Teeftallow/Chapter 16

A FEW days after Abner Teeftallow's rather justifiable drunkenness, Mr. Tug Beavers sat on his bed at the Scovell House filling the room with a strong smell of iodoform. He was dressing a finger which had got chewed during a fight at the Warrington dance. However, Tug had licked his man, Peck Bradley, in a fair fight, so Abner, Tug, Zed, and all the other denizens of the garage counted it a finger well spent.

Abner Teeftallow was doing nothing that morning further than waiting for a certain sound in the hall. To kill time he was polishing his black hair as glossily as might be and was trying to persuade it to make a large curl above his right eye. Mr. Beavers was questioning Abner about what had happened on the night of the dance.

"What did you fellows do at Shallburger's meetin'?" he pressed. "He's a feller I kain't quite make out."

"We adopted Socialism."

"What's that?"

"It's a plan to divide up all the work into such little bits, everybody will be out of a job most of the time."

"That's a hell of a plan."

"Yep, that's Socialism. . . ." Abner drew out his nickel watch, noted the minute, then began listening more nervously.

"Who'll support you-all?"

"The Guv'ment."

"How?"

"Pension us."

"Pension hell, don't you know the Guv'ment ain't goin' to pension you-all unless you got hurt in a fight?"

​At this moment Abner heard the sound for which he had been waiting, so began moving toward the door.

"I think Shallburger wants us to petition the Guv'ment to pension us."

"Hold on, wait—what will he say he wants it for?"

"So he won't haff to work—now I got to go."

"Fuh God's sake, hold on. What makes you so fidgety? You belong to 'em, don't you? How come you to join any such fool society?"

Abner opened the door and remarked briefly, "I was drunk," and stepped into the hallway, closing the door behind him.

His exit was accurately timed. Miss Nessie Sutton was just passing the door. He said "Good-mornin'" to the girl, and she said "Good-mornin'." Without further conversation Abner followed her down to breakfast.

The dining room of the Scovell House was dark and smelly as if air and sunlight were luxuries hardly to be arrived at in the country. The table linen was dirty and torn; the silver plating was worn off the spoons; the coffee cost thirty cents a pound. Yet Abner could never enter the dining room of the Scovell House without a certain embarrassment at the magnificence of its service. The Negro table boy in his dirty white coat always intimidated and irritated Abner with his hillman hostility to all Negroes. When the table boy asked Abner would he have his eggs boiled or fried, the white youth felt an inward tremor lest he should say or do the wrong thing.

A still greater hazard of a faux pas lay in the fact that Abner ate directly across the table from Nessie, so he was continually under her pansy and, the youth felt sure, critical eyes. Nessie herself unfolded her napkin and ordered her egg casually. She was in no trepidation whatever of the table boy.

Breakfast at the Scovell House began with about a three-fifths-cooked oatmeal, then bacon and eggs and coffee. Abner preferred milk but he felt coffee to be a more manly ​drink. Nessie herself drank it to keep from having a headache, she said. No one ever thought of the strangeness of Scovell House coffee preventing a headache.

Abner held his fork with his first and third fingers outside the handle and his second and little fingers on the inner or body side. His thumb opposed his index finger. This was the peculiar grasp of all hill youths as they clutch at straws of propriety when shipwrecked on social seas.

As breakfast proceeded in this unsure fashion, the table boy emerged from the kitchen, came up behind Abner, and said in a low thick voice, "Gemman wants to see you, Mistuh Abnah."

Abner looked around blankly.

"Wants to see me?"

"Yes, suh."

Abner was amazed. Never before in his life had he been called out by a gentleman. Now, coming on him like this at mealtime, he didn't know what to do. He made a move to go but corrected that as faulty. He remembered he should ask somebody's pardon, he didn't know whose. In rising he spilled his coffee. This unmanned him completely.

"I—I hope you'll pardon me," he stammered. Then stiff with self-consciousness, he started for the door.

"It's de back do', Mistuh Abnah," said the Negro.

