Brewtique Presents…Big Sixteen

Big Sixteen

From The Book of Negro Folklore, edited by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps. Retold with commentary following the story by Chunky Panther

“Listen here, for this is how it was told to me;

‘Not long ago–in the days of slavery so certainly not long ago enough–there was a man in bondage called Big Sixteen. Now I’ve been told he didn’t have no proper name but folk called him Sixteen because that was the size shoe he wore. Big Sixteen was, well, big and strong. Strong enough that the ole’ massah looked to him to do just about everything ’round the plantation.

One day ole’ massah comes to Big Sixteen and says, “Sixteen, I believe I want you to move them sills that I hewed out in the swamp.”

“I yessuh, Massah,” Big Sixteen replied dutifully.

So Big Sixteen went down to that swamp and found them sills. He picked up those 12×12’s and took them up to the big house and stacked them. Now, no one person has toted a 12×12 before nor since.

One day ole’ massah comes to Big Sixteen and says, “Sixteen, go fetch the mules, I want to give ’em a look over.”

So Big Sixteen went down to that pasture and caught the two mules by their bridles. Mules can be mighty ornery and these mules especially so. They were so contrary and balky that Big Sixteen tore up their bridles trying to lead them away from the pasture. Not having a way to lead the mules anymore, Big Sixteen reached down a picked up those mules; one under each arm and took them to ole’ massah.

Ole’ massah was flabbergasted. “Big Sixteen, if you can tote two balky mules, you can do just about anything! I bet you can catch the Devil himself, Sixteen.”

“Yassuh, Massah, I can, if you get me a 9-pound hammer, a pick, and a shovel.”

So ole’ massah went and brought Big Sixteen the things he asked for and said, “Now go on and bring me the Devil!”

So Big Sixteen went out and started digging. He was digging for nearly a month before he got to where he wanted. Big Sixteen took out his hammer and went to the Devil’s house.

At the Devil’s house Big Sixteen did his best to press his body against the wall so he couldn’t be seen if the door was cracked. And he knocked.

And the Devil himself answered! “Who dat out there?”

“It’s Big Sixteen.”

“Well, what you want?”

“Just wanna have a word with you for a minute.”

Now, the Devil cracked the door to see who was really at his door but he couldn’t see nothing nor nobody! So the devil stuck his head out to get a better look and when he did Big Sixteen swung that 9-pound hammer down on the Devil’s head and killed him dead.

So Big Sixteen slung the Devil’s body over his shoulder and took it to ole’ massah who took one look at that dead devil and hollered, “Get that ugly thing out of here, quick! I didn’t think you’d actually catch the Devil!”

So Big Sixteen took the Devil’s body and threw it back down the hole he dug.

Now, some time passed and Big Sixteen passed on. He went all the way up to Heaven but when St. Peter saw Big Sixteen approaching he began to throw a fit. St. Peter told Big Sixteen to g’wan and get out of his sight! Big Sixteen was so big and powerful that St. Peter reckoned that if Sixteen ever got out of hand there’d be no one in all of Heaven to handle him.

Now Big Sixteen understood he wasn’t welcome in Heaven but he had to go somewhere so he made his way down to Hell.

As soon as Big Sixteen reached the gates of Hell, he saw the Devil’s children playin’ in the yard. The children began to chant, “Mama! Mama! That man that kilt papa is here!”

So she called her children inside and shut the door behind them. When Big Sixteen got to her she handed him a little bit of fire, a burning ember, and said, “You ain’t comin’ in here. Here, take this hot coal and g’wan start a hell of yo’ own.”

And so Big Sixteen went out, not welcome in Heaven nor Hell.

So if you are ever walking and come across a jack o’lantern in the woods at night, now you know it’s just Big Sixteen with his little bit of fire; looking for a place to go.'”

“Big Sixteen” is one of my favorite stories in The Book of Negro Folklore. It’s short but it’s dense and there’s just so much to love–like how Hell is not only a physical location but it takes just under a month to dig there using a pick and shovel. I think I would like to start by looking at the logic of the story and the assumptions it makes before diving into the things that really struck me.

