Evening Star Newspaper, February 9, 1930, Page 94

A New Writer, ‘L. Paul,” Con- tributes This Unusual Yarn to the Series of Best Stories Published in America During the Past Year—It Is a Story of Vagabonds—A Tale of ““Men of the Road” Who Wander Here, There and Ezveryzwhere. E sat by our jungle fire, a thing of broken sticks and odds and ends of refuse that burned the parched bare ground still harder. A fence divided us from the road where a poiiceman walked, a battered, blistered fence ¢of ancient rails. Another fence across the white dusty road, a thing of wire with easily swinging gates, inclosed that other, orderly jungle where gas arabs pavked their cars be- neath tall elms. They were new creatures in these days and highly popular. That policeman eyed them in- dulgently, but us he waiched. This Maine city gave them freely a park across the road and to us yielded grudgingly this corner of waste- land where, hemmed in by heaps of ash and rubbish, we might linger our brief permitted day, penned up under the eye of the law. We were the Elder Nomads and fully as hon- est as these others. Yet there were fences be- tween. We were the Elder Nomads and the clasp knife I fingered was token of my stand- ing in the Lodge of the Itching Foot. I had left my New Brunswick farm home & year ago, that clasp knife and $10 in my pocket, high aspirations in my heart and at my side tall Yonderbound, my father. I had seen his world as he would have me see it, and here we were at the end of our circuit, with New Brunswick just over the border. SO it went, and as I fondled that battered old knife memories came. I should have seen tall mountains rising about dense forest, valleys leading into silent hills of mystery, trails beck- oning. I saw instead the open door of a ranger's cabin in the foothills and a girl's face remembered now because it was a girl’s. I rhould have seen the blue grass, where men were polte even to dusty folk like our pedes- trian selves, where such horses as I had never seen showed in every line, in every graceful movement, their aristocracy. But I remem- bered now only that girl who had smiled down at us from atop a load of hay. That, and my father’s puzzled frown as he caught me looking back. Looking back? That, too, was part of this open road life. That and the fences. For fences we had found everywhere. Nor were they always fences that a man could climb. So it went, memory upon memory—and my- =elf In a brown study gazing at the old clasp knife. Till Tantramar Joe looked up from his cooking and whistled in wonder. Till my father, who had been watching me, turned and aaw too, and said—— “It's him—Smoothface.” Smoothface it was, walking down the road, seedy and small, yet strangely not unkempt. There was dust, thick white dust, on the lower half of each boot, but above, worn leather and shiny serge of trouser were clean. Smoothface it was, :10dding to the law there, swinging open that oiled gate, walking as by right across that bit of parkland where now the gas arabs were eating in strange tabernacles of canvas; Bmoothface who paused by the long wash- stand under blue sky and unrolled a paper parcel. We watched him, as the law watched him; saw him borrow a cake of soap from a nearby gourist; saw him brush his teeth carefully, slick down the last stray lock of hair across his fore- head; saw him wrap again in paper brush and towel and by the same token, that tourist’s soap; and finally greeted him as, walking out of that park, he strutted impudently by the po- Jiceman, scrambled over our rickety fence and sguatted by our fire. But, watching, I thought: “Crossing this way’s easy. It's getting back that counts, if ever you want to get back.” Then I became aware that Smoothface was talking. “That bull—he don't like me none—me that Rin't no worse than others. A holy guy, likely, be is—white collars meanin’ righteousness.” And at that I remembered the Evangelist, Sall and bearded and thin, Smoothface’s part- per, laid by the heels in Farley, doomed to the wockpile. Remembered, too, how we had parted from Ilonely Smoothface in Montreal almost a $ear ago, how we had not seen him since. One maoment he stood on Notre Dame street, look- #ng small and deceptively ineffectual and alone. ¥he next the crowd had swallowed him.e [ALMOST a year since we had seen him. No regrets at parting, no surprise at reunion. " raiis crossed and forked in our wandering woild and reason had no place in it. £lmeost & year, yet now I remembered clearly pur first meeting in A bhox esr. Smoothface and Holy Joe the Evangelist, Red Alick, who had tried to knife me for my $10; Bookie, that strange, scholar—these my first acquaintances on the open road. And of them all, after a year, Smoothface alone had come back to us. But now his voice came through my thoughts and Tantramar was lifting his mess of food off the fire. The policeman by the fence was eying us as we began to eat, as if he grudged us our very food. And from the corner of a mouth that worked like a rabbit’s as he gulped his share, Smoothface told us why he was here. “Holy Joe—can you beat it, Yonderbound? On the rockpile? Got to exhortin'—sorta re- formed them stone crackers. They say even Red Alick nigh got religion. Beats everything how a man that