Birthright - T.S. Stribling
At the first sound, however, Jim Pink became suddenly alert. He took
three strides ahead of Peter, and as he went he whispered over his
shoulder:
"Beat it, nigger! beat it!"
The mulatto recognized one of Jim Pink's endless stupid attempts at
comedy. It would be precisely Jim Pink's idea of a jest to give Peter a
little start. As the mulatto stood looking about among the cedars for
the person who had called his name, it amazed him that Jim Pink could be
so utterly insane; that he performed some buffoonery instantly, by
reflex action as it were, upon the slightest provocation. It was almost
a mania with Jim Pink; it verged on the pathological.
The clown, however, was pressing his joke. He was pretending great fear,
and was shouting out in his loose minstrel voice:
"Hey, don' shoot down dis way, black man, tull I makes my exit!" And a
voice, rich with contempt, called back:
"You needn't be skeered, you fool rabbit of a nigger!"
Peter turned with a qualm. Quite close to him, and in another direction
from which he had been looking, stood Tump Pack. The ex-soldier looked
the worse for wear after his jail sentence. His uniform was frayed, and
over his face lay a grayish cast that marks negroes in bad condition. At
his side, attached by a belt and an elaborate shoulder holster, hung a
big army revolver, while on the greasy lapel of his coat was pinned his
military medal for exceptional bravery on the field of battle.
"Been lookin' fuh you fuh some time, Peter," he stated grimly.
Peter considered the formidable figure with a queer sensation. He tried
to take Tump's appearance casually; he tried to maintain an air of
ordinariness.
"Didn't know you were back."
"Yeah, I's back."
"Have you--been looking for me?"
"Yeah."
"Didn't you know where I was staying?"
"Co'se I did; up 'mong de white folks. You know dey don' 'low no
shootin' an' killin' 'mong de white folks." He drew his pistol from the
holster with the address of an expert marksman.
[Illustration: "Naw yuh don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an'
march on to niggertown"]
Peter stood, with a quickening pulse, studying his assailant. The glade,
the air, the sunshine, seemed suddenly drawn to a tension, likely to,
break into violent commotion. His abrupt danger brought Peter to a
feeling of lightness and power. A quiver went along his spine. His
nostrils widened unconsciously as he calculated a leap and a blow at
Tump's gun.
The soldier took a step backward, at the same time bringing the barrel
to a ready.
"Naw you don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an' march on to
Niggertown."
"What for?" Peter still tried to be casual, but his voice held new
overtones.
"Because, nigger, I means to drap you right on de Main Street o'
Niggertown, 'fo' all dem niggers whut's been a-raggin' me 'bout you an'
Cissie. I's gwine show dem fool niggers I don' take no fumi-diddles
off'n nobody."
"Tump," gasped Jim Pink, in a husky voice, "you oughtn't shoot Peter; he
mammy jes daid."
"'En she won' worry none. Turn roun', Peter, an' when I says, 'March,'
you march." He leveled his pistol. "'Tention! Rat about face! March!"
Peter turned and moved off down the noiseless path, walking with the
stiff gait of a man who expects a terrific blow from behind at any
instant.
The mulatto walked twenty or more paces amid a confusion of self-
protective impulses. He thought of whirling on Tump even at this late
date. He thought of darting behind a cedar, but he knew the man behind
him was an expert shot, and something fundamental in the brown man
forbade his getting himself killed while running away. It was too
undignified a death.
Presently he surprised himself by calling over his shoulder, as a sort
of complaint:
"How came you with the pistol, Tump? Thought it was against the law to
carry one."
"You kin ca'y 'em ef you don' keep 'em hid," explained the ex-soldier in
a wooden voice. "Mr. Bobbs tol' me dat when he guv my gun back."
The irony of the thing caught Peter, for the authorities to arrest Tump
not because he was trying to kill Peter, but because he went about his
first attempt in an illegal manner. For the first time in his life the
mulatto felt that contempt for a white man's technicalities that flavors
every negro's thoughts. Here for thirty days his life had been saved by
a technical law of the white man; at the end of the thirty days, by
another technical law, Tump was set at liberty and allowed to carry a
weapon, in a certain way, to murder him. It was grotesque; it was
absurd. It filled Peter with a sudden violent questioning of the whole
white regime. His thoughts danced along in peculiar excitement.
At the turn of the hill the trio came in sight of the squalid semicircle
of Niggertown. Here and there from a tumbledown chimney a feather of
pale wood smoke lifted into the chill sunshine. The sight of the houses
brought Peter a sharp realization that his life would end in the curving
street beneath him. A shock at the incomprehensible brevity of his life
rushed over him. Just to that street, just as far as the curve, and his
legs were swinging along, carrying him forward at an even gait.
