His hands indicated a small fish. Involuntarily Hugo looked at them.
The hands flew apart and slapped him smartly. Several of the children
had stopped their play to watch. The first insult made them giggle. The
second brought a titter from Anna Blake, and Hugo noticed that. Anna
Blake was a little girl with curly golden hair and blue eyes. Secretly
Hugo admired her and was drawn to her. When she laughed, he felt a
dismal loneliness, a sudden desertion. The farmer's boy pressed the
occasion his meanness had made.
"I'll bet you ain't even strong enough to fight little Charlie Todd.
Commere, Charlie."
"I am," Hugo replied with slow dignity.
"You're a sissy. You're a-scared to play with us."
The ring around Hugo had grown. He felt a tangible ridicule in it. He
knew what it was to hate. Still, his inhibitions, his control, held him
in check. "Go away," he said, "or I'll hurt you."
The farmer's boy picked up a stick and put it on his shoulder. "Knock
that off, then, strong man."
Hugo knew the dare and its significance. With a gentle gesture he
brushed the stick away. Then the other struck. At the same time he
kicked Hugo's shins. There was no sense of pain with the kick. Hugo saw
it as if it had happened to another person. The school-yard tensed with
expectation. But the accounts of what followed were garbled. The
farmer's boy fell on his face as if by an invisible agency. Then his
body was lifted in the air. The children had an awful picture of Hugo
standing for a second with the writhing form of his attacker above his
head. Then he flung it aside, over the circle that surrounded him, and
the body fell with a thud. It lay without moving. Hugo began to whimper
pitifully.
That was Hugo's first fight. He had defended himself, and it made him
ashamed. He thought he had killed the other boy. Sickening dread filled
him. He hurried to his side and shook him, calling his name. The other
boy came to. His arm was broken and his sides were purpling where Hugo
had seized him. There was terror in his eyes when he saw Hugo's face
above him, and he screamed shrilly for help. The teacher came. She sent
Hugo to the blacksmith to be whipped.
That, in itself, was a stroke of genius. The blacksmith whipped grown
boys in the high school for their misdeeds. To send a six-year-old child
was crushing. But Hugo had risen above the standards set by his society.
He had been superior to it for a moment, and society hated him for it.
His teacher hated him because she feared him. Mothers of children,
learning about the episode, collected to discuss it in high-pitched,
hateful voices. Hugo was enveloped in hate. And, as the lash of the
smith fell on his small frame, he felt the depths of misery. He was a
strong man. There was damnation in his veins.
The minister came and prayed over him. The doctor was sent for and
examined him. Frantic busybodies suggested that things be done to weaken
him--what things, they did not say. And Hugo, suffering bitterly, saw
that if he had beaten the farmer's boy in fair combat, he would have
been a hero. It was the scale of his triumph that made it dreadful. He
did not realize then that if he had been so minded, he could have turned
on the blacksmith and whipped him, he could have broken the neck of the
doctor, he could have run raging through the town and escaped unscathed.
His might was a secret from himself. He knew it only as a curse, like a
disease or a blemish.
During the ensuing four or five years Hugo's peculiar trait asserted
itself but once. It was a year after his fight with the bully. He had
been isolated socially. Even Anna Blake did not dare to tease him any
longer. Shunned and wretched, he built a world of young dreams and
confections and lived in it with whatever comfort it afforded.
One warm afternoon in a smoky Indian summer he walked home from school,
spinning a top as he walked, stopping every few yards to pick it up and
to let its eccentric momentum die on the palm of his hand. His pace
thereby was made very slow and he calculated it to bring him to his home
in time for supper and no sooner, because, despite his vigour, chores
were as odious to him as to any other boy. A wagon drawn by two horses
rolled toward him. It was a heavy wagon, piled high with grain-sacks,
and a man sat on its rear end, his legs dangling.
As the wagon reached Hugo, it jolted over a rut. There was a grinding
rip and a crash. Hugo pocketed his top and looked. The man sitting on
the back had been pinned beneath the rear axle, and the load held him
there. As Hugo saw his predicament, the man screamed in agony. Hugo's
blood chilled. He stood transfixed. A man jumped out of a buggy. A Negro
ran from a yard. Two women hurried from the spot. In an instant there
were six or seven men around the broken wagon. A sound of pain issued
from the mouth of the impaled man. The knot of figures bent at the sides
of the cart and tried to lift. "Have to get a jack," Hugo heard them
say.
Hugo wound up his string and put it beside his top. He walked
mechanically into the road. He looked at the legs of the man on the
ground. They were oozing blood where the backboard rested on them. The
men gathered there were lifting again, without result. Hugo caught the
side and bent his small shoulders. With all his might he pulled up. The
wagon was jerked into the air. They pulled out the injured man. Hugo
lowered the wagon slowly.
For a moment no attention was paid to him. He waited pridefully for the
recognition he had earned. He dug in the dirt with the side of his shoe.
A man with a mole on his nose observed him. "Funny how that kid's
strength was just enough to turn the balance."
Hugo smiled. "I'm pretty strong," he admitted.
Another man saw him. "Get out of here," he said sharply. "This is no
place for a kid."
"But I was the one--"
"I said beat it. And I meant beat it. Go home to your ma."
Slowly the light went from Hugo's eyes. They did not know--they could
not know. He had lifted more than two tons. And the men stood now,
waiting for the doctor, telling each other how strong they were when the
instant of need came.
"Go on, kid. Run along. I'll smack you."
Hugo went. He forgot to spin his top. He stumbled a little as he
walked.