NEARLY every week--weather permitting--the old judge went to dinner
somewhere. To a considerable extent he kept up his political fences
going to dinners. Usually it was of a Sunday that he went.
By ten o'clock almost any fair Sunday morning--spring, summer or early
fall--Judge Priest's Jeff would have the venerable side-bar buggy
washed down, and would be leading forth from her stall the ancient white
lady-sheep, with the unmowed fetlocks and the intermittent mane, which
the judge, from a spirit of prideful affection and in the face of all
visual testimony to the contrary, persisted in regarding as an authentic
member of the equine kingdom.
Presently, in their proper combination and alignment, the trio would be
stationed at the front gate, thus: Jeff in front, bracing the forward
section of the mare-creature; and the buggy behind, its shafts
performing a similar office for the other end of this unique quadruped.
Down the gravelled walk that led from the house, under the water maples
and silver-leaf poplars, which arched over to make a shady green tunnel
of it, the judge would come, immaculate but rumply in white linens. The
judge's linens had a way of getting themselves all rumpled even before
he put them on. You might say they were born rumpled.
Beholding his waddlesome approach out of the tail of her eye, the white
animal would whinny a dignified and conservative welcome. She knew
her owner almost as well as he knew her. Then, while Jeff held her
head--that is to say, held it up--the old man would heave his frame
ponderously in and upward between the dished wheels and settle back into
the deep nest of the buggy, with a wheeze to which the agonised rear
springs wheezed back an anthem like refrain.
“All right, Jeff!” the judge would say, bestowing his cotton umbrella
and his palm-leaf fan in their proper places, and working a pair of
wrinkled buckskin gloves on over his chubby hands. “I won't be back,
I reckin, till goin' on six o'clock this evenin', and I probably won't
want nothin' then fur supper except a cold snack. So if you and Aunt
Dilsey both put out from the house fur the day be shore to leave the
front-door key under the front-door mat, where I kin find it in case I
should git back sooner'n I expect. And you be here in due time yourse'f,
to unhitch. Hear me, boy?”
“Yas, suh,” Jeff would respond. “I hears you.”
“All right, then!” his employer would command as he gathered up the
lines. “Let loose of Mittie May.”
Conforming with the accepted ritual of the occasion, Jeff would let
loose of Mittie May and step ceremoniously yet briskly aside, as
though fearing instant annihilation in the first resistless surge of a
desperate, untamable beast. Judge Priest would slap the leathers down on
Mittie May's fat back; and Mittie May, sensing the master touch on those
reins, would gather her four shaggy legs together with apparent intent
of bursting into a mad gallop, and then, ungathering them, step out
in her characteristic gentle amble, a gait she never varied under any
circumstances. Away they would go, then, with the dust splashing up
from under Mittie May's flat and deliberative feet, and the loose rear
curtain of the buggy flapping and slapping behind like a slatting sail.
Jeff would stand there watching them until they had faded away in the
deeper dust where Clay Street merged, without abrupt transition, into a
winding country road; and, knowing the judge was definitely on his way,
Jeff would be on his way, too, but in a different direction. Of his
own volition Jeff never fared countryward on Sundays. Green fields
and running brooks laid no spell of allurement on his nimble fancy.
He infinitely preferred metropolitan haunts and pastimes--such, for
instance, as promenades along the broken sidewalks of the Plunkett's
Hill section and crap games behind the coloured undertaker's shop on
Locust Street.
The judge's way would be a pleasant way--a peaceful, easy way, marked
only by small disputes at each crossroads junction, Mittie May desiring
always to take the turn that would bring them back home by the shortest
route, and the judge stubborn in his intention of pushing further on.
The superior powers of human obstinacy having triumphed over four-legged
instinct, they would proceed. Now they would clatter across a wooden
bridge spanning a sluggish amber-coloured stream, where that impertinent
bird, the kingfisher, cackled derisive imitations of the sound given off
by the warped axles of the buggy, and the yonkerpins--which Yankees, in
their ignorance, have called water lilies--spread their wide green
pads and their white-and-yellow cusps of bloom on the face of the creek
water.
Now they would come to cornfields and tobacco patches that steamed in
the sunshine, conceding the season to be summer; or else old, abandoned
clearings, grown up rankly in shoe-make bushes and pawpaw and persimmon
and sassafras. And the pungent scent of the wayside pennyroyal would
rise like an incense, saluting their nostrils as they passed, and the
grassy furrows of long-harvested grain crops were like the lines of
graves on old battlegrounds.
Now they would come into the deep woods; and here the sunlight sifted
down through the tree tops, making cathedral aisles among the trunks
and dim green cloisters of the thickets; and in small open spaces
the yellowing double prongs of the mullein stalks stood up stiff and
straightly like two-tined altar candles. Then out of the woods again and
along a stretch of blinding hot road, with little grey lizards racing
on the decayed fence rails as outriders, and maybe a pair of those old
red-head peckerwoods flickering on from snag to snag just ahead, keeping
company with the judge, but never quite permitting him to catch up with
them.
So, at length, after five miles, or maybe ten, he would come to his
destination, which might be a red-brick house set among apple trees on a
low hill, or a whitewashed double cabin of logs in a bare place down in
the bottoms. Here, at their journey's end, they would halt, with Mittie
May heaving her rotund sides in and out in creditable simulation of a
thoroughbred finishing a hard race; and Judge Priest would poke his head
out from under the buggy hood and utter the customary hail of “Hello the
house!” At that, nine times out of ten--from under the house and from
round behind it--would boil a black-and-tan ground swell of flap-eared,
bugle-voiced hound dogs, all tearing for the gate, with every apparent
intention of devouring horse and harness, buggy and driver, without
a moment's delay. And behind them, in turn, a shirt-sleeved man would
emerge from the shelter of the gallery and hurry down the path toward
the fence, berating the belling pack at every step he took:
“You Sounder, you Ring, you Queen--consam your mangy pelts! Go on
back yonder where you belong! You Saucer--come on back here and behave
yourse'f! I bet I take a chunk some of these days and knock your fool
head off!”
As the living wave of dogs parted before his advance and his threats,
and broke up and turned about and vanished with protesting yelps, the
shirt-sleeved one, recognising Mittie May and the shape of the buggy,
would speak a greeting something after this fashion:
“Well, suh--ef it ain't Jedge Priest! Jedge, suh, I certainly am proud
to see you out this way. We was beginnin' to think you'd furgot us--we
was, fur a fact!”
