Books: Our Mr. Wrenn
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Sinclair Lewis >> Our Mr. Wrenn
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When Mr. Wrenn had gone Mr. Trubiggs remarked to some one, by
telephone, "'Nother sucker coming, Blaugeld. Now don't try to
do me out of my bit or I'll cap for some other joint,
understand? Huh? Yuh, stick him for a thirty-five-cent bed.
S' long."
The caravan of Trubiggs's cattlemen who left for Portland by
night steamer, Friday, was headed by a bulky-shouldered boss, who
wore no coat and whose corduroy vest swung cheerfully open. A
motley troupe were the cattlemen--Jews with small trunks,
large imitation-leather valises and assorted bundles, a stolid
prophet-bearded procession of weary men in tattered derbies and
sweat-shop clothes.
There were Englishmen with rope-bound pine chests. A
lewd-mouthed American named Tim, who said he was a hatter out of
work, and a loud-talking tough called Pete mingled with a
straggle of hoboes.
The boss counted the group and selected his confidants for the
trip to Portland--Mr. Wrenn and a youth named Morton.
Morton was a square heavy-fleshed young man with stubby hands,
who, up to his eyes, was stolid and solid as a granite monument,
but merry of eye and hinting friendliness in his tousled
soft-brown hair. He was always wielding a pipe and artfully
blowing smoke through his nostrils.
Mr. Wrenn and he smiled at each other searchingly as the
Portland boat pulled out, and a wind swept straight from the
Land of Elsewhere.
After dinner Morton, smoking a pipe shaped somewhat like a
golf-stick head and somewhat like a toad, at the rail of the
steamer, turned to Mr. Wrenn with:
"Classy bunch of cattlemen we've got to go with. Not!... My
name's Morton."
"I'm awful glad to meet you, Mr. Morton. My name's Wrenn."
"Glad to be off at last, ain't you?"
"Golly! I should say I _am!_"
"So'm I. Been waiting for this for years. I'm a clerk for the
P. R. R. in N' York."
"I come from New York, too."
"So? Lived there long?"
"Uh-huh, I--" began Mr. Wrenn.
"Well, I been working for the Penn. for seven years now. Now
I've got a vacation of three months. On me. Gives me a chance
to travel a little. Got ten plunks and a second-class ticket
back from Glasgow. But I'm going to see England and France just
the same. Prob'ly Germany, too."
"Second class? Why don't you go steerage, and save?"
"Oh, got to come back like a gentleman. You know. You're from
New York, too, eh?"
"Yes, I'm with an art-novelty company on Twenty-eighth Street.
I been wanting to get away for quite some time, too.... How are
you going to travel on ten dollars?"
"Oh, work m' way. Cinch. Always land on my feet. Not on my
uppers, at that. I'm only twenty-eight, but I've been on my
own, like the English fellow says, since I was twelve.... Well,
how about you? Traveling or going somewhere?"
"Just traveling. I'm glad we're going together, Mr. Morton.
I don't think most of these cattlemen are very nice. Except for
the old Jews. They seem to be fine old coots. They make you
think of--oh--you know--prophets and stuff. Watch 'em, over
there, making tea. I suppose the steamer grub ain't kosher.
I seen one on the Joy Line saying his prayers--I suppose he
was--in a kind of shawl."
"Well, well! You don't say so!"
Distinctly, Mr. Wrenn felt that he was one of the gentlemen who,
in Kipling, stand at steamer rails exchanging observations on
strange lands. He uttered, cosmopolitanly:
"Gee! Look at that sunset. Ain't that grand!"
"Holy smoke! it sure is. I don't see how anybody could believe
in religion after looking at that."
Shocked and confused at such a theory, yet excited at finding
that Morton apparently had thoughts, Mr. Wrenn piped:
"Honestly, I don't see that at _all_. I don't see how anybody
could disbelieve anything after a sunset like that. Makes me
believe all sorts of thing--gets me going--I imagine I'm all
sorts of places--on the Nile and so on."
"Sure! That's just it. Everything's so peaceful and natural.
