Fighting Blood (Witwer)/Round 1
I remember the first look I took at the cubbyhole on the top floor just about wound matters up. The walls is papered terrible red, or maybe this rabbit hutch kind of blushed when the landlady called it a room. A faded rag carpet on the floor, a white-enameled cot like you get in the hospital, a chair not even fit to use as a weapon, a bureau which I bet come off the Ark, a picture of Theodore Roosevelt with the compliments of the New York "Blade," a cartoon of a vase of roses in a gilt frame, a window with a wide crack in the upper pane of glass—or else it was grinning at me: "Not so good, eh?"
Still, everything is as clean and neat as a new pin. But I can't sleep in a new pin. I'm looking for a out, when Mrs. Willcox, the kind of silvery-haired, sweet-faced old lady your grandmother was or is, takes things in hand.
"This here's seven and a half dollars a week with board—ahump—in advance," she says, and looks at me. I guess she must of heard me gulping. I had eight dollars, even. "What did you say your name was?" she adds.
I ain't said nothing about my name, but I did now. "Gale Galen."
"Plannin' on stayin' in Drew City for a spell?" is the next question.
"That's up to Drew City," I says, telling the truth. "I"
"What sort of business you in, Mister Galen?" she cuts me off.
The "Mister" tickled me. Why shouldn't it at seventeen? I bet the first time you was called "Mister" it tickled you too.
"The business I'm in right now, Mrs. Willcox," I says, "is looking for a job."
"Ahump!" says Mrs. Willcox, plenty suspicious.
I leave her to be that way, for the reasons that I have already made up my mind that I don't want no part of that two-by-four room for seven and a half or for nothing at all a week. Even if I am a poor fish, I am no sardine. I like plenty of parking space. So I kind of moved to the door.
"I don't think I want to take—eh—" I begin.
A door slams open downstairs with a bang, feet comes pattering up the two flights, a voice that made me snap out of it with a click calls: "Oh, mother!" and a minute later a million dollars' worth of girl yanks open the door, sees me, says, "Oh, I beg your pardon!" and blushes into two million dollars' worth of girl.
"Land sakes, Judy, can't you ever come into the house 'thout bangin' the doors off?" says Mrs. Willcox, kind of peeved. Judy shakes a head of hair that must of enraged a lot of her girl friends and shows me all her nice white teeth. Me? I'm double cuckoo! I don't know what it's all about till Mrs. Willcox coughs and it wasn't from no cold. I reached in my pocket and handed over all but four bits of my bank roll.
"I'll take the room, Mrs. Willcox," I says, pushing the money into her hand. "Eh—I want to see some people here and—eh—what time is supper?"
"Dinner," says Judy, her eyes twinkling at me, "is at seven."
"I generally always exchange references," says Mrs. Willcox, looking at Judy and frowning a bit. "And"
"That's all right," I says from out in the hall. "You don't need to give me no references, Mrs. Willcox!" and then, before she could say some more, I took the air. I had to get a job. Less than a hour later I landed one as soda jerker in Ajariah Stubbs' "Cash Beats Credit!" drug store. Seven a.m. to 9.30 p.m. and very few laughs.
That was six years ago and maybe you think that's a lot of memorandum about nothing at all to remember that long. You wouldn't think so if you could of seen Judy—that's Judith Willcox. It ain't the slightest trouble for me to remember every detail in any ways connected with me meeting her. I'll remember that right up to the time they send for the embalmer! Yet I'm no memory shark. I forget plenty things, as some of my many ex-bosses could tell you. They should—they told me. But certain things kind of stand out, things that I don't have to look back to, they're always as fresh and clear down to the smallest detail as if they happened yesterday. Like these—the time Dewey got rid of the Spanish navy at Manila Bay and I got rid of armfuls of special extras on a street corner in Boston, when I should of been in public school instead of being a studious pupil of nine summers in the School of Experience . . . the time. I fell off a dock into the harbor at the mellow age of eleven and find out I can't swim . . . a operation for appendicitis . . . the pay envelope from my first job . . . the first time I seen Judy Willcox . . . but that's enough to give you a idea of what kind of things sticks in my mind. I remember Dewey's sensational win because I get a nickel apiece that morning for penny papers, the flop into the harbor for the reasons that a cop pulled me out and gets both our pictures in the paper, the operation because I didn't have appendicitis, the pay envelope because I lose it, and the first time I seen Judy Willcox because she knocks me so dizzy I rush out of her mother's boarding house without any hat and had to buy another one with my last half dollar, on the account I'm afraid I can't get a job bareheaded.
Well, anyways, after a year I'm still on the wrong side of the counter, mixing a mean ice cream soda and shaking a wicked egg phosphate for old Ajariah Stubbs. I was clicking off twelve bucks the week and I had plenty responsibilities—I deliver in a flivver, prescriptions and ice cream. But I'd made up my mind I wasn't going to spend the rest of my life behind no soda fountain. I didn't do all my dreaming at night and I was determined that some day I was going to mean something.
