by Frank Norris
“I guess I’ll say what I please in my own kitchin, you dirty little drab,” screamed the other. Their faces were by this time close together, neither would draw back an inch.
“No you won’t, no you won’t,” panted Trina, “an’ don’t you dare call me a drab. Drab yourself; best go back to the pigs your man used to fatten on old poultices, go back to your sty, I guess it won’t be any dirtier than this here kitchun.”
“Git out of it then.”
“Not till I get ready.”
“An’ I’ll call you drab till I’m black in the face, drab, drab, dam nasty, dirty little drab. Get out uv my kitchin.”
“Ah-h, let me see you put me out.”
“Ah, dirty little drab.”
“Ah, slattern, ah, pig feeder.”
Suddenly they tore at each other like infuriated cats. A handful of black and gray hair came away from Missis Ryer’s head. Fingernail marks, long red lines appeared on the curve of Trina’s cheeks, very like McTeague’s conception of the parallels upon a globe. Missis Ryer, hustling Trina toward the door, pushed her into the arms of McTeague himself. At the same time Ryer, warned of this war of wives, entered the kitchen from the front of the house. He had come over hastily from the “Wein Stube” and was half drunk. McTeague had partially slept off his intoxication and was about half sober.
“Here, here, here,” cried the ex-dentist over his wife’s shoulder, “you two women fightin’, quit it, what the bloody Hell!”
“Scrappin’” shouted Ryer from the doorway, “Choke off, ol’ woman, if there’s any scrappin to be done, I’ll do it meself.”
“She called me a drab,” gasped Trina, glaring at her enemy from under the protection of her gigantic husband.
“An’ she said my kitchin wasn’t a place for pigs to live in,” retorted Missis Ryer, without taking her eyes from Trina.
The men had not yet looked at each other. They were unwilling to fight this morning, because each one of them was half drunk or half sober, (either way you choose to put it), and because Ryer preferred to fight when he had all his wits about him, while McTeague was never combative until he had lost his wits entirely.
“What started the row, whatcha been fightin’ about demanded the ex-dentist.
“Yes, sure,” put in Ryer, “whatcha been scrappin about, what started the row?”
The women looked at each other, unable to answer. Then Trina began awkwardly:
“Well I — well — well — a — well she told me — she said — well, she run you down, Mac, an’ I didunt figure on puttun up with it.”
“She tried to make small of you, Ryer,” said his wife, “an’ I called her down, an’ — that’s all, she tried to make small of you.”
“Hey? What’d she say?” demanded McTeague, “out with it.”
“Well, this is what she said,” exclaimed Trina suddenly. “She said Ryer could give her a worse dressing down than you ever gave me, an’ I wouldn’t stand it.”
“Well,” declared Missis Ryer, turning to her husband. “I ain’t goin’ to let every dirty little drab that comes along say — say — throw mud at my man, am I? I guess,” added Missis Ryer, defiantly, facing Trina and the ex-dentist, “I guess Ryer can do what he likes in his own house. I ain’t goin’ to let any woman tell me that her man is better’n mine, in any way.”
“An’ that’s what you two fought over,” exclaimed the husbands in the same breath.
“Well, suppose we did,” said Trina with defiance. “I guess I can quarrel about what I like,” observed Missis Ryer, sullenly.
For the first time since they had entered the room the eyes of the two men met, and for fully half a dozen seconds they looked squarely at each other. Then the corners of the slit under Ryer’s nose began to twitch, and McTeague’s huge jaws to widen to a grin in nutcracker fashion. Suddenly a roar of laughter shook him; he sank into a chair, rocking back and forth, smiting his knee with his palm. Ryer cackled shrilly, crying out between peals of laughter: “Well, if this ain’t the greatest jolly I’ve struck yet.”
“Fightin’ over our fightin’ them,” bellowed McTeague. “I’ve seen queer bugs in my time,” gasped Ryer, “but the biggest curios yet are women, oh Lord, but this does beat the Dutch.”
“Say, ain’t this great, Ryer?”
“Mac, this does beat the carpet, sure.”
“Look here old man, about them parallel lines, I say let’s call it off. I ain’t got no quarrel against you.”
“That’s a go, Mac, you’re a good fellah, sure, put it there.”
They shook hands upon their reconciliation, their breasts swelling with magnanimity. They felt that they liked one another hugely, and they slapped each other tremendous blows on the back, exclaiming at intervals “put it there,” and gripping hands with a cordiality that was effusive beyond words. All at once Ryer had an inspiration.
“Say, Mac, come over to the Stube and have a drink on it.”
“Well, I just guess I will,” vociferated the ex-dentist.
Bewildered and raging at the unexpected reconciliation of their husbands, the two women had disappeared, Trina slamming the door of the kitchen with a parting cry of “pig feeder,” which Missis Ryer immediately answered by thrusting her head out of a second story window and screaming at the top of her voice to the neighborhood in general, “dirty little drab.”
Meanwhile the two men strode out of the house and across the street, their arms affectionately locked; the swing doors of the “Stube” flapped after them like a pair of silent wings.
* * *
That day settled the matter. Heretofore it had been the men who were enemies and their wives who were friends. Now the two men are fast friends, while the two women maintain perpetual feud. The “block” has come to recognize their quarrel as part of the existing order of things, like the leak from the gas works and the collector’s visits. Occasionally the women fight, and Missis Ryer, who is the larger and heavier, has something the best of it.
However, one particular custom common to both households remains unchanged — both men continue to thrash their wives in the old ratio — McTeague on the days when he is drunk (which are many), Ryer on the days when he is sober (which are few).
PERVERTED TALES
SIX PARODIES FROM THE WAVE OF DECEMBER 24, 1897.
The discovery of California by the editors of the Big Four Magazines of the East has had the lamentable result of crowding from their exalted places, heretofore so secure, a number of the world’s most fascinating storytellers. Their places have been filled from the ranks of that little army of youthful volunteers known as Les Jeunes. As a lamentable result old idols have been overthrown, old gods forgotten, and the children in the market place no longer dance to the tune of the old pipes. Where once the old favorite received a check, he now receives a printed form with veiled reference to availability, guarded allusions to the plans of the editor — and his story. With the view to stemming the perverse tide of popular favor — whose ebb and flow are not reducible to any known law — and, if only for a moment, sounding again the old notes once so compelling, the editors of this paper have secured for publication a few of these rejected tales and here submit them to the public of the West. Their genuineness is as Caesar s wife, and if internal evidence were wanting, the opinions of experts in typewriting have been secured, which place their authenticity beyond fear and beyond reproach.
Frank Norris, Editor
THE RICKSHA THAT HAPPENED BY R——D K——G
Ching-a-ring-a-ring ching-chow
Ho, dinkum darkey. — The unedited diary of Bahlar mooca Tah.
Jam yesterday and jam to-morrow But never jam to-day. — Native Proverb.
“Who’s all right? Rudyard! Who? Rudyard!”
Barrack-room ballad.
There was a man once — but that’s another story. Personally, I do not believe much of this story, however, you may have it for what it is worth, to me it was worth five thousand dollars per thousand words.
A friend of mine, who is a jinricksha down by Benares, told me this tale one hot evening outside the Tiddledtypore gate. In the telling of it he spat reflectively and often into the moat. Chaprassi simpkin peg, as Mrs. Hawkseye says.
Mulligatawney, who is a private soldier and who dines with me at table d’hote on Thursdays, and who shares my box at the opera, says the tale is cheap at a gallon and a half of beer.
“Pwhat nex!” exclaimed Mulligatawney, when he heard it, shifting his quid to other side of his mouth (we were at table). “It’s jaddoo, that’s pwhat ut is. ’Tis flyin’ in the face uv natoor to trifle with such brutil and licenshous soldiery as me and Orf-of-this an’ Lear-eyed.” Here he stole a silver spoon to hide his emotion. “Choop, sez oi to im,” said Mulligatawney, filling himself another jinricksha, “choop, an’ he chooped, like ghairun gone clane dal-bat an’ Kipiri in hot weather. I waz only a recruity then. But I waz a corpril wanst. I was rejuced aftherwards, but I waz a corpril wanst,” and he stared mournfully at the dying embers in the jinricksha.
We are a terrible bad lot out here in Indiana, but we can’t help that. Here a man’s whole duty is to lie doggo and not ekka more than once a week, and to pray for a war. Also he may keep a jinricksha in his stable if he can afford it. As that wonderful woman, Mrs. Hawkseye, says: “It’s better to bustee in a jam-panni than to have your jinricksha puckarowed.” But that’s her affair.
