The Red Book Magazine/Volume 15/Number 6/The Great Reader

by Earl Derr Biggers

The Great Reader

BY EARL DERR BIGGERS

AS the clock struck six William Parker climbed down from his uncomfortable stool in the office of Jenks & Company, Importers, and reached for his shiny, blue serge coat. Precisely at the same instant forty other young men climbed down from similar stools, flinging at each other meanwhile pale, sickly jests garnered from the city's roof-gardens. In this persiflage Mr. Parker took no part. Silently he adjusted the ready-made garment to his comic shoulders, jerked his bargain sale tie a trifle to the left, covered his straw-colored hair with a dinky derby, grown green in service, and set out for the land of his dreams.

In reality, oh, ye literally minded, Mr. Parker pushed through the swinging gate into the cool corridor without, and descended to join the great mass of humanity that clogged the street below. Past the mighty skyscraper that sheltered in one of its pigeon-holes the carefully indexed destinies of Jenks & Company, overloaded open cars crept wearily, pausing now and again as though for breath. To the running board of one of these William Parker attached himself, and clung like a mollusc to its rock, viewing dispassionately the dismayed faces of the girls who vainly sought a place by his side.

Up the narrow cañon crawled the car, between monstrous buildings winking yellow eyes, while far above the autumn sky faded accommodatingly into the darker background demanded by the electric signs. Over Mr. Parker, and the shabby means of transportation afforded him by the Traction Company, the city, magnificent, magic, preposterous, cast her spell. Before his pale face she flaunted her innumerable wiles. But William Parker was as blind as if he had been a beggar standing on a corner with the legend of blindness about his neck. Fighting for his foot-hold on the running board of that jerky car, in his mind's eye he saw a desert bathed in the sunset, cactus-strewn, solitary. At a quarter-past six he was already safely landed in the country of his dreams.

Dropping from the car at a shabby corner, Mr. Parker hastened into a street that lay like a shadowy path between two rows of. battered brick fronts. Homeward-bound grocery and delicatessen wagons rattled over the uneven pavement. From the basement windows of each house glared a sickly white light—a light that shone within on the soiled linen and blackened silver of lodging-house dining-rooms.

Mr. Parker stopped at a certain house he knew from its fellows by number, and mounted the steps into the musty hallway. Perfunctorily he examined the mail rack, then he climbed a pair of stairs. And then more stairs. With him rose the odor of cheap cooking. From behind closed doors came voices that wheedled, complained, cajoled, cursed, argued, whined, explained. Mr. Parker. oblivious, went on up, and up, to his room under the eaves

Once inside its narrow confines, he slammed the door and tossed his green derby toward the shabby cot. His preparations for dinner toilet, however, went no further for the moment. Instead, his eager hands sought the table for a book drawn the night before from a circulating library. It was a huge volume, battered, soiled; one that suggested germs. William Parker lighted his scanty gas, and turned lovingly the pages of his treasure.

“It is a strange region,” he read, pausing opposite an engraving that represented a man posing hopelessly in the midst of desolation, “a region of underground rivers that never see the light, of lakes gone dry, ages ago, that still proclaim themselves from afar as cool, wave-tossed waters, of lofty table-lands where forests of yuccas lift themselves—”

Mr. Parker sighed, laid down the book, and removed his coat. Taking from his washstand the inevitable white pitcher, he opened the door and stepped out into the hall. In one of its dark corners was the sink with the “running water,” mentioned so feelingly in all advertisements of the house.

Around this had gathered a nondescript throng; women in weird dressing sacks; men without their coats, revealing ugly suspenders and eccentric tastes in shirtings. Mr. Parker stood meekly aside until the last had gone, and then waited patiently while his pitcher filled with reluctantly running water.

Several times during his economic toilet he turned back to that volume of wonders, which was entitled “Reminiscences of the Plains, or Fifty years of Ranch Life.” He learned that by the side of the only road, crossing that deceitful region, are many graves, where sleep the victims of Nature's treachery. This solemn fact he pondered deeply as he descended to his evening meal.

Gathered round the long table in the basement, in the white glare of the patent burner, sat the hangers-on of the house, typical derelicts of the city, homeless, hopeless, cynical. Mr. Parker took his place between a little down-town stenographer and a “vaudeville lady,” temporarily out of the limelight, and dipped his black spoon into the nameless fluid on the plate before him.

Desultory conversation drifted back and forth across the spotted cloth. A flashy youth gave what was evidently expert opinion regarding the charms of various musical comedy choruses then before the public. The men all listened attentively—all save Mr. Parker, whose thoughts were afar.

