Catty was pretty quiet all the afternoon. He seemed to be figuring
something out, and every little while he acted as if he had forgotten I
was around at all, and would sit down some place and look off at the
distance and squint, and bend his thumb back and forth like he expected
to pump water with it. When I got to know him better I found out he
always worked his thumb when he was het up over something or didn’t know
what to do. Once I told him I guessed his brains was in his wrist
instead of in his head, and that he had to pump them like they do the
pipe-organ in church, or they wouldn’t work.
Pretty soon he jumped up all of a sudden, and says to me, in a warlike
kind of a voice: “It would be runnin’ away. We’ve been runnin’ away
right along.”
“Do tell,” says I. “From what?”
“Folks,” says he, and then shut his mouth up like a steel trap and began
to walk away fast.
“Hey!” says I. “Where you goin’?”
“To see Dad,” says he.
I kept right up with him, but he didn’t speak again till we were right
by that little shanty near the waterworks where he and his father were
sleeping. It was no kind of a place to sleep at all. There wasn’t a
whole window in it; the front door was off the hinges and there was more
roof where the shingles was off than where they was on. Honest Injun, it
looked as if a good stiff shove would topple the whole shooting-match
over. Inside there wasn’t a stick of furniture and the floor was full of
holes. It smelled kind of musty and damp. The minute I saw it I knew I
wouldn’t enjoy tramping. No, sir. I wouldn’t mind sleeping in the woods
or in the hay, but to use a place like this was something I jest
naturally would be dead set against.
Catty called, but nobody answered.
“Dad’s fishin’,” says he, and off we went to the bayou, where, after a
few minutes, we came across a man a-sitting on a log with a long cane
pole in his hands. I couldn’t see him move so much as his eye-winkers.
He was kind of long and narrow, and whiskers that was a sort of red and
yellow, mixed, stuck out around his face like the spokes of a wheel.
[Illustration: “Who’s he?” said Mr. Atkins, pointing very sudden at me]
What he had on his head might have been a hat and it might have been
part of a horse-blanket, and it might have been a busted waste-basket.
It might have been almost anything, but the thing it looked like _least_
was a hat. He had a nose with a hook in it and a drooping end. Most of
his face was nose. That was about all I saw of him first off. Then Catty
spoke to him and he turned around slow.
“Howdy, Sonny!” says he, and smiled. I saw then that his eyes were
brown, with wrinkles all around them. Not laughing wrinkles, but the
kind you get from the sun shining in your eyes. I never saw a smile just
like his smile. It was kind of patient, and kind of glad, and kind of
thoughtful, and kind of sorry—all mixed in—and right off I liked him.
“Who’s _he_?” said Mr. Atkins, pointing very sudden at me.
“Wee-wee Moore,” says Catty. “Been to his house to dinner.”
“Eh?” says Mr. Atkins, opening his eyes wide.
“Right in the house, at the table, with him and his Pa and Ma.”
“No! I swan to man! Wa’n’t you nigh scairt to death?”
“Nobody’d be scairt with Mr. Moore and Wee-wee’s mother.”
“How’d it come about, Sonny?”
“It was after a woman called me a tramp and other names and ordered her
boy not to come near me. Mr. Moore he told her what he thought about
her, and that I was his guest, and then he made me come to dinner, and
we talked.”
“I’d like to git a squint at that Mr. Moore,” says Mr. Atkins,
reflective-like.
“He’s comin’ to call on you,” says Catty.
“I want to know! Um!... Calc’late I better wait for him right here in my
office. Men likes to talk in their places of business. He kin set on one
end of this log and I’ll set on the other. Mighty cozy. When you
calc’late he’s comin’?”
“Maybe to-day.”
“Um!... Don’t call to mind havin’ a caller these fifteen year. Guess
maybe I better comb out my whiskers.”
“Dad,” says Catty.
His father turned to look at him, and saw that Catty’s face was kind of
sober and set. “What is it, Sonny?”
“Did you ever figger any on settlin’ in one place, Dad?”
“Can’t say’s I have. There’s things ag’in’ it. When you’re settled you
hain’t on the move, be you? Nobody could claim you was, I guess. And,
take the opposite, when you’re always on the move you hain’t settled in
one place.” He sat back and eyed us like he was mighty proud of figuring
a thing out that way.
“Do you like movin’ so much, Dad, that you couldn’t be contented to
settle?”
“Movin’ about’s an occupation, Sonny—a reg’lar profession like law or
storekeepin’. There’s got to be folks in all trades, or business would
go _smash_! Every feller ought to do what he kin do best, and the best
thing I ever done was bein’ shiftless and moggin’ from place to place.
Seems like I’m fitted for it by nature. Yes, sir, I was cut out for it.
I hain’t never seen anybody that does it as thorough and conscientious
as me. Now, as to settlin’ down, I hain’t had the experience, and how’s
a man goin’ to succeed at a trade he hain’t had experience in?”
“If I was to ask you to settle here, and say that I wanted to do it
mighty bad, and that I didn’t want to move around any more, what would
you say?”
“I calc’late I’d ask you what the reason was.”
“I hain’t sure I want to, but if I did want to there would be reasons.”
“There gen’ally is reason for ’most everything a feller wants. I’ve
noticed it. I’ve noticed it most special and p’tic’lar. Take a dog, for
instance. He wants to chase his tail. Why does he want to chase his
tail? Because he’s got reasons for it, and them reasons is that he wants
to satisfy a curiosity in his mind whether he kin catch it. If you had
reasons for wantin’ to stop here permanent, what would them reasons be?”
