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

by Irvin S. Cobb

“They brought Tallow Dave out of the jail with his arms tied back, and put him in a wagon, him sitting on his coffin, and drove him under a tree and noosed him round the neck, and then the wagon pulled out and left him swinging and kicking there with the people scrooging up so close to him they almost touched his legs. I was there where I could see it all, and that's another thing in my life I'm never going to forget. It was pretty soon after they'd cut him down that Harve Allen ran across Singin' Sandy. This Sandy Biggs was a little stumpy man with sandy hair and big gray eyes that would put you in mind of a couple of these here mossy agates, and he was as freckled as a turkey egg, in the face. He hadn't been here very long and people had just begun calling him Singin' Sandy on account of him going along always humming a little tune without any words to it and really not much tune, more like a big blue bottle fly droning than anything else. He lived in a little clearing that he'd made about three miles out, back of the Grundy Hill, where that new summer park, as they call it, stands now. But then it was all deep timber—oak barrens in the high ground and cypress slashes in the low—with a trail where the gravel road runs, and the timber was full of razor back hogs stropping themselves against the tree boles and up above there were squirrels as thick as these English sparrows are today. He had a cub of a boy that looked just like him, freckles and sandy head and all; and this boy—he was about fourteen, I reckon—had come in with him on this day of the Tallow Dave hanging.

“Well, some way or other, Singin' Sandy gave offense to Harve Allen—which as I have told you, was no hard thing to do—bumped into him by accident maybe or didn't get out of the road brisk enough to suit Harve. And Harve without a word, up and hauled off and smacked him down as flat as a flinder. He laid there on the ground a minute, sort of stunned, and then up he got and surprised everybody by making a rush for Harve. He mixed it with him but it was too onesided to be much fun, even for those who'd had the same dose themselves and so enjoyed seeing Harve taking it out of somebody else's hide. In a second Harve had him tripped and thrown and was down on him bashing in his face for him. At that, Singin' Sandy's cub of a boy ran in and tried to pull Harve off his dad, and Harve stopped pounding Sandy just long enough to rear up and fetch the cub a back handed lick with the broad of his hand that landed the chap ten feet away. The cub bounced right up and made as if to come back and try it again, but some men grabbed him and held him, not wanting to see such a little shaver hurt. The boy was sniveling too, but I took notice it wasn't a scared snivel—it was a mad snivel, if you all know what I mean. They held him, a couple of them, until it was over.

“That wasn't long—it was over in a minute or two. Harve Allen got up and stood off grinning, just as he always grinned when he'd mauled somebody to his own satisfaction, and two or three went up to Singin' Sandy and upended him on his feet. Somebody fetched a gourd of water from the public well and sluiced it over his head and face. He was all blood where he wasn't mud—streaked and sopped with it, and mud was caked in his hair thick, like yellow mortar, with the water dripping down off of it. He didn't say a word at first. He got his breath back and wiped some of the blood out of his eyes and off his face onto his sleeve, and I handed him his old skin cap where it had fallen off his head. The cub broke loose and came running to him and he shook himself together and straightened up and looked round him. He looked at Harve Allen standing ten feet away grinning, and he said slow, just as slow and quiet:

“'I'll be back agin Mister, one month frum today. Wait fur me.

“That was all—just that 'I'll be back in a month' and 'wait fur me.' And then as he turned around and went away, staggering a little on his pins, with his cub trotting alongside him, I'm blessed if he didn't start up that little humming song of his; only it sounded pretty thick coming through a pair of lips that were battered up and one of them, the upper one, was split open on his front teeth.

“We didn't then know what he'd meant, but we knew in a month. For that day month, on the hour pretty nigh, here came Singin' Sandy tramping in by himself. Harve Allen was standing in front of a doggery that a man named Whitis ran—he died of the cholera I remember years and years after—and Singin' Sandy walked right up to him and said: 'Well, here I am' and hit out at Harve with his fist. He hit out quick, like a cat striking, but he was short armed and under sized. He didn't much more than come up to Harve's shoulder and even if the lick had landed, it wouldn't have dented Harve hardly. His intentions were good though, and he swung out quick and fast. But Harve was quicker still. Singin' Sandy hit like a cat, but Harve could strike like a moccasin snake biting you. It was all over again almost before it started.

“Harve Allen bellowed once, like a bull, and downed him and jumped on him and stomped him in the chest with his knees and pounded and clouted him in the face until the little man stretched out on the ground still and quiet. Then, Harve climbed off of him and swaggered off. Even now, looking back on it all, it seems like a shameful thing to admit, but nobody dared touch a hand to Singin' Sandy until Harve was plumb gone. As soon, though, as Harve was out of sight behind a cabin, some of them went to the little man and picked him up and worked over him until he came to. If his face had been dog's meat before, it was calf's liver now—just pounded out of shape. He couldn't get but one eye open. I still remember how it looked. It looked like a piece of cold gray quartz—like the tip of one these here gray flint Indian darts. He held one hand to his side—two of his ribs were caved in, it turned out—and he braced himself against the wall of the doggery and looked around him. He was looking for Harve Allen.

“'Tell him for me,' he said slow and thick, 'that I'll be back agin in a month, the same as usual.'

“And then he went back out the road into the oak barrens, falling down and getting up and falling some more, but keeping right on. And by everything that's holy, he was trying to sing as he went and making a bubbling noise through the blood that was in his throat.

“They all stood staring at him until he was away off amongst the trees, and then they recalled that that was what he had said before—that he'd be back in a month; and two or three of them went and hunted up Harve Allen and gave him the message. He swore and laughed that laugh of his, and looked hard at them and said: