Mary Emma & Company (3 page)

There were plenty of days on the ranches when I worked a lot harder than I had that day, but I don't remember ever being any more tired. That evening Uncle Frank tried to teach me how to play cribbage, but I went to sleep right in the middle of a game.

3

The Bad-Boy Book

I
DON'T
know how early it was when I first woke up the next morning—or even if it was morning—but I must have dozed off just a few seconds before Uncle Frank shook me and whispered, “Time to get up, fella. It's quarter after six, and I've got a bite to eat ready in the kitchen.”

Whewwww, it was cold that first morning when I started for work at the D & H Grocery, and the bicycle pushed as if it weighed half a ton. The cold was a different kind from what we had in Colorado. It made tears come into my eyes, and a drop on the end of my nose, but I needed both hands to keep the bike from tipping over, so I couldn't do anything about it.

The yellow light from the big kerosene lamp above the counter was shining out onto the snow as I came down the hill past the store windows, and Mr. Haushalter was building a fire in the pot-bellied stove that stood in the middle of the floor. It wasn't nearly as cold inside the store as it was outside, but he still had on his overcoat, and a red woolen muffler wound around his neck. He looked up as I opened the door, and said, “Well, well, well, right on time! That's the ticket! Nippy out this mornin', ain't it?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Shall I bring the bicycle inside?”

“No need, no need,” he told me. “John'll be along after a while, and he'll want it for goin' to get his orders. Hold on a minute whilst I go fetch some kerosene. Didn't bank this cussed fire high enough last night and it petered out on me.”

He didn't seem to be in any hurry, and sort of waddled—like a fat duck—as he went behind the counter and through a doorway into a back room. He was gone three or four minutes, then waddled back, holding an old quart measure in his hand. He opened the stove door, tossed in about a cupful of kerosene, and jumped back. It was a good thing that he jumped quick. In less than a tenth of a second the stove belched out a peck of ashes and a bushel of flame. The lid on top of it jumped three or four inches into the air, and a cloud of black smoke went up to the ceiling. “There,” Mr. Haushalter said as he kicked the stove door shut, “that ought to do the trick. Come get your hands warm, and I'll show you abouts; then you can sweep out some. Ain't had a boy for two-three months now, and the place is gettin' a mite dusty. Kitty-kitty-kitty.”

I was sure Mr. Haushalter had lit the stove that same way a good many times. The ceiling above it was as black as a coal bin, there was a gray layer of dust and ashes on the shelves nearby, and I'd noticed that the calico cat sneaked away under the cracker case when she saw him coming with the quart measure. As he talked to me he went back to the counter, reached under, and set up a two-gallon milk can.

“Nights in this kind of weather there ain't no sense puttin' it in the ice box; keeps sweet enough right under the counter,” he told me as he stooped down and brought up a chipped cereal bowl: the kind with red flowers on it that always came in Banner Oats. “Kitty-kitty-kitty,” he called again as he filled the bowl and set it on the floor. Then, as the cat crawled out from under the cracker case, he looked up at me and said, “Whenst you go to cleanin' up, don't sweep too close to the cracker case. Matilda's got a new litter of kittens under there—fourth litter she's had since spring if I recollect rightly. You can come along now if you're thawed out a mite; I'll show you abouts. Let me see, you said you was Frank Gould's nephew, but I don't recollect you sayin' what your first name is.”

“It's Ralph,” I said, “Ralph Moody.”

“Oh, then your ma is Frank's sister . . . or be you kin to his wife?”

“Mother's Mr. Gould's sister,” I said as I went behind the counter with him, but he didn't seem to be listening.

“Hmmmmm, Moody,” he said. “Hope you ain't
too
moody. John, he gets that way sometimes when business is off a dite, but I can't see much sense to it. Business comes and business goes, kind of like the tide. Can't expect it to be at flood all the time. Got a middle name?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “It's Owen.”

Mr. Haushalter stopped right where he was, and chuckled so hard that the ends of his muffler jiggled. “Owen . . . Owen,” he said, and then chuckled again. “Owen Moore, he went away, owin' more than he could pay. Owen Moore come back again, owin' more.” He didn't say it as if he were saying it to me, or as if he were making fun of my name. It was more as if he'd just thought of something he hadn't heard for a long, long time, and was saying it over to himself.

“Well, well, well,” he said as he started on again, “owin' is bad business.” He stopped again, right behind the candy case, looked at me sternly, and said, “So's stealin', and I don't want you to ever steal as much as one pea bean around here.”

I couldn't have felt much worse if he'd slapped me, but before I could think of a word to say he chuckled again and went on, “So there's the candy case, and yonder is the cookie case, and the cheese box, and there's apples in the barrel. A boy's got to eat, and there's nothin' will make a thief out of him any quicker'n an empty belly, so eat all you want. You'll prob'ly get sick on candy the first couple of days—most boys does—but you'll simmer down 'fore the week's out. Now there's just one more thing I want to tell you: that's only for yourself, and only right here in the store; you don't take stuff out with you, and you don't give it to nobody else—not even your own brothers and sisters. Is that fair?”

“Yes, sir,” I told him. “That's more than fair. And that way I could afford to work for . . .”

“Never mind the ‘sir,'” he broke in. “Everybody calls me Gus, and they call John, John. But if you've a mind to, you could call John, Mr. Durant; I have a notion he'd like it. Well, well, we've frittered away a lot of time here, ain't we? And here comes John now. You might as well get on with the sweepin'—and take care 'bout the kittens. Broom's in the corner, yonder by the coal scuttle. I'll show you 'round some more after school's over; you're commencin' today, ain't you?”

