Chapter IX: Introduction: I (8)

Outside it rains, and outside it snows, and then the sun sings forth and dries up the long lines of pavements made of stone cunningly mortised. From his cot he can see a tiny bit of sky--a small bright opening far away. Now and then a figure walks across a neighboring roof and reminds him of the man on the high wall who held a rifle in his hand and shouted, ‘How does it feel to be free?’ From his cot he can see glimpses of the outside world--the real world that is made of kisses and snow. But between him and the great outside is the window-ledge upon which stands that rusty, packed-together wad of wire, shaped like a bottle.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] Copyright, 1925, by The Atlantic Monthly Company.
Copyright, 1925, by Boni and Liveright, Inc.
From “The Grace of Lambs,” published by Boni and Liveright,
Inc.

HAIRCUT[12]

By RING LARDNER

(From _Liberty_)

I got another barber that comes over from Carterville and helps me out Saturdays, but the rest of the time I can get along all right alone. You can see for yourself that this ain’t no New York City and besides that, the most of the boys works all day and don’t have no leisure to drop in here and get themselves prettied up.

You’re a newcomer, ain’t you? I thought I hadn’t seen you round before. I hope you like it good enough to stay. As I say, we ain’t no New York City or Chicago, but we have pretty good times. Not as good, though, since Jim Kendall got killed. When he was alive, him and Hod Meyers used to keep this town in an uproar. I bet they was more laughin’ done here than any town its size in America.

Jim was comical, and Hod was pretty near a match for him. Since Jim’s gone, Hod tries to hold his end up just the same as ever, but it’s tough goin’ when you ain’t got nobody to kind of work with.

They used to be plenty fun in here Saturdays. This place is jam-packed Saturdays, from four o’clock on. Jim and Hod would show up right after their supper round six o’clock. Jim would set himself down in that big chair, nearest the blue spittoon. Whoever had been settin’ in that chair, why they’d get up when Jim come in and give it to him.

You’d of thought it was a reserved seat like they have sometimes in a theayter. Hod would generally always stand or walk up and down or some Saturdays, of course, he’d be settin’ in this chair part of the time, gettin’ a haircut.

Well, Jim would set there a w’ile without openin’ his mouth only to spit, and then finally he’d say to me, “Whitey,”--my right name, that is, my right first name, is Dick, but everybody round here calls me Whitey--Jim would say, “Whitey, your nose looks like a rosebud tonight. You must of been drinkin’ some of your aw de cologne.”

So I’d say, “No, Jim, but you look like you’d been drinkin’ somethin’ of that kind or somethin’ worse.”

Jim would have to laugh at that, but then he’d speak up and say, “No, I ain’t had nothin’ to drink, but that ain’t sayin’ I wouldn’t like somethin’. I wouldn’t even mind if it was wood alcohol.”

Then Hod Meyers would say, “Neither would your wife.” That would set everybody to laughin’ because Jim and his wife wasn’t on very good terms. She’d of divorced him only they wasn’t no chance to get alimony and she didn’t have no way to take care of herself and the kids. She couldn’t never understand Jim. He _was_ kind of rough, but a good fella at heart.

Him and Hod had all kinds of sport with Milt Sheppard. I don’t suppose you’ve seen Milt. Well, he got an Adam’s apple that looks more like a mushmelon. So I’d be shavin’ Milt and when I’d start to shave down here on his neck, Hod would holler, “Hey, Whitey, wait a minute! Before you cut into it, let’s make up a pool and see who can guess closest to the number of seeds.”

And Jim would say, “If Milt hadn’t of been so hoggish, he’d of ordered a half a cantaloupe instead of a whole one and it might not of stuck in his throat.”

All the boys would roar at this and Milt himself would force a smile, though the joke was on him. Jim certainly was a card!

There’s his shavin’ mug, settin’ on the shelf, right next to Charley Vail’s. “Charles M. Vail.” That’s the druggist. He comes in regular for his shave, three times a week. And Jim’s is the cup next to Charley’s. “James H. Kendall.” Jim won’t need no shavin’ mug no more, but I’ll leave it there just the same for old time’s sake. Jim certainly was a character!

Years ago, Jim used to travel for a canned goods concern over in Carterville. They sold canned goods. Jim had the whole northern half of the State and was on the road five days out of every week. He’d drop in here Saturdays and tell his experiences for that week. It was rich.

I guess he paid more attention to playin’ jokes than makin’ sales. Finally the concern let him out and he come right home here and told everybody he’d been fired instead of sayin’ he’d resigned like most fellas would of.

It was a Saturday and the shop was full and Jim got up out of that chair and says, “Gentlemen, I got an important announcement to make. I been fired from my job.”

Well, they asked him if he was in earnest and he said he was and nobody could think of nothin’ to say till Jim finally broke the ice himself. He says, “I been sellin’ canned goods and now I’m canned goods myself.”

You see, the concern he’d been workin’ for was a factory that made canned goods. Over in Carterville. And now Jim said he was canned himself. He was certainly a card!

