Part 3

Frank, however, soon proved too busy to talk, and Potter was left to his own thoughts. The effect which liquor usually had on him was to produce three distinct stages. It plunged him first into a dreamy and altogether pleasant condition, in which his lot appeared the rosiest in the world, and he radiated good will on all sides. This led to melancholy and a gradual feeling of boredom with everything, aggravated by a tendency to analyze his wrongs and conduct long, unspoken conversations about them with the persons presumed to be responsible for wronging him. Then followed a feverish desire for physical motion, and the making of quick decisions, obeyed on the instant, however ill-advised.

The first state of high spirits brought him agreeably to six o’clock when he left Steve Ball’s for fear of encountering early drinkers from the Campus. He was hungry and bolted sandwiches and coffee in a nameless lunch-wagon around the corner. He found himself after that in the “Bucket of Blood.” Night had fallen; the place was unspeakably sordid with its dim lamps and shuffling bums, and his problem once more assumed proportions that harried him. He began to assail Ellen for ever having permitted the intimacy to start. Then he quickly reacted from that attack. A profound, overwhelming wave of self-abasement engulfed him. If there was suffering to be done poor Ellen would endure all of it. She had been his victim and had given him what she had to give, in all things. Had their ages been precisely reversed, he could not have been more responsible.

As he ordered another bottle of beer, he became acutely conscious that his money was disappearing. There was no more to be had, certainly for several days. Mails had to take their time, even if there was anything to hope for from them. This sense of impecuniousness made his mind veer to another complicated grievance. In one of the banks at home, held for his use at majority, lay what now seemed an incredible sum of money, from his grandmother’s estate. He had twice entreated his father to allow him to draw modestly on it. His father had not refused in either case, but had probed good-naturedly into his reasons for desiring it. But why, thought the boy, should his father have to know his private business? How could his father understand his peculiar needs? These questions had rankled time and again.

And now, he reflected bitterly, now that the trust fund might be the means of lightening a burden that would follow him all his life, it would be the same old story with his father. He would have to make a full confession of the case. But he could not do this. How could he tell his father such a yarn? Weren’t his whole family concerned as much as he? Was there not a question of blood relationship involving them? Common delicacy and loyal feeling toward them demanded that he conceal the truth, unless he took the burden upon himself and parted with them completely. He had thought all this out before and settled it. There was nothing he could say to his father.

These reflections, repeated over and over again, embroidered upon, attacked at every angle, adorned with many duplications of the same phrases, led nowhere. The bill at the “Bucket of Blood” had to be paid, and nothing was left to do but to get up and go. Well, well, he felt like moving anyhow. If only there were anything he could do now, right now, it would be a relief. He started walking rapidly uptown toward the fraternity house. Then at the corner where Broadway turned into his own street he stopped abruptly.

“What a fool!” he muttered aloud. “What a triple-plated iron-head! Why did I send that money to Ellen? Why didn’t I go myself?” He stopped and began to curse his idiocy with all the eloquence and thoroughness of which he was capable.

Then he reflected, again aloud: “But is it too late? The jerk-water goes over to Jamestown in half an hour. I could make it to Jamestown. But I haven’t enough money to go all the way. Well, I’ve got enough to go to Jamestown.”

The thought of bluffing his way on the through train with a promise to pay at the other end rushed into his mind. His name, his identification by letters in his pocket, his father’s acquaintance with railroad officials, these might carry him through. He turned and started toward the station.

“If I can get home I can raise that money. I can raise it on a note. I can get some Jew like Stern to shave the note. Or maybe I can get it from Colonel Cobb. I’ll bet Colonel Cobb would let me have it.”

This line of reasoning had to be exhausted with the usual number of variations and redundancies as he sat in the little branch train of two cars, with its dusty, worn plush seats, its threadbare blue trainmen ambling back and forth, and its scattering of anonymous, unimportant-looking passengers. Fortunately nobody was leaving town that he knew. That was to be expected six weeks after the opening of term. For the first time, the thought struck him that he himself was bolting, perhaps for several days, without the formality of an excuse from the Dean, without even notifying the men at the house. Ordinarily this would have been a serious infraction of the rules, punishable by suspension.