What brings me to Drew City, in the first place, is the Jersey Central Railroad and a desire to see Jack Reynolds, which jerks soda with me in Boston before he goes back to his home town, this village thirty-eight miles from New York where even the circus only stops for a day. Jack's real trade is being a advance agent for carnivals, and between seasons why, he puts on a white coat and apron and slings soda.
You'd be surprised at some of the fellows you run across in the soda-dispensing game. While I was in it, I worked side by side with actors, chorus men, song writers, press agents, scrappers, fellows working their ways through college, ex-bartenders, etc and etc., ail, except the ex-bartenders, waiting for something to turn up in their own line. You know in the big towns a first-class soda jerk can knock off eighteen to twenty bucks a week and a good head soda man which can also mix syrups can ask and get twenty-five to thirty. Plenty of milk-fed private secretaries and law clerks gets far less.
Aside from the fly-by-nights, which only goes behind a fountain while waiting for a chance to do their real trick, there's thousands of fellows has made a first-class trade out of jerking soda. And to get the important money you got to know a whole lot more about the calling than just being able to put on a white coat and apron and saying: "Get your checks from the cashier, please!" Oh, my, yes! If you don't think so, try and get a job on a first-class fountain in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Chicago, and hamlets of that size. You get put through a examination that would make Edison's foolish questions sound like a kindergarten test and you got to be well heeled with references, don't think you don't.
You can tell a big league head soda jerk by the way he picks up a glass, but the acid test is what kind of chocolate syrup he can make in the summer and what kind of tomato bouillon he can throw together in the winter when hot drinks gets the call at the fountain. Plenty flavors can be bought in bulk, but no first-class fountain buys tailor-made chocolate. The most popular flavor of 'em all is always made personally by the head soda man and he takes as much pride in his chocolate as Dempsey does in his right hook. He says it with chocolate and he composes a mean syrup. You bother him when he's making up a batch and good-bye job! Fountains is made or broke amongst soda jerks by their chocolate syrup and making it right is a sure enough gift.
Well, when I get to Drew City, Jack Reynolds has gone away a week before with some carnival, so my chances of busting head first into the theatrical business is all shot to pieces. I ain't got enough jack to get back to Boston, and New York frightens me in the short view I get of it changing trains. I don't even know a street address there and it looks so big and cold-hearted—everything and everybody rushing and tearing along with a kind of wild, worried look on their faces—well, it scares me stiff, no fooling! Then, like I said, along comes Judy Willcox, and I hang my hat up in Drew City and call it home.
At first I don't make the headway with Judy that I'd like to, and that's a fact. She was sixteen when I hit Drew City and on her seventeenth birthday I gave her a gold-banded fountain pen with her initials on it. Judy got a total of nine presents for that birthday. Five of 'em was gold-banded fountain pens and I wish now I had gave her my present in cash and she could of got something she really needed—probably fountain pen ink.
Anyways I made myself a lot of friends among the fellows and girls that went to Drew City Prep and come in the drug store every afternoon for their sodas and sundaes. I went to work and invented a drink called Drew City Surprise, and the gang went crazy about it. It had everything in it but the kitchen stove and we got twenty cents a copy for it. I had a terrible battle with the boss the first time I paste up the sign on the mirror back of the fountain. He claims they ain't nobody living will pay twenty cents for no soda fountain drink, unless I put a dime in each and every glass, but I says if I can get them to try a Drew City Surprise they will pay twenty cents or even more for it, for the reasons that it's something new and a bit different from plain ordinary soda fountain drinks. Then again, the high price will make 'em think it must be good and the fellows will want to show off in front of their girls so they'll order it.
Well, I am right and old Ajariah smiles for about the first time since he found a dollar bill wedged under the cash-register drawer when he bought the store. He says I ought to be a salesman, and maybe next year he'll put me on the drug counter, where the patent medicines and the 85 per cent profits is. But I can't get him to try a "Drew City Surprise" himself, because he says he has watched me and I never make it the same way twice and that's a fact, for I forget how I make it the first time. Still and all, they's no complaints from nobody, so why worry?
After you leave Drew City Prep you go either to Princeton or to work, according to how is things with your people. But outside of Judy Willcox, most of the gang that come in the drug store belongs to families as rich as a custard, and they all go to some swell college the same as their fathers and mothers done before them, just like I went to work the same day as my fathers and mothers done before me. The routine is a little different on the account everybody is equal at birth when it don't mean nothing, but if they was all equal at around seventeen, why, it would mean plenty! In that case I would of been going to this Drew City Prep and getting my three squares a day, too, instead of jerking soda for Ajariah Stubbs so's in the order to eat and depending on what I can remember of this and that to get a education.
Among the first friends I make in Drew City is Rutledge Spencer-Brock, a regular guy even if his name does sound like two collars and a Pullman car. His old man is down to his last twenty million, and some day Spence will be left about everything but Niagara Falls and South Dakota, but he don't put on no dog with me in spite of that. He's about as old as me, but taller and thinner and one swell-looking fellow. Most of these flappers was just wild about him, and why shouldn't they be wild over a baby like that, which can't miss being a millionaire and just about owns this Drew City Prep? He was pitcher on the baseball team, quarter-back and captain of the football team, and the same week I arrived in Drew City he goes to work and takes over the interscholastic record for the dash of 440 yards. Likewise, he's a dancing fool and throats a cruel tenor—which makes him about perfect from the girls' standpoint, hey?