Jim had a great trick that he used to play w’ile he was travelin’. For instance, he’d be ridin’ on a train and they’d come to some little town like, well, like, well, like, we’ll say, like Benton. Jim would look out the train window and read the signs on the stores.

For instance, they’d be a sign, “Henry Smith, Dry Goods.” Well, Jim would write down the name and the name of the town and when he got to wherever he was goin’ he’d mail back a postal card to Henry Smith at Benton and not sign no name to it, but he’d write on the card, well, somethin’ like “Ask your wife about that book agent that spent the afternoon last week,” or “Ask your Missus who kept her from gettin’ lonesome the last time you was in Carterville.” And he’d sign the card, “A Friend.”

Of course, he never knew what really come of none of these jokes, but he could picture what _probably_ happened and that was enough.

Jim didn’t work very steady after he lost his position with the Carterville people. What he did earn, doin’ odd jobs round town, why he spent pretty near all of it on gin, and his family might of starved if the stores hadn’t of carried them along. Jim’s wife tried her hand at dressmakin’, but they ain’t nobody goin’ to get rich makin’ dresses in this town.

As I say, she’d of divorced Jim, only she seen that she couldn’t support herself and the kids and she was always hopin’ that some day Jim would cut out his habits and give her more than two or three dollars a week.

They was a time when she would go to whoever he was workin’ for and ask them to give her his wages, but after she done this once or twice, he beat her to it by borrowin’ most of his pay in advance. He told it all round town, how he had outfoxed his Missus. He certainly was a caution!

But he wasn’t satisfied with just outwittin’ her. He was sore the way she had acted, tryin’ to grab off his pay. And he made up his mind he’d get even. Well, he waited till Evans’s Circus was advertised to come to town. Then he told his wife and two kiddies that he was goin’ to take them to the circus. The day of the circus, he told them he would get the tickets and meet them outside the entrance to the tent.

Well, he didn’t have no intentions of bein’ there or buyin’ tickets or nothin’. He got full of gin and laid round Wright’s poolroom all day. His wife and the kids waited and waited and of course he didn’t show up. His wife didn’t have a dime with her, or nowhere else, I guess. So she finally had to tell the kids it was all off and they cried like they wasn’t never goin’ to stop.

Well, it seems, w’ile they was cryin’, Doc Stair come along and he asked what was the matter, but Mrs. Kendall was stubborn and wouldn’t tell him, but the kids told him and he insisted on takin’ them and their mother in the show. Jim found this out afterwards and it was one reason why he had it in for Doc Stair.

Doc Stair come here about a year and a half ago. He’s a mighty handsome young fella and his clothes always look like he has them made to order. He goes to Detroit two or three times a year and w’ile he’s there he must have a tailor take his measure and then make him a suit to order. They cost pretty near twice as much, but they fit a whole lot better than if you just bought them in a store.

For a w’ile everybody was wonderin’ why a young doctor like Doc Stair should come to a town like this where we already got old Doc Gamble and Doc Foote that’s both been here for years and all the practice in town was always divided between the two of them.

Then they was a story got round that Doc Stair’s gal had throwed him over, a gal up in the Northern Peninsula somewhere, and the reason he come here was to hide himself away and forget it. He said himself that he thought they wasn’t nothin’ like general practice in a place like ours to fit a man to be a good all round doctor. And that’s why he’d came.

Anyways, it wasn’t long before he was makin’ enough to live on, though they tell me that he never dunned nobody for what they owed him, and the folks here certainly has got the owin’ habit, even in my business. If I had all that was comin’ to me for just shaves alone, I could go to Carterville and put up at the Mercer for a week and see a different picture every night. For instance, they’s old George Purdy--but I guess I shouldn’t ought to be gossipin’.

Well, last year, our coroner died, died of the flu. Ken Beatty, that was his name. He was the coroner. So they had to choose another man to be coroner in his place and they picked Doc Stair. He laughed at first and said he didn’t want it, but they made him take it. It ain’t no job that anybody would fight for and what a man makes out of it in a year would just about buy seeds for their garden. Doc’s the kind, though, that can’t say no to nothin’ if you keep at him long enough.

But I was goin’ to tell you about a poor boy we got here in town--Paul Dickson. He fell out of a tree when he was about ten years old. Lit on his head and it done somethin’ to him and he ain’t never been right. No harm in him, but just silly. Jim Kendall used to call him cuckoo; that’s a name Jim had for anybody that was off their head, only he called people’s head their bean. That was another of his gags, callin’ head bean and callin’ crazy people cuckoo. Only poor Paul ain’t crazy, but just silly.

You can imagine that Jim used to have all kinds of fun with Paul. He’d send him to the White Front Garage for a left-handed monkey wrench. Of course they ain’t no such thing as a left-handed monkey wrench.

And once we had a kind of a fair here and they was a baseball game between the fats and the leans and before the game started Jim called Paul over and sent him way down to Schrader’s hardware store to get a key for the pitcher’s box.

