Kitabı oku: «Those Times and These», sayfa 14
And, somehow, I felt – and I knew they felt – that here, in this short, stumpy white-haired form, stood the Old South, embodied and typified, with all its sectional pride and all its sectional devotion – yes, and all its sectional prejudices. All at once, in the midst of a sentence, he checked up; and then, staring hard at them through a pause, he spoke his final message: “You are of the seed of heroes. Try to remember that when you go back out yonder before that great crowd. You are the sons of men who had sand, who had bottom, who had all the things a fighting man should have. Try – if you can – to remember it!”
Out from behind the group that had clustered before the speaker, darted a diminutive darky – Midsylvania’s self-appointed water carrier:
“He done jest said it!” whooped the little negro, dancing up and down in frenzy. “He done jest said it! ‘Cinnamon Seed an’ Sandy Bottom! ‘Dat’s it! Cinnamon Seed an’ Sandy Bottom!’ – same ez you sez it w’en you sings Dixie Land. Dem’s de words to win by! W’ite folks, youse done heared de lesson preached frum de true tex’. Come on! Le’s us go an’ tear dem Sangamonders down! ‘Cinnamon Seed an’ Sandy Bottom!’ Oh, gloree, gloree, hallelujah!”
He rocked back on his splay feet, his knees sprung forward, his mouth wide open, and his eyes popping out of his black face.
The Major did not look the little darky’s way. Settling his slouch hat on his head, he faced about and out he stalked; and I, following along after him, was filled with conflicting emotions, for, as it happened, my father was a Confederate soldier, too, and I had been bred up on a mixed diet of Robert E. Lee, N. B. Forrest and Albert Sidney Johnston.
I followed him back to our post, he saying nothing at all on the way and I likewise silent. I scrouged past him to my place alongside Ike Webb and sat down, and tried in a few words to give Ike and Gil Boyd a summary of the sight I had just witnessed. And when I was done I illustrated my brief and eager narrative by pointing with a flirt of my thumb to Major Stone, stiffly erect on my left hand, with his chest protruded and his head held high in a posture faintly suggestive of certain popular likenesses of the late Napoleon Bonaparte; and on his elderly face was the look of one who, having sowed good seed in receptive loam, confidently expects an abundant and a gratifying harvest.
It was a different team which came out for the second half of that game; not exactly a jaunty team, nor yet a boisterous one, but rather a team that were grimly silent, indicating by their silence a certain preparedness and a certain resolution for the performance of that which is claimed to speak louder than words – action.
The onlookers, I judged, saw the difference almost instantly and realised that from some source, somehow, Morehead’s men had gathered unto themselves a new power of will, which presently they meant to express physically. And three minutes later Sangamon found herself breasted by a mechanism that had in its composition the springiness of an earnest desire and a sincere determination, whereas before, in emergencies, it had expressed no more than sullen and downhearted desperation.
Now from the very outset there was resilience behind its formations and active intelligence behind its movements, guiding and shaping them. The confronting line might give under the pressure of superior weight, but it bounced right back. At once it was made manifest that the Red eleven would not thenceforward be content merely to defend, but would have the effrontery actually to attack, and attack again, and to keep on attacking. No longer was it a case of hammer falling on anvil; two hammers were battering against one another, nose to nose now, and in one stroke there was as much buoyancy as in the other.
In my eagerness to reach my climax I am getting ahead of my story. Let’s go back a bit: The whistle blew. The antagonists having swapped goals, Midsylvania now had what benefit was to be derived from the wind, which blew out of the West at a quartering angle across the field. Following the kick-off an interchange of punts ensued. Midsylvania apparently elected to continue these kicking operations indefinitely; whereupon it is probable the Sangamon strategists jumped at the conclusion that, realising the hopelessness of overcoming the weight presented against them, the locals meant to make a kicking match of it. Be that as it may, they accepted the challenge, if challenge it was, and a punting duel ensued, with no noteworthy fortunes falling to either eleven.
I think it was early in this stage of the proceedings, after some mighty brisk scrimmaging, when the strangers, by coming into violent physical contact with their opponents, discovered that a new spirit inspired and governed the others, and began to apprehend that, after all, this would not be a walkover for them; but that they must fight, and fight hard, to hold their present lead, and fight even harder if they expected to swell that lead.
