Part 12

Always he found a ready welcome at the Home Trench. Mrs. Wilmerding was so gracious, and Peggy Sturgis so interested and so eager that he should feel at home. And there were many other places that opened their doors to him—clubs and rest rooms and private homes. He was called “buddy,” and told many times how proud everyone was of him; he was, indeed, not a little proud of himself.

He was attacked by an urgent desire to live up to what was expected of him, to be a hero in reality, to win medals, to do violence to the enemy; his hate, daily more bitter, demanded an outlet.

He began to ask the sergeants, “When do we go across?”

They did not know, so they looked mysterious. He began to be worried; he had a fear that the war might be over before he could get into it. He even ventured to ask the captain when the regiment would sail. The captain, who did not know, looked mysterious. Joey’s worry increased. His dreams became haunted by visions of an early peace or by the specter of himself being left behind when his regiment did, at last, sail. Why didn’t it sail? Surely he was ready.

The day toward which all Joey Pell’s thoughts had turned did come. The sergeants looked more mysterious than usual; the officers whispered together and looked very wise. At retreat the captain announced the news with a suitable gravity; Joey quivered from the peak of his campaign hat to the nail-studded soles of his army shoes.

“The regiment sails from Hoboken May fifth.”

In all his life Joey Pell had never heard more exciting, more gratifying words. May fifth was but six days distant.

Joey cajoled a one-day pass to New York from the top sergeant. It was one of the brightest days he had ever known. Everyone was so kind to him. At the Home Trench they were especially nice to him; Mrs. Wilmerding had him to dinner in her own dining-room, and they had turkey. To Joey for anyone to have turkey at any time but Christmas was unheard-of luxury; it made him surer than ever that he was a personage. They all wrung his hand when at last, reluctantly, he left, bearing a load of wristlets, sweaters, trench mirrors, candy and cigarets.

The night before he was to sail Joey Pell did not sleep at all. He lay watching his equipment; now and then he examined it to see if it was all there and in perfect order; he did not want to take the most minute chance or to risk in any way being left behind.

He was in M Company, which was to go aboard the transport last. He sat on the chilly pier, chafing. He wanted to get under way; he could not be sure he was actually going until the Statue of Liberty faded from view.

He heard a sergeant’s staccato order: “Detail—Privates Leary, Kochanski, Pell——”

He sprang up and stood at attention with the others.

“Go aboard,” the sergeant ordered, “and feed the mules.”

Joey held back when he reached the hold where the artillery mules were; they were restless and were scuffling and biting in the half darkness. He decided that he had done his duty in bringing the pails of water that far; others could give them to the mules. But a watchful corporal spied him.

“Here, you!” shouted the corporal. “Water them mules.”

But still Joey held back.

“Say, you ain’t afraid of them, are you?” demanded the corporal scornfully.

“Naw,” said Joey, “not exactly, but——”

“Don’t be yella!” shot out the corporal. “Are you a soldier or ain’t you?”

Joey picked up the pails resolutely; decidedly he was a soldier. He shouldered his way in among the mules; they seemed gigantic, grotesque in the dimness. He set down one of the pails. It was then that a mule lashed out with its steel-shod hoof. It hit Joey Pell squarely in the back of the head. Sharply a swift blackness fell on his brain.

At the military hospital in a deserted department store on lower Sixth Avenue, to which they rushed Joey Pell, the doctors said that his skull was crushed and that part of it was pressing on his brain. His regiment sailed without him; but Joey Pell never knew it.

His was a curious case, the doctors said. They were able to relieve some of the pressure on his brain, but not all of it. He continued to exist. But he existed as a vegetable does. The part of his brain that gave him memory did not work at all. He had no past, no yesterdays. Each day when he woke, it was as if he were freshly born. Certain habits remained—eating, dressing, simple motion. But he was quite unsensitive to impressions. Each day they told him his name, and a moment later he forgot it. He never asked how he happened to be there; he never asked about anything; he simply sat in the corner of the private room they had given him, quiet, apathetic.

