sector where he was. He fought at the Front, and then he'd fight at
hospitals every time he got took back there for being shot up. He was
almost too scrappy even for that war. He was usually too busy to write,
but we got plenteous reports of his adventures from other men, these
adventures always going hard with whatever Germans got in his way.
And I bet his mother never dreamed that his being such a demon fighter
was all due to her keeping him in curls so long, where he got the habit
and come to love it for its own sake.
Anyway, he fought and fought and had everything happen to him that German
science had discovered was useful to exterminate the lesser races, and it
finally begun to tell on him, hardened as he was by fighting from the
cradle up, as you might say.
It was a glad day for Arline when she got word that he was a broken-down
invalid and had landed at an Atlantic Ocean port on his way home. She
got arrowroot gruel and jelly and medicinal delicacies and cushions, and
looked forward to a life of nursing. She hoped that in the years to come
she could coax the glow of health back to his wan cheeks. And I wouldn't
put it past her--mebbe she hoped she could get him to let the golden hair
grow again, just long enough to make him interesting as he lay coughing
on his couch.
And Shelley come home, but his idee of being an invalid wasn't anything
like his mother's. He looked stout as a horse, and merely wished to rest
up for a couple weeks before getting some other kind of action suited to
his peculiar talents. And worse, he wasn't Shelley Vane Plunkett--he was
Bugs Plunkett; and his mother's heart broke again. He was shaved like a
convict and thicker through than ever, and full of rich outdoor words
about what he would do to this so-and-so medical officer for not letting
him back into the scrap. Yes, sir; that man is going to suffer casualties
right up to the limit the minute he gets out of his uniform--and him
thinking the world is at peace once more! Sure, Shelley had been shot
through the lungs a couple of times, and one leg had been considerably
altered from the original plan, but he had claimed he was a better
scrapper than ever before and had offered to prove it to this medical
officer right then and there if it could be done quiet. But this fair
offer had been rejected.
So here he'd come back, not any kind of a first-class invalid that would
be nice to nurse, but as Bugs Plunkett! No sooner did he get to town than
letters and postal cards begun to come addressed to Mr. Bugs Plunkett or
mebbe B. Plunkett, Esquire; and the cards would be from his old pals in
the trenches, many of whom had worse names, even, than Shelley had made
for himself.
Also the sick warrior turned down flat the arrowroot gruel and Irish-moss
custard and wine jelly and pale broth. He had to have the same coarse
food that is et by common working people who have had no home advantages,
including meat, which is an animal poison and corrupts the finer
instincts of man by reducing him to the level of the brutes. So Arline
Plunkett says. Shelley had it, though, ordering it in a bass voice that
made the statuary teeter. Steak was cooked in the Plunkett home for
the first time since it had been erected, notwithstanding the horrible
example it set to little Keats, who still had golden curls as lovely as
Shelley's once had been and was fed on fruits and nuts.
Arline couldn't of had any pleasant time with her wandering boy them
three weeks he was there. She suffered intensely over the ignominy of
this mail that came to him by the awful name of Bugs, with the gossips
in the post office telling it everywhere, so that the boys round the
cigar store got to calling him Bugs right out plain. And her son seeming
proud of this degradation!
And she couldn't get him to protect himself from drafts by night.
He'd insist on having a window wide open, and when she'd sneak back to
close it so he wouldn't catch his death of cold he'd get up and court
destruction by hoisting it again. And once when she'd crept in and shut
it a second time he threw two shoes through the upper and lower parts so
it would always be open. He claimed he done this in his sleep, having got
into the habit in the trenches when he'd come in from a long march and
someone would close all the windows. But Arline said that this only
showed that war had made him a rowdy, even in his sleep--and out of the
gentlest-mannered boy that ever wore velvet garments and had a cinch on
every prize in the Sunday school; though she did not use coarse words
like that. She told me herself it was time we got this other side of what
war did to gently nurtured youths that had never soiled their lips with
an oath in their lives until they went into war's hell. She said just
that!
