Well, we had pork and greens fur dinner that day, with the best
corn-bread I ever eat anywheres, and buttermilk, and sweet potato pie.
We got 'em at the house of a feller named Withers--Old Daddy Withers.
Which if they was ever a nicer old man than him, or a nicer old woman
than his wife, I never run acrost 'em yet.
They lived all alone, them Witherses, with only a couple of niggers to
help them run their farm. After we eats our dinner and Sam gets his'n
out to the kitchen, we sets out in front of the house and gets to
talking with them, and gets real well acquainted. Which we soon found
out the secret of old Daddy Withers's life--that there innocent-looking
old jigger was a poet. He was kind of proud of it and kind of shamed of
it both to oncet. The way it come out was when the doctor says one
of them quotations he is always getting off, and the old man he looks
pleased and says the rest of the piece it dropped out of straight
through.
Then they had a great time quoting it at each other, them two, and I
seen the doctor is good to loaf around there the rest of the day, like
as not. Purty soon the old lady begins to get mighty proud-looking over
something or other, and she leans over and whispers to the old man:
“Shall I bring it out, Lemuel?”
The old man, he shakes his head, no. But she slips into the house
anyhow, and fetches out a little book with a pale green cover to it, and
hands it to the doctor.
“Bless my soul,” says Doctor Kirby, looking at the old man, “you don't
mean to say you write verse yourself?”
The old man, he gets red all over his face, and up into the roots of
his white hair, and down into his white beard, and makes believe he is a
little mad at the old lady fur showing him off that-a-way.
“Mother,” he says, “yo' shouldn't have done that!” They had had a boy
years before, and he had died, but he always called her mother the same
as if the boy was living. He goes into the house and gets his pipe,
and brings it out and lights it, acting like that book of poetry was
a mighty small matter to him. But he looks at Doctor Kirby out of
the corner of his eyes, and can't keep from getting sort of eager and
trembly with his pipe; and I could see he was really anxious over what
the doctor was thinking of them poems he wrote. The doctor reads some of
'em out loud.
Well, it was kind of home-made poetry, Old Daddy Withers's was. It
wasn't like no other poetry I ever struck. And I could tell the doctor
was thinking the same about it. It sounded somehow like it hadn't been
jointed together right. You would keep listening fur it to rhyme, and
get all worked up watching and waiting fur it to, and make bets with
yourself whether it would rhyme or it wouldn't. And then it ginerally
wouldn't. I never hearn such poetry to get a person's expectances all
worked up, and then go back on 'em. But if you could of told what it was
all about, you wouldn't of minded that so much. Not that you can tell
what most poetry is about, but you don't care so long as it keeps
hopping along lively. What you want in poetry to make her sound good,
according to my way of thinking, is to make her jump lively, and
then stop with a bang on the rhymes. But Daddy Withers was so
independent-like he would jest natcherally try to force two words to
rhyme whether the Lord made 'em fur mates or not--like as if you would
try to make a couple of kids kiss and make up by bumping their heads
together. They jest simply won't do it. But Doctor Kirby, he let on like
he thought it was fine poetry, and he read them pieces over and over
agin, out loud, and the old man and the old woman was both mighty
tickled with the way he done it. He wouldn't of had 'em know fur
anything he didn't believe it was the finest poetry ever wrote, Doctor
Kirby wouldn't.
They was four little books of it altogether. Slim books that looked as
if they hadn't had enough to eat, like a stray cat whose ribs is rubbing
together. It had cost Daddy Withers five hundred dollars apiece to get
'em published. A feller in Boston charged him that much, he said. It
seems he would go along fur years, raking and scraping of his money
together, so as to get enough ahead to get out another book. Each time
he had his hopes the big newspapers would mebby pay some attention to
it, and he would get recognized.
“But they never did,” said the old man, kind of sad, “it always fell
flat.”
“Why, _father!_”--the old lady begins, and finishes by running back into
the house agin. She is out in a minute with a clipping from a newspaper
and hands it over to Doctor Kirby, as proud as a kid with copper-toed
boots. The doctor reads it all the way through, and then he hands it
back without saying a word. The old lady goes away to fiddle around
about the housework purty soon and the old man looks at the doctor and
says:
“Well, you see, don't you?”
“Yes,” says the doctor, very gentle.
“I wouldn't have _her_ know for the world,” says Daddy Withers. “_I_
know and _you_ know that newspaper piece is just simply poking fun at my
poetry, and making a fool of me, the whole way through. As soon as I
read it over careful I saw it wasn't really praise, though there was a
minute or two I thought my recognition had come. But _she_ don't know it
ain't serious from start to finish. _She_ was all-mighty pleased when that
piece come out in print. And I don't intend she ever shall know it ain't
real praise.”
His wife was so proud when that piece come out in that New York paper,
he said, she cried over it. She said now she was glad they had been
doing without things fur years and years so they could get them little
books printed, one after the other, fur now fame was coming. But
sometimes, Daddy Withers says, he suspicions she really knows he has
been made a fool of, and is pertending not to see it, fur his sake, the
same as he is pertending fur _her_ sake. Well, they was a mighty nice
old couple, and the doctor done a heap of pertending fur both their
sakes--they wasn't nothing else to do.
“How'd you come to get started at it?” he asts.
Daddy Withers says he don't rightly know. Mebby, he says, it was living
there all his life and watching things growing--watching the cotton
grow, and the corn and getting acquainted with birds and animals and
trees and things. Helping of things to grow, he says, is a good way to
understand how God must feel about humans. For what you plant and help
to grow, he says, you are sure to get to caring a heap about. You can't
help it. And that is the reason, he says, God can be depended on to pull
the human race through in the end, even if appearances do look to be
agin His doing it sometimes, fur He started it to growing in the first
place and that-a-way He got interested personal in it. And that is the
main idea, he says, he has all the time been trying to get into that
there poetry of his'n. But he reckons he ain't got her in. Leastways,
he says, no one has never seen her there but the doctor and the old lady
and himself. Well, for my part, I never would of seen it there myself,
but when he said it out plain like that any one could of told what he
meant.
You hadn't orter lay things up agin folks if the folks can't help 'em.
And I will say Daddy Withers was a fine old boy in spite of his poetry.
Which it never really done any harm, except being expensive to him, and
lots will drink that much up and never figger it an expense, but one
of the necessities of life. We went all over his place with him, and we
noticed around his house a lot of tin cans tacked up to posts and trees.
They was fur the birds to drink out of, and all the birds around there
had found out about it, and about Daddy Withers, and wasn't scared of
him at all. He could get acquainted with animals, too, so that after a
long spell sometimes they would even let him handle them. But not if any
one was around. They was a crow he had made a pet of, used to hop around
in front of him, and try fur to talk to him. If he went to sleep in the
front yard whilst he was reading, that crow had a favourite trick of
stealing his spectacles off'n his nose and flying up to the ridgepole
of the house, and cawing at him. Once he had been setting out a row of
tomato plants very careful, and he got to the end of the row and turned
around, and that there crow had been hopping along behind very sollum,
pulling up each plant as he set it out. It acted like it had done
something mighty smart, and knowed it, that crow. So after that the old
man named him Satan, fur he said it was Satan's trick to keep things
from growing. They was some blue and white pigeons wasn't scared to come
and set on his shoulders; but you could see the old man really liked
that crow Satan better'n any of them.
Well, we hung around all afternoon listening to the old man talk, and
liking him better and better. First thing we knowed it was getting along
toward supper time. And nothing would do but we must stay to supper,
too. We was pinted toward a place on the railroad called Smithtown, but
when we found we couldn't get a train from there till ten o'clock that
night anyhow, and it was only three miles away, we said we'd stay.
After supper we calculated we'd better move. But the old man wouldn't
hear of us walking that three miles. So about eight o'clock he hitched
up a mule to a one-hoss wagon, and we jogged along.
They was a yaller moon sneaking up over the edge of the world when we
started. It was so low down in the sky yet that it threw long shadders
on the road, and they was thick and black ones, too. Because they was a
lot of trees alongside the road, and the road was narrow, we went ahead
mostly through the darkness, with here and there patches of moonlight
splashed onto the ground. Doctor Kirby and Old Man Withers was setting
on the seat, still gassing away about books and things, and I was
setting on the suit case in the wagon box right behind 'em. Sam, he was
sometimes in the back of the wagon. He had been more'n half asleep all
afternoon, but now it was night he was waked up, the way niggers and
cats will do, and every once in a while he would get out behind and cut
a few capers in a moonlight patch, jest fur the enjoyment of it, and
then run and ketch up with the wagon and crawl in agin, fur it was going
purty slow.
The ground was sandy in spots, and I guess we made a purty good load fur
Beck, the old mule. She stopped, going up a little slope, after we had
went about a mile from the Witherses'. Sam says he'll get out and walk,
fur the wheels was in purty deep, and it was hard going.
“Giddap, Beck!” says the old man.
But Beck, she won't. She don't stand like she is stuck, neither, but
like she senses danger somewheres about. A hoss might go ahead into
danger, but a mule is more careful of itself and never goes butting in
unless it feels sure they is a way out.
“Giddap,” says the old man agin.
But jest then the shadders on both sides of the road comes to life. They
wakes up, and moves all about us. It was done so sudden and quiet it was
half a minute before I seen it wasn't shadders but about thirty men had
gathered all about us on every side. They had guns.
“Who are you? What d'ye want?” asts the old man, startled, as three or
four took care of the mule's head very quick and quiet.
“Don't be skeered, Daddy Withers,” says a drawly voice out of the dark;
“we ain't goin' to hurt _you_. We got a little matter o' business to tend
to with them two fellers yo' totin' to town.”