#144 Strong Horse Tea- Alice Walker

#144 Strong Horse Tea- Alice Walker

“Rannie Toomer’s little baby boy Snooks was dying from double pneumonia and whooping cough.”

The baby will die without care. Rannie wants proper care, a real doctor, no folk medicine or local useless remedies:

“I don’t believe in none of that swamp magic. And the old home remedies I took when I was a child come just short of killing me.”

She doesn’t know how to get help, she’s never called on a real doctor, doesn’t know how to call a real doctor and can't leave the house. So, the natural thing to do is ask an official public servant that she sees everyday, the mailman. But he only recommends folk-medicine and is put off that she asks him for help:

“Why did colored folks always want you to do something for them?”

The doctor doesn’t come, and she is left with no other choice than to go out and get herself some Strong Horse Tea. A mother will do anything she can to heal her child, but is it enough?

Rating: 7-6-7-6 Total= 26

#126 Sredni Vashtar- Saki (H.H. Munro)

#126 Sredni Vashtar- Saki (H.H. Munro)

“Conradin was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced his professional opinion that the boy would not live another five years.”

“One of these days Conradin supposed he would succumb to the mastering pressure of wearisome necessary things—such as illness and coddling restrictions and drawn-out dullness. Without his imagination, which was rampant under the spur of loneliness, he would have succumbed long ago.”

A doomed, lonely child with a wonderful imagination. He has a guardian that is strict and nobody but himself to keep busy. He keeps a ferret that he has dubbed a God, Sredni Vashtar. The guardian is skeptical of the child’s secret and takes the key that will unlock his secret. He prays that his God will escape these evil forces:

Sredni Vashtar went forth,

His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.

His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.

Sredni Vashtar the beautiful

They accidentally allow his pet to escape and worry that they have ruined the one thing he cares about, but he is excited that his God has been set free.

Notable Passage: “The few fruit trees that it contained were set jealously apart from his plucking.”

Rating: 8-7-9-10 Total= 35