OVER night, it almost seems, a town will undergo radical and startling
changes. The transition covers a period of years really, but to those
who have lived in the midst of it, the realization comes sometimes with
the abruptness of a physical shock; while the returning prodigal finds
himself lost amongst surroundings which by rights should wear shapes as
familiar as the back of his own hand. It is as though an elderly person
of settled habits and a confirmed manner of life had suddenly fared
forth in new and amazing apparel--as though he had swapped his crutch
for a niblick and his clay pipe for a gold tipped cigarette.
It was so with our town. From the snoreful profundities of a Rip Van
Winkle sleep it woke up one morning to find itself made over; whether
for better or worse I will not presume to say, but nevertheless, made
over. Before this the natural boundaries to the north had been a gravel
bluff which chopped off sharply above a shallow flat sloping away to the
willows and the river beyond. Now this saucer-expanse was dotted over
with mounds of made ground rising like pimples in a sunken cheek; and
spreading like a red brick rash across the face of it, was a tin roofed,
flat-topped irritation of structures--a cotton mill, a brewery, and a
small packing plant dominating a clutter of lesser industries. Above
these on the edge of the hollow, the old warehouse still stood, but the
warehouse had lost its character while keeping its outward shape. Fifty
years it resounded to a skirmish fire clamor of many hammers as the
negro hands knocked the hoops off the hogsheads and the auctioneer
bellowed for his bids; where now, brisk young women, standing in rows,
pasted labels and drove corks into bottles of Dr. Bozeman's Infallible
Cough Cure. Nothing remained to tell the past glories of the old days,
except that, in wet weather, a faint smell of tobacco would steam out of
the cracks in the floor; and on the rotted rafters over head, lettered
in the sprawling chirography of some dead and gone shipping clerk,
were the names and the dates and the times of record-breaking steamboat
runs--_Idlewild_, Louisville to Memphis, so many hours and so many
minutes; _Pat Cleburne_, Nashville to Paducah, so many hours and so many
minutes.
Nobody ever entered up the records of steamboat runs any more; there
weren't any to be entered up. Where once wide side-wheelers and long,
limber stern-wheelers had lain three deep at the wharf, was only a thin
and unimpressive fleet of small fry-harbor tugs and a ferry or two, and
shabby little steamers plying precariously in the short local trades.
Along the bank ran the tracks of the railroad that had taken away the
river business and the switch engines tooted derisively as if crowing
over a vanquished and a vanished rival, while they shoved the box cars
back and forth. Erecting themselves on high trestles like straddle bugs,
three more railroads had come in across the bottoms to a common junction
point, and still another was reliably reported to be on its way.
Wherefore, the Daily Evening News frequently referred to itself as the
Leading Paper of the Future Gateway of the New South. It also took
the Associated Press dispatches and carried a column devoted to the
activities of the Women's Club, including suffrage and domestic science.
So it went. There was a Board of Trade with two hundred names of
members, and half of them, at least, were new names, and the president
was a spry new comer from Ohio. A Republican mayor had actually been
elected--and that, if you knew the early politics of our town, was
the most revolutionary thing of all. Apartment houses--regular flat
buildings, with elevator service and all that--shoved their aggressive
stone and brick faces up to the pavement line of a street where before
old white houses with green shutters and fluted porch pillars had
snuggled back among hack berries and maples like a row of broody old
hens under a hedge. The churches had caught the spirit too; there were
new churches to replace the old ones. Only that stronghold of the ultra
conservatives, the Independent Presbyterian, stood fast on its original
site, and even the Independent Presbyterian had felt the quickening
finger of progress. Under its gray pillared front were set ornate stone
steps, like new false teeth in the mouth of a stem old maid, and the new
stained glass memorial windows at either side were as paste earrings for
her ancient virginal ears. The spinster had traded her blue stockings
for doctrinal half hose of a livelier pattern, and these were the
outward symbols of the change.
But there was one institution among us that remained as it was--Eighth
of August, 'Mancipation Day, celebrated not only by all the black
proportion of our population--thirty-six per cent by the last
census--but by the darkies from all the lesser tributary towns for
seventy-five miles around. It was not their own emancipation that they
really celebrated; Lincoln's Proclamation I believe was issued of a
January morning, but January is no fit time for the holidaying of a race
to whom heat means comfort and the more heat the greater the comfort. So
away back, a selection had been made of the anniversary of the freeing
of the slaves in Hayti or San Domingo or somewhere and indeed it was
a most happy selection. By the Eighth of August the watermelons are
at their juiciest and ripest, the frying size pullet of the spring has
attained just the rightful proportions for filling one skillit all
by itself, and the sun may be reliably counted upon to offer up a
satisfactory temperature of anywhere from ninety in the shade to one
hundred and two. Once it went to one hundred and four and a pleasant
time was had by all.
Right after one Eighth the celebrants began laying by their savings
against the coming of the next Eighth. It was Christmas, Thanksgiving,
and the Fourth of July crowded into the compass of one day--a whole
year of anticipation packed in and tamped down into twenty-four hours
of joyous realization. There never were enough excursion trains to bring
all those from a distance who wanted to come in for the Eighth. Some,
travelers, the luckier ones, rode in state on packed day coaches and the
others, as often as not, came from clear down below the Tennessee line,
on flat cars, shrieking with nervous joy as the engine jerked them
around the sharp curves, they being meantime oblivious alike to the sun
shining with midsummer fervor upon their unprotected heads, and the coal
cinders, as big as buttons, that rained down in gritty showers. There
was some consolation then in having a complexion that neither sun could
tan nor cinders blacken.
