Kitabı oku: «The Boy Grew Older», sayfa 7

CHAPTER XVII

Pat furnished copy for Peter again within a month. Kate came in from the Park all breathless with an account of a fight between the child and his friend and playmate Bobby, last name not given.

"It was about an engine," explained Kate. "Bobby give it to Pat and then he wanted to take it away again. Before we could get to them Pat hit Bobby in the mouth so hard it made his mouth bleed. And that Bobby, him almost six years old. And a head taller than Pat. He bled something terrible, Mr. Neale. First I thought it was just Bobby's blood on Pat's hand, but it kept on and when I looked closer there was all the skin off of the knuckles of Pat. It must have been the teeth of that Bobby when Pat hit him. I'll be putting iodine on it this very minute if you'll watch till I get back, Mr. Neale."

"Put down that engine and come here, Pat," said Peter.

"I can't hear you."

"Yes, you can. I said put down that engine. Nobody's going to take it away from you. Not just now, anyway. It's not yours but I suppose you've won it. Come here, I want to see your hand."

Very reluctantly Pat placed the engine on the sofa and advanced slowly.

"It's all red," he said.

Peter took off the handkerchief. "Nonsense," he said, "you haven't more than scratched it."

He was about to dismiss the matter from his mind and start for the office when he noticed something he'd overlooked. "Kate, Kate," cried Peter in great excitement, "this hand that Pat cut hitting that boy is his left hand."

"Yes, 'tis his left hand he'd be using all the time when I'm not noticing him," said Kate, returning with the iodine. "That's where the strength is. It'll be hard to teach him out of it."

"I don't want him taught out of it, Kate. Don't you ever try to stop him. It's bad to try to change children around. Anyway I don't want him changed. This is fine for him. When he grows up and plays baseball he'll be two steps nearer first base and besides the swing will throw him into his stride. Maybe you don't know what I'm talking about, Kate, but remember I want him to stay a left-hander."

Peter went down to the office and wrote, "There seems to be no shadow of doubt from which hope can spring – I am the father of a southpaw." He nursed the theme and the incident along for almost a column, and there were other by-products of comfort. In the City Room Peter ran into Deane Taylor, the venerable music critic of the Bulletin.

"Mr. Taylor," he asked, "did you ever see a left-handed violin player?"

"No, Peter," said the old man, "there's no such thing. Of course there might be left-handed piano players, but certainly all the fiddlers and all the conductors are right-handed. Come to think of it, I don't know any left-handed musicians at all. But if you're writing something about that you better ask somebody else. I might be wrong. You see I've never gone into music from that angle."

"No," replied Peter, "this is just something I'm interested in personally. Your impression's good enough for me. You don't have to prove it. Thank you very much."

Peter went away greatly pleased. "There's one of Vonnie's guesses gone wrong anyhow," he said.

From his observations of professional baseball, Peter had worked out the theory that lefthanders were more difficult to handle than anybody else. There was Rube Waddell for instance. Peter had seen him call the outfielders in for the ninth inning and retire the side with only an infield behind him. And everybody knew about the way Rube used to disappear every now and then during the middle of a season and go fishing. Only the day before he had had a Rube Waddell story in his column. It was about Rube and the animal crackers. The man who told Peter said the story came straight from Connie Mack and that there was no doubt about its being true. Ollie Shreck, Rube's regular catcher, wouldn't sign a contract one season. When they asked him the trouble he said, "They always put me in to room with Rube on the road. Maybe they think I understand him after catching him so much. Well, Mr. Mack, I won't sign no contract unless you put in a clause that Rube can't eat animal crackers in our bed."

Pat lived up to most of Peter's theories about southpaws. Before the child had quite turned four Peter discovered that Kate had no control over him. She had given him a little theology but no discipline. The facts came out through her complaint that Pat wouldn't eat any of the things which he was supposed to eat. A doctor called in to attend a passing cold had remained to suggest a diet. He was horrified to learn that Kate had allowed the child to eat meat two or three times a day, with the exception of Friday, just as she did.

