Book: Somewhere in Red Gap

H >> Harry Leon Wilson >> Somewhere in Red Gap




"About five o'clock I took another run downtown for some things I'd
forgot, with an eye out to see how Alonzo and Ben might be coming on.
The fact is, seeing each other only once a year that way they're apt to
kind of loosen up--if you know what I mean.

"No sign of 'em at first. Nothing but ladies young and old--even some of
us older ranching set--making final purchases of ribbons and such for
the sole benefit of Wilfred Lennox, and talking in a flushed manner
about him whenever they met. Almost every darned one of 'em had made it
a point to stroll past the Price mansion that afternoon where Wilfred
was setting out on the lawn, in a wicker chair with some bottles of beer
surveying Nature with a look of lofty approval and chatting with
Henrietta about the real things of life.

"Beryl Mae Macomber had traipsed past four times, changing her clothes
twice with a different shade of ribbon across her forehead and all her
college pins on, and at last she'd simply walked right in and asked if
she hadn't left her tennis racquet there last Tuesday. She says to Mrs.
Judge Ballard and Mrs. Martingale and me in the Cut-Rate Pharmacy, she
says: 'Oh, he's just awfully magnetic--but do you really think he's
sincere?' Then she bought an ounce of Breath of Orient perfume and kind
of two-stepped out. These other ladies spoke very sharply about the
freedom Beryl Mae's aunt allowed her. Mrs. Martingale said the poet, it
was true, had a compelling personality, but what was our young girls
coming to? And if that child was hers--

"So I left these two lady highbinders and went on into the retail side
of the Family Liquor Store to order up some cooking sherry, and there
over the partition from the bar side what do I hear but Alonzo Price and
Ben Sutton! Right off I could tell they'd been pinning a few on. In
fact, Alonzo was calling the bartender Mister. You don't know about Lon,
but when he calls the bartender Mister the ship has sailed. Ten minutes
after that he'll be crying over his operation. So I thought quick,
remembering that we had now established a grillroom at the country club,
consisting of a bar and three tables with bells on them, and a
Chinaman, and that if Alonzo and Ben Sutton come there at all they had
better come right--at least to start with. When I'd given my order I
sent Louis Meyer in to tell the two gentlemen a lady wished to speak to
them outside.

"In a minute Ben comes out alone. He was awful glad to see me and I said
how well he looked, and he did look well, sort of cordial and
bulging--his forehead bulges and his eyes bulge and his moustache and
his chin, and he has cushions on his face. He beamed on me in a wide and
hearty manner and explained that Alonzo refused to come out to meet a
lady until he knew who she was, because you got to be careful in a small
town like this where every one talks. 'And besides,' says Ben, 'he's
just broke down and begun to cry about his appendicitis that was three
years ago. He's leaning his head on his arms down by the end of the bar
and sobbing bitterly over it. He seems to grieve about it as a personal
loss. I've tried to cheer him up and told him it was probably all for
the best, but he says when it comes over him this way he simply can't
stand it. And what shall I do?'

"Well, of course I seen the worst had happened with Alonzo. So I says to
Ben: 'You know there's a party to-night and if that man ain't seen to he
will certainly sink the ship. Now you get him out of that swamp and I'll
think of something.' 'I'll do it,' says Ben, turning sideways so he
could go through the doorway again. 'I'll do it,' he says, 'if I have to
use force on the little scoundrel.'

"And sure enough, in a minute he edged out again with Alonzo firmly
fastened to him in some way. Lon hadn't wanted to come and didn't want
to stay now, but he simply couldn't move. Say, that Ben Sutton would
make an awful grand anchor for a captive balloon. Alonzo wiped his eyes
until he could see who I was. Then I rebuked him, reminding him of his
sacred duties as a prominent citizen, a husband, and the secretary of
the Red Gap Chamber of Commerce. 'Of course it's all right to take a
drink now and then,' I says.

"Alonzo brightened at this. 'Good!' says he; 'now it's now and pretty
soon it will be then. Let's go into a saloon or something like that!'

"'You'll come with me,' I says firmly. And I marched 'em down to the
United States Grill, where I ordered tea and toast for 'em. Ben was
sensible enough, but Alonzo was horrified at the thought of tea. 'It's
tea or nice cold water for yours,' I says, and that set him off again.
'Water!' he sobs. 'Water! Water! Maybe you don't know that some dear
cousins of mine have just lost their all in the Dayton flood--twenty
years' gathering went in a minute, just like that!' and he tried to snap
his fingers. All the same I got some hot tea into him and sent for Eddie
Pierce to be out in front with his hack. While we was waiting for Eddie
it occurs to Alonzo to telephone his wife. He come back very solemn and
says: 'I told her I wouldn't be home to dinner because I was hungry and
there probably wouldn't be enough meat, what with a vegetarian poet in
the house. I told her I should sink to the level of a brute in the night
life of our gay little city. I said I was a wayward child of Nature
myself if you come right down to it.'