Anyhow, me and Spence gets along like the Two Orphans. He had a elegant racing car, and we burn up the State road to Trenton in that sweet running boat many's the time. We go duck shooting and fishing and like that together and the first Sunday I was off we both sneaked over to New York and went to this Coney Island. Some joint! We ride on everything in the place from the merry-go-round to the shoot-the-shoots and act like a pair of ten-year-old kids in the toy department the week before Xmas. Some of the things, like the roller coaster and the Dizzy Dip, why, we stay on a dozen times. I had eleven bucks saved up for a suit and that lasted about as long as a leaf of cabbage would last at a rabbits' convention. Money and me is easy separated, and that's a fact! While Spence is in a cigar store phoning his mother where he is, I blowed two of the last three of my eleven bucks taking a bunch of dirty-faced kids around on the scenic railway. Them kids is hanging around watching it like it is a ham bone and they are all collies, and every now and then they get chased away by the guy running the thing.
Well, after a while I can't stand looking at them, so I took the whole mob for a ride and be done with it!
When Spence came out of the cigar store he bets me five bucks he can wallop a punching-bag machine harder than I can. So he hauls off and hits this bag and the dial registers 1,150. Then I stepped back and slammed it as hard as I could and the arrow points to 2,025, and Spence says the machine must be out of order. So we punch it again and this time Spence hits 1,475 and hurts his hand and I hit 2,625 and hurt his bank roll, as he immediately hands over the five bucks with a grin, remarking that he would hate to get into a fight with me. Well, I wouldn't get in no fight with him no matter what he done, because he is aces with me. But I would fight for Spence in a minute, don't think I wouldn't!
But to get to the point, I guess I will always look back on the next day as one of the most exciting days I ever had in my life. It's a big day for Drew City likewise, because Knockout Kelly, the welter-weight, comes down there the day before to train for his fight with Jackie Frayne in New York. The bunch stops in on their ways to school the following morning and all the fellows is talking about going out in the afternoon to Knockout Kelly's camp and watch him do his stuff.
Spence begs me to come out with him, so I ask old Ajariah can I have the day off and I won't take my regular day next week. But they is nothing stirring! Ajariah says he can't let me get away on the account he's going out to look at a sheriff's sale. Where he went was out to Knockout Kelly's training camp, because Spence seen him there and told me.
Why Ajariah Stubbs should be so keen about boxing I don't know, unless it's because he's about fifteen years older than the Rocky Mountains and will soon be meeting the busiest boxer of 'em all—the undertaker.
Well, Judy Willcox comes in with the rest of the gang that day and gives me a smile which cost Ajariah Stubbs exactly three cents because I drop a glass as the result. Judy has just went to work and had her hair bobbed off, and she asks me how do I like it, taking off her hat and flopping the hair around to show me. But whenever I see her face, why, that's all I can look at, and she could of had a basket of eggs on her head and I wouldn't of knew it. I'm looking into the bluest and shineyest eyes I ever seen or want to and I'm kind of trembling like I done when I first seen her, and like I always do when I see her since. Then a nasty voice says:
"Come on, snap out of it—do your sleeping at night! Two orange phosphates."
This is a guy called Maurice Dempster, and he's carrying Judy's books for her, the big stiff! His old man owned the carpet factory here, which seems to make this fathead think he's the duck's quack. We like each other the same way a rat loves a ferret and the fact that he's stuck on Judy don't make me want to kiss him every time I run across him either. I don't know how Judy could ever see this baby, with his fat face and beady little eyes, which is still beady even when he laughs.
"Oh, don't be so cranky, Rags, you're like an old bear!" says Judy, and she don't seem to like this dumbbell hollering at me. "Besides I don't want an orange phosphate, I want a chocolate fudge sundae."
"I should say not!" says Rags, like he's her father. They call him "Rags" on the account of his old man's carpet mill. "I should say not! It's too soon after your breakfast. Hurry up with those phosphates, will you?"
"Be yourself and quit that hollering!" I says, laying a chocolate fudge sundae and a exceedingly bitter orange phosphate down in front of 'em.
"Can't you understand English?" snorts Rags, "I didn't order a sundae, I said two"
"Well, I ordered a sundae," butts in Judy, dipping her spoon in this rich goo and rolling her eyes up at the ceiling. "This is perfectly heavenly!" she says. So is she!
Rags gets red in the face and Judy catches him in the mirror back of the fountain and she winks and laughs. Acting like he's worried about something, Rags gives me a horrible look.
"Thirty cents, please!" I says to him.
He begins going through his pockets and his face is now the color of a ripe tomato. "I—eh—I've only got—I find I have only twenty cents with me," he stutters, glaring at me. "That would have been enough for the two orange phosphates I ordered. I don't see why I should have to pay for your stupidity—you misunderstood my order and"
Judy laughs and opens her purse.
