FullReads

“Is that you, judge? Well sir, I’m glad to see you! Come right in; take a seat and sit down and rest yourself.”

The speaker showed himself in the arched opening of the vine barrier–an old man–not quite so old, perhaps, as the judge. He was in his shirtsleeves. There was a patch upon one of the sleeves. His shoes had been newly shined, but the job was poorly done; the leather showed a dulled black upon the toes and a weathered yellow at the sides and heels. As he spoke his voice ran up and down–the voice of a deaf person who cannot hear his own words clearly, so that he pitches them in a false key. For added proof of this affliction he held a lean and slightly tremulous hand cupped behind his ear.

The other hand he extended in greeting as the old judge mounted the step of the low porch. The visitor took one of two creaky wooden rockers that stood in the narrow space behind the balsam vines, and for a minute or two he sat without speech, fanning himself. Evidently these neighborly calls between these two old men were not uncommon; they could enjoy the communion of silence together without embarrassment.

The town clocks struck–first the one on the city hall struck eight times sedately; and then, farther away, the one on the county courthouse. This one struck five times slowly, hesitated a moment, struck eleven times with great vigor, hesitated again, struck once with a big, final boom, and was through. No amount of repairing could cure the courthouse clock of this peculiarity. It kept the time, but kept it according to a private way of its own. Immediately after it ceased the bell on the Catholic church, first and earliest of the Sunday bells, began tolling briskly. Judge Priest waited until its clamoring had died away.

“Goin’ to be good and hot after while,” he said, raising his voice.

“What say?”

“I say it’s goin’ to be mighty warm a little later on in the day,” repeated Judge Priest.

“Yes, suh; I reckon you’re right there,” assented the host. “Just a minute ago, before you came over, I was telling Liddie she’d find it middlin’ close in church this morning. She’s going, though–runaway horses wouldn’t keep her away from church! I’m not going myself–seems as though I’m getting more and more out of the church habit here lately.”

Judge Priest’s eyes squinted in whimsical appreciation of this admission. He remembered that the other man, during the lifetime of his second wife, had been a regular attendant at services–going twice on Sundays and to Wednesday night prayer meetings too; but the second wife had been dead going on four years now–or was it five? Time sped so!

The deaf man spoke on:

“So I just thought I’d sit here and try to keep cool and wait for that Ledbetter boy to come round with the Sunday paper. Did you read last Sunday’s paper, judge? Colonel Watterson certainly had a mighty fine piece on those Northern money devils. It’s round here somewhere–I cut it out to keep it. I’d like to have you read it and pass your opinion on it. These young fellows do pretty well, but there’s none of them can write like the colonel, in my judgment.”

Judge Priest appeared not to have heard him.

“Ed Tilghman,” he said abruptly in his high, fine voice, that seemed absurdly out of place, coming from his round frame, “you and me have lived neighbors together a good while, haven’t we? We’ve been right acros’t the street from one another all this time. It kind of jolts me sometimes when I git to thinkin’ how many years it’s really been; because we’re gittin’ along right smartly in years–all us old fellows are. Ten years from now, say, there won’t be so many of us left.” He glanced sidewise at the lean, firm profile of his friend. “You’re younger than some of us; but, even so, you ain’t exactly what I’d call a young man yourself.”