Those Times and These

Far back, hard by the refreshment stand, he wriggled himself in behind an intervening frieze of standees. His judgment warned him that he should heed Smooth Crumbaugh’s wishes and entirely betake himself hence; but his crushed and bruised spirit revolted against a surrender so abject and so utter. He told himself he had given up his chair because he did not care to be sitting down, anyway. Even so, this was a free country and he would stay a while longer if he wanted to stay. Only, he meant to keep yards of space and plenty of bystanders between him and Smooth Crumbaugh. He would be self-effacive, but not absolutely absent.

With an ear dulled by chagrin, he hearkened as the Reverend Grasty rose and opened his discourse touching on the life and works of the late Red Hoss Shackleford. The speaker’s very first words made it clear to all that he had come to bury Cæsar – not to praise him. Really, the only complimentary thing which might truthfully be said of Red Hoss was that always he had a good appetite. At once the Reverend Grasty manifested that he meant to adopt no weak and temporising course in his discussion of the subject in hand. Forthrightly he launched into a stirring recital of the shortcomings of the deceased; and out of his topic’s sins, cut off in the midst of his impenitence, he builded a vivid lesson to warn the living.

If one might judge by her behaviour, the lorn half sister resented not the attitude and the language of the orator. She forgot to faint and she sat erect. Presently she was chanting an accompaniment to his shouted illustrations.

“Oh, my pore lost brother, sunken in de cold waters.” She quavered in a fine camp-meeting tremolo. “Oh, my pore onworthy brother, whut we gwine do ‘bout you now?”

Fervently deep amens began to arise from other quarters, punctuating the laments of Sister Rosalie and the louder outpourings of the Reverend Grasty. The memorial service was turning out to be the high point of the watch party.

In spite of personal distractions, Jeff was carried away by the dramatic intensity of the scene. Forgetting momentarily his own trouble, he shoved forward, the better to see and hear. A menacing growl in his off ear brought him back to earth with a jolt. It was the dread voice of Smooth Crumbaugh, speaking from a distance not of yards but of inches. And now, as Jeff turned his head, Smooth’s outjutted underlip was almost brushing the tip of his nose.

“Thought I tole you to git plum’ outen dis hall!” quoth Smooth; and his voice, more than before, was freighted with the menace of dire catastrophe, imminent and impending.

Jeff didn’t dare reply in regular words. He muttered unintelligible sounds beneath his breath, seeking the while to draw away.

“Quit mumblin’!” ordered Smooth. “You’s liable to mumble up somethin’ I don’t keer to heah, an’ den I’ll tek an’ jes’ natchelly mek a set of nigger shoestrings outen you. B’lieve I’ll do hit anyway – right now!”

One of his hands – the left one – closed en-twiningly in Jeff’s coat collar. His right stole back toward his hip pocket – the pocket wherein Smooth was reputed to carry his razor. Jeff felt dark wings fanning his clammy brow.

“Speak up an’ say whut you got to say whilst you is got de breath to say hit,” said the bad man.

“I – I wus jes’ fixin’ to go, Smoothy,” his voice squeaked.

“Naw, you wuzn’t. Ain’t I been watchin’ you, hangin’ round back yere whar you thought I couldn’t see you. Now den – ”

A uniformed and helmeted form bulged in between them, breaking Smooth’s hold on Jeff. The disturbance had drawn the Most High Grand Outer Guardian away from his post at the door.

“Yere! Dat’ll be ‘bout all!” stated this functionary in a voice of authority. “Go on outside, you two, ef you wants to argify wid one nurr. Dis ain’t no place to be ‘sputin’.” He gave a violent start of surprise and his voice trailed off to nothingness. Until now he had not recognised Jeff’s adversary.

“Who you talkin’ to, Mistah Monkey Clothes?”

Smooth swung on the officer, ready in his present state of feeling to carve up one or a dozen. An ingratiating smile split the nervous countenance of the Most High Grand Outer Guardian. Than to be flirting with disaster nothing was farther from his desires.