They wasn’t nothin’ in the way of gags that Jim couldn’t think up, when he put his mind to it.

Poor Paul was always kind of suspicious of people, maybe on account of how Jim had kept foolin’ him. Paul wouldn’t have much to do with anybody only his own mother and Doc Stair and a girl here in town named Julie Gregg. That is, she ain’t a girl no more, but pretty near thirty or over.

When Doc first come to town, Paul seemed to feel like here was a real friend and he hung round Doc’s office most of the w’ile; the only time he wasn’t there was when he’d go home to eat or sleep or when he seen Julie Gregg doin’ her shoppin’.

When he looked out Doc’s window and seen her, he’d run downstairs and join her and tag along with her to the different stores. The poor boy was crazy about Julie and she always treated him mighty nice and made him feel like he was welcome, though of course it wasn’t nothin’ but pity on her side.

Doc done all he could to improve Paul’s mind and he told me once that he really thought the boy was getting better, that they was times when he was as bright and sensible as anybody else.

But I was goin’ to tell you about Julie Gregg. Old man Gregg was in the lumber business, but got to drinkin’ and lose the most of his money and when he died, he didn’t leave nothin’ but the house and just enough insurance for the girl to skimp along on.

Her mother was a kind of a half invalid and didn’t hardly ever leave the house. Julie wanted to sell the place and move somewheres else after the old man died, but the mother said she was born here and would die here. It was tough on Julie as the young people round this town--well, she’s too good for them.

She’s been away to school and Chicago and New York and different places and they ain’t no subject she can’t talk on, where you take the rest of the young folks here and you mention anything to them outside of Gloria Swanson or Tommy Meighan and they think you’re delirious. Did you see Gloria in Wages of Virtue? You missed somethin’!

Well, Doc Stair hadn’t been here more than a week when he come in one day to get shaved and I recognized who he was, as he had been pointed out to me, so I told him about my old lady. She’s been ailin’ for a couple years and either Doc Gamble or Doc Foote, neither one, seemed to be helpin’ her. So he said he would come out and see her, but if she was able to get out herself, it would be better to bring her to his office where he could make a completer examination.

So I took her to his office and w’ile I was waitin’ for her in the reception room, in come Julie Gregg. When somebody comes in Doc Stair’s office, they’s a bell that rings in his inside office so as he can tell they’s somebody to see him.

So he left my old lady inside and come out to the front office and that’s the first time him and Julie met and I guess it was what they call love at first sight. But it wasn’t fifty-fifty. This young fella was the slickest lookin’ fella she’d ever seen in this town and she went wild over him. To him she was just a young lady that wanted to see the doctor.

She’d came on about the same business I had. Her mother had been doctorin’ for years with Doc Gamble and Doc Foote and without no results. So she’d heard they was a new doc in town and decided to give him a try. He promised to call and see her mother that same day.

I said a minute ago that it was love at first sight on her part. I’m not only judgin’ by how she acted afterwards but how she looked at him that first day in his office. I ain’t no mind reader, but it was wrote all over her face that she was gone.

Now Jim Kendall, besides bein’ a jokesmith and a pretty good drinker, well, Jim was quite a lady-killer. I guess he run pretty wild durin’ the time he was on the road for them Carterville people, and besides that, he’d had a couple little affairs of the heart right here in town. As I say, his wife could have divorced him, only she couldn’t.

But Jim was like the majority of men, and women, too, I guess. He wanted what he couldn’t get. He wanted Julie Gregg and worked his head off tryin’ to land her. Only he’d of said bean instead of head.

Well, Jim’s habits and his jokes didn’t appeal to Julie and of course he was a married man, so he didn’t have no more chance than, well, than a rabbit. That’s an expression of Jim’s himself. When somebody didn’t have no chance to get elected or somethin’, Jim would always say they didn’t have no more chance than a rabbit.

He didn’t make no bones about how he felt. Right in here, more than once, in front of the whole crowd, he said he was stuck on Julie and anybody that could get her for him was welcome to his house and his wife and kids included. But she wouldn’t have nothin’ to do with him; wouldn’t even speak to him on the street. He finally seen he wasn’t gettin’ nowheres with his usual line so he decided to try the rough stuff. He went right up to her house one evenin’ and when she opened the door he forced his way in and grabbed her. But she broke loose and before he could stop her, she run in the next room and locked the door and phoned to Joe Barnes. Joe’s the marshal. Jim could hear who she was phonin’ to and he beat it before Joe got there.

Joe was an old friend of Julie’s pa. Joe went to Jim the next day and told him what would happen if he ever done it again.

I don’t know how the news of this little affair leaked out. Chances is that Joe Barnes told his wife and she told somebody else’s wife and they told their husband. Anyways, it did leak out and Hod Meyers had the nerve to kid Jim about it, right here in this shop. Jim didn’t deny nothin’ and kind of laughed it off and said for us all to wait; that lots of people had tried to make a monkey out of him, but he always got even.

