If memory serves him aright, this chronicler of sundry small happenings in the life and times of the Honorable William Pitman Priest has more than once heretofore commented upon the fact that among our circuit judge"s idiosyncrasies was his trick, when deeply moved, of talking to himself. This night as he went slowly homeward through the soft and velvety cool of the summer darkness he freely indulged himself in this habit. Oddly enough, he punctuated his periods, as it were, with lamp-posts. When he reached a street light he would speak musingly to himself, then fall silent until he had trudged along to the next light.
Something after this fashion:
Corner of Chickasaw Drive and Exall Boulevard:
"Well, sir, the older I git the more convinced I am that jest about the time a man decides he knows a little something about human nature it"s a sh.o.r.e sign he don"t know nothin" a-tall about it, "specially human nature ez it applies to the female of the species. Now, f"rinstance, you take this here present instance: A woman turns aginst the woman she thinks is her own mother. Then she finds out the other woman ain"t her own mother a-tall, and she swings right back round agin and--well, it"s got me stumped. Now ef in her place it had "a" been a man. But a woman--oh, shuckin"s, whut"s the use?"
Corner of Chickasaw Drive and Sycamore Avenue:
"Still, of course we"ve got to figger the baby as a prime factor enterin" into the case and helpin" to straighten things out. Spry little trick fur three days old, goin" on four, wuzn"t she? Ought to be purty, too, when she gits herself some hair and a few teeth and plumps out so"s she taken up the slack of them million wrinkles, more or less, that she"s got now. Babies, now--great inst.i.tutions anyway you take "em."
Corner of Sycamore Avenue, turning into Clay Street:
"And still, dog-gone it, you"ll find folks in this world so blind that they"ll tell you destiny or fate, or whutever you want to call it, jest goes along doin" things by haphazard without no workin" plans and no fixed designs. But me, I"m different--me. I regard the scheme of creation ez a h.e.l.l of a success. Look at this affair fur a minute. I go meddlin" along like an officious, absent-minded idiot, which I am, and jest when it looks like nothin" is goin" to result frum my interference but fresh heartaches fur one of the n.o.blest souls that ever lived on this here footstool, why the firm of Providence, Pedaloski and Poindexter steps in, and bang, there you are! It wouldn"t happen agin probably in a thousand years, but it sh.o.r.e happened this oncet, I"ll tell the world. Let"s see, now, how does that there line in the hymn book run?--"moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform." Ain"t it the truth?"
Last street lamp on Clay Street before you come to Judge Priest"s house:
"And they call "em the opposite s.e.x! I claim the feller that fust coined that there line wuz a powerful conservative pusson. Opposite? Huh!
Listen here to me: They"re so dad-gum opposite they"re plum"
cater-cornered!"
CHAPTER III
A SHORT NATURAL HISTORY
If ever a person might be said to have dedicated his being to the pursuit of leisure, that selfsame was Red Hoss Shackleford, of color, and highly so. He was one who specialized in the deft and fine high art of doing nothing at all. With him leisure was at once a calling to be followed regularly and an ideal to be fostered. But also he loved to eat, and he had a fancy for wearing gladsome gearings, and these cravings occasionally interfered with the practice of his favorite vocation. In order that he might enjoy long periods of manual inactivity it devolved upon him at intervals to devote his reluctant energies to gainful labor. When driven to it by necessity, which is said to be the mother of invention and which certainly is the full sister to appet.i.te, Red Hoss worked. He just naturally had to--sometimes.
You see, in the matter of being maintained vicariously he was less fortunately circ.u.mstanced than so many of his fellows in our town were, and still are. He had no ministering parent doing cookery for the white folks, and by night, in accordance with a time-hallowed custom with which no sane housekeeper dared meddle, bringing home under a dolman cape loaded tin buckets and filled wicker baskets. Ginger Dismukes, now--to cite a conspicuous example--was one thus favored by the indulgent fates.
