Peewee/Chapter 4
Whenever he was tired or hungry—his only causes of low spirits—Peewee thought of Mrs. Markyn. The certainty which had been made plain to him that his existence was a misfortune to her had determined him never to go where she might see him. He did not want her to be unhappy. As to his father, the most definite feeling he had toward him was anger. He had not wanted any parents, and had even felt a superiority over other boys who had relatives who could forbid them to do the things they wanted. It was clear to him that his father threatened his liberty more actively than the agents of the Juvenile Court ever had done. His father had more personal interest in discovering him than any agents; and the least that this discovery possibly could mean was that Peewee would be put away where his existence could be concealed.
To be put where he could be concealed implied possibly an institution of some sort. It implied certainly a regulation of his life by others. Incidentally, but importantly, it implied being put to bed at a stated hour. He was conscious that it might imply much more unpleasant things than that. Peewee assured himself that he was not afraid of his father. He resented his existence, but he was confident of avoiding him by his wits.
In the late afternoon of the fourth day after his visit to the State Street house he stood in Wabash Avenue near Washington Street, observing with a speculative eye a flower stand conducted by an Italian. As the search which his father must have instituted for him would be for a newsboy, he had not dared to sell any newspapers. The omission had unpleasant consequences. He perceived that if he did not sell something he soon would not be able to eat.
The only business he knew of, besides the selling of newspapers, which could be engaged in by so young a person as himself, was the selling of flowers or chewing gum. These had not, he knew, the standing which his former business had; boys have sold newspapers for so long that grown men who sell them appear to be invading one of boys' established rights; but the selling of flowers and chewing gum is regarded as irregular. He knew, by observation, the method of the flower business but not the source from which the young merchants obtained their stocks.
He bargained, after reflection, with the Italian for a small handful of his most faded flowers, and went west to Clark Street. Here he turned north, inspecting through their doorways the interiors of the somewhat questionable cafes. If he saw a man and woman inside seated together at a table, he pulled off his disreputable cap and went in. With his apprehensive stare fixed on proprietor and waiters and ready at any move on their parts to run, he laid one of the flowers on the table in front of the woman. The price he asked for each flower was five cents. Sometimes the woman took the flower and her escort refused to pay him; sometimes the escort gave him more than he had asked. At ten o'clock at night he had only one flower left.
An inspection of the most brightly lighted of the nearby cafes revealed a young lady with abnormally red cheeks and remarkably black eyebrows and eye-lashes in conversation with a gentleman at a table not too far from the door. He went in and put the flower on the table in front of her.
"What a pretty boy!" she said.
She stretched out a plump and not clean hand toward him with a gesture which enveloped him in a breath of strong perfume, and he backed rapidly away.
"Five cents," he said.
"Catch him," she directed the man with her. "I want to kiss him."
As he continued to back anxiously toward the door, but still keeping a proprietorial gaze upon the flower, she fumbled in her pocket book and produced twenty-five cents.
"I'll give you this for the flower," she offered, "if you'll let me kiss you."
He considered, gazing at the coin. By degrees he guardedly approached and she kissed him upon his mouth with soft, damp lips. He seized the quarter and ran out into the street, and stood gazing back at the entrance, rubbing his lips and thinking about Mrs. Markyn.
The women he had known best had been matrons of institutions, generally kind but always official. He had appreciated fully Mrs. Markyn's difference from them, as he was appreciating now, in his sophistication, her difference from the woman who had just kissed him. How attractive Mrs. Markyn had seemed, when he had seen her come up the stairs! He could recall the sound of her voice and of her clear, sweet laughter.
He resented the kiss that had just been given him. He did not know why it had made him feel suddenly small and lonesome. He looked south in the direction he had been intending to go, but instead walked north and east to look, in the safety of the darkness, at his father's house.
The windows of the lower part of the house were lighted, but he neglected them to watch the dimmer square above them which marked the bedroom window. He stirred excitedly as, after a long wait, the light of this window suddenly brightened as someone turned on the electrics within. Mrs. Markyn came to the window, stood an instant looking out at the sky, and then pulled down the shade. He breathed deeply. Whatever it was within himself that had been tormenting him had been quieted. He no longer felt tired, and as he moved away he skipped from edge to edge of the sidewalk, and made spirited attacks on imaginary enemies lying in wait for him.
It would not do, he decided, to come near the house by daylight, but he could come here and perhaps obtain these glimpses of her in the dark.
