Produced by Bryan Ness, Dianna Adair, Mary Meehan and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
_J. Poindexter, Colored_
_By Irvin S. Cobb_
_Fiction_
J. POINDEXTER, COLORED
SUNDRY ACCOUNTS
FROM PLACE TO PLACE
THOSE TIMES AND THESE
LOCAL COLOR
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
BACK HOME
THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM
_Wit and Humor_
ONE THIRD OFF
A PLEA FOR OLD CAP COLLIER
THE ABANDONED FARMERS
THE LIFE OF THE PARTY
EATING IN TWO OR THREE LANGUAGES
"OH, WELL, YOU KNOW HOW WOMEN ARE!"
FIBBLE D.D.
"SPEAKING OF OPERATIONS--"
EUROPE REVISED
ROUGHING IT DE LUXE
COBB'S BILL OF FARE
COBB'S ANATOMY
_Miscellany_
THE THUNDERS OF SILENCE
THE GLORY OF THE COMING
PATHS OF GLORY
"SPEAKING OF PRUSSIANS--"
_New York_
_George H. Doran Company_
_J. Poindexter, Colored_
_By_
_Irvin S. Cobb_
_Author of_
"_Old Judge Priest_,"
"_Speaking of Operations--_," _Etc._
_New York_
_George H. Doran Company_
_Copyright, 1922_,
_By George H. Doran Company_
[Illustration: Company Logo]
_Copyright, 1922_,
_By The Curtis Publishing Company_
_Printed in the United States of America_
_J. Poindexter, Colored_
TO
MARGARET ILLINGTON BOWES
[Illustration: Cover]
_CONTENTS_
CHAPTER PAGE
ONE: _Down Yonder_ 11
TWO: _North-Bound_ 27
THREE: _Manhattan Isle_ 41
FOUR: _Harlem Heights_ 61
FIVE: _Local Colored_ 88
SIX: _Gold Coast_ 94
SEVEN: _Country Side_ 103
EIGHT: _Dark Secrets_ 114
NINE: _Movie-Land_ 120
TEN: _Black Belt_ 140
ELEVEN: _Afric Shores_ 151
TWELVE: _Business Deals_ 162
THIRTEEN: _Private Life_ 167
FOURTEEN: _Oiled Skids_ 173
FIFTEEN: _Vet to Zym_ 193
SIXTEEN: _Lady-Like!_ 201
SEVENTEEN: _Sable Plots_ 210
EIGHTEEN: _White Hopes_ 224
NINETEEN: _Pistol Plays_ 235
TWENTY: _Piebald Joys_ 247
TWENTY-ONE: _Headed Home_ 252
TWENTY-TWO: _Last Words_ 264
_J. Poindexter, Colored_
CHAPTER I
_Down Yonder_
My name is J. Poindexter. But the full name is Jefferson Exodus
Poindexter, Colored. But most always in general I has been known as
Jeff, for short. The Jefferson part is for a white family which my folks
worked for them one time before I was born, and the Exodus is because my
mammy craved I should be named after somebody out of the Bible. How I
comes to write this is this way:
It seems like my experiences here in New York is liable to be such that
one of my white gentleman friends he says to me I should take pen in
hand and write them out just the way they happen and at the time they is
happening, or right soon afterwards, whilst the memory of them is clear
in my brain; and then he'll see if he can't get them printed somewheres,
which on top of the other things which I now is, will make me an author
with money coming in steady. He says to me he will fix up the spelling
wherever needed and attend to the punctuating; but all the rest of it
will be my own just like I puts it down. I reads and writes very well
but someway I never learned to puncture. So the places where it is
necessary to be punctual in order to make good sense and keep everything
regulation and make the talk sound natural is his doings and also some
of the spelling. But everything else is mine and I asks credit.
