Through the Shadows with O'Henry
Page 9
"Colonel, would you mind granting me an audience," he said in the bantering formality of his way. "I'd appreciate the opinion of a fellow-struggler. I have a little scrap here. I'd like to read it to you and Billy."
Porter was usually so reticent, usually the listener while others talked, that one felt a warm surge of pleasure whenever he showed a disposition for con- fidence. Billy and I swerved about, eager for the reading.
Porter sat on a high stool near the desk and carefully drew from his pocket a roll of brown paper. He had written in a big, generous hand and there was scarcely a scratch or an erasure on a single sheet.
From the moment that Porter's rich, low, hesitant voice began there was a breathless suspense until suddenly Billy Raidler gulped, and Porter looked up as one aroused from a dream. Raidler grinned and jabbed his maimed hand into his eye.
"Damn you, Porter, I never did it in my life before. By God, I didn't know what a tear looked like."
It was a funny thing to see two train-robbers blubbering over the simple story.
Perhaps the convict is over-sentimental, but the queer twist in Porter's story just seemed to sneak into the heart with a kind of overflowing warmth.
It was "The Christmas Chaparral" he read to us. Both Billy and I could understand the feelings of the cowpuncher who had lost out in the wooing of the girl. We could feel his hot jealousy toward the peeler who won the bride. We knew that he would keep his promise—we knew he would return to kill his rival.
And when he comes back on Christmas Eve, dressed as a Santa Claus, armed to bring tragedy to the happy ranch house, we could sympathize with his mood. He overhears the wife say a word in his defense—he hears her praise the early kindness of his life. He walks up to her---"There's a Christmas present in the next room for you," he says, and leaves the house without firing the shot that was to have ended the husband's life.
Well, the story is told as only O. Henry can rough in the picture. Billy and I could see ourselves in the cowpuncher's place. We could feel ourselves respond to that stray beam of kindness in the girl's thoughtless praise. We could feel it and it brought the tears to our calloused old cheeks.
Porter sat there silent, pleased, his eyes aglow with happy satisfaction. He rolled up the manuscript and climbed down from the stool.
"Gentlemen, many thanks. I never expected to win tears from experts of your profession," he said at last. And then we all fell into a speculation as to what the story should bring and where we ought to send it. We felt an interest in its fate. "The Long Riders" and its many buckets of blood were forgotten in the wizardry of "The Christmas Chaparral."
With the fervor of hero-worshipers, Raidler and I acknowledged Bill Porter, the genius.
We decided to send the story to the Black Cat. There was in the prison at this time a cultured Frenchman, a banker from New Orleans. Through his sister, Porter's stories, bearing the New Orleans address, were sent to the editor.
When "The Christmas Chaparral" was sent out, Billy and I could hardly wait for the weeks to go by. We were sure it would be accepted at once. At least $75 was the price we thought it ought to bring. It came back.
Years later I peddled my own story from editor to editor. Never did I feel the angry spasm of disappointment that seized me when Porter's great story was rejected.
I knew that he, too, was filled with a bitter regret. He had counted on the money. He wanted to send a little present to his daughter, Margaret. Now she would have to wait. It cut him to the quick, this failure of his, as a father.
But he said very little when Billy handed him the package. We were so incensed against the publishers, of the magazines, we wanted him to blacklist them in the future.
"Colonel, the day may come when I can decline publication—at present I don't seem to have the deciding voice."
And he went back to his desk and wrote and wrote. He went back to the melancholy prison hospital, to the night patrol through the cell ranges, gathering his material, transmuting the gloom through the O. Henry alchemy into the sunny gold of his stories. Many of these he read to us in the stolen happiness of Sunday afternoons at the "Recluse Club.'*
CHAPTER XVII.
O. Henry; Bohemian; the Recluse Club in the prison; the vanishing kitchen; the tragedy of Big Joe; effect on O. Henry; personality of a genius.
