Peewee/Chapter 11
For the time being, none of the things which Peewee had been indefinitely expecting happened. His father did not throw him into the lake and watch him drown; he did not lead him into the darkness of the park bushes and murder him. Keeping tight hold of Peewee's hand, as though not assured that the boy would not try to escape him, he led him to Clark Street, where they waited for a street car.
Peewee's imagination suggested to him that his fate was probably deferred. His attention was taken up in assuring himself that the prospect of it did not frighten him, and he stared angrily, awaiting the chance to make his explanation. There appeared no opportunity for doing this. The street car, which was safer for persons who wished to escape inquiry who might be inquired about, than a cab would be, assured him of temporary immunity. Nothing would be done to him upon the car in the presence of other passengers.
They descended from the car a mile from where they had taken it and stopped in a drug-store while his father telephoned. The globed lights of the park, as they came out from the drug store, were visible in the darkness which blotted the end of the street. They turned, Peewee noted with feelings of terror, in that direction. Was this some deserted portion of the park where the body of a small boy could be disposed of with impunity? It was undoubtedly time to try the effect of an explanation on his father, but he was prevented from this by their stopping at a house half way down the street, and by his father's ringing the bell.
A tall, yellow-skinned, dry-looking man who opened the door, evidently had been expecting their arrival; it was to him, Peewee thought, his father must have telephoned, for he inspected Peewee with interest but without surprise.
"Where did you find him?" he inquired.
"He was at Matt Beman's. He ran away from there and I met him on the street."
The tall man raised his eyebrows. "At Beman's!"
Peewee could not be certain whether his father was concealing the nature of their meeting, or whether he was unaware of Peewee's part in it. They followed the tall man into a stuffy room, where Peewee was given a chair. He sat watching them determinedly and swinging his short legs while for some minutes the two men talked together inaudibly.
"The shorter time he is here then," the tall man said at last, "the better. I can possibly make arrangements over the long distance 'phone, and there is a train early this evening."
"He can't be taken out there the way he is, Sallet."
"No; certainly. Suppose, while I am making the arrangements, you get an outfit for him. I'll call a cab for you."
"Can it be done without taking him along to fit?"
"Their clothes run, I think, by ages. I would suppose a six year old would be about right."
Peewee breathed deeply with the realization that it did not seem probable they would buy clothes for a boy whose body they were going to dispose of. He recalled that his father, on first learning of his existence, had spoken only of sending him away. He felt now that, if it would help Mrs. Markyn, he would be willing to be sent away. Wherever he might be sent he would save his money, as Beman had saved his.
Subsequently, grown up and no longer afraid of what people could do to him, he would return, very wealthy, and see Mrs. Markyn.
He heard his father leave the house, and later heard Sallet at the telephone, but could not make out what he said. He planned, while they waited for his father to come back, the particulars of his return in later years to see Mrs. Markyn—himself as good-looking as his father, as forceful as Beman, a person in elegantly fitting clothes, topped with a silk hat, and riding in a brilliant limousine. His father brought back a number of bundles and a little wicker suitcase. The smallness of the suitcase excited Peewee; it seemed to indicate that the case was intended for himself, and he had never so far in life owned any baggage. The bundles contained underwear and a suit of clothes.
"Put these on," his father commanded.
Sallet and his father stood watching as Peewee stripped himself of his old garments and put on the new clothes.
"I kept the cab," his father said to Sallet. "I suppose you made inquiries about the trains."
"There is one."
The lawyer brought his hat and coat. His father, when they were ready to start, stood gazing down at the boy and Peewee gazed back at him. There was no tenderness in Markyn's look.
"I suppose you're wondering what all this means," he inquired.
Peewee recalled that his father did not know that he knew that he was his son.
"Yes, sir," he said.
"Mr. Sallet is interested in boys and is going to have you taken care of."
"Yes, sir," Peewee agreed.
"On your part you are to behave yourself. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir."
Peewee clutched the handle of the small suitcase, as the three went out at the front door and down to the cab. He and Sallet got in. He looked back when the cab had started, but his father already was walking in the opposite direction. He wished he had had the chance to tell his father that he would help him try to keep Mrs. Markyn from knowing about him but the time for that had passed. It was not yet clear what was being done with him, but it was evident that he would not see his father wherever he might be going.
His thought, therefore, faced anxiously forward to the fact that he was going on a train. The only fear which Peewee admitted was an unconquerable fright of locomotives, though he enjoyed the rumble of the elevated above the streets and the clatter of the street cars on the surface. He did not know the reason for this fear. If he had been asked he could have replied only that he had "always" been afraid of them. He trembled and stuck close to Sallet as they walked beside the train until they found their car. Then, recalling his resentment at Sallet, he drew away from him and looked up at him steadily. When the small suitcase had been put in the rack above their heads and the train began to move, he could not see into the darkness outside the window except as they passed green and red lights beside the track, or streets with rows of street lamps, or buildings whose windows were lighted rectangles. The yellow-faced lawyer scrutinized him.
"Exactly how was it," Sallet asked, "that Mr. Markyn came across you?"
Peewee was certain that his father had already told the lawyer this. "He said it to you, I think," he answered.
"Yes; but I'd like to hear you 'say' it now. It was on the street, wasn't it?"
Peewee's antagonism toward Sallet was distinctly different from his opposition to Beman. Beman was forceful, threatening and only incidentally crafty; Sallet was primarily crafty. Peewee did not define this difference in words, but he recognized that his experience of reading faces on the street did not serve him here. He could not tell by watching the lawyer what Sallet was thinking about.
"He'd seen you at Beman's?"
"Yes, sir."
"So of course he recognized you."
"Yes, sir," Peewee replied relievedly.
"In the dark," the lawyer said in a perfectly natural tone.
Peewee stiffened; the relief he had experienced was plainly a delusion.
"Markyn said he found you on the street," Sallet went on. "Then he said you spoke to him. That isn't actually the point. You meet a comparatively strange man on the street; he brings you to me; we decree between us that you're to be taken away, you don't know where. The actual point is this; why haven't you made any objection?"
Peewee stared at him, unable to reply.
"You don't know where you're going," the lawyer stated.
"No, sir," Peewee agreed.
"Do you want to go there?"
Peewee shook his head.
"All right then; why do you go?" the lawyer asked.
Peewee eyed him in doubt. The lawyer, it was evident, was demanding the explanation which Peewee had wanted to make to his father.
"He was going to tell her," he replied at last.
"He? Who was?"
"Mr. Beman."
"Whom was he going to tell?"
Peewee hesitated. He never spoke of Mrs. Markyn by name and even in his thoughts she was always merely "she."
"His wife," he said.
It was evident that the lawyer did not understand this.
"Beeman hasn't any wife," he said. "What was he going to tell her?"
"About him and me."
The lawyer considered these perplexing pronouns carefully, and studied Peewee with sudden interest.
"Let's understand this," he observed. "Beman was going to tell Mrs. Markyn something. Is that it?"
"Yes, sir."
"What was he going to tell her?"
"About him and me," Peewee repeated.
The lawyer's expression changed to one of sharp surprise; he had not, of course, Peewee appreciated, known any more than Markyn knew.
"So you ran away from Beman?"
"Yes."
"To Markyn?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"He didn't want her told."
Sallett gazed at Peewee sternly, while he reflected upon this. "I see," he said finally.
Peewee could not tell what the effect of this information had been upon the lawyer. It was plain that it had had a considerable effect, but it had not softened Sallet's manner; rather, he appeared more stern. In spite of his opposition to the lawyer and his anxiety at being on a train, Peewee was very sleepy. At intervals his eyes closed unconsciously. When they had done this, a sense of something indefinite but strongly terrifying came to him. It was not connected with Sallet or with his father; they, in fact, disappeared from his consciousness. It was connected vaguely with the clicking of the car wheels on the track and the swaying and rumbling of the car. It was like a dream, but it did not have the definiteness even of a dream, and it awoke him with a start of terror. Each time this happened he saw the lawyer still sternly studying him. Finally his eyes failed to open and he slept.
