have my word for it, that nigger didn’t die.”
“Yas-suh, Jedge, Yo’ Honour. Ah’ll take yo’ word for it--on’y, we ain’
goin’ back,” said Bulldog emphatically.
“Do you mean to say you aren’t going to help me get out of here--that
you’d go away and leave me?” Judge Barringer looked straight up into
the face of the big Negro.
“No, suh! Ah ain’ goin’ away an’ leave yo’, Jedge Barringer, but also
Ah ain’ goin’ back wiv yo’ an’ git hung by de neck for no yaller
Washin’ton nigger.... Ain’ yo’ even got a san’widge, Jedge?”
Judge Barringer was rapidly, in his weakened state, becoming
exasperated. “Now, you listen to me, Bulldog, and don’t be a fool. I
don’t want you to hang any more than you want to hang. Chinkapin never
told the truth in his life. If he said that nigger died, he meant it as
a joke, and you jumped to conclusions and----”
“No, suh, Jedge, Ah ain’ jump to nuthing. Jes when Chinkapin say dat
nigger die three flip-flop death-angel buzzards come flyin’ right ovah
mah haid.... If yo’ ain’ even got a san’widge, we goes hungry, both of
us; but, Jedge, we ain’ gwine back fo’ to git me hung.” Bulldog was
adamant on that point.
“If I had a gun, Bulldog, I’d shoot you!” Judge Barringer threatened.
“Yas-suh, Jedge, Yo’ Honour,” Bulldog agreed solemnly. “But dat
wouldn’t be gittin’ me hung by de neck. Ah saw oncet a lynch nigger an’
his neck was stretch out as long as mah arm. No, suh, Jedge Barringer,
when Ah dies Ah dies so dey can put me in de coffin beautiful.”
“Can’t you do something besides talk like a fool?” Judge Barringer felt
that his strength was slipping away from him. The hope that had come
with Bulldog’s arrival was fast disappearing. His head sank resignedly
to his chest. His brain was beginning to grow muddled again from sheer
exhaustion, when he felt that Bulldog had taken him by the shoulder.
From a long way off he could hear the big Negro’s voice.
“Jedge Barringer, don’ yo’ go passin’ out. Ah’ll git you home someways.
Gives me yo’ arm an’ I totes you to Ossabaw.”
Ossabaw? That was an island at the mouth of the river fully fifteen
miles distant. Now Judge Barringer, semiconscious as he was, knew
that Bulldog was crazy. If he should be taken to Ossabaw, he would be
farther away from help than ever. He would stay rather where he was. It
was warm here, and quiet.
But when the black giant reached down and picked him up he made no
protest. He was not even aware that he was being carried. Under this
new burden, Bulldog found the going heavy in the swamp and made for the
higher ground near the river bank. It was the wind coming up from the
sea some two hours later that had a reviving effect on Judge Barringer.
He opened his eyes to see a shadow a yard away.
“Is that you, Bulldog?” he asked.
“Yas-suh, Jedge, dis is me.”
“If you won’t do anything, why do you stay here?” Judge Barringer said
petulantly in his weakness.
“Shucks, Jedge, we ain’ heah no mo’; we’s halfway to Ossabaw. Yo’
weighs like ce-ment, Jedge. When Ah gits me a li’l’ res’ we goes on.”
“Halfway to Ossabaw?”
“Yas-suh, Jedge.”
Judge Barringer lapsed again. It was useless to try to argue with the
crazy hyena. If Bulldog had made up his mind to take him to Ossabaw, he
would have to go, being unable to resist. He saw a picture of himself
as a fellow Crusoe, fugitive from justice with a chain-gang Negro.
But if that leg of his lost its soreness, if he ever was able to get
around again, he swore that it would be much better for Bulldog to have
hanged. A sudden jolt, a feeling that he was floating, and he knew that
they were on their way.