"'Good for you,' I says, having got word that Eddie is outside with his
hack. 'And now for the open road!' 'Fine!' says Alonzo. 'My spirit is
certainly feeling very untamed, like some poet's!' So I hustled 'em out
and into the four wheeler. Then I give Eddie Pierce private
instructions. 'Get 'em out into the hills about four miles,' I says,
'out past the Catholic burying ground, then make an excuse that your
hack has broke down, and as soon as they set foot to the ground have
them skates of yours run away. Pay no attention whatever to their
pleadings or their profane threats, only yelling to 'em that you'll be
back as soon as possible. But don't go back. They'll wait an hour or so,
then walk. And they need to walk.'

"'You said something there,' says Eddie, glancing back at 'em. Ben
Sutton was trying to cheer Alonzo up by reminding him of the Christmas
night they went to sleep in the steam room of the Turkish bath at Nome,
and the man forgot 'em and shut off the steam and they froze to the
benches and had to be chiselled off. And Eddie trotted off with his
load. You'd ought to seen the way the hack sagged down on Ben's side.
And I felt that I had done a good work, so I hurried home to get a bite
to eat and dress and make the party, which I still felt would be a good
party even if the husband of our hostess was among the killed or
missing.

"I reached the clubhouse at eight o'clock of that beautiful June
evening, to find the party already well assembled on the piazza and the
front steps or strolling about the lawn, about eight or ten of our
prominent society matrons and near as many husbands. And mebbe those
dames hadn't lingered before their mirrors for final touches! Mrs.
Martingale had on all her rings and the jade bracelet and the art-craft
necklace with amethysts, and Mrs. Judge Ballard had done her hair a new
way, and Beryl Mae Macomber, there with her aunt, not only had a new
scarf with silver stars over her frail young shoulders and a band of
cherry coloured velvet across her forehead, but she was wearing the
first ankle watch ever seen in Red Gap. I couldn't begin to tell you the
fussy improvements them ladies had made in themselves--and all, mind
you, for the passing child of Nature who had never paid a bill for 'em
in his life.

"Oh, it was a gay, careless throng with the mad light of pleasure in its
eyes, and all of 'em milling round Wilfred Lennox, who was eating it up.
Some bantered him roguishly and some spoke in chest tones of what was
the real inner meaning of life after all. Henrietta Templeton Price
hovered near with the glad light of capture in her eyes. Silent but
proud Henrietta was, careless but superior, reminding me of the hunter
that has his picture taken over in Africa with one negligent foot on
the head of a two-horned rhinoceros he's just killed.

"But again the husbands was kind of lurking in the background, bunched
up together. They seemed abashed by this strange frenzy of their
womenfolks. How'd they know, the poor dubs, that a poet wasn't something
a business man had ought to be polite and grovelling to? They affected
an easy manner, but it was poor work. Even Judge Ballard, who seems nine
feet tall in his Prince Albert, and usually looks quite dignified and
hostile with his long dark face and his moustache and goatee--even the
good old judge was rattled after a brief and unhappy effort to hold a
bit of converse with the guest of honour. Him and Jeff Tuttle went to
the grillroom twice in ten minutes. The judge always takes his with a
dash of pepper sauce in it, but now it only seemed to make him more
gloomy.

"Well, I was listening along, feeling elated that I'd put Alonzo and Ben
Sutton out of the way and wondering when the show would begin--Beryl Mae
in her high, innocent voice had just said to the poet: 'But seriously
now, are you sincere?' and I was getting some plenty of that, when up
the road in the dusk I seen Bush Jones driving a dray-load of furniture.
I wondered where in time any family could be moving out that way. I
didn't know any houses beyond the club and I was pondering about this,
idly as you might say, when Bush Jones pulls his team up right in front
of the clubhouse, and there on the load is the two I had tried to lose.
In a big armchair beside a varnished centre table sits Ben Sutton
reading something that I recognized as the yellow card with Wilfred's
verses on it. And across the dray from him on a red-plush sofa is Alonzo
Price singing 'My Wild Irish Rose' in a very noisy tenor.

