Story Summary:
George Mathis was so reviled as a plantation overseer that the sharecroppers under him use to play a game guessing how he would die. But no matter how violent a death they conjured for the man they called Mean Man Mathis, no one came close to guessing what would ultimately spell the end for the meanest man in the world. Set in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, “The Black Cat’s Revenge” is part tall tale, part ghost story and all thrills. A short story, about 3500 words.
Sample:
There are all sorts of tall tales floating around the Mississippi Delta, fantastic yarns about giant
catfish and bargains with the devil. Most of these stories are freely traded over sacks of cotton
or at the all-night "revivals" folks stage from time to time. But it's a rare moment when someone
speaks the name of George Mathis. His tale is best told on a cold night, when shadows from
the fireplace flicker like grasping fingers and a bottle of moonshine is within arm's reach. You
see, some of these stories are flat-out lies, most just the victims of a few extra details. But a few
stories folks will swear are the gospel truth. This story about the meanest man in the world--and
what eventually killed him--is one such tale.
Now what made George Mathis so mean remains a matter of speculation, but he came from a
long line of cheats and scoundrels who settled in the Delta some time before Adam. Some folks
said his mama put yellow jackets in his baby bottle. Others guessed he wasn’t born, but hatched
in a cottonmouth’s nest. Regardless, by the time he was in grade school he was sending home
bullies twice his size with a bloody nose. On one occasion as a young man, he watched some
local toughs tie tin cans to a dog’s tail and send it scurrying away in fear. Inspired, he cornered
the ruffians in an alley, tied ‘em together with rope and doused them in kerosene. Then he
wrapped a long rag around the rope and set it aflame. How he laughed watching the men try
and travel in three directions at once. Eventually they jumped in the river, which extinguished
the flame but they nearly drowned trying to escape the ropes. George took a seat on the
riverbank to watch their flailing and screaming. When they clawed their way out onto the stinking
mud of the riverbank, sputtering and exhausted, George walked away without a word.
Mind you, this wasn’t retribution for the dog. George didn’t have a kind-hearted bone in his body,
especially for some mangy mutt. He just had a knack for taking evil to its next logical step.
As he grew older, George’s mean streak turned from a source of amusement to a way of doing
business. For generations, the Mathis family had kept a plantation that grew vast acres of
cotton, but also a few cash crops like soybeans and corn. After Mr. Lincoln's war, the cotton
pickers on his property were called sharecroppers instead of slaves. They did the same amount
of work under the same miserable conditions, except they got to keep a few handfuls of the crop
to sell.
George was a harsh overseer, who would collect a day's work then accuse his workers of
weighing their sacks with rocks and refuse to pay them. The sharecroppers would scrape by
on their bottom dollar, then have nothing to pay with when rent was due. George would show
up with a sympathetic smile and extend them three months to pay their back rent--with interest,
of course. By the time George returned,they owed double the rent and rarely possessed the
means to pay it. Most of his workers were also deeply indebted to the commissary owned and
operated by George, which was the only place for miles around for supplies and food. The
commissary was always willing to extend credit to the families that couldn’t pay his high
prices (which was everyone) and soon they were buried deep under that debt, too. A lot of
families were eventually turned out, often by torch light in the dead of night. Sometimes he
would keep families in their homes long past their deadline, just to feed off their anxiety and
fear. This was especially true in winter, when he would come calling for an August debt in the
depths of a freezing January night. On occasion a family would attempt to skip out on their
debt, but no one saw or heard of them again. It was always assumed that George met them at
the property line and settled that debt in blood.
The Mathis plantation workers lived in a little village on the edge of the plantation. The houses
were ramshackle affairs with sagging front porches and more holes in the roof than a trespasser
caught in George’s shotgun sights. Folks didn’t have much to their name but the clothes on their
backs, some sticks of furniture and a pack of hungry kids. They did share a common problem
though in George Mathis and that bound them closer together than their shared misery. On
the sweltering summer evenings when it was too hot to sleep, the menfolk would gather on
someone’s porch and talk deep into the night. By and by, they started playing a game guessing
how George Mathis--or Mean Man Mathis as they called him--would
eventually meet his maker.
Someone would venture a guess: “Suppose a water moccasin one day bites him on the
heel?” No, they’d argue, one drop of George’s blood would sooner kill the snake.
“Well, suppose one day he falls in the Mississippi and drowns?” They’d laugh: “No, he’d poison
the water from Cairo to N’awlins.” Someone else would pipe up: “Say, what if lightin’ should
strike him down?”
“I reckon Mean Man Mathis would grab that bolt of lightin’ and toss it back up at God.”
And on they went. Usually what started as a light-hearted game eventually turned into a bitter
wish list of violent deaths the desperate men wished upon Mean Man Mathis. But of all the
deaths the men conjured up, no one came close to guessing it would be a big black cat that
would eventually spell the end for Mean Man Mathis.
To Read More:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Cats-Revenge-ebook/dp/B009D790XE/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&qid=1349556763&sr=8-15&keywords=the+black+cat%27s+revenge
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