Читать книгу Our Ernie - Alice Hegan Rice - Страница 4

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The transition from a scholastic to a business career was less easy of achievement than Ernie had imagined. He had something that no other member of the family possessed, a driving power that made him go after what he wanted with the suddenness and directness of a bullet. But he discovered to his amazement that no one seemed to accept him at his own valuation. For months he tramped the streets looking for a job, answering advertisements, and making himself a nuisance to every one he knew.

Disgusted at last with the lack of acumen on the part of the public, he decided to go into business for himself. Plunging recklessly into his capital, he had some cards lettered in red ink on yellow paper which read:

Need a Boy?

That’s me!

Ernest Bossel

Jobs. Bycicle Errands. Dirty Work.

$.20 a hour.

Magnolia 7231.

These, distributed in St. Thomas Court and Park neighborhood, brought in a few responses, but not nearly enough to exhaust the energies of the indefatigable Mr. Bossel. On the side he delivered papers, drove an ice-wagon, and on Sunday nights set up pins in a bowling-alley.

But one must not conclude that he was cut off from the amusements of life. Wirt’s Division was a small world in itself, which offered many diversions. It was bounded on the north by aristocracy, on the south by the proletariat, on the east by industry, and on the west by Holy Rollers. At one end of the Bossels’ block was a motion-picture theater in front of which stood a slot-machine capable, in an emergency, of being manipulated with a pant’s button; at the other end was an engine-house, and back of that a municipal athletic field, where Ernie was a showy performer.

Whether in work or play existence proved a thrilling melodrama, in which he always cast himself for the leading rôle.

His happiest hours, however, were those spent at home, tinkering with his inventions, working on prize competitions, or indulging in the family hobby of studying trade catalogues. He pored over models of artificial arms with Pop, considered seed catalogues with Curt, and even plunged into the intricacies of “ready-to-wears” with Rose.

From all these activities the Captain alone was immune. Having provided a handsome roof for his offspring, he considered his responsibilities forever at an end, and shamelessly lapped the cream from the family milk bowl with an air of kindly condescension. With Buffy, the cat, in his lap, and Roustabout at his feet, he sat in his big rocker, sipped his toddy, and smoked his pipe, in amiable tranquillity that might have passed for spiritual serenity.

For forty years he had neglected his wife, but at her passing had expressed his inconsolable grief by a conspicuous black band on his brown coat sleeve. Now that he had decided to install her successor, he felt a belated concern about the depleted state of the family budget.

“Ernie ought to be at work,” he announced one night. “Where is the boy?”

“He’s down in the cellar trying to yodel,” said Pop. “I never knew a boy to enjoy his voice changing so much!”

“Tell him to come up here, I want to talk to him.”

But when he appeared it was difficult for the Captain to make himself heard. The Bossels had a disconcerting fashion of carrying on a fourway conversation that made interruptions well-nigh impossible.

“I saw a suit up at Stoner’s for ten dollars,” Curt was saying.

“When did it begin to leak?” Pop was asking Rose.

“Stripes or checks?” Ernie inquired of Curt.

“It leaks all the time,” Rose answered Pop.

The Captain assumed his megaphone voice: “Here! Ernie! Listen to me. I been wondering if you couldn’t get work at Peckham’s Pickle Factory.”

“He’d like that,” said Curt. “His girl works there.”

“What girl?” demanded Ernie savagely.

“That red Hessian who lives next door.”

Ernie blushed to the roots of his hair, but the Captain did not notice it.

“Peckham is a smart man,” he said. “I remember when his father brought him up the river on my boat and they didn’t have enough money to wad a gun. Now Peckham’s one of the richest men in town.”

“How’d he get his start?” asked Ernie.

“In the pickle factory,” said the Captain. “And now he owns one of the finest houses in town; they say he’s worth a million.”

“Ernie can’t get in there ‘til he’s sixteen,” said Curt. “Besides there’s six applicants for every vacancy. They don’t want green hands.”