For that one day out of the three hundred and sixty-five and a fourth,
the town was a town of dark joy. The city authorities made special
provision for the comfort and the accommodation of the invading swarms
and the merchants wore pleased looks for days beforehand and for weeks
afterward--to them one good Eighth of August was worth as much as six
Court Mondays and a couple of circus days. White people kept indoors as
closely as possible, not for fear of possible race clashes, because
we didn't have such things; but there wasn't room, really, for anybody
except the celebrants. The Eighth was one day when the average white
family ate a cold snack for dinner and when family buggies went
undrivered and family washing went unwashed.
On a certain Eighth of August which I have in mind, Judge Priest spent
the simmering day alone in his empty house and in the evening when he
came out of Clay Street into Jefferson, he revealed himself as the sole
pedestrian of his color in sight. Darkies, though, were everywhere--town
darkies with handkerchiefs tucked in at their necks in the vain hope of
saving linen collars from the wilting-down process; cornfield darkies
whose feet were cramped, cabin'd, cribb'd and confined, as the saying
goes, inside of stiff new shoes and sore besides from much pelting over
unwontedly hard footing; darkies perspiry and rumpled; darkies gorged
and leg weary, but still bent on draining the cup of their yearly joy to
its delectable dregs. Rivers of red pop had already flowed, Niagaras of
lager beer and stick gin had been swallowed up, breast works of parched
goobers had been shelled flat, and blade forests of five cent cigars had
burned to the water's edge; and yet here was the big night just getting
fairly started. Full voiced bursts of laughter and yells of sheer
delight assaulted the old Judge's ears. Through the yellowish dusk one
hired livery stable rig after another went streaking by, each containing
an unbleached Romeo and his pastel-shaded Juliet.
A corner down town, where the two branches of the car lines fused
into one, was the noisiest spot yet. Here Ben Boyd and Bud Dobson,
acknowledged to be the two loudest mouthed darkies in town, contended
as business rivals. Each wore over his shoulder the sash of eminence
and bore on his breast the badge of much honor. Ben Boyd had a shade the
stronger voice, perhaps, but Bud Dobson excelled in native eloquence.
On opposite sidewalks they stood, sweating like brown stone china ice
pitchers, wide mouthed as two bull-alligators.
“Come on, you niggers, dis way to de-real show,” Ben Boyd would bellow
unendingly, “Remember de grand free balloom ascension teks place at
eight o'clock,” and Ben would wave his long arms like a flutter mill.
“Don't pay no 'tention, friends, to dat cheap nigger,” Bud Dobson would
vociferously plead, “an' don't furgit de grand fire works display at mah
park! Ladies admitted free, widout charge! Dis is de only place to go!
Tek de green car fur de grand annual outin' an' ball of de Sisters of
the Mysterious Ten!”
Back it would come in a roar from across the way:
“Tek de red car--dat's de one, dat's de one, folks! Dis way fur de big
gas balloom!” Both of them were lying--there was no balloon to go up, no
intention of admitting anybody free to anything. The pair expanded their
fictions, giving to their work the spontaneous brilliancy of the born
romancer. Like straws caught in opposing cross currents, their victims
were pulled two ways at once. A flustered group would succumb to Bud's
blandishments and he would shoo them aboard a green car. But the car had
to be starting mighty quick, else Bud Dobson's siren song would win
them over and trailing after their leader, who was usually a woman, like
blade sheep behind a bell wether they would pile off and stampede over
to where the red car waited. Some changed their minds half a dozen times
before they were finally borne away.
These were the country darkies, though--the town bred celebrants knew
exactly where they were going and what they would do when they got
there. They moved with the assured bearing of cosmopolitans, stirred
and exhilarated by the clamor but not confused by it. Grand in white
dresses, with pink sashes and green headgear, the Imperial Daughters
of the Golden Star rolled by in a furniture van. The Judge thought he
caught a chocolate-colored glimpse of Aunt Dilsey, his cook, enthroned
on a front seat, as befitting the Senior Grand Potentate of the lodge;
anyhow, he knew she must be up front there somewhere. If any cataclysm
of Providence had descended upon that furniture van that night many a
kitchen beside his would have mourned a biscuit maker par excellence.
Sundry local aristocrats of the race--notably the leading town barber,
a high school teacher and a shiny black undertaker in a shiny high
hat--passed in an automobile, especially loaned for the occasion by a
white friend and customer of the leading barber. It was the first time
an automobile had figured in an Eighth of August outing; its occupants
bore themselves accordingly.
Further along, in the centre of the business district, the Judge had
almost to shove a way for himself through crowds that were nine-tenths
black. There was no actual disorder, but there was an atmosphere of
unrestrained race exultation. You couldn't put your hand on it, nor
express it in words perhaps, but it was there surely. Turning out from
the lit-up and swarming main thoroughfare into the quieter reaches of
a side street, Judge Priest was put to it to avoid a collision with an
onward rush of half grown youths, black, brown, and yellow. Whooping,
they clattered on by him and never looked back to see who it was they
had almost run over.
