God Helps the Poor Man

ACROSS the passageway that divides the jail house from the courtroom, the jailbirds can see Judge Thomas holding his court. The Judge is old and bald, with a hooked nose like the beak of a buzzard, but he is a kindly soul. He always smiles and speaks words of encouragement when he sentences a man, and never inflicts a heavy penalty if he can help it. Most of the jailbirds know from personal experience where the Judge’s heart is.

They are trying an automobile accident over there in the courtroom, and it looks like a bad case. The prisoner is a young fellow with fuzz on his lip where the beard will grow some day, but the State says he was drunk at the time of the accident. The Judge looks sad and a little worried.

Watching the witnesses take and leave the witness stand, old Sam Johnson says, ‘Funny things happen in automobile accidents sometimes. Do I ever tell you about Banty McGinnis?’

‘Not that I recollect of,’ says Phil Allen. ‘Is it worth listenin’ to?’

‘It ain’t so bad,’ says Sam Johnson. ‘Listen.’

I

A good many years ago, I’m a mule driver for Joe Taylor, like I tell you about before now, and in them days Joe Taylor’s men is not only handy with their guns, but also with their fists. It’s a rule in the outfit that differences between members of the gang has to be settled without weapons, so when I have a run-in with Big Jim Lanham it’s an affair of the knuckles.

It so happens in this mix-up that Jim Lanham gives me a powerful beatin’, and by that I mean Big Jim is a wheel horse of a man and then some. He stands six feet six in his stockin’ feet, weighs two hundred and forty pounds, and there ain’t an ounce of fat on him. The fight takes place in a saloon over at Brownstown.

This is the first time I get stretched out in a fist fight, and it hurts. I’m off in a side room afterwards, rubbin’ myself with liniment and feelin’ like the world is against me, when the door opens and a feller sidles up to me like his feet weigh about a ton apiece. I notice him before out in the barroom, and think to myself then that here is undoubtedly the most serious-minded man in the world. He stands undecidedlike for a minute or two, shiftin’ from one foot to the other. Then he says, ‘I see the fight inside there, and what I want to know is, what ’ll you give me to whip him?’

He says it slow and easy like I’m tellin’ you, so for a minute I think he is kiddin’. That makes me mad till I take another look at him, and see he means business. A man with that face never kidded nobody in his life.

He is a little feller about five feet two inches tall and medium weight at that, but he’s got the biggest head on him I ever see on a human bein’. His head looks like it is carved out of rock and about that thick, and his lower jaw sticks out like an English bulldog. Lookin’ at him, I think it’s plain to see he don’t take any prizes for beauty and even less for brains, but he sure does have the map of a scrapper. Even so, I can’t see him holdin’ his own with Big Jim, and the thought of what Big Jim will do to him makes me laugh. So I say, ‘That will be worth quite a bit to me, podner. How much do you want?’

‘Two dollars and a half,’ says he.

That makes me laugh some more, so I say, ‘If you whip Jim Lanham, I’ll double the money.’

I won’t do this, you understand, if I think there is a chance of Big Jim and this feller fightin’, for it ain’t my way to hire substitutes in these matters. The whole thing sounds like a big joke to me. So we go back in the barroom where Big Jim is standin’ up at the bar, and I say, ‘ Well, Jim, you got the best of me that time, but I’ve brought along my side-kick to help me.’

‘Where?’ says Jim, lookin’ ferocious.

‘Right here,’ says I, bringin’ the little guy to the front, ‘and furthermore I promised him five dollars to whip you.’

Jim sees it’s a joke, so he says, ‘ Well, little feller, I admire your nerve, but there ain’t no use of us mixin’ it to-day. Fightin’ is a thing that’s mighty hard on the eyes, and I always avoid it when possible. Have a drink?’

‘Maybe I’ll drink with you,’ says the little guy, ‘and maybe I won’t. We’ll see about that after the fight. For my part, I’m all ready.’

Jim is still good-natured, and he says, ‘Listen, little feller, anybody can see you ain’t got no business with me. If you won’t drink, run along to your mamma. She’s waitin’ for you.’

‘If she is,’ says the little guy, ‘she can wait.’

With that he walks over and smacks Big Jim Lanham in the nose.

Well, men, you may talk about your seventy-five-round prize fights if you want to, but they ain’t nothin’. I don’t mean to say the little guy steps in and makes it hot for Jim right from the beginnln’, for it ain’t in the nature of things he can do it. As a matter of fact, the first time Jim hits him I think maybe we will have a funeral, because Jim can knock a mule down with his fist, and he puts out all he’s got. But the little guy comes back again, and that ain’t the last time. The more Jim knocks him down, the more he comes back, and pretty soon it gets to be a game of roly-poly.

