That afternoon about four o’clock the paper came out, and right on the
front page of it was a big piece about Sands Jones and Darkie Patt and
the painting-race. Mr. Cuppy had done himself proud. Everything was
there that Catty had told him and a lot of things Catty never thought of
at all.
“This event,” said Editor Cuppy, “constitutes one of the most remarkable
examples of civic and business ingenuity ever manifested in our midst.
Our village will thrill at the prospect of such a contest between such
well-known citizens as Mr. Patt and Mr. Jones. There have been
horse-races and foot-races and balloon-races and dog-races, but never to
our knowledge has the earth seen a painting-race. It remained for our
town to set the lead in this new realm of sport, and it remained for our
new and valued citizens, Atkins & Son, painters and decorators and
contractors, to bring this honor to us. It represents true enterprise.
We should all extend the hand of welcome to these progressive citizens.
It is to be hoped that the town will take formal notice of this event
and that some sort of celebration will be arranged to mark the start of
the race. The least that could be done would be to organize a parade to
the place of the contest, and to hear some words of congratulation and
patriotism spoken before the gladiators lay on their brushes.” There was
a lot more of it and Catty was tickled to death.
“I guess I git my ladders now,” he said.
“How?”
“Wait and see,” says he.
We walked over to Mr. Manning’s warehouse where Mr. Atkins was mixing
paints. He was about done when we got there, and Catty grabbed onto him
and told him to come along.
“Where?” says Mr. Atkins. “I want a chance to git off and rest and look
at birds a-flyin’ and clouds a-scuddin’ by.”
“After this,” says Catty, “about the only time you git to do that is
Sundays. You’re goin’ to be too busy the rest of the week.”
“I be, be I? Wa-al, where we goin’ now?”
“Barber’s,” says Catty.
“Hair-cuttin’ barber’s?”
“That’s the feller, Dad.”
“I’m goin’ to git my hair cut?”
“Whiskers, too.”
“Not clean off?” says Mr. Atkins, and his eyes got kind of frightened.
“Naw,” says Catty, “not off. Them whiskers is valuable, pervidin’
they’re used right. I’ve been thinkin’ up what kind of whiskers looks
most respectable and dignified and sich-like, and I got it all planned
out. Let’s hustle, Dad.”
So we went to the barber’s, and Catty herded his Dad into the chair, and
then told the barber just what he wanted done and how he wanted it. He
had a picture he had cut out of an old magazine of some man that was
president of a railroad, and he was about the most dignified-looking man
I ever see. His whiskers come down to a sharp point and was that neat
and handsome you wouldn’t believe it. Catty held this picture up to the
barber and told him to make his Dad look as much like that as he could.
The barber he went to work slow and careful. Every little while he would
stand off and look at Mr. Atkins with his head on one side and whistle
through his teeth. Then he would sort of rush in and snip off a chunk of
hair and then stand off again and take another look. Mr. Atkins sat like
he was frozen solid and looked at the barber hard and then looked in the
glass, and then grunted down in his throat. It took the barber ’most an
hour to git through, but when he was done you wouldn’t have known Mr.
Atkins. He looked like he was ten years younger and a million dollars
richer. Why, if a man with whiskers like his were fixed should stop you
on the street and ask you to get him change for a million-dollar bill,
you would be surprised that he was bothering with such small change.
Mr. Atkins looked at himself and waggled his head; then he looked at
himself some more, sideways, hideways, and wideways, and mumbled and
looked discontented.
“’Tain’t me,” says he. “Now, when I git up in the mornin’ and wash my
face and look in the glass I’ll have to git interduced or I’ll think
there’s a stranger a-hangin’ around. I got used to my face and I kind of
liked it. Now I got to start in all over to git used to this one.”
“It hain’t only your face that’s changed,” says Catty. “It’s all of you.
You’re respectable now. How does it feel?”
