Teeftallow/Chapter 6

THE two hillmen found Irontown filled with the material and spiritual resonances of the coming railroad. The village merchants were doing a brisk business in work shirts, overalls, and brogan shoes. The price of board had advanced. "Men Wanted" signs decorated the telephone posts. In a little open space between Irontown Bank and Fuller's Drug Store, one of those adventurers who flock in the wake of any industrial development had hung a sign across the pavement:

From the other side of the street, the town constable scanned Mr. Stegall and the soft drink feature of his sign with an appraising eye.

Beyond the drug store arose the Grand Drygoods Store. And even the Grand was stimulated by the arrival of the railroad. Four new hats appeared in its show windows; two toques, a leghorn, and a sailor with a red feather in its band.

Beyond the Grand was a tiny jeweller's shop with the sign, "A.M. Belshue, Watch and Clock Repairing." Just inside the single dusty window Mr. Belshue always could be dimly discerned bending over his work with one eye exaggerated by a jeweller's glass. When Abner Teeftallow settled in his boarding place, the Scovell House, farther up the street, he had to pass the jewellery shop twice a day. When he ​first saw this curious elongation in the eye of the man behind the desk he was minded to step into the shop and see what it was, but the project faded from his thoughts, and thereafter the grayish head with the magnifier screwed into its eye became simply a part of the dusty window and held no human interest whatsoever.

The construction which Railroad Jones had set going so prosperously was best displayed at the L. & N. depot, for Irontown already was on a main-line railroad, and the Lane County magnate meant to form a junction with this system as an outlet for his own jerkwater road. At the depot was a confusion of gasoline caterpillars, graders, traction ploughs, rock crushers, dirt scoops, and what not. It was extraordinary how the hillmen laid hold of these huge and unfamiliar machines and, after a brief experimental stage, launched themselves into the task of cutting a level thoroughfare through the full-bosomed hills.

Abner Teeftallow found a job of driving a team of mules hitched to a dirt scoop. He and some thirty or forty other teamsters drove their scoops around and around in a great ellipse, moving ploughed dirt forward down a declivity, emptying it at a designated place and then turning and climbing up the hill to the ploughed ground again. Under the ardour of a July sun this was melting work; the steadying of the scoop handles to dip the loose earth, the heave to upset it and spread it down the declivity, the effort of walking in the soft dirt, and above all the nervousness and irritability of the mules. When one mule danced or kicked in the great ellipse the whole string was disorganized. This caused a continual outpour of profanity and whip-cracking from the teamsters. The bitterest qualifications, the lewdest objurgations were repeated endlessly.

For several days Abner refrained from the use of such language, but after a while, when the afternoons reached their greatest heat, and his mules their worst impishness, it seemed to Abner as if a sort of fury arose up inside of him in response to his bouncing scoop and fighting mules. He ​lashed his whip, spat out the vilest invectives, and struggled on desperately. Why he should work so fiercely, why objurgate so filthily and indecently, he had not the faintest idea. All the teamsters did the same thing and none of them had the slightest notion why they were so stirred and so bitter.

At one o'clock Saturday afternoon, the construction gang were to be paid off at the Irontown bank. Railroad Jones had arranged for this bank to finance his operations, and the weekly payrolls were to be distributed from the teller's window. So a little past noon on Saturday all the construction gang tramped into the village. They came in groups and pairs with here and there a surly or a meditative fellow walking alone. As the men tramped in they jested among themselves with the peculiar sardonic thrusts of the hill people; each witticism was meant, very cheerfully, to wound its object as much as possible. Some of the boys began annoying others about certain disreputable women of the village. Somebody shouted at Abner in this fashion, and a terrible embarrassment swept over the youth, but to his immense relief the subject was not pressed. The talk of the crowd swung to the pay they were going to receive. Zed Parrum announced in a loud voice that he didn't believe the crowd would get a cent because they stood a lot better chance of drawing a pair of Perry Northcutt's eye teeth than a dollar out of his bank.

Laughter crackled up and down the street at this hit. It inspired other efforts. Such gloomy predictions began to shake Abner's faith in the payroll. He turned to Tug Beavers, with whom he was walking.

