"Giddy-ap!" cried the Baron, slappity-slappity at the great boulder of
the Granite Jaw's head. "Giddy-ap!"
They plowed forward, a group out of Phantasmagoria--as motley a
threesome as ever strode this side of the Land of Anesthesia.
"How do you like it at Mrs. Bostum's boarding-house, Mr. Jastrow? I
never stop anywheres else on the Island. Most of the Shapiro concession
always stops there."
"Good as the next," said Mr. Jastrow, kicking onward.
"I was sorry to hear you was ailing so last night, Mr. Jastrow, and I
was sorry there was nothing you would let me do for you. They always
call me 'the Doc' around exhibits. I say--but you just ought to heard
yourself yell me out of the room when I come in to offer myself--"
"They had me crazy with pain."
"You wasn't so crazy with pain when the albino girl come down with the
bottle of fire-water, was he, Baron? We seen him throwing goo-goos at
Albino, didn't we, Baron?"
THE BARON _(impish in the moonlight)_: He fell for a cotton-top.
"He didn't yell the albino and her bottle out, did he, Baron?"
"It's this darn business," said Mr. Jastrow, creating a storm of
sand-spray with each stride. "I'm punctured up like a tire."
"I been saying to the Baron, Mr. Jastrow, if you'd only cut out the
glass-eating feature. You got as fine a appearance and as fine a strong
act by itself as you could want. A short fellow like you with all your
muscle-power is a novelty in himself. Honest, Mr. Jastrow, it--it's a
sin to see a fine-set-up fellow like you killing yourself this way. You
ought to cut out the granite-jaw feature."
"Yeh--and cut down my act to half-pay. I'd be full of them
tricks--wouldn't I? Show me another jaw act measures up to mine. Show me
the strong-arm number that ever pulled down the coin a jaw act did. I'd
be a, sweet boob, wouldn't I, to cut my pocket-book in two? I need
money, Airy-Fairy. My God! how I got the capacity for needing money!"
"What's money to health, Mr. Jastrow? It ain't human or freak nature to
digest glass. Honest, every time I hear you crunching I get the chills!"
Then Mr. Jastrow shot forward his lower jaw with a milling motion:
"Gr-r-r-r-r!"
"She's sweet on you, Jastrow, like all the rest of 'em."
"Better to have loved a short man
Than never to have loved atall."
"Baron, I--I'll spank!" "Worth her weight in gold!"
"Where you got all that money soaked, Big Tent?" "Aw, Mr. Jastrow, the
Baron's only tormenting me."
"She sleeps on a pillow stuffed with greenbacks." "Sure I got a few
dollars saved, and I ain't ashamed of it. I've had steady work in this
business eight years, now, ever since the circus came to my town out in
Ohio and made me the offer, but that's no sign I can be in it eight
years longer. Sure I got a few dollars saved."
"Well, whatta you know--a big tent like you?"
"Ain't a big tent like me human, Mr. Jastrow? Ain't I--ain't I
just like any other--girl--twenty years old--ain't I just
like--other--girls--underneath all this?"
"Sure, sure!" said Mr. Jastrow. "How much you to the good, little one?"
"I've about eleven hundred dollars with my bank-books and pig."
"'Leven hundred! Well, whatta you know about that? Say, Big Tent, better
lemme double your money for you!"
"Aw, you go on, Mr. Jastrow! Ain't you the torment, too?"
"Say, gal, next time I get the misery you can hold my hand as long as
your little heart desires. 'Leven hundred to the good! Good night! Get
down off my shoulder, you little flea, you. I got to turn in here and
take a drink on the strength of that! 'Leven hundred to the good!
Good night!"
"Oh, Mr. Jastrow, in your state! In your state alcohol's poison. Mr.
Jastrow--please--you mustn't!"
"Blow me, too, Jas! Aw, say--have a heart; blow me to a bracer, too!"
"No, no, Mr. Jastrow, don't take the Baron. The little fellow can't
stand alcohol. His baroness don't want it. Anyways, it's against the
rules--please--"
"You stay and take the lady home, flea. See the lady home like a
gentleman. 'Leven hundred to the good! Say, I'd see a lady as far as the
devil on that. Good night!"
* * * * *
At Mrs. Bostum's boarding-house, one of a row of the stare-faced
packing-cases of the summer city, bathing-suits drying and kicking over
veranda rails, a late quiet had fallen, only one window showing yellowly
in the peak of its top story. A white-net screen door was unhooked from
without by inserting a hand through a slit in the fabric. An uncarpeted
pocket of hall lay deep in absolute blackness. Miss Hoag fumbled for the
switch, finally leaving the Baron to the meager comfort of his
first-floor back.
"Y'all right, honey? Can you reach what you want?"
The Baron clambered to a chair and up to her. His face had unknotted,
the turmoil of little lines scattering.
"Aw!" he said. "Good old tub, Teenie! Good old Big Tent!"
A layer of tears sprang across Miss Hoag's glance and, suddenly gaining
rush, ran down over her lashes. She dashed at them.
"I'm human, Baron. Maybe you don't know it, but I'm human."
"Now what did I do, Teenie?"
