Читать книгу Pee-wee Harris: Fixer - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 9

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The two outstanding features of Tuesday were the observance of Pee-wee’s birthday and the appearance of the circus in town. The circus gave two “stupendous performances.” Pee-wee gave one memorable performance.

The early morning of that festive spring day found him harassed with perplexity. His troubles were financial. He awoke early and lay for a little while allowing his mind to dwell on the radio set which he knew his father intended to give him. He had extracted that much information from his father, but he had not been able to extract the gift. Doctor Harris had old-fashioned ideas about birthdays.

Pee-wee’s mother had been won over and had given him her personal gift of a dollar, most of which already had found its way into circulation via Bennett’s Fresh Confectionery on Main Street. As for his sister Elsie, Pee-wee felt it would be rash to expect anything from her in the way of a present!

He had exactly fifty-two cents. Purchases necessary to install his radio set would require forty-seven of this, leaving five cents which would be of no use, except to enable him to drink his own health in an orange phosphate at Bennett’s. Or he might wish himself many happy returns of the day with an ice cream cone.

In any case he could not go to the circus, unless he postponed the installation of his radio till such time as his circumstances improved. He considered this alternative and decided that the radio must be installed for immediate operation, circus or no circus.

The faint hope which he had dared to indulge that Elsie might forget the episode involving a scout’s lack of secrecy in the glow of the birthday morn proved entirely unjustified. She did not even come down to breakfast. Having carefully laid his precious gift on the table in his room, and feasted his eyes upon it as long as his official duties would permit, he emerged with his school books, the while whistling audibly in the forlorn hope that the new Joan of Arc might hear him and relent. After this all hope was abandoned.

Renouncing his lingering dream of an evening at the circus and consoling himself with thoughts of his radio, he hurried to school with the more immediate joy of his official position uppermost in his mind. He reached the scene of his public duties promptly at eight-thirty and immediately put on his costume, consisting of his celluloid badge and his dangling whistle.

The public school was on Terrace Avenue and filled the entire block from West Street to Allerton Street. Pee-wee’s stand was at the intersection of Allerton Street and Terrace Avenue. Here, for half an hour, he raised his hand, blew his whistle, beckoned reassuringly to the small children who paused uncertainly at the curbs. Occasionally he honored some little girl by personally conducting her across the street.

“Stop, d’you hear?” he thundered at a bus driver who had declined to take him seriously. “D’you see this badge? If you don’t stop, you see, I’ll have you fined—maybe as much as—as—ten dollars, maybe.”

And upon the cynical bus driver’s pausing, the autocrat leisurely escorted little Willie Hobertson, whose leg was held in a nickel frame, across to the school.

He stopped Mr. Runner Snagg, the auto inspector, who was speeding in his official car. Here authority clashed with authority, but Officer Harris won the day by boldly planting himself in front of the inspector’s roadster the while he beckoned to a group of pupils.

“You thought you’d get away with it, didn’t you?” he shouted. “Just because you’re an inspector you needn’t think you don’t have to obey the law—geeeeee whiz!”

Lacking the size and dignity of a regular policeman, he made up for it by abandoning himself to approaching traffic, standing immovable before vehicles, sometimes until the very bumpers and headlights touched him. They stopped because he would not budge.

Perhaps he erred a trifle on the side of dictatorship that first morning, but the pupils all reached school in safety, and without confusion or delay. He stopped everything except the flippant comments of older boys who were guilty of lèse majesté. But even these he “handled,” to use his own favorite word.

“Look who’s holding up the traffic!”

“Hey, mister, don’t run over that kid, you’ll get a puncture.”

“Look at that badge with a kid tied to it.”

“Look out, kid, you’ll blow yourself away with that whistle.”

Pee-wee’s cheeks bulged as he blew a frantic blast to warn Mr. Temple’s chauffeur, who was taking little Janet Temple to school in the big Temple Pierce Arrow. Fords and Pierce Arrows, they were all the same to Pee-wee. He would have stopped the fire engines themselves.

“Hey, mister, look out, there’s a boy behind that badge,” a mirthful onlooker called.

“Cheese it, kid, here comes President Harding.”

“Here comes the ambulance, Pee-wee. Don’t blow your whistle, you’ll wake up the patient.”

“Hey, kid, here comes a wop with a donkey, blow your whistle. Hold up your hand for the donkey.”

“Hold up your own hand!” Pee-wee shouted. “He belongs to your family.”

“Hey, Pee-wee, tell that sparrow to get off the street or he’ll run into a car and bust it.”

“Stand on your head, kid, that’s what I’d do!”

“You haven’t got any head to stand on!” Pee-wee shouted.

By nine o’clock all the pupils were in school except a few tardy stragglers. For ten minutes more these kept coming. Pee-wee held his post.

It was about nine fifteen and he could hear the singing within, when he reluctantly decided that it was time for him to relinquish his enjoyable occupation. The boy up at the next street intersection had already disappeared.

But one thing, or, to be more exact, two things, detained Pee-wee at the neighborhood of the post which he had graced with such efficiency. One was the sound of distant music. The other was the approach of a dilapidated motor truck, heavily laden with bales of rags and papers. It was this truck, rather than the faint music in the air, which attracted our young hero.