Meanw’ile everybody in town was wise to Julie’s bein’ wild mad over the Doc. I don’t suppose she had any idear how her face changed when him and her was together; of course she couldn’t of, or she’d of kept away from him. And she didn’t know that we was all noticin’ how many times she made excuses to go up to his office or pass it on the other side of the street and look up in his window to see if he was there. I felt sorry for her and so did most other people.

Hod Meyers kept rubbin’ it into Jim about how the Doc had cut him out. Jim didn’t pay no attention to the kiddin’ and you could see he was plannin’ one of his jokes.

One trick Jim had was the knack of changin’ his voice. He could make you think he was a girl talkin’ and he could mimic any man’s voice. To show you how good he was along this line, I’ll tell you the joke he played on me once.

You know, in most towns of any size, when a man is dead and needs a shave, why the barber that shaves him soaks him five dollars for the job; that is, he don’t soak _him_, but whoever ordered the shave. I just charge three dollars because personally I don’t mind much shavin’ a dead person. They lay a whole lot stiller than live customers. The only thing is that you don’t feel like talkin’ to them and you get kind of lonesome.

Well, about the coldest day we ever had here, two years ago last winter, the phone rung at the house w’ile I was home to dinner and I answered the phone and it was a woman’s voice and she said she was Mrs. John Scott and her husband was dead and would I come out and shave him.

Old John had always been a good customer of mine. But they live seven miles out in the country, on the Streeter road. Still I didn’t see how I could say no.

So I said I would be there, but would have to come in a jitney and it might cost three or four dollars besides the price of the shave. So she, or the voice, it said that was all right, so I got Frank Abbott to drive me out to the place and when I got there, who should open the door but old John himself! He wasn’t no more dead than, well than a rabbit.

It didn’t take no private detective to figure out who had played me this little joke. Nobody could of thought it up but Jim Kendall. He certainly was a card!

I tell you this incident just to show you how he could disguise his voice and make you believe it was somebody else talkin’. I’d of swore it was Mrs. Scott had called me. Anyways, some woman.

Well, Jim waited till he had Doc Stair’s voice down pat; then he went after revenge.

He called Julie up on a night when he knew Doc was over in Carterville. She never questioned but what it was Doc’s voice. Jim said he must see her that night; he couldn’t wait no longer to tell her somethin’. She was all excited and told him to come to the house. But he said he was expectin’ an important long distance call and wouldn’t she please forget her manners for once and come to his office. He said they couldn’t nothin’ hurt her and nobody would see her and he just _must_ talk to her a little w’ile. Well, poor Julie fell for it.

Doc always keeps a night light in his office, so it looked to Julie like they was somebody there.

Meanw’ile Jim Kendall had went to Wright’s poolroom, where they was a whole gang amusin’ themselves. The most of them had drank plenty of gin, and they was a rough bunch even when sober. They was always strong for Jim’s jokes and when he told them to come with him and see some fun they give up their card games and pool games and followed along.

Doc’s office is on the second floor. Right outside his door they’s a flight of stairs leadin’ to the floor above. Jim and his gang hid in the dark behind these stairs.

Well, Julie come up to Doc’s door and rung the bell and they was nothin’ doin’. She rung it again and she rung it seven or eight times. Then she tried the door and found it locked. Then Jim made some kind of a noise and she heard it and waited a minute, and then she says, “Is that you, Ralph?” Ralph is Doc’s first name.

They was no answer and it must of came to her all of a sudden that she’d been bunked. She pretty near fell downstairs and the whole gang after her. They chased her all the way home, hollerin’, “Is that you Ralph?” and “Oh, Ralphie, dear, is that you?” Jim says he couldn’t holler it himself, as he was laughin’ too hard.

Poor Julie! She didn’t show up here on Main Street for a long, long time afterward.

And of course Jim and his gang told everybody in town, everybody but Doc Stair. They was scared to tell him, and he might of never knowed only for Paul Dickson. The poor cuckoo, as Jim called him, he was here in the shop one night when Jim was still gloatin’ yet over what he’d done to Julie. And Paul took in as much of it as he could understand and he run to Doc with the story.

It’s a cinch Doc went up in the air and swore he’d make Jim suffer. But it was a kind of a delicate thing, because if it got out that he had beat Jim up, Julie was bound to hear of it and then she’d know that Doc knew and of course knowin’ that he knew would make it worse for her than ever. He was goin’ to do somethin’, but it took a lot of figurin’.

Well, it was a couple days later when Jim was here in the shop again, and so was the cuckoo. Jim was goin’ duck-shootin’ the next day and had came in lookin’ for Hod Meyers to go with him. I happened to know that Hod had went over to Carterville and wouldn’t be home till the end of the week. So Jim said he hated to go alone and he guessed he would call it off. Then poor Paul spoke up and said if Jim would take him he would go along. Jim thought a w’ile and then he said, well, he guessed a half-wit was better than nothin’.