“Scuse me, Mistah Crumbaugh. I didn’t know ‘twuz you. I begs yore pardon!” he stated hastily. “Please, ef you don’t mind, I’ll settle dis matter fur you.”

He swung round on Jeff, who was making himself smaller by the second.

“Whut you mean,” he demanded, “per-vokin’ Mistah Crumbaugh twell he’s jes’ about to lose his temper? Ef yore presence yere irritates him, w’y don’t you go on ‘way, lak a gen’leman?.. Lis’en to dat! Don’t you see you’s ‘bout to break up de programme?” From the rows of seats nearest them came indignant Sh-h-hs! Jeff’s popped eyes, glaring about him, read in all visible looks only intense disapproval of him. It was not healthy to hold Smooth Crumbaugh responsible for the interruption; but poor Jeff stood in quite a different attitude with the assemblage.

He shrank away, pawing out behind him with both hands for the door. Partly mollified, but still growling, Smooth started to return to his seat, all in his way making a clear path for him. Jeff vanished through the opening like a scared chipmunk.

The Reverend Grasty had not been discommoded by the disturbance in the rear. He was getting louder every minute. So was Sister Shackleford.

Outside on the landing, Jeff breathed again and paused to master a trembling tendency as regards his legs, at the same time telling himself he had not wanted to stay through their old watch party anyhow. It was a lie; but he kept on telling it to himself over and over again until he almost believed it. With a bitter smile, reflective of the intense bitterness in his heart, he looked backward at the blank panels of the door and reflected that, barring one fascinating exception, he didn’t have a real friend in all that multitude.

Why, if they really wanted to put somebody out, hadn’t they clubbed in and put that tough Smooth Crumbaugh out? Why hadn’t twenty-five or thirty of them formed a volunteer committee on good order and removed Smooth by force? He would have been glad to enroll as a member of that committee – as the thirtieth member and in an advisory capacity purely.

Oh, well, what was the use of hanging round a place where true gentility was neither recognised nor appreciated? These here Supreme Kings couldn’t possibly last much longer, anyway – running things the way they did. He might as well go on about his business. Reluctantly, making compromise with his outraged dignity at every step, and rent between a hankering to linger on and a conviction that if he did linger a most evil thing surely would befall him, Jeff limped in his creaking new shoes down the empty stairs, descending yard by yard into a Slough of Despond.

At the foot of the steps he stopped again, fumbling in his pockets. The jangled state of his nerves demanded the sooth of nicotine. From one pocket he exhumed nearly half of a cigar and from the other a box of matches. He inserted the cigar between his lips and undertook to strike a light. These were a new kind of matches – long, thick ones, with big white-and-black heads. Judge Priest had brought home a supply of them the day before, and Jeff, attracted vaguely by their novelty of appearance and their augmented size, had been moved to borrow a box of them off the dining-room sideboard without mentioning the matter to any one.

The misanthrope drew one of the big matches down the plastered side of the entryway. It sputtered and snapped under the friction of the stroke, but declined to burst into flame. Jeff cast it away and tried another, with no different result, except that the stick part snapped off short. Either the prevalent dampness had adversely affected them or they were defective and untrustworthy by reason of some flaw in their manufacture. But he noted that both matches had left queer luminous streaks upon the dingy wall.

Morbidly reflecting that in this night of his bad luck he was to be denied even the small solace of a smoke, Jeff absently fingered a third match between his fingers, plucking at its bulbous tip with a thumb nail. Instantly the effect of this was such as mildly to startle him; for at once on his finger ends appeared a strange spectral glow, as though he had been fondling some new and especially well-illuminated breed of lightning bug in his naked hand.

At any other time, almost, this phenomenon, so simply accomplished, would have set Jeff’s nimble fancy at work devising experimental means of entertainment to be derived therefrom; but now and here, in his existent frame of thought, the discovery gave him no pleasure whatsoever.

He pouched cigar butt and matches, and stepped forth from the stair passage into the drizzle. Out of the darkness a figure reeled unsteadily. It bumped into him with such violence as to drive him back into the doorway, and then caromed off, rocking on its heels to regain its balance. Jeff made out that the awk-ward one was a person of his own colour and sex.