"Your child is just about one ton behind in spinach," said Dr. Whiting to Peter. "He's got to catch up, but there won't be any particular trouble about that. He's pretty sure to like spinach. All children do. And I want him to have more milk."

Peter found upon inquiry that Pat had never known spinach. "I don't like it," explained Kate.

"Well, he's got to have a lot of it," said Peter. "I want you to start right in today."

The report next morning was unsatisfactory. "How did the spinach go?" asked Peter. "He wouldn't eat any of it," answered Kate. "He said he didn't like it."

"How could he tell he didn't like it if he didn't eat any," objected Peter sharply.

"I don't know. But he said he didn't like it. He threw the plate on the floor."

"How about the milk?"

"He wouldn't drink any."

"Didn't you tell him that he had to."

"I did that, Mr. Neale. I told him God wouldn't love him if he didn't eat his nice spinach and that, begging your pardon, sir, you'd cry."

"Today," said Peter with a certain magnificence, "I'll stay home and eat lunch with him myself. And for lunch we'll have just spinach and milk."

"Well, well," said Peter, with great gusto as lunch was served, "isn't this fine – milk and spinach. Kate, how did you know just what we wanted?"

"I don't want any lunch," said Pat.

"No spinach?"

Pat did not deign a reply.

"What do you want?"

"I want crackerjack and ice cream."

"Spinach is what you're going to get."

Pat began to cry, but Peter found that it was only a sign of rage and not of weakness. The child's refusal remained steadfast. Finally, Peter spanked him for the first time in his life. It was not a success. Pat cried a lot more but he ate no spinach. Press of other work kept Peter from pursuing the problem for three days, during which time the child reverted to his old diet. In a second personally conducted test, Peter Neale managed to induce Pat both to drink milk and eat spinach, but it was not exactly a triumph. The result was gained by strategy, which was ingenious but also abject. Moreover, it was almost wholly accidental. Driven desperate by an unyielding stubbornness, Peter at length lost his temper and shouted at the child. "All right then, don't eat any spinach. I won't let you eat any spinach."

Pat scowled and, reaching all the way across the table, helped himself to a large spoonful. "I'm eating spinach," he said, "I'm eating it right now."

The only thing of which Peter had a right to boast was that he did not allow any false pride to stand between him and the object which he sought. He was quick to seize his opportunity. Pat's seeming free will was harnessed to serve the predetermined purposes of an ego less powerful but more unscrupulous.

"Maybe you are eating a little spinach," said Peter, "but I guess you won't dare take any milk when I tell you not to."

Pat fell into the trap. "Look at me now, Peter, I'm drinking it all up."

Once he learned the method Peter became a strict disciplinarian. Almost invariably Pat disobeyed with alacrity when he heard the stalwart and ringing command, "Now, Pat, I don't want you to go to bed and I don't want you to go this very minute." Of course the thing became a little complicated. Even after much practice Peter used to get somewhat mixed up over such instructions as, "No, the nightgown I don't want you to wear is the one over there."

The eating problem was subjected to still further complexities. Peter was shrewd enough to realize that the scheme of indirect discourse might become strained beyond all usefulness if employed too much. Pat conformed and yet it became evident at length that he saw through the trickery. On his fifth birthday, for instance, at his party he made no rush for the ice cream which was placed before him but looked up plaintively and said, "Peter, why don't you tell me not to eat my ice cream."

Accordingly, other games were invented. The milk race proved generally useful but rules had to be devised to prevent Pat from going too fast. Eventually the contest was introduced by Peter as "a slow milk race." In order to prevent Pat from choking to death he would cry every now and then "Measure!" At that signal both would lower their glasses and set one against the other on the table. Pat took over the announcing of these results. He used only one decision – "I'm ahead" – and this bore no accurate relation to the actual quantity of milk in the two glasses.

