3stalwarts

by Unknown

“Try ‘em on,” said Dan.

  Fortune took off his shoes and rolled his trousers up along his shanks.

  “It fits all right,” he said, stamping his foot on the floor.

  “Sure,” said the cobbler through the rat-tat of his hammer.

  “Try the other one,” said Dan. “When you buy a team, you look at both horses.”

  “The young man is right,” said the cobbler; “only at Lerba’s you don’t need to look at both— it is all tenderloin, not?”

  The dim lamplight cast his shadow grotesquely against the leather stacked by the wall, where it did a pantomime of hammering, and the nails rolled down from a pendulous lip, larger than life. The whole little underground shop smelled strong of leather, with a sharp damp odor mixed in. There were traces of mould on the walls.

  Fortune got up and walked round. The shoes squeaked protestingly.

  “I said they was stiff. You’ll get sore feet with them, I guess, Fortune.”

  “Noo,” said the cobbler, laying down his hammer and disgorging a handful of nails over his tongue. “It is just the leather is so lively getting acquainted.”

  “I don’t know …”

  “It is good shoes,” said the cobbler. “I give them away for four dollars and half.”

  “I guess they ought to be all right,” said Fortune.

  “Sure, the old shent wears them. He should know.”

  “All right,” said Dan.

  “It is good,” said the cobbler, pushing his hands down his leather apron. “It is fine. I am an honest man and it is fine.”

  Fortune took them off.

  “I go find some paper,” said the cobbler.

  His bent back disappeared through a door and they heard him creaking up some stairs and calling, “Rachel, come quick! There is paper for shoes sold.”

  “He’s a funny old turkey,” said Fortune. “Him and his wife sell furniture upstairs and take in a lodger once in a while.”

  “That is right,” said the Jew from the top of the stairs. “Would you shents have furniture?”

  “No,” said Fortune.

  “It is good furniture, bargains. There is bedroom crockery with pansies, and some good quiltings, and some mirrors …”

  Dan started.

  “Gol,” he said. “I might get a mirror, at that.”

  “Sure,” said the cobbler. “A pretty mirror very cheap.”

  “I guess I’ll go and look at it.”

  “All right,” said Fortune.

  They felt their way up the narrow stairs, the cobbler looking over the rail at the top and guiding them with his voice.

  “It cannot fall, them stairs. But don’t step on the next one to the top one. It isn’t.”

  Dan and Fortune found themselves in a fairly large first-floor room with two windows facing the street. The ceiling was high for so small a house. Chairs, beds, tables, wash-hand stands, were piled along the floor in complete disorder, with crooked spaces between through which a person could barely walk. Dishes and crockery sets “with pansies” were scattered over all objects with a horizontal surface. In the doorway stood a dark-haired woman in a loose brown dress which kept falling away from her right shoulder, showing a smooth pale skin. The lamp she held over her eyes swayed a little from side to side, so that there was a constant slow procession of shadows back and forth across the wall.

  The cobbler held his apron tight to the sides of his legs and picked his way between two rocking-chairs.

  “Here is the mirror, mister. See. It is pretty, with the carving on the wood all around.”

  “There’s a chip off it,” said Dan.

  “Secondhanded goods has chips,” said the cobbler stoutly. “That is why they are secondhanded goods. Such a mirror is four dollars at Lerba’s. You take it with the shoes, it is eight dollars for the combination. Look, it is a good mirror. You can hang it two ways— up, so, or sideways, so. Whichever way you hang it, it makes the other way look not right. It is a good mirror.”

  One corner of the glass was freckled, but except for that, and for the chip, it looked very respectable to Dan. Broadways it would be just the thing to hang in the cabin. It would please Molly.

  As it lay against the arms of the chair, Dan caught in it a glimpse of the ex-preacher staring nervously about him, and of Mrs. Lerba’s thin hand holding the lamp.

  “Hey, Lerba,” asked Fortune in a friendly voice, “got any lodgers now?”

  “No, no lodgers any more.”

  “I thought you always kept lodgers.”

  “No, mister, it was one kept, but not no more.”