"Oh, I'll pay for my own luxuries," she says, slapping a dime on the counter besides Rags's two. Just to make Rags feel bad, I rung it up. Imagine a guy with a carpet mill in his family taking a girl in a drug store for a drink and then having to borrow the money from her to pay the bill!
Rags is fit to be tied and he gulps down his phosphate and jumps off the stool. His face is all screwed up in a knot and I don't blame him, as I put plenty phosphate into his glass! Then he growls at Judy to hurry up or they'll be late.
"I'm going to report you to Mr. Stubbs!" he snarls at me.
"Do that!" I says politely, polishing up back of the fountain.
"If you do any such thing, Rags," says Judy, very cold, getting up and wiping her wonderful lips with the paper napkin I give her—"if you do any such thing, I'll have nothing further to do with you!"
"Laugh that off!" I says to Rags—and make a enemy for life.
Judy comes in by herself again after school in the afternoon and they ain't nobody in the store but me. The boys is all out at Knockout Kelly's camp, and the girls is busy getting their costumes ready for a masquerade that Stella Armitage, Spence's girl friend, is giving the next night. Judy orders up a chocolate fudge sundae, and while I am going out of my way to make this the greatest sundae ever placed in a dish, I happen to look at her books which she has laid on the counter. Most of 'em is Latin, Greek, and French and I am thinking I only wish I had a chance to study them languages and maybe get away from the soda business and not be no dumbbell all my life.
But I am having plenty trouble with the English language then, as far as that part of it goes! That's what gets me sore when I think things over, like I do now and then when I ain't thinking of Judy and how much chocolate syrup I got on hand and will I ever get any more than twelve bucks a week. I think suppose I did get a crack at a job with some kind of a future in it right then—what good would that do me when, as far as education is concerned, I don't know what it's all about?
They must be something I can do which will get me further than jerking soda will, I think, but how am I ever going to find out what that something is, with the schooling I got? They may be a big league lawyer, or a first class doctor, or a world beating business man in me somewheres, but how can I bring that out when I have got to stick back of this fountain or else see how long can I fast? There ought to be some way of guys like me getting a crack at things. I bet there's lots of rich fellows in college which don't give a dam what they do after their four years is up. Well I'd of give a leg for even one year at college and I bet when I come out I'd of did a whole lot more than just go to the annual football games, and that's a fact! Anyway I slapped a dollar's worth of whipped cream on the top of this chocolate fudge sundae and put it in front of Judy, and then I notice she's watching me, with a queer look on her pretty face.
"Gale," she says, "do you ever think about your future?"
Now, ain't that funny, when that's just what I been thinking about?
"Sure!" I says. "I think my future is all behind me."
"No—I'm serious," says Judy. "And this whipped cream is delicious! What did you do before you came to Drew City, or is that too personal?"
"Not at all, Judy," I says. "It ain't often I get a chance to—well, get this kind of stuff off my chest. They is nothing very exciting in my life's history, so far. I was born of poor but American parents and I begin earning my keep at about eight—in the morning and of age. I've sold papers, split bobbins in a cotton mill, been a errand boy, printer's devil, and took out orders for a butcher—that being about the only time I actually delivered the goods!"
"But when did you go to school?" asks Judy.
"Before I got into the newspaper business—selling 'em," I says.
"And that was when you were only eight years old?" she asks, and her eyes gets wider.
I nods.
"Well," says Judy, very severe, "I think you must have been a very, very bad little boy to stay away from school just to sell newspapers for a few pennies!"
"Judy," I says, "I would of been a very, very thin little boy if I hadn't of stayed away from school to sell newspapers. We got so crazy about food in our family that we just had to have some every day or we wouldn't play!"
Judy stops eating that swell sundae and gives me a long look. Then she nods her head and sighs.
"I—I understand, now," she says, kind of soft. "Oh—that's criminal!"
"Well, Judy," I says, "they's plenty fellows like me, as far as that part of it goes. And then, again, somebody has got to be soda jerkers, I guess—eh—" I am trying to laugh matters off.
"Surely, Gale, you don't expect to be a soda clerk all your life?" she cuts in on me. The sundae is melting away.
"No, Judy, I don't!" I says slowly, sitting on the ice-cream tank back of the counter. "For one thing, I'd have a hard time shaking up malted milks when I got to be eighty-five, and for another thing, Judy, I'm going to get somewhere! Right now I ain't got no more idea than a baby of what I'm going to be. I'm busy now living . . . some job for us guys. But I ain't going to just sit back and moan because I fail to get born in a mint, like Rags Dempster and that bunch. I got too much fighting blood in me to moan, Judy! I'm going to get me a education. I'm going to get that by hook or crook! I got to get some trick which will keep me alive while I'm plowing through books like you got there and trying to understand what they mean. Say—yesterday they was a lot of them rich guys from the golf club in here and they're talking about the new locker room they're putting in. Each one of them babies is socked for a thousand apiece—nothing at all to them. Why, I'd live a year on a thousand bucks, and I could go to some snappy school like you do, too! Well, I'll get the thousand, or"
"Honestly, of course!" butts in Judy, as serious as if she's forty instead of seventeen. But then girls is always older than their actual age, ain't they?
