Back Home: Being the Narrative of Judge Priest and His People. Cobb Irvin Shrewsbury

any white gentleman there present, yet was steadily making progress all the while and in ample time getting down a certain sum of money on Flitterfoot to win at odds.

      “Ain’t that your nigger boy Jeff?” inquired Doctor Lake of Judge Priest, as the new comer, still boring deftly, emerged from the group and with a last muttered “Scuse me, boss – please, suh – scuse me!” darted away toward the head of the stretch, where others of his race were draping themselves over the top rail of the fence in black festoons.

      “Yes, I suppose ‘tis – probably,” said Judge Priest in that high singsong of his. “That black scoundrel of mine is liable to be everywhere – except when you want him, and then he’s not anywhere. That must be Jeff, I reckin.” And the old judge chuckled indulgently in appreciation of Jeff’s manifold talents.

      During the parade of the veterans that day Judge Priest, as commandant of the camp, had led the march just behind the fife and drums and just ahead of the color-bearer carrying the silken flag; and all the way out from town Jeff, his manservant, valet, and guardian, had marched a pace to his right. Jeff’s own private and personal convictions – convictions which no white man would ever know by word of mouth from Jeff anyhow —

      were not with the late cause which those elderly men in gray represented. Jeff’s political feelings, if any such he had, would be sure to lean away from them; but it was a chance to march with music – and Jeff had marched, his head up and his feet cutting scallops and double-shuffles in the dust.

      Judge Priest’s Jeff was a small, jet-black person, swift in his gait and wise in his generation. He kept his wool cropped close and made the part in it with a razor. By some subtle art of his own he could fall heir to somebody else’s old clothes and, wearing them, make than look newer and better than when they were new. Overcome by the specious wiles of Jeff some white gentleman of his acquaintance would bestow upon him a garment that seemed shabby to the point of open shame and a public scandal. Jeff would retire for a season with a pressing iron and a bottle of cleansing fluid, and presently that garment would come forth, having undergone a glorious resurrection. Seeing it, then, the former proprietor would repent his generosity and wonder what ever possessed him to part with apparel so splendid.

      For this special and gala occasion Jim wore a blue-serge coat that had been given to him in consideration of certain acts of office-tending by Attorney Clay Saunders. Attorney Clay Saunders weighed two hundred and fifty pounds If he weighed an ounce, and Jeff would never see one hundred and twenty-five; but the blue serge was draped upon Jeff’s frame with just the fashionable looseness. The sleeves, though a trifle long, hung most beautifully. Jeff’s trousers were of a light and pearly gray, and had been the property originally of Mr. Otter-buck, cashier at the bank, who was built long and rangy; whereas Jeff was distinctly short and ducklike. Yet these same trousers, pressed now until you could have peeled peaches with their creases and turned up at the bottoms to a rakish and sporty length, looked as if they might have been specially coopered to Jeff’s legs by a skilled tailor.

      This was Judge Priest’s Jeff, whose feet would fit anybody’s shoes and whose head would fit anybody’s hat. Having got his money safely down on Flitterfoot to win, Jeff was presently choking a post far up the homestretch. With a final crack of the starter’s coiling blacksnake and a mounting scroll of dust, the runners were off on their half-mile dash. While the horses were still spattering through the dust on the far side of the course from him Jeff began encouraging his choice by speech.

      “Come on, you little red hoss!” he said in a low, confidential tone. “I asks you lak a gen’leman to come on and win all that money fur me. Come on, you little red hoss – you ain’t half runnin’! little red hoss” – his voice sank to a note of passionate pleading – “whut is detainin’ you?”

      Perhaps even that many years back, when it had just been discovered, there was something to this new theory of thought transference. As if Jeff’s tense whispers were reaching to him across two hundred yards of track and open field Flitterfoot opened up a gap between his lathered flanks and the rest of them. The others, in a confused group, scrambled and hinged out with their hoofs; but Flitterfoot turned into a long red elastic rubber band, stretching himself out to twice his honest length and then snapping back again to half. High up on his shoulder the ragged black stable boy hung, with his knees under his chin and his shoulders hunched as though squaring off to do a little flying himself. Twenty long yards ahead of the nearest contender, Flitterfoot scooted over the line a winner. Once across, he expeditiously bucked the crouching small incumbrance off his withers and, with the bridle dangling, bounced riderless back to his stable; while above the roar from the grandstand rose the triumphant remark of Jeff: “Ain’t he a regular runnin’ and a-jumpin’ fool!”

      The really important business of the day to most, however, centered about the harness events, which was only natural, this being an end of the state where they raised the standard breds as distinguished from the section whence came the thoroughbreds. A running race might do for an appetizer, like a toddy before dinner; but the big interest would focus in the two-twenty pace and the free-for-all consolation, and finally would culminate in the County Trot – open only to horses bred and owned in the county and carrying with it a purse of two thousand dollars – big money for that country – and a dented and tarnished silver trophy that was nearly fifty years old, and valued accordingly.

      After the half-mile dash and before the first heat of the two-twenty pace there was a balloon ascension and parachute drop. Judge Priest’s Jeff was everywhere that things were happening. He did two men’s part in holding the bulging bag down to earth until the spangled aeronaut yelled out for everybody to let go. When the man dropped, away over by the back fence, Jeff was first on the spot to brush him off and to inquire in a voice of respectful solicitude how he was feeling, now that he’d come down. Up in the grandstand, Mrs. Major Joe Sam Covington, who was stout and wore a cameo breastpin as big as a coffee saucer at her throat, expressed to nobody in particular a desire for a glass of cool water; and almost instantly, it seemed, Judge Priest’s Jeff was at her side bowing low and ceremoniously with a brimming dipper in one hand and an itch for the coming tip in the other. When the veterans adjourned back behind Floral Hall for a watermelon cutting, Jeff, grinning and obsequious, arrived at exactly the properly timed moment to receive a whole butt-end of red-hearted, green-rinded lusciousness for his own. Taking the opportunity of a crowded minute about Uncle Isom Woolfolk’s barbecued meat stand he bought extensively, and paid for what he bought with a lead half dollar that he had been saving for months against just such a golden chance – a half dollar so palpably leaden that Uncle Isom, discovering it half an hour later, was thrown into a state of intense rage, followed by a period of settled melancholy, coupled with general suspicion of all mankind. Most especially, though, Judge Priest’s Jeff concerned himself with the running of the County Trot, being minded to turn his earlier winnings over and over again.

      From the outset Jeff, like most of the fair crowd, had favored Van Wallace’s black mare, Minnie May, against the only other entry for the race, Jackson Berry’s big roan trotting stallion, Blandville Boy. The judgment of the multitude stood up, too, for the first two heats of the County Trot, alternating in between heats of the two-twenty pace and the free-for-all, were won handily by the smooth-gaited mare. Blandville Boy was feeling his oats and his grooming, and he broke badly each time, for all the hobble harness of leather that was buckled over and under him. Nearly everybody was now betting on Minnie May to take the third and the decisive heat.

      Waiting for it, the crowd spread over the grounds, leaving wide patches of the grandstand empty. The sideshows and the medicine venders enjoyed heavy patronage, and once more the stalled ox and the fatted pig were surrounded by admiring groups. There was a thick jam about the crowning artistic gem of Floral Hall – a crazy quilt with eight thousand different pieces of silk in it, mainly of acutely jarring shades, so that the whole was a thing calculated to blind the eye and benumb the mind.

      The city marshal forcibly calmed down certain exhilarated young bucks from the country – they would be sure to fire off their pistols and yell into every dooryard as they tore home that night, careening in their dusty buggies; but now they were made to restrain themselves. Bananas and cocoanuts advanced steadily in price as the visible supply shrank. There is a type of Southern countryman who, coming to town for a circus day or a fair, first