Over his shoulder he would single out one of a cluster of children who
magically appeared on the gallery steps, and bid Tennessee or Virgil
or Dora-Virginia or Albert-Sidney, as the name of the chosen youngster
might be, to run and tell their ma that Judge Priest had come to stay
for dinner. For the judge never sent any advance notice of his intention
to pay a Sunday visit; neither did he wait for a formal invitation. He
just dropped in, being assured of a welcome under any rooftree, great or
humble, in his entire judicial district.
Shortly thereafter the judge, having been welcomed in due state, and
provision made for Mittie May's stabling and sustenance, would be
established on the gallery in the rocking-chair of honour, which was
fetched out from the parlour for his better comfort. First, a brimming
gourd of fresh spring water would be brought, that he might take the
edge off his thirst and flush the dust out of his throat and moisten
up his palate; and then would follow a certain elaborated rite in
conjunction with sundry sprigs of young mint and some powdered sugar and
outpourings of the red-brown contents of a wicker demijohn.
Very possibly a barefooted and embarrassed namesake would be propelled
forward, by parental direction, to shake hands with the guest; for,
except old Doctor Saunders, Judge Priest had more children named for him
than anybody in our county. And very probably there would come to his
ears from somewhere rearward the frenzied clamour of a mighty barnyard
commotion--squawkings and cacklings and flutterings----closely followed
by the poignant wails of a pair of doomed pullets, which grew fainter
and fainter as the captives were borne to the sacrificial block behind
the woodpile--certain signs, all these, that if fried chicken had not
been included in the scope and plan of Sunday dinner, fried chicken
would now be, most assuredly.
When dinner was over, small messengers would be sent up the road and
down to spread the word; and various oldsters of the vicinity would
leave their own places to foregather in the dooryard of the present host
and pass the time of day with Judge Priest. Sooner or later, somehow,
the talk would work backward to war times. Overhearing what passed to
and fro, a stranger might have been pardoned for supposing that it was
only the year before, or at most two years before, when the Yankees came
through under Grant; while Forrest's Raid was spoken of as though it had
taken place within the current month.
Anchored among the ancients the old judge would sit, doing his share of
the talking and more than his share of the listening; and late in the
afternoon, when the official watermelon, all dripping and cool, had been
brought forth from the springhouse, and the shadows were beginning
to stretch themselves slantwise across the road, as though tired out
completely by a hard day's work in the broiling sun, he and Mittie May
would jog back toward town, meeting many an acquaintance on the road,
but rarely passing one. And the upshot would be that at the next
Democratic primary the opposing candidate for circuit judge--if there
was any opposing candidate--got powerfully few votes out of that
neighbourhood.
Such Sunday excursions as these and such a Sunday dinner as this typical
one formed a regular part of Judge Priest's weekly routine through at
least nine months of the year. If unforeseen, events conspired to rob
him of his trip to the country he felt the week had not rightly rounded
itself out; but once a year he attended a dinner beside which all other
dinner occasions were, in his estimation, as nothing at all. With regard
to this particular affair, he used to say it took him a week to get
primed and ready for it, one whole night to properly enjoy it, and
another week to recover from the effects of it. I am speaking now of the
anniversary banquet of the survivors of Company B--first and foremost of
the home companies--which was and still is held always on a given date
and at a given place, respectively, to wit: The evening of the twelfth
of May and the dining room of the Richland House.
Company B held the first of its annual dinners at the Richland House
away back in '66. That time sixty and more men--young men, mostly, in
their mid-twenties and their early thirties--sat down together to meat
and drink, and no less a personage than General Grider presided--that
same Meriwether Grider who, going out in the first year of the war as
company commander, came back after the Surrender, bringing with him the
skeleton remnants of a battered and a shattered brigade.
General Meriwether Grider has been dead this many a year now. He gave
his life for the women and the children when the _Belle of the Bends_
burned up at Cottonwood Bar; and that horror befell so long ago that the
present generation down our way knows it only as a thing of which those
garrulous and tiresome creatures, the older inhabitants, are sometimes
moved to speak. But the rules for the regulation and conduct of
subsequent banquets which were adopted on that long-ago night, when the
general sat at the head of the table, hold good, even though all else in
our town has changed.
Of the ardent and youthful sixty-odd who dined with him then, a fading
and aging and sorely diminished handful is left. Some in the restless
boom days of the eighties moved away to other and brisker communities,
and some have marched down the long, lone road that leads to a far
country. Yet it abides as a bylaw and a precedent that only orthodox
members of the original company shall have covers and places
provided for them when anniversary night rolls round. The Richland
House--always--must be the place of dining; this, too, in spite of the
fact that the Richland House has been gnawed by the tooth of time into
a shabby old shell, hardly worthy to be named in the same printed page
with the smart Hotel Moderne--strictly European plan; rates, three
dollars a day and upward--which now figures as our leading hotel.
Near the conclusion of the feast, when the cloth has been cleared of
the dishes and only the glasses are left, the rolls called by the acting
top-sergeant--cholera having taken off the real top-sergeant in '75.
Those who are present answer for themselves, and for those who are
absent some other voice answers. And then at the very last, after the
story-telling is done, they all stand and drink to Company B--its men,
its memories, its most honourable record, and its most honourable dead.
They tell me that this last May just seven met on the evening of the
twelfth to sit beneath the crossed battle-flags in the Richland House
dining room, and that everything was over and done with long before
eleven o'clock. But the annual dinner which I especially have in mind to
describe here took place on a somewhat more remote twelfth of May, when
Company B still might muster better than the strength of a corporal's
guard. If I remember correctly, eighteen grizzled survivors were known
to be alive that year.
In saying that, though, I would not have you infer that there were no
more than eighteen veterans in our town. Why, in those times there must
have been two hundred easily. Gideon K. Irons Camp could turn out upward
of a hundred members in good standing for any large public occasion;
but you understand this was a dinner limited to Company B alone, which
restriction barred out a lot of otherwise highly desirable individuals.
