The Bishop and the Boogerman Part 7

"Black my shoes!" commanded old Jonas in a tone that was almost brutal.

Randall hustled around until he found an old box of blacking that had been in the kitchen for many years. With this and an old brush that Lucindy found in some impossible place, he proceeded to give old Jonas's shoes a polish that caused them to shine brightly.

"Don't you think it is beneath the dignity of a pastor to black shoes?"

old Jonas asked.

Randall chuckled. "That's the way some white folks'd feel about it," he answered; "but me--I'm black, an' I ain't got no business for to feel so--not me! St. Paul, or it may be St. Timothy, he says, somewhere, I dunner 'zackly where, 'What your han' finds to do, let your heart commend.'"

"Wa'n't it Shakespeare said that?" Mr. Sanders inquired.

"It mought 'a' been, suh," replied Randall. "All I know, it was some of them Bible folks. They say, 'Do what yo' han' finds to do, an' do it better'n some un else could 'a' done it.' That's why you see these shoes lookin' like they're spang new."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'That's why you see these shoes lookin' like they're spang new'"]

"Why, I should have thought that a man who is studying to be a bishop,"

said old Jonas, sharply, "would think himself above blacking anybody's shoes."

"It may be so, suh, in some parts of the country and amongst some people, but it ain't that-away wid me--I may come to it, suh, but I ain't come to it yit."

Randall finished the shoes, and offered to black those of the other men present, but they declined, and then old Jonas fished around in his pocket for a shin-plaster small enough to fit the job that had been done. He found a ragged one that faintly promised to pay the bearer five cents on demand, but Randall recoiled from it, and held up his hands in protest. "No, suh! Oh, no, suh! It was wuth all I done jest to hear you-all gentermens talkin' kinder friendly like. Ef you-all had all the trouble I uv done had, all the time dodgin' an' lookin roun' cornders fer fear er Mr. Tuttle er some er his kinnery--he's got um all up dar whar I been--you'd be mo' than thankful for to hear some un talkin' like de nex' minnit ain't 'gwine ter be de las'. I done got it p.r.o.ned inter me that I'm gwine for to be Ku-Klucked long 'fo' I have gray ha'r. You dunner how nice it is for to have white folks talkin' like they ain't gwine to kill you yet awhile."

To any one who knew little of the negro race, Randall's remarks would have sounded tremendously like a sly joke, with a little irony thrown in for good measure; but though the negro's voice was soft and deliberate, he was terribly in earnest, and those who heard him understood and appreciated this simple recital of a harrowing experience already behind him, and his lively fear of something worse to come.

"Well, when you get to be a bishop," remarked old Jonas, "I expect you to come and black my shoes."

"I'll do it, suh, an' be glad to do it. Des take yo' stan' anywhere, jest so it's a public place, an' holla at me, an' tell me you want yo'

shoes blacked. I'll do it, suh, in the face of ten thousand."

"I believe you would!" exclaimed old Jonas almost gleefully.

"You don't hafter b'lieve me, suh; jest holla at me, an' yo shoes'll be blacked."

With that, Randall started out of the room, but Mr. Sanders raised his hand. "B'ar in mind, Boogerman, that you're not to leave the lot after dark. Old Tuttle is a rank Radical, an' a n.i.g.g.e.r-lover for what revenue thar is in it, but he's fixin' up his tricks for to give you a taste of the Radical-Republican movement, an' he's got to be watched. We'll do the watchin' ef you'll do the hidin'."

"I'll be more than glad to do that, suh," said Randall, with invincible politeness--"mo' than glad. I uv got so now, sence freedom come, that I can hide most as good as I can eat; an' when I say that, you may know it means sump'n."

"I reckon it does," said old Jonas, "something to me!"

Randall laughed pleasantly, and bowed himself out. In a moment the men in the sitting-room heard him talking to Adelaide in the entry.

"My goodness, little mistiss! A little mo' an' you'd a skeer'd me crooked--an' I ain't right straight now. I had de idee that I was to be the Boogerman, but ef you go on this-a-way, you'll be the Boogerman."

"Oho!" laughed Adelaide; "don't you know that a young lady could never be a Boogerman?"

"Well, I declare!" Randall exclaimed almost joyously; "that certainly is so in these days of tribulation. But that ain't all; I uv got a bigger Boogerman than you uv got. How is Miss Cally-Lou?"

"Oh, shucks!" replied Adelaide, "you don't have to call her miss; she ain't right white. Don't you see her standing here by me?"

"Well, suh!" exclaimed the Boogerman in the tone of one who has just made a remarkable discovery. "Ef I don't, I most does; an' when you git that close to Cally-Lou it's the same as seein' her. She don't look right well to me," said the Boogerman at a venture.

"Then you do see her," remarked Adelaide; "she hasn't been well for a day or two."

"Make her git outdoors, an' take the fresh air," suggested the Boogerman.