Stepterfetchit had just come out from home. Now when a man comes out from home, if he is not jin-rickshaed at the pier landing, he generally does one of three things (jampanni chorah simpkin bungalow), either he dies with swiftness, which is bad, or lives with swiftness, which is worse, or marries, which is the worst of all. “A single man,” says my friend Mulligatawney, “is an ornamint to the service.” But as Leareyed observes, “when a mon is tewed wi’ a lass he’s lokri in a bunder, nothing but dikh,” and he flung himself (seven foot four of British soldier), full length upon his jinricksha.
Stepterfetchit knew as much of Life (Life with a big L) as a weaning child, until I, who have seen everything worth seeing, and done everything worth doing, and have known everything worth knowing, from Indian magic to the cleaning of codfish, took him in hand. He began by contradicting his colonel, and went on from that to making love to Mrs. Hawkseye (till that lady told him he was a bungalow, with no more pukaree than a dacoit), and wound up by drinking too much jinricksha at his club.
Now, when a man takes to the jinricksha he is very likely to end at the shroff. So I spoke to the Major. You may hit a marumutta over the head at the beginning of your acquaintance, but you must not soap the tail of a kitten that belongs to a Ryotwary, unless you are prepared to prove it on his front teeth. It takes some men a life time to find this out, but the knowledge is useful. Sempkin peg, do re mi fa, ching-a-ring a-ring-ching-chow, but that’s another story. We arrived — the Major and I — at Stepterfetchit’s dak-bungalow on a red hot evening, when the heat blanketed the world like a hot towel round a swelled head. We nearly killed the jinricksha in getting there, but a mountain bred can gawbry more jhil than you would care to believe.
“Hark!” said the Major. We paused on the threshold and the silence of the Indian twilight gathered us in its hollow palms. We both heard a sound that came from Stepterfetchit’s window. It was the ticking of an eight-day clock.
People write and talk lightly of blood running cold and of fear and all that sort of thing, but the real sensation is quite too terrible to be trifled with. As the Major and I heard the ticking of that eight-day clock, it is no lie to say that the bhisti mussick turned shikary in our khitmatgar. We were afraid. The Major entered the bungalow and I followed and salaamed the door behind me.
The jinricksha lay dead on the charpoy in Stepterfetchit’s room. Stepterfetchit must have killed it hours before. “We came too late,” groaned the Major. We made no attempt to keep from crying — I respected my self for that. But we gathered up the pieces of the jinricksha and sent them to Stepterfetchit’s people at Home.
So now you know what I know of the Ricksha that never was.
Stepterfetchit is now a plate-layer somewhere down near Bareilly, on the line of the railroad, where the Kharki water tanks that the Rajah of Bathtub built out of stolen government money, when the commissariat bullock train was puckarowed by Pathans, in the days of the old budmash Mahommud Dinare, and Mulligatawney is away annexing Burmah. When he heard of the affair he said:
“If a punkah is goin’ to ayah niver loose your grip, but I waz a corpril wanst, I was rejuced afterwards,” which is manifestly unfair.
Mrs. Hawkseye says that a “jinricksha in the hand gathers no moss” — but that’s another story.
THE GREEN STONE OF UNREST BY S——N CR——E
A Mere Boy stood on a pile of blue stones. His attitude was regardant. The day was seal brown. There was a Vermillion valley containing a church. The church’s steeple aspired strenuously in a direction tangent to the earth’s center. A pale wind mentioned tremendous facts under its breath with certain effort at concealment to seven not-dwarfed poplars on an un-distant mauve hilltop.
The Mere Boy was a brilliant blue color. The effect of the scene was not un-kaleidoscopic.
After a certain appreciable duration of time the Mere Boy abandoned his regardant demeanor. The strenuously aspiring church steeple no longer projected itself upon his consciousness. He found means to remove himself from the pile of blue stones. He set his face valleyward. He proceeded.
The road was raw umber. There were in it wagon ruts. There were in it pebbles, Naples yellow in color. One was green. The Mere Boy allowed the idea of the green pebble to nick itself into the sharp edge of the disc of his Perception.
“Ah,” he said, “a green pebble.”
The rather pallid wind communicated another Incomprehensible Fact to the paranthine trees. It would appear that the poplars understood.
“Ah,” repeated the Mere Boy, “a Green Pebble.”