All at once he began talking, arguing. He tried to speak at an ordinary
tempo, but his words kept edging on faster and faster:
"Tump, I'm not going to marry Cissie Dildine."
"I knows you ain't, Peter."
"I mean, if you let me alone, I didn't mean to."
"I ain't goin' to let you alone."
"Tump, we had already decided not to marry."
After a short pause Tump said in a slightly different tone:
"'Pears lak you don' haf to ma'y her--comin' to yo' room."
A queer sinking came over the mulatto. "Listen, Tump, I--we--in my room
--we simply talked, that's all. She came to tell me she was goin away.
I--I didn't harm her, Tump." Peter swallowed. He despaired of being
believed.
But his defense only infuriated the soldier. He suddenly broke into
violent profanity.
"Hot damn you! shut yo black mouf! Whut I keer whut-chu done! You weaned
her away fum me. She won't speak to me! She won't look at me!" A sudden
insanity of rage seized Tump. He poured on his victim every oath and
obscenity he had raked out of the whole army.
Strangely enough, the gunman's outbreak brought a kind of relief to
Peter Siner. It exonerated him. He was not suspected of wronging Cissie;
or, rather, whether he had or had not wronged her made no difference to
Tump. Peter's crime consisted in mere being, in existing where Cissie
could see him and desire him rather than Tump. Why it calmed Peter to
know that Tump held no dishonorable charge against him the mulatto
himself could not have told. Tump's violence showed Peter the certainty
of his own death, and somehow it washed away the hope and the thought of
escape.
Half-way down the hill they entered the edge of Niggertown. The smell of
sties and stables came to them. Peter's thoughts moved here and there,
like the eyes of a little child glancing about as it is forced to leave
a pleasure-ground.
Peter knew that Jim Pink, who now made a sorry figure in their rear,
would one day give a buffoon's mimicry of this his walk to death. He
thought of Tump, who would have to serve a year or two in the Nashville
Penitentiary, for the murder of negroes is seldom severely punished. He
thought of Cissie. He was being murdered because Cissie desired him.
And then Peter remembered the single bit of wisdom that his whole life
had taught him. It was this: no people can become civilized until the
woman has the power of choice among the males that sue for her hand. The
history of the white race shows the gradual increase of the woman's
power of choice. Among the yellow races, where this power is curtailed,
civilization is curtailed. It was this principle that exalted chivalry.
Upon it the white man has reared all his social fabric.
So deeply ingrained is it that almost every novel written by white men
revolves about some woman's choice of her mate being thwarted by power
or pride or wealth, but in every instance the rightness of the woman's
choice is finally justified. The burden of every song is love, true
love, enduring love, a woman's true and enduring love.
And in his moment of clairvoyance Peter saw that these songs and stories
were profoundly true. Against a woman's selectiveness no other social
force may count.
That was why his own race was weak and hopeless and helpless. The males
of his people were devoid of any such sentiment or self-repression. They
were men of the jungle, creatures of tusk and claw and loin. This very
act of violence against his person condemned his whole race.
These thoughts brought the mulatto an unspeakable sadness, not only for
his own particular death, but that this idea, this great redeeming
truth, which burned so brightly in his brain, would in another moment
flicker out, unrevealed, and be no more.
CHAPTER XVIII
The coughing and rattling of an old motor-car as it rounded the
Niggertown curve delayed Tump Pack's act of violence. Instinctively, the
three men waited for the machine to pass before Peter walked out into
the road. Next moment it appeared around the turn, moving slowly through
the dust and spreading a veritable fog behind it.
All three negroes recognized the first glimpse of the hood and top, for
there are only three or four cars in Hooker's Bend, and these are as
well known as the faces of their owners. This particular motor belonged
to Constable Bobbs, and the next moment the trio saw the ponderous body
of the officer at the wheel, and by his side a woman. As the machine
clacked toward them Peter felt a certain surprise to see that it was
Cissie Dildine.
The constable in the car scrutinized the black men, by the roadside in a
very peculiar way. As he came near, he leaned across Cissie and almost
eclipsed the girl. He eyed the trio with his perpetual menace of a grin
on his broad red face. His right hand, lying across Cissie's lap, held a
revolver. When closest he shouted above the clangor of his engine:
"Now, none o' that, boys! None o' that! You'll prob'ly hit the gal if
you shoot, an' I'll pick you off lak three black skunks."
He brandished his revolver at them, but the gesture was barely seen, and
instantly concealed by the cloud; of dust following the motor. Next
moment it enveloped the negroes and hid them even from one another.