This suggestion seemed to meet the views of Adelaide, for she went out into the yard, crying, "Come along, Cally-Lou! Come along!"

Old Jonas stirred uneasily in his chair, "Do you know, Sanders," he said, "that my grandmother had a little mulatto girl named Cally-Lou. As I remember her, she was the smartest little thing that ever ran about on two legs. I wonder----" Old Jonas paused, and Mr. Sanders didn't give him time to straighten out his thought.

"No, Jonas; you don't wonder, an' you needn't pertend to. Nuther here nor here-arter, will that sorter thing work. When I ketch you wonderin', I'll know you've took one of them infectious diseases that you read about. You could see Cally-Lou, an' so could I, if our gizzards was in the right place. But I kin say as much as that n.i.g.g.e.r did--I mighty nigh seed her. Folks tell me that you kin see the wind ef you'll take a handsaw at the right time of day, an' hold it so the breeze kin blow over it. I an't got the least doubt that we could see a heap of things that we never do see, ef we know'd when, an' whar, an' how to look."

The three men were silent a long time until Lawyer Tidwell remarked, with something that sounded like a sigh, "I reckon we'd better be going, Mr. Sanders." They went away, leaving old Jonas alone in the house. He neither bade them good-bye, nor turned his head when they went. But when he heard the door shut, he went to the window, as if to make sure they had really gone; and when he was satisfied on this point, he shuffled to the back porch, and called for Randall. The negro came silent, but wondering. For years he had been in a state of uneasy expectation, and he found it almost impossible to free himself from it now. Old Jonas was blunt and brief.

"Go over to the courthouse, walk into the Ordinary's office, and ask if Mr. Sanders and Lawyer Tidwell have been there. As a matter of fact, they haven't been there, and they are not going there, but old Tuttle will think they are coming and he'll be worried about it. I want you to show yourself to him just once. Answer every question he asks you. Tell him where you are staying; say that I have employed you; but pretend you don't know him. Then walk around the public square, and through the town, make yourself known to some of your coloured friends, and come right back here and go to work about the lot and yard just as if you had been here a long time."

Randall made no reply; he merely stood scratching his head, and fumbling with his hat trying hard to come to some understanding, however dim, of the motive and purpose that lay behind old Jonas's command; but, try as he would, he couldn't make out the puzzle that seemed to envelope and becloud his mind. Still fumbling with his hat, and standing on first one foot and then the other, he remarked, with some hesitation, "Well, suh, I'll go ef it's yo' will--but you know what St. Paul (er it may be St.

Second Timothy) tells us. He tells us, one er both, for to go not whether we'll be treated contretemptous, not by day an' not by night--Paul er St. Second Timothy, one er both."

Old Jonas regarded the negro with amazement; for the first time in his life he had a whiff of the kind of education the negroes were picking up here and there.

That, or something else irritated him, and he spoke with some heat.

"Well, confound you! do just as you please! Go or don't go--you're free, I reckon. But if you do go, say to old Tuttle that you're glad to see him looking so well. You are a Republican, I reckon?"

"Yes, sir," replied Randall, with some degree of hesitation; "ef you put it that way, I speck I is. n.o.body ain't never gi' me no chanst for to be anything else. I jest did squeeze in the Northron Methodist Church; ef I'd 'a' had on a long coat, the tail would 'a' been ketched in the crack of the door. All these here new doin's an' new fashions makes me feel right ticklish, an' sometimes I ketch myself laughin' when they ain't nothin' to laugh at, an' it took me long for to find out that when you laugh in the wrong place it's because you ought to be cryin' by good rights. All this has been gwine on now some time, an' I done come to that pa.s.s that when a piece of paper blows round the cornder right sudden, I mighty nigh jump out'n my skin. I'm tellin' you the plain truth, suh! An' now, after all this, you want me to put on what little cloze I got an' walk right into Mr. Tuttle's jaws--the identual man that I've been runnin' fum I dunner how long--him that I come mighty nigh joltin' across--I done forgot what St. Luke (or maybe it wuz St.

Mark--they run so close together in the book that I skacely know t'other fum which). Anyhow, they's a Bible name for the thing you want me to do; an' I tell you right now, I dunner whether for to do it or not. You white folks don't keer much what you do--I've done took notice of that; but when it comes down to a plain n.i.g.g.e.r, why, he's got to walk as thin as a batter cake; he's got to step like he's afeard of stickin' a needle in his foot. I'm tellin' you the truth, suh; I been dodgin' an' hidin'

so long that when I hear anybody walkin' fast behind me, the flesh crawls on my back--yes, suh, natchally crawls--an' I have to hol' my breath for to keep fum breakin' loose an' runnin'. I'll go there, suh, an' I hope it'll be all right; but I never is to forget what St. Paul (or it may be St. Second Timothy) says on that head."

