Alfred Lewis - When Men Grew Tall, or The Story Of Andrew Jackson

IN this year of our Lord’s grace, 1787, the ancient town of Salisbury, seat of justice for Rowan County, and the buzzing metropolis of its region, numbers by word of a partisan citizenry eight hundred souls. Its streets are unpaved, and present an unbroken expanse of red North Carolina clay from one narrow plank sidewalk to another. In the summer, if the weather be dry, the red clay resolves itself into blinding brick-red dust. In the spring, when the rains fall, it lapses into brick-red mud, and the Salisbury streets become bottomless morasses, the despair of travelers. Just now, it being a bright October afternoon and a shower having paid the town a visit but an hour before, the streets offer no suggestion of either mud or dust, but are as clean and straight and beautiful as a good man’s morals. Trees rank either side, and their branches interlock overhead. These make every street a cathedral aisle, groined and arched in leafy green.

In one of the suburbs, that is to say about pistol shot from the town’s commercial center, stands a two-story mansion. It is painted white, and thereby distinguished above its neighbors, and has a heavily columned veranda all across its wide face. This edifice is the residence of Spruce McCay, a foremost member of the Rowan County bar.

In a corner of the lawn, which unfolds verdantly in front of the house, is a one-story one-room structure, the law office of Spruce McCay. Inside are two or three pine desks, much visited of knives in the past, and a half-dozen ramshackle chairs, which have seen stronger if not better days. Also there is a collection of shelves; and these latter hold scores of law books, among which “Blackstone’s Commentaries,” “Coke on Littleton,” and “Hales’s Pleas of the Crown” are given prominent place. The books show musty and dog-eared, and it is many years since the youngest among them came from the printing press.

On this October afternoon, the office has but one occupant. He is tall, being six feet and an inch, and so slim and meager that he seems six inches taller. Besides, he stands as straight as a lance, with nothing of stoop to his narrow shoulders, and this has the effect of augmenting his height.

The face is a boy’s face. It is likewise of the sort called “horse”; with hollow cheeks and lantern jaws. The forehead is high and narrow. The yellow hair is long, and tied in a cue with an eelskin – for eelskins are according to the latest fashionable command sent up from Charleston. The redeeming feature to the horse face is the eyes. These are big and blue and deep, and tell of a mighty power for either love or hate. They are Scotch-Irish eyes, loyal eyes, steadfast eyes, and of that inveterate breed which if aroused can outstare, outdomineer Satan.

As adding to the horse face a look of command, which sets well with those blue eyes – so capable of tenderness and ferocity – is a high predatory nose. The mouth, thin-lipped and wide, is replete of what folk call character, but does nothing to soften a general expression which is nothing if not iron. And yet the last word is applicable only at times. The horse face never turns iron-hard unless danger presses, or perilous deeds are to be done. In easier, relaxed hours one finds no sternness there, but gayety and lightness and a love of pleasure.

In dress the horse-faced boy is rather the fop, with a bottle-green surtout of latest cut, high-collared, long-tailed, open to display a flowered waistcoat of as many hues as May, from which struggles a ruffle stiff with starch. The horsefaced boy has his predatory nose buried in a law book. This is as it should be, for he is a student of the learned Spruce McCay.

There comes a step at the door; the horsefaced boy takes his nose from between the covers of the book. Spruce McCay walks in, and throws himself carelessly into a seat. He is a square, hearty man, with nose up-tilted and eager, as though somewhere in the distance it sniffed an orchard. He is of middle years, and well arrived at that highest ground, just where the pathway of life begins to slope downward toward the final yet still distant grave.

Spruce McCay glances at a paper or two on his desk. Then, shoving all aside, he fills and lights a corn-cob pipe. Through the smoke rings he surveys the horse-faced boy; plainly he meditates a communication.

“Andy, I’ve been thinking you over.”

Andy says “Yes?” expectantly.

“You should cross the mountains.”

The blue eyes take on a bluer glint, and light up the horse face like azure lamps.

“Yes, a new country is the place for you. You are now about to be admitted to practice law; not because you know law, but for the reason that I have recommended it. As I say, you have little law knowledge; but you possess courage, brains, perseverance, honesty, prudence and divers other traits, which you take from your Carrickfergus ancestors. These should carry you farther in the wilderness than any knowledge of the books.”

The predatory nose snorts, and the horse face begins to glow resentfully.

“You think I know no law?”

“No more than does Necessity! Not enough to keep you from being laughed at in Rowan County! How should you? Your attention and your interest have both run away to other things. I’ve watched you for two years past. You are deep in the lore of cockfighting, but guiltless of the Commentaries of our worthy Master Blackstone. If I were to ask you for the Rule in Shelly’s Case, you would be posed. At the same time you could expound every rule that governs a horse race. In brief you are accomplished in many gentlemanly things, while as barren of law learning as a Hottentot. Now if you were a lad of fortune, instead of being as poor as the crows, you might easily cut a figure of elegant idleness on the North Carolina circuits. But you lack utterly of that money required to gild and make tolerable your ignorance here at home. In the woods along the Cumberland, that is to say in the Nashville and Jonesboro courts, where ignorance and poverty are the rule, your deficiencies will count for trifles. Also you will be surrounded by conditions that promote courage, honesty and quickness to a first importance. On the Cumberland the fact that you are a dead shot with rifle or pistol, and can back the most unmanageable horse that ever looked through a bridle, will place you higher in the confidence of men than would all the law that Hobart, Hales and Hawkins ever knew. Now don’t get angry. Think over what I’ve said; the longer you look at it, the more you’ll feel that I am right. I’ll see that you are given your sheepskin as a lawyer; and, when you decide to migrate, I’ll have you commissioned in that new country as attorney for the state. This last will send you headlong into the midst of a backwoods practice, where those native virtues you own should find a field for their exercise, and your talents for cockfighting and horse racing, added to your absolute genius for firearms, be sure to advance you far.”

Spruce McCay raps the ashes from his corncob pipe. Just then one of the house negroes taps at the door, as preliminary to intruding a respectful head. The respectful head announces that visitors have arrived at the big white mansion. Spruce McCay at this quits the office, and the horse-faced Andy finds himself alone.

For one hour he ponders the unpalatable words of his worthy master. His vanity has been hurt; his self-love ruffled. None the less he feels that a deal of truth lies tucked away in what Spruce McCay has said. Besides a plunge into the untried wilderness rather matches his taste, and a promised state’s attorneyship is not to be despised.

As the horse-faced Andy ruminates these things, laughter and much joyous clatter is heard at the door. This time it is his two fellow students, Crawford and McNairy. These young gentlemen have been out with their guns, and now present themselves with a double backload of quails as the fruits of it. The pair begin vociferously to inform the horse-faced Andy concerning their day’s adventures. He halts the conversational flow with a repressive lift of the hand.