Just _is_. Gives the imagination enough to do, even by itself,
without having to have religion."
"Well," reflected Mr. Wrenn, "I don't hardly ever go to church.
I don't believe much in all them highbrow sermons that don't
come down to brass tacks--ain't got nothing to do with real
folks. But just the same, I love to go up to St. Patrick's
Cathedral. Why, I get real _thrilled_--I hope you won't think
I'm trying to get high-browed, Mr. Morton."
"Why, no. Cer'nly not. I understand. Gwan."
"It gets me going when I look down the aisle at the altar and
see the arches and so on. And the priests in their robes--they
look so--so way up--oh, I dunno just how to say it--so kind of
_uplifted_."
"Sure, I know. Just the esthetic end of the game. Esthetic,
you know--the beauty part of it."
"Yuh, sure, that's the word. 'Sthetic, that's what it is.
Yes, 'sthetic. But, just the same, it makes me feel's though I
believed in all sorts of things."
"Tell you what I believe may happen, though," exulted Morton.
"This socialism, and maybe even these here International Workers
of the World, may pan out as a new kind of religion. I don't
know much about it, I got to admit. But looks as though it might
be that way. It's dead certain the old political parties are just
gangs--don't stand for anything except the name. But this comrade
business--good stunt. Brotherhood of man--real brotherhood. My
idea of religion. One that is because it's got to be, not just
because it always has been. Yessir, me for a religion of guys
working together to make things easier for each other."
"You bet!" commented Mr. Wrenn, and they smote each other upon
the shoulder and laughed together in a fine flame of shared hope.
"I wish I knew something about this socialism stuff," mused Mr.
Wrenn, with tilted head, examining the burnt-umber edges of the
sunset.
"Great stuff. Not working for some lazy cuss that's inherited
the right to boss you. And _international_ brotherhood, not just
neighborhoods. New thing."
"Gee! I surely would like that, awfully," sighed Mr. Wrenn.
He saw the processional of world brotherhood tramp steadily
through the paling sunset; saffron-vestured Mandarin marching by
flax-faced Norseman and languid South Sea Islander--the diverse
peoples toward whom he had always yearned.
"But I don't care so much for some of these ranting street-corner
socialists, though," mused Morton. "The kind that holler `Come
get saved _our_ way or go to hell! Keep off scab guides to prosperity.'"
"Yuh, sure. Ha! ha! ha!"
"Huh! huh!"
Morton soon had another thought. "Still, same time, us guys
that do the work have got to work out something for ourselves.
We can't bank on the rah-rah boys that wear eye-glasses and
condescend to like us, cause they think we ain't entirely too
dirty for 'em to associate with, and all these writer guys and
so on. That's where you got to hand it to the street-corner
shouters."
"Yes, that's _so_. Y' right there, I guess, all right."
They looked at each other and laughed again; initiated friends;
tasting each other's souls. They shared sandwiches and
confessions. When the other passengers had gone to bed and the
sailors on watch seemed lonely the two men were still declaring,
shyly but delightedly, that "things is curious."
In the damp discomfort of early morning the cattlemen shuffled
from the steamer at Portland and were herded to a lunch-room by
the boss, who cheerfully smoked his corn-cob and ejaculated to
Mr. Wrenn and Morton such interesting facts as:
"Trubiggs is a lobster. You don't want to let the bosses bluff
you aboard the _Merian_. They'll try to chase you in where the
steers'll gore you. The grub'll be--"
"What grub do you get?"
"Scouse and bread. And water."
"What's scouse?"
"Beef stew without the beef. Oh, the grub'll be rotten.
Trubiggs is a lobster. He wouldn't be nowhere if 't wa'n't for me."