He came on the next two nights, but did not see her. Was it because she had gone out somewhere before he got there? On the succeeding afternoon he walked out along the shore of the lake to be on hand as soon as it got dark. The children's bathing beach penned in the curve of the concrete esplanade along the lake beside the Lake Shore Drive was crowded with little figures. He moved on past them to the end of the street on which the house stood. He could not, from this distance, see the house. A limousine was standing opposite where the house must be. He could not see who it was that came out and got into it, and it rolled away. Presently he saw it reappear a few blocks to the north and stop where the drive came closest to the lake. Mrs. Markyn's slender figure descended from it; she crossed the bridle-path and strip of greensward to the esplanade and moved in his direction, looking at the children and the lake, while the motor awaited her upon the drive.
Peewee thought he ought to run away; then he reflected that to run would attract her attention. The best thing, he decided, was to sit still and not to look at her. But as she passed in front of him he was unable not to look. His great eyes, fixed eagerly upon her, caught her own. His heart thumped as he saw her smile at him, and he was terrified by the impression that she knew who he was. Then he realized that if she had known she would not have smiled. She smiled because she was happy. If she was happy it was because he was letting her be so. He did not consciously formulate this or what it made him feel to realize that she was happy, but he warmed pleasantly. She stopped a few moments near him to watch the children; then she walked across the grass to the motor, and got in and went away.
Did she walk here every day? He determined to investigate that. The next day she did not come, or the day following. On the third day the motor reappeared and she took the same short walk. She smiled again at seeing him, and he saw recognition in her of having seen him there before.
"Hullo," she said.
He did not make any reply but gazed at her intently.
In the two succeeding weeks he saw her, in all, six times. She grew accustomed to seeing him there, and twice she stopped and spoke some unimportant words to him. It was quite safe, he perceived, for him to see her like this; she did not make distinction between him and the other children that she saw, and had no suspicion that he was related to her.
Exactly how, he wondered, was he related to her?
When the motor had gone away, he went to Clark Street and caught a "hitch" through downtown to Adams Street and another west almost to Halsted. Here he dropped down and took the sidewalk. This progression brought him to a stairway descending to a basement entrance. Pendant beside the entrance was a string of shoes—none new; above the doorway was a sign, "Shoes for One-legged Men Our Specialty," and beside the entrance hung shoes, not in pairs, but one by one.
At the stairfoot a Greek a little larger than a dwarf was patching shoes upon a cobbler's bench. In the room visible through the door an immense woman moved slowly about and four small children were playing with bits of leather on the floor.
Peewee sat down upon the upper step.
"Papoulas," he inquired, eyeing the children, "how many people make a family?"
The question appeared not fully plain to the Greek.
"Everybody has a father and a mother," Peewee helped.
The Greek appeared now to understand.
"Also grandfathers—two grandfathers. One is his father's father, the other is his mother's. He has two grandmothers, too. The fathers of grandfathers are called great-grandfathers. It is the same with grandmothers."
He finished the patch he was making; then he recommenced.
"The brothers of his father are his uncles. So are his mother's brothers. Their sisters are his aunts. The children of his uncles and his aunts are his cousins."
Peewee adjusted his knowledge in accordance with these facts. He had been indefinitely aware of these relationships, but had wanted what he knew made definite. Jeffrey Markyn, Third, these things established, was his uncle. Jeffrey, Second had been his grandfather.
Some words of the obituary shown him by the truck driver had lingered in his head. "Jeffrey Markyn, Second," it had said,—"One of the builders of Chicago." He had been interested in this because it had not previously occurred to him that the city had been built. It grew, he had observed, by buildings being added, and it improved by old buildings being torn down and new ones being erected in their place. But accepting it as it was, he had neglected to speculate as to the time when there had been no city here at all.
He looked up with new interest at the surrounding buildings. Had Jeffrey, Second, he wondered, built any ones among these? Had he built them with his own hands, or simply "bossed" their building? How did one go about it to build a city." He began to feel a certain pride in his grandfather, the city-builder, and a desire to emulate him, considering whether, after he had grown up, he would not select an eligible site and construct a city for himself.
The original Jeffrey Markyn—he who had been concerned in the Markyn-Beman "wheat corner," whatever that might have been—had been his great-grandfather. These facts did not touch, however, the question which he had at heart.
"What," he inquired of Papoulas, "is a person to his father's wife?"
"When she is not his mother?"
"Yes."
"She is then his step-mother," the Greek replied. But he continued to reflect. It was not always the case, in the circles in which he moved, that she was a step-mother. "That is, if his father and mother were married," he added. "If they were not, he is not any relation to her at all."
"Not anything?"
"Not anything."
Peewee got up and moved away disconsolately. His resentment against his father increased. Exactly what marriage had to do with it was not perfectly plain, but his father had stated definitely that he had not married Peewee's mother. Consequently his father had related Peewee to a number of persons who were perhaps somewhat interesting in their way; but by his neglect had left him unrelated to the one person whose relationship Peewee would have liked to claim.