THE RAVELIN' WOLF
When the draft came to our town as it came to all towns it enmeshed Jeff
Poindexter, who to look at him might be any age between twenty-one and
forty-one. Jeff had a complexion admirably adapted for hiding the wear
and tear of carking years and as for those telltale wrinkles which
betray care he had none, seeing that care rarely abode with him for
longer than twenty-four hours on a stretch. Did worry knock at the front
door Jeff had a way of excusing himself out of the back window. But this
dread thing they called a draft was a worry which just opened the door
and walked right in--and outside the window stood a jealous Government,
all organized to start a rookus if anybody so much as stepped sideways.
Jeff had no ambition to engage in the jar and crash of actual combat;
neither did the idea of serving in a labor battalion overseas appeal to
one of his habits. The uniform had its lure, to be sure, but the
responsibilities presaged by the putting on of the uniform beguiled him
not a whipstitch. Anyhow, his ways were the ways of peace. As a diplomat
he had indubitable gifts; as a warrior he felt that he would be out of
his proper element. So when answering a summons which was not to be
disregarded Jeff appeared before the draft board he was not noticeably
happy.
"Unmarried, eh?" inquired his chief inquisitor.
"Yas, suh--I means, naw, suh," stated Jeff. "I ain't never been much of
a hand fur marryin' round."
He forced an ingratiating smile. The smile fell as seed on barren
soil--fell and died there.
"Mother and father? Either one or both of them living?"
Never had Jeff looked more the orphan than as he stood there confessing
himself one. He fumbled his hat in his hands.
"No dependents at all then, I take it?"
"Yas, suh, dey shorely is," answered Jeff smartly, hope rekindling
within him.
"Well, who is it that you help support--if it's anybody?"
"Hit's Jedge Priest--tha's who. Jedge, he jes' natchelly couldn't git
'long noways 'thout me lookin' after him, suh. The older he git the more
it seem lak he leans heavy on me."
"Well, Judge Priest may have to lean on himself for a while. Uncle Sam
needs every able-bodied man he can get these times and you look to be as
strong as a mule. Here, take this card and go on through that door
yonder to the second room down the hall and let Doctor Dismukes look you
over."
Jeff cheered up slightly. He knew Doctor Dismukes--knew him mighty well.
In Doctor Dismukes' hands he would be in the hands of a friend. Beyond
question the doctor would understand the situation as this strange and
most unsympathetic white man undoubtedly did not.
But Doctor Dismukes, all snap and smartness, went over him as though he
had never seen him before in all his life. If Jeff had been a horse for
sale and the doctor a professional horse coper, scarcely could the
examination have been carried forward with a more businesslike dispatch.
"Jeff," said the doctor when he had finished and the other was
rearranging his wardrobe, "you ought to be ashamed of yourself for being
so healthy. Take your teeth now--your teeth are splendid. I only wish I
had a set like 'em."
"Is dey?" said Jeff despondently, for the first time in his life
regretting his unblemished ivory.
"They certainly are. You wouldn't need a gun, not with those teeth you
wouldn't--you could just naturally bite a German in two."
Jeff shivered. The very suggestion was abhorrent to his nature.
"Please suh, don't--don't talk lak that," he entreated. "I ain't
cravin' to bite nobody a-tall, 'specially 'tis Germans. Live an' let
live--tha's my sayin'."
"Yep," went on the doctor, prolonging the agony for the victim, "your
teeth are perfect and your lungs are sound, your heart action is
splendid and I know something about your appetite myself, having seen
you eat. Black boy, listen to me! In every respect you are absolutely
qualified physically to make a regular man-eating bearcat of a
soldier"--he paused--"in every respect excepting one--no, two."
If a drowning man clutching for a straw might be imagined as
coincidentally asking a question, it is highly probable he would ask it
in the tone now used by Jeff.
"Meanin'--meanin' w'ich, suh?"
"I mean your feet. You've got flat feet, Jeff--you've got the flattest
feet I ever saw. I don't understand it either. So far as I've been able
to observe you've spent the greater part of your life sitting down.
Somebody must have hit you on the head with an ax when you were standing
on a plowshare and broke your arches down."
It was an old joke, but it fitted the present case, and Jeff, not to be
outdone in politeness, laughed louder at it than its maker did. Indeed
Jeff felt he had reason to laugh; a great load was lifting from his
soul.
"Jeff," went on the doctor, "deeply though it may grieve both of us, it
nevertheless is my painful duty to inform you that you have two
perfectly good exemptions from military service--a right one and a left
one. Now grab your hat and get out of here."
"Boss," cried Jeff, "Ise gone. Exemptions, tek me away frum yere!"
So while many others went away to fight or to learn how to fight, as the
case might be, Jeff stayed behind and did his bit by remaining
steadfastly cheerful. Never before, sartorially speaking, had he cut so
splendid a figure as now when such numbers of young white gentlemen of
his acquaintance were putting aside civilian garb to put on khaki. Jeff
had one of those adaptable figures. The garments to which he fell heir
might never have fitted their original owner, but always they would fit
Jeff. Gorgeous in slightly worn but carefully refurbished raiment, he
figured in the wartime activities of the colored population and in
ostensibly helpful capacities figured in some of the activities of the
white folks too.