In this side street the Judge was able to make a better headway; the
rutted sidewalk was almost untraveled and the small wholesale houses
which mainly lined it, were untenanted and dark. Two-thirds of a block
along, he came to a somewhat larger building where an open entry way
framed the foot of a flight of stairs mounting up into a well of pitchy
gloom. Looking up the stairs was like looking up to a sooty chimney,
except that a chimney would have shown a dim opening at the top and
this vista was walled in blankness and ended in blankness. Judge Priest
turned in here and began climbing upward, feeling the way for his feet,
cautiously.
Once upon a time, a good many years before this, Kamleiter's Hall
had been in the centre of things municipal. Nearly all the lodges and
societies had it then for their common meeting place; but when the new
and imposing Fraternity Building was put up, with its elevator, and its
six stories and its electric lights, and all, the Masons and the Odd
Fellows and the rest moved their belongings up there. Gideon K. Irons
Camp alone remained faithful. The members of the Camp had held their
first meeting in Kamleiter's Hall back in the days when they were just
organizing and Kamleiter's was just built. They had used its assembly
room when there were two hundred and more members in good standing, and
with the feeble persistency of old men who will cling to the shells of
past things, after the pith of the substance is gone, they still used
it.
So the Judge should have known those steps by the feel of them under his
shoe soles, he had been climbing up and down them so long. Yet it seemed
to him they had never before been so steep and so many and so hard to
climb, certainly they had never been so dark. Before he reached the top
he was helping himself along with the aid of a hand pressed against the
plastered wall and he stopped twice to rest his legs and get his breath.
He was panting hard when he came to the final landing on the third
floor. He fumbled at a door until his fingers found the knob and
turned it. He stood a moment, getting his bearings in the blackness. He
scratched a match and by its flare located the rows of iron gas jets
set in the wall, and he went from one to another, turning them on and
touching the match flame to their stubbed rubber tips.
It was a long bare room papered in a mournful gray paper, that was
paneled off with stripings of a dirty white. There were yellow, wooden
chairs ranged in rows and all facing a small platform that had desks and
chairs on it, and an old fashioned piano. On the wall, framed uniformly
in square black wooden frames and draped over by strips of faded red and
white bunting, were many enlarged photographs and crayon portraits of
men either elderly or downright aged. Everything spoke of age and hard
usage. There were places where gussets of the wall paper had pulled away
from the paste and hung now in loose triangles like slatted jib sails.
In corners, up against the ceiling, cobwebs hung down in separate
tendrils or else were netted up together in little gray hammocks to
catch the dust. The place had been baking under a low roof all day
and the air was curdled with smells of varnish and glue drawn from the
chairs and the mould from old oil cloth, with a lingering savor of coal
oil from somewhere below. The back end of the hall was in a gloom, and
it only lifted its mask part-way even after the Judge had completed his
round and lit all the jets and was reaching for his pocket handkerchief.
Maybe it was the poor light with its flickery shadows and maybe it was
the effect of the heat, but standing there mopping his forehead, the
old Judge looked older than common. His plump figure seemed to have
lost some of its rotundness and under his eyes the flesh was pouchy and
sagged. Or at least, that was the impression which Ed Gafford got. Ed
Gafford was the odd jobs man of Kamleiter's Hall and he came now, and
was profuse with apologies for his tardiness.
“You'll have to excuse me, Judge Priest,” he began, “for bein' a little
late about gettin' down here to light up and open up. You see, this
bein' the Eighth of August and it so hot and ever'thing, I sort of
jumped at the conclusion that maybe there wouldn't be none of your
gentlemen show up here tonight.”
“Oh, I reckin there'll be quite a lot of the boys comin' along pretty
soon, son,” said Judge Priest. “It's a regular monthly meetin', you
know, and besides there's a vacancy to be filled--we've got a color
bearer to elect tonight. I should say there ought to be a purty fair
crowd, considerin'. You better make a light on them stairs,--they're as
black as a pocket.”
“Right away, Judge,” said Gafford, and departed.
Left alone, the Judge sat down in the place of the presiding officer on
the little platform. Laboriously he crossed one fat leg on the other,
and looked out over the rows of empty wooden chairs, peopling them with
the images of the men who wouldn't sit in them ever again. The toll of
the last few months had been a heavy one. The old Judge cast it up in
his mind: There was old Colonel Horace Farrell, now, the Nestor of the
county bar to whom the women and men of his own State had never been
just plain women and men, but always noble womanhood and chivalric
manhood, and who thought in rounded periods and even upon his last sick
bed had dealt in well measured phrases and sonorous metaphor in his
farewell to his assembled children and grandchildren. The Colonel had
excelled at memorial services and monument unveilings. He would be
missed--there was no doubt about that.
Old Professor Lycurgus Reese was gone too; who was principal of the
graded school for forty-odd years and was succeeded a mercifully short
six months before his death by an abnormally intellectual and gifted
young graduate of a normal college from somewhere up in Indiana, a man
who never slurred his consonant r's nor dropped his final g's, a man who
spoke of things as stimulating and forceful, and who had ideas about Boy
Scout movements and Native Studies for the Young and all manner of new
things, a remarkable man, truly, yet some had thought old Professor
Reese might have been retained a little longer anyhow.