“I can’t help it,” he thought, “I’ve _got_ to go. If they knew why I guess they’d think so.”

This, however, upon reflection, sounded illogical and inadequate. The danger of trouble with the authorities would not down so easily. There’d be mystery in his disappearance, a search would be made for him in the morning, and a wire probably sent to his folks. A moment later he had the solution. How easy! He could fix that up by telephoning the fraternity from Jamestown. It would cost him a quarter and he’d still have more than a dollar left. He would get old Ed Taylor to see the Dean to-morrow. Some lie would do. Ed could turn the Dean around his finger. Maybe he could keep the whole thing from his father. He could, if he slipped back to town on the next night’s train. If his father got hold of it, he’d be puzzled, want to know things, and this was no time to be submitted to questioning of any kind.

“At the same time,” he pursued, “I’d better not try the through train. Fellows have been pinched for it. They might take me off the train at Fayette, and then, oh, my God....”

A picture rose before him of a night in the county jail, of wiring home for money to pay his fine, of his father coming to Fayette, of scandal untold and unending, and no help to Ellen whatever. Rather the reverse, because he would be in disgrace and his hands, therefore, completely tied for some time to come.

“No, I can’t try the through train. Too big a chance. I wonder how about the freight. Hell, plenty of other fellows have done that, with no worse results than a swipe on the ear or a bawling out. Besides I’ve got a little money. Brakies are all right.”

The wind at that moment coming through the leaky train was devilishly sharp, and he had no overcoat, nothing but his fall-weight suit. It would be still colder later, especially on an unprotected freight car roof, which was the only place he could think of to ride.

“Can’t help it,” he concluded. “It’s got to be the freight. I can get a half pint of rot gut at Jamestown. Keep me warm enough. It’s just a nice little ride in the open air.”

An hour later, with his hat pulled down over his eyes, and his bottle in his breast pocket, Potter stepped from the smoke-draped, kerosene-smelling barroom of the little junction town. By buying a round of beer for two loafers he had obtained the advice and information he wanted. The freight train now resting on tracks just back of those on which the through train was soon expected would pull out for his destination about ten-thirty. He crept down perhaps a half a dozen cars from the station and found himself practically in open country. An overgrown fence lay twenty feet to the side of one of the big, dirty-looking red cars. He sat down in the shadow of the fence to wait, listening to the frogs in the dim, unwelcoming marshes behind him.

Once as he sat there a man ran along the top of the train from the caboose far off at the end of the line of cars and came back. Once just a little before the scheduled hour, he heard cinders being crunched under foot in the direction of the engine. The flashing rays of a lantern, swung from an invisible shoulder, played under the cars and the figure carrying it passed by hurriedly on the other side. At every coupling the lantern was swung up between the cars. Osprey knew now why the roustabouts had told him to lie low and keep away from the train while it was still.

“Wait ’til she gives her first jerk, then grab her and climb like yer momma was after you.”

Whistles shrieked and soon a long, noisy shiver travelled down the length of the cars. Potter jumped for the iron treads closest to him. The train was moving off and he with it. Once on top of the car, he laid full length, making himself as small as possible on the side of the roof farthest from the station, until it should be passed. Beyond the little town he breathed freely, took a comfortable seat on the flat boardway in the centre with his legs dangling over the car’s end, and gripped the rusty steel shaft of the brake.

V

At first he did not mind the bumping, nor the penetrating wind, nor the coldness of the metal on his palms. The occasional showers of cinders were annoying, and this grew worse as the train increased its speed. Nevertheless, he was exhilarated; the motionless friendly stars overhead, the sense of succeeding in a wild and unreasonable adventure gave him courage and high spirits. He only had to stand it for a few hours and a few hours of discomfort never had killed anybody.

Misgivings crept over him gradually. His seat was being severely lambasted by the bumping. It seemed incredible, in a way, how it kept up and the violence of it. The steel bar to which he held grew increasingly cold, yet he realized that come what may he would have to cling to it or stand a chance of falling. The wind became more biting and between it and the bar his fingers were stiffening fast. The cinders, stinging his face with only brief cessations, might soon be unendurable.

