Danny's Own Story Part 22

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 prominent 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 embarra.s.sed, 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' n.i.g.g.ah medicine in, sah. I reckon yo' must love 'em a heap to be that concerned 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 n.i.g.g.e.r, except our own n.i.g.g.e.r Sam, and he couldn't of told ALL the n.i.g.g.e.rs in that town about the stuff to turn n.i.g.g.e.rs white, even if he had set up all night to do it. But every last n.i.g.g.e.r we saw looked like he knowed something about us. Even after we left town our n.i.g.g.e.r driver hailed two or three n.i.g.g.e.rs in the road that acted that-away. 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, somehow, 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 n.i.g.g.e.r 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 n.i.g.g.e.r 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 windla.s.s. 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 considerable, 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 n.i.g.g.e.r church right on the edge of Bairdstown, and n.i.g.g.e.rs 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. .h.i.t the meeting hard.

What he has been prophesying, Sam says, is the coming of a Messiah fur the n.i.g.g.e.r 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 n.i.g.g.e.rs 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 n.i.g.g.e.r 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 n.i.g.g.e.rs white, the n.i.g.g.e.rs 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 n.i.g.g.e.rs 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 n.i.g.g.e.r 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 n.i.g.g.e.rs to be led singing and shouting and rejoicing into a land of milk and honey, forevermore, AMEN!

That's what Sam says they are looking fur, dozens and scores and hundreds of them n.i.g.g.e.rs round about. Sam, he had lived in town five or six years, and he looked down on all these here ignoramus country n.i.g.g.e.rs. So he busts out laughing 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 n.i.g.g.e.rs 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 n.i.g.g.e.rs, 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 working 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 pa.s.s 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 n.i.g.g.e.rs. 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.