Back Home: Being the Narrative of Judge Priest and His People

As a matter of fact, he was still playing them when he passed a wide-porched old white house almost at the end of the empty street, where a stout old man in a wrinkly white linen suit leaned across a gate and regarded the steam calliope man with a satisfied almost a proprietorial air.

VI. WHEN THE FIGHTING WAS GOOD

MISTER SHERIFF,” ordered the judge, “bring Pressley G. Harper to the bar.”

Judge Priest, as I may have set forth before, had two habits of speech – one purposely ungrammatical and thickly larded with the vernacular of the country crossroads – that was for his private walks and conversations, and for his campaignings; but the other was of good and proper and dignified English, and it he reserved for official acts and utterances. Whether upon the bench or off it, though, his voice had that high-pitched, fiddle-string note which carried far and clearly; and on this day, when he spoke, the sheriff roused up instantly from where he had been enjoying forty winks between the bewhittled arms of a tilted chair and bestirred himself. He hurried out of a side door. A little, whispering, hunching stir went through the courtroom. Spectators reclining upon the benches, partly on their spines and partly on their shoulderblades, straightened and bent forward. Inside the rail, which set apart the legal goats from the civic sheep, a score of eyes were fixed speculatively upon the judge’s face, rising above the top of the tall, scarred desk where he sat; but his face gave no dew to his thoughts; and if the mind back of the beneficent, mild blue eyes was troubled, the eyes themselves looked out unvexed through the steel-bowed spectacles that rode low on the old judge’s nose.

There was a minute’s wait. The clerk handed up to the judge a sheaf of papers in blue wrappers. The judge shuffled through them until he found the one he wanted. It was the middle of the afternoon of a luscious spring day – the last day of the spring term of court. In at the open windows came spicy, moist smells of things sprouting and growing, and down across the courthouse square the big star-shaped flowers of the dogwood trees showed white and misty, like a new Milky Way against a billowy green firmament.

A minute only and then the sheriff reëntered. At his side came a man. This newcomer must have been dose to seventy years – or sixty-five, anyway. He was long and lean, and he bore his height with a sort of alert and supple erectness, stepping high, with the seemingly awkward gait of the man trained at crossing furrows, yet bringing his feet down noiselessly, like a house-cat treading on dead leaves. The way he moved made you think of a deerstalker. Strength, tremendous strength, was shown in the outward swing of the long arms and the huge, knotty hands, and there was temper in the hot, brown eyes and in the thick, stiff crop of reddish-gray hair, rising like buckwheat stubble upon his scalp. He had high cheekbones and a long, shaven face, and his skin was tanned to a leathery red, like a well-smoked ham. Except for the colors of his hair and eyes, he might have passed for half Indian. Indeed, there was a tale in the county that his great-grandmother was a Shawnee squaw. He was more than six feet tall – he must have been six feet two.

With the sheriff alongside him he came to the bar – a sagged oaken railing – and stood there with his big hands cupped over it. He was newly shaved and dressed in what was evidently his best.

“Pressley G. Harper at the bar,” sang out the clerk methodically. Everybody was listen-ing.

“Pressley G. Harper,” said the judge, “waiving the benefit of counsel and the right of trial by jury, you have this day pleaded guilty to an indictment charging you with felonious assault in that you did, on the twenty-first day of January last, shoot and wound with a firearm one Virgil Settle, a citizen of this county. Have you anything to say why the sentence of the law should not be pronounced upon you?”

Only eying him steadfastly, the confessed offender shook his head.

“It is the judgment of this court, then, that you be confined in the state penitentiary for the period of two years at hard labor.”

A babbling murmur ran over the room – for his sins old Press Harper was catching it at last. The prisoner’s hands gripped the oaken rail until his knuckles nails showed white, and it seemed that the tough wood fibers would be dented in; other than that he gave no sign, but took the blow braced and steady, like a game man facing a firing squad. The sheriff inched toward him; but the judge raised the hand that held the blue-wrappered paper as a sign that he had more to say.

