NEW FRIENDS
IT WAS an awful moment.
During that moment there was dead silence. Johnnie's heart stopped
beating, his ears sang, his throat knotted as if paralyzed, and the skin
on the back of his head crinkled; while in all those uneven thickets of
his tawny, tea-stained hair, small, dreadful winds stirred, and he
seemed to lift--horribly--away from the floor.
Also, a sickish, sinking feeling at the lower end of his breastbone made
him certain that he was about to break in two; and a sudden wobbling of
the knees threatened to bring him down upon them.
Barber closed the hall door at his back--gently, so as not to waken his
father. His eyes were still roving the kitchen appraisingly. It was
plain that the full sink and the littered table were having their effect
upon him; for he had begun that chewing on nothing which betokened a
rising temper.
Johnnie saw, but he was too stunned and scared to think of any way out
of his difficulty. He might have caught up the big cooking spoon and
rapped on that lead pipe--five times in rapid succession, as if he were
trying to clear the spoon of the cereal clinging to its bowl. The five
raps was a signal that he had not used for a long time. It belonged to
that dreadful era to which Cis and he referred as "before the saloons
shut up." Preceding the miracle that had brought the closing of these,
Barber, returning home from his day's work, had needed no excuse for
using the strap or his boot upon either of the children. And once he had
struck helpless old Grandpa--a happening remembered by Cis and Johnnie
with awesome horror, so that they spoke of it as they spoke of the Great
War, or of a murder in the next block.
It had not been possible in those days for Big Tom to overlook the
temptation of drink. To arrive at his own door from any direction he had
to pass saloons. At both of the nearest street crossings northward,
three of the four corners had been occupied by drinking places. There
were two at each of the street crossings to the south. In those now
distant times, the signal, and Mrs. Kukor's prompt answering of it, had
often saved Cis and Johnnie from drunken beatings.
But now the boy sent no signal. Those big-girl's hands were shaking in
spite of all effort to control. His upturned face was a ghastly sallow.
The gray eyes were set.
Barber's survey of the room finished, he stepped across the sagging
telephone line, placed the cargo hook and his lunch pail on the untidy
table, and squared round upon Johnnie.
"Now, say!"
"Yes?" It was a whisper.
"What y' done in here since I left two hours ago?"
Johnnie drew a quick breath. He was not given to falsehood, but he did
at times depend upon evasion--at such times as this. And not
unnaturally. For he was in the absolute power of a bully five times his
own size--a bully who was none the less cruel because he argued that he
was disciplining the boy properly, bringing him up "right." Discipline
or not, Big Tom did not know the meaning of mercy; and to Johnnie the
blow of one of those great gorillalike fists was like some cataclysm of
nature.
"What y' done?" persisted Barber, but speaking low, so as not to
disturb the sleeper in the wheel chair. He leaned down toward Johnnie,
and thrust out that lower lip.
The boy's own lips began to move, stiffly. But he spoke as if he were
out of breath. "Grandpa f-f-fretted," he stammered. "He--he wanted to be
run up and down--with his hat on. And--and so I filled the
m-m-mush-kettle t' soak it, and then we--we----"
His lips went on moving; but his words became inaudible. A smile was
twisting Barber's mouth, and carrying that crooked, cavernous nose
sidewise. Johnnie understood the smile. The fringe about his thin arms
and legs began to tremble. He raised both hands toward the longshoreman,
the palms outward, in a gesture that was like a silent prayer.
With a muttered curse, Barber straightened, turned on his heel, strode
to the door of his bedroom, threw it wide, noted the unmade beds, and
came about, pushing at the sleeve of his right arm. "Come here," he
bade, and the quiet of his tone was more terrible to the boy than if he
had shouted.
Johnnie did not obey. He could not. His legs would not move. His feet
were rooted. "Oh, Mister Barber," he pleaded. "Oh, don't lick me! I
won't never do it again! Oh, don't! Oh, don't! Oh, don't!"
"Come here." The great arm was bared now. The voice was lower than
before. In one bulging, bloodshot eye that cast showed and went, then
showed again. "Do what I say--come here."
