by Ralph Moody
Instead of answering me the fat man called to the other one, “John, there’s a boy here wants to hire out to us for a dollar and a half a week. He’s a little shaver, but stout for his size, and from the way he goes about makin’ a dicker I calc’late he’d turn out to be a good merchant. What you think?”
The other man stopped his work just long enough to look at me for half a minute over the top of his glasses, then called back, “He appears awful small for a delivery boy, but use your own judgment, Gus.”
I was too close to let the chance get by, so before the man named Gus could say anything, I made my best offer. “I’ll work a week for nothing,” I told him. “That way, it won’t cost you anything to find out that I can handle the job.”
I think that’s what got me the job, and I’m sure it was what got the children a whole bag of candy for nothing. He picked a piece out of every tray in the case, then passed the bag to me and said, “That’s to bind the bargain; you be here at seven o’clock tomorrow mornin’ to sweep up and bag some coal.” Then, as we were going out, he called me back and said, “If you want, you could come ’round about six o’clock this evenin’ and get the bicycle, so’s to get in a little practice on it.”
I was so happy about getting a job my first day in town that I wanted to dance, but I wouldn’t let myself, because I didn’t really have it for sure; just sort of on a week’s trial. I got thinking about that as soon as we were outside the store, and it seemed to me that the best thing I could do to get ready for my new job was to learn the street names, so I walked the children all around that end of Medford till noon.
In the afternoon the children were too tired to go out at all, but Grace made me go and find out which school we’d go to and what the teachers’ names would be. I found that Philip and Muriel would go to the James School, and that I’d go to the Franklin. Hal wasn’t old enough to go, and Grace wasn’t going. She’d been in the eighth grade when Father died, but after that she had to stay at home to help Mother.
That afternoon seemed ten times as long to me as the forenoon had, mostly because I didn’t have much of anything to do, and because I was anxious for six o’clock to come, so I could find out whether or not I could ride the grocery store bicycle. I’d seen plenty of people ride bicycles—some of them girls, and some of them sitting up straight and riding no-hands—so I knew it couldn’t be very hard, but I wanted to be real sure I could do it before I started my new job.
Partly because I was worried about Mother, and partly because I wanted to have another look at the bicycle down at the grocery store, I went to meet every train that came in after four o’clock. It was half-past-five before Mother came, and when she stepped down from the car she looked tired and worried. I ran right to her, took the bundle she was carrying, and told her about my new job. I didn’t tell her that it was only for a week’s trial, or that I’d said I’d work that week for nothing.
She laid her hand on my shoulder and said, “You’ve done a great deal better than your mother has, Son. From what I’ve been able to learn, most of the larger hotels in Boston launder and stretch their own lace curtains, and the others pay so small a price that we couldn’t make a living by doing their work. On the other hand, rents are terribly high here, and I didn’t see a stick of used furniture that was worth anything like the price they were asking for it. I shall look again tomorrow, but it may be that we will find Medford is not the right place for us.” For a minute or two she walked along with her lips pinched tight, then she said sternly, as if she had forgotten I was there, “We shall not impose on Frank and Hilda; they have all they can do to take care of their own little ones.”
I don’t know what more she might have said if Uncle Frank hadn’t called, “Hi, Mary Emma!” from in back of us. Until Mother turned I didn’t know it was Uncle Frank calling, or that the call was for her. Father had always called her “Mame,” so had all her best friends in Colorado, and I wasn’t used to hearing her called “Mary Emma.”
Uncle Frank had been on the same train Mother came on, but had ridden back in the smoker, so she hadn’t seen him. I ran back to meet him, and told him about my new job and the bicycle, but when we caught up to Mother they talked about lace curtains. She didn’t say a word about the high prices of rents, or that Medford might not be the right place for us.
Aunt Hilda and Grace had supper ready when we reached the house, but it was so near six o’clock that I didn’t dare stop to eat. I carried the bundle inside, then ran right back for the bicycle. I didn’t try to get on it, but pushed it, and that was hard enough. It must have weighed just about as much as I did, there was a big basket strapped to the handle bars, the tires were made of solid rubber, and the snow hadn’t been shoveled off more than half of the sidewalks.
Uncle Frank said he’d help me with learning to ride the bicycle, but not until after I’d eaten my supper, so I poked down the plateful Aunt Hilda had saved for me just as fast as I could. Then Uncle Frank helped me shovel off two of the neighbors’ walks, so that I’d have a good clear stretch of sidewalk to ride on.
As soon as the walks were cleared he stood the bike at one end of the runway we’d made, and said, “Now I’ll ride it a little piece to show you how. There’s only one trick to it: when you feel it beginning to tip toward either side, turn the handle bars that way and you’ll straighten it right up. Now you watch how I do it.”
As he was talking he lifted the hind wheel off the sidewalk, reached down, and turned the foot pedal on his side around until it was straight up. Then, after he’d told me to watch him, he stepped up on it, threw the other leg over—just as if he’d been mounting a horse—and away he went. I couldn’t see that he turned the handle bars at all, but he went right down the middle of the sidewalk, turned the bicycle around, and pedaled it as straight back to me as if he’d been riding on a tightrope.
Before I tried to get on I was careful to lift the hind wheel and turn the pedal around just as he had, but when I stepped up onto it the bike came over onto me quicker than a horse that’s stepped into a gopher hole. It was lucky that there was a good high snow bank along there, so I didn’t get hurt a bit. When I’d picked myself up and got the snow out of my ears, Uncle Frank said, “Don’t pull the handle bars toward you when you go up; leave them straight. It’s time enough to turn them when you get rolling.”
I tried it the same way three more times, but each time the bike pitched me into the snow bank before we’d gone a foot. I found out what the trouble was on that third fall. “I know what I’m doing wrong,” I told Uncle Frank. “With a strange horse you always pull his head way around toward you before you go up. That way he can’t rear, or start off too quick and dump you. Next time I’ll remember not to pull the handle bars around as I’m going up.”
I didn’t pull them, but I must have pushed. Anyway, the bike ran into the snow bank on the other side of the walk, and I dived head-first into a low hedge with a million little thorns on it. I didn’t get scratched up very much, but I was pretty sore at myself for not being able to do something that lots of girls could do. Uncle Frank helped me get untangled from the hedge, and asked, “Are you hurt?”
I wasn’t, but I wouldn’t have let on if I had been. “No, sir,” I told him, “but I wish there was some way to put a gunny sack over this critter’s eyes, the way they put one over a horse’s eyes in a roundup. Then they can’t buck till you’re all on and have both feet in the stirrups.”
He told me he’d be the gunny sack, so he stood in front of the bike on my next try, holding the handle bars with his hands and the wheel between his knees. Everything went fine until he stepped away, and for about six feet after that, then the bike decided to go one way just as I decided to go the other, and I was in the hedge again.
On my fourth try after that I made as much as twenty feet before it pitched me off again, going down the sidewalk as if both the bicycle and I were drunk.
“That’s fine! That’s fine!” Uncle Frank told me as he came to help me
out of the hedge. “Your only trouble is that you don’t turn the handle bars quick enough when you begin to tip, and then, when you do turn them, you turn too far.”
“I know it,” I told him, “but I don’t know what to do about it. I can always tell which way a bucking horse is going to jump by the way he turns his ears, but this thing doesn’t give you any warning.”
I was scratched up from the hedge more than I thought, but I guess I looked a lot worse off than I really was. When I wiped my mitten across my face it came away with a red smooch on it, and Uncle Frank said, “That’s enough for one lesson. Those solid tires and the basket will always make it tough to ride, but after another day or two you won’t have to think anything about keeping it balanced. I’ll drop in at the store in the morning and tell Gus Haushalter that you’re going to make out all right, but that you’d better deliver your orders on Shank’s mare for the rest of this week.”
There were plenty of days on the ranches when I worked a lot harder than I had that day, but I don’t remember ever being any more tired. That evening Uncle Frank tried to teach me how to play cribbage, but I went to sleep right in the middle of a game.
3
The Bad-Boy Book
I DON’T know how early it was when I first woke up the next morning—or even if it was morning—but I must have dozed off just a few seconds before Uncle Frank shook me and whispered, “Time to get up, fella. It’s quarter after six, and I’ve got a bite to eat ready in the kitchen.”
Whewwww, it was cold that first morning when I started for work at the D & H Grocery, and the bicycle pushed as if it weighed half a ton. The cold was a different kind from what we had in Colorado. It made tears come into my eyes, and a drop on the end of my nose, but I needed both hands to keep the bike from tipping over, so I couldn’t do anything about it.
The yellow light from the big kerosene lamp above the counter was shining out onto the snow as I came down the hill past the store windows, and Mr. Haushalter was building a fire in the pot-bellied stove that stood in the middle of the floor. It wasn’t nearly as cold inside the store as it was outside, but he still had on his overcoat, and a red woolen muffler wound around his neck. He looked up as I opened the door, and said, “Well, well, well, right on time! That’s the ticket! Nippy out this mornin’, ain’t it?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Shall I bring the bicycle inside?”
“No need, no need,” he told me. “John’ll be along after a while, and he’ll want it for goin’ to get his orders. Hold on a minute whilst I go fetch some kerosene. Didn’t bank this cussed fire high enough last night and it petered out on me.”
He didn’t seem to be in any hurry, and sort of waddled—like a fat duck—as he went behind the counter and through a doorway into a back room. He was gone three or four minutes, then waddled back, holding an old quart measure in his hand. He opened the stove door, tossed in about a cupful of kerosene, and jumped back. It was a good thing that he jumped quick. In less than a tenth of a second the stove belched out a peck of ashes and a bushel of flame. The lid on top of it jumped three or four inches into the air, and a cloud of black smoke went up to the ceiling. “There,” Mr. Haushalter said as he kicked the stove door shut, “that ought to do the trick. Come get your hands warm, and I’ll show you abouts; then you can sweep out some. Ain’t had a boy for two-three months now, and the place is gettin’ a mite dusty. Kitty-kitty-kitty.”
I was sure Mr. Haushalter had lit the stove that same way a good many times. The ceiling above it was as black as a coal bin, there was a gray layer of dust and ashes on the shelves nearby, and I’d noticed that the calico cat sneaked away under the cracker case when she saw him coming with the quart measure. As he talked to me he went back to the counter, reached under, and set up a two-gallon milk can.
“Nights in this kind of weather there ain’t no sense puttin’ it in the ice box; keeps sweet enough right under the counter,” he told me as he stooped down and brought up a chipped cereal bowl: the kind with red flowers on it that always came in Banner Oats. “Kitty-kitty-kitty,” he called again as he filled the bowl and set it on the floor. Then, as the cat crawled out from under the cracker case, he looked up at me and said, “Whenst you go to cleanin’ up, don’t sweep too close to the cracker case. Matilda’s got a new litter of kittens under there—fourth litter she’s had since spring if I recollect rightly. You can come along now if you’re thawed out a mite; I’ll show you abouts. Let me see, you said you was Frank Gould’s nephew, but I don’t recollect you sayin’ what your first name is.”
“It’s Ralph,” I said, “Ralph Moody.”
“Oh, then your ma is Frank’s sister . . . or be you kin to his wife?”
“Mother’s Mr. Gould’s sister,” I said as I went behind the counter with him, but he didn’t seem to be listening.
“Hmmmmm, Moody,” he said. “Hope you ain’t too moody. John, he gets that way sometimes when business is off a dite, but I can’t see much sense to it. Business comes and business goes, kind of like the tide. Can’t expect it to be at flood all the time. Got a middle name?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “It’s Owen.”