“That's the bunch for my money, every time,” finished the expert, slicking down his greasy black hair with a long, thin hand. “Say, there's a little blond in that outfit that has Lillian Russell lashed to the mast and—”

William Parker pondered that region of underground rivers that never see the light, he thought of the lofty table-lands where—

“Have you had the liver, Mr. Parker?” the little stenographer at his side was saying. She handed him the platter, glancing slyly up into his face as she did so. “Been over to the Garden to see the circus?” she asked.

“Not yet,” he responded.

“I was up, last night,” the girl went on. “Seems funny to see a circus indoors. Out home in Peoria they used to show in the vacant lot right across from our house. When I was a kid—”

“Yes, sir,” a large, commanding-looking woman repeated, in a tone for the table to hear, “tried to steal my bag right on the street, he did. But they got him. I screamed like murder, and they pinched him. Now I 'spose I'll get a chance to go to court and testify against him. I wonder how much I'll make in witness fees. Mr. Harwood, you're a lawyer, do I get paid for this testifying? I'm hoping for a trip to Coney out of it, anyhow.”

Mr. Harwood, legal, wizened, with the cordial manner of a card-index, spoke ponderous words. William Parker seized the opportunity to gallop back to that far region, where lakes, gone dry centuries ago, managed still their wiles from afar—

“When I was playin' Tucson, Arizona—” began the vaudeville lady at his side.

Mr. Parker dropped his knife, and turned to her with sudden interest.

“Why, I didn't know you was ever in Arizona,” he said. “How long ago was that?”

“Too long ago to give dates, sonny,” snapped the woman, glaring at him from under her overhanging coiffure. “As I was sayin'—”

Mr. Parker blushed, and turned to a minute study of a yellow crack in his plate. He listened attentively to the woman's story, however, hoping to hear of lava-strewn deserts, shadowy ravines, red-shirted ranchmen of the plains. But the tale was a sordid one, of a manager who eloped to 'Frisco with the funds of the expedition.

“Some day,” thought William Parker, “I'll ask her all about the country out there.” And he looked at her with a new awe in his eyes.

After the inevitable Wednesday evening rice pudding, the lifeless party rose, and most of them, following the habit of boarders, went out to sit on the stoop. Not William Parker, however. He climbed again the many flights to his room, turned up the weak, faltering gas, and reached for “Reminiscences of the Plains.”

Outside his little window the million-eyed city sought to wink to William Parker the sly intimation that there was something doing. Like a gay coquette it flashed, taunted, allured. But Mr. Parker paid no heed. He was alone on a boundless desert that lay deathly white in the moonlight. From afar a lake, gone dry ages before, proclaimed itself as cool, wave-tossed. He heard the barking of prairie dogs. Mr. Parker was not sure that prairie dogs could exist on this sort of desert, but he did not care. He heard them, anyhow, as he wandered.

He opened the “Reminiscences” at page 127.

At ten o'clock Mr. Parker closed the book, yawned, and reached for the dinky derby. Turning the gas low, he felt his way down the creaking stairs, dimly lighted by hall lamps, such as are known only to landladies. On the front stoop a few of the boarders still lingered; through these he carefully picked his way. A facetious comment as to his destination he greeted with a laugh.

Aimlessly he wandered down the dark side-street to the Avenue, where the street cars clanged and the drug stores and rathskellers bathed the sidewalk in white. There life rushed up like a wave and engulfed him. He drifted on its crest until inevitably he found himself in the city's street of streets, where existence is like a Christmas tree with all the candles lighted. The phantom of false-day blinded him. He paused, a trifle dazed, on a corner.

About him the city, genial giant, roared tremendously as it ground out its night's quota of tragedies and comedies, to the rollicking tune of a street piano that came drifting from the shadow of a side-street. Men with strange stories in their faces jostled William Parker from the curb. Romance elbowed him; mystery crowded by. He did not see, or hear, or feel. He thought he was standing at the bottom of a rock-bound chasm, whose flaming peaks rose steep on every side.

Walking on, Mr. Parker came—in reality—to a quiet park, where the lost souls of the city wait, Micawber-like, on the benches, and the lovers whisper in the shaded corners. Into this he turned and found a seat. Then, looking out toward the mighty city, aglow with the million lamps of the night, Mr. Parker thought of a road through the desert: “It winds away among the boulder-strewn sand-hills. For a few miles it hugs the base of the mountains. Then it nears the bottom of the sink and skirts it, where lava lies above sandstone, weird, black, overlapping a dead—”

William Parker paused, and rubbed his eyes. For, down the gravel path of that quiet park clanked a figure out of his dreams. As it passed under the arc-light he recognized it in detail—sombrero, red flannel shirt, neckerchief, goat-skin breeches, spurs and raw-hide boots all, all as he had long imagined it.

