I was reminded recently, when coming in from the cold, of a chill from Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men. So I reread the classic book of black folk tales, waiting for that chill to come. It arrives in the form of some practical advice from an older man named Dad Boykin. Dad interrupts the storytelling going on around him to explain how best to get warm. What my mind did with his advice since I last read Mules and Men is a story in itself. Or the absence of a story, a cold shutting-out of folk tales.
“You young poots won’t lissen to nothin’!” Dad interjects soon after someone else tells a story about “de King of de Beasts,” the lion. What Dad has to say has nothing to do with these sorts of magical animals found throughout the book. His words are purely pragmatic: “Not a one of you knows how to warm hisself right and youse so hard-headed you don’t want to be teached.” He goes on to advise sitting right in front of a fireplace, not off in the “chimbley corner.” And from the center, it’s best to turn around — “dat’s to knock de breezes offen yo’ back.”
It chilled me years ago to listen to Dad describe just how the body gets cold when exposed to wind. “You know, all de time youse outside in the weather, de li’l breezes and winds is jumpin’ on yo’ back and crawlin’ down yo’ neck, to hide.” It still chills me, although not as much. When I was younger, I saw Dad’s advice as a long-winded, cold interruption of the fantastic tales. I wanted to hear more about talking animals and God and the devil. When I reread the book, I was surprised to find that Dad speaks for only a few paragraphs. His monologue was longer in my memory. His words had acted like “li’l breezes and winds” that had hid inside my mind and spread.
So here is my advice: When a book comes to you in a shiver, reread it and see how it has changed while hiding inside of you.