“Can’t say as yet. Can’t say as yet.... Goodness gracious, Peter! Now,
honest, Catty, is that me?”
“It’s you, Dad.”
“But that feller in the glass looks as if he _liked_ to work, and all
that.”
“He does,” says Catty.
“Then, ’tain’t me. I knowed it.... I wisht I had back my whiskers.”
Well, we went out of there and walked down the street, and all at once I
noticed that folks were pointing at us and whispering. Everywhere you
looked there was men reading the paper and talking about it. It was
almost like the night before election. The town was stirred up, and when
our town gets stirred it gets stirred clean to the bottom. That
painting-race had hit us right between the eyes, and I could see that
something was going to happen sure.
Dad had told me I could eat with Catty and his Dad, which I did. We had
fish cooked in the coals and water and bread and cheese. It was a mighty
fine meal. After supper we sat around awhile helping Mr. Atkins get used
to his whiskers, and then Catty says it was time to go to court.
The court was in a room over the fire-engine hall, and when we got there
there was a crowd. It looked like all the town had been arrested for
something. There was women there, too, and one of them was Mrs. Gage,
the justice’s wife. I figured she was to blame for trying to get Mr.
Atkins chased out of town, and had come down to make sure her husband
did it. We went in and sat down inside the railing, and pretty soon
everybody else came in, and then Mr. Gage sat down in his chair behind
the desk and cleared his throat and scowled at everybody as important as
all-git-out.
“Case of the People against Atkins,” he says. “Is the defendant
present?”
“I be,” says Mr. Atkins.
“You’re charged with being a vagrant. Guilty or not guilty?”
“Wa-al,” says Mr. Atkins, looking like a banker that was thinking about
lending fifty thousand dollars, “there’s two ways of lookin’ at it.”
“What two ways?” says Mr. Gage.
“If you look at it from the point of view that what I’m doin’ makes me a
vagrant, then I be one; but if you look at it from the point of view
that what I’m doin’ _don’t_ make me a vagrant, then I hain’t.”
I looked back, and you could see heads nodding all over the room. Those
words of Mr. Atkins’s coming right out of that kind of whiskers sounded
as if they were a little wiser than Solomon.
“What do you think?” says the judge.
“I think I hain’t,” says Mr. Atkins.
“Defendant pleads not guilty,” says Mr. Gage. “Town-marshal Piddlecomb,
take the stand.”
The town marshal shuffled up and sat down and lifted up his hand and
swore he would tell the truth.
“Know this defendant?” asked the judge.
“Seen him some.”
“You made the charge ag’in’ him?”
“I done so.”
“Why?”
“Your wife told me to.”
“Um!... Charge him with bein’ a vagrant, don’t you? That’s your charge?”
“Ya-as.... Him and his boy is tramps. They footed it into town. No
visible means of support. Livin’ in that there old shanty down by the
bayou. Ordered him to git out of town, and he refused. Don’t work. Jest
a tramp.”
“That all?”
“Plenty, hain’t it?”
“Sounds that way. Step down. Defendant got anythin’ to say?”
Catty nudged his father and Mr. Atkins stood up and walked to the
witness’s chair. With his beard and hair-cut, and those brand-new
painter’s clothes, he looked fine. He didn’t look any more like a tramp
than the Methodist minister, and the folks in the courtroom sort of
grunted out loud. Mr. Gage looked at him and then looked at his wife and
goggled his eyes. He was considerable flabbergasted, I judged.
“You are Mr. Atkins, the defendant in this case?”
“Calc’late to be.”
“Hear what the town marshal jest said?”
“Every word of it, from beginnin’ to end.”
“Did he tell the truth?”
“Not more ’n he could help,” says Mr. Atkins, and everybody in the room
let out a laugh.
“Did you tramp into town?”
“Walked in. Any crime to walkin’? Never heard walkin’ was a crime.”
“Live in that old shanty by the bayou?”