However, he argued, he could bear all these for some time, and when he couldn’t bear them any longer, he could do something else, shift his position. He deliberately decided to stand his present one as long as he could, then change and stand the next one as long as he could. In that way each new position would be so much the greater relief. He would see the night through. A long pull at the flask revived him.

“I’ll get my second wind pretty soon,” he thought, “and it won’t be so bad. That flask was an inspiration.”

The night wore on and Potter resorted to first one expedient and then another. He put his right side to the wind and then his left, thus partly protecting his face from the cinders. He wrapped handkerchiefs--fortunately he had two--around his hands. It was no good trying to get a decent hold of his board seat. He didn’t feel secure that way. These makeshifts did not help his sore buttocks, which were being hammered to insensibility, nor keep off the cold which was creeping over his whole body, but they lessened the number of his pains.

Finally he could endure sitting no longer. He laid down first on one side, then on the other, on his belly, and even for a while on his back. He threw his arms around the brake shaft and doubled his body into a bouncing, shaken ball, in order to keep the cold out of his vitals. At the moment when he thought he was beginning to see the end of his endurance the train ambled benevolently to a stop. He breathed a sigh of thanks and drank.

They were on a siding. As the train continued still, for five minutes, for ten minutes, a fresh fear assailed him. He had forgotten about the train crew. The fellow at Jamestown had told him to get off and hide whenever the train stopped.

“You got to do that if yer ridin’ in sight,” he said. Indeed, had the man been a professional tramp instead of a village lounger, he would have scouted the whole idea of riding on top.

But by this time Potter was so stiff and sore in every muscle that he feared being unable to climb back while the train was in motion. The relief from the rushing wind and bumping and cinders was too much. It was too sweet to sit there and recover some use of his limbs, to feel the warm blood in him once more for a brief spell. If he could only smoke or get up and walk about--but that would be dangerously courting attention. He had gone this far, and he would finish it; there was no sense in taking more chances than were necessary.

It was unearthly still. Not a living thing seemed to stir for miles about, over the uninterrupted fields of stubble just visible in the starlight. Even the frogs were silent. Against the sky far off he saw the silhouette of a group of buildings and trees, but they seemed like apparitions in a dream. On the train he was in a separate world, cut off from the other, a lonely world consisting of himself and his thoughts. The long, tapering string of dark cars ahead struck him like a procession of elephants asleep. They were impersonal and cruel, but alive; and presently would begin to sway and lumber frightfully through the murk. With their stopping his life, it seemed, had stopped.

Time went on. They had been there on the siding for fifteen, perhaps twenty minutes. Suddenly he was conscious of a low, blurred humming which rose from the main tracks alongside, and a succession of whistle blasts at a great distance broke the monotony. The buzz of the rails grew louder and the whistles shrieked again. His tussle with discomfort was about to begin once more, but he felt infinitely rested and refreshed. He sat up straight and peered down the tracks for the sight of a headlight.

“Hullo!”

The head and shoulders of a man appeared over the top of the car, followed by a short, wiry body.

“What the hell’s this? How’d you get here?”

“I’ve got to get to Mississippi City, to-night. I’m from the University up at Athens.”

“Don’t care where yer from. This here ain’t no place fer you.”

“Say, old man, you’re not goin’ to put me off now, are you?”

“H’m.” The man leaned over and inspected him familiarly.

“Yeh, you don’t look much like a bum. University up at Athens, eh? I’ve heard some about you God damn loafers, raisin’ hell on trains. Why the Christ can’t you ride in the cars where you belong?”

“Didn’t have the price.”

“No. An’ you think this railroad’s a charity institootion?”

“Say,” pleaded Potter, “honest, this is a life and death matter. It’d be a dirty trick to put a fellow off. Le’ me go the rest of the way, go on.”

The brakeman was obviously relenting. He gazed at Potter’s huddled, unhappy looking figure while the passenger train, like a streak of exploding lights on a whirling black band, shot deafeningly by.

