Sammy

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Title:     Sammy
Author: Francis Hopkinson Smith [More Titles by Smith]

It was on the Limited: 10.30 Night Express out of Louisville, bound south to Nashville and beyond.

I had lower Four.

When I entered the sleeper the porter was making up the berths, the passengers sitting about in each other's way until their beds were ready.

I laid my bag on an empty seat, threw my overcoat over its back, and sat down to face a newspaper within a foot of my nose. There was a man behind it, but he was too intent on its columns to be aware of my presence. I made an inspection of his arms and hands and right leg, the only portions of his surface exposed to view.

I noticed that the hands were strong and well-shaped, their backs speckled with brown spots--too well kept to have guided a plough and too weather-tanned to have wielded a pen. The leg which was crossed, the foot resting on the left knee, was full and sinewy, the muscles of the thigh well developed, and the round of the calf firmly modelled. The ankle was small and curved like an axe handle and looked as tough.

There are times when the mind lapses into vacancy. Nothing interests it. I find it so while waiting to have my berth made up; sleep is too near to waste gray matter.

A man's thighs, however, interest me in any mood and at any time. While you may get a man's character from his face, you can, if you will, get his past life from his thigh. It is the walking beam of his locomotion; controls his paddles and is developed in proportion to its uses. It indicates, therefore, the man's habits and his mode of life.

If he has sat all day with one leg lapped over the other, arm on chair, head on hand, listening or studying--preachers, professors, and all the other sedentaries sit like this--then the thigh shrinks, the muscles droop, the bones of the ankle bulge, and the knee-joints push through. If he delivers mail, or collects bills, or drives a pack-mule, or walks a tow-path, the muscles of the thigh are hauled taut like cables, the knee-muscles keep their place, the calves are full of knots--one big one in a bunch just below the strap of his knickerbockers, should he wear them.

If he carries big weights on his back--sacks of salt, as do the poor stevedores in Venice; or coal in gunnies, as do the coolies in Cuba; or wine in casks, or coffee in bags, then the calves swell abnormally, the thighs solidify; the lines of beauty are lost; but the lines of strength remain.

If, however, he has spent his life in the saddle, rounding up cattle, chasing Indians, hunting bandits in Mexico, ankle and foot loose, his knees clutched tightly, hugging that other part of him, the horse, then the muscles of the thigh round out their intended lines--the most subtle in the modulating curving of the body. The aboriginal bareback rider must have been a beauty.

I at once became interested then in the man before me, or rather in his thighs--the "Extra" hid the rest.

I began to picture him to myself--young, blond hair, blue eyes, drooping mustache, slouch hat canted rakishly over one eye; not over twenty-five years of age. I had thought forty, until a movement of the paper uncovered for a moment his waist-line which curved in instead of out. This settled it--not a day over twenty-five, of course!

The man's fingers tightened on the edges of the paper. He was still reading, entirely unconscious that my knees were within two inches of his own.

Then I heard this exclamation--

"It's a damned outrage!"

My curiosity got the better of me--I coughed.

The paper dropped instantly.

"My dear sir," he said, bending forward courteously and laying his hand on my wrist, "I owe you an apology. I had no idea anyone was opposite me."

If I was a surprise to him, he was doubly so to me.

My picture had vanished.

He was sixty-five, if a day; gray, with bushy eyebrows, piercing brown eyes, heavy, well-trimmed mustache, strong chin and nose, with fine determined lines about the mouth. A man in perfect health, his full throat browned with many weathers showing above a low collar caught together by a loose black cravat--a handsome, rather dashing sort of a man for one so old.

"I say it is a shame, sir," he continued, "the way they are lynching the negroes around here. Have you read the Extra?" passing it over to me --"Another this morning at Cramptown. It's an infernal outrage, sir!"

I had read the "Extra," with all its sickening details, and so handed it back to him.

"I quite agree with you," I said; "but this man was a brute."

"No doubt of it, sir. We've got brutal negroes among us, just as we've got brutal white men. But that's no reason why we should hang them without a trial; we still owe them that justice. When we dealt fairly with them there was never any such trouble. There were hundreds of plantations in the South during the war where the only men left were negroes. We trusted our wives and children to them; and yet such outrages as these were unheard of and absolutely impossible. I don't expect you to agree with me, of course; but I tell you, sir, the greatest injustice the North over did the slave was in robbing him of his home. I am going to have a smoke before going to bed. Won't you join me?"

Acquaintances are quickly made and as quickly ended in a Pullman. Men's ways lie in such diverse directions, and the hours of contact are often so short, that no one can afford to be either ungracious or exclusive. The "buttoned-up" misses the best part of travelling. He is like a camera with the cap on--he never gets a new impression. The man with the shutters of his ears thrown wide and the lids of his eyes tied back gets a new one every hour.

If, in addition to this, he wears the lens of his heart upon his sleeve, and will adjust it so as to focus the groups around him--it may be a pair of lovers, or some tired mother, or happy child, or lonely wayfarer, or a waif--he will often get a picture of joy, or sorrow, or hope--life dramas all--which will not only enrich the dull hours of travel, but will leave imprints on the mind which can be developed later into the richest and tenderest memories of his life.

I have a way of arranging my own sensitized plates, and I get a certain amount of entertainment out of the process, and now and then a Rembrandt effect whose lights and darks often thrill me for days.

So when this unknown man, with his young legs and his old face, asked me, on one minute's acquaintance, to smoke, I accepted at once.

"I am right about it, my dear sir," he continued, biting off the end of a cigar and sharing with me the lighted match. "The negro is infinitely worse off than in the slave days. We never had to hang any one of them then to make the others behave themselves."

"How do you account for it?" I asked, settling myself in my chair. (We were alone in the smoking compartment.)

"Account for what?"

"The change that has come over the South--to the negro," I answered.

"The negro has become a competitor, sir. The interests of the black man and the white man now lie apart. Once the white man was his friend; now he is his rival."

His eyes were boring into mine; his teeth set tight.

The doctrine was new to me, but I did not interrupt him.

"It wasn't so in the old days. We shared what we had with them. One-third of the cabins of the South were filled with the old and helpless. Now these unfortunates are out in the cold; their own people can't help them, and the white man won't."

"Were you a slave-owner?" I asked, not wishing to dispute the point.

"No, sir; but my father was. He had fifty of them on our plantation. He never whipped one of them, and he wouldn't let anybody else strike them, either. There wasn't one of them that wouldn't have come back if we had had a place to put him. The old ones are all dead now, thank God!--all except old Aleck; he's around yet."

"One of your father's slaves, did you say?"

I was tapping away at the door of his recollections, camera all ready.

"Yes; he carried me about on his back when I was so high," and he measured the distance with his hand. "Aleck and I were boys together. I was about eight and he about fifteen when my father got him."

My companion paused, drumming on the leather covering of his chair. I waited, hoping he would at least open his door wide enough to give me a glimpse inside.

"Curiously enough," he went on, "I've been thinking of Aleck all day. I heard yesterday that he was sick again, and it has worried me a good deal. He's pretty feeble now, and I don't know how long he'll last."

He flicked the ashes from his cigar, nursing his knee with the other hand. The leg must have pained him, for I noticed that he lifted it carefully and moved it on one side, as if for greater relief.

"Rheumatism?" I ventured, sympathetically.

"No; just _gets_ that way sometimes," he replied, carelessly. "But Aleck's got it bad; can hardly walk. Last time I saw him he was about bent double."

Again he relapsed into silence, smoking quietly.

"And you tell me," I said, "that this old slave was loyal to your family after his freedom?"

He hadn't told me anything of the kind; but I had found his key-hole now, and was determined to get inside his door, even if I picked the lock with a skeleton-key.

"Aleck!" he cried, rousing himself with a laugh; "well, I should say so! Anybody would be loyal who'd been treated as my father treated Aleck. He took him out of jail and gave him a home, and would have looked after him till he died if the war hadn't broken out. Aleck wasn't raised on our plantation. He was a runaway from North Carolina. There were three of them that got across the river--a man and his wife and Aleck. The slave-driver had caught Aleck in our town and had locked him up in the caboose for safe-keeping. Then he came to my father to help him catch the other two. But my father wasn't that kind of a man. The old gentleman had curious notions about a good many things. He believed when a slave ran away that the fault was oftener the master's than the negro's. 'They are nothing but children,' he would say, 'and you must treat them like children. Whipping is a poor way to bring anybody up.'