"Well, sir, I could have basted that fool Bush Jones with one of his own
dray stakes. That man's got an intellect just powerful enough to take
furniture from one house to another if the new address ain't too hard
for him to commit to memory. That's Bush Jones all right! He has the
machinery for thinking, but it all glitters as new as the day it was put
in. So he'd come a mile out of his way with these two riots--and people
off somewhere wondering where that last load of things was!

"The ladies all affected to ignore this disgraceful spectacle, with
Henrietta sinking her nails into her bloodless palms, but the men broke
out and cheered a little in a half-scared manner and some of 'em went
down to help the newcomers climb out. Then Ben had words with Bush Jones
because he wanted him to wait there and take 'em back to town when the
party was over and Bush refused to wait. After suffering about twenty
seconds in the throes of mental effort I reckon he discovered that he
had business to attend to or was hungry or something. Anyway, Ben paid
him some money finally and he drove off after calling out 'Good-night,
all!' just as if nothing had happened.

"Alonzo and Ben Sutton joined the party without further formality. They
didn't look so bad, either, so I saw my crooked work had done some good.
Lon quit singing almost at once and walked good and his eyes didn't
wabble, and he looked kind of desperate and respectable, and Ben was
first-class, except he was slightly oratorical and his collar had melted
the way fat men's do. And it was funny to see how every husband there
bucked up when Ben came forward, as if all they had wanted was some one
to make medicine for 'em before they begun the war dance. They mooched
right up round Ben when he trampled a way into the flushed group about
Wilfred.

"'At last the well-known stranger!' says Ben cordially, seizing one of
Wilfred's pale, beautiful hands. 'I've been hearing so much of you,
wayward child of the open road that you are, and I've just been reading
your wonderful verses as I sat in my library. The woods and the hills
for your spirit untamed and the fire of youth to warm your
nights--that's the talk.' He paused and waved Wilfred's verses in a fat,
freckled hand. Then he looked at him hard and peculiar and says: 'When
you going to pull some of it for us?'

"Wilfred had looked slightly rattled from the beginning. Now he smiled,
but only with his lips--he made it seem like a mere Swedish exercise or
something, and the next second his face looked as if it had been sewed
up for the winter.

"'Little starry-eyed gypsy, I say, when are you going to pull some of
that open-road stuff?' says Ben again, all cordial and sinister.

"Wilfred gulped and tried to be jaunty. 'Oh, as to that, I'm here to-day
and there to-morrow,' he murmurs, and nervously fixes his necktie.

"'Oh, my, and isn't that nice!' says Ben heartily--'the urge of the wild
to her wayward child'--I know you're a slave to it. And now you're going
to tell us all about the open road, and then you and I are going to have
an intimate chat and I'll tell you about it--about some of the dearest
little open roads you ever saw, right round in these parts. I've just
counted nine, all leading out of town to the cunningest mountains and
glens that would make you write poetry hours at a time, with Nature's
glad fruits and nuts and a mug of spring water and some bottled beer and
a ham and some rump steak--'

"The stillness of that group had become darned painful, I want to tell
you. There was a horrid fear that Ben Sutton might go too far, even for
a country club. Every woman was shuddering and smiling in a painful
manner, and the men regarding Ben with glistening eyes. And Ben felt it
himself all at once. So he says: 'But I fear I am detaining you,' and
let go of the end of Wilfred's tie that he had been toying with in a
somewhat firm manner. 'Let us be on with your part of the evening's
entertainment,' he says, 'but don't forget, gypsy wilding that you are,
that you and I must have a chat about open roads the moment you have
finished. I know we are cramping you. By that time you will be feeling
the old, restless urge and you might take a road that wasn't open if I
didn't direct you.'

"He patted Wilfred loudly on the back a couple of times and Wilfred
ducked the third pat and got out of the group, and the ladies all began
to flurry their voices about the lovely June evening but wouldn't it be
pleasanter inside, and Henrietta tragically called from the doorway to
come at once, for God's sake, so they all went at once, with the men
only half trailing, and inside we could hear 'em fixing chairs round and
putting out a table for the poet to stand by, and so forth.

"Alonzo, however, had not trailed. He was over on the steps holding
Beryl Mae Macomber by her new scarf and telling her how flowerlike her
beauty was. And old Judge Ballard was holding about half the men,
including Ben Sutton, while he made a speech. I hung back to listen.
'Sir,' he was saying to Ben, 'Secretary Seward some years since
purchased your territory from Russia for seven million dollars despite
the protests of a clamorous and purblind opposition. How niggardly seems
that purchase price at this moment! For Alaska has perfected you, sir,
if it did not produce you. Gentlemen, I feel that we dealt unfairly by
Russia. But that is in the dead past. It is not too late, however, to
tiptoe to the grillroom and offer a toast to our young sister of the
snows.'

