SHADES OF THE GARDEN OF EDEN!
It wasn’t often that Marshal Crow acknowledged that he was in a quandary. When he did find himself in that rare state of mind, he invariably went to Harry Squires, the editor of the Banner, for counsel—but never for advice. He had in the course of a protracted career as preserver of the peace and dignity of Tinkletown, found himself confronted by seemingly unsolvable mysteries, but he always had succeeded in unravelling them, one way or another, to his own complete satisfaction. Only the grossest impudence on the part of the present chronicler would permit the tiniest implication to creep into this or any other chapter of his remarkable history that might lead the reader to suspect that he did not solve them to the complete satisfaction of any one else. So, quite obviously, the point is not one to be debated.
Now, as nearly every one knows, Tinkletown is a temperance place. There is no saloon there,—unless, of course, one chooses to be rather nasty about Brubaker’s Drugstore. Away back in the Seventies,—soon after the Civil War, in fact,—an enterprising but misguided individual attempted to establish a bar-room at the corner of Main and Sickle Streets. He opened the Sunlight Bar and for one whole day and night revelled in the conviction that he had found a silver mine. The male population of Tinkletown, augmented by a swarm of would-be inebriates from all the farms within a radius of ten miles, flocked to the Sunlight Bar and proceeded to get gloriously and collectively drunk on the contents of the two kegs of lager beer that constituted an experimental stock in trade.
The next morning the women of Tinkletown started in to put the Sunlight Bar out of business. They did not, as you may suspect, hurl stones at the place, neither did they feloniously enter and wreak destruction with axes, hatchets and hoe-handles. Not a bit of it. They were peaceful, law-abiding women, not sanguinary amazons. What they did was perfectly simple.
It is possible, even probable, that they were the pioneer “pickets” of our benighted land. At any rate, bright and early on the second day of the Sunlight Bar, the ladies of Tinkletown brought their knitting and their sewing down to the corner of Main and Sickle streets and sat themselves down in front of the shrinking “silver mine.” They came with rocking-chairs, and camp-chairs, and milk-stools, and benches, too, and instead of chanting a doleful lay, they chattered in a blithe and merry fashion. There was no going behind the fact, however, that these smiling, complacent women formed the Death Watch that was to witness the swift, inevitable finish of the Sunlight Bar.
They came in relays, and they stayed until the lights went out in the desolate house of cheer. The next day they were on hand again, and the next, and still the next. Fortunately for them, but most unluckily for the proprietor of the Sunlight Bar, the month was August: they could freeze him out, but he couldn’t freeze them out.
Sheepish husbands and sons passed them by, usually on the opposite sidewalk, but not one of them had the hardihood to extend a helping hand to the expiring saloon. At the end of a week, the Sunlight Bar drew its last breath. It died of starvation. The only mourner at its bier was the bewildered saloon-keeper, who engaged a dray to haul the remains to Boggs City, the County seat, and it was he who said, as far back as 1870, that he was in favour of taking the vote away from the men and giving it exclusively to the women.
Tinkletown, according to the sage observations of Uncle Dad Simms, was rarely affected by the unsettling problems of the present day. This talk about “labour unrest” was ridiculous, he said. If the remainder of the world was anything like Tinkletown, labour didn’t do much except rest. It was getting so that if a workin’-man had very far to walk to “git” to his job, he had to step along purty lively if he wanted to arrive there in plenty of time to eat his lunch and start back home again. And as for “this here prohibition question,” he didn’t take any stock in it at all. Tinkletown had got along without liquor for more than a hundred years and he guessed it could get along for another century or two without much trouble, especially as it was only ten miles to Boggs City where you could get all you wanted to drink any day in the week. Besides, he argued, loudly and most violently, being so deaf that he had to strain his own throat in order to hear himself, there wasn’t anybody in Tinkletown except Alf Reesling that ever wanted a drink, and even Alf wouldn’t take it when you offered it to him.
But in spite of Uncle Dad’s sage conclusions, it was this very prohibition question that was disturbing Anderson Crow. He sauntered into the Banner office late one afternoon in May and planked himself down in a chair beside the editor’s desk. There was a troubled look in his eyes, which gave way to vexation after he had made three or four fruitless efforts to divert the writer’s attention from the sheet of “copy paper” on which he was scribbling furiously.