“Whut’s ailin’ you, man?” he demanded irritably. “Ain’t a whole sidewalk wide ‘nuff fur you, widout you tryin’ to knock folkses down?”

“Huh?”

The wavering pedestrian exhaled a thick grunt, which brought with it an aroma of stick gin. He tottered forward again, throwing out his clutching hands for some support.

“Go on ‘way frum me!”

Jeff flung out an arm to fend the other off; but the gesture froze solid while yet his elbow was crooked, and Jeff cowered back, transfixed and limber with terror, too scared to run, too weak to cry out.

For there, centred in the dim half-light that streamed down from above, swaying on his legs and dripping moisture, as befitting one who had but lately met a watery end, stood the mortal remains of the late unlamented – whom even now they were most unkindly commemorating upstairs – Red Hoss Shackleford, deceased. There was no doubt about it. Red Hoss’ embodied spirit, with the restless malignity of a soul accursed, had come back to attend its own memorial service!

Jeff’s jaws opened and refused to close. His throat locked on a howl, and that howl emerged as a thin, faint wheeze. The filling inside his knee joints turned to a marrowy jelly. His scalp crawled on his skull.

The ghost grabbed him in a fumbling embrace; and even as Jeff, in an intensified spasm of terror, wrestled to be free of that awful clutch, he realised that this ghost was entirely too solid for a regular ghost. Besides, there was that smell of gin. Ghosts did not drink – or did they? He found his voice – part of it.

“Shacky, ain’t you daid?” he pleaded in croaking accents. “Fur Gawd’s sake, tell me de truth – ain’t you sho-’nuff daid?”

“Who say I’m daid?” demanded Red Hoss with maudlin truculence. Then instantly his tone became plaintive: “How come ever’whars I goes to-night dey axes me is I daid? Does I look daid? Does I act daid?”

“Wait a minute, Shacky – lemme think.” And now Jeff, well recovered, was holding the ex-apparition upright. “You sorter taken me by s’prise; but lemme think.”

Already, as his self-possession came back to him, the germ of a splendid, dazzling idea took root and sprouted in his brain.

Still supporting the burden of the miraculously restored Red Hoss, he glanced over his shoulder up the hallway. There was no one visible; none other shared this marvellous secret with him. As quickly as might be, he guided the uncertain form of Red Hoss away from the doorway and round the corner into the black shadows at the side of the building, where rain dripped on them from the eaves above.

That made no difference. Red Hoss was wet through, and in this moment any slight dam-age from dampness to his own vanities of wardrobe meant nothing at all to Jeff. He propped Red Hoss against the brick wall and steadied him there. And when he spoke, he spoke low; but, also, he spoke fast. Time was a precious commodity right now.

“Red Hoss,” he said, “I’s yore friend, ez you knows full well. Now tell me: How come you didn’t git drownded in de river?”

“Me? Huh! Dey ain’t nary river ever been dug deep ‘nuff to drownd me in,” Red Hoss was replying with drunken boastfulness. “Here’s de way ‘twuz: Come de night after C’ris’mus, I finds myse’f a little bit overtuck wid licker. So I lays down on de b’iler deck of dat dere tugboat, takin’ a little nap. I reckin I must ‘a’ roll over in my sleep, ‘ca’se all of a sudden I ‘scovers myse’f in de middle of dat ole Tennessee River; an’ dat tugboat, she’s agoin’ ‘long upstream same ez ef de w’ite folks is sayin’ to deyse’ves: ‘Well, one nigger mo’ or less don’t make no diff’ence in good times lak dese.’

“I treads water an’ I yells; but she keep right on movin’. So den I jes’ swims an’ swims, an’ swims some mo’; an’ dat river sut-tinly is cold to my skin. After a spell I lands ashore whar dey’s some thick-kinder woods; an’ I walks back an’ fo’th th’ough dem woods, tryin’ to keep frum freezin’ to death.

