Читать книгу Still Jim - Honoré Morrow - Страница 7

After she had wiped the quick tears from her eyes, she read the few pages Jim had completed in his sprawling hand:

"My father said to me, 'Jimmy, never make excuses. It's always too late for excuses.'

"He said, 'A liar is a first cousin to a skunk. There isn't a worse coward than a liar.'

"He said to me, 'Don't belly-ache. Stand up to your troubles like a man.'

"My father said, 'Hang to what you undertake like a hound to a warm scent.'

"He said to me, 'Life is made up of obeying. What you don't learn from me about that, the world will kick into you. The stars themselves obey a law. God must hate a law breaker.'

"My father said, 'Somehow us Americans are quitters.'

"My mother said my father said, 'I want Jimmy to go through college. I want him to marry young and have a big family.'

"The thing my father said to me oftenest lately was, 'Jimmy, be clean about women. Some day you will know what I mean when I say that sex is energy. Keep yourself clean for your life work and your wife and children.'"

Mrs. Manning read the pages over several times, then she laid the book down and stood staring out of the window.

"Oh, he was a good man!" she whispered. "He was a good man! If Jimmy could have had him just two years more! I don't know how to teach him the things a man ought to know. A boy needs his father.——Oh, my love! My love——"

Down below, Jim was leaning on the front gate. His chum, Phil Chadwick, was coming slowly up the street. The boys had not been near Jim since the funeral. Jim had become a person set apart from their boy world. No one appreciates the dignity of grief better than a boy, or underneath his awkwardness has a finer way of showing it. Phil's mother, to his unspeakable discomfort, had insisted now that he go call on Jim.

Phil, his round face red with embarrassment, approached the gate a little sidewise.

"Hello, Still!" he said casually.

"Hello, Pilly!" replied Jim, blushing in sympathy.

There was a pause, then said Phil, leaning on the gate, "Diana's got her pups. One's going to be a bulldog and two of 'em are setters. U-u-u—want to come over and see 'em and choose yours?"

Jim's face was quivering. It was his father who had persuaded his mother that Jim ought to have one of Diana's pups. Mrs. Manning felt toward dogs much as she might have toward hyenas.

"I—I—guess not today, Pilly!"

Another long pause during which the lads swung the gate to and fro and looked in opposite directions. A locust shrilled from the elm tree. Finally Phil said:

"Still, you gotta come up to the swimming hole. It'll do you good. He—he'd a wanted you to—to—to do what you could to cheer up. Come on, old skinny. Tell your mother. We'll keep away from the other kids. Come on. You gotta do something or you'll go nutty in your head."

Jim turned and went into the house. His mother forestalled his request.

"If Phil wants you to go swimming, dear, go on. It will do you good. Don't stay in too long."

Jim and Phil walked up the road to the old Allen place. They climbed the stile into a field where the aftermath of the clover crop was richly green and vibrating with the song of cricket and katydid. The path that the boys followed had been used in turn by Indian and Puritan. The field still yielded an occasional hide scraper or stone axe.

There was a pine grove at the far edge of the field. In the center of the grove was the pond that had for centuries been the swimming pool for boys, Indian and white. Ground pine and "checkerberry" grew abundantly in the grove. Both boys breathed deep of the piney fragrance and filled their mouths with pungent "checkerberry" leaves. The path, deep worn by many bare feet, circled round the great pines to the clearing where the pond lay. It was black with the shadows of the grove where it was not blue and white in mirroring the September sky. Lily pads fringed the brim. Moss and a tender, long grass grew clear to the water's edge.

Several boys were undressing near the ancient springboard. They looked embarrassed and stopped their laughter when they saw Jim. He and Phil got into their swimming trunks quickly and followed each other in a clean dive into the pool. They swam about in silence for a time and then landed on the far side and lay in the sun on moss and pine needles.

The beauty and sweetness of the place were subtle balm to Jim. And surely if countless generations of boy joy could leave association, the old swimming hole should have spoken very sweetly to Jim. The swimming hole was a boy sanctuary. The water was too shallow for men. Little girls were not allowed to invade the grove except in early spring for trailing arbutus. The oldest men in Exham told that their grandfathers, as boys, had sought the swimming hole as the adult seeks his club.

Jim looked with interest at his legs. "I've got six. How many have you, Pilly?"

Phil counted the brown bloodsuckers that clung to his fat calves. "Seven. Mean cusses, ain't they."

Jim worked with a sharp edged stone, scraping his thin shanks. "You've got fat to spare. They've had enough off of me today."

"I remember how crazy I was first time they got on me. Felt as if I had snakes." Phil rooted six of the suckers off his legs and paused at the seventh. "He's as skinny as you are, Still. I'll give him two minutes more to finish a square meal."

The two boys lay staring out at the pond.

"Have you gotta go to work, Still?" asked Phil.

"Yes," replied Jim. "Mother says I can't, though."

Phil waited more or less patiently. His mates had long since learned that Jim's silences were hard to break.

"But I'm going to get a job in the quarry as soon as I can keep from getting sick at my stomach every time I see a derrick."

"My dad says your—he—he always planned to send you through college," said Phil.

Jim nodded. "I'll get through college. See if I don't. But I won't let my mother support me. I've got a lot of things to finish up for him."

"What things?" asked Phil.

"Well," Jim hesitated for words, "he worried a lot because all the real Americans are dying off or going, somehow, and he always said it was us kids' business to find out why. That's the chief job."

"I don't see what you can do about it," said Phil. "That's a foolish thing to worry about. Why——"

A boy screamed on the opposite side of the pond. It was so different from the shouts and laughter of the moment before that Jim and Phil jumped to their feet. Across the swimming hole a naked boy was dancing up and down, screaming hysterically,

"Take 'em off! Take 'em off! Take 'em off!"

"It's the new minister's kid, Charlie," laughed Phil. "The fellows have got the bloodsuckers on him. Ain't he the booby? Told me he was fifteen and he's bigger'n you are. Screams like a girl."

Jim stood staring, his hand shielding his gray eyes from the sun. Across the pond, the boys were doubled up with laughter, watching the minister's son writhe and tear at his naked body. Suddenly, Jim shot round the edge of the pond, followed by Phil. A dozen naked boys hopped joyfully around the twisting Charlie. They were of all ages, from eight to sixteen.

When Jim ran up to the new boy, his mates shouted: "Don't butt in, now, Jim. Don't butt in. He's a darned sissy."

Jim did not reply. Charlie was considerably larger than he. He had a finely muscled pink and white body, liberally dotted now with wriggling brown suckers. This was a familiar form of hazing with the Exham boys. There was a horror in a first experience with the little brown pests that usually resulted in a mild form of hysteria very pleasing to the young spectators. But Charlie was in an agony of loathing, far ahead of anything the boys had seen.

As Jim ran up, Charlie struck at him madly and the boys yelled in delight. Jim turned on them.

"Shut up!" he shouted. "Shut up now!"

Thin and tall, his boyish ribs showing, his damp hair tossed back from his beautiful gray eyes that were now black with anger, Jim dominated the crowd. There was immediate silence, broken only by Charlie's wild sobs.

"Take 'em off! Take 'em off!"

"He's going to have a fit!" exclaimed Phil.

Charlie's lips were blue and foam flecked. Again as Jim approached him, the minister's boy planted a blow on his ribs that made Jim spin.

"Charlie!" cried Jim. "Shut up!"

The same peculiarly commanding note that had silenced his mates pierced through Charlie's hysteria. He paused for a moment, and in that moment Jim said, "Hold your breath and they can't draw blood. I'll have 'em off you in a second."

"C-c-can't they?" sobbed Charlie.

"Hold your breath and I'll show you," said Jim. "Here, Phil, take hold."

As they stripped the squirming suckers, Jim kept a hand on Charlie's arm. "Can you fight, kid?" he asked. "You've got muscle. You'd better lick the fellow that started this on you or you'll never hear the end of it."

The blue receded from the older boy's lips. He had a fine, sensitive face. "I can fight," he replied. "But I fight fellows and not snakes or worms."

Jim nodded as he pulled off the last sucker. Then he turned to the boys, his hand still on Charlie's arm. He spoke in his usual drawl:

"They's a difference between hazing a fellow and torturing him. Some mighty gritty people can't stand snakes or suckers. You kids ought to use sense. Who started this?"

The biggest boy in the crowd, Fatty Allen, answered: "I did. And if your father hadn't just died I'd lick the stuffing out of you, Still, for butting in."

A shout of derision went up from the boys. Jim's lips tightened. "You lick the new kid first," he answered, "then tackle me. Get after him, Charlie!"

Charlie, quite himself again, leaped toward Fatty and the battle was on.

There had been, unknown to the boys, an interested spectator to this entire scene. Just as Charlie's screams had begun, a heavy set man, ruddy and well dressed, with iron gray hair and black lashed, blue eyes, had paused beside a pine tree. It was a vividly beautiful picture that he saw; the pine set pool, rush and pad fringed, and the naked boys, now gathered about the struggling two near the ancient springboard. One of the smaller boys, moving about to get a better view of the battle, came within arm reach of the stranger, who clutched him.

"Who's this boy they call Still?" he asked. "Stand up here on this stump. I'll brace you."

The small boy heaved a sigh of ecstasy at his unobstructed view. "It's Still Jim Manning. His father just got killed. He's boss of our gang."

