of food. She had trained him from the very start to eat some of everything she ate. She took him right in her lap when she sat down with her victuals and held his mouth close to her pan. When she took a big bite she gave him a tiny taste. When she ate collard greens he had a sip of the pot licker. When she ate peas and rice he had a spoonful of the good blue gravy. When she all but bit her fingers over catfish stew, he smacked his baby lips over a thread of the tender white meat, or sucked at a knot of the salt bacon. He never had colic from her breast milk or her food, for his insides were taught and trained to deal with strong things, with good full-flavored man rations.
Maum Hannah had warned her at the very beginning of his life not to coddle and weaken him with sugar rags and sweetened water and hot milk tea, but to make him a real man and raise him hard, strong, tough, so he could grow up able and hot with life.
When he first began crawling and went near the door-step, she did not say a word, but let him fall down the steps and bump his head hard. He remembered it and next time watched out and was careful. The first time he crawled near the hearth where the old fire burned day and night, sometimes slowly with a dull blue light,
