Tramping on Life Part 77

Ich hab' daruber nachgedacht Schon manche tausand Yahre."

Monday morning ... by six or seven o'clock a rustling below, in the shop, by eight, the day's work in full blast ... a terrific pounding and hammering on sheets of tin and pieces of pipe. The uproar threw my mind off my poetry.

I went down to speak with Randall about it....

"Frank, I can't stand this, I must leave."

"Nonsense; stay; you'll get used to it."

"No, I must go if the noise keeps up continually like this."

"Well, it won't ... we have a special job to finish ... tin-roofing ...

but if you want a place to stay where it is quiet, I have a camp, not far out, on the Ossawatomie, where I go for week-ends...."

"Where is it? That would be fine. I'd like to stay there."

"You know where old Farmer Brown lives, by the abandoned church, just outside of Perthville?"

"Yes. That's seven miles out on the Osageville road."

"Take the first turn to the right from his house, going west. It's an unused bye-road and it runs plumb into my cabin. There's a frying pan there ... and some flour ... and bacon ... tell you what ... it's been broken into several times. I'll consider it worth while if you go and live there, and I get no rent from you for it nor the room upstairs ...

you'll be alone, G.o.d knows--excepting Sat.u.r.days and Sundays."

I packed my Heine in a bundle ... with my Bible and my Josephus in the Greek, along with Whiston's English version ... and I included a bundle of books on New Testament times that made me groan under their weight.

For I planned to begin a four-act play on Judas, and must study for writing that, as well as learn the "how" of the lyric....

The stupendousness of the silence of absolute solitude! At first the thoughts run on with a tangle and jangle, a turmoil almost of madness ... then they quiet down into the peace that only a hermitage gives and the objects of life are seen in their true relativity and perspective.

My diet was one of sow-belly, bread, and coffee, and what fish I caught in the sluggish, muddy stream....

Sat.u.r.day, toward sunset, I heard a whooping in the woods. It was Randall coming with a few friends for his week-end, as he had warned. With him, his wild brother, Jack; and Bill, his a.s.sistant plumber and man-about-shop.

The drinking had begun before they were in sight of the shack. And it was kept up till late Sunday night ... around a big fire in a cleared s.p.a.ce they sang and gambled and drank.

Randall served great hilarity to the party by trying to breed his gelded horse to his mare ... the mare kicked and squealed, indignant at the cheat, looking back, flattening her ears, and showing the vicious whites of her eyes. Several times the infuriated beast's heels whished an inch or so from Randall's head, as he forced the gelding to advance and mount. We rolled on the gra.s.s, laughing ... myself included.

Then all stripped to the buff for a swim in the stream ... a treacherous place where the bottom was at times but two or three feet from the surface, and the mud, soft and semi-liquid for five feet more. And there were snags, and broken beer and whiskey bottles all over the bottom where it was decent and gravelly.

Bill, with his solemn dundreary whiskers, leaped high in the air like a frog, kicking his legs and yelling drunkenly as he took off.

"Look out, Bill," I shouted, "it's nothing but mud there!"

But Bill didn't heed me. He hit with a swish and a thud instead of a splash, and didn't come up.

We put out in our rickety boat.

By that luck that favours the drunkard and fool, we laid hold on Bill's feet sticking out, just under the water. We tugged mightily and brought him forth, turned into a black man by the ooze ... otherwise, unharmed.

It was not till two hours after midnight that they whisked away townward and left me alone, so that the graciousness of silence could enfold me again. I looked forward to a week's peace, before they descended on the camp again. But I had a premonition that there was to be no peace for me there. For Randall had said to me before he drove away....

"You know Pete Willets? Well, he's liable to come here for a few days, during the week ... a nice quiet fellow though ... won't disturb you."

The thought of another visitor did disturb me. Though I knew Pete Willets as a quiet, gentle shoemaker in whom seemed no guile, I wanted to be alone to think and read and write.

Wednesday noon Pete Willets drove up, accompanied by a grubby Woman whom at first glance I did not relish.

"h.e.l.lo, Johnnie, Frank said we could use the shack for a day or two."

"Forever, as far as I'm concerned," I answered, beginning to tie up my books in a huge bundle as big as a peddler's pack, and as heavy.

Impatiently tying the horse to a post, they were in the shack and immediately p.r.o.ne on my bunk.

As I shouldered my load their murmuring voices full of amorous desire stung me like a gadfly. I hurried off toward Laurel, angry at life.

I explained to Randall why I had left his camp so soon. He was gravely concerned.

"I didn't tell Willets he could have my shack to take Gracie there. This is a bit too thick."

"Who's Gracie?"

"--a bad lot ... a girl that's been on the turf since she was in knee skirts--as long as I've known her. He loves her. She can twist him around her little finger. She's going to get him into something bad some day. He'll do anything she wants. And she's capable of putting him up to anything."

"Willets is weak, when it comes to women ... don't drink much ... a hard worker ... everybody likes him....

"Did you ever notice his limp ... only slight ... scarcely noticeable, isn't it?... he's a corking mechanic as well as shoemaker ... mighty clever ... now for instance, you wouldn't ever have known, unless I told you, that his left leg is made of wood?"

"I wouldn't even suspect it."

"--lost his left leg when he was a brakeman ... made that wooden leg for himself ... it works so smoothly that he's thinking of taking out a patent on it."

"Why does a woman take to a man with a wooden leg?"

"--makes good money ... and he has a way about him with the girls ...

he goes about so quietly. He's so gentle and considerate ... acts, but doesn't say much, you know! that's what they like!"

"--d.a.m.ned sorry for his wife and two kids, though; when Willets comes to town again I'm not going to let him have my shack any more ... might be some trouble ... divorce or something."

There was trouble and very shortly. In a month Willets had poisoned his wife ... with rough-on-rats ... and the quiet little shoemaker went to the penitentiary for life ... a life-time of shoe-making.

I rented a tent and pitched it on an island in the middle of the Kaw, or Kansas River. There I was alone. I rented a boat to take out my possessions.