Then it struck me mebby it is jest different parts of the same story I been hearing of, and Martha had got her part a little wrong.
“George,” I says, “what did you say Miss Lucy Buckner’s gran-dad’s name was?”
“Kunnel Hampton–des de same as MY Miss Lucy befo’ SHE done ma’hied Marse Willyum.”
That made me sure of it. It was the same woman. She had run away with David Armstrong from this here same neighbourhood. Then after he got her up North he had left her–or her left him. And then she wasn’t Miss Buckner no longer. And she was mad and wouldn’t call herself Mrs. Armstrong. So she moved away from where any one was lible to trace her to, and took her mother’s maiden name, which was Hampton.
“Well,” I says, “what ever become of ’em after they run off, George?”
But George has told about all he knows. They went North, according to what everybody thinks, he says. Prent McMakin, he follered and hunted. And Col. Tom Buckner, he done the same. Fur about a year Colonel Tom, he was always making trips away from there to the North. But whether he ever got any track of his sister and that David Armstrong nobody knowed. Nobody never asked him. Old Colonel Hampton, he grieved and he grieved, and not long after the runaway he up and died. And Tom Buckner, he finally sold all he owned in that part of the country and moved further south. George said he didn’t rightly know whether it was Alabama or Florida. Or it might of been Georgia.
I thinks to myself that mebby Mrs. Davis would like to know where her niece is, and that I better tell her about Miss Hampton being in that there little Indiany town, and where it is. And then I thinks to myself I better not butt in. Fur Miss Hampton has likely got her own reasons fur keeping away from her folks, or else she wouldn’t do it. Anyhow, it’s none of MY affair to bring the subject up to ’em. It looks to me like one of them things George has been gassing about–one of them things that has settled itself, and it ain’t fur me to meddle and unsettle it.
It set me to thinking about Martha, too. Not that I hadn’t thought of her lots of times. I had often thought I would write her. But I kept putting it off, and purty soon I kind of forgot Martha. I had seen a lot of different girls of all kinds since I had seen Martha. Yet, whenever I happened to think of Martha, I had always liked her best. Only moving around the country so much makes it kind of hard to keep thinking steady of the same girl. Besides, I had lost that there half of a ring, too.
But knowing what I did now about Miss Hampton being Miss Buckner–or Mrs. Armstrong–and related to these Davises made me want to get away from there. Fur that secret made me feel kind of sneaking, like I wasn’t being frank and open with them. Yet if I had of told ’em I would of felt sneakinger yet fur giving Miss Hampton away. I never got into a mix up that-a-way betwixt my conscience and my duty but what it made me feel awful uncomfortable. So I guessed I would light out from there. They wasn’t never no kinder, better people than them Davises, either. They was so pleased with my bringing Bud home the night he was shot they would of jest natcherally give me half their farm if I had of ast them fur it. They wanted me to stay there–they didn’t say fur how long, and I guess they didn’t give a dern. But I was in a sweat to ketch up with Doctor Kirby agin.
CHAPTER XV
I made purty good time, and in a couple of days I was in Atlanta. I knowed the doctor must of gone back into some branch of the medicine game–the bottles told me that. I knowed it must be something that he needed some special kind of bottles fur, too, or he wouldn’t of had them shipped all that distance, but would of bought them nearer. I seen I was a dern fool fur rushing off and not inquiring what kind of bottles, so I could trace what he was into easier.
It’s hard work looking fur a man in a good-sized town. I hung around hotel lobbies and places till I was tired of it, thinking he might come in. And I looked through all the office buildings and read all the advertisements in the papers. Then the second day I was there the state fair started up and I went out to it.
I run acrost a couple I knowed out there the first thing–it was Watty and the snake-charmer woman. Only she wasn’t charming them now. Her and Watty had a Parisian Models’ show. I ast Watty where Dolly was. He says he don’t know, that Dolly has quit him. By which I guess he means he has quit her. I ast where Reginald is, and the Human Ostrich. But from the way they answered my questions I seen I wasn’t welcome none around there. I suppose that Mrs. Ostrich and Watty had met up agin somewheres, and had jest natcherally run off with each other and left their famblies. Like as not she had left poor old Reginald with that idiotic ostrich feller to sell to strangers that didn’t know his disposition. Or mebby by now Reginald was turned loose in the open country to shift fur himself, among wild snakes that never had no human education nor experience; and what chancet would a friendly snake like Reginald have in a gang like that? Some women has jest simply got no conscience at all about their husbands and famblies, and that there Mrs. Ostrich was one of ’em.
Well, a feller can be a derned fool sometimes. Fur all my looking around I wasted a lot of time before I thought of going to the one natcheral place–the freight depot of the road them bottles had been shipped by. I had lost a week coming down. But freight often loses more time than that. And it was at the freight depot that I found him.
Tickled? Well, yes! Both of us.
“Well, by George,” says he, “you’re good for sore eyes.”
Before he told me how he happened not to of drownded or blowed away or anything he says we better fix up a bit. Which he meant I better. So he buys me duds from head to heel, and we goes to a Turkish bath place and I puts ’em on. And then we goes and eats. Hearty.
“Now,” he says, “Fido Cut-up, how did you find me?”*
I told him about the bottles.
“A dead loss, those bottles,” he says. “I wanted some non-refillable ones for a little scheme I had in mind, and I had to get them at a certain place –and now the scheme’s up in the air and I can’t use ’em.”
The doctor had changed some in looks in the year or more that had passed since I saw him floating away in that balloon. And not fur the better. He told me how he had blowed clean acrost Lake Erie in that there balloon. And then when he got over land agin and went to pull the cord that lets the parachute loose it wouldn’t work at first. He jest natcherally drifted on into the midst of nowhere, he said–miles and miles into Canada. When he lit the balloon had lost so much gas and was flying so low that the parachute didn’t open out quick enough to do much floating. So he lit hard, and come near being knocked out fur good. But
———-
*AUTHOR’S NOTE–Can it be that Danny struggles vaguely to report some reference to FIDUS ACHATES?
that wasn’t the worst of it, fur the exposure had crawled into his lungs by the time he found a house, and he got newmonia into them also, and like to of died. Whilst I was laying sick he had been sick also, only his’n lasted much longer.
But he tells me he has jest struck an idea fur a big scheme. No little schemes go fur him any more, he says. He wants money. Real money.
“How you going to get it?” I asts him.
“Come along and I’ll tell you,” he says. “We’ll take a walk, and I’ll show you how I got my idea.”
We left the restaurant and went along the brag street of that town, which it is awful proud of, past where the stores stops and the houses begins. We come to a fine-looking house on a corner–a swell place it was, with lots of palms and ferns and plants setting on the verandah and showing through the windows. And stables back of it; and back of the stables a big yard with noises coming from it like they was circus animals there. Which I found out later they really was, kept fur pets. You could tell the people that lived there had money.
“This,” says Doctor Kirby, as we walked by, “is the house that Jackson built. Dr. Julius Jack- son–OLD Doctor Jackson, the man with an idea! The idea made all the money you smell around here.”
“What idea?”
“The idea–the glorious humanitarian and philanthropic idea–of taking the kinks and curls out of the hair of the Afro-American brother,” says Doctor Kirby, “at so much per kink.”
This Doctor Jackson, he says, sells what he calls Anti-Curl to the niggers. It is to straighten out their hair so it will look like white people’s hair. They is millions and millions of niggers, and every nigger has millions and millions of kinks, and so Doctor Jackson has got rich at it. So rich he can afford to keep that there personal circus menagerie in his back yard, for his little boy to play with, and many other interesting things. He must be worth two, three million dollars, Doctor Kirby says, and still a-making it, with more niggers growing up all the time fur to have their hair un- kinked. Especially mulattoes and yaller niggers. Doctor Kirby says thinking what a great idea that Anti-Curl was give him his own great idea. They is a gold mine there, he says, and Dr. Julius Jackson has only scratched a little off the top of it, but HE is going to dig deeper.
“Why is it that the Afro-American brother buys Anti-Curl?” he asts.
“Why?” I asts.
