THE GANG TAKES A HAND
For days after that visit, Jimmy Bobb stuck in Lee's mind. The cripple
boy had so little. If only there were something one could do to give him
a little pleasure!
Then a plan came to Lee. He just believed he'd--well, what he believed
was so vague that he couldn't put it into words, but it started him off
on a very busy time.
Lee turned back through the pages of the old science book, studying a
section here, copying off a diagram there in painstaking pencil lines.
In between times he roamed the Renaud place from attic to cellar, from
old stable yard to wood lot. And the things he collected--a broken
pipestem, a bit of beeswax, some feathers, an old cornstalk, wire, a
needle, a few threads raveled from a piece of yellowed silk! A strange
assortment for a strong, husky boy to spend his time gathering together!
Anybody might have thought he had gone as batty as old Johnny Poolak.
Only there was nobody to see. And as for bothering about making himself
ridiculous--um! well, Lee Renaud was so intent upon his task that all
thought of self had gone out of his head.
Towards the end of the week, Lee tramped over to the Bobb cabin.
"Good evening, everybody! Tomorrow suppose--" in his excitement, Lee
twisted his cap round and round in his hands--"suppose old Pomp and I
come here and carry Jimmy, chair and all, over to our place. I've got
something to show him. It would be all right, wouldn't it?"
"Would it! O-o-oh! Think of going somewhere!" Jimmy Bobb swayed in his
chair. His eyes seemed to get three sizes bigger. "I can, can't I, ma?"
Not being given to over many words, Sarah Ann Bobb merely nodded. But
her face was no longer apathetic; some of its tiredness seemed to have
gone away.
The next day, though, when Lee and old Pomp parted the bushes on the
narrow trail and came out on the bare knoll of the Bobb place, things
appeared entirely different. There was a change in atmosphere--due to a
group of rough-looking fellows massed close to the cabin door. Some of
those tobacco-spitting loafers Lee had had to navigate around every time
he went to the country store! Like all the Cove people, these gangling
youths were an unkempt, taciturn lot. Even as Lee and Pomp drew nearer,
they gave no greeting, but merely drew closer together like a guard
before the door.
Lee Renaud could almost feel the down on his spine prickle as his anger
rose against them. What was this gang up to? They had gathered here for
something! Must have heard that he and Pomp were going to carry Jimmy
over to the electrical shop. Full of the Coveite's ignorances and
superstitions, they must have gotten together here to try to interfere
with his plans. Well, just let 'em try to stop him--just let 'em!
Involuntarily his fists clenched, his jaw tightened. He was going to
give Jimmy a good time--as he'd planned! He'd fight 'em all before he'd
give up!
Renaud strode forward, with old Pomp edging back a little behind him.
Lem Hicks, who seemed to be leader of the gang, detached himself from
his fellows and stepped out into the path.
When the long-armed, hulking Lemuel spoke, what he had to say came
nearer knocking the wind out of Lee Renaud than any fist blow might have
done.
"We--we allowed we'd carry Jimmy over for you."
Lee stood like one rooted to the ground. He couldn't believe he'd heard
aright. There must be some trick in it. This rough gang was up to
something.
His fists, that had relaxed, tightened up again. Another was stepping
out of the group, the one they called Big Sandy. He was a tall fellow,
but he grasped a couple of poles taller than himself.
"Done cut some hickory saplings for to slide under Jimmy's chair for
handles, like. Jimmy, he ain't so big, but I allow he'd be quite a tote
for just you two. Us four can do it more better--"
"Sure--fine!" Lee Renaud's voice surprised himself. He blurted it out
almost before he knew it. But there was a something in the eyes of these
boys that made him say what he did. It was that same terrible
eagerness--like in Jimmy Bobb's--that hunger after something of interest
in their meager lives.
Little dark Tony Zita (one of those lowlife fishing folk, old Pomp had
once dubbed him) darted up close to Lee, a new light in the black eyes
beneath his tousled black locks. "You gonner let us see it all--what you
gonner show to Jimmy? We ain't never seen no 'lectricity, nor nothing!"
It was a lively procession that went forward down the little woods trail
between the log cabin and the warped and leaking elegance of the old
Renaud mansion. Jimmy Bobb, almost hysterical with excitement, rode like
a king in the wheelless chariot of his old armchair. Lem and Big Sandy,
being the strongest in the bunch, handled a pole end on either side
where the weight was heaviest. The Zita boy and Joe Burk put a shoulder
to the other ends of the poles. Mackey, who went along too, and Lee took
their turns at carrying.
Class feeling had been swept away. The antagonism of these secluded
backwoods folk for a "city dude what slicked his hair," the antagonism
of an educated fellow toward the narrow, suspicious ignorance of country
louts--a new feeling had suddenly taken the place of all this. This
group was now just "boys" bound together by an interest.
