Tramping on Life Part 59

Her small, black pupils dilated angrily. But she did not press the point of her staying. She had put her hand on my arm cajolingly, but I had shook it off with such evident disgust--founded partly and secretly on a horror of physical attraction for her--that drew my morbid, starved nature--

"Very well!... but I'll be back this afternoon, early. When he wakes up and asks for a drink of whiskey ... starts out to get one ... draw him a gla.s.s of water from the faucet, and take your oath that it's whiskey ...

he'll believe you and drink it!"

And she departed, an odor of strong perfume in her wake.

Had this planet of earth been populated from without?... there were evidently two races on it--the race of men--the race of women--men had voyaged in from some other world in s.p.a.ce women had done the like from their world ... to this world, alien to both of them. And here a monstrous thing had brought them together like an interlocking fungus--their s.e.x-union ... a function that monstrously held together two different species of animals that should not even be on meeting terms.

Thus my morbid fancy ran, as I entered slowly my father's room.

He slept.

On a chair by his bed lay a copy of _Hamlet_, his favourite Shakespearean play. I picked it up, read in it, waiting for him to wake, while he breathed laboriously.

I became absorbed in the play ... I must write a poem, some time, called "Hamlet's Last Soliliquy."

My father was awake.

I did not know how long he had been so, for his breathing had not changed and the only difference from his sleeping state was that his eyes stared, wide and gla.s.sy, at the ceiling, as if they comprehended nothing.

A feeling of horror crept over my body. This was more than I had counted on.. my father, helpless on his back and his wits off gathering wool....

"Father!" I put my hand on a talon of his.

He turned his head slightly. Smiled vacuously.

"Father!"

A perturbation clouded his eyes ... that painful struggle toward comprehension observed in an infant's face.

"Who are you? What do you want?"

"I'm your son--Johnnie!... and I've come back to take care of you."

"Johnnie is away ... far off ... on the sea ... in a s.h.i.+p."

And he sighed and turned his face to the wall as if the thought troubled him, and he wished to dismiss it. Then, in a moment, he whirled about, changed and furious. He rose to a sitting posture ... swung his legs out, bringing the bed-clothes a-wry with him....

"You are an impostor ... you are not my son ... I tell you again, he is away ... has been away for years ... as long as I can remember ...

perhaps he is dead ... you are an impostor."

He leaped up, full of madness, and seized hold of me.

"Stop, Father, what are you trying to do?"

As I grappled with him, trying to keep him from hurting me--and he was quite strong, for all his emaciation--the horror of my situation made me sick at the stomach, quite sick ... and my mind went ridiculously back to the times when my father and I had eaten oyster-fries together ...

"that is the only thing you and this man have in common ...

oyster-fries," remarked my mind to me. All the while I was pinning his wrists in my grasp ... re-pinning them as he frantically wrested them loose ... swearing and heaping obscenities on my head ... all the while, I thought of those oyster-fries ... we had saved up a lard-tin full of bacon grease to fry them in ... and fry after fry had been sizzled to a rich, cracker-powdered brown in that grease ... a peculiar smell waxed in the kitchen, however ... which we could never trace to its source ...

"a dead rat somewhere, maybe," suggested my father.

When we had used a third of the bacon grease, the dead rat's foot stood up ... out of that can.

We discharged the contents of our stomachs in the sink.

This was the ridiculous incident that possessed my imagination while I struggled with my father.

I had my father over on the bed. He fought to a sitting posture again ... got his finger in my eye and made me see a whorl of dancing sparks.

With irritation and a curse ... then both laughing hysterically and sobbing ... I bore him back to his pillow....

The strength had gone entirely out of him ... now it came into his mind that I was there trying to rob or kill him.

"Spare me, spare me!" he pleaded, "you can have everything in the house ... only don't kill me! My G.o.d!"

"Good Christ!" I groaned, as he beat upward, fighting again.

I let him rise, almost palsied with horror.

He perched on the edge of the bed, exhausted,--began groping with one hand, in the air, idly.

"What is it? What do you want?"

"Give me my pants! I don't trust you. I want to go to the corner and get a drink ... give me my pants!"

"Pop, look at me ... stop this nonsense ... you're safe ... I'm your son, Johnnie!"

"That's all very well," he a.s.sented with an air of reserved cunning.

"Please believe me," I pleaded.

"All right ... you are my son ... only don't kill me," he responded craftily.

"Father!... good G.o.d!"

He perceived by the emotion of my last exclamation, that at least I was not ill-disposed toward him.

He clutched at the advantage.

"Promise to take care of me till Johnnie comes--he's just around the corner," slyly.

"Pop, what is it you want? What can I do for you?"

"A curious greed flickered in his eyes.