Mary Emma & Company (19 page)

20

Never Pick on an Alderman's Son

T
HE cart Philip and I picked out was a good one—red—and it really didn't cost us anything. Tuesday was a bright, warm day, and when we came home with the cart Mother was hanging out clothes in the back yard. After we'd talked about the cart for a minute or two, she said, “My, isn't this a lovely day! Spring is really in the air, and it always makes my fingers itch to get into the soil. We must get our garden started right away. If we could manage to raise ourselves a good crop of vegetables this summer we'd save many a dollar on our grocery bill.”

The yard behind our house was a big one, and the lawn went only halfway to the back fence. Anyone who had ever been a farmer could see that the space beyond the lawn had once been a garden, but that it hadn't been planted for several years, and that the soil wasn't very fertile. The dried weed stalks from the year before were spindly, and even the witch grass was thin and wirelike. “I'm afraid we wouldn't get very much of a crop without at least two loads of good barnyard dressing,” I told Mother. “Don't you notice how spindly the old weeds are? With as much rain as they have here those stalks ought to be as big around as your thumb, so the land must be pretty well worn out.”

Mother looked at the dried weeds for a minute and said, “I'm afraid you're right, Son, but a good garden will be well worth a little expense. Doesn't Mr. Young, the man who delivered our furniture for us, keep cows and sell dressing?”

“Yes, ma'am,” I told her, “but it costs a lot of money. Al's father got a load for their roses, and it cost two dollars and a quarter.”

“Oh, my!” Mother said. “Two dollars and a quarter! Why, when I was a child . . .” She seemed to have forgotten what she was going to say, and just stood looking at the big oblong of brown, sandy loam. “Hmmmm, that would be four dollars and a half for two loads,” she said at last, “and the seed would doubtlessly cost another dollar, but a good garden would be worth much more than five fifty to us. Though I hate to spend the money right now, a garden is something that can't wait. The peas should already be in the ground, and within a week the soil will be warm enough for string beans and turnips and carrots. Tomorrow noon you might drop by Mr. Young's house, Ralph, and tell him we'd like two loads of dressing as soon as he can deliver it.”

“Now that we have a cart I think I know how we can do better than that,” I told her. “Lots of people around here keep hens, and they have to keep them in coops all winter, and in the spring the coops have to be cleaned out, and I'll bet almost anybody would give the dressing for getting their hencoop cleaned out!”

“Oh, not with the new cart we're going to use for delivering clean laundry!” Mother said.

“It wouldn't hurt the cart,” I told her. “We'd take boxes along, lined with newspaper, and I'll bet we wouldn't spill a crumb in the cart.”

“We'll talk about it more tonight,” Mother said, “but you boys had better run right along to school so you won't be late.”

Philip and I walked as far as the James School together, and he thought my idea about hencoops was a good one, but he was sure Mother wouldn't let us do it. “Well, she didn't say positively no,” I told him, “and if we should try it and it should happen to work out all right, she might never say it at all. Why don't you go over and ask Mrs. Hutchinson about her hencoop right after school? They have quite a few hens and no garden. If she says all right, you could tell her that we'll clean it right after supper. I don't think Mother would talk about dressing at the table, so we might get the job all done before she knows anything about it.”

Philip was so anxious to use his new cart that he didn't wait for me to help him. The minute school was out he went over to see Mrs. Hutchinson, and when she told him it would be all right he started to work on her hencoop. By the time I came home from work he had the job all finished, and about four bushels of good dressing piled up in our garden. All Mother said about it was, “My, that ought to make us a nice fertile garden!”

By the end of the week Philip had cleaned four more hencoops, all by himself. Our garden had all the dressing it needed, and we had more than half of it planted.

With one exception, April was about the luckiest month we ever had. Mother got two more customers, our garden grew to beat the band, and Grace's cake won first prize at the Sunday School picnic on Lexington Day. The exception was my getting my name down on the bad-boy book again, and it wasn't really my fault. After we got our cart Philip and Muriel picked up all the baskets of laundry and made the deliveries. He always pulled the cart and she walked beside it, to steady the basket and the boxes of fancy things when they had to go up and down over curbs. They'd never had any trouble, but when I knew they had a big load, I tried to keep an eye on them a bit. Of course, I couldn't do it all the time, but if I was out delivering an order I'd ride the bike a little out of my way to use streets I knew they'd be following.

