Read "The Eatonville Anthology" by Zora Neale Hurston online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Coon Taylor never did any real stealing. Of course, if he saw a chicken / or a watermelon or muskmelon or anything like that that he wanted he'd / take it. The people used to get mad but they never could catch him. He / took so many melons from Joe Clarke that he set up in the melon patch / one night with his shotgun loaded with rock salt. He was going to fix / Coon. But he was tired. It is hard work being a mayor, postmaster, / storekeeper and everything. He dropped asleep sitting on a stump in / the middle of the patch. So he didn't see Coon when he came. Coon / didn't see him either, that is, not at first. He knew the stump was / there, however. He had opened many of Clarke's juicy Florida Favorite / on it. He selected his fruit, walked over to the stump and burst the / melon on it. That is, he thought it was the stump until it fell over / with a yell. Then he knew it was no stump and departed hastily from / those parts. He had cleared the fence when Clarke came to, as it were. / So the charge of rock-salt was wasted on the desert air.
During the sugar-cane season, he found he couldn't resist Clarke's soft / green cane, but Clarke did not go to sleep this time. So after he had / cut six or eight stalks by the moonlight, Clarke rose up out of the / cane strippings with his shotgun and made Coon sit right down and chew / up the last one of them on the spot. And the next day he made Coon / leave his town for three months.