Danny's Own Story Part 21

"Authorities differ," says Doctor Kirby, slouching down in his chair, and grinning like he knowed a joke he wasn't going to tell no one. "I heard Doctor Jackson describe himself that way the other day."

Well, speaking personal, I never had smelled none of roses. I wasn't nothing but trash myself, so being a gentleman didn't bother me one way or the other. The only reason I didn't want to see them n.i.g.g.e.rs bunked so very bad was only jest because it was such a low-down, ornery kind of trick.

"It ain't too late," I says, "to pull out of this n.i.g.g.e.r scheme yet and get into something more honest."

"I don't know," he says thoughtful. "I think perhaps it IS too late."

And he sets there looking like a man that is going over a good many years of life in his mind. Purty soon he says:

"As far as honesty goes--it isn't that so much, O Daniel-come-to-judgment! It's about as honest as most medicine games.

It's--" He stopped and frowned agin.

"What is it?"

"It's their being n.i.g.g.e.rS," he says.

That made the difference fur me, too. I dunno how, nor why.

"I've tried nearly everything but blackmail," he says, "and I'll probably be trying that by this time next year, if this scheme fails.

But there's something about their being n.i.g.g.e.rs that makes me sick of this thing already--just as the time has come to make the start. And I don't know WHY it should, either." He slipped another big slug of whiskey into him, and purty soon he asts me:

"Do you know what's the matter with me?"

I asts him what.

"I'm too decent to be a crook," he says, "and too crooked to be decent.

You've got to be one thing or the other steady to make it pay."

Then he says:

"Did you ever hear of the descent to Avernus, Danny?"

"I might," I tells him, "and then agin I mightn't, but if I ever did, I don't remember what she is. What is she?"

"It's the chute to the infernal regions," he says. "They say it's greased. But it isn't. It's really no easier sliding down than it is climbing back."

Well, I seen this n.i.g.g.e.r scheme of our'n wasn't the only thing that was troubling Doctor Kirby that night. It was thinking of all the schemes like it in the years past he had went into, and how he had went into 'em light-hearted and more'n half fur fun when he was a young man, and now he wasn't fitten fur nothing else but them kind of schemes, and he knowed it. He was seeing himself how he had been changing, like another person could of seen it. That's the main trouble with drinking to fergit yourself. You fergit the wrong part of yourself.

I left him purty soon, and went along to bed. My room was next to his'n, and they was a door between, so the two could be rented together if wanted, I suppose. I went to sleep and woke up agin with a start out of a dream that had in it millions and millions and millions of n.i.g.g.e.rs, every way you looked, and their mouths was all open red and their eyes walled white, fit to scare you out of your shoes.

I hearn Doctor Kirby moving around in his room. But purty soon he sets down and begins to talk to himself. Everything else was quiet. I was kind of worried about him, he had taken so much, and hoped he wouldn't get a notion to go downtown that time o' night. So I thinks I will see how he is acting, and steps over to the door between the rooms.

The key happened to be on my side, and I unlocked it. But she only opens a little ways, fur his wash stand was near to the hinge end of the door.

I looked through. He is setting by the table, looking at a woman's picture that is propped up on it, and talking to himself. He has never hearn me open the door, he is so interested. But somehow, he don't look drunk. He looks like he had fought his way up out of it, somehow--his forehead was sweaty, and they was one intoxicated lock of hair sticking to it; but that was the only un-sober-looking thing about him. I guess his legs would of been unsteady if he had of tried to walk, but his intellects was uncomfortable and sober.

He is still keeping up that same old argument with himself, or with the picture.

"It isn't any use," I hearn him say, looking at the picture.

Then he listened like he hearn it answering him. "Yes, you always say just that--just that," he says. "And I don't know why I keep on listening to you."

The way he talked, and harkened fur an answer, when they was nothing there to answer, give me the creeps.

"You don't help me," he goes on, "you don't help me at all. You only make it harder. Yes, this thing is worse than the others. I know that.

But I want money--and fool things like this HAVE sometimes made it. No, I won't give it up. No, there's no use making any more promises now. I know myself now. And you ought to know me by this time, too. Why can't you let me alone altogether? I should think, when you see what I am, you'd let me be.

"G.o.d help you! if you'd only stay away it wouldn't be so hard to go to h.e.l.l!"

CHAPTER XVI

There's a lot of counties in Georgia where the blacks are equal in number to the whites, and two or three counties where the blacks number over the whites by two to one. It was fur a little town in one of the latter that we pinted ourselves, Doctor Kirby and me and Sam--right into the blackest part of the black belt.

That country is full of big-sized plantations, where they raise cotton, cotton, cotton, and then MORE cotton. Some of 'em raises fruit, too, and other things, of course; but cotton is the main stand-by, and it looks like it always will be.

Some places there shows that things can't be so awful much changed since slavery days, and most of the n.i.g.g.e.rs are sure enough country n.i.g.g.e.rs yet. Some rents their land right out from the owners, and some of 'em crops it on the shares, and very many of 'em jest works as hands. A lot of 'em don't do nigh so well now as they did when their bosses was their masters, they tell me; and then agin, some has done right well on their own hook. They intrusted me, because I never had been use to looking at so many n.i.g.g.e.rs. Every way you turn there they is n.i.g.g.e.rs and then more n.i.g.g.e.rs.

