City Boy (23 page)

Immediately the sneerers became cheerers once more.

“Good old Lennie!”

“Boy, he can do anything!”

“That's ridin' him, Lennie!”

Said Uncle Sid, to nobody in particular, “Of course I knew sawing the reins would do it, but I just can't stand being cruel to an animal.”

Clever Sam was headed for the open camp gate.

“Turn him back, Lennie!” called the counselor.

Lennie pulled on the left rein. Clever Sam's head obediently twisted on his elastic neck completely around to the left, but his body continued straight on as though it and the head had no connection at all. It was a ghostly sight to see a horse's body trotting calmly in one direction while his head was looking the other way. Out through the gate went horse and rider in this uncanny fashion. Lennie threw a helpless glance backward, and then he and Clever Sam disappeared around a slight bend
to the right.
How the horse negotiated that turn, which was entirely invisible to him, is not known, but that is what happened.

Uncle Sid stood with his mouth hanging open for a moment. Then he said, “You boys wait right here,” and started to run to the gate. He had not taken more than a few steps when Elmer Bean sang out, “Hold on, mister. That won't do no good,” and came toward him.

“That boy is my responsibility,” fretted Uncle Sid, but he stopped running.

“Yeah, an' the hoss is mine. Won't neither of 'em get hurt. They'll both be back soon.”

“What makes you so sure?” said the music counselor. The boys gathered around the two men as they talked. An oddly assorted pair they were, too—Uncle Sid forlorn, flabby, and uncomfortable in his fashionable riding clothes, towered over by the lanky, fair-haired Elmer, who, in his dirty shapeless overalls and green cotton shirt, looked as easy and natural in the field as a milkweed.

“Heck, I know that hoss. I knew him years ago when they called him Blackie. He been bounced around from one half-baked camp stable to another out here ever since I kin remember. He done four years with a egg farm, too. Ain't no harm in him.”

“He's obviously useless for camp purposes now,” said Uncle Sid. “You should have warned Mr. Gauss not to buy him.”

“Mister, either you got hosses at a camp or you ain't. Mr. Gauss ain't takin' on no more hands than me, an' no more hosses than that one. If they's gonna be one hoss just to have a hoss, it might as well be Clever Sam. He ain't no trouble to me an' he'll eat anything. He'll eat bark offa young trees. He'll eat old clothes, if they got a hay smell. A billy goat ain't in it with Clever Sam. He ain't never lived good, see?”

At this moment the subject of the talk plodded into sight, greeted with yells by the boys. He was minus Lennie.

“If anything has happened to that boy,” cried Uncle Sid, staring at the riderless animal, “I'll hold you responsible, Elmer.”

“Keep yer ridin' britches on, mister,” said the handy man. “Ain't nuthin' happened to the boy 'cept he ain't ridin' hossback no more.”

Clever Sam trotted to the spot where his grazing had been interrupted, dropped his head, and resumed his favorite activity. He had only taken a bite or two when Lennie came walking through the gate. Uncle Sid and the boys dashed to him. He was unhurt, as Elmer had predicted, but from head to foot he was covered with mud and dead leaves. And he was very angry. To the questions from all sides he responded with unintelligible growls. At last the music counselor said loudly, “Lennie, I demand to know what happened.”

“O.K., he rubbed me off against a tree, that's what happened!” exclaimed the boy furiously. “And he didn't pick any old tree, neither. He kept lookin' around an' lookin' around until he found a tree with a puddle under it. Nothin' I done made any difference. I pretty near pulled his head off to one side an' another. His head comes around like it's on a swivel, but it don't do nothin' to his feet. I swear to God he was lookin' right in my eye half the time he was goin'. That horse is crazy! My father can sue Mr. Gauss, an' I bet he will.” He dabbed at the mud and leaves, but only smeared them from one place to another.

“I certainly wouldn't blame him,” said Uncle Sid.

