Читать книгу The Great Accident - Ben Ames Williams - Страница 7

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AMOS CARETALL and his daughter had supper—dinner was at midday in the Caretall household—alone together. Old Maria Hale cooked the supper, and Agnes brought it to the table. It was a good supper. Fried chicken, for example; and mashed potatoes as creamy as—cream. And afterwards, apple tapioca pudding of a peculiar excellence. All garnished with little, round biscuits, each no more than a crisp mouthful. The Congressman smacked his lips over it with frank appreciation. “Maria,” he told the old colored woman, “you could make your fortune in Washington.”

Maria cackled delightedly. She was a shriveled little old crone, bent, wrinkled, and suspected of being as bald as an egg. No one ever saw her without a kerchief bound tightly around her head. She had looked a hundred years old for twenty years, and declared she was more than that. “I mus’ be a hundred an’ twenty, at the mos’,” she used to say, when questioned. Now she cackled with delight at the Congressman’s praise of her cookery.

“I don’t know ’bout Wash’n’t’n,” she declared. “But I ain’ makin’ no great pile in Hardiston, Miste’ Caretall.”

He laughed, head tilted back, mouth full of biscuit. “You old fraud, you could buy and sell Chase himself, twice over. You haven’t spent a cent for a hundred years, Maria.”

She giggled like a girl, and went out to the kitchen, wagging her head from side to side and mumbling to herself. Agnes looked after her, and when the door was closed said, with a toss of her head: “She’s getting awfully cranky, Dad.”

Amos chuckled. “Always was, Agnes. Just the same when I was your age. But she can make mighty un-cranky biscuits.”

“She gets cross as a bear if I don’t help her with the dishes.”

Amos looked at his daughter with a dry smile. “Then if I was you, Agnes, I’d help her.”

She started to reply, but thought better of it. A little restraint fell upon them, and this continued until Amos leaned back with a sigh of contentment and pulled a pipe from his coat pocket. It was a horny old pipe, black, odorous, rank as a skunk cabbage. Agnes hated it; but Amos stuck to it, year in, year out. When it caked so full that a pencil would not go down into its cavity, Amos always whittled out the cake, burned the pipe with alcohol, and started over again. The brier had been in regular and constant use for half a dozen years—and it was still, as Agnes used to say, “going strong.”

Amos cuddled this pipe lovingly in the palm of his hand. He polished the black bowl in his palm, and then by rubbing it across his cheek and against the side of his nose. Agnes fidgeted, and Amos watched her with a twinkle in his eye until she rose suddenly and cried:

“Dad—that’s horrid!”

He chuckled. “What was it you said about dishes?” he asked.

She went sulkily toward the kitchen.

Amos watched her with a certain amount of speculation in his eyes. Amos was always speculating, speculating about people, and about things. He stared at the door that closed behind her for a long minute before the clock on the mantel struck seven and broke the charm. Then he got up stiffly, favoring his big body, and went into the sitting room. Only half a dozen houses in Hardiston had living rooms in those days. Rooms with no other appointed use were, respectively, sitting rooms and parlors. The library and the living room were arriving together.

Amos went into the sitting room and pulled a creaky rockingchair up before the coal fire. His feet were in carpet slippers, and he kicked off the slippers and thrust his feet toward the blaze. He wore knitted wool socks, gray, with white heels and toes. Maria Hale had knitted Amos’ socks for ten years. He wriggled his toes comfortably, then searched from one pocket a black plug of tobacco, from another a crooked-blade pruning knife. He sliced three or four slices from the plug with grave care, restored plug and knife to his pockets, rolled the slices to a crumbling pile in his palm, and filled his pipe. When it was lighted—he “primed” it by cramming into the top of the pipe some half-burned tobacco from a previous smoking—he leaned back luxuriously in the chair, closed his eyes, puffed hard and thought gently.

He was still in this position when the telephone rang; and he rose, grumblingly, to answer it. Winthrop Chase, Senior, was at the other end of the wire; and when he discovered this, Amos winked gravely at the fire and his voice descended half an octave.

“Good evening, Congressman,” said Chase.

“Evening, Mr. Chase,” said Amos.

“Gergue told me you were coming home.”

“I guess he was right.”

“He thought you would want to see me.”

Amos’ eyes widened. “Did he say so?”

Chase laughed. “Well—you understand—Gergue has his methods.”

Amos nodded soberly. “Yes, yes. Well—you can come to-night if you want.”

“Er—what—”

“I said you could come to-night. I’ll be home all evenin’.”

Winthrop Chase, Senior, hesitated. He hesitated for so long that Amos asked blandly: “Er—anything else?”

“No, no-o,” Chase decided then. “No—I’ll come.”

