Chapter VI

Henry Fulton was a thick-shouldered, thick-headed boy much larger than Tar. They lived in the same part of an Ohio town and when Tar went to school he had to walk right past the Fulton place. There was a small frame house on the bank of a creek and near a bridge, and back of it, in the little valley made by the creek, was a cornfield and a thicket of uncleared land. Henry’s mother was a stout red-faced woman who went about the back yard in her bare feet. Her husband drove a dray. Tar could go to school another way. He could walk along a railroad embankment or go clear around by the waterworks pond, nearly a half mile out of the way.

The railroad embankment was fun. There was a certain risk. Tar had to cross the railroad bridge, built high up over the creek, and when he was in the middle of it he looked down. Then he glanced nervously up and down the tracks and shivers ran through his body. What if a train should come? He planned what he would do. Well, he would lie flat on the tracks, letting the train pass over him. A boy at school had told him of another boy who did that. It took nerve, I tell you. You have to lie flat as a pancake and must not move a muscle.

And so along comes the train. The engineer sees you but cannot stop his train. It rushes on. If you keep your nerve now what a tale you will have to tell. Not so many boys have been run over by trains and not got a scratch either. Sometimes when Tar went to school by the railroad embankment he almost wished a train would come. It should be a fast passenger train going at sixty miles an hour. There is a thing called suction you have to watch out for. Tar and a boy friend at school had discussed that. “There was a boy once who stood close beside the tracks when the train went through. He got too close. The suction drew him right under the train. Suction is a thing that pulls at you. It hasn’t got any hands but you’d better look out.”

Why had Henry Fulton got it in for Tar? John Moorehead walked right past his house, never thinking. Even little Robert Moorehead, who was now in the baby room, the primary, went that way without thinking anything about it. Whether or not Henry really wanted to punch Tar was the question. How could Tar tell? When Henry saw Tar he shouted and made for him. Henry had strange-looking small gray eyes. His hair was red and stood straight up on his head and when he rushed at Tar he laughed and the laugh gave Tar the shivers, like walking over the railroad bridge.

About the suction now, when you have been caught walking across a railroad bridge. When the train is coming you want to tuck your shirt down tight inside your pants. If an end of your shirt sticks up it catches on some whirling thing under the train and you are drawn right up. Talk about sausage!

The best part is when the train has passed. At last the engineer has stopped his engine. The passengers climb off. Every one is pale, of course. Tar would lie still for a little while because now he wasn’t scared. He would fool ’em a little just for a joke. When they got to where he was, the white anxious people, up he would jump and walk off as cool as a cucumber. The story would get all over town. After that happened, if a boy like Henry Fulton took after him there would always be a big boy around to take Tar’s part. “Well, he’s got moral courage, that’s it. It’s a thing generals have in battles. They don’t fight. Sometimes they are little fellows. You could put Napoleon Bonaparte in the neck of a bottle--almost.”

Tar knew a lot about moral courage because his father often spoke of it. It’s something like suction. You couldn’t describe it or see it but it was as strong as a horse.

As it was Tar might have asked John Moorehead to take his part against Henry Fulton but after all he couldn’t. You can’t let on about things like that to an older brother.

There was another thing he might do about being run over by a train, if he had the nerve. He might wait until the train was almost upon him. Then he could drop through between two of the railroad ties and hang by his hands like a bat. Maybe that would be the best way.

The house in which the Mooreheads now lived was larger than any during Tar’s time. Things had changed. Tar’s mother caressed her children more than she used to, she talked more and Dick Moorehead spent more time at home. Nowadays he was always taking some of the children with him when he went house or sign painting on Saturdays. He drank some but not so much as he did, just enough to make him talk well. It didn’t take much for that.

As for Tar, he was now all right. He was in the third room at school. Robert was in the primary. There had been two new babies, little Fern, who died within a month after she was born, Will, still a baby almost, and Joe. Although Tar did not know it Fern was to be the last baby born to the family. For some reason, and although he had always resented Robert, Will and the baby Joe were great fun. Tar even liked to take care of Joe, not too often but now and then. You could tickle his toes and he made the funniest sounds. It made you laugh to think you had once been like that, couldn’t talk, couldn’t walk about, had to have some one feed you.

A boy could not understand older people most of the time, no use trying. Sometimes Tar’s parents were one way, sometimes another. If he depended on his mother it wouldn’t work. She had babies and had to think about them, after they came. The first two or three years a baby isn’t any good, while a horse, big as he is, can work and everything when he is three.

