CHAPTER XVII
IN about a minute somebody spoke out of a window
without putting his head out, and says:
"Be done, boys! Who's there?"
I says:
"It's me."
"Who's me?"
"George Jackson, sir."
"What do you want?"
"I don't want nothing, sir. I only want to go along
by, but the dogs won't let me."
"What are you prowling around here this time of
night for -- hey?"
"I warn't prowling around, sir, I fell overboard off
of the steamboat."
"Oh, you did, did you? Strike a light there,
somebody. What did you say your name was?"
"George Jackson, sir. I'm only a boy."
"Look here, if you're telling the truth you needn't
be afraid -- nobody'll hurt you. But don't try to
budge; stand right where you are. Rouse out Bob and
Tom, some of you, and fetch the guns. George
Jackson, is there anybody with you?"
"No, sir, nobody."
I heard the people stirring around in the house now,
and see a light. The man sung out:
"Snatch that light away, Betsy, you old fool --
ain't
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you got any sense? Put it on the floor behind the
front door. Bob, if you and Tom are ready, take your
places."
"All ready."
"Now, George Jackson, do you know the Shepherdsons?"
"No, sir; I never heard of them."
"Well, that may be so, and it mayn't. Now, all
ready. Step forward, George Jackson. And mind, don't
you hurry -- come mighty slow. If there's anybody
with you, let him keep back -- if he shows himself
he'll be shot. Come along now. Come slow; push the
door open yourself -- just enough to squeeze in, d'
you hear?"
I didn't hurry; I couldn't if I'd a wanted to. I
took one slow step at a time and there warn't a
sound, only I thought I could hear my heart. The
dogs were as still as the humans, but they followed
a little behind me. When I got to the three log
doorsteps I heard them unlocking and unbarring and
unbolting. I put my hand on the door and pushed it a
little and a little more till somebody said, "There,
that's enough -- put your head in." I done it, but I
judged they would take it off.
The candle was on the floor, and there they all was,
looking at me, and me at them, for about a quarter
of a minute: Three big men with guns pointed at me,
which made me wince, I tell you; the oldest, gray
and about sixty, the other two thirty or more -- all
of them fine and handsome -- and the sweetest old
gray-headed lady, and back of her two young women
which I couldn't see right well. The old gentleman
says:
"There; I reckon it's all right. Come in."
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As soon as I was in the old gentleman he locked the
door and barred it and bolted it, and told the young
men to come in with their guns, and they all went in
a big parlor that had a new rag carpet on the floor,
and got together in a corner that was out of the
range of the front windows -- there warn't none on
the side. They held the candle, and took a good look
at me, and all said, "Why, he ain't a Shepherdson --
no, there ain't any Shepherdson about him." Then the
old man said he hoped I wouldn't mind being searched
for arms, because he didn't mean no harm by it -- it
was only to make sure. So he didn't pry into my
pockets, but only felt outside with his hands, and
said it was all right. He told me to make myself
easy and at home, and tell all about myself; but the
old lady says:
"Why, bless you, Saul, the poor thing's as wet as he
can be; and don't you reckon it may be he's hungry?"
"True for you, Rachel -- I forgot."
So the old lady says:
"Betsy" (this was a nigger woman), "you fly around
and get him something to eat as quick as you can,
poor thing; and one of you girls go and wake up Buck
and tell him -- oh, here he is himself. Buck, take
this little stranger and get the wet clothes off
from him and dress him up in some of yours that's
dry."
Buck looked about as old as me -- thirteen or
fourteen or along there, though he was a little
bigger than me. He hadn't on anything but a shirt,
and he was very frowzy-headed. He came in gaping and
digging one fist into his eyes, and he was dragging
a gun along with the other one. He says:
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"Ain't they no Shepherdsons around?"
They said, no, 'twas a false alarm.
"Well," he says, "if they'd a ben some, I reckon I'd
a got one."
They all laughed, and Bob says:
"Why, Buck, they might have scalped us all, you've
been so slow in coming."
"Well, nobody come after me, and it ain't right I'm
always kept down; I don't get no show."
"Never mind, Buck, my boy," says the old man,
"you'll have show enough, all in good time, don't
you fret about that. Go 'long with you now, and do
as your mother told you."
When we got up-stairs to his room he got me a coarse
shirt and a roundabout and pants of his, and I put
them on. While I was at it he asked me what my name
was, but before I could tell him he started to tell
me about a bluejay and a young rabbit he had catched
in the woods day before yesterday, and he asked me
where Moses was when the candle went out. I said I
didn't know; I hadn't heard about it before, no way.
"Well, guess," he says.
"How'm I going to guess," says I, "when I never
heard tell of it before?"
"But you can guess, can't you? It's just as easy."
"Which candle?" I says.
"Why, any candle," he says.
"I don't know where he was," says I; "where was he?"
"Why, he was in the dark! That's where he was!"
"Well, if you knowed where he was, what did you ask
me for?"
