Teeftallow/Chapter 3

THE admiring procession followed Mr. Jones through the July sunshine to his office. The fat man mounted his high porch and announced that the county court had voted the railroad bonds, and now he wanted labourers at Irontown to begin work on the following Monday morning. The pay, the financier announced, would be two and a quarter a day for a man, and four a day for a man and his span of mules; feed and stable furnished.

Apart from the consideration of these high wages, every man within the sound of Mr. Jones's buzzing voice already was predisposed to work for the magnate because of his victory over the Cincinnati Stove Company. That was a salutary turning of the tables on the city smart-alecks. It satisfied a vague animosity which every hillman felt toward the great world beyond the hills, with its opulence and social classes. Which, in brief, the hill people feel toward the American nation which has usurped the rôle of oppressor, tax gatherer, and maker of grinding laws; a rôle once occupied, centuries ago, by the British Government toward the forbears of these same hill folk. Now for Railroad Jones to beat the law with a legal contract was certainly a very turning on the enemy of his own cannon.

A number of men came up and enlisted as labourers in Railroad Jones's enterprise, and still others, who eventually would hire, put off their decision a few days or a few weeks to think the matter over.

When the hiring was finished, Abner saw Mr. Sandage beckoning to him, and a few minutes later the boy and the poor-farm keeper rejoined the railroad builder and set out ​once more for the courthouse to settle Abner's little case, as the magnate put it.

As they walked back Mr. Jones rehearsed his non-educational theories very earnestly, after the manner of a man priming himself for a forensic effort.

Abner listened with conviction to the fat man's diatribe against the weakening influence of literacy on the mentality, but on his way through the courthouse yard a recollection of the girl with the corn-silk hair and the lake-blue eyes brushed away the great man's homily. Abner searched the grounds for her with his glances, but she was gone. He scrutinized the groups of women who were still on the lawn, but she was not among them. Her absence gave him a queer tightening of the heart. He had a panicky impulse to desert his companions and search for her over the yard, the square, the stores. He felt sure she was just about to start home, and that if he would hurry he could reach her in time for a word. He did not know her name or where she lived; and indeed he did not know what was this last word which he so ardently desired to express.

But naturally he could not desert his companions on the instant. The greater ponderousness of the purposes of age over the whims of youth swept him irrevocably into the courthouse. He entered the door looking back, searching with a kind of inward ache for some glimpse of her, but the walls closed about him, shutting out the lawn and sunshine, shutting in the gloom, and the girl was lost.

Abner had straggled three or four men behind his monitors. He was in a narrow corridor through which struggled the inflow and outflow of the two courtrooms. The two streams of men ground past each other smelling of sweat, horses, leather, whisky, tobacco. An occasional Negro lent his pungent odour to the mélange. Abner tried to catch up with his friends, but a farmer immediately in front of him told him to "take it ca'm."

The reason for this extraordinary packing was that a jury was being empanelled for the Shelton murder trial in the ​second story. Abner heard the crowd whispering about this trial, "Peck Bradley's got Buckingham Sharp for his lawyer." "The Sheltons have fee'd John A. Stone." A murder trial is the one event in Lane County where life is sufficiently concentrated and foreshortened for the hill folk to feel the grip and drama of its flow. Listening to these rumours, Abner forgot the girl again and struggled forward with a desire to get into the Circuit Court and see this legal battle. Unfortunately, his serious business of avoiding an education lay in the relative penny show of the county court on the lower floor. He followed Railroad Jones and Mr. Sandage through a dirty door into the county courtroom, which was itself congested. The best the trio could do was to press themselves around the walls and finally line up when they came to an open space. Here they stood and looked over the crowded house. In a little railed-off chancel sat the justices of the peace of the county who composed the court. Behind a desk facing the justices lolled a musty old man who was the county judge, and by virtue of his office, the chairman of the court. At his side sat the county court clerk, a rough blond young man with a bored look. An officer "waited" on the court; this was a constable from an outlying district. The constable now beckoned a crippled man inside the chancel before the justices. The county judge leaned over to expectorate into a private cuspidor beside his chair, then looked appraisingly at the cripple.

"Gentlemen of the court," he mumbled around a quid of tobacco, "this crippled man wants to peddle goods in Lane County without a license; you-all see how crippled he is, are you ready for the question?"

A voice from the justices signified readiness.