“That’s good,” said Amos; and hung up, and came back to his chair with a pleasant smile upon his countenance.

Almost immediately, some one knocked on the door. From the sitting room, the door was open into the hall, so that Amos heard the knock easily. There was a bell, and most people rang the bell; but Peter Gergue always knocked, so Amos called out confidently:

“Come in, Pete.”

Listening, he heard the front door open. Then it closed, and Gergue came slowly along the hall and into the room. Amos looked up and nodded.

“Evening, Peter. Glad t’see you. Take a chair. Any chair.”

Peter put his hat on the table and dragged a morris chair before the fire. He sat down, still without speaking, and extended his feet toward the fire in imitation of Amos. Amos’ hands were clasped across his middle, and Gergue clasped his hands there too. Thus they remained for a little time silent.

But such a position put Gergue under too great a handicap. He had to get his fingers into his hair; and so presently he unclasped his hands and began to rummage through the tangle at the nape of his neck for his medulla, as though hunting for something. Apparently, he found it; for after a moment he said slowly:

“Well, Amos, we’re licked.”

Amos turned his head and studied Gergue. “Do tell!” he exclaimed at last.

Gergue nodded. “Hollow ain’t got any more chance of being Mayor than—than young Wint Chase has.”

This seemed to startle Amos. He opened his mouth to speak, hesitated, closed it again, then asked: “Young Wint! What makes you say that?”

“We-ell—no more chance than I got, then,” Gergue amended.

The Congressman seemed satisfied with the amendment. He wagged his head as though deploring the situation, then asked: “Why? What’s Jim done?”

Gergue looked at Amos reproachfully. “We-ell, you know Jim.”

“Always does the right thing, don’t he?”

“They ain’t no votes in that.”

The two considered this truism for a time in thoughtful silence. In this interval, Gergue produced and filled and lighted a pipe in a manner painfully like that of Amos. Every detail—pipe, plug, knife, priming—was the same. Amos watched him with interest, and when Gergue had finished with the rites, Amos asked:

“How big a margin has Chase got?”

Gergue opened his hands as though baring every secret.

“Well,” he said, “Jim’ll get two votes. Yours and mine. He won’t vote for himself. Says it ain’t right. So I don’t know where we can count on anything else.” He hesitated, then: “You know, this Chase has got a holt on Hardiston.”

“How?”

“Every way. Four-five hundred men working for him, one way or another. The drys are all with him. The money is all with him. And the Democrats are all with him.”

Amos pondered. “I hadn’t no notion Chase was such a popular man,” he said.

Gergue shook his head. “He ain’t. They’d all like to see him licked, just to see his swelling go down some. But—a man can’t vote for Hollow.”

Amos puffed hard. “You know, Peter, I’ve a mind to vote for Chase myself.”

Gergue was startled; but after a minute he grinned. “Whatever you say goes for me, Amos.”

“Chase is a good man, a big man, a public-spirited man. You know, Peter, if he was elected Mayor, things being as they is, he’d stand right in line for Congress next fall. I don’t know as I’d even run against him, Pete.”

Gergue leaned forward and clapped his knee and chuckled. Something pleased him. Amos watched him with an expression of comical bewilderment, until Gergue caught his eye and sobered abruptly. Then Amos asked, most casually:

“How’s young Wint, Peter?”

Gergue looked sharply at the Congressman. “The boy? We-ell—he’s over twenty-one.”

“Er—is he?”

Amos squinted at the ceiling. “Seems to me he is. He was three years ahead of Agnes in school and high school, and she is twenty now. He must be twenty-two or three.”

Peter considered this, but made no comment. After a moment Amos asked again: “So—how is he, Peter?”

Gergue rummaged through his back hair. “We-ell—they kicked him out of State for over-study of booze.”

Amos nodded. “I know. But—how is he?”

“Still at it.”

“Still at—the booze?”

“He drinks when he has a mind to; and he’s got a large and active mind.”

“What does his father think of it?”

“Various sentiments.”

“Wint is looking badly.”

Gergue nodded. “I come along the street this morning,” he said. “He was standing in front of the Post Office. His back was to me; and when I says, ‘Hello’ to him, he jumped a foot. Nerves on edge.”

“That’s natural.”

Peter shook his head. “Not natural; booze.”

“Oh,” said Amos; and: “But he’ll straighten up. He’ll come out all right.”

Peter shook his head. “I’ve seen ’em go that way. By and by his face will begin to look old, just over night. And then his clothes will get shabby, and b’fore anybody knows different, he’ll be hanging around the hotel corner of nights with a cigarette in his mouth.” He hesitated. “He’s set in his way, Amos. Nothing but an accident’ll change him.”