"Oh! oh! oh!" Again Johnnie was gasping.
Barber burst out at him like some fierce storm. "Don't y' try t' fool
_me_!" he cried. He came on. When he was within reach, that great,
naked, iron arm shot out, seized the boy at his middle, swept him up
from the floor with a violence that sent the tea leaves flying from the
yellow hair, held him for a second in mid-air, the small body slouched
in the big clothes as in the bottom of a sack, then shook him till he
fairly rattled, like a pea in a pod.
In a terror that was uncontrollable, Johnnie began to thrash about and
scream. And as Barber half dropped, half flung him to the floor, old
Grandpa roused, and came round in his chair, tap-tapping with the cane.
"Captain!" he shrilled. "The right's falling back! They're giving us
grape and canister!--Oh, our boys! Our poor boys!" Frightened by any
trouble, his mind always reverted to old scenes of battle, when his
broken sentences were like a halting, squeaky record in some talking
machine that is out of order and running down.
As Grandpa rolled near to Johnnie, the latter caught at a wheel, seeking
help, in his extremity, of the helpless, and thrust his hands through
the spokes to lock them. So that as Barber once more bent and dragged at
him, the chair and the old man followed about the kitchen.
"Let go!" commanded the longshoreman. He tried to shake Johnnie free of
the wheel.
But Johnnie held on, and his cries redoubled. The kitchen was in a
tumult now, for old Grandpa was also weeping--not only in fear for
Johnnie, but in terror lest he himself be overturned. And Big Tom was
alternately cursing and ordering.
The trouble was heard elsewhere. To right and left there was movement,
and the sound of windows being raised. Voices called out questioningly.
Some one pounded on a wall in protest. And overhead Mrs. Kukor left her
chair and went rocking across her floor.
Muttering a savage exclamation, Big Tom let go of the boy and flung
himself into the morris chair, not wanting to go so far with his
punishment as to invite the complaints of his neighbors and the
interference of the police. "Git up out of that!" he commanded, giving
Johnnie a rough nudge with a foot; then to quiet his father, "Now, Pa!
That'll do. Sh! sh! It's all right. The battle's over, and the Yanks've
beat."
But Johnnie was still prone, with the wheel in his embrace, and the old
veteran was sobbing, his wrinkled face glistening with tears, when Mrs.
Kukor opened the door and came doll-walking in.
She was a short little lady, with a compact, inflexible figure that was,
so to speak, square, with rounded-off corners--square, and solid, and
heavy. She had eyes that were as black and round and bright as a
sparrow's, a full, red mouth, and graying hair, abundant and crinkly,
which stood out around her countenance as if charged with electricity.
It escaped the hairpins. Even a knitted brown cap of some weight did not
adequately confine it. Every hair seemed vividly alive.
Her olive face was a trifle pale now. Her birdlike eyes darted from one
to another of the trio, quickly taking in the situation. Too concerned
to make any apology for her unannounced entrance, she teetered hastily
to Big Tom's side.
"Oy! oy!" she breathed anxiously. "Vot iss?"
"Tommie home," faltered old Grandpa. "Tommie home. And the color
sergeant's dead!" He reached his arms out to her like a frightened child
who welcomes company.
Like her eyes, Mrs. Kukor's lips never rested, going even when she
listened, for she had the habit of silently repeating whatever was said.
Thus, with lips and eyes busy, head alternately wagging and nodding
eloquently, and both hands waving, she was constantly in motion. Now,
"The color sergeant's dead!" her mouth framed, and she gave a swift
glance around almost as if she expected to see a fallen flag bearer.
"It's this lazy little rascal again," declared Barber, working his jaws
in baffled wrath.
"So-o-o-o!" She stooped and laid a gentle hand on Johnnie's shoulder.
"Come," she said. "Better Chonnie, he goes in a liddle by Cis's room.
No?" And as the boy, still trembling, got to his knees beside the chair,
she helped him to rise, and half led, half carried him past the stove.
