I
Old Eph’s favorite stand was on Tremont street, just outside the subway
kiosk, where every foot in Boston soon or late must pass. He appeared
here about dusk every evening, when the afternoon rush was over; and he
squatted, tailor fashion, on crossed legs, and hugged his banjo to his
ragged breast, and picked at it and crooned and shouted his old melodies
so long as there were any to listen. He was a cheerful old fellow, with
the pathetic cheerfulness of the negro. When coins were tossed to him,
he had a nimble trick of whisking his banjo bottom side up, catching the
contribution in this improvised receptacle, flipping it into the air and
pocketing it without interrupting his music. Each time he did this, his
fingers returned to the strings with a sweep and a strumming that
suggested the triumphant notes of trumpets. There was an ape-like cast
to his head; and his long arms and limber old fingers had the uncanny
dexterity of a monkey. Pretty girls, watching him, sometimes said
shiveringly to their escorts:
“He hardly seems human--squatting there....”
Old Eph always heard. His ears were unnaturally keen, attuned to the
murmur of the crowds. And he used to answer them, chanting his reply in
time with the tune he happened at the moment to be playing. Thus: “Don’
you cry, ma Honey ...” might become:
“‘Don’ you call me monkey,
‘Don’ you call me monk ...
‘Eph ain’ gwine tuh lak it, and hit ain’t so....’”
And then he would go on with the song, calm and undisturbed ...
“‘All de little black babies, sleepin’ on de flo’ ...
‘Mammy only lubs her own.’”
When a particularly liberal coin came his way, he gave thanks in the
midst of his song. Thus:
“‘I’m comin’; I’m comin’; and my head is thank ye ma’am ...
‘I hear dem darky voices calling: Yes mum-ma’am.’”
He never hesitated to take liberties with the English language in order
to preserve the meter; for he had the keen sense of rhythm that
characterizes his race. Also, for all the ravages of age, his voice was
sweet and true. He sang endlessly, so that his songs were half medley,
half monologue; and his banjo would all but speak for him.
No one ever saw Eph about the streets in the day time. He appeared at
dusk; and it was known that he sometimes remained at his post, singing
and picking at his banjo, long after the ways were empty of pedestrians.
Sometimes, in those middle hours between night and morning, when there
was no one near, the songs he sang became ineffably sad and mournful; he
crooned them, under his breath, to the banjo that he hugged against his
breast, and his sweet old voice was like a low lament. Once Walter
Ragan, the patrolman on the beat, passed at four in the morning of a
late fall day and heard Eph singing, over and over....
“Tramp, tramp, tramp! De boys is marching....”
Eph repeated this song so long and so sorrowfully that Ragan came up
quietly behind him and asked:
“What’s the matter, Eph?”
The old negro looked up, and Ragan saw that there were tears on his
black and wrinkled cheeks. But the darky grinned cheerfully at sight of
the policeman.
“Jes’ thinkin’ on de old times, Miste’ Ragan. Thinkin’ on de old times,
suh,” said Eph.
Ragan was half inclined to laugh, and half inclined to cry. He felt so
sorry for the old man that he ordered him gruffly to get up and go home
and go to bed. And Eph got up, and bowed, and brushed the paving with
his cap, so deep was his obeisance. “Yas, suh, Miste’ Ragan,” he
promised. “Yas, suh, I’m goin’ right along....”
And he tucked the banjo under his arm, and crossed the street, and
started up Beacon Hill. Ragan knew where he dwelt, down in the swarming
hive beneath the Hill. He watched old Eph go, watched the shuffling,
splay feet, and the bent shoulders, and the twisted, crooked little
body....
“The darned old nut,” said Ragan gruffly, to himself. “Not sense enough
to go to bed....”
And he went on down the street, whistling between his teeth and trying
not to think of Eph’s bowed body and the tears upon the black old
cheeks.