Dear Deer

by George Allan England

 

DEAR DEER

By GEORGE ALLAN ENGLAND

THE cadaverous, well-dressed city stranger, huddled in the splint-bottomed rocker on the porch of Dudley's General Store, hoisted one lean leg over the other and cast a look of profound melancholy at Uncle Forexample Meloon. The stranger looked like a sick man. And right here let us explain that Uncle's initials were E. G., which explains why people called him “Forexample,” commonly shortened to “Forry.”

Uncle Forry looked sad, too. Almost as sad as the city stranger. When Uncle looked sad, just that way, the Calais people knew what was coming. So some of them moved away. But others gave ear.

“An' all I done, after all,” Uncle declared, “was a favor for that 'tarnal Cousin Henry o' mine, down to Boston.” He dragged at the ripe cob, and scraped the sandpapery chin with the gnarled paw. His cheeks hollowed and his blue eyes glinted from under the old, white-thatched brows. “That's all, mister, Every nameable thing. An' yet, see how it rimracked me!”

“I am listening, sir,” remarked the stranger, in urbane tones. “Proceed with your narrative.”

“Rimracked me,” repeated Uncle Forexample, “because Aunt Vyeny's lawyer, that didn't know enough to lap salt, lawed me for damages he allowed I owed him on account o' my lawyer fallin' foul o' him an' fistin' him in Ben Billin's's barn. Ain't that enough to make your haslet curl? Jest because your Aunt Vyeny's best trunk, what you borrowed, gits busted hell-bent an' crooked, an' you buy her a new one an' she lets on 'tain't as good's the other, she laws you, fer spite. An' then the lawyers git fightin' an' your lawyer warms it to her'n, an' that buffle-brained idjit sues you an' collects a hundred—ain't that hell an' repeat? One hundred bucks! I ask you!”

The cadaverous stranger gazed on Uncle Forexample with hollow eyes, and commented:

“I am unable to state, sir. Your narrative appears to be a trifle confused, but I gather that there has been a disturbance of the rural dolce far niente in this vicinity. If you will kindly begin at the beginning and relate the incident, I may be able to judge of its modus operandi, so to speak. Precisely what causation contributed to the destruction of your aunt's domestic property?”

“Oh, that? Well, that's jest part an' parcel o' the whole razoo, that brung me troubles thicker'n fiddlers in Tunket. I'll tell ye, clear. I wouldn't of minded that part so much, nor even them ten dollars extry I had to pay Aunt Vy, if it hadn't of been fer her will. Ten dollars ain't no gret kill-or-cure. Chowder, no! Nor a hundred, neither. But changin' that will was enough to strike anybody all of a heap.

“When Vyeny was took—an' some say it was the rookus of havin' her best trunk smashed with them axes, an' gittin' all stewed up over lawin' me, that give her the capuluptic shock—why, both wills was found. Fust an' second. An' Jeems Rice! When they come to be read, I'd lost that fifty-acre mowin' lot, an' both wood lots, an' five hundred cash. So you can see the mess 1 was in. I was at least a thousand an* a half out o' pocket, jest there alone, an' besides that my Cousin Henry got miffed because he allowed as how he never got the trunk, nohow, let alone the contents, an' he wouldn't pay me an all-fired cent.”

“For what?” asked the cadaverous stranger, with increasing interest. “What was the nature of the transaction wherein you became so painfully involved?”

“Painfully is right, mister! On top of all that, that doggone cousin o' mine got a lawyer to write me, threatenin' to law me for damages for loss o' character an' public contumely, on account o' his havin' got mixed up with it an' his name bein' made a p'intin' an' a byword. Can you beat that? I ask you!”

“It would be difficult, indeed,” the stranger admitted. “But now, returning to the point at issue, let me inquire what—?”