Mother had already taken Muriel and Philip over to the James School, and was waiting for me when I'd finished the sweeping and got back to Uncle Frank's house at quarter of nine. But I didn't like the cap she was holding in her hand a single bit. Two summers before, the cowhands on the Y-B Ranch had given me a genuine Stetson hat—not a ten-gallon, but a five. That kind of a hat will last for years and years if you take good care of it, and they'd bought one that was about a size too big, so it would still fit me after I'd grown some more. The only trouble was that I'd just about stopped growing, but the hat fit all right if I kept some folded paper inside the sweat band. I'd never had anything to wear that I liked as much as I liked that hat, and I'd taken real fine care of it, so that it was almost as good as new. But Mother didn't think it was the right kind of a hat for me to wear to school in Medford, and had bought me a stocking cap when she'd been in Boston the day before. She put it on me and pulled it down over my ears as soon as I came in. To make it worse, it was a girl's cap instead of a boy's; white, with a fluffy red ball on the top.

Of course, I didn't tell Mother I wouldn't wear the cap, but I came as close to it as I dared. I did tell her that the boys would think I was a sissy if I wore it, and that if a fellow got the name of sissy tacked onto him his first day in a new school he could almost never get over it. That's what made her let me wear my Stetson, but it didn't keep me out of trouble.

Just because I'd happened to get into a scrap or two, Mother always worried whenever I went into a new school. I know she was worried that day. As we walked down Spring Street and over Central Avenue toward the Franklin School, she told me, “It is against my better judgment to let you wear this hat the cowboys gave you. In Colorado it was quite all right, but here it will look simply ridiculous. I am letting you wear it this one day only, and for one reason only: so that you may not feel obliged to pick a fight in order to prove your manliness. I will not
tolerate
your fighting in this new school. Now what did you tell me the principal's name was?”

“Well, I think Mr. Haushalter said it was Jackman, but it might have been Jackson. I tried to remember it but . . .”

“Never mind!” Mother told me sharply. “Whatever it is, I shall tell him to let me know immediately if you give him the slightest particle of trouble. And I want you to keep your wits about you while we are talking to him. I believe your number-work, reading and geography are good enough so that you might go into the eighth grade instead of the seventh.”

Mother could almost always make friends with people the first time she met them, but she didn't make friends with Mr. Jackman that first day I went to school in Medford, and I didn't either. As soon as they'd told each other their names and she'd told him mine, she said, “Ralph has been in the seventh grade in Colorado, but his teacher thought he was nearly ready for eighth-grade work; his arithmetic, reading and geography are really quite good.”

Mr. Jackman was a big man; fat, with a shiny bald head and pink cheeks. He didn't look quite as old as Mother, but he was more than a foot taller, and he left us standing, so that she had to turn her face up when she talked to him. Before she had finished he was looking down at her with the same kind of a smile that Grace used to give me when she was going to call me a ninny. “Most mothers think their children are brighter than the average,” he said, “but you must remember, Mrs. Moody, that our schools here in Massachusetts are quite advanced as compared to a state such as Colorado.”

From the way Mother's face turned pale I knew she was provoked, but she smiled right back and said, “I am well aware of a mother's weaknesses, but I believe that if you give Ralph an examination you will find . . .”

Mr. Jackman didn't let her finish, but looked down at me and asked, “What is the result of twelve times twelve, divided by thirteen, times five, divided by three?”

I got along all right until I came to fifty-five and five-thirteenths, then I got a little bit mixed up in trying to divide it by three, and Mr. Jackman mixed me up more by saying, “Come, come, boy! What is the answer?”

“I don't know,” I told him. “I got mixed up when I got into the thirteenths. In Colorado we only had . . .”

He didn't let me tell him that we had only up to twelfths, but shook his head and said, “Hmmph! Well, where is Narragansett Bay?”

I'd never even heard of Narragansett Bay, but I didn't want to seem stupid, and it did have sort of a French sound to it, so I just made a guess and said, “On the coast of France.”

That time Mr. Jackman laughed right out loud, shook his head again, and told Mother, “We'll try him in the seventh grade, but I have my doubts.”

By that time Mother's face was plain white and she had her lips pinched together. “Very well,” she said, and started to leave the office. At the door she turned back and said, “Mr. Jackman, I shall expect you to let me know if you have the slightest trouble with Ralph—either in his studies or otherwise.” Then she walked out without saying another word.

I didn't have a bit of trouble in class; my teacher was a good one, the reading was easy, and the arithmetic problems were in quarters and eighths instead of thirteenths. But at recess time I didn't get along very well. It all started over my hat. We hadn't been out in the yard two minutes before some one of the boys knocked it off. Then, as fast as I could pick it up, brush it off, and put it on again, some other boy knocked it off. In Colorado I'd have tried to lick the first boy who did it, but in Medford there were two reasons why I didn't dare. Mother always meant it when she said she wouldn't tolerate anything, and besides, Mr. Jackman was out there in the school yard with us. I knew he couldn't have helped seeing what was going on, and I was sure he'd stop the boys as soon as he saw that I wasn't going to fight—but he didn't.

About the tenth time my hat got knocked off the folded paper I kept inside the sweat band came out. Of course, that made it a size too big for my head, and the next boy jerked it down over my face so hard I was afraid he'd tear the brim. Before I straightened it out and put it back on I looked all around and said, “The next one that touches my hat is going to get poked in the nose.”

Al Richardson was the one who did it, and so quick that I didn't have a chance to get my fists doubled up before the hat brim was jerked clear down to my chin. To make it worse, the sweat band caught on my nose when I tried to pull the hat up, and I had to stand there like a cat trying to get its head out of a salmon can while all the boys laughed at me. That would have made me mad enough but, on top of it, I could hear Mr. Jackman laughing, too. His voice was high, like a woman's, and his laugh was almost a squeal.