For two years the brain of Private Joseph Pell lay fallow. His mind simply closed up shop and went on a vacation. So, while he sat there, impervious to anything, in a perfect vacuum, his regiment fought, the Armistice was signed, his regiment returned, there was a triumphal march up Fifth Avenue, the regiment was demobilized, and the great city swallowed it once more. The soldiers who had been clerks returned to their counters, the soldiers who had been truckmen returned to their trucks.

It was May fifth, two years after Joey Pell’s accident. The attendant on duty near Joey’s room had gone to the floor below to play cards with another attendant. Joey Pell in his chair grew sleepy in the drowsy spring morning air. His head nodded forward on the bosom of his hospital nightshirt. He fell asleep. A fire engine bellowing past in the street below screamed with its siren under his window. The impact of the sound startled him awake. It jerked him upright in his chair; the sudden movement tipped the chair over and Joey Pell pitched backward to the floor; his head struck violently a sharp corner of his iron bed.

He lay for a moment where he had fallen; then slowly he pulled himself to his feet and stared, puzzled, about him. What was he, Private Joseph Pell, doing in this room on the day his regiment was to sail for the Front? Then he remembered; they had made him go among the mules; one of the mules must have kicked him and stunned him; certainly his head still buzzed; the fools had carted him to this hospital, thinking he was badly hurt; as if a kick in the head could hurt a soldier! Decisively Joey Pell tore the nightshirt from his body. His regiment was going to sail that day at noon, and he was going to sail with it.

He saw that he must act swiftly, but with caution. In the next ward soldiers were drowsing. Their uniforms hung on pegs by their beds. Joey commandeered the first uniform he came to; its owner was asleep. He was a very much bigger man than Joey, and the uniform was half a dozen sizes too large, so that it draped around Joey’s meager frame in great folds. The purloined shoes were elevens, and Joey customarily wore fives. The hat came down over his ears; no matter; once aboard the transport, Joey knew he could get a new outfit. He hunted feverishly for his pack and his rifle. He could find no pack, but in a storeroom he did find a rifle. It was not his, for it was rusty and dusty, and his own was always clean and well cared for. He took it anyhow.

He had seen a clock, and saw that it was ten. He had two hours to get to Hoboken. He had no idea where he was and his knowledge of geography was limited, so he was not at all certain where Hoboken was; in Jersey, somewhere, he fancied. He slipped out of the hospital; his idea was to find the Hudson River and get a ferry. He saw from the street signs that he was at Sixth Avenue and Eighteenth Street; he breathed a sigh of relief. His problem was simple; he had only to hail a passing motor car and ask its driver to take him to one of the downtown ferries. He turned toward Fifth Avenue.

A man was coming along the street toward Joey. He was a well-dressed man, and he was escorting an appreciable paunch. Joey smiled at him; the man scowled and increased his pace.

Joey reached Fifth Avenue. People were hurrying along. They did not smile at Joey Pell; they hardly glanced at him; when they did, it was with scant interest and no friendliness. He wondered about it.

A big motor car cruised slowly past; there was a lady in white summer furs in the back seat, and there were orchids in the silver vase. Joey held up his hand as a signal for the car to stop. The lady looked at him obliquely.

“Give us a lift,” called Joey Pell.

The lady leaned forward and said something to the chauffeur; the car jumped ahead and sailed at a swifter rate of speed down the Avenue. Joey looked after it; he scratched his head.

He signaled another car; it did not stop. He signaled another; it did not stop. He signaled others; none of them paid the least heed to him. He stood, perplexed, on the corner. Something hard prodded him in the ribs; it was the night stick of a policeman.

“Move along there, Jack,” ordered the policeman. “I been watchin’ you. If you wanna panhandle, go over on Broadway; Fifth Avenue is closed, see?”

“But——” sputtered Joey.

“Don’t give me no argument,” said the policeman sternly. “Beat it.”

He gave Joey another prod with his club. Joey moved down Fifth Avenue; he was a little giddy. He wished he had time to show that big stiff of a cop that he could not talk to a soldier that way, but time was going fast, and his regiment sailed at noon.

Joey Pell hurried along. He had no time to speculate about why no one smiled at him. He had an idea, and that was to go to the Home Trench, which was near Eleventh Street; Mrs. Wilmerding always had a car or two on hand; a word to her, and he’d be driven to Hoboken at top speed.