“An' that wa'n't all, neither, what my cousin slatted to me. He quit comin' down here, him an' his wife, as my summer comp'ny. Five seasons they ain't come, now. Prob'ly two hundred a season, five seasons, that's another thousand. I cal'late that makes my loss twenty-six hundred an' ten, so fur, not countin' my lawyer's bill about Aunt Vy's trunk. That bill was twenty-five. Twenty-six hundred an' thirty-five. An' by gull, we ain't begtm, yit! You wonder I'm poor as pooduc, this minute? That doggone lawyer never did work for my int'rests, 'specially when he told Ben Billin's I was reely responsible for the barn burnin'.”

“Ah, a barn burned, did it?” the stranger queried, leaning a little forward in his chair. “Now this is something tangible. And you were accused of being criminis particeps, so to speak? Well, kindly elucidate the barn.”

“Hell's bells, mister! Can't you understand nothin'? My lawyer kicked that lantern over, into a stanchel full o' hay, an' though the Volunteers come a-runnin' like all possessed an' got there in less'n fifteen minutes, it was all off with the barn. That was at the end o' the fight, like.”

“Ah, I begin to get a glimmer of light! You say there was a personal encounter—?”

“Bet y'r boots an' resk it! It was some fall-out, mister! Y' see, Aunt Vy's lawyer an' mine met in the barn, an' her'n called mine a pestiferous shyster.

“Says he:

“'I'll make you take y'r back tracks about that there trunk, by crimus, afore ever you take it to court!'

“Mine says, says he:

“'It'll take a bigger man than what you be, Eleazor Tibbets, to do it. For two cents I'd dust your back. If I was as short o' brains as what you be. I'd git a job poundin' sand into a rat-hole!'

“'You meachin' cuss!' says her'n, he says, 'if ever I matt onta you, by the livin' laws! you'll wish you'd of got down on your prayer-handles an' took that back afore you said it!'

“Right then, my lawyer—Cyrenus Crabb, his name was—got mad an' fisted Eleazer as tight's he could jump for luck, an' knocked his uppers 'n' unders clean acrost the barn floor.

“'You try it on,' says he, 'if you think you can take me down! Say, you'd oughta be kicked to death by cripples, you had!'

“Eleazer, he was smaller'n Cyrenus, but withy. The wallop Cyrenus gin him got him madder'n snakes in hayin'. He gin one jump, grabbed holts, an' they both went to the floor.

“By gary, mister, that was some jeeroosly fight! Cyrenus tarnally laid it to Eleazer, who gaffled Cy by what was left of his hair, got him down an' pronged at him with t'other fist till he was all a gore o' blood. He'd of licked him, too, only Cy had better teeth, an' when he got Eleazer by the ear, that halted Eleazer, kind of. Eleazer, he ain't spleeny, but you know how 'tis, yourself, when anybody bites half your ear off.”

“I can imagine it might be far from Elysian.”

“You're doggone right, it ain't! Right there's where the lantern got kicked over, though who done it, no tellin', which is maybe all that saves me from Ben Billin's comin' back on me for the price o' the barn. He's tryin' to, as 'tis. That case ain't settled yit. But I wun't pay! Can't! How can you git blood out of a stun? But it's Hell on parade, now ain't it? I ask you!”

“It seems to me, if you will pardon the observation,” remarked the melancholy stranger, “that your narrative is becoming a trifle involved, not to say inverted, as it were. I do not as yet grasp the exact concatenation of this cause célèbre.”

“Huh?”

“I mean, the original incident which gave rise to such an extraordinary series of concomitant malentendus, so to speak.”

“He means, what started it?” put in Ted Alden, who had been away to Saltmarsh College.

“Oh, that? Well, I comin' to that, now, as fast as I can, ain't I? Jo Beeswax, mister, don't crowd me! The way it all begun was like this—an' that's all part of how I got to be the most unpopular man in the county by an overwhelmin' majority, one spell. Because this here case set husband agin wife an' brother agin sister, like, accordin' as they took sides for an' agin me.