"Do I look crooked?" I grins.
Judy laughs and shakes her head. "Well, I must go," she says. "This has been awfully interesting, hasn't it?" Then, like she just thought of it, she says: "Oh—you know that Stella Armitage's masquerade dance is to-morrow night?"
"I hear them all talking about it—yes," I says, kind of surprised. "But what does that mean to me?"
This is one of the very few times I ever see Judy act timid and shy.
"Well—well, the girls are to choose their own escorts and"
"And you're going with Rags Dempster!" I finishes for her, kicking a empty fruit can the length of the fountain.
"I am not!" says Judy, straightening her hat in the mirror. "I'm going with you! Are these caramels fresh?"
What do I care about caramels? I am around the counter in a jump!
"Is that level—you mean that, Judy?" I holler.
"Of course!" laughs Judy, moving to the door. "You mustn't get so excited. I'm going to be an Oriental dancer, but don't tell any of the crowd if they come in here to-day. What are you going to be?"
"I think I'll go as a soda dispenser!" I says, still in a trance from her asking me at all. "Or else I'll empty a bowl of whipped cream on my head and pretend I'm a nut sundae. I—eh—don't worry about that part of it, Judy, I'll dig up some kind of a layout. But, say, listen—are you just asking me to go with you so's to steam Rags Dempster up?"
"If you think so, don't come!" snaps Judy. Then she's laughing at me again. "However, Mr. Gale Galen, if you decide that you can condescend to accompany me, we should be at Stella's about half past eight."
"But listen, Judy, you"
A wave of her hand, a slammed door and she's gone. It's just Ajariah Stubbs's drug store again and I am just a soda jerk. Both me and the store seemed something entirely different when she was in there!
Well, the next thing is can I get off the night of the party and also where am I going to get me a costume for this masquerade, in twenty-four hours' notice? I got brains enough to know that this ain't simply a case of putting paint on your face and wearing girl's clothes, like the kids does on Hollow Eve. Stella Armitage's house is bigger than the library, which it looks a whole lot like from the outside, and they're the only ones in Drew City which has what is called Jap house boys. Likewise, they got two chauffeurs and a imported butler and pay a fearful income tax. Still. Stella and me and Spence has often kidded together at the fountain and Stella's never let her people's money tie up conversation as far as I'm concerned.
That night when I come back from supper, or "dinner," as Judy nicknames it, I ask Ajariah can I get off the following evening at seven instead of half past nine, and after plenty hemming and hawing he says yes. Having got that all settled, why, the next thing is what am I going to wear to the masquerade? I call up my pal, Spence, and he says he's got a extry devil's suit and he'll let me borrow it, because he's going as a pirate.
So a few minutes before I lock up the store, Spence brings down the devil's suit and it is certainly a swell costume. But when we come to trying it on me downstairs in the stock room, why, the only thing fits me is the mask on the account I am broader across the shoulders than Spence. So the devil's suit is out and it looks like I'll be out too, unless I can scrape some kind of a costume together. Well, while we're standing there trying to figure some kind of a disguise for me, I am looking around the stock room when I see something that gives me a big idea. I slap my hands together and tell Spence to go on home, because I have got my costume and I'm all set.
That's all I would tell him and he immediately hollers his head off, because he says he has told me what he's going to be dressed like and I'm holding out on him. So then I told him that unless I am very much mistaken I am going as a clown and does he think that will be O. K.? Spence says he didn't see why not, for the reasons that they will certainly be at least one more clown there if Rags Dempster goes, whether Rags is dressed that way or not.
After Spence goes home I lock up the store and take a pair of scissors from the surgical-goods case, a couple of spools of thread and a package of needles. Then I go down in the stock room and wrap up a armful of cheese-cloth which we use to strain syrups with and a jar of carmine coloring extract which we use to make fresh strawberry flavor with. The cheese-cloth and the carmine is the things which I happened to see in the stock room and which give me the idea for me masquerade suit. I took 'em all home with me and I sit up cutting, painting, and sewing this here cheese-cloth till six o-clock in the morning, but by that time I have got a classy disguise in the shape of a clown's costume.
It was one tough job and I'm all in by the time I've tried this cheesecloth on me for the sixty-ninth and last time. I got carmine coloring all over my hands and then there is some which I got to scrub off the floor. I have rammed that needle in my fingers all night long and I'm so sleepy that it's nearly more than I can do to keep my eyes open. Yet with all that I feel perfect, because I am going to take Judy to this swell racket and I have got a bear of a costume and to ask more would be ridiculous.
Well it is almost six o'clock when I get done tailoring and I have got to open up the store at seven. I can see there is no use of me going to bed at all, so I sneak downstairs and tore off a cold bath and let it go at that. Judy don't have to get up as early as I do and I don't see her at breakfast, but Mrs. Willcox, which has been the same as a mother to me, claims I got rings under my eyes and look terrible. She insists on me taking a swallow of cod liver oil before sitting down to the table and it makes me as sick as a dog and all I can eat is a cup of coffee.
