The Fires of Spring (14 page)

The Pennsylvania and Reading was approaching the curve when this accident took place. David, in grim fixation, watched the four figures flying in the sunlight. He forgot to decelerate his train, and it jumped the track. But everyone was concerned with the greater accident, and he was not fined. He got some boys to heave the cars back onto the track. When he finally got the train into the station—his passengers stayed behind to watch the ambulance come for the bodies—Max Volo was waiting for him.

“They’ll be closing you up pretty quick, kid,” Max said.

“Why?” David asked, confused.

“Oh, they always do!” Max said. “Every time a car goes
off the edge, they close the Hurricane. And this place, too. Don’t want nobody pokin’ around. In fifteen minutes you’ll be my cashier!”

“I don’t want to …” David began.

“Skip it, kid!” Max interrupted. “In a year you’ll be one of the best crooks in the business.” He winked and hurried off.

A messenger from the cashiers’ office checked David’s money and tickets. “Report to Max at the loganberry stand,” he directed. “Take over there for the rest of the day.”

When David reached the cashier’s booth he looked for Max Volo, but the little man was nowhere to be seen. So David opened the door, squeezed himself into the booth, and climbed upon the high chair. His right leg struck something soft. Below him, huddled in a corner, was Max Volo. His quick, beady eyes smiled up at David. “Now we can talk!” he whispered. “Cross your legs if that tall spotter comes along. Here’s a fistful of old tickets. We’ll split fifty-fifty.”

“I don’t want this job!” David protested. But he did not then or ever protest sufficiently to have Max arrested. No one ever did that, for Max made it perfectly clear to everyone who worked with him that if even so much as a word leaked out to the Park police, he, Max Volo, would …

For more than an hour and a half Max huddled in the corner of the booth and explained to David the possibilities the boy would have from either stealing money from the Pennsylvania and Reading, or, better still, moving into the loganberry stand as Max’s permanent cashier. “At the railroad it’s easier money, sure. Alone you could probably knock off ten bucks a day and nobody ever know about it. But that’s tops. You can’t go any higher than that, see? Now here we do a big business,” he droned on in a persuasive whisper.

“The spotter’s coming!” David warned. The tall man purchased a ticket, looked slyly at the number, watched to see if the ticket was torn up by the clerk, ducked behind a tree to write down the number, and passed on. Max Volo knew the thin man was a spotter. He bribed a clerk in the cashiers’ office to find out.

“He’s gone!” David said.

“But here!” Max resumed. “Here we do a big business. On a good day $450.00. On such a day we can knock down 10 per cent, easy. That’s twenty-two fifty for you. Of course, you give me two-fifty for the fix. That’s only fair.”

Half accepting the idea, half rejecting it, David asked, “Won’t they find out?”

“It’s all fixed!” Max explained. He shifted position and worked his face closer to David’s. “About the tickets, I know the nights they check to see if any old tickets are mixed in. So, watch! We never sell yesterday’s tickets that day. Only the tickets that I can palm during the first couple hours. I got a million ways to slip ’em to you. So when they check, they find only that day’s tickets! On the other days, I slip you a big bundle of old ones. Keep feedin’ them tickets out, kid. You get rid of that bunch, I can get you lots more.”

“But don’t they count the loganberry?” David said.

“I got it all fixed!” Max replied. “We water it. Then I slip in some extra citric acid. I can get it wholesale. For the carbonation I get the truck driver to leave four extra cylinders a week. He steals ’em from his company. Nobody knows a thing about it. I pay him for ’em, slip him five bucks a week, and who knows?”

“I’ll take a loganberry!” a customer said. David looked up in astonishment. It was Mr. Stone.

“They put me here!” David muttered, handing Mr. Stone a new ticket. The cashier tilted his straw hat back, reached through the window and grasped David’s left hand. Forcing it open he saw the fifty-odd old tickets the boy had been palming. He closed David’s hand over the old tickets. “That’s a good way to the penitentiary, kid!” he said. He kicked the booth a violent blow. “I suppose that’s Max down there. His regular game.” Mr. Stone stared at David. “You get A in arithmetic, they tell me. But you can’t see this is the penitentiary for you!” He tore up his ticket and threw it back into the booth.