“Long ‘bout daylight I comes to a tie camp whar two w’ite men is got a gang of niggers git-tin’ out crossties, an’ I yells an’ knocks on de do’ of de shack twell I rousts ‘em all up. Dey lemme in; an’ dey ax me a whole passel of fool questions ‘bout whar’bouts is I come frum, an’ whut is I doin’ dar, an’ dey kindle up a big fire an’ I dries myse’f out; an’ den bimeby dey feeds me a meal of vittles. W’en I gits ready to start frum dar, ‘long about de middle of de day, one of de w’ite men gives me six bits to pay my way back yere on de railroad.

“But jes’ after I leaves de camp to walk to de railroad, w’ich is eight miles ‘way, I runs into a bunch of de hands, hid out in de woods a little piece, shootin’ craps; an’ I stops. So presently my six bits is gone. So den I goes on to de railroad afoot; an’, not havin’ no money nor nothin’, I has to beat my way home. I rides on de brake beams a spell, an’ den de brakeman he spies me; an’ he th’ows me off; and de las’ eighteen miles I has to walk all de way – an’ hit a-rainin’!”

“W’en did you git yere? I means w’en did you hit town?”

“‘Bout a hour ago – or mebbe ‘twuz a hour an’ a half.”

With usage, Red Hoss’ powers for coherent speech were improving.

“So, fust off, I goes down to de river whar dat tugboat is tied up to see whut chance dey is, dat time of night, of my drawin’ whut money is coinin’ to me. But de cabin is all dark an’ t’ain’t nobody aboard her ‘cep’in’ de nigger night watchman; an’ he’s settin’ down back in de ingine room, sound asleep. I walks back to whar he is an’ I says to him, I says: ‘Hello, nigger!’ – jes’ lak dat. An’ he open his eyes an’ gimme jes’ one look; an’ den he give out one yell, an’ den he ain’t dere no mo’. I kin heah his footsteps goin’ up de levee, scatterin’ gravels lak a ole hen scratching but dat nigger is plum’ gone. He act lak he seen a ha’nt, or somethin’.

“So den, de nex’ thing I does, I goes up de wharf to de house whar my ha’f sister, Rosalie – you knows dat ‘ooman? – does cookin’ fur a w’ite fambly; an’ I goes round de house an’ knocks at de kitchen do’, but t’ain’t nobody answers. I keeps on knockin’, an’ after a spell de boss of de house, a w’ite man, name of Futrell, he come out on de back po’ch in his night-clo’es, wid a lamp in his hand, an’ he suttinly do act ‘stonished to see me standin’ dar; an’ he ax me p’intedly ain’t I drownded; an’ I tells him No, suh; suttinly I ain’t drownded! An’ I ax him whar is Rosalie. An’ he say, ef she ain’t in her cabin in de yard, he reckon she must ‘a’ come on up yere to dis yere hall fur some kind of nigger doin’s. Dat’s de fust I knows ‘bout her livin’ on de Futrell place.

“So I goes out to de cabin in de yard; but she done gone, leavin’ de do’ unlocked an’ on de jar. So I goes in an’ meks a light an’ looks ‘bout me; an’ I finds sixty cents under a mat on de washstand, w’ich on my way yere I spends dat sixty cents fur gin at de Bleedin’ Heart Saloon, ‘ca’se I’s wet to de skin, ez you kin see fur yo’se’f. An’ so den I meks my way to dis hall, ‘ca’se I p’intedly does aim to drag dat dere ‘ooman out an’ ax her whut put it into her fool haid to go all round town tellin’ folkses I’s drownded w’en she know, her ownse’f, dey ain’t nary river ever been dug deep ‘nuff to drownd me in.”

His voice became complaining now, rather than indignant:

“Fur de las’ ha’f hour, mo’ or less, I been tryin’ to git up dem stepses. But seem lak dem stepses is a heap mo’ steeper’n whut dey used to be. Whut mek ‘em steepen dem stepses fur, Jeff?”

