The bell rang and he went back to his machine.
Now, for the first time in nearly a year, he felt strength and vitality in himself, a passionate purpose, a purity of angry emotion. Elsie spoke to him from her high perch, but he ignored her. He must get away. There was a light again in the world, a vivid stark light, without beauty or gentleness.
CHAPTER 30
Frank slipped away early the next morning. He was always up before his parents, for Maybelle no longer rose to prepare breakfast. Frank prepared his own, of shredded wheat and hot milk and tea, and Francis did the same. So he had no difficulty in dressing in his one good suit, tying his tie carefully, brushing his thick mop of chestnut hair, and shaving the few hair sprouts that occasionally made their appearance on his face. He polished his one good pair of shoes, gave himself a last brushing, assumed an expression of aggressive confidence, and caught a Niagara Street car for the Curtiss plant on Austin Street. He carried his work clothes inconspicuously in a paper bundle under his arm.
The streetcar rumbled, jerked, complained on its way. It was crowded with workmen in overalls and carrying dinner-pails. Their faces were drained and sweaty in the summer heat. Their feet were sprawled before them, listlessly. Frank averted his head. He felt the stimulating but deadly hatred for them in his heart. They were the threat! They were what he could be reduced to, because they had no money, no hope, no purpose! He looked at the passing streets, and saw their dinginess and grime. Clouds of chaff blew over cobbled walks. Garbage had been set out, and its stench drifted on the hot wind into the streetcar. Dirty children already played on filthy sidewalks. This was poverty. Why had he not seen it before? Why had he not hated it, as he hated these people who reflected the corrupted horror of its bitter blight? Poverty was a blight, and they were blighted by it.
They deserve it, he thought, grimly setting his young jaw. This is all they deserve! It is their ugliness and barrenness which creates their slums. They are at once the cause and the result of their ghastly existence. They have no intelligence. They have no desire to be other than what they are! Oh, my God, if only I could get away from them! But I will! I will, I will!
The personnel manager of the Curtiss Aeroplane Company had not arrived when Frank reached the plant. But workmen were already waiting for him on the benches in the office. In his mind, Frank was feverishly going over his qualifications. He knew how to type. He did not know “touch” typewriting, but he could type very fast. I’ve had three years of high school, he thought. They couldn’t check up on it, so it doesn’t matter about the lie. And, I’m eighteen. I look it, anyway. Besides, I’ll be eighteen in November, so it’s all right. And I’ll go to night school this fall! I’ll learn typing, touch typing, and shorthand. I’ll learn bookkeeping. That is the first step. I won’t stop there! I’ll amount to something! I’ll make money.
He looked about him. Where he had once put forth the antennae of his mind probing delicately into every face, where once he had felt compassion and tenderness, where once he had seen beauty and the wonder of life in every living thing, he now saw ugliness. He hated the workmen. He felt the powerful throbbing of determination and ambition in himself. Why, there was nothing he could not do! He had hands, but he had a brain, too, which distinguished him from these dull and brutish cattle about him. He turned his gaze back to them, and felt the force of his hatred like an irresistible battering-ram in himself, a swelling of strength.
The personnel manager was a kind and harried young man. He saw Frank before he saw the others. Why, there’s a boy with intelligence and grit! he thought. Good-looking, too, in a queer kind of way. He called Frank to his desk and took down the falsified information on a small card. He heard Frank’s quiet, controlled voice, which spoke so smoothly. “Three years high school. Typing. Majored in English. Good at figures. Clair, I think we can use you in the office. Twenty-two dollars a week to start. That all right? A boy with your background and ambition can go far. You say you’ve worked in the office of the Bison Wheat Elevators? No, we don’t need references, I guess. Got to dispense with them these days.”
Frank drew in a deep tight breath of relief. Twenty-two dollars a week. That was incredible. They’ll not take all that away from me, he thought grimly of his parents. If they try it, I’ll move. I’ll give them ten dollars a week, that’s all. Take it or leave it.
He carried a yellow card through the clattering and roaring factory. Someone was testing an airplane somewhere, and the shattering thunder of it assaulted his ears. He reached a small wooden office hastily thrown up in the very center of the factory. He presented his card to a Mr. Wilson, who looked pleased. He was seriously undermanned, and this looked like a boy who knew his business. He pointed to a typewriter.
