Chapter II: One Flesh

The short swinging doors opened briskly and five tall men entered quietly. Jim tipped his chair forward upon its four legs. The scat game delayed itself.

The five lined up at the bar. "Beer," said the one with the boiled shirt. The skillful bartender drew five glasses of foam.

Jim sat still in his chair, hesitating to glance even obliquely toward the proceedings. What was one against five?

The tall man with the boiled shirt pointed to his glass, but did not touch it. Nor did any of his companions touch theirs. The saloon knighthood has not abandoned symbolism.

"Does that go?"

"It goes, Coffey Neal."

"And we don't get a lithograph in the front window?"

"You don't."

The five men withdrew a little for conference. Then Coffey Neal paid his reckoning with a quarter and a nickel.

The bartender rang up twenty-five cents on the register. Neal pointed to the five-cent piece upon the bar.

"That's for yourself, Jack."

The sardonic bartender placed it between his teeth. "It's phony," said he. "Take it back and put it in your campaign fund." He smiled, keeping his right hand below the bar.

"After election," Coffey Neal remarked through his nose, "your old man (he meant Jack's father-in-law) can't sell this place for the fixtures in it."

Jack concealed a yawn with his left hand.

"You're the twenty-second wop since the first of the year was going to put us out of business, and we're signing a lease for our new place next Monday. It's where your brother used to be located."

One of the enemy, a stocky fellow with a brakeman's black shirt, was constructing sandwiches of sliced bologna and rye at the lunch counter.

"I know you're not eating much lately, old boy, since you begun stringing with Coffey," smiled Jack from the corner of his mouth, "but those is for our customers."

Blackshirt turned quickly about, sweeping the pink hemisphere of cheese upon the floor and shivering it.

"Oh, dreadful!" he protested, falsetto. "My word, how sad!"

He trod some of the cheese into the sawdust. "Mr. Barman, ah, Mr. Barman, you may charge the damages to me--at the Blackstone."

There was a roar of laughter from the others. It looked like rough-housing, and damage to fixtures. The scat players had vanished, in their naïve Teutonic way, through the side door. Jack began to hope he wouldn't have to draw, for a shooting always black-eyes a saloon's good name and quiet scat custom shies at it.

Neal delivered Jim a tremendous thump on the shoulder. "Why, if it isn't my dear old college chump." Another thump. "Maybe you can buy us a drink with the collar off." A third thump.

"Now, can the comedy stuff, Coffey," Jim snarled, smilingly. If only he could steer Coffey away from the fight he seemed bent on picking. "I'll buy--sure. Why not?"

"Then you'll go across the street to do it," Jack inserted. "This ain't a barrel house."

Neal seized Jim's ear and lifted him to his feet. "You'll buy here, and now." Three of the men gathered about Jim. The other two, standing well apart, were watching Jack. There would be three pistols out, or none.

Jim was being slowly propelled to the bar, when the straw doors swung briskly and the big fellow entered. His shoulders, hands, legs and jaw were thick, and his eyes were amazingly alert.

Unspeakable peace spread through Jim. He knew that somehow or other the big fellow was going to get him out of this.

Indeed, that was what the boss had come for. News of the foray on this citadel of his had been grapevined to him up the block and around a corner.

He sized up the situation very quickly. There was Coffey Neal, the trouble-maker, the Judas who had refused to take his orders any longer. He was the one to be done for. The other four were merely Hessians, torsos, not headpieces. They slugged for a living, on either side of industrial disputes, according to the price--sometimes on both sides in the same strike.

"Have a drink, boys," said the great Ed Miles.

It surprised every man in the room. Jim's heart sank down again. Could it be that the big fellow was going to take water? Then it was the end of his reign and the end of Jim's days at court. There was a pause, a whispering. Ed, standing sidewise to the bar, held his open right hand, palm upwards, behind his coat so that only Jack could see it.

"And what if we wouldn't!" Coffey spoke with slow bravado.

"This." The big fellow flashed at him, and dropped the bung-starter heavily behind his ear. Coffey crumpled upon the floor. The sluggers hesitated half a second, then piled on Ed so quickly that Jack didn't dare use his gun. Instead, he ran around the bar and twisted his arm under the chin of blackshirt, pulling him away from the heap. He thrust him up in the air, using his own knee for a lever, then dropped him heavily on his back on the floor and kicked his head. There was no time for niceties.

Meanwhile, Jim had taken futile hold of another slugger's foot, who easily shook him off. He was cautiously planning for another hold--very cautiously indeed, not being anxious to become too completely immersed in the proceedings, when all at once the place became full of people.

Strong and willing arms eagerly and quickly unraveled the tangle.

