FROM THE BED: Worth her weight in gold. Worth her weight in gold.
* * * * *
In the cup of a spring dusk that was filled to overflowing with an
ineffable sweetness and the rich, loamy odors of turned earth; with
rising sap and low mists; with blackening tree-tops and the chittering
of birds--the first lamplight of all the broad and fertile landscape
moved across the window of a story-and-a-half white house which might
have been either itself or its own outlying barn. A roof, sheer of
slant, dipped down over the window, giving the façade the expression of
a coolie under peaked hat.
"Great Scott! Move that lamp off the sill! You want to gimme the blind
staggers?"
"I didn't know it was in your eyes, honey. There--that better?"
Silence.
A parlor hastily improvised into a bedroom came out softly in the glow.
A room of matting and marble-topped, bottle-littered walnut table, of
white iron hospital-cot and curly horsehair divan, a dapple-marble
mantelpiece of conch-shell, medicated gauze, bisque figurines, and
hot-water kettle; in the sheerest of dimity, still dainty of ribbon, the
figure of Miss Hoag, hugely, omnipotently omnipresent.
"That better, Jas?" Silence. "Better? That's good! Now for the boy's
supper. Beautiful white egg laid by beautiful white hen and all beat up
fluffy with sugar to make boy well, eh?"
Emaciated to boniness, the great frame jutting and straining rather
terribly to break through the restraint of too tight flesh, Mr. Jastrow
rose to his elbow, jaw-lines sullen.
"Cut out that baby talk and get me a swig, Teenie. Get me a drink before
I get ugly."
"Oh, Jastrow honey, don't begin that. Please, Jastrow, don't begin
that. You been so good all day, honey--"
"Get me a swig," he repeated through set teeth. "You and a boob country
quack of a doctor ain't going to own my soul. I'll bust up the place
again. I ain't all dead yet. Get me a swig--quick, too."
"Jas, there ain't none."
"There is!"
"That's just for to whip up five drops at a time with your medicine.
That's medicine, Jas; it ain't to be took like drink. You know what the
doc said last time. He ain't responsible if you disobey. I
ain't--neither. Please, Jas!"
"I know a thing or two about the deal I'm getting around here. No quack
boob is going to own my soul."
"Ain't it enough the way you nearly died last time, Jas? Honest, didn't
that teach you a lesson? Be good, Jas. Don't scare poor old Teenie all
alone here with you. Looka out there through the door. Ain't it
something grand? Honest, Jas, I just never get tired looking. See them
low little hills out there. I always say they look like chiffon this
time of evening. Don't they? Just looka the whole fields out there, so
still--like--like a old horse standing up dozing. Smell! Listen to the
little birds! Ain't we happy out here, me and my boy that's getting
well so fine?"
Then Jastrow the Granite Jaw began to whimper, half-moans engendered by
weakness. "Put me out of my misery. Shoot!"
"Jas--Jas--ain't that just an awful way for you to talk? Ain't that
just terrible to say to your poor old Big Tent?"
She smoothed out his pillow, and drew out his cot on ready casters,
closer toward the open door.
"See, Jas--honest, can you ever get enough of how beautiful it is? When
I was a kid on my pap's farm out there, eighty miles beyond the ridge,
instead of playing with the kids that used to torment me because I was a
heavy, I just used to lay out evenings like this on a hay-rack or
something and look and look and look. There's something about this soft
kind of scenery that a person that's born in it never gets tired of.
Why, I've exhibited out in California right under the nose of the
highest kind of mountains; but gimme the little scenery every time."
"I'm a lump--that's what I am. Nine months of laying. I'm a lump--on a
woman, too."
"Why, Jas, Teenie's proud to have you on--on her. 'Ain't we got plans
for each other after--you get well? Why, half the time I'm just in
heaven over that. That's why, honey, if only you won't let yourself get
setbacks! That's all the doctor says is between you and getting well.
That's all that keeps you down, Jas, you scaring me and making me go
against the doctor's orders. Last week your eating that steak--that
drink you stole--ain't you ashamed to have got out of bed that way and
broke the lock? You--you mustn't ever again, Jas, make me go against
the doctor."
"I gets crazy. Crazy with laying."
"Just think, Jas; here I've drew out my last six hundred, ready to make
first payment down on the place and us all ready to begin to farm it.
Ain't that worth holding yourself in for? It wouldn't be right, Jas; it
would be something terrible if we had to break into that six hundred for
medicine and doctors. I don't know what to make of you, honey, all those
months so quiet and behaved on your back, and, now that you're getting
well, the--the old liquor-thirst setting in. We never will get our start
that way, Jas. We got plans, if you don't hinder your poor Teenie. The
doctor told me, honey--honest, he did--one of them spells--from liquor
could--could take you off just like that. Even getting well the way
you are!"
