(From _The Dial_ and _The London Mercury_)
It was a hard jolt for me, one of the most bitterest I ever had to
face. And it all came about through my own foolishness too. Even
yet, sometimes, when I think of it, I want to cry or swear or kick
myself. Perhaps, even now, after all this time, there will be a kind
of satisfaction in making myself look cheap by telling of it.
It began at three o’clock one October afternoon as I sat in the grand
stand at the fall trotting and pacing meet at Sandusky, Ohio.
To tell the truth, I felt a little foolish that I should be sitting
in the grand stand at all. During the summer before I had left my
home town with Harry Whitehead and, with a nigger named Burt, had
taken a job as swipe with one of the two horses Harry was campaigning
through the fall race meets that year. Mother cried and my sister
Mildred, who wanted to get a job as a school teacher in our town that
fall, stormed and scolded about the house all during the week before
I left. They both thought it something disgraceful that one of our
family should take a place as a swipe with race horses. I’ve an idea
Mildred thought my taking the place would stand in the way of her
getting the job she’d been working so long for.
But after all I had to work and there was no other work to be got. A
big lumbering fellow of nineteen couldn’t just hang around the house
and I had got too big to mow people’s lawns and sell newspapers.
Little chaps who could get next to people’s sympathies by their sizes
were always getting jobs away from me. There was one fellow who kept
saying to everyone who wanted a lawn mowed or a cistern cleaned, that
he was saving money to work his way through college, and I used to
lay awake nights thinking up ways to injure him without being found
out. I kept thinking of wagons running over him and bricks falling on
his head as he walked along the street. But never mind him.
I got the place with Harry and I liked Burt fine. We got along
splendid together. He was a big nigger with a lazy sprawling body and
soft kind eyes, and when it came to a fight he could hit like Jack
Johnson. He had Bucephalus, a big black pacing stallion that could do
2.09 or 2.10 if he had to, and I had a little gelding named Doctor
Fritz that never lost a race all fall when Harry wanted him to win.
We set out from home late in July in a box car with the two horses
and after that, until late November, we kept moving along to the race
meets and the fairs. It was a peachy time for me, I’ll say that.
Sometimes, now, I think that boys who are raised regular in houses,
and never have a fine nigger like Burt for best friend, and go to
high schools and college, and never steal anything or get drunk a
little, or learn to swear from fellows who know how, or come walking
up in front of a grand stand in their shirt sleeves and with dirty
horsey pants on when the races are going on and the grand stand is
full of people all dressed up-- What’s the use talking about it? Such
fellows don’t know nothing at all. They’ve never had no opportunity.
But I did. Burt taught me how to rub down a horse and put the
bandages on after a race and steam a horse out and a lot of valuable
things for any man to know. He could wrap a bandage on a horse’s leg
so smooth that if it had been the same color you would think it was
his skin, and I guess he’d have been a big driver too and got to the
top like Murphy and Walter Cox and the others if he hadn’t been black.
Gee whizz, it was fun. You got to a county seat town maybe, say, on
a Saturday or Sunday, and the fair began the next Tuesday and lasted
until Friday afternoon. Doctor Fritz would be, say, in the 2.25 trot
on Tuesday afternoon and on Thursday afternoon Bucephalus would
knock ’em cold in the “free-for-all” pace. It left you a lot of time
to hang around and listen to horse talk, and see Burt knock some yap
cold that got too gay, and you’d find out about horses and men and
pick up a lot of stuff you could use all the rest of your life if you
had some sense and salted down what you heard and felt and saw.
And then at the end of the week when the race meet was over, and
Harry had run home to tend up to his livery stable business, you and
Burt hitched the two horses to carts and drove slow and steady across
country to the place for the next meeting so as to not over-heat the
horses, etc., etc., you know.
Gee whizz, gosh amighty, the nice hickorynut and beechnut and oaks
and other kinds of trees along the roads, all brown and red, and the
good smells, and Burt singing a song that was called Deep River, and
the country girls at the windows of houses and everything. You can
stick your colleges up your nose for all me. I guess I know where I
got my education.
Why, one of those little burgs of towns you come to on the way, say
now, on a Saturday afternoon, and Burt says, “let’s lay up here.” And
you did.
And you took the horses to a livery stable and fed them and you got
your good clothes out of a box and put them on.
And the town was full of farmers gaping, because they could see you
were race horse people, and the kids maybe never see a nigger before
and was afraid and run away when the two of us walked down their main
street.
