“Well, I am goin’ to, ain’t I?”
“Now!” Sam exclaimed. “He’s quit lookin’ at us. Quick!” Seizing this opportunity, Penrod ventured the deed and was rewarded. The elderly horse seemed to have forgotten his animosity; his mood had become one of depression merely; he hung his head, and marked the ravishment by nothing more than a slight shudder. “There!” said Penrod; and, as they went back into the yard, he glanced disdainfully at the gloomy quadruped. “It’s easy to get hairs out of a horse’s tail for a person that knows the right way to do it. I bet I could of pulled his whole tail out!”
But this was only a thought in passing, and the attention and energies of both boys were now devoted to the preliminaries of their great experiment. The largest empty bottles obtainable were selected, cleaned and filled with fail-water. Then, with befitting solicitude, the two long black hairs were lowered into the water, and the bottles were corked. After that, a label was pasted upon each, exhibiting the owner’s name and address. The fascinating work was not complete, however; Penrod paid a visit to the kitchen clock, and, after some severe exercises in computation, the following note was inscribed in precise duplicate upon the labels:
“Hair from Jacop R. Krish and Cos horse tail put in sixteen minutes of evelen oclock July 11 Snake comes sixteen minutes of evelen oclock July 32.”
They set the bottles, side by side, upon an empty box in the former office of George B. Jashber; stood before them; gazed upon them.
“Don’t you wish they’d turn right now?” Penrod said yearningly. “I don’t see why it’s got to be three weeks.”
“Well, it has.”
“I know that; but I wish it didn’t haf to be. Well, anyway, three weeks from now we’ll be lookin’ at our good ole snakes, all right!”
“Three weeks from now!” Sam echoed, with luscious anticipation. “Yes, sir! Oh, oh!”
“What’ll we feed ’em?”
“I don’t know. Suppose they’ll want to come out of the bottles?”
“You bet they will! I’m goin’ to train mine to follow me all around the yard. When school begins maybe I’ll take him with me in my pocket.”
“Oh, oh!” cried Sam. “So’ll I.”
They shouted with joy of the picture.
“I wouldn’t take a million dollars for mine!” said Penrod.
“Neither would I!” said Sam. “I wouldn’t take two million!”
“Neither would I!”
Then, fascinated, Penrod sat down upon the stable floor close to the box upon which stood the precious bottles, and Sam likewise sat, each gazing earnestly upon his own bottle and its slender occupant. Thus they remained for some time, silently engaged in who can say what paternal speculations; minute bubbles had already appeared upon the submerged hairs, and, to a gaze long fixed, faint stirrings and movements seemed almost perceptible; or, at least, such first tokens of transformation were easily imaginable.
“Sam, I believe mine’s begun to breathe already,” Penrod whispered.
“Sh!” Sam warned him, and so concentrated was the attention of Master Williams that he did not move when a heavy breath disturbed the short hair on the nape of his slender neck just above the collar. A moment later, however, as the same spot was affectionately caressed by something that felt like a banana peeling that had been dipped in warm water, he decided that too great a liberty was being taken with him. “You go away from here!” he hissed fiercely.
Without resentment, Walter-John returned to the doorway of the stable, which he had just entered, accompanied by a congenial friend, and for some moments the two communed inaudibly through the nose. Then Walter-John yawned inoffensively, although the action was taken in Duke’s very face, which was close enough to be almost involved within the cavern; after that, both dogs moved drowsily away from the rhomboid of hot sunshine near the doorway and sought the cooling shade of the interior. Duke stretched himself, then reclined upon his back, and Walter-John, approaching, let himself down awkwardly, and for his heavy head confidingly used the older and much smaller dog’s stomach as a pillow. This, Duke found inconvenient, even annoyingly burdensome; he complained crossly, removed himself and lay elsewhere, while Walter-John looked at him reproachfully with one eye, then closed it and slept with his chin upon the floor.
At the sound of Duke’s brief vocal complaint, Sam said “Sh!” again, after which the fascinated silence where the miracle worked within the stable obediently became complete; but there were noises outside that grew louder, and before long were too disturbing to be overlooked. In the alley Herman and Verman were playing vociferously with a rubber ball, and, not content with shouting almost continuously, they presently began to throw the ball against the doors of the carriage-house, evidently to catch it upon the rebound.
