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

by Irvin S. Cobb

For one versed in the mysteries of the unseen he was fairly democratic in his minglings with the people; and as for D. C. Davello, no one, not even a candidate, could excel him in cordiality. Together they visited the office of the Daily Evening News and also the office of our other paper, the Weekly Argua-Eye, which was upstairs over Leaken's job-printing shop. They walked through the market house and went to the city hall to call on the mayor and the city marshal and invite them to come to St. Clair Hall that night and bring their families with them, free of charge. Skinny Collins, who was of their tagging juvenile escort, at once began to put on airs before the rest. The city marshal was his father.

About the middle of the afternoon they went into Felsburg Brothers Oak Hall Clothing Emporium, steered by Van Wallace, who seemed to be showing them round. We followed in behind, half a dozen or more of us, scuffling our dusty bare feet on the splintery floor between the aisles of racked-up coats. In the rear was Willie Richey, limping along on one toe and one heel. Willie Richey always had at least one stone bruise in the stone-bruise season, and sometimes two.

They went clear back to the end of the store where the office was and the stove, but we, holding our distance, halted by the counter where they kept the gift suspenders and neckties—Felsburg Brothers gave a pair of suspenders or a necktie with every suit, the choice being left to the customer and depending on whether in his nature the utilitarian or the decorative instinct was in the ascendency. We halted there, all eyes and ears and wriggling young bodies. The proprietors advanced and some of the clerks, and Van Wallace introduced the visitors to Mr. Herman Felsburg and to Mr. Ike Felsburg, his brother. Mr. Herman said, “Pleased to meetcher,” with professional warmth, while Mr. Ike murmured, “Didn't catch the name?” inquiringly, such being the invariable formula of these two on greeting strangers. Cigars were passed round freely by D. C. Davello. He must have carried a pocketful of cigars, for he had more of them for some of the business men who came dropping in as if by chance. All of a sudden Van Wallace, noting how the group had grown, said it would be nice if the professor would show us what he could do. D. C. Davello said it wasn't customary for Daniel the Mystic to vulgarize his art by giving impromptu demonstrations, but perhaps he would make an exception just for this once. He spoke to Daniel the Mystic who was sitting silently in the Messrs. Felsburg's swivel office-chair with his face in his hands—the poster likeness was vindicated at last—and after a little arguing he got up and looked all about him slowly and in silence. His eye fell on the little huddle of small boys by the necktie counter and he said sharp and quick to Jack Irons: “Come here, boy!”

I don't know yet how Jack Irons came to be of our company on that day; mostly Jack didn't run with us. He was sickly. He had spells and was laid up at home a good deal.

He couldn't even go barefooted in summer, because if he did his legs would be broken out all over with dew poison in no time.

Jack Irons didn't belong to one of the prominent families either. He lived in a little brown house on the street that went down by the old Enders place. His mother was dead, and his sister worked in the county clerk's office and always wore black alpaca sleeves buttoned up on her forearms. His father was old Mr. Gid Irons that stayed in Scotter's hardware store. He didn't own the store, he just clerked there. Winter and summer he passed by our house four times a day, going to work in the morning and coming back at night, coming to dinner at twelve o'clock and going back at one. He was so regular that people used to say if the whistle on Langstock's planing mill ever broke down they could still set the clocks by old Mr. Gid Irons. Perhaps you have known men who were universally called old while they were yet on the up-side of middle life? Mr. Gid Irons was such a one as that.

I used to like to slip into Scotter's just to see him scooping tenpenny nails and iron bolts out of open bins and kegs with his bare hands. Digging his hands down into those rusty, scratchy things never seemed to bother him, and it was fascinating to watch him and gave you little flesh-crawling sensations. He was a silent, small man, short but very erect, and when he walked he brought his heels down very hard first. The skin of his face and of his hands and his hair and mustache were all a sort of faded pinkish red, and he nearly always had iron rust on his fingers, as though to advertise that his name was Irons.

By some boy intuition of my own I knew that he cut no wide swath in the lazy field of town life. When the veterans met at the city hall and organized their veterans' camp and named it the Gideon K. Irons Camp, it never occurred to me that they could be offering that honor to our old Mr. Gid Irons. I took it as a thing granted that there were some other Gideon Irons somewhere, one with a K in his name, a general probably, and no doubt a grand looking man on a white horse with a plume in his hat and a sword dangling, like the steel engraving of Robert E. Lee in our parlor. Whereas our Mr. Irons was shabby and poor; he didn't even own the house he lived in.

This Jack Irons who was with us that day was his only son, and when Daniel the Mystic looked at him and called him, Jack stepped out from our midst and went toward him, his feet dragging a little and moving as if some one had him by the shoulders leading him forward. His thin arms dangled at his sides. He went on until he was close up to Daniel the Mystic. The man threw up one hand and snapped out “Stop,” as though he were teaching tricks to a dog, and Jack flinched and dodged. He stopped though, with red spots coming and going in the cheeks as though under the stoking of a blowpipe, and he breathed in sharp puffs that pulled his nostrils almost shut. Standing so, he looked as poor and weak and futile as a sprig of bleached celery, as a tow string, as a limp rag, as anything helpless and spineless that you had a mind to think of. The picture of him has hung in my mind ever since. Even now I recall how his meager frame quivered as Daniel the Mystic stooped until his eyes were on a level with Jack's eyes, and said something to Jack over and over again in a half-whisper.

Suddenly his hands shot out and he began making slow stroking motions downward before Jack's face, with his fingers outstretched as though he were combing apart banks of invisible yam. Next with a quick motion he rubbed Jack's eyelids closed, and massaged his temples with his thumbs, and then stepped back.