When he opened his eyes again they were still on the go. His injured
leg--it had been a flesh wound in the calf--was numb and did not pain
him now. It occurred to him that he might even be able to walk. But the
side-to-side sway, as he was carried along, seemed much easier; and
besides, there was little weight to his body now; he felt as light as
a feather. Years after, he was to look back at that moment and wonder
what ever had put such a crazy notion in his head. He closed his eyes
again.
“Jedge Barringer!... Jedge Barringer!” Bulldog was calling to him, but
it was cold and he did not want to get up.
“Jedge Barringer!”
That was not Bulldog’s voice. He roused himself with a great effort
and sat up. A bent old Negro was on his knees before him, his face a
picture of despair. Suddenly it was wreathed in smiles of thankfulness.
“Jedge Barringer, yo’ is alive, thank de Lawd! Ah been callin’ yo’ fo’
de longes’ time until Ah jes’ ’bout reckon yo’ was a corp’.”
“Daddy Ike!” Judge Barringer gasped. “Where did you come from? Where’s
Bulldog?”
“Down on de plantation, Jedge.” The old Negro’s face looked puzzled.
“How come yo’ don’ know Ah ain’ nebber lef’ Ossabaw, Jedge?”
And then Judge Barringer remembered. Ossabaw Island was the seat of the
old Depford plantation, now only a relic of the past, and Daddy Ike was
the oldest Negro in the section. He still lived in the old ramshackle
slave quarters and eked out a living by fishing and raising truck.
Everyone knew Daddy Ike, and yet Judge Barringer had forgotten until
now. This was the reason they had come to Ossabaw. It was dawn. Bulldog
had been carrying him all night. He owed his life to the big Negro.
Daddy Ike misread the judge’s thoughts. “Bulldog he gone,” the old
Negro said quickly. “Yo’ fergit all ’bout him, Jedge Barringer, while
Ah helps yo’ to mah boat.”
“That crazy nigger’s gone? Where?”
“Yas-suh, Jedge, Bulldog’s de craziest nigger in de worl’. Why fo’ yo’
an’ me gib two goobers wheah dat fool nigger’s gone? Us is gwine to git
yo’ home, Jedge. How’s yo’ laig?” Daddy Ike changed the subject.
Judge Barringer smiled. “Daddy Ike, you old rascal, don’t lie to me.
Bulldog saved my life. Where is he?”
“Jedge Barringer, Ah don’ know. De las’ time Ah seed him he was sittin’
in mah house eatin’ hominy grits an’ side meat an’ yams an’ black-eye
peas; an’ lissen to me, Jedge, if Ah don’t git yo’ home and git back
dat crazy nigger’s gwine to eat me into de po’house. But Ah don’ know
wheah he is now.”
“All right,” Judge Barringer laughed. “We’ll see about that later.
Where’s your boat, Daddy Ike? If you’ll give me a hand I think I can
hobble.”
“Dat’s right, Jedge, lets us go. Heah’s de boat. Bulldog he swum across
to de island an’ like to scairt me senseless, comin’ up to mah do’ in
dem chain-gang clo’s. Ah’d ’a’ come across to yo’ right away, Jedge,
but dat crazy Bulldog said Ah got to feed him fust. If we don’ get yo’
home he’ll eat up all mah winter rations!”
With the old Negro’s help, Judge Barringer managed to bear his weight
on the uninjured leg and hobble down the few feet of bank to the boat.
Ossabaw Island lay like a black blob in the early morning mist a
quarter of a mile away. But their way lay in the opposite direction,
and Daddy Ike, for all his eighty-odd years, lost no time in pushing
off. Bulldog had told him to bring back a pair of overalls and a shirt,
and he wanted to get back as soon as possible before the ravenous giant
ate him “into de po’house.” Also he was genuinely alarmed for the
escaped convict’s sake and wanted him to get away before the law came
after him.
“Yo’ ain’ gwine to say nuthin’ ’bout Bulldog, is yo’, Jedge?” the old
man asked presently. “Dat nigger’s crazy, but fo’ all he size, he’s
jes’ lak a baby.”
“I’ll let you know later,” Judge Barringer said absently. He was
pondering the question of just what was to be done with Bulldog. He
knew that the big Negro would not go far. It was only a matter of time
before he would be caught in some shanty or other, giving way to his
appetite. But Judge Barringer was also convinced in his own mind that
the story of the Washington Negro’s death had been a hoax--a hoax that
had worked too well. And when they landed at one of the first river
settlements where the judge could get a conveyance that would take him
back to the city, the first thing he did was to get to a telephone and
wait while he had his secretary at the other end give him a report from
the hospital.
“Discharged yesterday, Judge,” the secretary reported. “It would be
pretty hard to find him now. After his experience with Bulldog I guess
he’s left town.”
“All right; didn’t want him anyway,” said the judge. “Tell Dr. Rafe
Kirby to go out to the hospital and wait for me. I’ll be there in about
an hour, bringing an accident case.”
Before the secretary could question him further, he hung up the
receiver. Judge Barringer hated personal publicity unless it had to do
with politics.
He turned to the storekeeper, whose telephone he had used. “Would you
mind telling that old nigger out there I want to see him a moment?”
Daddy Ike came in with his hat in his hand. “What dey say, Jedge?” he
asked anxiously.
“That Washington nigger was let out of the hospital yesterday and by
now he’s halfway home.”
“Praise de Lawd for dat!” breathed Daddy Ike.
“And tell Bulldog when he finishes eating that he is to come and report
to me before he goes back to the chain gang,” Judge Barringer said. The
least he could do was suspend sentence, but if possible, he wanted to
do something more substantial than that.
* * * * *
Thorough examination by Dr. Rafe Kirby showed that the gunshot wound
was superficial. The hardship of crawling mile after mile through the
swamp had caused most of the judge’s suffering. He was promised that he
would be around with the aid of a crutch in a day or two.
“But I thought you went after railbirds, Judge,” Dr. Kirby said with a
grin when the patient’s wound had been dressed.
“Rafe, if you-all don’t want me to lose my reputation as a gentleman
before this young lady nurse, get out of here quick,” Judge Barringer
bellowed.
* * * * *
It was the following Monday, still hobbling with the aid of a crutch,
that Judge Barringer returned to the bench. There had been no word
from Bulldog and he did not quite know what to make of it. When the
first case was called, a small Negro, whose head was almost completely
shrouded in bandages, stood before him, Judge Barringer looked down
compassionately.
“Well, what did you run into--a truck?” he asked.
There was a movement in the prisoners’ pen. The Monday-morning crowd
was being swayed by some unseen force. Then the force came into view in
the shuffling, sheepish form of Bulldog.
“Yas-suh, Jedge, Yo’ Honour, heah Ah is!”
“Bulldog!”
Judge Barringer was accustomed to almost anything that might happen
in his court, but for the moment he was nonplussed. “Didn’t Daddy Ike
bring you my message?”
“Yas-suh, Jedge, Yo’ Honour, it was thisaway----”
“Why didn’t you come to me if you got my message?” Judge Barringer
interrupted, his dismay turning to reproof.
“Yas-suh, Jedge, Yo’ Honour, Ah’m comin’ to dat. It was thisaway,”
Bulldog pleaded apologetically: “If yo’ was to take dem rags offen dat
little half-size nigger, yo’d see it was Chinkapin hidin’ behin’ ’em.”
“Chinkapin!”
“Yas-suh, Jedge, de same what tol’ me dat lie ’bout dat Washin’ton
nigger dyin’. Dis heah Chinkapin cause all de trouble, Jedge, Yo’
Honour. If it wasn’ fo’ Chinkapin’s lyin’, Jedge, Ah wouldn’ ’a’ bus’
loose from de chain gang. If it wasn’ fo’ dat little han’ful lyin’, I
wouldn’ hab tote’ yo’ all de way to Ossabaw. Don’ blame me fo’ totin’
yo’ to Ossabaw, Jedge; blame Chinkapin; he done it. Dat Chinkapin
nigger’s to blame fo’ ev’y las’ bit ob de trouble. So’s when Ah’m
comin’ from Ossabaw Sa’day night, comin’ to see you, Jedge, Ah bumps
into dat Chinkapin an’ Ah jes nachelly squeeze his lyin’ haid fo’ him
and gib him a couple ob shakes and dat’s all.”