"So when my father heard about the three runaways he refused to have anything to do with the case. This made the driver anxious.

"'Judge,' he said--my father had been a Judge of the County Court for years--'if you'll take the case I'll give you this boy Aleck as a fee. He's worth a thousand dollars.'

"'Send for him,' said my father. 'I'll tell you when I see him.'

"So they brought him in. He was a big, strong boy, with powerful shoulders, black as a chunk of coal, and had a look about him that made you trust him at first sight. My father believed in him the moment he saw him.

"'What did you run away for, Aleck?' he asked.

"The boy held his head down.

"'My mother died, Marster, an' I couldn't stay dar no mo'.'

"'I'll take him,' said my father; 'but on condition that the boy wants to live with me.'

"This was another one of the old gentleman's notions. He wouldn't have a negro on the place that he had to watch, nor one that wasn't happy.

"The driver opened his eyes and laughed; but my father meant what he said, and the papers were made out on those terms. The boy was outside in charge of the Sheriff while the papers were being drawn, and when they were signed the driver brought him in and said:

"'He's your property, Judge.'

"'Aleck,' father said, 'you've heard?'

"'Yes, sah.'

"The boy stood with tears in his eyes. He thought he was going to get a life-sentence. He had never faced a judge before.

"'Well, you're my property now, and I've got a proposition to make to you. There's my horse outside hitched to that post. Get on him and ride out to my plantation, two miles from here; anybody'll tell you where it is. Talk to my negroes around the quarters, and then go over to Mr. Shandon's and talk to his negroes--find out from any one of them what kind of a master I am, and then come back to me here before sundown and tell me if you want to live with me. If you don't want to live with me you can go free. Do you understand?'

"My father said it all over again. Aleck looked at the driver, then at the Sheriff, and then at my father. Then he crept out of the room, got on the mare, and rode up the pike.

"'You've thrown your money away,' said the driver, shrugging his shoulders. 'You'll never see that nigger again.'

"The Sheriff laughed, and they both went out. Father said nothing and waited. About an hour before sundown back came Aleck. Father always said he never saw a man change so in four hours. He went out crouching like a dog, his face over his shoulder, scared to death, and he came back with his head up and a snap in his eye, looking as if he could whip his weight in wildcats.

"'I'll go wid ye, an' thank ye all my life,' was all he said.

"Well, it got out around the village, and that night the other two runaways--the man and wife--they were hiding in the town--gave themselves up, and one of our neighbors bought them both and set them to work on a plantation next to ours, and the driver went away happy.

"I was a little fellow then, running around barefooted, but I remember meeting Aleck just as if it were yesterday. He was holding the horse while my father and the overseer stood talking on one side. They were planning his work and where he should sleep. I crept up to look at him. I had heard he was coming and that he was a runaway slave. I thought his back would be bloody and all cut to pieces, and that he'd have chains on him, and I was disappointed because I couldn't see his skin through his shirt and because his hands were free. I must have gotten too near the mare, for before I knew it he had lifted me out of danger.

"'What's your name?' I asked.

"'Aleck,' he said; 'an' what's your name, young marster?'

"'Sammy,' I said.

"That's the way it began between us, and it's kept on ever since. I call him 'Aleck,' and he calls me 'Sammy'--never anything else, even today."

"He calls you 'Sammy'!" I said, in astonishment. The familiarity was new to me between master and slave.

"Yes, always. There isn't another person in the world now that calls me 'Sammy,'" he answered, with a tremor in his voice.

My travelling-companion stopped for a moment, cleared his throat, drew a silver match-safe from his pocket, relighted his cigar, and continued.

