Tramping on Life Part 41

fiddler who had almost killed a man at a dance) "while Baykins here plays 'whip the devil.'"

The very next day we began dancing and singing and taking turns at the chuckhole bar.

"Whip the Devil" is an interminable tune like the one about the "old woman chasing her son round the room with a broom."...

The mistake was, that in our eagerness we "whipped the devil" too long at a time. Naturally, the jailer grew suspicious of such sudden and prolonged hilarity. But even at that it took almost a week for them to catch on. We knew it was all up when, one morning at breakfast, the sheriff came in with the jailer.

"Boys, all back into your cells!" he growled.

The long bar was thrown over our closed doors.

The sheriff stooped down and inspected the chuck-hole.

"Why, Jesus Christ, they'd of been through in two more nights. It's good we caught them in time or they'd of been a h.e.l.l of a big jail-delivery ... do you mean to tell me," turning to the jailer, "you never noticed this before?" and with one finger he raked out the blackened corn bread.

"You see, I'm a little near-sighted, Mistah Jenkins."

"Too d.a.m.ned near-sighted, an' too d.a.m.ned stupid, too."

The big iron door of the cage was locked again, the long bar thrown off our cell doors.

"Now, you sons of b---- can come out into the cage again; but, mind you, if any of you try such a thing again, I'll take you out one by one and give you all a rawhiding."

We received the abuse in sullen silence. For three days our rations lacked cornpone, for punishment.

We decided among ourselves that the negro preacher, to stand in well with the authorities, had given us away....

And if he had not, panic-stricken, pleaded with the sheriff to be taken out and put in a separate cell, I believe we would have killed him.

There was one more way. It was so simple a way that we had not thought of it before. The mulatto girl, who slept by the big stove, on a cot, just outside the cage ... a trusty and the jailer's unwilling concubine ... this slim, yellow creature was much in love with the l.u.s.ty young farmer who had stolen the bales of cotton and sold them for a drunk. And it was he who suggested that, through her, we get possession of the keys. For, every day, she informed us, she pa.s.sed them by where they hung on a nail, downstairs, as she swept and cleaned house for the jailer.

It was not a difficult matter to procure them. She would bring them up to us and hand them in through the chuck-hole, which the village blacksmith had repaired and once more reinforced with extra bars, "so them b.a.s.t.a.r.ds won't even think of sawing out again," as the jailer had expressed it.

The evening she handed the keys in to us we were so excited we wanted to have "Whip the Devil" played again for our singing and dancing. But this might have once more awakened suspicion. Before, we had raised such a row as to have caused pedestrians to stop and listen in groups, wondering what made the men inside so happy....

There were three separate locks on the great cage door. One, two of them went back with an easy click. For the third we could find no key. There was nothing else to do now but to have recourse to singing and dancing again. Baykins started sawing his fiddle furiously while the big negro in for rape hammered and hammered on the lock to break it, with one prison stool after another, till all were tossed aside, broken as kindling wood is broken. It was good that the jailer was either deaf, or, like the heathen G.o.ds in the Old Testament, away on a journey.

Finally, we gave up in despair. The big negro collapsed with a wail. The first sign of weakness I ever detected in him.

"Now it's sh.o.r.e either ninety-nine yeahs in de pen foh me, or ten yeahs for th' sheriff's son foh lawyah fees ... an' the footprints in de flowah bed ... of the man what done de rape was two sizes biggah dan mine."

The next day the jailer, of course, missed the keys. Panic-stricken, the mulatto girl was afraid to slip them back to their accustomed nail, for fear she'd be seen at it; or was it out of vindictiveness against the jailer that she had now actually hidden them somewhere (for, finding them of no use, we had handed them back to her)!

That same afternoon the sheriff, with his son and the little, shrivelled, stuttering, half-deaf jailer, came in at the door of the big room. It was easy to see what they wanted. They wanted the keys and they were going to make the girl confess where they were ... as she was the only other person, beside the prison authorities, that was in the way to come at them.

"Martha, we want them keys! Show us where they is, like a good girl!"

"'Deed, Ah don' know where dey is a-tall, Ma.r.s.e Sheriff!"

"Come on, gal, you was the only one downstairs exceptin' Jacklin heah!"

pointing to the jailer.

The jailer nodded his head a.s.severatingly.

"Yes, Martha, tell us whar the keys air," urged the latter, with caressing softness and fright in his voice. He didn't want his mistress whipped.

"If you don't, by G.o.d, I'll whup the n.i.g.g.e.r hide clean off yore back,"

and the sheriff reached for the braided whip which his son Jimmy handed him.

"I sweah Ah don' know where dey is!"

"You dirty liah," taking out a watch; "I'll give you jest five minutes t' tell, an' then--" he menaced with the up-lifted whip.

In stubborn silence the girl waited the five minutes out.

"Jimmy!... Jacklin!... throw her down an' hold her, rump up, over that cot." They obeyed. With a jerk the sheriff had her dress up and her bare b.u.t.tocks in view.

"I'm a-goin' to whup an' whup till you confess, Martha."

Crack! Crack! Crack! the whip descended, leaving red whelts each time.

The mulatto girl writhed, but did not cry quits. Beads of perspiration glistened on the jailer's face. The girl shook off his lax grip on her arms ... the sheriff's son was holding her legs. We were crowded against the bars, angry and silent. We admired the girl's hopeless pluck. We saw she was holding out just to, somehow, have vengeance on the jailer for her being held in unwilling concubinage by him, hoping he would catch it hard for having let the keys hang carelessly in open view, and so, stolen.

"d.a.m.n you, Jacklin," shouted the sheriff, "I believe you're a little soft on the gal ... come here ... you swing the whip an' I'll hold her arms."

In mute agony Jacklin obeyed ... whipping the woman of whom he was fond.

"Harder, Jacklin, harder," and the sheriff drew his gun on him to emphasise the command.

Under such impulsion, a shower of heavy blows fell. The girl screamed.

"I'll give up ... Oh, good Lordy, I'll give up."

And she dug the keys out from under the mattress across which they had whipped her.

After they had gone she lay crying on her face for a long while. When night came she still lay crying. Nothing any of us could say would console her. Not even the little white cotton thief had power to allay her hurt....

At last we began cursing and railing at her. That made her stop, after a fas.h.i.+on. But still she occasionally gave vent to a heart-deep, dry, racking sob.

Locked in there behind bars and forced to be impotent onlookers, the whipping we had witnessed made us as restless as wild animals. That night, under the dim flare of our jail-made lamps, the boys gambled as usual, for their strips of paper,--and as eagerly as if it were real currency. I, for my part, drew away to the vacant cell at the far end of the cage to study and read and dream my dreams....

As I sat there I was soon possessed with a disagreeable feeling that a malignant, ill-wis.h.i.+ng presence hovered near. I s.h.i.+fted in my seat uneasily. I looked up. There stood, in the doorway, the l.u.s.ty young farmer who was in for stealing the bales of cotton. He wore an evil, combative leer on his face. He was "spoiling" for a quarrel--just for the mere sake of quarrelling--that I could see. But I dissembled.

"Well, Jack?" I asked gently.