It was only after Peter was lost in the dust-cloud that the mulatto
really divined what was meant by Cissie's strange appearance with the
constable, her chalky face, her frightened brown eyes. The significance
of the scene grew in his mind. He stood with eyes screwed to slits
staring into the apricot-colored dust in the direction of the vanishing
noise.
Presently Tump Pack's form outlined itself in the yellow obscurity,
groping toward Peter. He still held his pistol, but it swung at his
side. He called Peter's name in the strained voice of a man struggling
not to cough:
"Peter--is Mr. Bobbs done--'rested Cissie?"
Peter could hardly talk himself.
"Don't know. Looks like it."
The two negroes stared at each other through the dust.
"Fuh Gawd's sake! Cissie 'rested!" Tump began to cough. Then he wheezed:
"Mine an' yo' little deal's off, Peter. You gotta he'p git her out."
Here he fell into a violent fit of coughing, and started groping his way
to the edge of the dust-cloud.
In the rush of the moment the swift change in Peter's situation appeared
only natural. He followed Tump, so distressed by the dust and disturbed
over Cissie that he hardly thought of his peculiar position. The dust
pinched the upper part of his throat, stung his nose. Tears trickled
from his eyes, and he pressed his finger against his upper lip, trying
not to sneeze. He was still struggling against the sneeze when Tump
recovered his speech.
"Wh-whut you reckon she done, Peter? She don' shoot craps, nor boot-
laig, nor--" He fell to coughing.
Peter got out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes.
"Let's go--to the Dildine house," he said.
The two moved hurriedly through the thinning cloud, and presently came
to breathable air, where they could see the houses around them.
"I know she done somp'n; I know she done somp'n," chanted Tump, with the
melancholy cadence of his race. He shook his dusty head. "You ain't
never been in jail, is you, black man?"
Peter said he had not.
"Lawd! it ain't no place fuh a woman," declared Tump. "You dunno nothin'
'bout it, black man. It sho ain't no place fuh a woman."
A notion of an iron cage floated before Peter's mind. The two negroes
trudged on through the crescent side by side, their steps raising a
little trail of dust in the air behind them. Their faces and clothes
were of a uniform dust color. Streaks of mud marked the runnels of their
tears down their cheeks.
The shrubbery and weeds that grew alongside the negro thoroughfare were
quite dead. Even the little avenue of dwarf box was withered that led
from the gate to the door of the Dildine home. The two colored men
walked up the little path to the door, knocked, and waited on the steps
for the little skirmish of observation from behind the blinds. None
came. The worst had befallen the house; there was nothing to guard. The
door opened as soon as an inmate could reach it, and Vannie Dildine
stood before them.
The quadroon's eyes were red, and her face had the moist, slightly
swollen appearance that comes of protracted weeping. She looked so frail
and miserable that Peter instinctively stepped inside and took her arm
to assist her in the mere physical effort of standing.
"What is the matter, Mrs. Dildine?" he asked in a shocked tone. "What's
happened to Cissie?"
Vannie began weeping again with a faint gasping and a racking of her
flat chest.
"It's--it's--O-o-oh, Peter!" She put an arm about him and began weeping
against him. He soothed her, patted her shoulder, at the same time
staring at the side of her head, wondering what could have dealt her
this blow.
Presently she steadied herself and began explaining in feeble little
phrases, sandwiched between sobs and gasps:
"She--tuk a brooch--Kep'--kep' layin' it roun' in--h-her way, th-that
young Sam Arkwright did,--a-an' finally she--she tuk hit. N-nen, when he
seen he h-had her, he said sh-sh-she 'd haf to d-do wh-whut he said, or
he'd sen' her to-to ja-a-il!" Vannie sobbed drearily for a few moments
on Peter's breast. "Sh-she did fuh a while: 'n 'en sh-she broke off wid
h-him, anyhow, an'--an' he swo' out a wa'nt an sont her to jail!" The
mother sobbed without comfort, and finally added: "Sh-she in a delicate
fix now, an' 'at jail goin' to be a gloomy place fuh Cissie."
The three negroes stood motionless in the dusty hallway, motionless save
for the racking of Vannie's sobs.
Tump Pack stirred himself.
"Well, we gotta git her out." His words trailed off. He stood wrinkling
his half-inch of brow. "I wonder would dey exchange pris'ners; wonder ef
I could go up an' serve out Cissie's term."
"Oh, Tump!" gasped the woman, "ef you only could!"
"I'll step an' see, Miss Vannie. 'At sho ain't no place fuh a nice gal
lak Cissie." Tump turned on his mission, evidently intending to walk to
Jonesboro and offer himself in the place of the prisoner.