And Father Minor, who was a winged devil of Morgan's cavalry by all
accounts, but a most devoted shepherd of a struggling flock after he
donned the cloth, and old Peter J. Galloway, the lame blacksmith,
with his impartial Irish way of cursing all Republicans as Black
Radicals--they were all gone. Yes, and a dozen others besides; but the
latest to go was Corporal Jake Smedley, color bearer of the Camp from
the time that there was a Camp.
The Judge had helped bury him a week before. There had been only eight
of the members who turned out in the dust and heat of mid-summer for
the funeral, just enough to form the customary complement of honorary
pallbearers, but the eight had not walked to the cemetery alongside the
hearse. Because of the weather, they had ridden in hacks. It was a new
departure for the Camp to ride in hacks behind a dead comrade, and that
had been the excuse--the weather. It came to Judge Priest, as he sat
there now, that it would be much easier hereafter to name offhand
those who were left, than to remember those who were gone. He flinched
mentally, his mind shying away from the thought.
Ten minutes passed--fifteen. Judge Priest shuffled his feet and fumed a
little. He hauled out an old silver watch, bulky as a turnip, with the
flat silver key dangling from it by a black string and consulted its
face. Then he heard steps on the stairs and he straightened himself in
his chair and Sergeant Jimmy Bagby entered, alone. The Sergeant carried
his coat over his arm and he patted himself affectionately on his left
side and dragged his feet a little. As Commander of the Camp, the Judge
greeted him with all due formality.
“Don't know what's comin' over this here town,” complained the sergeant,
when he had got his wind back. “Mob of these here crazy country niggers
mighty near knocked me off the sidewalk into the gutter. Well, if they
hadn't been movin' tolerable fast, I bet you I'd a lamed a couple of
'em,” he added, his imagination in retrospect magnifying the indignant
swipe he made at unresisting space a good half minute after the
collision occurred. The Sergeant soothed his ruffled feelings by ft
series of little wheezing grunts and addressed the chair with more
composure:
“Seems like you and me are the first ones here, Judge.”
“Yes,” said the Judge soberly, “and I hope we ain't the last ones
too--that's what I'm hopin'. What with the weather bein' so warm and
darkies thick everywhere”--he broke off short. “It's purty near nine
o'clock now.”
“You don't say so?” said the Sergeant. “Then we shorely oughter be
startin' purty soon. Was a time when I could set up half the night and
not feel it scarcely. But here lately I notice I like to turn in sort of
early. I reckin it must be the weather affectin' me.”
“That must be it,” assented the Judge, “I feel it myself--a little; but
look here, Sergeant, we never yet started off a regular meetin' without
a little music. I reckin we might wait a little while on Herman to come
and play Dixie for us. The audience will be small but appreciative, as
the feller says.” A smile flickered across his face. “Herman manages to
keep younger and spryer than a good many of the boys.”
“Yes, that's so too,” said the Sergeant, “but jest yestiddy I heared he
was fixin' to turn over his business to his son and that nephew of his
and retire.”
“That's no sign he's playin' out,” challenged Judge Priest rather
quickly, “no sign at all. I reckin Herman jest wants to knock round
amongst his friends more.”
Sergeant Bagby nodded as if this theory was a perfectly satisfactory one
to him. A little pause fell. The Sergeant reached backward to a remote
and difficult hip pocket and after two unsuccessful efforts, he fished
out what appeared to be a bit of warped planking.
“They're tearing away the old Sanders place,” he confessed somewhat
sheepishly, “and I stopped in by there as I come down and fetched
away this here little piece of clapboard for a sort of keepsake. You
recollect, Judge, that was where Forrest made his headquarters that day
when we raided back into town here? Lawsy, what a surprise old
Bedford did give them Yankees. But shucks, that was Bedford's
specialty--surprises.” He stopped and cocked his whity-gray head toward
the door hopefully.
“Listen yonder, that must be Herman Felsburg comin' up the steps now.
Maybe Doctor Lake is with him. Weather or no weather, niggers or no
niggers, it's mighty hard to keep them two away from a regular meetin'
of the Camp.”
But the step outside was too light a step and too peart for Mr.
Felsburg's. It was Ed Gafford who shoved his head in.
“Judge Priest,” he stated, “you're wanted on the telephone right away.
They said they had to speak to you in person.”
The Sergeant waited, with what patience he could, while the Judge
stumped down the long flights, and after a little, stumped back again.
His legs were quivering under him and it was quite a bit before he quit
blowing and panting. When he did speak, there was a reluctant tone in
his voice.
“It's from Herman's house,” he said. “He won't be with us tonight.
He--he's had a kind of a stroke--fell right smack on the floor as he was
puttin' on his hat to come down here. 'Twas his daughter had me on the
telephone--the married one. They're afraid it's paralysis--seems like
he can't move one side and only mumbles, sort of tongue tied, she says,
when he tried to talk. But I reckin it ain't nowhere near as serious as
they think for.”
“No suh,” agreed the Sergeant, “Herman's good for twenty year yit. I
bet you he jest et something that didn't agree with him. He'll be up and
goin' in a week--see if he ain't. But say, that means Doctor Lake won't
be here neither, don't it?”
“Well, that's a funny thing,” said the old Judge, “I pointedly asked her
what he said about Herman, and she mumbled something about Doctor Lake's
gittin' on so in life that she hated to call him out on a hot night like
this. So they called in somebody else. She said, though, they aimed to
have Lake up the first thing in the momin' unless Herman is better by
then.”
“Well, I'll say this,” put in Sergeant Bagby, “she better not let him
ketch her sayin' he's too old to be answerin' a call after dark. Lew
Lake's got a temper, and he certainly would give that young woman a
dressin' down.”
The old Judge moved to his place on the platform and mounted it heavily.
As he sat down, he gave a little grunting sigh. An old man's tired sigh
carries a lot of meaning sometimes; this one did.
“Jimmy,” he said, “if you will act as adjutant and take the desk, we'll
open without music, for this onc't. This is about the smallest turn-out
we ever had for a regular meetin', but we can go ahead, I reckin.”
Sergeant Bagby came forward and took a smaller desk off at the side
of the platform. Adjusting his spectacles, just so, he tugged a warped
drawer open and produced a flat book showing signs of long wear and much
antiquity. A sheet of heavy paper had been pasted across the cover
of this book, but with much use it had frayed away so that the word
“Ledger” showed through in faded gilt letters. The Sergeant opened at a
place where a row of names ran down the blue lined sheet and continued
over upon the next page. Most of the names had dates set opposite them
in fresher writing than the original entries. Only now and then was
there a name with no date written after it. He cleared his throat to
begin.
“I presume,” the Commander was saying, “that we might dispense with the
roll call for tonight.”
“That's agreeable to me,” said the acting adjutant, and he shut up the
book.
“There is an election pendin' to fill a vacancy, but in view of the
small attendance present this evenin'--”
The Judge cut off his announcement to listen. Some one walking with
the slow, uncertain gait of a very tired or a very feeble person was
climbing up the stairs. The shuffling sound came on to the top and
stopped, and an old negro man stood bareheaded in the door blinking his
eyes at the light and winking his bushy white tufts of eyebrows up
and down. The Judge shaded his own eyes the better to make out the new
comer.
“Why, it's Uncle Ike Copeland,” he said heartily. “Come right in, Uncle
Ike, and set down.”
“Yes, take a seat and make yourself comfortable,” added the Sergeant. In
the tones of both the white men was a touch of kindly but none the less
measurable condescension--that instinctive turn of inflection by which
the difference held firmly to exist between the races was expressed and
made plain, but in this case it was subtly warmed and tinctured with an
essence of something else--an indefinable, evasive something that would
probably not have been apparent in their greetings to a younger negro.
“Thanky, gen'l'men,” said the old man as he came in slowly. He was
tall and thin, so thin that the stoop in his back seemed an inevitable
inbending of a frame too long and too slight to support its burden. And
he was very black. His skin must have been lustrous and shiny in his
youth, but now was overlaid with a grayish aspect, like the mould upon
withered fruit. His forehead, naturally high and narrow, was deeply
indented at the temples and he had a long face with high cheek bones,
and a well developed nose and thin lips. The face was Semitic in its
suggestion rather than Ethiopian. The whites of his eyes showed a yellow
tinge, but the brown pupils were blurred by a pronounced bluish cast.
His clothes were old but spotlessly clean, and his shoes were slashed
open along the toes and his bare feet showed through the slashed places.
He made his way at a hobbling gait toward the back row of chairs.
“I'll be plenty comfor'ble yere, suhs,” he said in a voice which sounded
almost like an accentuated mimicry of Judge Priest's high notes. He
eased his fragile rack of bones down into a chair and dropped his old
hat on the matting of the aisle beside him, seemingly oblivious to the
somewhat puzzled glances of the two veterans.
“What's the reason you ain't out sashaying round on the Eighth with
your own people?” asked the Judge. The old negro began a thin, hen-like
chuckle, but his cackle ended midway in a snort of disgust.
“Naw suh,” he answered, “naw suh, not fur me. It 'pears lak most of de
ole residenters dat I knowed is died off, and mo' over I ain't gittin'
so much pleasure projectin' round 'mongst all dese brash young free
issue niggers dat's growed up round yere. They ain't got no fitten
respec' fur dere elders and dat's a fac', boss. Jes' now seen a passel
of 'em ridin' round in one of dese yere ortermobiles.” He put an ocean
of surging contempt to the word: “Huh--ortermobiles!”
“And dis time dar wam't no place on de flatform fur me at de festibul
out in dat Fisher's Gyarden as dey names it, do' it taint nothin'
'ceptin' a grove of trees. Always befoah dis I set up on de very fust
and fo'most row--yas suh, always befoah dis hit wuz de rule. But dis
yeah dey tek and give my place to dat 'bovish young nigger preacher
dat calls hisse'f de Rev'rund J. Fontleroy Jones. His name is Buddy
Jones--tha's whut it tis--and I 'members him when he wam't nothin' but
jes' de same ez de mud onder yore feet. Tha's de one whut gits my place
on de flatform, settin' there in a broadcloth suit, wid a collar on him
mighty nigh tall nuff to saw his nappy haid off, which it wouldn't be no
real loss to nobody ef it did.
“But I reckin I still is got my pride lef ef I ain't got nothin' else.
My grandmaw, she wuz a full blood Affikin queen and I got de royal Congo
blood in my veins. So I jes' teks my foot in my hand and comes right on
away and lef' dat trashy nigger dar, spreadin' hisse'f and puffin'
out his mouf lak one of dese yere ole tree frogs.” There was a forlorn
complaint creeping into his words; but he cast it out and cackled his
derision for the new generation, and all its works.
“Dey ain't botherin' me none, wid dere airs, dat dey ain't. I kin git
long widout 'em, and I wuz gwine on home 'bout my own business w'en I
seen dese lights up yere, and I says to myse'f dat some of my own kind
of w'ite folks is holdin' fo'th and I'll jess drap up dar and set a
spell wid 'em, pervidin' I'se welcome, which I knows full well I is.
“So you go right ahaid, boss, wid whutever it 'tis you's fixin' to do. I
'low to jes' set yere and res' my frame.”
“Course you are welcome,” said Judge Priest, “and we'll be mighty glad
to have you stay as long as you're a mind to. We feel like you sort of
belong here with us anyway, Unde Ike, account of your record.”
The old negro grinned widely at the compliment, showing two or three
yellowed snags planted in shrunken bluish gums. “Yas suh,” he assented
briskly, “I reckin I do.” The heat which wilted down the white men
and made their round old faces look almost peaked, appeared to have a
briskening effect upon him. Now he got upon his feet. His lowliness was
falling away, his sense of his own importance was coming back to him.
“I reckin I is got a sorter right to be yere, tho' it warn't becomin'
in me to mention it fust,” he said. “I been knowin' some of you all
gen'l'men since 'way back befoah de war days. I wonder would you all lak
to hear 'bout me and whut I done in dem times?”
They nodded, in friendly fashion, but the speaker was already going on
as though sure of the answer:
“I 'members monstrous well dat day w'en my young marster jined out wid
de artillery and Ole Miss she send me 'long wid him to look after him,
'cause he warn't nothin' but jess a harum-scarum boy noway. Less see,
boss--dat must be goin' on thutty or forty yeah ago, ain't it?”
It was more than thirty years or forty either, but neither of them was
moved to correct him. Again their heads conveyed an assent, and Uncle
Ike, satisfied, went ahead, warming to his theme:
“So I went 'long with him jess lak Ole Miss said. And purty soon, he git
to be one of dese yere lieutenants, and he act mighty biggotty toward
hisse'f wid dem straps sewed onto his cote collar, but I bound I keep
him in order--I bound I do dat, suhs, ef I don't do nothin' else in dat
whole war. I minds the time w'en we wuz in camp dat fust winter and yere
one day he come ridin' in out of de rain, jess drippin' wet. Befoah 'em
all I goes up to him and I says to him, I says, 'Marse Willie, you git
right down off'en dat hoss and come yere and lemme put some dry clothes
on you. What Ole Miss gwine say to me ef I lets you set round here,
ketchin; yore death?
“Some of dem y'other young gen'l'men laff den and he git red in de face
and tell me to go 'way from dere and let him be. I says to him, I says,
'I promised yore maw faithful to 'tend you and look after you and I
pintedly does aim to do so.' I says, 'Marse Willie,' I says, 'I hope I
ain't gwine have to keep on tellin' you to git down off'en dat hoss.'
Dem y'others laff louder'n ever den and he cuss and r'ar and call me a
meddlin' black raskil. But I tek notice he got down off'en dat hoss--I
lay to dat.
“But I didn't have to 'tend him long. Naw suh, not very long. He git
killed de very fust big battle we wuz in, which wuz Shiloh. Dat battery
shore suffer dat day. 'Long tow'rds evenin' yere dey come failin' back,
all scorified and burnt black wid de powder and I sees he ain't wid 'em
no more and I ax 'bout him and dey tells me de Battery done los' two of
its pieces and purty near all de hosses and dat young Marse Willie been
killed right at de outset of de hard fightin'. I didn't wait to hear no
mo'n dat--dat wuz 'nuff fur me. I puts right out to find him.
“Gen'l'men, dat warn't no fittin' place to be prowlin' 'bout in.
Everywhahs you look you see daid men and crippled men. Some places dey
is jess piled up; and de daid is beginnin' to swell up already and de
wounded is wrigglin' round on de bare ground and some of 'em is beggin'
for water and some is beggin' for somebody to come shoot 'em and put 'em
out of dere miz'ry. And ever onc't in a wile you hear a hoss scream. It
didn't sound like no hoss tho', it sound mo' lak a pusson or one of dese
yere catamounts screamin'.
“But I keep on goin' on 'count of my bein' under obligations to 'tend
him and jess him alone. After while it begin to git good and dark and
you could see lanterns bobbin' round whar dere wuz search parties out, I
reckin. And jess befo' the last of de light fade 'way I come to de place
whar de Battery wuz stationed in the aidge of a little saige-patch lak,
and dar I find him--him and two y'others, right whar dey fell. Dey wuz
all three layin' in a row on dere backs jes' lak somebody is done fix
'em dat way. His chist wuz tore up, but scusin' de dust and dirt, dar
wam't no mark of vilence on his face a t'all.
“I knowed dey wam't gwine put Ole Miss's onliest dear son in no trench
lak he wuz a daid hoss--naw suh, not wile I had my stren'th. I tek him
up in my arms--I wuz mighty survig'rous dem times and he wam't nothin'
but jes' a boy, ez I told you--so I tek him up and tote him 'bout a
hundred yards 'way whar dar's a little grove of trees and de soil is
sort of soft and loamy; and den and dere I dig his grave. I didn't have
no reg'lar tools to dig wid, but I uses a pinted stick and one of dese
yere bay-nets and fast ez I loosen de earth I cast it out wid my hands.
And 'long towo'ds daylight I gits it deep nuff and big nuff. So I fetch
water frum a little branch and wash off his face and I wrop him in a
blanket w'ich I pick up nearby and I compose his limbs and I bury him in
de ground.”
His voice had swelled, taking on the long, swinging cadences by
which his race voices its deeper emotions whether of joy or sorrow or
religious exaltation. Its rise and fall had almost a hypnotizing effect
upon the two old men who were his auditors. The tale he was telling was
no new one to them. It had been written a score of times in the county
papers; it had been repeated a hundred times at reunions and Memorial
Day services. But they listened, canting their heads to catch every word
as though it were a new-told thing and not a narrative made familiar by
nearly fifty years of reiteration and elaboration.
“I put green branches on top of him and I bury him. And den w'en I'd
done mark de place so I wouldn't never miss it w'en I come back fur him,
I jes' teks my foot in my hand and I puts out fur home. I slip through
de No'thern lines and I heads for ole Lyon County. I travels light and
I travels fast and in two weeks I comes to it. It ain't been but jes' a
little mo'n a year since we went 'way but Gar Almighty, gen'l'men, how
dat war is done change ever'thing. My ole Miss is gone--she died de very
day dat Marse Willie got killed, yas suh, dat very day she taken down
sick and died--and her brother, ole Majah Machen is gone too--he's 'way
off down in Missippi somewhars refugeein' wid his folks--and de rest of
de niggers is all scattered 'bout ever'whars. De Fed'ruls is in charge
and de whole place seem lak, is plum' busted up and distracted.
“So I jedge dat I is free. Leas'wise, dar ain't nobody fur me to repote
myse'f to, an' dar ain't nobody to gimme no ordahs. So I starts in
follerin' at my trade--I is a waggin maker by trade as you gen'l'men
knows--and I meks money and saves it up, a little bit at a time, and I
bury it onder de dirt flo' of my house.
“After 'while shore-nuff freedom she come and de war end, soon after
dat, and den it seem lak all de niggers in de world come flockin' in.
Dey act jess ez scatter-brained as a drove of birds. It look lak freedom
is affectin' 'em in de haid. At fust dey don't think 'bout settlin'
down--dey say de gover'mint is gwine give 'em all forty acres and a mule
apiece--and dey jess natchelly obleeged to wait fur dat. But I 'low to
my own se'f dat by de time de gover'mint gits 'round to Lyon County my
mule is gwine be so old I'll have to be doctorin' him 'stid of plowin'
him. So I keeps right on, follerin' my trade and savin' a little yere
and a little dar, 'tell purty soon I had money nuff laid by fur whut I
need it fur.”
There was a crude majesty in the old negro's pose and in the gesturing
of his long arms. It was easy to conceive that his granddam had been
an African Chieftainess. The spell of his story-telling filled the bare
hall. The comb of white that ran up his scalp stood erect like carded
wool and his jaundiced eyeballs rolled in his head with the exultation
of his bygone achievement. In different settings a priest of ancient
Egypt might have made such a figure.
“I had money nuff fur whut I needs it fur,” he repeated sonorously, “and
so I goes back to dat dere battle-field. I hires me a wite man and a
waggin and two niggers to help and I goes dar and I digs up my young
marster frum de place whar he been layin' all dis time, and I puts him
in de coffin and I bring him back on de railroad cyars, payin' all de
expenses, and actin' as de chief mourner. And I buries him in de buryin'
ground at de home-place right 'longside his paw, which I knowed Ole Miss
would a wanted it done jes' dat way, ef she had been spared to live and
nothin' happened. W'en all dat is done I know den dat I is free in my
own mind to come and to go; and I packs up my traps and my plunder and
leave ole Lyon County and come down yere to dis town, whar I is been
ever since.
“But frum dat day fo'th dey calls me a wite folks' nigger, some of 'em
does. Well, I reckin I is. De black folks is my people, but de wite
folks is always been my frends, I know dat good and well. And it stands
proven dis very night. De black people is de same ez cast me out, and
dat fool Jones nigger he sets in my 'pinted place on de flatform,”--a
lament came again into his chanting tone, and he took on the measured
swing of an exhorter at an experience meeting--“Dey cast me out, but I
come to my wite friends and dey mek me welcome.”