Abner was overwhelmed. To have a guest at the back door! He turned beet-red and started for the kitchen door. The floor seemed to wobble beneath his feet. When he reached the back door he had to stare for several seconds before he recognized the tall awkward form of Zed Parrum.

"Was you eatin' breakfast?" asked Zed in a contrite voice.

Abner nodded and cleaned his teeth nervously with his tongue.

"If I'd a-knowed it, I wouldn't of disturbed you."

"That's all right, Zed, this time, but fur God's sake don't never do it no more."

"This was a case of pushancy," explained Zed in an undertone. He backed away from the door into the desolation ​of the back yard and nodded Abner to follow him. The mystery of Zed's manner calmed Abner's discomfiture. He followed, and when they were some distance from the house Zed said in a guarded tone, "I want you to do somethin' fur me."

Abner adopted the same tone, "All right, what is it?"

"I want you to go to the station an' buy me a ticket."

Abner stared, "Why, what fur?"

"That's all right what fur—will you do it?"

"M—yes." Abner stared at Zed in the wildest speculation.

Zed reached in his pocket and drew out a handful of bills and silver coins. He put it all in Abner's hands.

"All right, go ahead an' git the ticket," he hurried. "I'll stay in yore room tull you git back."

"But where do you want to go?" groped Abner, staring at the money.

"Jest as fur as that money'll take me!" snapped Zed. "Go ahead!"

"But, Zed, what direction!" Abner gazed at his friend in the utmost stupefaction.

"Toward Texas I reckon. Now, git out an' git back. I want to ketch the noon train out on the edge of town before it gits too fast fer me to jump aboard."

"Zed!" cried Abner, curiosity overcoming his hill reticence, "what in the worl' have you went an' done?"

"Not a thing in the worl'," interrupted Zed with awful intensity. "I'm jest leavin', that's all. I jest decided I ain't goin' to stay here no longer. Now, go ahead—talkin' ain't gittin' me out o' this town!"

There was a way through the hall which avoided the dining room. Abner chose this instantly and set out at a fast walk through the house, out the gate, then up the street to the station. At the ticket office he had a difficult time in purchasing seventeen dollars and forty-five cents' worth of transportation toward Texas. Abner did not know whether Zed wanted to go through Birmingham, Memphis, or Shreve​port. However, the station agent in the edge of Lane County is accustomed to meeting vague demands. Abner received a ticket to Marked Tree, Arkansas, and twelve cents in change. The agent did not ask Abner if he had any baggage to check; Abner's type never had. When such a youth travelled, he travelled unencumbered.

When Abner returned to his room with the ticket he found Tug Beavers and Zed in a low conversation which they broke off when he entered. Tug arose with the air of a man making his farewells.

"Well, Zed," he drawled out, "if it so happens that I don't see you no more, we shore won't meet fer a long time."

"Be good, Tug," countered Zed, with the worn parting phrases of the hill country, "an' if you kain't be good, be keerful."

"So long, Zed," put in Abner, "don't do nothin' I wouldn't do."

"All right, an' don't you boys shoot craps with nobody that uses loaded dice."

"We won't. Good-bye, Zed."

"Good-bye, boys, an' I if don't git back the ol' gray mare's yo'rn."

So the three teamsters parted, glossing over the bleakness of their parting with mock moral injunctions after the manner of their kind. Abner and Tug tramped downstairs and started to work.

They were late, and as they hurried along the street, Abner was stung with certain jealous twinges because Zed had told Tug his real troubles and had not told him. He wanted to ask Tug, but pride forbade. If Zed did not trust him, then he didn't want to know. He was just as indifferent to Zed as Zed was to him. Then squarely in the midst of these thoughts he turned to his brooding companion and asked, "Tug, what's Zed havin' to leave town fer?"

Tug came out of a trance to say, "Oh—he jest took a ramblin' spell."

So that was the way the land lay—Abner was to be ex​cluded completely from this intimate affair! The youth flushed under his sunburn. He felt bitterly toward Zed, and yet the fact that Zed was running away lay like a little lead weight somewhere at the base of Abner's throat. Clearly he would not see Zed again; Zed, with his good-natured wooden face and endless foolishness.