"I'm a lump; that's what I am."
"You ain't, Jas; you're just everything in the world."
"Sponging off a woman!"
"'Sponging'! With our own little farm and us farming it to pay it off! I
like that!"
"Gimme a swig, Teenie. For God's sake gimme a swig!"
"Jas--Jas, if you get to cutting up again, I'm going to get me a
man-nurse out here--honest I am!"
"A swig, Teenie."
"Please, Jas--it's only for bad spells--five drops mixed up in your
medicine. That's six dollars a bottle, Jas, and only for bad spells."
"Stingy gut!"
"Looka down there, honey--there's old man Wyncoop's cow broke tether
again. What you bet he's out looking for her. See her winding up
the road."
"Stingy gut!"
"You know I ain't stingy. If the doctor didn't forbid, I'd buy you ten
bottles, I would, if it cost twenty a bottle. I'm trying to do what the
doctor says is best, Jas."
"'Best'! I know what's best. A few dollars in my pocket for me to boss
over and buy me the things I need is what's best. I'm a man born to
having money in his pocket. I'm none of your mollycoddles."
"Sure you ain't! Haven't you got over ninety dollars under your pillow
this minute? 'Ain't the boy got all the spending-money he wants and
nowheres to spend it? Ain't that a good one, Jas? All the spending-money
he wants and nowheres to spend it. Next thing the boy knows, he's going
to be working the farm and sticky with money. Ain't it wonderful, Jas,
never no showing for us again? God! ain't that just wonderful?"
He reached up then to stroke her hand, a short pincushion of a hand,
white enough, but amazingly inundated with dimples.
"Nice old Big Tent!"
"That's the way, honey! Honest, when you get one of your nice spells,
your poor old Teenie would do just anything for you."
"I get crazy with pain. It makes me ugly."
"I know, Jas--I know--anyway, you fix it, honey. I 'ain't got a kick
coming--a--tub like me to have--you."
She loomed behind his cot, carefully out of his range of vision, her own
gaze out across the drowsing countryside. A veil of haze was beginning
to thicken, whole schools of crickets whirring into it,
"If--if not for one thing, Jas, you know--you know what? I think if a
person was any happier than me, she--she'd die."
"Let's play I'm Rockefeller laying on his country estate, Teenie. Come
on; let's kid ourselves along. Gimme the six hundred, Teenie--"
"Why don't you ask me, Jas, except for what I'd be the happiest girl?
Well, it's this. If only I could wear a cloak so when I got in it you
couldn't see me! If only I never had to walk in front of you so--so you
got to look at me!"
"You been a good gal to me, Big Tent. I never even look twice at
you--that's how used a fellow can get to anything. I'm going to square
it up with you, too."
"You mean it's me will square it with you, Jas--you see if I don't. Why,
there'll be nothing too much for me to do to make up for the happiness
we're going to have, Jas. I'm going to make this the kinda little home
you read about in the magazines. Tear out all this old rented junk
furniture, paint it up white after we got the six hundred paid down and
the money beginning to come in. I'm even going to fix up the little
trap-door room in the attic, so that if the Baron or any of the old
exhibit crowd happens to be showing in Xenia or around, they can visit
us. Just think, Jas--a spare room for the old crowd. Honest, it's funny,
but there's not one thing scares me about all these months on the place
alone here, Jas, now that we bought the gun, except the nightmares
sometimes that we--we're back exhibiting. That's why I want to keep open
house for them that ain't as lucky as us. Honest, Jas--I--I just can't
think it's real, not, anyways, till we've paid down six hundred and--the
fellow you keep joking about that wears his collar wrong side 'fore
comes out from Xenia to read the ceremony. Oh, Jas, I--I'll make it
square with you. You'll never have a sorry day for it!"
"You're all right, Big Tent," said the Granite Jaw, lying back suddenly,
lips twitching.
"Ain't you feeling well, honey? Let me fix you an egg?"
"A little swig, Teenie--a little one, is all I ask."
"No, no--please, Jastrow; don't begin--just as I had you forgetting."
"It does me good, I tell you. I know my constitution better than a quack
country boob does. I'm a freak, I am--a prize concession that has to be
treated special. Since that last swig, I tell you, I been a different
man. I need the strength. I got to have a little in my system. I'm a
freak, I tell you. Everybody knows there's nothing like a swig for
strength."
"Not for you! It's poison, Jas, so much poison! Don't you remember what
they said to you after the operation? All your life you got to watch
out--just the little prescribed for you is all your system has got to
have. Wouldn't I give it to you otherwise--wouldn't I?"