"Tug, d'reckon we're goin' to git anything on these?" He shook his pay check.

"Hell, yes," asserted Tug broadly, "it's either the money or a cussin' out with me."

Now Abner had not yet reached that stage of hill culture where a cursing out represented a distinct spiritual asset and could be accepted as quid pro quo for other and more material values, so he asked very innocently:

​"Tug, what good will it do you to cuss out the bank, if you don't git yore money?"

Mr. Beavers scratched his head. "Well, a cussin' out is a cussin' out, Abner. Nobody likes to take a cussin' out, an' I reckon that's why ever'body likes to give one."

Abner began to perceive dimly Mr. Beavers's point of view, when Tug suddenly bawled out to someone up the street, "Well, for the love of Sukey, look yonder what the dawgs drug home!"

Abner looked and saw a short stocky man with a typical hard hill-country face now set in a grin of pleasure at Mr. Beavers's perfumed greeting. The moment he was espied half-a-dozen voices took up the chorus simultaneously, "Why, hey-oh, Peck Bradley!" "How'd je git out, Peck?" "Air ye out fer good, Peck?"

The man continued his hard-lined grin and explained laconically, "Same as—hung jury."

"But looks like they'd slapped you back in jail?"

"Hab a corpse," elucidated Mr. Bradley briefly.

"Well, I be derned!" cried Tug with genuine admiration in his voice. "You shore are a hellion! Out on hab a corpse—though of course you did."

Here Mr. Bradley's hard face straightened from its smiling into something wooden and somewhat troubled. "Shore! Shore!" he drawled, and evidently would have done with the topic.

Abner was thrilling with curiosity. He clutched Mr. Beavers's arm.

"What do you mean, Tug, out on hab a corpse?"

The hillman frowned on the boy and explained in a hurried undertone, "When you kill a man and can show the corpse, they kain't keep you in jail."

Abner was aghast, "Fuh God's sake—why?"

"Damn it!" whispered Mr Beavers, thoroughly irritated at such an awkward explanation in the presence of Peck, "because you got the corpse there to show, I reckon. Anyway, yore lawyer gits you out on hab a corpse."

​"Did he kill somebody?" whispered Abner in an awed voice.

"Damn it, yes. That's Peck Bradley, the feller that killed ol' man Shelton. You ort to know him, Abner, you wuz up at the murder trile in Lanesburg. Good God, boy, do you set aroun' asleep?" Here Mr. Beavers lifted his whispers to full voice again, and said cordially, "Well, Peck, by God, I didn't hope to see you out so soon."

Mr. Bradley began his hard-lined grinning again and ejaculated the single name, "Buckingham Sharp."

"A fine lawyer," put in a third voice commendingly.

"That's a fack," nodded Tug, "a feller kain't do nothin' hardly but what Buck Sharp kin git him off scot free. A mighty fine man to have in a community. Well, Peck, what you doin' down here?"

"Work"—from Mr. Bradley.

Half-a-dozen of his admirers gathered around Mr. Bradley, who turned and strolled with the crowd back to the bank.

Abner, following behind, peered through this escort at the man killer and received of him the most unearthly impression: the stocky body, the short, powerful legs, the round head with its rough black hair that might very well have been pig's bristles—this Peck Bradley really had murdered a man; has erased another human being cleanly from the earth. In the crowd were other men much like Peck, but the aura of this murder set him apart from all the other labourers; it cast a strange atmosphere over him. Abner peered at him with fascinated eyes until the crowd reached the bank. The labourers filed in. Peck Bradley walked on up the street with stiff wooden movements through self-consciousness from having a whole streetful watch him. As he went he smoked a cigar, holding it between his thumb and finger, looking at it, giving it his whole attention.