“Don’t live there. Jest sort of campin there, fishin’ in the bayou.
Campin’-like. Any crime to campin’?”
“Town marshal says you got no visible means of support.”
“How’s he know?” says Mr. Atkins. “That feller don’t know but what I got
a million dollars in gov’ment bonds and go around clippin’ off a coupon
whenever I need one.”
“Have you a business?”
“Painter ’n’ decorator.”
“Where’s your place of business?”
Here Catty walked up to his father and handed him a piece of paper and
whispered in his ear. Mr. Atkins read over the paper and says: “Jest
rented a store. Calc’latin’ to move in right sudden. Goin’ to live
there, too. Rooms behind the store. Calc’late to do paintin’ and
decoratin’ and gen’al contractin’. Rented this store off a feller named
Gage. Here’s a paper that says it with his name hitched onto the
bottom.”
I guess Mr. Gage hadn’t figured that Mr. Atkins was the one that had
rented his store. He hadn’t ever seen him, of course, for Catty and me
had rented it. When he saw that paper it kind of knocked him off his
perch. “Be you the man that’s rented my store?”
“Calc’late to be.”
“The man that’s got the contract to paint Manning’s warehouse?”
“Calc’late to be.”
“The man that’s holdin’ this here paintin’-race Monday?”
“Calc’late to be.”
Mr. Gage scratched his head and looked worried. He shot a glance at his
wife and she was scowling to beat everything. But there wasn’t anything
for him to do. He swallowed once or twice and says: “Case dismissed. Man
that’s in business and rented a store and has got a big contract hain’t
no vagrant. Court’s adjourned.”
Mrs. Gage got up quick and hustled out of the room, but everybody else
stayed, and everybody seemed like he wanted to shake hands with Mr.
Atkins and talk to him, and before we knew it the court had turned into
a sort of meeting to make arrangements to celebrate the painting-race.
They began making plans. First off there was to be a parade with the
Silver Cornet Band, and a speech by Representative Capper, who was home
from the state capital. There was going to be committees, and the
G. A. R. was going to march and the Republican Club and the Knights of
Hannibal, and everything. Then the chief of the fire department says
they would march and pull their new hose-cart and hook-and-ladder that
had never been tried out yet. I saw Catty whispering to a man next to
him, and the man got up all of a sudden and says:
“Feller-citizens, this here is a great day for our town. There hain’t
never been no paintin’-race nowheres in the world before, and we ought
to make it a reg’lar town event. It ought to be did right. Now there’s
the matter of ladders. Painters’ ladders is mostly white and all daubed
with paint. How’s it goin’ to look to have this kind of a celebration
and nothin’ but mussy ladders? Folks’ll be disgusted. What I say is, do
it right or don’t do it at all. _Red_ ladders is what is needed. Ladders
that look like a celebration and that folks can see.... Yes, sir. Now to
do this here thing right, Mr. Atkins and Patt and Jones ought to be
drawed to the scene of the contest on the village’s hook-and-ladder
wagon, and the firemen, wearin’ their red shirts, ought to take there
own red ladders and hist them alongside the buildin’, and the race ought
to be raced by men paintin’ on them very identical ladders.... That’s my
idea. Give the whole thing a kind of a official sort of a look, that’s
what it ’ll do, and I move, Mr. Chairman, that it be did.”
Well, sir! Everybody let out a holler, and the motion was seconded and
voted on—and Catty Atkins had his ladders! He turned around to me and
grinned and says: “Figgered it would come out right.... Looks like we
was movin’ along toward bein’ respectable. What become of Mrs. Gage?”
“She left early,” says I.
“Calc’lated she would,” says Catty. The way he said it, kind of sober
and dry, made me laugh right out. “Figger Mr. Gage is goin’ to git
unpleasant things said to him ’fore mornin’.”
He sat down in a chair like he was all tired out.
“It’s dog-gone hard work to git respectable,” says he.