I certainly burnt Ajariah Stubbs up that day and that's a fact. A couple of times I fell asleep behind the fountain and I give a guy pepsin bismuth and a stiff argument, when all he says he asked for was a plain chocolate soda. By dousing my head in cold water in the syrup room and drinking a couple dollars' worth of bromo-seltzer, why, I managed to keep awake till four o'clock, when Judy calls me up and what she told me kept me awake for the rest of the day without no trouble at all!
The minute I hear Judy's voice I know something's up.
"Gale," she says, "please don't be angry with me—but—but I can't go to Stella's with you to-night!"
"Why, what's the matter, Judy?" I says, kind of scared. "Are you sick?"
"No—I'm all right, Gale," she says, still in that funny voice. "It's—it's—Gale, this is very unpleasant and I may as well get it over with at once! Stella—Stella doesn't want you to come, and I think she's horrid, and if I hadn't gone to such trouble about my costume, I wouldn't go either!"
I come near swooning away in a faint right in that phone booth! I feel like yesterday I see in the papers where I have been left a million bucks and this morning I read where it's April Fool. Here I have sit up all night long and—well, what's the use! Knocking around since I been a kid has made me a pretty hard-boiled egg, but they's a lump in my throat when Judy's "Hello, hello—are you there, Gale?" brings me back to life.
"What got her sore at me?" I says finally. "Stella Armitage was in here only a couple of days ago and we're kidding about this and that. Why"
"Yes, and she'll probably be in there again doing the same thing, and that's why I hate her!" says Judy. "Oh, don't think I didn't give her a piece of my mind, Gale. As if it should make any difference what you are—eh—I mean, when we've all been so friendly. It isn't as if you were just an ordinary, everyday soda clerk that none of us knew—eh—or"
Judy rattles along kind of nervous, but I miss quite a lot of what she's saying. I feel sick, no fooling! I know what's the matter now and why this Stella Armitage declares me out of her party. Stella Armitage is Stella Armitage, and I'm just a soda jerk which blew in from nobody knows. The kidding at the fountain is one thing; inviting me to her house is something entirely different. Right away I see where I fit in with this gang—nowheres! A lot of other plans I had made blows up with the one of going to the masquerade and the first time Judy stops for breath I says I hope she has a swell time and goodby.
Then I get red-headed.
I ain't good enough to be asked to this Armitage Jane's house, hey? Well,—I swear to myself that the day will come when she'll be tickled silly to have me, or even to say she knew me! I'm good enough for Judy Willcox and Spence—and then I begin to wonder what Spence thinks about me being gave the air. Stella's his girl and he means more than she does in the town. He's been palling around with me, too, and of course he knows I expected to go to this party. Well, I get the idea that maybe he's also laughed me off.
I went down in the stock room, where I had hung up my clown's layout to let the carmine dry, and they ain't nobody in no hospital nowheres feels half so bad as I do! I look at this here masquerade costume, which half a hour ago seems very nifty to me, and now it's just a lot of cheesecloth, which I have went to work and ruined by dabbing it with carmine. I think of how I sit on the side of my bed all night when I can hardly keep awake, jabbing that needle into my fingers and attempting to learn the mysteries of sewing at a minute's notice. I think of how I kept trying it on and taking it off, and taking it off and trying it on, and—well, I make a wild grab at that clown's costume and I rip it to shreds, and that kind of eases my feelings a little, anyways!
When I go back to the fountain I begin polishing up, and a guy can do a great deal of first-class thinking when he's polishing something, if he ain't one of them whistlers or hummers. What I mean is, did you ever notice how some people, mostly women, will keep humming or whistling when they're polishing and dusting and the etc.? Then they's others which kind of goes off in a trance when they get a polishing rag and a silver bowl or the like in their hands, and, while they are putting a shine on it, why, they will do all their thinking for the week.
Well, while I am making the nickel plate look like a mirror, I am thinking that ten or fifteen years from then I will come back to Drew City in a Pullman called "Fauntleroy," or something classy like that, and the whole burg will be at the station to meet me, waving flags and hollering "Hurray for Gale Galen, our new, rich, and popular governor!" After I make a few speeches and shake hands with one and all, I will order Stella Armitage's big white house tore down for some legal reasons, and, of course, Rags Dempster will be in jail by that time, and I will haughtily refuse to turn him loose. Then I will give Mrs. Willcox something like a million and make Drew City the capital of New Jersey; but me and Judy will put the governor's mansion on Riverside Drive, New York. Old Ajariah Stubbs will be going around throwing out his chest and saying: "Why, that boy worked for me once, and look at him now!"
By this time it's six o'clock, and I made up my mind that as long as I ain't going to the masquerade party I won't take the night off, as what is there for me to do with it? If I had only knew the various things which was going to happen to me! Anyhow, I tell old Ajariah that I am going to get my supper and then I will come back and work. This tickles him silly, on the account it gives him the chance to go down to Kale Yackley's cigar store and play checkers with Judge Tuckerman all night. They gamble for ten cents a game, but you would never think there was that amount at stake if you watched 'em. You'd think they was betting each other five thousand dollars on each and every move.