  “That’s funny,” said Fortune. “I thought I heard somebody moving around upstairs.”

  The apron rattled in Lerba’s hands and the lamp swayed, and suddenly beside and behind the reflection of it, looking over a stair rail outside, Dan saw the tall figure of a man peering in from under his wide hat brim. While Dan watched, the figure moved softly down, and he thought he heard a quick closing of the outer door.

  Lerba cleared his throat loudly and said seriously to Fortune, “No, it is the Missis says there is a baby, so we put a nursery in the lodging room and don’t paint it with paint this year. No. There is no lodger.”

  “Hey, there!” called a voice from the foot of the stairs up which Dan and Fortune had felt their way.

  Again the lamp swayed suddenly.

  “Make a light steady, Rachel,” said the cobbler. “You will take this mirror?”

  “Yeanh.”

  “All right, we take it back down with us.”

  “Hey there, Lerba!”

  The voice had a cavernous echo, coming from the cellar shop.

  “Yes, yes,” cried the cobbler. “I make a hurry.”

  He caught up the mirror and picked his way quickly to the head of the stairs.

  “Get paper, Rachel,” he called to his wife, and then, to Dan and Fortune, “Make care about the steps.”

  They came back into the shop. Henderson was sitting on the cobbler’s stool, his fat short legs crossed, his hat on the back of his head, pulling at a big dead cigar.

  “Hullo!” he said on seeing Dan. “You here?”

  “Yeanh.”

  “The shents came to buy boots and a mirror— good ones, a bargain,” explained the cobbler.

  “I’ll bet it was a bargain, all right,” said Henderson.

  Lerba nodded his head with a pleased smile.

  Henderson nodded affably at Fortune Friendly.

  “I just dropped in, Lerba,” he explained. “Just a friendly visit.”

  “Sure,” said the cobbler. “What is the name? Boots is cheap.”

  There was a sudden scratching and rustling down the stair treads. “It is paper,” exclaimed the cobbler. “It is paper from Rachel.”

  He ducked out to get it.

  “Got a lodger, Lerba?” asked Henderson when he came in.

  “No, not no more at all.”

  “You used to have one.”

  “No more no lodger, not at all.”

  “Did he leave?”

  “Yes, it is. There is a baby, Rachel tells— the shents say so. It makes a nursery.”

  “Well, I want to poke round the nursery,” said Henderson.

  “These shents tell …” protested the cobbler.

  Henderson looked at the end of his cigar; then with his left hand he pulled his suspender through the armhole of his waistcoat.

  “Sure,” said the cobbler, at once. “Rachel, there is a shent wants to see the nursery. Show him with light.”

  Henderson got up and disappeared through the door, whistling “Walky-Talky- Jenny.” They heard him climbing the stairs behind Rachel. Lerba went about wrapping the boots and mirror, using his teeth as a third hand in tying the string. By the time he had finished, Henderson was coming back.

  “Well, well,” he said pleasantly. “It’ll be a nice nursery. When do you expect the new Lerba?”

  The cobbler spread his hands.

  “It is not my business
; how should I tell? Rachel makes it.”

  “All right, Lerba. I won’t bother you any more tonight. You gents walking back towards the canal?”

  “Yeanh.”

  They went out.

  “How’s Samson?” Henderson asked Dan.

  “He’s dead.”

  “I guessed he would. He looked bad when I seen him that night. Who’s got the boat?”

  “Me.”

  “You have, eh?”

  “I asked Mr. Butterfield about it. I’m hauling for him.”

  “Well, I guess it’s right if he says so. Seen any more of Gentleman Joe?”

  “No.”

  “I expected he might be lodging at Lerba’s here. I guess he’s cleared out. I know where he’s gone, though. Who’s this gent?”

  “Fortune Friendly,” said Dan. “Know Mr. Sam Henderson.”

  The ex-preacher shook hands.

  “He’s driving for me.”

  “Where are you bound for?”

  “Carthage,” said Dan.

  “Well, you may run into me up that way. If you do, I’ll probably have Calash with me.”

  He put his hands in his pockets and turned aside down a street.

  “Who’s that man?” Fortune asked.

  “He’s Department of Justice,” said Dan. “He calculates he’ll get Gentleman Joe.”

  Samson’s Bank

  “I’m tired,” said Fortune Friendly, when they got back to the cabin of the Sarsey Sal. “I think I’ll go to bed.”

  Molly glanced up from the toweling she was hemming. “Did you get the boots?”

  “Yeanh.”

  “They’re regular bullhead boots,” said Fortune.

  He got himself a dipper of water from the water butt under the stairs and then went to the single bunk and drew the curtain. Dan sat down, refilled his pipe, and lit up.

  “Is it a good pipe?”

  “Yeanh. It’s breaking in real handy.”

  He stretched out his legs to the stove and tilted the chair back. Molly bit off her thread, close to the toweling, pressing the cloth tight against her cheek.

  “I’m going to look at Fortune’s boots.”

  She squatted down on the floor before the package, like a child.

  “Let me have your knife, Dan.”

  He tossed it to her.

  “Ugh,” she exclaimed, pressing her upper teeth down on her under lip. “I can’t open it. You open it, please.”

  He grinned and handed it back to her.

  “They’re good boots, I guess. My, they’re heavy!”

  “Yeanh,” said Dan. “They’d ought to exercise him good.”

  “Poor old man,” she said softly, “he ain’t going to like driving for very long.”

  “I don’t know. He seems to like you a lot, Molly. How’d you come to know him?”

  “Pa used to let him travel a lot on his boat. He used to say old Fortune was a gentleman for all his ways at cards. Fortune never did a lick of work, but he’d used to sit on deck when I was a little girl with my hair in a ribbon, and he’d tell stories. And Pa would listen just as hard as me. He’d tell stories all about witches and such things, and Pa believed ‘em as much as me. And when Pa died Fortune asked me did I want to stay on the canal. And then he took me down to Lucy Cashdollar’s and told her to look out for me careful.”

  She pushed the boots to one side.

  “What’s in the other package?” she asked.

  Dan pressed down the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe with his thumb.

  “It’s an article I bought to Lerba’s.”

  “What is it?” she asked again, looking back at him over her shoulder, and squinting a little against the light.

  “I got it for you,” said Dan, awkwardly.

  She flushed.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed as she pulled away the paper. “Oh! Ain’t it pretty? Ain’t it big? Why, I think it’s real pretty, Dan.”

  She stood up lithely, her eyes shining.

  “Why, Dan.”

  Dan gave an inarticulate grunt and leaned forward to open the draft of the stove, his face red.

  She caught him by the shoulders and held him down, shaking him.

  “Why didn’t you tell me right off?”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “You old surl,” she said, stooping to kiss him. Then she jumped away from his arm and picked up the mirror. “There’s a wire on to it to hang it broadways, Dan. It’ll just fit over the table.”

  She took down the little mirror that had been Samson Weaver’s and hung the new one in its place.

  “Now I can see to do my hair.”

  She took out the pins and shook it down over her shoulders. He stood behind her and gathered it into a handful and pulled her head back against his chest, grinning at her. She pushed his face away.

  “Don’t, Dan. Not now.” She turned her eyes to the sleeping cuddy. Dan laughed. “Listen,” he said.

  Fortune Friendly’s deep breathing purred suddenly, unmistakably.

  “Let’s look for Samson’s money,” Dan said. “It’ll be our money when we find it.”

  She put a finger to her lips, and smiled behind it, a conspirator’s gleam in her eyes.

  “Fortune’s a good enough body,” she whispered. “But it’s just as well he didn’t know.”

  Dan nodded.

  “Where’d the old boater say it was?” she asked.

  Dan lowered his voice.

  “He didn’t say— only that it was in a beam, and that part of it lifted out.”

  Together they looked round the cabin from the middle of the floor. There was a beam across the middle of the ceiling, and one across each end, and a heavy beam sill jutting out of each rear corner. Dan began running his finger along the middle beam.

