Every Tongue Got to Confess by Zora Neale Hurston Read Free Book Online Page A

had happened. The preacher said, “What in the hell is you all coming around here for? The fun is all over now.”
    —L.O. T AYLOR .
     
    There was two colored preachers went to Mississippi to run revival and ran their meeting for two weeks.
    At the end of the meeting they had gained a lot of souls. So on their way back to Alabama they stopped to count money, and to their surprise they had a hundred bucks a-piece.
    The younger preacher said to the old one, “Let’s shoot some craps.”
    The older one said, “No, no, I’ve quit all that for twenty years.”
    So the younger one kept on persuading him until finally the game started. The younger preacher had a sharp shot they called the Hudson; the older preacher had the shot they call the Up-and-Out.
    So him and him! The old preacher losing all the time. So when he got to his last dollar he opened his knife—(Soliloquy): “And as soon as the younger one make that point I am going to take my money back.”
    The younger one was watching him all the time, so he continued to shoot. As soon as the point was made the old one fastenedhim around the neck and said: “Give me my money! I’ve ’hark from the tomb around your neck,” not noticing the thirty-two–twenty the younger preacher had in his side. So the young preacher said, “Yes, but I’ve got the doleful sound.”
    So the old one looked and saw the gat and said, “The doleful sound gets it.” So I being there, I asked the bushes to go my bond. *
    —J OE W ILEY.
     
    I had the occasion of leaving Alabama and going to Georgia. While being in Georgia I attended a meeting runned by Reverend Fullbosom. So the meeting lasted one week.
    So all the time meeting was going on, nobody wouldn’t bow down, neither say “amen” to nothing said.
    So the church had only one door and one window, and the window was in the pulpit behind the preacher. So the last night of the meeting, Reverend Fullbosom carried his fifty-six special; so when church begin Reverend said: “Brothers and sisters, we are about to end our meeting, so Brother Sexton, lock the door and bring me the key.” So he did, the sexton being peg-legged.
    About that time I was a mourner.
    Reverend Fullbosom said, “I’ve preached to all of you one week and not a one of you have even bowed down.” So he opened his grip and out with his fifty-six special and said: “Now, all of you thieves, and robbers, hoboes, cut-throats, and rounders, BOW DOWN!”
    So they begin to bow. So the peg-leg man thought it was impossible for him to bend that peg, so he said: “Brother Pastor, me too?”
    Reverend said, “Yes, you peg-leg son of a gun, BOW DOWN!”
    So when I looked around the sexton was on both knees singing: “If my wife is in this church, tell her to come here please; if she ain’t got time to come, tell her to send me them keys.”
    So Reverend made three shots in the church and everybody went to run and made for the side of the church, and running so fast they carried it twenty-eight miles before they thought to turn it loose.
    —J OE W ILEY.
     
    “Say, boy, where have you been?”
    “I been to hell and everywheres else, mister.”
    “What did you see there?”
    “I saw a preacher and some boys. The boys was shooting crap on Sunday. The preacher scolded them and told them they ought not to do that. So the boys told the preacher that they were going to find Jesus next Sunday. So the boys had dirty * under a hat and covered it up. The preacher was standing up and they all said, ‘We have found Jesus.’
    “ ‘Where is he,’ said the preacher?
    “ ‘You pick it up,’ said the boys.
    “So the preacher picked the hat up and said, ‘Well, boys, Jesus done defecated and gone.’ ”
    —E DWARD M ORRIS.
    * Originally typed “package” but changed in the manuscript.
    * “Shine” or “moonshine.”
    * “tiny.”
    * “preachers.”
    * Originally typed “son of a bitch,” but changed in the manuscript.
    * As in, “headed for the hills.”
    *