Mr. Wrenn appreciated England's need of roast beef, but he
timidly desired not to be gored by steers, which seemed
imminent, before breakfast coffee. The streets were coldly
empty, and he was sleepy, and Morton was silent. At the
restaurant, sitting on a high stool before a pine counter, he
choked over an egg sandwich made with thick crumby slices of a
bread that had no personality to it. He roved forlornly about
Portland, beside the gloomy pipe-valiant Morton, fighting two
fears: the company might not need all of them this trip, and he
might have to wait; secondly, if he incredibly did get shipped
and started for England the steers might prove dreadfully
dangerous. After intense thinking he ejaculated, "Gee! it's be
bored or get gored." Which was much too good not to tell Morton,
so they laughed very much, and at ten o'clock were signed on for
the trip and led, whooping, to the deck of the S.S. _Merian_.
Cattle were still struggling down the chutes from the dock. The
dirty decks were confusingly littered with cordage and the
cattlemen's luggage. The Jewish elders stared sepulchrally at
the wilderness of open hatches and rude passageways, as though
they were prophesying death.
But Mr. Wrenn, standing sturdily beside his suit-case to guard
it, fawned with romantic love upon the rusty iron sides of their
pilgrims' caravel; and as the _Merian_ left the wharf with no
more handkerchief-waving or tears than attends a ferry's leaving
he mumbled:
"Free, free, out to sea. Free, free, that's _me!_"
Then, "Gee!... Gee whittakers!"
CHAPTER IV
HE BECOMES THE GREAT LITTLE BILL WRENN
When the _Merian_ was three days out from Portland the frightened
cattleman stiff known as "Wrennie" wanted to die, for he was now
sure that the smell of the fo'c'sle, in which he was lying on a
thin mattress of straw covered with damp gunny-sacking, both
could and would become daily a thicker smell, a stronger smell,
a smell increasingly diverse and deadly.
Though it was so late as eight bells of the evening, Pete, the
tough factory hand, and Tim, the down-and-out hatter, were still
playing seven-up at the dirty fo'c'sle table, while McGarver,
under-boss of the Morris cattle gang, lay in his berth, heavily
studying the game and blowing sulphurous fumes of Lunch Pail
Plug Cut tobacco up toward Wrennie.
Pete, the tough, was very evil. He sneered. He stole. He
bullied. He was a drunkard and a person without cleanliness of
speech. Tim, the hatter, was a loud-talking weakling, under
Pete's domination. Tim wore a dirty rubber collar without a
tie, and his soul was like his neckware.
McGarver, the under-boss, was a good shepherd among the men,
though he had recently lost the head foremanship by a spree
complicated with language and violence. He looked like one of
the _Merian_ bulls, with broad short neck and short curly hair
above a thick-skinned deeply wrinkled low forehead. He never
undressed, but was always seen, as now, in heavy shoes and
blue-gray woolen socks tucked over the bottoms of his overalls.
He was gruff and kind and tyrannical and honest.
Wrennie shook and drew his breath sharply as the foghorn yawped
out its "Whawn-n-n-n" again, reminding him that they were
still in the Bank fog; that at any moment they were likely to be
stunned by a heart-stopping crash as some liner's bow burst
through the fo'c'sle's walls in a collision. Bow-plates
buckling in and shredding, the in-thrust of an enormous black
bow, water flooding in, cries and--However, the horn did at least
show that They were awake up there on the bridge to steer him
through the fog; and weren't They experienced seamen? Hadn't
They made this trip ever so many times and never got killed?
Wouldn't They take all sorts of pains on Their own account as
well as on his?
But--just the same, would he really ever get to England alive?
And if he did, would he have to go on holding his breath in
terror for nine more days? Would the fo'c'sle always keep
heaving up--up--up, like this, then down--down--down, as though
it were going to sink?
"How do yuh like de fog-horn, Wrennie?"
Pete, the tough, spit the question up at him from a corner of
his mouth. "Hope we don't run into no ships."
He winked at Tim, the weakling hatter, who took the cue and
mourned:
"I'm kinda afraid we're going to, ain't you, Pete? The mate was
telling me he was scared we would."
"Sures' t'ing you know. Hey, Wrennie, wait till youse have to
beat it down-stairs and tie up a bull in a storm. Hully gee!
Youse'll last quick on de game, Birdie!"
"Oh, shut up," snapped Wrennie's friend Morton.
