Back Home: Being the Narrative of Judge Priest and His People

by Irvin S. Cobb

He lives as a memory now in the town—his lean shaven jowl, and his high heeled boots and the crimson blanket that he wore winters, draped over his shoulders and held at the throat with a pin made of a big crusty nugget of virgin California gold. Wearing this blanket was no theatrical affectation of Cap'n Jasper's—it was a part of him; he was raised in the days when men, white and red both, wore blankets for overcoats. He could remember when the Chickasaws still held our end of the State and General Jackson and Governor Shelby came down and bought it away from them and so gave to it its name of The Purchase. He could remember plenty of things like that—and what was better, could tell them so that you could see before your eyes the burnished backs of the naked bucks sitting in solemn conclave and those two old Indian fighters chaffering with them for their tribal lands. He was tall and sparse and straight like one of those old hillside pines, that I have seen since growing on the red clay slopes of the cotton country south of us; and he stayed so until he died, which was when he was away up in the nineties. It was Cap'n Jasper this night who told the story of Singin' Sandy Biggs.

Somehow or other, the talk had flowed and eddied by winding ways to the subject of cowardice, and Judge Priest had said that every brave man was a coward and every coward was a brave man—it all depended on the time and the place—and this had moved Captain Shelby Woodward to repeat one of his staple chronicles—when the occasion suited he always told it. It concerned that epic last year of the Orphan Brigade—his brigade he always called it, as though he'd owned it.

“More than five thousand of us in that brigade of mine, when we went out in '61,” he said, “and not quite twelve hundred of us left on that morning in May of '64 when we marched out of Dalton—Joe Johnston's rear guard, holding Sherman back. Holding him back? Hah, feeding ourselves to him; that was it, sir—just feeding ourselves to him a bite at a time, so as to give the rest of the army a chance for its life. And what does that man Shaler say—what does he say and prove it by the figures? One hundred and twenty solid days of fighting and marching and retreating—one hundred and forty days that were like a hot red slice carved out of hell—fighting every day and mighty near every hour, hanging on Sherman's flanks and stinging at him like gadflies and being wiped out and swallowed in mouthfuls. A total, sir, of more than 1800 deadly, or disabling wounds for us in those hundred and twenty days, or more than a wound apiece if every man had been wounded, and there were less than fifty of the boys that weren't wounded at that. And in September, at the end of those hundred and twenty days, just 240 of us left out of what had been five thousand three years before—240 out of what had been nearly twelve hundred in May—240 out of a whole brigade, infantry, and artillery—but still fighting and still ready to keep right on fighting. Those are Shaler's figures, and he was a Federal officer himself, and a most gallant gentleman. And it is true, sir—every word of it is true.

“Now was that bravery? Or was it just pure doggedness? And when you come right down to it, what is the difference between the two? This one thing I do know, though—if it was bravery we were no braver than the men who fought us and chased us and killed us off on that campaign to Atlanta and then on down to the Sea and if it was doggedness, they'd have been just as dogged as we were with the conditions reversed—them losing and us winning. When you're the underdog you just naturally have to fight—there's nothing else for you to do—isn't that true in your experience, Billy?”

“Yes,” said Judge Priest, “that's true as Gospel Writ. After all, boys,” he added, “I reckin the bravest man that lives is the coward that wants to run and yit don't do it. And anyway, when all's said and done, the bravest fighters in every war have always been the women and not the men. I know 'twas so in that war of ours—the men could go and git what joy there was out of the fightin'; it was the women that stayed behind and suffered and waited and prayed. Boys, if you've all got a taste of your toddies left, s'posen we drink to our women before Jeff brings you your fresh glasses.”

They drank with those little clucking sipping sounds that old men make when they drink, and for a bit there was a silence. The shifting shuttle play of the lightning made stage effects in yellow and black against the back-drop of the sky. From the shadows of the dishrag vine where he sat in a hickory arm chair, his pipe bowl making a glowing red smudge in the darkness, old Cap'n Jasper Lawson spoke.

“Speaking of under dogs and things, I reckon none of you young fellows”—he chuckled a little down in his throat—“can remember when this wasn't a gun-toting country down here? But I do.

“It was before your day, but I remember it. First off, there was the time when my daddy and the granddaddies of some of you gentlemen came out over the Wilderness trail with a squirrel rifle in one hand and an ax in the other, swapping shots with the Indians every step of the way. And that was the beginning of everything here. Then, years later on, the feuds started, up in the mountains—although I'm not denying but we had our share of them down here too—and some broken down aristocrats moved out from Virginia and Maryland and brought the Code and a few pairs of those old long barreled dueling pistols along with them, which was really the only baggage some of them had; and awhile after that the Big War came on; and so what with one thing and another, men took to toting guns regularly—a mighty bad habit too, and one which we've never been entirely cured of yet, as Billy's next court docket will show, eh, Billy?”

Judge Priest made an inarticulate sound of regretful assent and Squire Buckley spat out into the darkness with a long-drawn syrupy swish.

“But in between, back in the twenties and the thirties, there was a period when gun toting wasn't so highly popular. Maybe it was because pistols hadn't got common yet and squirrel rifles were too heavy to tote around, and maybe it was because people were just tired of trouble. I won't pretend to say exactly what the cause of it was, but so it was—men settled their differences with their fists and their feet—with their teeth too, sometimes. And if there were more gouged eyes and more teeth knocked out, there were fewer widows and not so many orphans either.