And that was before prohibition and all that foolishness, and so you
went into a saloon, the two of you, and all the yaps come and stood
around, and there was always someone pretended he was horsey and knew
things and spoke up and began asking questions, and all you did was
to lie and lie all you could about what horses you had, and I said
I owned them, and then some fellow said, “Will you have a drink of
whiskey?” and Burt knocked his eye out the way he could say, offhand
like, “Oh, well, all right, I’m agreeable to a little nip. I’ll split
a quart with you.” Gee whizz.
But that isn’t what I want to tell my story about. We got home late
in November and I promised mother I’d quit the race horses for good.
There’s a lot of things you’ve got to promise a mother because she
don’t know any better.
And so, there not being any work in our town any more than when I
left there to go to the races, I went off to Sandusky and got a
pretty good place taking care of the horses for a man who owned a
teaming and delivery and storage business there. It was a pretty good
place with good eats and a day off each week and sleeping on a cot in
the big barn, and mostly just shoveling in hay and oats to a lot of
big good-enough skates of horses that couldn’t have trotted a race
with a toad. I wasn’t dissatisfied and I could send money home.
And then, as I started to tell you, the fall races come to Sandusky
and I got the day off and I went. I left the job at noon and had
on my good clothes and my new brown derby hat I’d just bought the
Saturday before, and a stand-up collar.
First of all I went downtown and walked about with the dudes. I’ve
always thought to myself, “put up a good front,” and so I did it. I
had forty dollars in my pocket and so I went into the West House,
a big hotel, and walked up to the cigar stand. “Give me three
twenty-five cent cigars,” I said. There was a lot of horse men and
strangers and dressed-up people from other towns standing around in
the lobby and in the bar, and I mingled amongst them. In the bar
there was a fellow with a cane and a Windsor tie on, that it made me
sick to look at him. I like a man to be a man and dress up, but not
to go put on that kind of airs. So I pushed him aside, kind of rough,
and had me a drink of whiskey. And then he looked at me as though
he thought maybe he’d get gay, but he changed his mind and didn’t
say anything. And then I had another drink of whiskey, just to show
him something, and went out and had a hack out to the races all to
myself, and when I got there I bought myself the best seat I could
get up in the grand stand, but didn’t go in for any of these boxes.
That’s putting on too many airs.
And so there I was, sitting up in the grand stand as gay as you
please and looking down on the swipes coming out with their horses
and with their dirty horsey pants on and the horse blankets swung
over their shoulders same as I had been doing all the year before.
I liked one thing about the same as the other, sitting up there and
feeling grand and being down there and looking up at the yaps and
feeling grander and more important too. One thing’s about as good as
another if you take it just right. I’ve often said that.
Well, right in front of me, in the grand stand that day, there was a
fellow with a couple of girls and they was about my age. The young
fellow was a nice guy all right. He was the kind maybe that goes to
college and then comes to be a lawyer or maybe a newspaper editor or
something like that, but he wasn’t stuck on himself. There are some
of that kind are all right and he was one of the ones.
He had his sister with him and another girl and the sister looked
around over his shoulder, accidental at first, not intending to start
anything--she wasn’t that kind--and her eyes and mine happened to
meet.
You know how it is. Gee, she was a peach. She had on a soft dress,
kind of a blue stuff and it looked carelessly made, but was well
sewed and made and everything. I knew that much. I blushed when she
looked right at me and so did she. She was the nicest girl I’ve ever
seen in my life. She wasn’t stuck on herself and she could talk
proper grammar without being like a school teacher or something
like that. What I mean is, she was O.K. I think maybe her father
was well-to-do, but not rich to make her chesty because she was his
daughter, as some are. Maybe he owned a drug store or a dry goods
store in their home town, or something like that. She never told me
and I never asked.
My own people are all O.K. too, when you come to that. My grandfather
was Welsh and over in the old country, in Wales he was--but never
mind that.
* * * * *
The first heat of the first race come off and the young fellow
setting there with the two girls left them and went down to make a
bet. I knew what he was up to, but he didn’t talk big and noisy and
let everyone around know he was a sport, as some do. He wasn’t that
kind. Well, he come back and I heard him tell the two girls what
horse he’d bet on, and when the heat was trotted they all half got
to their feet and acted in the excited, sweaty way people do when
they’ve got money down on a race, and the horse they bet on is up
there pretty close at the end, and they think maybe he’ll come on
with a rush, but he never does because he hasn’t got the old juice in
him, come right down to it.