When, at the first opportunity for a forward push, the Red line came at the Blue with an impetuosity theretofore lacking from its frontal assaults, you could almost see the ripple of astonishment running down the spines of the Northerners as they braced themselves to meet and stay the onslaught. Anyhow, you could imagine you saw it; certainly there were puzzled looks on the faces of some of them as they emerged from the mêlée.
With appreciative roars, the crowd greeted these evidences of a newer and more comforting aspect to the situation. Each time some Midsylvania player caught the booted ball as it came tumbling out of the skies the grand stand rocked to the noise; each time Midsylvania sent it flying back to foreign ground it rocked some more; each time the teams clashed, then locked together, it was to be seen that the Midsylvanians held their ground despite the efforts of their bulkier rivals to uproot and overthrow them.
And, at that, the air space beneath the peaked roof was ripped all to flinders by exultant blares from sundry thousands of lungs. Under the steady pounding feet the floor of the grand stand became a great bass drum, which was never silent; and all the myriad red flags danced together. Into the struggle an element of real dash had entered and mightily it uplifted the spectators. They knew now that, though the Varsity team might be beaten, and probably would be, they would not be disgraced. It would be an honourable defeat before overpowering odds, and one stoutly resisted to the end by all that intelligence, plus pluck, could do.
There was no fault now to be found with Midsylvania’s captain. Little Morehead, with his face a red smear, was playing all over the lot. The impact of a collision with a bigger frame than his, had slammed him face down against the ground, skinning one cheek and bloodying his nose. He looked like a mad Indian in streaky war paint, and he played like one. He seemed to be everywhere at once, exhorting, commanding, leading; by shouted precept and by reckless example giving the cue to his teammates.
I suppose the latter half was about half over when the Sangamon team changed their tactics and, no longer content to play safe and exchange punts, sought to charge through and gain ground by sheer force. Doubtlessly their decision was based on sound principles of reason; but by reason of certain insurmountable obstacles, personified in eleven gouging, wrestling, panting, sweating youths, they were effectually deterred, during a breathless period of minutes, from so doing.
It was inevitable that a break must come sooner or later. It was not humanly possible for any team or any two teams to maintain that punishing pace very long without giving way somewhere.
The ball, after various vicissitudes, was in the middle of the field, and the Northerners had it. As the Blue tackles slipped back of their comrades stealthily, and Vretson, stealing forward, poised himself to take the catch, we on the press benches realised that Sangamon meant to undertake a repetition of the device that had won her lone goal for her. Thirty minutes earlier it would have seemed the logical move to try. Now, in view of everything, it was audacious.
At that, though, I guess it was Sangamon’s best card, even though Midsylvania would be forewarned and forearmed by their earlier disastrous experience to take measures for combating the play. Everything depended on getting Vretson away to a flying start and then keeping his interference intact.
The captain chanted the code numbers. The Blue press shifted in quick shuttlelike motions, and the ball, beautifully and faultlessly handled, was flipped back, aiming straight for Vretson’s welcoming grasp. Simultaneously something else happened. That something else was Morehead.
As the ball was passed he moved. There was a hole in Sangamon’s breastworks, made by the spreading out of her men. It was a little hole and a hole which instantaneously closed up again, being stoppered by an interposing torso; but in that flash of space Morehead saw the opening and, without being touched, came whizzing straight through it like a small, compact torpedo. Head in and head down, he crashed into Vretson in the same tenth-second when the ball reached Vretson’s fingers. With his skull, his shoulders, his arms, and his trunk he smashed against the giant.
Vretson staggered sideways. The ball escaped from his grip; and, striking the earth, it took one lazy bound, and then another; but no more. As it bounced the second time, Morehead, bending double from his hips, slid under it with outspread arms, scooped it up to his breast, and was off, travelling faster, I am sure, than Morehead in all his life had ever travelled. He was clear and away, going at supertopspeed, while Vretson still spun and rocked on his heels.
