Читать книгу Tom Slade at Black Lake - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 7

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But there was one lucky thing that Tom had done, once upon a time. He had hit Pete Connegan plunk on the head with a rotten tomato.

That was before the war; oh, long, long before. It was a young war all by itself. It happened when Tom was a hoodlum and lived with his drunken father in Barrel Alley. And in that little affair Tom Slade made a stand. Filthy little hoodlum that he was, instead of running when Pete Connegan got down out of his truck and started after him, he turned and compressed his big mouth and stood there upon his two bare feet, waiting. It was Tom Slade all over—Barrel Alley or No Man’s Land—he didn’t run.

The slime of the tomato has long since been washed off Pete Connegan’s face and the tomato is forgotten. But the way that Tom Slade stood there waiting—that meant something. It was worth all the rotten tomatoes in Schmitt’s Grocery, where Tom had “acquired” that particular one.

“Phwat are ye standin’ there for?” Pete had roared in righteous fury. Probably he thought that at least Tom might have paid him that tribute of respect of fleeing from his wrath.

“’Cause I ain’t a goin’ ter run, that’s why,” Tom had said.

Strange to relate, Pete Connegan did not kill him. For a moment he stood staring at his ragged assailant and then he said, “Be gorry, ye got some nerve, annyhow.”

“If I done a thing I’d see it through, I would; I ain’t scared,” Tom had answered.

“If ye’ll dance ye’ll pay the fiddler, hey?” his victim had asked in undisguised admiration....

Oh well, it was all a long time ago and the only points worth remembering about it are that Tom Slade didn’t run, that he was ready to see the thing through no matter if it left him sprawling in the gutter, and that he and the burly truck driver had thereafter been good friends. Now Tom was an ex-scout and a returned soldier and Pete was janitor of the big bank building.

He was sweeping off the walk in front of the bank as Tom passed in.

“Hello, Tommy boy,” he said cheerily. “How are ye these days?”

“I’m pretty well,” Tom said, in the dull matter-of-fact way that he had, “only I get mixed up sometimes and sometimes I forget.”

“Phwill ye evver fergit how you soaked me with the tomater?” Pete asked, leaning on his broom.

“It wasn’t hard, because I was standing so near,” Tom said, always anxious to belittle his own skill.

“Yer got a mimory twinty miles long,” Pete said, by way of discounting Tom’s doubts of himself. “I’m thinkin’ ye don’t go round with the scout boys enough.”

“I go Friday nights,” Tom said.

“Fer why don’t ye go up ter Blakeley’s?”

“I don’t know,” Tom said.

“That kid is enough ter make annybody well,” Pete said.

“His folks are rich,” Tom said.

That was just it. He was an odd number among these boys and he knew it. Fond of them as he had always been, and proud to be among them, he had always been different, and he knew it. It was the difference between Barrel Alley and Terrace Hill. He knew it. It had not counted for so much when he had been a boy scout with them; good scouts that they were, they had taken care of that end of it. But, you see, he had gone away a scout and come back not only a soldier, but a young man, and he could not (even in his present great need) go to Roy’s house, or Grove Bronson’s house, or up to the big Bennett place on just the same familiar terms as before. They thought he didn’t want to when in fact he didn’t know how to.

“Phwen I hurd ye wuz in the war,” Pete said, “I says ter meself, I says, ‘that there lad’ll make a stand.’ I says it ter me ould woman. I says, says I, ‘phwat he starts he’ll finish if he has ter clane up the whole uv France.’ That’s phwat I said. I says if he makes a bull he’ll turrn the whole wurrld upside down to straighten things out. I got yer number all roight, Tommy. Get along witcher upstairs and take the advice of Doctor Pete Connegan—get out amongst them kids more.”

I dare say it was good advice, but the trouble was that Lucky Luke was probably born on a Friday, and there was no straightening that out.

As to whether he would turn the world upside down to straighten out some little error, perhaps Pete was right there, too. Roy Blakeley had once said that if Tom dropped his scout badge out of a ten-story window, he’d jump out after it. Indeed that would have been something like Tom.

Anyway the saying was very much like Roy.