II
Eph’s songs, in the old days, were simple darky ballads, or lullabys, or the songs of the southland that all the world knows. People sometimes brought their children, of an evening, just to hear Eph sing: “Don’ You Cry, Ma Honey ...” or that fearsome lullaby about the “Conju’ cats....” When the old man was in good voice, he never failed to gather a little audience about him. His listeners used to call out and ask him to sing certain songs that were their favorites; and sometimes Eph sang what they wished to hear, and sometimes he refused. He would never sing “Dixie.” “I ain’ no slave nigger,” he was accustomed to protest, with scorn. “I fit ag’in’ de South, in de big war. Rackon I’m gwine sing dat song? Lawdy, man, no suh.”
They told him, laughingly, that the war was over. “Da’s all right,” he agreed. “De war’s over. Mebbe so. But I ain’ over. Not me. An’ long as I is what I is, I don’ sing no rebelliums. No suh.”
Those who had enough curiosity to make inquiries found that Eph told the truth when he said he had fought for the North. He had served in that colored regiment whose black ranks are immortalized in the Shaw Memorial, opposite the State House, just up the hill from where Eph had his nightly stand; and he carried his discharge papers in a tattered old wallet in his tattered coat.... By the same token, though he would never sing “Dixie,” it required no more than a word to start him off on that mighty battle hymn, “Mine eyes have seen the glory....” When he sang this, his voice rolled and throbbed and thrummed with a roar like the roar of drums, and there was the beat of marching feet in the cadence of his song. His banjo tinkled shrilly as the piping of the fifes, and his bent shoulders straightened, and his head flung high, and his old eyes snapped and shone....
When Europe went to war, Eph little by little forsook the gentler melodies of his repertoire; he chose songs with a martial swing. He chose them by ear and by words; and when he sang them, there was the blare of bugles in his voice. He was, from the beginning, violently anti-German; and now and then, when his enthusiasm overcame him, he delivered an oration on the subject to his nightly audience. At which they laughed.
But if it was a joke to them, it was not funny to Eph; and he proved this when the United States went into the war. He went, unostentatiously, to the recruiting office and offered himself to the country.
The Sergeant in charge did not smile at old Eph, because he saw that Eph himself was deadly serious. Eph had said simply:
“I’ve come to jine up in de army, suh.” The Sergeant asked:
“You mean you want to enlist.”
Eph nodded, and grinned. “Yas suh, jes dat.”
The Sergeant frowned, and he considered. “I’ll tell you, old man,” he said. “I’m afraid you’re over the age limit.”
“Whut de age limit?” Eph asked cautiously.
“Forty-five.”
Eph cackled with delight. “I declare, dat jes lets me in. Me, I’m gwine on fo’ty-four, dis minute.”
The Sergeant grinned. “Get out!” he protested. “You’ll never see seventy-four again.”
“I kin prove it,” Eph offered.
The other shook his head. “You’re too old; and your eyes are no good, and your teeth are gone, and you’ve got flat-foot....”
Eph perceived that the man was friendly. “I can p’int a gun an’ pull a trigger,” he urged wheedlingly.
“There’s more than that to war,” the Sergeant told him; and Eph’s eyes blazed.
“Whut you know ’bout war, man?” he demanded. “Ain’ I been in it. Ain’ I slep’ in de rain, an’ et raw corn, an’ fit in mud to de knees, an’ got a bullet in my laig, an’ laid out in de snow three days till they come an’ fotch me in. Don’ you let on about war to me, man. I been it and I done it, befo’ you uz thought of. Go way!”
Eph was so deadly earnest that the Sergeant’s eyes misted. The Sergeant himself knew what it was to grow old. He had a terrible, sneaking fear that they would keep him on such duty as this; that he would never see France. And he crossed, and dropped his hand on Eph’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s no go. We can’t take you.”
Eph passed from anger to pleading. “Spose’n I uz to go along an’ sing to um,” he proposed. “I c’d do that, anyways.”
“No. They wouldn’t allow you....”
“I’m a jim dandy cook,” Eph offered pitifully.
The Sergeant had to swear or weep. He swore. “Get out of here, you damned old scamp,” he exclaimed, and swept Eph toward the door. “Get out of here and stay out, or I’ll have you run in....”
And Eph, who knew white folks and their ways as well as the slave niggers he scorned, understood that this was the Sergeant’s way of telling him there was no hope at all. So he said simply: “Thank’e, sir.” And he turned, and with a sad and dreary dignity he went out, and down the stairs to the street, and up the Hill and down to the little room where he lodged.
He was alone in his room all that day. The woman who kept the boarding house, a billowy negress with a pock-marked face, heard little moaning cries and lamentations coming from behind his closed door; and once she knocked and offered her comfort, but Eph drove her away with hard words, and nursed his sorrow alone.
That night, some of those who saw him at his stand by the subway kiosk thought he looked tired; but he was as gay as ever, and as cheerful. He made one innovation in his singing. Across the street and above his head rose the spire of the Park street church. Whenever the hands of the clock in this spire touched the hour, old Eph rose, and took off his hat, and lifted up his voice and sang:
He sang this each hour that evening, and each hour in all the evenings that were to come, until the end. And at first they scoffed a little, because they thought he was playing patriotism for his own ends; but when they saw how earnestly he sang, and felt the wistful tenderness in his tones, they faintly understood, and more respected him.
When Ragan came on duty, shortly after midnight that night, he thought old Eph looked sick, and he sent the old man home.