Also Shelley had contracted the vicious habit of smoking, which was all
a body would want to know about war. She said he'd have his breakfast in
bed, including whole slices of ham, which comes from the most loathsome
of all animals, and would then lie and smoke the Lord Byron five-cent
cigar, often burning holes in the covers, which he said was another old
trench habit--and that showed what war done to the untainted human soil.
Also while smoking in bed he would tell little Keats things no innocent
child should hear, about how fine it feels to deflate Germans with a good
bayonet. She had never esteemed Lord Byron as a poet, and these cigars,
she assures me, was perfectly dreadful in a refined home, where they
could be detected even in the basement.
Little Keats was now thirteen, with big joints and calf knees showing
under the velvet pants, and I guess his curls was all that persuaded his
mother to live, what with Shelley having gone to the bad and made a name
for himself like Bugs. But little Keats had fell for his brother, and
spent all the time he could with him listening to unpretty stories of
Germans that had been fixed up proper the way the good Lord meant 'em
to be.
After he'd been home a couple weeks or more Shelley begun to notice
little Keats more closely. He looked so much like Shelley had at that age
and had the same set-on manner in the house that Shelley got suspicious
he was leading the same double life he had once led himself.
He asked his mother when she was going to take Keats to a barber, and his
mother burst into tears in the old familiar way, so he said no more to
her. But that afternoon he took little Keats out for a stroll and closely
watched his manner toward some boys they passed. They went on downtown
and Shelley stepped into the Owl cigar store to get a Lord Byron. When he
come out little Keats was just finishing up a remark to another boy. It
had the familiar ring to Shelley and was piquant and engaging even after
three years in the trenches, where talk is some free. Keats still had the
angel face, but had learned surprisingly of old English words.
Then Shelley says to him: "Say, kid, do you like your curls?" And little
Keats says very warmly and almost shedding tears: "They're simply hell!"
"I knew it," says Shelley. "Have many fights?"
"Not so many as I used to," says Keats.
"I knew that, too," says Shelley. "Now, then, you come right along with
me."
So he marches Keats and curls down to Henry Lehman's and says: "Give this
poor kid a close haircut."
And Henry Lehman won't do it. He says that Mrs. Plunkett, the time of
the scandal about Shelley, had warned every barber in town that she would
have the law on 'em if they ever harmed a hair on the head of a child of
hers; and he was a law-abiding citizen. He didn't deny that the boy
needed a haircut the worst way in the world, but at his time of life he
wasn't going to become an outlaw.
Keats had nearly broke down at this. But Shelley says: "All right; come
on over to the other place."
So they go over to Katterson Lee, the coloured barber, and Katterson
tells 'em the same story. He admits the boy needs a haircut till it
amounts to an outrage, but he's had his plain warning from Shelley's ma,
and he ain't going to get mixed up with no lawsuit in a town where he's
known to one and all as being respectable.
Shelley then threatened him with bodily harm if he didn't cut that hair
off quick, and Katterson was right afraid of the returned soldier, that
had fixed so many Germans right, but he was more afraid of the law, so
he got down on his knees to Shelley and begged for his life.
Little Keats was now blubbering, thinking he wasn't going to be shut of
his disgrace after all, but Shelley says: "All right, kid; I'll stand by
you. I'll do it myself. Get into that chair!"
Of course Katterson couldn't prevent that, so Keats got sunny again and
climbed into the chair, and Shelley grabbed a pair of shears and made a
sure-nuff boy of him. He got the curls off all right, but when it come to
trimming up he found he couldn't do a smooth job, and Katterson wasn't
there to give him any hints, having run from his shop at the beginning of
the crime so he would have a good alibi when hauled into court. So
Shelley finally took up a pair of clippers, and having learned to clip
mules he soon had little Keats' whole scalp laid bare. It must of been a
glorious sight. They both gloated over it a long time.