“Pressley G. Harper,” said the judge, “probably this is not the time or the place for the court to say how deeply it regrets the necessity of inflicting this punishment upon you. This court has known you for many years – for a great many years. You might have been a worthy citizen. You have been of good repute for truthfulness and fair dealing among your neighbors; but you have been beset, all your life, with a temper that was your abiding curse, and when excited with liquor you have been a menace to the safety of your fellowman. Time and time again, within the recollection of this court, you have been involved in unseemly brawls, largely of your own making. That you were generally inflamed with drink, and that you afterward seemed genuinely penitent and made what amends you could, does not serve to excuse you in the eyes of the law. That you have never taken a human life outright is a happy accident of chance.

“Through the leniency of those appointed to administer the law you have until now escaped the proper and fitting consequences of your behavior; but, by this last wanton attack upon an inoffensive citizen, you have forfeited all claim upon the consideration of the designated authorities.”

He paused for a little, fumbling at the bow of his spectacles.

“In the natural course of human events you have probably but a few more years to live. It is to be regretted by all right-thinking men that you cannot go to your grave free from the stigma of a prison. And it is a blessing that you have no one closely related to you by ties of blood or marriage to share in your disgrace.” The old judge’s high voice grew husked and roughened here, he being himself both widowed and childless. “The judgment of the court stands – two years at hard labor.”

He made a sign that he was done. The sheriff edged up again and touched the sentenced man upon the arm. Without turning his head, Harper shook off the hand of authority with so violent a shrug that the sheriff dodged back, startled. Then for the first time the prisoner spoke.

“Judge, Your Honor,” he said quietly, “jest a minute ago you asked me if I had anything to say and I told you that I had not. I’ve changed my mind; I want to ask you something – I want to ask you a mighty big favor. No, I ain’t askin’ you to let me off – it ain’t that,” he went on more quickly, reading the look on the judge’s face. “I didn’t expect to come clear in this here case. I pleaded guilty because I was guilty and didn’t have no defense. My bein’ sorry for shootin’ Virge Settle the way I did don’t excuse me, as I know; but, Judge Priest, I’ll say jest this to you – I don’t want to be dragged off to that there penitentiary like a savage dumb beast. I don’t want to be took there by no sheriff. And what I want to ask you is this: Can’t I go there a free man, with free limbs? I promise you to go and to serve my time faithful – but I want to go by myself and give myself up like a man.”

Instantly visualized before the eyes of all who sat there was the picture which they knew must be in the prisoner’s mind – the same picture which all or nearly all of them had seen more than once, since it came to pass, spring and fall, after each term of court – a little procession filing through the street to the depot; at its head, puffed out with responsibility, the sheriff and one of his deputies – at its tail more deputies, and in between them the string of newly convicted felons, handcuffed in twos, with a long trace-chain looping back from one pair to the next pair, and so on, binding all fast together in a clanking double file – the whites in front and the negroes back of them, maintaining even in that shameful formation the division of race; the whites mainly marching with downcast heads and hurrying feet, clutching pitiably small bundles with their free hands – the negroes singing doggerel in chorus and defiantly jingling the links of their tether; some, the friendless ones, hatless and half naked, and barefooted after months of lying in jail – and all with the smell of the frowsy cells upon them. And, seeing this familiar picture spring up before them, it seemed all of a sudden a wrong thing and a very shameful thing that Press Harper, an old man and a member of a decent family, should march thus, with his wrists chained and the offscourings and scum of the county jail for company. All there knew him for a man of his word. If old Press Harper said he would go to the penitentiary and surrender himself they knew he would go and do it if he had to crawl there on his knees. And so now, having made his plea, he waited silently for the answer.

The old judge had half swung himself about in his chair and with his hand at his beard was looking out of the window.

“Mister Sheriff,” he said, without turning his head, “you may consider yourself relieved of the custody of the defendant at the bar. Mister Clerk, you may make out the commitment papers.” The clerk busied himself with certain ruled forms, filling in dotted lines with writing. The judge went on: “Despite the irregularity of the proceeding, this court is disposed to grant the request which the defendant has just made. Grievous though his shortcomings in other directions may have been, this court has never known the defendant to break his word. Does the defendant desire any time in which to arrange his personal affairs? If so how much time?”

“I would like to have until the day after tomorrow,” said Harper. “If I kin I want to find a tenant for my farm.”