It barred out Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, for the sergeant had served with
King's Hellhounds; and Captain Shelby Woodward, who belonged to the
Orphan Brigade, as you would have learned for yourself at first hand had
you ever enjoyed as much as five minutes of uninterrupted conversation
with the captain; and Mr. Wolfe Hawley, our leading grocer, who was a
gunner in Lyon's Battery--and many another it barred out. Indeed, Father
Minor got in only by the skin of his teeth. True enough he was a Company
B man at the beginning; but he transferred early to another branch of
the service and for most of the four years he rode with Morgan's men.
The committee in charge looked for a full attendance. It was felt that
this would be one of the most successful dinners of them all. Certainly
it would be by long odds the best advertised. It would seem that the
Sunday editor of the _Courier-Journal_, while digging through his
exchanges, came on a preliminary announcement in the columns of the
_Daily Evening News_, which was our home paper; and, sensing a feature
story in it, he sent one of his young men down from Louisville to spend
two days among us, compiling facts, names and photographs. The young man
did a page spread in the Sunday _Courier-Journal,_ thereby unconsciously
enriching many family scrapbooks in our town.
This was along toward the middle of April. Following it, one of
the Eastern syndicates rewrote the piece and mailed it out to its
constituent papers over the country. The Associated Press saw fit
to notice it too; and after that the tale got into the boiler-plate
shops--which means it got into practically all the smaller weeklies that
use patent insides. It must have been a strictly non-newspaper-read-ing
community of this nation which did not hear that spring about the group
of old soldiers who for forty years without a break had held a dinner
once a year with no outsiders present, and who were now, for the
forty-first time, about to dine again.
Considering this publicity and all, the committee naturally counted on a
fairly complete turnout. To be sure, Magistrate Matt Dallam, out in the
country, could not hope to be present except in the spirit, he having
been bedridden for years. Garnett Hinton, the youngest enlisted member
of Company B, was in feeble health away off yonder in the Panhandle of
Texas. It was not reasonable to expect him to make the long trip back
home. On the tenth Mr. Napoleon B. Crump was called to Birmingham,
Alabama, where a ne'er-do-well son-in-law had entangled himself in legal
difficulties, arising out of a transaction involving a dubious check,
with a yet more dubious signature on it. He might get back in time--and
then again he might not.
On the other hand, Second Lieutenant Charley Garrett wrote up from his
plantation down in Mississippi that he would attend if he had to walk--a
mere pleasantry of speech, inasmuch as Lieutenant Garrett had money
enough to charter for himself a whole railroad train should he feel so
inclined. And, from his little farm in Mims County, Chickasaw Reeves
sent word he would be there, too, no matter what happened. The boys
could count on him, he promised.
Tallying up twenty-four hours or so ahead of the big night, the
arrangements committee, consisting of Doctor Lake, Professor Lycurgus
Reese and Mr. Herman Felsburg, made certain of fifteen diners, and
possibly sixteen, and gave orders accordingly to the proprietor of the
Richland House; but Mr. Nap Crump was detained in Birmingham longer
than he had expected, and Judge Priest received from Lieutenant Charley
Garrett a telegram reading as follows:
“May the Lord be with you!--because I can't. Rheumatism in that game leg
of mine, ---- ----------it!”
The excisions, it developed, were the work of the telegraph company.
Then, right on top of this, another disappointment piled itself--I
have reference now to the sudden and painful indisposition of Chickasaw
Reeves. Looking remarkably hale and hearty, considering his sixty-eight
years, Mr. Reeves arrived in due season on the eleventh, dressed fit to
kill in his Sunday best and a turndown celluloid collar and a pair
of new shoes of most amazing squeakiness. After visiting, in turn, a
considerable number of old friends and sharing, with such as them as
were not bigoted, the customary and appropriate libations, he dropped
into Sherill's Bar at a late hour of the evening for a nightcap before
retiring.
At once his fancy was drawn to a milk punch, the same being a pleasant
compound to which he had been introduced an hour or so earlier. This
milk punch seemed to call for another, and that one for still another.
As the first deep sip of number three creamily saluted his palate, Mr.
Reeves' eyes, over the rim of the deep tumbler, fell on the free lunch
displayed at the far end of the bar. He was moved to step down that way
and investigate.
The milk punches probably would not have mattered--or the cubes of brick
cheese, or the young onions, or the pretzels, or the pickled beets and
pigs' feet. Mr. Reeves' seasoned and dependable gastric processes were
amply competent to triumph over any such commonplace combination of
food and drink. Undoubtedly his undoing was directly attributable to a
considerable number of little slickery fish, belonging, I believe, to
the pilchard family--that is to say, they are pilchards while yet they
do swim and disport themselves hither and yon in their native element;
but when caught and brined and spiced and oiled, and put in cans for
the export trade, they take on a different name and become, commercially
speaking, something else.
Mr. Reeves did not notice them at first. He had sampled one titbit and
then another; finally his glance was arrested by a dish of these small,
dainty appearing creatures. A tentative nibble at the lubricated tail of
a sample specimen reassured him as to the gastronomic excellence of the
novelty. He stayed right there until the dish was practically empty.
Then, after one more milk punch, he bade the barkeeper good night and
departed.
Not until three o'clock the following afternoon was Mr. Reeves able to
receive any callers--except only Doctor Lake, whose visits until that
hour had been in a professional rather than in a social capacity. Judge
Priest, coming by invitation of the sufferer, found Mr. Reeves' room at
the hotel redolent with the atmospheres of bodily distress. On the bed
of affliction by the window was stretched the form of Mr. Reeves. He was
not exactly pale, but he was as pale as a person of Mr. Reeves' habit of
life could be and still retain the breath of life.
“Well, Chickasaw, old feller,” said Judge Priest, “how goes it? Feelin'
a little bit easier than you was, ain't you?”
The invalid groaned emptily before answering in wan and wasted-away
tone.
“Billy,” he said, “ef you could 'a' saw me 'long 'bout half past two
this mornin', when she first come on me, you'd know better'n to ask sech
a question as that. First, I wus skeered I wus goin' to die. And then
after a spell I wus skeered I wusn't. I reckin there ain't nobody
nowheres that ever had ez many diff'runt kinds of cramps ez me and lived
to tell the tale.”
“That's too bad,” commiserated the judge. “Was it somethin' you et or
somethin' you drunk?”
“I reckin it wus a kind of a mixture of both,” admitted Mr. Reeves.
“Billy, did you ever make a habit of imbibin' these here milk punches?”
“Well, not lately,” said Judge Priest.