Sometimes Tar’s father was all right and then again he was all wrong. When Tar and Robert went with him, sign painting on fences on Saturdays, and when there were no older people about he was O. K. Sometimes he told about the battle of Vicksburg. He really won the battle. Well, anyway he told General Grant what to do and he did it, but afterward General Grant never gave Dick any credit. The fact is that after the city was won General Grant left Tar’s father out West with the army of occupation while he took General Sherman, Sheridan and a lot of other officers with him down East, and let them have chances Dick never had. Dick never even got promoted. He was a captain before the battle of Vicksburg and a captain afterward. It would have been better if he had never told General Grant how to win the battle. If Grant had taken Dick down East he wouldn’t have been so long licking General Lee. Dick would have thought up a plan. He did think up one but he never told any one.

“I tell you what. If you tell another man how to do something and he does it and it works then, afterwards, he doesn’t like you much. He wants all the credit for himself. As though there weren’t enough to go around. That’s the way men are.”

Dick Moorehead was all right when there were no other men about but let another man come along and then what? They talked and talked, about nothing mostly. You never got hardly any sign painting done.

The best thing, Tar thought, would be to have a friend who was another boy nearly ten years older. Tar was smart. He had skipped a whole grade in school already and he could skip another grade if he wanted to. Maybe he would. The best thing would be to have a boy friend who was strong as an ox but dumb. Tar would get his lessons for him and he would do Tar’s fighting. Well, in the morning he would come around Tar’s way to go to school with him. Tar and he would walk right past Henry Fulton’s house. Henry had better keep out of sight.

Older people got strange ideas into their heads. When Tar was in the first grade at school, the primary (he stayed there only two or three weeks because his mother had taught him his letters and how to read when he was sick that time) when he was in the primary Tar told a lie. He said he did not throw a stone that broke a window in the schoolhouse when every one knew he did.

Tar said he did not do it and stuck to the lie. What a fuss was made. The teacher came to the Moorehead house to talk to Tar’s mother. What every one said was that if he would confess, own up, he would feel better.

Tar had stuck it out for a long time. He wasn’t allowed to go to school for three days. How strangely his mother acted, so unreasonable. You wouldn’t have expected it from her. He would go into the house all cheered up to see if she had forgotten the whole nonsensical business but she never had. She agreed with the teacher that if he would own up everything would be all right. Even Margaret got to talking that way. John had more sense. He kept out of it, never said a word.

And it was all foolishness. Finally Tar did own up. The truth was that by that time there had been such a fuss made that he could not rightly remember whether he had thrown the stone or not. And what if he did? What of it? Another glass had already been put in the window. It was only a small stone. Tar wasn’t throwing at the window. That was the whole point.

If he owned up to a thing like that he got credit for something he never intended doing at all.

Tar had finally confessed. Of course he had felt badly during the three days. No one knew how he did feel. What you’ve got at such a time is moral courage and that’s what people can’t understand. When every one is against you what are you going to do? Sometimes, during the three days, he cried when no one was looking.

It was his mother who really got him to own up. He was sitting with her on the back porch and she said again that if he would own up he would feel all right. How had she known he wasn’t feeling all right?

He did own up, all of a sudden, without thinking.

Then his mother was satisfied, the teacher was satisfied, every one was satisfied. After he had told what they thought was the truth he went out to the barn. His mother had put her arms about him, but that one time her arms did not feel so good. It was better not to tell a lie like that when every one is going to make such a fuss about it after you have told it.... Anyway, during the three days, every one had found out something. Tar could stick to a thing when he had made up his mind.

The best part of the place where the Mooreheads now lived was that it had a barn. Of course there wasn’t any horse or cow but a barn is a barn.

After Tar confessed that time he went out to the barn and crawled up into the empty loft. What an empty feeling inside too--the lie gone. When he was holding out even Margaret, who had to go and preach, had a kind of admiration for him. If, when Tar grew to be a man, he ever became a great criminal like Jesse James or some one and got caught, they would never get any confession out of him. He had made up his mind to that. He would defy them all. “Well, go ahead, hang me then.” As he stood up on the gallows he would smile and wave his hand. If they let him he would wear his Sunday suit--all white. “Ladies and gentlemen, I, the notorious Jesse James, am about to die. I’ve something I want to say. You think you can make me come down off my perch. Well, try it.

“You can all go to hell, that’s where you can go.”

That’s the way to do a thing like that. Grown people have such mixed up ideas. There are a lot of things they never get straight.

When you have a boy friend ten years older who is stout but dumb you are all right. There was a boy named Elmer Cowley Tar thought might almost have done for the place but he was too dumb. And then besides he never paid any attention to Tar. He wanted to be John’s friend but John would not have him. “Ah, he’s a blockhead,” John said. If he hadn’t been quite so dumb and had taken a notion to Tar it might have been just the thing.