In August the peace of the family was shattered by the advent of the Captain’s new wife. Mrs. Myrtle was a large, baby-faced woman of fifty whose soft exterior belied the hardness within. As an embodied advertisement of her business she presented a startling appearance. Her face had been lifted, her nails lacquered a deep mahogany, her locks hennaed and waved into permanent fury.

The Bossels were a tolerant lot and in the confused tangle of family life there was plenty of room for the exercise of this virtue. But Mrs. Myrtle refused to be assimilated. She disapproved of everything about the house and undertook to change it. Being superstitious about occupying Grampa’s big front room on the first floor, she took the best chamber on the second story, and tucked Pop and the boys in two small rear rooms. But it was what she did to the beloved dining-room that caused the greatest consternation. The rocking-chair, and sewing-machine, the musical instruments, and cherished catalogues were ruthlessly swept out, and even the cat and the dog banished to the back porch.

The last act was not unreasonable, for an enmity existed between Buffy and Roustabout that frequently resulted in a fight. One belonged to the proletariat, while the other was an aristocrat. Roustabout would lie with plebeian nose between his paws in the attitude of deceptive innocence, watching Buffy, then, without warning, would pounce on her and place an offensive paw squarely in her face. No lady could quietly submit to such an insult, so Buffy invariably spit in his eye.

It was upon Ernie, however, that Mrs. Myrtle’s disfavor rested most heavily. She seemed to think it her duty to discipline him, and the method used was as obnoxious to the rest of the family as it was to him. No sooner did he take his seat at the table and begin as usual to dramatize the events of the day, than she would say:

“Not so much talk from you, young man.” And he would collapse into embarrassed silence.

Soon after her arrival she bought him a book called Don’t which he faithfully perused. So thorough were its prohibitions that, followed literally, it would have paralyzed him completely.

“Can’t you get me one called Do?” he inquired plaintively.

“What’s the use?” she asked. “You are so awkward and clumsy—I wonder if it would help any if you knew how to dance?”

“I know the holts already,” said Ernie, “but I don’t know the steps.”

“Well, I’ll try to teach you,” she said, turning on the phonograph and seizing him resolutely by the shoulders. “But don’t dance on my feet, and for heaven’s sake stop counting.”

At the end of the second lesson Ernie could reverse with his eyes open, without getting dizzy, and could avoid two out of three obstacles he encountered. By the fourth lesson the rhythm was in his blood, and from that time on he was an addict.

“Never keeps quiet a minute,” Rose complained.

If Mrs. Myrtle’s advent was disturbing to the Bossels, it was nothing less than catastrophic to the Captain. His twenty years’ seniority proved a lever by which she gained her every wish. With constant suggestion and innuendo she managed to convince him that he was failing mentally and physically and that his judgment was not to be relied upon.

“You got blood pressure,” she told him one day.

“High or low?” he asked anxiously.

“I don’t say which. But you got it. I can tell by your color. My first husband looked pasty like that before he died; and he was fifteen years younger than you.”

The Captain was greatly disturbed. In a long life of perfect health the only discomfort he had ever suffered was a chronic thirst. When the bride insisted that he give up meat, coffee, and tobacco, to say nothing of his toddy, he confided to Pop that he felt like a flat tire on a rough road.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Myrtle’s activities were not confined to the family. Before long she got into a quarrel with a neighbor that landed them both in court. Mrs. Calloway alleged that Mrs. Katzenbach had, with malicious intent, turned the hose on her, thereby causing a severe nervous breakdown, and in rebuttal Mrs. Katzenbach had told the judge that when a lady finds the word “Huns” scribbled on her freshly scrubbed pavement she has a right to resort to hose-play. The case was eventually thrown out of court, but not until the usually peaceful neighborhood had been split in twain.

The Bossels’ loyalty stood by the Captain’s wife, but the old gentleman lost flesh under the strain, and became increasingly anxious about his health. When at last Mrs. Myrtle announced that she was going to have him clinicked, he was so depressed that he broke over and got tight instead.