Porter was a bohemian in heart, in soul, in temperament. Not the poser he had neither sympathy nor kinship with the temperamental quacks of the artistic world but a born original. He loved freedom and unconventional sociability. In this buoyant atmosphere he could warm up, whisper out his drolleries, forget. Even in the prison the whimsical vagabond in him asserted itself. He founded the
"Recluse Club."
Six convicts three of them bank-robbers, one a forger and two train-robbers, made up its membership. We met on Sunday in the construction office. And never a club in the highest strata of society had graver, brighter, happier discussion never an epicure's retreat served a more delicious menu than our Sunday repasts.
The embezzlers had been men of great wealth. They were educated and polished. It was a fitting environment to bring out the best in Bill Porter. He was king of that exclusive club.
It was a Sunday, three weeks after I had been transferred to the post-office, that I was invited to join.
"Slither over, colonel," Porter whispered to me. "I key will show $ou the way."
An odder initiation ceremony never was held.
Porter met me at the door of the construction office and with elaborate burlesque paid tribute to my accomplishments. "Here is a financier worthy to sit with the elect. The colonel kills with a deft equanimity equaled only by the finesse of Louisa in seasoning the gravy."
Louisa was the nickname given to the French gentleman sent to the Ohio penitentiary on a charge of embezzlement. He was dapper, swarthy, mannered like a prince—the chief clerk in the construction office and the man responsible for the magic kitchenette concealed behind the walls of the office.
Louisa was official chef of the "Recluse Club." He turned out mince pies and roast beef that would have made the eyes of Dives bulge with envy. He measured to the grain all his ingredients and he followed minutely the instructions in a big cook book.
If the prison had suddenly been changed into paradise it would have seemed no more miraculous than the scene in this improvised banquet room. A fairy table, decorated with wild flowers and set for six, was laden with all manner of delicacies—olives, radishes, sugar, cream, white bread, lettuce, tomatoes.
In an armchair sat the little, rotund banker from New Orleans—the one who had accosted me the day I transferred myself to the cell in Bankers' Row. He was such a sputtery, rasp-voiced, punctilious trifle, Porter could not abide him. Billy Raidler was also sitting in comfortable grandeur. These two were exempt from labor—Billy because he could not walk alone; Carnot because he was old and fussy as a fat, spoiled baby.
Ikey slippered from wall to wall, his ear tuned for the sound of the guard's approach. The club and its opulent layout was distinctly against prison rules.
At a moment's signal, gas stove and its range could be hidden out of sight. Louisa was an architect and draughtsman.
A false wall had been built and the kitchenette with full equipment was hidden like a long telephone booth behind it. It was stocked with silverware, napkins, flavoring extracts, flour and every necessity, enough in fact, for a small hotel. All had been stolen or bargained from the head clerks in other shops and from the chief cook in the kitchen.
Louisa dodged from behind the door, a great dish cloth tied about his waist.
"Dinner is served, gentlemen. Make yourselves at home."
It was Bill Porter's turn to wait on table. Bill in all his buoyant sunniness brought on the roast beef that gala Sunday. It seemed to give him a whimsical satisfaction to wait on Raidler and me.
"Colonel, I feel more at home holding the tray for you than I would have felt holding the horses that day," he whispered in my ear.
We had a tomato soup that was the pride of Louisa's art. He boasted of the pinch of soda added to keep the milk from curdling. And there was corn and green peas and roast potatoes, a mince pie and a cold bread pudding made with raisins and currants.
I've given that recipe of Louisa's to every woman I ever met. Not one of them could turn out the delicacy as the chef of the "Recluse Club" did it.
Porter had drafted the rules of the club. A copy lay at each place with the little cartoons he made of us. Funny little verses were scrawled under the figures. Every Sunday we had different place cards.
Porter's raillery was boundless. Raidler and I were the only ones to acknowledge ourselves guilty. Louisa, Porter, Ikey and old Carnot were all victims of circumstances. They were touchy about their pasts. And so the cartoonist drew them as cherubs, friars, lilies without stain and the dewdrops glistening on their white sheafs.
