He had sold electric refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, radios, and a lot of other modern things to people who couldn’t afford to buy them, and he had sold these things simply by talking about them, and by showing catalogue pictures of them. The customer had to pay freight and everything else. All Harry did was talk and sell. If a man couldn’t pay cash for a radio, Harry would get five dollars down and a note for the balance, and if the man couldn’t make his payments, Harry would attach the man’s home, or his vineyard, or his automobile, or his horse, or anything else the man owned. And the amazing thing was that no one ever criticised him for his business methods. He was very smooth about attaching a man’s property, and he would calmly explain that it was the usual procedure, according to law. What was right was right.
No one could figure out what Harry wanted with so much money. He already had money in the bank, a big car, and he wasn’t interested in girls; so what was he saving up all the money for? A few of his customers sometimes asked him, and Harry would look confused a moment, as if he himself didn’t know, and then he would come out and say:
“I want to get hold of a half million dollars so I can retire.”
It was pretty funny, Harry thinking of retiring at eighteen. He had left high school in his first year because he hadn’t liked the idea of sitting in a class room listening to a lot of nonsense about starting from the bottom and working up, and so on, and ever since he had been on the go, figuring out ways to make money.
Sometimes people would ask him what he intended to do after he retired, and Harry would look puzzled again, and finally he would say, “Oh, I guess I’ll take a trip around the world.”
“Well, if he does,” everyone thought, “he’ll sell something everywhere he goes. He’ll sell stuff on the trains and on the boats and in the foreign cities. He won’t waste a minute looking around. He’ll open a catalogue and sell them foreigners everything you can think of.”
But things happen in a funny way, and you can never tell about people, even about people like Harry. Anybody is liable to get sick. Death and sickness play no favorites; they come to all men. Presidents and kings and movie stars, they all die, they all get sick.
Even Harry got sick. Not mildly, not merely something casual like the flu that you can get over in a week, and be as good as new again. Harry got T. B. and he got it in a bad way, poor kid.
Well, the sickness got Harry, and all that money of his in the Valley Bank didn’t help him a lot. Of course he did try to rest for a while, but that was out of the question. Lying in bed, Harry would try to sell life insurance to his best friends. Harry’s cousin, Simon Gregory, told me about this. He said it wasn’t that Harry really wanted more money; it was simply that he couldn’t open his mouth unless it was to make a sales talk. He couldn’t carry on an ordinary conversation because he didn’t know the first thing about anything that didn’t have something to do with insurance, or automobiles, or real estate. If somebody tried to talk politics or maybe religion, Harry would look irritated, and he would start to make a sales talk. He even asked Simon Gregory how old he was, and when Simon said that he was twenty-two, Harry got all excited.
“Listen, Simon,” he said, “you are my cousin, and I want to do you a favor. You haven’t a day to lose if you intend to be financially independent when you are sixty-five. I have just the policy you need. Surely you can afford to pay six dollars and twenty-seven cents a month for the next forty-three years. You won’t be able to go to many shows; but what is more important, to see a few foolish moving pictures, or to be independent when you are sixty-five?”
It almost made Simon bawl to hear Harry talking that way, sick as he was.
The doctor told Harry’s folks that Harry ought to go down to Arizona for a year or two, that it was his only hope, but when they talked the matter over with Harry, he got sore and said the doctor was trying to get him to spend his money. He said he was all right, just a cold in the chest, and he told his folks to ask the doctor to stay away. “Get some other doctor,” he said. “Why should I go down to Arizona?”
Every now and then we would see Harry in town, talking rapidly to someone, trying to sell something, but it would be for only a day or two, and then he would have to go back to bed. He kept this up for about two years, and you ought to see the change that came over that poor boy. It was really enough to make you feel rotten. To look at him you would think he was the loneliest person on earth, but the thing that hurt most was the realization that if you tried to talk to him, or tried to be friendly toward him, he would turn around and try to sell you life insurance. That’s what burned a man up. There he was dying on his feet, and still wanting to sell healthy people life insurance. It was too sad not to be funny.
Well, one day (this was years ago) I saw Simon Gregory in town, and he looked sick. I asked him what the trouble was, and he said Harry had died and that he had been at the bedside at the time, and now he was feeling rotten. The things Harry talked about, dying. It was terrible. Insurance, straight to the end, financial independence at sixty-five.
Harry’s photograph was in The Evening Herald, and there was a big story about his life, how smart Harry had been, how ambitious, and all that sort of thing. That’s what it came to, but somehow there was something about that crazy jackass that none of us can forget.
He was different, there is no getting away from it. Nowadays he is almost a legend with us, and there are a lot of children in this town who were born after Harry died, and yet they know as much about him as we do, and maybe a little more. You would think he had been some great historical personage, somebody to talk to children about in order to make them ambitious or something. Of course most of the stories about him are comical, but just the same they make him out to be a really great person. Hardly anyone remembers the name of our last mayor, and there haven’t been any great men from our town, but all the kids around here know about Harry. It’s pretty remarkable when you bear in mind that he died before he was twenty-three.