“How do you spell beverage, Anderson?” inquired Mr. Squires abruptly.
“What kind of beverage?” demanded Mr. Crow.
“Any kind, just so it’s intoxicating. Never mind, I’ll take a chance and spell it the easiest way. That’s the way the dictionary spells it, so I guess it’s all right. Well, sir, what’s on your mind?—besides your hat, I mean. You look worried.”
“I am worried. Have you any idee as to the size of the apple crop in this neighbourhood last summer and fall, Harry?”
“Not the least.”
“Well, sir, it was the biggest we’ve had since 1902, ‘specially the fall pickin.”
“What’s the idea? Do you want me to put something in the Banner about Bramble County’s bumper crop of pippins?”
“No. I just want to ask you if there’s anything in this new prohibition amendment against apple cider?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Well, do you know it’s impossible to buy a good eatin’ or cookin’ apple in this town today, Harry Squires?”
“You don’t say so! In spite of the big crop last fall?”
“You could buy all you wanted last week, by the bushel or peck or barrel,—finest, juiciest apples you ever laid your eyes on.”
“Well, I don’t like apples anyway, so it doesn’t mean much in my life.”
Anderson was silent for a moment or two, contemplating his foot with singular intentness.
“Was you ever drunk on hard cider?” he inquired at last,—transferring his gaze to the rapidly moving hand that held the pencil.
The reporter jabbed a period,—or “full stop,” as they call it in a certain form of literature,—in the middle of a sentence, and looked up with sudden interest.
“Yes,” he said, with considerable force. “I’ll never forget it. You can get tighter on hard cider than anything else I know of.”
“Well, there you are,” exclaimed the Marshal, banging his gnarled fist on the arm of the chair. “And as far as I c’n make out, there ain’t no law ag’inst cider stayin’ in the barrel long enough to get good and hard, an’ what’s more, there ain’t no law ag’ainst sellin’ cider, hard or sweet, is there?”
“I get your point, Anderson. And I also get your deductions concerning the mysterious disappearance of all the apples in Tinkletown. Apparently we are to have a shortage of dried apples this year, with an overflow of hard cider instead. By George, it’s interesting, to say the least. Looks as though an apple orchard is likely to prove more valuable than a gold mine, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, sir! ‘Specially if you’ve got trees that bear in the fall. Fall apples make the best cider. They ain’t so mushy. And as fer the feller that owns a cider-press, why, dog-gone it, he ought to be as rich as Crowsis.”
“I seem to recall that you have a cider-press on your farm on Crow’s Mountain,—and a whacking good orchard, too. Are you thinking of resigning as Marshal of Tinkletown?”
“What say?”
“I see you’re not,” went on Harry. “Of course you understand you can’t very well manufacture hard cider and sell it and still retain your untarnished reputation as a defender of the law.”
“I’m not figurin’ on makin’ hard cider,” said Anderson, with some irritat
ion. “You don’t make hard cider, Harry. It makes itself. All you do is to rack the apple juice off into a barrel, or something, with a little yeast added, and then leave it to do the work. It ferments an’ then, if you want to, you rack it off again an’ bottle it an’—well, gee whiz, how tight you c’n get on it if you ain’t got sense enough to let it alone. But I ain’t thinkin’ about what I’m goin’ to do, ’cause I ain’t to do anything but make applebutter out of my orchard,—an’ maybe a little cider-vinegar fer home consumption. What’s worryin’ me is what to do about all these other people around here. If they all take to makin’ cider this fall,—or even sooner,—an’ if they bottle or cask it proper,—we’ll have enough hard cider in this township to give the whole state of New York the delirium trimmins.”
“I don’t see that you can do anything, Anderson,” said Squires, leaning back in his chair and puffing at his pipe. “You can’t keep people from making cider, you know. And you can’t keep ’em from drinking it. Besides, who’s going to take the trouble to ascertain whether it contains one-half of one percent alcohol? What interests me more than anything else is the possibility of this township becoming ‘wet’ in spite of itself,—an’ to my certain knowledge, it has been up to now the barrenest desert on God’s green earth.”