Obeying the signal for the play the majority of the Sangamon team already had darted off to their right to make a living barrier upon the threatened side of the imaginary lane their star was due to follow. It behooved them to reverse the manouvre. Digging their heels into the earth for brakes they wheeled round, scuttling back and spreading out to intercept the fugitive; but he was already past and beyond Vretson, and nearing the line of cross-angle along which the nearest of his pursuers must go to encounter him. Before him, along the eastern boundary of Sangamon’s territory, was a clear stretch of cross-marked turf.
Vretson recovered himself and made a stem chase of it, and Vretson could run, as I said before; but it would have been as reasonable to expect a Jersey bull to overtake a swamp rabbit when the swamp rabbit had the start of the bull, and was scared to death besides, as to expect Vretson to catch Morehead. The Red captain travelled three feet for every two the bigger man travelled. Twenty yards – thirty, forty – he sped, and not a tackler’s hand was laid on him. With the pack of his adversaries tagging out behind him like hounds behind a hare, he pitched over the goal line and lay there, his streaming nose in the grass roots, with the precious ball under him, and the Sangamon players tumbling over him as they came tailing up. Single-handed, on a fluky chance, Morehead had duplicated and bettered what Vretson, with assistance, had done.
The crowd simply went stark, raving crazy and behaved accordingly. But the Varsity section in the grand stand and the clump of blanketted Varsity substitutes and scrubs on the side lines were the craziest spots of all.
After this there isn’t so very much to be told. Midsylvania kicked for a goal, but failed, as Sangamon had done. The ball struck the crossbar between the white goal posts and flopped back; and during the few remaining minutes of play neither side tallied a point, though both tried hard enough and Sangamon came very near it once, but failed – thanks to the same inspired counterforces that had balked her in similar ambitions all through this half.
So, at the end, with the winter sun going down red in the west, and the grand stand all red with dancing flags to match it, the score stood even – four to four.
Officially a tie, yes; but not otherwise – not by the reckoning of the populace. That Midsylvania, outmanned and outweighted as she was, should have played those Middle West champions to a standstill was, in effect, a victory – so the crowd figured – and fitting to be celebrated on that basis, which promptly it was.
Out from the upstanding ranks of the multitude, down from the stand, across the track and into the field came the Varsity students, clamouring their joy, and their band came with them, and others, unattached, came trailing after them. Some were dancing dervishes and some were human steam whistles, and all the rest were just plain lunatics. They fell into an irregular weaving formation, four or six abreast, behind the team, with Morehead up ahead, riding upon the shoulders of two of his fellows; and round the gridiron they started, going first between one pair of goal posts and then between the other pair. Doubtlessly the band played; but what tune they elected to play nobody knew, because nobody could hear it – not even the musicians themselves.
As the top of the column, completing its first circuit, swung down the gridiron toward the judges’ stand, Morehead pointed toward where we sat and, from his perch on their shoulders, called down something to those who bore him. At that, a deputation of about half a dozen broke out of the mass and charged straight for us. For a moment it must have seemed to the crowd that this detachment contemplated a physical assault upon some obnoxious newspaper man behind our bench, for they dived right in among us, laying hands upon one of our number, heaving him bodily upward, and bearing him away a prisoner.
Half a minute later Major Putnam Stone, somewhat dishevelled as to his attire, was also mounted on a double pair of shoulders and was bobbing along at the front of the procession, side by side with young Morehead. Judging by his expression, I should say the Major was enjoying the ride. Without knowing the whys and the wherefores of it, the spectators derived that in some fashion this little, old, white-haired man was esteemed by Midsylvania’s representatives to have had a share in the achieved result.
As this conviction sank home, the exultant yelling mounted higher and higher still. I think it was along here the members of the band quit trying to be heard and stopped their playing, and took their horns down from their faces.
Immediately after this still another strange figure attained a conspicuous place in the parade: A little darky, mad with joy, and wearing a red-and-gray sweater much too roomy for him, came bounding across the field, with an empty water bucket in one hand. He caught up with the front row of the marchers; and, scuttling along backward, directly in front of them, he began calling out certain words in a sort of slogan, repeating them over and over again, until those nearest him detected the purport of his utterances and started chanting them in time with him.
