Where the Car Turns at 18th
This will be a homing pigeon story. Though I send it ever sofar--though its destination be the office of a home-and-firesidemagazine or one of the kind with a French story in the back, itwill return to me. After each flight its feathers will be a littlemore rumpled, its wings more weary, its course more wavering,until, battered, spent, broken, it will flutter to rest in thewaste basket.And yet, though its message may never be delivered, it must besent, because--well, because----You know where the car turns at Eighteenth? There you see aglaringly attractive billboard poster. It depicts groups ofsmiling, white-clad men standing on tropical shores, with wavingpalms overhead, and a glimpse of blue sea in the distance. Thewording beneath the picture runs something like this:"Young men wanted. An unusual opportunity for travel,education, and advancement. Good pay. No expenses."When the car turns at Eighteenth, and I see that, I rememberEddie Houghton back home. And when I remember Eddie Houghton I seered.The day after Eddie Houghton finished high school he went towork. In our town we don't take a job. We accept a position. Ourpaper had it that "Edwin Houghton had accepted a position as clerkand assistant chemist at the Kunz drugstore, where he would take uphis new duties Monday."His new duties seemed, at first, to consist of opening thestore in the morning, sweeping out, and whizzing about town on abicycle with an unnecessarily insistent bell, deliveringprescriptions which had been telephoned for. But by the time thesummer had really set in Eddie was installed back of the sodafountain.There never was anything better looking than Eddie Houghton inhis white duck coat. He was one of those misleadingly gold andpink and white men. I say misleadingly because you usuallyassociate pink-and-whiteness with such words as sissy andmollycoddle. Eddie was neither. He had played quarter-back everyyear from his freshman year, and he could putt the shot and cutclasses with the best of 'em. But in that white duck coat with thebraiding and frogs he had any musical-comedy, white-flannel tenorlieutenant whose duty it is to march down to the edge of thefootlights, snatch out his sword, and warble about his country'sflag, looking like a flat-nosed, blue-gummed Igorrote. Kunz's sodawater receipts swelled to double their usual size, and the girls'complexions were something awful that summer. I've known NellieDonovan to take as many as three ice cream sodas and two phosphatesa day when Eddie was mixing. He had a way of throwing in agood-natured smile, and an easy flow of conversation with everydrink. While indulging in a little airy persiflage the girls hada great little trick of pursing their mouths into rosebud shapesover their soda straws, and casting their eyes upward at Eddie.They all knew the trick, and its value, so that at night Eddie'sdreams were haunted by whole rows of rosily pursed lips, and seasof upturned, adoring eyes. Of course we all noticed that on thoserare occasions when Josie Morehouse came into Kunz's her glass washeaped higher with ice cream than that of any of the other girls,and that Eddie's usually easy flow of talk was interspersed withcertain stammerings and stutterings. But Josie didn't come inoften. She had a lot of dignity for a girl of eighteen. Besides,she was taking the teachers' examinations that summer, when theother girls were playing tennis and drinking sodas.Eddie really hated the soda water end of the business, asevery soda clerk in the world does. But he went about itgood-naturedly. He really wanted to learn the drug business, butthe boss knew he had a drawing card, and insisted that Eddie goright on concocting faerie queens and strawberry sundaes, andnectars and Kunz's specials. One Saturday, when he happened tohave on hand an over-supply of bananas that would have spoiled overSunday, he invented a mess and called it the Eddie Extra, and thegirls swarmed on it like flies around a honey pot.That kind of thing would have spoiled most boys. But Eddiehad a sensible mother. On those nights when he used to come homenauseated with dealing out chop suey sundaes and orangeades, andsaying that there was no future for a fellow in our dead littlehole, his mother would give him something rather special forsupper, and set him hoeing and watering the garden.So Eddie stuck to his job, and waited, and all the time he wassaying, with a melting look, to the last silly little girl who wasdrinking her third soda, "Somebody looks mighty sweet in pinkto-day," or while he was doping to-morrow's