Up in the littered second-story room that served as Lee's workshop,
young Renaud didn't need to press very strongly his warning against
"folks mixing too much with the dangers of electricity." The great glass
wheel, with its strange gearing of wood and brass and fur, laid its own
spell of warning on the boys. The old thing did look queer and
outlandish. One almost expected some black-robed wizard to step out of
the past and "make magic" on it.
Well, electricity was a sort of magic, it was so wonderful and powerful,
thought Lee, only it wasn't the "black magic" of evil; it was a great
power for good.
As Lee cranked the machine into a swift whirl, the other boys stood well
back, but looked with all their eyes. Like a showman putting his charges
through their stunts, Lee put all his crude, homemade apparatuses
through their paces.
"He's doing it! He's ketching lightning, like they said!" whispered Tony
Zita as sparks leaped and crackled across the metal points set in brass
so close to the wheel.
He showed his Leyden Jar "that you stored electricity in just like
pouring molasses in a bucket, then shot it out again on a wire what
sparks!"
He exhibited his Voltaic Pile, a crude stack of broken bits of iron and
pieces of a copper pot and squares of old flannel wet in salt water
that, as Lem Hicks admiringly put it, "without no rubbing together of
things--without no nothing doing at all except piling up of wet iron and
copper--just went ahead and made this here electricity!"
"Gosh A'mighty," Lem exclaimed, "that's a smart thing! Wish I could fix
up something like it oncet!"
Jimmy Bobb didn't have so much to say. He just looked, taking it in and
storing it away in his eager hungering brain.
Then Lee opened a wall cupboard and brought out his latest
treasures--the things he had prepared especially to show Jimmy Bobb what
electricity could do. He came back to the group now, bearing the piece
of broken pipestem in his hand. It was a clear, yellowish piece of stem,
with a pretty sheen to it. Lee handed it to Jimmy, along with a rag of
flannel cloth.
"Rub the yellow stuff with the cloth," he ordered. "Rub hard."
Jimmy's legs might be feeble, but his arms were strong. He put in some
sharp, vigorous rubs, his face excited but withal mystified. He didn't
know what it was all about, but he was making a try at it.
"Now that's enough." As he spoke, Lee scattered some downy feathers on
the table. "Reach the yellow piece out, somewhere near the feathers," he
went on, "and see what'll happen."
Jimmy stretched out the old piece of pipestem, and the feathers leaped
up to it as though they were alive.
"Well, I'll be blowed!" shouted Jimmy, trying the experiment time and
again, and each time having the fluff leap up to cling to the stem.
"What is it? What makes it act all alive?"
"Electricity." Lee Renaud picked up the broken stem. "This thing is
amber. I just happened to find it in a junk pile. An old book told me
about how people found out long ago that 'delectable amber, rubbed with
woolen' would generate enough electricity to draw to itself light
objects."
"I'll be blowed! Well, I'll be blowed!" Jimmy Bobb kept saying to
himself, as he tried the amber and feather stunt over and over. "Just
think, I can rub up this here lightning-power myself!"
Lee Renaud was not through with his show pieces yet. From the cupboard
he brought out the strangest little contraption of all. Upon the center
of a stout plank about two feet long, he had erected two small posts of
wood. The tiny figure of a man, ingeniously cut out of cornstalk pith,
sat in a swing of frail silken thread that hung suspended from the tops
of the posts. At one end of the board was an insulated standard of
brass. At the other end was a brass standard, uninsulated. Lee carefully
arranged this curious apparatus so that the insulated stand was
connected with the "prime conductor" of the old glass friction-wheel.
Against the other standard was laid a little chain so that the chain end
touched the floor, thus making what is known electrically as ground
contact.
Now the fun began. Electrified by its connection with the prime
conductor, the insulated standard drew the tiny figure in the silken
swing up against the brass where the figure took on an electrical
charge. Then off swung the little man to discharge his load of
electricity against the ground contact post at the other end of the
board.
This way, that way swung the tiny figure, an animated little cornstalk
man that for all the world looked as if he was enjoying his high riding.
Back and forth, back and forth he swung, pulled now by the positive, now
by the negative power of that strange thing, electricity. And he
continued to swing just as long as electrical power was supplied to him.
Shouts of laughter greeted the antics of Lee's little man.
"This here electricity's fun!"
"Better'n a show!"
"We can come again, huh, can't we?"
Altogether, Lee Renaud had a pleasurable afternoon showing off his
treasures. His pride was punctured a bit, though, when, upon leaving,
one fellow said, "This here 'lectricity's a right pretty thing. Pity it
ain't no use for helping folks."