Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  Penrod affected some enthusiasm. “Sam, we’ll keep it out here in the stable.”

  “Yes, and we’ll go huntin’ with it. We’ll do lots of things with it!” But Sam made no effort to take it, and neither boy seemed to feel yesterday’s necessity to show the other how he did. “Wait till next Fourth o’ July!” Sam continued. “Oh, oh! Look out!”

  This incited a genuine spark from Penrod.

  “Fourth o’ July! I guess she’ll be a little better than any firecrackers! Just a little ‘Bing!’ Bing! Bing!’ she’ll be goin’. ‘Bing! Bing! Bing!’”

  The suggestion of noise stirred his comrade. “I’ll bet she’ll go off louder’n that time the gas-works blew up! I wouldn’t be afraid to shoot her off ANY time.”

  “I bet you would,” said Penrod. “You aren’t used to revolavers the way I—”

  “You aren’t, either!” Sam exclaimed promptly, “I wouldn’t be any more afraid to shoot her off than you would.”

  “You would, too!”

  “I would not!”

  “Well, let’s see you then; you talk so much!” And Penrod handed the weapon scornfully to Sam, who at once became less self-assertive.

  “I’d shoot her off in a minute,” Sam said, “only it might break sumpthing if it hit it.”

  “Hold her up in the air, then. It can’t hurt the roof, can it?”

  Sam, with a desperate expression, lifted the revolver at arm’s length. Both boys turned away their heads, and Penrod put his fingers in his ears — but nothing happened. “What’s the matter?” he demanded. “Why don’t you go on if you’re goin’ to?”

  Sam lowered his arm. “I guess I didn’t have her cocked,” he said apologetically, whereupon Penrod loudly jeered.

  “Tryin’ to shoot a revolaver and didn’t know enough to cock her! If I didn’t know any more about revolavers than that, I’d—”

  “There!” Sam exclaimed, managing to draw back the hammer until two chilling clicks warranted his opinion that the pistol was now ready to perform its office. “I guess she’ll do all right to suit you THIS time!”

  “Well, whyn’t you go ahead, then; you know so much!” And as Sam raised his arm, Penrod again turned away his head and placed his forefingers in his ears.

  A pause followed.

  “Why’n’t you go ahead?”

  Penrod, after waiting in keen suspense, turned to behold his friend standing with his right arm above his head, his left hand over his left ear, and both eyes closed.

  “I can’t pull the trigger,” said Sam indistinctly, his face convulsed as in sympathy with the great muscular efforts of other parts of his body. “She won’t pull!”

  “She won’t?” Penrod remarked with scorn. “I’ll bet I could pull her.”

  Sam promptly opened his eyes and handed the weapon to Penrod.

  “All right,” he said, with surprising and unusual mildness. “You try her, then.”

  Inwardly discomfited to a disagreeable extent, Penrod attempted to talk his own misgivings out of countenance.

  “Poor ‘ittle baby!” he said, swinging the pistol at his side with a fair pretense of careless ease. “Ain’t even strong enough to pull a trigger! Poor ‘ittle baby! Well, if you can’t even do that much, you better watch me while I—”

  “Well,” said Sam reasonably, “why don’t you go on and do it then?”

  “Well, I AM goin’ to, ain’t I?”

  “Well, then, why don’t you?”

  “Oh, I’ll do it fast enough to suit YOU, I guess,” Penrod retorted, swinging the big revolver up a little higher than his shoulder and pointing it in the direction of the double doors, which opened upon the alley. “You better run, Sam,” he jeered. “You’ll be pretty scared when I shoot her off, I guess.”

  “Well, why don’t you SEE if I will? I bet you’re afraid yourself.”

  “Oh, I am, am I?” said Penrod, in a reckless voice — and his finger touched the trigger. It seemed to him that his finger no more than touched it; perhaps he had been reassured by Sam’s assertion that the trigger was difficult. His intentions must remain in doubt, and probably Penrod himself was not certain of them; but one thing comes to the surface as entirely definite — that trigger was not so hard to pull as Sam said it was.