All of the labourers could not enter the lobby of the Irontown bank at the same time, and some had to wait out on the pavement before the building. Abner and Tug entered with the first draft and stood for their turn before the window. ​Just inside the cashier's window was a thin, sandy-haired man, and when the crowd had entered and their little noises had subsided somewhat, he began speaking with a disagreeable crack to his voice:

"Howdy, boys, I'm glad to see you, an' I hope you'll all come out to church to-morrow. You are strangers in our little city, and I extend you this invitation to our religious services. Well, so you've all come to make your deposits? Mighty glad to see that. If you haven't already got an account started here, you certainly can't find a better time than right this minute to start one. You all know what the bible says about the faithful steward who put his money out at usury and when the Master called for his talents, he had four pieces instead of two. Yes, boys, God wants you to save your money. It's your Christian duty. All right now, you," the cashier pointed a thin possessive finger at the man nearest him, "will you let me have your slip?"

The man pushed through the window his slip which contained his name and the amount due him.

"Do you want to deposit all this, Mr. Fraley?" asked the cashier with a certain disagreeable quality in the solicitous glide of his voice.

"Naw, I don't want to deposit none of it," said Fraley.

"You don't!"—with pained astonishment at Fraley's obduracy in the face of a Biblical quotation.

"Naw, I don't."

"What are you going to do with this money, Mr. Fraley?"

"Pay my board," said Fraley, with somewhat shortened temper.

The cashier gave Fraley a pale bloodless smile. "Now, you'll just throw away this money, Fraley, shooting craps, or spend it for moonshine over at Caly Stegall's place. There ain't no use in you fooling away your money like that. Five dollars will pay your board, and you just leave the rest here in the bank so you can get it when you want it and need it!" The cashier stressed the two words with religious unction as if he and Mr. Fraley were both sure that at present Fraley ​neither wanted nor needed the money. As he said this he made an entry in a fresh little bank pass book, handed it to Mr. Fraley, then motioned him toward the teller's window with a "Give him five dollars, Chester."

Chester, a washed-out blond youth with eyebrows that seemed pulled up to the middle of his forehead, hurriedly handed a five-dollar bill to the new depositor.

The next man who took Mr. Fraley's place at the window went through the same queries and arguments and came off with seven dollars and a new pass book, and the injunction to keep his money where he could lay hands on it when he wanted it!

Not a single workman wanted to make a deposit, but the cashier contrived, nevertheless, to retain about three fourths of their wages and sent them away with a dollar or two and a new pass book.

When Mr. Beavers came to the window and was asked how much he wanted to deposit, Tug stated bluntly that he wanted every damn cent he had in the bank.

Mr. Northcutt smiled bloodlessly and asked him what he wanted with so much money—to buy moonshine with?

Mr. Beavers pushed his face up to the little brass bars of the window and said, "You damn little spindlin' money sucker, I want ever' damn cent I got in this bank, an' I don't haff to tell no damn little white-headed ant what I'm goin' to do with my own money! It's mine! You give it to me an' the quickest way you can reach it out will be too damn slow fer me!"

Without another word or a change of countenance Mr. Northcutt O.K'd Mr. Beavers's slip and waved him to the teller; then as Abner stepped up next in turn, the cashier with his usual etiolated smile glanced at the boy and in his usual disagreeable voice asked, "Well, how much board do you pay, my boy?"

Abner began to speculate uncertainly on how much of his money he could persuade the cashier to pay him when a ​voice inside the grating said in a low tone, "That's that Teeftallow boy, Perry."

Mr. Northcutt's face instantly took on a different, a more ingratiating, and somehow a more disagreeable expression. He said, "Oh, is it?" and immediately afterward, "Abner, would you mind stepping inside the grating just a moment, please?"

At this elaborate preparation to make him a depositor, all hope of getting any money whatever forsook Abner. He began to defend himself as best he could.

"I don't mind comin' aroun'," he began unhappily, "but I want my money same as Tug Beavers, I want—"

"Oh, that's all right," smoothed the cashier suavely. "Chester, just pay Abner twelve dollars and a half as he goes by your window. We want to see you on quite a different business, Abner, quite a different, and, we hope, a profitable business for you, Abner." Mr. Northcutt fairly purred out these "Abners," to the youth's utter nonplussing; the stripling in the teller's window pushed through two five-dollar bills, one two-dollar bill, and half dollar. Abner wadded these up awkwardly and tremulously and decided on what pocket he could entrust with so much money, as he passed around to the door which admitted him behind the grating of the bank.

