Sheener was a Jewish newsboy; that is to say, a representative of the
only thoroughbred people in the world. I have known Sheener for a good
many years, and he is worth knowing; also, the true tale of his life
might have inspired Scheherazade. A book must be made of Sheener some
day. For the present, it is enough to say that he had the enterprise
which adversity has taught his people; he had the humility which they
have learned by enduring insults they were powerless to resent, and he
had the courage and the heart which were his ancient heritage. And--the
man Evans had captured and enslaved his imagination.
He believed in Evans from the beginning. This may have been through a
native credulity which failed to manifest itself in his other dealings
with the world. I think it more probable that Evans and his pretensions
appealed to the love of romance native to Sheener. I think he enjoyed
believing, as we enjoy lending ourselves to the illusion of the theatre.
Whatever the explanation, a certain alliance developed between the two;
a something like friendship. I was one of those who laughed at Sheener’s
credulity, but he told me, in his energetic fashion, that I was making a
mistake.
“You got that guy wrong,” he would say. “He ain’t always been a bum. A
guy with half an eye can see that. The way he talks, and the way he
walks, and all. There’s class to him, I’m telling you. Class, bo.”
“He walks like a splay-footed walrus, and he talks like a drunken old
hound,” I told Sheener. “He’s got you buffaloed, that’s all.”
“Pull in your horns; you’re coming to a bridge,” Sheener warned me.
“Don’t be a goat all your life. He’s a gent; that’s what this guy is.”
“Then I’m glad I’m a roughneck,” I retorted; and Sheener shook his head.
“That’s all right,” he exclaimed. “That’s all right. He ain’t had it
easy, you know. Scrubbing spittoons is enough to take the polish off any
guy. I’m telling you he’s there. Forty ways. You’ll see, bo. You’ll
see.”
“I’m waiting,” I said.
“Keep right on,” Sheener advised me. “Keep right on. The old stuff is
there. It’ll show. Take it from me.”
I laughed at him. “If I get you,” I said, “you’re looking for something
along the line of ‘Noblesse Oblige.’ What?”
“Cut the comedy,” he retorted. “I’m telling you, the old class is there.
You can’t keep a fast horse in a poor man’s stable.”
“Blood will tell, eh?”
“Take it from me,” said Sheener.
It will be perceived that Evans had in Sheener not only a disciple; he
had an advocate and a defender. And Sheener in these rôles was not to be
despised. I have said he was a newsboy; to put it more accurately, he
was in his early twenties, with forty years of experience behind him,
and with half the newsboys of the city obeying his commands and
worshiping him like a minor god. He had full charge of our city
circulation and was quite as important, and twice as valuable to the
paper, as any news editor could hope to be. In making a friend of him,
Evans had found an ally in the high places; and it became speedily
apparent that Sheener proposed to be more than a mere friend in name.
For instance, I learned one day that he was drawing Evans’s wages for
him, and had appointed himself in some sort a steward for the other.
“That guy wouldn’t ever save a cent,” he told me when I questioned him.
“I give him enough to get soused on, and I stick five dollars in the
bank for him every week. I made him buy a new suit of clothes with it
last week. Say, you wouldn’t know him if you run into him in his glad
rags.”
“How does he like your running his affairs?” I asked.
“Like it?” Sheener echoed. “He don’t have to like it. If he tries to
pull anything on me, I’ll poke the old coot in the eye.”
I doubt whether this was actually his method of dominating Evans. It is
more likely that he used a diplomacy which occasionally appeared in his
dealings with the world. Certainly the arrangement presently collapsed,
for Sheener confessed to me that he had given his savings back to Evans.
We were minus a second assistant janitor for a week as a consequence,
and when Evans tottered back to the office and would have gone to work I
told him he was through.
He took it meekly enough, but not Sheener. Sheener came to me with fire
in his eye.
“Sa-a-ay,” he demanded, “what’s coming off here, anyhow? What do you
think you’re trying to pull?”
I asked him what he was talking about, and he said: “Evans says you’ve
given him the hook.”
“That’s right,” I admitted. “He’s through.”
“He is not,” Sheener told me flatly. “You can’t fire that guy.”
“Why not?”
“He’s got to live, ain’t he?”
I answered, somewhat glibly, that I did not see the necessity, but the
look that sprang at once into Sheener’s eye made me faintly ashamed of
myself, and I went on to urge that Evans was failing to do his work and
could deserve no consideration.
“That’s all right,” Sheener told me. “I didn’t hear any kicks that his
work wasn’t done while he was on this bat.”
“Oh, I guess it got done all right. Some one had to do it. We can’t pay
him for work that some one else does.”
“Say, don’t try to pull that stuff,” Sheener protested. “As long as his
work is done, you ain’t got any kick. This guy has got to have a job, or
he’ll go bust, quick. It’s all that keeps his feet on the ground. If he
didn’t think he was earning his living, he’d go on the bum in a minute.”
I was somewhat impatient with Sheener’s insistence, but I was also
interested in this developing situation. “Who’s going to do his work,
anyhow?” I demanded.
For the first time in our acquaintance I saw Sheener look confused.
“That’s all right, too,” he told me. “It don’t take any skin off of your
back, long as it’s done.”
In the end I surrendered. Evans kept his job; and Sheener--I once caught
him in the act, to his vast embarrassment--did the janitor’s work when
Evans was unfit for duty. Also Sheener loaned him money, small sums that
mounted into an interesting total; and furthermore I know that on one
occasion Sheener fought for him.
The man Evans went his pompous way, accepting Sheener’s homage and
protection as a matter of right, and in the course of half a dozen years
I left the paper for other work, saw Sheener seldom, and Evans not at
all.