I suppose he was plottin’ to get Paul out in the boat and play some joke on him, like pushin’ him in the water. Anyways, he said Paul could go. He asked him had he ever shot a duck and Paul said no, he’d never even had a gun in his hands. So Jim said he could set in the boat and watch him and if he behaved himself, he might lend him his gun for a couple of shots. They made a date to meet in the mornin’ and that’s the last I seen of Jim alive.

Next mornin’, I hadn’t been open more than ten minutes when Doc Stair come in. He looked kind of nervous. He asked me had I seen Paul Dickson. I said no, but I knew where he was, out duck-shootin’ with Jim Kendall. So Doc says that’s what he had heard, and he couldn’t understand it because Paul had told him he wouldn’t never have no more to do with Jim as long as he lived.

He said Paul had told him about the joke Jim had played on Julie. He said Paul had asked him what he thought of the joke and the Doc had told him that anybody that would do a thing like that ought not to be let live.

I said it had been a kind of a raw thing, but Jim just couldn’t resist no kind of a joke, no matter how raw. I said I thought he was all right at heart, but just bubblin’ over with mischief. Doc turned and walked out.

At noon he got a phone call from old John Scott. The lake where Jim and Paul had went shootin’ is on John’s place. Paul had came runnin’ up to the house a few minutes before and said they’d been an accident. Jim had shot a few ducks and then give the gun to Paul and told him to try his luck. Paul hadn’t never handled a gun and he was nervous. He was shakin’ so hard that he couldn’t control the gun. He let fire and Jim sunk back in the boat, dead.

Doc Stair, bein’ the coroner, jumped in Frank Abbott’s flivver and rushed out to Scott’s farm. Paul and old John was down on the shore of the lake. Paul had rowed the boat to shore, but they’d left the body in it, waiting for Doc to come.

Doc examined the body and said they might as well fetch it back to town. They was no use leavin’ it there or callin’ a jury, as it was a plain case of accidental shootin’.

Personally I wouldn’t never leave a person shoot a gun in the same boat I was in unless I was sure they knew somethin’ about guns. Jim was a sucker to leave a new beginner have his gun, let alone a halfwit. It probably served Jim right, what he got. But still we miss him round here. He certainly was a card!

Comb it wet or dry?

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Copyright, 1925, by Liberty Weekly, Incorporated.
Copyright, 1926, by Ring W. Lardner.

THE ILL WIND[13]

By ROBERT ROBINSON

(From _Collier’s Weekly_)

As best I can recollect, this is the way it happened:

I got up about the usual time that morning and went out to get some kindling to make a fire with. Well, I noticed that it was kinda still and sultry like, and I told Martha when I got back in that I believed it was going to come a storm. She said she hoped it rained, as the tomatoes needed it bad. You see, we’d set out a five-acre patch of them about a week before. I didn’t tell her that I was afraid that it was going to turn into a sandstorm. I knew she’d have a fit. She always does.

Martha’d worked too hard. You see, we moved on this place more’n fifteen years ago. We were young then, and we figured we’d make no end of money. We came here from Missouri ’cause we wanted to get a start so’s we could give the boy an education. We just had one kid then, Johnnie. We got five now. But that ain’t got nothing to do with the story. As I was saying, Martha’d worked too hard. We had to pay out the place, and it seemed like luck would never break our way. The first year the sod didn’t make enough to pay expenses; then several years we were blown out by sand; the drought got us a couple of times; and then we had a good many other things to happen that kinda took the wind out of our sails.

And then there was another thing that I hate to mention that seemed to worry her no end. You see, Martha was awful religious. She comes from that kind of stock. For some reason or other I ain’t never took to religion much. It always seemed like foolishness to me. That kinda hurt her. And when everything begin to go wrong she laid it to me being so ungodly. I used to laugh and joke her about it, but she took it serious as ever’thing. She’d say:

“All right, you can joke about it all you want to, but some day you’ll see. The Lord’ll exact His toll; He’ll make you pay.”

Well, she got up, and as usual she cried a little. I didn’t blame her. Poor old Martha! She’d had such dreams, and they’d all been blown away, as you might say. Then too she was a sick woman a lot of the time. She had the neuralgia and the catarrh, and between them, with all the work she did, they kept her feeling mighty poorly.

But, as I was saying, Martha got up, and after she’d had her little cry she was all right. She got Minnie up--that’s our oldest girl--and they started getting breakfast. It weren’t daylight yet, but the east was beginning to get sorta rosy like and you could kinda smell the sun a-coming. I rousted out Henry and Johnnie--they’re our oldest boys--and we started to the barn to feed the stock.

Well, I saw that sure enough we were in for something. The red in the east had spread until it covered quite a bit of the sky, and it didn’t look like it usually does. It was as if somebody had hung a thin yellow veil over it. And I noticed that there was a bank of dark-looking clouds hanging low against the northwest sky line. And so I yelled for Martha to leave breakfast alone and come milk before it started raining, or something. I was purty sure by that time that it weren’t going to be no ordinary rain, but I didn’t want Martha to know it till she had to.