The trouble with a boy like that, who was too dumb, was that he would never get the point. Let Henry Fulton get after Tar when they were going to school in the morning and like as not Elmer would only laugh. If Henry really started pounding Tar he might rush in but that wasn’t the point either. Pounding isn’t the worst part. It’s expecting to be pounded that is the worst of all. If a boy isn’t smart enough to know that, what good is he?

The trouble with going around by the railroad bridge or by the waterworks pond was that it made Tar out a coward to himself. What if no one knew? What difference did that make?

Henry Fulton had a gift Tar would have given much to possess. The chances were he only wanted to scare Tar because Tar had caught up with him in school. Henry was nearly two years older, but they were both in the same room and both by ill luck lived at the same end of town.

About Henry’s special gift. He was a born butter. Some are born that way. Tar wished he had been. Henry could put down his head and run against anything and it did not seem to hurt his head at all.

In the schoolhouse yard there was a high board fence and Henry could stand back and take a flying run, hitting the fence with all his might and afterwards only smile. You could hear the boards of the fence crack. Once, at home in the barn, Tar gave the thing a trial. He did not run full speed and afterwards he was glad he didn’t. His head was sore enough as it was. If you haven’t a gift you haven’t it. You might as well give the matter up.

The only gift Tar had was that he was smart. It isn’t anything at all to get such lessons as they give you in school. There are always a lot of dumb boys in your class and the whole class has to wait for them. If you’ve got any sense you don’t have to work much. It isn’t any fun though to be smart. What good does it do?

A boy like Henry Fulton had more fun than a dozen smart boys. At the recess time all the other boys gathered around. Tar kept in the background only because Henry had got that notion of taking after him.

In the school yard there was a high board fence. At the recess time the girls played on one side the fence, the boys on the other. Margaret was over there on the other side with the girls. On the fence the boys drew pictures. They threw stones and in the winter, snowballs, over the fence.

What Henry Fulton did was to knock loose one of the boards with his head. Some older boys put him up to it. Henry was really dumb. He would have been a good one to be Tar’s friend, the best one in school, counting the talent he had, but it wasn’t to be.

Henry ran against the fence full tilt, then he ran again. The board had begun to give a little. It began to creak. The girls on their side knew what was going on and all the boys were gathered around. Tar was so jealous of Henry that it made him ache inside.

Bang! Henry’s head went against the fence and then he drew back and, bang, it went again. He said it didn’t hurt at all. Maybe he lied, still his head must have been tough. Other boys went up to feel of it. There wasn’t any bump raised at all.

And then the board gave way. It was a wide board and Henry had knocked it right out of the fence. You could have crawled right through to the girls’ side.

Afterwards when they were all back in the room the superintendent of the school came to the door of the room in which both Tar and Henry sat. He, the superintendent, was a large man with a black beard and he admired Tar. All the older Mooreheads, John, Margaret and Tar, had a record for being smart and that is what a man like a superintendent admires.

“Another one of Mary Moorehead’s children. And you jumped a grade. Well, you’re a smart lot.”

The whole schoolroom had heard him say that. It put a boy in bad. Why didn’t the man keep his mouth shut?

He, the superintendent, was always lending books to John and Margaret. He told all three of the older Moorehead children to come to his house any time and get any book they wanted.

It was fun to read books all right. “Rob Roy,” “Robinson Crusoe,” “The Swiss Family Robinson.” Margaret read the Elsie Books but she did not get them from the superintendent. A dark pale woman who clerked in the postoffice started lending them to her. They made her cry but she liked it. Girls like nothing better than crying. In the Elsie Books a girl about Margaret’s age was sitting at a piano. Her mother was dead and she was afraid her papa was going to marry another woman, an adventuress, who was sitting right in the room. She, the adventuress, was the kind of woman who would make a fuss over a little girl, kiss her and pet her when her father was around, and then maybe hit her a clip over the head when her papa wasn’t looking, that is to say after she’d married the papa. Margaret read that part of one of the Elsie Books to Tar. She just had to read it to some one. “It was so full of feeling,” she said. She cried when she read it.

Books are all right but it’s better not to let other boys know you like them. It’s all right to be smart but when the superintendent of the school gives you away, right before every one, what fun is there in that?

That day when Henry Fulton butted the board out of the fence at the recess time the superintendent came to the door of the room with a whip in his hand and called Henry Fulton out. There was a dead silence in the room.

Henry was going to get a beating and Tar was glad. At the same time he wasn’t glad.