“Some claimed the fine was too heavy, an' others allowed it wa'n't, an' that I'd ought to of been fined twice the five hundred an' costs I had to pay. How much 's that make, now? Thirty-two hundred an' twenty-five, total loss so fur, ain't it? Yes, sir! Folks got as excited over it as a cat to a mouse show. Some said the ten days I laid there in Machias Jail, tryin' to git bailed out, served me doggone good an' right. Jay Re-co, but I was all in when I come out o' jail. Others vowneyed if it had been them—”

“My dear sir,” interrupted the melancholy stranger, “pray spare me these inconsequential minutiæ. They are quite immaterial to the prosecution of your narrative. Let us get at the raison d'être, so to speak. The casus belli, as it were!”

“No belly to it, special!” declared Uncle Forexample, smiting his patched knee and blinking into the late afternoon sun. “It was the en-tire corpse. An' as I was sayin', they wouldn't never of ketched me if I'd only of happened to of lived t'other side o' the line. Y'see, I'm tryin' to make this all plain an' clear, if you'll only listen an' not keep fubbin' in, every minute. Look, now! Canady's here.” Uncle tapped an unseemly finger on one of the porch boards. “The States is here. This here is Calais, Maine, an' here's the St. Croix River, an' here's St. Stephen, 'cross the river is Canady. Well, now, don't you git it?”

The dejected stranger contracted puzzled brows.

“I may be dense,” he declared, “but as yet a certain nebulosity appertains to the development of the sequences, which—”

“Gret Deludian! You don't see?” demanded Uncle, with some heat. “When I git that letter, I'm death-struck with worry. Wouldn't it strike a dread to anybody? I ask you! I don't dast stay to hum. No, I jest stivver 'cross the bridge, where I'll be safe a spell, anyhow. It was the en-tire carcass, remember. I go boardin' with my second cousin, Delano Simm—him that married—”

“The entire carcass?” demanded the dejected stranger. “Carcass of what?”

“—my wife's niece by her third husband. Yes, sir, I go an' den up with Delano, bluer 'n a whetstun, an' he hadn't ought to of overcharged me no such way, for merely harborin' a relative. Del he's as accomodatin' as a hog on ice, a'most!”

Uncle Forry was now well under way, sweating freely, cob-pipe waving in air. “Ain't that an outrage, to take advantage of a poor fugitive from injestice? I'm there three weeks, at twenty per. That's sixty dollars, an' my bank account all shriveled up to a skrid. Gosh, I never was so druv in all my mortal life! Sixty dollars. That makes thirty-two hundred an' eighty-five. An' me right in sight of my own farm, an' every day huckin' it up an' down them railroad tracks watchin' my place, an' them doggone cunstables settin' on the international bridge, waitin' to snaffle me if I tried to go home! Say, ain't that hard fodder, mister? I ask you!”

“Very sad, indeed,” the stranger admitted. “But now, returning to the original question, let me inquire how—”

“Them potato bugs, too, made it wuss. I had to watch 'em eat up any God's amount o' my plants. They fixed my crop so it wa'n't wuth a wroppin' 'round your finger. There ain't no way to reckon exactly how much I lost by them bugs, but it was some! An' all the time, me right in sight o' the shed where I killed him! Was I—?”

“You killed him? demanded the lugubrious stranger. “You admit the corpus delicti?”

“Sure's shootin'l The corpus was in my Aunt Vyeny's trunk, an' I admit I put it there. I ain't never denied that! But is that any reason to persecute a man a'most to death? I ain't no gret of a hand to complain, mister, but I doggone nigh flew all to gosh, watchin' them potato bugs skivin' through my patch. I dunno's I ever had no bitterer minutes in my life, except mebbe when I got that there letter from my brother Abner, down to Portland, tellin' me the officers had got my name off the trunk.”

Uncle Forry sighed deeply and raked his chin with a horny hand. The melancholy stranger leaned closer.

“The trunk, I perceive,” he commented, “seems to nave quite a rôle.”