But Morton was seasick; and Pete, not heeding him, outlined
other dangers which he was happily sure were threatening them.
Wrennie shivered to hear that the "grub 'd git worse." He
writhed under Pete's loud questions about his loss, in some
cattle-pen, of the gray-and-scarlet sweater-jacket which he had
proudly and gaily purchased in New York for his work on the
ship. And the card-players assured him that his suit-case,
which he had intrusted to the Croac ship's carpenter, would
probably be stolen by "Satan."
Satan! Wrennie shuddered still more. For Satan, the gaunt-jawed
hook-nosed rail-faced head foreman, diabolically smiling when
angry, sardonically sneering when calm, was a lean human
whip-lash. Pete sniggered. He dilated upon Satan's wrath at
Wrennie for not "coming across" with ten dollars for a bribe
as he, Pete, had done.
(He lied, of course. And his words have not been given
literally. They were not beautiful words.)
McGarver, the straw-boss, would always lie awake to enjoy a good
brisk indecent story, but he liked Wrennie's admiration of him,
so, lunging with his bull-like head out of his berth, he snorted:
"Hey, you, Pete, it's time to pound your ear. Cut it out."
Wrennie called down, sternly, "I ain't no theological student,
Pete, and I don't mind profanity, but I wish you wouldn't talk
like a garbage-scow."
"Hey, Poicy, did yuh bring your dictionary?" Pete bellowed to
Tim, two feet distant from him. To Wrennie, "Say, Gladys, ain't
you afraid one of them long woids like, t'eological, will turn
around and bite you right on the wrist?"
"Dry up!" irritatedly snapped a Canadian.
"Aw, cut it out, you--," groaned another.
"Shut up," added McGarver, the straw-boss. "Both of you."
Raging: "Gwan to bed, Pete, or I'll beat your block clean off.
I mean it, see? _Hear me?_"
Yes, Pete heard him. Doubtless the first officer on the bridge
heard, too, and perhaps the inhabitants of Newfoundland. But
Pete took his time in scratching the back of his neck and
stretching before he crawled into his berth. For half an hour
he talked softly to Tim, for Wrennie's benefit, stating his belief
that Satan, the head boss, had once thrown overboard a Jew much
like Wrennie, and was likely thus to serve Wrennie, too.
Tim pictured the result when, after the capsizing of the steamer
which would undoubtedly occur if this long sickening motion kept up,
Wrennie had to take to a boat with Satan.
The fingers of Wrennie curled into shape for strangling some one.
When Pete was asleep he worried off into thin slumber.
Then, there was Satan, the head boss, jerking him out of his
berth, stirring his cramped joints to another dawn of
drudgery--two hours of work and two of waiting before the daily
eight-o'clock insult called breakfast. He tugged on his shoes,
marveling at Mr. Wrenn's really being there, at his sitting in
cramped stoop on the side of a berth in a dark filthy place that
went up and down like a freight elevator, subject to the orders
of persons whom he did not in the least like.
Through the damp gray sea-air he staggered hungrily along the
gangway to the hatch amidships, and trembled down the iron
ladder to McGarver's crew 'tween-decks.
First, watering the steers. Sickened by walking backward with
pails of water he carried till he could see and think of nothing
in the world save the water-butt, the puddle in front of it, and
the cattlemen mercilessly dipping out pails there, through
centuries that would never end. How those steers did drink!
McGarver's favorite bull, which he called "the Grenadier," took
ten pails and still persisted in leering with dripping gray
mouth beyond the headboard, trying to reach more. As Wrennie
was carrying a pail to the heifers beyond, the Grenadier's horn
caught and tore his overalls. The boat lurched. The pail
whirled out of his hand. He grasped an iron stanchion and
kicked the Grenadier in the jaw till the steer backed off, a
reformed character.
McGarver cheered, for such kicks were a rule of the game.
"Good work," ironically remarked Tim, the weakling hatter.
"You go to hell," snapped Wrennie, and Tim looked much more
respectful.