Another moment and the figure was passing William Parker's bench. He summoned all his strength and leaped forth, grasping the apparition by the arm.

“You're from the West?” he gasped hoarsely.

The strangely garbed one burst into loud laughter.

“Do I look like I come from Boston?” he asked.

Mr. Parker motioned toward the bench, with the air of an old member extending to a stranger the hospitalities of the club.

“Sit down,” he said. “Sit down and tell me about God's country.”

The stranger seized William Parker roughly and faced him round to the arc-light.

“What's that?” he cried. “God's country? Don't try that on me, boy. I suppose you was born on the same strip as me, an' you need a five-spot until to-morrow. Well, let me tell you something, kid—you've never been west of Buffalo in your life. 1 can see it in your face.”

“No, no!” cried the wounded Mr Parker. “You've made a mistake. Sit down, and I'll explain. I didn't mean I'd been out there. Sit down.”

He dragged the other to the bench, then paused for breath. The light from the big street was filtering down through the branches upon him. He looked toward the tree tops; out at the dazzling city; back to the wildly clothed man at his side. Then abruptly, without preface, William Parker poured out his shabby, hall-room soul.

“All my life,” he said, “I've read and dreamed of the West—the desert, the cañons, the ranches, and the cattle country. If there's any book on the subject I aint read, I want to know its name. I've never been outside of this state, but I know the plains just like I was born there. I work in an office eight hours a day, but I know which side to mount a broncho on, I live in a hall-bedroom on a side-street, but I got the art of branding a steer down pat. I know you got to drop the check rein over a pony's head, or he wont stand. Oh, I'm the prize scholar on all that dope, Mister. And up to now the only person from the West I ever saw was a Plainfield, New Jersey, vaudeville actress that once played a week in Tucson. That's why I held you up and asked you about God's country.”

Mr. Parker paused, while the stranger drew from his pocket a bag of tobacco and a bit of rice-paper, and rolled a cigaret in the lightning fashion approved by the western realists in fiction. The sight very nearly paralyzed William Parker. When he could regain his composure, he reached out and touched timidly the weird trousers of the other.

“I can't sleep nights,” he went on, “for picturing myself in an outfit like that, riding a lean pony through the sage brush. Can you ride through sage brush? Or is it over it you ride? I don't care. I want to see the West. I hate New York, I hate it. It's crowded, cruel, horrible. I want to get out on the broad plains, where there's enough of God's air for all. But I never will. I'll just have to go on reading—and reading—and maybe talking about it now and then. Say—what is the West like—anyhow?”

Bob Garwood, the stranger, lighted a match and held it for a second so that its light shone into the pinched, city-pale face of William Parker. Then he applied it to his cigaret and tossed it to the grass.

“I guess you are on the level, kid,” he said. “I thought at first you was tryin' to interest me in Wall Street, or a two volume life of Geronimo. I'd tell you about the West if I could, but—well, I aint no Frederick Remington with words. It's just—why, the West—plains, mountains, ranches—an' God knows I'm homesick for it to-night.”

“Why did you come away?” asked Mr. Parker.

Garwood pointed out between the trees to where a theatre sign flashed a western title.

“I brought a party of the boys out to add realism to that drama of ranch life—as it aint,” he said. “That's how you come to see me in this outlandish make-up. My costume was designed by the author of the play, who has never been outside of Concord, New Hampshire. It's one of my leading reasons for wantin' the civilized West again.”

“It's a great play,” spoke William Parker, his eyes on the distant sign. “I saw it the first night. It's the finest ever staged—I think. Real Indians in it, aint there?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Garwood, “there is. There's also real guns, an' real horses. But that doesn't make it a 'slice of the cattle country transplanted to Broadway,' as I see the press-agent is calling it. Life out there aint so much sombrero as it is hard work, Kid. But it's the one country—the one country of 'em all.”

“I know,” cried William Parker. “It's a man's-size land. I wish I could see it. I wish I could say good-by to this town forever. It's the West I want—the West I was made for—I want to live there. I've always wanted to—and I never will.”

To Garwood this was the wail of a kindred lost soul in the wilderness of lights. He hesitated a mere second, then clapped William Parker on the back with such terrific suddenness that the dinky derby leaped, with human-like agility, into a bush back of the bench.

“Don't you worry, Kid,” he cried. “You're going to see the West all right, all right. Do you think you could start for Three Cross ranch to-morrow?”