"All in favour of lettin' him peddle without a license vote aye; all opposed, no."

A grunting of ayes filled the courtroom.

"Ayes have it. Mr. Clerk, enter among yore notes that Tobe Weatherby can peddle goods in Lane County without a license. What's next on docket?"

​The blond clerk said, "Elvis Compton has put in a claim aginst the county fer a cow."

The judge drew a plug of inky tobacco from his hip pocket, set his snaggled teeth in it, and bit off a chew.

"How does the county owe you for a cow, Mr. Compton?" he asked in a muffled tone.

A small dark man stood up in the audience,

"The tick inspector made me dip her and it killed her."

"How's that?" asked the judge with interest.

"Why, we drove her through the vat and a lot of the truck got in her years and dreened into her brain an' killed her."

Astonishment filled the audience at this deadly effect of tick dip on a cow. Just then the tick inspector himself arose.

"Jedge, that's redickerlous," he drawled, "the guv'ment dip kain't dreen through a cow's years into her brains—they ain't nothin' kin do that."

The chairman waved him down.

"That's fer the court to decide. Gentlemen, you hear the question. All who believe the tick dip dreened into the brains of Mr. Compton's cow an' killed her let it be known by votin' aye."

Came a grunting of ayes.

"All who don't believe it vote no."

Came a grunting of noes.

"The clerk will haff to call the roll on that," announced the judge.

The clerk began calling the names of the justices; when he finished the roll stood at fourteen ayes and fifteen noes.

"Mr. Compton," announced the judge in a tone still muffled by his new quid, "the guv'ment dip liked jest one vote dreenin' into yore cow's brains an' killin' her. What's next on docket, Mr. Clerk?"

Laughter filled the courtroom as the clerk drawled out, "Professor Lem Overall and Brother Blackman want to put a proposition before the court."

As he spoke the two men mentioned arose from the crowd and entered the chancel. A trickle of dismay went over Abner ​on seeing the stranger with Professor Overall. His black coat and a certain unsmiling quality about his long sallow face stamped him for a preacher. Abner's spirits sank and sank at these elaborate preparations to force him to go to school and thereby weaken his mind. He began to doubt even if Railroad Jones could rescue him from such a situation.

Professor Overall took the floor and stood rolling his prominent eyes about the room for several seconds, after the approved fashion of Lane County orators, then began with the utmost solemnity:

"Honourable Judge and justices of the court, Brother Blackman an' me has come before you to-day to address you on what I an' all the scholarly world considers to be the most important base on which our civilization rests, an' that is the edjercation of the young. Ain't that right, Brother Blackman?"

"Amen, Brother Overall," rumbled the minister in a basso profundo.

"Brother Blackman, as a great many of you all know, is an evangelist now holdin' a meetin' at Shady Grove Church on Big Cyprus, an' from all reports, God shore has been blessin' him in a wonnerful manner with a great outpourin' of the spirit." He turned for corroboration to the minister.

"That's right, Brother Overall," assented the divine in his sepulchral tone, "we shore have got the devil on the run on Big Cyprus."

"But in his work of savin' souls," continued the pedagogue, "Brother Blackman goes jest a grain furder than savin' the ol' sheep from destruction; he's after the innocent lam's, the little childern of this county an' them that's to come in the fewcher."

A pause here as the room became intensely quiet except for a whisper somewhere, "edjercated fool, but he shore han'les a speech. . . ."

"Brother Blackman ast me as a man of science an' as a representative of the edjercational intrusts of this county to git up an' tel you-all what I thought of his plan. I want ​ter say I'm with him heart an' soul. I want you justices to hear what he is goin' to ast you to do an' you do it. It'll be a blessin' to you an' yore childern the longest day you'll live. Honourable Judge an' justices of the court, lemme interduce Brother Blackman."

The evangelist stepped forward as the pedagogue retired.

"Gentlemen of the court," began the minister in his profound voice, "Brother Overall says it will be a blessin' to you as long as you live. I say it will be a blessin' to you through etarnity. I tell you the angels are leanin' this minute over the battlements of Heaven, waitin' with hushed breaths an' beatin' hearts to see what the justices of Lane County air goin' to do here at this hour an' this minute!"

The minister paused with a certain effect of embodying the supernatural world, of solidifying it in the air somewhere above their heads. He proceeded in his ponderous voice, and inquired slowly and solemnly, "My frien's, do you b'lieve yore great gran'daddy was a monkey?"