My coming to New York, in the first place, is sort of a sudden thing
which starts here about a month before the present time. I has been
working for Judge Priest for going on sixteen years and is expecting to
go on working for him as long as we can get along together all right,
which it seems like from appearances that ought to be always. But after
he gives up being circuit judge on account of him getting along so in
age he gets sort of fretful by reasons of him not having much to do any
more and most of his own friends having died off on him. When the state
begins going Republican about once in so often, he says to me, kind of
half joking, he's a great mind to pull up stakes and move off and go
live somewheres else. But pretty soon after that the whole country goes
dry and then he says to me there just naturally ain't no fitten place
left for him to go to without he leaves the United States.
The old boss-man he broods a right smart over this going-dry business.
Being a judge and all, he's always been a great hand for upholding the
law. But this here is one law which he cannot uphold and yet go on
taking of his sweetening drams steady the same as he's been used to
doing all his life. And from the statements which he lets fall from time
to time I gleans that he can't hardly make up his mind which one of the
two of them--law or liquor--he's going to favor the most when the pinch
comes and the supply in the dineroom cupboard begins running low. Every
time he starts off for a little trip somewheres and has to tote a bottle
along in his hip pocket instead of being able to walk into a grocery and
refresh himself over the bar like he's been doing for mighty nigh sixty
years, I hears him speaking mumbling[1] words to himself. I hears him
saying it's come to a pretty pass when a Kentucky gentleman has either
got to compromise with his conscience or play a low-down trick on his
appetite. Off and on it certainly does pester him mightily.
But just about the middle of the present summer he gets a letter from
his married niece, her which used to be Miss Sally Fanny Priest but is
now married to a Yankee gentleman named Fairchild and living in Denver,
Colorado. Miss Sally Fanny is the closest kin-folks the old judge has
got left in the world; and she ups and writes to him and invites him to
come on out there where she lives and stay a spell with them and then
toward winter go along with her to a place called Bermuda which it seems
like from what she says in the letter, Bermuda is one of these here
localities where you can still keep on having a toddy when you feels
like it without breaking the law.
So he studies about it awhile and then he says to me one night he
believes he'll go, which he does along about four weeks ago, leaving me
behind to sort of look out for the home place out on Clay Street. My
wages goes on the same as if he was there, and I has but little to do,
but the place seems mighty lonesome to me without the old boss-man
pottering 'round doing this and that and the other thing. I certainly
does miss seeing the sight of him. Every time I walks through the front
part of the house, and it all empty and closed up and smelling kind of
musted, and sees his old umbrella hanging on the front hall hat-rack
where he forgot and left it there the day he went away, I gets a sort of
a low feeling in my mind. It's like having the toothache in a place
where there ain't no tooth to have it in.
And I keeps on thinking about the old days when he'd be setting out on
the front porch as night-time come on, with some of them old-time
friends of his dropping in on him, and me bringing them drinks from the
sideboard, and them laughing and smoking and joking and carrying on; or
else maybe talking about the Confederate War and the Battle of Shiloh
and all. But most of them is now dead and gone and the old judge is away
out yonder in Denver, Colorado, a-many and a-many a mile from me; and
all I can hear as I comes up the walk from the front gate after dark is
the katy-dids calling in the silver-leaf trees and all I can hear when I
unlocks the door and goes inside is one of them old chimney swifts up
the chimney, going: "_Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!_" I've took notice before
now that an empty house which it has always been empty ain't half so
lonesome for you to be in it as one which has been lived in by people
you knowed but they have now gone entirely away.
So, after about two weeks of being alone, I gets so restless I feels
like I can't stand it very much longer without breaking loose someway.
So one Sunday about half past two o'clock in the evening, I'm going on
past a young white gentleman by the name of Mr. Dallas Pulliam's house
and he comes out on his front porch and calls over to me and tells me to
come on in there 'cause he wants to talk to me about something. So I
crosses over from the other side of the street and walks up to the porch
steps and takes off my hat and asks him how he is getting along and he
says he ain't got no complaint and he asks me how is I getting along my
own self and I tells him just sort of toler'ble so-and-so, and then he
says to me how would I like to take a trip to New York City? I thinks he
must be funning. But I says to him, I says:
"How come New York City, Mr. Dallas?"
So he tells me that here lately he's been studying a right smart about
going to New York and staying there a spell on a sort of a vacationlike,
and if he likes it maybe he'll settle there and go into business. He
says he's about made up his mind to take some likely black boy along
with him for to be his body-servant and look after his clothes and
things and everything and he's thinking that maybe I might be the one to
fill the bill; and then he says to me:
"How about it, Jeff--want to go along and give the big town the
once-over or not?"
I then sees he is not funning but is making me a straight business
proposition. I thanks him and says to him that I has ever had the crave
to travel far and wide and that I likewise has often heard New York
spoke of as a very pleasant place to go to, by them which has done so,
and also a place where something or other is going on most of the time.
But I says to him I'm afraid I can't go on account I'm under obligations
to Judge Priest by reasons of us having been together so long and him
having left me in complete utter charge of our house. He says, though,
he thinks maybe he can attend to that part of it all right; he says
he'll write a letter to the Judge specifying about what's come up and
he's pretty sure it can be fixed up so's I can go. He says if I don't
like the job after I gets there, he'll pay my way back home again any
time I wants to come, or when the old judge needs me, either one. He
says he ain't adopting me, he's just borrowing me.
I always has liked Mr. Dallas Pulliam, him being one of the most
freehanded young white gentlemen in town. Of course, off and on, I've
heard the rest of the white folks hurrahing him behind his back about
the way he's handled all that there money which was left to him here a
few years back when his paw died. There was that time when he bought a
sugar plantation down in Louisiana, sight onseen, and when he went down
to see it, couldn't do so without he'd a-done a whole heap of
bailing-out first, by reason of its being under three feet of standing
water. Anyway, that's what I heard tell; thought I reckon it wasn't
noways as bad as what some of the white folks let on. And there was that
other time only a few months back when he decided to start up a
buggy-factory. I overhears Judge Priest speaking about that one day to
Dr. Lake.
"That young man, Dallas Pulliam, certainly is a sagacious and a
farseein' person," he says. "Jest when automobiles has got so cheap that
every hill-billy in the county kin afford to own at least one, he's
fixin' to go into the buggy-factory business on an extensive scale. Next
time I run into him I'm goin' to suggest to him that when the buggy
trade seems to sort of slack up, ez possibly it may, that instid of
layin' off his hands he might start in to turnin' out flint-lock muskets
fur the U. S. Army."
I suspicions that Judge Priest or somebody else must have spoke to Mr.
Dallas along those lines because he didn't go into the buggy business
after all. For the past several months he ain't been doing much of
anything, so far as I knows of, except pranking 'round and courting Miss
Henrietta Farrell.
Well, white folks may poke their fun at him unbeknownst, but he's got
manners suitable to make him popular with me. He's the kind of a white
gentleman that's this here way: He'll wear a new necktie or a fancy vest
about three or four times and then he'll get tired of it and pass it on
to the first one which comes along. Moreover, him and me is mighty near
the same size and I knows full well in advance, just from looking at him
that Sunday evening standing there on his porch, that the very same suit
of clothes which he's got on then will fit me without practically no
alterations. It's a checked suit, too, and mighty catchy to the eye. So
right off I tells him if Judge Priest gives his free will and consent
I'll certainly be down at the depot when that there old engine whistle
blows for to get aboard for New York City. Which he then asks me for
Miss Sally Fanny's address and promises he'll write out there that very
night to find out can I go.
It's curious how news does travel 'round in a place that's the right
size for everybody in it to know everybody else's business. Before night
it has done leaked out somehow that I is seriously considering accepting
going to New York with young Mr. Dallas Pulliam; and by next morning, lo
and behold, if it ain't all over town! Wherever I goes, pretty near
everybody I meets, whites and blacks alike, asks me how about it and
allows I'm powerful lucky to get such a chance. Mostly, in times gone
by, when my race goes North they heads for Chicago, Illinois, or maybe
Detroit, Michigan, or Indianapolis, Indiana. No sooner do they get
there than they begins writing back saying that up North is the only
fitten place for colored folks to be at; wages high, times easy, and
white folks calling you "Mister" and everything pleasant like that. They
writes that there is not no Jim Crow cars nor separate seats for colored
at the moving-pictures nor nothing like that. But I has taken notice
that after awhile most of 'em quits writing back and starts coming back.