ball game with one ofthe boys who dropped in for a cigar, he was thinking of biggerthings, and longing for a man-size job.The man-size job loomed up before Eddie's dazzled eyes when heleast expected it. It was at the close of a particularly hot daywhen it seemed to Eddie that every one in town had had everythingfrom birch beer to peach ice cream. On his way home to supper hestopped at the postoffice with a handful of letters that old manKunz had given him to mail. His mother had told him that theywould have corn out of their own garden for supper that night, andEddie was in something of a hurry. He and his mother were greatpals.In one corner of the dim little postoffice lobby a man wasbusily tacking up posters. The whitewashed walls bloomed withthem. They were gay, attractive-looking posters, done in red andblue and green, and after Eddie had dumped his mail into the slot,and had called out, "Hello, Jake!" to the stamp clerk, whose backwas turned to the window, he strolled idly over to where the manwas putting the finishing touches to his work. The man was dressedin a sailor suit of blue, with a picturesque silk scarf knotted athis hairy chest. He went right on tacking posters.They certainly were attractive pictures. Some showed groupsof stalwart, immaculately clad young gods lolling indolently ontropical shores, with a splendor of palms overhead, and a sparklingblue sea in the distance. Others depicted a group of white-cladmen wading knee-deep in the surf as they laughingly landed a cutteron the sandy beach. There was a particularly fascinating oneshowing two barefooted young chaps on a wave-swept raft engaged inthat delightfully perilous task known as signaling. Another showedthe keen-eyed gunners busy about the big guns.Eddie studied them all.The man finished his task and looked up, quite casually."Hello, kid," he said."Hello," answered Eddie. Then--"That's some picture galleryyou're giving us."The man in the sailor suit fell back a pace or two andsurveyed his work with a critical but satisfied eye."Pitchers," he said, "don't do it justice. We've opened arecruiting office here. Looking for young men with brains, andmuscle, and ambition. It's a great chance. We don't get to thesehere little towns much."He placed a handbill in Eddie's hand. Eddie glanced down atit sheepishly."I've heard," he said, "that it's a hard life."The man in the sailor suit threw back his head and laughed,displaying a great deal of hairy throat and chest. "Hard!" hejeered, and slapped one of the gay-colored posters with the backof his hand. "You see that! Well, it ain't a bit exaggerated.Not a bit. I ought to know. It's the only life for a young man,especially for a guy in a little town. There's no chance here fora bright young man, and if he goes to the city, what does he get?The city's jam full of kids that flock there in the spring andfall, looking for jobs, and thinking the city's sittin' up waitin'for 'em. And where do they land? In the dime lodging houses,that's where. In the navy you see the world, and it don't cost youa cent. A guy is a fool to bury himself alive in a hole like this.You could be seeing the world, traveling by sea from port to port,from country to country, from ocean to ocean, amid ever-changingscenery and climatic conditions, to see and study the habits andconditions of the strange races----"It rolled off his tongue with fascinating glibness. Eddieglanced at the folder in his hand."I always did like the water," he said."Sure," agreed the hairy man, heartily. "What young fellerdon't? I'll tell you what. Come on over to the office with me andI'll show you some real stuff.""It's my supper time," hesitated Eddie. "I guess I'd betternot----""Oh, supper," laughed the man. "You come on and have supperwith me, kid."Eddie's pink cheeks went three shades pinker. "Gee! That'dbe great. But my mother--that is--she----"The man in the sailor suit laughed again--a laugh with a stingin it. "A great big feller like you ain't tied to your ma's apronstrings are you?""Not much I'm not!" retorted Eddie. "I'll telephone her whenI get to your hotel, that's what I'll do."But they were such fascinating things, those new booklets, andthe man had such marvelous tales to tell, that Eddie forgot trifleslike supper and waiting mothers. There were pictures taken onboard ship, showing frolics, and ball games, and minstrel shows andglee clubs, and the men at mess, and each sailor sleeping snug asa bug in his hammock. There were other pictures showing foreignscenes and strange ports. Eddie's tea grew cold, and his apple pieand cheese lay untasted