Gladiator

by Wylie, Philip;

  Thus, bound by the conditionings of his babyhood, he reached the spring of his first year in school without accident. Such tranquillity could not long endure. The day which his mother had dreaded ultimately arrived. A lanky farmer’s son, older than the other children in the first grade, chose a particularly quiet and balmy recess period to plague little Hugo. The farmer’s boy was, because of his size, the bully and leader of all the other boys. He had not troubled himself to resent Hugo’s exclusiveness or Hugo’s reputation until that morning when he found himself without occupation. Hugo was sitting in the sun, his dark eyes staring a little sadly over the laughing, rioting children.

  The boy approached him. “Hello, strong man.” He was shrewd enough to make his voice so loud as to be generally audible. Hugo looked both harmless and slightly pathetic.

  “I’m not a strong man.”

  “Course you’re not. But everybody thinks you are—except me. I’m not afraid of you.”

  “I don’t want you to be afraid of me. I’m not afraid of you, either.”

  “Oh, you aren’t, huh? Look.” He touched Hugo’s chest with his finger, and when Hugo looked down, the boy lifted his finger into Hugo’s face.

  “Go away and let me alone.”

  The tormentor laughed. “Ever see a fish this long?”

  His hands indicated a small fish. Involuntarily Hugo looked at them. The hands flew apart and slapped him smartly. Several of the children had stopped their play to watch. The first insult made them giggle. The second brought a titter from Anna Blake, and Hugo noticed that. Anna Blake was a little girl with curly golden hair and blue eyes. Secretly Hugo admired her and was drawn to her. When she laughed, he felt a dismal loneliness, a sudden desertion. The farmer’s boy pressed the occasion his meanness had made.

  “I’ll bet you ain’t even strong enough to fight little Charlie Todd. Commere, Charlie.”

  “I am,” Hugo replied with slow dignity.

  “You’re a sissy. You’re a—scared to play with us.”

  The ring around Hugo had grown. He felt a tangible ridicule in it. He knew what it was to hate. Still, his inhibitions, his control, held him in check. “Go away,” he said, “or I’ll hurt you.”

  The farmer’s boy picked up a stick and put it on his shoulder. “Knock that off, then, strong man.”

  Hugo knew the dare and its significance. With a gentle gesture he brushed the stick away. Then the other struck. At the same time he kicked Hugo’s shins. There was no sense of pain with the kick. Hugo saw it as if it had happened to another person. The school-yard tensed with expectation. But the accounts of what followed were garbled. The farmer’s boy fell on his face as if by an invisible agency. Then his body was lifted in the air. The children had an awful picture of Hugo standing for a second with the writhing form of his attacker above his head. Then he flung it aside, over the circle that surrounded him, and the body fell with a thud. It lay without moving. Hugo began to whimper pitifully.

  That was Hugo’s first fight. He had defended himself, and it made him ashamed. He thought he had killed the other boy. Sickening dread filled him. He hurried to his side and shook him, calling his name. The other boy came to. His arm was broken and his sides were purpling where Hugo had seized him. There was terror in his eyes when he saw Hugo’s face above him, and he screamed shrilly for help. The teacher came. She sent Hugo to the blacksmith to be whipped.

  That, in itself, was a stroke of genius. The blacksmith whipped grown boys in the high school for their misdeeds. To send a six-year-old child was crushing. But Hugo had risen above the standards set by his society. He had been superior to it for a moment, and society hated him for it. His teacher hated him because she feared him. Mothers of children, learning about the episode, collected to discuss it in high-pitched, hateful voices. Hugo was enveloped in hate. And, as the lash of the smith fell on his small frame, he felt the depths of misery. He was a strong man. There was damnation in his veins.

  The minister came and prayed over him. The doctor was sent for and examined him. Frantic busybodies suggested that things be done to weaken him—what things, they did not say. And Hugo, suffering bitterly, saw that if he had beaten the farmer’s boy in fair combat, he would have been a hero. It was the scale of his triumph that made it dreadful. He did not realize then that if he had been so minded, he could have turned on the blacksmith and whipped him, he could have broken the neck of the doctor, he could have run raging through the town and escaped unscathed. His might was a secret from himself. He knew it only as a curse, like a disease or a blemish.

