Evening Star Newspaper, May 26, 1929, Page 94

me. Yes, I know you ain't seen either of us for three y:ars, and taking into gmccount how much we favor each other it'd be natural enough if you wasn't to be just sure which one of us it was. Coming on me sud- denly this way, sitting by a mountain shack s hundred miles from nowhere, you might well've hesitated. But there’s the point: You never did. No, there you come around the cor- ner, give me one look, hold out your hand as if before you thought, and, “Why, good heav- ens! Hullo, Lester!” says you. “Where's John?” " And all the while, me John! | Well, then, you say, where's Lester? Well, Jester's all right. Look here, I know you, and T'd trust you with my last cent. Only you $mow how things go. And they might sti'l get Lester for that, I s'pose. The law's that way. The law would never tak: into account that no fatal harm ever come to no one through 4t (as it turns out—oh, yes, I've heard)—no snore’n it’d take into account that Lester is— well—different, No, let’s leave Lester where he 3s, if it’s all the same to you. But your taking me for him, without so much #@s a quiver; that's the queer thing. You never mistook us in the old days, nor any one else. Why, anybody in town could've said in a wink this one’s Lester or this one’s John. How could they? You know bettern I do. And yet they do say that no matter how much twins favor each other, yet if you're used to ’em there’s something different. UT how in the world did you ever come to take me for Lester? That's what geis NLY look here. I can say il where an- . other couldn’'t. You know o5 well as I do that there was a difference between Lester and me. As a boy I was stronger'n Lester. If there was & kite in a tree, I was the one to climb the tree. If we had to go anywhere aft- er dark, I went first. Or when it came to mak- ing a living I was the one to undertake it. Mind, T ain’t complaining. I was glad to do it. You never knew why Lester was scared of lightning, did you? But you knew h> was. Yes, . for I remember ’twas you and Tom Lake come with me that night the herring factory was struck and we found Lester jammed so tight under the wood-shed floor, to home, we had to - pry off a plank to get him clear. Course, I always knew he was scared of lightning. Many and many's the night I been waked by a tempest to find Lester in bed with me, and the touch of him cold as ice. I re- member seeing him there by the flashes, sit- ting bolt up and his eyes staring open. And every time it come he’d beg me to look—Ilook all around—look. Look at what? Couldn’t say. Only look! *“D’ye see anything, John? Not anything 't all?” He made me feel queer enough, I can tell you, with that high-pitched, unnatural voice. Well, one time he told me. It was a Sunday afternoon, and we was lying on the beach Jooking at the clouds. Once in a long while it come like that. It’s hard to explain. I don’t know’s you'd understand anyway; you never was born twin with another. But sometimes, when everything was dead quiet and nobody else about and nothing to do, a funny kind of & dreamy softness-like used to come over us; it was 's if all I want to do was to take hold of Lester’s hand and lay there and kind o’ forget. And if I had a secret, or if Lester had a secret —did you ever see the mist coming off the of an early morning—that easy? Oh, doggone it, I don't know how to—it just sounds foolish. But anyway—— Well, anyway, Lester told me why he was scared of lightning. It wasn't he was pcared of, being struck. No, he says he even wish sometimes he could be. It was somett else, -As.far.as he could make out it must've been some dream he'd had, several times, he thought likely. He was in the dark, trying to go somewheres, creeping on his hands and mees. ‘There come ‘s stroke of lightning that run right down through his body like an ice- cold flame. And just then, right before him on the ground, he seen.the face of a woman. He seen her there where he could've touched her with his hand, and her eyes was wide open, staring at him—dead—dead as a door nail. r E.JE wasn’t himself; youll just have to under- : stand that. Maybe it's the electricity in ghe air. Maybe it’s something else. I've read something in a book since I was here, and I've got to thinking maybe ‘twas something come down to him—something our ma might possibly have got scared by before me and Lester was Yorn. That happens. But in that case, you'll say, why wasn't I burned with the same iron? Well, there you wre. I been reading, and all that business is queer enough, if you only knew it. You can only say that when me and Lester divided up, that was one of the things that went into his share. And what a share! Dear me! When he came running to me in the tempest that evening—you know the evening I mean— and tell me what had happened (what he thought had happened), it seemed to me the world had ended for us two. I don't need to go over it again, that “crime” of Lester’s. You know it as well's I do; you know's well’s I do he wasn't a responsible creature that night, and as far as I'm concerned that's enough. But he was like a kid, too horror-struck and yemorseful to do for himself. .He was pitiful. I told him I'd take care of him. We had a good house and & nice piece of land, remem- ber? I locked the house and hove the key away; I remember. it shining now in the light ‘where the moon come through the cloud, going over into the long grass behind of White's. Everything I had in the world but my brother ‘went with that key. 1 told Lester to come, and we started down ‘across the bog toward the “Y.” We was un- Jucky, though. We met Ellis—Constable Ellis. He squinted at us, and you could see the old HINGTON, D. C, MAY 26, 1929—PART 7. man didn't know what to do. When we'd pass- turned and commenced to follow. Lester was crying, he was 80 nervous, was at my wit's end, I tell you that. The freight was at the “Y,” same’s I thought, but seeing Ellis was on our trail we didn't stop. It was still quite dark, and we had no trouble stowing away in an empty box ‘That box car landed us in the hills here after two days and nights (and thank God it wasn't more) without a drop of water or a grain of food. Lester seem to suffer from it. I honestly don't remember a pang of hunger or thirst myself, but it seem’s if Lester’s would kill me. It seem’s if his horror and hopeless- ness was more’n I could bear, I was that work- ed up over it all. Even about his “crime.” It wasn't his; it was my own; we’'d both done it. T tell you it was just the same as it was them times when we lay watching the clouds together; same’s if all the time was washed out, back to the time we was unborn babes, we done whea we got car was walk into a mountain town and buy dinner at a bakery. We set at a table in the rear, eating buns and drinking coffee, one cup after anoth- This Story—"“Lightning” by | G-HTNING——B)/ PP ilbur Daniel Ste / { J ! I remember seeing him there by the flashes, sitting bolt up and his eyes staring open. er. We looked bad enough, I guess, with our faces pinched up white and a three days’ growth on 'em, and our clothes dusty and bag- ged. It was hot in that bakery; there was a swarm of flles on everything, and the milk in the coffee was turned a mite, but, I tell you, what with the food, the relief, and the newness of all the sights, it was as good as a banquet in the Adams House. “Now,” I says to Lester, “we're all right. Look here. We start from today. We was born today, Lester, and life’s all ahead of us. See?” A pink spot come in his cheek; he give me a funny look, half scared, half hoping, and his coffee slopped, his hand was shaking so. “Is that right?” says he. “Honest, do you believe that, John?” 3 “Sure!” says I, as bold as brass. After a minute the pink went out of his cheeks, and he give my foot a nudge with his. “I wish that girl'd quit watching us so,” says he under his breath. “She’s done nothing else ever since we come in here.” She'd gone from the counter when I got a chance to look,. She was'back directly, though, and a couple of customers with her—customers, I noticed, that didn't buy. Within five minutes there was a dozen people in that little bakery, and if one went out two come in. Lester begin scratehing his wrist. You could always tell when he was getting nervous, the way he always scratched his wrist. “For pity's sake,” says he, “let’s pay and get out of here!” “Don’t you mind,” says I. All the same, it seem to me the place had got as close as an oven. One man come in and give us a long look and walked out at a brisk rate, and I could've swore he had a badge on underneath his coat. Lester wouldn't leave me be. “It's nothing, nothing,” I tell him. I wished T could believe it. The air of them people set me thinking. If Constable Ellis had traced us to the Junction, it was perfectly possible for him to have found out where every cdr in that freight was billed to. And there’s always the telegraph. “The flies are bad here,” I says to Lester. “If you're done, we might’s well move along.” And I call the girl and pald. “Is that right?” I asked her in a sharp way, for in place of looking at the money she kept her eyes going from one to the other of us, her mouth half open and her face as red as a beet. Wilbur Daniel Steele, Is the First of a Series by America’s Famous Authors— Each Story Will Be Complete in The SundayStar Maga- zine—MWill Represent the Particular Author’s Work. High-Water Mark of the Each Story is One of the O. Henry Memorial Award Selections : —— v/ “Count it,” says I. But she never. And I didn’t trouble to ask her again. Just that minute I hear some one coming into the door behind me, and my heart stopped beating. You know the way Ellis walks, from that bad leg of his. Well, it may not've been the least like it, but I never turned to look. I took Lester by the elbow, and I says, “Come on quiet,” and I walk him straight away through the bake room and out the back door. I never stopped to think; never stopped to reckon out what chance in a thousand there was ¢f old Ellis turning up in the flesh in that little out-of-the-way village in the mountains. No sooner'd we got into the sunlight outside that door than I just started out to run, dragging Lester with me. “¥You never mind about the use,” I kept tell- in front of us, and then smell of corn growing and a rustle breaking around us like tide-rips. That's where we come, into a field of it, along the foot of the mountain. “Lay down,” I says to Lester when we'd come & dozen rows or so. ;o “Th'ain’t no use,” he kept it up. without any life to his voice. “I'm going back and have it over with, John.” “You go back, Lester,” says I, “and I'll kill myself.” He laid down beside me. . .\ By and by Lester begin to talk. He laid with his bands behind his head and his eyes staring up at the corn leaves. His whole life come out. He was good, he says, and he knew it. He had queer ideas and imaginings that scared him, and it wasn't alone in time of tempecst any more. I can hcar him going on, monoloncus and dreamy, letting it all come out under the green corn rows. He knew he wasn't the same as others, and he couldn’t kcep his mind off his gqueerness. He said he had a terrible drawing toward women—not any one woman—just women. Yet he was scared of them. He was scared to be left alone in the dark with a woman or a girl for fear he’'d find her dead. That was what seem to get in the way of everything he undertook. So he might’s well be dead himself; better, he says, for then he wouldn't be a drag on me no longer, nor a shame nor a torment to himself. With that I hitch up and put an arm around his shoulders, good and tight, and, “Now it's my turn to talk,” says L “All this you been telling me is a lie,” I says. “No,” says he, “it’s every word the truth.” “No,” says I, “it’s a lie. For it's all just in your mind, and it's wrong. And what's just Lester, and wrong, that's a lie. "t have it. I won't stand for it, a brother of mine. Now—do W] I say? Look here. No, in the I'm stronger'n you; I'm steadiern you; braver'n you. Not what you say, but what t goes. Get that? Well, it's a 't have it. Right here and now war on it; from this identical minute e sides—with you—and against that —— . I take responsibility for you. What strength I got is yours—yours—understand? I give{guevetythlnglgot,musndbody. You know, if either of us’d thought eof it, I sounded as queer as a loon myself. I was trying s0 hard to make Lester believe me that I be- lieved myself. I was blowing like a beached haddock when I got through, and so was he. “You hear what I say?” I give him a hard shake. “I say that that thing has gone and got out of you—now—from now on!” The same look come into his face that I'd 1 i T :