on his plate."Now me," said the recruiting officer, "I'm a married man.But my wife, she wouldn't have it no other way. No, sir! She'llbe in the navy herself, I'll bet, when women vote. Why, before Ijoined the navy I didn't know whether Guam was a vegetable or anisland, and Culebra wasn't in my geography. Now? Why, now I'm asmuch at home in Porto Rico as I am in San Francisco. I'm as wellacquainted in Valparaiso as I am in Vermont, and I've run aroundCairo, Egypt, until I know it better than Cairo, Illinois. It'sthe only way to see the world. You travel by sea from port toport, from country to country, from ocean to ocean, amidever-changing scenery and climatic conditions, to see and studythe----"And Eddie forgot that it was Wednesday night, which was theprescription clerk's night off; forgot that the boss was awaitinghis return that he might go home to his own supper; forgot hismother, and her little treat of green corn out of the garden;forgot everything in the wonder of this man's tales of people andscenes such as he never dreamed could exist outside of a JackLondon story. Now and then Eddie interrupted with a, "Yes,but----" that grew more and more infrequent, until finally theyceased altogether. Eddie's man-size job had come.When we heard the news we all dropped in at the drug store tojoke with him about it. We had a good deal to say about rollinggaits, and bell-shaped trousers, and anchors and sea serpentstattooed on the arm. One of the boys scored a hit by slapping hisdime down on the soda fountain marble and bellowing for rum andsalt horse. Some one started to tease the little Morehouse girlabout sailors having sweethearts in every port, but when they sawthe look in her eyes they changed their mind, and stopped. It'sfunny how a girl of twenty is a woman, when a man of twenty is aboy.Eddie dished out the last of his chocolate ice cream sodas andcherry phosphates and root beers, while the girls laughingly beggedhim to bring them back kimonos from China, and scarves from theOrient, and Eddie promised, laughing, too, but with a far-off,eager look in his eyes.When the time came for him to go there was quite a littlebodyguard of us ready to escort him down to the depot. We pickedup two or three more outside O'Rourke's pool room, and a couplemore from the benches outside the hotel. Eddie walked ahead withhis mother. I have said that Mrs. Houghton was a sensible woman.She was never more so than now. Any other mother would have goneinto hysterics and begged the recruiting officer to let her boyoff. But she knew better. Still, I think Eddie felt someuncomfortable pangs when he looked at her set face. On the way tothe depot we had to pass the Agassiz School, where Josie Morehousewas substituting second reader for the Wilson girl, who was sick.She was standing in the window as we passed. Eddie took off hiscap and waved to her, and she returned the wave as well as shecould without having the children see her. That would never havedone, seeing that she was the teacher, and substituting at that.But when we turned the corner we noticed that she was stillstanding at the window and leaning out just a bit, even at the riskof being indiscreet.When the 10:15 pulled out Eddie stood on the bottom step, withhis cap off, looking I can't tell you how boyish, and straight, andclean, and handsome, with his lips parted, and his eyes verybright. The hairy-chested recruiting officer stood just besidehim, and suffered by contrast. There was a bedlam of good-byes,and last messages, and good-natured badinage, but Eddie's mother'seyes never left his face until the train disappeared around thecurve in the track.Well, they got a new boy at Kunz's--a sandy-haired youth, withpimples, and no knack at mixing, and we got out of the habit ofdropping in there, although those fall months were unusually warm.It wasn't long before we began to get postcards--pictures ofthe naval training station, and the gymnasium, and of model campsand of drills, and of Eddie in his uniform. His mother insisted oncalling it his sailor suit, as though he were a little boy. Oneday Josie Morehouse came over to Mrs. Houghton's with a grouppicture in her hand. She handed it to Eddie's mother withoutcomment. Mrs. Houghton looked at it eagerly, her eye selecting herown boy from the group as unerringly as a mother bird finds hernest in the forest."Oh, Eddie's better looking than that!" she cried, with atremulous little laugh. "How funny those pants make them look,don't they? And his mouth isn't that way, at all. Eddie alwayshad the sweetest mouth, from the time he was a