"Frank, I can't stand this, I must leave."
"Nonsense; stay; you'll get used to it."
"No, I must go if the noise keeps up continually like this."
"Well, it won't ... we have a special job to finish ... tin-roofing ...
but if you want a place to stay where it is quiet, I have a camp, not
far out, on the Ossawatomie, where I go for week-ends...."
"Where is it? That would be fine. I'd like to stay there."
"You know where old Farmer Brown lives, by the abandoned church, just
outside of Perthville?"
"Yes. That's seven miles out on the Osageville road."
"Take the first turn to the right from his house, going west. It's an
unused bye-road and it runs plumb into my cabin. There's a frying pan
there ... and some flour ... and bacon ... tell you what ... it's been
broken into several times. I'll consider it worth while if you go and
live there, and I get no rent from you for it nor the room upstairs ...
you'll be alone, God knows--excepting Saturdays and Sundays."
* * * * *
I packed my Heine in a bundle ... with my Bible and my Josephus in the
Greek, along with Whiston's English version ... and I included a bundle
of books on New Testament times that made me groan under their weight.
For I planned to begin a four-act play on Judas, and must study for
writing that, as well as learn the "how" of the lyric....
The stupendousness of the silence of absolute solitude! At first the
thoughts run on with a tangle and jangle, a turmoil almost of madness
... then they quiet down into the peace that only a hermitage gives and
the objects of life are seen in their true relativity and perspective.
My diet was one of sow-belly, bread, and coffee, and what fish I caught
in the sluggish, muddy stream....
Saturday, toward sunset, I heard a whooping in the woods. It was Randall
coming with a few friends for his week-end, as he had warned. With him,
his wild brother, Jack; and Bill, his assistant plumber and
man-about-shop.
The drinking had begun before they were in sight of the shack. And it
was kept up till late Sunday night ... around a big fire in a cleared
space they sang and gambled and drank.
Randall served great hilarity to the party by trying to breed his gelded
horse to his mare ... the mare kicked and squealed, indignant at the
cheat, looking back, flattening her ears, and showing the vicious whites
of her eyes. Several times the infuriated beast's heels whished an inch
or so from Randall's head, as he forced the gelding to advance and
mount. We rolled on the grass, laughing ... myself included.
Then all stripped to the buff for a swim in the stream ... a treacherous
place where the bottom was at times but two or three feet from the
surface, and the mud, soft and semi-liquid for five feet more. And there
were snags, and broken beer and whiskey bottles all over the bottom
where it was decent and gravelly.
Bill, with his solemn dundreary whiskers, leaped high in the air like a
frog, kicking his legs and yelling drunkenly as he took off.
"Look out, Bill," I shouted, "it's nothing but mud there!"
But Bill didn't heed me. He hit with a swish and a thud instead of a
splash, and didn't come up.
We put out in our rickety boat.
By that luck that favours the drunkard and fool, we laid hold on Bill's
feet sticking out, just under the water. We tugged mightily and brought
him forth, turned into a black man by the ooze ... otherwise, unharmed.
* * * * *
It was not till two hours after midnight that they whisked away townward
and left me alone, so that the graciousness of silence could enfold me
again. I looked forward to a week's peace, before they descended on the
camp again. But I had a premonition that there was to be no peace for me
there. For Randall had said to me before he drove away....
"You know Pete Willets? Well, he's liable to come here for a few days,
during the week ... a nice quiet fellow though ... won't disturb you."
The thought of another visitor did disturb me. Though I knew Pete
Willets as a quiet, gentle shoemaker in whom seemed no guile, I wanted
to be alone to think and read and write.
Wednesday noon Pete Willets drove up, accompanied by a grubby Woman whom
at first glance I did not relish.
"Hello, Johnnie, Frank said we could use the shack for a day or two."
"Forever, as far as I'm concerned," I answered, beginning to tie up my
books in a huge bundle as big as a peddler's pack, and as heavy.
Impatiently tying the horse to a post, they were in the shack and
immediately prone on my bunk.
As I shouldered my load their murmuring voices full of amorous desire
stung me like a gadfly. I hurried off toward Laurel, angry at life.
I explained to Randall why I had left his camp so soon. He was gravely
concerned.
"I didn't tell Willets he could have my shack to take Gracie there. This
is a bit too thick."
"Who's Gracie?"
"--a bad lot ... a girl that's been on the turf since she was in knee
skirts--as long as I've known her. He loves her. She can twist him
around her little finger. She's going to get him into something bad some
day. He'll do anything she wants. And she's capable of putting him up to
anything."
"Willets is weak, when it comes to women ... don't drink much ... a hard
worker ... everybody likes him....
"Did you ever notice his limp ... only slight ... scarcely noticeable,
isn't it?... he's a corking mechanic as well as shoemaker ... mighty
clever ... now for instance, you wouldn't ever have known, unless I told
you, that his left leg is made of wood?"
"I wouldn't even suspect it."
"--lost his left leg when he was a brakeman ... made that wooden leg for
himself ... it works so smoothly that he's thinking of taking out a
patent on it."
"Why does a woman take to a man with a wooden leg?"
"--makes good money ... and he has a way about him with the girls ...
he goes about so quietly. He's so gentle and considerate ... acts, but
doesn't say much, you know! that's what they like!"
"--damned sorry for his wife and two kids, though; when Willets comes to
town again I'm not going to let him have my shack any more ... might be
some trouble ... divorce or something."
There was trouble and very shortly. In a month Willets had poisoned his
wife ... with rough-on-rats ... and the quiet little shoemaker went to
the penitentiary for life ... a life-time of shoe-making.
* * * * *
I rented a tent and pitched it on an island in the middle of the Kaw, or
Kansas River. There I was alone. I rented a boat to take out my
possessions.
I lived naked till I grew brown all over. I studied and read and wrote
to my full desire, there in the grateful silence of trees and waters--a
solitude broken only by an occasional train streaming its white trail of
smoke as it whistled and raced round the curve of shining track toward
Laurel.
I read Josephus entirely through, haltingly, line by line, in the Greek.
I read all the books the "stack" at the university could afford me on
New Testament life and times, in preparation for my play on Judas.
My only companions were a flock of tiny mud-hens with their dainty proud
little rooster. I heard them talking in bird-language, saw them paddling
with diminutive gravity up and down in the mud, on the island mud-bank
just beneath the high place on which my tent was pitched.
When I grew lonesome for company, human company, I swam ashore, my
clothes tied on top of my head to keep them dry, and, dressing, walked
into Laurel. Where I lounged about for the day on the streets, or in the
stores, or in the livery stables ... I knew everybody and everybody knew
me, and we had some fine times, talking.
I had access to the local Carnegie Library as well as to the university
"stack".
My food did not cost me above a dollar a week. For I went on a whole
wheat diet, and threw my frying pan away.