I love that the Devil has a house and a whole family. It’s a level of domesticity applied to the literal Devil which tickles me to no end. As I already said I love the very folkloric logic that Hell is physical place you can dig to. This idea gets even more comedic if you take it at face value and realize that there was a plantation that had an actual hole going straight to actual Hell on it’s property? The story never explicitly states that Big Sixteen fills in the hole so did they just…leave it? Not gonna lie I kind of want to read the short story about the hell-mouth plantation.

Another detail that stuck out to me is that Big Sixteen actually kills the devil. So often in folklore, especially the folklore coming from the displaced indigenous peoples of the African Diaspora, wit and trickery is valued over raw strength. The folkloric protagonist usually needs to use every skill they have to overcome the antagonist–often specifically because physical confrontation would be so devastating. And yet, in “Big Sixteen,” we have a man imbued with a superhuman constitution who straight up murders the devil with little to no fuss. This is a fascinating inversion of what I expected to find and I would like to suggest this inversion directly supports one of the things that truly struck me; Big Sixteen’s corporeality.

Let me begin with this; being Black and reading myth and folklore is a fascinating experience. I have a somewhat scholarly impulse to not project modernity onto the past, or, at least, be very clear about when I am projecting modernity. However, being Black and engaging with Black stories means coming up against the fact the more things change the more things stay the same (put more bluntly: ain’t a damn thing changed). This is in part due to the fact that the most distant past of Blackness is only a handful of generations away from today. Our displacement was recent, our past is immediate.

With that extremely long winded preamble, I would like to talk about Big Sixteen’s corporeality. Homeboy is big. Bigness is his defining characteristic to the point that his name is a marker of how capital B-Big he is. I find it difficult to not read into this story a keen understanding that to be Big and Black is a dangerous existence. For all the shit Big Sixteen takes, does he ever do anything wrong in this story? Hell, he kills the devil! An act that in another story would be worthy of adulation but here only gets Big Sixteen rebuffed by the slave master–the very person who asked him to get the devil in the first place! The same slave master who, earlier in the story, praised Sixteen’s strength when it was economically beneficial to the slave master. Of course the physicality of a Big Black man cannot be praised for actions that do not reify the white supremacist social hierarchy.

Now let’s get to the part most damning of being Big and Black. Big Sixteen is too Big for Heaven. Y’all I almost yelled at this part in the story. It’s so explicit that Heaven does not have a reason to deny Big Sixteen entrance other than they perceive him to be a threat. The encapsulation of navigating a physical existence while Black is almost too neat. The content of your character doesn’t matter because the question at the forefront of folks minds will always be, “but what if they get violent?” I’m tired.

My favorite character in this story is, I think, most accurately described as the Devil’s babymama. On the most surface read, this woman barely even counts as a character. She is not named, she isn’t even called the Devil’s wife. Our only hint at her relationship is that the Devil’s kids call her mama. Her only utility in the story is to deliver the information that Big Sixteen isn’t welcome in Hell. This is a pretty thin basis to say, “and she’s my favorite.” But! But! Let’s read a little deeper. As far as I can tell the Devil’s Babymama is the only character to show anything approaching sympathy to Big Sixteen through giving him that little bit of fire for his wanderings. She’s also the only character who tells Big Sixteen to go do his own thing and “make a hell of [his] own” instead of giving him orders. Now that’s fascinating. What does it mean that this nameless and hellish woman gave more to Big Sixteen than St. Peter? I’m sure folk smarter than me can pull something truly beautiful out of this narrative thread.

The final thing that really struck me was the ending. I have been primed by countless scary stories to expect the standard spooky twist of “if you come across this…then the ghost might be nearby! Oooo!” Yet this story once again flipped my expectations with the ending just being…really sad. This isn’t a story of some kid-stealing haint or messed up tooth monster that you should actively avoid running into. This is a story of a slave who never had a place to go. As I am writing this out I am realizing that is actually scary, and only gets scarier with time–the idea that you could go out on a hike tonight and stumble across a jack o’lantern and know that Big Sixteen has been wandering for decades is haunting. In Big Sixteen’s wandering we touch on the other frightful thrust of the story; the profound feeling of displacement in the ending. To be a slave is to be denied even the afterlife.

Hoo boy! Well, first of thanks for making it this far down the page! That wasn’t a small amount of words to get through. This is my first time writing commentary in this way so please forgive my meandering ramblings. I hope y’all enjoyed this and let’s hope together that this and and future installments are increasingly readable!