In the midst of this depressing mood, a sudden glorious view burst on his eyes which made him instantly forget the slight his friends had put upon him. The two companions were passing the L. & N. switch yard where the new railroad hitched on to the main line; there in the morning sunlight a small locomotive with two flat cars was puffing out of the switch yard on to the new track.

Tug saw it too for he shouted, "Look, Railroad Jones's injun's come!"

Instantly both youths set out at top speed after the puffing engine. The two flat cars were loaded with men who presently saw the boys running after them. The locomotives appeared not to be going fast, but Abner's best efforts gained nothing at all. He jerked off his hat and waved it for the train to stop. So did Tug. But the passengers began laughing at the two labourers trying to catch a train.

Tug bellowed desperately, "Hold on, you fools! Slow up! Let us on!" then gasped to Abner, "Missin' the first ride after we built the damn thing!" He bore ahead of Abner in a mighty effort to make this initial trip.

But the little locomotive steadily widened the gap. The men on the flats pointed and guffawed. Tug fell into desperate profanity.

At that moment a great fat man on the first flat went climbing over the tender at the risk of his neck. He got to where he could see the engineer and fireman. He gesticulated at them, then a miracle happened. The puffs ceased, came a wail of airbrakes, and a little later the train came backing toward the boys.

To Abner's amazement, the man who stopped the train was Railroad Jones. Evidently he had been off somewhere; ​up North, no doubt, where such things are procurable; and had brought back this engine and the cars. How a man would set about buying such things, where they came from, who sold them, moved Abner with the same sense of mystery as did the glitter of the stars.

Railroad Jones himself, with his square yellow face, black mane, and birthmark, reached down and helped the boys up in his flat. "Well, Abner," he beamed down on his teamster, "we shore built her, my boy! Tug, we got her to goin' at last! When I seen it was you fellows, I says, 'Boys, we got to go back an' git them boys; they holp build her and they're intitled to a ride same as us.'" As the engine resumed its forward movement, he cried out,

"Watch her puff! Ain't she a dandy!"

As a matter of fact, Abner had been disappointed in the engine. He had expected a new glittering locomotive to run on the long westward curve of yellow ties and black rails, but this one was rusty, old, evidently second-hand. But this welcome by Railroad Jones, this backing the train to pick him up, filled him with the greatest enthusiasm. It undid all the preachments Shallburger had ever made or would ever make. The notion of striking against a genuine fellow like Railroad Jones was ridiculous.

The flat cars rattled and shook under their feet. The men held to one another to keep from falling down.

"Yonder's an auto!" shouted Jones gloriously, pointing at a motor car along a parallel road, "bet ever' man in the crowd a dollar we pass her!"

A number of voices took him.

"It's a bet! Whoop her up, boys! Monty, tell Henry to give her more coal; git this shebang under way!"

The man called Monty climbed the tender and began bawling at the engineer and pointing toward the motor to transfer the idea of a race. In a few minutes black smoke boiled out of the stack. The puffing increased in speed and intensity. A rising wind beat the men's faces. The rattle of the flats changed to a roar.

​Unfortunately this demonstration attracted the attention of the motorist, who sensed a race, turned on more gas, and ran off and left the engine.

Railroad Jones roared with laughter at his defeat.

"Hey, boys, you tell 'em!" he shouted above the noise, "I ain't got the heart! But we got a railroad through old Lane jest the same-y! Here, come on up, boys, an' collect yore bets!" He drew out a roll of greenbacks as thick as his arm, and began peeling off dollar bills. Some of the men attempted to refuse the wager, but Jones would not hear to it, "Take it! Take it!" he shouted. "It's a souven-air!"

The whole trip became a love feast. Flasks of whisky began circulating among the men. The engineer ahead started a continuous ear-splitting shriek on his diminutive whistle.

"The name of this road!" shouted Jones, "is the Lane County Farmers' and Lumbermen's Railroad! That's what I name her now!" and he broke a bottle of illicit corn whisky against the tender.

