Col. LaFayette was a tenant farmer—a typical tenant farmer of a class that lived in the cotton-producing section of the South after the civil war. During the days of slavery he served as overseer for small slave-owning landlords. Most of his kind moved to the towns of the Piedmont counties of the Southern States when cotton mills began to flourish and put their children at work at the spindle and the loom. The sorrier ones became vampires.
In appearance Col. LaFayette was a freak, but in manner, a sort of shabby-genteel Chesterfield. He was a cadaverous-looking fellow, with long body, long legs, and long arms, and thin, sharp, pointed face. The oldest citizen of his county did not remember to have seen him in well-fitting clothes. His shirt sleeves were too short, and his trousers never reached the top of his shoes. He habitually wore a slouch hat, with one side up and the other down, and went with his shirt front open and his shoes loosely laced.
Picture him in your mind, trudging his way to town to join his chums at The Merry Bowl, Jim Roediger’s saloon! Any excuse took him in, for he was always certain that his friends, all of whom, save Uncle Billy, were fellow tillers of the soil, would meet him there. No particular day was set but the little band of drinking cronies came together like iron filings to a magnet. If any one failed to appear something serious had happened to prevent his coming. Jim Boggs, Pete Blue, Sam Helms, Mike Broom and Bob Sink belonged to the coterie.
Such were the running mates of Uncle Bill Malone; all good fellows, and harmless, except to their own constitutions. They stood in their own light but no one could say aught against any of them, barring the fact that he drank to excess, and that was a common complaint at that time. They had lived together so long, and enjoyed one another’s society to such an extent that, up to the time of Uncle Billy’s death, with the exception of a few business associations, they shunned the rest of mankind, not that they were ashamed but that ordinary men bored them. Their circle was complete.
On a cold—bitter cold—night in December, 18—, the angel of death knocked at the cabin door of Uncle Billy Malone. Without warning, and suddenly, the call came. The old man had not been feeling well for several days, but he had not complained to his companions. The facts concerning his last moments are not known to the outside world. The curtain is down and no one can say how Uncle Billy passed from life to eternity. But the charitable must believe that he was sober and clothed in his right mind.
The day before the summons came De Ate, as the party was known, foregathered at The Merry Bowl and drank until late. Sid and his father got home just before dark. The next morning, when the son went to arouse his father, he found his body cold in death.
But, let us turn to the funeral!
Sid Malone behaved like a child in the presence of death. The very thought of being alone and face to face with a dead kinsman seemed to unnerve him. There was but one definite idea in his head and that was that his father had to be buried.
“Who is to do it?” he asked himself.
“Why, his friends!” was the natural answer.