But Wrennie lost this credit before they had finished feeding
out the hay, for he grew too dizzy to resent Tim's remarks.
Straining to pitch forkfuls into the pens while the boat rolled,
slopping along the wet gangway, down by the bunkers of coal,
where the heat seemed a close-wound choking shroud and the
darkness was made only a little pale by light coming through
dust-caked port-holes, he sneezed and coughed and grunted till
he was exhausted. The floating bits of hay-dust were a thousand
impish hands with poisoned nails scratching at the roof of his
mouth. His skin prickled all over. He constantly discovered
new and aching muscles. But he wabbled on until he finished the
work, fifteen minutes after Tim had given out.
He crawled up to the main deck and huddled in the shelter of a
pile of hay-bales where Pete was declaring to Tim and the rest
that Satan "couldn't never get nothing on him."
Morton broke into Pete's publicity with the question, "Say, is
it straight what they say, Pete, that you're the guy that owns
the Leyland Line and that's why you know so much more than the
rest of us poor lollops? Watson, the needle, quick!" [Applause
and laughter.]
Wrennie felt personally grateful to Morton for this, but he went
up to the aft top deck, where he could lie alone on a pile of
tarpaulins. He made himself observe the sea which, as Kipling
and Jack London had specifically promised him in their stories,
surrounded him, everywhere shining free; but he glanced at it
only once. To the north was a liner bound for home.
Home! Gee! That _was_ rubbing it in! While at work, whether
he was sick or not, he could forget--things. But the liner,
fleeting on with bright ease, made the cattle-boat seem about
as romantic as Mrs. Zapp's kitchen sink.
Why, he wondered--"why had he been a chump? Him a wanderer?
No; he was a hired man on a sea-going dairy-farm. Well, he'd get
onto this confounded job before he was through with it, but
then--gee! back to God's Country!"
While the _Merian_, eleven days out, pleasantly rocked through
the Irish Sea, with the moon revealing the coast of Anglesey,
one Bill Wrenn lay on the after-deck, condescending to the
heavens. It was so warm that they did not need to sleep below,
and half a dozen of the cattlemen had brought their mattresses
up on deck. Beside Bill Wrenn lay the man who had given him
that name--Tim, the hatter, who had become weakly alarmed and
admiring as Wrennie learned to rise feeling like a boy in early
vacation-time, and to find shouting exhilaration in sending a
forkful of hay fifteen good feet.
Morton, who lay near by, had also adopted the name "Bill
Wrenn." Most of the trip Morton had discussed Pete and Tim
instead of the fact that "things is curious." Mr. Wrenn had been
jealous at first, but when he learned from Morton the theory
that even a Pete was a "victim of 'vironment" he went out for
knowing him quite systematically.
To McGarver he had been "Bill Wrenn" since the fifth day, when
he had kept a hay-bale from slipping back into the hold on the
boss's head. Satan and Pete still called him "Wrennie," but he
was not thinking about them just now with Tim listening
admiringly to his observations on socialism.
Tim fell asleep. Bill Wrenn lay quiet and let memory color the
sky above him. He recalled the gardens of water which had
flowered in foam for him, strange ships and nomadic gulls, and
the schools of sleekly black porpoises that, for him, had
whisked through violet waves. Most of all, he brought back the
yesterday's long excitement and delight of seeing the Irish
coast hills--his first foreign land--whose faint sky fresco had
seemed magical with the elfin lore of Ireland, a country that
had ever been to him the haunt not of potatoes and politicians,
but of fays. He had wanted fays. They were not common on the
asphalt of West Sixteenth Street. But now he had seen them
beckoning in Wanderland.
He was falling asleep under the dancing dome of the sky, a happy
Mr. Wrenn, when he was aroused as a furious Bill, the cattleman.
Pete was clogging near by, singing hoarsely, "Dey was a skoit
and 'er name was Goity."
"You shut up!" commanded Bill Wrenn.
"Say, be careful!" the awakened Tim implored of him.
Pete snorted: "Who says to `shut up,' hey? Who was it, Satan?"