baby. Let's seesome of these other boys. Why--why----"Then she fell silent, scanning those other faces. PresentlyJosie bent over her and looked too, and the brows of both womenknitted in perplexity. They looked for a long, long minute, andthe longer they looked the more noticeable became the cluster offine little wrinkles that had begun to form about Mrs. Houghton'seyes.When finally they looked up it was to gaze at one anotherquestioningly."Those other boys," faltered Eddie's mother, "they--they don'tlook like Eddie, do they? I mean----""No, they don't," agreed Josie. "They look older, and theyhave such queer-looking eyes, and jaws, and foreheads. But then,"she finished, with mock cheerfulness, "you can never tell in thosesilly kodak pictures."Eddie's mother studied the card again, and sighed gently. "Ihope," she said, "that Eddie won't get into bad company."After that our postal cards ceased. I wish that there wassome way of telling this story so that the end wouldn't come in themiddle. But there is none. In our town we know the news beforethe paper comes out, and we only read it to verify what we haveheard. So that long before the paper came out in the middle of theafternoon we had been horrified by the news of Eddie Houghton'sdesertion and suicide. We stopped one another on Main Street totalk about it, and recall how boyish and handsome he had looked inhis white duck coat, and on that last day just as the 10:I5 pulledout. "It don't seem hardly possible, does it?" we demanded of eachother.But when Eddie's mother brought out the letters that had comeafter our postal cards had ceased, we understood. And when theybrought him home, and we saw him for the last time, all those of uswho had gone to school with him, and to dances, and sleigh rides,and hayrack parties, and picnics, and when we saw the look on hisface--the look of one who, walking in a sunny path has stumbledupon something horrible and unclean--we forgave him his neglect ofus, we forgave him desertion, forgave him the taking of his ownlife, forgave him the look that he had brought into his mother'seyes.There had never been anything extraordinary about EddieHoughton. He had had his faults and virtues, and good and badsides just like other boys of his age. He--oh, I am using too manywords, when one slang phrase will express it. Eddie had been justa nice young kid. I think the worst thing he had ever said was"Damn!" perhaps. If he had sworn, it was with clean oaths,calculated to relieve the mind and feelings.But the men that he shipped with during that year or more--Iam sure that he had never dreamed that such men were. He had neverstood on the curbing outside a recruiting office on South StateStreet, in the old levee district, and watched that tragic panoramamove by--those nightmare faces, drink-marred, vice-scarred, ruined.I know that he had never seen such faces in all his clean,hard-working young boy's life, spent in our prosperous littlecountry town. I am certain that he had never heard such words ascame from the lips of his fellow seamen--great mouth-filling,soul-searing words--words unclean, nauseating, unspeakable, and yetspoken.I don't say that Eddie Houghton had not taken his drink nowand then. There were certain dark rumors in our town to the effectthat favored ones who dropped into Kunz's more often than seemedneedful were privileged to have a thimbleful of something choice inthe prescription room, back of the partition at the rear of thedrug store. But that was the most devilish thing that Eddie hadever done.I don't say that all crews are like that one. Perhaps he wasunfortunate in falling in with that one. But it was an Easterntrip, and every port was a Port Said. Eddie Houghton's thoughtswere not these men's thoughts; his actions were not their actions,his practices were not their practices. To Eddie Houghton, aChinese woman in a sampan on the water front at Shanghai wassomething picturesque; something about which to write home to hismother and to Josie. To those other men she was possible prey.Those other men saw that he was different, and they pesteredhim. They ill-treated him when they could, and made his life ahellish thing. Men do those things, and people do not speak of it.I don't know all the things that he suffered. But in his mind, dayby day, grew the great, overwhelming desire to get away from itall--from this horrible life that was such a dreadful mistake. Ithink that during the long night watches his mind was filled withthoughts of our decent little town--of his mother's kitchen, withits Wednesday and Saturday scent of new-made