THE BIG MAN
SOME two weeks later Joey informed me that he could play “Bell Brandon”
on his flute. I doubt if any one familiar with the piece would have
recognized it as rendered by Joey on the futile instrument I had
carved. The air being unfamiliar to me I asked him where he had picked
it up.
“Oh,” he said carelessly, “she plays it on her guitar.”
I was growing accustomed to the sight of Joey, followed by the collie,
marching sturdily away down the yew path each day as soon as the dinner
dishes were done, and I had more than once remonstrated with him on the
frequency of his visits to Hidden Lake. His answer was invariably the
same. “She says, ‘Come again,’ every time, Mr. David.”
“That’s only a way people have of being polite,” I protested at last,
and was surprised to see the hurt tears in his eyes.
That night he came home radiant.
“She doesn’t say ‘Come again’ to be polite,” he announced, throwing
his cap in a corner and speaking blusteringly. “She didn’t ask Mr.
Lundquist to come again. She only said, ‘When I need you again I’ll let
you know.’”
The perfect weather changed about this time, and sultry nights,
alternating with days like hot coals, ensued, until, suddenly, one
evening at dusk, the wind came up with a roar, and scurrying leaves
and particles of dust filled the air. The dust storm enveloped us. It
sang and poured and hissed up and down the river, the temperature kept
dropping lower and lower, rain and hail descended, and the wind grew
more tempestuous as darkness came on.
As I pored over a volume of Tacitus that evening, glowing with the
sense of well being that the warmth of the fire and the cheer of the
light cast by my green-shaded light imparted in contrast to the storm
without, there came a vigorous knocking at the cabin door.
Joey, dozing on his stool before the fire, sat upright with a start,
and the collie growled and ruffled his back. A curious prescience of
disaster assailed me with that knock; a grim finger seemed laid on my
heart-strings--I seemed to feel the touch of a cold iron hand arresting
me on a well-ordered, dearly familiar path.
Joey sprang to the door, opened it wide, and a gust of wind tore it
from his hand. The rain swept into the cabin, and a man carrying a
suitcase came quickly forward from the darkness beyond, crossed the
threshold, and stood in the glare of the firelight.
He was a tall man, powerfully built, but he walked with a slovenly
gait, and something pompous and hard and withal insincere rang in his
tones as he set down his suitcase and spoke:
“Pardon my intrusion, my man. Your light attracted me. It’s blacker
than Egypt outside, and I’ve lost my way in the storm.”
He rolled back the collar of his slicker coat and shook the raindrops
from the brim of his hat.
“Take off your coat,” I said hospitably, “and come up to the fire.”
He thanked me, favored me with a patronizing glance from his
full-lidded light eyes, and stood rocking back and forth on the
bearskin rug before the fire, rubbing his hands.
“I shall have to hurry on to Roselake if I am to get there to-night.
Perhaps you will show me the trail, my man.”
I assured him that I would direct him, then realizing that the man
was chilled through, I threw a fresh log on the fire, and going to a
cupboard in the chimney-corner, took down a bottle and a small glass
and placed them on the table.
“Have a drink,” I said, “it will save you from a bad cold on a night
like this.”
“Thanks. Don’t mind if I do.” He filled his glass, and as he did so
his glance fell on the book I had been reading. His manner changed.
“‘Tacitus’! Rather grim reading for a wild night like this.” He turned
a page unsteadily, and followed a line with his finger. “Mm! Nero, the
fiddler--it’s ghastly reading--bestial, rather. Cramming for anything?”
“No,” I replied.
“Take something lighter--‘Abbe Constantine,’ ‘Hyperion,’ ‘The Snow
Man.’”
His voice was thick; and as he stood resting his hand on a chair back,
he lurched slightly.
“Sit down,” I said.
He sank into the armchair and raised his glass, waving it in my
direction, then he rose to his feet, bowed, and said: “Your health,
sir,” and drank thirstily. I saw then that he had been imbibing more
than was good for him, but I could also see that he was literally
sodden with fatigue, and something impelled me to offer him food.
“Now that’s kind--very kind,” he said throatily. “I could not think--”
He reeled back against the chair and put his hand to his head suddenly.
I signaled to Joey, who left the room, and I went to the man and eased
him into the depth of the chair.
“Rest here awhile and have something hot to eat,” I suggested.
His head sank on his chest, his lids dropped over his prominent eyes.
“Yes--‘Abbe Constantine’--or ‘Hyperion’--‘Hyperion,’ preferably,” he
mumbled. “Weak, disgusting fool--Nero!”
He roused sufficiently to eat a few mouthfuls when Joey and I served
him royally with good corned-beef and hominy, and a steaming pot of
coffee. But he sank again into lethargy, and I saw that he was in no
condition to push on to Roselake in the storm.
I told him so frankly, and pointed to a built-in bunk covered with
hemlock boughs in the corner. “Turn in here,” I said, giving him a
couple of blankets. “I’ll bunk with the lad to-night.”
I had taken great pains with Joey’s room, and the narrow cedar strips
with which I had paneled it shone with a silver lustre in the light
of the two candles Joey insisted on lighting in my honor. Joey’s bed
was a boxed-in affair, but I had contrived to make it comfortable by
stretching stout bed-cord from the head to the foot and interlacing it
across from side to side. This served in lieu of springs. The mattress
was a crude one of straw, but the straw was sweet and clean, and Wanza
had pieced a wonderful bed quilt of shawl-flower pattern calico, and
presented it to Joey the year before when he had the measles. The bed
had a valance of blue burlap, and I had painstakingly stenciled it with
birds and beasts and funny fat clowns and acrobatic ladies in short
skirts and tights, after a never-to-be-forgotten circus-day parade Joey
had witnessed in the village.
There was a gaily striped Indian blanket for covering, and pillows
stuffed with the feathers of many a mallard slaughtered in the marshes.
I had converted a couple of barrels into chairs and covered them with
tea matting. For floor covering there were the skin of a mountain lion
that had prowled too close to my cabin one night, and the skins of a
couple of coyotes that had ventured within shooting distance.
In one of the windows hung the wooden cage I had made for Joey’s
magpie. But the windows themselves were my chief pride. I had procured
them from an old house-boat that had been abandoned by a party of
fishermen, and had drifted down the river to anchor itself before my
workshop. There were four of these windows, with tiny mullioned panes,
and I had hung them, two on either side of a door that opened out on
a rustic pergola I had erected. The pergola led to a bosky dell of
green--a veritable bower--where wild honeysuckle hung its bells in the
sweet syringa bushes, and wild forget-me-not and violets and kinnikinic
gemmed the emerald banks of a limpid pool so hedged in by high green
thickets that no eye save the initiated ever rested on its crystal
clarity. We called this spot the Dingle Dell, and the Dingle was a rare
retreat for Joey on the occasion of any embarrassing caller.
As I blew out the candles that night and lay down beside the little
lad, he murmured sleepily: “Bell Brandon ain’t so terrible hard to
play on the flute--but it’s terrible hard on a guitar; a guitar makes
blisters on your fingers.”
He spoke again almost unintelligibly. “I don’t like that man. He never
spoke to me once, Mr. David. Any one, ’most, speaks to a boy.”
In the middle of the night I awakened. Joey was sitting up in bed.
“A star’s out, Mr. David. I’m making a wish,” he whispered.
“Well, well,” I yawned drowsily, “lie down--you’ll take cold.”
He cuddled obediently beneath the blankets. “I’m wishing the big man
would go, but I’m wishing you’d sleep with me just the same, Mr. David.
I sleep tighter when the coyotes holler.”