"This is a hell of a game for eight o'clock in the evenin'." It was the bass voice of public peace. "Oh!" concernedly, "is it you, Mr. Miles? Are you hurted?"

The big fellow felt his shaven skull where, in the melee, a brass knuckle had struck him a glancing blow. He looked at his red fingers. "Just a scrape, Sarje, not cracked," he laughed.

"What's the charge?" asked the detective sergeant, solicitously.

"Tell 'em the facts," enjoined the big fellow.

"Well," began the efficient bartender, "Mr. Miles and me was talking quietly together here; he was standing just there with his back to the door, and I heard an awful yelling going up and down in the street. I knew it was Coffey Neal, hunting trouble, and drunk. They come in the cigar stand, swearing and cursing, saying they were looking for Ed Miles--to cut his heart out. But Ed says to me he didn't want any trouble in the place, so's he'd walk out, and he started out the side door, when Coffey and this blackshirt fellow come running in and threw that bowl of cheese at him--see it there--and jumped him. Then these other bad actors began kicking him, too, and I went in to separate 'em--and I guess that's all. Lucky you came in or there might have been trouble."

"What charge will I put agin 'em?"

"Drunk and disorderly; assault; assault and battery; assault with intent to kill; unprovoked assault; mayhem; assault with a deadly weapon--and I guess they ain't got no visible means of support," suggested the big fellow. "Oh! yes, and conspiracy."

"Let it go at that," said Jack.

The sergeant wrote it down. The sluggers were silent. The case had become one for lawyers' fees. Their own talking couldn't do any good.

"Any witnesses?" asked the sergeant.

"Me," said Jim. "It was the way Jack says."

"Put 'em in the wagon," commanded law and order.

Coffey Neal was picking up his threads again at the place he had dropped them.

"And what if we won't drink with you, Ed Miles!" he muttered, somewhat scattered.

"Likely the Bridewell, Coffey," laughed the big fellow.

The vanquished were escorted out into the night.

The victor and his vassals, perhaps a dozen of them by this time, remained in possession of the field.

"Good thing I had those coppers planted before I started anything," commented the big fellow. "Those strong-arm guys like to got me going at the end."

"They certainly handled themselves very useful," Jack acknowledged.

"They gotta be with us after this, or get out of town." The big fellow turned suddenly on Jim. "And you, you yellow pup," he roared, seizing him by the collar, "what were you doing while they was pounding me up? D'you think you were at a ball game, hey?" He shook him back and forth until his jaws cracked.

"I--I was trying--I got one of 'em by the leg, and he----"

"Yes, like you'd pick flowers in the spring--sweet and pretty--that's the way you grabbed his leg." He lifted Jim from the ground and flung him on the floor. "Yellow pup!" he repeated passionately, over and over again.

Jim raised himself to his elbow, but did not dare to go further. The big fellow's eyes were still blazing.

"Honest, Ed, I was trying to help."

Miles took a step toward him. "You're a G--d d--d liar!" he shouted.

Jim tried to meet his look. It was a wretched business to be called that name before a dozen others--it had happened to him before, but he always hated it. Still the big fellow seemed especially vicious and dangerous just now; Jim knew how senseless it was to cross him when he was having one of his spells, and besides, they never lasted long, anyway. Jim dropped his eyes again, acknowledging the justice of the discipline.

Miles threw a ten-dollar bill on the bar and broke the tension with a jolly laugh. "Well, I guess we've put Coffey Neal out o' this primary," said he. "Plunge in, lads." Jack served each man, but nothing for Jim. The code provided for a final display of magnanimity by the fountainhead. "Come ahead, Jim," he growled, kindly.

Serenity unfolded again her frightened wings and the smoke of peace increased and multiplied over a leader fitted to lead and followers fitted to follow.

The ensuing celebration spread itself over many hours and into many taverns. There was some agreeable close harmony, to which Jim joined a pleasant baritone, and much revilement of all double-crossers, from Judas and Benedict Arnold down to Coffey Neal, and a certain Irish party whose name now escapes me, but who grievously misbehaved himself during a Fenian incident.

Very frequently they reached the shank of the evening--as often, indeed, as anybody wanted to go home. And in the big fellow's mouth the shank was ever a cogent argument.

Eventually the ultimate question as to their further destination was put, and here the big fellow stood aside, permitting perfect latitude of decision. He was a politician and he knew that he could not possibly afford to have it said by the wives of the ward that he influenced their husbands toward sin. He could afford to have almost everything else said about him, but not that.

Jim wavered, then resisted temptation. His record in that particular respect had been almost absolutely clean.

He walked home stiffly, fighting with the skill of the practiced alcoholic for the upright position and the shortest distance between two points.

His early morbidity had vanished. If he had done one thing badly that evening, he had done another thing well. Whatever his wife, Georgia, might urge against him in regard to his conviviality, wasn't he, after all, one of the most faithful husbands he knew? For all her superior airs, she had much to be grateful for in him.

He entered his flat with little scraping of the keyhole, and cautiously undressed in the front room. It was late--much later than he had hoped for. He could just make out the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece by the light from the street lamp.

He opened the door to their bedroom so slowly, so slowly and steadily, and then--as usual, that cursed hinge betrayed him. The number of times he had determined to oil it--yet he always forgot to. To-morrow he wouldn't forget--that was his flaming purpose.

Psychological flux and flow may be deduced from door hinges as well as from the second cup of coffee for breakfast or the plaintive lady standing immediately before your hard-won seat in the street car. Jim would never oil the hinge in the morning, because that would somehow imply he expected to come in very late again at night, and he never expected to--in the morning.

But her breathing remained regular, absolutely regular; he had this time escaped the snare of the hinge.

The gas jet burned in a tiny flame. She had fallen into the habit of keeping a night-light during the past three or four years. At first he had objected that it interfered with his sleep, but she had been singularly persistent about it. She hadn't given him her reasons; indeed, she had never analyzed them. It was nothing but a bit of preposterous feminism, which she kept to herself, that the light made a third in their room.

She lay with her back to him, far over on her side of the bed. He could see where her hip rose, and vaguely through the covering the outline of her limbs. Her shoulders were crumpled forward, and the upper one responded to her breathing, and marked it. Under her arm, crossed in front of her, he knew was the swelling of her breast.

And then at the neck was the place where the hair was parted and braided, the braids wound forward about her eyes--a very peculiar way to treat one's hair.

What a different thing a woman was! He had seen her lying so countless times, and yet the strangeness had never worn off. Indeed, curiously enough, there seemed even more of it now than when they had just married, and she was entirely new.

He often thought a woman didn't seem exactly a person--that is, not like him, and he was certainly a person--but something else; just as good, perhaps, but quite other. Her body, of course--well, agreeable as it might be, still he was glad he wasn't made that way, for it seemed so ineffective.

And one of them could stand a good man on his head. He simply couldn't get the hang of that. If a man was angry and sulked, he didn't mind. In fact, he preferred it to being knocked about as the big fellow sometimes did to him. He had never cared what man sulked, his brother or father or any of them.

And yet this woman, she----he looked at her intently, earnestly, as if finally to solve her--she was very beautiful. And she was his wife.

He crept into bed, very softly, for she might wake up. But then, it briefly occurred to him, what if she did! He was perfectly sober--at least to all intents and purposes. He could talk perfectly straight; he felt sure of that.

Perhaps she would now wake of her own accord. That would be the best solution, and then he could appear drowsy, as if he, too, had just been aroused from sleep.

He sighed loudly and turned himself over in the bed, but she gave no sign.

"Georgia," he whispered very low.

Pause.

"Georgia," a little louder, "are you awake?"

No answer.

He touched her, as if carelessly. She stirred. Ah, she would--no, her breathing was markedly the breathing of slumber. Perhaps she was pretending. Oh, well, what was the use of his trying, if she was going to act so?

He turned noisily back to his side of the bed. He was disappointed in her. Was it fair of her to pretend--if she was pretending? After all, she was his wife.

A husband has his rights. That was what the church said. Otherwise, what was the use of getting married and supporting a woman--well, most men supported their wives, and he intended to do so again soon, very soon.

Yes, he had the teachings on his side. He wanted nothing beyond the bond. It was holy wedlock, wasn't it?

He placed his hand upon her waist. And yet she would give no sign. More resolutely than before she counterfeited the presentment of sleep.

"Georgia!" he spoke aloud.

"What is it!" she said, quickly, sitting up, her black braids falling back on her slim shoulders.

"I just wanted to say good night," he muttered, huskily.

"Good night," she answered, curtly. "Please don't disturb me again. I am very tired."

She was turning from him, when he placed his hand on her shoulder.

"Georgia, I love you. You know I do."

The foulness of his poisoned breath filled her with loathing.

"No, Jim," she gasped, afraid. "Oh, no!"

"Georgia, you dunno how I love you," he pleaded, almost tearfully, taking her in his arms.

Quickly she jumped from the bed. "Where are you going?" asked the annoyed husband.

"I can't sleep here, Jim; I can't." She took up her underskirt and her thin flannel dressing sack and passed from the room. She made her couch on the lounge in the front room and after a time fell asleep.

Jim twitched with nightmare throughout the night, and long after she had gone downtown in the morning.