“Well, suh,” stated Mr. Reeves, “you'd be surprised to know how tasty
they kin make jest plain ordinary cow's milk ef they take and put some
good red licker and a little sugar in it, and shake it all up together,
and then sift a little nutmaig seasonin' onto it--you would so! But,
after you've drunk maybe three-four, I claim you have to be sorter
careful 'bout whut you put on top of 'em. I've found that much out.
“I reckin it serves me right, though. A country-jake like me oughter
know better'n to come up here out of the sticks and try to gormandise
hisse'f on all these here fancy town vittles. It's all right, mebbe,
fur you city folks; but my stomach ain't never been educated up to it.
Hereafter I'm a-goin' to stick to hawg jowl and cawn pone, and things I
know 'bout. You hear me--I'm done! I've been cured.
“And specially I've been cured in reguards to these here little pizenous
fishes that look somethin' like sardeens, and yit they ain't sardeens.
I don't know what they call 'em by name; but it certainly oughter be
ag'inst the law to leave 'em settin' round on a snack counter where
folks kin git to 'em. Two or three of 'em would be dangerous, I
claim--and I must 'a' et purty nigh a whole school.”
Again Mr. Reeves moaned reminiscently.
“Well, from the way you feel now, does it look like you're goin' to be
able to come to the blow-out to-night?” inquired Judge Priest. “That's
the main point. The boys are all countin' on you, Chickasaw.”
“Billy,” bemoaned Mr. Reeves, “I hate it mightily; but even ef I wus
able to git up--which I ain't--and git my clothes on and git down to the
Richland House, I wouldn't be no credit to yore party. From the way I
feel now, I don't never ag'in want to look vittles in the face so long
ez I live. And, furthermore, ef they should happen to have a mess of
them there little greasy minners on the table I know I'd be a disgrace
to myse'f right then and there. No, Billy; I reckin I'd better stay
right where I am.”
Thus it came to pass that, when the members of Company B sat down
together in the decorated dining room of the Richland House at eight
o'clock that evening, the chair provided for Mr. Chickasaw Reeves made
a gap in the line. Judge Priest was installed in the place of honour,
where Lieutenant Garrett, by virtue of being ranking surviving officer,
would have enthroned himself had it not been for that game leg of his.
From his seat at the head, the judge glanced down the table and decided
in his own mind that, despite absentees, everything was very much as
it should be. At every plate was a little flag showing, on a red
background, a blue St. Andrew's cross bearing thirteen stars. At every
plate, also, was a tall and aromatic toddy. Cocktails figured not in the
dinner plans of Company B; they never had and they never would.
At the far end from him was old Press Harper. Once it had been Judge
Priest's most painful duty to sentence Press Harper to serve two years
at hard labour in the state prison. To be sure, circumstances, which
have been detailed elsewhere, interfered to keep Press Harper from
serving all or any part of his punishment; nevertheless, it was the
judge who had sentenced him. Now, catching the judge's eye, old Press
waved his arm at him in a proud and fond greeting.
Father Minor beamingly faced Squire Futrell, whose Southern Methodism
was of the most rigid and unbendable type. Professor Reese, principal
of the graded school, touched elbows with Jake Smedley, colour bearer
of the Camp, who just could make out to write his own name. Peter J.
Galloway, the lame blacksmith, who most emphatically was Irish, had a
caressing arm over the stooped shoulder of Mr. Herman Felsburg, who most
emphatically was not. Doctor Lake, his own pet crony in a town where
everybody, big and little, was his crony in some degree, sat one seat
removed from the judge, with the empty chair of the bedfast Chickasaw
Reeves in between them and so it went.
Even in the matter of the waiters an ancient and a hallowed sentiment
ruled. Behind Judge Priest, and swollen as with a dropsy by pomp of
pride and vanity, stood Uncle Zach Mathews, a rosewood-coloured
person, whose affection for the Cause that was lost had never
been questioned--even though Uncle Zach, after confusing military
experiences, emerged from the latter end of the conflict as cook for a
mess of Union officers and now drew his regular quarterly pension from a
generous Federal Government.
Flanking Uncle Zach, both with napkins draped over their arms, both
awaiting the word from him to bring on the first course, were posted--on
the right, Tobe Emery, General Grider's one-time body servant; on the
left, Uncle Ike Copeland, a fragile, venerable exhuman chattel, who
might almost claim to have seen actual service for the Confederacy. No
ordinary darkies might come to serve when Company B foregathered at the
feast.
Uncle Zach, with large authority, had given the opening order, and at
the side tables a pleasing clatter of china had arisen, when Squire
Futrell put down his glass and rose, with a startled look on his face.
“Looky here, boys!” he exclaimed. “This won't never do! Did you fellers
know there wus thirteen at the table?”
Sure enough, there were!
It has been claimed--perhaps not without colour of plausibility--that
Southerners are more superstitious than Northerners. Assuredly the
Southerners of a generation that is almost gone now uniformly nursed
their private beliefs in charms, omens, spells, hoodoos and portents. As
babies many of them were nursed, as boys all of them were played with,
by members of the most superstitious race--next to actors--on the face
of creation. An actor of Ethiopian descent should by rights be the
most superstitious creature that breathes the air of this planet, and
doubtlessly is.
No one laughed at Squire Futrell's alarm over his discovery. Possibly
excusing Father Minor, it is probable that all present shared it with
him. As for Uncle Zach Mathews and his two assistants, they froze with
horror where they had halted, their loaded trays poised on their arms.
But they did not freeze absolutely solid--they quivered slightly.
“Law-zee!” gasped Uncle Zach, with his eyeballs rolling. “Dinner can't
go no fur'der twell we gits somebody else in or meks somebody leave and
go 'way--dat's sartain shore! Whee! We kin all thank Our Maker dat dey
ain't been nary bite et yit.”
“Amen to dat, Brer Zach!” muttered Ike shakily; and dumbly Tobe Emery
nodded, stricken beyond power of speech by the nearness of a barely
averted catastrophe fraught with disaster, if not with death itself.
Involuntarily Judge Priest had shoved his chair back; most of the others
had done the same thing. He got on his feet with alacrity.
“Boys,” he said, “the squire is right--there's thirteen of us. Now whut
d'ye reckin we're goin' to do 'bout that?”