Barber began his defense. "I go out o' here of a mornin'," he
complained, "to do a hard day's work, so's I can pay rent and the
grocer. I leave that kid t' do a few little things 'round the place. And
the minute my back's turned, what does he do? Nothin'! I come back, and
look!"
Mrs. Kukor, having seen Johnnie out of the room, turned about. Then,
smoothing her checked apron with her plump hands, she glanced at Barber
with a deprecating smile. "I haf look," she answered. "Und I know.
But--he wass yust a poy, und you know poys."
"I know boys have t' work," came back Barber, righteously. "If they
don't, they grow up into no-account men. When his Aunt Sophie died, I
promised her I'd raise him right. The work here don't amount to
nothin',--anyhow not if you compare it with what I done when _I_ was a
boy. Why, on my father's farm, up-state, I was out of my bed before
sunup, winter and summer, doin' chores, milkin', waterin' the stock,
hoein', and so on. What's a few dishes to _that_? What's a bed or two?
and a little sweepin'? And look! He ain't even washed the old man yet!
And I like to see my father clean and neat. That's what makes me so
red-hot, Mrs. Kukor--the way he neglects my father."
"Chonnie wass shut up so much," argued Mrs. Kukor.
That cast whitened Big Tom's eye anxiously. He did not want Johnnie to
hear any talk about going out. He hastened to reply, and his tone was
more righteous than ever. "No kid out of this flat is goin' to run the
streets," he declared, "and learn all kinds of bad, and bring it home to
that nice, little stepdaughter o' mine! No, Mrs. Kukor, her mother'd
haunt me if I didn't bring her up nice, and you can bet I'll do that.
That kid, long's he stays under my roof, is goin' t' be fit t' stay. And
he wouldn't be if he gadded the streets with the gangs in this part of
town." While this excuse for keeping Johnnie indoors was anything but
the correct one, Big Tom was able to make his voice fervent.
"But Chonnie wass tired mit always seeink the kitchen," persisted the
little Jewish lady. "He did-ent go out now for a lo-ong times. I got
surprises he ain't crazy!"
"That's just what he _is_!" cried Big Tom, triumphantly. "He's crazy! Of
all the foolishness in the world, he can think it up! And the things he
does!--but nothin' that'll ever git him anywheres, or do him any good!
And lazy? Anything t' kill time--t' git out of honest work! Now what
d'y' suppose he was doin' with this clothes line down? and talkin' out
loud to himself?"
"Niaggery! Niaggery!" piped old Grandpa, smiling through his tears, and
swaying against the rope that crossed his chest. "Niaggery! Niaggery!
Chug! chug! chug!"
Mrs. Kukor spread out both hands in a comprehensive gesture. "See?" she
asked. "Oh, I haf listen. The chair goes roundt and roundt, und much
water wass runnink in the sink. It wass for Grandpa, und--it takes
time."
Barber's dark face relaxed a little. It could not truthfully be said of
him that he was a bad son; and any excuse that offered his father as its
reason invariably softened him. He pulled himself to his feet and picked
up the lunch pail and the cargo hook. "Well--all right," he conceded.
"But I said t' myself, 'I'll bet that kid ain't workin'.' So havin' a'
hour, I come home t' see. And how'd he git on yesterday, makin' vi'lets
for y'?"
"Ach!"--this, an exclamation of impatience, was aimed at herself. "I
wass forgettink!" Under her apron hung a long, slender, black bag. Out
of it she took a twenty-five-cent piece and offered the coin to Barber.
"For yesttady," she added.
"Thank y'." He took the quarter. "Glad the kid done his work."
"Oh, sure he do!" protested Mrs. Kukor. "Pos-i-tiv-vle!" (Mrs. Kukor
could also be guilty of self-deception.)
Now, Barber raised his voice a little: "Johnnie, let's see how quick you
can straighten this place up."
At that, Mrs. Kukor waved both hands in eloquent signals, urging Big Tom
to go; tapped her chest, winked, and made little clicking noises with
her tongue--all to denote the fact that she would see everything
straightened up to perfection, but that for old Grandpa's sake further
conversation with Johnnie might be a mistake, since weeping all around
would surely break out again. So Barber, muttering something about
leaving her a clear coast, scuffed his way out.