“How far are we, anyway?” asked Potter. “Must be more than half way.”

The brakeman chuckled.

“We ain’t even a third of the way yet. Guess you’ve been plenty cold up here.”

The first sentence fell heavily upon Potter’s spirits.

“Gee, seems longer’n that,” he said, as casually as he could manage.

“Got on at Jamestown, did you?”

“Yes.”

“You got any money?”

“A little,” said Potter eagerly. “I’ll give you all I’ve got.”

He thrust his hand into his pocket and drew it forth with a collection of small change.

“There,” he said, counting it over. “It’s seventy-five cents.”

The brakeman took it.

“That all you got, honest to God?”

“Every cent. I can get more at Mississippi City, though. You going to be there a few hours?”

“Huh,” replied the other, “guess you’ll need breakfast by the time you get in. Ain’t much used to this kind o’ business, eh? Well, here’s coffee money.” He handed back a dime.

“Have a drink, old man?” asked Potter, almost jovially, pulling out his bottle with a distinct feeling of pride.

“Sure.”

The man took a long pull at the depleted flask and returned it almost empty.

“Ach,” he grunted appreciatively. “That’s red eye! Bet you were drunk, boy, an’ thought ridin’ free was a picnic. Well, better come out o’ this and hustle up the track. They’s an empty box car about halfway up. You’ll see it ’cause one door’s open. An’ you’re God damn lucky, son. You’d just naturally a froze a lung off up here an’ maybe fell off an’ got winged. Shake a leg. Just time to make it. An’ hop off well outside the yards when we get to town in the mornin’. Understand? If you don’t you may see the judge.”

Before he had finished speaking Potter was stumbling frantically along the cinder track-side. In one end of the empty car was a little dirty straw and excelsior. Two minutes later he was asleep, jolting happily along the streets of paradise in a royal coach. An old man in a brakeman’s cap whom he took to be the king of the country sat beside him....

A sudden, wrenching jolt and the screaming of brakes woke him. Daylight filled the car, and in a moment he was out on his feet, recognizing the familiar outskirts of his native city. He plunged into the park, striding vigorously along over new-fallen crisp leaves, warming his body, which had been chilled through during his sleep, even in that protected corner. The woods were gay with the last of the autumn colour; the morning was dewy and mysterious under long corridors of trees. His day’s job seemed easy before him, such as it was, and beyond that he was too happy and thankful to speculate. Quite a trip, he thought, thoroughly surprised that he had attempted it and come through all right.

“If I hadn’t got potty, I wouldn’t be here,” he told himself, justifying thereby volumes of alcoholic adventures past and to come.

He looked down at his hands, his trousers, his shirt. He was filthy. It would never do to appear before Colonel Cobb with the grime of a hundred and forty miles of rough travel clinging to him. But this was the home town, good old home town! and he could get breakfast, new linen and a good wash without the outlay of a cent. He took the car downtown and went first to a store, then to a hotel. By ten o’clock he was breakfasting sumptuously and appeared fairly respectable.

Heretofore, Colonel Cobb had seemed in Potter’s mind a sort of complete symbol of good fellowship. The all-weather friend of his father for thirty years, Potter had heard everything there was to know about him that could with discretion be told. He was the old-fashioned type of publicity man, doing business largely through the medium of champagne and dinners. Open-handedness and good nature were traits which a half century of tradition had associated with his name.

A much older man than Potter’s father, Cobb wore a beard which was nearly white, but he was one of those veterans to whom a beard imparted an air of boldness and adventure rather than of piety or age. His costume was youngish, smart-looking, but deeply wrinkled by lounging ease. He greeted the young man cordially in his somewhat unpretentious and disorderly office and indicated an upholstered arm chair to him. Potter sank into it and the old man leaned back in his own to survey him.

“Well,” he said, “Johnny’s boys are growing up. Let’s see, are you the second or the third?”

“Third, Colonel.”