"It--it ain't you, Baron; it--it ain't anybody. It--it's--only I just
wonder sometimes what God had in mind, anyways--making our kind. Where
do we belong--"
"Aw, you're a great Heavy, Teenie--and it's the Bigs and the Littles got
the cinch in this business. Looka the poor Siamese. How'd you like to be
hitched up thataway all day. Looka Ossi. How'd you like to let 'em stick
pins in you all for their ten cents' worth. Looka poor old Jas. Why, a
girl's a fool to waste any heartache gettin' stuck on him. That old
boy's going to wake up out of one of them spells dead some day. How'd
you like to chew glass because it's big money and then drink it up so
fast you'd got to borrow money off the albino girl for the doctor's
prescription--"
The tears came now rivuleting down Miss Hoag's cheeks, bouncing off to
the cape.
"O God!" she said, her hand closing over the Baron's, pressing it. "With
us freaks, even if we win, we lose. Take me. What's the good of ten
million dollars to me--twenty millions? Last night when I went in to
offer him help--him in the same business and that ought to be used to
me--right in the middle of being crazy with pain, what did he yell every
time he looked at me, 'Take her away! Take her away!'"
"Aw now, Teenie, Jas had the D.T.'s last night; he--"
'"Take her away!' he kept yelling. 'Take her away!' One of my own kind
getting the horrors just to look at me!"
"You're sweet on the Granite Jaw; you are, Teenie; that's what's eating
you--you're sweet on the Granite Jaw--"
Suddenly Miss Hoag turned, slamming the door afterward so that the
silence re-echoed sharply.
"What if I am?" she said, standing out in the hall pocket of absolute
blackness, her hand cupped against her mouth and the blinding tears
staggering. "What if I am? What if I am?"
Within her own room, a second-floor-back, augmented slightly by an
immaculate layout of pink-celluloid toilet articles and a white
water-pitcher of three pink carnations, Miss Hoag snapped on her light
where it dangled above the celluloid toilet articles. A summer-bug was
bumbling against the ceiling; it dashed itself between Miss Hoag and her
mirror, as she stood there breathing from the climb and looking back at
herself with salt-bitten eyes, mouth twitching. Finally, after an
inanimate period of unseeing stare, she unhooked the long cape, brushing
it, and, ever dainty of self, folding it across a chair-back. A
voluminous garment, fold and fold upon itself, but sheer and crisp
dimity, even streaming a length of pink ribbon, lay across the bed-edge.
Miss Hoag took it up, her hand already slowly and tiredly at the
business of unfettering herself of the monstrous red silk.
Came a sudden avalanche of knocking and a rattling of door-knob, the
voice of Mrs. Bostrum. landlady, high with panic.
"Teenie! Jastrow's dyin' in his room! He's yellin' for you! For God's
sakes--quick--down in his room!"
In the instant that followed, across the sudden black that blocked Miss
Hoag of vision, there swam a million stars.
"Teenie! For God's sakes--quick! He's yellin' for you--"
"Coming, Mrs. Bostrum--coming--coming--coming!"
In a dawn that came up as pink as the palm of a babe, but flowed rather
futilely against the tired, speckled eye of incandescent bulb dangling
above the Granite Jaw's rumpled, tumbled bed of pain, a gray-looking
group stood in whispered conference beside a slit of window that
overlooked a narrow clapboard slit of street.
THE DOCTOR: Even with recovery, he will be on his back at least six
months.
MISS HOAG: Oh, my God! Doctor!
THE DOCTOR: Has the man means?
THE BARON: Not a penny. He only came to the concession two months ago
from a row with the Flying-Fish Troupe. He's in debt already to half
the exhibit.
THE LANDLADY: He's two weeks in arrears. Not that I'm pestering the poor
devil now, but Gawd knows I--need--
THE DOCTOR: Any relatives or friends to consult about the operation?
MISS HOAG (_turning and stooping_): 'Ain't you got no relations or
friends, Jastrow? What was it you hollered about the aerial-wonder act?
Are they friends of yours? 'Ain't you got no relatives, no--no friends,
maybe, that you could stay with awhile? Sid? Who's he? 'Ain't you,
Jastrow, got no relations?
The figure under the sheet, pain-huddled, limb-twisted, turned toward
the wall, palm slapping out against it.
"Hell!" said Jastrow, the Granite Jaw.
THE DOCTOR (_drawing down his shirt-sleeves_): I'll have an ambulance
around in twenty minutes.
MISS HOAG: Where for, Doctor?
THE DOCTOR: Brooklyn Public Institute, for the present.
THE LANDLADY (_apron up over her head_): Poor fellow! Poor handsome
fellow!
MISS HOAG: No, Doctor. No! No! No!
THE DOCTOR (_rather tiredly_): Sorry, madam, but there is no
alternative.
MISS HOAG: No, no! I'll pay, Doctor. How much? How much?
THE BARON: Yeh. I'll throw in a tenner myself. Don't throw the poor
devil to charity. We'll collect from the troupe. We raised forty dollars
for a nigger wild man, once when--
THE DOCTOR: Come now; all this is not a drop in the bucket. This man
needs an operation and then constant attention. If he pulls through, it
is a question of months. What he actually needs then is country air,
fresh milk, eggs, professional nursing, and plenty of it!
Miss HOAG: That's me, Doc! That's me! I'm going to fix just that for
him. I got the means. I can show you three bank-books. I got the means
and a place out in Ohio I can rent 'til I buy it some day. A farm! Fresh
milk! Leghorns! I'll take him out there, Doc. Eighty miles from where I
was born. I was thinking of laying up awhile, anyways. I got the means.
I'll pull him through, Doctor. I'll pull him through!