“Has the commonwealth’s attorney any objection to the granting of this delay?” inquired the judge, still with his head turned away.

“None, Your Honor,” said the prosecutor, half rising. And now the judge was facing the prisoner, looking him full in the eye.

“You will go free on your own recognizance, without bond, until the day after tomorrow,” he bade him. “You will then report yourself to the warden of the state penitentiary at Frankfort. The clerk of this court will hand you certain documents which you will surrender to the warden at the same time that you surrender yourself.”

The tall old man at the rail bowed his head to show he understood, but he gave no thanks for the favor vouchsafed him, nor did the other old man on the bench seem to expect any thanks. The clerk’s pen, racing across the ruled sheets, squeaked audibly.

“This consideration is granted, though, upon one condition,” said the judge, as though a new thought had just come to him. “And that is, that between this time and the time you begin serving your sentence you do not allow a drop of liquor to cross your lips. You promise that?”

“I promise that,” said Harper slowly and soberly, like a man taking a solemn oath.

No more was said. The clerk filled out the blanks – two of them – and Judge Priest signed them. The clerk took them back from him, folded them inside a long envelope; backed the envelope with certain writings, and handed it over the bar rail to Harper. There wasn’t a sound as he stowed it carefully into an inner pocket of his ill-fitting black coat; nor, except for the curiously light tread of his own steps, was there a sound as he, without a look side-wise, passed down the courtroom and out at the doorway.

“Mister Clerk,” bade Judge Priest, “adjourn the present term of this court.”

As the crowd filed noisily out, old Doctor Lake, who had been a spectator of all that happened, lingered behind and, with a nod and a gesture to the clerk, went round behind the jury-box and entered the door of the judge’s private chamber, without knocking. The lone occupant of the room stood by the low, open window, looking out over the green square. He was stuffing the fire-blackened bowl of his corncob pipe with its customary fuel; but his eyes were not on the task, or his fingers trembled – or something; for, though the pipe was already packed to overflowing, he still tamped more tobacco in, wasting the shreddy brown weed upon the floor.

“Come in, Lew, and take a chair and set down,” he said. Doctor Lake, however, instead of taking a chair and sitting down, crossed to the window and stood beside him, putting one hand on the judge’s arm.

“That was pretty hard on old Press, Billy,” said Doctor Lake.

Judge Priest was deeply sensitive of all outside criticism pertaining to his official conduct; his life off the bench was another matter. He stiffened under the touch.

“Lewis Lake,” he said – sharply for him – “I don’t permit even my best friends to discuss my judicial acts.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that, Billy,” Doctor Lake made haste to explain. “I wasn’t thinking so much of what happened just now in the court yonder. I reckon old Press deserved it – he’s been running hog-wild round this town and this county too long already. Let him get that temper of his roused and a few drinks in him and he is a regular mad dog. Nobody can deny that. Of course I hate it – and I know you do too – to see one of the old company – one of the boys who marched out of here with us in ‘61 – going to the pen. That’s only natural; but I’m not finding fault with your sending him there. What I was thinking of is that you’re sending him over the road day after tomorrow.”

“What of that?” asked the judge.

“Why, day after tomorrow is the day we’re starting for the annual reunion,” said Doctor Lake; “and, Billy, if Press goes on the noon train – which he probably will – he’ll be traveling right along with the rest of us – for a part of the way. Only he’ll get off at the Junction, and we – well, we’ll be going on through, the rest of us will, to the reunion That’s what I meant.”

“That’s so!” said the judge regretfully – “that’s so! I did forget all about the reunion startin’ then – I plum’ forgot it. I reckin it will be sort of awkward for all of us – and for Press in particular.” He paused, holding the unlighted and overflowing pipe in his hands absently, and then went on:

“Lewis, when a man holds an office such as mine is he has to do a lot of things he hates mightily to do. Now you take old Press Harper’s case. I reckin there never was a braver soldier anywhere than Press was. Do you remember Brice’s Crossroads?”

“Yes,” said the old doctor, his eyes suddenly afire. “Yes, Billy – and Vicksburg too.”