“Sho-o,” remarked the wind.
The Mere Boy moved appreciably forward. If there were a thousand men in a procession and nine hundred and ninety-nine should suddenly expire, the one man who was remnant would assume the responsibility of the procession.
The Mere Boy was an abbreviated procession.
The blue Mere Boy transported himself diagonally athwart the larger landscape, printed in four colors, like a poster.
On the uplands were chequered squares made by fields, tilled and otherwise. Cloud-shadows moved from square to square. It was as if the Sky and Earth were playing a tremendous game of chess.
By and by the Mere Boy observed an Army or a Million Men. Certain cannon, like voluble but noncommittal toads with hunched backs, fulminated vast hiccoughs at unimpassioned intervals. Their own invulnerableness was offensive.
An officer of blue serge waved a sword, like a picture in a school history. The non-committal toads pullulated with brief red pimples and swiftly relapsed to impassivity.
The line of the Army of a Million Men obnubilated itself in whiteness as a line of writing is blotted with a new blotter.
“Go teh blazes b’Jimminey,” remarked the Mere Boy. “What yeh’s shooting fur? They might be people in that field.”
He was terrific in his denunciation of such negligence. He debated the question of his ir-removability. “If I’m goin’ teh be shot,” he observed; “If I’m goin teh be shot, b’Jimminey — —”
* * * * *
A Thing lay in the little hollow.
The little hollow was green.
The Thing was pulpy white. Its eyes were white. It had blackish-yellow lips. It was beautifully spotted with red, like tomato stains on a rolled napkin.
The yellow sun was dropping on the green plain of the earth, like a twenty-dollar gold piece falling on the baize cloth of a gaming table.
The blue serge officer abruptly discovered the punctured Thing in the Hollow. He was struck with the ir-remediableness of the business.
“Gee
,” he murmured with interest. “Gee, it’s a Mere Boy.”
The Mere Boy had been struck with seventy-seven rifle bullets. Seventy had struck him in the chest, seven in the head. He bore close resemblance to the top of a pepper castor.
He was dead.
He was obsolete.
As the blue serge officer bent over him he became aware of a something in the Thing’s hand.
It was a green pebble.
“Gee,” exclaimed the blue serge officer. “A green pebble, gee.”
The large Wind evolved a threnody with reference to the seven un-distant poplars.
A HERO OF TOMATO CAN BY B — E H — TE
Mr. Jack Oak-hearse calmly rose from the table and shot the bartender of Tomato Can, because of the objectionable color of his hair. Then Mr. Oakhearse scratched a match on the sole of his victim’s boot, lit a perfumed cigarette and strolled forth into the street of the camp to enjoy the evening air. Mr. Oak-hearse’s face was pale and impassive, and stamped with that indefinable hauteur that marks the professional gambler. Tomato Can knew him to be a cool, desperate man. The famous Colonel Blue-bottle was reported to have made the remark to Miss Honorine-Sainte-Claire, when that leader of society opened the Pink Assembly at Toad-in-the-Hole, on the other side of the Divide, that he, Colonel Blue-bottle, would be everlastingly “ — ed if he didn’t believe that that —— — ed Oak-hearse would open a —— — ed jack-pot on a pair of —— ed tens, —— — ed if he didn’t.”
To which Miss Ste.-Claire had responded:
“Fancy now.”
On this occasion as Mr. Jack Oak-hearse stepped in the cool evening air of the Sierra’s from out of the bar of the hotel of Tomato Can, he drew from his breast pocket a dainty manicure set and began to trim and polish his slender, almost feminine finger nails, that had been contaminated with the touch of the greasy cards. Thus occupied he betook himself leisurely down the one street of Tomato Can, languidly dodging an occasional revolver bullet, and stepping daintily over the few unburied corpses that bore mute testimony to the disputatious and controversial nature of the citizens of Tomato Can. He arrived at his hotel and entered his apartments, gently waving aside the half-breed Mexican who attempted to disembowel him on the threshold. The apartment was crudely furnished as befitted the rough and ready character of the town of Tomato Can. The Wilton carpet on the floor was stained with spilt Moet and Chandon. The full-length portrait of Mr. Oak-hearse by Carolus Duran was punctured with bullet marks, while the teak-wood escritoire, inlaid with buhl and jade, was encumbered with bowie knives, spurs and Mexican saddles.