“Look, feller,” said Elmer Bean, who had sauntered up in time to hear most of Lennie's tirade, “that hoss ain't crazy. He's old, see? And he's never had it good, see? And he's had so many city boobs on his back that he hadda develop a rubber neck an' a thick skin er drop dead. He ain't stupid. Every other hoss in the world that lets people git up on their back an' shove 'em around is stupid. Clever Sam's been livin' a hoss's life for maybe twenty years and fin'ly figgered out how to git around it. And he ain't takin' no more of it than he can help, that's all.”

“Which all adds up to the fact,” said Uncle Sid, “that he's totally useless as a riding horse, and I shall so report to Mr. Gauss.”

“Hey, Uncle Sid,” interrupted Herbie. “Lookit Cliff.”

He pointed in the direction of the horse. Herbie's cousin was standing beside the animal with his hand on the scraggly black mane, talking to him.

“Cliff, come away from that dangerous beast!” shouted the counselor.

“It's O.K., Uncle Sid,” Cliff called back. “He ain't gonna hurt me.” He resumed his murmuring. To everyone's surprise, Clever Sam stopped eating for a moment and raised his head a little way from the ground.

“Feller looks like he been around a hoss before,” said the handy man.

Herbie, feeling an access of family pride, said importantly, “Cliff is my cousin. His father used to keep a stable for delivery wagons an' horses.”

This was the first time in Herbie's life that the stable-keeping background of his uncle seemed an ornament to the family name. Usually it was not mentioned. He could not help observing a new deference among the other boys toward him as soon as he told of it.

All at once Cliff swung himself easily onto Clever Sam's back, patted the horse's neck, and spoke in a coaxing tone. Clever Sam picked up his head and began to trot.

“Wait till they get to a free,” said Lennie bitterly.

But they never got to a tree. Clever Sam trotted once around the ring, then, at a snap of the reins, he broke into a dignified, creaky, but quite genuine gallop. The onlookers were confounded.

“Boy, what a cousin you got, Herbie,” said Ted respectfully. Herbie, fat and grounded as ever, beamed in reflected glory.

Horse and rider swept past the group to a volley of cheers. Twice more Clever Sam pounded around the ring, seeming to enjoy himself more as he warmed to it, like an old gentleman who has been persuaded to waltz. At last he turned sharply off the ring, and, as the boys gasped and Uncle Sid uttered a warning cry, headed straight for the pile of boards that had once been a hurdle. Everyone could see that for the first time Cliff was frightened. He stiffened and pulled back on the reins. Clever Sam galloped straight on and jumped clumsily over the barrier, barely missing the top board with his hind legs. As he landed Cliff toppled forward and almost tumbled down over the horse's neck, but he clung and managed to straighten up. He turned Clever Sam toward the spectators, cantered within a yard of them, and pulled up short. Clever Sam huffed and puffed, shook himself, and pawed the ground a few times. Then his head sank once more, and chomp! chomp! went the great teeth again.

Cliff dismounted and received the plaudits of a hero. Amid the noise of congratulation and excited questions, the sallow boy, Eddie Bromberg, said, “Bet I can ride him now, too.” He approached the horse with kind words, but when he was about to put his hand on the long neck, Clever Sam bared his terrible teeth at him. Eddie leaped backward, with a vivid picture of his arm being bitten in two like a daisy.

Elmer Bean said, “Clever Sam he had his day's exercise. Ain't gonna be no more ridin', boys.”

Nobody else wanted to try. The group went down the hill, still clustering around the modest Cliff, who found little to say. Herbie, his arm linked in his cousin's, did a very satisfactory job as spokesman, and reveled in it.

“Say, Cliff, how'd you stop him so short?” asked Ted.

“Well, you know, just stopped him,” said Cliff.

“Gosh, ain't you got eyes, Ted?” said Herbie. “Clever Sam don't like no rough treatment, see? Cliff rides with the reins real loose, see, then at the last minute just a good tug, an' whoa, boy!—there you are. Right, Cliff?”

“Um,” said Cliff.

In this way all questions were answered, and Herbie's replies were listened to with eagerness and received as the final word. It was the fat boy's happiest time since his arrival in camp, and it lasted all day, for the fame of Cliff's feat spread, and more and more boys kept coming to Herbie, asking him to repeat the story and explain his cousin's secrets of horsemanship.