“My goodness!” Penrod said indignantly. “Haven’t they got any sense?” And finding the thumping of the ball unendurable, he went to the carriage-house doors, threw them open and shouted angrily: “My goodness! Don’t you know anything at all!”
Surprised, Herman and Verman came to the doorway. “Whut you mad fer?” Herman inquired mildly. “Whut all goin’ on you git so mad, Penrod?”
“Never mind,” Penrod said coldly. “We got sumpthing on our hands here we don’t want any ole ball bangin’ and whangin’ up against these doors!”
“Whut all you got goin’ on you ack so big, Penrod?”
“Never mind!”
But Verman had already entered the stable, and Herman followed, urged by a natural curiosity, which both Penrod and Sam plainly found annoying. “My goodness!” Sam exclaimed. “What do you haf to come hangin’ around here now for, makin’ all this noise? Why can’t you take your ole ball up the alley and play where we don’t haf to listen to you? Haven’t you got sense enough to know how to tell when we’re busy?”
To be the more impressive, he frowned heavily as he spoke, and the severity of his expression evidently interested Verman. “Wop he mek fafe fo?” the smaller brother inquired of the larger.
“Verman want to know why you makin’ faces,” Herman r translated, chuckling. “You look so mad Verman think you tryin’ to make him laugh.”
Upon this, Sam frowned so heavily that Verman did laugh; delighted, he pointed at Sam’s face and also at Penrod’s, for Penrod was frowning as darkly. Verman squealed hilariously, and then, sobering somewhat, he gave utterance to a thought that deepened the annoyance of the two white boys by its seeming sheer irrelevancy. “Oo dum kef oh Mihhuh Habe yip?”
“He want to know ef you done ketch ole Dade yit,” the faithful interpreter explained.
“Oh, my goodness!” Penrod said, and Sam said the same thing almost simultaneously. The two looked at each other, expressing in the glance their mutual hopelessness of so low an intelligence as that just displayed before them. Almost two weeks had elapsed since the hot day spent by Penrod in the sawdust box, principally, and by Sam in laudable, self-imposed tasks; for both of the friends mists of time had intervened, and all the affairs of the agency were dim with remoteness, almost lost over the horizon of the long, long ago. George B. Jashber was as extinct as last year’s first day of school. “Oh, my goodness!” Penrod exclaimed again, turning upon Verman. “Don’t you know anything at all? Why, Mr. Dade doesn’t even live in this town any more!”
But Verman received this scornful information without any emotion; he was not interested, for he had observed the two bottles upon the box before which the annoyed Sam still continued to sit. “Wop ap?”
He stretched forth a small brown hand toward Sam’s bottle; but, before the shining glass could be violated by this ignorant touch, Sam pushed him away, and said angrily, “You get back! For heavenses’ sakes, can’t you keep away from here? If you dare to stick your ole hand near this bottle, I’ll—”
But Verman was already giggling again, and Herman, too, seemed to be highly amused, so that their united laugh ter drowned out the sound of Sam’s voice. “Makem hake!” Verman squealed, jumping up and down
and clapping the pinks of his hands together. “Makem hake! Makem hake!”
“Cert’nly, we’re makin’ snakes!” Penrod shouted fiercely. “And you quit makin’ all that noise in here. You think we want our good ole snakes ruined by everybody cornin’ in here and yelling and everything? You think our snakes are goin’ to begin turnin’ with all this noise and—”
“Noise ain’ go’ hurt no snakes,” Herman interrupted, abating his laughter but little. “Ain’ go’ be no snakes. You cain’ make no snakes less’n you put hoss hairs in a bottle an’ nev’ look at ’em. You put hoss hair in a bottle an’ nev’ look once fer th’ee weeks you go’ to git a snake. You ev’ take one peep at hoss hair, snake done spoil’; ain’ go’ be no snake in nem bottles — nuff’m ‘cep’ hoss-tail hair.”