That night Max Volo received $16.40 plus $4.00 for David’s share of the various fixes. David took home $12.40 plus another $2.85 for short-changing. He now had $57.50 hidden in the poorhouse. After he had cashed his day’s take he sat for a long time in his room behind closely locked Door 8. He stayed awake until almost four o’clock writing a poem. David called this poem “People in the Air.” Five people were floating in the air. But nothing bad happened to them. For they were floating idly above the earth, above the lilac bushes. They just floated off and never came back.

After David had worked on the railroad about six weeks the spotter turned in his report: “Harper seems to be more honest
than any boy we have had on this job. As you are well aware, only a boy’s honesty prevents him from stealing what he will. I judge that Harper has never taken much more than forty of fifty cents a day. Even on days when the total reported receipts were above fifty dollars, his returns checked very closely with my estimates. Recommended: That he be given the job at the loganberry stand.” The spotter received fifteen dollars from Max Volo for that last line. The preceding portion of the report was unbiased fact. David Harper, when not working with Max Volo, was a reasonably honest cashier. That made him a phenomenon at the Park.

David had no wish to work for Volo, but he accepted the job. He had been in the booth half an hour when a pimply-faced boy bought a ticket and gave him a copy of
Passionate Love
. From the feel of the cheap magazine David guessed that it contained two bundles of old tickets. He nonchalantly read the cover page. “Beasts in the Night!” A pale, frantic girl wept in terror while a hairy hand ripped away her dress. The men working in the Park loved such magazines. He slipped the tickets into his lap. Then he looked up in horror. The tall spotter was watching him!

“What you got there, son?” the man asked.

“A magazine!” David said weakly. This was it! This was the way they arrested cashiers. No fuss. He had seen the young fellow at the popcorn stand get it. They just walked him away.

“Let me see it a minute,” the spotter said quietly.

Sweating profusely, David lifted the magazine up to the money board and slipped it through the opening. He kept the tickets in his lap, squeezed between his legs. He tried not to show any emotion. The tall man studied the magazine a moment. “Just as I thought!” he said. “This magazine’s mine!” He showed David the name written painstakingly across the top: “Michael McDermott.” He rolled the magazine up. “Sorry, kid! But somebody swiped that magazine when I was eating lunch. I’ll give it to you when I’m finished.” He smiled slowly at David. The boy tried to smile back, but couldn’t. He saw that the man hadn’t been studying his name on the cover at all. He had been looking into the folds of the magazine where Max Volo had secreted the tickets. The man knew David had old tickets for sale. And David knew he knew. The spotter smiled a long, agonizing, slow smile. “I’ll be back!” he said.

David could hardly see, he was so excited and frightened.
There was nothing he could do with the tickets. There they were, in his lap. And the spotter was coming back! Suddenly the boy had an idea. He started coughing, violently. A guard hurried up. “What’s the matter, kid?” the guard asked.

“A cracker!” David replied weakly.

“I’ll get you a drink!” the guard said.

Feigning not to have understood, David left his booth, a forbidden thing to do, and rushed over to the loganberry stand. “Hey, son! Back in your box!” the guard cried. But before he could reach David, the boy had slipped Max Volo the two wads of tickets. In massive relief he drank a glass of cold water. It tasted wonderful.

But in less than half an hour the same pimply-faced boy was back with another magazine,
Great Crimes
. In it David could feel the two wads of tickets. He permitted them to slip into his lap. In terrible confusion he tried to hide the tickets but found that Max had enclosed a note: “Don’t be a sucker! That spotter’s fixed!” David looked across the gravel roadway to the loganberry stand. Max was grinning at him.

David was growing up. He was almost fifteen now, strong in the shoulders, long in reach. There was a slight growth of hair on his chin. At night, on the trolley, he often had a great urge to reach out and wrestle with some boy. Occasionally he fought on the trolley, and the conductor laughed until the punches became too rough. “That’s enough!” the conductor would cry, and then David and the other boy would swap one or two real blows, as hard as they could swing, furious, deadly socks. They felt good, even when they hurt. Then the boys would sink back in their seats and each would think: “I could lick that guy … if I had to.” David ate good meals now, with his stolen money, but he was always hungry. Walking up the poorhouse lane late at night, after the trolley had hurried over the hill to Doylestown, he would sometimes dart quickly from shadow to shadow as if he were an Indian scout. He would stop sharply, whirl about to meet an unknown assailant, double up, lash out at the darkness, and then step calmly back into the road. He knew exactly what he would do if attacked. Thinking of this, he would come upon the women’s building, long and gray in the night, and he would smile. He would think of how Aunt Reba had beaten him, and he would smile.