"The overseer put Aleck to ploughing the old orchard that lay between the quarters and the house. I sneaked out to watch him as a curious child would, still intent on seeing his wounds. Soon as Aleck saw me, he got a board and nailed it on the plough close to the handle for a seat, and tied up the old horse's tail so it wouldn't switch in my face, and put me on it, and I never left that plough till sundown. My father asked Aleck where he had learned that trick, and Aleck told him he used to take his little brother that way before he died.

"After the orchard was ploughed Aleck didn't do a thing but look after me. We fished together and went swimming together; and we hunted eggs and trapped rabbits; and when I got older and had a gun Aleck would go along to look after the dogs and cut down the trees when we were out for coons.

"Once I tumbled into a catfish-hole by the dam, and he fished me out; and once, while he had crawled in after a woodchuck, a rock slipped and pinned him down, and I ran two miles to get help, and fell in a faint before I could tell them where he was. What Aleck had in those days I had, and what I had he had; and there was no difference between us till the war broke out.

"I was grown then, and Aleck was six or seven years older. We were on the border-line, and one morning the Union soldiers opened fire, and all that was left of the house, barns, outbuildings, and negro quarters was a heap of ashes.

"That sent me South, of course, feeling pretty ugly and bitter, and I don't know that I've gotten over it since. My father was too old to go, and he and my mother moved into the village and lived in two rooms over my father's office. The negroes, of course, had to shift for themselves, and hard shifting it was--the women and children herding in the towns and the men working as teamsters and doing what they could.

"The night before I left home Aleck crawled out to see me. I was hidden in a hayrick in the lower pasture. He begged me to let him go with me, but I knew father would want him, and he finally gave in and promised to stay with him, and I left. But no one was his own master in those days, and in a few months they had drafted Aleck and carried him off.

"Three years after that my mother fell ill, and I heard of it and came back in disguise, and was arrested as a suspicious character as I entered the town. I didn't blame them, for I looked like a tramp and intended to. The next day I was let out and went home to where my mother and father were living. As I was opening the garden-gate--it was night--Aleck laid his hand on my shoulder. He had on the uniform of a United States soldier. I couldn't believe my eyes at first. I had lost track of him, and, as I found out afterward, so had my father. We stood under the street-lamp and he saw the look in my face and threw his hands up over his head as a negro does when some sudden shock comes to him.

"'Don't turn away f'om me, Sammy,' he cried; 'please don't, Sammy. 'Tain't my fault I got on dese clo'es, 'deed it ain't. Dey done fo'ced me. I heared you was here an' I been tryin' to git to ye all day. Oh, I so glad to git hold ob ye, Sammy, so glad, so glad.' He broke out into sobs of crying. I was near it myself, for he was the first one from home I had seen, and there was something in his voice that went through me.

"Then he unbuttoned his coat, felt in his pocket, pushed something into my hand, and disappeared in the darkness. When I got inside and held it out to the light, he had given me two five-dollar greenbacks!

"I was sitting by my mother the next night about ten o'clock--she wouldn't let me out of her sight--when there came a rap at the door and Aleck came in. I knew how my father would feel about seeing him in those clothes. I didn't know till afterward that they were all he had and that the poor fellow was as bad off as any of us.

"Father opened upon Aleck right away, just as I knew he would, without giving him a chance to speak. He upbraided him for going into the Army, told him to take his money back, and showed him the door. The old gentleman could be pretty savage when he wanted to, and he didn't spare Aleck a bit. Aleck never said a word--just listened to my father's abuse of him--his hands folded over his cap, his eyes on the two bills lying on the table where my father had thrown them. Then he said, slowly:

"'Marse Henry, I done hearn ye every word. You don't want me here no mo', an' I'm gwine away. I ain't a-fightin' agin you an' Sammy an' neber will--it's 'cause I couldn't help it dat I'm wearin' dese clo'es. As to dis money dat you won't let Sammy take, it's mine to gib 'cause I saved it up. I gin it to Sammy 'cause I fotched him up an' 'cause he's as much mine as he is your'n. He'll tell ye so same's me. If you say I got to take dat money back I got to do it 'cause I ain't neber dis'beyed ye an' I ain't gwine to begin now. But I don't want yer ter say it, Marse Henry--I don't want yer to say it. You is my marster I know, but Sammy is my _chile_. An' anudder thing, dey ain't gwine to let him stay in dis town more'n a day. I found dat out yisterday when I heared he'd come. Dar ain't no money whar he's gwine, an' dis money ain't nothin' to me 'cause I kin git mo' an' maybe Sammy can't. Please, Marse Henry, let Sammy keep dis money. Dere didn't useter be no diff'ence 'tween us, and dere oughtn't to be none now.'