The natural suggestion would be that they send at once for another
person. Three or four offered it together, their voices rising in a
babble. Names of individuals who would make congenial table mates
were heard. Among others, Sergeant Jimmy Bagby was spoken of; likewise
Colonel Cope and Captain Woodward. But Judge Priest shook his head.
“I can't agree with you-all,” he set forth. “By the time we sent clean
uptown and rousted one of them boys out, the vittles would all be cold.”
“Well, Billy,” demanded Doctor Lake, “what are you going to do, then? We
can't go ahead this way, can we? Of course I don't believe in all this
foolishness about signs myself; but”--he added--“but I must admit to a
little personal prejudice against thirteen at the table.”
“Listen here, you boys!” said Judge Priest. “Ef we're jest, obliged and
compelled to break a long-standin' rule of this command--and it looks to
me like that's whut we've got to do--let's foller after a precedent that
was laid down a mighty long time ago. You-all remember--don't you--how
the Good Book tells about the Rich Man that give a feast oncet? And at
the last minute the guests he'd invited didn't show up at all--none
of 'em. So then he sent out into the highways and byways and scraped
together some hongry strangers; and by all accounts they had a purty
successful time of it there. When in doubt I hold it's a fairly safe
plan to jest take a leaf out of them old Gospels and go by it. Let's
send out right here in the neighbourhood and find somebody--no matter
who 'tis, so long as he's free, white and twenty-one--that looks like
he could appreciate a meal of vittles, and present the compliments of
Company B to him, and ast him will he come on in and jine with us.”
Maybe it was the old judge's way of putting it, but the idea took
unanimously. The manager of the Richland House, having been sent for,
appeared in person almost immediately. To him the situation was outlined
and the remedy for it that had been favoured.
“By gum, gentlemen,” said their host, instantly inspired, “I believe I
know where I can put my hand on the very candidate you're looking for.
There's a kind of seedy-looking, lonely old fellow downstairs, from
somewhere the other side of the Ohio River. He's been registered since
yes'day morning; seems like to me his name is Watts--something like
that, anyhow. He don't seem to have any friends or no business in
particular; he's just kind of hanging round. And he knows about this
dinner too. He was talking to me about it a while ago, just before
supper--said he'd read about it in a newspaper up in his country. He
even asked me what the names of some of you gentlemen were. If you think
he'll do to fill in I'll go right down and get him. He was sitting by
himself in a corner of the lobby not two minutes ago. I judge he's about
the right age, too, if age is a consideration. He looks to be about the
same age as most of you.”
There was no need for Judge Priest to put the question to a vote.
It carried, so to speak, by acclamation. Bearing a verbal commission
heartily to speak for the entire assemblage, Manager Ritter hurried out
and in less than no time was back again, escorting the person he had
described. Judge Priest met them at the door and was there introduced to
the stranger, whose rather reluctant hand he warmly shook.
“He didn't want to come at first,” explained Mr. Ritter; “said he didn't
belong up here with you-all; but when I told him the fix you was in he
gave in and consented, and here he is.”
“You're mighty welcome, suh,” said Judge Priest, still holding the other
man's hand. “And we're turribly obliged to you fur comin', and to Mr.
Ritter fur astin' you to come.”
With that, he drew their dragooned guest into the room and, standing
beside him, made formal presentation to the expectant company.
“Gentlemen of Company B, allow me to make you acquainted with Mr. Watts,
of the State of Illinoy, who has done us the great honour of agreein'
to make fourteen at the table, and to eat a bite with us at this
here little dinner of ours.” A straggling outburst of greeting and
approbation arose from twelve elderly throats. “Mr. Watts, suh, will you
be so good as to take this cheer here, next to me?” resumed Judge Priest
when the noise abated; and he completed the ceremonial by indicating the
place of the absent Mr. Reeves.
What the stranger saw as he came slowly forward--if, indeed, he was able
to see anything with distinctness by reason of the evident confusion
that covered him--was a double row of kindly, cordial, curious faces of
old men, all staring at him. Before the battery of their eyes he bowed
his acknowledgments, but did not speak them; still without speaking, he
slipped into the seat which Tobe Emery sprang forward to draw clear of
the table for his easier admission to the group. What the others saw was
a tall, stooped, awkward man of, say, sixty-five, with sombre eyes, set
deep in a whiskered face that had been burned a leathery red by wind and
weather; a heavy-footed man, who wore a suit of store clothes--clothes
of a homely cut and none too new, yet neat enough; such a man, one might
guess at a glance, as would have little to say and would be chary about
saying that little until sure of his footing and his audience. Judging
by appearances and first impressions he did not promise to be what you
might call exciting company, exactly; but he made fourteen at the table,
and that was the main point, anyhow.
Now the dinner got under way with a swing and a clatter. For all the
stitches and tucks that time had taken in their leg muscles, the three
old negroes flitted about like flickery black shadows, bringing food to
all and toddies to several, and just plain ice water to at least three
of their white friends. Even Kentuckians have been known to be advocates
of temperance. To learn how true a statement this is you must read, not
the comic weeklies, but the official returns of local-option elections.
Above the medley of commingling voices, some cracked and jangled with
age, some still full and sonorous, and one at least as thin and piercing
as the bleat of a reed flute--that would be Judge Priest's voice,
of course--sounded the rattling of dishes and glasses and plated
silverware. Uncle Zach and his two aides may have been good waiters, but
they were tolerably noisy ones.
Through it all the extra guest sat very quietly, eating little and
drinking nothing. Sitting alongside him, Doctor Lake noticed that he fed
himself with his right hand only; his left hand stayed in his lap, being
hidden from sight beneath the table. Naturally this set afoot a train
of mild professional surmise in the old doctor's mind. The arm itself
seemed sound enough; he vaguely wondered whether the Illinois man had a
crippled hand or a deformed hand, or what. Judge Priest noticed it
too, but subconsciously rather. At the beginning he tried to start a
conversation with Watts, feeling it incumbent on him, as chief sponsor
for the other's presence, to cure him of his embarrassment if he could,
and to make him feel more at home there among them; but his well-meant
words appeared to fall on barren soil. The stranger answered in mumbled
monosyllables, without once looking Judge Priest straight in the
face. He kept his head half averted--a posture the judge ascribed to
diffidence; but it was evident he missed nothing at all of the talk that
ran up and down the long table and back and forth across it. Under his
bushy brows his eyes shifted from face to face as this man or that had
his say.