Peter supported Vannie back into the poor living-room, and placed her in
the old rocking-chair before the empty hearth. There was where he had
sat the evening Cissie made her painful confession to him. Only now did
he realize the whole of what Cissie was trying to confess.
Peter Siner overtook Tump Pack a little way down the crescent, opposite
the Berry cabin. The thoroughfare was deserted, because the weather was
cold and the scantily clad children were indoors. However, from every
cabin came sound of laughing and romping, and now and then a youngster
darted through the cold from one hut to another.
It seemed to Peter Siner only a little while since he and Ida May were
skittering through wintry weather from one fire to another, with Cissie,
a wailing, wet-nosed little spoil-sport, trailing after them. And then,
with a wheeling of the years, they were scattered everywhere.
As the negroes passed the Berry cabin, Nan Berry came out with an old
shawl around her bristling spikes. She stopped the two men and drew them
to her gate with a gesture.
"Wha you gwine?"
"Jonesbuh."
"Whut you goin' do 'bout po-o-o' Cissie?"
"Goin' to see ef the sheriff won' take me 'stid o' Cissie."
"Tha's right," said Nan, nodding solemnly. "I hopes he will. You is mo'
used to it, Tump."
"Yeah, an' 'at jail sho ain't no place fuh a nice gal lak Cissie."
"Sho ain't," agreed Nan.
Peter interrupted to say he was sure the sheriff would not exchange.
The hopes of his listeners fell.
"Weh-ul," dragged out Nan, with a long face, "of co'se now it's lak dis:
ef Cissie goin' to stay in dat ja-ul, she's goin' to need some mo'
clo'es 'cep'n whut she's got on,--specially lak she is."
Tump stared down the swing of the crescent.
"'Fo' Gawd, dis sho don' seem lak hit's right to me," he said.
Nan let herself out at the rickety gate. "You niggers wait heah tull I
runs up to Miss Vannie's an' git some o' Cissie's clo'es fuh you to tote
her."
Tump objected.
"Jail ain't no place fuh clean clo'es. She jes better serve out her term
lak she is, an' wash up when she gits th'ugh."
"You fool nigger!" snapped Nan. "She kain't serve out her term lak she
is!"
"Da' 's so," said Tump.
The three stood silent, Nan and Tump lost in blankness, trying to think
of something to do for Cissie. Finally Nan said:
"I heah she done commit gran' larceny, an' they goin' sen' her to de
pen."
"Whut is gran' larceny?" asked Tump.
"It's takin' mo' at one time an' de white folks 'speck you to take,"
defined the woman. "Well, I'll go git her clo'es." She hurried off up
the crescent.
Peter and Tump waited in the Berry cabin for Nan's return. Outside, the
Berry cabin was the usual clapboard-roofed, weather-stained structure;
inside, it was dark, windowless, and strong with the odor of black folk.
Some children were playing around the hearth, roasting chestnuts. Their
elders sat in a circle of decrepit chairs. It was so dark that when
Peter first entered he could not make out the little group, but he soon
recognized their voices: Parson Ranson, Wince Washington, Jerry
Dillihay, and all of the Berry family.
They were talking of Cissie, of course. They hoped Cissie wouldn't
really be sent to the penitentiary, that the white folks would let her
out in time for her to have her child at home. Parson Ranson thought it
would be bad luck for a child to be born in jail.
Wince Washington, who had been in jail a number of times, suggested that
they bail Cissie out by signing their names to a paper. He had been set
free by this means once or twice.
Sally, Nan's little sister, observed tartly that if Cissie hadn't acted
so, she wouldn't have been in jail.
"Don' speak lak dat uv dem as is in trouble, Sally," reproved old Parson
Ranson, solemnly; "anybody can say 'Ef.'"
"Sho am de troof," agreed Jerry Dillihay.
"Sho am, black man." The conversation drifted into the endless
moralizing of their race, but it held no criticism or condemnation of
Cissie. From the tone of the negroes one would have thought some
impersonal disaster had overtaken her. Every one was planning how to
help Cissie, how to make her present state more endurable. They were the
black folk, the unfortunate of the earth, and the pride of righteousness
is only to the well placed and the untempted.
Presently Nan came back with a bundle of Cissie's clothes. Tump took the
bundle of dainty lingerie, the intimate garments of the woman he loved,
and set forth on his quixotic errand. He tied it to his shoulder-holster
and set out. Peter went a little of the way with him. It was almost dusk
when they started. The chill of approaching night stung the men's faces.
As they walked past the footpath that led over the Big Hill, three
pistol-shots from the glade announced that the boot-leggers had opened
business for the night.