Them that thinks they is awful easy to handle out of a natcheral respect fur white folks has got another guess coming. They ain't so bad to get along with if you keep it most pintedly shoved into their heads they IS n.i.g.g.e.rs. You got to do that especial in the black belt, jest because they IS so many of 'em. They is children all their lives, mebby, till some one minute of craziness may strike one of them, and then he is a devil temporary. Mebby, when the crazy fit has pa.s.sed, some white woman is worse off than if she was dead, or mebby she IS dead, or mebby a loonatic fur life, and that n.i.g.g.e.r is a candidate fur a lynching bee and ginerally elected by an anonymous majority.

Not that ALL n.i.g.g.e.rs is that-a-way, nor HALF of 'em, nor very MANY of 'em, even--but you can never tell WHICH n.i.g.g.e.r is going to be. So in the black belt the white folks is mighty pertic'ler who comes along fooling with their n.i.g.g.e.rs. Fur you can never tell what turn a n.i.g.g.e.r's thoughts will take, once anything at all stirs 'em up.

We didn't know them things then, Doctor Kirby and me didn't. We didn't know we was moving light-hearted right into the middle of the biggest question that has ever been ast. Which I disremember exactly how that n.i.g.g.e.r question is worded, but they is always asting it in the South, and answering of it different ways. We hadn't no idea how suspicious the white people in them awful black spots on the map can get over any one that comes along talking to their n.i.g.g.e.rs. We didn't know anything about n.i.g.g.e.rs much, being both from the North, except what Doctor Kirby had counted on when he made his medicine, and THAT he knowed second-handed from other people. We didn't take 'em very serious, nor all the talk we hearn about 'em down South.

But even at that we mightn't of got into any trouble if it hadn't of been fur old Bishop Warren. But that is getting ahead of the story.

We got into that little town--I might jest as well call it Cottonville--jest about supper time. Cottonville is a little place of not more'n six hundred people. I guess four hundred of 'em must be n.i.g.g.e.rs.

After supper we got acquainted with purty nigh all the prominent citizens in town. They was friendly with us, and we was friendly with them. Georgia had jest went fur prohibition a few months before that, and they hadn't opened up these here near-beer bar-rooms in the little towns yet, like they had in Atlanta and the big towns. Georgia had went prohibition so the n.i.g.g.e.rs couldn't get whiskey, some said; but others said they didn't know WHAT its excuse was. Them prominent citizens was loafing around the hotel and every now and then inviting each other very mysterious into a back room that use to be a pool parlour. They had been several jugs come to town by express that day. We went back several times ourselves, and soon began to get along purty well with them prominent citizens.

Talking about this and that they finally edges around to the one thing everybody is sure to get to talking about sooner or later in the South--n.i.g.g.e.rs. And then they gets to telling us about this here Bishop Warren I has mentioned.

He was a n.i.g.g.e.r bishop, Bishop Warren was, and had a good deal of white blood into him, they say. An ashy-coloured n.i.g.g.e.r, with b.u.mps on his face, fat as a possum, and as cunning as a fox. He had plenty of brains into his head, too; but his brains had turned sour in his head the last few years, and the bishop had crazy streaks running through his sense now, like fat and lean mixed in a slab of bacon. He used to be friends with a lot of big white folks, and the whites depended on him at one time to preach orderliness and obedience and agriculture and being in their place to the n.i.g.g.e.rs. Fur years they thought he preached that-a-way. He always DID preach that-a-way when any whites was around, and he set on platforms sometimes with white preachers, and he got good donations fur schemes of different kinds. But gradual the suspicion got around that when he was alone with a lot of n.i.g.g.e.rs his n.i.g.g.e.r blood would get the best of him, and what he preached wasn't white supremacy at all, but hopefulness of being equal.

So the whites had fell away from him, and then his graft was gone, and then his brains turned sour in his head and got to working and fermenting in it like cider getting hard, and he made a few bad breaks by not being careful what he said before white people. But the n.i.g.g.e.rs liked him all the better fur that.

They always had been more or less h.e.l.l in the bishop's heart. He had brains and he knowed it, and the white folks had let him see THEY knowed it, too. And he was part white, and his white forefathers had been big men in their day, and yet, in spite of all of that, he had to herd with n.i.g.g.e.rs and to pertend he liked it. He was both white and black in his feelings about things, so some of his feelings counterdicted others, and one of these here race riots went on all the time in his own insides.

But gradual he got to the place where they was spells he hated both whites and n.i.g.g.e.rs, but he hated the whites the worst. And now, in the last two or three years, since his crazy streaks had growed as big as his sensible streaks, or bigger, they was no telling what he would preach to them n.i.g.g.e.rs. But whatever he preached most of them would believe. It might be something crazy and harmless, or it might be crazy and harmful.

He had been holding some revival meetings in n.i.g.g.e.r churches right there in that very county, and was at it not fur away from there right then.

The idea had got around he was preaching some most unusual foolishness to the blacks. Fur the n.i.g.g.e.rs was all acting like they knowed something too good to mention to the white folks, all about there. But some white men had gone to one of the meetings, and the bishop had preached one of his old-time sermons whilst they was there, telling the n.i.g.g.e.rs to be orderly and agriculturous--he was considerable of a fox yet. But he and the rest of the n.i.g.g.e.rs was so DERNED anxious to be thought agriculturous and servitudinous that the whites smelt a rat, and wished he would go, fur they didn't want to chase him without they had to.

Jest when we was getting along fine one of them prominent citizens asts the doctor was we there figgering on buying some land?

"No," says the doctor, "we wasn't."