“Why did you wait until Saturday to come?” Judge Barringer asked.
“’Deed, Jedge, Yo’ Honour, how come Ah could come befo’ Sa’day? Cap’n
Jim didn’ let Chinkapin loose offen de chain gang until Sa’day,” said
Bulldog honestly.
Judge Barringer did not smile this morning. The business before him was
too personal. The little bandaged Negro had lied to Bulldog. But in
breaking away from the chain gang, Bulldog had been the means of saving
the judge’s life, for he might never have been found in the swamp. It
had been his purpose to suspend sentence on the big Negro, to take him
under his wing and get him a job. Now that seemed impossible.
“What do you think I ought to do, Bulldog?” he asked the giant gravely.
“Who, me?” Bulldog looked incredulous. “Shucks, Jedge Barringer, Ah’
don’ know what yo’ ought to do, but Ah knows what yo’ is gwine to do.”
“What’s that?”
Bulldog grew suddenly serious. He had heard enough tales of road gangs
in the northern counties of the state, where it was cold in winter,
where the prisoners were badly treated, and the food was poor.
“Yo’ ain’ funnin’ wiv me, Jedge, Yo’ Honour? Yo’ ain’ holdin’ it
agin me for totin’ yo’ all de way down to Ossabaw? ’Deed, Jedge
Barringer”--and here pathos entered Bulldog’s voice--“’deed, if yo’
sen’ me anywheres besides to de Fahm, yo’ll bus’ Cap’n Jim’s heart.”
Judge Barringer sighed a sigh of relief. “All right, Bulldog, you win.
Six months on the Fahm. And you, Chinkapin,” he said, turning to the
little Negro--“you go with him.”
“Yas-suh, Jedge, Yo’ Honour,” Bulldog grinned. As long as he could be
under the gentle tutelage of Captain Jim and Uncle Henry, the cook, he
was happy.
“An’ yo’ kin trus’ me, Jedge Barringer,” he said solemnly. “Ah won’
bus’ loose no mo’.”
HE MAN
BY MARJORY STONEMAN DOUGLAS
From _Saturday Evening Post_
Small cold shivers of fright began rippling up and down Ronny’s spine
the moment his father stopped the car at the wharf on the bay front,
and Gloria Cargill and Mrs. Kinney screamed with delight at the waiting
parallel planes of the flying boat. In spite of the warm brilliance
of the Florida morning at ten o’clock, in spite of the salt tang of
the wind that snapped flags on mastheads and ruffled the blue water
between the slips, in spite of the hilarious breakfast party they had
all shared in celebration of Ronny’s birthday trip to Bimini, his feet
chilled and his hands went clammy and the bacon and boiled pompano sat
uneasily within him. Yet the terror that from childhood had ridden him,
the fear of high places, of falling horribly through thin air, and
therefore, of all flying, was no greater in him at this moment than his
fear of letting his father know that he was afraid.
He sat mute in the corner of the back seat, his slender hands gripping
at his boyish bony knees. The lucky fact that no one ever noticed him
much anyway gave him a chance to pull himself together. As his father
dashed around to help out Gloria, and burly Colonel Kinney reached back
a hand for his smart chubby wife, Ronny looked at himself deliberately
in the little mirror over the wheel. His tan hid the pallor that he
felt. His mild gray eyes steadied as he watched them, so that they
would not betray him. That he did not show his panic more plainly gave
him courage to get out of the car, carrying Gloria’s green-leather
vanity case and her flimsy green-silk coat.
None of the four looked at him as he came up, the tall awkward boy so
acutely aware always that he could never be the figure of a man that
his father was. Ronny looked at him now, shyly, with the spark of his
adoration in his eye.