So presently the judge, feeling that he had complied with the
requirements of hospitality, abandoned the effort to interest his silent
neighbour, and very soon after forgot him altogether for the time being.
Under the circumstances it was only to be expected of Judge Priest that
he should forget incidental matters; for now, to all these lifelong
friends of his, time was swinging backward on a greased hinge. The years
that had lined these old faces and bent these old backs were dropping
away; the memories of great and storied days were mounting to their
brains like the fumes of strong wine, brightening their eyes and
loosening their tongues.
From their eager lips dropped names of small country churches, tiny
backwoods villages of the Southwest, trivial streams and geographically
inconsequential mountains--names that once meant nothing to the world at
large, but which, by reason of Americans having fought Americans there
and Americans having died by the hundreds and the thousands there,
are now printed in the school histories and memorised by the school
children--Island Number 10 and Shiloh; Peachtree Creek and Stone River;
Kenesaw Mountain and Brice's Crossroads. They had been at these very
places, or at most of them--these thirteen old men had. To them the
names were more than names. Each one burned in their hearts as a living
flame. All the talk, though, was not of battle and skirmish. It dealt
with prisons, with hospitals, with camps and marches.
“By George, boys, will you ever forget the day we marched out of this
town?” It was Doctor Lake speaking, and his tone was high and exultant.
“Flags flying everywhere and our sweethearts crying and cheering us
through their tears! And the old town band up front playing Girl I Left
Behind Me and Johnnie's Gone for a Soger! And we-all stepping along,
feeling so high and mighty and stuck-up in our new uniforms! A little
shy on tactics we were, and not enough muskets to go round; but all the
boys wore new grey suits, I remember. Our mothers saw to that.”
“It was different, though, Lew, the day we came home again,” reminded
some one else, speaking gently. “No flags flying then and nobody
cheering, and no band to play! And half the women were in black--yes,
more than half.”
“An' dat's de Gawd's truth!” half-whispered black Tobe Emery, carried
away for the moment.
“Well,” said Press Harper, “I know they run out of muskets 'fore they
got round to me. I call to mind that I went off totin' an ole flintlock
that my paw had with him down in Mexico when he wus campin' on ole Santy
Anny's trail. And that wus all I did have in the way of weepins, 'cept
fur a great big bowie knife that a blacksmith out at Massac made fur me
out of a rasp-file. I wus mighty proud of that there bowie of mine till
we got down yonder to Camp Boone and found a whole company, all with
bigger knives than whut mine wus. Called themselves the Blood River
Tigers, those boys did, 'cause they came frum up on Blood River, in
Calloway.”
Squire Futrell took the floor--or the table, rather--for a moment:
“I recollec' one Calloway County feller down at Camp Boone, when we fust
got there, that didn't even have a knife. He went round 'lowin' as how
he wus goin' to pick him out a likely Yank the fust fight we got into,
and lick him with his bare hands ef he stood still and fit, or knock him
down with a rock ef he broke and run--and then strip him of his outfit.”
“Why, I place that feller, jest ez plain ez if he wus standin' here
now,” declared Mr. Harper. “I remember him sayin' he could lick ary
Yankee that ever lived with his bare hands.”
“I reckin mebbe he could, too--he wus plenty long enough,” said the
squire with a chuckle; “but the main obstacle wus that the Yankees
wouldn't fight with their bare hands. They jest would insist on usin'
tools--the contrary rascals! Let's see, now, whut wus that Calloway
County feller's name? You remember him, Herman, don't you? A tall,
ganglin' jimpy jawed, loose-laiged feller he wus--built like one of
these here old blue creek cranes.”
Mr. Felsburg shook his head; but Press Harper broke in again:
“I've got him! The boys called him Lengthy fur short; but his real name
wus Washburn, same ez--”
He stopped short off there; and, twisting his head away from the
disapproving faces, which on the instant had been turned full on him
from all along the table, he went through the motion of spitting, as
though to rid his mouth of an unsavoury taste. A hot colour climbed to
Peter J. Galloway's wrinkled cheeks and he growled under the overhang
of his white moustache. Doctor Lake pursed up his lips, shaking his head
slowly.
There was one black spot, and just one, on the records of Company B.
And, living though he might still be, or dead, as probably he was, the
name of one man was taboo when his one-time companions broke bread at
their anniversary dinner. Indeed, they went farther than that: neither
there nor elsewhere did they speak by name of him who had been their
shame and their disgrace. It was a rule. With them it was as though that
man had never lived.
Up to this point Mr. Herman Felsburg had had mighty little to say. For
all he had lived three-fourths of his life in our town, his command of
English remained faulty and broken, betraying by every other word his
foreign birth; and his habit of mixing his metaphors was proverbial.
He essayed few long speeches-before mixed audiences; but now he threw
himself into the breach, seeking to bridge over the awkward pause.
“Speaking of roll calls and things such as that,” began Mr. Felsburg,
seeming to overlook the fact that until now no one had spoken of roll
calls--“speaking of those kinds of things, maybe you will perhaps
remember how it was along in the winter of '64, when practically we were
out of everything--clothes and shoes and blankets and money--ach, yes;
money especially!--and how the orderly sergeant had no book or papers
whatsoever, and so he used to make his report in the morning on a clean
shingle, with a piece of lead pencil not so gross as that.” He indicated
a short and stubby finger end.
“'Long 'bout then we could 'a' kept all the rations we drew on a clean
shingle too--eh, Herman?” wheezed Judge Priest. “And the shingle
wouldn't 'a' been loaded down at that! My, my! Ever' time I think of
that winter of '64 I find myse'f gittin' hongry all over agin!” And the
judge threw himself back in his chair and laughed his high, thin laugh.
Then, noting the others had not yet rallied back again to the point
where the flow of reminiscences had been checked by Press Harper's
labial slip-up, he had an inspiration.
“Speakin' of roll calls,” he said, unconsciously parroting Mr. Felsburg,
“seems to me it's 'bout time we had ours. The vittles end of this here
dinner 'pears to be 'bout over. Zach”--throwing the suggestion across
his shoulder--“you and your pardners'd better be fetchin' on the coffee
and the seegars, I reckin.” He faced front again, raising his voice:
“Who's callin' the roll to-night?”
“I am,” answered Professor Reese; and at once he got on his feet,
adjusted his spectacles just so, and drew from an inner breast pocket of
his long frock coat a stained and frayed scroll, made of three sheets of
tough parchment paper pasted end to end.