He ran up the steps of her stately house. Someone had taken down the Home Trench sign, he noticed. He tried to open the door, but it was locked. That was odd, he thought; it had always been open from eight till six. It must be stuck, he thought. So he pressed the bell. A jowlish man with side bars came to the door and surveyed Joey in his tentlike uniform coldly.

“Well?” inquired the man.

Joey started to enter, but the man barred the way.

“Where are you going?” he demanded.

“Goin’ in,” said Joey. “Wanna see Mrs. Wilmerding.”

“You’ll have to be announced,” the man stated. “What are your name and business?”

“Why—er”—Joey stammered—“just tell her it’s Joey Pell—Private Pell. She knows me.”

“Wait here,” said the man, and he closed the door.

Joey Pell waited. It was all very strange, he thought. He could look in through the window and see the long front room; usually it was crowded with soldiers; this day it was empty; not quite empty, however. At a desk sat a well-nourished lady—Mrs. Wilmerding, unquestionably. Joey Pell felt greatly relieved.

The door opened a trifle. The side-barred man was there. “Mrs. Wilmerding is not at home,” he said.

Joey decided that the man was joking; that this was a new system of entertainment.

“Say, kid,” he said, “you ain’t looked very hard. I can see her right in there.”

“She’s not at home,” said the man; his voice was frigid.

“Say, cut the kiddin’,” said Joey. “My reg’ment sails at noon and I gotta get to Hoboken.” The butler appeared to be closing the door.

“Hey, Mrs. Wilmerding! Mrs. Wilmerding!” Joey called loudly.

She came out from her drawing room; her face was unsmiling.

“Jeffords,” she said to the butler, “what does he want?”

“I told him you were not at home, madam,” the butler said.

“Mrs. Wilmerding,” broke in Joey, “I gotta get to Hoboken—quick—see?—and I thought you could help me.”

“I advise you to apply to the Veteran’s Charity Bureau, in Madison Avenue,” she said, and shut the door.

Joey stood on the steps for two precious minutes. He wondered what he had done to offend her. But he knew he had no time to puzzle it out. He again started down the Avenue. And again he noticed that the faces of those who passed him were uninterested, without friendliness.

Out of the sea of faces swam a familiar one—Peggy Sturgis.

He saluted her and said, “Hello, Miss Sturgis. Well, I’m off.”

She did not return his salutation; she looked at him queerly, as if there were something curious about him.

“I beg your pardon?” she said.

“Say—you ain’t forgot me already?” blurted Joey Pell.

“I’m sorry,” she said coolly, “but I’m afraid I have. One met so many soldiers you know. I hope things are going well with you. Goodby.”

She was gone before he could catch his breath. What terrible thing had he done, he wondered. But he had no room in his mind for much wondering; his immediate problem was to get to Hoboken by noon. He pushed on toward Washington Square.

As he progressed along, at a half run, he overtook two men who were also going toward the square. Joey saw that they, too, were in uniform—but it was not khaki; it was a garish uniform, strange to him. He stopped short. But it was not the uniforms of the men that stopped him; it was their talk. They were talking in the language of the enemy. Joey Pell had learned to recognize it. Joey knew at once that they must be spies. He slackened his pace and followed close behind them. Fear hit him. If he captured the men he’d miss the transport. But it was his duty, he saw that, to capture them; he would do his duty.

Across the broad square he followed the two men. They headed for a crowd assembled in the southeast corner of the square. Joey did not take his eyes off them till they neared the crowd. Then he looked up, and his heart turned a somersault. His fingers closed tight on his rifle. The crowd was forming in a military formation, and they all wore the same strange garish uniforms as the two spies; and furthermore, they were speaking the same language. Joey stopped and stared.

The uniformed men carried a banner; it bore words in a foreign language. The truth came to Joey Pell in a sickening flash: the enemy had captured New York! How or when, he did not know. But there they were; they held Washington Square. He watched them, petrified with horror and hate. He tried to decipher their flag, but it meant nothing to him. He could not read its inscription:

Young Men’s Uniformed Gymnastic and Singing Society of the Reformed Lutheran Church

He could not tell from their speech that they were assembling to march to the funeral of a deceased member. One thought filled his brain: the enemy had captured New York. Now he understood why the people had ignored him; they were afraid to do otherwise.