“I know your brother Kirk better’n I do the rest of you. I see a good deal of him up at the Mercantile Club. Kirk’s a good boy and looks to me like he’s goin’ to make his Dad proud. You ain’t old enough to drink whiskey, are you? I guess not this time of the morning, anyway. Well, have a cigar.”

He thrust out a spacious box.

“Colonel,” said Potter, “you may be surprised at what I’m here for. I’m in a kind of a fix, a bad fix, to tell the truth, and I need money. I’ve got twenty-eight hundred in the National Trust but I can’t draw on it for two years, without my father’s consent. I want to get two hundred and fifty dollars on a note for that length of time.”

As he mentioned the amount it seemed so enormous to Potter that he felt a little absurd. He had never handled more than fifty dollars at a time in his life.

“I see. H’m.”

The older man was smoking a well-used meerschaum and took a few puffs on it in silence, looking at Potter quickly once or twice with a more penetrating and appraising glance than at first. The latter noticed, in spite of the Colonel’s genial expression, that his eyes, in reflection, became a very cold and impersonal grey.

“H’m, that’s bad,” said the Colonel. “You see, your pa and me are old pals. Now, why don’t you go over and tell him what the trouble is? There’s nothin’ in the world you could tell John Osprey that he wouldn’t understand. There ain’t a thing, son.”

“I think there is, Colonel,” said Potter gravely.

“Some girl trouble?”

“Yes.”

“Now, I’d say you’re wrong. I’d say he’d be just the kind of man to take that kind of a story to. Your old man has got nothing to learn about human nature, son.”

Potter felt the moment had come for fuller confidence if he hoped to succeed. He had anticipated this objection and intended to combat it by laying stress on his own reasons for not wishing to tell his father. These he felt would make a good impression upon any man. He launched into the broad outlines of his story. Colonel Cobb listened with seriousness and attention until he had finished. When Potter mentioned the manner in which he had come to town that morning his eye lighted up with a spark of the warmth that had marked his first reception.

“H’m,” he chuckled. “I like that. Yep, I used to hop those blamed things myself. Then they got me to workin’ for ’em, and since then I’ve had to ride in style--but I don’t enjoy it as much.”

He ruminated on in silence, puffing at the pipe held in one hand and combing his beard downward with the other, at every stroke or so stopping to scratch the tip of his thrust out chin, and drawing down his lower lip somewhat in the manner of a bitted horse. Potter noticed the long, blackened roots of his teeth, his puffy, reddish skin, and the tiny network of blood vessels and wrinkles that crisscrossed his cheeks around the eyes and nose. He felt a sudden disgust for life, for the rotten universe and for his own silly predicament. He grew restless, wishing for a decision one way or the other, scarcely caring which it should be.

“You’re at college, you said?” asked the Colonel.

“Yes, State University. Two years.”

“How are you doin’ up there in your studies?”

“Well, a little better than the average, Colonel, right along,” said Potter, smiling. It was somewhat less than the truth, yet he regretted the words immediately, as a boast. But the Colonel did not mind.

“That’s good,” he said, heartily.

He lurched forward in his big leather swivel chair and laid down his pipe.

“The way I figure it out is this,” he said. “If you know that there’s two of us to get into trouble over this money, instead of one, you maybe will be more careful not to do the wrong thing with it, so it will get out. As for what’s the wrong thing I leave that to you. I’m goin’ to take a chance on John Osprey’s skinnin’ me alive if he hears about this transaction, and I guess there ain’t much likelihood of his hearin’ about it from you or me, is there?”

He ponderously drew out a long black check-book, inked the pen and looked at it, inked it again and wrote. Potter received the slip of paper with its figures written in a big, round buccaneer’s Spencerian. His fingers trembled in spite of himself.

“But, Colonel,” he began, suddenly feeling a sense of guilt.

“I don’t want a note,” interrupted Cobb, lifting his rotund body by the arms of his chair. “The check’s enough. If you don’t pay me, I’ll send it around to you some day, when you’re rich, and you can light your cigar with it or pay, just the way you please. It’s made out to cash, so’s you won’t have any trouble gettin’ the money, but you just write your name along the back when you get to the bank. Good luck, son.”