“Because,” he says, “he wants to be as much like a white man as he possibly can. He strives to burst his birth’s invidious bar, Danny. They talk about progress and education for the Afro- American brother, and uplift and advancement and industrial education and manual training and all that sort of thing. Especially we Northerners. But what the Afro-American brother thinks about and dreams about and longs for and prays to be–when he thinks at all–is to be white. Education, to his mind, is learning to talk like a white man. Progress means aping the white man. Religion is dying and going to heaven and being a WHITE angel–listen to his prayers and sermons and you’ll find that out. He’ll do anything he can, or give anything he can get his Ethiopian grub- hooks on, for something that he thinks is going to make him more like a white man. Poor devil! Therefore the millions of Doctor Jackson Anti- Curl.
“All this Doctor Jackson Anti-Curl has dis- covered and thought out and acted upon. If he had gone just one step farther the Afro-American brother would have hailed him as a greater man than Abraham Lincoln, or either of the Washing- tons, George or Booker. It remains for me, Danny–for US–to carry the torch ahead–to take up the work where the imagination of Doctor Jackson Anti-Curl has laid it down.”
“How?” asts I.
“WE’LL PUT UP AND SELL A PREPARATION TO TURN THE NEGROES WHITE!”
THAT was his great idea. He was more excited over it than I ever seen him before about anything.
It sounded like so easy a way to get rich it made me wonder why no one had ever done it before, if it could really be worked. I didn’t believe much it could be worked.
But Doctor Kirby, he says he has begun his experiments already, with arsenic. Arsenic, he says, will bleach anything. Only he is kind of afraid of arsenic, too. If he could only get hold of something that didn’t cost much, and that would whiten them up fur a little while, he says, it wouldn’t make no difference if they did get black agin. This here Anti-Curl stuff works like that–it takes the kinks out fur a little while, and they come back agin. But that don’t seem to hurt the sale none. It only calls fur MORE of Doctor Jackson’s medicine.
The doctor takes me around to the place he boards at, and shows me a nigger waiter he has been ex- perimenting on. He had paid the nigger’s fine in a police court fur slashing another nigger some with a knife, and kept him from going into the chain- gang. So the nigger agreed he could use his hide to try different kinds of medicines on. He was a velvety-looking, chocolate-coloured kind of nigger to start with, and the best Doctor Kirby had been able to do so fur was to make a few little liver- coloured spots come onto him. But it was making the nigger sick, and the doctor was afraid to go too fur with it, fur Sam might die and we would be at the expense of another nigger. Peroxide of hidergin hadn’t even phased him. Nor a lot of other things we tried onto him.
You never seen a nigger with his colour running into him so deep as Sam’s did. Sam, he was always apologizing about it, too. You could see it made him feel real bad to think his colour was so stubborn. He felt like it wasn’t being polite to the doctor and me, Sam did, fur his skin to act that-a-way. He was a willing nigger, Sam was. The doctor, he says he will find out the right stuff if he has to start at the letter A and work Sam through every drug in the hull blame alphabet down to Z.
Which he finally struck it. I don’t exactly know what she had in her, but she was a mixture of some kind. The only trouble with her was she didn’t work equal and even–left Sam’s face looking peeled and spotty in places. But still, in them spots, Sam was six shades lighter. The doctor says that is jest what he wants, that there passing- on-to-the-next-cage-we-have-the-spotted-girocutus- look, as he calls it. The chocolate brown and the lighter spots side by side, he says, made a regular Before and After out of Sam’s face, and was the best advertisement you could have.
Then we goes and has a talk with Doctor Jackson himself. Doctor Kirby has the idea mebby he will put some money into it. Doctor Jackson was setting on his front veranda with his chair tilted back, and his feet, with red carpet slippers on ’em, was on the railing, and he was smoking one of these long black cigars that comes each one in a little glass tube all by itself. He looks Sam over very thoughtful, and he says:
“Yes, it will do the work well enough. I can see that. But will it sell?”
Doctor Kirby makes him quite a speech. I never hearn him make a better one. Doctor Jackson he listens very calm, with his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, and moving his eyebrows up and down like he enjoyed it. But he don’t get excited none. Finally Doctor Kirby says he will undertake to show that it will sell–me and him will take a trip down into the black country ourselves and show what can be done with it, and take Sam along fur an object lesson.
Well, they was a lot of rag-chewing. Doctor Jackson don’t warm up none, and he asts a million questions. Like how much it costs a bottle to make it, and what was our idea how much it orter sell fur. He says finally if we can sell a certain number of bottles in so long a time he will put some money into it. Only, he says, they will be a stock company, and he will have to have fifty-one per cent. of the stock, or he won’t put no money into it. He says if things go well he will let Doctor Kirby be manager of that company, and let him have some stock in it too, and he will be president and treasurer of it himself.
Doctor Kirby, he didn’t like that, and said so. Said HE was going to organize that stock company, and control it himself. But Doctor Jackson said he never put money into nothing he couldn’t run. So it was settled we would give the stuff a try-out and report to him. Before we went away from there it looked to me like Doctor Kirby and me was going to work fur this here Doctor Jackson, instead of making all them there millions fur ourselves. Which I didn’t take much to that Anti-Curl man myself; he was so cold-blooded like.
I didn’t like the scheme itself any too well, neither. Not any way you could look at it. In the first place it seemed like a mean trick on the niggers. Then I didn’t much believe we could get away with it.
The more I looked him over the more I seen Doctor Kirby had changed considerable. When I first knowed him he liked to hear himself talking and he liked to live free and easy and he liked to be running around the country and all them things, more’n he liked to be making money. Of course, he wanted it; but that wasn’t the ONLY thing he was into the Sagraw game fur. If he had money, he was free with it and would help most any one out of a hole. But he wasn’t thinking it and talking it all the time then.
But now he was thinking money and dream- ing money and talking of nothing but how to get it. And planning to make it out of skinning them niggers. He didn’t care a dern how he worked on their feelings to get it. He didn’t even seem to care whether he killed Sam trying them drugs onto him. He wanted MONEY, and he wanted it so bad he was ready and willing to take up with most any wild scheme to make it.
They was something about him now that didn’t fit in much with the Doctor Kirby I had knowed. It seemed like he had spells when he saw himself how he had changed. He wasn’t gay and joking all the time like he had been before, neither. I guess the doctor was getting along toward fifty years old. I suppose he thought if he was ever going to get anything out of his gift of the gab he better settle down to something, and quit fooling around, and do it right away. But it looked to me like he might never turn the trick. Fur he was drinking right smart all the time. Drinking made him think a lot, and thinking was making him look old. He was more’n one year older than he had been a year ago.
He kept a quart bottle in his room now. The night after we had took Sam to see Doctor Jackson we was setting in his room, and he was hitting it purty hard.
“Danny,” he says to me, after a while, like he was talking out loud to himself too, “what did you think of Doctor Jackson?”
“I don’t like him much,” I says.
“Nor I,” he says, frowning, and takes a drink. Then he says, after quite a few minutes of frowning and thinking, under his breath like: “He’s a blame sight more decent than I am, for all of that.”
“Why?” I asts him.
“Because Doctor Jackson,” he says, “hasn’t the least idea that he ISN’T decent, and getting his money in a decent way. While at one time I was–“
He breaks off and don’t say what he was. I asts him. “I was going to say a gentleman,” he says, “but on reflection, I doubt if I was ever anything but a cheap imitation. I never heard a man say that he was a gentleman at one time, that I didn’t doubt him. Also,” he goes on, work- ing himself into a better humour again with the sound of his own voice, “if I HAD ever been a gentle- man at any time, enough of it would surely have stuck to me to keep me out of partnership with a man who cheats niggers.”
He takes another drink and says even twenty years of running around the country couldn’t of took all the gentleman out of him like this, if he had ever been one, fur you can break, you can scatter the vase if you will, but the smell of the roses will stick round it still.
I seen now the kind of conversations he is always having with himself when he gets jest so drunk and is thinking hard. Only this time it happens to be out loud.
“What is a gentleman?” I asts him, thinking if he wasn’t one it might take his mind off himself a little to tell me. “What MAKES one?”
“Authorities differ,” says Doctor Kirby, slouching down in his chair, and grinning like he knowed a joke he wasn’t going to tell no one. “I heard Doctor Jackson describe himself that way the other day.”