As a matter of fact, the milk race never was a very sporting proposition. Pat always won and as the practice continued he began to demand new guarantees of success. "You mustn't start till I'm through, Peter," he would say. "I want to win." Peter also hit upon the device of serving Pat with nothing but "special milk." His own came out of the same bottle but had no title. Nobody but Pat was supposed under any circumstances to be allowed to touch "special milk." The story, circulated by Peter, was that the cow wouldn't like it.

Another incentive to appetite was playing burglar. This game was also one of Peter's inventions, but Pat eventually became the aggressor. "You must be asleep," he would say, "and I must be a burglar and come along and steal some of your spinach. Shut your eyes."

Even years afterward Peter could never look at spinach without blinking.

Kate was not very apt at any of the eating games and the result was that Peter found himself more bound to the flat than ever. Now he seldom got down to the office except during the hours between lunch and dinner. The feeding and more particularly, the urging of Pat came to be almost a regular duty. Peter was never quite sure whether he liked or hated these activities. Although they were confining and arduous he got an undeniable satisfaction out of them. He was succeeding with something a good deal more personal than a syndicate. He was succeeding where Kate, the mother of five or six, had failed.

"Maybe women are all right for children when they get a little older," was the way Peter expressed it to himself, "but they haven't imagination enough to handle a little one like Pat. That's a man's job."

CHAPTER XVIII

Pat was six years old when he saw his first ball game up at the old hill top park of the New York Yankees who were then the Highlanders. The Red Sox were the visiting team.

"That's Sea Lion Harry Hall," said Peter, pointing to a man in a gray uniform who was throwing the ball. Pat tried to follow the direction in which Peter pointed.

"I don't see no sea lion," he complained.

"Right over there," replied Peter, "the pitcher. Don't you see the man that's throwing the ball. That's his name, Sea Lion Harry Hall."

Pat was enormously disappointed. He had thought that maybe it was some sort of circus which they were going to see in this great open park. The sea lion had sounded like a promise of elephants to come. He tried to beat back his grief, but presently tears rolled out of his eyes. The best he could do was to make no sound. Eventually Peter noticed the damp tracks across his face.

"What are you crying about?" he asked in surprise.

"You said it was a sea lion," sobbed Pat, "and it isn't any sea lion."

"Oh, that's it. Don't you understand: his name's Sea Lion. Just as they call you Pat."

"Why do they call him a Sea Lion?"

"Well," said Peter, "to tell the truth I don't know exactly. It's just one of those things. I've been writing about Sea Lion Harry Hall a couple of years and now I never stopped to think up any reason for it. It was smart of you to ask me, Pat. That's right. Don't you go taking in things people tell you without asking why. That's the first thing a newspaperman ought to learn. You just wait here a minute and I'll go and find out why they call him Sea Lion Harry Hall."

Peter went over to the wire screen which ran in front of the press box and called to a short little man who was sitting on his heels and balancing himself with his bat which he had dug into the ground. The player straightened up and came over. Peter conversed earnestly with him for a moment. Then he came back. "Now," he said, "I know all about it. Kid Elberfeld – that was Kid Elberfeld I was talking to – he says they call him Sea Lion Harry Hall because he roars so – just like a sea lion."

For the next half hour Pat abandoned all thought of the game. Peter rattled off words and the meaning of them. There were hits and errors and flies and grounders. Once everybody in the park shouted and stood up and Peter said it was a home run, but Pat gave very little heed to this. He paid no more attention to the rooting than if it had been Peter talking to him. It was another sound for which he was waiting. He couldn't be burdened with learning about hits and errors or even the thing called a home run. What he wanted was to hear Sea Lion Harry Hall roar like a sea lion. For hours Pat heard nothing. The man just did his exercises and threw the ball. Then something happened which made him mad. He threw the ball and after it was thrown he walked straight up to a man in blue who had on a false face. And he talked at him. Very loud and hoarse he said, "Jesus, Tim, call 'em right."

"There goes the Sea Lion," said Peter who had been busy with something else and had caught no more than the rumble. "Didn't that sound just like a sea lion?"

Pat scorned to cry. He did not even bother to say "No." By now he knew that the baseball park was the land of disappointment. It was a place where things were cried up with words which were not so. Peter had said he would roar like a sea lion. And he didn't. He was just a man who said "Jesustim" pretty loud.

Pat heard a seal lion once. "Jesustim" didn't sound anything like a sea lion.

Interesting inquiry might have centred around "Too hot to handle" if Peter had used it earlier in the day, but by the time it came Pat knew that it was just a grown up way of talking big. When Peter said, "That's Birdie Cree," Pat did not look or even ask any questions. He knew there was not a birdie.

Only one romantic concept came to Pat from the game.

"That's Tris Speaker, that kid in centre field," said Peter.

Of course, Pat knew that he really wouldn't be a kid. It didn't surprise him to find that Tris was a man but he was quite a lot different from pretty nearly all the other grown-ups that Pat had ever seen. They didn't run like Tris. Probably they couldn't. The other men in this baseball park ran, but Tris was the fastest. But it wasn't just looking at him that Pat liked. He said the name over to himself several times. "Tris Speaker, Tris Speaker." There was fun in the sound of it. Not quite enough for a whole afternoon, to be sure. This was a park without sandpiles or a merry-go-round. And there were no policemen to make everybody keep off the grass. Pat wished they would.

"I want to go home," he said at last.

"Tired already?" asked Peter. "Well, there's only half an inning more. It wasn't much of a game, was it? Too one-sided. But we're not going home right off. I've got to go straight to the office and I'm going to take you with me."

In another ten minutes the game was over. "You didn't like it, did you?" asked Peter. The formula nettled Pat.

"Yes, I did," he said.

After a long trip in the subway they came to the big building where Peter worked. Pat had never been there before. At the end of a long corridor was a small office and Peter opened the door and went in. "I've got to write the paper," he said. "You keep quiet till I'm done. Here's the funny section for you."

Upon examination Pat found that it was last Sunday's pictures. He had already seen the one about how the kids put dynamite in the Captain's high hat. Still he followed the adventure again. When Kate read it to him on Sunday it had made him a little sad. It seemed to him that it must have hurt the Captain when Maude, the mule, kicked him in the head. Now he found a new significance in the last picture. Maude and the Captain were floating in the air high above the roof. Coming out of the Captain's mouth were marks like this, "! – !!!" And yet it must be pleasant to go floating away in the sky like that. Pat looked out of the window and he could see the river and the great bridge. He would like to have a high hat and some dynamite and a mule. Then he could float through the window like Davey and the Goblin. That would be better than sitting there in the little office so quietly while Peter pounded the keys of his typewriter. Peter kept taking sheets of paper out of it and tearing them up.

"Whatch you doing?" Pat asked when he could keep silent no longer.

"Hush," said Peter very sternly, "you mustn't ask questions now. I'm doing a story for the Bulletin. That's very important, I must do it right away."

"Why?"

"Well, pretty soon they're going to put the paper to bed." Pat knew that must be some sort of joke. Papers didn't go to bed. They didn't have any pajamas or nightgowns.

Somebody knocked at the door and before Peter could say anything Charlie Hall came in. "Is that your kid?" he asked.

"Yes," said Peter, "He's my son. Say hello to Charlie Hall, Pat."

"Well, what's your name?" said Hall just as if he was very much interested.

"My name's Pat."

"Tell him your big name," prompted Peter. "Go ahead."

"Peter Neale, second."

"I suppose you'll be down here doing baseball yourself pretty soon now that you're getting to be such a big boy," said Hall.