As the hall door closed, Johnnie buried his small nose in Cis's pillow.
He was wounded in pride rather than in body. He hated to be found on the
floor at the toe of Big Tom's boot. He had listened to the conversation
while lying face downward on Cis's bed but with his head raised like a
turtle's. However, it seemed best, somehow, not to be found in that
position by Mrs. Kukor. He must not take his ill-treatment lightly, nor
recover from his hurts too quick. He decided to be prone and prostrated.
When the little Jewish lady came swaying in to him, therefore, he was
stretched flat, his yellow head motionless.
The sight smote Mrs. Kukor. In all the five years he had lived at the
Barber flat, she had continually watched over him, plying him with
medicine, pulling his baby teeth, mending his ragged clothes, teaching
him to cook and do housework, feeding him kosher dainties, and--for
reasons better hinted at than made plain--keeping a sharp lookout in the
matter of his bright hair.
In the beginning, when trouble had assailed him, her lap had received
him like the mother's lap he could not remember; her arms had cradled
him tenderly, her kisses had comforted, and he had often wept out his
rage and mortification on her bosom.
However, long since he had felt himself too big to be held or kissed.
And as for his hair, she understood what a delicate subject it had come
to be with him. She would have liked to stroke it now; but she contented
herself with patting gently one thin arm. Behind her was old Grandpa,
peering into the dim closet.
"Oy! oy! oy!" mourned Mrs. Kukor, wagging her round head. "Ev'rytink
goes bat if some peoples lives by oder peoples w'ich did-ent belonk mit.
Und how to do? I can't to say, except yust live alonk, und see if
sometink nice happens maype."
Johnnie moved, with a long, dry sob, and very tenderly she leaned down
to turn his face toward her. "Ach, poor Chonnie!" she cried. "Come! We
will wash him, und makes him all fresh und clean. Und next--how do you
t'ink? Mrs. Kukor hass for you a big surprises!"
He sat up then, wearily, but forbore to seem curious, and she coaxed him
into the kitchen, to bathe the dust and tears from his countenance, and
stitch up some rents in the big shirt, where Big Tom had torn it. All
the while she talked to him comfortingly. "Ach, mine heart it bleets
over you!" she declared. "But nefer mind. Because, _oh_, such swell
surprises!"
Now Johnnie felt he could properly show interest in things outside the
morning's trouble. "What, Mrs. Kukor?" he wanted to know. "Is it--is it
noodle soup?"
And now both burst out laughing, for it was always a great joke between
them, his liking for her noodle soup. Old Grandpa laughed loudest of
all, circling them, and pounding the floor with his cane. "What say?" he
demanded. "What say?" Altogether the restoration to the flat of peace
and happiness was made so evident that, to right, left, and below,
windows now began to go down with a bang, as, the Barber row over, the
neighbors went back to their own affairs.
"It wass not noodle soup," declared Mrs. Kukor. "It wass sometink a
t'ousand times so goot. But not for eatink. No. _Much_ better as. Und!
Sooner your work wass finished, make a signals to me alonk of the sink,
und see how it happens!"
More she would not say, but rocked out and up.
Johnnie went at his dishes hard. The table cleared, the sink empty, and
the cupboard full, he tied the clothesline out of the way, then with
broom and dustpan invaded Big Tom's bedroom, which Grandpa shared with
his hulking son. Here were two narrow, iron bedsteads. Between them was
barely room for the wheel chair when it rolled the little old man in to
his night's rest. To right and left of the door, high up, several nails
supported a few dusty garments. That was all.
If Johnnie stooped in the doorway of this room, he could see every
square foot of its floor, and every article in it. Yet from the very
first he had feared the place, into which no light and air came direct.
Whenever he swept it and made the beds, his heart beat fast, and he felt
nervous concerning his ankles, as if Something were on the point of
seizing them! For this reason he always put off his bedroom work as long
as he could; then finished it up quickly, keeping the door wide while he
worked. At other times, he kept it tight shut. Often when old Grandpa
was asleep by the stove, Johnnie would tiptoe to that door, lean
against the jamb of it, and listen. And he told Cis that he could
plainly hear _creakings_!