Going among his own set his frequent companion was that straw-colored
light of his social hours, Ophelia Stubblefield. It helped to reconcile
Jeff to the rigors of the period of enforced rationing as he reflected
that the same issues and causes which made lump sugar a rarity and fat
meat a scarcity had rid him of his more dangerous competition in the
quarter where his affections centered. Particularly on one account did
he feel reconciled. A spirit of the most soothful resignation filled him
when he gave thought to the moral certainty that the most formidable and
fearsome of his rivals, that bloody-minded bravo, Smooth Crumbaugh,
would daunt him never again with threats of articular dismemberment with
a new-honed razor. For Smooth Crumbaugh was gone and gone for good.
First the draft had carried him away and then the pneumonia had carried
him off. War had its compensations after all.
Wearing Ophelia upon one arm and wearing in the crook of the other a
high hat which once had been the property of a young man now bossing an
infantry battalion in the muddiest part of France, Jeff appeared
prominently in the Armistice celebration at the First Ward Colored
Baptist Church. Still so accoutered--Ophelia on his one hand and the
high hat held in proper salute against his breast--he served upon the
official reception committee headed by the Rev. Potiphar Grasty and by
Prof. Rutherford B. H. Champers, principal of the Colored High School,
which greeted the first returning squad of service men of color.
Home-comers who had been clear across the ocean brought back with them
almost unbelievable but none the less fascinating accounts of life and
customs in foreign parts. The tales these traveled ones had to tell were
eagerly listened to and as eagerly passed along, dowered at each time
of retelling with prodigal enlargements and amplifications the most
generous.
A ferment of discontent began to stir under the surface of things; a
sort of inarticulate rebellion against existing conditions, which
presently manifested itself in small irritations at various points of
contact with the white race. It was nothing tangible as yet, nothing
upon which one might put a hand or cap with a word of comprehensive
description. Indeed it had been working for weeks like a yeast in the
minds of sundry black folk before their Caucasian neighbors began to
sense it at all, and for this there was a reason easily understandable
by anyone born and reared in any sizable town in any one of the older
states lying below Mason and Dixon's Line. For in each such community
there are two separate and distinct worlds--a black one and a white
one--interrelated by necessities of civic coordination and in an
economic sense measurably dependent one upon the other, and yet in many
other aspects as far apart as the North Pole is from the South.
Regarding what the white world is feeling and thinking and saying, the
lesser black world that is set down within it is nearly always better
informed than is the other and larger group touching on new movements
and growing sentiments amongst the darker-skinned factors. Into the
white man's house, serving in this or that domestic capacity, goes the
negro as an observant witness to the moods and emotions of his or her
employer and bringing away an understanding of the family complexities
and the current trend of opinion as it shapes itself beneath that roof.
But the white man, generally speaking, views the negro's private life
only from the outside, and if he be a Southern-born white man, wise in
his generation, seeks to look no further, for surface garrulity and
surface exuberance do not deceive him, but serve only to make him
realize all the more clearly that he is dealing with members of what at
heart is one of the most secretive and sensitive of all the breeds of
men. But since this started out to be the chronicle of an episode
largely relating to Jeff Poindexter and one other and not a
psychological study of actions and reactions as between the two most
numerous races in this republic, it is perhaps as well that we should
get on with our narrative.
If the leaven of unrest, vague and formless as it was at the outset,
properly might be said to date from the time of the return of divers
black veterans, it took on shape and substance after the advent of one
Dr. J. Talbott Duvall, an individual engaging in manner, and in
language, dress and deportment fascinating beyond degree; likewise an
organizer by profession and a charmer of the opposite sex by reason of
qualifications both natural and acquired.
A doctor he was, as witness the handle to his name, and yet a doctor of
any known variety he was not. Confessedly he was no doctor of medicine,
though his speech dripped gorgeous ear-filling Latin words which sounded
as though they might be the names of difficult and sinister diseases;
nor was he doctor of divinity, though speedily he proved himself to be
at home in pulpits. He was not a horse doctor or a corn doctor or a
conjure doctor or a root-and-herb doctor or a healer by faith or the
laying on of hands. His title, it seemed, was his by virtue of a degree
conferred upon him by a college--a white man's college--somewhere in the
North. His accent was that of a traveled cosmopolite superimposed upon
the speech of a place away off somewhere called the West Indies. He had
money and he spent it; he had a wardrobe of distinction and he wore it;
he had a gift for argumentation and he exercised it; he had a way with
the ladies and he used it. His coming had created a social furor; his
subsequent ministrations amounted to what for lack of a better word is
commonly called a sensation.
If there were those who from motives, let us say, of envy looked with
the jaundiced eye of disfavor upon his mounting popularity and his
constantly widening scope of influence they mainly kept their own
counsel or at least refrained from voicing their private prejudices in
public places. One gets fewer bumps traveling with the crowd than
against it.
Even so bold a spirit and customarily so outspoken a speaker as Aunt
Dilsey Turner, Judge Priest's black cook of many years' incumbency, saw
fit somewhat to dissemble on the occasion of a call paid by Sister
Eldora Menifee, who came dressed to kill and inspired by the zeal of the
new convert to win yet other converts. Entering by way of the alley gate
one fine forenoon, Sister Eldora found Aunt Dilsey sitting in the
kitchen doorway hulling out a mess of late green peas newly picked from
the house garden.
"Sist' Turner," began the visitor, "I hopes I ain't disturbin' you by
runnin' in on you this mawnin'."
"Honey," said Aunt Dilsey, "you're jes' ez welcome ez day is frum night.
Lemme fetch you a cheer out yere on the gallery." And she made as if to
heave her vast comfortable bulk upright.
"No'm, set right where you is," begged Sister Menifee. "I ain't got only
jes' a few minutes to stay. Things is mighty pressin' with me. I got
quite a number of my lady frien's to see to-day an' you happens to be
the fust one on de list."
"Is tha' so?" inquired Aunt Dilsey. Her tone was cordiality itself, but
one less carried away by the enthusiasm of the mission which had brought
her than Sister Eldora Menifee was might have caught a latent gleam of
hostility in the elder woman's eye. "Well, go on, Ise lis'enin'."
"Well, Sist' Turner, ef you's heared 'bout de work I been doin' lately
I reckin mebbe you kin guess whut brung me to yore do'. I is solicitin'
you fur yore fellership ez a reg'lar member of de ladies' auxiliary of
de new s'ciety w'ich Doct' J. Talbott Duvall is got up."
"Meanin' perzactly w'ich s'ciety? Dis yere Doct' Duvall 'pears to be so
busy gittin' up fust one thing an' then 'nother seems lak I ain't been
able to keep track of his doin's, 'count of my bein' so slow gittin'
round on my feet by reason of de rheumatism."
"Meanin' de Shinin' Star Cullid Uplift and Progress League--dat's de
principalest activity in w'ich he's now engaged. De dues is one dollar
down on 'nitiation an' twenty cents a week an'--"
"Wait jes' one minute, Sist' Menifee, ef you please. 'Fore we gits any
furder 'long answer me dis one question Ise fixin' to ast you--do dis
yere new lodge perpose to fune'lize de daid?"
"We ain't tuck up dat point yit; doubtless we'll come to de plans fur
dat part later. Fur de time bein' de work is jes' to form de ladies'
auxiliary an' git de main objec's set fo'th."
"Lis'en, chile. Me, I don't aim never so long as I lives an' keeps my
reason to jine no lodge w'ich don't start out fust thing by fune'lizin'
de daid. Ise thinkin' now of de case of dat pore shif'less Sist'
Clarabelle Hardin dat used to live out yere on Plunkett's Hill. She up
an' jined one of dese newfandangle' lodges w'ich didn't have nothin' to
it but a fancy name an' a fancy strange nigger man runnin' it, an' right
on top of dat she up an' died 'thout a cent to her back. An' you know
whut happen den? Well, I'm gwine tell you. Dat pore chile laid round de
house daid fur gwine on three days an' den she jes' natchelly had to git
out to de cemetery de bes' way she could. Not fur me, honey, not fur me.
Dey got to have de money in de bank waitin' an' ready to bury de fus'
member dat passes frum dis life before dey gits a cent of mine."
"But dis yere lodge is gwine have a more 'portant puppose 'en jes' to
fune'lize de daid," protested Sister Eldora. "We aims to do somethin'
fur de livin' whilst yet dey's still alive. Curious you ain't tuck
notice of de signs of de times ez dey's been expounded 'mongst de people
by Doct' Duvall. He sho' kin 'splain things in a way to mek you a true
believer." The advocate of the new order of things sank her voice to a
discreet half whisper. "Sist' Turner, we aims at gittin' mo' of de
rights dat's due us. We aims to see dat de pore an' de lowly an' de
downtrodden-on is purtected in dey rights. We aims--"
"Num'mine whut you aims at--de question is, is you gwine be able hit
whar you aims? An' lemme tell you somethin' more, Sist' Eldora Menifee.
I ain't needin' no ladies' auxiliary to tell me whut my rights is.
Neither I ain't needin' to pay out no twenty cents a week to find out
neither. W'en it comes to dat, all de ladies' auxiliary w'ich I needs is
jes' me, myse'f. I knows good an' well whut my rights is already an' Ise
gwine have 'em, too, or somebody'll sho' git busted plum wide open. Mind
you, I ain't sayin' nothin' 'ginst dis new man nur 'ginst dem w'ich
chooses to follow 'long after his teachin's. Ise jes' sayin' dat so fur
ez my jinin' in wid dis yere lodge is concern' you's wastin' yore
breath. Better pass along, honey, to de nex' one on dat list of your'n,
'thout you's a mind to stay yere an' watch me dish up Jedge Priest's
vittles fur 'im."
"Mebbe if Doct' Duvall wuz to come hisse'f an' mek manifest to you de
high pupposes--" began Sister Eldora. But Aunt Dilsey cut her off short.
"Wouldn't mek no diffe'nce ef he come eighty times a day an' twice ez
offen on Sunday. Anyway, I reckins my day fur jinin' things is done
over."
There was a dead weight of finality in her words. She rose heavily. As
Sister Menifee departed Aunt Dilsey became aware of the presence of Jeff
Poindexter. He was emerging from behind the door.
"Been hidin' inside dat kitchen lis'enin', I s'pose?" demanded Aunt
Dilsey.
"Couldn't help frum hearin'," admitted Jeff. It was evident that he was
not deeply grieved over the failure of Sister Menifee to make headway
against Aunt Dilsey's opposition. "At the last you suttinly give dat
woman her marchin' orders, didn't you, Aunt Dilsey?"
"An' sech wuz my intention frum de start off," she confided. "Minute she
come th'ough dat back gate yonder I knowed whut she wuz comin' fur an' I
wuz set an' ready wid de words waitin' on de tip of my tongue."
"Me, I don't fancy dat Duvall neither," stated Jeff. "I ain't been
sayin' much 'bout him one way or 'nother but I been doin' a heap o'
steddyin'."
"Yas, I knows all 'bout dat too," snapped Aunt Dilsey. "I got eyes in my
haid. You los' yore taste fur dis yere big-talkin', fine-lookin' man jes
ez soon ez he started sparkin' round dat tore-down limb of a 'Phelia
Stubblefield. Whut ails you is you is jealous; hadn't been fur dat I lay
you'd be runnin' round wid yore tongue hangin' out suckin' in ever'thing
he sez ez de gospil truth same ez a lot of dese other weak-minded ones
is doin'. Oh, I know you, boy, frum ze ground up! An' furthermo' I knows
dis Doct' Duvall likewise also, even ef I ain't never seen him but oncet
or twicet sence fust he come yere to dis town all dress' up lak a
persidin' elder. I don't lak his looks an' I don't lak his ways, jedgin'
by whut I hears of 'em frum dis one an' dat one, an' most in special I
don't lak his color. He ain't clear brown lak whut I is, an' he ain't
muddy black lak whut you is, neither he ain't high yaller lak some is.
To me he looks most of all lak de ground side of a nickel wahtermelon.
An' in all de goin' on sixty-two yeahs of my life I ain't never seen no
pusson callin' theyselves Affikins dat had dat kind of a sickly
greenish-yaller-whitish complexion but whut trouble come pourin' frum
'em sooner or later, an' most gin'rally sooner, lak manna pourin' from
de gourd of de Prophet Jonah. Dat man is a ravelin' wolf, ef ever I seen
one."
"Whut kind of a wolf did you say, Aunt Dilsey?" asked Jeff.
"Consult de Scriptures an' you won't be so ignunt," she answered
crushingly. "Consult de Scriptures an' you'll read whar de ravelin' wolf
come down on de fold, an' whut he done to de fold after he'd done come
down on it wuz more'n aplenty. An' now, boy, you git on out of my
kitchen an' go on 'bout yore business--ef you's got any business, w'ich
I doubts. I ain't got no mo' time to waste on you den whut I is on dat
flighty-haided Eldora Menifee, a-traipsin' round frum one back do' to
'nother with her talk 'bout ladies' auxiliaries an' gittin' yo rights
fur a dollah down an' twenty cents a week."
Jeff faded away. It was comforting in a way to find Aunt Dilsey on his
side, even though her manner rather indicated she resented the fact that
he was on hers. A few evenings later he found out something else. He was
made to know that in another and entirely unsuspected quarter the
endeavors of the diligently crusading and organizing Duvall person had
roused more than a passing curiosity.
One evening, supper being over, Judge Priest lingered on in his
low-ceiled dining room smoking his corncob pipe while Jeff cleared away
the supper dishes. It was the same high-voiced deliberately
ungrammatical Judge Priest that the kindly reader may recall--somewhat
older than at last accounts, somewhat slower in his step--but then he
never had been given to fast movements--and perhaps just a trifle
balder.
"Wuz dey anythin' else you wanted, jedge, 'fore I locks up the back of
the house an' lights out?" Jeff inquired when the table had been reset
for breakfast.
"Yes, I think mebbe there wuz," drawled the old man. He hesitated a
moment almost as though at a loss for a proper phrasing of the thing he
meant to say next. Then: "Jeff, what's come over your race in this town
here lately?"
"Meanin' w'ich, suh?" countered Jeff. "Me, I ain't notice nothin' out of
the way--nothin' particular."
"Haven't you? Well, I think I have. Jeff, I don't want to be put in the
position of pryin' into the private and the personal affairs of other
folks, reguardless of color. I have to do enough of that sort of thing
in my official capacity when I'm settin' in judgment up at the big cote
house. But unless I can get some confidential information frum you I
don't know where else I'm likely to git it, and at the same time I sort
of feel as ef I should try to get hold of it somewheres or other ef it's
humanly possible."
"Yas, suh."
"Now heretofore in this community the two races--white and black--have
got along purty tolerably well together. We managed to put up with your
shortcomings and you managed to put up with ours, which at times may
have been considerable of a strain on both sides. Still we've done it.
But it seems to me here of late there's been a kind of an undercurrent
of discontent stirrin' amongst your people--and no logical reason fur it
either, so fur as I kin see. Yet there it is.
"There wuz that rumpus two-three weeks ago down in Market Square. A
little more and that affair could have growed into a first-class race
riot. And here last Saturday night followed that mix-up out by the Union
Depot when Policeman Gip Futtrell got all carved up and two darkies got
purty extensively shot. And night before last the trouble that occurred
on that Belt Line car out in Hollandville; that looked mighty
threatenin', too, fur a while. And in between all these more serious
things a lot of little unpleasantnesses keep croppin' up--always takin'
the form of friction between whites and blacks.