  During the ensuing four or five years Hugo’s peculiar trait asserted itself but once. It was a year after his fight with the bully. He had been isolated socially. Even Anna Blake did not dare to tease him any longer. Shunned and wretched, he built a world of young dreams and confections and lived in it with whatever comfort it afforded.

  One warm afternoon in a smoky Indian summer he walked home from school, spinning a top as he walked, stopping every few yards to pick it up and to let its eccentric momentum die on the palm of his hand. His pace thereby was made very slow and he calculated it to bring him to his home in time for supper and no sooner, because, despite his vigor, chores were as odious to him as to any other boy. A wagon drawn by two horses rolled toward him. It was a heavy wagon, piled high with grain-sacks, and a man sat on its rear end, his legs dangling.

  As the wagon reached Hugo, it jolted over a rut. There was a grinding rip and a crash. Hugo pocketed his top and looked. The man sitting on the back had been pinned beneath the rear axle, and the load held him there. As Hugo saw his predicament, the man screamed in agony. Hugo’s blood chilled. He stood transfixed. A man jumped out of a buggy. A Negro ran from a yard. Two women hurried from the spot. In an instant there were six or seven men around the broken wagon. A sound of pain issued from the mouth of the impaled man. The knot of figures bent at the sides of the cart and tried to lift. “Have to get a jack,” Hugo heard them say.

  Hugo wound up his string and put it beside his top. He walked mechanically into the road. He looked at the legs of the man on the ground. They were oozing blood where the backboard rested on them. The men gathered there were lifting again, without result. Hugo caught the side and bent his small shoulders. With all his might he pulled up. The wagon was jerked into the air. They pulled out the injured man. Hugo lowered the wagon slowly.

  For a moment no attention was paid to him. He waited pridefully for the recognition he had earned. He dug in the dirt with the side of his shoes. A man with a mole on his nose observed him. “Funny how that kid’s strength was just enough to turn the balance.”

  Hugo smiled. “I’m pretty strong,” he admitted.

  Another man saw him. “Get out of here,” he said sharply. “This is no place for a kid.”

  “But I was the one—”

  “I said beat it. And I meant beat it. Go home to your ma.”

  Slowly the light went from Hugo’s eyes. They did not know—they could not know. He had lifted more than two tons. And the men stood now, waiting for the doctor, telling each other how strong they were when the instant of need came.

  “Go on, kid. Run along. I’ll smack you.”

  Hugo went. He forgot to spin his top. He stumbled a little as he walked.

  Chapter IV

  DAYS, months, years. They had forgotten that Hugo was different. Almost, for a while, he had forgotten it himself—He was popular in school. He fostered the unexpressed theory that his strength had been a phenomenon of his childhood—one that diminished as he grew older. Then, at ten, it called to him for exercise.

  Each day he rose with a feeling of insufficiency. Each night he retired unrequited. He read Poe, the Bible, Scott, Thackeray, Swift, Defoe—all the books he could find. He thrilled with every syllable of adventure. His imagination swelled. But that was not sufficient. He yearned as a New England boy yearns before he runs away to sea.

  At ten he was a stalwart and handsome lad. His brow was high and
surmounted by his peculiarly black hair. His eyes were wide apart, inky, unfathomable. He carried himself with the grace of an athlete. He studied hard and he worked hard for his parents, taking care of a cow and chickens, of a stable and a large lawn, of flowers and a vegetable garden.

  Then one day he went by himself to walk in the mountains. He had not been allowed to go into the mountains alone. A Wanderlust that came half from himself and half from his books led his feet along a narrow, leafy trail into the forest depths. Hugo lay down and listened to the birds in the bushes, to the music of a brook, and to the sound of the wind. He wanted to be free and brave and great. By and by he stood up and walked again.

