I
Vonnie made good her threat and two weeks after the quarrel Peter
received a picture postcard of a giant redwood. The message said, "Well
Peter here I am in San Francisco--Vonnie." It was the first written
communication he had ever received from her and so he did not know
whether or not the brevity was habitual or was intended to convey a
rebuke. It seemed safe to assume the latter as Vonnie sent no address.
Peter found himself turning to Pat for companionship. Perhaps he did not
exactly turn, but was rather tugged about without will of his own. The
needs of Pat were increasingly greater and Peter was caught up into them
now that he had nothing in particular to do with his evenings. Instead
of taking Vonnie out to an early dinner before the show he helped to put
Pat to bed. It didn't seem quite virile to Peter, but it was easier than
hanging around Jack's or Joel's or the Eldorado. Of course, Pat was
supposed to be in bed long before the night life of New York had really
begun, but bit by bit he edged his time ahead until it was often eleven
or after before he fell off to sleep. The child fought against sleep as
if it were a count of ten. Never within Peter's memory did Pat express a
willingness to go to sleep, much less a desire. It was always necessary
to conduct him forcibly over the line where consciousness ceased.
Peter was swept under the tyranny of this obligation a couple of nights
after Vonnie went away. Unable to think up anything to do, he came back
to the flat a little after ten. He saw a light burning down the hall in
Pat's room and occasional entreaties and commands drifted out. Pat
wanted a drink of water and the toy alligator and the electric engine
and six freight cars. Looking at his watch Peter found that it was half
past ten. He walked into the child's room and exclaimed sternly, "What's
all this racket about?"
"He wants the funny section read to him," explained Kate, "and it's been
lost some place. I can't find it anywhere."
"That's perfect rubbish," said Peter.
"I've looked all over for it, Mr. Neale."
"That wasn't what I meant was rubbish, Kate. I'm glad you lost it. I
want you to keep on losing it. I meant it's rubbish for him to be
staying up this late and asking for things."
"Yes sir."
"Now we'll both say good night to him, Kate, and let him go to sleep."
Pat began to cry not only loudly but with a certain note of sincerity
which caught Peter's ear. "What's the matter with him now?"
"He made me promise I'd tell him a story if I couldn't find the funny
paper," said Kate.
"It's too late now and anyway if he made you do it, Kate, it isn't a
promise. It don't count."
"Yes, Mr. Neale. But it's so set he is he'll be calling me back all the
night long for me to tell him the story. It's nothing he does be
forgetting."
"All right, Kate, we'll settle that very easily. You go out and I'll
stay and he can cry his head off."
"Where'll I go, Mr. Neale?"
"I don't care, Kate. Go any place you like. It isn't eleven o'clock yet.
Where do you usually go?"
"To my sister's in Jamaica, but it's no time to be routing them out at
this hour."
"Well, let me see. I tell you, Kate, there's a moving picture theatre
down there at Fifty-ninth Street that keeps going till after one.
Here's some money. You go there and see the picture and I'll stay and
show this young man he can't get everything he cries for."
"I want to see the picture," said Pat, sitting up in bed.
"Now don't be silly. You get back there on your pillow," said Peter, "or
I'll just knock you down."
Kate rummaged around for her bonnet and finally went out. During all
this time Pat kept up a suppressed sobbing. As soon as the door slammed
behind Kate he was sufficiently rested again to begin crying full force.
"Well, what is it now?" said Peter as fiercely as he could.
Pat's utterance was muffled with tears. "I want a story."
"You heard Kate go out. If you've got any sense you know she can't tell
you a story."
"You tell me a story."
"I'm too busy. Go to sleep."
"Why are you busy?"
"Because I am. Now go to sleep."
"I don't want to go to sleep. I want you to tell me a story."
Pat commenced to cry again. He had sensed an opening.
Peter dropped his guard. "Just one story?" he asked.
Upon the instant Pat ceased crying and sat up. "Tell me about the old
beggarman and Saint Pat."
"I don't know it," said Peter. In fact he felt almost as if he had been
suddenly called upon to make a speech at a public banquet. Of course, he
had heard of Cinderella and Red Riding Hood and Aladdin and the
wonderful lamp, but he could not quite remember what any of them did.
Suddenly he remembered another source book.