And then, pretty soon, the horses came out for the 2.18 pace and
there was a horse in it I knew. He was a horse Bob French had in his
string, but Bob didn’t own him. He was a horse owned by a Mr. Mathers
down at Marietta, Ohio.
This Mr. Mathers had a lot of money and owned some coal mines or
something, and he had a swell place out in the country, and he was
stuck on race horses, but was a Presbyterian or something, and I
think more than likely his wife was one, too, maybe a stiffer one
than himself. So he never raced his horses hisself, and the story
round the Ohio race tracks was that when one of his horses got ready
to go to the races he turned him over to Bob French and pretended to
his wife he was sold.
So Bob had the horses and he did pretty much as he pleased and you
can’t blame Bob, at least, I never did. Sometimes he was out to win
and sometimes he wasn’t. I never cared much about that when I was
swiping a horse. What I did want to know was that my horse had the
speed and could go out in front if you wanted him to.
And, as I’m telling you, there was Bob in this race with one of Mr.
Mathers’ horses, was named “About Ben Ahem” or something like that,
and was fast as a streak. He was a gelding and had a mark of 2.21,
but could step in .08 or .09.
Because when Burt and I were out, as I’ve told you, the year before,
there was a nigger Burt knew, worked for Mr. Mathers, and we went out
there one day when we didn’t have no race on at the Marietta Fair and
our boss Harry was gone home.
And so everyone was gone to the fair but just this one nigger, and he
took us all through Mr. Mathers’ swell house and he and Burt tapped a
bottle of wine Mr. Mathers had hid in his bedroom, back in a closet,
without his wife knowing, and he showed us this Ahem horse. Burt was
always stuck on being a driver, but didn’t have much chance to get
to the top, being a nigger, and he and the other nigger gulped that
whole bottle of wine and Burt got a little lit up.
So the nigger let Burt take this About Ben Ahem and step him a mile
in a track Mr. Mathers had all to himself, right there on the farm.
And Mr. Mathers had one child, a daughter, kinda sick and not very
good looking, and she came home and we had to hustle and get About
Ben Ahem stuck back in the barn.
I’m only telling you to get everything straight. At Sandusky, that
afternoon I was at the fair, this young fellow with the two girls
was fussed, being with the girls and losing his bet. You know how
a fellow is that way. One of them was his girl and the other his
sister. I had figured that out.
“Gee whizz,” I says to myself, “I’m going to give him the dope.”
He was mighty nice when I touched him on the shoulder. He and the
girls were nice to me right from the start and clear to the end. I’m
not blaming them.
And so he leaned back and I gave him the dope on About Ben Ahem.
“Don’t bet a cent on this first heat because he’ll go like an oxen
hitched to a plough, but when the first heat is over go right down
and lay on your pile.” That’s what I told him.
Well, I never saw a fellow treat any one sweller. There was a fat man
sitting beside the little girl that had looked at me twice by this
time, and I at her, and both blushing, and what did he do but have
the nerve to turn and ask the fat man to get up and change places
with me so I could set with his crowd.
Gee whizz, amighty. There I was. What a chump I was to go and get
gay up there in the West House bar, and just because that dude was
standing there with a cane and that kind of a necktie on, to go and
get all balled up and drink that whiskey, just to show off.
Of course she would know, me setting right beside her and letting her
smell of my breath. I could have kicked myself right down out of that
grand stand and all around that race track and made a faster record
than most of the skates of horses they had there that year.
Because that girl wasn’t any mutt of a girl. What wouldn’t I have
give right then for a stick of chewing gum to chew, or a lozenger, or
some licorice, or most anything. I was glad I had those twenty-five
cent cigars in my pocket, and right away I give that fellow one and
lit one myself. Then that fat man got up and we changed places and
there I was plunked right down beside her.
They introduced themselves, and the fellow’s best girl he had
with him, was named Miss Elinor Woodbury, and her father was a
manufacturer of barrels from a place called Tiffin, Ohio. And the
fellow himself was named Wilbur Wessen and his sister was Miss Lucy
Wessen.
I suppose it was their having such swell names got me off my trolley.
A fellow, just because he has been a swipe with a race horse, and
works taking care of horses for a man in the teaming, delivery and
storage business, isn’t any better or worse than any one else. I’ve
often thought that, and said it, too.
But you know how a fellow is. There’s something in that kind of nice
clothes, and the kind of nice eyes she had, and the way she had
looked at me, awhile before, over her brother’s shoulder, and me
looking back at her, and both of us blushing.