  An easy exhilaration filled his veins. His pace increased. “I wonder,” he thought, “how fast I can run, how far I can jump.” He quickened his stride. In a moment he found that the turns in the trail were too frequent for him to see his course. He ran ahead, realizing that he was moving at an abnormal pace. Then he turned, gathered himself, and jumped carefully. He was astonished when he vaulted above the green covering of the trail. He came down heavily. He stood in his tracks, tingling.

  “Nobody can do that, not even an acrobat,” he whispered.

  Again he tried, jumping straight up. He rose fully forty feet in the air.

  “Good Jesus!” he exulted. In those lonely, incredible moments Hugo found himself. There in the forest, beyond the eye of man, he learned that he was superhuman. It was a rapturous discovery. He knew at that hour that his strength was not a curse. He had inklings of his invulnerability.

  He ran. He shot up the steep trail like an express train, at a rate that would have been measured in miles to the hour rather than yards to the minute. Tireless blood poured through his veins. Green streaked at his sides. In a short time he came to the end of the trail. He plunged on, careless of obstacles that would have stopped an ordinary mortal. From trunk to trunk he leaped a burned stretch. He flung himself from a high rock. He sped like a shadow across a pine-carpeted knoll. He gained the bare rocks of the first mountain, and in the open, where the horror of no eye would tether his strength, he moved in flying bounds to its summit.

  Hugo stood there, panting. Below him was the world. A little world. He laughed. His dreams had been broken open. His depression was relieved. But he would never let them know—he, Hugo, the giant. Except, perhaps, his father. He lifted his arms—to thank God, to jeer at the world. Hugo was happy.

  He went home wondering. He was very hungry—hungrier than he had ever been—and his parents watched him eat with hidden glances. Samson had eaten thus, as if his stomach were bottomless and his food digested instantly to make room for more. And, as he ate, Hugo tried to open a conversation that would lead to a confession to his father. But it seemed impossible.

  Hugo liked his father. He saw how his mother dominated the little professor, how she seemed to have crushed and bewildered him until his mind was unfocused from its present. He could not love his mother because of that. He did not reason that her religion had made her blind and selfish, but he felt her blindness and the many cloaks that protected her and her interests. He held her in respect and he obeyed her. But often and wistfully he had tried to talk to his father, to make friends with him, to make himself felt as a person.

  Abednego Danner’s mind was buried in the work he had done. His son was a foreign person for whom he felt a perplexed sympathy. It is significant that he had never talked to Hugo about Hugo’s prowess. The ten-year-old boy had not wished to discuss it. Now, however, realizing its extent, he felt he must go to his father. After dinner he said: “Dad, let’s you and me take a walk.”

  Mrs. Danner’s protective impulses functioned automatically. “Not to-night. I won’t have it.”

  “But, mother—”

  Danner guessed the reason for that walk. He said to his wife with rare firmness: “If the boy wants to walk with me, we’re going.”

  After supper they went out. Mrs. Danner felt that she had been shut out of her own son’s world. And she realized that he was growing up.

  Danner and his son strolled along the leafy street. They talked about his work in school. His father seemed to Hugo more human than he had ever been. He even ventured the first step toward other conversation. “Well, son, what is it?”

  Hugo caught his breath. “Well—I kind of thought I ought to tell you. You see—this afternoon—well—you know I’ve always been a sort of strong kid—”

  Danner trembled. “I know—”

  “And you haven’t said much about it to me. Except to be gentle—”

  “That’s so. You must remember it.”

  “Well—I don’t have to be gentle with myself, do I? When I’m alone—like in the woods, that is?”

  The older one pondered. “You mean—you like to—ah—let yourself out—when you’re alone?”

  “That’s what I mean.” The usual constraint between them had receded. Hugo was grateful for his father’s help. “You see, dad, I—well—I went walkin’ to—day—and I—I kind of tried myself out.”

  Danner answered in breathless eagerness: “And?”

  “Well—I’m not just a strong kid, dad. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. It seems I’m not like other kids at all. I guess it’s been gettin’ worse all these years since I was a baby.”

