JIMMY, THE BRIDGE-TENDER
Pretty soon the big fat man stuck his head out of the window and he
shouted, “What’s the matter, is everybody deaf around here? Here, you
boys, where’s the bridgeman?” Honest, you’d think I had the bridgeman in
my pocket. I told him I didn’t know where the bridgeman was. Oh, but he
looked mad. He had an awful red face and white whiskers and I guess he
must have been used to ordering people around—anyway, he looked that
way.
He said, “Here I am on the down tide, the water going out every minute
and got to run up to North Bridgeboro yet. It’s a ——” he said what
kind of an outrage it was, but I wouldn’t tell you. Oh, he was hopping
mad. “I’ll get stuck hard and fast in the consarned mud,” he said, “if I
ain’t back and past this here Sleepy Hollow in forty minutes—that’s
what I will!”
I hollered up to him that I’d row across to Jimmy’s house and see if he
was asleep.
“_Asleep!_” that’s just the way he shouted. “Do bridgeman sleep on full
tide up this way? Don’t he know the harbor and waterway laws? I’ll make
it hot for ’im—I will.” And then he began pulling the whistle faster
and faster.
“Somebody must have been feeding him meat,” Westy whispered to me.
“He’s good and mad, that’s sure,” I said.
Even while we rowed across to Jimmy’s shanty I could hear him shouting
between the whistlings and saying he’d have the bridgeman up for
deserting on flood tide and putting him in the mud. And jiminy, I have
to admit that he was up against it, because the tide was running down
and by the time he got up to North Bridgeboro and back, it would maybe
be too low in the channel. One thing, Jimmy had a right to be there,
especially at flood tide, I knew that. But I guess the reason he wasn’t
was because nothing but little motor boats ever came up our river and
they can always crawl under.
Jimmy lives all by himself on account of being old and his people are
all dead. I said to Westy that maybe he was just asleep, so we knocked
and knocked, but nobody came to the door. Then I knew he wasn’t there at
all or else maybe he was dead.
“Anyway, we’d better find out,” I said, “because it’s mighty funny him
not being there, seeing that he never goes away anywhere.”
All the time we could hear that old grouch shouting about Bridgeboro and
our river and saying it was Sleepy Hollow and Dopeville, and the river
was a mud hole. But it isn’t and don’t you believe it.
“Anyway, I’m going to climb in through the shed window,” I said, “and
see if maybe Jimmy is sick or dead.” I could see that Pee-wee was—not
exactly scared but sort of anxious, and I was too, I have to admit it.
Westy and I got the shed window open, all right, because Jimmy wasn’t
careful about it, on account of not having anything worth stealing, I
suppose. I was kind of shaky when we went into the first room, because
that was where he slept and I thought maybe he’d be lying there dead.
But he wasn’t there at all. Just the same we stood there looking at each
other, and we were both kind of nervous, because Jimmy’s clothes were
lying all around on the bed and on the floor, and a chair was knocked
over, and it looked just as if somebody had been rummaging in the room
in a big hurry. The door into the other room was closed and, I have to
admit, I didn’t feel like opening it.
“I bet somebody’s robbed him and killed him,” Westy said, kind of low.
“That’s just what _I’m_ thinking,” I said, “and when we open that door
we’ll see him lying on the floor dead, hey?”
“Anyway, we have to open it,” he said.
“I’ll open it if you don’t want to,” I told him.
But, anyway, neither of us opened it. We just stood there and I felt
awful funny. It was all still and spooky and I could hear the clock
ticking, and I counted the ticks. It sounded spooky, going tick, tick,
tick.
Then Westy said, “Shall I open it?”
“Sure,” I said, “we’ve got to sometime.”
So he opened it just a little bit and then, all of a sudden, he pushed
it wide open and we looked into that other room.