His hands tightened on his rifle; there was no question what his duty was; they were two hundred to one; but he was a soldier.

He fumbled at his belt for cartridges, then groaned as he realized he had none. Crouching behind a tree he drew from its scabbard the bayonet; his teeth bit into each other as he fixed the bayonet in its socket.

Then he jumped from behind his tree. His voice, high and shrill, sounded through the square.

“I’ll show you, you devils; I’ll show you!”

The surprised members of the uniformed gymnastic and singing society saw his fantastic figure come running toward them. At first they thought he was joking. Then, when they saw the leveled bayonet, they thought him crazy. Straight into the midst of them charged Private Joseph Pell. His big hat came down over his eyes, so the lunge he made with his bayonet at the chest of the leader of the society missed its mark and the point became entangled in the sleeve of that astonished young gymnast and singer. The men were sure he was a madman now. They knocked him down on the granite pavement; Private Joseph Pell’s head hit one of the blocks.

* * * * *

So ended the Battle of Washington Square, the briefest battle in history, and yet the only one where the American Army’s casualties were 100 per cent.

THE LAST OF THE FLATFEET

HIS name was Ugobeecheebuggocheebeepawpawkeepiswiskiweeweechinoobee. In Flatfoot Indian this means, of course, Little-Big-Fat-Brown-Muskrat-Sitting-on-a-Pine-Stump-With- His-Tail-just-Touching-the-Ground. At the school on the reservation whither he was taken, screaming, at a tender age, the teacher, in the interest of simplicity and patriotism, renamed him George Washington Ug.

After some months had passed, the teacher voiced a regret that he had done this; it hardly seemed fair to the Father of His Country. Closer acquaintance with the young aborigine forced the teacher to conclude that it was entirely unlikely that Ug would ever be first in war, peace, or, indeed, anything. Privately the teacher expressed the opinion that if Ug were to unveil his boxlike head in the open air Ug would be in acute peril from woodpeckers. The juvenile Ug seemed absolutely impervious to the pearls of knowledge with which he was pelted. So the teacher decided to change his name to Walter Muskrat.

It was then that the salient trait of Ug’s character shone forth. He refused flatly to be Walter Muskrat. Somehow the idea had seeped through some chink in his cranium that George Washington was, or had been, a great white chief entitled to many feathers and rich in horses, squaws and scalps, for whom it was an honor to be named. Ug announced without passion but with palpable determination that he intended to remain George Washington Ug. What was his, was his, he intimated. Arguments, cajolery, threats left him equally unmoved. He refused to answer to any other name, and he refused to eat. Before his wooden-faced obduracy the teacher at length surrendered; Ug remained George Washington Ug.

To the task of civilizing Ug, the teacher, a zealous soul, gave particular attention. It was a matter of pride with that teacher that the civilizing job should be a thorough one, neat, efficient, and with no rough edges; for Ug, it seemed quite probable, was destined to be the last of the Flatfeet. To civilize a Flatfoot! That was an ambition worthy of any man, thought the teacher. It had never been done; full well the teacher knew this. Had he not been trying for thirty years? He had seen no end of Flatfoot youths issue forth from his schoolroom, to the outward eye finished products, glowing with the high polish of civilization and possessed of well-cultivated tastes for derby hats, bank accounts, a reasonable amount of morality, safety razors, hymns, suspenders, lawsuits and the other essential habiliments of civilization, only to backslide into barbarous practises at the first suitable opportunity that presented itself.

“There’s a broad streak of atavism in the Flatfoot,” said the teacher. “He reverts to type as easily as the rattlesnake sheds its skin. On Saturday night he may be seen in a derby hat and rah-rah clothes, peaceably eating a nut sundae in a drug store and discussing Ty Cobb, ship subsidies and self-starters with the clerk. On the following Monday, like as not, he is back in moccasins and feathers, doing some forbidden tribal dance, whetting up his hunting knife and wistfully regretting that the Government has such narrow-minded prejudices against a little scalping.

“But,” concluded the teacher, “I’ve got hold of Ug early enough to civilize him so it will stick. The last of the Flatfeet is going to be the best of the Flatfeet. I’ll train Ug so that he will never want to take off his derby hat. After all, the derby hat is the symbol of civilization. No man can possibly be wild in a derby hat.”

