The Boy Grew Older Part 15

David and Goliath became set as a bedtime story and lasted through the next six months almost without change. Indeed Pat resented changes.

"Once," Peter would begin, "there was a man named Goliath and he was the biggest man in the world and he could lick any man in the world."

"Not lick," Pat would interrupt. "Beat."

"Oh, yes, he could beat any man in the world." Peter found himself coming home for Pat's bedtime with increasing frequency. Once or twice he tried to break away, but upon such occasions Kate reported that the child had cried for him and had kept awake until after midnight asking for the story of David and Goliath.

"You tell it to him," said Peter. "I think I can teach it to you. He wants it just this way." And he repeated the accepted version.

Kate shook her head. "I'm too old a woman to be learning so many words, Mr. Neale," she said. "And it's not a story I think Father Ryan would like me to be telling. That's not the way the story do be going in our Bible."

"Gosh," thought Peter to himself. "She thinks it was Martin Luther made those changes."

Notwithstanding Goliath, Peter made a gallant attempt to break away from his newly found responsibilities. He felt that he ought to. He felt that in the restaurants and poolrooms there lay the sort of sporting gossip he ought to pick up for his column. Of course, not all New York kept Pat's hours in those days but there was something almost auto-hypnotic in getting the child to sleep. In addition to the bedtime story, Peter found it necessary to feign great weariness in order to suggest a similar feeling in Pat. He would yawn prodigiously immediately after the Red Bat had knocked down David and pretend to doze off on the foot of Pat's bed. Presently, he would hear the boy's regular breathing and would tiptoe out of the room. But Peter acted his role much too well.

After so much shamming he generally was actually tired himself and indisposed to wander down to Jack's or any of the other places where he might find fighters or their managers.

Indeed, he made the discovery that the material to be extracted from these people was not inexhaustible. Like David and Goliath they had a tendency to run into formula. "And I yell at him, don't box him; fight him. Keep rus.h.i.+ng him. Don't let him set. And when he comes to his corner at the end of the third round I bawl in his ear, 'You kike so and so, begging your pardon, Mr. Neale, if you don't get that lousy wop I'm done with you.' And would you believe me it did him a lot of good. It put guts in him. In the fourth we nail him with a right and we win. Now we're going after the champ and if we ever get him into a ring we'll lick him."

A year or so before Neale could have taken stuff like that and worked it over into a column on "The Psychology of a Prizefight Manager." But now all the inspiration was gone. He had heard precisely the same tale in much the same language too many times. He was almost tempted to cry out, "Not lick him, beat him."

Nor was there much more available color in the fighters themselves. They were a silent crowd, most of them, particularly if they happened to have a manager along.

Once, Peter found Dave Keyes, the Brooklyn lightweight, sitting all alone in Jack's. He was going great guns that year and Peter thought of him as the logical successor to the champion. They had met a couple of times at fight clubs, but Keyes did not seem to remember Peter. He was sober but not bright. Still, Peter felt that he might draw him out during the course of the evening. In time Keyes began to talk freely enough. He was even confidential but fighting seemed to be the last thing in the world he cared to discuss.

"You see there's two dames fall for me. And the tough break is the both of them lives on the same block. See. Well, let me tell you how I works it. First I give Helen, that's the blonde one, a ring and then right bang on top of that I has the call switched over to Gracie's flat----."

"Life," thought the hara.s.sed Peter Neale, "is just one bedtime story after another."

In the Spring a long swing around the baseball training camps took Peter away for almost two months and another month and a half went in a fruitless journey to Juarez to wait for a fight which never happened. It was June when Peter returned and to his horror he found that the child had picked up theology in his absence. A storm helped the discovery. The roll of the thunder was still a long way off when Peter called it to Pat's attention. "We're going to have a thunderstorm," he said.

"No, we're not," answered the child. "Thunder storms only come when you're bad."

"What's that?" asked Peter.

"A thunderstorm's G.o.d showing his ankle," explained Pat.

This did not seem a dogma altogether iron clad and yet it worried Peter.

"Thunder's got nothing to do with you're being bad," he told Pat. "If that was it we'd have thunder all the time. Thunder's nothing to be afraid of. It's just somebody up the sky saying 'Booh' at you for fun."

"G.o.d lives up in the sky."

"How do you know that? Did you see him?"

"Yes," said Pat stoutly.

That made the question difficult to argue.

"All right," continued Peter. "Call him G.o.d if you want to. Anyhow, when it's thunder he's just saying 'Booh' at you and if you get scared you haven't got any sense. Remember that's what thunder is. Just somebody named G.o.d saying 'Booh.'"

"No, it isn't."

"Well, you tell me then."

"When it's thunder," said Pat, pointing up the street in the direction of Central Park, "it's a big giant in the trees."

The child paused. "A blind giant," he added.

Peter stared at him and wondered whether the phrase and figure were his own or whether he had picked them up from Kate. Later Peter took occasion to ask her and she denied it. "G.o.d's ankle," she admitted but only after revision. "You know, Mr. Neale, it's the way he has of getting things twisted in his little head. You understand now it was 'G.o.d's anger' I was a telling him."

"Oh, I knew that all right, Kate. I knew he made up the ankle part of it. But you're sure you didn't tell him anything about thunder and a giant in the trees--a blind giant."

"No, sir."

Peter got to thinking things over and began to remember what Vonnie had said concerning the future of Pat. He was worried. This idolatry of the Red Bat who sang on the phonograph he didn't like. After this it would have to be somebody else who knocked David down. Sandow Mertes maybe.

Then there was this blind giant in the trees. He didn't mind Pat's growing up to be a poet. That would fit into the column nicely enough, but not wild poetry. The thing had to be kept in bounds or there wasn't any way to syndicate it. Still the next column of "Looking Them Over"

which Peter wrote contained a little poem somewhat outside his usual manner. It was called, "The Big Blind Giant."

Three days later the syndicate manager on the Bulletin called up Peter.

"We've got six telegrams already about that poem of yours," he said.

"The one about the big blind giant running around and hitting his head against the trees."

"What's the matter with it?" asked Peter aggressively.

"Nothing at all, Peter, they all say it's great. All but that sporting editor of the Des Moines Register--you know him, Caleb Powers?"

"No, I don't know him. What's he say?"

"He just gives the name of the poem and then he says in his telegram, 'Don't tell me the answer, I want to guess.'"

"Five out of six is plenty," said Peter. "And say, Bill, where do you suppose I got the idea from?"

"Where?"

"From my kid--Peter Neale, 2nd. He isn't four yet, but you see I've got him working for the Bulletin already."

CHAPTER XVII

Pat furnished copy for Peter again within a month. Kate came in from the Park all breathless with an account of a fight between the child and his friend and playmate Bobby, last name not given.

"It was about an engine," explained Kate. "Bobby give it to Pat and then he wanted to take it away again. Before we could get to them Pat hit Bobby in the mouth so hard it made his mouth bleed. And that Bobby, him almost six years old. And a head taller than Pat. He bled something terrible, Mr. Neale. First I thought it was just Bobby's blood on Pat's hand, but it kept on and when I looked closer there was all the skin off of the knuckles of Pat. It must have been the teeth of that Bobby when Pat hit him. I'll be putting iodine on it this very minute if you'll watch till I get back, Mr. Neale."

"Put down that engine and come here, Pat," said Peter.

"I can't hear you."