  “It would be on the back side,” Molly said. “The light wouldn’t hit there.”

  They found no crack in the middle beam, and Dan began feeling along the end ones. Molly began to examine the corner sills. Suddenly she made a little crowing noise, and, looking round, Dan saw her hunkered down in the corner. She had lifted out a false front close to the floor and was holding out to Dan two limp rectangular packages wrapped in dirty brown paper.

  Dan took them back under the lamp and sat down in the rocking-chair, and Molly perched herself on his knees. The packages were tied with red cord, a bowknot directly at the crossing, the ends corresponding exactly with the loops, as though old Samson had taken care and pleasure in wrapping them. The paper was thumb-marked and stained, and when Dan opened the first package some tobacco ashes slid down on the back of his hand.

  Molly drew in her breath and looked down at him. There was a friendly feeling in the touch to Dan, and he held his hand close to his eyes. Spidery long ashes, made from Warnick and Brown, that Samson had smoked.

  “He was a nice feller,” Dan said seriously. “I think he was a good man, though he was bothered with Annie’s running off.”

  Molly blew off the ashes suddenly. They rose in a burst, and scattered in an indiscernible fine powder. She leaned closer and kissed his hand.

  “Let’s count it, Dan.”

  He stared at her as he did not quite comprehend.

  “Let’s see how much there is,” she whispered again.

  He tossed both packages into her lap. She took out the bills and started laying them down one by one on her knee.

  “You’ll have to steady them,” she told Dan.

  He pressed his hand down on them and lifted it when she put down another bill. It became a kind of game for the two of them to play, like children stolen out of bed when the house is sleeping— a fugitive, trembling sort of game, requiring a touch of hands. Molly frowned and kept the tally with silently moving lips, heedless of Dan’s watching gaze on the curve of her cheek and the soft mass of her hair.

  Finally she stacked the bills together with firm little raps on her knee.

  “Dan!” she exclaimed softly. “There’s eight hundred and thirty-five dollars
. Eight hundred and thirty-five dollars. My, that’s a lot of money for a man to have!”

  She caught Dan’s left hand and brought it round her waist, and let herself lean back against his shoulder, her face close to his cheek.

  But he was staring at the opposite wall. Eight hundred and thirty-five dollars— it was a lot of money. It represented many things. With it a man could start a farm, a small farm. As he sat there with Molly against him, he seemed to see again the hip-roofed barn, and himself behind a heavy team going out to plough long furrows in rich earth. He saw more than he had seen before; he saw Molly churning on a kitchen stoop. He heard the lowing of cows; and he saw himself and Molly moving from one to the other in the hay-smelling shadow to milk them.

  “What’re you going to do with it, Dan?”

  He took hold of her hands with their strong long fingers. She watched him carefully, almost jealously, and cast a worried glance at the side of his lean head, tracing the curve of his ear. Beyond the curtain they heard Fortune Friendly’s even, sure breathing, purring a little now and then at the end of the breath. The canal beyond the curtained windows was silent and dead.

  The stillness was very close to them.

  “What’re you going to do with it, Dan?”

  “It’s a lot of money,” Dan began uncertainly.

  Suddenly, thin and faint, they heard the blast of a horn, blowing for the weighlock; and when the silence came again they were conscious of the ripple of the water. The horn sounded a second time— louder.

  Molly sighed and stirred against Dan’s shoulder, and he twisted his neck to look at her.

  “I guess I’ll buy a good team,” he said. “A good heavy team. I’ll want ‘em in the spring for heavy hauling.”

  She drew a deep breath of relief.

  The clock whirred and rapidly beat out ten strokes.

  “Good land! Dan, it’s time we went to bed.”

  They returned the money to Samson’s bank and blew out the lamp; and when the east-coming boat passed they were asleep.

  Ecclesiasticus

  Five days later the Sarsey Sal was nosing along southward up the Black River behind a string of four boats. Leading the string, the sidewheel tug-boat smacked the river with her paddles and belched a line of dark smoke in which hot wood cinders swirled. The northwest wind blowing on their backs carried the smoke free.