Then Keats says: "Now you come with me and we'll show it to mamma!" But
Shelley says: "Not me! I have to draw the line somewhere. I shall be far
away from here to-night. I am not afraid of enemy soldiers, for I've been
up against them too often. But there are worse things than death, so
you'll have to face mamma alone. You can tell her I did it, but I will
not be there to hear you. So good-bye and God help you!" And Shelley
retired to a position less exposed.
That was an awful day for the Plunkett home, because little Keats, being
left to his own resources, tried to use his brain. First he gathered up
the long shining curls and wrapped 'em in a newspaper. Then he went
out and found Artie Bartell, who is a kind of a harmless halfwit that
just walks the streets and will do anything whatever if told, being
anxious to please. Keats gives Artie a dime to take the curls up to his
dear mother and tell her that her little boy has been run over by a
freight engine down to the station and these here curls was all that
could be saved of him.
Then he hurries home the back way and watches, and pretty soon he sees
some neighbours come rushing to the house when they hear his mother
scream, so then he knows everything is all right. He waits a minute or
two, then marches in with his hat off. His mother actually don't know him
at first, on account of his naked skull, but she soon sees it must be he,
little Keats, and then has hysterics because she thinks the freight
engine has clipped him this way. And of course there was more hysterics
when she learned the terrible truth of his brother's infamy. I guess
Shelley had been wise all right to keep off the place at that time,
soldier or no soldier. But that's neither here nor there.
The point is that little Keats may now be saved to a life of usefulness
and not be hanged for murder, thanks to his brother's brave action. Of
course Bugs himself is set in his ways, and will adorn only positions of
a certain kind. He's fine here, for instance, just at this time when I
got to hire all kinds that need a firm hand--and Bugs has two.
Sure, it was him took the job of foreman here yesterday. We had quite a
little talk about things when he come. He told me how he released his
little brother from shame. He said he wouldn't of done such a radical
thing except that peace is now coming on and the world will no longer
need such fighting devils as curls will make of a boy if let to stay
long enough.
"Keats might have turned out even worse than I did," he says, "but
if there wasn't going to be any way where he could do it legally, what
was the use? He'd probably sometime have killed a boy that called him
Goldilocks, and then the law might have made it unpleasant for him. I
thought it was only fair to give him a chance to live peaceful. Of course
in my own case mamma acted for the best without knowing it. We needed
fighters, and I wouldn't have been anything at all like a fighter if she
hadn't made me wear those curls till my whiskers began to show above the
surface. In fact, I'm pretty sure I was a born coward, but those golden
strands took all that out of me. I had to fight.
"And see what it did for me in the Army. I don't want to talk about
myself, but I made a good average fighter and I would have been there
to the last if I'd had my rights. And I simply owe it all to my dear
mother. You might say she made me the man I am. I wouldn't ever have been
tough if she'd cut my hair humanely from six years on. I certainly hope
Keats hasn't gone too long. One of us in a family is enough."
That's the way Bugs talks, and it sounds right sensible. What I say now
is, the idee had ought to be took up by the War Department at Washington,
D. C. Let 'em pass a law that one boy out of, say, twenty-five has
got to wear curls till his voice changes. By that time, going round in
this here scenic investiture, as you might say, he will be a demon. In
peace times it may add to our crimes of violence, but look what it will
be when another war comes. We'll have the finest line of shock troops
the world has ever produced, fit and anxious to fight, having led an
embittered existence long enough to make it permanent. No line would
ever stand against a charge of them devils. They would be a great
national asset and might save the country while we was getting ready
to begin to prepare a couple months after war was declared on us.
Still I don't suppose it will be took up, and I ain't got time to go down
and preach it to Congress personally.
And now let me tell you one thing: I'm going to sleep to-night without a
care on my mind for the first time in a year. This here Bugs unites to
the distinction of his name a quick and handy nature, and my busiest
troubles are over.