When the little guy goes down about a hundred times and still comes up with the fight in him, the crowd is for him and I hear them say, ‘Boy, that bird is tough. You can’t hurt him with a broadaxe.’

Big Jim hears it, too, and gets worried. He is one of these fighters that stakes everything on the first rush, and his stayin’ powers are only medium. Knockin’ this guy down is plenty exercise in itself, and in the end Big Jim gets the blind staggers. He hangs on then with his nerve for a half hour, but his knees give way finally and the little guy stretches his six foot six on the barroom floor. It’s the only case I know of where a man wears himself out knockin’ another one down.

II

I tell you fellers all this because that is my first introduction to Banty McGinnis and the story is about Banty. After this I get to know him pretty well, and whenever we come to Brownstown he always comes to see me. He is a man that don’t make many friends, but when he makes one he sticks to him, and he says I’m his friend because that five dollars I give him for whippin’ Jim Lanham helps him make the down payment on his farm. He keeps after me to come over and visit him at his place, and so one day I tell him I will come on a certain day.

Banty’s farm is located over on the head of Lick Creek, and from the way he talks about it I suppose he has a mighty fine establishment. But when I get there and find him settin’ in his front yard under a sycamore tree I can’t hardly believe it’s the place, for it’s the sorriest-lookin’ shack and the sorriest-lookin’ farm in the neighborhood. The only farmin’ I can see is a garden patch and a field of new ground on the mountain side, and the fastestgrowin’ things around there is weeds and babies.

I don’t really know him very well before this, for I see now he is one of them men that works hard all their lives and gets nowhere. But of course I don’t say nothin’ about that to him. Instead, I say, ‘Well, Banty, here I am. How are you?’

‘Tol’able,’ says he. ‘Have a seat.’

He has one of the kids bring me out a green willow rocker, and then I take a look at his family. There is babies peekin’ out of every corner. His woman scrubs the little fellers inside and makes them tidy for company, but the older ones takes to the garden and the outhouses and watches from a distance. Tryin’ to make conversation, I tell him it must be great to be a family man.

‘I’m always a great one for children,’ says he, ‘and that’s why I buy me a place of my own where they can roam the hills all they want to. Of course, it’s a hard row payin’ for it, but when that’s done a man will have somethin’ to look back on.’

‘How much you pay for this place?’ says I.

‘Five dollars,’ says he; ‘the five you give me.’

I know he don’t buy a farm for five dollars, for even in them days there ain’t no five-dollar farms I hear of. What he means is, he says, he buys this place for two hundred dollars, which, considerin’ the coal is sold, is a good price for it, and he makes a down payment of five dollars.

‘I buy it from Perry Kirk,’ says he, ‘on a contract to pay five dollars a year and the taxes. When I make the last payment I get the deed.’

‘At five dollars a year it will take you forty years to pay for it.’

‘Reckon that’s right,’ says he. ‘In forty years the place is mine.’

That sounds to me like a funny way to buy a farm, but it’s his business and I say, ‘Well, I know you are a great one for hangin’ on, and I wish you luck. Let’s hope you live that long.’

He says he figures he’ll live to be a hundred, and we change the subject.

In the meantime the kids is comin’ out of their hidin’ places, and one of them has a banjo. You fellers know my weakness when a banjo’s around, and it ain’t long till the whole family is out in the yard listenin’ to me play and sing the old-time favorites like ‘I Take My Gal to the Circus’ and ‘Lord, I’m Blind,’ and some others. You would think I am the world’s greatest musician by the way they stand around without makin’ a noise, and pretty soon the spell of the music, and the bigger spell of bein’ alive in a world where music is always around you, is upon us.

Maybe you notice how music affects people that way. Take a crowd of people where everybody is strangers, and they will look at each other suspicious-like and say nothin’. But let somebody start playin’ and singin’ to a banjo, and the first thing you know they are thinkin’ the same thoughts and feel mighty friendly.

That’s the way it is at Banty’s house, and now that I see his wife and his babies close at hand I know they are a happy family. Happiness is the thing we all hunt for, I suppose, but if there is any permanent rest and contentment in this world it must be in the homes of men like Banty McGinnis. That thought, I remember, is runnin’ through my head while I play and sing that old funeral song that is mighty sad in a way, and yet sweet and full of hope.

That makes us all kind of sad-like, and before long I put down the banjo and go back to Brownstown. I promise Banty when I leave that I will come back again, but it so happens that is one of the last trips Joe Taylor’s men ever makes through Brownstown, and I never do. Lots of times I think about the pleasant time I spent under the sycamore with him and his wife and his babies, but I ain’t cut out for domestic happiness personally, and for twentyeight years after that evenin’ I never set eyes on him. The next time I see him things has changed a whole lot, both with regards to the country and to myself.

III

I don’t need to tell you fellers what happens to me, for you know already. Somehow or other I can’t leave liquor alone, and after a while I don’t care. While other men marries and settles down to be good citizens, I wed myself to a whiskey bottle, and hardly a year passes but I serve a term or two in the jail house. It’s home, sweet home to me now, the only place in the whole wide world where I’m sure of a bed and some vittles. Well, I’m sittin’ here in the bull pen seven years ago this summer when the jailer brings me a visitor. It ain’t often anybody comes to see me personally, and I get a real surprise this time, for it’s Banty McGinnis himself.

He has n’t changed much either since the first time I see him. His jaws has flattened out a little and a crease has come on each side of his upper lip, but otherwise he’s the same little, lean, hard-headed man I see in the barroom at Brownstown. This time, though, his face is more serious than ever, and there is a look in his eyes like he faces the Day of Judgment.

‘I come to see you, Sam,’ says he, ‘because I don’t know who else to go to.’

‘What’s the matter?’ says I.

Then he tells me a long story about how they are cheatin’ him out of his farm. It seems like he still lives at the same place and makes his five-dollar payments every year for twenty-eight years. He has eighteen children born there and naturally figures the place is his own. But they strike gas over in his country and this Perry Kirk that sells him the farm wants it back. He offers Banty what is already paid if Banty will move, and when Banty refuses he up and sells the farm to a feller named Bob Steele, and Steele gives Banty notice to vacate. Banty ain’t got no deed and they tell him his contract to buy, bein’ oral, is bad because it’s in the Statute of Frauds. He wants to know what to do about it.

Of course, I ain’t no lawyer, but I see there is somethin’ wrong with this country if they can take his property like that, and I tell him to go down and see Lawyer Williams. That’s the Williams in the State Senate to-day. He is just startin’ then, but he is a squareshooter and I ’ll trust him farther than the others.

Banty does as I tell him and Williams takes the case. Of course, the thing is tied up in the courts for a long time, but Williams fights it like he is gettin’ a big fee, when I know from Banty himself that ten dollars is all he can scrape together, and finally Banty wins. At least they tell him he wins, though the judge enters a decree that puts Banty in pretty near as tough a spot as if he don’t win at all. The judge says he can have the property all right on account of livin’ on it for twenty-eight years and makin’ the payments, while Steele ain’t no innocent purchaser; but in the interests of justice Banty has got to pay the balance on the purchase price in thirty days. In other words, Banty has got thirty days to raise sixty dollars, and that is more money than he ever sees at one time in his life.

IV

You will think that with gas over in that country, and the farm worth more than he pays for it, somebody will loan Banty sixty dollars. But they don’t. His neighbors is all good people and they will let him have fifty cents or a dollar whenever he needs it, but above that his credit ain’t good. He’s got too many children and is always too near the line of starvation. The big trouble is that, while Banty McGinnis is the most serious-minded man in the world, people thinks he is a joke. He looks like a joke, the way he manages his affairs is a joke, and there ain’t but few people in this world will risk sixty dollars on a joke. His children, of course, will help him all they can, but they are about as bad off as he is, and there ain’t sixty dollars among them.

This is enough to make an ordinary man feel discouraged, and I suppose Banty feels down in the mouth about it. But there is somethin’ in that hard old nut of his that keeps him from backin’ down and out. He may look like a joke and his judgment ain’t always the highest, but he don’t know when he’s licked, and that’s somethin’.

He explains it this way: ‘Somewhere in this county,’ says he, ‘is a man with sixty dollars. I aim to find him. I don’t know where he is, but if I go over this county from house to house lookin’ for him I’ll find him. I’ve got thirty days to do it in and that gives me time to cover the county.’

The idee is as good as any other I think of, and I tell him to go to it. So he starts out, canvassin’ the county as thorough as any candidate on the ticket, doin’ the job brown. He ain’t got a car, or even a horse, for that matter, but the walkin’ ain’t crowded and day after day it’s surprisin’ how much territory a man will cover on foot. Any day of the week, includin’ Sundays, you will see him trudgin’ along the highways, and every man he meets he will ask for sixty dollars. He’s got to have it, he says, to pay for his farm; and when the man says he can’t spare that amount just now Banty won’t argue with him. They part company then and there, and Banty goes on to the next one.

It ain’t quite the usual thing for a man to go around solicitin’ sixty dollars to pay for his farm, and Banty’s errand goes faster than he does. People are on the lookout for him. He’s a harmless old feller even if he ain’t quite right in the upper story, and they treat him nice. On the road people will give him a lift in their automobiles, and lots of them make him take nickels and dimes so he won’t be hungry. People are funny that way, if you notice it. Hardly a man in the world will refuse another man somethin’ to eat, but the only ones that can borrow money are them that don’t need it.

Of course, he’s wastin’ time, even though he does the best he knows how, and the thirty days is pretty near up when he covers the county. He comes to see me then, feelin’ pretty blue, and it happens that I get out the very next momin’.

I do some tall thinkin’ myself in the meantime tryin’ to help him, and I figure there is one more chance. So I say, ‘I’ve got an idee stickin’ in the top of my dome that may be worth somethin’ and may not. Anyhow, it’s worth tryin’. To-morrow mornin’ I get out of here, and I want you to meet me in Sandy Bridge to-morrow afternoon. Can you get there?’

Banty says he will try to bum a ride up the river, and after he goes I start layin’ my plans for doin’ the thing right. There is a bootlegger in Sandy Bridge that I spend many a dollar with, and I know he’s got the money. Whether he will put up sixty dollars on this proposition is somethin’ else, but he’s a friend of mine and he can’t more than say no.

So the next mornin’ when they turn me loose I hustle up to Sandy Bridge to see him. He’s friendly, same as usual, but when I tell him what I want he turns sour, and says, ‘If he’s a friend of yours, Sam, I’m sorry. Times is bad, you know, and I can’t afford it. If a man helps out every case of that kind these days he will soon be in the poorhouse.’

That ends that, and there ain’t nothin’ left to do but wait till Banty shows up and tell him. It’s one of the few times when I wish I lead a virtuous life so I can help the poor devil, but wishin’ don’t help then. Nothin’ is ahead that I can see except that Banty is goin’ to lose his farm, and it seems like nothin’ can be done about it.

V

I walk down the street thinkin’ this over, and when I get in front of Brill Brothers’ Garage at the corner of the main street I see a fellow drive up in a car from down river like he’s right much excited. He pulls up in front of Brills’ gasoline tanks, and then in a loud voice says, ‘For God’s sake, get the wrecker and an ambulance. A car goes over Sandy Gorge five minutes ago.’

When he says this, people begin to gather round, and he says, ‘It’s a Chevrolet coop from Point Pleasant. The feller drivin’ is hittin’ the moonshine, but he jumps when the car starts over and ain’t hurt. The only one in the car is a crazy old feller that goes round the country tryin’ to borrow money.’

‘Banty McGinnis!’ says I. ‘Is it Banty McGinnis?’

‘Reckon that’s him,’ says he. He’s two hundred feet over the gorge.’

In the meantime Charley Brill is backin’ out the wreck truck, and I jump up beside him. While we’re shootin’ down to the gorge at the head of a string of automobiles I do a lot of thinkin’ about poor old Banty. It’s his luck to go over Sandy Gorge, where no man yet comes out alive, while the drunken fool that sends him there comes off without a scratch. I think of his wife and his babies, and how I sing them that song one time called ‘Gone to Rest,’ and then we reach the gorge.

The feller that jumps on the edge is sittin’ on the bank lookin’ mighty sober by this time. His car crashes through the guard rail at the place where it’s a straight drop to the rocks below.

‘I don’t suppose it’s any use goin’ down,’ says Charley Brill, ‘so far as helpin’ him is concerned, for what that feller needs is an undertaker. But somebody will have to go over on the ropes anyhow and we’re the first on the job.’

I tell him I will go down with him, since this feller is a friend of mine, so we fix up the ropes and the basket. In a way I ain’t at all sure old Banty is dead, for I remember that fight with Jim Lanham and I know he’s tough. In a couple of minutes we’re over the gorge, and sure enough there is Banty sittin’ on the edge of a rock all cut up from flyin’ glass and bloody as a stuck pig, but alive and plenty of fight in him.