I don't go home for supper, because I don't want to run into Judy, who'll probably be all dressed up for the party, and that would only get me feeling bad again. So I had some ham and beans and coffee in Red Fisher's Palace Eating House, and come right back to the store. Then the excitement begins! Ajariah is at the phone, and when he hangs up he looks at his watch and says: "Seems to me like you go clear to Trenton for your meals. Hump yourself now and git out this here order!"
With that he hands me a slip of paper, and when I say that you could of took that paper to a Chinese laundry and got your collars out with it, why, you will get a idea of how Ajariah writes. But finally I make out: "I gallon vanilla, I gallon chocolate, I gallon orange ice."
"Where's it go?" I says, starting out for the flivver.
"Up to Armitage's," says Ajariah. "Must be—carryin's on there to-night!"
Hot coffee!
I like to fall through a show case. Imagine asking me to take this ice cream around to the back door of Stella Armitage's house, right while this masquerade's going on. To be flagged from the party itself and then made to deliver their refreshments to the kitchen! Suppose Judy sees me—or this cuckoo, Rags Dempster? It ain't enough to make a tramp out of me by canceling my invitation, but I got to be made a fool of like this in front of a girl I'm crazy about and a guy that's trying to make her!
"What ails you?" snorts Ajariah, looking at me over his cheaters. "You sick?"
"Yes, sir," I says, kind of faint; "I'm terrible sick, Mister Stubbs! I—I can't haul that ice cream up to Armitage's—I—you don't understand"
"'Pears to me like you're a-doin' too much runnin' around at nights!" growls old Ajariah, coming out from behind the counter. "You been half asleep round here the hull day. Wouldn't be surprised if you wasn't gambling all night with them loafers in Nickmeyer's garage. That's all's the matter with you; you ain't been to bed. I kin tell by your eyes—look like two burnt holes in a blanket!"
"I wasn't doing no gambling," I says. "I never been in Nickmeyer's except for gas and oil."
"Where was you, then?" snarls Ajariah. "Speak up now!"
I says nothing at all. I ain't going to tell him I sit up all night making the clown's costume for Stella Armitage's masquerade and have him cackle his head off!
"Can't say, eh?" he grunts. "I thot so. Well, you shake a leg and git that cream up to Armitage's, or you won't have no more job here than a rabbit!"
I know he means it. So I drag them cans of ice cream out to the flivver and run 'em up to Armitage's, wishing I would have the good luck to hit a telegraph pole on the ways over.
Stella's house is lit up like a church, and there's more cars outside it than there is at a auto show. I see Spence's boat which I have took many's the ride in, but I don't see Spence, or nobody else, thank Heavens, till I run my flivver up the drive in the back.
The delivery and servants' entrance runs along the lawn, which is all fixed up with Chinese lanterns and streamers of different colored ribbon, and the Jap house boys is going around fixing up the tables. Most of the gang is there already, and I hear 'em laughing and kidding each other, and some of 'em-is beginning to dance to the music of Eddie Granger's Vesper A. C. Jazz Band. Stella's old man hired the boys and I hear he paid Eddie five hundred bucks for the night and on top of that they all got a swell feed after the party was over.
Well, I manage to unload the ice cream without none of the gay masqueraders seeing me, but as I am backing the flivver around to come down the driveway, I get it and I get it good! They's a couple dancing right beside the hedge which separates the lawn from the drive, and they look up when they hear the noise of my bus. Its only by dumb luck that I don't run the flivver right into the hedge, because the couple is Judy Willcox and Rags Dempster.
Both of 'em is masked, but I'd know 'em if they had checked their faces with their hats! I know every line of Judy's, the way she carries herself and that dimple in her chin, which shows under the edge of the mask—I'd pick her out from a million without no trouble, because I'm cuckoo over her. And I know every line of Rags Dempster because I like him the same way I like working fourteen hours a day for twelve bucks a week. As she told me, Judy is dressed like a Oriental dancing girl, but Judy would make a Oriental dancing girl take poison! Rags is wearing an Indian chief's layout, for which his face is perfect.
Judy waves her hand to me, and I manage to tip my cap, and this Rags throws back his head and laughs. "Wait there for a minute, boy!" he hollers. "Wait there a minute and I'll send the butler out with a sandwich for you; you look hungry!"
Just before I shot through the drive in the flivver I hear Judy bawling Rags out. A little satisfaction, but not the satisfaction I wanted right then. To of kicked Rags over the hedge would of been much better!
That old tin can never traveled so fast in its life as it done from Stella Armitage's house to the store. Rounding the corner of Jefferson Lane to turn into First Street, I crashed over one of the three traffic standards in Drew City, and put ten years on Hank King, which happened to be standing beside it. I make Joe Lannon put his fish wagon up on the pavement, and when Constabule Watson comes running out at Valley Street, yelling at me and waving his club, why, I chased him almost into the station-house doors. That cost me plenty the next day, but I ain't thinking about that part of it then. I'm thinking about Judy Willcox and Rags Dempster, and why is it I didn't jump over that hedge at Stella Armitage's and have it out with Rags for once and for all!
By the time I got to the store I am in fine shape to commit murder, but old Ajariah is crazy to get to his checker tourney with Judge Tuckerman, and he hobbled right away without saying a word to me. If he had I would of surely lost my job right then and there, no fooling.
I'm just going to close up the store at half past nine when two fellows comes in and sits down at the fountain. They're a couple of tough-looking babies, for a fact. The youngest one of 'em has a flat nose and a cap pulled down over his eyes, and he's wearing a dirty white sweater. I never seen either of 'em before, and that's funny in Drew City, where I know everybody, you might say.
"A couple of ginger ales and make it snappy!" says the guy with the sweater.
That's no way to talk to me the way I'm feeling then!
"Take your time!" I says. "I got everything all closed here for the night and"
"C'mon, c'mon, don't give me no argument; get them ginger ales out here, yokel!" he growls.
I kind of trembled, and I see in the mirror back of the fountain that my face is good and white. I got my mind all made up what I'm going to do when I hear a familiar honk honk outside the door. That's the signal Spence used to give when he come down to wait for me to close the store at night. In another minute he comes running in, all dressed up like a pirate and his face is red and mad looking.
"Gale, I just found out that—oh, about the reason you didn't come up to Stella's to-night," he pants. "I hope you don't think I had anything to do with that. I've had a frightful row with Stella over it, and"
The fellow with the sweater gets off the stool and walks up to the end of the fountain. He looks at Spence in the pirate's suit and back to his friend with a nasty grin. Then he turns to me, and the grin has went.
"Say, you big dumbell, get busy on them ginger ales or I'll slap you for a mock orange!" he snarls.
I am talking to Spence and I pay no attention. "That's all right, Spence," I says. "I don't blame you and maybe Stella's right. Go back and have a good time. I don't belong and"
But Spence is looking over my shoulder at the other fellow, and Spence's eyes is wide and scared. He seems to be trying to make some signals to me with 'em too. The tough-looking baby suddenly grabs me by the shoulder and gives me a push. "Get back there and give us them drinks!" he bellers. "You"
Never mind what he called me. I swung around and looked at him, and my mouth slips into a nervous grin, which I want to stop and can't. Then I shot out my right arm as hard as I could—like when I slammed that punching bag at Coney Island with Spence. My fist landed fair and square on this fellow's chin, and it felt like hitting the side of a building, but he went down on his back like I'd stabbed him through the heart.
Spence yelled, and the other fellow let out a terrible curse. But I felt wonderful. I never knocked nobody down before in my life, and I want to say it is quite a sensation! My nerves gets quiet and my temper gets cool, and as I blew on my sore knuckles and little finger, which is beginning to swell and feels kind of numb, the only thing I'm wishing is that this fellow on the floor will get up and come at me!
Spence and the fellow that come to the store with the guy I hit is standing there staring at me like they can't believe their eyes. The stranger finally bends down and iooks over his friend on the floor.
"You hit hard!" he grunts at me. "Get me a bottle of ammonia and some ice water."
I got 'em and he douses the cold water on this fellow's face, and, uncorking the ammonia, holds it under his nose. Pretty soon my victim's eyes opens, and the other fellow starts helping him up, with his face half turned to me.
"Know who you just stopped?" he says in a odd voice. I shook my head. What difference did that make?
"He's just Knockout Kelly," he says; "'at's all he is!"
"And you knocked him out—you knocked him out!" sings Spence, dancing around wildly.
Well, I get sick to my stomach, and that's a fact. I hit Knockout Kelly, the prize fighter! Why, I thought, he'll get up off that floor and about murder me! And he did straighten up on his feet just then and make a rush at me, but his friend holds him back.
"C'mere, you sap!" he hisses at him. "What d'ye wanna do—break your hands on this guy? We'll square this in good time!" He turns around to me and winks heavy. "You—eh—you wanna beg K. O.'s pardon, don't you?"
Don't I? Say, you ought to see me grab this chance to escape being killed. I can't get my hand out quick enough. Imagine me hitting Knockout Kelly!
Knockout Kelly just barely touched my hand. "We'll get together on this again, feller!" he mumbles, not very forgiving, I must say.
"Sure!" says his friend, smiling at me and patting Knockout Kelly's shoulders. "Sure—we'll play you again some time. But now—eh—ever do any boxin', kid?" he asks me, looking me up and down.
"No, sir," I says; "I never did."
"Well—you're goin' to!" he says. "I'm Nate Shapiro, K. O.'s pilot. Come up to the Commercial House at ten to-morrow. I wanna talk to you. You're one sweet puncher, if you are a hick, and—"
"I can't get there till noon," I butts in. "I got to open up the store at seven-thirty."
"Open up nothin'!" snorts Nate Shapiro. "You're all through mixin' banana punches and the like. I'll get you more jack for your punches than you'll ever see here. C'mon, K. O."
And they went out.