believes hard can sorta spread things. Why, I heard tell one of the guards took to prayin’. Anyways, some reeligious wim- men hears of this and pries Holy Joe loose, sets him up in a shack that used to be a school. Now he's branched out with a tent and a regu- lar ballyhoo revival outfit. And, by the same token, there's a long skinny guy playin’ a cor- net I ought to be tootin’. And so—" He spread his hands out, gesturing, as if that explained all. “So you aim to go do likewise.” Tantramar eyed the policeman at the fence uncertainly. “You'll get as far as the rockpile. I just been up to the New Brunswick border. Your num- ber's up, Smoothface. They'll like for to see you.” “He was my pardner,” Smoothface said simply. “Holy Joe, that's gettin’ fat an’ lazy, he was my pardner. I reckon I got to go pry him loose. I got to take my chance of the bulls, Tantramar. Once pardners, always pardners. When you take on a game like that you'll come to the place where you asks your- self questions. I'm askin’ myself some right now in this here jungle. And the answer—the answer——" So I realized with a start that in his warped way Smoothface was being conscientious. Whatever the risk, he must make the attempt, must try to save Holy Joe from respectability. But across the road a girl leaned on the gate, & young girl who watched us. And, catching her eye, I smiled, then flushed, for she looked away. And a woman's voice shrilled, so that the girl turned and ran across grass and was gone. Only the fence was there mow, to re- mind me that even in our wandering world there were boundaries. BUT my father stretched and yawned and said: “We're goin’ North too, come dawn, Smooth- face. Best Wit the grit together.” “Forever why?” I asked, for we had had other plans. “For to ask a question I dursn’t answer,” my father explained. “Yarb Doctor lives on Bald- head and him we’ll ask.” ) Nor would he say more just then. But his face was somber and I caught him looking at me strangely. Then a farmer’s rig creaked along the road and stopped and the farmer himself, leaning down from his high seat, talked with the police- man of crops and meadows and stock. I could follow this old familiar jargon—and, over there, across the-fences, a girl's voice was lifted in song—and from the celluloid window of a pre- tentious tent came yellow light, like ‘a beacon. And because I was very young I wondered if I could have walked through that gate, op- posite, as Smoothface had walked, if I could have stayed as old Smoothface dare not stay? . And, wondering, slept. We hit the grit at dawn, Smoothface, Yon- derbound my father, and myself. We walked in single file past a new policeman who smiled to see us go. Over in the campers’ park they still slept beneath the law’s benignant eye. “ We hit the grit steadily, silent till the sun was up, for dawn walking is no romance after a year of it. After 10 or 20 years? I wondered what it must be to Smoothface. Shadows on the ground and the air chill, and joints stifr, muscles cold; ahead a road winding mile after mile. I wondered what it would be like if nothing lay at the end of that road after all. On we walked. And as they talked, these two, the morning brightness went from the fields and though clouds swung up from the horizon it was a more intangible overcasting of the heavens that I blamed for the chill in the air and the shadows on the land. We came through rain at dusk to an old tumbledown barn and there slept. ‘The border lay a mile ahead. ‘The Stars and Stripes flew over the little poct office, but across the smell river a bright THE SUNDAY STAR. W red signboard said, “Clegg's Plug 15 Cents.” So I knew I was back home in Canada. Knew &s I stepped from piank bridge to reddish earthen road that this was native soil. And if the trees bent more graciously over the muddy road, if the very frogs in the ditches seemed to croak melodiously, it was pgt strange. For this very soil had nourished me. This land I knew. I had bent over my hoe in fields such as these, had drunk from earthen jug beneath such elms at nooning time the same clear cold water. My step lengthened till I scuffed Smooth- face’s heel. But Smoothface minded this least of all. At noon we came to a little village tucked away between hills and here we lunched grandly in a neat hotel. “Got to come respectable to Holy Joe,” Smoothface explained, and paid the reckoning gayly. “Though I will say paid grub chokes a guy.” He whistled as we took the road again. For he was near his gozl. Rigs came past us and mud from many hoofs splashed us. Democrats and buggles, almost a procession of t&l;emh going our way, kept us scuttling for the tch. “Single-minded folk, going for their kind o* jag,” sneered Smoothface. Then he had the grace to smile placatingly at me, since, but for thirty miles, these were my people who now crowded this country road, maging for a great white tent somewhere far ahead. “All folks breaks out somewheres,” my father put in. “If it ain’t drink, it's gamblin’; if it ain’t gamblin’, it's mebbe religion.” And, as if to prove his statement, came a hard-faced man in & wagon driven by a small boy, who reined in obediently as they came opposite us and the man bawled— “Stop!” A hard-faced man, red-skinned, rusty-haired, with blue