The Red Book Magazine/Volume 45/Number 4/Laugh That Off!
“You're only a child!” he yelled. “Next you'll be chasin' young upstarts an' thinkin' you're old enough to marry and leave me.”
This magazine was the first of America's greater periodicals to publish very short stories. The practice is general now, but Red Book Magazine “very shorts” continue to win the prize of public praise. Here, then, is another by a writer who, in his home on Lake Michigan, has only recently made use of the form. You'll read his story in five minutes, but you'll remember it five years.
NOBODY in town liked Baxter, anyhow, and we were all glad when it happened. It certainly was a wallop for him, and he deserved one; and of course everybody likes excitement of that sort. We were glad for Ruth, too.
He was too cold-blooded a fish to have such a daughter as Ruth, anyway. If she had been spunky or disagreeable herself, it would have been different, but she was young and frail, and ever since her mother died, she had been old Baxter's drudge. She not only kept his house but worked in his office, where he squeezed poor farmers were unlucky enough to have to borrow money from him. The other girls said that Ruth had never been to a party in her life and had only one dress a year and made that herself. It was a case of all work and no fun, as far as she was concerned.
Worse than that, old Baxter used to abuse her before people. It made no difference what she'd done or who was around; he seemed to like to humiliate her just to show others what a hard-boiled old egg he was. But it wasn't necessary; everybody knew him for what he was.
Every morning about eight we'd see Ruth hurrying downtown to open up the old man's office; at eleven she'd go home to get the dinner; and never later than half-past twelve she'd be back at her machine and stay till after five. Like that, day after day. Nobody ever saw her evenings.
RUTH'S appearance was remarkable for but one thing. Her face was white, with only a little stain of pink high up on her cheeks, and her eyes were large and blue; she was slender—sort of half-fed-looking—and medium tall. But she had the reddest and the heaviest hair you've ever seen in your life. Honestly, it was so red and heavy it looked like spun copper and hung in a great thick braid down her back, like a metal cable.
She did it up only once. Bud Holliday—he's the sheriff of our county—went to the office early one morning to get some attachments old Baxter had fixed up. Baxter hadn't come down yet, and Ruth was just turning away from the mirror over the wash-stand in the corner. She'd done up her hair, and she seemed rather embarrassed at being caught.
The sheriff started to josh her a little—he's always joshing; and just then Baxter came in. What he said to Ruth was a plenty. He seemed to go crazy.
“You're only a child!” he yelled in a voice that would carry a block. “A child, tryin' to act grown up! Next you'll be chasin' young upstarts an' thinkin' you're old enough to marry an' leave me, who's slaved for you for years! Take it down!”
Ruth was all broken up, and Bud tried to make it easier but only made it worse. Baxter had his way, and Ruth kept right on being a little girl until she was twenty—that copper rope of hair hanging down her back and she shy and quiet and without any friends same as always. She kept away from girls because she could never do what girls like to do, and boys kept away from her because she was so plain or maybe because they were afraid of Baxter.
Baxter used to buy a bond now and then, and a young bond salesman who came to our town two or three times a year always called on him. One day Baxter went into his office and found this man visiting with Ruth. The girl was blushing and confused, and the old man wanted to know what was up. Now, this young fellow was all man, and when he saw Baxter give Ruth that dirty look, he went to her rescue, or thought he did.
“I was just complimenting your daughter on her hair,' he said. “I was saying some day some man would go clear off his head about it. That's lovely hair, Mr. Baxter, and she ought to be proud of it.”
The old man only grunted and then said he didn't want any bonds and there wasn't any use of the young fellow hanging around any longer. The salesman went out, but he waited in the hall because he sort of expected something might happen.
“Hair, eh?” he heard Baxter sneer. “So young gaffers think your hair's purty! It'll make some of ‘em crazy about you, will it? Come here! I'll show 'em! I'll learn you to let young gaffers tell you that kind of stuff!'
The door was open a ways, and the bond man saw old Baxter grab up a big pair of desk shears. He got the girl by the wrist, and she yelled good and loud. The young fellow jumped back into the room, but he was too late. Baxter had snipped that great bronze braid off close to Ruth's neck and stood waving it around, so mad he couldn't speak. He got a piece of another man's mind, you bet, but that wasn't any help to Ruth, who was about crazy with scare and shame.
Well, of course, even Baxter couldn't have his daughter going around with her hair haggled that way, so he gave her a half-dollar to go to the Gem Barber Shop and have Looie straighten it up. And that's where the surprise came in.
You know, bobbed hair works queer changes in girls' looks, but nobody ever knew what a real change was until they saw Ruth. Her hair had been wavy, but there'd been such a heft of it that the wave, so to speak, never had had a chance. Now, with it bobbed short, it clung around her ears in the trickiest sort of half-curls. It framed her face, sort of, and brought out color and lines nobody'd ever seen before, and when she pulled her old felt hat away down over it folks didn't know her! She looked like a mixture of the prettiest flappers you see in the movies, and an angel. That sounds like a funny mixture, but there wasn't anything funny about Ruth Baxter's looks—then.
WELL, sir, in no time at all she had all the young fellows in town clear off their heads. Rolly Wilcox, for instance, who'd gone to school with her and who'd never looked twice at her before, forgot all about cashiering at the bank. He went around goggle-eyed for a week and then went around fighting mad. This last was because old Baxter threatened him with a gun.
But that didn't stop Rolly. Not much. It wouldn't have stopped any decent fellow with nerve when Ruth was on the far side of that gun. He took her right out of the old man's office one noon and slammed the door in Baxter's face and plumped Ruth into the front seat of his auto and whizzed down to the courthouse and over to Reverend Parker's.
He's got the prettiest wife our town's ever seen, and the happiest too. They say that after Baxter'd eaten humble pie a spell, and promised to be good if they'd recognize him as an in-law, he went back to the office and poked the blades of those shears in a crack and busted them all to smithereens. But my wife says he wont be entirely human till he's a grandfather.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1967, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 56 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse