The effect of that whiskey hitting his gizzards was altogether righteous. He sat up as if electrified. It throwed him. He shook and rattled a bit. His large mane of hair stood on end. His eyes growed wide. He seemed sotted right off. “Whew. That’s a sip, a sot, and a mop!”
“Why, you is right,” I said. I drunk mine’s down and placed the empty glass on the table. He stared at the empty glass. “Impressive,” he grumbled. “You means business, you little harlot.” He filled both glasses again, this time filling both to the brim.
“How’s about one for the plights of our people in the South who ain’t here to hear your speech on ’em?” I said, for I aimed to get pixilated, and his whiskey was weak. He poured another and I drunk mine down again.
“Hear, hear,” he said, and he followed suit, downing his a second time and looking bleary-eyed.
Mine’s was gone, but I growed to like the taste. “What about the pets who is in slavery, too, suffering in all the heat and cold without your word on ’em?” I said. He poured and I downed it again.
Well, that surprised him, seeing me throw that essence down so easy. See, I learned my drinking out on the prairie of Kansas and Missouri with redshirts, Pro Slavers, and abolitionists, of which even the women could drain a gallon or three and not get two-fisted so long as somebody else was pouring. It pushed his confidence a bit, seeing a girl outdo him. He couldn’t stand it.
“Surely,” he said. He refilled both glasses again. “Preach it, my country waif, sing that they needs to hear me everywhere in the world!” He was getting addled now, all his fancy prattling started to drop off him like raindrops bouncing off a roof, and the country in him begun to come out. “Nothin’ like a spree and a jag then a bout!” he barked, and he poured that weepy, sorry, tea-tasting willowy whiskey down his red lane one more time. I followed him.
Well, we just went on like that. We run through that bottle and then runned into a second. The more stupefied he got, the more he forgot about the hanky-panky he had in mind and instead germinated on what he knowed—orating. First he orated on the plight of the Negro. He just about wore the Negro out. When he was done orating on them, he orated about the fowl, the fishes, the poultry, the white man, the red man, the aunties, uncles, cousins, the second cousins, his cousin Clementine, the bees, the flies, and by the time he worked down to the ants, the butterflies, and the crickets, he was stone-cold, sloppy, clouded-up, sweet-blind drunk, whereas yours truly was simply buzzing, for that tea was weaker than bird piss, though when you drunk it by volume, it growed more to your liking and tasted better each lick. By the third bottle of essence, he had gone to pot completely, tripping over his oration and skunking about the birds and bees, which was the point of it all, I reckon, for while I was not even half-mud-eyed, he was bent on not being outdrunk by a girl. But being the great leader that he was, he never let go of himself, though he seemed to lose his fancy for me. The more bleary-eyed he got, the more he talked like a right regular down-home, pig-knuckle-eatin’ Negro. “I had a mule once,” he bawled, “and she wouldn’t pull the hat off your head. But I loved that damn mule. She was a stinkin’ good mule! When she died, I rolled her in the creek. I would’a buried her, but she was too heavy. A fat thousand-pounder. By God, that mule could single-trot, double-trot... .” I rather fancied him then, not in the nature-wanting sort of a way, but knowing that he was a good soul, too muddled to be of much use. But after a while I seen my out, for he was off the edge, wasted and looped beyond redemption, and couldn’t hurt me now. I got up. “I got to go,” I said.
He was setting in the middle of the floor by then, his suspenders off, clasping the bottle. “Don’t marry two women at once,” he managed to burble. “Colored or white, it’ll whip you scandalous.”
I made for the door. He took one final dive for me as I made for it, but fell on his face.
He looked up at me, grinning sheepishly as I opened the door, then said, “It’s hot in here. Open da winder.” Then laid his mighty Negro head, with his mighty hair like a lion’s mane, down flat on his face, and was out cold, snoring when I quietly took my leave.
I didn’t tell the Old Man about his friend’s exploits. I hated to disappoint him and it didn’t seem proper. Besides, once the Old Man made up his mind about somebody, nothing could change him. If the Old Man liked somebody, it didn’t matter whether they was heathen or reckless or a boy sporting life as a girl. So long as they was against slavery, that was good enough.