Not one of those men, and they were Porter's equals at least in social position, dared to take liberties with him. I think they held him in a sort of awe. His dignity was invulnerable. Old Carnot would have liked the same respect. He never got it. Billy Raidler never tired of puncturing his pompous self-esteem. But Billy would have died rather than wound Bill Porter.
Old Carnot did not want any one even to mention the fact that he was in the penitentiary. He would bluster and sputter when any one spoke of him as a convict. Every Sunday there was an argument about it. Raidler, just for the impish love of teasing the old man, would open it.
"Now, Mr. Carnot," he would say, "my esteemed friend, Bill Porter, and I propose to found a union of ex-convicts as soon as we are discharged. We wish you to join."
Carnot would get red, champ his teeth together and rustle in his chair.
"Don't speak of it. I don't wish you to mention it." His pursy lips sent out a shower, I ducked.
"Colonel, I don't know why you are contorting your face and capering about so," the old man turned on me.
"Well, by God, your honor, I don't want to get drowned."
Then it would begin all over again, Carnot protesting that any man who would salute him as an exconvict would be shot on the spot. No man dreaded the thought of that stigma more than Porter. We had many talks about it. He hid his feeling under a light banter.
Once in a while the veneer cracked. The day I told him about the ugly tragedy of Big Joe, a Greek Indian of the "Buck Gang," I thought he was going to faint. His face was usually quiet and enigmatic in its expression. This day it got ashen and rigid. He said nothing for a moment. Then with a flash he turned the subject. Old Carnot would not have it. There was almost an open breach between them.
Big Joe had been sick at the hospital for months. One night the word went around that he had croaked. A burglar friend of mine, on patrol duty at the hospital, came over to the post-office.
"Jennings, come along over to the ward with me. I want to show you something," he said mysteriously.
"What's up?"
"They've got Big Joe tied up ready for the wheel-barrow and he isn't dead."
"Hell, no!"
"Come over and see."
I went in with him. Big Joe was lying in his cot, his feet tied together, a handkerchief over his eyes.
"Look, the burglar whispered. He took out his penknife and pricked the Indian on the foot. The knee drew up, the man twitched to his neck. It made me sick with repulsion. I went over to Porter.
"Big Joe isn't dead," I said. "Tell the croaker."
"The damn' hellions know it," Porter hissed. "I told him. They'd like to bury us all alive. Damn them, I'll get them yet."
He turned his back and rushed off. I went back to the cot where the Indian's body lay.
Porter came back with the night doctor. Big Joe had already opened his eyes. As the croaker took up his wrist to feel his pulse he yanked himself suddenly to one side.
"Drink—water!" The broken mumble seemed to splinter the air. The four of us stepped back with the shock of this whisper from the lips of the man tied up as dead.
The doctor himself pulled off the straps. The burglar ran for the water. I went back to the post-office.
The next night Big Joe had another fit.
"He's dead this time." The croaker was still shaky from his recent experience. "Let him stay dead. I don't want any of you damn' meddlers to monkey with him."
The gigantic body, yellow and emaciated, was carted to the dead house and laid in the bottom of the trough. This trough stood on the cement floor and was about three feet deep. The stiff was placed on it and cracked ice scattered over it. The body was kept a day. If no friends called for it the doctors held a dissecting symposium—what was left of the bones was dumped into a rough board box and stuck into a hole in the prison graveyard.
It was a Saturday night when Big Joe kicked off. The night porter used to go whistling by the post-office, jogging the wheelbarrow to the dead house. He would stop for a word with Billy and me. We would look out. Sometimes there would be one stiff with its arms and legs dangling over the sides of the cart. Sometimes there were two or even three.
"Big Joe done got it fob shuah dis time," he sang out to us, and clattered blithely on.
