My American

by Stella Gibbons

  Bob was the only one who was worth a dime.

  Dan felt like that about them, too. He always had. When he was a kid he used to hate them having more money than he had, and the way they looked at you sometimes, kind of as if you were funny but they’d never tell you why. He used to like taking Bob shooting, but only because he said he could get Bob away from that bunch if he wanted to, and show him how to be a tough guy, a regular fellow, not soft. Dan hated soft guys.

  Then she thought of Dan and his mob and felt better. They were showing that Vorst crowd and all the other Honest Johns where they got off. yes sir. That bunch and the other Honest Johns had to pay money to guys like Dan, or Dan and his mob and all the other mobs made hell for them. It was Dan and the other mobsmen were sitting pretty now, not the Honest Johns, so what call had that lousy bunch up the hill to be so pleased with themselves? And everybody knew Bob’s old man had lost a packet when the market crashed.

  Upstairs, the long whine of the creaking door sounded again. Glancing up from her paper, Francey saw two shadows on the wall at the top of the stairs, Bob’s and a man’s.

  “So long, kid.” The shadows clasped hands.

  “G’d bye, Dan. Thanks for having me up. I’m mighty glad to have seen you again.”

  “That goes for me, too, kid. Don’t forget, if you’re ever down my way. So long.”

  The door creaked, and the light vanished, and Bob ran down the stairs.

  “Well, whadja think of him?” demanded Francey eagerly, looking up from Dan’s tabloid and smiling excitedly. “Hardly’ve known him, would ja?”

  “Gee, he has got on, hasn’t he?” Bob was flushed with excitement and his eyes sparkled. He drained his glass and put it down. “Francey, do you know what he was doing up there, with all the boys shooting craps in the same room? Reading!”

  “Sure, he reads a lot. He ain’t like those hoodlums ’at never look at anything but the tabloids ’n the funnies,” she said proudly. “He reads books. He buys ’em, too. He tried to make me, but nothin’ doin’. It takes me all my time to follow the styles n’ fix my hair … but he’s crazy about books.”

  “It was a Life of Napoleon,” said Bob impressively.

  “Kind of a wop, was he?”

  “Not exactly” (he looked at her as he used to when they were kids, as though she were kind of funny), “he was Corsican (Corsica’s an island way off Italy), and he was a corporal in the French army. He made himself Emperor of France and conquered most all of Europe.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Oh, the British beat him at Waterloo.”

  “Sounds kinda historical. Did he make a pile, too?”

  “He didn’t care about money. He wanted power and glory, and all that sort of thing.”

  “Well, that’s like Dan, too, on’y he waunts to make a pile as well. He knows how to spend it, too. Lookit!”

  She proudly held out her wrist, where a tiny jewelled watch glittered.

  “It set him back fifty bucks. He said so.”

  “Gee!” Bob picked up her wrist and admired. “You didn’t have that on before I went upstairs?”

  “No, ’cause I was afraid you’d see it and start third-degreein’ me about who gave it to me. Isn’t it pretty?” She moved her freckled wrist this way and that, making the diamonds flash.

  “It’s ever so pretty. Gee, Francey, he’s swell, isn’t he?”

  “Sure he is.”

  “And I’m glad … you know … Francey, he’s never been mixed up in any bad shooting? I asked him what it felt like to kill somebody and he laughed and said he never had killed anybody, he’d been lucky. He’s just in the racket for the kick of it. He says he gets a hell of a kick out of making money that way, same as a guy does out of selling cars or anything.”

  “Sure.” Her back was towards him as she put the bottle of rye away and he could not see the grin on her face.

  “He says he gets such a hell of a kick out of it he can’t quit.”

  She said nothing.

  “He says if I’m ever in Detroit, I’m to go in to The Ecstasy Club and the place is mine. Gee, I’d love to go down there some time, Francey!”

  “It certainly is a jawbreakin’ name,” she said, cautiously trying “ecstasy” over under her breath. “Kind of a Mexican name, maybe?”

  Bob was staring at the floor. He said suddenly in a low voice:

  “Of course, people do get shot, don’t they?”

  “Sure they do … if they get in the way.”

  “He says the first time he has to shoot to kill he’ll quit.”

  “Yeah,” she said, yawning. “Guess you’ll be late for supper, won’t you?” glancing at the flashing watch. She liked fighting boys and kissing boys, not listening to boys.

  “Guess I will, too. So long, redhead.”

  “Ah, gwan!” cried Francey, pleased at this return to a level she understood. “I’ll fight you any day! So long!”

  He went down the porch steps and out into the warm still air, whistling. It was nearly dark, but his eyes were trained by long days in the woods, and he saw a darker mass in a thicket across the road. A powerful car was parked there: Dan’s. He went over to it and put his hand on the bonnet. It was cold and slippery with dew. A faint thrill, chilly and intoxicating, raced down his back. This must be the one Dan took the boys in when they were on a job. …

  Crash! The black-powder bomb struck the shop, and everything slid into ruin. Men ran out shouting, and this long black car, this, that he was touching now, dwindled away down the road. …

  What sort of a kick must Dan get out of it if he, Bob, got a kick like this from just touching the car?

  He was ravenously hungry. He climbed the familiar hill in the swiftly-coming darkness and went through the wood where two owls were calling. Gee, it was good to have seen Dan again! What’d Jonas and the rest of the bunch say if they knew he’d been talking to Dan Carr? It was most as good as talking to Lindbergh or Al Capone … well, maybe not quite as good as talking to Lindbergh, but pretty nearly.

  But he would never tell Jonas and the bunch, because Dan trusted him not to. He hadn’t said, “Don’t talk, kid,” but Bob knew that was what his smile and handshake had meant. Dan was a wise guy; the police had nothing definite pinned on him, but he didn’t want anyone to know he’d been visiting his home town and his folks, and as Bob crossed the lawn towards the house he swore to himself that he would never tell.

  He yawned. It had been a long day, and his head was swimming deliciously with drink and a feeling of secrecy and danger, while pictures flashed in his excited brain … the black car parked in the bushes, Dan’s face smiling down at him, the crap-shooters glancing up startled as he came to the door and then going on with their game at a nod from Dan … Helen’s face, so beautiful, looking away from him … and the doctor’s hands, moving over the ribs of that woman who had been knocked down in the Polak quarter in Morgan, as though they were alive on their own and knew exactly what to do … and the doctor’s face, kind of listening, as if his hands were telling him what they were finding out … and the crowd all round, so quiet, watching … that had been wonderful. That had made him suddenly know that he wanted to be a doctor, too.

  He yawned again. The house was lit up. Supper would be ready, and was he hungry! But confused and excited and hungry as he was, he remembered to unwrap and put into his mouth a piece of a gum sworn to remove, without possibility of failure, all traces of alcohol and tobacco from the breath of the most hardened addict in the United States.

  CHAPTER X

  IT WAS THE last day of the summer term at the Anna Bonner, and Amy’s last day at school. The sunny corridors echoed with cockneyish young voices crying:

  “Mind you write to me, Sylvia!”

  “Ooo! … here’s Miss Seager! Come and say good-bye to her with me, Molly, be an angel.”

  “Miss Naylor, please will you sign this?”

  Amy was sitting on the bench outside the Headmistress’s room waiti
ng her turn to say good-bye to her. Muriel Wilcox was in there now, probably having one last long jaw about her maths, poor sop. When Muriel came out it would be Amy’s turn.

  Nursed carefully on Amy’s knee was a large brown paper parcel. It was her stories, which had trebled their number in three years and were now so bulky that she was seriously worried about what to do with them. She had collected them yesterday from the old exam room and made them into this parcel and it had spent the previous night in her form-room cupboard, for she was Monitor this term, and as such was the only person allowed to go there. After to-day there would be no more hiding places at the Anna Bonner and if she took the parcel home the Beedings would be almost sure to ask what it was; for as she got older, they seemed to get nosier.