A sudden drowsiness overcame the narrator and he sought to slump down against the wall. But Jeff upheld him, against his will; and a minute later Jeff’s words had roused him out of his gin-born daze:

“Lis’en to me, Red Hoss; lis’en! I jes’ come down frum up dere. I come away; ‘ca’se I’s yore friend, an’ I jes’ natchelly couldn’t bear to set dere no longer an’ heah ‘em scandalise you de way dey’s doin’.”

“Scandalise me! Who’s scandalisin’ me?”

“Ever’body is; but specially de pastor of de Fust Ward Church – yas, suh; he’s de main scandaliser. An’ dat sister of your’n, she’s settin’ there harkin’ to him, same ez ef he wuz tellin’ her some good news.”

“Lemme go! Lemme go! I lay I’ll learn dem niggers to be ‘stroyin’ my good name behine my back!”

The victim of calumny, all wide-awake now, wrestled to be free of the detaining hands. After a little, though, he suffered his form to relax and his struggles to abate as Jeff poured agreeable advice upon him.

“Wait a minute, Shacky – jes’ wait a minute! I got a better scheme ‘n whut dat one is. ‘Sides, you couldn’t git past de do’ – whole place up dere is jest jammed an’ blocked off wid people. Come on now wid me. We’ll go in by de back way, whar de stepses ain’t so steep ez dey is round yere in front. You an’ me’ll go up dat way, tippytoe, so ez not to mek no noise; and we’ll wait in dat little hall behine de flatform – you knows de hall I means – de one whar dey perpares de candidates fur ‘nitiation?”

Red Hoss nodded.

“I knows it full well. Been dere oncet. And den whut?” he inquired.

“Den we’ll wait twell dey turns de lights out; dey’s aimin’ to turn ‘em out in a mighty few minutes to welcome in de New Yeah in de darkness. An’ jes’ w’en dey does dat I’ll open de do’, an’ you step out on de flatform an’ say: ‘Heah I is!’ At dat I’ll switch on de lights right quick; an’ den – don’t you see? – you’ll be standin’ right dere in full view, up on de flatform, whar you kin tell dat preacher whut you thinks of him.”

“I ain’t ‘lowin’ to tell him nothin’ – I ‘low to jes’ haul off an’ bust him one, an’ peel his nappy haid fur him!” avowed Red Hoss.

“Suit yo’se’f about dat,” conceded Jeff; “but how do de res’ of de plan seem to strike you?”

“You’s my friend – seem lak you’s de onlies’ friend whut I got lef in de world,” stated Red Hoss. “An’ so I does lak you says – up to a suttin point; but frum den on I’s gwine cut loose an’ be rough. Come on, Jeff! Show me de way! Dat’s all I axes you – jes’ show me de way!”

“Hole still a minute – we got time yit to spare,” counselled Jeff; on top of his first inspiration a second one had burgeoned forth. “Fust off, lemme wipe de rain an’ de cinders offen you – yore face is powerful dirty.”

Obediently Red Hoss offered his features for renovation. From his pocket Jeff hauled out a handkerchief; hauled something else out, too – only Red Hoss didn’t see that. He made pretense of wrapping a forefinger in the handkerchief; but it was not a finger tip that carefully encircled both of Red Hoss’ blinking eyes, pressing firmly against the moist black flesh, and then outlined his nose and passed in rings round his mouth, above the upper lip and below the lower one.

“Hole up!” protested Red Hoss. “You’s rubbin’ too hard. Yore finger nail hurts me.”

“Stay still!” urged Jeff. “I’s ‘most th’ough.” Craftily, with a fresh match, he touched the outer and the inner corners of Red Hoss’ eyes and the lobes of his ears; and then he drew off, almost appalled himself by the ghastliness of his own handicraft, as revealed in the dark.

“Come along, Red Hoss. An’ don’t furgit whut you’s goin’ to say w’en I opens de hall do’ fur you.”

“Ain’t furgittin’ nothin’,” promised Red Hoss.