Some stays but more returns--and is verging on shouting-happy when they
crosses the Ohio River coming in. From what I hears some of 'em say
after they gets home and has got a full meal of vittles inside of them,
and so is got more time to talk, I has made up my mind that so far as my
own color is concerned, the main difference from the South is this: Up
North they calls you "Mister" but they don't feed you!
Still, New York City ain't Chicago, Illinois, nor yet it ain't Detroit,
Michigan; and besides, working for Mr. Dallas Pulliam, I won't have to
be worrying about when does I eat next. Still, even so, I says to
myself that it won't be no harm to inquire round now that the word is
done leaked out anyhow, and learn something more than what little I
knows about New York City. But it seems like, outside of some few white
folks, there is not nobody I knows who's ever been there, excusing a few
head of draft-boys which went there enduring of the early part of the
war; and they wouldn't scarcely count neither on account of them just
passing through and not staying over only just a short time whilst
waiting for the boat to start. Howsomever, they tells me, one and all,
that from what they did see of it they is willing to recommend it very
highly.
One or two of the white gentlemen which I is well acquainted with, they
tells me the same, too. Mr. Jere Fairleigh he takes me into his law
office when I meets him on the street and speaks to him about it; and he
gets a book all about New York down off of one of his shelves and he
reads to me where the book says that in New York there is more of these
here Germans than there is in any German city except one, and more
Russians than there is in any Russia city except none, and more Italians
than there is in any Italy city except one, and more Hungarians than
there is in any Hungry city at all, and so on and so forth. I says to
him, I says:
"Mr. Jere, it seems lak they is mo' of ever' nation in Noo Yawk 'en whut
they is anywhars else. But they does not 'pear to be nothin' said 'bout
'Merikins. How come, suh?"
He says he reckons there's so few of them there that the man which wrote
the book didn't figure it was worth while putting them in. Still, he
says I'll probably run into somebody once in awhile which speaks the
United States language.
"'Most every policeman does," he says, "I understand it's the law that
they have to be able to speak it before they'll let 'em go on the force,
so as they can understand the foreigners that come over from the
mainland of North America to visit in New York."
The way he looks--so sort of serious--when he says that, I can't tell if
he's in earnest or not. I judges, though, that he's just having his
fumdiddles with me. And then he goes on and tells me that the biggest of
everything and the tallest and the richest and the grandest is found
there and if I don't believe it is, I can just ask any New Yorker after
I gets there and he'll tell me the same.
So, taking one thing with another, I'm mighty much pleased when the word
comes along in about a week from then that the old judge says I can go
and sends me his best wishes and a twenty-dollar bill as a parting gift
and friendship offering. He says in the letter, which Mr. Dallas reads
to me, to tell me to be sort of careful about sampling the stock of
liquor and cigars on the sideboard of any New York family when I'm in
their house, and also not to start in wearing a strange Yankee
gentleman's clothes without telling him about it first. He says people
up there probably don't understand local customs as they have ever
prevailed down our way, and if I ain't careful, first thing I know
there'll be a skinny black nigger named Jeff locked up in the county
jail hollowing for help and not no help handy.
But that's just the old boss-man's joke. He always is been the beatenest
one for twitting me about little things around the house! Mr. Dallas he
knows how to take what the Judge says and so does I and we has quite a
laugh together over the letter.
And lessen twenty-four hours from that time we is both all packed up and
on our way, New York bound, me wearing one of Mr. Dallas' suits of
clothes which I figures he ain't had it on his back more than five or
six times before altogether. It's a suit of a most pleasing pattern,
too. And cut very stylish, with a belt in the back.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Note by Jeff's amanuensis.--In the part of the Union from which Jeff
hails and among his race the word _mumbling_ denotes complaint,
peevishness, a querulous utterance.