“People are so all-fired contrary,” Anderson complained. “For the last fifty years the citizens of this town and its suburbs have been so dead set ag’inst liquor that if a man went up to Boggs City an’ got a little tipsy he had to run all the way home so’s he’d be out of breath when he got there. Nobody ever kept a bottle of whiskey in his house, ’cause nobody wanted it an’ it would only be in the way. But now look at ’em! The minute the Government says they can’t have it, they begin movin’ things around in their cellars so’s to make room fer the barrels they’re going to put in. An’ any day you want to drive out in the country you c’n see farmers an’ hired men treatin’ the apple-trees as if they was the tenderest plants a-growin’. I heard this mornin’ that Henry Wimpelmeyer is to put in a cider-press at his tanyard, an’ old man Smock’s turnin’ his grist mill into an apple-mill. An’ everybody is hoardin’ apples, Harry. It beats the Dutch.”
“It’s up to you to frustrate their nefarious schemes, Mr. Hawkshaw. The fair name of the Commonwealth must be preserved. I use the word advisedly. It sounds a great deal better than ‘pickled.’ Now, do you want me to begin a campaign in the Banner against the indiscriminate and mendacious hardening of apple-cider, or am I to leave the situation entirely in your hands?”
Marshal Crow arose. The fire of determination was in his ancient eye.
“You leave it to me,” said he, and strode majestically from the room.
Encountering Deacon Rank in front of the Banner office, he chanced this somewhat offensive remark:
“Say, Deacon, what’s this I hear about you?”
The deacon looked distinctly uneasy.
“You can always hear a lot of things about me that aren’t true,” he said.
“I ain’t so sure about that,” said Anderson, eyeing him narrowly. “Hold on! What’s your hurry?”
“I—I got to step in here and pay my subscription to the Banner,” said the deacon.
“Well, that’s something nobody’ll believe when they hear about it,” said Anderson. “It’ll be mighty hard fer the proprieter of the Banner to believe it after all these years.”
“Times have been so dog-goned hard fer the last couple of years, I ain’t really been able to—”
“Too bad about you,” broke in Anderson scornfully.
“Everything costs so much in these days,” protested the deacon. “I ain’t had a new suit of clothes fer seven or eight years. Can’t afford ’em. My wife was sayin’ only last night she needed a new hat,—somethin’ she can wear all the year round,—but goodness knows this ain’t no time to be thinkin’ of hats. She—”
“She ain’t had a new hat fer ten years,” interrupted Anderson. “No wonder the pore woman’s ashamed to go to church.”
“What’s that? Who says she’s ashamed to go to church? Anybody that says my wife’s ashamed to go to church is a—is a—well, he tells a story, that’s all.”
“Well, why don’t she go to church?”
“’Tain’t because she’s ashamed of her hat, let me tell you that, Anderson Crow. It’s a fine hat an’ it’s just as good as new. She’s tryin’ to save it, that’s what she’s tryin’ to do. She knows it’s got to last her five or six years more, an’ how in tarnation can she make it last that long if she wears it all the time? Use a little common sense, can’t you? Besides, I’ll thank you not to stick your nose in my family affairs any—”
“What’s that you got in your pocket?” demanded Anderson, indicating the bulging sides of the deacon’s overcoat.
“None of your business!”
“Now, don’t you get hot. I ask you again, civil as possible,—what you got in your pocket?”
“I’m a respectable, tax-paying, church-going citizen of this here town, and I won’t put up with any of your cussed insinuations,” snapped the deacon. “You act as if I’d stole something. You—”
“I ain’t accusin’ you of stealin’ anything. I’m only accusin’ you of havin’ something in your pocket. No harm in that, is there?”
The deacon hesitated for a minute. Then he made a determined effort to temporize.
“And what’s more,” he said, “my wife’s hat’s comin’ back into style before long, anyhow. It’s just as I keep on tellin’ her. The styles kinder go in circles, an’ if she waits long enough they’ll get back to the kind she’s wearin’, and then she’ll be the first woman in Tinkletown to have the very up-to-datest style in hats,—’way ahead of anybody else,—and it will be as good as new, too, you bet, after the way she’s been savin’ it.”