The week before the Sunday School picnic Mrs. Humphrey sent a big basketful, with lots of fancy things in it, so when it was finished Grace had to pack it in six or seven suit boxes. We had several customers in the store when Philip and Muriel went past with the delivery, but I noticed that they were having some trouble with slipping boxes when they crossed Spring and started up Washington Street. Between customers I kept an eye on them as they went up Washington, and when they turned out of sight down Otis Street I began to worry about them. As soon as we'd taken care of all the customers I asked Mr. Haushalter if I could take the bicycle and ride up to see how Philip and Muriel were getting along.

Except for getting my name down on the book again, it was lucky that I went. When I turned the corner at Otis, Philip and Muriel were only halfway down the block, and they were having plenty of trouble. Three boys were laughing and shouting as they knocked boxes off the cart, Philip and Muriel were both trying to push them away, but with three against two they weren't doing any good. Just as I got there one of the boys grabbed the side of the cart and tipped it over, spilling the whole basketful of clean laundry out into the street.

I was so mad I was seeing red, and the boys were so busy they didn't see me coming. Maybe that's how I managed to get in as many good licks as I did, right at the start. The boys were all bigger than we were, and in a fair fight they could have licked us easy enough, but that wasn't a fair fight: I didn't tell them, “Put your fists up!” before I swung, Philip kicked one of them in the shins, and Muriel used a stick. Of course, a girl couldn't have been expected to fight with her fists, and the stick Muriel picked up wasn't much bigger than a ruler, but she waded into those boys as if she were swinging a sword. And Philip couldn't be blamed very much for kicking. He'd never been in a real fight before, there were two boys punching at him, and he was just fighting back with everything he had.

I don't think the whole fight lasted more than two minutes, but it was plenty hot while it did last. And it was the bicycle that really stopped it. I didn't have time to stand it up against a tree when I got there, but just jumped off and let it fall in the street. Then I went mainly after the boy who had tipped the cart over. He was a little bigger than the other two, and as I fought with him he tried to angle around so he could tramp on the spilled clothes. But Muriel beat him away with her stick, and I kept punching at his face and stomach until I had him going backwards.

If you can keep the one you're fighting going backwards he can't get set to punch very hard, and you can get in some real good licks. I did, and with every one he kept going faster until his feet got tangled up in the front wheel of the bicycle. When he started to fall he twisted around to save himself, but he didn't get his hands up quick enough, and landed face-down on the brick paving. I'd bloodied his nose and got a good sock into one eye before he fell, but whatever I hadn't done to his face, the bricks did. And they took all the fight out of him. Before I could get around the bike he scrambled to his feet, bawling, and ran toward Central Avenue. And the other boys ran after him.

Until the fight was over neither Philip nor I knew that we'd been hit, or that ladies on both sides of the street were standing on their front piazzas, shouting for us to stop. As soon as the boys had gone the ladies came running to help us pick up the clothes, and to see how much we had been hurt. One of them told me if I'd pinch my nose tight for a minute it would stop bleeding, and another wiggled Philip's front teeth to see if they were loosened enough that he ought to go to a dentist. There's one thing I'll have to say for those boys: they didn't hit Muriel, but they couldn't have missed Philip's face or mine with many punches. We were both a little messed up, and three spokes were broken out of the front wheel of the D & H bicycle.

Of course, there was nothing we could do but take the mussed and dirty laundry home. I didn't stop at the store, because I didn't want to tell Mr. Haushalter about the bicycle right then, or to have him see me looking the way I did. Mother didn't scold me at all for getting into the fight, and Grace said for us not to feel bad about their having to do most of the laundry over again. She held a cold, wet cloth against my eye, so it wouldn't turn too black, and she was real careful not to hurt my nose when she washed the blood off it.