There was something callous and appalling about the prison attitude to the stiffs. The men were treated as so much refuse—they got no more respect than a dead dog. Big Joe's "comeback" had given me an odd twist. I felt spooky, bitter, depressed.
I went over to the dead house on Sunday morning. Curiosity drew me. It was just a dark shack, 'way off near the gas house. The patrol guard went with me. We pushed the door to.
The horror of the thing struck upon us. It was revolting as thought a cold clammy hand reached up from that trough and smeared us with blood. A kind of strangling sensation caught me. The guard hung to my waist, his teethchattering. Big Joe had been placed in the bottom of the trough. He had "come to" again.
He had awakened in the dead house in the middle of the night. He had tried to climb out. His clawing, terrible, long arms were flung forward. His body hung over the board, his head resting on the cement, as though he had lost his balance and half toppled out. The face, one cheek pressed against the ground, was twisted toward us the mouth agape, the eyes staring.
I went over to the club shortly after 12. Louisa and Porter were in the little box kitchen. Louisa had his dishrag apron tied about him. Porter, inmaculate in the prison gray, was wearing a rich blue necktie.
The clerk in the State shop used to make us presents in return for favors. We wore the finest grade of underwear; we had good white shirts. Except for the black stripe on the trousers we could look like "dandies" on occasions. It was always an occasion for Porter. Even in his blackest moods and he had many of them in prison—he was fastidious about his appearance.
Louisa and Porter were scrapping like a couple of old women over the roast. Porter was a bit of an epicure, and there was many a heated argument over culinary niceties.
"Here, taste it, then," the chef jabbed the spoon between Porter's teeth.
"A little more celery salt," Porter smacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, paused a moment after the manner of the queen's taster, and gave his opinion.
"Now here, I measured it three times." Louisa produced the cook book to prove it.
"That is no proof. You should have an apothecary's scale and weigh the ingredients," Porter was in one of his bubbling, irrepressible moods. "Let the colonel judge between us." He turned to me, and stopped, with the spoon clanking to the floor. "By God, Al, what ails you?"
I said nothing for a moment. We were seated about the table. They pressed me. I told them about Big Joe. I couldn't seem to keep it to myself. Porter jumped up and slammed his chair against the wall. Old Carnot commenced to sputter.
"We should write to the President of the United States about it." Carnot w
ould never stoop to any lesser authority. "It is an outrage."
Porter came back to the table, the explosive, unusual outburst over. He drew in his lip and coughed—a habit of his.
"I think the summer will be quite warm," he offered.
Carnot would not have it.
"Mr. Porter, yon should exercise your best ability as a writer on this subject. You should enkindle the world about it. You should put it in an article and send it broadcast."
Porter's cold look would have chilled the ardor of any other suggestion-giver.
"I do not understand you, sir," he answered frigidly. "I am not here as a reporter. I shall not take upon myself the burden of responsibility. This prison and its shame is nothing to me."
He got up and walked into the kitchen. I followed him. "There are some obnoxious people here." His voice was stifled with resentment. "We should eliminate them."
It was one of the few times that I ever saw Bill Porter openly ruffled. He despised tips from men of Carnot's caliber. He never wanted any one to point out a story to him. He had to see the thing himself. As he says in "The Duplicity of Hargreaves"---"All life belongs to me. I take thereof what I want. I return it as I can."
With Billy Raidler and me it was quite different. Porter liked us. He would sit in the post-office and deliberately draw out from us accounts of the outlaw days. He would get us to describe the train-robbers, he would deftly prod us into giving elaborate details even to the very slang expressions the men had used in their talk. I never saw him take a note, but his memory was relentless.
The day I told him about Dick Price, a fellow-convict, he sat quiet for a long time.
"That will make a wonderful story," he said at last.
Dick Price is the original of the immortal Jimmy Valentine.
Porter came into the post-office just after the astounding feat had been accomplished. Dick Price, the warden, and I had returned from the offices of the Press-Post Publishing Company, Price had opened the safe in 10 seconds.