“What!” Penrod shcruted, and his attitude became so threatening that Herman retreated from him, protesting, though with continued laughter. “You get out o’ here!” Penrod bellowed. “You get on out o’ here! You don’t know anything in this world, and you come round here tryin’ to ruin these good ole snakes—”
“Lemme ‘lone, whi’ boy!” Herman begged, sputtering, as he moved toward the alley door. “I ain’ done nuff’m to you. All I do, I dess say hoss-tail hair ain’ go’ turn into no snake ef you look at—”
“You get out o’ here!” Penrod shouted, and he seemed to look about him for weapons or something to throw, whereupon, their merriment increasing, both Herman and Verman fled lightly with noiseless feet. Their voices, however, could still be heard as they sped down the alley, and the penetrating, silvery giggle of Verman came through the air for some little time longer to four ears reddened by irritation.
Penrod closed the alley doors, returned to the box and again sat down near Sam. “Never did have any sense,” he muttered, alluding to the mirthful fugitives, and he added morosely, “Think they know so much!”
“Yes,” Sam assented, in like mood. “Why, if I didn’t know any more about snakes than Herman does, I’d sell out! I would; I’d sell out my whole biznuss and move away! He just said that to be smart, and because he and Verman haven’t got any horse-tail hair, themselves — nor any good bottles to put ’em in, if they did have, proba’ly — and want to behave like they know everything on earth. Nobody that ever lived ever heard anything about not lookin’ at ’em, so that proves it.” His manner became argumentative. “Because, look here, Penrod — listen, Penrod — just lookin’ at anything at all doesn’t do anything to it. F’r instance, you could look all day at a tadpole and that wouldn’t stop him from changin’ into a frog, and you know that as well as I do; but you take Herman and he’d tell you if you had a tadpole and wanted him to change to a frog, you couldn’t ever look at him or else he wouldn’t.”
“Yes, that’s exackly what that ole Herman would say,” Penrod agreed. “He wouldn’t know any more about frogs than he would about snakes, because, listen, Sam: How could you put a horse-tail hair in the bottle, in the first place, without ever lookin’ at it? I guess that proves he doesn’t know anything he’s talkin’ about, doesn’t it?”
“‘Course it does!” Sam said, well pleased. “Coloured people don’t know anything, anyway.”
To this prejudiced view of an amiable and interesting race, Penrod, in his present mood, offered no objection; instead, he frowned, pursed his lips and, so far as he was able, assumed an air of maturity and importance. “They don’t know anything about anything,” he said, in this manner. “I heard my father say, himself, that they’re nothing but a mash of stuperstition.”
“What?” Sam asked deferentially.
But Penrod felt it better to let well enough alone and not to attempt the phrase again. “I heard Papa say it, myself,” he said. “I guess that settles how much Herman knows about snakes, doesn’t it?”
“It cert’nly does,” Sam agreed, and then for a time they sat in silence, content in the faith that the matter was settled and Herman’s unfounded and almost malicious criticism well answered. In the expression of each, as he gazed upon his own bottle’s occupant, there was something like tenderness, a hint of the resentful fondness felt by one who has championed, defended and perhaps saved a helpless, loyal dependent. Minutes had elapsed when Sam uttered a muffled but excited exclamation. “Look, Penrod!” he whispered. “There’s a new bubble come right at the top end of mine, where his face is goin’ to be, because mine’s goin’ to have his face—”
“Sh!” Penrod interrupted sternly, but without removing his gaze from his own bottle. “Can’t you keep still? Sh!”
Duke and Walter-John, disturbed by the arrival of Herman and Verman, had ippved out into the yard; but now, returning, they disposed themselves for slumber upon the stable floor at a little distance from their masters, and again Duke, forgetting to what burden he exposed himself, lay partially upon his back. Walter-John almost immediately seized the opportunity to employ the elderly dog’s delicate stomach as a pillow, and Duke, too drowsy to move, uttered a few low and threatening complaints, for which he was angrily reproved in a husky whisper.
“You stop that!” Penrod thus commanded over his shoulder. “My goodness!”
Sam also looked round; upon which, Walter-John, without materially altering his posture, thought fit to wag his tail; but it was a tail already of some weight, and its wagging made a thumping upon the stable floor.
“You quit that!” Sam whispered ferociously. “My goodness!”
Walter-John, unreproachful and obedient, at once lay motionless, and Duke, though almost painfully incommoded by the other’s naive selfishness, was now too sleepy either to change his position or to make any further protest. A complete silence fell upon that place. Penrod and Sam, fascinated, sat gazing intently, each at his own hair from the tail of Jacob R. Krish and Company’s horse.