"Once," he began, "there was a man named Goliath and he was the biggest
man in the world. He could beat any man in the world. And one day there
was a little man named David----."
"I'm bigger than David," interrupted Pat.
"I guess you are. He was a little bit of a man, but he wasn't afraid of
Goliath. He said, 'Ole Goliath, you talk too much. You make me sick.'
And he picked up a rock and hit Goliath and knocked him down."
"Why did he knock Goliath down?" Pat wanted to know.
"I guess he knocked Goliath down because it was Goliath's bedtime and
Goliath wouldn't go to bed."
Pat remained alert in spite of the moralizing. He gave no hint of
recognition that the end of a story had been reached. Anyhow, the
creative impulse had seized upon Peter particularly since it might be so
unblushingly combined with propaganda.
"Well," he continued, "pretty soon George Browne came out of his house
and he was the second biggest man in the world and he wouldn't go to bed
and so David picked up another great big rock and knocked him down. And
then your friend the Red Bat came out of his house and he was the next
biggest man in the world and he wouldn't go to bed and so David picked
up another rock and knocked him down."
"No, he didn't," broke in Pat.
"I'm telling this story. David hit the Red Bat with a rock and knocked
him down because he wouldn't go to bed."
"No, he didn't."
"Oh, all right then, if you know so much about it, he didn't. What did
he do?"
"He knocked David down."
Peter realized that his narrative was overburdened with propaganda and
he was artist enough to throw over some of his moralizing ballast.
"Well, this was the way it happened, Pat. David picked up a big rock and
threw it at the Red Bat, but the Red Bat was too smart for him. The Red
Bat caught the rock and threw it back at David and knocked him down.
That was it, wasn't it?"
"Yes," said Pat.
When Kate returned a little after one Peter reported, "I didn't have any
bother with him. He just went right off to sleep."
II
David and Goliath became set as a bedtime story and lasted through the
next six months almost without change. Indeed Pat resented changes.
"Once," Peter would begin, "there was a man named Goliath and he was the
biggest man in the world and he could lick any man in the world."
"Not lick," Pat would interrupt. "Beat."
"Oh, yes, he could beat any man in the world." Peter found himself
coming home for Pat's bedtime with increasing frequency. Once or twice
he tried to break away, but upon such occasions Kate reported that the
child had cried for him and had kept awake until after midnight asking
for the story of David and Goliath.
"You tell it to him," said Peter. "I think I can teach it to you. He
wants it just this way." And he repeated the accepted version.
Kate shook her head. "I'm too old a woman to be learning so many words,
Mr. Neale," she said. "And it's not a story I think Father Ryan would
like me to be telling. That's not the way the story do be going in our
Bible."
"Gosh," thought Peter to himself. "She thinks it was Martin Luther made
those changes."
Notwithstanding Goliath, Peter made a gallant attempt to break away from
his newly found responsibilities. He felt that he ought to. He felt that
in the restaurants and poolrooms there lay the sort of sporting gossip
he ought to pick up for his column. Of course, not all New York kept
Pat's hours in those days but there was something almost auto-hypnotic
in getting the child to sleep. In addition to the bedtime story, Peter
found it necessary to feign great weariness in order to suggest a
similar feeling in Pat. He would yawn prodigiously immediately after the
Red Bat had knocked down David and pretend to doze off on the foot of
Pat's bed. Presently, he would hear the boy's regular breathing and
would tiptoe out of the room. But Peter acted his role much too well.
After so much shamming he generally was actually tired himself and
indisposed to wander down to Jack's or any of the other places where he
might find fighters or their managers.
Indeed, he made the discovery that the material to be extracted from
these people was not inexhaustible. Like David and Goliath they had a
tendency to run into formula. "And I yell at him, don't box him; fight
him. Keep rushing him. Don't let him set. And when he comes to his
corner at the end of the third round I bawl in his ear, 'You kike so and
so, begging your pardon, Mr. Neale, if you don't get that lousy wop I'm
done with you.' And would you believe me it did him a lot of good. It
put guts in him. In the fourth we nail him with a right and we win. Now
we're going after the champ and if we ever get him into a ring we'll
lick him."
A year or so before Neale could have taken stuff like that and worked it
over into a column on "The Psychology of a Prizefight Manager." But now
all the inspiration was gone. He had heard precisely the same tale in
much the same language too many times. He was almost tempted to cry out,
"Not lick him, beat him."