But this morning he felt none of his usual nervousness, so taken up was
his mind with Mrs. Kukor's mystery. Swiftly but carefully he made the
two beds. As a rule, he contented himself with straightening each out,
but so artfully that Barber would think the sheets had been turned.
Sometimes Barber threw a bit of paper or a sock into one bed or the
other, in order to trap Johnnie, who found it wise always to search for
evidence.
Now he pulled each bed apart, turned the old mattresses with the loudest
thumps, snapped the sheets professionally (Cis had taught him that!),
whacked the pillows with might and main, and tucked in the worn blankets
like a trained nurse. Then with puffs and grunts he swept under as well
as around the beds, searching out the deep cracks with the cornstraw,
and raising a prodigious cloud.
When he came out of the bedroom it was to empty his garnerings into the
stove and repeat the dust-gathering process in Cis's room, that
cubby-hole, four-by-seven, which had no window, and doubtless had been
intended for a storage place, or a bathroom free from draughts. It held
no furniture at all--only a long, low shelf and a dry-goods box. Cis
slept on a narrow mattress which upholstered the shelf, and used the box
both as a dressing-table and a wardrobe. Johnnie was not expected to
make up the shelf; and was strictly forbidden to touch the box. He
scratched the floor successfully, not having attended to it for some
days.
By the time he was ready to do the kitchen, his face was streaked again,
and glistening with perspiration. And he could not help but wish, as he
planted the wheel chair at the open window, that Barber, if he intended
to make another unexpected return, would come at such a time as this,
when things that he liked were happening.
The kitchen floor lay in great splintering hummocks and hollows. Its
wide cracks were solid with the accumulations of time, while lint and
frayings, and bits of cloth and string, were fairly woven into its rough
surface everywhere, and tenaciously held. It was lastingly greasy in the
neighborhood of the table, as steadily wet in the region of the sink,
and sooty in an ever-widening circle about the stove.
Sprinkling it thoroughly, he swept even the two squares on which were
set the fuel boxes; gave the stove what amounted to a feverish rubbing,
then turned his attention to old Grandpa.
The morning routine of caring for the aged veteran included the bathing
of the wizened face and hands and the brushing of the thin, straggling
hair. Johnnie hastened to collect the wash basin, the bar of soap (it
was of the laundry variety), and a square of once-white cloth, which it
must be confessed was used variously about the flat, serving at one time
to polish the lamp chimney, and again for any particular dusting.
Grandpa had all of a small boy's dislike for water. The moment he spied
Johnnie's preparations, he began to protest. "No! no!" he objected.
"It's cold! It's cold!" He whirled his chair in an attempt to escape.
But Johnnie had a fine device for just this problem. "Oh, Grandpa!" he
reminded coaxingly as he filled the wash basin with warm water out of
the teakettle, "don't you remember that you jus' was in a big battle?
And there's _mud_ on your face!"
Grandpa capitulated at once, and allowed himself to be washed and
combed. The old man clean, Johnnie gave him a glass of warm milk,
wheeled him as far away from the window as possible, then trundled him
gently back and forth, as if he were a baby in a carriage. And all the
while the boy sang softly, improvising a lullaby:
"Oh, Grandpa, now go to s'eepy-s'eep,
'Cause you're awful tired.
And Johnnie wants t' see what Mrs. Kukor
Is goin' to s'prise him about----"
Grandpa dozing, Johnnie did not pause to eat the cold potato and bread
spread with the grease of bacon trimmings which made his usual noon
meal. Curiosity dulled his hunger. Gently he tapped upon that convenient
pipe--once, then twice, then once again.
As he leaned at the window to wait, his small nose curled in a grin.
There was no movement up above. He half suspected a joke. But he had got
off easy with Big Tom. Also, the housework was done, and in fine style.