Whenever somebody fails to accomplish some unusual undertaking in our town, people say to one another, “Harry would have done it.” And everybody laughs, remembering him, the way he rushed about town, waking people up, making deals. A couple of months ago, for example, there was a tight-wire walker on the stage of the Hippodrome Theatre, and he tried to turn a somersault in the air and land on the tight-wire, but he couldn’t do it. He would touch the wire with his feet, lose his balance, and leap to the stage. Then he would try it over again, from the beginning, music and all, the drum rolling to make you feel how dangerous it was. This acrobat tried to do the trick three times and failed, and while he was losing his balance the fourth time, some young fellow away back in the gallery hollered out as loud as he could, “Get Harry. Harry is the man for the emergency.” Then everybody in the theatre busted out laughing. The poor acrobat was stunned by the laughter, and he began to swear at the audience in Spanish. He didn’t know about our town’s private joke.
All this will give you an idea what sort of a name Harry made for himself, but the funniest stories about him are the ones that have to do with Harry in heaven, or in hell, selling earthquake insurance, and automobiles, and buying clothes cheap. He was a worldbeater. He was different. Everybody likes to laugh about him, but all the same this whole town misses him, and there isn’t a man who knew him who doesn’t wish that he was still among us, tearing around town, talking big business, making things pop, a real American go-getter.
Laughter
“You want me to laugh?”
He felt lonely and ill in the empty class-room, all the boys going home, Dan Seed, James Misippo, Dick Corcoran, all of them walking along the Southern Pacific tracks, laughing and playing, and this insane idea of Miss Wissig’s, making him sick.
“Yes.”
The severe lips, the trembling, the eyes, such pathetic melancholy.
“But I do not want to laugh.”
It was strange. The whole world, the turn of things, the way they came about.
“Laugh.”
The increasing tenseness, electrical, her stiffness, the nervous movements of her body and her arms, the cold she made, and the illness in his blood.
“But why?”
Why? Everything tied up, everything graceless and ugly, the caught mind, something in a trap, no sense, no meaning.
“As a punishment. You laughed in class, now as a punishment you must laugh for an hour, all alone, by yourself. Hurry, you have already wasted four minutes.”
It was disgusting; it wasn’t funny at all, being kept after school, being asked to laugh. There was no sense in the idea. What should he laugh about? A fellow couldn’t just laugh. There had to be something of that kind, something amusing or pompous, something comical. This was so strange, because of her manner, the way she looked at him, the subtlety; it was frightening. What did she want of him? And the smell of school, the oil in the floor, chalk dust, the smell of the idea, children gone; loneliness, the sadness.
“I am sorry I laughed.”
The flower bending, ashamed. He felt sorry, he was not merely bluffing; he was sorry, not for himself but for her. She was a young girl, a substitute teacher, and there was that sadness in her, so far away and so hard to understand; it came with her each morning and he had laughed at it, it was comical, something she said, the way she said it, the way she stared at everyone, the way she moved. He hadn’t felt like laughing at all, but all of a sudden he had laughed and she had looked at him and he had looked into her face, and for a moment that vague communion, then the anger, the hatred, in her eyes. “You will stay in after school.” He hadn’t wanted to laugh, it simply happened, and he was sorry, he was ashamed, she ought to know, he was telling her. Jiminy crickets.
“You are wasting time. Begin laughing.”
Her back was turned and she was erasing words from the blackboard: Africa, Cairo, the pyramids, the sphinx, Nile; and the figures 1865, 1914. But the tenseness, even with her back turned; it was still in the class-room, emphasized because of the emptiness, magnified, made precise, his mind and her mind, their grief, side by side, conflicting; why? He wanted to be friendly; the morning she had entered the classroom he had wanted to be friendly; he felt it immediately, her strangeness, the remoteness, so why had he laughed? Why did everything happen in a false way? Why should he be the one to hurt her, when really he had wanted to be her friend from the beginning?
“I don’t want to laugh.”
Defiance and at the same time weeping, shameful weeping in his voice. By what right should he be made to destroy in himself an innocent thing? He hadn’t meant to be cruel; why shouldn’t she be able to understand? He began to feel hatred for her stupidity, her dullness, the stubbornness of her will. I will not laugh, he thought; she can call Mr. Caswell and have me whipped; I will not laugh again. It was a mistake. I had meant to cry; something else, anyway; I hadn’t meant it. I can stand a whipping, golly Moses, it hurts, but not like this; I’ve felt that strap on my behind, I know the difference.
Well, let them whip him, what did he care? It stung and he could feel the sharp pain for days after, thinking about it, but let them go ahead and make him bend over, he wouldn’t laugh.
He saw her sit at her desk and stare at him, and for crying out loud, she looked sick and startled, and the pity came up to his mouth again, the sickening pity for her, and why was he making so much trouble for a poor substitute teacher he really liked, not an old and ugly teacher, but a nice small girl who was frightened from the first?
“Please laugh.”