Nor was there much more available color in the fighters themselves. They
were a silent crowd, most of them, particularly if they happened to have
a manager along.
Once, Peter found Dave Keyes, the Brooklyn lightweight, sitting all
alone in Jack's. He was going great guns that year and Peter thought of
him as the logical successor to the champion. They had met a couple of
times at fight clubs, but Keyes did not seem to remember Peter. He was
sober but not bright. Still, Peter felt that he might draw him out
during the course of the evening. In time Keyes began to talk freely
enough. He was even confidential but fighting seemed to be the last
thing in the world he cared to discuss.
"You see there's two dames fall for me. And the tough break is the both
of them lives on the same block. See. Well, let me tell you how I works
it. First I give Helen, that's the blonde one, a ring and then right
bang on top of that I has the call switched over to Gracie's flat----."
"Life," thought the harassed Peter Neale, "is just one bedtime story
after another."
In the Spring a long swing around the baseball training camps took Peter
away for almost two months and another month and a half went in a
fruitless journey to Juarez to wait for a fight which never happened. It
was June when Peter returned and to his horror he found that the child
had picked up theology in his absence. A storm helped the discovery. The
roll of the thunder was still a long way off when Peter called it to
Pat's attention. "We're going to have a thunderstorm," he said.
"No, we're not," answered the child. "Thunder storms only come when
you're bad."
"What's that?" asked Peter.
"A thunderstorm's God showing his ankle," explained Pat.
This did not seem a dogma altogether iron clad and yet it worried Peter.
"Thunder's got nothing to do with you're being bad," he told Pat. "If
that was it we'd have thunder all the time. Thunder's nothing to be
afraid of. It's just somebody up the sky saying 'Booh' at you for fun."
"God lives up in the sky."
"How do you know that? Did you see him?"
"Yes," said Pat stoutly.
That made the question difficult to argue.
"All right," continued Peter. "Call him God if you want to. Anyhow, when
it's thunder he's just saying 'Booh' at you and if you get scared you
haven't got any sense. Remember that's what thunder is. Just somebody
named God saying 'Booh.'"
"No, it isn't."
"Well, you tell me then."
"When it's thunder," said Pat, pointing up the street in the direction
of Central Park, "it's a big giant in the trees."
The child paused. "A blind giant," he added.
Peter stared at him and wondered whether the phrase and figure were his
own or whether he had picked them up from Kate. Later Peter took
occasion to ask her and she denied it. "God's ankle," she admitted but
only after revision. "You know, Mr. Neale, it's the way he has of
getting things twisted in his little head. You understand now it was
'God's anger' I was a telling him."
"Oh, I knew that all right, Kate. I knew he made up the ankle part of
it. But you're sure you didn't tell him anything about thunder and a
giant in the trees--a blind giant."
"No, sir."
Peter got to thinking things over and began to remember what Vonnie had
said concerning the future of Pat. He was worried. This idolatry of the
Red Bat who sang on the phonograph he didn't like. After this it would
have to be somebody else who knocked David down. Sandow Mertes maybe.
Then there was this blind giant in the trees. He didn't mind Pat's
growing up to be a poet. That would fit into the column nicely enough,
but not wild poetry. The thing had to be kept in bounds or there wasn't
any way to syndicate it. Still the next column of "Looking Them Over"
which Peter wrote contained a little poem somewhat outside his usual
manner. It was called, "The Big Blind Giant."
Three days later the syndicate manager on the Bulletin called up Peter.
"We've got six telegrams already about that poem of yours," he said.
"The one about the big blind giant running around and hitting his head
against the trees."
"What's the matter with it?" asked Peter aggressively.
"Nothing at all, Peter, they all say it's great. All but that sporting
editor of the Des Moines Register--you know him, Caleb Powers?"
"No, I don't know him. What's he say?"
"He just gives the name of the poem and then he says in his telegram,
'Don't tell me the answer, I want to guess.'"
"Five out of six is plenty," said Peter. "And say, Bill, where do you
suppose I got the idea from?"
"Where?"
"From my kid--Peter Neale, 2nd. He isn't four yet, but you see I've got
him working for the Bulletin already."