At Paradise he began to watch the girls. They came to the
Park in summer dresses and stood quietly by the loganberry stand while their escorts bought tickets. There would be thin lines of dew upon their lips, and David wondered what it would be like to kiss such lips. Then he became awkwardly ashamed of his thoughts and contented himself with reading
Passionate Love
and staring at the illustrations. Sometimes he would look up suddenly and see the wind tugging at some girl’s dress, and the form of her living body was a million times more exciting than the stories in
Passionate Love
. And once a girl from Philly had arranged to meet a young man at the loganberry stand. He was late, and she stood nervously away from the crowd so that finally David spoke to her. She blushed angrily, against her will, and she looked so lovely that David said, “How’d you like a drink?” and she agreed, and they joked with one another, and David said, “I’ll bet he’s not coming at all,” and she blushed again and said, “I’ll tell you what! If he don’t come, you and me’ll make a night of it!” David’s knees grew weak, and through the bars of his cage he held her hand, but the young man came and glared at David, and the night was empty, so that on the trolley going home David really slugged another boy and drew blood.

Max Volo, who was a very clever man, noticed these things about the growing boy and whispered one day. “You oughta come down to the Coal Mine for a while. That’d fix you up!” David, thinking Max referred only to the immense, dark ride, agreed. Max’s eyes grew bright as he whispered instructions: “Then you duck right in under the waterfall!”

The Coal Mine was famous for its two fearful drops through gloomy darkness and for the imitation waterfall which carried a constant burden of green and brackish water across imitation rocks. David walked there slowly and studied the waterfall. Magically, from behind it, Max Volo whistled to him. David looked sharply and saw that a door led through the papier-mâché rocks. “This way!” Max called.

David entered the narrow doorway and about him saw the gaunt outlines of scaffolding which sustained the flimsy structure. Water dripped from old and rotting beams, and mossy slime clung to every board. Far above him, a car bearing a few hardy celebrants roared along the lofty tracks and then plunged into the darkness. The occupants screamed, and David could hear the car roar past on a lower level.
The scaffolding trembled, and moisture was shaken loose. Then the Coal Mine was silent again, and very black.

“Hssst!” Max whistled. “This way!” He led David along a path of planking and suddenly opened a door through the scaffolding. A bright line shone into the darkness and illuminated the slimy water at David’s feet. “Well!” Max announced proudly. “Here we are!” but before David could enter the room Max whispered harshly. “It’s three bucks, please.”

When he had been paid, he led David into a fairly large room. Originally intended as a storehouse for extra cars used only on Sundays, it had been rebuilt by Max into a crudely sumptuous entertainment room. Three girls, one of them wearing almost nothing, were seated in heavy chairs. A brakeman from the Coal Mine was sitting in the lap of the girl with almost no clothes on. The two other girls rose to greet Max, and to his astonishment David saw that the prettier of the two was that same big Betty who, at the swimming hole, had insisted that the boys stone and arrest old Toothless Tom.

“Do you know Betty?” Max asked.

“He’s the poorhouse kid!” Betty laughed. “Hear you’re in fast time, kid? How you like it?”

David smiled. Max answered for him. “He’s doin’ fine, Betty. And how are you doin’? Miss me today?” She came over to him and threw her arms about his neck. He placed both hands in the small of her back and drew her warmly to him. Then he moved his quick hands to her breasts. Betty twisted away. “She’s good for me!” Max told David.

The brakeman raised his head from kissing the girl in the big chair. “Janet says hello, kid!” The girl waved a bare arm and grinned at David. She was a handsome girl, big, broad-shouldered. Her legs were bare to where they lost themselves beneath the brakeman. They were very white.

“It’s a nice place we got here,” Max said to David as Betty and the third girl started to make some sandwiches. “I make more money here than I do anywhere else.” He nodded to the smaller of the girls making sandwiches. “That’s Nora. She’s a nice little thing.”