He paused, then with the revivalist's trick, shouted the same question with a different stress at the top of his lungs, "Do you b'lieve yore great gran'daddy was a monkey?"

This jarred the nerves of his audience. The preacher brought down his fist on the chancel rail with a sounding blow, "Is there a man in the sound of my voice that b'lieves his great gran'daddy was a monkey?

"Oh, brethren, don't you know the Bible says man was made in the image of God! Then how can he be made in the image of a monkey?

"Brothers, judges," gasped the divine, pausing to mop his dripping face, "you know that our school books air full of this damnable doctrine. What air ye goin' to do about it? Air ye goin' to let the deceivin' agnostic, hell-bound college perfessers send our children to hell? Air they goin' to cry fer bread an' you give 'em a stone! It's a sin unto God an' a cryin' out of unrighteousness from the earth! What air ye goin' to do—what you goin' to do? I'm talkin' to you justices now; what you goin' to do?"

​Reverend Blackman shook a long forefinger at the justices.

"You know what you can do," he replied to his own question, "tear this infidel doctrine out of the school books! Tear it out! Give the old devil a thrust in the heart with the sword of truth! Strike a match to his sulfurious fires an' roast him out of the school books our blessed little childern's got to read. Roast him out! Ain't I right, Brother Overall?" he bellowed, beet-coloured.

"You're right, Brother Blackman!"

"Then, let's all be right!" chanted the preacher. "Now, brothers an' justices of Lane County, when the clerk passes aroun' the petition I have drew up, I want ever' man who believes in God and wants to meet his childern in Heaven—I want him to sign it. I want you to tell our legislatur' that we don't want no more infidel doctrines of the Godless Yankees sent down here in our school books, an' we won't have it! Let 'em know ol' Lane stan's fer God, an' God stan's fer ol' Lane! An' we do this hopin' our county escapes the destruction that God is shore to send on our Sodom an' Gomorrah nation! Brethren, let us pray!"

The parson lifted his hands and the whole courtroom bowed its head. His prayer was as vehement as his address and covered the same points. When he made an end, he retired, dripping with perspiration, while the blond clerk, rather hastily, passed around a petition which the minister had drawn up asking the Tennessee state legislature to remove all traces of the science of evolution from the school books of the state.

The justices looked at it rather blankly and signed one after another. One of the court hesitated a moment. "Professor Overall," he asked, "does our present school books teach there ain't no God an' our gran'fathers was monkeys?"

Professor Overall rolled his prominent eyes on the questioner reprovingly. "They certainly do, Brother Boggus. You can take my word as a teacher and a scholar."

"I jest wanted to know," said the justice in a chastened tone, and signed his name hurriedly.

​There was some slight cheering among the audience when the petition went back to the table. The judge of the court rapped for silence.

"Quiet! Quiet! Now, gentlemen of the court, le's git to work on somethin' we know somethin' about. Mr. Clerk, what's nex' on docket?"

Railroad Jones broke the pause. In his buzzing voice he began explaining that his friend Jim Sandage had raised a boy on the county poor farm until now the boy was seventeen turning eighteen, and he thought the time had come to set him free; and that he, David Jones, was going to ask the court, for Mr. Sandage, to set Mr. Abner Teeftallow free and give him all the contractual rights of a man of twenty-one so he could hire to work and receive pay, sue and be sued, like any other man. The reason of this, Jones explained, was that he wanted to hire Abner to work on his railroad, and that if it met with the court's approval the clerk could draw up a paper to that effect and have it passed.

"It is right and fitting," explained the magnate in conclusion, "that this young man whose grandfather was circuit judge in this county should come out an' help build a railroad as his first lick of work as a man that would help develop the county his grandfather started."

There was some cheering at this which the judge had to rap down.

Abner looked at Railroad Jones in the greatest consternation at this amazing turn of the game. The magnate nodded back encouragingly.

"That's all right. It stops all school action complete. It gits Jim here out of a mean fix, an', young man, it puts you where you can begin to make two dollars an' a half a day an' be your own boss. The fewcher certainly looks bright fer you, my boy; you with a brain unspiled by book learnin', a judge fer a grandfather an' a crazy woman for a mammy."

He reached a puffy hand and clapped Abner warmly on the shoulder.