So he labored over Ug. Time passed, as it is apt to, and Ug’s chest measurement and appetite increased, and the teacher watched hopefully for signs of mental and moral development. That Ug would ever become a profound thinker, the teacher harbored grave doubts; there was scant indication that the chunky, square-faced boy would ever become a Flatfoot Aristotle. Indeed, in darker moments the teacher sometimes opined that the only way to implant seeds of knowledge in that brown head was by means of a major operation involving trepanning. It was not that Ug preferred sin to syntax; docilely enough, and readily, he accepted the leading facts of an elementary education—to wit: That in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue; that six times nine is invariably fifty-four; that one must spell “separate” with an “a” till one’s hair turns gray; that homicide is not only illegal but unethical; that the femur is the longest bone in the human body; that when a fat man gets into a tubful of water the water will overflow. Having accepted them, he forgot them.

“However,” said the teacher, “if I can teach him to be a law-abiding member of his community, who will work and keep sober, it will be enough. A man can be civilized without being a mental Hercules.”

He continued most earnestly to train Ug in the way, by civilized canons, he should go. When Ug was fourteen a most encouraging event happened. With his own delighted eyes the teacher observed the behavior of Ug that day at recess in the school yard when Ug became involved in a quarrel with Henry James Curly Bear, a sprig of the Blackfoot tribe, and a youth of superior size and brawn. Henry James Curly Bear, whom no amount of effort had been able to redeem from savagery, had kicked Ug roundly in a dispute over the somewhat knotty technical problem of whether Jack Dempsey was a greater fighter than Ty Cobb was a ball player. Ordinarily such an act meant instant and spirited fistic battle, for traditionally the Flatfeet are of martial cast and care no more for Blackfeet than one male bulldog cares for another male bulldog confined in the same coal bin. The teacher made ready to launch himself into the fray and drag the opponents apart. To his surprise and joy he heard Ug say in ringing tones:

“I will not fight you, Henry James Curly Bear. The teacher says only bad people fight. Good people sue in the courts. If you kick me again, Henry James Curly Bear, when I say my prayers tonight I’ll tell our heavenly Father on you, and He’ll fix you, Henry James Curly Bear.”

Young Curly Bear expressed the opinion that Ug was afraid of him. This Ug gently denied.

“The Good Book,” said George Washington Ug, “says that it is wicked to fight; and, anyhow, why don’t you take somebody your own size?”

Then, not without a show of dignity, Ug turned his back on young Curly Bear and retired from the scene. The teacher felt the warming flush of pride.

“Score one for civilization,” he said.

As he walked toward his home that evening the teacher was decidedly in a self-congratulatory mood; overnight, almost, it seemed that Ug had begun to respond to the efforts of the teacher. With such gratifying thoughts in his brain, the teacher passed a grove of live oaks, a secluded spot. To his ears came sounds. He stopped. Louder grew the sounds, and stranger; they appeared to issue from the grove. Now he heard a wail, shrill and laden with some emotion akin to anger; then he heard a chant, weird, almost frenzied. The teacher cautiously pushed aside some underbrush and peered into the grove. An unpedagogical expression leaped to his lips, for he saw the person from whom the sounds came, and he knew their import.

The chanting lips were the lips of his pupil, George Washington Ug. As Ug chanted he danced—a wild, abandoned dance full of twists, turns, bends and wriggles. Gone were Ug’s pants; they hung on a stump; and so did his derby hat. In his black hair stood feathers, plainly the tail feathers of a recently despoiled rooster. In his hand gleamed the blade of a jackknife, and he made menacing gestures at what the teacher thought at first was a bit of red string but which closer scrutiny revealed to be an adult earthworm of the night-crawler variety. A concentrated and bloodthirsty scowl was on the face of Ug as he twisted in the dance, and chanted:

“Koopeekis koopeekis Bobbochee cheebobo Toowanda bonda bonda bonda Bopokum kobokum.”

At this point Ug dispatched the earthworm by biting off its head. Chagrin and horror overwhelmed the watching teacher, for he knew that the chant meant: