KEEKIE JOE
It required but a few seconds for Keekie Joe to decide to run true to
form. The situation was an unusual one, the missile was a delicious
morsel, and was nothing more nor less than what he had demanded. But
still it had been thrown at him and Keekie Joe elected to consider it
as a shot fired by the enemy.
"Whatcher chuckin' things at me fer?" he demanded, descending from the
fence and approaching Pee-wee with a terrible look of menace. He had
been careful, however, to pick the jawbreaker up and put it in his
mouth.
"Didn't you say you wanted one?" Pee-wee asked. "Didn't you just put
it in your mouth?"
"Never you mind wot I done," said Keekie Joe. "D'yer think yer cin
sass me?"
"I'll show you how to catch if you'll say you'll be a scout," Pee-wee
answered. There could be no better illustration of his desperation as
a scout missionary than this artless proposition to the sentinel of
Barrel Alley.
"Who can't catch?" Keekie Joe demanded.
"You can't."
"Me?"
"Yes, you."
"Yer dasn' say it again."
"You can't catch, you can't catch, you can't catch," said Pee-wee.
There seemed nothing left now but to break off diplomatic relations
altogether. The issue was clear. But Keekie Joe did not plunge his
outlandish person into war.
"If I didn' have ter lay keekie I'd slam yer one," he announced.
"What's the use of giving you candy if we can't be friends?" Pee-wee
said. "Gee whiz, I wouldn't care how much candy fellers threw at me;
the more the merrier. They can throw mince pies at me for all I care,"
he added. "If you want to be a scout I'll show you how and we can
start a patrol maybe."
[Illustration: Keekie Joe interviews Pee-wee]
The word patrol seemed to suggest something ominous to Keekie Joe, for
he glanced furtively up and down the alley, and then waved his hand
reassuringly to the group in the middle of the field.
Pee-wee perceived now that the scene of the crap game had been selected
with keen military wisdom, affording a safe avenue of precipitate
retreat in any direction. Disaster could have resulted only from a
surrounding host. Officer McMahon, the tyrant on this squalid beat,
was large. But he was not large enough to surround the camp.
The crap-shooters of Barrel Alley had been surprised in every nook and
corner of their neighborhood until they had hit upon the bold expedient
of playing in an open lot, reposing their trust in a sentinel. It
would not have been well for the sentinel to relax his vigilance.
"What I want ter join them scout kids fer?" Keekie Joe inquired. "Der
yer call me a sissy?"
"Do you call the scouts sissies?" Pee-wee inquired angrily. "They have
more fun than you do, that's one sure thing. If you don't want to join
you don't have to but you don't have to get mad about it. Gee whiz,
you're always mad, kind of. I guess you got up out of the wrong side
of the bed, that's what _I_ think."
This was not true, for indeed Keekie Joe did not sleep in a bed at all;
he slept on a heap of old inner tubes in Ike Levine's tire repair shop.
He was about to resent this slander from Pee-wee with a glowering look
and a threat, when suddenly something happened, which precipitately
terminated his performance of his official functions. His father
called him from a tenement across the street, accompanying his summons
with such dismal predictions of what would happen if he did not obey
that the official sentinel had no choice but to desert his post.
"If I have ter come over there'n git yer," the father said, "I'll----"
Poor Joe glanced at his father in the window, then at the gamesters in
the field. It was evident that chastisement of the severest character
awaited him in any case. For a moment he had a wild notion of making a
spectacular retreat along the street, crawling through a broken part of
the fence beyond the range of parental vision, and resuming his duties
of sentinel at another vantage point. Such a maneuver would at least
postpone a reckoning with his father and enable him to be faithful to
his trust. A very unworthy trust it may have been but his one thought
was to be faithful to it. And there you have Keekie Joe in a
nutshell . . .