“But I do,” said Landlord Vose. “Your uncle Deck wants to get into
politics in this town--he wants to get into politics far enough so that
he can do something to Judge Kingsley. He reckons you don’t need any
popularity. He is starting you out with considerable of a handicap
if you mean to live and prosper in your own town. However, I won’t do
anything to encourage you to leave! I’ve got to keep on living in the
town--alongside your uncle Deck!”
A flash of family loyalty prompted me to assert that my uncle was good
to the poor.
“That he is,” said Dodovah Vose. “He is a queer man, your uncle is. But
I don’t want to make a pauper of myself in order to curry favor with
him.”
It came to me that I’d better have a talk with my uncle, and I started
out, crossing the village square on my way home.
All at once something landed heavily and violently on my shoulders,
and the attack was so sudden that I was borne to the ground with such
a crack of my forehead on the hard earth that I became unconscious, but
not until I had felt claws of some sort tearing at my cheeks.
When I came to my senses I was back in the tavern foreroom and Dodovah
Vose was swabbing my face with a sponge wet in warm water. In a corner
of the room Constable Nute and two helpers were hog-tying old Bennie
Holt, the village fool.
“I ain’t a dove of peace no longer--I ain’t a rooster no longer,” he was
squalling. “I’m a bald-headed eagle! They told me I’m an eagle. I allus
knowed I was some kind of a fowl. They lied to me when they said I was a
dove of peace. I’m an eagle. See what I’ve done! I’ve mallywhacked him.
He made fun of me when I was a dove. Others made fun of me--but now
they’d better look out. I’m an eagle.”
Whatever the old idiot had been or thought he had been, he was then
plainly a raving maniac. In his struggles he was shedding turkey
feathers with which he had thatched his coat. As far back as I could
remember old Bennie Holt, he used to stand in the square with feathers
of various sorts stuck around his hat, harmlessly indulging his vagary.
But never before had he raised his hand against any human being.
“I reckon that this time you fired a boomerang, young Sidney,” stated
the constable, reproachfully. “Old Bangs didn’t fly back and hit you,
but this one has. The village will be glad to hear it.”
“You’d better be careful what you report about me,”
I told him. “I had nothing whatever to do with old Bennie. Mr. Vose will
answer for me.”
“We know where to plaster the blame when anything happens in this
place,” insisted Nute. “Now you’ve sent another one to the bug-house!”
It did not seem to be of much use to talk to that raving old man, but I
tried it. I asked him who had been talking to him.
“My guardeen angels,” he screamed. “They all come to me and told
me. They was in white and they told me.” I myself had furnished the
pillow-case cowls to the Skokums out of the second-hand stock in my
uncle’s storehouse!
“There must be some mistake this time, Nute,” said Landlord Vose. “Young
Sidney has been spending his evenings here in the tavern for quite some
time.”
“Trying to put up a bluff, that’s all. The one who-torches on a fool
can’t complain if the fool kicks back. Here’s more expense to the town,
boarding an insane man at the State hospital. It didn’t cost us anything
as long as he e’t broken crackers out of the grocery-stores, and slept
in the livery-stable. I reckon Town-Treasurer Kingsley will say that
this ends up his patience.”
“Don’t you dare to tell Judge Kingsley that I had anything to do with
getting old Bennie in this state,” I cried. My face smarted dreadfully,
for Dodovah Vose-. was putting on some kind of stuff to kill the poison
of the-, tool’s finger-nails, so he explained.
“I don’t need to tell him; he’ll know it for himself.”
“I’ll find out who did do it! I know well enough!”
“Of course you know.”
It was maddening--this determination on the part of Levant to put me in
the wrong in all matters of local disturbance. Here was I, victim of
the resentment of the Skokums because I was trying to obey my promise
to Celene Kingsley, now in imminent danger of further repute as the
ringleader of the latest atrocity--even though I was the sole sufferer
after the devil had been stirred up in the old loafer.
“You fired him, and the boomerang swung around back and hit you--that’s
all,” insisted the constable. “His mouth has been full of something you
have done to him. If it wasn’t you he wouldn’t be talking about you.”
While Dodovah Vose was finishing with my lacerated face I pondered
on what he had said about my uncle’s indifference in regard to my
popularity in town.
Then I stood up in the tavern foreroom and cursed family and foes and
town with such lurid invective--my vocabulary and force being so far
beyond the ordinary capabilities of youth--that even the crazy man was
shocked into silence. I was ashamed of myself even as I ranted. But
then, as in after-times, my temper swept me out of myself. I was blind
and dizzy and there was a roar in my ears like the rush of water. I
swung the fires of anger about myself as a juggler whirls his flaming
torches. I was sorry as soon as it was over--I have always been sorry
when my frenzy has passed.
When I bowed my head and walked out of the tavern I heard the constable
clucking away like an offended old hen.
“It’s all a matter for the judge to consider--language and all,” he
declared.
“But I insist that he is a good boy in his heart,” said Dodovah Vose.
“Can’t be--coming out of that family--and with the general reputation he
has got since he has worked for his uncle the last four years,” insisted
the constable. Fine dwelling-place for me--Levant, eh?
My uncle was in bed and asleep when I got to the house--and perhaps
it was just as well, because I was quickly forgetting my shame and was
ready for a further squabble; a disposition on my part which has never
been especially helpful during my life.
I made careful and disgusted study of my striped face in the
looking-glass before I went to bed. In spite of my innocence, there I
was, the labeled participator in an affray. In this world, as you have
probably noticed, the man who carries around a blacked eye or a bunged
lip never succeeds in dissipating the suspicion that he has been in some
sort of a disgraceful mix-up, in which he was more or less to blame.
You may remember how you yourself have felt in the case of your friends,
even when a sliding rug or a closet door has been saddled with
the blame. A man with a marked-up physog is never at his best as a
defendant. I dreaded the next day, for it seemed pretty certain that
I would have to face Judge Kingsley. But the feeling that his daughter
might be brought to doubt the sincerity of my promises, when she heard
the story and beheld my face, kept me awake more effectually than did
the pain of that ferocious clapperclawing.