He broke off to shake his wool-crowned head from side to side. Then in
altogether different voice he began an apology:
“Jedge, you and Mistah Bagby must please suh, s'cuse me fur ramblin' on
lak dis. I reckin I done took up nuff of yore time--I spects I better be
gittin' on towo'ds my own home.”
But he made no move to start, because the old Judge was speaking; and
the worn look was gone from the Judge's face, and the stress of some
deep emotion made the muscles of his under jaws tighten beneath the
dew-laps of loose flesh.
“Some who never struck a blow in battle, nevertheless served our Cause
truly and faithfully,” he said, as though he were addressing an audience
of numbers. “Some of the bravest soldiers we had never wore a uniform
and their skins were of a different color from our skins. I move that
our comrade Isaac Copeland here present be admitted to membership in
this Camp. If this motion is regular and accordin' to the rules of the
organization, I make it. And if it ain't regular--I make it jest the
same!”
“I second that motion,” said Sergeant Jimmy Bagby instantly and
belligerently, as though defying an unseen host to deny the propriety of
the step.
“It is moved and seconded,” said Judge Priest formally, “that Isaac
Copeland be made a member of this Camp. All in favor of that motion will
signify by saying Aye!”
His own voice and the Sergeant's answered as one voice with a shrill
Aye.
“Contrary, no?” went on the Judge. “The Ayes have it and it is so
ordered.”
It was now the Sergeant's turn to have an inspiration. Up he came to his
feet, sputtering in his eagerness.
“And now, suh, I nominate Veteran Isaac Copeland for the vacant place
of color bearer of this Camp--and I move you furthermore that the
nominations be closed.”
The Judge seconded the motion and again these two voted as one, the old
negro sitting and listening, but saying nothing at all. Judge Priest
got up from his chair and crossing to a glass cabinet at the back of
the platform, he opened the door and drew forth a seven foot staff of
polished wood with a length of particolored silk wadded about its upper
part and bound round with a silken cord.
“Unde Ike,” he said, reverently, “You are our color-sergeant now in good
and proper standin'--and here are your colors for you.”
The old negro came shuffling up. He took the flag in his hands. His
bent back unkinked until he stood straight. His long fleshless fingers,
knotted and gnarled and looking like fire-blackened faggots twitched
at the silken square until its folds fell away and in the gas light it
revealed itself, with its design of the starred St. Andrew's cross and
its tarnished gold fringe.
“I thanky suhs, kindly,” he said, addressing the two old white men,
standing at stiff salute, “I suttinly does appreciate dis--and I'll tell
you why. Dey done drap me out of de Cullid Odd Fellers, count of my not
bein' able to meet de dues, and dis long time I been feared dat w'en
my time come to go, I'd have to be buried by de co'pperation. But now I
knows dat I'll be laid away in de big stylish cemetary--wid music and de
quality wite gen'l'men along and ker'riges. And maybe dar'll be a band.
Ain't dat so, gen'l'men--ain't dar goin' to be a band 'long too?”
They nodded. They were of the same generation, these two old white
men and this lone old black man, and between them there was a perfect
understanding. That the high honor they had visited upon him meant to
their minds one thing and to his mind another thing was understandable
too. So they nodded to him.
*****
They came down the steep stairs, the Judge, and the Sergeant abreast in
front, the new color bearer two steps behind them, and when they were
outside on the street, the Judge fumbled in his pocket a moment, then
slipped something shiny into the old negro's harsh, horny palm, and the
recipient pulled his old hat off and thanked him, there being dignity in
the manner of making the gift and in the manner of receiving it, both.
The Judge and the Sergeant stood watching him as he shuffled away in
the darkness, his loose slashed brogans clop-lopping up and down on his
sockless feet. Probably they would have found it hard to explain why
they stood so, but watch him they did until the old negro's gaunt black
shadow merged into the black distance. When he was quite gone from
sight, they faced about the other way and soberly and silently, side by
side, trudged away, two stoutish, warm, weary old men.
At the corner they parted. The Judge continued alone along Jefferson
Street. A trolley car under charter for the Eighth whizzed by him, gay
with electric lights. On the rear platform a string band played rag
time of the newest and raggedest brand, and between the aisle and on
the seats negro men and women were skylarking and yelling to friends
and strangers along the sidewalk. The sawing bleat of the agonized bass
fiddle cut through the onspeeding clamor, but the guitars could hardly
be heard. A little further along, the old Judge had to skirt the curbing
to find a clear way past a press of roystering darkies before a moving
picture theatre where a horseshoe of incandescent glowed about a sign
reading _Colored People's Night_ and a painted canvas banner made
enthusiastic mention of the historic accuracies of a film dealing with
The Battle of San Juan Hill, on exhibition within. The last of the
rented livery rigs passed him, the lathered horse barely able to pluck a
jog out of his stiff legs. Good natured smiling faces, brown, black, and
yellow showed everywhere from under the brims of straw hats and above
the neckbands of rumpled frocks of many colors. The Eighth of August
still had its last hours to live and it was living them both high and
fast.
When Judge Priest, proceeding steadily onward, came to where Clay Street
was brooding, a dark narrow little thoroughfare, in the abundant covert
of many trees, the tumult and the shouting were well dimmed in the
distance behind him. He set his back to it all and turned into the
bye-street, an old tired man with lagging legs, and the shadows
swallowed him up.