He cleared his throat; and, as though the sound had been a command, his
fellow members bent forward, with faces composed to earnestness. None
observed how the stranger acted; indeed, he had been quite out of
the picture and as good as forgotten for the better part of an hour.
Certainly nobody was interested in him at this moment when there
impended what, to that little group, was a profoundly solemn, highly
sentimental thing.
Again Professor Reese cleared his throat, then spoke the name that was
written in faded letters at the top of the roll--the name of him who had
been their first captain and, at the last, their brigade commander.
“Died the death of a hero in an effort to save others at Cottonwood
Bar, June 28, 1871,” said Judge Priest; and he saluted, with his finger
against his forehead.
One by one the old school-teacher called off the list of commissioned
and noncommissioned officers. Squire Futrell, who had attained to the
eminence of a second corporal's place, was the only one who answered for
himself. For each of the others, including Lieutenant Garrett--he of
the game leg and the plantation in Mississippi--somebody else answered,
giving the manner and, if he remembered it, the date of that man's
death. For, excepting Garrett, they were all dead.
The professor descended to the roster of enlisted men:
“Abner P. Ashbrook!”
“Died in Camp Chase as a prisoner of war.”
“G. W. Ayres!”
“Killed at Baker's Creek.”
“R. M. Bigger!”
“Moved to Missouri after the war, was elected state senator, and died in
'89.”
“Reuben Brame!”
“Honourably discharged after being wounded at Corinth, and disappeared.
Believed to be dead.”
“Robert Burnell!”
“Murdered by bushwhackers in East Tennessee on his way home after the
Surrender.”
So it went down the long column of names. They were names, many of them,
which once stood for something in that community but which would
have fallen with an unfamiliar sound upon the ears of the oncoming
generation--old family names of the old town. But the old families had
died out or had scattered, as is the way with old families, and the
names were only pronounced when Company B met or when some idler,
dawdling about the cemetery, deciphered the lichen-grown lines on gray
and crumbly grave-stones. Only once in a while did a voice respond,
“Here!” But always the “Here!” was spoken clearly and loudly and at
that, the remaining twelve would hoist their voices in a small cheer.
By common consent certain survivors spoke for certain departed members.
For example, when the professor came to one name down among the L's,
Peter J. Galloway, who was an incorruptible and unshakable Roman of the
party of Jefferson and Jackson, blared out: “Turn't Republikin in '96,
and by the same token died that same year!” And when he reached the name
of Adolph Ohlmann it was Mr. Felsburg's place to tell of the honourable
fate of his fellow Jew, who fell before Atlanta.
The reader read on and on until his voice took on a huskened note.
He had heard “Here!” for the thirteenth time; he had come to the very
bottomest lines of his roster. He called one more name--Vilas, it
was--and then he rolled up his parchment and put it away.
“The records show that, first and last, Company B had one hundred
and seventy-two members, all regularly sworn into the service of the
Confederate States of America under our beloved President, Jefferson
Davis,” stated Professor Reese sonorously. “Of those names, in
accordance with the custom of this organisation, I have just called one
hundred and seventy-one. The roll call of Company B, of the Old Regiment
of mounted infantry serving under General Nathan Bedford Forrest, is
completed for the current year.” And down he sat.
As Judge Priest, with a little sigh, settled back in his chair, his
glance fell on the face of the man next him. Perhaps the old judge's
eyes were not as good as once they had been. Perhaps the light was
faulty. At any rate, he interpreted the look that was on the other's
face as a look of loneliness. Ordinarily the judge was a pretty good
hand at reading faces too.
“Looky here, boys!” he called out, with such emphasis as to centre
general attention on the upper end of the table. “We oughter be
'shamed of ourselves--carryin' on this way 'mongst ourselves and plum'
furgittin' we had an outsider with us ez a special guest. Our new friend
here is 'bout the proper age to have seen service in the war his own
se'f--mebbe he did see some. Of all the states that fought ag'inst us,
none of 'em turned out better soldiers than old Illinoy did. If my guess
is right I move we hear frum Mr. Watts, frum Illinoy, on some of his own
wartime experiences.” His hand dropped, with a heartening thump, on
the shoulder of the stranger. “Come on, colonel! We've had a word from
ever'body exceptin' you. It's your turn--ain't it, boys?”
Before his question might be answered, Watts had straightened to his
feet. He stood rigidly, his hands driven wrist-deep into his coat
pockets; his weather-beaten face set in heavy, hard lines; his deep eyes
fixed on a spot in the blank wall above their heads.
“You're right--I was a soldier in the war between the States,” he said
in a thickened, quick voice, which trembled just a little; “but I didn't
serve with the Illinois troops. I didn't move to Illinois until after
the war. My regiment was as good a regiment, though, and as game a
regiment, as fought in that war on either side.”
Some six or eight broke generously into a brisk patter of handclapping
at this, and from the exuberant Mr. Galloway came:
“Whirroo! That's right--stick up for yer own side always! Go on, me boy;
go on!”
The urging was unnecessary. Watts was going on as though he had not been
interrupted, as though he had not heard the friendly applause, as though
his was a tale which stood in most urgent need of the telling:
“I'm not saying much of my first year as a soldier. I wasn't
satisfied--well, I wasn't happily placed; I'll put it that way. I
had hopes at the beginning of being an officer; and when the company
election was held I lost out. Possibly I was too ambitious for my
own good. I came to know that I was not popular with the rest of the
company. My captain didn't like me, either, I thought. Maybe I was
morbid; maybe I was homesick. I know I was disappointed. You men have
all been soldiers--you know how those things go. I did my duty after
a fashion--I didn't skulk or hang back from danger--but I didn't do it
cheerfully. I moped and I suppose I complained a lot.
“Well, finally I left that company and that regiment. I just quit. I
didn't quit under fire; but I quit--in the night. I think I must have
been half crazy; I'd been brooding too much. In a day or two I realised
that I couldn't go back home--which was where I had started for--and
I wouldn't go over to the enemy. Badly as I had behaved, the idea of
playing the outright traitor never entered my mind. I want you to know
that. So I thought the thing over for a day or two. I had time for
thinking it over--alone there in that swamp where I was hiding. I've
never spoken of that shameful thing in my life since then--not until
to-night. I tried not to think of it--but I always have--every day.
