The Boy Grew Older. Heywood Hale Broun
up. He gave himself a boyhood as a jockey and also enlisted fictionally in the Spanish American war. Peter believed everything and liked everything. Four months later Rusk left the Bulletin in order to try his hand at free lancing for the magazines. His failure in that field surprised him. He had come to confuse Peter Neale and the general public.
…
Peter began his spree by going to the Newspaper Club. He found no one in the big room except two old men playing chess. One of them did weather and the other fish on the New York Press. They were not communicative and neither seemed disposed to be drawn into conversation. And so for a time Peter watched the game. He found it impossible to work up any enthusiasm about the issue and departed to practice pool on a table at the other end of the room. Caring nothing about performance, Peter was surprised to discover that the most difficult shots all came off. Nothing was too hard. Even the most fantastically complicated combinations plopped the required ball into a pocket.
Far from being pleased at this Peter grew angry. He felt that Fate was ironically evening up things for him by burdening him with luck and prowess in something which made no difference and withholding its favor in all the important aspects of life. Testing out his theory he picked up a straggler, a man he knew but slightly, who happened to wander into the club at that moment.
"I'll roll you Indian dice," challenged Peter. "A dollar a throw."
Good luck continued to plague him although he knew that its attentions were not honorable! At the end of three quarters of an hour Peter was $85 ahead.
"That's enough," he said with irritation.
"You're not going to quit now that you've got me in the hole," protested his opponent. "Aren't you going to give me a chance to get back?"
"You wouldn't have any chance. If we keep up I'm sure to win hundreds of dollars from you. Nobody can beat me just now. Look here if you don't believe me I'll give you a chance. I'll bet you a hundred dollars to ten on one roll."
"What's the matter with you, Neale?" asked the loser. "Are you soused?"
"Not yet," said Peter. "You're not taking any advantage of me. I tell you I know. I can't lose. Go ahead and roll."
"All right, if you want to throw money away it's not my fault."
He took the leather cup and rolled a pair of sixes. Peter slammed the dice down and four aces and a five danced out.
"No more," said Peter. "It's no use. That's $95 you owe me."
"Would you mind if I held you up on that till next week? I'm sort of busted just now."
"No hurry, anytime'll do."
"Ninety-five, that's right, isn't it? Lend me $5 that'll make it an even hundred. Easier to remember."
Peter gave him the five. He knew that even in his gambling triumphs there would be some catch. Wandering over to the bar alone he had two Martinis and then a Bronx but nothing seemed to happen. Looking at his watch he found that it was still only a little after three and he went up town to Fourteenth Street to a burlesque house. The show was called "Dave Shean's Joy Girls." When Peter came in Shean as a German comedian with a false stomach and a red wig had just volunteered to take the place of the bullfighter played by the straight man.
"Do you think you can kill the bull?" asked the straight man.
"I don't know dot I kills him," said Shean, "but I can throw him."
It annoyed Peter that everybody else in the theatre laughed so loudly.
"Yesterday," continued the real toreador, "I killed four bulls in the arena."
"I had him for breakfast."
"What are you talking about? What did you have for breakfast?"
"Farina."
Peter thought he would go but he waited in the hope that it might get better. Presently Shean and the tall man got into an argument. The serious one of the pair contended that Otto Schmaltz, the character played by Shean, did not have a whole shirt on his back.
"I bet you! I bet you!" shouted Schmaltz dancing about and patting the other man on the cheek. They came close to the footlights and placed huge piles of stage money side by side.
"Now," said the big man, "the bet is you haven't got a whole shirt on your back."
"Ches," replied Schmaltz.
"Why, you poor pusillanimous, transcendental, ossified little shrimp, you," said the big man. "Of course you haven't got a whole shirt on your back. Half of it is on the front."
"Ha! Ha! Ha!" he continued sneeringly and kicked the little man resoundingly while the crowd screamed.
Later Schmaltz bet with somebody else taking the other side of the contention, but again he lost because when it came time for the tag line he grew confused and shouted. "Why, you poor pussaliniment, tramps-on-a-dimple, oysterfied little shrimp, you, half of de back is on the front." And again the fortune of Schmaltz was swept away and again he was kicked.
Possibly the three cocktails had begun to have some effect after all or it may have been something else, but at any rate Peter was no longer merely bored by all these happenings. His sensation was just as unpleasant, but it was acute. Somehow or other the story of Schmaltz and the shirt had made him sad.
"Schmaltz is on me," he thought. "Schmaltz is everybody. Getting fooled and getting kicked." His musing became more vague. "Half of the back is on the front," seemed to take form as a tragic complaint against life. He and Schmaltz they couldn't have it whole because "half of the back is on the front."
More disturbing moralizing was yet to come from the book of "Dave Shean's Joy Girls." The next entertainers were the Mulligan Brothers, female impersonators. One played the part of Clara and the other was Margie.
"The sailors on that ship was awful," began Clara. "The sailors on that ship was just awful. The poor girl was sinking there in the water and they wouldn't let her into the lifeboat. Every time she came up, Margie, one of the sailors hit her over the head with an oar."
Margie began to laugh stridently.
"What are you laughing for, Margie? Did you hear what I was telling you? I said every time the poor girl came up a sailor hit her over the head with an oar."
"Wasn't she the fool to come up," said Margie.
Peter knew that was not a joke. Here was his case against life summed up in a sentence. Idiots about him were laughing. Couldn't they see the bitterness of it. "Wasn't she the fool to come up!" That was his folly. He was going on taking the buffeting of the oars and for no reason. And yet he knew perfectly well that he would continue to come up no matter what blows fell about his head and shoulders. There was no use making any resolve to quit it all. Peter had no facility for suicide. He did not dare and he tried to justify himself in this unwillingness.
"After all," he thought, "it would be a pretty rotten trick to play on Kate. I promised her she could have Sunday off."
One piece of positive action he could and did take. He did not wait to gather any further pessimistic contributions to cosmic philosophy from "Dave Shean's Joy Girls," but walked out in the middle of Shean's drunken act. The comedian was pretending that the edge of the stage was the brass rail along a bar. Now he was swaying far over the orchestra pit and seemed about to fall into it. A woman in front of Peter screamed. Shean slowly straightened himself up and shook a reproving finger at the laughing audience. "My wife's bes' lil' woman in worl'," he said and did a hiccough. Still he seemed sober enough when Peter sitting on the aisle in the second row got up and started out of the theatre.
"Don't you like our show?" he called after him.
Peter flushed and made no answer.
"I guess I'm too natural," said Shean. "He can't stand it. You know how it is. He's a married man himself."
"Hey, Percy," he shouted after the retreating figure of Peter in a high falsetto, "you'll find a saloon right around the corner. Tell the bartender to let you have one on Otto Schmaltz."
Peter conscientiously walked past the saloon mentioned by the impertinent Shean and went into the next one three blocks farther on.