Negro Tales Part 2

What Noah felt and thought while digging Patsy's grave would make a serious, instructive volume. A like record of Caleb and Melviny, as they stood before the magistrate, would show the brute in man, the folly in woman. So long as woman is sure she has mastered man, so long is man sure to degrade woman. 'Tis the equation of the fall. The rib that gave woman life ever waits to give her temptation and death.

Caleb had been away from Melviny six months when their child was born.

Fancy a man, dirty, ragged, and lousy, sitting beside a post. Notice the convenience of the post. Look well at the grin that is indicative of a bite; forget not the smile that means one intruder less. Why those dice? He shakes them in his hand, throws them out, and says seven. Any money at stake? No! Any fellow-players? No! See the point? Look closely!

When he grins he shakes the dice. Know you what that means? There is a bite. When he smiles he throws out the dice and says seven. Understand that? The post and a movement of his back have done the work, and there is one intruder less. He is actually gambling with the lice on his back.

A fellow-gambler comes up and says: "Caleb, you have an heir in your family. Happy dog you should be."

"Let's celebrate it with a game," says Caleb.

He throws down a ten-dollar bill; the other lays down five silver dollars.

Caleb shakes the dice, grins fiercely, throws them out, smiles a double smile, and says seven twice. This means a double victory. More lice have been killed, and five dollars are won.

"Five more! Will you have it?" asks Caleb.

"I'm a gambling man and never flinch," says the other. He lays down five more silver dollars. Caleb rises and uses the post vigorously. His face is a solid grin. The dice are shaken and leap from his hand. The broad grin relaxes into a little smile that spreads so as to almost hide his nose. His left hand a.s.sists the post, while with the right he picks up the silver dollars.

"A gambling man are you?" twits Caleb.

"Yes," nods the other.

"Then a generous man am I," continues Caleb. "Take the ten-dollar bill and remember you have met Caleb."

"Caleb," replies the other, "I am a more generous man than you. Take back the counterfeit bill and keep the silver dollars you have stolen. I will a.s.sist you further by inventing a new way of killing lice."

"Lice, sir?" roared Caleb. "Where are they? Do you mean----?"

"I mean a post is a good louse-killer, but a little oil and a match are better."

Caleb, as you know by this time, was a coward. He outran fire-and-oil justice, and was caught in the mesh of circ.u.mstances. He leaped over a beehive and alighted between two lines of barbed-wire fence. After spending the night with barbed-wire and bees he was very properly removed to the hospital.

"His legs must be amputated," said the physicians.

"That means what?" asked Caleb, arousing himself as from a dream.

"Death, perchance," said they.

"That means the morgue?" asked he, with a grunt.

"For such as you, yes," replied one.

"My legs, gentlemen, my legs! The morgue! The morgue! I see it. How cold it is! Gentlemen, are you gentlemen? My legs! My legs!"

The next day he learned that his legs had been taken off. The following day he roared about the morgue and fought with both hands. He cried out at intervals:

"Off! Off, you doctors! My legs are here to carry me from the morgue, but you are waiting to cut them off again. Off, you butchers! Come, my right leg! Come, my left! On, my right leg! On my left! Yes! Yes!

Welcome, tried friends! Down the steps now! Halfway down are we! Back!

Back, you butchers! You shall not! My right foot--you shall not turn around. 'Tis done. The toes are where the heel should be. I go a step forward and fall back a step. Your knives are sharp, you butchers. My right leg is off and hops upstairs. My left leg is off and hops downstairs. My body falls and is carried to the morgue. The morgue, gentlemen, is so cold--so cold!"

After this there were several hours of indistinct raving. The next day his legless body was upon a marble slab in the morgue.

His fellow-gamblers, hearing of his fate, begged his body that they might give it a "decent" burial. They removed it to an old out-house and sat up with it the first night. Why do they gaze upon it so often? Why do their hands touch his face and hands? Would they learn a lesson from the cold, deathly touch? The next night, the next, the next, and the next it is alone.

You searchers of the city's offal, you living buzzards who remove the dead and rotten of your kind, fling open the doors! Is that Caleb you find? 'Tis a part of him. His legs are buried somewhere. His ears and fingers are in the pockets of his fellow-gamblers. Now carry out Caleb minus Caleb. Stop up your nose--stop up your nose!

RODNEY

Rodney was an illegitimate child. He knew not what this meant, but the sting of it embittered his young life.

The Negro has as much prejudice as the white man. Under like conditions the negro would make the same laws against the white. This crept out in the treatment of Rodney. His worst enemies were always negroes. The Anglo-Saxon blood in his veins made scoffers of some and demons of others.

To be pitied is the boy who has never framed the word "father" upon his lips. Rodney attempted it once, but failed, and never tried it again. He stood before his father bareheaded and with the coveted word upon his lips.

"You have a fine head of hair," said his father.

"That's what people say," replied Rodney.

"Are you proud of it?"

"Should I not be, sir?"

"Well, my little man, it's a disgrace to you."

This was the first and last meeting of Rodney and his father.

Once two fine ladies of ebony hue visited his mother, to show their silk dresses and to take dinner. A large dish of parched horse-corn was placed in the center of the table. His mother said a solemn blessing, and the ladies looked vexed.

"My dear people," she said, after looking them into a smile, "if you are good, this is good enough. If you are not good, it is too good. In either case, help yourselves."

Rodney learned from this and similar incidents to make the most of a bad case.

"A little corn, if you please," said one. She was helped plentifully by Rodney's mother.

"Give me a part of yours," said the second to the first. She received about four-fifths of it.

"You are too generous," said Rodney's mother, and refilled the plate.

Rodney sat on the floor, stroked his cat, and eyed the fine dresses. The ladies munched with dignity, or fingered the laces on their sleeves.

"I see Rodney has had the smallpox," said one.

"Yes," replied his mother.