Inside the enclosure sat three men, a girl, and a boy working at an adding machine. The youth with the blond hair remained at his window, but Mr. Northcutt, with the indifference characteristic of a banker in a one-bank town, where lack of competition breeds lack of courtesy, turned away from his grating as Abner entered and left the labourers to cool their heels in the lobby.

Mr. Northcutt smiled at Abner, and this drew the skin over his lean jaws and gave his face a queer corpselike appearance.

"You got your money all right, Abner?" he asked affably.

Abner, with a certain suspicion that the cashier might attempt to get it from him, admitted that he had it.

​"Very good, Abner, that's very good. I hope you'll use your little nest egg wisely, to the benefit of yourself and the glory of God."

Abner agreed vaguely to this vague suggestion.

The banker rubbed his thin bony hands together. "Your grandfather was old Judge Jefferson Coltrane, was he not, my boy?"

Abner drawled an affirmative, studying the cashier's bony face.

"Old Judge Jefferson Coltrane, he and my father were great friends, Abner, that's one of the reasons I called you around here, my boy; you've come into our midst more or less alone and on account of the friendship of my family for yours"—here Mr. Northcutt glanced at one of the men in the office—"you know we folks here in the South are great sticklers for families, Mr. Ditmas, when a boy like this comes from a good family—" the banker broke off, smiling with bloodless benevolence.

Abner glanced around and was surprised to see a man whom he knew. This Mr. Ditmas was an engineer, and Abner had seen him working on the right-of-way of Railroad Jones's new road near the poorhouse.

"Yes, I'd observed that," returned Ditmas in an agreeable manner. "I think it's a fine old custom."

"Quite so," nodded the banker. "You know, Mr. Ditmas, I think we Southern people—you mustn't take offence—" the cashier smiled placatingly, "but I tihnk we stand just a little closer to God than—er—"

A third gentleman in the room, with a faint smile on his rather round face, put in: "The South has often been called God's country, Perry."

"Why, certainly, Mr. Sharp," agreed the banker in a faintly undecided voice, as if he were not quite sure whether Mr. Sharp was agreeing with him or jibing at him very delicately. He paused a moment, then turned to Abner again.

"Now, to get down to business, Abner—er—I was just wondering whether you don't need a little money, maybe?"

​"Money!" repeated Abner, astonished.

"Yes, you might require some money just at this period of your life, say to go to school on."

"No, I don't want to go to school," returned Abner promptly.

"I didn't know. Your grandfather was a very bookish man. Then perhaps you'd like three or four hundred dollars to buy yourself an automobile; most boys want an auto."

An automobile had been, up to that moment, furthest from Abner's thoughts, but now the mere hint that he possibly might get one set up a trembling inside of him.

"I'd shore like that, but how in the worl' kin I git it?"

"As an old friend of your family," smiled the banker, "I might advance you that amount."

"Jest because my gran'daddy knowed yore daddy?"

"Well, yes, and because, too—" here the banker hesitated, placed the tips of his bony fingers delicately together—"because too, Abner, there was a little cloud on the title of some of my father's holding; it's what Mr. Sharp here calls a shadow on the title; so we thought if you would just sign us a quit-claim deed to a little tract of land in question we would make you a present of four or five hundred dollars just to show our appreciation."

All this talk about clouds on titles meant nothing whatever to Abner, but his hill instinct to trade made him say, "Is five hunderd as good as you could do on that, Mr. Northcutt?"

Mr. Buckingham Sharp leaned back and laughed roundly at this.

"If you had offered him a million, Perry, you would have got the same answer; it's automatic with them."

Mr. Northcutt likewise smiled his bloodless smile. "You forget, Abner, this is mainly a present in memory of your grandfather."

"What is a cloud on a title?" queried the youth shrewdly.

"Well, it is just some irregularity, perhaps your grandfather's signature was not witnessed; or your grandmother's ​signature does not correspond with the form it is written in the deed; some little misstep, you know," the banker waved his fingers and drew a legal-looking paper from the drawer. "Now here is a quit-claim deed which Mr. Sharp has drawn up, and if you'll sign it—you can write, can't you?"