"Swig, Teenie! Honest to God, just a swig!"
"No, no, Jas! No, no, no!"
Suddenly Jastrow the Granite Jaw drew down his lips to a snarl, his
hands clutching into the coverlet and drawing it up off his feet.
"Gimme!" he said. "I've done it before and I'll do it now--smash up the
place! Gimme! You're getting me crazy! This time you got me crazy.
Gimme--you hear--gimme!"
"Jas--for God's sakes--no--no!"
"Gimme! By God! you hear--gimme!" There was a wrenching movement of his
body, a fumbling beneath the pillow, and Mr. Jastrow suddenly held
forth, in crouched attitude of cunning, something cold, something
glittering, something steel.
"Now," he said, head jutting forward, and through shut teeth--"now
gimme, or by God--"
"Jas--Jas--for God's sake have you gone crazy? Where'd you get that gun?
Is that where I heard you sneaking this morning--over to my trunk for my
watch-dog? Gimme that gun--Jas! You--you're crazy--Jas!"
"You gimme, was what I said, and gimme quick! You see this thing
pointing? Well, gimme quick."
"Jas--"
"Don't 'Jas' me. I'm ugly this time, and when I'm ugly _I'm ugly!_"
"All right! All right! Only, for God's sakes, Jas, don't get out of bed,
don't get crazy enough to shoot that thing. I'll get it. Wait, Jastrow;
it's all right, you're all right. I'll get it. See, Teenie's going.
Wait--wait--Teenie's going--"
She edged out and she edged in, hysteria audible in her breathing.
"Jas honey, won't you please--"
"Gimme, was what I said--gimme and quick!"
Her arm under his head, the glass tilted high against his teeth, he
drank deeply, gratefully, breathing out finally and lying back against
his pillow, his right hand uncurling of its clutch.
She lifted the short-snouted, wide-barreled, and steely object off the
bed-edge gingerly, tremblingly.
"More like it," he said, running his tongue around his mouth; "more like
it."
"Jas--Jas, what have you done?"
"Great stuff! Great stuff!" He kept repeating.
"If--if you wasn't so sick, honey--I don't know what I'd do after such a
terrible thing like this--you acting like this--so terrible--God! I--I'm
all trembling."
"Great stuff!" he said, and reaching out and eyes still closed, patting
her. "Great stuff, nice old Big Tent!"
"Try to sleep now, Jas. You musta had a spell of craziness! This is
awful! Try to sleep. If only you don't get a spell--Sleep--please!"
"You wait! Guy with the collar on wrong side round--he's the one; he's
the one!"
"Yes--yes, honey. Try to sleep!"
"I wanna dream I'm Rockefeller. If there's one thing I want to dream,
it's Rockefeller."
"Not now--not now--"
"Lemme go to sleep like a king."
"Yes, honey."
"Like a king," I said.
She slid her hand finally into one of the voluminous folds of her
dress, withdrawing and placing a rubber-bound roll into his hands.
"There, honey. Go to sleep now--like a king."
He fingered it, finally sitting up to count, leaning forward to the ring
of lamplight.
"Six hundred bucks! Six hundred! Wow--oh, wow! If Sid could only see me
now!"
"He can, honey--he can. Go to sleep. 'Sh-h-h-h!'"
"Slide 'em under--slide 'em under--Rockefeller."
She lifted his head, placing the small wad beneath. He turned over,
cupping his hand in his cheek, breathing outward deeply, very deeply.
"Jas!"
"Huh?"
"Ain't you all right? You're breathing so hard. Quit breathing so hard.
It scares me. Quit making those funny noises. Honey--for God's
sake--quit!"
Jastrow the Granite Jaw did quit, so suddenly, so completely, his face
turned outward toward the purpling meadows, and his mouth slightly
open, that a mirror held finally and frantically against it did not so
much as cloud.
At nine o'clock there drew up outside the coolie-faced house one of
those small tin motor-cars which are tiny mile-scavengers to the country
road. With a thridding of engine and a play of lamps which turned green
landscape, gray, it drew up short, a rattling at the screen door
following almost immediately.
"Doctor, that you? O my God! Doctor, it's too late! It's all over,
Doctor--Doctor--it's all over!" Trembling in a frenzy of haste, Miss
Hoag drew back the door, the room behind her flickering with shadows
from an uneven wick.
"You're the Fat, ain't you? The one that's keeping him?"
"What--what--"
"So you're the meal-ticket! Say, leave it to Will, Leave it to that boy
not to get lost in this world. Ain't it like him to the T to pick a
good-natured Fat?"