“They’d be,” says Catty, slow and deliberate, “that Mrs. Gage up and
called me names, and that I wouldn’t want to run away without showin’
her that she didn’t have no business callin’ me names. And they’d be
that I’d want to learn myself table manners so’s I wouldn’t be scairt if
I ever et with Wee-wee’s mother ag’in. But mostly they’d be that folks
seems to think that shiftlessness hain’t respectable, and that it gits
under my skin to have folks sneerin’ at you and me.”
“Folks sneers, do they?”
“Stiddy and constant,” says Catty.
“Hain’t got no business to. It takes brains to be shiftless, Sonny, and
folks hain’t able to appreciate it. Anybody kin work and earn a livin’
and stay in one place and never have no fun. But you take one of them
stiddy men and turn him to live like we do, and what ’ll happen? He’ll
starve, and before he starves he’ll die from sleepin’ on the ground, and
before that he’ll have blisters onto his feet. _We_ don’t do none of
them things, and why? I ask you why. It’s because we’re smart and we’ve
learned our trade.”
“Is it awful hard to work all the time?”
“Easy as fallin’ off a log. Everybody can do it.”
“Could you run a store, Dad?”
“I could run a train if I owned one. Trouble is I don’t own no store.”
“How do folks git to own stores?”
“Mostly their folks leave stores to ’em when they die, or money to buy
’em with. Some saves up money and buys ’em.”
“We never have any money to save.”
“Never had much need for money.”
“Would you like to own a store, or have a stiddy job, and never have
anybody sneer at you any more and call you a tramp?”
“Sonny,” says Mr. Atkins, “you don’t never need to worry about what
folks thinks of you. What you want to worry about is what you think of
yourself.”
“I’ve been doin’ that, Dad.”
“And what do you think of yourself?”
“I hain’t sure, but it looks kind of like I was goin’ to think that the
way we live hain’t what you’d call _valuable_. Seems like everybody
ought to be _makin’_ somethin’ or _doin’_ somethin’. Seems like I’d like
to have folks respect me—and it seems like I’d like sort of to live the
same way other boys does and play with ’em without their folks tellin’
them to git away from me.”
“Sonny, you hain’t gone and got ambitious, have you?”
“What’s _ambitious_, Dad?”
“Ambitious means wantin’ to git to a place where you can look down on
other folks.”
“I don’t quite agree with you, Mr. Atkins,” says a voice, and we looked
around to see my Dad standing there. “I believe ambition means a desire
to improve yourself and to become something more valuable than you are.
It means that you’re not satisfied with yourself.”
Mr. Atkins got up and looked at Dad, and Dad looked back at Mr. Atkins.
“Be you Mr. Moore?” says Catty’s Dad.
“Yes, Mr. Atkins.”
“I’m much obleeged to meet you,” says he, and he shook hands with Dad
very polite.
“Glad you’ve moved to Athens, Mr. Atkins.” Athens was the name of our
town. “We’ve seen quite a little of Catty, and we hope you’re both going
to stay here.”
“Um!...” says Mr. Atkins. “Catty’s been mentionin’ it.”
“Haven’t reached a decision?”
“Catty hain’t sure he wants to stay.”
“If he were sure, and wanted to stay very much, what would you do?”
“Stay,” says Mr. Atkins, very short and prompt.
“Why?”
“Because I hain’t got nothin’ to do in this world but look after Catty
and kind of make him glad he’s alive. Folks ought to be glad they’re
alive. I be. I don’t want Catty to grow up and think that I ever denied
him anythin’ that I could give to him that wasn’t harmful. Yes, if Catty
says stay, why, we stay.”
“And what _do_ you say, Catty?”
“I don’t say nothin’ yet. I hain’t ready to say. I got to think about a
lot of things, and make up my mind what we’d do if we was to stay, and
if Dad could be happy stayin’ instead of movin’ around. If Dad wouldn’t
be happy I wouldn’t ever stay, even if I wanted to so bad I couldn’t
stand it.”
“I like to hear you say that,” says Dad.
“If you won’t figger it’s bad manners,” says Catty, “I want to go off
alone and kind of wander around and figger things out. I don’t want
nobody with me—not even Dad. As soon’s I know what’s best I’ll come and
let you know about it.”
“Go ahead,” says Dad. “That’s the way to go after things. Reason them
out. Don’t take anybody’s word for it, but make sure yourself.”
“I’m a-goin’ to,” says Catty, and off he went. Dad and I stayed there
and talked to Mr. Atkins. It was mighty interesting, for he had been so
many places and he had a funny kind of a way to tell about them, and
then he had some notions that was funny, too. We had a good time, and
when we started home Dad and Mr. Atkins shook hands again, and Dad said
that he hoped Mr. Atkins would live there, because he liked to talk to
him, and Mr. Atkins said that if he _did_ come to live there Dad would
make it a heap easier.
It was about nine o’clock that night when somebody rang our bell and Dad
went to the door. It was Catty, because I heard his voice. He didn’t say
good evening, or anything else but jest one sentence:
“We’re a-goin’ to stay.”
“Good for you,” says Dad, and held out his hand.
Catty shook it a minute, and then, without a word, he turned and ran
down the steps and disappeared into the dark.
I was glad he was going to stay, because I liked him and I liked his
Dad. My Dad was glad, too. Mother says:
“I hope it’s best. They’ll have some hard things to put up
with—especially the boy.”
“I’m not worrying about the boy,” says Dad, “now that his mind is made
up.”
Somehow I didn’t worry about Catty, either.