Well, speaking personal, I never had smelled none of roses. I wasn’t nothing but trash myself, so being a gentleman didn’t bother me one way or the other. The only reason I didn’t want to see them niggers bunked so very bad was only jest because it was such a low-down, ornery kind of trick.
“It ain’t too late,” I says, “to pull out of this nigger scheme yet and get into something more honest.”
“I don’t know,” he says thoughtful. “I think perhaps it IS too late.” And he sets there looking like a man that is going over a good many years of life in his mind. Purty soon he says:
“As far as honesty goes–it isn’t that so much, O Daniel-come-to-judgment! It’s about as honest as most medicine games. It’s–” He stopped and frowned agin.
“What is it?”
“It’s their being NIGGERS,” he says.
That made the difference fur me, too. I dunno how, nor why.
“I’ve tried nearly everything but blackmail,” he says, “and I’ll probably be trying that by this time next year, if this scheme fails. But there’s something about their being niggers that makes me sick of this thing already–just as the time has come to make the start. And I don’t know WHY it should, either.” He slipped another big slug of whiskey into him, and purty soon he asts me:
“Do you know what’s the matter with me?”
I asts him what.
“I’m too decent to be a crook,” he says, “and too crooked to be decent. You’ve got to be one thing or the other steady to make it pay.”
Then he says:
“Did you ever hear of the descent to Avernus, Danny?”
“I might,” I tells him, “and then agin I mightn’t, but if I ever did, I don’t remember what she is. What is she?”
“It’s the chute to the infernal regions,” he says. “They say it’s greased. But it isn’t. It’s really no easier sliding down than it is climbing back.”
Well, I seen this nigger scheme of our’n wasn’t the only thing that was troubling Doctor Kirby that night. It was thinking of all the schemes like it in the years past he had went into, and how he had went into ’em light-hearted and more’n half fur fun when he was a young man, and now he wasn’t fitten fur nothing else but them kind of schemes, and he knowed it. He was seeing himself how he had been changing, like another person could of seen it. That’s the main trouble with drinking to fergit yourself. You fergit the wrong part of yourself.
I left him purty soon, and went along to bed. My room was next to his’n, and they was a door between, so the two could be rented together if wanted, I suppose. I went to sleep and woke up agin with a start out of a dream that had in it millions and millions and millions of niggers, every way you looked, and their mouths was all open red and their eyes walled white, fit to scare you out of your shoes.
I hearn Doctor Kirby moving around in his room. But purty soon he sets down and begins to talk to himself. Everything else was quiet. I was kind of worried about him, he had taken so much, and hoped he wouldn’t get a notion to go downtown that time o’ night. So I thinks I will see how he is acting, and steps over to the door be- tween the rooms.
The key happened to be on my side, and I un- locked it. But she only opens a little ways, fur his wash stand was near to the hinge end of the door.
I looked through. He is setting by the table, looking at a woman’s picture that is propped up on it, and talking to himself. He has never hearn me open the door, he is so interested. But somehow, he don’t look drunk. He looks like he had fought his way up out of it, somehow–his forehead was sweaty, and they was one intoxicated lock of hair sticking to it; but that was the only un-sober- looking thing about him. I guess his legs would of been unsteady if he had of tried to walk, but his intellects was uncomfortable and sober.
He is still keeping up that same old argument with himself, or with the picture.
“It isn’t any use,” I hearn him say, looking at the picture.
Then he listened like he hearn it answering him. “Yes, you always say just that–just that,” he says. “And I don’t know why I keep on listening to you.”
The way he talked, and harkened fur an answer, when they was nothing there to answer, give me the creeps.
“You don’t help me,” he goes on, “you don’t help me at all. You only make it harder. Yes, this thing is worse than the others. I know that. But I want money–and fool things like this HAVE sometimes made it. No, I won’t give it up. No, there’s no use making any more promises now. I know myself now. And you ought to know me by this time, too. Why can’t you let me alone altogether? I should think, when you see what I am, you’d let me be.
“God help you! if you’d only stay away it wouldn’t be so hard to go to hell!”
CHAPTER XVI
There’s a lot of counties in Georgia where the blacks are equal in number to the
whites, and two or three counties where the blacks number over the whites by two to one. It was fur a little town in one of the latter that we pinted ourselves, Doctor Kirby and me and Sam– right into the blackest part of the black belt.
That country is full of big-sized plantations, where they raise cotton, cotton, cotton, and then MORE cotton. Some of ’em raises fruit, too, and other things, of course; but cotton is the main stand-by, and it looks like it always will be.
Some places there shows that things can’t be so awful much changed since slavery days, and most of the niggers are sure enough country niggers yet. Some rents their land right out from the owners, and some of ’em crops it on the shares, and very many of ’em jest works as hands. A lot of ’em don’t do nigh so well now as they did when their bosses was their masters, they tell me; and then agin, some has done right well on their own hook. They intrusted me, because I never had been use to looking at so many niggers. Every way you turn there they is niggers and then more niggers.
Them that thinks they is awful easy to handle out of a natcheral respect fur white folks has got another guess coming. They ain’t so bad to get along with if you keep it most pintedly shoved into their heads they IS niggers. You got to do that especial in the black belt, jest because they IS so many of ’em. They is children all their lives, mebby, till some one minute of craziness may strike one of them, and then he is a devil temporary. Mebby, when the crazy fit has passed, some white woman is worse off than if she was dead, or mebby she IS dead, or mebby a loonatic fur life, and that nigger is a candidate fur a lynching bee and ginerally elected by an anonymous majority.
Not that ALL niggers is that-a-way, nor HALF of ’em, nor very MANY of ’em, even–but you can never tell WHICH nigger is going to be. So in the black belt the white folks is mighty pertic’ler who comes along fooling with their niggers. Fur you can never tell what turn a nigger’s thoughts will take, once anything at all stirs ’em up.
We didn’t know them things then, Doctor Kirby and me didn’t. We didn’t know we was moving light-hearted right into the middle of the biggest question that has ever been ast. Which I disre- member exactly how that nigger question is worded, but they is always asting it in the South, and an- swering of it different ways. We hadn’t no idea how suspicious the white people in them awful black spots on the map can get over any one that comes along talking to their niggers. We didn’t know anything about niggers much, being both from the North, except what Doctor Kirby had counted on when he made his medicine, and THAT he knowed second-handed from other people. We didn’t take ’em very serious, nor all the talk we hearn about ’em down South.
But even at that we mightn’t of got into any trouble if it hadn’t of been fur old Bishop Warren. But that is getting ahead of the story.
We got into that little town–I might jest as well call it Cottonville–jest about supper time. Cottonville is a little place of not more’n six hundred people. I guess four hundred of ’em must be niggers.
After supper we got acquainted with purty nigh all the prominent citizens in town. They was friendly with us, and we was friendly with them. Georgia had jest went fur prohibition a few months before that, and they hadn’t opened up these here near-beer bar-rooms in the little towns yet, like they had in Atlanta and the big towns. Georgia had went prohibition so the niggers couldn’t get whiskey, some said; but others said they didn’t know WHAT its excuse was. Them prominent citizens was loafing around the hotel and every now and then inviting each other very mysterious into a back room that use to be a pool parlour. They had been several jugs come to town by express that day. We went back several times ourselves, and soon began to get along purty well with them prominent citizens.
Talking about this and that they finally edges around to the one thing everybody is sure to get to talking about sooner or later in the South– niggers. And then they gets to telling us about this here Bishop Warren I has mentioned.
He was a nigger bishop, Bishop Warren was, and had a good deal of white blood into him, they say. An ashy-coloured nigger, with bumps on his face, fat as a possum, and as cunning as a fox. He had plenty of brains into his head, too; but his brains had turned sour in his head the last few years, and the bishop had crazy streaks running through his sense now, like fat and lean mixed in a slab of bacon. He used to be friends with a lot of big white folks, and the whites depended on him at one time to preach orderliness and obedience and agriculture and being in their place to the niggers. Fur years they thought he preached that-a-way. He always DID preach that-a-way when any whites was around, and he set on platforms sometimes with white preachers, and he got good donations fur schemes of different kinds. But gradual the suspicion got around that when he was alone with a lot of niggers his nigger blood would get the best of him, and what he preached wasn’t white su- premacy at all, but hopefulness of being equal.