“Now I know why you got your pockets stuffed full of things,—eggs, maybe, or hick’ry nuts, or—whatever it is you got in ’em. It’s because you’re tryin’ to save a piece of wrappin’ paper or a bag, or the wear and tear on a basket. No wonder you got so much money you don’t know how to spend it.”
“And as for me gettin’ a new suit of clothes,” pursued the deacon, doggedly, “if times don’t get better the chances are I’ll have to be buried in the suit I got on this minute. I never knowed times to be so hard—”
The marshal interrupted him. “You go in an’ pay up what you owe fer the Banner an’ I’ll wait here till you come out.”
Deacon Rank appeared to reflect. “Come to think of it, I guess I’ll stop in on my way back from the post office. Ten or fifteen minutes—”
He stopped short, a fixed intent look in his sharp little eyes. His gaze was directed past Anderson’s head at some object down the street. Then, quite abruptly and without even the ceremony of a hasty “good-bye,” he bolted into the Banner office, slamming the door in the marshal’s face.
“Well, I’ll be dog-goned!” burst from the lips of the astonished Mr. Crow. “I never knowed him to change his mind so quick as that in all my life,—or so often. What the dickens—”
Indignation succeeded wonder at this instant, cutting off his audible reflections. Snapping his jaws together, he laid a resolute hand on the doorknob. Just as he turned it and was on the point of stamping in after the deacon, his eye fell upon an approaching figure—the figure of a woman. If it had not been for the hat she was wearing, he would have failed to recognize her at once. But there was no mistaking the hat.
“Hi!” called out the wearer of the too familiar object. Marshal Crow let go of the door knob and stared at the lady in sheer stupefaction.
Mrs. Rank’s well-preserved hat was perched rakishly at a perilous angle over one ear. A subsequent shifting to an even more precarious position over the other ear, as the result of a swift, inaccurate sweep of the lady’s hand, created an instant impression that it was attached to her drab, disordered hair by means of a new-fangled but absolutely dependable magnet. Never before had Marshal Crow
seen that ancient hat so much as the fraction of an inch out of “plumb” with the bridge of Mrs. Rank’s undeviating nose.
She approached airily. Her forlorn little person was erect, even soldierly. Indeed, if anything, she was a shade too erect at times. At such times she appeared to be in some danger of completely forgetting her equilibrium. She stepped high, as the saying is, and without her usual precision. In a word, the meek and retiring wife of Deacon Rank was hilariously drunk!
Pedestrians, far and near, stopped stockstill in their tracks to gaze open-mouthed at the jaunty drudge; storekeepers peered wide-eyed and incredulous from windows and doors. If you suddenly had asked any one of them when the world was coming to an end, he would have replied without the slightest hesitation.
She bore down upon the petrified Mr. Crow.
“Is zat you, An’erson?” she inquired, coming to an uncertain stop at the foot of the steps. Where—oh, where! was the subdued, timorous voice of Sister Rank? Whose—oh, whose! were the shrill and fearless tones that issued forth from the lips of the deacon’s wife?
“For the Lord’s sake, Lucy,—wha—what ails you?” gasped the horrified marshal.
“Nothing ails me, An’erson. Nev’ fel’ better’n all my lipe—life. Where’s my hush—hushban’?”
She brandished her right hand, and clutched in her fingers an implement that caused Anderson’s eyes to almost start from his head.
“What’s that you got in your hand?” he cried out.
“Thish? Thass a hashet. Don’t you know whass a hashet is?”
“I—I know it’s a hatchet. Lucy,—but, fer heaven’s sake, what are you goin’ to do with it?”
“I’m going to cut th’ deacon’s head off wiz it,” she replied blandly.
“What!”
“Yes, shir; thass what I’m goin’ cut off. Right smack off, An’erson,—and you can’t stop me, unnerstan’, An’erson. I been wannin’ cuttiz ’ead off f’r twenny-fi’ year. I—”
“Hey! Stop wavin’ that thing around like that, Lucy Rank!”
The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories Page 280