“Look at all those bills of lading and requests for factory parts! Get down to work at once, kid. Clear up all you can.”
There were young stenographers here, and girls working noisily on billing machines. Frank looked about him and smiled. The girls were clean, pretty and well-dressed, and they eyed him furtively. The men wore well-pressed suits and white shirts and ties. This was something like! he thought, in the phraseology of his parents. He had taken his first step away from ugliness, from the hideousness of work clothes, from the sodden and hopeless faces of the poor. Besides, his work began at nine, ended at five.
He made up for his lack of skill on the typewriter by sheer, persistent industry. By the time it was five o’clock he had almost reached the bottom of the pile. Mr. Wilson was delighted.
Frank reached home at half-past five, a full hour before his usual time of arrival. Maybelle was so dismayed that she did not at first notice his good clothing. “Have they sacked you?” she cried, in angry fear.
He sat down in the kitchen and coolly told her of his new job. At first she was incredulous and enraged, then awed. She sank into a kitchen chair, moistened her lips, blinked her eyes. “Twenty-two dollars a week,” she murmured. “But it won’t last.” She was pale.
Francis returned home, and his first exclamation, after being told, was: “It’s a damned lie! I don’t believe it!”
He was less impressed than Maybelle. “I knew he couldn’t stick at anything,” he said furiously. “He’s worked in that shop for only two years. But he’d never learn to keep his head down! That was all the trouble, never learning to keep his head down.”
Frank stared at him fully, contemptuously. How clearly he saw his parents now, and despised them! “Why should I keep my head down? Why? I intend to lift my head up. I intend to keep it up.”
“Talk. You were always a babbler. Babbling Bill! Big talk and little action. Well, you won’t last there. You’ll never last anywhere. You’re a failure.”
Frank clenched his fists. Now he was inspired by a really murderous hatred and rage against his father. All at once he seemed to expand, to grow larger, to overflow the narrow boundaries of the apprehension of his childhood. He said: “All my life you’ve told me I was a failure. Keep on. I don’t hear it or believe it.”
Francis glared at him. He was accustomed to Frank’s eye falling away from his. But now it did not. He felt his own smallness, suddenly, before this tall young boy. He gritted his teeth and blustered: “I’ll give you a clout for your impudence! Liar, that’s what you are. You were always a liar; couldn’t rely on a word you said! Babbling Bill!” But he was little, he was small, and Frank was suddenly a man. Here was a stranger, no longer a child, but a man, and he had no power over him. “I’ll clout you!” he repeated again savagely. “You weren’t belted enough!”
Frank smiled, and that smile infuriated his father.
“Twenty-two dollars a week,” murmured Maybelle uneasily. “That’s a fortune, for a lad his age. Think of the money we can put in the bank.”
Francis gnawed the corner of his mustache, and his eyes blinked reflectively. He muttered: “Eighteen dollars a week in the bank, at least. Extra. Two dollars a week for his clothes. Now he’s in an office, damn it, he’ll need some m
ore clothes. A dollar for his carfare. That’s twenty-one dollars. A dollar for him—”
“No,” said Frank, quietly. “Not a dollar for me. Twelve dollars for me. Ten for you, for my board, my lunches.”
“What are you talking about, you ruddy beggar!” screamed Francis, grasping the arms of his chair. “I’ll knock you down—I’ll—I’ll—!”
“You’ll do nothing,” said Frank quietly. “I’ve made up my mind. So, I’m Babbling Bill, am I? This time I’m doing more than babble. You’ll take ten dollars, or you’ll get nothing. And don’t think you can tell me I’m under age. I’ll be eighteen in November, and my own master. I’ll go away. You’ll get nothing at all, and I mean it.”
They sat there in their chairs, and they looked at each other, and it was Francis’ eye that fell away.
“You’ve exploited me too long,” said Frank softly. “I’m doing you a favor by staying here, by giving you anything. You gave me fifty cents a week of my hard-earned money. You didn’t need it. You’ve got over ten thousand dollars in the bank. Now I’m on my own. And I’m going to stay on my own. You can talk about my being under age, and you being entitled to my money. You can threaten me with the police, as you did before. And I’ll tell the police that you forced me to lie, to say I was sixteen, when I was only fifteen. I’ll tell them how you sent a fifteen-year-old boy into a factory. I can talk, too.”
“But ten dollars a week isn’t enough,” whimpered Maybelle, as Francis, choking with rage, could not speak. “Why, we got eight and a half dollars from you when you worked in the factory! This is only one dollar fifty cents more, that you want to pay us. Don’t you think you owe us something for our years of work and effort and sacrifice for you?”
Frank stood up. He looked from his father to his mother. Then he spoke, and his words, though quiet, came in a stream of steady vitriol and hatred from his lips:
“I owe you nothing but pain, ridicule and abuse. That is what you gave me. I owe you a wretched childhood, and meanness, and fear. That is what you gave me. I owe you cruelty and undeserved beatings. I owe you the lack of a decent education. If it had been necessary, I would understand, and forgive, and do what I could. But it was not necessary! You made a laughing-stock of me, because you would not buy me clothing that wasn’t clown clothing. You deprived me of the ordinary equipment for school, so I had to steal paper and pens, and even books. I owe you years of ill-health, because you wouldn’t provide me with medical care. I owe you hatred, for you gave me hatred. You made me a liar; you made me dirty in my own sight. I owe you all this, and in return I offer you ten dollars a week.”
Maybelle could only listen dumbly, making futile gestures with her little fat hands. Then tears came to her eyes. “To think I’d live to hear this from my own child!” she said at last. “Serpent’s tooth. Sharper than a serpent’s tooth. That’s what Shakespeare says about an ungrateful child. I did my best. And only ingratitude in return.” She turned to her husband for support. Francis’ face was hideous with his fury, it was scarlet. He had thrust his tongue out between his lips, and his teeth were clenched on it. He looked mad.
Frank felt a last quiver of apprehension. It passed, never to return again. He said: “Shall I pack up and go?”
“You’ve got to give us eighteen dollars a week!” screamed Maybelle, beating her plump fists together.
“Ten. Shall I pack up and go?”
Francis found his tongue. He staggered to his feet, and brandished his fists. He fell upon his son. Frank deftly caught the flailing arms and pinned them down with one hand. He looked down into his father’s eyes, and it was that look, hating, loathing, contemptuous, which halted Francis, rather than his son’s grip.
“If you ever dare to touch me again,” said Frank softly, “I’ll knock you down. I know the law. I’ve done a little studying of it, myself. Assault and battery. Do you want to go to jail, Pa?”
He flung his father’s arms aside, and brushed his palms together, as if ridding them of dirt. He stood up, lifted his chin. His parents were like small children before him. Francis’ head barely came to his mouth and Maybelle’s dusty crown reached only to his chin.
“Ten dollars. Think it over.”
CHAPTER 31
In september, Frank’s salary was increased to twenty-five dollars a week.
He was able to save seven dollars a week now. He looked at his bankbook and saw freedom. He studied the figures, not as his parents did theirs, with avarice, but with a fierce determination. It was not enough! He needed more money, a great deal more money, not ten thousand dollars, or twenty, or fifty, but an astronomical amount. He needed enough to free himself forever from the deathly touch of poverty, to hide himself forever from the faces of poverty, from its raucous voices and its drab habitations.
He took to haunting the streets of the rich again, not with pleasure in the beauty of the trees and the lawns and the gardens, as once he had done, but with envy and grim purpose. He saw nothing of the beauty. He saw the luxuriance there, the lavishness, the ease, the leisure, the security as of fortress walls. He saw the fine automobiles that rolled from driveways, and he imagined himself at the wheel. Now there was a devouring lust in him for wealth, wealth secured at any price, at any cost. If he thought of Paul Hodge now it was as one thinks of a dream, clothed in radiance and color, but, after all, only a dream. There was a callous growing over the memory of Paul, thick, impervious, scarred, but numb. He had not written to Paul for nearly six months.
One day in warm and golden September, Mr. Wilson tapped him on the shoulder. “Kid, there’s a guy out here to see you, in a sailor suit. Says he knows you, and wants to talk to you. Go ahead; the work’ll wait a few minutes.”