"My father didn't speak again--he hadn't the heart, and Aleck went out, leaving the money on the table."

Again my companion stopped and fumbled over the matches in his safe, striking one or two nervously and relighting his cigar. It was astonishing how often it went out. I sat with my eyes riveted on his face. I could see now the lines of tenderness about his mouth and I caught certain cadences in his voice which revealed to me but too clearly why the negro loved him and why he must always be only a boy to the old slave. The cigar a-light, he went on:

"When the war closed I came home and began to pick up my life again. Aleck had gone to Wisconsin and was living in the same town as young Cruger, one of my father's law-students. When my father died, I telegraphed Cruger, inviting him to serve as one of the pall-bearers, and asked him to find Aleck and tell him. I knew he would be hurt if I didn't let him know.

"At two o'clock that night my niece, who was with my mother, rapped at my door. I was sitting up with my father's body and would go down every hour to see that everything was all right.

"'There's a man trying to get in at the front door,' she said. I got up at once and went downstairs. I could see the outlines of a man's figure moving in the darkness, but I could not distinguish the features.

"'Who is it?' I asked, throwing open the door and peering out.

"'It's me, Sammy--it's Aleck. Take me to my ole marster.'

"He came in and stood where the light fell full upon him. I hardly knew him, he was so changed--much older and bent, and his clothes hung on him in rags.

"I pointed to the parlor-door, and the old man went on tip-toe into the room and stood looking at my father's dead face for a long time--the body lay on a cot. Then he placed his hat on the floor and got down on his knees. There was just light enough to see his figure black against the white of the sheet that covered the cot. For some minutes he knelt motionless, as if in prayer, though no sound escaped him. Then he stretched out his big black hand and passed it over the body, smoothing it gently and patting it tenderly as one would a sleeping child. By and by he leaned closer to my father's face.

"'Marse Henry,' I heard him say, 'please, Marse Henry, listen. Dis yere's Aleck. Ye'r wouldn't hear me the las' time but yer got ter hear me now. It's yo' Aleck, Marster, dat's who it is. I come soon's I could, Marse Henry, I didn't wait a minute.' He stopped as if expecting an answer, and went on. 'I ain't neber laid up nothin' agin ye though, Marse Henry. When ye turned me out dat night in the col' 'cause I had dem soger clo'es on an' didn't want me to gin dat money to Sammy, I knowed how yer felt, but I didn't lay it up agin ye. I ain't neber loved nobody like I loved you, Marse Henry, you an' Sammy. Do yer 'member when I fust come? 'Member how ye tuk me out o' jail, an' gin me a home? 'Member how ye nussed me when I was sick, an' fed me when I was hongry, an' put clo'es on me when I was most naked? Nobody neber trusted me with nothin' till you trusted me, dey jus' beat me an' hunt me. An' don't yer 'member, Marse Henry, de time ye gin me Sammy an' tol' me to take care on him? you ain't forgot dat day, is yer? He's here, Marster; Sammy's here. He's settin' outside a-watch-in'. Him an' me togedder, same's we useter was.'

"He got upon his feet, and looked earnestly into the dead face. Then he bent down and picked up one corner of the white sheet, and kissed it reverently. He did not touch the face. When he had tiptoed out of the room, he laid his hand on my shoulder. The tears were streaming down his face: 'It was jes' like ye, Sammy, to send fo' me. We knows one anudder, you an' me--' and he turned toward the front door.

[Illustration: I hardly knew him, he was so changed.]

"'Where are you going, Aleck?' I asked.

"'I dunno, Sammy--some place whar I kin lay down.'

"'You don't leave here to-night, Aleck,' I said. 'Go upstairs to that room next to mine--you know where it is--and get into that bed.' He held up his hand and began to say he couldn't, but I insisted.