"There was subdued cheers and they tiptoed. Ben Sutton was telling the
judge that he felt highly complimented, but it was a mistake to ring in
that snow stuff on Alaska. She'd suffered from it too long. He was going
on to paint Alaska as something like Alabama--cooler nights, of course,
but bracing. Alonzo still had Beryl Mae by the scarf, telling her how
flowerlike her beauty was.

"I went into the big room, picking a chair over by the door so I could
keep tabs on that grillroom. Only three or four of the meekest husbands
had come with us. And Wilfred started. I'll do him the justice to say he
was game. The ladies thought anything bordering on roughness was all
over, but Wilfred didn't. When he'd try to get a far-away look in his
eyes while he was reciting his poetry he couldn't get it any farther
away than the grillroom door. He was nervous but determined, for there
had been notice given of a silver offering for him. He recited the
verses on the card and the ladies all thrilled up at once, including
Beryl Mae, who'd come in without her scarf. They just clenched their
hands and hung on Wilfred's wild, free words.

"And after the poetry he kind of lectured about how man had ought to
break away from the vile cities and seek the solace of great Mother
Nature, where his bruised spirit could be healed and the veneer of
civilization cast aside and the soul come into its own, and things like
that. And he went on to say that out in the open the perspective of life
is broadened and one is a laughing philosopher as long as the blue sky
is overhead and the green grass underfoot. 'To lie,' says he, 'with
relaxed muscles on the carpet of pine needles and look up through the
gently swaying branches of majestic trees at the fleecy white clouds,
dreaming away the hours far from the sordid activities of the market
place, is one of the best nerve tonics in all the world.' It was an
unfortunate phrase for Wilfred, because some of the husbands had tiptoed
out of the grillroom to listen, and there was a hearty cheer at this,
led by Jeff Tuttle. 'Sure! Some nerve tonic!' they called out, and
laughed coarsely. Then they rushed back to the grillroom without
tiptoeing.

"The disgraceful interruption was tactfully covered by Wilfred and his
audience. He took a sip from the glass of water and went on to talk
about the world's debt to poetry. Then I sneaked out to the grillroom
myself. By this time the Chinaman had got tangled up with the orders and
was putting out drinks every which way. And they was being taken
willingly. Judge Ballard and Ben Sutton was now planting cotton in
Alaska and getting good crops every year, and Ben was also promising to
send the judge a lovely spotted fawnskin vest that an Indian had made
for him, but made too small--not having more than six or eight fawns, I
judged. And Alonzo had got a second start. Still he wasn't so bad yet,
with Beryl Mae's scarf over his arm, and talking of the unparalleled
beauties of Price's Addition to Red Gap, which he said he wouldn't trade
even for the whole of Alaska if it was offered to him to-morrow--not
that Ben Sutton wasn't the whitest soul God ever made and he'd like to
hear some one say different--and so on.

"I mixed in with 'em and took a friendly drink myself, with the aim of
smoothing things down, but I saw it would be delicate work. About all I
could do was keep 'em reminded there was ladies present and it wasn't a
barroom where anything could be rightly started. Doc Martingale's
feelings was running high, too, account, I suppose, of certain
full-hearted things his wife had blurted out to him about the hypnotic
eyes of this here Nature lover. He was quiet enough, but vicious, acting
like he'd love to do some dental work on the poet that might or might
not be painless for all he cared a hoot. He was taking his own drinks
all alone, like clockwork--moody but systematic.

"Then we hear chairs pushed round in the other room and the chink of
silver to be offered to the poet, and Henrietta come out to give word
for the refreshments to be served. She found Alonzo in the hallway
telling Beryl Mae how flowerlike her beauty was and giving her the elk's
tooth charm off his watch chain. Beryl Mae was giggling heartily until
she caught Henrietta's eye--like a cobra's.

"The refreshments was handed round peaceful enough, with the ladies
pressing sardine sandwiches and chocolate cake and cups of coffee on to
Wilfred and asking him interesting questions about his adventurous life
in the open. And the plans was all made for his class in poetry to be
held at Henrietta's house, where the lady subscribers for a few weeks
could come into contact with the higher realities of life, at eight
dollars for the course, and Wilfred was beginning to cheer up again,
though still subject to dismay when one of the husbands would glare in
at him from the hall, and especially when Ben Sutton would look in with
his bulging and expressive eyes and kind of bark at him.