There entered into Miss Hoag's front room Miss Sidonia Sabrina, of the
Flying-Fish Troupe, World's Aeronaut Trapeze Wonder, gloved and
ringleted, beaded of eyelash and pink of ear-lobe, the teeth somewhat
crookedly, but pearlily white because the lips were so red, the parasol
long and impudently parrot-handled, gilt mesh bag clanking against a
cluster of sister baubles.
"If it ain't Will to the T! Pickin' hisself a Fat to sponge on. Can you
beat it? M-m! Was you the Fat in the Coney concession?"
"Who--Whatta you--want?"
"We was playin' the Zadalia County Fair. I heard he was on his back. The
Little in our show, Baroness de Ross, has a husband played Coney with
youse. Where is he? Tell him his little Sid is here. Was his little Sid
fool enough to beat it all the way over here in a flivver for eight
bucks the round trip? She was! Where is he?"
"He--Who--You--"
"You're one of them good-natured simps, ain't you? So was I, dearie. It
don't pay! I always said of Will he could bleed a sour pickle. Where is
he? Tell him his little Sid is here with thirty minutes before she meets
up with the show on the ten-forty, when it shoots through Xenia. Tell
him she was fool enough to come because he's flat on his back."
"I--That's him--Jastrow--there--O my God--that's him laying there,
miss! Who are you? Sid--I thought--I never knew--Who are you? I
thought it was Doc. He went off in a flash. I was standing right here--
I--O God!"
There seemed to come suddenly over the sibilant Miss Sidonia Sabrina a
quieting down, a lessening of twinkle and shimmer and swish. She moved
slowly toward the huddle on the cot, parasol leading, and her hands
crossed atop the parrot.
"My God!" she said. "Will dead! Will dead! I musta had a hunch. God! I
musta! All of a sudden I makes up my mind. I jumps ahead of the show.
God! I musta had one of my hunches. That lookin'-glass I broke in
Dayton. I--I musta!"
"It come so sudden, miss. It's a wonder I didn't die, too, right on the
spot. I was standing here and--"
Suddenly, Miss Sabrina fumbled in the gilt mesh bag for her kerchief,
her face lifting to cry.
"He spun me dirt, Will did. If ever a girl was spun dirt, that girl was
me, but just the same it--it's my husband laying there--it's my husband,
no matter what dirt he spun me. O God--O--O--"
At half after ten to a powdering of eye-sockets, a touching up with
lip-stick, a readjustment of three-tiered hat, Miss Sidonia Sabrina took
leave. There were still streaks showing through her retouched cheeks.
"I left you the collar-and-cuff box with his initials on, dearie, for a
remembrance. I give it to him the first Christmas after we was married,
before he got to developing rough. I been through his things now entire.
I got 'em all with me. If there's such a thing as a recordin' angel,
you'll go down on the book. Will was a bad lot, but he's done with it
now, dearie. I never seen the roughness crop up in a man so sudden the
way it did in Will. You can imagine, dearie, when the men in the troupe
horsewhipped him one night for the way he lit in on me one night in
drink. That was the night he quit. O Gawd! maybe I don't look it,
dearie, but I been through the mill in my day. But that's all over now,
him layin' there--my husband. Will was a good Strong in his day--nobody
can't ever take that away from him. I'm leavin' you the funeral money
out of what he had under his pillow. It's a godsend to me my husband
layin' up that few hundred when things ain't so good with me. You was a
good influence, dearie. I never knew him to save a cent. I'd never have
thought it. Not a cent from him all these months. My legs for the
air-work ain't what they used to be. Inflammatory rheumatism, y'know.
I've got a mind to buy me a farm, too, dearie. Settle down. Say, I got
to hand it to you, dearie--you're one fine Fat. Baby Ella herself had
nothin' on you, and I've worked with as fine Fats as there is in the
business. You're sure one fine Fat, and if there's such a thing as a
recordin' angel--I got to catch that train, dearie--the chauff's
honkin'--no grandmother stories goes with my concession. God, to think
of Will layin' on a cool six hundred! Here's twenty-five for the
funeral. If it's more, lemme know. Sidonia Sabrina, care Flying-Fish
Troupe, State Fair, Butler County, Ohio. Good-by, dearie, and God
bless you!"
Long after the thridding of engine had died down, and the purple quiet
flowed over the path of twin lamplights, Miss Hoag stood in her
half-open screen door, gazing after. There were no tears in her eyes;
indeed, on the contrary, the echo of the chugg-chugging which still lay
on the air had taken on this rhythm:
Better to have loved a short man
Than never to have loved atall.
Better to have loved a short man
Than never to have loved atall.