"One of these here occurrences might be what you'd call an accident and
two of them in rapid succession a coincidence, but it looks to me like
now it's gittin' to be a habit. It's leadin' to bad blood and what's
worse it's leadin' to a lot of spilt blood and our city gittin' a bad
name and all that.
"And I know the respectable black folks in this town don't want that to
happen any more than the respectable white people do.
"Now then, Jeff, whut's at the bottom of all this--I mean on your side
of the color line? Who's stirrin' up old grudges and kindlin' new ones?
I've sort of got my own private suspicions, but I'd like to see ef your
ideas run along with mine. Got any suggestions as to the underlying
causes of this ill feelin' that's sprung up so lately and without any
good reason for it either so fur ez I kin see?"
Now ordinarily Jeff would have held firmly to the doctrine that white
folks should tend to their business and let black folks tend to theirs.
For all his loyalty to his master, a certain race consciousness in him
would have bade him keep hands off and tongue locked. But here a strong
personal prejudice operated to steer Jeff away from what otherwise would
have been his customary course.
"Jedge," he said, drawing a pace or two nearer his employer, "did you
ever hear tell of a pale-yaller party w'ich calls hisse'f Doct' J.
Talbott Duvall dat come yere a few weeks ago?"
"Ah, hah!" said the judge as though satisfied of the correctness of a
prior conclusion. "I thought possibly my mind might be on the right
track. Yes, I've heard of him and I've seen him. Whut of him?"
"Jedge, I trusts you won't tell nobody else whut I'm tellin' you, but
dat's sho' de one dat's at the bottom of the whole mess. He's the one
dat's plantin' the pizen. Me, I ain't had no truck wid him myse'f, but
dat ain't sayin' I don't know whut he's doin', case I do. He calls
hisse'f a organizer."
"Ah, hah! And whut is he organizin'?"
"Trouble, jedge. Dat's whut--trouble fur a lot of folks. Jedge, fo' we
goes any further lemme ast you a coupler questions, please, suh. Is it
true dat over dere in some of dem Youropean countries black folks is
jes' the same ez white folks, ef not more so?"
Choosing his words, the old man elucidated his understanding of the
social order as it prevailed in certain geographical divisions and
subdivisions of the continent of Europe.
"Yas, suh, thanky, suh," said Jeff when the judge had finished. "I
reckin mebbe one main trouble over dere is, jedge, dat dem folks ain't
been raised de way you an' me is."
"Jeff," said the judge, "I'm inclined to think probably you're right."
"Yas, suh. Now den, jedge, here's one mo' thing. Is it true dat in all
dem furrin countries--Russia an' Germany an' Bombay an' all--dat the
po' people, w'ite or black or whutever dey color is, is fixin' to rise
up in they might an' tek the money an' de gover'mint an' de fine houses
an' the cream of ever'thing away frum dem dat's had it all 'long?"
Again the judge expounded at length, touching both upon upheavals abroad
and on discords nearer home. Next it was Jeff's turn to make disclosures
having a purely local application and he made them. Listening intently,
Judge Priest puckered his bald brow into furrows of perplexity.
"Jeff," he said finally, "I'm much obliged to you fur tellin' me all
this. It backs up what I'd sort of figgered out all by myself. The whole
world appears to be engaged in standin' on its esteemed head at this
writin'. I reckin when old Mister Kaiser turned loose the war he didn't
stop to think that mebbe the war was only one of a whole crop of evils
he wuz lettin' out of his box of tricks. Or mebbe he didn't care--bein'
the kind of a person he wuz. And I'm prone to believe also that when the
Germans stopped fightin' us with guns they begun fightin' us with other
weapons almost as dangersome to our peace of mind and future well-bein'.
Different parts of this country are in quite a swivet--agitators
preachin' bad doctrine--some of 'em drawin' pay from secret enemies
across the sea fur preachin' it, too, I figger--and a lot of highly
disagreeable disturbances croppin' up here and there. But I was hopin'
that mebbe our little corner of the world wouldn't be pestered. But now
it looks ez ef we weren't goin' to escape our share of the trouble."
"Jedge," asked Jeff, "ain't they some way dis Duvall pusson could be
fetched up in cote? I suttinly would admire to see dat yaller man
wearin' a striped suit of clothes."
"Well, Jeff," said the judge, "I doubt either the legality or the
propriety of such a step, ef you get what I mean. From whut you tell me
I don't see where he's really broken any laws. He's got a right to come
here and organize his societies and lodges and things so long as he
don't actually come out in the open and preach violence. He's got a
perfect right under the law to organize this here new drill company you
speak about. I sometimes think that ef all the young men in this country
had been required to do a little more drillin' in years gone by we'd be
feelin' somewhat safer to-day. Anyway, it's a mighty great mistake
sometimes to make a martyr out of a rascal. Puttin' him in jail, unless
you're absolutely certain that a jail is where he properly belongs,
gives him a chance to raise the cry of persecution and gives his
followers an excuse to cut loose and smash up things. You git my drift,
don't you?"
"Yas, suh, think I do. Well den, suh, ef I wuz runnin' dis town seems to
me I'd git a crowd of strong-minded gen'elmen together some evenin' in
the dark of the moon an' let 'em call on dis yere slick-haided
half-strainer an' invite him to tek his foot in his hand an' marvil
further. Ef one of 'em wuz totin' a rope in his hand sorter keerless lak
it might help. Ropes is powerful influential. An' the sight of tar an'
feathers meks a mighty strong argument, too, Ise heared tell."
"Jeff," said the judge, "I'm astonished that you'd even suggest sech a
thing! Mob law is worse even than no law at all. Besides," he added--and
now there was a small twinkle in his eye to offset to a degree the
severity in his tones--"besides, the feller that was bein' called on by
the committee might decline to take the hint and then purty soon you
might have another self-made martyr on your hands. But ef he ran away on
his own hook now--ef something came up that made him go of his own
accord and go fast and cut a sort of a cheap figure in the eyes of his
deluded followers whilst he was goin'--that'd be a different thing
altogether. Start a crowd of folks, white or black or brown, to laughin'
at a feller and they'll quit believin' in him. Worshipin' a false god
and laughin' at him at the same time never has been successfully done
yit."
He sucked his pipe. "Jeff," he resumed, "what do you know, ef anything,
about the past career and movements of this here J. Talbott Et Cetery?"
Jeff knew a good deal--at second hand. Didn't the object of his deepest
aversions persist in almost nightly calls upon the object of his
deepest affections? Paying such calls, didn't the enemy spend
hours--hours upon hours doubtless--pouring into Ophelia's ear accounts
of his recent triumphs as an uplifter in other towns and other states?
Didn't the fascinated and flattered Ophelia in turn recount these tales
to one whose opportunities for traveling and seeing the great world had
been more circumscribed? Had not Jeff writhed in jealous misery the
while he heard the annals of a rival's successes? So Jeff made prompt
answer.
"Yas, suh, I suttinly does. Ise heared a right smart 'bout dis yere
Duvall's past life frum--frum somebody. 'Cordin' to the way he norrates
it, he wuz in Nashville, Tennessee 'fore he come yere; an' 'fore dat in
Mobile, Alabama; an' 'fore dat in Little Rock, Arkansaw. Seem lak w'en
he ain't organizin' or speechifyin' he ain't got nothin' better to do
den run round amongst young cullid gals braggin' 'bout the places he's
been an' the things he done whilst in 'em."
Jeff spoke with an enhanced bitterness.
"I see. Then I take it ef he spends so much time in seekin' out female
society that he's not a married man?"
"So he say--so he say! But, Jedge Priest, ef ever I looked on the
spittin'-image of a natchel-born marryin' nigger, dat ver' same Duvall
is de one."
Judge Priest seemed not to have heard this last. He sat for a bit
apparently studying the tips of his square-toed, low-quarter shoes.
"Jeff," he said when he had given his feet a long half minute of seeming
consideration, "I would like to know some facts about the previous life
and general history of the individual we've been discussin'--I really
would. In fact my curiosity is sech that I might even be willin' to
spend a little money out of my own pocket, ef needs be, in order to find
out. So I was jest wonderin' whether you wouldn't like to take a little
trip, with all expenses paid, and tour round through some of our sister
states and make a few private inquiries. It occurs to me that everything
considered you might make a better job of it as an amateur investigator
than a regular professional detective of a different color might. Do you
know where by any chance you could git hold of a good photograph of this
here individual--I mean without lettin' him know anything about it?"
"Yas, suh, dat I does," stated Jeff briskly.
The conference between master and man lasted perhaps fifteen minutes
longer before Jeff was dismissed for the night. Mainly it dealt with
ways, means and purposes. Upon the heels of it, within forty-eight hours
two events--seemingly nowise related or bearing one upon the
other--occurred. An ornately framed photograph lately bestowed as a gift
and treasured as a trophy of sentimental value mysteriously vanished
from the mantelpiece of the front room of Ophelia Stubblefield's pa's
house; and Jefferson Poindexter, carrying a new and very shiny suitcase,
unostentatiously left town late at night on a southbound train.
Darktown in Nashville knew him for a brief space as a visiting nobleman
with money in all his pockets and apparently nothing of importance to do
except to spend it in divertisements suitable to the social instincts of
a capitalist of leisure. In Mobile at the Elite Colored Beauty Parlors
for the first time in his life he tendered his finger nails for
ministrations at the hands of a dashing chocolate-ice-cream-colored
manicurist and spent the remainder of that same afternoon in a sunny
spot, glistening pleasantly.
If in both these cities and likewise in Little Rock, which next he
favored with his presence, he made himself known to brothers of his
particular lodge--the Afro-American Order of Supreme Kings of the
Universe has a large and a widely distributed membership--and if under
the sacred pledge of secrecy which only may be broken on pain of
mutilation and death by torture he--with the aid of these fraternal
allies of his--conducted certain discreet inquiries, why, that was his
own private business. Assuredly, so far as surface indications counted,
he appeared to have no business other than pleasurable pursuits. From
Little Rock he turned his face southeastward, landing at Macon, Georgia,
where he lingered on for upward of a week, breaking his visit only by a
day's side trip to a smaller town south of Macon. Altogether Jeff was
an absentee from his favorite haunts back home for the greater part of a
month.
He reached town on a Monday. Betimes Tuesday morning, inspired outwardly
by the zeal of one just won over from skepticism to the immediate
advisability of following a sapient course, he sought opportunity to
become a member in good standing of the Shining Star Colored Uplift and
Progress League, a simple ceremony and a brief, since it involved merely
the signing of one's name on Dotted Line A of a printed form card and
the paying of a dollar into the hand of Dr. J. Talbott Duvall. On
Tuesday evening the league met in stated session at Hillman's Hall on
Yazoo Street and Jeff was early on hand, visibly enthusiastic and
professedly ready to do all within his power to further the aims and
intents of the organization. As a brand snatched from the burning he was
elevated before the eyes of the assemblage so that all might see him and
mark his mien of newborn fervor, for Doctor Duvall, following his
custom, called to places upon the platform the proselytes enrolled since
the previous meeting, to the end that older members might observe the
physical proof of a steady and a healthful growth.
So there sat Jefferson in the very front row of wooden chairs, where all
might behold him and he might behold all and sundry. About him were his
recent fellow converts. Almost directly behind him was a door giving
upon a side entrance; there was another door serving similar purposes
upon the opposite side of the stage. Beyond him to the left in the
center of the stage were grouped the honorary officers of the league,
flanking and supporting their chief.
Being an honorary officer carried with it, as the title might imply,
honor and prominence second only to that enjoyed by the
president-organizer, but it entailed no great weight of responsibility,
since practically all the actual work of the league had from the very
outset been generously assumed by Doctor Duvall. It was he who cared for
the funds, he who handled disbursements, he who conducted the
proceedings, he who made the principal addresses on meeting nights, he
who between meetings labored without cessation to spread educational
propaganda. That he found time for all these purposeful endeavors and
yet crowded in such frequent opportunity for mingling socially among the
lambs of his flock--notably the ewe lambs--was but evidence,
accumulating daily, of his genius for leadership and direction.
This night the session opened with a prayer--by Doctor Duvall; an
eloquent and a moving prayer indeed, its sonorous periods set off and
adorned with noble big words and quotations in foreign tongues. The
prayer would be followed, it had been announced, by the reading of the
minutes of the previous session, after which Doctor Duvall would speak
at length with particular reference to things lately accomplished and
the even more important things in contemplation for the near future.
Standing for the prayer, Jeff could look out over what a master of words
before now has fitly described as a sea of upturned faces--faces black,
brown and yellow. Had he been minded to give thought to details he might
have noted how at every polysyllabic outburst from the inspired
invocationist old Uncle Ike Fauntleroy, himself accounted a powerful
hand at wrestling with sinners in prayer, was visibly jolted by
admiration; might, if he had had a head for figures, have kept count of
the hearty amens with which Sister Eldora Menifee punctuated each pause
when Doctor Duvall was taking a fresh breath; might have cast a side
glance upon Ophelia Stubblefield in a new and most becoming hat with
ostrich plumage grandly surmounting it. But under the hand which he held
reverently cupped over his brow Jeff's eyes were fixed upon a certain
focal point,--to wit, the door of the main entrance at the length of the
hall from him. It was as though Jeff waited for something or somebody he
was expecting.
Nor did he have so very long to wait. The prayer was done and well done.
In its wake, so to speak, there spouted up from every side veritable
geysers of hallelujahs and amens. The honorary secretary, Brother Lemuel
Diuguid, smelling grandly of expensive hair ointments--Brother Diuguid
being by calling a head barber--stood up to read the minutes of the
preceding regular session, and having read them sat down again. A
friendly and flattering bustle of anticipation filled the body of the
hall as Doctor Duvall rose and moved one pace forward and--raising a
hand for silence--began to speak. But he had no more than begun, had
progressed no farther than part way of his first smoothly launched
sentence, when he was made to break off by an unseemly interruption at
the rear. The honorary grand inner guard on duty at the far street door,
after a brief and unsuccessful struggle with unseen forces, was observed
to be shoved violently aside from his post. Bursting in together there
entered two strangers--a tall yellow woman and a short black man, and
both of them of a most grim and determined aspect. He moved fast, this
man, but even so his companion moved faster still. She was three paces
ahead of him when, bulging impetuously past those who sprang into the
center aisle as though to halt her onward rush--all others present being
likewise up on their feet--she came to a halt near the middle of the
hall and, glaring about her defiantly, just double-dog-dared any present
to lay so much as the weight of one detaining finger upon her. There was
something about her calculated to daunt the most willing of volunteer
opponents, and so while those at a safe distance demanded the ejection
of the intruders, those nearer her hesitated.
"Th'ow me out?" she whooped, echoing the words of outraged and startled
members of the Shining Star. "I'd lak to see de one dat's gwine try it!
An' 'fo' anybody talk 'bout th'owin' out lettum heah me whilst I sez my
say!"
Towering until she seemed to increase in stature by inches, she aimed a
long and bony finger dead ahead.