Aunt Ca"line Dismukes, mother of the above, was as honest as the day was long; but when the evening of that day came, such trifles, say, as part of a ham or a few left-over slices of cake fell to her as a legitimate if unadvertised salvage. Every time the quality in the big house had white meat for their dinner, Ginger, down the alley, enjoyed drumsticks and warmed-up stuffing for his late supper. He might be like the tapeworm in that he rarely knew in advance what he would have to eat, but still, like the tapeworm, he gratefully absorbed what was put before him and asked no questions of the benefactor. Without prior effort on his part he was fed even as the Prophet Elijah was fed by the ravens of old. This simile would acquire added strength if you"d ever seen Aunt Ca"line, her complexion being a crow"s-wing sable.
Red Hoss had no dependable helpmate, such as Luther Maydew had, with a neatly lettered sign in her front window: GOING-OUT WASHING TAKEN IN HERE. Luther"s wife was Luther"s only visible means of support, yet Luther waxed fat and shiny and larded the earth when he walked abroad.
Neither had Red Hoss an indulgent and generous patron such as Judge Priest"s Jeff--Jeff Poindexter--boasted in the person of his master.
Neither was he gifted in the manipulation of the freckled bones as the late Smooth Crumbaugh had been; nor yet possessed he the skill of shadow boxing as that semiprofessional pugilist, Con Lake, possessed it. Con could lick any shadow that ever lived, and the punching bag that could stand up before his onslaughts was not manufactured yet; wherefore he figured in exhibition bouts and boxing benefits, and between these lived soft and easy. He enjoyed no such sinecure as fell to the lot of Uncle Zack Matthews, who waited on the white gentlemen"s poker game at the Richland House, thereby harvesting many tips and whose otherwise nimble mind became a perfect blank twice a year when he was summoned before the grand jury.
Red Hoss did, indeed, have a sister, but the relations between them were strained since the day when Red Hoss" funeral obsequies had been inopportunely interrupted by the sudden advent among the mourners of the supposedly deceased, returning drippingly from the river which presumably had engulfed him. His unexpected and embarra.s.sing reappearance had practically spoiled the service for his chief relative.
She never had forgiven Red Hoss for his failure to stay dead, and he long since had ceased to look for free pone bread and poke chops in that quarter.
So when he had need to eat, or when his wardrobe required replenishing, he worked at odd jobs; but not oftener. Ordinarily speaking, his heart was not in it at all. But at the time when this narrative begins his heart was in it. One speaks figuratively here in order likewise to speak literally. A romantic enterprise carried on by Red Hoss Shackleford through a period of months promised now a delectable climax. As between him and one Melissa Grider an engagement to join themselves together in the bonds of matrimony had been arranged.
Before he fell under Melissa"s spell Red Hoss had been regarded as one of the confirmed bachelors of the Plunkett"s Hill younger set. He had never noticeably favored marriage and giving in marriage--especially giving himself in marriage. It may have been--indeed the forked tongue of gossip so had it--that the fervor of Red Hoss" courting, when once he did turn suitor, had been influenced by the fortuitous fact that Melissa ran as chambermaid on the steamboat _Jessie B._ The fact outstanding, though, was that Red Hoss, having ardently wooed, seemed now about to win.
But Melissa, that comely and comfortable person, remained practical even when most loving. The grandeur of Red Hoss" dress-up clothes may have entranced her, and certainly his conversational brilliancy was altogether in his favor, but beyond the glamour of the present, Melissa had the vision to appraise the possibilities of the future. Before finally committing herself to the hymeneal venture she required it of her swain that he produce and place in her capable hands for safe-keeping, first, the money required to purchase the license; second, the amount of the fee for the officiating clergyman; and third, cash sufficient to pay the expenses of a joint wedding journey to St. Louis and return. It was specified that the traveling must be conducted on a mutual basis, which would require round-trip tickets for both of them.
Melissa, before now, had heard of these one-sided bridal tours. If Red Hoss went anywhere to celebrate being married she meant to go along with him.
Altogether, under these headings, a computed aggregate of at least eighty dollars was needed. With his eyes set then on this financial goal, Red Hoss sought service in the marts of trade. Perhaps the unwonted eagerness he displayed in this regard may have been quickened by the prospect that the irksomeness of employment before marriage would be made up to him after the event in a vacation more prolonged than any his free spirit had ever known. Still, that part of it is none of our affair. For our purposes it is sufficient to record that the campaign for funds had progressed to a point where practically fifty per cent of the total specified by his prudent inamorata already had been earned, collected and, in accordance with the compact, intrusted to the custodianship of one who was at once fiancee and trustee.
