Tramping on Life. Harry 1883-1960 Kemp
stood over my bed.
"—want to go hunting with me to-day? … shootin' blackbirds?"
"Yes, Uncle Lan," I assented, my mind divided between fear of him and eagerness to go.
In the kitchen we ate some fried eggs and drank our coffee in silence. Then we trudged on through the dew-wet fields, drenched to the knees as if having waded through a brook.
Lan bore his double-barrelled shotgun over his shoulder. He shot into a tree-top full of bickering blackbirds and brought three down, torn, flopping, bleeding. He thrust them into his sack, which reddened through, and we went on … still in silence. The silence began to make me tremble but I was glad, anyhow, that I had gone with him. I conjectured that he had brought me a-field to give me a final whipping—"to teach me to mind Granma."
"—had to bring you out here … the women are too chicken-hearted—they stop me too soon. … "
"—Pity your pa's away … don't do to leave a kid alone with women folks … they don't make him walk the chalk enough!"
It was about an hour after sunrise. We had come to an open field among trees. Lan set down his gun against a tree-trunk.
"—needn't make to run … I can catch you, no matter how fast you go."
He cut a heavy stick from a hickory.
"Come on and take your medicine … I'm goin' away to-morrow to Halton, and I want to leave you something to remember me by—so that you'll obey Ma and Millie while I'm gone. If you don't, when I come back, you'll catch it all over again."
My heart was going like a steam engine. At the last moment I started to run, my legs sinking beneath me. He was upon me with my first few steps, and had me by the scruff of the neck, and brought down the cudgel over me.
Then an amazing thing happened inside me. It seemed that the blows were descending on someone else, not me. The pain of them was a dull, far-away thing. Weak, fragile child that I was (known among the other children as "Skinny Gregory" and "Spider-Legs") a man's slow fury was kindling in me … let Lan beat me for a year. It didn't matter. When I grew up I would kill him for this.
I began to curse boldly at him, calling him by all the obscene terms I had ever learned or heard. This, and the astounding fact that I no longer squirmed nor cried out, but physically yielded to him, as limp as an empty sack, brought him to a puzzled stop. But he sent me an extra blow for good measure as he flung me aside. That blow rattled about my head, missing my shoulders at which it had been aimed. I saw a shower of hot sparks soaring upward into a black void.
I woke with water trickling down my face and all over me. I heard, far off, my uncle's voice calling, cajoling, coaxing, with great fright sounding through it. …
"Johnnie, Johnnie … I'm so sorry … Johnnie, only speak to me!" He was behaving exactly like Aunt Millie when she had St. Vitus' dance.
He began tending me gently like a woman. He built a fire and made some coffee over it—he had brought coffee and some lunch. I crouched white and still, saying not a word.
Landon squatted with his back turned, watching the coffee. His shotgun, leaning against the tree-trunk, caught my eye. I crept toward that shotgun. I trembled with anticipatory pleasure. God, but now I would pay him back! …
But it was too heavy. I had struggled and brought it up, however, half to my shoulder, when that uncanny instinct that sometimes comes to people in mortal danger, came to Uncle Lan. He looked about.
He went as pale as a sheet of paper.
"—God, Johnnie!" he almost screamed my name.
I dropped the gun in the grass, sullenly, never speaking.
"Johnnie, were you—were you?" he faltered, unnerved.
"Yes, I was going to give you both barrels … and I'm sorry I didn't."
All his desire to whip me had gone up like smoke.
"Yes, and I'll tell you what, you big, dirty——, I'll kill you yet, when I grow big."
That night I fainted at supper. When Granma put me to bed she saw how bruised and wealed I was all over … for the first time she went after Uncle Lan—turned into a furious thing.
Shortly after, I was taken sick with typhoid fever. They used the starvation cure for it, in those days. When they began to give me solid food, I chased single grains of rice that fell out of the plate, about the quilt, just as a jeweller would pearls, if a necklace of them broke.
With my recovery came news, after many days, of my father.
The Hunkies were pushing out the Irish from the mills—cheaper labour. My grandmother could not afford to board the Hunkies, they lived so cheaply. Renewed poverty was breaking our household up.
My grandmother was about to begin her living about from house to house with her married sons and daughters.
My father was sending for me to come East. He had a good job there in the Composite Works at Haberford. He was at last able to take care of his son—his only child.
My grandmother and my aunt Millie took me to the railroad station. I tried to be brave and not cry. I succeeded, till the train began to pull out. Then I cried very much.
The face of my grandmother pulled awry with grief and flowing tears. Aunt Millie wept, too.
No, I wouldn't leave them. I would stay with them, work till I was rich and prosperous, never marry, give all my life to taking care of them, to saving them from the bitter grinding poverty we had shared together.
I ran into the vestibule. But the train was gathering speed so rapidly that I did not dare jump off.
I took my seat again. Soon my tears dried.
The trees flapped by. The telegraph poles danced off in irregular lines. I became acquainted with my fellow passengers. I was happy.
I made romance out of every red and green lamp in the railroad yards we passed through, out of the dingy little restaurants in which I ate. …
The mysterious swaying to and fro of the curtains in the sleeper thrilled me, as I looked out from my narrow berth.
In the smoker I listened till late to the talk of the drummers who clenched big black cigars between their teeth, or slender Pittsburgh stogies, expertly flicking off the grey ash with their little fingers, as they yarned.
I wore a tag on my coat lapel with my name and destination written on it. My grandmother had put it there in a painful, scrawling hand.
The swing out over wide, salt-bitten marshes, the Jersey marshes grey and smoky before dawn! … then, far off, on the horizon line, New York, serrate, mountainous, going upward great and shining in the still dawn!
Beneath a high, vast, clamorous roof of glass. …
As I stepped down to the platform my father met me.
I knew him instantly though it had been years since I had seen him.
My father whisked me once more across the long Jersey marshes. To Haberford. There, on the edge of the town, composed of a multitude of stone-built, separate, tin-roofed houses, stood the Composite Works. My father was foreman of the drying department, in which the highly inflammable sheets of composite were hung to dry. …
My father rented a large, front room, with a closet for clothes, of a commuting feed merchant named Jenkins … whose house stood three or four blocks distant from the works.
So we, my father and I, lived in that one room. But I had it to myself most of the time, excepting at night, when we shared the big double bed.
Still only a child, I was affectionate toward him. And, till he discouraged me, I kissed him good night every night, I liked the smell of the cigars he smoked.
I wanted my father to be more affectionate