  In three months she would be fifteen. She sat with the sunlight falling warmly on her lifted face and stared dreamily out of the window at the sky. In three years she had, of course, grown taller but she was still noticeably small among girls of her own age and still very slender. Mrs. Beeding frequently expressed the opinion that Aime would not grow much more. Aime was going to be just as high as my heart, said Mr. Beeding (he was, without much encouragement and for some reason best known to himself, fond of Aime). The pigtail was still there. Her skin had improved, the last trace of sallowness had gone and it was creamy, showing off her eyes. But though she looked much healthier she was not the kind of girl that people watch in trams and buses, for her face had the same guarded secret look it had worn as a child and there was no warmth in her expression. Still, light, cool, limpid as water, yet wary—those were the words that would have gone through the mind of someone trying to describe her.

  Her love of her secret world, her love of being alone, had grown in the past two years to a passion. Day by day she cared less for people and more for imaginary pictures so strong that they were more like feelings or dreams than ideas inside her head. She felt only a passive affection for the Beedings. Indeed, she did not feel active affection for anyone living; she only loved the memory of her mother, while for the dream-people in her mind she felt such a strong interest and concern that it could have been described as love.

  Both feelings were secret and deep and she never talked of them to anyone nor thought about them; they were just there, like her pigtail, and she took them for granted, as indeed, she took all her feelings. Though she sometimes identified herself with someone in one of her stories she never thought about herself in her daily life. If she was lonely, she did not know it. The dream-images in her mind absorbed her interests and affections with dangerous ease, as anyone who has ever lived with such phantoms will immediately recall their power to do. Empty, vast and cold were the halls of the Snow Queen. They were all lighted up by the vivid light of the aurora.…

  The door of the Headmistress’s room opened and Muriel Wilcox came out giggling.

  “Hullo, Piggy. I say, you’re leaving too, aren’t you?”

  Amy nodded.

  “What’re you going to do?”

  “I don’t know yet. What’re you?”

  “Pitmans. Isn’t it ghastly.” She turned her eyes up and her mouth down.

  “Amy? Come along, dear.” Miss Lathom’s voice was a little sharp. She had not only been left the School in her great-aunt’s will, but also a very large house at St. Leonard’s, bursting with useless but beloved personal possessions of Miss Bonner’s which the Will forbade her to sell or give away. She foresaw quite five years’ work at sorting and packing, to be fitted into the midst of all her other activities. Also, the last day of term was quite trying enough without people making it worse by wasting her time.

  Amy scurried in as quickly as she could for the weight of her parcel.

  “Well, now, Amy—good gracious, what have you got there?”

  “It’s my stories, Miss Lathom. You see——”

  “You must have wasted a lot of time in the last three years, child, if that’s all stories, and it explains your eyestrain, of course. I expect you know that Mrs. Beeding has been to see me and we talked over what you’re going to do?”

  “Yes, Miss Lathom. Please, Miss Lathom——”

  “Just a moment, Amy (put it down on that chair, you make my arm ache to look at you). Now, Mrs. Beeding told you, I suppose that I don’t think your eyes are strong enough to stand the close work in dressmaking. And it’s no use your getting into a firm as an apprentice and wasting two or three years if your eyes aren’t going to let you take up the work later on, is it? Do pay attention. Never mind your stories, now.” For Amy’s gaze was wandering.

  “No, Miss Lathom. Miss Lathom, I suppose you couldn’t possibly let me go on keeping my stories in the old exam room?”

  “No, I could not, Amy. It’s quite out of the question when once you’ve left school.”

  “Miss Lathom, when I’ve got a job I could pay you a sort of rent for them. Half a crown a week. It could go to the Missionary Society.”

  Miss Lathom shook her head, but not severely. Amy’s expression grew secret, and still. She stared at the Headmistress in silence.

  “My dear,” Miss Lathom put out her hand and pulled the girl gently towards her until Amy stood in the circle of her arm, as she had stood three years ago when Miss Lathom had told her of her father’s death. “I expect you will think I’m very hard, but I am only telling you for your own good. You really must try to be a little more practical. You’re not really in the least interested in what you’re going to do when you leave school, are you?”

  There was a pause. Amy tried to lie, but for some reason—perhaps because she associated the face looking gravely into her own with kindness when she had felt unbearably desolate—she could not. She shook her head.