"The next morning was Sunday. I saw when he came downstairs that he had done the best he could with his clothes, but they were still pretty ragged. I asked him if he had brought any others, but he told me they were all he had. I didn't say anything at the time, but that afternoon I took him to a clothing store, had it opened as a favor to me and fitted him out with a suit of black, and a shirt, and shoes and a hat--everything he wanted--and got him a carpet-bag, and told Abraham, the clothier, to put Aleck's old things into it, and he would call for them the next day.

"When we got outside, Aleck looked himself all over--along his sleeves, over his waistcoat, and down to his shoes. He seemed to be thinking about something. He would start to speak to me and stop and look over his clothes again, testing the quality with his fingers. Finally he laid his hand on my arm, and, with a curious, beseeching look, in his eyes, said:

"'Sammy, all yesterday, when I was a-comin', I was a-studyin' about it, an' I couldn't git it out'n my mind. It come to me agin when I saw Marse Henry las' night, an' I wanted to tell him. But when I got up dis mawnin' an' see myself I knowed I couldn't ask ye, Sammy, an' I didn't. Now I got dese clo'es, it's come to me agin. I kin ask ye now, an' I don't want ye to 'fuse me. I want ye to let me drive my marster's body to de grave.'

"I held out my hand, and for an instant neither of us spoke.

"'Thank ye, Sammy,' was all he said."

Again my companion's voice broke. Then he went on:

"When the carriages formed in line I saw Aleck leaning against the fence, and the undertaker's man was on the hearse. I caught Aleck's eye and beckoned to him.

"'What's the matter, Aleck? Why aren't you on the hearse?'

"'De undertaker man wouldn't let me, Sammy; an' I didn't like to 'sturb you an' de mistis.'

"The tears stood in his eyes.

"'Go find him and bring him to me,' I said.

"When he came I told him the funeral would stop where it was if he didn't carry out my orders.

"He said there was some mistake, though I didn't believe it, and went off with Aleck. As we turned out of the gate and into the road I caught sight of the hearse, Aleck on the box. He sat bolt upright, head erect, the reins in one hand, the whip resting on his knee, as I had seen him do so often when driving my father--grave, dignified, and thoughtful, speaking to the horses in low tones, the hearse moving and stopping as each carriage would be filled and driven ah pad.

"He wouldn't drive the hearse back; left it standing at the gate of the cemetery. I heard the discussion, but I couldn't leave my mother to settle it.

"'I ain't gwine to do it,' I heard him say to the undertaker. 'It was my marster I was 'tendin' on, not yo' horses. You can drive 'em home yo'-self.'"

My companion settled himself in his chair, rested his head on his hand, and closed his eyes. I remained silent, watching him. His cigar had gone out; so had mine. Once or twice a slight quiver crossed his lips, then his teeth would close tight, and again his face would relapse into calm impassiveness.

At this instant the curtains of the smoking-room parted and the Pullman porter entered.

"Your berth's all ready, Major," said the porter.

My companion rose from his chair, straightened his leg, held out his band, and said:

"You can understand now, sir, how I feel about these continued outrages. I don't mean to say that every man is like Aleck, but I do mean to say that Aleck would never have been as loyal as he is but for the way my father brought him up. Good-night, sir."

He was gone before I could do more than express my thanks for his confidence. It was just as well--any further word of mine would have been superfluous. Even my thanks seemed out of place.

In a few minutes the porter returned with, "Lower Four's all ready, sir."

"All right, I'm coming. Oh, porter."

"Yes, sir."

"Porter, come closer. Who is that gentleman I've been talking to?"

"That's Major Sam Garnett, sir."

"Was he in the war?"

"Yes, sir, he was, for a fact. He was in de Cavalry, sir, one o' Morgan's Raiders. Got more'n six bullets in him now. I jes' done helped him off wid his wooden leg. It was cut off below de knee. His old man Aleck most generally takes care of dat leg. He didn't come wid him dis trip. But he'll be on de platform in de mornin' a-waitin' for him."

[The end]
Francis Hopkinson Smith's short story: Sammy

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