So the whites had fell away from him, and then his graft was gone, and then his brains turned sour in his head and got to working and fermenting in it like cider getting hard, and he made a few bad breaks by not being careful what he said before white people. But the niggers liked him all the better fur that.
They always had been more or less hell in the bishop’s heart. He had brains and he knowed it, and the white folks had let him see THEY knowed it, too. And he was part white, and his white forefathers had been big men in their day, and yet, in spite of all of that, he had to herd with niggers and to pertend he liked it. He was both white and black in his feelings about things, so some of his feelings counterdicted others, and one of these here race riots went on all the time in his own insides. But gradual he got to the place where they was spells he hated both whites and niggers, but he hated the whites the worst. And now, in the last two or three years, since his crazy streaks had growed as big as his sensible streaks, or bigger, they was no telling what he would preach to them niggers. But whatever he preached most of them would believe. It might be something crazy and harmless, or it might be crazy and harmful.
He had been holding some revival meetings in nigger churches right there in that very county, and was at it not fur away from there right then. The idea had got around he was preaching some most unusual foolishness to the blacks. Fur the niggers was all acting like they knowed something too good to mention to the white folks, all about there. But some white men had gone to one of the meetings, and the bishop had preached one of his old-time sermons whilst they was there, telling the niggers to be orderly and agriculturous–he was considerable of a fox yet. But he and the rest of the niggers was so DERNED anxious to be thought agriculturous and servitudinous that the whites smelt a rat, and wished he would go, fur they didn’t want to chase him without they had to.
Jest when we was getting along fine one of them prominent citizens asts the doctor was we there figgering on buying some land?
“No,” says the doctor, “we wasn’t.”
They was silence fur quite a little spell. Each prominent citizen had mebby had his hopes of unloading some. They all looks a little sad, and then another prominent citizen asts us into the back room agin.
When we returns to the front room another promi- nent citizen makes a little speech that was quite beautiful to hear, and says mebby we represents some new concern that ain’t never been in them parts and is figgering on buying cotton.
“No,” the doctor says, “we ain’t cotton buyers.”
Another prominent citizen has the idea mebby we is figgering on one of these here inter-Reuben trolley lines, so the Rubes in one village can ride over and visit the Rubes in the next. And another one thinks mebby we is figgering on a telephone line. And each one makes a very eloquent little speech about them things, and rings in something about our fair Southland. And when both of them misses their guess it is time fur another visit to the back room.
Was we selling something?
We was.
Was we selling fruit trees?
We wasn’t.
Finally, after every one has a chew of natcheral leaf tobaccer all around, one prominent citizen makes so bold as to ast us very courteous if he might enquire what it was we was selling.
The doctor says medicine.
Then they was a slow grin went around that there crowd of prominent citizens. And once agin we has to make a trip to that back room. Fur they are all sure we must be taking orders fur something to beat that there prohibition game. When they misses that guess they all gets kind of thoughtful and sad. A couple of ’em don’t take no more interest in us, but goes along home sighing-like, as if it wasn’t no difference WHAT we sold as long as it wasn’t what they was looking fur.
But purty soon one of them asts:
“What KIND of medicine?”
The doctor, he tells about it.
When he finishes you never seen such a change as had come onto the faces of that bunch. I never seen such disgusted prominent citizens in my hull life. They looked at each other embarrassed, like they had been ketched at something ornery. And they went out one at a time, saying good night to the hotel-keeper and in the most pinted way taking no notice of us at all. It certainly was a chill. We sees something is wrong, and we begins to have a notion of what it is.
The hotel-keeper, he spits out his chew, and goes behind his little counter and takes a five-cent cigar out of his little show case and bites the end off careful. Then he leans his elbows onto his counter and reads our names to himself out of the register book, and looks at us, and from us to the names, and from the names to us, like he is trying to figger out how he come to let us write ’em there. Then he wants to know where we come from before we come to Atlanta, where we had registered from. We tells him we is from the North. He lights his cigar like he didn’t think much of that cigar and sticks it in his mouth and looks at us so long in an absent-minded kind of way it goes out.
Then he says we orter go back North.
“Why?” asts the doctor.
He chewed his cigar purty nigh up to the middle of it before he answered, and when he spoke it was a soft kind of a drawl–not mad or loud–but like they was sorrowful thoughts working in him.
“Yo’ all done struck the wo’st paht o’ the South to peddle yo’ niggah medicine in, sah. I reckon yo’ must love ’em a heap to be that concehned over the colour of their skins.”
And he turned his back on us and went into the back room all by himself.
We seen we was in wrong in that town. The doctor says it will be no use trying to interduce our stuff there, and we might as well leave there in the morning and go over to Bairdstown, which was a little place about ten miles off the railroad, and make our start there.
So we got a rig the next morning and drove acrost the country. No one bid us good-bye, neither, and Doctor Kirby says it’s a wonder they rented us the rig.
But before we started that morning we noticed a funny thing. We hadn’t so much as spoke to any nigger, except our own nigger Sam, and he couldn’t of told ALL the niggers in that town about the stuff to turn niggers white, even if he had set up all night to do it. But every last nigger we saw looked like he knowed something about us. Even after we left town our nigger driver hailed two or three niggers in the road that acted that-a- way. It seemed like they was all awful polite to us. And yet they was different in their politeness than they was to them Georgia folks, which is their natcheral-born bosses–acted more familiar, some- how, as if they knowed we must be thinking about the same thing they was thinking about.
About half-way to Bairdstown we stopped at a place to get a drink of water. Seemingly the white folks was away fur the day, and an old nigger come up and talked to our driver while Sam and us was at the well.
I seen them cutting their eyes at us, whilst they was unchecking the hosses to let them drink too, and then I hearn the one that belonged there say:
“Is yo’ SUAH dat hit air dem?”
“SUAH!” says the driver.
“How-come yo’ so all-powerful SUAH about hit?”
The driver pertended the harness needed some fixing, and they went around to the other side of the team and tinkered with one of the traces, a-talking to each other. I hearn the old nigger say, kind of wonderized:
“Is dey a-gwine dar NOW?”
Sam, he was pulling a bucket of water up out of the well fur us with a windlass. The doctor says to him:
“Sam, what does all this mean?”
Sam, he pertends he don’t know what the doctor is talking about. But Doctor Kirby he finally pins him down. Sam hemmed and hawed considera- ble, making up his mind whether he better lie to us or not. Then, all of a sudden, he busted out into an awful fit of laughing, and like to of fell in the well. Seemingly he decided fur to tell us the truth.
From what Sam says that there bishop has been holding revival meetings in Big Bethel, which is a nigger church right on the edge of Bairdstown, and niggers fur miles around has been coming night after night, and some of them whooping her up daytimes too. And the bishop has worked himself up the last three or four nights to where he has been perdicting and prophesying, fur the spirit has hit the meeting hard.
What he has been prophesying, Sam says, is the coming of a Messiah fur the nigger race–a new Elishyah, he says, as will lead them from out’n their inequality and bring ’em up to white standards right on the spot. The whites has had their Messiah, the bishop says, but the niggers ain’t never had none of their SPECIAL OWN yet. And they needs one bad, and one is sure a-coming.
It seems the whites don’t know yet jest what the bishop’s been a-preaching. But every nigger fur miles on every side of Big Bethel is a-listening and a-looking fur signs and omens, and has been fur two, three days now. This here half-crazy bishop has got ’em worked up to where they is ready to believe anything, or do anything.
So the night before when the word got out in Cottonville that we had some scheme to make the niggers white, the niggers there took up with the idea that the doctor was mebby the feller the bishop had been prophesying about, and for a sign and a omen and a miracle of his grace and powers was going out to Big Bethel to turn ’em white. Poor devils, they didn’t see but what being turned white orter be a part of what they was to get from the coming of that there Messiah.
News spreads among niggers quicker than among whites. No one knows how they do it. But I’ve hearn tales about how when war times was there, they would frequent have the news of a big fight before the white folks’ papers would. Soldiers has told me that in them there Philippine Islands we conquered from Spain, where they is so much nigger blood mixed up with other kinds in the islanders, this mysterious spreading around of news is jest the same. And jest since nine o’clock the night before, the news had spread fur miles around that Bishop Warren’s Messiah was on his way, and was going fur to turn the bishop white to show his power and grace, and he had with him one he had turned part white, and that was Sam, and one he had turned clear white, and that was me. And they was to be signs and wonders to behold at Big Bethel, with pillars of cloud and sounds of trumpets and fire squirting down from heaven, like it always use to be in them old Bible days, and them there niggers to be led singing and shouting and rejoicing into a land of milk and honey, forever- more, AMEN!
That’s what Sam says they are looking fur, dozens and scores and hundreds of them niggers round about. Sam, he had lived in town five or six years, and he looked down on all these here ignoramus country niggers. So he busts out laugh- ing at first, and he pertends like he don’t take no stock in any of it. Besides, he knowed well enough he wasn’t spotted up by no Messiah, but it was the dope in the bottles done it. But as he told about them goings-on Sam got more and more interested and warmed up to it, and his voice went into a kind of a sing-song like he was prophesying himself. And the other two niggers quit pertending to fool around the team and edged a little closeter, and a little closeter yet, with their mouths open and their heads a-nodding and the whites of their eyes a-rolling.
Fur my part, I never hearn such a lot of dern foolishness in all my life. But the doctor, he says nothing at all. He listens to Sam ranting and rolling out big words and raving, and only frowns. He climbs back into the buggy agin silent, and all the rest of the way to Bairdstown he set there with that scowl on his face. I guesses he was thinking now, the way things had shaped up, he wouldn’t sell none of his stuff at all without he fell right in with the reception chance had planned fur him. But if he did fall in with it, and pertend like he was a Messiah to them niggers, he could get all they had. He was mebby thinking how much ornerier that would make the hull scheme.
CHAPTER XVII
We got to Bairdstown early enough, but we didn’t go to work there. We wasted
all that day. They was something work- ing in the doctor’s head he wasn’t talking about. I supposed he was getting cold feet on the hull proposition. Anyhow, he jest set around the little tavern in that place and done nothing all afternoon.
The weather was fine, and we set out in front. We hadn’t set there more’n an hour till I could tell we was being noticed by the blacks, not out open and above board. But every now and then one or two or three would pass along down the street, and lazy about and take a look at us. They pertended they wasn’t noticing, but they was. The word had got around, and they was a feeling in the air I didn’t like at all. Too much caged-up excitement among the niggers. The doctor felt it too, I could see that. But neither one of us said anything about it to the other.
Along toward dusk we takes a walk. They was a good-sized crick at the edge of that little place, and on it an old-fashioned worter mill. Above the mill a little piece was a bridge. We crossed it and walked along a road that follered the crick bank closte fur quite a spell.
It wasn’t much of a town–something betwixt a village and a settlement–although they was going to run a branch of the railroad over to it before very long. It had had a chancet to get a railroad once, years before that. But it had said then it didn’t want no railroad. So until lately every branch built through that part of the country grinned very sarcastic and give it the go-by.
They was considerable woods standing along the crick, and around a turn in the road we come onto Sam, all of a sudden, talking with another nigger. Sam was jest a-laying it off to that nigger, but he kind of hushed as we come nearer. Down the road quite a little piece was a good-sized wooden building that never had been painted and looked like it was a big barn. Without knowing it the doctor and me had been pinting ourselves right toward Big Bethel.
The nigger with Sam he yells out, when he sees us:
“Glory be! HYAH dey comes! Hyah dey comes NOW!”
And he throwed up his arms, and started on a lope up the road toward the church, singing out every ten or fifteen yards. A little knot of niggers come out in front of the church when they hearn him coming.
Sam, he stood his ground, and waited fur us to come up to him, kind of apologetic and sneaking- looking about something or other.
“What kind of lies have you been telling these niggers, Sam?” says the doctor, very sharp and short and mad-like.
Sam, he digs a stone out’n the road with the toe of his shoe, and kind of grins to himself, still looking sheepish. But he says he opinionates he been telling them nothing at all.
“I dunno how-come dey get all dem nigger notions in dey fool haid,” Sam says, “but dey all waitin’ dar inside de chu’ch do’–some of de mos’ faiful an’ de mos’ pra’rful ones o’ de Big Bethel cong’gation been dar fo’ de las’ houah a-waitin’ an’ a-watchin’, spite o’ de fac’ dat reg’lah meetin’ ain’t gwine ter be called twell arter supper. De bishop, he dar too. Dey got some dese hyah coal-ile lamps dar des inside de chu’ch do’ an’ dey been keepin’ on ’em lighted, daytimes an’ night times, fo’ two days now, kaze dey say dey ain’t gwine fo’ ter be cotched napping when de bridegroom COMeth. Yass, SAH!– dey’s ten o’ dese hyah vergims dar, five of ’em sleepin’ an’ five of ’em watchin’, an’ a-takin’ tuhns at hit, an’ mebby dat how-come free or fouah dey bes’ young colo’hed mens been projickin’ aroun’ dar all arternoon, a-helpin’ dem dat’s a-waitin’ twell de bridegroom COM eth!”
We seen a little knot of them, down the road there in front of the church, gathering around the nigger that had been with Sam. They all starts toward us. But one man steps out in front of them all, and turns toward them and holds his hands up, and waves them back. They all stops in their tracks.
Then he turns his face toward us, and comes slow and sollum down the road in our direction, walking with a cane, and moving very dignified. He was a couple of hundred yards away.
But as he come closeter we gradually seen him plainer and plainer. He was a big man, and stout, and dressed very neat in the same kind of rig as white bishops wear, with one of these white collars that buttons in the back. I suppose he was coming on to meet us alone, because no one was fitten fur to give us the first welcome but himself.
Well, it was all dern foolishness, and it was hard to believe it could all happen, and they ain’t so many places in this here country it COULD happen. But fur all of it being foolishness, when he come down the road toward us so dignified and sollum and slow I ketched myself fur a minute feeling like we really had been elected to something and was going to take office soon. And Sam, as the bishop come closeter and closeter, got to jerking and twitching with the excitement that he had been keeping in–and yet all the time Sam knowed it was dope and works and not faith that had made him spotted that-a-way.
He stops, the bishop does, about ten yards from us and looks us over.
“Ah yo’ de gennleman known ter dis hyah sinful genehation by de style an’ de entitlemint o’ Docto’ Hahtley Kirby?” he asts the doctor very ceremoni- ous and grand.
The doctor give him a look that wasn’t very encouraging, but he nodded to him.
“Will yo’ dismiss yo’ sehvant in ordeh dat we kin hol’ convehse an’ communion in de midst er privacy?”
The doctor, he nods to Sam, and Sam moseys along toward the church.
“Now, then,” says the doctor, sudden and sharp, “take off your hat and tell me what you want.”
The bishop’s hand goes up to his head with a jerk before he thought. Then it stops there, while him and the doctor looks at each other. The bishop’s mouth opens like he was wondering, but he slowly pulls his hat off and stands there bare-headed in the road. But he wasn’t really humble, that bishop.
“Now,” says the doctor, “tell me in as straight talk as you’ve got what all this damned foolishness among you niggers means.”
A queer kind of look passed over the bishop’s face. He hadn’t expected to be met jest that way, mebby. Whether he himself had really believed in the coming of that there new Messiah he had been perdicting, I never could settle in my mind. Mebby he had been getting ready to pass HIMSELF off fur one before we come along and the niggers all got the fool idea Doctor Kirby was it. Before the bishop spoke agin you could see his craziness and his cunningness both working in his face. But when he did speak he didn’t quit being ceremonious nor dignified.
“De wohd has gone fo’th among de faiful an’ de puah in heaht,” he says, “dat er man has come accredited wi’ signs an’ wi’ mahvels an’ de poweh o’ de sperrit fo’ to lay his han’ on de sons o’ Ham an’ ter make ’em des de same in colluh as de yuther sons of ea’th.”
“Then that word is a lie,” says the doctor. “I DID come here to try out some stuff to change the colour of negro skins. That’s all. And I find your idiotic followers are all stirred up and waiting for some kind of a miracle monger. What you have been preaching to them, you know best. Is that all you want to know?”
The bishop hems and haws and fiddles with his stick, and then he says:
“Suh, will dish yeah prepa’shun SHO’LY do de wohk?” Doctor Kirby tells him it will do the work all right.