  “I knew it,” announced Miss Lathom. “You just want to be left alone to scribble, isn’t that it?”

  Another nod.

  “You don’t care about anything in the world except that bundle of—that bundle on the chair, do you?”

  A shake, this time.

  “Well, it won’t do,” vigorously. “We all have our dreams (I wanted to be a pianist, once) but we can’t all have them come true.”

  “Some people can,” said Amy mildly. “Kipling wrote a poem about that. It’s called, The Dreamer Whose Dreams Came True. It’s my favourite poem,” she added, colour coming into her face. “It says:

  Down with the drawbridge and let him through!

  The Dreamer whose dreams came true.

  Do you know it, Miss Lathom?”

  “Yes. It’s a bad poem.” Miss Lathom’s temper was gone. She removed her arm.

  “It’s my favourite,” repeated Amy dreamily, glancing down at her parcel.

  “Well, to get back to your affairs. You had better try for some kind of a job in which you’ll have time to write as well. I suppose you do want to be a writer?”

  “I am a writer,” opening her eyes in surprise.

  “When you are grown up, I meant,” explained Miss Lathom, glancing at her watch. Amy considered.

  “I don’t know, Miss Lathom. I never thought about it. Mrs. Beeding said last night she’s going to write a letter to that man, Mr. Ramage; you know, who was at Dad’s funeral. He’s on The Prize, where Dad was. It’s a boy’s paper. Mrs. Beeding’s going to ask him if there might be a job there for me.”

  “Why on earth didn’t you say so before, Amy? You really are tiresome. It’s a good idea. (Mrs. Beeding is a very sensible woman as well as a very kind one, and I hope you appreciate her as you should.) But what sort of opening would there be there for a girl? Of course, I know The Prize, and so did Miss Bonner; her brothers and mine used to take it in.”

  “Well, Dad always said they had such a bother with their office boys, they were always sacking them. He said they had six while he was there. So Dora Beeding (she’s twenty-three, she’s Mrs. Beeding’s eldest), Dora thought perhaps they might like to have an office girl, instead. Dora only thought of it last night, or I’d have told you before, Miss Lathom.”

&
nbsp; “And that might lead to your getting some writing job on the paper later on—I see. Have you told Mrs. Beeding about your stories?”

  “Oh, no, Miss Lathom!”

  “I think you’re silly not to, Amy. She would probably be very interested.”

  Amy said nothing.

  “Well … that settles you,” sighed Miss Lathom, again glancing at her watch. She was hungry. “Mrs. Beeding’s going to try to get you on to The Prize. Do you like the idea, yourself? Of course, you’re very young to be leaving at all, but in your circumstances I think it’s the wisest thing … how do you feel about it all?”

  “I don’t mind, Miss Lathom.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to have a story in The Prize one day, Amy?” demanded Miss Lathom. (Like most adults, she enjoyed seeing the young enthuse.)

  “I couldn’t, not if I was an office girl.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “They won’t let you have a story in the paper if you’re on the staff. Dad said they had to do that, because everyone was always trying to get stories into the paper because they thought it was so easy. All the office boys used to try. It was an awful nuisance, Dad said. That was why they were always being sacked.”

  Miss Lathom laughed.

  “Oh, well, that rather spoils your chances, doesn’t it?”

  “Oh, I don’t mind. The stories in The Prize aren’t very exciting. Mine are much better.”

  “I rejoice to hear it,” said Miss Lathom drily, recalling that bald paragraph about the two men waiting by the desert tomb and thinking; Poor little cocksure sprat. The worse they do anything, the surer they are. Haven’t I seen it again and again! She said rather severely, “I hope you won’t develop into a conceited girl, Amy; there’s nothing so putting-off. Well,” she stood up and held out both her hands, “good-bye, my dear. Be sure to let me know how you get on, I shall be interested. And you’ll be coming back to Old Girls next term, won’t you?”

  “Yes, Miss Lathom. Thank you very much. Yes, I will.” Amy passively let her slim cool hands be shaken, then picked up her parcel and made for the door. On the threshold she paused and made one of her surprising exit-speeches.