I’ve seen a lot of west Texas storms, and I’ve seen them break records coming up, but I ain’t never seen one that could keep in smelling distance of that one that morning. Why, do you know, by the time Martha and Minnie could get to the cow pen and get one cow apiece milked that bank of clouds was halfway up the sky and going so fast you could see it a-moving. The sun was just peeping over the horizon and looking so red and awful, and the air was so still, and you could hear for miles. I made out ever’ word Old Man Holland said to one of his little boys, who it ’peared had done something he shouldn’t, and it was more’n two miles over to their place. The air had a sort of pressing-down effect. You kinda had to put out an effort to get enough breath to keep you from gasping. And sweat! It just poured down my face.

Well, I went on back in the barn and began shucking some corn to shell so as I could take it to town the next day, Saturday, and get it ground into meal. Directly I heard Martha let out a squeal and I knew something was up. I hurried out and saw her standing in the middle of the cow lot looking about her in a wild sort of way. She kinda looks wild, anyway, when she first gets up, with her hair a-stringing down and her dress askew.

“It’s going to come a cyclone!” she yells to me. And then she tells Minnie to come on, and away they goes to the house lickity split. She hollers and tells me to come on and let’s go down the cellar.

I looked about and, by heck, I felt like making a run for the hole myself. The cloud had spread away over the barn, and on both the east and west there was a rolling, working mass of sand a-tearing along the prairie at a terrific rate. Above I could hear the wind rumbling and growling, and about a mile and a half away I saw bearing down on me a black, awful-looking mass. And there weren’t a breath of air a-stirring where I was. And hot! Gosh, but the sweat was just naturally pouring off me!

Well, you can tell the world that I made fast time getting to the house. By the time I was there Martha had all the kids out in the yard. We went down the cellar, and I managed to pull the door too just as the first whiff of wind hit.

Well, we stayed down there for I guess as long as thirty minutes. By that time the hardest part of the wind, it seemed, had passed. Now, that doesn’t mean that it weren’t blowing yet. Gosh, no! It was still moaning and whistling, making the craziest sound in the cellar flue. I stayed down there till I judged that it was safe to come out, and I started to open up. Martha she kicked some, but I told her I wanted to see what the wind had done to everything. I raised the door a little, and the wind got a whip at it. Danged if it didn’t tear it right out of my hands and bust it into a dozen pieces against the ground. Then there weren’t nothing else to do but come out.

Martha she grabbed the kids and said she weren’t coming out, but when she saw me standing up she judged it was safe, so she took a chance and came about halfway up the steps. There came a moment’s lull about that time. Now, I don’t mean that the wind quit blowing. Land, no! I just mean that it didn’t blow so hard for a minute or so. Martha saw that I knew what I was talking about, so she hustled the kids out, and they got ready to make a run for the house.

Well, about that time along came a hard gust and caught Molly--that’s our second girl--right in the middle and blew her sky-winding. It didn’t hurt her none, and I saw it, so I laughed. Now, maybe that didn’t make Martha mad. Gosh! She started after Molly, who couldn’t seem to get her feet, and danged if Martha didn’t get turned over. Then I seen that it was time for me to take a hand, so I did. I got ’em both on their feet, but Martha, she couldn’t seem to stand. She said it’d hurt her back; that she guessed that I was satisfied now that I had probably killed her; that that’s what I’d been trying to do for a long time.

Now Martha she knew better than that, but when she gets all wrought up she jest has to say something like that. Of course her back weren’t broke. It was just her imagination. She’s got anything beat for imagining things that I ever seen. But you can tell the world that she gave me Hail Columbia just the same.

Well, I finally got ’em all safely in the house, and then I begin to try to see what damage had been done to the other buildings. I expected to see every one of ’em laying slap on the ground. I couldn’t see very well from the window, but I could tell that at least a part of the barn was standing. Then I looked for the chicken house, but it weren’t nowhere to be seen. Right then and there I said to myself that I had to go out and see about it.

Martha she didn’t want me to.

“That’s it. Go out and get yourself killed and then what’ll become of us?” she says with the tears a-running down her cheeks.

Just for fun I put in, kinda innocent like:

“Why, Martha, I didn’t think I amounted to much around here anyway, to hear you tell it.”

Well, sir, I hadn’t no more’n got that out of my mouth than I was sorry as heck that I’d said it. She begin to cry and take on something terrible. Said that I was just making that up; that it was me that didn’t care anything for her; that I’d go out and get my neck broke and leave the poor little children to be orphans. To quiet her I told her I wouldn’t go. And then I begin peering out of the windows of every room that gave me a view of the lots and chicken house; and I begin to wonder out loud what had become of them chickens. D’rectly Martha she says:

“Looks like you’d go out and see about them instead of setting around in here and letting ’em blow away.”