"Y-yes, sir," hesitated Abner, deeply suspicious of a trap.

"Chester, just count out Abner four hundred dollars in ten-dollar bills."

Abner looked at the cashier quickly, "I thought you said five hundred dollars?"

"You'll do, Abner," smiled the banker. "Make it five hundred, Chester."

The blond youth reached into a drawer and began counting green and yellow backs apparently out of an illimitable sheaf. A dreamlike feeling came over Abner. It did not seem that this money could be real or that he was going to get it. A violent emotion seized him and he arose with a shaken feeling to sign the paper when he glanced across and happened to see Mr. Ditmas frowning at him and shaking his head slightly but urgently.

It had the effect on Abner of a dash of cold water on a sleep walker. A certain kindness the engineer had shown Abner at the poorhouse had established the boy's confidence and this was something he felt for no one else in the group. He was advancing toward the table. Now he stopped still and drawled in his flat hill tones, "Naw, I don't reckon I'll sign that right now."

Mr. Northcutt was shocked and instantly angry.

"Won't sign it!" he cried. "Now, look here, Abner, that's no way for a man to do, balk like a mule right in the midst of an agreed trade. Why, you—you—what do you mean, shilly-shallying like this?"

The angry timbre of his voice aroused Abner. "I ain't shilly-shallyin'," he retorted obstinately. "I ain't goin' to sign it!"

Mr. Northcutt caught up the paper which he wanted signed and shook it at Abner. "My young man, I'll bring ​an action in chancery to clear up this title, and you'll not get a cent out of it! You are simply throwing away five hundred dollars!"

Abner moved wordlessly toward the door with a certain apprehension of an attack by Mr. Northcutt. The banker did take three steps after the boy and catch him by the arm.

"Abner, you idiot, listen to reason!"

The hulking youth flung himself loose with a feeling of being trapped. "Turn me go, Perry Northcutt, or I'll knock hell out of ye!" He had a fist swung back and his frightened eyes were blazing at the banker.

The cashier stepped back. "What a dolt! What a dolt!" he ejaculated furiously as he watched Abner pass into the lobby and disappear through the door. The banker was profoundly exasperated at this outcome. His rancour vibrated through his whole body. What had just occurred seemed to Mr. Northcutt impious, actually sacrilegious. It was absolutely sinful for an ordinary stupid drunken hill boy to thwart his designs in this fashion. Because Perry knew that he, himself, was going to serve God's purposes in every way he could whereas this youth would wickedly misuse anything of value that fell into his hands. Behind this he felt the villager's contempt for the hill folk, and for such a lout to frustrate his plans . . .

The cashier turned back to his window and by sheer will power restored the smile to his face and resumed the receiving of deposits from unwilling depositors. As he banked these deposits he felt vindictively righteous, and the parable of the good steward who put his money out at usury returned to his mind.

Presently Mr. Ditmas arose, excused himself, and walked out of the bank. Mr. Sharp watched the engineer go out and presently caught Mr. Northcutt's eye.

"I think our friend Ditmas played rather an odd little game just then," he observed, drawing a cigar from his pocket.

"How's that?" asked the cashier.

​"He prompted the witness."

"What do you mean?

"Well, I mean I've cross-examined too many witnesses not to know when a third party is prompting them by signals—I didn't glance around at Ditmas, but then I didn't have to."

The banker was thunderstruck. "But, my dear Sharp, why—"

Mr. Sharp lifted both hands. "Now, Perry, I'll be damned if I know why!"

Mr. Northcutt seemed to shrink visibly. "Sharp, I wish you wouldn't swear. Can't you realize that God hears your every word?"

"Pardon me, Perry," the lawyer laughed apologetically. Then he arose and moved leisurely and with a distinctly graceful carriage out of the enclosure, through the lobby to the door. He stood there a moment looking up and down the shabby street of Irontown. Then he saw something that caused him to nod in a sort of sardonic agreement with his own prescience—Mr. Ditmas was walking rapidly up the street after Abner and was obviously in pursuit of the youth. Buckingham Sharp took his cigar from his mouth and stood looking and smiling rather ironically after the two.