  BANG! WH-A-A-ACK! A shattering report split the air of the stable, and there was an orifice of remarkable diameter in the alley door. With these phenomena, three yells, expressing excitement of different kinds, were almost simultaneous — two from within the stable and the third from a point in the alley about eleven inches lower than the orifice just constructed in the planking of the door. This third point, roughly speaking, was the open mouth of a gayly dressed young coloured man whose attention, as he strolled, had been thus violently distracted from some mental computations he was making in numbers, including, particularly, those symbols at ecstasy or woe, as the case might be, seven and eleven. His eye at once perceived the orifice on a line enervatingly little above the top of his head; and, although he had not supposed himself so well known in this neighbourhood, he was aware that he did, here and there, possess acquaintances of whom some such uncomplimentary action might be expected as natural and characteristic. His immediate procedure was to prostrate himself flat upon the ground, against the stable doors.

  In so doing, his shoulders came brusquely in contact with one of them, which happened to be unfastened, and it swung open, revealing to his gaze two stark-white white boys, one of them holding an enormous pistol and both staring at him in stupor of ultimate horror. For, to the glassy eyes of Penrod and Sam, the stratagem of the young coloured man, thus dropping to earth, disclosed, with awful certainty, a slaughtered body.

  This dreadful thing raised itself upon its elbows and looked at them, and there followed a motionless moment — a tableau of brief duration, for both boys turned and would have fled, shrieking, but the body spoke:

  “‘At’s a nice business!” it said reproachfully. “Nice business! Tryin’ blow a man’s head off!”

  Penrod was unable to speak, but Sam managed to summon the tremulous semblance of a voice. “Where — where did it hit you?” he gasped.

  “Nemmine anything ‘bout where it HIT me,” the young coloured man returned, dusting his breast and knees as he rose. “I want to know what kine o’ white boys you think you is — man can’t walk ‘long street ‘thout you blowin’ his head off!” He entered the stable and, with an indignation surely justified, took the pistol from the limp, cold hand of Penrod. “Whose gun you playin’ with? Where you git ‘at gun?”

  “It’s ours,” quavered Sam. “It belongs to us.”

  “Then you’ pa ought to be ‘rested,” said the young coloured man. “Lettin’ boys play with gun!” He examined the revolver with an interest in which there began to appear symptoms of a pleasurable appreciation. “My goo’ness! Gun like’iss blow a team o’ steers thew a brick house! LOOK at ‘at gun!” With his right hand he twirled it in a manner most dexterous and surprising; then suddenly he became severe. “You white boy, listen me!” he said. “Ef I went an did what I OUGHT to did, I’d march straight out ‘iss stable, git a policeman, an’ tell him ‘rest you an’ take you off to jail. ‘At’s what you need — blowin’ man’s head off! Listen me: I’m goin’ take ‘iss gun an’ th’ow her away where you can’t do no mo’ harm with her. I’m goin’ take her way off in the woods an’ th’ow her away where can’t nobody fine her an’ go blowin’ man’s head off with her. ‘At’s what I’m goin’ do!” And placing the revolver inside his coat as inconspicuously as possible, he proceeded to the open door and into the alley, where he turned for a final word. “I let you off ‘iss one time,” he said, “but listen me — you listen, white boy: you bet’ not tell you’ pa. I ain’ goin’ tell him, an’ YOU ain’ goin’ tell him. He want know where gun gone, you tell him you los’ her.”

  He disappeared rapidly.

  Sam Williams, swallowing continuously, presently walked to the alley door, and remarked in a weak voi
ce, “I’m sick at my stummick.” He paused, then added more decidedly: “I’m goin’ home. I guess I’ve stood about enough around here for one day!” And bestowing a last glance upon his friend, who was now sitting dumbly upon the floor in the exact spot where he had stood to fire the dreadful shot, Sam moved slowly away.

  The early shades of autumn evening were falling when Penrod emerged from the stable; and a better light might have disclosed to a shrewd eye some indications that here was a boy who had been extremely, if temporarily, ill. He went to the cistern, and, after a cautious glance round the reassuring horizon, lifted the iron cover. Then he took from the inner pocket of his jacket an object which he dropped listlessly into the water: it was a bit of wood, whittled to the likeness of a pistol. And though his lips moved not, nor any sound issued from his vocal organs, yet were words formed. They were so deep in the person of Penrod they came almost from the slowly convalescing profundities of his stomach. These words concerned firearms, and they were:

  “Wish I’d never seen one! Never want to see one again!”

  Of course Penrod had no way of knowing that, as regards bingism in general, several of the most distinguished old gentlemen in Europe were at that very moment in exactly the same state of mind.

  CHAPTER V. THE IN-OR-IN

  GEORGIE BASSETT WAS a boy set apart. Not only that; Georgie knew that he was a boy set apart. He would think about it for ten or twenty minutes at a time, and he could not look at himself in a mirror and remain wholly without emotion. What that emotion was, he would have been unable to put into words; but it helped him to understand that there was a certain noble something about him that other boys did not possess.

  Georgie’s mother had been the first to discover that Georgie was a boy set apart. In fact, Georgie did not know it until one day when he happened to overhear his mother telling two of his aunts about it. True, he had always understood that he was the best boy in town and he intended to be a minister when he grew up; but he had never before comprehended the full extent of his sanctity, and, from that fraught moment onward, he had an almost theatrical sense of his set-apartness.

  Penrod Schofield and Sam Williams and the other boys of the neighbourhood all were conscious that there was something different and spiritual about Georgie, and, though this consciousness of theirs may have been a little obscure, it was none the less actual. That is to say, they knew that Georgie Bassett was a boy set apart; but they did not know that they knew it. Georgie’s air and manner at all times demonstrated to them that the thing was so, and, moreover, their mothers absorbed appreciation of Georgie’s wonderfulness from the very fount of it, for Mrs. Bassett’s conversation was of little else. Thus, the radiance of his character became the topic of envious parental comment during moments of strained patience in many homes, so that altogether the most remarkable fact to be stated of Georgie Bassett is that he escaped the consequences as long as he did.

  Strange as it may seem, no actual violence was done him, except upon the incidental occasion of a tar-fight into which he was drawn by an obvious eccentricity on the part of destiny. Naturally, he was not popular with his comrades; in all games he was pushed aside, and disregarded, being invariably the tail-ender in every pastime in which leaders “chose sides”; his counsels were slighted as worse than weightless, and all his opinions instantly hooted. Still, considering the circumstances fairly and thoughtfully, it is difficult to deny that his boy companions showed creditable moderation in their treatment of him. That is, they were moderate up to a certain date, and even then they did not directly attack him — there was nothing cold — blooded about it at all. The thing was forced upon them, and, though they all felt pleased and uplifted — while it was happening — they did not understand precisely why. Nothing could more clearly prove their innocence of heart than this very ignorance, and yet none of the grown people who later felt themselves concerned in the matter was able to look at it in that light. Now, here was a characteristic working of those reactions that produce what is sometimes called “the injustice of life”, because the grown people were responsible for the whole affair and were really the guilty parties. It was from grown people that Georgie Bassett learned he was a boy set apart, and the effect upon him was what alienated his friends. Then these alienated friends were brought (by odious comparisons on the part of grown people) to a condition of mind wherein they suffered dumb annoyance, like a low fever, whenever they heard Georgie’s name mentioned, while association with his actual person became every day more and more irritating. And yet, having laid this fuse and having kept it constantly glowing, the grown people expected nothing to happen to Georgie.

  The catastrophe befell as a consequence of Sam Williams deciding to have a shack in his backyard. Sam had somehow obtained a vasty piano-box and a quantity of lumber, and, summoning Penrod Schofield and the coloured brethren, Herman and Verman, he expounded to them his building-plans and offered them shares and benefits in the institution he proposed to found. Acceptance was enthusiastic; straightway the assembly became a union of carpenters all of one mind, and ten days saw the shack not completed but comprehensible. Anybody could tell, by that time, that it was intended for a shack.