From the capstan, where he was still smoking, the head foreman
muttered: "What's the odds? The little man won't say it again."
Pete stood by Bill Wrenn's mattress. "Who said `shut up'?"
sounded ominously.
Bill popped out of bed with what he regarded as a vicious
fighting-crouch. For he was too sleepy to be afraid. "I did!
What you going to do about it?" More mildly, as a fear of his
own courage began to form, "I want to sleep."
"Oh! You want to sleep. Little mollycoddle wants to sleep,
does he? Come here!"
The tough grabbed at Bill's shirt-collar across the mattress.
Bill ducked, stuck out his arm wildly, and struck Pete, half by
accident. Roaring, Pete bunted him, and he went down, with Pete
kneeling on his stomach and pounding him.
Morton and honest McGarver, the straw-boss, sprang to drag off
Pete, while Satan, the panther, with the first interest they had
ever seen in his eyes, snarled: "Let 'em fight fair. Rounds.
You're a' right, Bill."
"Right," commended Morton.
Armored with Satan's praise, firm but fearful in his rubber
sneakers, surprised and shocked to find himself here doing this,
Bill Wrenn squared at the rowdy. The moon touched sadly the
lightly sketched Anglesey coast and the rippling wake, but Bill
Wrenn, oblivious of dream moon and headland, faced his
fellow-bruiser.
They circled. Pete stuck out his foot gently. Morton sprang
in, bawling furiously, "None o' them rough-and-tumble tricks."
"Right-o," added McGarver.
Pete scowled. He was left powerless. He puffed and grew dizzy
as Bill Wrenn danced delicately about him, for he could do
nothing without back-street tactics. He did bloody the nose of
Bill and pummel his ribs, but many cigarettes and much whisky
told, and he was ready to laugh foolishly and make peace when,
at the end of the sixth round, he felt Bill's neat little fist
in a straight--and entirely accidental--rip to the point of
his jaw.
Pete sent his opponent spinning with a back-hander which awoke
all the cruelty of the terrible Bill. Silently Bill Wrenn
plunged in with a smash! smash! smash! like a murderous savage,
using every grain of his strength.
Let us turn from the lamentable luck of Pete. He had now got the
idea that his supposed victim could really fight. Dismayed, shocked,
disgusted, he stumbled and sought to flee, and was sent flat.
This time it was the great little Bill who had to be dragged
off. McGarver held him, kicking and yammering, his mild
mustache bristling like a battling cat's, till the next round,
when Pete was knocked out by a clumsy whirlwind of fists.
He lay on the deck, with Bill standing over him and demanding,
"What's my name, _heh?_"
"I t'ink it's Bill now, all right, Wrennie, old hoss--Bill, old
hoss," groaned Pete.
He was permitted to sneak off into oblivion.
Bill Wrenn went below. In the dark passage by the fidley he
fell to tremorous weeping. But the brackish hydrant water that
stopped his nose-bleed saved him from hysterics. He climbed to
the top deck, and now he could again see his brother pilgrim,
the moon.
The stiffs and bosses were talking excitedly of the fight.
Tim rushed up to gurgle: "Great, Bill, old man! You done just
what I'd 'a' done if he'd cussed me. I told you Pete was a bluffer."
"Git out," said Satan.
Tim fled.
Morton came up, looked at Bill Wrenn, pounded him on the shoulder,
and went off to his mattress. The other stiffs slouched away,
but McGarver and Satan were still discussing the fight.
Snuggling on the hard black pile of tarpaulins, Bill talked to
them, warmed to them, and became Mr. Wrenn. He announced his
determination to wander adown every shining road of Europe.
"Nice work." "Sure." "You'll make a snappy little ole
globe-trotter." "Sure; ought to be able to get the slickest
kind of grub for four bits a day." "Nice work," Satan
interjected from time to time, with smooth irony. "Sure.
Go ahead. Like to hear your plans."
McGarver broke in: "Cut that out, Marvin. You're a `Satan' all
right. Quit your kidding the little man. He's all right. And
he done fine on the job last three-four days."
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