What would happen would be that Henry would walk right out and take it as cool as you please.

He would get a lot of credit he did not deserve. If Tar’s head had been made like that he could have butted a board out of the fence too. If they would whip a boy for being smart, for having his lessons so he could reel them right off, he’d get as many lickings as any boy in school.

In the schoolroom the woman teacher was silent, all the children were silent while Henry got up and went to the door. He made a loud clattering sound with his feet.

Tar could not help hating him because he was so brave. He wanted to lean over to the boy who sat in the next seat and ask a question. “Do you suppose?”

What Tar wanted to ask the boy was rather hard to put into words. There was a hypothetical question to be asked. “If you were a boy, born with a thick head and could knock boards out of fences and if the superintendent found you out (probably because some girl told) and you were going to be whipped and were in a hall alone with the superintendent, would the same kind of nerve that led you not to let on it hurt your head to the other boys when you butted a fence, would the same kind of nerve you had then lead you to butt the superintendent?”

Standing up and just taking a licking without crying wasn’t anything. Even Tar could do that, maybe.

Now Tar had got himself into one of his thinking times, one of his questioning moods. One of the reasons it was fun to read books was that while you were reading, if the book was any good and had any good exciting places in it, you did not think or ask questions while you were reading. At other times--oh well.

Tar now was in one of his bad times. What he did when he was in such times was to make himself do, in imagination, what maybe he never would do if he had the chance. Then sometimes he was betrayed into telling others what he had imagined as a fact. That was all right too, but nearly every time some one caught him. It was the kind of thing Tar’s father was always doing but his mother did not do it. That was why nearly every one respected his mother so much, while they liked his father and did not respect him hardly at all. Even Tar knew the difference.

Tar wanted to be like his mother but had a secret fear he was growing more like his father all the time. It made him sick inside to realize it sometimes and still he could not help being as he was.

He was doing the thing now. Instead of Henry Fulton, he, Tar Moorehead, had just marched out of the room. He was not born to be a butter, try as hard as he might, he never could knock a board out of a fence with his head but here he was pretending he could.

He had in fancy just been marched out of the schoolroom and was alone with the superintendent in a hall where the children hung up their hats and coats.

There was a stairway leading down. Tar’s room was on the second floor.

The superintendent went along as cool as you please. It was all a part of the day’s work with him. You caught a boy doing something and whipped him. If he cried, all right. If he did not cry, was one of the stubborn kind that would not cry, you just hit him a few extra clips for good luck and let him go. What else could you do?

There was a place right at the head of the stairs, an open space. That was where the superintendent did the whipping.

All right for Henry Fulton but what about Tar?

When he, Tar, was out there, in fancy, what a difference. What he did was to walk along, just as Henry would have done, but he was thinking and planning. Here’s where smartness comes in. If you’ve got a thick head that will knock boards out of fences you get credit all right but you can’t think.

Tar was thinking about the time when the superintendent went and called the attention of the whole room to his Moorehead smartness. Now was the time to get even.

The superintendent wouldn’t be expecting anything at all, not from a Moorehead. He would be thinking, because they were smart, they were a lot of sissies. Well, they weren’t. Maybe Margaret was one but John wasn’t. You ought to see him clip Elmer Cowley on the chin.

If you can’t butt fences that doesn’t mean you can’t butt people. People are pretty soft, right in the middle. What made Napoleon Bonaparte such a great man, Dick said, was that he was always doing what no one expected.

What Tar did, in fancy, was to walk along before the superintendent right to that place at the head of the stairs. He had got a little ahead, just enough to give him a flying start, and then he turned. He used just the technique Henry used on fences. Well, he had watched often enough. He knew how it was done.

He took a flying start and aimed right for the soft place in the superintendent’s middle and he hit it too.

He knocked the superintendent down a flight of stairs. It made a racket. People, women teachers and scholars, came running into the hall from all the rooms. Tar was trembling all over. Imaginative people, when they do anything like that, always tremble afterward.

Tar was trembling as he sat in the schoolroom, having done nothing. When he got through thinking a thing like that out he was trembling so that when he tried to write something on a slate he couldn’t. His hand trembled so he could hardly hold a pencil. If any one wanted to know why he was so sick that time Dick came home drunk, there it was. If you’re made that way you are.

Henry Fulton had come back into the room as cool as you please. Of course all the others were looking at him.

What had he done? He had taken a licking without crying. People thought he was brave.

Had he knocked a superintendent down a flight of stairs as Tar had? Had he used his brains? What was the good having a head that was good for butting boards out of fences when you didn’t know enough to butt the right thing at the right time?