The entire rolling stock of the L. C. F. & L. Ry. dashed along amid thin persimmon-grown hills, through narrow but rich creek bottoms; into pine woods; along desolate cut-over lands. Rabbits bolted out of the path of the monster; coveys of quails hurtled into air; half-wild hogs snorted and dashed off through the woods.

On the rear flat, two hillmen, who were old friends, and therefore could afford it, began fighting. Their buddies made a ring around them to keep them from toppling off the car to destruction.

After a run of two and a half miles, the excursion reached the end of the line where the men were working. The advent of the engine and of Railroad Jones disorganized everything. The man came flocking about the engine, all filed with a sense of proprietorship. They climbed over the locomotive and walked around it, examining its intricate mechanism. One of the men began telling a very old joke ​about how the train had chased a man along the track; how the engineer had shouted, "Get off!" and the farmer had yelled, "If I get off into the ploughed ground, you fellers will ketch me an' run over me!" All the men about the teller roared as if it actually had happened.

After about an hour of these felicitations, the foremen persuaded the men to go to work. Abner got out his team and hitched it to his scoop, but his work was so overshadowed by the fact of the engine actually standing there on the track, he could hardly think of what he was doing.

Lane County really had a railroad! How "smart" Railroad Jones was to build one! He recalled the suit about the heating stoves which Railroad had won in Lanesburg. A brainy man! A big-hearted man to back up the train and let him and Tug ride!

Out in front of Abner a small army of men was working on the right of way, levelling it, cutting away the hills, filling the valleys. The L. C. F. & L. Ry. was stretching westward into virgin country. The August sun climbed the heavens and looked down on this activity. It grew hot. Abner's mules danced with fretfulness; the youth jerked their reins and cursed. He went round and round in the heat, falling into the peculiar coma of labour.

A little before noon, Tug came to Abner and told him if he would take out his mules right away they could catch the train back to Irontown and see Zed off on the twelve o'clock.

Abner started at once for the stables. The foreman came up and wanted to know why Abner was quitting work at that hour. Abner told the foreman that all he, the foreman, had to do was to mark down his, Abner's, time, and if he didn't like what he was doing he could "chubb" it. Thereupon Abner and Tug hurried to catch the cars for the return trip.

On the way back Abner rode on the last flat and watched the landscape spin back to Irontown. And as he rattled along it occurred to him that each day his work would be getting farther and farther away from Irontown, and eventu​ally he would be forced to leave the village to get closer to his job and that would end his daily association with Nessie. This was a gray prospect; however, he hoped the change would not be soon.

Then he thought of Zed Parrum again; then of the time he had seen Zed and Mr. Ditmas and Professor Overall in the black jacks near the poorhouse farm. He remembered how he and Beatrice had hidden behind the plum bushes and yodeled. It all seemed a long, long time ago. He thought of Mr. Sandage who had been elected as county trustee and was living in Lanesburg now. How they had all split up. A melancholy fell over Abner at the instability of human associations. At that moment the little locomotive broke into a long furious shriek—they were entering Irontown.

Ten minutes later the two teamsters hurried along, filled with that queer human impulse to renew the pain of their parting with Zed. Because it was possible to see Zed again, they felt they must.

They kept a bright lookout down the village street, and also across side alleys for, if they had gauged Zed alright, he was likely to seek the outskirts of the village by the most inconspicuous paths.

As they walked they listened for the far-away blast of the noon train. It was due very soon, but it was nearly always late.

Abner's original curiosity returned concerning Zed's secrecy. He wanted to ask Tug again, but pride forbade him. Then he thought bitterly that if Zed had been as good a friend to him as he to Zed, Zed never would have refused to tell him, no matter what— Here Abner lost track of his own meandering recrimination for a short cut—Zed hadn't treated him right! Neither had Tug! They had both used him pretty rotten, he called it.

In the midst of his reverie Tug ejaculated in astonishment, "Why, yonder's the damn fool walkin' along there big as life!"

​Abner looked and sure enough, there was Zed walking down the village street with an old country man.