Except for a little violet-making--not too much--more than a whole
half-day still lay ahead of him. And what an automobile trip he could
take with Mr. Astor! Idly he followed the changing contours of a cloud
in an otherwise empty sky.
Then of a sudden something came dropping between him and the cloud. He
started back. It was a shallow basket, suspended from each of its four
corners by a string. As it lowered inch by inch, he stood up in the rope
coils; and what he saw in it fairly took his breath. For there on the
bottom of the basket was--a book!
"Gee!" he gasped.
He brought the basket to a safe landing. Then, forgetting that some one
was at the other end of the four strings, he slipped to the floor,
turned on the water in the sink, and, like a Moslem holy man who is
about to touch his Koran, washed both grimy hands.
To look at, it was not much of a book. In the first place, it had not
the length, width or thickness of the telephone directory, while its
corners were fully as dog-eared. Yet he took it from the basket with
something like reverence. It had one cloth cover--the back. This was
wine-red, and shiny. The front one had been torn out of its binding.
However, this seemed to him no flaw. Also, there were several
pictures--in colors! And as he looked the volume over still more
closely, he made a wonderful discovery: on the front page was written a
name--_J. J. Hunter_.
It was a man's book!
"Oh, my goodness!" he whispered. "Oh, Mrs. Kukor!"
The basket danced inquiringly, tipped, and began to heave upward. A
voice began to whisper to him, coming down along those four strings: "I
finds him by a secont-hant store-mans. I gets him almost for notink. He
wass olt, und very fine. Haf you open him? Reat, Chonnie!"
He opened the book at the first page; and knew how different this one
was from the directory, with its solid lines of names; from the speller,
printed in columns of words, or the arithmetic, which was all
hit-or-miss. Here was a page divided into paragraphs, as in the
newspapers which Cis sometimes smuggled in. Before and after many of the
paragraphs were those strange little marks, larger at one end than at
the other, which showed that some one was speaking.
"It's a story!" he whispered back.
Indeed, as he read that first page, it so informed him. Across its top,
in capital letters, ran those words: _THE STORY OF ALADDIN; OR, THE
WONDERFUL LAMP_. All his life he had had to make up his own stories, get
acquainted with the people in them, dress them, and even give them
speech. But here was a story belonging to some one else--a story as
important as that one about his friends David and Goliath, this proven
by the fact that it had been written down, letter for letter.
He began it: _In the capital of one of the large and rich provinces of
the Kingdom of China, the name of which I do not recollect, there lived
a tailor, named Mustapha, who was so poor, that he could hardly, by his
daily labor, maintain himself and his family, which consisted of a wife
and son._
_His son, who was called Aladdin_----
Something came into Johnnie's throat when he got that far. He gulped.
And he could not read any further just then because something had come
into his eyes. He laid the book against his breast, and crossed both
arms upon it. He did not know how to pray. Mrs. Kukor had never dared
teach him, fearing the wrath of Big Tom. As for Cis, she knew how from
her mother; but she had all of a child's natural shyness regarding
sacred subjects.
To Johnnie, Sunday was not a day set apart for sacred matters. It was a
day to be dreaded. And not only because on that day Barber was likely to
be about at any hour, but because for Johnnie it meant uninterrupted
work. The noon meal had to be put on the table instead of into lunch
pails. And when dinner was cleared away there was always bead-stringing
or violet-making to do--Cis helping when she returned from church. On
account of his clothes, Johnnie never went to church himself. What he
knew about churches, therefore, was only what Cis told him; and of her
information the most striking bit was this: red carpets led into them
under gay awnings whenever people were getting married.
But as he stood with the book clasped to his breast, what he felt was
thanksgiving--to his very toes. "Aladdin,"--he spoke aloud to that other
boy, who was so poor; "you're goin' t' be a dandy friend of mine! Yes,
and your Pa and Ma, too! And I'll introduce you to Buckle, and Mr.
Rockefeller, and a lot of nice folks!"
Presently he brought the book up to where, by lowering his head, he
could lay a thin cheek against that front page. Then, "Oh, Mister J. J.
Hunter," he added huskily, "I hope you ain't never goin' to want this
back!"