Presently, as the chorus of definite sounds and the meaning of the sounds spread along down the column, the Varsity boys took up the refrain, and it rose and fell in a great, thundering cadence. And then everybody made out its substance, the words being these:
“Cinnamon Seed and Sandy Bottom! Cinnamon Seed and Sandy Bottom! CINNAMON SEED AND SANDY BOTTOM!”
The sun, following its usual custom, continued to go down, growing redder and redder as it went; and Midsylvania, over and above the triumph it had to celebrate and was celebrating, had also these three things now added unto her: A new college yell, in this perfectly meaningless line from an old song; a new cheer leader – her first, by the way – in the person of a ragged black water boy; and a new football idol to take to her heart, the same being an elderly gentleman who knew nothing at all of the science of football, and doubtlessly cared less – an idol who in the fullness of time would become a tradition, to be treasured along with the noseless statue of Henry Clay and the beech tree under which Daniel Boone slept one night.
So that explains why, each year after the main game, when the team of a bigger and stronger Midsylvania have broken training, they drink a rising toast to the memory of Major Putnam Stone, deceased; whereat, as afore-stated, there are no heel-taps whatsoever.
CHAPTER IX. A KISS FOR KINDNESS
AS WILL be recalled, it was from the lips of His Honour, Judge Priest, that I heard the story relating to those little scars upon the legs of Mr. Herman Felsburg. It was from the same source that I gleaned certain details concerning the manner of Mr. Felsburg’s enlistment and services as a private soldier in the Army of the Confederate States of America; and it is these facts that make up the narrative I would now relate. As Judge Priest gave them to me, with occasional interruptions by old Doctor Lake, so now do I propose giving them to you.
This tale I heard at a rally in the midst of one of the Bryan campaigns, back in those good days before the automobile and the attached cuff came in, while Bryan campaigns were still fashionable in the nation. It could not have been the third Bryan campaign, and I am pretty sure it was not the first one; so it must have been the second one. On second thought, I am certain it was the second one – when the candidate’s hair was still almost as long in front as behind.
By reason of the free-silver split four years earlier, and bitter dissensions within the party organization subsequently, our state had fallen into the doubtful column; wherefore, campaigns took on even a more hectic and feverish aspect than before. Of course there was no doubt about our own district. Whatever might betide, she was safe and sound – a Democratic Rock of Ages. “Solid as Gibraltar!” John C. Breckinridge called her once; and, taking the name, a Gibraltar she remained forever after, piling up a plurality on which the faithful might mount and stand, even as on a watch-tower of the outer battlements, to observe the struggle for those debatable counties to the eastward and the northward of us. It was not a question whether she would give a majority for the ticket, but a question of how big a majority she would give. Come to think about it, that was not much of a question, either. We had sincere voters and competent compilers of election returns down our way then; and still have, for that matter.
Nevertheless and notwithstanding, it was to be remembered that, four years before, the bulk of the state’s votes in the Electoral College, for the first time in history, had been recorded for a Republican nominee; and so, with a possibility of a recurrence of this catastrophe staring us in the face, the rally that was held on that fine Indian summery day at Cold Springs, five miles out from town on the road to Maxon’s Mills, assumed a scope and an importance beyond the rallies of earlier and less uncertain times. It was felt that by precept and deed the Stalwarts should set an example for all wavering brethren above the river. So there was a parade through town in the morning and burgoo and a barbecue in the woods at noon, and in the afternoon a feast of oratory, with Congressman Dabney Prentiss to preside and a United States Senator from down across the line in Tennessee to deliver the principal address. There was forethought in the shaping of the programme thus: those who came to feast would remain to hear.
Time waits on no man, but has an accommodating way of checking up occasionally, while the seed pod of reminiscence sprouts beneath the warm, rich humus of a fellow’s memory; and, because time does do just this, I yet can visualise, with sufficient clarity for my present purposes, some of the things which happened that day. Again is my blood quickened by sweet strains of music as Dean’s Brass Band swings up Franklin Street, leading the procession of the forenoon.
Without serious mental strain I re-create the picture of the prominent guests riding in open carriages with members of the reception committee and, behind them, the Young Men’s Democratic Marching Club going afoot, four hundred strong.
I see a big four-horse wagon, used ordinarily for such prosaic purpose as moving household goods, but now with bunting and flags converted into a tableau car, and bearing pretty girls, badged and labelled with the names of the several states of the Union. And the prettiest, stateliest girl of all stands for Kentucky. At her side is a little dark girl who represents the Philippines, and accordingly she wears upon her wrists a dangling doubled loop of ironmongery. This hardware is very new and very shiny, and its links jangle effectively as the pageant moves onward, thereby causing the captive sister to smile a gratified smile not altogether in keeping with the lorn state of servitude here typified by these trace-chain manacles of hers.
It seems a long time – doesn’t it? – since Expansion was a cardinal issue and Imperialism a war cry, and we were deeply concerning ourselves with the fate and future of the little brown brother, and warmly debating among ourselves whether we should continue to hold him as a more or less unwilling ward of the nation or turn him and his islands loose to fend for themselves. But really, when we cast up the tally of the intervening years, it isn’t so very long ago after all. It is as though this might have happened yesterday, isn’t it?
So it is with me – abiding as one of those yesterdays that stand out from the ruck and run of yesterdays. Perhaps that is why I can almost taste the dust which is winnowed up from beneath the hoofs of the teams and the turning wheels as the crowds stream off out the gravel turnpike, bound for Cold Springs. Nearly everybody of consequence, politically or socially, joins in that hurrying pilgrimage. Like palmers of old, Judge Priest and Commonwealth’s Attorney Flournoy and Sheriff Giles Birdsong and all our district and county and city officials attend, to attest by their presence the faith that is in them. I attend, too; but in the capacity of scribe. I go to report the doings for the Daily Evening News. I am the principal reporter and, by the same token, one-half of the local staff of that dependable journal, the remaining half being its editor in chief.
Time in its flight continuing to turn backward, we are now at Cold Springs. Mint-master Jack Frost has been busy there these last few nights, so that the leaves of the hickories are changing from summer’s long green to swatches of the crisp yellow-backed currency of October. On the snake fence, which separates the flanks of the woodland from the cleared lands beyond, the trumpet vine and the creeper blaze in clumps so red that one almost wonders the dried rails do not catch fire too.
The smells of fall are in the air – of com in the shock; of bruised winesaps dropping, dead ripe, from the orchard trees; of fox grapes turning purple in the vine canopies away up in the tops of the trees. From the fringes of the grove come the sounds of the stamping of horses’ feet and the restless swishing of horses’ tails. Off in quiet places a hundred flat flasks have been uncorked; in each thicket rendezvous fore-thoughted citizens are extending the hospitalities of the occasion to such as forgot to freight their hip pockets before journeying hither. There have been two fights and one runaway.
And now it is noon time; and now it is half an hour past it, and the county committee, with the aid of the only known Republicans present – all these latter being of African descent and all, or nearly all, camp cooks of high repute in Red Gravel County – is about to play host to the multitude.
In retrospect I smell the burgoo a-cooking, and sympathetically my mouth waters. Do you know burgoo? If not your education has been sadly neglected – most woefully neglected. It is a glorified gumbo, made in copper caldrons over open fires; and it contains red meats and white meats, and ducks and chickens, and young squirrels, and squabs, and all the fresh green vegetables in season. And into it with prodigal black hands the cooks put plenty of tomatoes for color and potatoes for body and red peppers for seasoning and onions for flavour. And all these having stewed together for hours and hours, they merge anon into a harmonious and fragrant whole. So now the product is dipped up in ladles and bestowed upon the assemblage in tin cups, to be drunk after a fashion said to have been approved of by Old Hickory Jackson himself. A Jeffersonian simplicity likewise governs the serving out of the barbecued meats, following afterward. You eat with the tools Nature has given you, and the back of your hand is your napkin. And when everybody is as full of victuals as a good Democrat should be – which is another way of saying so full he cannot hold another bite or another sup – the band plays and the speaking starts on a plank platform under a brush arbour, with the audience sitting or standing – but mostly sitting – on a fragrant thick matting of faded wild grasses and fallen red and yellow leaves.
The programme of events having progressed to this point, I found my professional duties over for the day. The two principal speeches were already in type at the Daily Evening News office, advance copies having been furnished by Congressman Prentiss and the visiting Senator from Tennessee, the authors of the same. By special messenger I had transmitted brief dispatches touching on the complete and unqualified success of the burgoo, the barbecue, the two fist fights and the runaway.