On a fine autumnal day Red Hoss made a beginning at the task of ama.s.sing the remaining half of the prenuptial sinking fund by accepting an a.s.signment to deliver a milch cow, newly purchased by Mr. d.i.c.k Bell, to Mr. Bell"s dairy farm three miles from town on the Blandsville Road.
This was a form of toil all the more agreeable to Red Hoss--that is to say, if any form of toil whatsoever could be deemed agreeable to him--since cows when traveling from place to place are accustomed to move languidly. By reason of this common sharing of an antipathy against undue haste, it was late afternoon before the herder and the herded reached the latter"s future place of residence; and it was almost dusk when Red Hoss, returning alone, came along past Lone Oak Cemetery. Just ahead of him, from out of the weed tangle hedging a gap in the cemetery fence, a half-grown rabbit hopped abroad. The cottontail rambled a few yards down the road, then erected itself on its rear quarters and with adolescent foolhardiness contemplated the scenery. In his hand Red Hoss still carried the long hickory stick with which he had guided the steps of Mr. Bell"s new cow. He flung his staff at the inviting mark now presented to him. Whirling in its flight, it caught its target squarely across the neck, and the rabbit died so quickly it did not have time to squeak, and barely time to kick.
Now it is known of all men that luck of two widely different kinds resides in the left hind foot of a graveyard rabbit. There is bad luck in it for the rabbit itself, seeing that the circ.u.mstance of its having a left hind foot, to begin with, renders life for that rabbit more perilous even than is the life of a commonplace rabbit. But there is abiding good luck in it for the human who falls heir to the foot after the original possessor has pa.s.sed away. To insure the maximum of fair fortune for the legatee, the rabbit while in the act of jumping over a sunken grave in the dark of the moon should be killed with a crooked stick which a dead man has carried; but since there is no known record of a colored person hanging round sunken graves in the dark of the moon, the left hind foot of an authentic graveyard rabbit slain under any circ.u.mstances is a charm of rare preciousness.
With murky twilight impending, it was not for Red Hoss Shackleford to linger for long in the vicinity of a burying ground. Already, in the gloaming, the white fence palings gleamed spectrally and the shadows were thickening in the honeysuckle jungles beyond them. Nor was it for him to think of eating the flesh of a graveyard rabbit, even though it be plump and youthful, as this one was.
Graveyard rabbits, when indubitably known to be such, decorate no Afro-American skillet. Destiny has called them higher than frying pans.
Almost before the victim of his aim had twitched its valedictory twitch he was upon it. In his hand, ready for use, was his razor; not his shaving razor, but the razor he carried for social purposes. He bent down, and with the blade made swift slashes right and left at a limber ankle joint, then rose again and was briskly upon his homeward way, leaving behind him the maimed carca.s.s, a rumpled little heap, lying in the dust. A dozen times before he reached his boarding house he fingered the furry talisman where it rested in the bottom of his hip pocket, and each touching of it conveyed to him added confidences in propitious auguries.
Surely enough, on the very next day but one, events seemed organizing themselves with a view to justifying his antic.i.p.ations. As a consequence of the illness of Tom Montjoy he was offered and accepted what promised to be for the time being a lucrative position as Tom Montjoy"s subst.i.tute on the back end of one of Fowler & Givens" ice wagons. The Eighteenth Amendment was not as yet an accomplished fact, though the dread menace of it hung over that commonwealth which had within its confines the largest total number of distilleries and bonded warehouses to be found in any state of this union. Observing no hope of legislative relief, sundry local saloon keepers had failed to renew their licenses as these expired. But for every saloon which closed its doors it seemed there was a soda fountain set up to fizz and to spout; and the books of Fowler & Givens showed the name of a new customer to replace each vanished old one. So trade ran its even course, and Red Hoss was retained temporarily to understudy, as it were, the invalid Montjoy.
In an afternoon lull following the earlier rush of deliveries Mr. Ham Givens came out to where Tallow d.i.c.k Evans, Bill Tilghman and Red Hoss reclined at ease in the lee of the ice factory"s blank north wall and bade Red Hoss hook up one of the mules to the light single wagon and carry three of the hundred-pound blocks out to Biederman"s ex-corner saloon, now Biederman"s soft-drink and ice-cream emporium, at Ninth and Washington.
"Better let him take Blue Wing," said Mr. Givens, addressing Bill Tilghman, who by virtue of priority of service and a natural affinity for draft stock was stable boss for the firm.
It was Bill Tilghman who once had delivered himself of the sage remark that "A mule an" a n.i.g.g.e.r is "zackly alike--"specially de mule."
"Can"t tek Blue Wing, Mist" Givens," answered Bill. "She done went up to Mist" Gallowayses" blacksmith shop to git herse"f some new shoes."
This pluralization of a familiar name was evidence on Bill Tilghman"s part of the estimation in which he held our leading farrier, Mr. P. J.
Galloway.
"All right, take one of the other mules then. But get a hustle on,"
ordered Mr. Givens as he reentered his office.
"Dat bein" de case, I reckin I"ll tek dat white Frank mule," said Red Hoss. ""Tain"t no use of him standin" in de stall eatin" his ole fool haid off jes" "cause Tom Montjoy is laid up."
"Boy," said Bill Tilghman, "lissen! You "cept a word of frien"ship an"
warnin" f"um somebody dat"s been kicked by more mules "en whut you ever seen in yore whole life, an" you let dat Frank mule stay right whar he is. You kin have yore choice of de Maud mule or de Maggie mule or Friday or January Thaw; but my edvice to you is, jes" leave dat Frank mule be an" don"t pester him none."
"How come?" demanded Red Hoss. "I reckin I got de strength to drive ary mule dey is."
"I ain"t sayin" you ain"t," stated Bill Tilghman. "A born ijiot could drive dat mule, so I jedge you mout mek out to qualify. "Tain"t de drivin" of him--hit"s de hitchin" up of him which I speaks of."
Tallow d.i.c.k put in, "Hit"s dis way wid dat Frank: In his early chilehood somebody muster done somethin" painful to dat mule"s haid, an" it seem lak it lef" one ondurin" scar in his mind. Anyway, f"um dat day hencefor"ard he ain"t let n.o.body a-tall, let alone hit"s a plum"
stranger to him lak you is, go prankin" round his haid. Ef you think a mule"s back end is his dangersome end you jes" try to walk up to ole Frank face to face, ez n.i.g.g.e.r to mule, an" try to hang de mule jewelry over his years. Da"s all, jes" try it! Tom Montjoy is de onliest one which kin slip de bit in dat mule"s mouf, an" de way he do it is to go into de nex" stall an" keep speakin" soothin" words to him, an" put de bridle on him f"um behinehand of his shoulder lak. But when Tom Montjoy ain"t wukkin", de Frank mule he ain"t wukkin" neither any. Yessuh, Tom Montjoy is de sole one which dat Frank mule gives his confidences to, sech as dey is."
Red Hoss snorted his contempt for his warning.
"Huh, de trouble wid dat mule is he"s pampered! You n.i.g.g.e.rs done pamper him twell he think he owns dese whole ice-factory premises. Whut he need fur whut ails him is somebody which ain"t skeered of him. Me, I aims to go "crost to dat stable barn over yonder "crost de street an" walk right in de same stall wid dat Frank same ez whut I would wid ary other mule, an" ef he mek jes" one pa.s.s at me I"m gwine up wid my fistes an" give him somethin" to brood over."
Bill Tilghman looked at Tallow d.i.c.k, looking at him sorrowfully, as though haunted by forebodings of an impending tragedy, and shook his head slowly from side to side. Tallow d.i.c.k returned the glance in kind, and then both of them gazed steadfastly at the vainglorious new hand.
"Son, boy," inquired old Bill softly, "whut is de name of yore mos"
favorite hymn?"
"Whut my favorite hymn got to do wid it?"