“Well, I came to a decision at last. I closed the book on my old self; I
wiped out the past. I changed my name and made up a story to account for
myself; but I thank God I didn't change flags and I didn't change sides.
I was wearing that new name of mine when I came out of those woods, and
under it I enlisted in a regiment that had been recruited in a state two
hundred miles away from my own state. I served with it until the end of
the war--as a private in the ranks.
“I'm not ashamed of the part I played those last three years. I'm proud
of it! As God is my judge, I did my whole duty then. I was commended
in general orders once; my name was mentioned in despatches to the War
Department once. That time I was offered a commission; but I didn't take
it. I bear in my body the marks of three wounds. I've got a chunk of
lead as big as your thumb in my shoulder. There's a little scar up here
in my scalp, under the hair, where a splinter from a shell gashed me.
One of my legs is a little bit shorter than the other. In the very last
fight I was in a spent cannon ball came along and broke both the bones
in that leg. I've got papers to prove that from '62 to '65 I did my best
for my cause and my country. I've got them here with me now--I carry
them with me in the daytime and I sleep at night with them under my
pillow.”
With his right hand he fumbled in his breast pocket and brought out
two time-yellowed slips of paper and held them high aloft, clenched and
crumpled up in a quivering fist.
“One of these papers is my honourable discharge. The other is a letter
that the old colonel of my regiment wrote to me with his own hand two
months before he died.”
He halted and his eyes, burning like red coals under the thick brows,
ranged the faces that looked up into his. His own face worked. When he
spoke again he spoke as a prisoner at the bar might speak, making a last
desperate appeal to the jury trying him for his life:
“You men have all been soldiers. I ask you this now, as a soldier
standing among soldiers--I ask you if my record of three years of hard
service and hard fighting can square me up for the one slip I made when
I was hardly more than a boy in years? I ask you that?”
With one voice, then, the jury answered. Its verdict was acquittal--and
not alone acquittal but vindication. Had you been listening outside you
would have sworn that fifty men and not thirteen were yelling at the
tops of their lungs, beating on the table with all the might in their
arms.
The old man stood for a minute longer. Then suddenly all the rigidity
seemed to go out of him. He fell into his chair and put his face in his
two cupped hands. The papers he had brandished over his head slipped
out of his fingers and dropped on the tablecloth. One of them--a flat,
unfolded slip--settled just in front of Doctor Lake. Governed partly by
an instinct operating automatically, partly to hide his own emotions,
which had been roused to a considerable degree, Doctor Lake bent
and spelled out the first few words. His head came up with a jerk of
profound surprise and gratification.
“Why, this is signed by John B. Gordon him-self!” he snorted. He twisted
about, reaching out for Judge Priest. “Billy! Billy Priest! Why, look
here! Why, this man's no Yankee! Not by a dam' sight he's not! Why, he
served with a Georgia regiment! Why----”
But Judge Priest never heard a word of what Doctor Lake was saying. His
old blue eyes stared at the stranger's left hand. On the back of that
hand, standing out upon the corded tendons and the wrinkled brown skin,
blazed a red spot, shaped like a dumb-bell, a birthmark of most unusual
pattern.
Judge Priest stared and stared; and as he stared a memory that was
nearly as old as he was crept out from beneath a neglected convolution
in the back part of his brain, and grew and spread until it filled his
amazed, startled, scarce-believing mind. So it was no wonder he did not
hear Doctor Lake; no wonder he did not see black Tobe Emery stealing up
behind him, with popped eyes likewise fixed on that red dumb-bell-shaped
mark.
No; Judge Priest did not hear a word. As Doctor Lake faced about the
other way to spread his wonderful discovery down the table and across
it, the judge bent forward and touched the fourteenth guest on the
shoulder very gently.
“Pardner,” he asked, apparently apropos of nothing that had happened
since the dinner started--“Pardner, when was the first time you heard
about this here meetin' of Company B--the first time?”
Through the interlaced fingers of the other the answer came haltingly:
“I read about it--in a Chicago Sunday paper--three weeks ago.”
“But you knew before that there was a Company B down here in this town?”
Without raising his head or baring his face, the other nodded. Judge
Priest overturned his coffee cup as he got to his feet, but took no heed
of the resultant damage to the cloth on the table and the fronts of his
white trouser legs.
“Boys,” he cried out so shrilly, so eagerly, so joyously, that they all
jumped, “when you foller after Holy Writ you can't never go fur wrong.
You're liable to breed a miracle. A while ago we took a lesson from the
Parable of the Rich Man that give a dinner; and--lo and behold!--another
parable and a better parable--yes, the sweetest parable of 'em all--has
come to pass and been repeated here 'mongst us without our ever knowin'
it or even suspectin' it. The Prodigal Son didn't enjoy the advantage of
havin' a Chicago Sunday paper to read, but in due season he came back
home--that other Prodigal did; and it stands written in the text that he
was furgiven, and that a feast was made fur him in the house of his
fathers.”
His tone changed to one of earnest demand: “Lycurgus Reese, finish the
roll call of this company--finish it right now, this minute--the way it
oughter be finished!”
“Why, Judge Priest,” said Professor Reese, still in the dark and filled
with wonderment, “it is already finished!”
As though angered almost beyond control, the judge snapped back:
“It ain't finished, neither. It ain't been rightly finished from the
very beginnin' of these dinners. It ain't finished till you call the
very last name that's on that list.”
“But, Judge----”
“But nothin'! You call that last name, Ly-curgus Reese; and you be
almighty quick about it!”
There was no need for the old professor, thus roughly bidden, to haul
out his manuscript. He knew well enough the name, though wittingly it
had not passed his lips for forty years or more. So he spoke it out:
“Sylvester B. Washburn!”
The man they had called Watts raised in his place and dropped his
clenched hands to his sides, and threw off the stoop that was in his
shoulders. He lifted his wetted eyes to the cracked, stained ceiling
above. He peered past plaster and rafter and roof, and through a rift
in the skies above he feasted his famished vision on a delectable land
which others might not see. And then, beholding on his face that look
of one who is confessed and shriven, purified and atoned for, the scales
fell away from their own eyes and they marvelled--not that they knew him
now, but that they had not known him before now. And for a moment or two
there was not a sound to be heard.
“Sylvester B. Washburn!” repeated Professor Reese.
And the prodigal answered:
“Here!”