Mr. Parker, who had risen to get his derby, dropped back to the bench with a startled cry. The skyscrapers, the trees, the street of lights, all leaped on a merry-go-round and rode away. He gurgled strange noises in his throat.

“Could you?” persisted Garwood.

“Could I?” muttered William Parker. “Could I? Say, I could start to-night.”

“That's the talk,” Garwood laughed. “You see, it's like this. My old boss, Kirkpatrick, has been losin' a lot of men lately to the glitterin' life of the actor, an' he'd take you on in a minute if I was to say the word. You're not exactly what I might call husky, but the West would soon change that. Ever ride a horse?”

“Sure,” began William Parker—and then halted. “No, I haven't. I thought for a minute I had. No, I don't believe I've ever seen a dozen horses in my life that wasn't hitched to things. But I know how it's done.”

“They'd show you, anyhow,” said the Westerner, and paused to smile at the possibilities. “I'll stake you to the $40 railroad fare, an' Kirkpatrick can forward it out of your pay—a little a month. You meet me in the lobby of that hotel over there at nine in the morning, ready to travel. There's a train at ten. It's the West for yours,-my boy.”

He stood up. William Parker sought also to rise, but his trembling knees would not support him.

“I'd better be gettin' back,” said Garwood, nodding toward the theatre. “If they find out over there I've sneaked out for a little intermission I'll hear about it in this week's pay envelope. Besides, I'm liable to be pinched for going out in these clothes. I ought to be, if I aint.”

He moved off down the walk, and paused to light a final cigaret.

“Remember—to-morrow at nine,” he drawled, and passed out of sight.

Mr. Parker rose as one in a dream and getting down on his hands and knees, felt carefully in the bush back of the bench for his derby, When he found it he returned to the bench and sat down, holding the hat on his knees. He wondered if it was all true. Somehow he couldn't help listening for the sharp clamor of the ninety-eight cent alarm clock that summoned him daily to the office of Jenks & Company. Over on the street the theatres were pouring their black crowds out onto the walk. Mr. Parker listened. The clock did not ring.

At length he rose and found his way back to the shabby street. Carefully he let himself into the boarding-house and ascended the stairs, now in complete darkness. He turned up his gas, and pulled from a corner a little, ancient trunk.

Into this he painstakingly packed the accumulations of a lifetime—his Sunday suit of shiny black, his winter overcoat with the velvet worn from the collar, his extra night-shirt, his slippers and his books.

The clocks boomed one as he finished packing and locked the trunk. It was high time he retired. Outside, the warm September night hugged the city close; even at that hour a tepid breeze crept in through the small window. Mr. Parker glanced at his narrow cot in that hot corner where breezes never penetrated. He removed his collar and his shoes, and reached for “Reminiscences of the Plains.”

But he did not read. Instead he held the big book on his knees, and gazed fixedly at the hideous paper on the walls of his hideous home. And as he gazed the walls fell, and there again stretched before him the land of his dreams.

So he sat until the dawn of the greatest day of his life swept the grimy roofs of the city, and the landlady tapped at his door to ask why the gas meter, thoughtfully situated in her room, had ticked the long night through.

 

Three months later Bob Garwood and Jim Kirkpatrick rode together over the four-mile trail that leads from Yucca Junction to the Three Cross ranch. In Syracuse, New York, Garwood had forsworn forever the glittering life of the actor; the fastest transcontinental train on the rails had carried him West to Yucca, and now he was cantering on through a red and gold sunset toward the only home he knew, looming a friendly mass against the violet shadowed eastern sky.

The pair dismounted in silence, and walked toward the door of the ranch house. Nearly there, Garwood turned suddenly on his companion.

“Oh, by the way,” he said, “how about that guy—William Parker—I shipped you from New York. How's he gettin' on? I clean forgot.”

Kirkpatrick grunted.

“Parker's no good,” he said. “He's got his nose in a book all the time. Just reads, an' reads, an' reads. The greatest reader you ever saw. Mopin' in a corner with a fool look every blamed minute he gets.”

A puzzled look swept Garwood's face.

“Reads?” he repeated, wonderingly. “Why I—say, what in hell does he read?”

For answer Kirkpatrick pushed him into the living room of the ranch. There on a stool, his back to a sunset such as no art gallery ever boasted, oblivious to the world, sat William Parker, huddled over a book.

Bob Garwood walked to the boy's side, and snatching the volume from his hands, glanced at the cover.

The book William Parker read was entitled, “Adrift in a Great City, or a Boy's Adventures in New York.”