Old Jonas frowned heavily, and further betrayed his irritation by a smothered malediction that included the entire negro race. Randall waited for no further outbreak; he melted, as it were, from the doorway, and disappeared as far as old Jonas was concerned, but Adelaide, who was sitting in a little bower she had made for herself, saw him standing by the fence gazing into s.p.a.ce. The child after awhile turned her attention to play, but Randall held his ground for a long time, looking into the bright sky far beyond the bermuda hills for a proper solution of the problem he had in his mind. But it was a problem that the windy s.p.a.ces with their blue perspective could not solve, and so, with a sigh, he betook himself to the courthouse, where the man whose life he had nearly taken was now holding forth as an officer of the law. The slave-driver had become a belated Unionist, then a Republican, and was now a Radical of the stripe and temper of poor Thaddeus Stevens, who was at that time the centre and motor of Radical politics.

Now, Mr. Tuttle was by no means asleep; he had watched and waited for the return of Randall. He carried in his pocket book a warrant, duly made out and officially signed, for the arrest of the negro. The charge was a.s.sault with intent to murder. He saw Randall long before Randall saw him, called the deputy sheriff, who had a room across the corridor, apprised him of the fact that a criminal was to be arrested, pulled from his pocket-book the wrong doc.u.ment, and the moment the negro entered the courthouse he found himself in custody of the dread officer of the law.

To say that he was frightened would be putting it rather mildy; he was paralysed with sickening fear, which was only overcome by desperate rage against the white people, all and singular, who had caused him to walk into such a trap.

The park in which the courthouse stands was separated from the rest of the public square by a small, neat fence, over which, at the entrances, steps led, so that instead of opening a gate, you simply walked up the steps, over the fence, and down on the other side. On top of the most frequented of these stiles or steps Mr. Sanders and Lawyer Tidwell were sitting. Lawyer Tidwell was on his way to the courthouse for the purpose of examining some legal doc.u.ments relating to a case he had on the docket, and Mr. Sanders had accompanied him as far as the enclosure.

Their conversation grew so interesting that they finally seated themselves on the topmost step of the stile. They may have been talking of something serious, or they may have been relating anecdotes; but whatever the character of their conference, it was brought to a sudden conclusion by the appearance of the deputy sheriff with his humble and unresisting prisoner. The deputy had a fine and high opinion of the dignity of his position; he magnified his office. "Make way, gentlemen!"

he cried, and stood waiting for Mr. Sanders and the lawyer to move respectfully aside.

Both men looked up, but it was left to Mr. Sanders to express the surprise of each. "What in the confounded nation does this mean?" he exclaimed, rising to a standing position, and facing the officer and prisoner.

The prisoner was ahead of the deputy with a reply: "It means lots mo' to me than what it do to anybody else, suh," Randall declared, drawing in a deep breath, as if, in that way, he could control his emotion. "Whar I come frum they warned me ag'in' all white folks, bofe Republican an'

Dimmycrat. They say, 'You go an' preach the straight gospel, an' let 'em alone when they talk anything else but the Saviour an' Him crucified; they tol' me that, an' now you see me! But for that little white child down yander, I wouldn't be here now. But here I is, an' here I'll stay, an' I'll be nuther the fust nor the last that was flung to the lions.

Look at Daniel, an' see what he done! Yes, suh! I'm right here!"

"Well, now, you jest hold up your head an' put your hat on sideways ef you want to," remarked Mr. Sanders. "Gus!" he said, turning to the lawyer, with something like a frown on his bland countenance, "here's a whole bunch of business that's fell right in our laps. An' it's all in your line, too; but ef you can't do nothin', why, then, I'll take up the loose ends an' see what I kin do wi' 'em. I'll tell you right now," he went on, turning to the deputy sheriff, "when you take this n.i.g.g.e.r to jail, you'll take me, too--you or the man that's waitin' for your job.

Make no mistake about that!"

A number of negroes who had been talking together near the courthouse drew nearer when they saw one of their colour held prisoner. One of them was the negro member of the Legislature, and he was curious to know what the trouble was--curious and sympathetic, too, for he somehow felt that as the representative of the race in the county, he was responsible for the welfare of each individual. When Lawyer Tidwell thought that the negroes were near enough to hear everything that was said, he rose from his seat on the stile, and impressively shook his leonine mane. "What do you propose to do with this boy?" he inquired.

"I'm taking him to jail," the deputy replied, with a little relapse from dignity due to the unwonted aspect of Mr. Tidwell and Mr. Sanders. The lawyer demanded by what authority he had arrested the negro, and asked to see the warrant. By this time a considerable crowd of coloured people had gathered around, and when the warrant was produced, Mr. Tidwell created a considerable sensation by the tone of indignation he a.s.sumed and by the dramatic gestures with which he denounced such proceedings.

"Do you call this a warrant?" he cried, striking the doc.u.ment with the back of his hand. Then with threatening forefinger, held under the deputy's nose, he went on: "Do you mean to tell me, sir, that you arrest people, and run them into jail with such sc.r.a.ps of paper as this is?