Now, that’s just like Martha. It hadn’t been five minutes before that she was crying because I was thinking of going out. Anyway, I went.

Them chickens was a sight to behold. When the wind took their house and sent it flying from over their heads they was sent rolling and tumbling every which way. Least, I guess they were from the way they were scattered. Some of ’em had caught against the garden fence--it was made out of hog wire--but most of ’em had been blown out across the field where they’d been able to get protection behind some new listed furrows that I had plowed only a few days before.

The cow shed was gone and the fence was down. The cows had drifted up against the wire fence that separated the pasture from the fields. There they stood, their heads down, all hunched up like they used to do on cold winter days. But now, instead of snow caked on their backs, it was sand. Every once and a while an extra hard puff would send ’em forward like it was going to make ’em get in the fence. That kinda skeered me, so I went back to the house and got Johnnie to come and help me put ’em in the horse lot. Martha objected to him going out, but he didn’t listen, just came a-tearing. He was tickled to death to get out. It was a kind of picnic for him. Least, he ’peared to take it that way. All the kids seemed to be having a rip-roaring good time out of the storm. But you can tell the world that I weren’t.

Well, we tried to drive them cows in the lot. Every time we’d turn them against the wind they’d blink their eyes, shake their heads, go a few paces, and then turn around and start tearing back to the fence. About the third time we tried it one of ’em went too far and got in the wire just as I was afraid she would. We tried to get her out, and she pulled and sawed about, which made it all the worse. She got all tangled up and tore down the wire.

We tried to get old Boss out of the fence, but she was helpless. Poor old thing! I seen that she was a goner, so to put her out of her misery I sent Johnnie in the house to get the gun. I told him not to let his ma see him, but it was wasted breath. She spied him on the road out and follered him just a-boiling. Of course she didn’t know what he’d come after the gun for, and it skeered her. Then she saw what’d happened. Of course she laid it on to me. Land, how she did carry on!

We shot Boss. Then I went down and found out that the horses were faring purty well, considering ever’thing. They were all covered in sand, but that weren’t nothing. I fed ’em and killed as much time as I could, ’cause I wanted to stay away from the house as long as possible. I knew good and well that Martha’d pour it onto me hot and heavy when I came in.

But, do you know, when I got in she didn’t say a word for a long time. She was a-setting in the sitting room rocking back and forth in a chair that we’d got from Chicago a couple of years before. She just set there and rocked and looked at me so funny I felt downright creepy. I’d a whole lot druther she’d ’a’ give it to me hot and heavy. Fact is, I tried to start her. I says, kinda funny like:

“Well, it looks like the good Lord don’t like us none a-tall. Don’t look like He’d ’a’ treated you this way, Martha.”

I thought sure that’d make her boil over, but it didn’t. She just kept rocking back and forth and looking at me in that strange sort of way. I noticed a couple of tears that were running down her cheeks. They made little clear streaks through the dust. Maybe you think I wasn’t getting skeered.

“What’s the matter, Martha?” I asks in an anxious voice.

She didn’t answer a-tall.

“Do you feel bad?”

Still no answer. She just kept right on a-rocking and a-rocking, and she kept right on looking at me in that crazy sort of way. Then she says in a awful voice:

“The Lord’s judgment has fell upon us.”

Gosh, but I felt creepy! It was so gloomy there in the room in spite of it being broad open daylight. You see, the sun was hid behind dust clouds and the windows didn’t let in much light, they were so dirty. The sand was a-drizzling down from the ceiling and a-coming in through the cracks around the windows and doors; the wind was howling about the roof of the house; and there she set and just rocked and rocked, and every now and then she’d say:

“The Lord’s judgment has fell upon us.”

I tried to get her to go to bed, but she wouldn’t make a move; I got up and traipsed around trying to stir up some noise so’s I could drive away that creepy feeling that she gave me with her rocking and saying in such a awful voice that the Lord’s judgment was upon us. But somehow it didn’t do no good. I began to be afraid that she was going crazy, and the more I watched her the more I believed it. I had often thought that she’d do it some time when she’d get on one of her tears.

Every now and then she’d raise her hands up toward the ceiling and make the craziest motions and mutter something under her breath. And all the time she just kept a-rocking and a-rocking.

I tried several things to arouse her. The kids were beginning to notice it and to get scared and to cry. Leastwise, the youngest ones was. Finally I happened to think of a bright idea. If I’d pretend I’d suddenly got religion, thinks I to myself, maybe she’d get cheered up and get over her spell. I kinda hated to do it because I hated to be a hypocrite, but, thinks I, circumstances alter cases, so I decided to take a shot.

I went around where she could see me and got down on my knees and begin to pray. I asked her to help me; said I felt the spirit of the Lord descending upon me. Then I knew at once that I’d hit the nail right on the head. She let out a shout and fell on her knees by my side, and such praying I never heard before. It actually skeered me, she was so wild about it. She’d throw up her arms and cry out at the top of her voice for the Lord to send down His blessed healing power and wipe out all my sins. The little kids, they got skeered and begin to squall with all their might, and Johnnie, Minnie and Mollie were struck dumb at first; then they fell on their knees and begin to pray. That only added fuel to Martha’s praying.