"But he's not the biggest," said the stranger.

"Naw, he ain't the biggest, but he can make the fellows mind. He don't talk much but what he says goes."

"Can he lick the big fellow?"

"Who? Fatty Allen? Bet your life! Still's built like steel wire."

"What did he start this fight for?" asked the man.

"Aw, can't you see they'd never let up on this new kid after he bellered so, unless he licked Fatty? Gee! What a wallop! That Charlie kid is going to lick whey out of Fatty."

"So Still is boss?" mused the stranger. "Could he stop that fight, now?"

"Sure," answered the child, "but he wouldn't."

"We'll see," said the stranger. He crossed over to the ring of boys and touched Jim on the shoulder. "I want to speak to you, Manning."

Jim looked at the stranger in astonishment, then answered awkwardly, "Can you wait? I've got to referee this fight."

"You will have to come now," said the man. "Your mother said to come back at once, with me."

Jim walked into the ring, between the two combatants. "Drop it, fellows. I've got to go home. We'll finish this fight tomorrow. Fatty can tackle me then, too."

There were several protests but Fatty had had enough. He was glad of the opportunity to dive into the pond. One after the other the boys ran up the springboard until only Jim and the stranger were left. The man walked back into the grove and in a moment Jim, in his knickerbockers and blouse, joined him.

"I'm glad to see you can obey, as well as boss, me boy," said the man. "Your mother says you don't know that a few days ago she advertised in the N. Y. Sun for a position as housekeeper. I liked the ad and came up to see her. I'm a lawyer in New York, a widower. I like your mother. She's a lady to the center of her. But when she told me she had a boy your age, I felt dubious. She wanted to send for you but I insisted on coming meself. I wanted to see you among boys. Me name is Michael Dennis."

Jim flushed painfully. "I don't want my mother to work like that. I can support her."

"I'm glad that you feel that way, me boy. But on the other hand, you're not old enough to support her the way she can support herself and you, too."

"I'll never let my mother support me!" cried Jim.

"What can you do to prevent it?" asked Mr. Dennis. "Wouldn't you like to live in New York?"

Jim hesitated. Dennis put his hand on Jim's shoulder. "I like you, me boy. I never thought to want another child about me house. Come, we'll talk it over with your mother."

Jim followed into the cottage sitting room, where his mother eyed the two anxiously.

"I thought something must have happened," she said. "Did you have trouble finding the pond?"

Mr. Dennis smiled genially. "Not a bit! I was just getting acquainted with your boy. He's quite a lad, Mrs. Manning, and I'm going to tell you I'll be glad to have him in me house. Now I'll just tell you what me house is like and what we'll have to expect of each other."

After an hour's talk Dennis said: "I will give you fifty dollars a month and board and lodging for the lad."

Mrs. Manning flushed with relief. Jim, who had not said a word since coming into the house, spoke suddenly in his father's own drawl:

"I don't want anyone to give me my keep. I'll take care of the furnace and do the work round the house you pay a man to do, and if that isn't enough to pay for keeping me, I'll work for you in your office Saturdays."

Mr. Dennis looked at the tall boy keenly, then said whimsically, "Well, I thought you'd been smitten dumb."

"He's very still, Jim is, except when he's fearfully worked up. All the Mannings are that way," said his mother.

Mr. Dennis nodded. "The house takes lots of care. Your mother will get a maid to help her and I'll let the man go who has been doing janitor service for me. With this arrangement, I'll make your mother's salary $65 a month."

And so the decision was made.

It was the last week in September when Jim and his mother left Exham. The day before they left the old town, Jim tramped doggedly up the street toward the old Manning mansion. He had not been there since his father's death.

When he reached the dooryard he stopped, pulled off his cap and stood looking at the doorway that had welcomed so many Mannings and sped so many more. The boy stood, erect and slender, the wind ruffling his thick dark hair across his dreamer's forehead, his energetic jaw set firmly. Now and again tears blinded his gray eyes, but he blinked them back resolutely.

Jim must have stood before the door of his old home for half an hour, a silent, lonely young figure at whom the quarry men glanced curiously. When the whistle blew five Jim made an heroic effort and turned and looked at the derrick, again spliced into place. He shuddered but forced himself to look.

It was after sunset when Jim finally turned away. It was many years before he came to this place again. Yet Exham had made its indelible imprint on the boy. The convictions that had molded his first fourteen years were to mold his whole life. Somehow he felt that his father had been a futile sacrifice to the thing that was destroying New England and that old New England spirit which he had been taught to revere. What the thing was he did not know. And yet, with his boyish lips trembling, he promised the old mansion to make good for his father and for Exham—poor old Exham, with its lost ideals!