  There was a door on leather hinges; it drooped, perhaps, but it was a door. There was a window — not a glass one, but, at least, it could be “looked out of”, as Sam said. There was a chimney made of stovepipe, though that was merely decorative, because the cooking was done out of doors in an underground “furnace” that the boys excavated. There were pictures pasted on the interior walls, and, hanging from a nail, there was a crayon portrait of Sam’s grandfather, which he had brought down from the attic quietly, though, as he said, it “wasn’t any use on earth up there.” There were two lame chairs from Penrod’s attic and along one wall ran a low and feeble structure intended to serve as a bench or divan. This would come in handy, Sam said, if any of the party “had to lay down or anything”, and at a pinch (such as a meeting of the association) it would serve to seat all the members in a row.

  For, coincidentally with the development of the shack, the builders became something more than partners. Later, no one could remember who first suggested the founding of a secret order, or society, as a measure of exclusiveness and to keep the shack sacred to members only; but it was an idea that presently began to be more absorbing and satisfactory than even the shack itself. The outward manifestations of it might have been observed in the increased solemnity and preoccupation of the Caucasian members and in a few ceremonial observances exposed to the public eye. As an instance of these latter, Mrs. Williams, happening to glance from a rearward window, about four o’clock one afternoon, found her attention arrested by what seemed to be a flag-raising before the door of the shack. Sam and Herman and Verman stood in attitudes of rigid attention, shoulder to shoulder, while Penrod Schofield, facing them, was apparently delivering some sort of exhortation, which he read from a scribbled sheet of foolscap. Concluding this, he lifted from the ground a long and somewhat warped clothes-prop, from one end of which hung a whitish flag, or pennon, bearing an inscription. Sam and Herman and Verman lifted their right hands, while Penrod placed the other end of the clothes-prop in a hole in the ground, with the pennon fluttering high above the shack. He then raised his own right hand, and the four boys repeated something in concert. It was inaudible to Mrs. Williams; but she was able to make out the inscription upon the pennon. It consisted of the peculiar phrase “In-Or-In” done in black paint upon a muslin ground, and consequently seeming to be in need of a blotter.

  It recurred to her mind, later that evening, when she happened to find herself alone with Sam in the library, and, in merest idle curiosity, she asked: “Sam, what does ‘In-Or-In’ mean?”

  Sam, bending over an arithmetic, uncreased his brow till it became of a blank and marble smoothness.

  “Ma’am?”

  “What are those words on your flag?”

  Sam gave her a long, cold, mystic look, rose to his feet and left the r
oom with emphasis and dignity. For a moment she was puzzled. But Sam’s older brother was this year completing his education at a university, and Mrs. Williams was not altogether ignorant of the obligations of secrecy imposed upon some brotherhoods; so she was able to comprehend Sam’s silent withdrawal, and, instead of summoning him back for further questions, she waited until he was out of hearing and then began to laugh.

  Sam’s action was in obedience to one of the rules adopted, at his own suggestion, as a law of the order. Penrod advocated it warmly. From Margaret he had heard accounts of her friends in college and thus had learned much that ought to be done. On the other hand, Herman subscribed to it with reluctance, expressing a decided opinion that if he and Verman were questioned upon the matter at home and adopted the line of conduct required by the new rule, it would be well for them to depart not only from the room in which the questioning took place but from the house, and hurriedly at that. “An’ STAY away!” he concluded.

  Verman, being tongue-tied — not without advantage in this case, and surely an ideal qualification for membership — was not so apprehensive. He voted with Sam and Penrod, carrying the day.

  New rules were adopted at every meeting (though it cannot be said that all of them were practicable) for, in addition to the information possessed by Sam and Penrod, Herman and Verman had many ideas of their own, founded upon remarks overheard at home. Both their parents belonged to secret orders, their father to the Innapenent ‘Nevolent Lodge (so stated by Herman) and their mother to the Order of White Doves.

  From these and other sources, Penrod found no difficulty in compiling material for what came to be known as the “rixual”; and it was the rixual he was reading to the members when Mrs. Williams happened to observe the ceremonial raising of the emblem of the order.