And what humiliation, not commanding him, begging him now, begging him to laugh when he didn’t want to laugh. What should a fellow do, honestly; what should a fellow do that would be right, by his own will, not accidentally, like the wrong things? And what did she mean? What pleasure could she get out of hearing him laugh? What a stupid world, the strange feelings of people, the secretiveness, each person hidden within himself, wanting something and always getting something else, wanting to give something and always giving something else. Well, he would. Now he would laugh, not for himself but for her. Even if it sickened him, he would laugh. He wanted to know the truth, how it was. She wasn’t making him laugh, she was asking him, begging him to laugh. He didn’t know how it was, but he wanted to know. He thought, Maybe I can think of a funny story, and he began to try to remember all the funny stories he had ever heard, but it was very strange, he couldn’t remember a single one. And the other funny things, the way Annie Gran walked; gee, it wasn’t funny any more; and Henry Mayo making fun of Hiawatha, saying the lines wrong; it wasn’t funny either. It used to make him laugh until his face got red and he lost his breath, but now it was a dead and a pointless thing, by the big sea waters, by the big sea waters, came the mighty, but gee, it wasn’t funny; he couldn’t laugh about it, golly Moses. Well, he would just laugh, any old laugh, be an actor, ha, ha, ha. God, it was hard, the easiest thing in the world for him to do, and now he couldn’t make a little giggle.
Somehow he began to laugh, feeling ashamed and disgusted. He was afraid to look into her eyes, so he looked up at the clock and tried to keep on laughing, and it was startling, to ask a boy to laugh for an hour, at nothing, to beg him to laugh without giving him a reason. But he would do it, maybe not an hour, but he would try, anyway; he would do something. The funniest thing was his voice, the falseness of his laughter, and after a while it got to be really funny, a comical thing, and it made him happy because it made him really laugh, and now he was laughing his real way, with all his breath, with all his blood, laughing at the falseness of his laughter, and the shame was going away because this laughter was not fake, and it was the truth, and the empty class-room was full of his laughter and everything seemed all right, everything was splendid, and two minutes had gone by.
And he began to think of really comical things everywhere, the whole town, the people walking in the streets, trying to look important, but he knew, they couldn’t fool him, he knew how important they were, and the way they talked, big business, and all of it pompous and fake, and it made him laugh, and he thought of the preacher at the Presbyterian church, the fake way he prayed, O God, if it is your will, and nobody believing in prayers, and the important people with big automobiles, Cadillacs and Packards, speeding up and down the country, as if they had some place to go, and the public band concerts, all that fake stuff, making him really laugh, and the big boys running after the big girls because of the heat, and the streetcars going up and down the city with never more than two passengers, that was funny, those big cars carrying an old lady and a man with a moustache, and he laughed until he lost his breath and his face got red, and suddenly all the shame was gone and he was laughing and looking at Miss Wissig, and then bang: jiminy Christmas, tears in her eyes. For God’s sake, he hadn’t been laughing at her. He had been laughing at all those fools, all those fool things they were doing day after day, all that falseness. It was disgusting. He was always wanting to do the right thing, and it was always turning out the other way. He wanted to know why, how it was with her, inside, the part that was secret, and he had laughed for her, not to please himself, and there she was, trembling, her eyes wet and tears coming out of them, and her face in agony, and he was still laughing because of all the anger and yearning and disappointment in his heart, and he was laughing at all the pathetic things in the world, the things good people cried about, the stray dogs in the streets, the tired horses being whipped, stumbling, the timid people being smashed inwardly by the fat and cruel people, fat inside, pompous, and the small birds, dead on the sidewalk, and the misunderstandings everywhere, the everlasting conflict, the cruelty, the things that made man a malignant thing, a vile growth, and the anger was changing his laughter and tears were coming into his eyes. The two of them in the empty class-room, naked together in their loneliness and bewilderment, brother and sister, both of them wanting the same cleanliness and decency of life, both of them wanting to share the truth of the other, and yet, somehow, both of them
alien, remote and alone.
He heard the girl stifle a sob and then everything turned up-side-down, and he was crying, honest and truly crying, like a baby, as if something had really happened, and he hid his face in his arms, and his chest was heaving, and he was thinking he did not want to live; if this was the way it was, he wanted to be dead.
He did not know how long he cried, and suddenly he was aware that he was no longer crying or laughing, and that the room was very still. What a shameful thing. He was afraid to lift his head and look at the teacher. It was disgusting.
“Ben.”
The voice calm, quiet, solemn; how could he ever look at her again?
“Ben.”
He lifted his head. Her eyes were dry and her face seemed brighter and more beautiful than ever.
“Please dry your eyes. Have you a handkerchief?”
“Yes.”
He wiped the moisture from his eyes, and blew his nose. What a sickness in the earth. How bleak everything was.
“How old are you, Ben?”
“Ten.”
“What are you going to do? I mean—”
“I don’t know.”
“Your father?”
“He is a tailor.”
“Do you like it here?”
“I guess so.”
“You have brothers, sisters?”
“Three brothers, two sisters.”
“Do you ever think of going away? Other cities?”
It was amazing, talking to him as if he were a grown person, getting into his secret.
The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze Page 13