Their two figures, closely interwoven – one steering and supporting; the other being steered and being supported – passed in the murk round the back corner of Odd Fellows’ Hall, to bring up at the foot of a flight of rough wooden stairs, built on against the wall for added protection and as an added means of exit from the upper floor in case of fire, fight or flight. Here the hardest part of Jeff’s job began. He had to boost Red Hoss up, step by step.

Above, the most successful watch party ever conducted under the auspices of the Supreme Kings of the Universe had progressed almost to its apogee. It was now six minutes before the hour when, according to no less an authority than the late Bard of Avon, churchyards yawn and graves give up their sheeted dead. The principal orator, with his high collar quite wilted down and his face, behind his spectacles, slick and shiny with sweat, reached his conclusion, following a burst of eloquence so powerful that his hearers almost could hear the Tophet fires crackling beneath their tingling feet.

“An’ now, my dearly beloved sistern an’ brethem,” he proclaimed, in a short peroration to his longer one – “an’ now I commands you to think on the fix this pore transgressor must be in at this very minute, cut off ez he wuz in the midst of his sins an’ his shortcomin’ses. Think on yore own sins an’ yore own shortcomin’ses. Think, an’ think hard! Think, an’ think copious!”

His voice swung downward to the more subdued cadence of the semiconversational tone: “The hour of midnight is ‘most at hand. In acco’dance wid the programme I shell now turn off the lights, an’ this gatherin’ will set in the solemn communion of darkness fur five minutes, till the New Yeah comes.”

He stepped three paces backward and turned a plug set in the wall close to the door jam. All over the hall the bulbs winked out. Nothing was to be seen, and for a few seconds nothing was heard except the sound of the minister’s shuffling movements as he felt his way back to his place at the front of the platform, and, below him, in the body of the hall, the nervous rustle of many swaying bodies and of twice as many scuffling feet.

On the far side of the closed rear door crouched Jeff, breathless from his recent exertions, panting whispered admonitions in the ear of his co-conspirator. Red Hoss was impatient to lunge forward. He wanted to surge in right now. But Jeff held fast to him. Jeff could sense a psychological moment, even if he could not pronounce one.

“Wait jes’ one secont mo’ – please, Red Hoss!” he entreated. “Wait twell I opens dis yere do’ fur you. Den you bulge right in an’ speak up de words ‘Here I is!’ loud an’ clear. You won’t furgit’dat part, will you?”

“‘On’t furgit nothin’!” muttered Red Hoss. “Jes’ watch my smoke – dat’s all!”

With his ear against a thin panel, Jeff listened; listened – and smiled. Through the barrier he heard the preacher’s voice saying:

“All present will now unite in singin’ the hymn w’ich begins: Hark! From the Tombs a Doleful Soun’!”

Softly, oh, so softly, Jeff’s fingers turned the doorknob; gently, very gently, he drew the door itself half open; with the whispered admonition “Now, boy, now!” he swiftly but silently propelled Red Hoss, face forward, through the opening.

The Reverend Grasty stood waiting for the first words of the hymn to uprise from below him in a mighty swing. But from that unseen gathering down in front a very different sound came – a sound that was part a gasp of stupefaction, part a groan of abject distress. For the rest saw what the minister, as yet, did not see, by reason of his back being to the wall, where-as they faced it. They saw, floating against a background of black nothingness, a face limned in wavering pulsing lines of a most ghastly witch fire – nose and brow and chin and ears, wide mouth and glaring eyes, all wreathed about by that unearthly graveyard glow.

In that same flash of space Jeff Poindexter’s hand had found the switch, set in the wall hard by the door casing, and had flipped the lights on. And now before them they beheld the form of the late Red Hoss Shackleford, his face seamed with livid greyish streaks, his garments all adrip, his arms outspread, his eyes like balls of flame, and his lips agleam with a palish blush, as though he had hither come direct from feasting on the hot coals of Perdition, without stopping to wipe his mouth. And then he opened that fearsome scupper of a mouth, and in a voice thickened and muddy – the proper voice for one who had lain for days in river ooze – he spoke the words: