Part 15 (1/2)
”Unmarried, eh?” inquired his chief inquisitor.
”Yas, suh--I means, naw, suh,” stated Jeff. ”I ain't never been much of a hand fur marryin' round.”
He forced an ingratiating smile. The smile fell as seed on barren soil--fell and died there.
”Mother and father? Either one or both of them living?”
Never had Jeff looked more the orphan than as he stood there confessing himself one. He fumbled his hat in his hands.
”No dependents at all then, I take it?”
”Yas, suh, dey sh.o.r.ely is,” answered Jeff smartly, hope rekindling within him.
”Well, who is it that you help support--if it's anybody?”
”Hit's Jedge Priest--tha's who. Jedge, he jes' natch.e.l.ly couldn't git 'long noways 'thout me lookin' after him, suh. The older he git the more it seem lak he leans heavy on me.”
”Well, Judge Priest may have to lean on himself for a while. Uncle Sam needs every able-bodied man he can get these times and you look to be as strong as a mule. Here, take this card and go on through that door yonder to the second room down the hall and let Doctor Dismukes look you over.”
Jeff cheered up slightly. He knew Doctor Dismukes--knew him mighty well.
In Doctor Dismukes' hands he would be in the hands of a friend. Beyond question the doctor would understand the situation as this strange and most unsympathetic white man undoubtedly did not.
But Doctor Dismukes, all snap and smartness, went over him as though he had never seen him before in all his life. If Jeff had been a horse for sale and the doctor a professional horse coper, scarcely could the examination have been carried forward with a more businesslike dispatch.
”Jeff,” said the doctor when he had finished and the other was rearranging his wardrobe, ”you ought to be ashamed of yourself for being so healthy. Take your teeth now--your teeth are splendid. I only wish I had a set like 'em.”
”Is dey?” said Jeff despondently, for the first time in his life regretting his unblemished ivory.
”They certainly are. You wouldn't need a gun, not with those teeth you wouldn't--you could just naturally bite a German in two.”
Jeff s.h.i.+vered. The very suggestion was abhorrent to his nature.
”Please suh, don't--don't talk lak that,” he entreated. ”I ain't cravin' to bite n.o.body a-tall, 'specially 'tis Germans. Live an' let live--tha's my sayin'.”
”Yep,” went on the doctor, prolonging the agony for the victim, ”your teeth are perfect and your lungs are sound, your heart action is splendid and I know something about your appet.i.te myself, having seen you eat. Black boy, listen to me! In every respect you are absolutely qualified physically to make a regular man-eating bearcat of a soldier”--he paused--”in every respect excepting one--no, two.”
If a drowning man clutching for a straw might be imagined as coincidentally asking a question, it is highly probable he would ask it in the tone now used by Jeff.
”Meanin'--meanin' w'ich, suh?”
”I mean your feet. You've got flat feet, Jeff--you've got the flattest feet I ever saw. I don't understand it either. So far as I've been able to observe you've spent the greater part of your life sitting down.
Somebody must have hit you on the head with an ax when you were standing on a plowshare and broke your arches down.”
It was an old joke, but it fitted the present case, and Jeff, not to be outdone in politeness, laughed louder at it than its maker did. Indeed Jeff felt he had reason to laugh; a great load was lifting from his soul.
”Jeff,” went on the doctor, ”deeply though it may grieve both of us, it nevertheless is my painful duty to inform you that you have two perfectly good exemptions from military service--a right one and a left one. Now grab your hat and get out of here.”
”Boss,” cried Jeff, ”Ise gone. Exemptions, tek me away frum yere!”
So while many others went away to fight or to learn how to fight, as the case might be, Jeff stayed behind and did his bit by remaining steadfastly cheerful. Never before, sartorially speaking, had he cut so splendid a figure as now when such numbers of young white gentlemen of his acquaintance were putting aside civilian garb to put on khaki. Jeff had one of those adaptable figures. The garments to which he fell heir might never have fitted their original owner, but always they would fit Jeff. Gorgeous in slightly worn but carefully refurbished raiment, he figured in the wartime activities of the colored population and in ostensibly helpful capacities figured in some of the activities of the white folks too.
Going among his own set his frequent companion was that straw-colored light of his social hours, Ophelia Stubblefield. It helped to reconcile Jeff to the rigors of the period of enforced rationing as he reflected that the same issues and causes which made lump sugar a rarity and fat meat a scarcity had rid him of his more dangerous compet.i.tion in the quarter where his affections centered. Particularly on one account did he feel reconciled. A spirit of the most soothful resignation filled him when he gave thought to the moral certainty that the most formidable and fearsome of his rivals, that b.l.o.o.d.y-minded bravo, Smooth Crumbaugh, would daunt him never again with threats of articular dismemberment with a new-honed razor. For Smooth Crumbaugh was gone and gone for good.
First the draft had carried him away and then the pneumonia had carried him off. War had its compensations after all.