bread--of the shadyfront porch, with its purple clematis--of the smooth front yardwhich it was his Saturday duty to mow that it might be trim andsightly for Sunday--of the boys and girls who used to drop in atthe drug store--those clear-eyed, innocently coquettish, giggling,blushing girls in their middy blouses and white skirts, theirslender arms and throats browned from tennis and boating, theireyes smiling into his as they sat perched at the fountain after ahot set of tennis--those slim, clean young boys, sun-browned,laughing, their talk all of swimming, and boating, and tennis, andgirls.He did not realize that it was desertion--that thought thatgrew and grew in his mind. In it there was nothing offaithlessness to his country. He was only trying to be true tohimself, and to the things that his mother had taught him. He onlyknew that he was deadly sick of these sights of disease, and vice.He only knew that he wanted to get away--back to his own decentlife with the decent people to whom he belonged. And he went. Hewent, as a child runs home when it had tripped and fallen in themud, not dreaming of wrong-doing or punishment.The first few hundred miles on the train were a dream. Butfinally Eddie found himself talking to a man--a big, lean,blue-eyed western man, who regarded Eddie with kindly, puzzledeyes. Eddie found himself telling his story in a disjointed,breathless sort of way. When he had finished the man uncrossed hislong lean legs, took his pipe out of his mouth, and sat up. Therewas something of horror in his eyes as he sat, looking at Eddie."Why, kid," he said, at last. "You're deserting! You'll getthe pen, don't you know that, if they catch you? Where you going?""Going!" repeated Eddie. "Going! Why, I'm going home, ofcourse.""Then I don't see what you're gaining," said the man, "becausethey'll sure get you there."Eddie sat staring at the man for a dreadful minute. In thatminute the last of his glorious youth, and ambition, and zest oflife departed from him.He got off the train at the next town, and the western manoffered him some money, which Eddie declined with all his old-timesweetness of manner. It was rather a large town, with a great manybusy people in it. Eddie went to a cheap hotel, and took a room,and sat on the edge of the thin little bed and stared at the car-pet. It was a dusty red carpet. In front of the bureau many feethad worn a hole, so that the bare boards showed through, with atuft of ragged red fringe edging them. Eddie Houghton sat andstared at the worn place with a curiously blank look on his face.He sat and stared and saw many things. He saw his mother, for onething, sitting on the porch with a gingham apron over her lightdress, waiting for him to come home to supper; he saw his ownroom--a typical boy's room, with camera pictures and blue printsstuck in the sides of the dresser mirror, and the boxing gloves onthe wall, and his tennis racquet with one string broken (he hadalways meant to have that racquet re-strung) and his track shoes,relics of high school days, flung in one corner, and hisgay-colored school pennants draped to form a fresco, and the cush-ion that Josie Morenouse had made for him two years ago, atChristmas time, and the dainty white bedspread that he, fussedabout because he said it was too sissy for a boy's room--oh, Ican't tell you what he saw as he sat and stared at that worn placein the carpet. But pretty soon it began to grow dark, and at lasthe rose, keeping his fascinated eyes still on the bare spot, walkedto the door, opened it, and backed out queerly, still keeping hiseyes on the spot.He was back again in fifteen minutes, with a bottle in hishand. He should have known better than to choose carbolic, beinga druggist, but all men are a little mad at such times. He laydown at the edge of the thin little bed that was little more thana pallet, and he turned his face toward the bare spot that couldjust be seen in the gathering gloom. And when he raised the bottleto his lips the old-time sweetness of his smile illumined his face.Where the car turns at Eighteenth Street there is a big,glaring billboard poster, showing a group of stalwart young men inwhite ducks lolling on shores, of tropical splendor, with palmswaving overhead, and a glimpse of blue sea in the distance. Thewording beneath it runs something like this:"Young men wanted. An unusual opportunity for travel,education and advancement. Good pay. No expenses."When I see that sign I think of Eddie Houghton back home. Andwhen I think of Eddie Houghton I see red.
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