"You see, it's this way," and he leaned forward and put his hand on my
knee.. "it's women--a woman" ... he paused, I nodded to him to go on,
feeling very dramatic and important....
"It's Mrs. Jenkins, the widow, that has her hooks in him ... around
where he boards ... and, to be frank with you, he's going it so strong
with her that he's sick and rundown ... and not so right, at times, _up
here_!" and Hartman tapped his forehead with his forefinger
significantly....
"Now, you're the nearest one to him around here," he went on, "and I'll
tell you what we were going to do ... his lodge, of which I'm a member,
was going to give him a trip, to separate him from her, and cure him ...
you come back just pat....
"Has your daddy any relatives that can afford to entertain him, out in
the West, where you came from?"
"Yes, one of my uncles, his brother, is very well off, and would be glad
to take him in ... in fact any of the folks back home would," my voice
sounded hollow and far off as I answered.
"You're a pretty smart lad ... do you want to go back with him when he
goes?"
"No, Mr. Hartman."
"Well, we can tip the porter to take care of him ... but why don't you
want to go with him, we will foot your expenses?"
"I have other things to do," I answered vaguely.
He gave a gesture of impatience....
* * * * *
There was a hush in the house, as I stepped softly up the stairs. The
catch of the front door was back....
First I went to my room and found all my books intact ... in better
condition even, than when I was home with them ... there was not a speck
of dust anywhere. Evidently my father was not too sick to keep the place
clean ... but then, I meditated he would attend to that, with his last
effort.
My books were my parents, my relatives. I had been born of them, not of
my own father and mother. My being born in the flesh was a mere accident
of nature. My father and mother happened to be the vehicle.
But the place was so quiet it perturbed me.
"Pop!" I called, going toward his bed-room.
The door leading into it slowly opened. The little, dark widow was in
there with him.
"Hush! your father is asleep."
A hatred of both him and her shot up quick in my heart. I sensed their
abandonment to the sheerly physical, till it took in their whole
horizon. It was utterly ignoble. I had a vision of all humanity, living,
for the most part, merely for food and sex, letting art and poetry and
beauty and adventure pass by, content if they only achieved the bare
opportunity of daily wallowing in their mire.
I was bad and mean enough, but the conception of a single poem in my
brain, till it found birth on paper, was, I swore, bigger and finer
than all this world-mess at its best. Also there was in me somewhat the
thwarted, sinister hatred of the celibate....
* * * * *
"You mustn't bother your father now," little Mrs. Jenkins interposed, as
I started in, "you must let him rest for awhile, and not wake him."
Through the door, half open, I caught a glimpse of a hollow, wax-white
face ... he looked as if all the blood had been let out of his body,
little by little. The little, pretty, dark woman looked like a crafty
animal ... there was a beady shine of triumph, which she could not
conceal, in her eyes, as she opposed my entering. I smelt the pungent
smell of her physical womanhood. There was a plumpness about her body, a
ruddiness to her lips, that gave me the phantasy that, perhaps, the
moment before, she had drunk of my father's blood, and that she was
preventing me from going in to where he lay till a certain tiny, red
puncture over his jugular vein had closed.
"You forget, Mrs. Jenkins, that he is my father."
"You shan't go in ... please, Johnnie ... let him sleep just a little
longer ... as soon as he wakes he asks for another drink!"
"And who put him in this state?" I charged directly, vividly remembering
what Hartman had said....
"What, you don't mean to insinuate?"--she gasped.
"I mean nothing, only that I have come home to take care of my father,
till his lodge takes charge of him, and that, for the present, I want
you to please leave me alone with him."
Her small, black pupils dilated angrily. But she did not press the point
of her staying. She had put her hand on my arm cajolingly, but I had
shook it off with such evident disgust--founded partly and secretly on a
horror of physical attraction for her--that drew my morbid, starved
nature--
"Very well!... but I'll be back this afternoon, early. When he wakes up
and asks for a drink of whiskey ... starts out to get one ... draw him a
glass of water from the faucet, and take your oath that it's whiskey ...
he'll believe you and drink it!"
And she departed, an odor of strong perfume in her wake.
* * * * *
Had this planet of earth been populated from without?... there were
evidently two races on it--the race of men--the race of women--men had
voyaged in from some other world in space women had done the like from
their world ... to this world, alien to both of them. And here a
monstrous thing had brought them together like an interlocking
fungus--their sex-union ... a function that monstrously held together
two different species of animals that should not even be on meeting
terms.
Thus my morbid fancy ran, as I entered slowly my father's room.
He slept.
On a chair by his bed lay a copy of _Hamlet_, his favourite
Shakespearean play. I picked it up, read in it, waiting for him to wake,
while he breathed laboriously.
I became absorbed in the play ... I must write a poem, some time, called
"Hamlet's Last Soliliquy."
* * * * *
My father was awake.
I did not know how long he had been so, for his breathing had not
changed and the only difference from his sleeping state was that his
eyes stared, wide and glassy, at the ceiling, as if they comprehended
nothing.
A feeling of horror crept over my body. This was more than I had counted
on.. my father, helpless on his back and his wits off gathering wool....
"Father!" I put my hand on a talon of his.
He turned his head slightly. Smiled vacuously.
"Father!"
A perturbation clouded his eyes ... that painful struggle toward
comprehension observed in an infant's face.
"Who are you? What do you want?"
"I'm your son--Johnnie!... and I've come back to take care of you."
"Johnnie is away ... far off ... on the sea ... in a ship."
And he sighed and turned his face to the wall as if the thought troubled
him, and he wished to dismiss it. Then, in a moment, he whirled about,
changed and furious. He rose to a sitting posture ... swung his legs
out, bringing the bed-clothes a-wry with him....
"You are an impostor ... you are not my son ... I tell you again, he is
away ... has been away for years ... as long as I can remember ...
perhaps he is dead ... you are an impostor."
He leaped up, full of madness, and seized hold of me.
"Stop, Father, what are you trying to do?"
As I grappled with him, trying to keep him from hurting me--and he was
quite strong, for all his emaciation--the horror of my situation made me
sick at the stomach, quite sick ... and my mind went ridiculously back
to the times when my father and I had eaten oyster-fries together ...
"that is the only thing you and this man have in common ...
oyster-fries," remarked my mind to me. All the while I was pinning his
wrists in my grasp ... re-pinning them as he frantically wrested them
loose ... swearing and heaping obscenities on my head ... all the while,
I thought of those oyster-fries ... we had saved up a lard-tin full of
bacon grease to fry them in ... and fry after fry had been sizzled to a
rich, cracker-powdered brown in that grease ... a peculiar smell waxed
in the kitchen, however ... which we could never trace to its source ...
"a dead rat somewhere, maybe," suggested my father.
When we had used a third of the bacon grease, the dead rat's foot stood
up ... out of that can.
We discharged the contents of our stomachs in the sink.
This was the ridiculous incident that possessed my imagination while I
struggled with my father.
* * * * *
I had my father over on the bed. He fought to a sitting posture again
... got his finger in my eye and made me see a whorl of dancing sparks.
With irritation and a curse ... then both laughing hysterically and
sobbing ... I bore him back to his pillow....
The strength had gone entirely out of him ... now it came into his mind
that I was there trying to rob or kill him.
"Spare me, spare me!" he pleaded, "you can have everything in the house
... only don't kill me! My God!"
"Good Christ!" I groaned, as he beat upward, fighting again.