Puzzled, Frank rose and went outside the wooden walls of the little office. His ears were immediately assaulted by the roar of an airplane. A sailor stood there, watching the testing of the motor. He turned and smiled. It was Paul.
Frank halted abruptly. For a moment all his blood rushed to his heart, and made him faint. Paul’s figure became slanted, gray, dim. He felt Paul take his hand. He heard his voice. The factory fled away, and they were standing in spring woods again, listening to the shrill, sweet piping of the hosannas to life.
Then he was looking into Paul’s face, and he could do nothing but look. They smiled at each other and could not speak. They only stood and smiled, and there was a thickness in Frank’s throat. Their hands gripped together, and Paul was saying gently: “You’ve changed, Frank. My God, I’m glad to see you again! Why didn’t you write to me?”
Frank said almost inaudibly: “It was no use. No use.”
He cleared his throat and pointed speechlessly to Paul’s uniform. Paul looked down at it. He colored. He said awkwardly: “It was the only thing to do. Dad gave his permission. After all, I’m almost eighteen.” He paused. “I’m on my way to the Great Lakes Training Station. My train goes at six. I spoke to that man, and he said it would be all right for you to go out with me now, so we can have some time together before I leave.”
The door opened, and Mr. Wilson grinned out. “Go on. It’s O.K., boys. Good luck, sailor.”
Frank was dizzy. He stood there, inert, and again looked at Paul. His friend was as tall as himself, and as thin as ever. His small pale face and delicate features had changed very little. His uniform gave him an elegance, a poise, which recalled the childish dignity of his earlier years.
Frank said: “They say the war will be over soon.”
Paul was not baffled by this apparently irrelevant remark. Instead, he was touched. His hand brushed Frank’s sleeve. “Shall we go out now?”
They went out into the warm blue and gold of the beautiful day. They walked down the vociferous and grimy street together, without speaking. Then Paul said: “Let’s go down to The Front, shall we? We used to haunt the place once.”
Frank was silent. Paul’s greenish eyes studied his face, and his own darkened a little. A streetcar came rattling and swaying down the tracks. They w
ent into the car together. It rumbled on down Niagara Street. They said nothing during the ride. Frank did not look at his friend. His profile was turned to him, and Paul studied it, and his pale mouth tightened in a depressed line.
They reached The Front. The river lay below them, blue-green, hurrying, sparkling. A boat was going down the Canal, blowing its whistles. The Canadian shore was a vivid green across the water. The sky arched over them, a pure and brilliant ultramarine, without a cloud. They sat down on a bench, and felt the warm bright wind on their faces.
Paul had never taken the initiative in speech. He could only wait now. He was heavy with despondency. This was not the Frank he remembered, this remote and restrained stranger with the hard jaw and the averted eyes, and the cold silence. Where was the old warmth, the old eagerness and ebullience, the old laughter and hasty, laughing speech? Where was the assurance he had always felt, the happy strength and hopefulness, the eye that saw so many mysterious and significant things?
Then Frank said: “What about your education?” There was a hard, almost sneering, note in his voice. He did not look at his friend.
Paul turned away. He gazed at the river. He said, in his light, neutral voice. “That can wait. But—but this can’t.”
Frank’s mouth lifted slightly in a faint smile. “What can’t wait?”
Paul looked down at his narrow quiet hands. He moved them a little. He said: “My country.”
Did Frank shrug, ever so imperceptibly? Paul’s lips tightened briefly. He went on: “I can give a year for what America means to me. I can give a year to—”
“Save democracy,” interjected Frank.
Now Paul flushed. He lifted his head. He said, with dignity: “Yes.”
He waited. Frank did not speak. Then Paul said: “Words can be used so often, so lightly, so—so meretriciously, so thoughtlessly, so banally, by politicians, by fools, by mouthers of easy phrases, that they can sound meaningless and absurd. But they don’t lose their essential significance. They can be soiled by dirty and stupid hands, but underneath the grime they are still bright.” He paused. He was not given to long speeches, but his heart was now beating in the strangest way, as if with indignation, or fear, or as if it was trying to communicate something to one who had turned blind and deaf. “But you know that. We often talked about it. Remember?”
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