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"Why, blame it, it's a riddle, don't you see? Say,
how long are you going to stay here? You got to stay
always. We can just have booming times -- they don't
have no school now. Do you own a dog? I've got a dog
-- and he'll go in the river and bring out chips
that you throw in. Do you like to comb up Sundays,
and all that kind of foolishness? You bet I don't,
but ma she makes me. Confound these ole britches! I
reckon I'd better put 'em on, but I'd ruther not,
it's so warm. Are you all ready? All right. Come
along, old hoss."
Cold corn-pone, cold corn-beef, butter and
buttermilk -- that is what they had for me down
there, and there ain't nothing better that ever I've
come across yet. Buck and his ma and all of them
smoked cob pipes, except the nigger woman, which was
gone, and the two young women. They all smoked and
talked, and I eat and talked. The young women had
quilts around them, and their hair down their backs.
They all asked me questions, and I told them how pap
and me and all the family was living on a little
farm down at the bottom of Arkansaw, and my sister
Mary Ann run off and got married and never was heard
of no more, and Bill went to hunt them and he warn't
heard of no more, and Tom and Mort died, and then
there warn't nobody but just me and pap left, and he
was just trimmed down to nothing, on account of his
troubles; so when he died I took what there was
left, because the farm didn't belong to us, and
started up the river, deck passage, and fell
overboard; and that was how I come to be here. So
they said I could have a home there as long as I
wanted it. Then it was most daylight and everybody
went to bed, and I went to bed
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with Buck, and when I waked up in the morning, drat
it all, I had forgot what my name was. So I laid
there about an hour trying to think, and when Buck
waked up I says:
"Can you spell, Buck?"
"Yes," he says.
"I bet you can't spell my name," says I.
"I bet you what you dare I can," says he.
"All right," says I, "go ahead."
"G-e-o-r-g-e J-a-x-o-n -- there now," he says.
"Well," says I, "you done it, but I didn't think you
could. It ain't no slouch of a name to spell --
right off without studying."
I set it down, private, because somebody might want
me to spell it next, and so I wanted to be handy
with it and rattle it off like I was used to it.
It was a mighty nice family, and a mighty nice
house, too. I hadn't seen no house out in the
country before that was so nice and had so much
style. It didn't have an iron latch on the front
door, nor a wooden one with a buckskin string, but a
brass knob to turn, the same as houses in town.
There warn't no bed in the parlor, nor a sign of a
bed; but heaps of parlors in towns has beds in them.
There was a big fireplace that was bricked on the
bottom, and the bricks was kept clean and red by
pouring water on them and scrubbing them with
another brick; sometimes they wash them over with
red water-paint that they call Spanish-brown, same
as they do in town. They had big brass dog-irons
that could hold up a saw-log. There was a clock on
the middle of the mantel-piece, with a picture of a
town painted on the bottom
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half of the glass front, and a round place in the
middle of it for the sun, and you could see the
pendulum swinging behind it. It was beautiful to
hear that clock tick; and sometimes when one of
these peddlers had been along and scoured her up and
got her in good shape, she would start in and strike
a hundred and fifty before she got tuckered out.
They wouldn't took any money for her.
Well, there was a big outlandish parrot on each side
of the clock, made out of something like chalk, and
painted up gaudy. By one of the parrots was a cat
made of crockery, and a crockery dog by the other;
and when you pressed down on them they squeaked, but
didn't open their mouths nor look different nor
interested. They squeaked through underneath. There
was a couple of big wild-turkey-wing fans spread out
behind those things. On the table in the middle of
the room was a kind of a lovely crockery basket that
bad apples and oranges and peaches and grapes piled
up in it, which was much redder and yellower and
prettier than real ones is, but they warn't real
because you could see where pieces had got chipped
off and showed the white chalk, or whatever it was,
underneath.
This table had a cover made out of beautiful
oilcloth, with a red and blue spread-eagle painted
on it, and a painted border all around. It come all
the way from Philadelphia, they said. There was some
books, too, piled up perfectly exact, on each corner
of the table. One was a big family Bible full of
pictures. One was Pilgrim's Progress, about a man
that left his family, it didn't say why. I read
considerable in it now and then. The statements was
interesting, but
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tough. Another was Friendship's Offering, full of
beautiful stuff and poetry; but I didn't read the
poetry. Another was Henry Clay's Speeches, and
another was Dr. Gunn's Family Medicine, which told
you all about what to do if a body was sick or dead.
There was a hymn book, and a lot of other books. And
there was nice split-bottom chairs, and perfectly
sound, too -- not bagged down in the middle and
busted, like an old basket.