"Who's the old man?" asked Abner.

Tug strained his eyes. "That looks kinder like ol' man Tolbert."

The teamsters hurried forward, and as they drew near Abner noted that old man Tolbert held a gun in his hand, a long, muzzle-loading squirrel rifle. Abner had not observed it until it swung out of line with his eyes. Now, such an accessory was not at all uncommon among the hillmen who came into the village, but just at this juncture the squirrel rifle took on a certain possible significance to Abner. He looked sharply at Tug and suddenly realized that Tug had recognized old man Tolbert at an almost impossible distance. Then it dawned on Abner that there was something queer in the very way Zed was walking. The teamster forgot his jealousy and hurried on with a vague apprehension growing in his heart.

At some distance ahead two or three little boys ran out into the street and began whooping; still farther on, where the business section of the village set in, a crowd was gathering.

An impulse struck both teamsters to cut down an alley, run to the garage, and be there when Zed and old man Tolbert passed. It would have been undignified for them to come running after Zed right before the gathering crowd, that would not have looked right. The fact that this curiosity spurred flight did not comport exactly with the passionate friendship Abner at that moment had been vowing for Zed never struck the youth.

Both teamsters bolted down a by-way and ran stooping along a parallel alley and presently panted into the side door of the garage. Then they dodged among motors and spare parts, sharply afraid that Zed would pass the front door before they arrived there.

On the oily platform in front of the garage some half-a-dozen youths were grinning and staring fixedly down the ​street. The teamsters entered this group breathing deeply.

Zed and the old man were just coming past. Tolbert carried his squirrel rifle carelessly, in his left hand, on the opposite side from Zed.

Mr. Parrum moved along with a set and painful grin on his face with which he answered the multi-faced grin of his cronies in the garage. He even essayed to wink and nod at the old man stalking at his side; he meant this to show that no matter what happened he was still the same old devil-may-care Zed Parrum.

Old man Tolbert himself glanced neither to the right nor the left but marched straight on with the cheeks and upper parts of his bewhiskered face looking as if they were chopped out of gray stone.

Abner was amazed beyond all experience and knowledge. He twitched to ask questions concerning this unparalleled scene, but this was impossible with Zed so close. Everyone else knew. The moment the two had passed, the crowd broke into the most significant winks and grins, and immediately fell in behind the pair.

Old man Tolbert and Zed pursued their way past several doors, past the Grand, Belshue's jewellery shop, a grocery, and came to a little dusty one-room frame building which was the law office of Buckingham Sharp. It was also the office Squire Meredith used when he was in town. The mysterious pair entered this building, and then, notwithstanding the heated day, closed the door with a bang.

However, there was no curtain to the dusty window. The garage gang framed that window, like bees around a hive. Abner half climbed another man's shoulder and in turn had his own shoulders occupied. Abner's view of the interior was somewhat interfered with by reflections. He saw a blue sky, a rolling summer cloud, the peak of the storehouse across the street. But by disregarding this skyey scene, he dimly made out Squire Meredith inside while before him stood Zed Parrum and a girl with their hands joined together.

​In the following weekly issue of the Irontown Dispatch, this notice appeared:

Last Wednesday at noon, the friends and acquaintances of Miss Pearlie Tolbert and Mr. Zedekiah Parrum were pleasantly surprised by the happy culmination of their romance in matrimony. The marriage of this popular young couple was quite unexpected. Miss Tolbert was attired in a simple travelling costume and is one of Lane County's most beautiful and charming examples of young womanhood, while Mr. Parrum is a prominent railroad man who played a leading part in the construction of the new Lane County Farmers' and Lumbermen's Railroad. May the Voice that Breathed o'er Eden never cease to wake to harmonious minstrelsy that divine tie of tenderness and yearning that writes across the firmament of this charming couple in letters of glorious emblazonry, that magic vocable, "LOVE." Now is the time to subscribe.

It must be stated here in defence of the editor's eloquence that this last phrase did not really belong in the wedding notice. The printer's devil accidentally mixed it in when he made up the form.