And then the bishop, after beating around the bush some more, comes out with his idea. Whether he expected there would be any Messiah come or not, of course he knowed the doctor wasn’t him. But he is willing to boost the doctor’s game as long as it boosts HIS game. He wants to be in on the deal. He wants part of the graft. He wants to get together with the doctor on a plan before the doctor sees the niggers. And if the doctor don’t want to keep on with the miracle end of it, the bishop shows him how he could do him good with no miracle attachment. Fur he has an awful holt on them niggers, and his say-so will sell thousands and thousands of bottles. What he is looking fur jest now is his little take-out.
That was his craftiness and his cunningness working in him. But all of a sudden one of his crazy streaks come bulging to the surface. It come with a wild, eager look in his eyes.
“Suh,” he cries out, all of a sudden, “ef yo’ kin make me white, fo’ Gawd sakes, do hit! Do hit! Ef yo’ does, I gwine ter bless yo’ all yo’ days!
“Yo’ don’ know–no one kin guess or comper- hen’–what des bein’ white would mean ter me! Lawd! Lawd!” he says, his voice soft-spoken, but more eager than ever as he went on, and plead- ing something pitiful to hear, “des think of all de Caucasian blood in me! Gawd knows de nights er my youth I’se laid awake twell de dawn come red in de Eas’ a-cryin’ out ter Him only fo’ ter be white! DES TER BE WHITE! Don’ min’ dem black, black niggers dar–don’ think er DEM–dey ain’t wuth nothin’ nor fitten fo’ no fate but what dey got– But me! What’s done kep’ me from gwine ter de top but dat one thing: _I_ WASN’T WHITE! Hit air too late now–too late fo’ dem ambitions I done trifle with an’ shove behin’ me–hit’s too late fo’ dat! But ef I was des ter git one li’l year o’ hit–ONE LI’L YEAR O’ BEIN’ WHITE!–befo’ I died–“
And he went on like that, shaking and stuttering there in the road, like a fit had struck him, crazy as a loon. But he got hold of himself enough to quit talking, in a minute, and his cunning come back to him before he was through trembling. Then the doctor says slow and even, but not severe:
“You go back to your people now, bishop, and tell them they’ve made a mistake about me. And if you can, undo the harm you’ve done with this Messiah business. As far as this stuff of mine is concerned, there’s none of it for you nor for any other negro. You tell them that. There’s none of it been sold yet–and there never will be.”
Then we turned away and left him standing there in the road, still with his hat off and his face working.
Walking back toward the little tavern the doctor says:
“Danny, this is the end of this game. These people down here and that half-cracked, half- crooked old bishop have made me see a few things about the Afro-American brother. It wasn’t a good scheme in the first place. And this wasn’t the place to start it going, anyhow–I should have tried the niggers in the big towns. But I’m out of it now, and I’m glad of it. What we want to do is to get away from here to-morrow–go back to Atlanta and fix up a scheme to rob some widows and orphans, or something half-way respectable like that.”
Well, I drew a long breath. I was with Doctor Kirby in everything he done, fur he was my friend, and I didn’t intend to quit him. But I was glad we was out of this, and hadn’t sold none of that dope. We both felt better because we hadn’t. All them millions we was going to make–shucks! We didn’t neither one of us give a dern about them getting away from us. All we wanted was jest to get away from there and not get mixed up with no nigger problems any more. We eat supper, and we set around a while, and we went to bed purty middling early, so as to get a good start in the morning.
We got up early, but early as it was the devil had been up earlier in that neighbourhood. About four o’clock that morning a white woman about a half a mile from the village had been attacked by a nigger. They was doubt as to whether she would live, but if she lived they wasn’t no doubts she would always be more or less crazy. Fur besides everything else, he had beat her insensible. And he had choked her nearly to death. The country-side was up, with guns and pistols look- ing fur that nigger. It wasn’t no trouble guessing what would happen to him when they ketched him, neither.
“And,” says Doctor Kirby, when we hearn of it, “I hope to high heaven they DO catch him!”
They wasn’t much doubt they would, either. They was already beating up the woods and bushes and gangs was riding up and down the roads, and every nigger’s house fur miles around was being searched and watched.
We soon seen we would have trouble getting hosses and a rig in the village to take us to the railroad. Many of the hosses was being ridden in the man-hunt. And most of the men who might have done the driving was busy at that too. The hotel-keeper himself had left his place standing wide open and went out. We didn’t get any break- fast neither.
“Danny,” says the doctor, “we’ll just put enough money to pay the bill in an envelope on the register here, and strike out on shank’s ponies. It’s only nine or ten miles to the railroad–we’ll walk.”
“But how about our stuff?” I asts him. We had two big cases full of sample bottles of that dope, besides our suit cases.
“Hang the dope!” says the doctor, “I don’t ever want to see it or hear of it again! We’ll leave it here. Put the things out of your suit case into mine, and leave that here too. Sam can carry mine. I want to be on the move.”
So we left, with Sam carrying the one suit case. It wasn’t nine in the morning yet, and we was starting out purty empty fur a long walk.
“Sam,” says the doctor, as we was passing that there Big Bethel church–and it showed up there silent and shabby in the morning, like a old coloured man that knows a heap more’n he’s going to tell– “Sam, were you at the meeting here last night?”
“Yass, suh!”
“I suppose it was a pretty tame affair after they found out their Elisha wasn’t coming after all?”
Sam, he walled his eyes, and then he kind of chuckled.
“Well, suh,” he says, “I ‘spicions de mos’ on ’em don’ know dat YIT!”
The doctor asts him what he means.
It seems the bishop must of done some thinking after we left him in the road or on his way back to that church. They had all begun to believe that there Elishyah was on the way to ’em, and the bishop’s credit was more or less wrapped up with our being it. It was true he hadn’t started that belief; but it was believed, and he didn’t dare to stop it now. Fur, if he stopped it, they would all think he had fell down on his prophetics, even although he hadn’t prophesied jest exactly us. He was in a tight place, that bishop, but I bet you could always depend on him to get out of it with his flock. So what he told them niggers at the meeting last night was that he brung ’em a message from Elishyah, Sam says, the Elishyah that was to come. And the message was that the time was not ripe fur him to reveal himself as Elishyah unto the eyes of all men, fur they had been too much sinfulness and wickedness and walking into the ways of evil, right amongst that very congregation, and disobedi- ence of the bishop, which was their guide. And he had sent ’em word, Elishyah had, that the bishop was his trusted servant, and into the keeping of the bishop was give the power to deal with his people and prepare them fur the great day to come. And the bishop would give the word of his coming. He was a box, that bishop was, in spite of his crazy streaks; and he had found a way to make himself stronger than ever with his bunch out of the very kind of thing that would have spoiled most people’s graft. They had had a big meeting till nearly morning, and the power had hit ’em strong. Sam told us all about it.
But the thing that seemed to interest the doctor, and made him frown, was the idea that all them niggers round about there still had the idea he was the feller that had been prophesied to come. All except Sam, mebby. Sam had spells when he was real sensible, and other spells when he was as bad as the believingest of them all.
It was a fine day, and really joyous to be a-walking. It would of been a good deal joyouser if we had had some breakfast, but we figgered we would stop somewheres at noon and lay in a good, square, country meal.
That wasn’t such a very thick settled country. But everybody seemed to know about the man- hunt that was going on, here, there, and everywhere. People would come down to the road side as we passed, and gaze after us. Or mebby ast us if we knowed whether he had been ketched yet. Women and kids mostly, or old men, but now and then a younger man too. We noticed they wasn’t no niggers to speak of that wasn’t busier’n all get out, working at something or other, that day.
They is considerable woods in that country yet, though lots has been cut off. But they was some- times right long stretches where they would be woods on both sides of the road, more or less thick, with underbrush between the trees. We tramped along, each busy thinking his own thoughts, and having a purty good time jest doing that without there being no use of talking. I was thinking that I liked the doctor better fur turning his back on all this game, jest when he might of made some sort of a deal with the bishop and really made some money out of it in the end. He never was so good a business man as he thought he was, Doctor Kirby wasn’t. He always could make himself think he was. But when it come right down to brass tacks he wasn’t. You give him a scheme that would TALK well, the kind of a josh talk he liked to get off fur his own enjoyment, and he would take up with it every time instead of one that had more promise of money to it if it was worked harder. He was thinking of the TALK more’n he was of the money, mostly; and he was always saying some- thing about art fur art’s sake, which was plumb foolishness, fur he never painted no pictures. Well, he never got over being more or less of a puzzle to me. But fur some reason or other this morning he seemed to be in a better humour with himself, after we had walked a while, than I had seen him in fur a long time.