Tump paused and shivered. He said it was a cold night. He thought he
would like to get a kick of "white mule" to put a little heart in him.
It was a long walk to Jonesboro. He hesitated a moment, then turned off
the road around the crescent for the path through the glade.
A thought to dissuade Tump from drinking the fiery "singlings" of the
moonshiners crossed Peters mind, but he put it aside. Tump was a habitue
of the glade. All the physiological arguments upon which Peter could
base an argument were far beyond the ex-soldier's comprehension. So Tump
turned off through the dark trees. Peter watched him until all he could
see was the white blur of Cissie's underwear swinging against his
holster.
After Tump's disappearance, Peter stood for several minutes thinking.
His brief crusade into Niggertown had ended in a situation far outside
of his volition. That morning he had started out with some vague idea of
taking Niggertown in his hands and molding it in accordance with his
white ideas; but Niggertown had taken Peter into its hands, had
threatened his life, had administered to him profound mental and moral
shocks, and now had dropped him, like some bit of waste, with his face
set over the Big Hill for white town.
As Peter stood there it seemed to him there was something symbolic in
his attitude. He was no longer of the black world; he was of the white.
He did not understand his people; they eluded him.
He belonged to the white world; not to the village across the hill, but
to the North. Nothing now prevented him from going North and taking the
position with Farquhar. Cissie Dildine was impossible for him now.
Niggertown was immovable, at least for him. He was no Washington to lead
his people to a loftier plane. In fact, Peter began to suspect that he
was no leader at all. He saw now that his initial success with the Sons
and Daughters of Benevolence had been effected merely by the aura of his
college training. After his first misstep he had never rehabilitated
himself. He perhaps had a dash of the artistic in him, and the power to
mold ideas often confuses itself subjectively with the power to mold
human beings. In reality he did not even understand the people he
assumed to mold. A suspicion came to him that under the given conditions
their ways were more rational than his own.
As for Cissie Dildine, his duty by the girl, his queer protective
passion for her--all that was surely past now. After her lapse from all
decency there was no reason why he should spend another thought on her.
He would go North to Chicago.
The last of the twilight was fading in swift, visible gradations of
light. The cedars, the cabins, and the hill faded in pulse-beats of
darkness. Above the Big Hill the last ember of day smoldered against a
green-blue infinity. Here and there a star pricked the dome with a
wintry brilliance.
Then, somehow, the thought of Cissie looking out on that chilly sky
through iron bars tightened Peter's throat. He caught himself up sharply
for his emotion. He began a vague defense of the white man's laws on
grounds as cold and impersonal as the winter evening. Laws, customs, and
conventions were for the strengthening of men, to seed the select, to
winnow the weak. It was white logic, applied firmly, as by a white man.
But somehow the stars multiplied and kept Cissie's image before Peter--a
cold, frightened girl, harassed with coming motherhood, peering at those
chill, distant lights out of the blackness of a jail.
The mulatto decided to spend the night in his mother's cabin. He would
do his packing, and be ready for the down-river boat in the morning. He
found his way to his own gate in the darkness. He lifted it around,
entered, and walked to his door. When he tried to open it, he found some
one had bored holes through the shutter and the jamb and had wired it
shut.
Peter struck a match to see just what had been done. The flame displayed
a small sheet tacked on the door. He spent two matches investigating it.
It was a notice of levy, posted by the constable in an action of debt
brought against the estate of Caroline Siner by Henry Hooker. The owner
of the estate and the public in general were warned against removing
anything whatsoever from the premises under penalty exacted by the law
governing such offenses. Then Peter untwisted the wire and entered.
Peter searched about and found the tiny brass night-lamp which his
mother always had used. The larger glass-bowled lamp was gone. The
interior of the cabin was clammy from cold and foul from long lack of
airing. In the corner his mother's old four-poster loomed in the
shadows, but he could see some of its covers had been taken. He passed
into the kitchen with a notion of building a fire and eating a bite, but
everything edible had been abstracted. Even one of the lids of the old
step-stove was gone. Most of the pans and kettles had disappeared, but
the pretty old Dutch sugar-bowl remained on a bare paper-covered shelf.
Negro-like, whatever person or persons who had ransacked Peter's home
considered the sugar-bowl too fine to take. Or they may have thought
that Peter would want this bowl for a keepsake, and with that queer
compassion that permeates a negro's worst moments they allowed it to
remain. And Peter knew if he raised an outcry about his losses, much of
the property would be surreptitiously restored, or perhaps his neighbors
would bring back his things and say they had found them. They would help
him as best they could, just as they of the crescent would help Cissie
as best they could, and would receive her back as one of them when she
and her baby were finally released from jail.