"Ax dat slinky yaller man up yonder on dat flatfo'm ef he gwine give de
order to th'ow me out!" she clarioned in a voice which rose to a
compelling shriek. "But fust off ax him whut he meant--marryin' me in
Mobile, Alabama, an' den runnin' 'way frum his lawful wedded wife under
cover of de night! Ax him--dat's all, ax him!"
"An' ax him one thing mo'!" It was the voice of her short companion
rising above the tumult. "Ax him whut he done wid de funds of de s'ciety
he 'stablished at Little Rock, Arkansaw, all of w'ich he absconded wid
dis last spring!"
As though the same set of muscles controlled every neck the heads of all
swung about, their eyes following where the accusers pointed, their ears
twitching for the expected blast of denial and denunciation which would
wither these mad and scandalous detractors in their tracks.
Alas and alackaday! With his splendid figure suddenly all diminished and
shrunken, with distress writ large and plain upon his features, the
popular idol was step by step flinching backward from the edge of the
platform--was step by step inching, edging toward the side door in the
right-hand wall.
And in this same instant the stunned assemblage realized that Jeff
Poindexter, by nimble maneuvering, had thrust himself between the
retreating figure and the exit, and Jeff was crying out: "Not dis way
out, Doct' Duvall. Not dis way! The one you married down below Macon is
waitin' fur you behin' dis do'!"
The doctor stopped in midflight and swung about and his eye fell upon
the right-hand door and he moved a yard or two in that direction; but no
more than a yard or two, for again Jeff spoke in warning, halting him
short:
"Not dat way neither! The one frum dat other town whar you uster live is
waitin' outside dat do'--wid a pistil! Seems lak you's entirely
s'rounded by wives dis evenin'!"
To the verge of the footlights the beset man darted, and like a
desperate swimmer plunging from a foundering bark into a stormy sea he
leaped far out and projected himself, a living catapult, along the
middle aisle. He struck the tall yellow woman as the irresistible force
strikes the supposedly immovable object of the scientists' age-old
riddle, but on his side was impetus and on hers surprise. She was bowled
over flat and her hands, clutching as she went down, closed, but on
empty and unresisting air. Literally he hurdled over the stocky form of
the little black man behind her, but as the other flitted by him the
fists of the stranger knotted firmly into the skirts of its wearer's
long black frock coat and held on. There was a rending, tearing sound
and as the back breadth of the garment ripped bodily away from the
waistband there flew forth from the capsized tail pockets a veritable
cloudburst of currency--floating, fluttering green and yellow bills and
with them pattering showers of dollars and halves and dimes and quarters
and nickels.
That canny instinct which had led the fugitive apostle of the uplift to
hide the collected funds of the league upon his person rather than trust
to banks and strong boxes was to prove his ruination financially but his
salvation physically. While those who had believed in him, now
forgetting all else, scrambled for the scattered money--their money--he
fled out of the unguarded door and was instantly gone into the shielding
night--a sorry shape in a bob-tailed garment.
At a somewhat later hour Judge Priest in his living room was receiving
from Jefferson Poindexter a much lengthier and more elaborated account
of the main occurrences of the evening at Hillman's Hall than has here
been presented. Speaking as he did in the dual role of spectator and of
an actuating force in the events of that crowded and exciting night,
Jeff spared no details. He had come to the big scene of his narrative
when his master interrupted him:
"Hold on a minute, Jeff! I don't know ez I get the straight of it all
yit. I rather gathered frum whut you told me yesterday when you landed
back home and made your report that you'd only been able to dig up one
certain-sure wife of this feller's--the one that came along with you and
that little Arkansaw darky. You didn't say anything then about bein'
able to prove he wuz a bigamist."
"Huh, jedge, I didn't have to prove it! Dat man wuz more'n jes' a plain
bigamist. He sho' wuz a trigamist, an' ef the full truth wuz knowed I
'spects he wuz a quadrupler at the very least. He proved it hisself--way
he act' w'en the big 'splosion come."
"But the two women you told him were waitin' behind those side doors for
him--how about them?"
"Law, jedge, dey wuzn't dere--neither one of 'em wuzn't. Jes' lak I told
you yistiddy, I couldn't find only jest one woman dat nigger'd married
an' run off frum, an' her I fetched 'long wid me. But lak I also told
you, I got kind of traces of one dat uster live below Macon but w'ich is
now vanished, an' ever'whar else I went whar he'd lived befo' he come
yere de signs wuz manifold dat he wuz a natchel-born marryin' fool, jes'
lak I 'spicioned fust time ever I see him. So w'en he started fur dat
fust do' I taken a chancet on him an' w'en I seen how he cringed an'
ducked back I taken another chancet on him, an' the subsequent evidences
offers testimony dat both times I reckined right. Jedge, the late Doct'
Duvall muster married some powerful rough-actin' gals in his time ef he
thought the Mobile one wuz the gentlest out of three. Well, anyway, suh,
the ravelin' wolf is gone frum us, an' fur one I ain't 'spectin' him
back never no mo'. An' I reckin dat's the main pint wid you an' me
both."
"The ravelin' whut?"
"Dat's whut Aunt Dilsey called him oncet, speechifyin' to me 'bout
him--the ravelin' wolf. Only he suttinly did look he wuz comin'
unraveled mighty fast the last I seen of him."