They had pictures hung on the walls -- mainly
Washingtons and Lafayettes, and battles, and
Highland Marys, and one called "Signing the
Declaration." There was some that they called
crayons, which one of the daughters which was dead
made her own self when she was only fifteen years
old. They was different from any pictures I ever see
before -- blacker, mostly, than is common. One was a
woman in a slim black dress, belted small under the
armpits, with bulges like a cabbage in the middle of
the sleeves, and a large black scoop-shovel bonnet
with a black veil, and white slim ankles crossed
about with black tape, and very wee black slippers,
like a chisel, and she was leaning pensive on a
tombstone on her right elbow, under a weeping
willow, and her other hand hanging down her side
holding a white handkerchief and a reticule, and
underneath the picture it said "Shall I Never See
Thee More Alas." Another one was a young lady with
her hair all combed up straight to the top of her
head, and knotted there in front of a comb like a
chair-back, and she was crying into a handkerchief
and had a dead bird laying on its back in her other
hand with its heels up, and underneath the picture
it said "I Shall Never Hear Thy Sweet
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Chirrup More Alas." There was one where a young lady
was at a window looking up at the moon, and tears
running down her cheeks; and she had an open letter
in one hand with black sealing wax showing on one
edge of it, and she was mashing a locket with a
chain to it against her mouth, and underneath the
picture it said "And Art Thou Gone Yes Thou Art Gone
Alas." These was all nice pictures, I reckon, but I
didn't somehow seem to take to them, because if ever
I was down a little they always give me the
fan-tods. Everybody was sorry she died, because she
had laid out a lot more of these pictures to do, and
a body could see by what she had done what they had
lost. But I reckoned that with her disposition she
was having a better time in the graveyard. She was
at work on what they said was her greatest picture
when she took sick, and every day and every night it
was her prayer to be allowed to live till she got it
done, but she never got the chance. It was a picture
of a young woman in a long white gown, standing on
the rail of a bridge all ready to jump off, with her
hair all down her back, and looking up to the moon,
with the tears running down her face, and she had
two arms folded across her breast, and two arms
stretched out in front, and two more reaching up
towards the moon -- and the idea was to see which
pair would look best, and then scratch out all the
other arms; but, as I was saying, she died before
she got her mind made up, and now they kept this
picture over the head of the bed in her room, and
every time her birthday come they hung flowers on
it. Other times it was hid with a little curtain.
The young woman in the picture had a kind of a nice
sweet face,
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but there was so many arms it made her look too
spidery, seemed to me.
This young girl kept a scrap-book when she was
alive, and used to paste obituaries and accidents
and cases of patient suffering in it out of the
Presbyterian Observer, and write poetry after them
out of her own head. It was very good poetry. This
is what she wrote about a boy by the name of Stephen
Dowling Bots that fell down a well and was drownded:
ODE TO STEPHEN DOWLING BOTS, DEC'D
And did young Stephen sicken,
And did young Stephen die?
And did the sad hearts thicken,
And did the mourners cry?
No; such was not the fate of
Young Stephen Dowling Bots;
Though sad hearts round him thickened,
'Twas not from sickness' shots.
No whooping-cough did rack his frame,
Nor measles drear with spots;
Not these impaired the sacred name
Of Stephen Dowling Bots.
Despised love struck not with woe
That head of curly knots,
Nor stomach troubles laid him low,
Young Stephen Dowling Bots.
O no. Then list with tearful eye,
Whilst I his fate do tell.
His soul did from this cold world fly
By falling down a well.
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They got him out and emptied him;
Alas it was too late;
His spirit was gone for to sport aloft
In the realms of the good and great.
They got him out and emptied him;
If Emmeline Grangerford could make poetry like that
before she was fourteen, there ain't no telling what
she could a done by and by. Buck said she could
rattle off poetry like nothing. She didn't ever have
to stop to think. He said she would slap down a
line, and if she couldn't find anything to rhyme
with it would just scratch it out and slap down
another one, and go ahead. She warn't particular;
she could write about anything you choose to give
her to write about just so it was sadful. Every time
a man died, or a woman died, or a child died, she
would be on hand with her "tribute" before he was
cold. She called them tributes. The neighbors said
it was the doctor first, then Emmeline, then the
undertaker -- the undertaker never got in ahead of
Emmeline but once, and then she hung fire on a rhyme
for the dead person's name, which was Whistler. She
warn't ever the same after that; she never
complained, but she kinder pined away and did not
live long. Poor thing, many's the time I made myself
go up to the little room that used to be hers and
get out her poor old scrap-book and read in it when
her pictures had been aggravating me and I had
soured on her a little. I liked all that family,
dead ones and all, and warn't going to let anything
come between us. Poor Emmeline made poetry about all
the dead people when she was alive, and it didn't
seem right that there warn't nobody to make some
about her
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now she was gone; so I tried to sweat out a verse or
two myself, but I couldn't seem to make it go
somehow. They kept Emmeline's room trim and nice,
and all the things fixed in it just the way she
liked to have them when she was alive, and nobody
ever slept there. The old lady took care of the room
herself, though there was plenty of niggers, and she
sewed there a good deal and read her Bible there
mostly.
Well, as I was saying about the parlor, there was
beautiful curtains on the windows: white, with
pictures painted on them of castles with vines all
down the walls, and cattle coming down to drink.
There was a little old piano, too, that had tin pans
in it, I reckon, and nothing was ever so lovely as
to hear the young ladies sing "The Last Link is
Broken" and play "The Battle of Prague" on it. The
walls of all the rooms was plastered, and most had
carpets on the floors, and the whole house was
whitewashed on the outside.
It was a double house, and the big open place
betwixt them was roofed and floored, and sometimes
the table was set there in the middle of the day,
and it was a cool, comfortable place. Nothing
couldn't be better. And warn't the cooking good, and
just bushels of it too!
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