“Yes, that's what Abner said. When it rolled out on the platform at the Union Station, to Portland, that's when all the trouble began. Abner, he always done favors the same as you haul a hog out'n a scaldin'-tub—not because you love the hog, but because you expect to git somethin', later. He sent me a bill for ten dollars, for warnin' me. But all I ever gin him was five. That makes it thirty-two hundred an' ninety, which, added to the damages I had to pay for that sp'iled actress's clothes—”

“Ah, a new arrival? What spoiled actress?” demanded the stranger. “Where does this histrionic individual enter the maze of your labyrinthine lucubrations?”

“My which?”

“Explain the spoiled actress, will you, please?”

“Ain't none! It was her duds as was sp'iled, by the blood!”

“Indeed? What blood? Ah, I fear my reason is unseated!” The sad one pressed a hand to his brow, and glanced from one to another of the platform loafers. “Gentlemen,” he appealed, “tell me the worst. Are you hearing the same things that I am?”

“It's all right, mister,” answered Walter Gordon. “Unk always tells it this way, t'other end to. You'll git to the beginnin', if you'll only wait till the end. Giddap, Unk!”

“The blood, I tell ye!” Forexample asseverated, with some heat. “You ain't over 'n' above bright, I must say, if you can't follow me. The blood sp'iled her stage clothes, don't ye see? My brother told me somethin' about that in his letter, an' I found out later 'twas a heap sight wuss'n what he said. They must of been handsome riggin's, 'cause she lawed me for a thousand. But we settled for half o' that. How much 's that make, now?”

“Thirty-seven hundred an' ninety,” announced Charley Noyes, who had been keeping score with a pencil on a roll of sheathing-paper. “You're twenty dollars shy this time, Unk. Last time, at this place, it was—”

“Never mind about a paltry twenty dollars,” put in the anxious stranger. “My mind is disturbed by larger issues than a slight pecuniary discrepancy. I am now dwelling on the criminis causa. How about this blood? What blood? Pray, elucidate!”

“What blood?” demanded Forexample, with great irritation. “Why, the blood, o' course! Here I give you the whole dognation story, straight's a string, an' you ain't got sprawl enough to foller me! The blood, what made all the touse. The blood, what run out o' my Aunt Vyeny's borrered trunk!”

“Ah!” sighed the stranger leaning back. “Now we are becoming semi-coherent. The estimable Aunt Vyeny's trunk appears again, in the narrative, and some sort of circle is established. I begin to perceive a kind of tentative concatenation in these digressive divagations. The crux historiae——”

“Who's a crook?” demanded Unk, menacingly.

“I mean, the key to the mystery is obviously at hand. Pray, explain how the blood got into the best trunk of your excellent relative, now deceased—that is, sir, if you don't mind setting a fevered brain at rest?”

“Sure, I'll explain!” affirmed Unk Forry, with vehemence. “I been tryin' to, right along, but everybody's been buddin' in an' knockin' my story all weewaw. I'd tell it slick's a ramcat, if you all would only lemme be!” Anger sat on his corrugated brow, and again he smote his knee. “When I'm doin' my doggondest to make it all plain, straightforrard an' logical, can't you shut y'r traps?

“When they seen that blood, they got right up on their shoe-taps an' figgered 'twas murder in the worst degree. Who wouldn't of? I ain't blamin' 'em for that. Abner, he told me what they suspicioned in his letter. The letter was kind of like this, as I remember:

“'Dear Brother:

“There's blue Hell to pay, an' you better come up 'mongst the missin' a spell. I see your name on the trunk tag, an' I recognized Aunt Vy's trunk, too, an' knowed you sent it. They're after you, with corked boots. You never see such a catouse as they had here, to the depot, when they was bustin' it open.'”

“Bursting what open?” queried the stranger. “The depot?”

“Hell's hinges, no! Aunt Vy's best trunk! Say, you city men may be long on for clothtes, but you're sure dull when it comes to understandin' language. Ain't you got no education? Depot, nothin'! It's the trunk I'm talkin' about, my Aunt Vy's new trunk that I borrowed. It cost her—”

“Spare me the details about the monetary exchange value of the trunk, my friend. Pray, proceed to the inverted dénouement!”

“Eleven dollars an' a half, down to Herb Libby's! An' she got madder'n bulls in flytime when they rimracked it. Walter, he wrote me as per follows:

“It made a mess all over the baggage-car, between Bangor an' Portland, an' just natchally sp'iled Daisie La Rue's reppytory of lingerry, bein' stacked up on Daisie's trunk, and when they throwed it off on the platform at the Union Station in Portland, there was such a crowd gathered that somebody pulled in an alarm. Then there was a rookus, an' don't ye doubt it!

“'One fire-engine, comin' along St. John street, hit a peanut cart right in front of Bert Hutchinson's house. You know Bert, what runs the New Portland Theater. The engine throwed the peanut cart through Bert's front window into his parlor, an' filled the piano with peanuts, an' I callate you'll have to pay damages on the piano an' the house, also make good on the peanuts.

“'Three women fainted at the depot, an' the police had to fight the crowd to keep 'em from gittin' crushed. You'll admit, yourself, they was justified in thinkin' it was a murder-in-a-trunk mystery. They got axes out o' the train, an' what's left of it ain't kindlin's.'”

“Left of what? The train?”

“No! The trunk!”

“Your pronouns are misleading, sir,” the sad stranger mildly reproved. “Now, let us have the causa rerum, if you please.”

“O' course it did look like murder,” Uncle Forexample doggedly continued. “You can't blame 'em none for thinkin' that. Now, if I'd only of used an ile-cloth to of wropped up the body in, or dreened it well afore I packed it—but there! I hadn't of reelly never ought to of killed it, in the fust place.”

“You are killing it in the last place, it seems to me,” commented the lugubrious one.

“No, I reelly killed it in my woodshed, after it had et up about five dollars wuth o' my best shorts,” affirmed Unk Forry. “I should of jest swallered them shorts—the loss of 'em, I mean—an' let it go, an' not shot it. That's where I made my fall-down—there, an' trustin' the sireen voice of my Cousin Henry, down to Boston, when he wrote me he'd pay fifty for it. This tryin' to do a favor, or make a dollar easy, is all bugbite an' moonshine. I've learned my lesson. It was closed season, you see.”

“For cousins?”

“Sufferin' beeswax, no! For deer!”

“Dear deer, I call it,” murmured Charley Noyes. Uncle Forry looked expectant.

The melancholy stranger sat a moment, in profound meditation. Then his mouth cracked into something vaguely resembling a grin. Extraordinary sounds began issuing from his throat.

“He's chokin'!” cried Walter Gordon. “Water!”

The stranger waved away the tin dipper in Carl Dudley's hand.

“No, gentlemen,” said he. “I am not choking. I am laughing. This is a laugh.”

“It's needs ile,” remarked old Fred Spear. “Not water.”

“I,” resumed the stranger, “am Professor Alcibiades Honeywell, of Harvard. This is the first cachinnation in which I have indulged for more than eleven years. I have long been a victim of melancholia, given up to die unless I could laugh. I have traveled widely in search of the merriment that would save my life. That life, gentlemen, is now saved, and I shall reward my friend, here, for his narrative.”

From his pocket the stranger drew a quarter, and handed it to Unk Forry.

Unk squinted at it, as it lay in his palm. Then he bit it, pocketed it, and fished up fifteen cents in change, which he passed to the stranger.

“Here y'are, mister,” said he. “I'm a good jedge o' the value of a man's life. An', doggone it! I'm honest. I won't overcharge no man!”

In silence he arose and hobbled away. As he turned the corner by the blacksmith's shop, Ed Bean remarked:

“Ten cents clear money, eh? Well, that's 'bout what he evridges with that deer. A dime to a quarter a throw. Funny, ain't it, how a man that's been on the town thirty year, an' ain't never had twenty-five bones all at once in his whole fife can think he lost thousands?”

“Ten cents clear money ain't so bad at that,” put in Leonidas McCue. “For somethin' what never happened, nohow, it ain't bad at all.”