‘I begin to think I won’t get out of this place,’ says he, ‘on account of the water makes so much noise nobody can hear me. But I says, “ O God, I have to get up to Sandy Bridge to see Sam Johnson,” and here you are.’

I can’t tell him then I don’t get the sixty dollars, so I let on like I still have to see the party, and we put him in the basket. A doctor is up at the top by this time and he says he don’t see how a man can get a fall like that without breakin’ every bone in his body, but so far as he can see none of them ain’t broken. There are some bad cuts, however, and it is a bad shock, so he says to take Banty home and put him to bed. Some feller says he will take him in his car, and I say I will go along with them, but Banty won’t listen to that.

‘You see this feller up at Sandy Bridge,’ says he, ‘and come out to my place to-morrow mornin’. Otherwise, I’m goin’ to Sandy Bridge with you.’

I know he will do it, even if he dies on the way, so I tell him all right and promise to come to see him the next mornin’. As soon as he’s out of sight I bum a ride down to the jail house, and the next mornin’ hitch-hike over to Lick Creek.

What I’m goin’ to tell him when I get there I don’t know. If he ain’t hurt too bad I aim to tell the truth, but if he’s in bad shape I figure a little lie is all to the good, for, after all, livin’ is more important than any farm I know of.

VI

I make good time to the mouth of Lick Creek and then I only walk half a mile till a couple of strangers come along and pick me up. They are city fellers from Charleston probably, and pretty soon one of them says, ‘Do you know a feller named Banty McGinnis? ’

The way he says it makes me think twice before I answer, and then I say, ‘Only by hearsay. They tell me he is right bad hurt yesterday.’

The feller gives me a sharp look, and says, ‘If you’re a stranger around here, maybe you can help us. We’re insurance adjusters from the company that has this car insured that the old man gets hurt in. What we want to know is, how bad is he hurt?’

‘Well, I only know from hearsay,’ says I, ‘ but you know what that Sandy Gorge is. He’s the only man ever come out of there alive. They tell me he’s in bad shape.’

The feller thinks awhile and then looks at the other one.

‘It looks to me,’ he says, ‘like this is a five-thousand-dollar case. It might even pay us to go seventy-five hundred.’

‘Same here,’ says the other guy. ‘Get off as cheap as you can.’

About this time we get to Banty’s place and I make a bee line to the house so I can tell Banty what’s comin’ and to say seventy-five hundred dollars. But when I get there the house is full of people, and they won’t let me see him.

‘The doctor is with him,’ says a big guy, blockin’ the doorway, ‘and he says not to let nobody in.’

Of course I won’t let that stop me, only I don’t know how bad Banty is and maybe a rough-house will kill him. So I says, ‘Listen here. The insurance men are here and I want to tell him how much to ask for.’

‘You hear me,’says the big guy. ‘The doctor says nothin’ doin’.’

Just then the insurance men come in, and because they are city fellers and look prosperous everybody is nice as pie. This big palooka blockin’ the doorway tells them he will ask the doctor about seein’ Banty, and about thirty seconds later he sticks his head out and says everything is O.K. Naturally I do a little silent cussin’ under my breath, but it’s too late now.

In about fifteen minutes they come out again lookin’ mighty pleased with themselves, and I tell the big stiff at the door I am goin’ to see Banty if I have to throw him out in the yard. I will do it, too, in about a minute, only I hear Banty callin’ all of a sudden, and he says, ‘Oh, Sam! Is that Sam Johnson? Let him in.’

They let me by then, and I find Banty layin’ on the bed and covered with bandages from his toes to the top of his head. The only part of his face showin’ is his eyes and his nose, and his mouth is stickin’ out of the bandages, but that much of his face looks happy, and I see he is pretty near smilin’ for the first time in his life.

‘Come over here, Sam,’ says he. ‘I got somethin’ to tell you. You see them fellers that just left? They’re insurance men, and it seems like they insured the car I got hurt in.’

Of course that ain’t news to me, so I say, ‘How much did you settle with them for?’

‘That’s what I want to tell you about,’ says he. ‘All night long I lie here and say over and over, “O God, I’m a poor man and I got to raise sixty dollars before to-morrow evenin’. You got to help me, God, for there ain’t nobody else I can turn to.” I say this over and over all night long, and now I get the answer to my prayer. No matter what happens in this life, you’ll always find God looks out for the poor man. Look at this.’

He hands me a piece of paper that I look at and turn wheezy. I know then that a man’s heart may be of gold and his courage as strong as a lion, but if God don’t provide him with brains it’s a pity. The check is for sixty dollars.