“Lord,” she screamed above the roar of the storm, “Thou seest this man’s children on their knees to you pleading that you wash away their papa’s sins; you see his wife that has lived with him in all his wickedness all these years, kneeling and asking you to send your healing grace.”

About that time she got all choked up, and I decided it was time for me to give up, so I suddenly got up and told her that I saw the light; that I was saved.

Well, I’ve seen some wild ones in my time, but never one as crazy as she was for the next ten minutes or so. She begin to shout and jump around; then she threw her arms around my neck and praised the Lord so loud in my ear she nearly busted my eardrum; she sang and she shouted hurrah, hosannah, bless His precious name, and other such things, until the house fairly rung with her voice above the shriek of the storm. And Minnie, who is kinda like her ma in being religious and excitable like, begin to shout and sing too. Maybe you think that between them and the storm and the kids a-squalling there weren’t some racket being made. I felt kinda foolish.

The rest of the day Martha was so cheerful it made me ashamed of myself.

Thinks I: why, if I’d ’a’ known that it’d make so much difference to her I’d ’a’ confessed a long time ago. I’d ’a’ been a hypocrite to give Martha that much pleasure because she ain’t had any too much joy in this life, anyway.

Well, I joined the church, and I ain’t never had the nerve to tell Martha what a hypocrite I’ve been. She’s been much happier. Of course she gets on a spell now and then, but not near as often as she used to. She’s feeling much better too. I guess, all and all, it’s a good thing, a mighty good thing. Anyway, that’s how I come to be such a church-goer. They elected me deacon not long ago, said I was the regularest attending member they had. I don’t feel near so bad about being a hypocrite, any more. The fact is, I don’t know for sure that I am one.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] Copyright, 1925, by P. F. Collier & Son Company.
Copyright, 1926, by Robert Robinson.

THE OLD LADY[14]

By EVELYN SCOTT

(From _The Dial_)

The old lady was often to be seen walking on the beaches overlooked by the hotels. She had been tall, but was now stooped, and always advanced slowly, and with the help of a cane. In spite of the expensive soberness of her dress, of fine stuffs not quite in the fashion, yet much discussed by the maids in her hotel who expected generous remuneration for their services to her, the old lady had not that aloof confidence in herself and her position which is the usual endowment of wealth. She smiled too frequently into the faces of those who looked at her, and her excessive benevolence was like a subtle self-apology.

Her thoughts could not be read, and that was fortunate. When she awakened in the morning in a stately bed, from which, against an opposite wall of her large room, she saw an _armoire_ flanked with mirrors give back her image, she always, when possible, avoided the contemplation of this reflection; or, compelled to confront a revelation which caused her pain, remarked inwardly, “Can it be I?” and tried vainly to recall another almost-obliterated impression of her own features. Queer that, remembering so distinctly the most minute incidents of a past that had been filled with dramatic interest, able to visualize with exactitude the appearances of each of her friends, today dead or separated from her by years and oceans, she had so much difficulty in piecing together from fragments retained from the lost years, even the vaguest representation of her own countenance as it had been caught in looking-glasses long ago. People who had been dear to her, and even the people she had once disliked, had not aged, nor had they died, in that they existed continually in her thoughts in every moment of the time. Only her own personality, in its once-youthful aspect, had disappeared in the nothingness of a feeble present. She sighed, and said to herself, “Well, I never was pretty.” Yet without being pretty she had commanded affection and even very strong feeling.

It frightened her a little that she had become some one whom she did not know, some one whom she could not look at with clear eyes.

For all the sadness which pervaded her meditations, she did not, with truth, call herself unhappy. She slept badly, dreaming often of her married daughter whom she had not seen for many months, and of a dead son; but always, after noting the thinning of the darkness by a dawn yet scarcely visible and feeling, upon her dry cheeks and in her scanty hair, the still wind which rushed in a tide of freshness from the suddenly audible sea, she would turn upon her side, and, as if some sentinel duty of the night had been accomplished, find that she could rest easily. Then, from this hour into the morning, she would sleep like a child and awaken when the sun was shining rosily upon the gilt-flowered bedroom walls, while the lace curtains between the window hangings of brown-and-cream brocade seemed to expand as with an ecstatic delicacy, and, in the gilded foliage of the dark plane tree beyond them, birds sang.

Her maid, entering the chamber, and bringing the morning coffee in an immaculate service, received a cheery “_Bon jour_,” but, offering to assist the old lady at her toilet, was invariably sent away with a refusal couched in the same terms. “Not yet, Françoise. The time for that has not yet come.” And the old lady dressed herself. She waited for something miraculous to occur. Every morning approached her with an adventure which, finally, in the heat of noontime, had not revealed itself.