Returning from the fringes of the woodland, after confiding my scribbled advices to our courier, my way led me under the shoulder of the bluff above Cold Springs. There, right where the water came seeping out through the bank of tawny gravel, I came upon a picture which is one of the pictures that have endured in reasonably vivid colours on the background of my mind.
The bole of an uptorn gum tree spanned a half-moon depression at the verge of the spring. Upon the butt end of the log, where an upended snag of root made a natural rest for his broad back, was perched Judge Priest. His plump legs hugged the rounded trunk. In one hand he held a pint flask and in the other a tin cup, which lately must have contained burgoo. A short distance down the tree from him sat old Doctor Lake, without any bottle, but with the twin to Judge Priest’s tin cup poised accurately upon one of his bony knees.
Behind these two, snugly screening them in, was a wall of green and yellow grape leaves. Through the vines the sunlight filtered in, to make a mellow flood about them. Through the leaves, also, came distantly the sound of the present speaker’s voice and, at frequent intervals, cheering. There was to be heard a gentle tinkling of cracked ice. A persuasive odour of corn distillations perfumed the languid air. All through the glade nuts were dropping from the hickories, with sharp little reports. It was a picture, all right enough!
My feet made rustlings in the leaves. Judge Priest squinted over his glasses to see who the intruder upon their woodland privacy might be.
“Why, howdy, son!” he hailed. “How’s everything with you?”
He didn’t offer to share his store of refreshment with me. I never knew him to give a very young man a drink or to accept a drink from such a one. Doctor Lake raised his cup to stir its contents and nodded in my direction over it.
“The big speech of the day has just got started good, gentlemen,” I said. “Didn’t you-all know it?”
“Yes; we knowed it,” answered the old Judge; “in fact, we heared the beginnin’ of it. That’s one reason why me and Lew Lake come on away. The other reason was that Lew run acrost a little patch of late mint down here by the spring. So we slipped off frum the crowd and come on down here to sort of take things nice and easy till it gits time to be startin’ back toward the city.”
“Why, I thought he was a mighty fine speaker, from what I heard right after Mr. Prentiss introduced him,” I said.
“He’s all of that,” assented the old Judge; “he’s a regular Cicero – seems to know this here oratory business frum who laid the rail. He don’t never jest plain ast somebody to do somethin’. He adjures ‘em by the altars of their Sunny Southland, and he beseeches ‘em by the memories of their sires; but he don’t ast ‘em. And I took notice, durin’ the few minutes I lingered on – spellbound, ez you mout say, by the witchery of his voice – that when he gits holt of a good long word it ain’t a word no more. He runs her as a serial and every syllable is a separate chapter.
“Oh, no; I ain’t got a word to say ag’inst the distinguished gentleman’s style of delivery. I only wisht I had his gift of melodious expression. I reckin ef I did, I’d talk in public part of the day and sing the rest of the time. But the p’int is, son, that me and Lew Lake have heared consid’able of that particular brand of oratory in our day, and after a little spell of listenin’ we decided betwixt ourselves that we favoured the quiet of the sylvan dell to the heat and dust of the forum. So here we are, ez you behold us.
“One speech mere or less won’t make much difference in the gineral results, noways, I reckin. Down here in the pennyrile country we’ll all vote the regular ticket the same ez we always do; and the Republikans will vote their ticket, bein’ the stubborn unreasonable creatures that they are; and then our boys’ll hold back the returns to see how many Democrat votes are needed, and up in the mountains the Republikans will hold them back to see how many Republikan votes are needed – and that’ll be the whole upshot of it, onless the corrupt scoundrels should succeed in outcounting the party of the people.
“Of course there’s a great crisis hoverin’ over our country at present. There’s a crisis hoverin’ every four years, regular – to hear the orators tell it. But I’ve took notice that, after the votin’ is over, the crisis always goes back in its hole to stay till the next presidential election, and the country remains reasonably safe, no matter which side gits in; though I admit it’s purty hard to convince the feller who’s already got a government job, or hopes to git one, that the whole nation won’t plumb go to thunder onless his crowd wins.”