We come to the top of one long hill, which it had made us sweat to climb, and without saying nothing to each other we both stopped and took off our hats and wiped our foreheads, and drawed long breaths, content to stand there fur jest a minute or two and look around us. The road run straight ahead, and dipped down, and then clumb up another hill about an eighth of a mile in front of us. It made a little valley. Jest about the middle, between the two hills, a crick meandered through the bottom land. Woods growed along the crick, and along both sides of the road we was travelling. Right nigh the crick they was another road come out of the woods to the left-hand side, and switched into the road we was travelling, and used the same bridge to cross the crick by. They was three or four houses here and there, with chimbleys built up on the outside of them, and blue smoke coming out. We stood and looked at the sight before us and forgot all the troubles we had left behind, fur a couple of minutes–it all looked so peaceful and quiet and homeyfied and nice.
“Well,” says the doctor, after we had stood there a piece, “I guess we better be moving on again, Danny.”
But jest as Sam, who was follering along behind with that suit case, picks it up and puts it on his head agin, they come a sound, from away off in the distance somewheres, that made him set it down quick. And we all stops in our tracks and looks at each other.
It was the voice of a hound dog–not so awful loud, but clear and mellow and tuneful, and carried to us on the wind. And then in a minute it come agin, sharper and quicker. They yells like that when they have struck a scent.
As we stood and looked at each other they come a crackle in the underbrush, jest to the left of us. We turned our heads that-a-way, jest as a nigger man give a leap to the top of a rail fence that separated the road from the woods. He was going so fast that instead of climbing that fence and bal- ancing on the top and jumping off he jest simply seemed to hit the top rail and bounce on over, like he had been throwed out of the heart of the woods, and he fell sprawling over and over in the road, right before our feet.
He was onto his feet in a second, and fur a minute he stood up straight and looked at us–an ashes- coloured nigger, ragged and bleeding from the under- brush, red-eyed, and with slavers trickling from his red lips, and sobbing and gasping and panting fur breath. Under his brown skin, where his shirt was torn open acrost his chest, you could see that nigger’s heart a-beating.
But as he looked at us they come a sudden change acrost his face–he must of seen the doctor before, and with a sob he throwed himself on his knees in the road and clasped his hands and held ’em out toward Doctor Kirby.
“ELISHyah! ELISHyah!” he sings out, rocking of his body in a kind of tune, “reveal yo’se’f, reveal yo’se’f an’ he’p me NOW! Lawd Gawd ELISHyah, beckon fo’ a CHA’iot, yo’ cha’iot of FIAH! Lif’ me, lif’ me–lif’ me away f’um hyah in er cha’iot o’ FIAH!”
The doctor, he turned his head away, and I knowed the thought working in him was the thought of that white woman that would always be an idiot for life, if she lived. But his lips was dumb, and his one hand stretched itself out toward that nigger in the road and made a wiping motion, like he was trying fur to wipe the picture of him, and the thought of him, off’n a slate forevermore.
Jest then, nearer and louder and sharper, and with an eager sound, like they knowed they almost had him now, them hounds’ voices come ringing through the woods, and with them come the mixed- up shouts of men.
“RUN!” yells Sam, waving of that suit case round his head, fur one nigger will always try to help another no matter what he’s done. “Run fo’ de branch–git yo’ foots in de worter an’ fling ’em off de scent!”
He bounded down the hill, that red-eyed nigger, and left us standing there. But before he reached the crick the whole man-hunt come busting through the woods, the dogs a-straining at their straps. The men was all on foot, with guns and pistols in their hands. They seen the nigger, and they all let out a yell, and was after him. They ketched him at the crick, and took him off along that road that turned off to the left. I hearn later he was a member of Bishop Warren’s congregation, so they hung him right in front of Big Bethel church.
We stood there on top of the hill and saw the chase and capture. Doctor Kirby’s face was sweating worse than when we first clumb the hill. He was thinking about that nigger that had pleaded with him. He was thinking also of the woman. He was glad it hadn’t been up to him personal right then and there to butt in and stop a lynching. He was glad, fur with them two pictures in front of him he didn’t know what he would of done.
“Thank heaven!” I hearn him say to himself. “Thank heaven that it wasn’t REALLY in my power to choose!”
CHAPTER XVIII
Well, we had pork and greens fur dinner that day, with the best corn-bread I ever eat anywheres, and buttermilk, and sweet potato pie. We got ’em at the house of a feller named Withers–Old Daddy Withers. Which if they was ever a nicer old man than him, or a nicer old woman than his wife, I never run acrost ’em yet.
They lived all alone, them Witherses, with only a couple of niggers to help them run their farm. After we eats our dinner and Sam gets his’n out to the kitchen, we sets out in front of the house and gets to talking with them, and gets real well acquainted. Which we soon found out the secret of old Daddy Withers’s life–that there innocent-looking old jigger was a poet. He was kind of proud of it and kind of shamed of it both to oncet. The way it come out was when the doctor says one of them quotations he is always getting off, and the old man he looks pleased and says the rest of the piece it dropped out of straight through.
Then they had a great time quoting it at each other, them two, and I seen the doctor is good to loaf around there the rest of the day, like as not. Purty soon the old lady begins to get mighty proud- looking over something or other, and she leans over and whispers to the old man:
“Shall I bring it out, Lemuel?”
The old man, he shakes his head, no. But she slips into the house anyhow, and fetches out a little book with a pale green cover to it, and hands it to the doctor.
“Bless my soul,” says Doctor Kirby, looking at the old man, “you don’t mean to say you write verse yourself?”
The old man, he gets red all over his face, and up into the roots of his white hair, and down into his white beard, and makes believe he is a little mad at the old lady fur showing him off that-a-way.
“Mother,” he says, “yo’ shouldn’t have done that!” They had had a boy years before, and he had died, but he always called her mother the same as if the boy was living. He goes into the house and gets his pipe, and brings it out and lights it, acting like that book of poetry was a mighty small matter to him. But he looks at Doctor Kirby out of the corner of his eyes, and can’t keep from getting sort of eager and trembly with his pipe; and I could see he was really anxious over what the doctor was thinking of them poems he wrote. The doctor reads some of ’em out loud.
Well, it was kind of home-made poetry, Old Daddy Withers’s was. It wasn’t like no other poetry I ever struck. And I could tell the doctor was thinking the same about it. It sounded somehow like it hadn’t been jointed together right. You would keep listening fur it to rhyme, and get all worked up watching and waiting fur it to, and make bets with yourself whether it would rhyme or it wouldn’t. And then it ginerally wouldn’t. I never hearn such poetry to get a person’s expectances all worked up, and then go back on ’em. But if you could of told what it was all about, you wouldn’t of minded that so much. Not that you can tell what most poetry is about, but you don’t care so long as it keeps hopping along lively. What you want in poetry to make her sound good, according to my way of thinking, is to make her jump lively, and then stop with a bang on the rhymes. But Daddy Withers was so independent-like he would jest natcherally try to force two words to rhyme whether the Lord made ’em fur mates or not–like as if you would try to make a couple of kids kiss and make up by bumping their heads together. They jest simply won’t do it. But Doctor Kirby, he let on like he thought it was fine poetry, and he read them pieces over and over agin, out loud, and the old man and the old woman was both mighty tickled with the way he done it. He wouldn’t of had ’em know fur anything he didn’t believe it was the finest poetry ever wrote, Doctor Kirby wouldn’t.
They was four little books of it altogether. Slim books that looked as if they hadn’t had enough to eat, like a stray cat whose ribs is rubbing together. It had cost Daddy Withers five hundred dollars apiece to get ’em published. A feller in Boston charged him that much, he said. It seems he would go along fur years, raking and scraping of his money together, so as to get enough ahead to get out another book. Each time he had his hopes the big news- papers would mebby pay some attention to it, and he would get recognized.
“But they never did,” said the old man, kind of sad, “it always fell flat.”
“Why, FATHER!”–the old lady begins, and finishes by running back into the house agin. She is out in a minute with a clipping from a newspaper and hands it over to Doctor Kirby, as proud as a kid with copper-toed boots. The doctor reads it all the way through, and then he hands it back without saying a word. The old lady goes away to fiddle around about the housework purty soon and the old man looks at the doctor and says:
“Well, you see, don’t you?”
“Yes,” says the doctor, very gentle.
“I wouldn’t have HER know for the world,” says Daddy Withers. “_I_ know and YOU know that news- paper piece is just simply poking fun at my poetry, and making a fool of me, the whole way through. As soon as I read it over careful I saw it wasn’t really praise, though there was a minute or two I thought my recognition had come. But SHE don’t know it ain’t serious from start to finish. SHE was all-mighty pleased when that piece come out in print. And I don’t intend she ever shall know it ain’t real praise.”
His wife was so proud when that piece come out in that New York paper, he said, she cried over it. She said now she was glad they had been doing without things fur years and years so they could get them little books printed, one after the other, fur now fame was coming. But sometimes, Daddy Withers says, he suspicions she really knows he has been made a fool of, and is pertending not to see it, fur his sake, the same as he is pertending fur HER sake. Well, they was a mighty nice old couple, and the doctor done a heap of pertending fur both their sakes–they wasn’t nothing else to do.
“How’d you come to get started at it?” he asts.
Daddy Withers says he don’t rightly know. Mebby, he says, it was living there all his life and watching things growing–watching the cotton grow, and the corn and getting acquainted with birds and animals and trees and things. Helping of things to grow, he says, is a good way to under- stand how God must feel about humans. For what you plant and help to grow, he says, you are sure to get to caring a heap about. You can’t help it. And that is the reason, he says, God can be depended on to pull the human race through in the end, even if appearances do look to be agin His doing it sometimes, fur He started it to growing in the first place and that-a-way He got interested personal in it. And that is the main idea, he says, he has all the time been trying to get into that there poetry of his’n. But he reckons he ain’t got her in. Leastways, he says, no one has never seen her there but the doctor and the old lady and himself. Well, for my part, I never would of seen it there myself, but when he said it out plain like that any one could of told what he meant.
You hadn’t orter lay things up agin folks if the folks can’t help ’em. And I will say Daddy Withers was a fine old boy in spite of his poetry. Which it never really done any harm, except being expensive to him, and lots will drink that much up and never figger it an expense, but one of the necessities of life. We went all over his place with him, and we noticed around his house a lot of tin cans tacked up to posts and trees. They was fur the birds to drink out of, and all the birds around there had found out about it, and about Daddy Withers, and wasn’t scared of him at all. He could get acquainted with animals, too, so that after a long spell sometimes they would even let him handle them. But not if any one was around. They was a crow he had made a pet of, used to hop around in front of him, and try fur to talk to him. If he went to sleep in the front yard whilst he was reading, that crow had a favour- ite trick of stealing his spectacles off’n his nose and flying up to the ridgepole of the house, and cawing at him. Once he had been setting out a row of tomato plants very careful, and he got to the end of the row and turned around, and that there crow had been hopping along behind very sollum, pulling up each plant as he set it out. It acted like it had done something mighty smart, and knowed it, that crow. So after that the old man named him Satan, fur he said it was Satan’s trick to keep things from growing. They was some blue and white pigeons wasn’t scared to come and set on his shoul- ders; but you could see the old man really liked that crow Satan better’n any of them.
Well, we hung around all afternoon listening to the old man talk, and liking him better and better. First thing we knowed it was getting along toward supper time. And nothing would do but we must stay to supper, too. We was pinted toward a place on the railroad called Smithtown, but when we found we couldn’t get a train from there till ten o’clock that night anyhow, and it was only three miles away, we said we’d stay.
After supper we calculated we’d better move. But the old man wouldn’t hear of us walking that three miles. So about eight o’clock he hitched up a mule to a one-hoss wagon, and we jogged along.
They was a yaller moon sneaking up over the edge of the world when we started. It was so low down in the sky yet that it threw long shadders on the road, and they was thick and black ones, too. Because they was a lot of trees alongside the road, and the road was narrow, we went ahead mostly through the darkness, with here and there patches of moonlight splashed onto the ground. Doctor Kirby and Old Man Withers was setting on the seat, still gassing away about books and things, and I was setting on the suit case in the wagon box right behind ’em. Sam, he was sometimes in the back of the wagon. He had been more’n half asleep all afternoon, but now it was night he was waked up, the way niggers and cats will do, and every once in a while he would get out behind and cut a few capers in a moonlight patch, jest fur the enjoyment of it, and then run and ketch up with the wagon and crawl in agin, fur it was going purty slow.
The ground was sandy in spots, and I guess we made a purty good load fur Beck, the old mule. She stopped, going up a little slope, after we had went about a mile from the Witherses’. Sam says he’ll get out and walk, fur the wheels was in purty deep, and it was hard going.
“Giddap, Beck!” says the old man.
But Beck, she won’t. She don’t stand like she is stuck, neither, but like she senses danger some- wheres about. A hoss might go ahead into danger, but a mule is more careful of itself and never goes butting in unless it feels sure they is a way out.
“Giddap,” says the old man agin.
But jest then the shadders on both sides of the road comes to life. They wakes up, and moves all about us. It was done so sudden and quiet it was half a minute before I seen it wasn’t shadders but about thirty men had gathered all about us on every side. They had guns.
“Who are you? What d’ye want?” asts the old man, startled, as three or four took care of the mule’s head very quick and quiet.
“Don’t be skeered, Daddy Withers,” says a drawly voice out of the dark; “we ain’t goin’ to hurt YOU. We got a little matter o’ business to tend to with them two fellers yo’ totin’ to town.”
CHAPTER XIX
Thirty men with guns would be consider-
able of a proposition to buck against, so we didn’t try it. They took us out of the
wagon, and they pinted us down the road, steering us fur a country schoolhouse which was, I judged from their talk, about a quarter of a mile away. They took us silent, fur after we found they didn’t answer no questions we quit asking any. We jest walked along, and guessed what we was up against, and why. Daddy Withers, he trailed along behind. They had tried to send him along home, but he wouldn’t go. So they let him foller and paid no more heed to him.
Sam, he kept a-talking and a-begging, and several men a-telling of him to shut up. And him not a-doing it. Till finally one feller says very disgusted-like:
“Boys, I’m going to turn this nigger loose.”
“We’ll want his evidence,” says another one.
“Evidence!” says the first one. “What’s the evidence of a scared nigger worth?”
“I reckon that one this afternoon was consider- able scared, when he give us that evidence against himself–that is, if you call it evidence.”
“A nigger can give evidence against a nigger, and it’s all right,” says another voice–which it come from a feller that had a-holt of my wrist on the left-hand side of me–“but these are white men we are going to try to-night. The case is too serious to take nigger evidence. Besides, I reckon we got all the evidence any one could need. This nigger ain’t charged with any crime himself, and my idea is that he ain’t to be allowed to figure one way or the other in this thing.”
So they turned Sam loose. I never seen nor hearn tell of Sam since then. They fired a couple of guns into the air as he started down the road, jest fur fun, and mebby he is running yet.
The feller had been talking like he was a lawyer, so I asts him what crime we was charged with. But he didn’t answer me. And jest then we gets in sight of that schoolhouse.
It set on top of a little hill, partially in the moon- light, with a few sad-looking pine trees scattered around it, and the fence in front broke down. Even after night you could see it was a shabby- looking little place.
Old Daddy Withers tied his mule to the broken down fence. Somebody busted the front door down. Somebody else lighted matches. The first thing I knowed, we was all inside, and four or five dirty little coal oil lamps, with tin reflectors to ’em, which I s’pose was used ordinary fur school exhibi- tions, was being lighted.
We was waltzed up onto the teacher’s platform, Doctor Kirby and me, and set down in chairs there, with two men to each of us, and then a tall, raw- boned feller stalks up to the teacher’s desk, and raps on it with the butt end of a pistol, and says: