Books: Lifted Masks
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Susan Glaspell >> Lifted Masks
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"Perhaps it is then that it is like that," he murmured, his vision
carrying him back to the days of his broken English. "Perhaps it is
that every man's America is in the inside of his own heart. Perhaps
it is that it will come when it has grown big--big and very
strong--in the hearts."
XII
THE ANARCHIST: HIS DOG
Stubby had a route, and that was how he happened to get a dog. For the
benefit of those who have never carried papers it should be thrown
in that having a route means getting up just when there is really
some fun in sleeping, lining up at the _Leader_ office--maybe
having a scrap with the fellow who says you took his place in the
line--getting your papers all damp from the press and starting for
the outskirts of the city. Then you double up the paper in the
way that will cause all possible difficulty in undoubling and hurl
it with what force you have against the front door. It is good to
have a route, for you at least earn your salt, so your father can't
say _that_ any more. If he does, you know it isn't so.
When you have a route, you whistle. All the fellows whistle. They
may not feel like it, but it is the custom--as could be sworn to by
many sleepy citizens. And as time goes on you succeed in acquiring
the easy manner of a brigand.
Stubby was little and everything about him seemed sawed off just a
second too soon,--his nose, his fingers, and most of all, his hair.
His head was a faithful replica of a chestnut burr. His hair did not
lie down and take things easy. It stood up--and out!--gentle ladies
couldn't possibly have let their hands sink into it--as we are told
they do--for the hands just wouldn't sink. They'd have to float.
And alas, gentle ladies didn't particularly want their hands to sink
into it. There was not that about Stubby's short person to cause the
hands of gentle ladies to move instinctively to his head. Stubby
bristled. That is, he appeared to bristle. Inwardly, Stubby yearned,
though he would have swung into his very best brigand manner on the
spot were you to suggest so offensive a thing. Just to look at
Stubby you'd never in a thousand years guess what a funny feeling he
had sometimes when he got to the top of the hill where his route
began and could see a long way down the river and the town curled in
on the other side. Sometimes when the morning sun was shining
through a mist--making things awful queer--some of the mist got into
Stubby's squinty little eyes. After the mist behaved that way he
always whistled so rakishly and threw his papers with such
abandonment that people turned over in their beds and muttered
things about having that little heathen of a paper boy shot.
All along the route are dogs. Indeed, routes are distinguished by
their dogs. Mean routes are those that have terraces and mean dogs;
good routes--where the houses are close together and the dogs run
out and wag their tails. Though Stubby's greater difficulty came
through the wagging tails; he carried in a collie neighbourhood, and
all collies seemed consumed with mighty ambitions to have routes. If
you spoke to them--and how could you _help_ speaking to a
collie when he came bounding out to you that way?--you had an awful
time chasing him back, and when he got lost--and it seemed collies
spent most of their time getting lost--the woman would put her head
out next morning and want to know if you had coaxed her dog away.
Some of the fellows had dogs that went with them on their routes.
One day one of them asked Stubby why he didn't have a dog and he
replied in surly fashion that he didn't have one 'cause he didn't
want one. If he wanted one, he guessed he'd have one.
And there was no one within ear-shot old enough or wise enough--or
tender enough?--to know from the meanness of Stubby's tone, and by
his evil scowl, that his heart was just breaking to own a dog.
One day a new dog appeared along the route. He was yellow and looked
like a cheap edition of a bull-dog. He was that kind of dog most
accurately described by saying it is hard to describe him, the kind
you say is just dog--and everybody knows.
He tried to follow Stubby; not in the trusting, bounding manner of
the collies--not happily, but hopingly. Stubby, true to the ethics
of his profession, chased him back where he had come from. That
there might be nothing whatever on his conscience, he even threw a
stone after him. Stubby was an expert in throwing things at dogs. He
could seem to just miss them and yet never hit them.
The next day it happened again; but just as he had a clod poised for
throwing, a window went up and a woman called: "For pity
_sake_, little boy, don't chase him back _here_."
"Why--why, ain't he yours?" called Stubby.
"Mercy, _no_. We can't chase him away."
"Who's is he?" demanded Stubby.
"Why, he's nobody's! He just hangs around. I wish you'd coax him
away."
Well, that was a _new_ one! And then all in a heap it rushed
over Stubby that this dog who was nobody's dog could, if he coaxed
him away--and the woman _wanted_ him coaxed away--be his dog.
