Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison

He, Bliss, sat at the kitchen table drinking the ice-cold lemonade and listening to the tinkle the chunk of ice made when he stirred it with his finger. The others were sitting quietly in the room with Daddy Hickman and he could see Sister Wilhite nodding in her chair over near the window. Sister Wilhite's tired, he thought. She's been up all night and Deacon has too. He looked at the cooking stove, dull black with shining nickel parts around the bottom made in the shape of scrolls. They're the same shape as the scrolls on the lid of my coffin, he thought. Why do they put scrolls on everything? Sister Wilhite's sewing machine has scrolls made into the iron part where her feet go to pedal and it has scrolls painted in gold in the long shining block that holds the shiny wheel and the needle. Scrolls on everything. People don't have scrolls though. But maybe you just can't see them. Sister Georgia. Scroll, Scroll Jellyroll. That's a good rhyme-but sinful. Jellyroll.

The stovepipe rose straight up and then curved and went out through a hole up near the ceiling. The wallpaper up there was black where the smoke had leaked through. The stove was cold. No fire was showing through the airholes in the door where the wood and coal went, and he thought, It's sleeping too. It's resting, taking a summer vacation. It works hard in the winter though, it goes all day long eating up wood and coal and making ashes. From early in the morning till late at night and sometimes they stoke it and it burns all night too. It's just coasting then though, but it's working. Summertime is easy except for Sunday when a lot of folks have to eat string beans, turnip greens, cabbage and salt pork, sweet potato pie, ham hocks and collards, egg-cornbread and dandelion greens is good for you. Make you big and strong. Summer is easy except for those good things so the stove can take a rest. It wakes up for oatmeal for breakfast and eggs and grits and coffee but then it goes out. Not a stick of wood in the corner or bucket of coal. No heat for lemonade but it's good. In the fall is the busy time. In the fall they'll be killing the hogs and taking the chitterlins and the members will be bringing a whole pig to Daddy Hickman all scalded and scrubbed clean, then he'll give it to Deacon Wilhite and Deacon'll give it to Sister Wilhite and that's when the stove will really have to work. The door where the fire goes'll be cherry red and the stovepipe too.