Mr. Haushalter stopped right where he was, and chuckled so hard that the ends of his muffler jiggled. “Owen . . . Owen,” he said, and then chuckled again. “Owen Moore, he went away, owin’ more than he could pay. Owen Moore come back again, owin’ more.” He didn’t say it as if he were saying it to me, or as if he were making fun of my name. It was more as if he’d just thought of something he hadn’t heard for a long, long time, and was saying it over to himself.
“Well, well, well,” he said as he started on again, “owin’ is bad business.” He stopped again, right behind the candy case, looked at me sternly, and said, “So’s stealin’, and I don’t want you to ever steal as much as one pea bean around here.”
I couldn’t have felt much worse if he’d slapped me, but before I could think of a word to say he chuckled again and went on, “So there’s the candy case, and yonder is the cookie case, and the cheese box, and there’s apples in the barrel. A boy’s got to eat, and there’s nothin’ will make a thief out of him any quicker’n an empty belly, so eat all you want. You’ll prob’ly get sick on candy the first couple of days—most boys does—but you’ll simmer down ’fore the week’s out. Now there’s just one more thing I want to tell you: that’s only for yourself, and only right here in the store; you don’t take stuff out with you, and you don’t give it to nobody else—not even your own brothers and sisters. Is that fair?”
“Yes, sir,” I told him. “That’s more than fair. And that way I could afford to work for . . .”
“Never mind the ‘sir,’” he broke in. “Everybody calls me Gus, and they call John, John. But if you’ve a mind to, you could call John, Mr. Durant; I have a notion he’d like it. Well, well, we’ve frittered away a lot of time here, ain’t we? And here comes John now. You might as well get on with the sweepin’—and take care ’bout the kittens. Broom’s in the corner, yonder by the coal scuttle. I’ll show you ’round some more after school’s over; you’re commencin’ today, ain’t you?”
Mother had already taken Muriel and Philip over to the James School, and was waiting for me when I’d finished the sweeping and got back to Uncle Frank’s house at quarter of nine. But I didn’t like the cap she was holding in her hand a single bit. Two summers before, the cowhands on the Y-B Ranch had given me a genuine Stetson hat—not a ten-gallon, but a five. That kind of a hat will last for years and years if you take good care of it, and they’d bought one that was about a size too big, so it would still fit me after I’d grown some more. The only trouble was that I’d just about stopped growing, but the hat fit all right if I kept some folded paper inside the sweat band. I’d never had anything to wear that I liked as much as I liked that hat, and I’d taken real fine care of it, so that it was almost as good as new. But Mother didn’t think it was the right kind of a hat for me to wear to school in Medford, and had bought me a stoc
king cap when she’d been in Boston the day before. She put it on me and pulled it down over my ears as soon as I came in. To make it worse, it was a girl’s cap instead of a boy’s; white, with a fluffy red ball on the top.
Of course, I didn’t tell Mother I wouldn’t wear the cap, but I came as close to it as I dared. I did tell her that the boys would think I was a sissy if I wore it, and that if a fellow got the name of sissy tacked onto him his first day in a new school he could almost never get over it. That’s what made her let me wear my Stetson, but it didn’t keep me out of trouble.
Just because I’d happened to get into a scrap or two, Mother always worried whenever I went into a new school. I know she was worried that day. As we walked down Spring Street and over Central Avenue toward the Franklin School, she told me, “It is against my better judgment to let you wear this hat the cowboys gave you. In Colorado it was quite all right, but here it will look simply ridiculous. I am letting you wear it this one day only, and for one reason only: so that you may not feel obliged to pick a fight in order to prove your manliness. I will not tolerate your fighting in this new school. Now what did you tell me the principal’s name was?”
“Well, I think Mr. Haushalter said it was Jackman, but it might have been Jackson. I tried to remember it but . . .”
“Never mind!” Mother told me sharply. “Whatever it is, I shall tell him to let me know immediately if you give him the slightest particle of trouble. And I want you to keep your wits about you while we are talking to him. I believe your number-work, reading and geography are good enough so that you might go into the eighth grade instead of the seventh.”