“Ah-hah!” went on the old judge – “and the second day’s fight at Chickamauga, when we lost so many out of the regiment, and Press came back out of the last charge, draggin’ little Gil Nicholas by the arms, and both of them purty nigh shot to pieces? Yes, suh; Press always was a fighter when there was any fightin’ to do – and the fightin’ was specially good in them days. The trouble with Press was he didn’t quit fightin’ when the rest of us did. Maybe it sort of got into his blood. It does do jest that sometimes, I judge.”

“Yes,” said Doctor Lake, “I suppose you’re right; but old Press is in a fair way to be cured now. A man with his temper ought never to touch whisky anyhow.”

“You’re right,” agreed the judge. “It’s a dangerous thing, licker is – and a curse to some people. I’d like to have a dram right this minute. Lew, I wish mightily you’d come on and go home with me tonight and take supper. I’ll send my nigger boy Jeff up to your house to tell your folks you won’t be there until late, and you walk on out to my place with me. I feel sort of played out and lonesome – I do so. Come on now. We’ll have a young chicken and a bait of hot waffles – I reckin that old nigger cook of mine does make the best waffles in the created world. After supper we’ll set a spell together and talk over them old times when we were in the army – and maybe we can kind of forget some of the things that’ve come up later.”

The noon accommodation would carry the delegation from Gideon K. Irons Camp over the branch line to the Junction, where it would connect with a special headed through for the reunion city. For the private use of the Camp the railroad company provided a car which the ladies of the town decorated on the night before with draped strips of red and white bunting down the sides, and little battle-flags nailed up over the two doors. The rush of the wind would soon whip away the little crossed flags from their tack fastenings end roll the bunting streamers up into the semblance of peppermint sticks; but the car, hitched to the tail end of the accommodation and surrounded by admiring groups of barelegged small boys, made a brave enough show when its intended passengers came marching down a good half hour ahead of leaving-time.

Considering the wide swath which death and the infirmities of age had been cutting in the ranks all these years, the Camp was sending a good representation – Judge Priest, the commandant; and Doctor Lake; and Major Joe Sam Covington; and Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, who never missed a reunion; and Corporal Jake Smedley, the color-bearer, with the Camp’s flag furled on its staff and borne under his arm; and Captain Shelby Woodward – and four or five more. There was even one avowed private. Also, and not to be overlooked on any account, there was Uncle Zach Matthews, an ink-black, wrinkled person, with a shiny bald head polished like old rosewood, and a pair of warped legs bent outward like saddlebows. Personally Uncle Zach was of an open mind regarding the merits and the outcome of the Big War. As he himself often put it:

“Yas, suh – I ain’t got no set prejudices ary way. In de spring of ‘61 I went out wid my own w’ite folks, as body-sarvant to my young marster, Cap’n Harry Matthews – and we suttinly did fight dem bluebellies up hill and down dale fer three endurin’ years or more; but in de campaignin’ round Nashville somewhars I got kind of disorganized and turn’t round someway; and, when I sorter comes to myself, lo and behole, ef I ain’t been captured by de Fed’rul army! So, rather’n have any fussin’ ‘bout it, I j’ined in wid dem; and frum den on till de surrender I served on de other side – cookin’ fer one of their gin’els and doin’ odd jobs round de camp; but when ‘twas all over I come on back home and settled down ag’in ‘mongst my own folks, where I properly belonged. Den, yere a few years back, some of ‘em tum’t in and done some testifyin’ fer me so’s I could git my pension. Doctor Lake, he says to me hisse’f, he says; ‘Zach, bein’ as de Yankee Gover’mint is a passin’ out dis yere money so free you might jess as well have a little chunk of it too!’ And he – him and Mistah Charley Reed and some others, they helped me wid my papers; and, of course, I been mighty grateful to all dem gen’l’men ever since.”

So Uncle Zach drew his pension check quarterly, and regularly once a year went to the reunion as general factotum of the Camp, coming home laden with badges and heavy with small change. He and Judge Priest’s Jeff, who was of the second generation of freedom, now furnished a touch of intense color relief, sitting together in one of the rearmost seats, guarding the piled-up personal baggage of the veterans.