"Then Ben Sutton come and stood in the doorway till he caught Wilfred's
eye and beckoned to him. Wilfred pretended not to notice the first time,
but Ben beckoned a little harder, so Wilfred excused himself to the six
or eight ladies and went out. It seemed to me he first looked quick
round him to make sure there wasn't any other way out. I was standing in
the hall when Ben led him tenderly into the grillroom with two fingers.

"'Here is our well-known poet and _bon vivant_,' says Ben to Alonzo, who
had followed 'em in. So Alonzo bristles up to Wilfred and glares at him
and says: 'All joking aside, is that one of my new shirts you're wearing
or is it not?'

"Wilfred gasped a couple times and says: 'Why, as to that, you see, the
madam insisted--'

"Alonzo shut him off. 'How dare you drag a lady's name into a barroom
brawl?' says he.

"'Don't shoot in here,' says Ben. 'You'd scare the ladies.'

"Wilfred went pasty, indeed, thinking his host was going to gun him.

"'Oh, very well, I won't then,' says Alonzo. 'I guess I can be a
gentleman when necessary. But all joking aside, I want to ask him this:
Does he consider poetry to be an accomplishment or a vice?'

"'I was going to put something like that to him myself, only I couldn't
think of it,' says Doc Martingale, edging up and looking quite
restrained and nervous in the arms. I was afraid of the doc. I was
afraid he was going to blemish Wilfred a couple of times right there.

"'An accomplishment or a vice? Answer yes or no!' orders the judge in a
hard voice.

"The poet looks round at 'em and attempts to laugh merrily, but he only
does it from the teeth out.

"'Laugh on, my proud beauty!' says Ben Button. Then he turns to the
bunch. 'What we really ought to do,' he says, 'we ought to make a
believer of him right here and now.'

"Even then, mind you, the husbands would have lost their nerve if Ben
hadn't took the lead. Ben didn't have to live with their wives so what
cared he? Wilfred Lennox sort of shuffled his feet and smiled a smile of
pure anxiety. He knew some way that this was nothing to cheer about.

"'I got it,' says Jeff Tuttle with the air of a thinker. 'We're cramping
the poor cuss here. What he wants is the open road.'

"'What he really wants,' says Alonzo, 'is about six bottles of my pure,
sparkling beer, but maybe he'll take the open road if we show him a good
one.'

"'He wants the open road--show him a good one!' yells the other husbands
in chorus. It was kind of like a song.

"'I had meant to be on my way,' says Wilfred very cold and lofty.

"'You're here to-day and there to-morrow,' says Ben; 'but how can you be
there to-morrow if you don't start from here now?--for the way is long
and lonely.'

"'I was about to start,' says Wilfred, getting in a couple of steps
toward the door.

"''Tis better so,' says Ben. 'This is no place for a county recorder's
son, and there's a bully road out here open at both ends.'

"They made way for the poet, and a sickening silence reigned. Even the
women gathered about the door of the other room was silent. They knew
the thing had got out of their hands. The men closed in after Wilfred as
he reached the steps. He there took his soft hat out from under his coat
where he'd cached it. He went cautiously down the steps. Beryl Mae broke
the silence.

"'Oh, Mr. Price,' says she, catching Alonzo by the sleeve, 'do you think
he's really sincere?'

"'He is at this moment,' says Alonzo. 'He's behaving as sincerely as
ever I saw a man behave.' And just then at the foot of the steps Wilfred
made a tactical error. He started to run. The husbands and Ben Sutton
gave the long yell and went in pursuit. Wilfred would have left them all
if he hadn't run into the tennis net. He come down like a sack of meal.

"'There!' says Ben Sutton. 'Now he's done it--broke his neck or
something. That's the way with some men--they'll try anything to get a
laugh.'

"They went and picked the poet up. He was all right, only dazed.

"'But that's one of the roads that ain't open,' says Ben. 'And besides,
you was going right toward the nasty old railroad that runs into the
cramped haunts of men. You must have got turned round. Here'--he pointed
out over the golf links--'it's off that way that Mother Nature awaits
her wayward child. Miles and miles of her--all open. Doesn't your gypsy
soul hear the call? This way for the hills and glens, thou star-eyed
woodling!' and he gently led Wilfred off over the links, the rest of the
men trailing after and making some word racket, believe me. They was all
good conversationalists at the moment. Doc Martingale was wanting the
poet to run into the tennis net again, just for fun, and Jeff Tuttle
says make him climb a tree like the monkeys do in their native glades,
but Ben says just keep him away from the railroad, that's all. Good
Mother Nature will attend to the rest.

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