In the past, when these lapses occurred, they merely rippled the household serenity. The Captain always brought home his load, and if he sang and danced, or sometimes tried to walk on all fours, he was unfailingly gentle, affectionate, and amusing.

In this instance, Mrs. Myrtle made a tragedy of his fall from grace, locking herself in her room and refusing to accept his explanation that it was a mixture of soft drinks that had been his downfall.

“Lemonade and sarsaparilla and root-beer would throw a stronger drinker than me,” he pleaded. “You should have let me stick to rum.”

During the following months the family morale declined steadily. Curt began staying out of evenings; Rose hinted darkly of matrimony; and Ernie carried his activities to the cellar. Only Pop plodded in the accustomed path, humbly waiting on Mrs. Myrtle, and trying to reconcile the conflicting elements.

Yet it was to him that her advent had caused the deepest sorrow. The one private possession he could claim in the entire world was the back yard. Here everything looked up to him and depended upon him, he was the divinity who provided food and shelter and boundless affection for every living thing that thrust its head above the sandy soil, or peered in at the alley gate. Every available object was utilized as a flower-pot, old saucepans, tin cans, and bits of discarded gutter harbored orphan slips and crippled shrubs. In the ragged border was a heterogeneous assembly, planted without regard for race, creed or condition, pink phlox and magenta petunias consorting in unholy alliance. Squirrels and cats, sparrows and cardinals, dandelions and roses were equally welcome, his interest being paternal rather than esthetic.

Mrs. Myrtle had seen fit to clean up the back yard, and with the reluctant assistance of old black Uncle Jerry had ruthlessly transferred Pop’s treasures to the alley and reduced his hopes to despair.

Things might have gone on thus indefinitely had not Ernie’s lively imagination found a way out of the difficulty.

“It’s funny how I keep on smelling peppermint,” he said one day.

“Well, what of it?” demanded Mrs. Myrtle.

“Nothing. Only it makes me think of Grandma. She always carried mint drops in her pocket.”

The Captain sniffled audibly, and Rose said, “Now Ernie, you hush! Can’t you see you’re making Grampa feel bad?”

“Peppermint and wintergreen,” continued Ernie dreamily. “Those were her favorites. Sometimes in the night I wake up smelling them; then I always seem to hear her going down the steps—with a kind of limp, you know, like she was tired.”

“You give me the creeps!” protested Mrs. Myrtle. “Don’t let me catch you saying such things again.”

But he not only continued to say them; he backed up his speech with action. Procuring some mint from a vacant lot, he hid it under the Captain’s bed, and that night, when the house was still, he limped several times up and down the stairs.

The next morning at breakfast Mrs. Myrtle asked who it was that came in so late, but no one had been out.

“That’s the noise I been talking about!” cried Ernie. “I heard it, too. One light step and one heavy one, wasn’t it, Mrs. Myrtle?”

The next ghostly manifestation was achieved by the aid of the old-fashioned clock that stood on the hall mantel. For years it had had a constitutional objection to striking on the hour, and even when the hands told the truth the striker would do its best to contradict it. Trading on this lack of integrity, Ernie, by a little manipulation, persuaded the ancient timepiece to announce the midnight hour by striking twenty-four.

Under these disturbing phenomena, Mrs. Myrtle’s nervousness increased. “It’s bad enough having the children dislike me,” she confided to Pop. “But for the Captain’s first wife to come back from the grave to devil me is more than I can stand.”

On Christmas night, when Grampa failed to come home, Ernie took Pop down in the cellar, and told him a secret.

“We are going to lose Grampa for good, the first thing you know,” he said anxiously. “He’s skeered of Mrs. Myrtle, that’s what’s the matter with him.”

“How skeered?”

“Of the tricks she works on him, to cure him of drinking.”

“What does she do?” asked Pop.

Ernie, embarrassed, whispered the awful truth, and Pop shuddered.

“No!” he protested. “She surely didn’t do that to the Captain.”

“That’s what he told me. Said she did it while he was asleep. Stuck a darning-needle right into his nable!”