eyes that had the toper's look, though probably he had never taken a drink, ‘& man “breaking out,” as my father had said, shaking free of elvillzed restraint, crashing down artificial barriers in some sp:cies of de- bauch. So much I guessed who had read a hundred faces this past year. So much I sedsed dimly. Then stopped all speculation as fear gripped me. For the man leanéd over and said: “Well, well. It's you. Now ain't that Jucky? Though tough on me.” It was at Smoothface that he glared. But I had some knowledge of the law by now, and to him we were three birds of a feather. “Well, well!” The man flipped aside the lapel of his coat and something glittered. He patted a pocket that clanked and said: “Never travel without 'em. Now, question is, what's to be done? Slide over, Sonny. Big Feller, you climb in the back seat with me. Smooth- face, you get up front with t'other one. And set tight. Anything you hoboes says will be used again you. An'—” “We was doin’ nothing,” whined Smooth- face. “We was just makin’ for that revival.” The man laughed skeptically. “That ain’t your sort o' play,” said he. “Amos Casset cut his teeth years back. Amos Casset ain’t never lost his man. You three get up. Revival? Revival's for decent folks, not for your sort. Revival—" and his face saddened strangely. like the face of a child denied some treat. “Me, I was goin’, me an’ Sonny here—but now—" and was silent as the wheels creaked and the horses swung into a trot; was silent, but, turning to look at my father, sitting there beside Amos Casset, I saw that expression of doubt and longing on the officer’s hard face. SMOOTHFACE nudged me. From the corner of his mouth he whisp:red: “Can you beat it? Ever see a guy that's swore off smellin’ red-eye? That bird's red-eye is religion—served hot. Wouldn't wonder——" “After all,” said Amos Casset, “it’s on our way. It'd be beyant his powers, th’ Evan- gelist’'s, though even hoboes has been moved to grace. No tricks—no tricks. I ain't never lost a prisoner——" The boy who drove grinned, brightened up, cracked his whip over the horses. “That’s right, Scnny. We want for to be there in good time. Want real prominent seats up front in the public eye,” said Amos Casset. Turning, I glanced at him again. His tongue tip was brushing his lips, as if he already tasted something long desired. So came brief respite. So it was we saw, at last, the green meadow with its gracious trees and the great ugly tent, behind fences where tethered horses trampled grass to mire. Jail ‘Express, making a brief stop at Revival Siding. But after that—— Whispered words to an usher who stared at me as if half recognizing me. Words of Amos’ that changed the curious stare into one al of hatred. Amos had told him. We were less folk, of the world Holy Joe fought, ¢ tures of the Thing Holy Joe cast out. But that usher led us to a prominent § just behind the penitent benches, a seat w all might look on us, whence we could easily escape. And I found myself betwee fat man who moaned and Smoothface sniffied, aping sorrow for his manifcld s And on the other end of our bench sat Arg Casset, patting the pocket that jingled, tou ing the badge on his lapel. The boy had not come with us. Too vo for salvation, he played pitch-penny with fellows outside, Holy Joe's cyes were gazing out over crowd, upward, as if held by something glimp afar off. As yet he had not seen us. He was a little stouter than when we part:d. His clothes were good and on other man would have locked it. On his ga frame they merely hung, for all the ad weight about the belt and the slight softer of shoulder angles. The music soared, the vast crowd pack:d the tent joining in. Then it died, s denly, on a high shrill note. Holy Joe got up, arms siretched out. came to the edge of the platform and begar preach. The stoui man beside me settled self more steadily on the bench, plantéd feet firmly on the trampled sod, one pu hand gripping the edge of the board. Amos Casset looked us over, then faced platform. And Smoothiace, all admira whispered swiftiy toc me: “Better'n ever. Listen to him, the old hortin’ fool. What I ain't taught him o he's found out fo: hisself.” Now, Holy Joe was reaching his cli Now he struck at them, these simple folk, how they submiited themselves to his lash. woman fainted, with a half-scream of dist back there near th: door, and her husb staring, staring at the Evangelist, did not k it, though two ushers carried her out. fat man, fingers clenched, was rising, ri slowly, till he stood on broad fect. “God help me, God help me!” he bello and his breath told me what his secret was. b The evangelist was striding up and do up and down now. fixing those burning on this one, on that onc, till at last swung over our bench, THEN a sudd°n pause, a stricken pause a saw us, saw who was with us. “He knows,” Smoocthface whispered from corner of his mouth. “But ain't he a d Most folks'd wreck the show, but not him, Holy Joe. That's the windup.. Them that d get convicted of sin now——" The evangelist lowered his voic:. It becd soft, pliant, devoid of all harsh force, plead A few brief words as he pointed the Wa; Hope. Then music, soft music, and the co shining in silver glory besid= him as the t| man played. Then the cheir in hushed voi