Amos looked across at Peter curiously. “Accident?”

“Yeah.”

Gergue volunteered no explanation; but after a little time Amos said slowly: “Well, Peter—some accidents ain’t so accidental as others. Pete, you just make a study of Wint Chase for me.”

Gergue looked curious, and he threaded his hair for his medulla oblongata, but he asked no questions. Before a direct instruction or command from Amos, Peter was always silently obedient. He looked at Amos, and then he turned back at the fire; and for a long time the two men sat thus, staring into the coals above the smoking bowls of their pipes.

It is one of the merits of cut-plug for smoking that a well-filled pipe gives a long smoke. Amos Caretall’s pipe lasted three quarters of an hour before the last embers were drowned in the moisture at the bottom of the bowl. He knocked out the loose ashes into his palm, leaving the half-burned cake in the bottom of the pipe to serve as priming for a later smoke, and then stuffed the pipe affectionately away into his pocket.

Peter was still puffing at his, and Amos watched him for a little, and then he chuckled softly to himself. Gergue looked across at him in faint surprise. Amos chuckled harder, began to laugh, laughed aloud—and instantly was as sober as a judge.

“Peter,” he said slowly, “what you reckon Winthrop Chase, Senior, would up and do if he was licked for Mayor?”

Gergue considered for a moment, then seriously judged: “He’d up and lay him an egg.”

Amos nodded. “And eggs will be worth fifty cents a dozen, right here in Hardiston, inside a month. It might pay to have him lay one, Pete.”

“You’ll need a political Lay-or-Bust for that, Amos.”

“I’ve got one, Peter.”

Gergue stared slowly at Amos, his eyes ponderously inquisitive. At length he asked: “What brand?”

Amos leaned toward him quickly. “Almost any good man could beat Chase, couldn’t he, Pete?”

“He might have—starting at the first go off. He couldn’t now.”

“Chase ain’t rightly popular.”

“No—he puts on too many airs.”

“Hardiston’d like to see a joke on him—now wouldn’t it?”

“Sure. A man always can laugh at a joke on the other fellow. Special if it’s on old Chase.”

“Pete—I kind of like Congress.”

Gergue nodded. “Don’t blame you a speck.”

“I want to keep a-going back there.”

“Fair enough.”

“But you say, yourself, that Chase don’t agree with me on that.”

“He says so too.”

Amos tapped Gergue’s knee. “Pete, wouldn’t a good, smashing joke on Chase put him out of the running for a spell?”

Gergue considered. “I’ll say this, Amos,” he announced at length. “A joke on a man is all right, if it don’t go too far. If you go too far, you’ll make ’em sorry for Chase, and then there’ll be no stopping ’em. Politics sure does love a martyr. But—short o’ that—a joke’s good medicine.”

Caretall sat up quickly. “That’s fine,” he said soberly. “That’s fine,” he repeated. And he fell silent, and after a little said, half aloud and for the third time, “Peter, that’s fine.”

Peter’s pipe smoked out, and he, too, emptied the ashes and preserved the last charred bits of tobacco as Amos had done. Then he rose, reached slowly for his hat. “I’ll go along, Amos,” he announced.

The Congressman lumbered up out of his chair, his broad countenance beaming. “Fair enough, Peter. But, Pete—I want to ask you something.”

Gergue shifted his hat to his left hand; his right went to the back of his neck. “What is it?”

“Take a man like young Wint, Peter. Suppose he was give a job—sudden—that was right up to him. Responsibility, power, something to do that had to be done. Nobody to boss him but himself. Him and his heart. What would that do to a man like Wint, Pete?”

Gergue scratched his head—hard. He thought—hard. Amos said softly: “Don’t hurry, Pete. Think it over.” Gergue nodded; and presently he said:

“Man just like Wint—that’s what you mean?”

“Say—Wint himself.”

“It’d depend on the man.”

“Say it’s Wint.”

“Depend on whether he had any backbone—any stuff in him.”

“Has Wint got it?”

Gergue shook his head. “Ain’t sure.”

“Say he has.”

“Then—this job you mentioned would straighten him out—likely.”

“Say he hadn’t.”

“’Twouldn’t hurt him none.”

Amos nodded. “That’s what I thought, Pete.” He laid his hand on the other’s shoulder and propelled him gently toward the door. There he paused, added: “You do what I asked, will you, Pete? Make a study of Wint.”

“All right.”

“And—Pete.”

Gergue turned.

“Tell V. R. Kite I wish he’d come and see me.”

Peter’s eyes lighted slowly—and after a moment, he grinned. “All right, Amos,” he said quietly, and went down the walk to the gate.