The two looked at each other aghast. That the gallant Captain should have been subjected to such an indignity, even in the cause of virtue, was beyond belief.

“We orter do something about it,” said Pop.

“We’re goin’ to,” announced Ernie with decision.

That night at midnight, when the Captain had not returned and Mrs. Myrtle was sitting up in bed listening for every sound she was terrified by a white object that floated repeatedly past her window.

The next morning, before breakfast, she was packing her trunk and preparing to move beyond the reach of ghostly influences.

When it was found out that she did not intend to return, peace and joy descended upon the household. The family promptly snapped back into its accustomed ways; Pop and the boys moved to their old quarters; the litter returned to the dining-room; the Captain ate what he liked and regained his health; and Ernie once more occupied the spotlight.

It was about this time that one of the local newspapers offered a substantial prize to the best-informed boy of high-school age in the city. Ernie’s lamentable ignorance did not for a moment deter him from becoming a contestant. Next best to knowing a fact is knowing where to find it, and he promptly sought the assistance of the person whom he thought most likely to know the answers to the long questionnaire.

Miss Hanks had been teaching in the graded schools for fifty years, five of which she had taught Ernie. She was large and square and as full of information as an almanac. But being versed in the ways of adolescence, and knowing Ernie of old, she declined to impart her information, but made him work for it. She furnished him books on history, science and mathematics, but made him wade through the contents to find the desired answers.

Ernie rushed into the enterprise with characteristic fervor. Experiments in electricity, patents, catalogues were all forgotten in the new and exciting adventure. All through that spring he worked with ardor and confidence. Each new problem was a challenge to be met and conquered. He did not win the prize, but he got honorable mention and had the satisfaction of seeing his picture in the paper.

“Don’t you mind about the prize,” Miss Hanks consoled him. “You’ve learned more in the last six months than you did the whole time you were in school!”

Before Ernie recovered from his disappointment he had another blow. Rose threw the family into a state of consternation by announcing that she was going to be married. For four years every one had saved and scrimped that she might get her training at the City Hospital. That she should, on the very eve of graduating, give up her profession and embark on the uncertain sea of matrimony seemed nothing short of madness.

Ernie was especially indignant. As self-appointed spokesman for the family, he tried to make her see the folly of linking her fate to the knock-kneed, asthma-afflicted Gibbs. But Rose assured him that Bob was one of Nature’s noblemen, and that his delicate health required devoted nursing. She pointed out that with Ernie and Pop now at home to look after Grampa, there was no reason why she should not follow the dictates of her heart. So eloquent and tearful did she become, that it ended in Ernie championing her cause, and advising her to go ahead and live her own life and let the rest of them go hang.

“And don’t you worry, Sis,” he concluded grandly. “Once I get a start, I’ll be taking care of the whole caboodle.”

So Rose got married in the little Methodist Church around the corner; and she, the groom, the bridesmaid, and Curt chewed gum vigorously during the ceremony, while Ernie, sitting between Grampa and Pop, struggled to keep back the tears.

After Rose’s departure the house seemed desolate indeed, for her removal from the closely forged family circle made a gap that was hard to fill.

The four men were now left to the tender mercies of old black Jeremiah who had been doing as little as possible around the premises for twenty years. The simplest task required a colored assistant, and as Curt said, “Jerry was so lazy he had to sit down to sneeze.” For some unknown reason he strapped his legs from ankles to knees, in a sort of puttee effect, wore a patriarchal white beard, and like his illustrious predecessor was seriously addicted to lamentations.

When Ernie was sixteen Grampa found a regular job for him.

“It’s at Jeb Hart’s Garage and Filling Station,” he explained. “Jeb’s father used to pilot for me. I told him you were the family baby, and he mustn’t work you too hard.”

“Oh, gosh! What did you do that for?” wailed Ernie. “I just got through licking the neighborhood for calling me ‘Mellin’s Food.’ Ain’t you all ever going to treat me like I’m grown?”

The Captain laughingly rumpled the boy’s shining hair.

“You’ll always be our Ernie to us, Sonny, no matter how old you get!”