Eph’s songs, in the old days, were simple darky ballads, or lullabys, or
the songs of the southland that all the world knows. People sometimes
brought their children, of an evening, just to hear Eph sing: “Don’ You
Cry, Ma Honey ...” or that fearsome lullaby about the “Conju’ cats....”
When the old man was in good voice, he never failed to gather a little
audience about him. His listeners used to call out and ask him to sing
certain songs that were their favorites; and sometimes Eph sang what
they wished to hear, and sometimes he refused. He would never sing
“Dixie.” “I ain’ no slave nigger,” he was accustomed to protest, with
scorn. “I fit ag’in’ de South, in de big war. Rackon I’m gwine sing dat
song? Lawdy, man, no suh.”
They told him, laughingly, that the war was over. “Da’s all right,” he
agreed. “De war’s over. Mebbe so. But I ain’ over. Not me. An’ long as I
is what I is, I don’ sing no rebelliums. No suh.”
Those who had enough curiosity to make inquiries found that Eph told the
truth when he said he had fought for the North. He had served in that
colored regiment whose black ranks are immortalized in the Shaw
Memorial, opposite the State House, just up the hill from where Eph had
his nightly stand; and he carried his discharge papers in a tattered
old wallet in his tattered coat.... By the same token, though he would
never sing “Dixie,” it required no more than a word to start him off on
that mighty battle hymn, “Mine eyes have seen the glory....” When he
sang this, his voice rolled and throbbed and thrummed with a roar like
the roar of drums, and there was the beat of marching feet in the
cadence of his song. His banjo tinkled shrilly as the piping of the
fifes, and his bent shoulders straightened, and his head flung high, and
his old eyes snapped and shone....
When Europe went to war, Eph little by little forsook the gentler
melodies of his repertoire; he chose songs with a martial swing. He
chose them by ear and by words; and when he sang them, there was the
blare of bugles in his voice. He was, from the beginning, violently
anti-German; and now and then, when his enthusiasm overcame him, he
delivered an oration on the subject to his nightly audience. At which
they laughed.
But if it was a joke to them, it was not funny to Eph; and he proved
this when the United States went into the war. He went,
unostentatiously, to the recruiting office and offered himself to the
country.
The Sergeant in charge did not smile at old Eph, because he saw that Eph
himself was deadly serious. Eph had said simply:
“I’ve come to jine up in de army, suh.” The Sergeant asked:
“You mean you want to enlist.”
Eph nodded, and grinned. “Yas suh, jes dat.”
The Sergeant frowned, and he considered. “I’ll tell you, old man,” he
said. “I’m afraid you’re over the age limit.”
“Whut de age limit?” Eph asked cautiously.
“Forty-five.”
Eph cackled with delight. “I declare, dat jes lets me in. Me, I’m gwine
on fo’ty-four, dis minute.”
The Sergeant grinned. “Get out!” he protested. “You’ll never see
seventy-four again.”
“I kin prove it,” Eph offered.
The other shook his head. “You’re too old; and your eyes are no good,
and your teeth are gone, and you’ve got flat-foot....”
Eph perceived that the man was friendly. “I can p’int a gun an’ pull a
trigger,” he urged wheedlingly.
“There’s more than that to war,” the Sergeant told him; and Eph’s eyes
blazed.
“Whut you know ’bout war, man?” he demanded. “Ain’ I been in it. Ain’ I
slep’ in de rain, an’ et raw corn, an’ fit in mud to de knees, an’ got a
bullet in my laig, an’ laid out in de snow three days till they come an’
fotch me in. Don’ you let on about war to me, man. I been it and I done
it, befo’ you uz thought of. Go way!”
Eph was so deadly earnest that the Sergeant’s eyes misted. The Sergeant
himself knew what it was to grow old. He had a terrible, sneaking fear
that they would keep him on such duty as this; that he would never see
France. And he crossed, and dropped his hand on Eph’s shoulder. “I’m
sorry,” he said. “It’s no go. We can’t take you.”
Eph passed from anger to pleading. “Spose’n I uz to go along an’ sing
to um,” he proposed. “I c’d do that, anyways.”
“No. They wouldn’t allow you....”
“I’m a jim dandy cook,” Eph offered pitifully.
The Sergeant had to swear or weep. He swore. “Get out of here, you
damned old scamp,” he exclaimed, and swept Eph toward the door. “Get out
of here and stay out, or I’ll have you run in....”
And Eph, who knew white folks and their ways as well as the slave
niggers he scorned, understood that this was the Sergeant’s way of
telling him there was no hope at all. So he said simply: “Thank’e, sir.”
And he turned, and with a sad and dreary dignity he went out, and down
the stairs to the street, and up the Hill and down to the little room
where he lodged.
He was alone in his room all that day. The woman who kept the boarding
house, a billowy negress with a pock-marked face, heard little moaning
cries and lamentations coming from behind his closed door; and once she
knocked and offered her comfort, but Eph drove her away with hard words,
and nursed his sorrow alone.
That night, some of those who saw him at his stand by the subway kiosk
thought he looked tired; but he was as gay as ever, and as cheerful. He
made one innovation in his singing. Across the street and above his head
rose the spire of the Park street church. Whenever the hands of the
clock in this spire touched the hour, old Eph rose, and took off his
hat, and lifted up his voice and sang:
“‘Oh say, kin you see....’”
He sang this each hour that evening, and each hour in all the evenings
that were to come, until the end. And at first they scoffed a little,
because they thought he was playing patriotism for his own ends; but
when they saw how earnestly he sang, and felt the wistful tenderness in
his tones, they faintly understood, and more respected him.
When Ragan came on duty, shortly after midnight that night, he thought
old Eph looked sick, and he sent the old man home.