  “Worse?”

  “I mean—I been gettin’ stronger. An’ now it seems like I’m about—well—I don’t like to boast—but it seems like I’m about the strongest man in the world. When I try it, it seems like there isn’t any stopping me. I can go on—far as I like. Runnin. Jumpin’.” His confession had commenced in detail. Hugo warmed to it. “I can do things, dad. It kind of scares me. I can jump higher’n a house. I can run faster’n a train. I can pull up big trees an’ push ‘em over.”

  “I see.” Banner’s spine tingled. He worshiped his son then. “Suppose you show me.”

  Hugo looked up and down the street. There was no one in sight. The evening was still duskily lighted by afterglow. “Look out then. I’m gonna jump.”

  Mr. Danner saw his son crouch. But he jumped so quickly that he vanished. Four seconds elapsed. He landed where he had stood. “See, dad?”

  “Do it again.”

  On the second trial the professor’s eyes followed the soaring form. And he realized the magnitude of the thing he had wrought.

  “Did you see me?”

  Danner nodded. “I saw you, son.”

  “Kind of funny, isn’t it?”

  “Let’s talk some more.” There was a pause. “Do you realize, son, that no one else on earth can do what you just did?”

  “Yeah. I guess not.”

  Danner hesitated. “It’s a glorious thing. And dangerous.”

  “Yeah.”

  The professor tried to simplify the biology of his discovery. He perceived that it was going to involve him in the mysteries of sex. He knew that to unfold them to a child was considered immoral. But Danner was far, far beyond his epoch. He put his hand on Hugo’s shoulder. And Hugo set off the process.

  “Dad, how come I’m—like this?”

  “I’ll tell you. It’s a long story and a lot for a boy your age to know. First, what do you know about—well—about how you were born?”

  Hugo reddened. “I—I guess I know quite a bit. The kids in school are always talkin’ about it. And I’ve read some. We’re born like—well—like kittens were born last year.”

  “That’s right.” Danner knitted his brow. He began to explain the details of conception as it occurs in man—the biology of ova and spermatozoa, the differences between the anatomy of the sexes, and the reasons for those differences. He drew, first, a botanical analogy. Hugo listened intently. “I knew most of that. I’ve seen—girls.”

  “What?”

  “Some of them—after school—let you.”

  Danner was surprised, and at the same time he was amused. He had forgotten the details of his young investigation. They are blotted out of the minds of most adults
—to the great advantage of dignity. He did not show his amusement or his surprise.

  “Girls like that,” he answered, “aren’t very nice. They haven’t much modesty. It’s rather indecent, because sex is a personal thing and something you ought to keep for the one you’re very fond of. You’ll understand that better when you’re older. But what I was going to tell you is this. When you were little more than a mass of plasm inside your mother, I put a medicine in her blood that I had discovered. I did it with a hypodermic needle. That medicine changed you. It altered the structure of your bones and muscles and nerves and your blood. It made you into a different tissue from the weak fiber of ordinary people. Then—when you were born—you were strong. Did you ever watch an ant carry many times its weight? Or see a grasshopper jump fifty times its length? The insects have better muscles and nerves than we have. And I improved your body till it was relatively that strong. Can you understand that?”

  “Sure. I’m like a man made out of iron instead of meat.”

  “That’s it, Hugo. And, as you grow up, you’ve got to remember that. You’re not an ordinary human being. When people find that out, they’ll—they’ll—”

  “They’ll hate me?”

  “Because they fear you. So you see, you’ve got to be good and kind and considerate—to justify all that strength. Some day you’ll find a use for it—a big, noble use—and then you can make it work and be proud of it. Until that day, you have to be humble like all the rest of us. You mustn’t show off or do cheap tricks. Then you’d just be a clown. Wait your time, son, and you’ll be glad of it. And—another thing—train your temper. You must never lose it. You can see what would happen if you did? Understand?”

  “I guess I do. It’s hard work—doin’ all that.”