Andrew Burgess always dominated any group. His graying dark hair was
bared, flying its shaggy crest of lock above the others. His bronzed
handsome face was alert and eager, with only a few folds about the
eyes to betray his years. Ronny thought again, as he had since a small
boy, with that same little throb of almost hopeless devotion, that his
father was the finest man he had ever seen in his life. To Ronny, who
at school had followed breathlessly in the newspapers his father’s polo
exploits, his tennis triumphs, the purses and the ribbons that his
racing stable won, Andrew Burgess was also the most brilliant sportsman
in the world. His father never in his life refused a high dive or knew
the weak sickness of great heights. Never in a thousand years would he
have given up practice with the school polo team, as Ronny had, after
being in hospital two months with a broken rib, because ever after that
when he thought of playing polo the thunder of those following hoofs
came sickeningly back to him, the trampling pain, the darkness, the
oblivion. His father’s ribs had been broken, and his collar bone and
his leg, and he had played more dashing polo than ever, after that.
But Ronny couldn’t. He just couldn’t, that was all, no matter how deep
within him burned the bitter knowledge that he was a coward.
Sometimes Ronny thought that if his father ever discovered the depths
of his son’s weakness he would disown him. It was only that as a
motherless sickly child Ronny had been given over to the care of the
best of nurses, as a mild little boy to the most expensive of schools,
that had saved him until now, he was certain, from being found out.
This winter in Miami was the first time Ronny had ever been with his
father for so many months. It was as if Andrew had suddenly discovered
that he was about to be twenty and had decided to make a man of him.
As a result Ronny had had desperately to try to live up to what was
expected of him by a man who retained all his enthusiasm for sports,
even if he were too old now for the more strenuous of them. Ronny had
to give up entirely his rather studious, leisurely life. He had no
time now for reading, or for the Spanish translations he had been so
interested in doing with a young instructor at his college. And he gave
up his beloved photography, which for years at school and summer camp
and college had absorbed him. There was time for nothing now, and
certainly no excess energy for anything but sports.
He struggled with them, with what valiance he could muster. He worked
hard at a golf lesson every day, to improve his indifferent game,
while his father and Colonel Kinney tramped their speedy eighteen
holes every morning. He worked at tennis lessons for which he had no
feeling whatsoever, because it had been one of the things his father
had done best. And he spent hours every afternoon with his father and
the Kinneys at polo games or at the races, where he bet and lost often,
so that his father would not think him a piker, struggling wildly to
conceal even from himself how supremely he was bored. It seemed to
Ronny that nothing but luck and Gloria Cargill had kept his father from
finding him out.
It had been all luck at first. His father happened never to have seen
Ronny swinging rather wildly with a brassie, or practising an overhand
with his usual awkwardness. Ronny took care always to be swimming among
the breakers when everyone else was diving from the tower by the pool.
He rather liked swimming, anyway, if he could be left alone at it. He
grew brown from work with a medicine ball every morning on the sand,
put on a little weight, and tried to remain inconspicuous. His father,
incapable of imagining that any real man could be uninterested in the
sports he loved, was only vaguely disappointed with him as yet.
If at times he looked a little puzzled at the quiet boy who took no
prizes, broke no records at anything, would not play polo, was not
handsome and dominant and magnetic, he had not thought about it long
enough to be resentful. The boy was young yet. After all, he’d had too
much schooling, too many women nurses as a small boy. It was a good
thing he’d remembered to take him out of college. There would be still
time for his polo.
“Stick with me, old boy!” he would shout to Ronny in one of his lavish
moments, when a horse of his had won or he had taken a close game from
Colonel Kinney. “I’ll make a he man of you yet. Next year, when you’re
toughened up a bit, we’ll look around for a couple of good polo ponies
for you and you can get in on the practice games up at Aiken.”
Those were the moments that Ronny, writhing inwardly, hated most. It
made the time when his father must find him out seem very near. It was
to the putting off of that moment, which would have been the end of
everything for Ronny, that Gloria Cargill had assisted.