Lennie and Uncle Sid retired to the showers together, and cleaned themselves. It was noticed thereafter that they maintained a heavy reserve on the subject of Clever Sam. Whenever the horse was mentioned, in fact, and Herbie began to expound, Lennie was observed to snort loudly and take himself off.

That night, at a meeting of the Royal Order of Gooferdusters, the secret honor society of the camp, Cliff was proposed for election. He was blackballed by two Super-seniors who maintained scornfully that his achievement was nothing, because they could ride Clever Sam themselves. In time they tried, and learned they were mistaken. Clever Sam, in his old age, had simply come to dislike horseback riding as a sport, and his cleverness lay in the fact that, without resorting to the violence of a bronco, he could get any member of the human race off his back if he so chose.

Despite the Gooferduster injustice, Cliff's stock jumped twenty points on the Manitou market. And even Herbie's, hitherto practically a bankrupt issue, sluggishly went up about five.

M
eantime, Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Bookbinder, like all New Yorkers in the summer, were steaming unhappily. In July and August the delusion that a city apartment is a home disappears, and the dwellers know it for what it is—a shelf; a small, complicated shelf of iron and brick, lined with plaster. The Bookbinders stayed out of their apartment as much as possible, supposedly to be in the fresh air. But there was no fresh air; only the blanket of steam, smoke, and a little oxygen that drops over New York after the Fourth of July fireworks and is not lifted until September.

The absence of the children made matters worse. True, the Bookbinders were not very demonstrative parents, yet once Herbie and Felicia were gone a shadow fell on their days. The father caught himself in his office in midday leaning back in his swivel chair, staring out of the window, and wondering why he was overworking himself and hurrying to the grave. The mother spent hours over old photographs. Their talk in the evenings was no longer all about the Place, but about the children, and about the forgotten times of courtship in their first years in America. The shaking up of their lives awoke memories, with an effect more often bitter than sweet. At the halfway mark of life it is not always pleasant to think of old times.

The consolation of the parents was letters. Twice a week Felicia wrote long accounts of her doings, sprinkled with adoring references to her counselor, Aunt Dora, in whom she had found the sum of human perfection. Herbie wrote every day. He had begun magnificently with four-page letters in his best English-composition manner. This burst of literary force lasted a week, and then the letters dwindled to dry one-page notes. These were soon followed by a series of penny postcards containing one or two sentences. Unsatisfying as the terse cards were, they did, at least, come each day without fail, and the mother and father commented happily on the devotion of their boy.

One evening Jacob Bookbinder came walking wearily home along Homer Avenue after a vexing day. For perhaps the twentieth time he had refought with his partner the question of selling the Place. Krieger, compelled by his voting agreement to side with his partner, was still trying to change Bookbinder's mind by nagging, a form of persuasion for which he was well equipped. The flood of disjointed language had all but carried away Bookbinder's resolve to stand by his claim based on the blue paper. Powers was offering the ice company for sale on the assumption that the memorandum was worthless; and Krieger was cowed, and wanted to give in and get the best possible terms. But there was a core of revulsion in Bookbinder's spirit against disposing of the fruit of his lifetime while he was in health. It kept him from agreeing to sell, but it did not save him from a heavy dose of Krieger's eloquence.

With the phrases “peaceable—I say this way—thirty years in the ice business” ringing in his ears, Herbie's father opened the door of his apartment to be faced with fresh woe. Mrs. Bookbinder was weeping in the kitchen, mumbling incoherently about a letter from Herbie. She pointed to an envelope on the table, the ink of which was blurred with fresh tears. Bookbinder seized the envelope and pulled out the letter with a shaking hand.

It was a blank page.

“I just came home from the market,” wailed the mother, “and found it in the letter box. My boy is sick; he can't even write. Oh, Jake, let's get in the car and go up there right now.”

The father puzzled over the empty sheet in silence for a minute. Then he said, “If he was so sick, how could he address the envelope? You see it's his handwriting.”

Mrs. Bookbinder snatched the envelope and examined it. Her husband was obviously right.