CURRY was our mess cook.
He was a great rascal, but one of the best cooks in the world. And besides he was discriminative in his rascality. He never did any dishonest thing towards us; but he was capable of any conceivable crime, if he could commit it in our behalf.
He was a pure-blooded negro of the brown or semi-copper-colored variety. He was without a trace of beard, as that variety of negro usually is. His voice was a falsetto.
His devotion was dog-like. If the state of South Carolina held anything that his mess needed, and there was any conceivable way in which it could be got, he got it. Frankly without morals,—unless devotion to his mess was a moral sentiment,—and illimitable in resource as he was, he generally so managed matters that we should live well.
We would buy a pig or a lamb, and have a fore quarter for dinner. The next day Curry would give us a hind quarter. The next day another fore quarter; and so on until that member of the mess who had a statistical mind would begin to reflect that there are really only four quarters to an animal, while we had had from fifteen to twenty quarters from this one. Then Curry would be summoned, and indignantly asked: “Where have you been getting all this meat we have been eating?”
The question never disturbed Curry in the least. He was always ready with the answer: “I buyed it from one man, sir.”
When asked who the man was, he never knew. And when questioned as to payment, he always assured us that the “one man, sir,” was coming that afternoon for his money.
The “one man, sir,” always came that afternoon. His charge was always the same: $2.50 in Confederate currency, or something less than twenty-five cents in real money.
The pretence was a bit flimsy, but it answered Curry’s purpose. His mess was well fed, and he was not caught in his raids upon the pig-pens and sheep-folds thereabouts.
Curry was a slave, and we hired him from the estate to which he belonged as a chattel. One day we were ordered to move from South Carolina to Virginia. Curry came to us and asked to be taken with us. When we explained to him that we could not legally take him out of the state, he deliberately proposed to run away in order to go with us. Having no alert perception of the difference between crime and good conduct, he could not see why we should not abet him in this proposed violation of law. But when we made it clear to him that, for reasons inscrutable to his mind, we could not permit him to go with us out of the state, he fell into melancholy.
That night we had some roast pig for dinner; and Curry had not “buyed it from one man, sir.”
The only reply he would make to our questionings was: “I done got it fur de mess, sir. De mess has been good to me.”
Early next morning—the day on which we were to leave—the enemy landed below, and we were ordered forward to meet them. As we unlimbered in battery and opened fire, Curry rode up on an antique mule, stolen for the occasion from the battery blacksmith. Leaping from his steed he went to the gun that was most short-handed, took a vacant place, and began fighting like an artilleryman. When the head of the mess rode up to him and said: “What are you doing here, Curry?”
His reply was: “Ise takin’ a hand.”
The fight was hot for ten minutes. At the end of it poor Curry lay stretched upon the grass—a bullet through his chest. One of us went to him and said something—no matter what. He looked up and said: “I can’t go wi’ de mess to Virginy. You’ll have to take some no ’count nigger. But Ise fought wi’ de mess anyhow, and you’ll find de res’ o’ dat pig hangin’ up de chimbly.”