Shortly before train-time carriages came, bringing young Mrs. McLaurin, little Rita Covington and Miss Minnie Lyon – the matron of honor, the sponsor and the maid of honor respectively of the delegation. Other towns no larger would be sure to send a dozen or more sponsors and maids and matrons of honor; but the home Camp was proverbially moderate in this regard. As Captain Woodward had once said: “We are charmed and honored by the smiles of our womanhood, and we worship every lovely daughter of the South; but, at a reunion of veterans, somehow I do love to see a veteran interspersed here and there in among the fair sex.”

So now, as their special guests for this most auspicious occasion, they were taking along just these three – Rita Covington, a little eighteen-year-old beauty, and Minnie Lyon, a tall, fair, slender, pretty girl, and Mrs. Mc-Laurin. The two girls were in white linen, with touches of red at throat and waist; but young Mrs. McLaurin, who was a bride of two years’ standing and plump and handsome, looked doubly handsome and perhaps a wee mite plumper than common in a tailor-made suit of mouse-gray, that was all tricked out with brass buttons and gold-braided cuffs, and a wide black belt, with a cavalry buckle. That the inspired tailor who built this costume had put the stars of a major-general on the collar and the stripes of a corporal on the sleeve was a matter of no consequence whatsoever. The color was right, the fit of the coat was unflawed by a single wrinkle fore or aft, and the brass buttons poured like molten gold down the front. Originally young Mrs. McLaurin had intended to reserve her military suit for a crowning sartorial stroke on the day of the big parade; but at the last moment pride of possession triumphed over the whisperings of discretion, and so here she was now, trig and triumphant – though, if it must be confessed, a trifle closely laced in. Yet she found an immediate reward in the florid compliments of the old men. She radiated her satisfaction visibly as Doctor Lake and Captain Woodward ushered her and her two charges aboard the car with a ceremonious, Ivanhoeish deference, which had come down with them from their day to this, like the scent of old lavender lingering in ancient cedar chests.

A further martial touch was given by the gray coats of the old men, by the big Camp badges and bronze crosses proudly displayed by all, and finally by Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, who, true to a habit of forty years’ standing, was wearing the rent and faded jacket that he brought home from the war, and carrying on his shoulder the ancient rusted musket that had served him from Sumter to the fall of Richmond.

The last of the party was on the decorated coach, the last ordinary traveler had boarded the single day-coach and the conductor was signaling for the start, when an erect old man, who all during the flurry of departure had been standing silent and alone behind the protecting shadow of the far side of the station, came swiftly across the platform, stepping with a high, noiseless, deerstalker’s tread, and, just as the engine bleated its farewell and the wheels began to turn, swung himself on the forward car. At sight of two little crossed flags fluttering almost above his head he lifted his slouch hat in a sort of shamed salute; but he kept his face turned resolutely away from those other old men to the rear of him. He cramped his great length down into a vacant seat in the daycoach, and there he sat, gazing straight ahead at nothing, as the train drew out of the station, bearing him to his two years at hard labor and these one-time comrades of his to their jubilating at the annual reunion.

As for the train, it went winding its leisurely and devious way down the branch line toward the Junction, stopping now and then at small country stations. The air that poured in through the open windows was sweet and heavy with Maytime odors of blossoming and blooming. In the tobacco patches the adolescent plants stood up, fresh and velvet-green. Mating red birds darted through every track-side tangle of underbrush and wove threads of living flame back and forth over every sluggish, yellow creek; and sparrowhawks teetered above the clearings, hunting early grasshoppers. Once in a while there was a small cotton-patch.

It was warm – almost as warm as a summer day. The two girls fanned themselves with their handkerchiefs and constantly brushed cinders off their starched blouses. Mrs. Mc-Laurin, buttoned in to her rounded throat, sat bolt-upright, the better to keep wrinkles from marring the flawless fit of her regimentals. She suffered like a Christian martyr of old, smiling with a sweet content – as those same Christian martyrs are said to have suffered and smiled. Judge Priest, sitting one seat to the rear of her, with Major Covington alongside him, napped lightly with his head against the hot red plush of the seat-back. Sergeant Jimmy Bagby found the time fitting and the audience receptive to his celebrated and more than familiar story of what on a certain history-making occasion he heard General Breckinridge say to General Buckner, and what General Buckner said to General Breckinridge in reply.