Peewee awoke in the dim grayness of early dawn. It was so dark that it conveyed the impression that it still was night. His first consciousness that he was without his clothes was followed by the realization that he was in a large, soft bed. What little light there was came through a small square window, and above him there was a sloping, raftered roof.
He got up and went to the window to look out. A dim, brown field, from which a mist was rising, sloped away from the window; at its further edge there was a narrow strip of woods, beyond, and seen over the top of the trees, there was a hill. Nowhere was there any other house in sight. Peewee shuddered and looked about him for his clothes. They were arranged neatly on a chair. He put them on, did not notice until he had dressed himself in his underclothes that the new suit which he had worn the night before was not among them. It had been replaced by a small suit of overalls. The resemblance of these to those worn by workmen—"city-builders" of the practical kind—pleased him; but the undefined change in his circumstances which they implied made him anxious. After looking vainly about again for his other clothes he put them on.
He opened the door cautiously and looked out into a small dark hall. The hall led him to a narrow, crooked flight of stairs, the stairs to a lower hall, at one end of which a door stood open into a kitchen where a stout, red-haired woman was cooking by lamplight. He looked in at her without her seeing him, then went to the door at the other end of the hall and opened it. This let him out onto a small wooden porch. He observed now, at the side of the house not visible from his window, a barn and outbuildings. A tall, thin man in overalls and cowhide shoes came out of the barn with a measure of grain in his hand and went into a shed. A sound remotely resembling an auto-horn came to him, and looking in that direction he perceived an animal with horns and a smaller one without any, which some internal conviction told him were a cow and a calf. He heard another sound like that of a large crowd of people talking all together at a great distance and hurried around the corner of the house to discover whence it came and found that it was made by chickens.
Brown or green fields sloped in all directions away from the small, wooden house. No other house could be seen from it, and no one in sight. Peewee went to the door of the shed which the thin man had entered and looked in. The shed, it developed, held some other cows. The man sat on a stool beside one, shooting a stream of milk from beneath the cow into a tin pail. Peewee recoiled toward the house. He had been aware, by theory, that milk came from cows, but he had not seen the process in opera tion before and the sight revolted him.
The man emerged presently from the shed, and set his milk pail down and crossed to a small garden. Here he pulled out of the ground certain small red objects which experience of South Water Street informed Peewee were radishes. The man struck the radishes against the palm of his hand to shake the earth off them. A feeling of unhappiness came to Peewee, and he went back into the house and into the kitchen where the red-haired woman was at work.
"Where's Mr. Sallet?" he inquired.
"He went back last night after leaving you here. Say good morning the first time you see anybody," the woman directed without looking at him.
"Yes, ma'am," Peewee agreed.
The thin man came in at the kitchen door and put his milk pail and the radishes down on a bench, and began to wash his hands at the sink.
"Breakfast in a minute, father," the woman observed.
Peewee reflected upon the form of this address. It was not possible that the thin man was the woman's father. "Father," in this instance, must be the correct formality in addressing him.
"Hello," the man remarked, looking at Peewee.
"Good morning, father," Peewee replied.
"You mustn't call him 'father,'" the woman rebuked him. "Call him Mr. Miller. And I'm Mrs. Miller."
"Yes, Mrs. Miller," Peewee assented.
The woman poured some of the fresh milk into a glass and put it on the table.
"Set up," she directed. Peewee stared at her, perplexed by this admonition which seemed to be addressed to himself. "Set up to the table," the woman repeated crossly.
Peewee drew himself upon the chair to which she pointed and tasted of the milk. It was still warm, and he pushed it away from him, repelled by recollection of the cow. He looked at the radishes which had been washed and put upon the table. There were potatoes also, and the realization came suddenly to him that these too had been taken from the ground. In happier days he had picked such things up from the gutters of South Water Street without repugnance, but they had had then behind them a history of cleanly barrels or crates.
He choked, and his feeling of unhappiness increased into the sense of an immense calamity.