Pat picked up the funny paper again and pretended to become engrossed in it. Charlie Hall was diverted back to the first of the Peter Neales.

"I guess he's a little older than my youngest," he said. "Let me see, Joe – no, that's not the one I mean – Bill must be about four or five now. Just around there."

"Pat's older than that. He was six a couple of days ago."

"Getting pretty near time to begin figuring what to do with him."

"I know that already," said Peter, "he's going to be a newspaper man. He's going to be 'by Peter Neale'."

"I'd drown mine, all six of 'em, before I'd let 'em go into the newspaper business."

"What's the matter with it?"

"It don't get you any place. Now if I was in business I'd be just getting ready to be a president of the company or something. And as it is I'm just an old man around the shop. Forty-two my last birthday. In a couple of years more I'll be on the copy desk."

"That's mostly bunk, Charlie. But even if it was so, haven't you had a lot of fun?"

"What do you mean, fun?"

"Going out where things are happening and writing pieces and seeing them in the paper the next day. Just writing a baseball story seems sort of exciting to me."

"Hell," said Charlie, "they're all faked, those baseball games. I wouldn't go across the street to see one."

He paused, but went on again before Peter could protest.

"It's a funny thing, but the longer you stay in newspaper work the more it gets to seem as if everything's faked. After a while you find out that all the murders are just alike. Somebody sleeps with somebody and somebody else don't like it and then you have what we call a 'mystery' and we get all steamed up about it. Railroad accidents – the engineer disregarded the signal – fires – somebody dropped a cigarette in a pile of waste. My God, Pete, there's only about ten things can happen any place in the world and then they must go on repeating themselves over and over."

Peter rushed in pellmell. "But don't you see, Charlie. It's the writing about them makes them different. A piano player might as well say, 'I haven't got anything but the same notes.'"

"Well," said Charlie, "I'd drown all five of them if they wanted to be piano players. Maybe there is some fun in writing. I don't know anything about that. But if a man wants to write why put it down some place where it's going to be swept up by the street cleaner the next day. At eleven o'clock tomorrow morning all that stuff you were writing before I came in will be dead and rotten. It'll have to make room for the home edition and on top of that'll come another. And so on all day long. Writing for a newspaper's like spitting in Niagara Falls. Anybody that can write ought to get on a magazine and do something that'll last anyway from breakfast to dinner time."

"It's no good for me," said Peter. "I've written for magazines a little – just sport stuff, you know. You do something and maybe you like it, but that's the last you hear about it for a month. By the time it comes out you've forgotten all about it and maybe by that time it isn't true anyway. It's like writing for posterity."

"All right," said Charlie, "go on with your story. If you make it a good one maybe there'll be somebody around the office'll remember it clear into next week."

Left alone, Peter proceeded at a furious rate. Even Pat was frightened out of interrupting by the beat and pace of the noise which came from the typewriter. If there had been a steam whistle it would have sounded a good deal like a locomotive. Soon Peter called a copy boy and gave him the pages. It had grown almost dark now, but he did not switch on the electric light immediately. From the next room came the clicking sound of telegraph keys.

"Do you hear that," said Peter. "That's magic. Some place there's a war, or a king's just died, or maybe he's only sick and those clicks are telling us about it."

"Did he eat too much ice cream and cake?" asked Pat.

"I don't know. I can't tell till somebody writes it down. You have to make a b c's out of it before anybody except just the man in the room understands about it."

"Come here," said Peter, suddenly getting up from his chair, "you sit down there, Pat."

"I don't want to," said Pat.

"All right, I won't let you sit in my chair."

Pat got up and took the seat.

"Now," said Peter earnestly, "I don't want you to grow up to be a newspaper man, and I don't want you to come into this office after I'm gone."

He put his arm around Pat's shoulder and drew him close. Then he took the boy's hand, the left one, and moved it forward near the typewriter.

"This is the desk," said Peter, "that I don't want you to use."