From time to time, Duke, not otherwise moving, half opened one eye to let a glance of devotion rest momentarily upon Penrod. Similarly, Walter-John sometimes partly opened an eye to look affectionately at Sam.
CHAPTER XXI
TWELVE
THIS BUSY GLOBE that spawns us is as incapable of flattery and as intent upon its own affair, whatever that is, as a gyroscope; it keeps steadily whirling along its lawful track, and, thus far seeming to hold a right of way, spins doggedly on, with no perceptible diminution of speed to mark the most gigantic human events — it did not pause to pant and recuperate even when what seemed to Penrod its principal purpose was accomplished, and an enormous shadow, vanishing westward over its surface, marked the dawn of his twelfth birthday anniversary.
To be twelve is an attainment worth the struggle. A boy, just twelve, is like a Frenchman just elected to the Academy.
Distinction and honour wait upon him. Younger boys show deference to a person of twelve: his experience is guaranteed, his judgment, therefore, mellow; consequently, his influence is profound. Eleven is not quite satisfactory: it is only an approach. Eleven has the disadvantage of six, of nineteen, of forty-four, and of sixty-nine. But, like twelve, seven is an honourable age, and the ambition to attain it is laudable. People look forward to being seven. Similarly, twenty is worthy, and so, arbitrarily, is twenty-one; forty-five has great solidity; seventy is most commendable and each year thereafter an increasing honour. “Thirteen is embarrassed by the beginnings of a new colthood; the child becomes a youth. But twelve is the very top of boyhood.
Dressing, that morning, Penrod felt that the world was changed from the world of yesterday. For one thing, he seemed to own more of it; this day was his day. And it was a day worth owning; the mid-summer sunshine, pouring gold through his window, came from a cool sky, and a breeze moved pleasantly in his hair as he leaned from the sill to watch the tribe of clattering blackbirds take wing, following their leader from the trees in the yard to the day’s work in the open country. The blackbirds were his, as the sunshine and the breeze were his, for they all belonged to the day that was his birthday and therefore most surely his. Pride suffused him: he was twelve!
/> His father and his mother and Margaret seemed to understand the difference between to-day and yesterday. They were at the table when he descended, and they gave him a greeting that of itself marked the milestone. Habitually, his entrance into a room where his elders sat brought a cloud of apprehension: they were prone to look up in pathetic expectancy, as if their thought was, “What new awfulness is he going to start now?” But this morning they laughed; his mother rose and kissed him twelve times, so did Margaret; and his father shouted, “Well, well! How’s the man?”
Then his mother gave him a Bible and “The Vicar of Wakefield”; Margaret gave him a pair of silver-mounted hair brushes; and his father gave him a “Pocket Atlas” and a small compass.
“And now, Penrod,” his mother said, after breakfast, “I’m going to take you out in the country to pay your birthday respects to Aunt Sarah Crim.”
Aunt Sarah Crim, Penrod’s great-aunt, was his oldest living relative. She was ninety, and when Mrs. Schofield and Penrod alighted from a carriage at her gate they found her using a rake in the garden.
“I’m glad you brought him,” she said, desisting from labour. “Jinny’s baking a cake I’m going to send for his birthday party. Bring him in the house. I’ve got something for him.”
She led the way to her “sitting-room”, which had a pleasant smell, unlike any other smell, and, opening the drawer of a shining old what-not, took therefrom a boy’s “slingshot” made of a forked stick, two strips of rubber and a bit of leather.
“This isn’t for you,” she said, placing it in Penrod’s eager hand. “No. It would break all to pieces the first time you tried to shoot it, because it is thirty-five years old. I want to send it back to your father. I think it’s time. You give it to him from me, and tell him I say I believe I can trust him with it now. I took it away from him thirty-five years ago, one day after he’d killed my best hen with it, accidentally, and broken a glass pitcher on the back porch with it — accidentally. He doesn’t look like a person who’s ever done things of that sort, and I suppose he’s forgotten it so well that he believes he never did, but if you give it to him from me I think he’ll remember. You look like him, Penrod. He was anything but a handsome boy.”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 450