And because that idea had such a strange effect on him he sang out,
in off-hand fashion: "Oh, all right, I'll take him away and drown
him for you!
"Oh, little _boy_," called the woman, "why, don't _drown_
him!"
"Oh, all right, I'll shoot him then!" called obliging Stubby,
whistling for the dog--while all morning long the woman grieved over
having sent a helpless little dog away with that perfectly
_brutal_ paper boy!
Stubby's mother was washing. She looked up from her tubs on the back
porch to say, "Wish you'd take that bucket--" then seeing what was
slinking behind her son, straightway assumed the role of destiny
with, "Git out o' here!"
Stubby snapped his fingers behind his back as much as to say, "Wait
a minute."
"A woman gave him to me," he said to his mother.
"_Gave_ him to you?" she scoffed. "I sh' think she would!"
Then something happened that had not happened many times in Stubby's
short lifetime. He acknowledged his feelings.
"I'd like to keep him. I'd like to have a dog."
His mother shook her hands and the flying suds seemed expressing her
scorn. "Huh! _That_ ugly good-for-nothing thing?"
The dog had edged in between Stubby's feet and crouched there. "He
could go with me on my route," said Stubby. "He'd kind of be company
for me."
And when he had said that he knew all at once just how lonesome he
had been sometimes on his route, how he had wanted something to
"kind of be company" for him.
His face twitched as he stooped down to pat the dog. Mrs. Lynch
looked at her son--youngest of her five. Not the hardness of her
heart but the hardness of her life had made her unpractised in
moments of tenderness. Something in the way Stubby was patting the
dog suggested to her that Stubby was a "queer one." He _was_
kind of little to be carrying papers all by himself.
Stubby looked up. "He could eat what's thrown away."
That was an error in diplomacy. The woman's face hardened. "Mighty
little'll be thrown away _this_ winter," she muttered.
But just then Mrs. Johnson appeared on the other side of the fence
and began hanging up her clothes and with that Mrs. Lynch saw her
way to justify herself in indulging her son. Mrs. Johnson and Mrs.
Lynch had "had words." "You just let him stay around, Stubby," she
called, and you would have supposed from her tone it was Stubby who
was on the other side of the fence, "maybe he'll keep the
neighbour's chickens out! Them that ain't got chickens o' their own
don't want to be bothered with the neighbours'!"
That was how it happened that he stayed; and no one but Stubby
knew--and possibly Stubby didn't either--how it happened that he was
named Hero. It would seem that Hero should be a noble St. Bernard,
or a particularly mean-looking bulldog, not a stocky, shapeless,
squint-eyed yellow dog with one ear bitten half off and one leg
built on an entirely different plan from its fellow legs. Possibly
Stubby's own spiritual experiences had suggested to him that you
weren't necessarily the way you looked.
The chickens were pretty well kept out, though no one ever saw Hero
doing any of it. Perhaps Hero had been too long associated with
chasing to desire any part in it--even with roles reversed. If
Stubby could help it, no one really saw Stubby doing the chasing
either; he became skilled in chasing when he did not appear to be
chasing; then he would get Hero to barking and turn to his mother
with, "Guess you don't see so many chickens round nowadays."
The fellows in the line jeered at Hero at first, but they soon tired
of it when Stubby said he didn't want the cur but his mother made
him stay around to keep the chickens out. He was a fine chicken dog,
Stubby grudgingly admitted. He couldn't keep him from following,
said Stubby, so he just let him come. Sometimes when they were
waiting in line Stubby made ferocious threats at Hero. He was going
to break his back and wring his head off and do other heartless
things which for some reason he never started in right then and
there to accomplish.
It was different when they were alone--and they were alone a good
deal. Stubby's route wasn't nearly so long after he had Hero to go
with him. When winter came and five o'clock was dark and cold for
starting out it was pretty good to have Hero trotting at his heels.
And Hero always wanted to go; it was never so rainy nor so cold that
that yellow dog seemed to think he would rather stay home by the
fire. Then Hero was always waiting for him when he came home from
school. Stubby would sing out, "Hello, cur!" and the tone was such
that Hero did not grasp that he was being insulted. Sometimes when
there was nobody about, Stubby picked Hero up in his arms and
squeezed him--Stubby had not had a large experience with squeezing.