It was nearly an hour before I'd taken a bath, changed my clothes and got back to the store. I hadn't finished telling Mr. Haushalter that I was sorry about the bicycle, and that I'd pay for getting it fixed, when Cop Watson came in. “So it's another fight you've been in,” he said to me, and he said it as if he had come to arrest me.

“Yes, sir,” I told him, “but it wasn't my fault.”

“Divil a bit, it wasn't!” he said. “It was you what flung the first punch, wasn't it?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, “but I had to. There were three boys knocking boxes off our laundry cart, and one of them tipped it over.”

“Ah, go on with you! Don't be givin' me none o' your fairy tales!” he said roughly. “They was walkin' down the street and your brother and sister was takin' up the whole sidewalk with their wagon, and when the boys tried to squeeze past a box tumbled off, so you come up from behind and go to slingin' fists and beatin' 'em with a club.”

“I didn't either!” I told him. “I didn't have a thing in my hands, and I wouldn't have hit them if they hadn't knocked the boxes off the cart and tipped it over on purpose.”

I was standing behind the counter with Mr. Haushalter, and Cop Watson came over and leaned on it. He bent over and looked right into my good eye for a minute, not hard, but just steady. Then he said, “Lad, you're in trouble up to your neck, and 'twill only go harder with you if you lie about it. One o' the boys has a'ready been up to the station house with his old man, and the chief's after tellin' me the poor lad's face is beat to a pudd'n'. And that's not all, at all. There's a lump the size of a baseball on the top of his noggin, and a welt acrost the side of his jaw where he was beat with a club.”

“Then he's the one that tipped the wagon over,” I told Cop Watson, “and he's the one I saw knock the first box off the cart. But I didn't hit him with a club, and if his face is all beat to a pudding it's because he landed on it when he fell over the bicycle. He was the one that started the trouble, not me! And if you don't believe me you ask any of those ladies up on Otis Street. There were three or four of them standing on their front piazzas and shouting for us to stop fighting.”

I don't think Cop Watson believed me even then, but Mr. Haushalter helped me out by telling him he'd never caught me lying, and that I'd never acted quarrelsome.

“Well, I'll mosey up the line and have a word with the ladies,” Cop Watson told him, “but mind you, Gus, this is no small offense at all, at all, and I can't be brushin' it over easy. The chief's het up like a teakettle. And don't be forgettin': the lad's name has been wrote down in the book twice before this time. You keep him here in the store till I get back; I might be havin' to take him up to the station house.”

Just as Cop Watson was going out the doorway, Mr. Haushalter called to him and asked, “Who were they, kids from around the neighborhood?”

Cop Watson turned and told him, “No. From Edgeworth, bad cess to 'em. And, worst of all, it had to be an alderman's son what got the tar pasted out of him.”

He started to go on out, then turned back again and told me, “If ever you hit a kid again, for glory's sake pick on a President's son, an alderman can make it forty times as rough on you.”

I watched Cop Watson all the way up Washington Street, until he turned the corner at Otis. And I was still watching an hour later when he turned the corner to come back. He wasn't hurrying, but walking with his head down, and his flat feet made him roll a bit from side to side as he came. I didn't want to have him take me up to the station house, and with every slow step he took my heart seemed to beat faster.

“Well, lad,” he told me when he came into the store, “you've got them ladies' sympathy all right, all right, but that's all you've got; and sympathy'll never, never in the world rub your name off of that book. There wasn't a livin' one o' them seen the start of it. When they heard the hollerin' and run out the fight was on, but they've cleared you of wieldin' the club. That little sister of yours must be a Tartar when her dander's up. I'll not be takin' you up to the station house when I go in to report, but stay to home this evenin' I'll maybe drop by for a word with your mother.”

As Cop Watson talked to me he took out his jackknife, opened it, and whittled a chew off his plug of B-L. After he'd tucked it away in his cheek, he looked at some notes he had in his helmet, brushed his big white mustache back with a hand, and started out. With one foot on the doorstep, he turned back to me and said gently, “For glory's sake, lad, watch your step.” Then he went out, and I had to swallow hard, because my throat hurt.