Ronny did not really like Gloria Cargill. He did not really like big
wheezy Colonel Kinney, whose talk was like his father’s--all sports
and poker and bootleggers--but somehow not the same--a thousand times
more monotonous. He did not really like Mrs. Kinney, who was fat and
flat faced, who wore the most expensive clothes in the most startling
colours and played bridge like an inspired card sharp. He never knew
what to say to any of them, and they had a way of screaming with
laughter at some embarrassed speech of his and then staring at him
curiously, with cold eyes, touched slightly with contempt. They always
made him feel that they knew perfectly what a coward he was, if his
father did not. But even they were easier to endure than Gloria, for
all that she took his father’s attention from him.
His father said that Gloria Cargill was the most marvellous woman in
New York, and all his world of rich men and expensive women and racing
and cards and sport and supper clubs seemed to agree with him. She
was the youthful widow of a tire king, and she spent her money like a
spoiled empress. She was almost as tall as Andrew, with a lithe figure
that was swaying and sleek either in a bathing suit or in one of her
fabulous evening dresses. Her hair was wild red gold around the bold
beauty of her face. Her brown-velvet eyes had little gold lights in
them that burned when they looked at men, and the wet brightness of
her mouth showed scarlet down the whole length of a hotel corridor or
across a dance floor.
For Ronny the worst of it was that she had discovered that he was
painfully shy of handsome women and therefore delighted in tormenting
him. She could turn the whole force of her fascination on him, like a
headlight, in which he squirmed and blinked miserably, to her laughing
delight. She adored running a glittering hand suddenly down his coat
sleeve, drowning him in her gusts of perfume, clinging with a burlesque
of devotion to his arm and flashing her heady glance into his dazzled
eyes. Once or twice Andrew had seen him blanch and jerk his hand back
involuntarily and he had been furious, because an assured gallantry
to women was to Andrew the fundamental of red-blooded masculinity.
He lashed out savagely to the boy, if in a low voice, in one of those
sudden rages which reddened his face uncontrollably. The whole thing
fixed Ronny in his miserable sense of inferiority.
But if he secretly disliked Gloria, he was grateful to her for taking
his father’s attention. It seemed that everyone was watching to see if
she would marry Andrew. Their world agreed it would be an excellent
match, with plenty of money on both sides. Sometimes Ronny had moments
of bitter jealousy of her, of this woman like a brass band and an
express train, who thought she was good enough for his splendid father.
But chiefly he was humbly glad to be effaced. And if she did marry
him, perhaps his father would not mind so much finding out, as he must
sometime, how much his son was unlike and unworthy of him.
Ronny thought all that over in a flash now, joining them in the full
sun upon the wharf. He was trying to keep himself from staring at that
flying thing. Gloria caught his somewhat rigid glance and smiled at him
brilliantly. He had never seen her beauty so bright and polished and
complete. She was all in a green so bright it made your eyes redden to
look at it--green shoes and small green hat with a diamond and emerald
pin pulled tight down over her blazing gold eyes. There was a flash
of emerald light on her finger and a cuff of glittering bracelets on
her wrist. And yet she dominated all that flash and glare with the
sheer assault of her eyes, her lips, her poise, her conscious charm.
Beside her, fattish Mrs. Kinney in her egg-yellow chiffon was almost
inconspicuous. Not that Mrs. Kinney cared. Her voice was as loud as
Gloria’s, if not louder. Her laughter had edges. Ronny saw men around
the wharves lingering and staring at the bright group, chauffeurs
staring from parked cars and mechanics from the plane shed. The women
especially seemed to be carelessly aware of the attention they were
attracting. When Gloria glanced about her with quick casual glances, it
was as if she trailed her laughter like an insolent plume across all
the staring faces, fascinating them and knowing that she fascinated
them, although they did not exist. That sort of thing always made
Ronny’s feet and hands seem enormous and uncomfortable. Now he tried to
imitate his father’s lordly buoyance, knowing exactly how far he failed.