At those times Hero would lick Stubby's face and whimper a little
love whimper and such were the workings of Stubby's heart and mind
that that made him of quite as much account as if he really had
chased the chickens. Stubby, who had seen the way dogs can look at
you out of their eyes, was not one to say of a dog, "What good is
he?"
But it seemed there were such people. There were even people who
thought you oughtn't to have a dog to love and to love you if you
weren't one of those rich people who could pay two dollars and a
half a year for the luxury.
Stubby first heard of those people one night in June. The father of
the Lynch family was sitting in the back yard reading the paper when
Hero and Stubby came running in from the alley. It was one of those
moments when Hero, forgetting the bleakness of his youth, abandoned
himself to the joy of living. He was tearing round and round Stubby,
barking, when Stubby's father called out: "Here!--shut up there, you
cur. You better lie low. You're going to be shot the first of
August."
Stubby, and as regards the joy of living Hero had done as much for
Stubby as Stubby for Hero, came to a halt. The fun and frolic just
died right out of him and he stood there staring at his father, who
had turned the page and was settling himself to a new horror. At
last Stubby spoke. "Why's he going to be shot on the first of
August?" he asked in a tight little voice.
His father looked up. "Why's he going to be shot? You got any two
dollars and a half to pay for him?"
He laughed as though that were a joke. Well, it was something of a
joke. Stubby got ten cents a week out of his paper money. The rest
he "turned in."
Then he went back to his paper. There was another long pause before
Stubby asked, in that tight queer little voice: "What'd I have to
pay two dollars and a half for? Nobody owns him."
His parent stirred scornfully. "Suppose you never heard of a dog
tax, did you? S'pose they don't learn you nothing like that at
school?"
Yes, Stubby did know that dogs had to have checks, but he hadn't
thought anything about that in connection with Hero. He ventured
another question. "You have to have 'em for all dogs, even if you
just picked 'em up on the street and took care of 'em when nobody
else would?"
"You bet you do," his parent assured him genially. "You pay your dog
tax or the policeman comes on the first of August and shoots your
dog."
With that he dismissed it for good, burying himself in his paper.
For a minute the boy stood there in silence. Then he walked slowly
round the house and sat down where his father couldn't see him. Hero
followed--it was a way Hero had. The dog sat down beside the boy and
after a couple of minutes the boy's arm stole furtively around him
and they sat there very still for a long time.
As nobody but Hero paid much attention to him, nobody save Hero
noticed how quiet and queer Stubby was for the next three days. Hero
must have noticed it, for he was quiet and queer too. He followed
wherever Stubby would let him, and every time he got a chance he
would nestle up to him and look into his face--that way even cur
dogs have of doing when they fear something is wrong.
At the end of three days Stubby, his little freckled face set and
grim, took his stand in front of his father and came right out with:
"I want to keep one week's paper money to pay Hero's tax."
His father's chair had been tilted back against a tree. Now it came
down with a thud. "Oh, you _do_, do you?"
"I can earn the other fifty cents at little jobs."
"You _can_, can you? Now ain't you smart!"
The tone brought the blood to Stubby's face. "I think I got a right
to," he said, his voice low.
The man's face, which had been taunting, grew ugly. "Look a-here,
young man, none o' your lip!"
The tears rushed to Stubby's eyes but he stumbled on: "I guess
Hero's got a right to some of my paper money when he goes with me
every day on my route."
At that his father stared for a minute and then burst into a loud
laugh. Blinded with tears, the boy turned to the house.
After she had gone to bed that night Stubby's mother heard a sound
from the alcove at the head of the stairs where her youngest child
slept. As the sound kept on she got out of her bed and went to
Stubby's cot.
"Look here," she said, awkwardly but not unkindly, "this won't do.
We're poor folks, Freddie" (it was only once in a while she called
him that), "all we can do to live these times--we can't pay no dog
tax."
As Stubby did not speak she added: "I know you've taken to the dog,
but just the same you ain't to feel hard to your pa. He can't help
it--and neither can I. Things is as they is--and nobody can help
it."
As, despite this bit of philosophy Stubby was still gulping back
sobs, she added what she thought a master stroke in consolation.
"Now you just go right to sleep, and if they come to take this dog
away maybe you can pick up another one in the fall."
The sobs suddenly stopped and Stubby stared at her. And what he said
after a long stare was: "I guess there ain't no use in you and me
talking about it."
"That's right," said she, relieved; "now you go right off to sleep."
And she left him, never dreaming why Stubby had seen there was no
use talking about it.
Nor did he talk about it; but a change came over Stubby's funny
little person in the next few days. The change was particularly
concerned with his jaw, though there was something different, too,
in the light in his eyes as he looked straight ahead, and something
different in his voice when he said: "Come on, Hero."
He got so he could walk into a store and demand, in a hard little
voice: "Want a boy to do anything for you?" and when they said, "Got
more boys than we know what to do with, sonny," Stubby would say,
"All right," and stalk sturdily out again. Sometimes they laughed
and said: "What could _you_ do?" and then Stubby would stalk
out, but possibly a little less sturdily.
Vacation came the next week, and still he had found nothing. His
father, however, had been more successful. He found a place where
they wanted a boy to work in a yard a couple of hours in the
morning. For that Stubby was to get a dollar and a half a week. But
that was to be turned in for his "keep." There were lots of mouths
to feed--as Stubby's mother was always calling to her neighbour
across the alley.
But the yard gave Stubby an idea, and he earned some dimes and one
quarter in the next week. Most folks thought he was too little--one
kind lady told him he ought to be playing, not working--but there
were people who would let him take a big shears and cut grass around
flower beds, and things like that. This he had to do afternoons,
when he was supposed to be off playing, and when he came home his
mother sometimes said some folks had it easy--playing around all
day.
It was now the first week in July and Stubby had a dollar and twenty
cents. It was getting to the point where he would wake in the night
and find himself sitting up in bed, hands clenched. He dreamed
dreams about how folks would let him live if he had ninety-nine
cents but how he only had ninety-seven and a half, so they were
going to shoot him.
Then one day he found Mr. Stuart. He was passing the house after
having asked three people if they wanted a boy, and they didn't, and
seemed so surprised at the idea of their wanting him that Stubby's
throat was all tight, when Mr. Stuart sang out: "Say, boy, want a
little job?"
It seemed at first it must be a joke--or a dream--anybody asking him
if he _wanted_ one, but the man was beckoning to him, so he
pulled himself together and ran up the steps.
"Now here's a little package"--he took something out of the mail
box. "It doesn't belong here. It's to go to three-hundred-two
Pleasant street. You take it for a dime?"
Stubby nodded.
As he was going down the steps the man called: "Say, boy, how'd you
like a steady job?"
For the first minute it seemed pretty mean--making fun of a fellow
that way!
"This will be here every day. Suppose you come each day, about this
time, and take it over there--not mentioning it to anybody."
Stubby felt weak. "Why, all right," he managed to say.
"I'll give you fifty cents a week. That fair?"
"Yes, sir," said Stubby, doing some quick calculation.
"Then here goes for the first week"--and he handed him the other
forty cents.
It was funny how fast the world could change! Stubby wanted to
run--he hadn't been doing much running of late. He wanted to go home
and get Hero to go with him to Pleasant street, but didn't. No,
_sir_, when you had a job you had to 'tend to things!
Well, a person could do things, if he had to, thought Stubby. No use
saying you couldn't, you _could_, if you had to. He was back in
tune with life. He whistled; he turned up his collar in the old
rakish way; he threw a stick at a cat. Back home he jumped over the
fence instead of going in the gate--lately he had actually been
using the gate. And he cried, "Get out of my sight, you cur!" in
tones which, as Hero understood things, meant anything but getting
out of his sight.
He was a little boy again. He slept at night as little boys sleep.
He played with Hero along the route--taught him some new tricks. His
jaw relaxed from its grown-upishness.
It was funny about those Stuarts. Sometimes he saw Mr. Stuart, but
never anybody else; the place seemed shut up. But each day the
little package was there, and every day he took it to Pleasant
street and left it at the door there--that place seemed shut up,
too.
When it was well into the second week Stubby ventured to say
something about the next fifty cents.
The man fumbled in his pockets. Something in his face was familiar
to experienced Stubby. It suggested a having to have two dollars and
a half by August first and only having a dollar and a quarter state
of mind.
"I haven't got the change. Pay you at the end of next week for the
whole business. That all right?"
Stubby considered. "I've got to have it before the first of August,"
he said.
At that the man laughed--funny kind of laugh, it was, and muttered
something. But he told Stubby he would have it before the first.
It bothered Stubby. He wished the man had given it to him
_then_. He would rather get it each week and keep it himself. A
little of the grown-up look stole back.
After that he didn't see Mr. Stuart, and one day, a week or so
later, the package was not in the box and a man who wore the kind of
clothes Stubby's father wore came around the house and asked him
what he was doing.
Stubby was wary. "Oh, I've got a little job I do for Mr. Stuart."
The man laughed. "I had a little job I did for Mr. Stuart, too. You
paid in advance?"
Stubby pricked up his ears.
"'Cause if you ain't, I'd advise you to look out for a little job
some'eres else."
Then it came out. Mr. Stuart was broke; more than that, he was "off
his nut." Lots of people were doing little jobs for him--there was
no sense in any of them, and now he had suddenly been called out of
town!
There was a trembly feeling through Stubby's insides, but outwardly
he was bristling just like his hair bristled as he demanded: "Where
am I to get what's coming to me?"
"'Fraid you won't get it, sonny. We're all in the same boat." He
looked Stubby up and down and then added: "Kind of little for that
boat."
"I _got_ to have it!" cried Stubby. "I tell you, I _got_
to!"
The man shook his head. "_That_ cuts no ice. Hard luck, sonny,
but we've got to take our medicine in this world. 'Taint no medicine
for kids, though," he muttered.
Stubby's face just then was too much for him. He put his hand in his
pocket and drew out a dime, saying: "There now. You run along and
get you a soda and forget your troubles. It ain't always like this.
You'll have better luck next time."
But Stubby did not get the soda. He put the dime in his pocket and
turned toward home. Something was the matter with his legs--they
acted funny about carrying him. He tried to whistle, but something
was the matter with his lips, too.
Counting this dime, he now had a dollar and eighty cents, and it was
the twenty-eighth day of July. "Thirty days has September--April,
June and November--" he was saying to himself. Then July was one of
the long ones. Well, _that_ was a good thing! Been a great deal
worse if July was a short one. Again he tried to whistle, and that
time did manage to pipe out a few shrill little notes.
When Hero came running up the hill to meet him he slapped him on the
back and cried, "Hello, Hero!" in tones fairly swaggering with
bravado.
That night he engaged his father in conversation--the phrase is well
adapted to the way Stubby went about it. "How is it about--'bout
things like taxes"--Stubby crossed his knees and swung one foot to
show his indifference--"if you have _almost_ enough--do they
sometimes let you off?"--the detachment was a shade less perfect on
that last.
His father laughed scoffingly. "Well, I guess _not!_"
"I thought maybe," said Stubby, "if a person had _tried_ awful
hard--and had _most_ enough--"
Something inside him was all shaky, so he didn't go on. His father
said that _trying_ didn't have anything to do with it.
It was hard for Stubby not to sob out that he thought trying
_ought_ to have something to do with it, but he only made a
hissing noise between his teeth that took the place of the whistle
that wouldn't come.
"Kind of seems," he resumed, "if a person would have had enough if
they hadn't been beat out of it, maybe--if he done the best he
could--"
His father snorted derisively and informed him that doing the best
you could made no difference to the government; hard luck stories
didn't go when it came to the laws of the land.
Thereupon Stubby took a little walk out to the alley and spent a
considerable time in contemplation of the neighbour's chicken-yard.
When he came back he walked right up to his father and standing
there, feet planted, shoulders squared, wanted to know, in a
desperate little voice: "If some one else was to give--say a dollar
and eighty cents for Hero, could I take the other seventy out of my
paper money?"
The man turned upon him roughly. "Uh-_huh_! _That's_ it,
is it? _That's_ why you're getting so smart all of a sudden
about government! Look a-here. Just l'me tell you something. You're
lucky if you git enough to _eat_ this winter. Do you know
there's talk of the factory shuttin' down? _Dog_ tax! Why
you're lucky if you git _shoes_."
Stubby had turned away and was standing with his back to his father,
hands in his pockets.
"And l'me tell you some'en else, young man. If you got any dollar
and eighty cents, you give it to your mother!"
As Stubby was turning the corner of the house he called after him:
"How'd you like to have me get you an automobile?"
He went doggedly from house to house the next afternoon, but nobody
had any jobs. When Hero came running out to him that night he patted
him, but didn't speak.
That evening as they were sitting in the back yard--Stubby and Hero
a little apart from the others--his father was discoursing with his
brother about anarchists. They were getting commoner, his father
thought. There were a good many of them at the shop. They didn't
call themselves that, but that was what they were.
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