Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 192
“What do you see?” the girl asked breathlessly.
“Wish I could see land,” said the man. “We seem to have lost that. Even the fog horns are getting scarcer, but I’ll cook your chicken for you, lady.”
“That’s swell,” said Jo. “You’re a good egg, chief. I’ve a sick man up there. He’s been shot.”
“Heard about that guy,” the chief replied as he moved searchingly about the confined area. “Sort of queer thing, that. And all the time there’s some man sitting quietly on this boat who was intended to stop that bullet. It just shows. You never can tell. Who’d ever thought I’d be cooking a chicken in a fog?”
“Ain’t he even going ter wash it?” asked Little Arthur.
“What for?” asked Jo. “We’ll burn the dirt off.”
Little Arthur shrank even smaller.
“Always like my chickens washed,” he muttered.
The black-faced man had found what he wanted. It was a pan — a large pan. This he filled with glowing coals upon which he placed another and smaller pan.
“Ask him to dust the ashes out,” urged Little Arthur.
“Will you be quiet!” said Jo, who was by now greatly interested.
From a suspicious-looking can the chief poured some water into the smaller pan, plopped the chicken in it, then covered the whole affair with a galvanized washtub.
“Wouldn’t want no better oven than that,” he remarked, surveying his rude creation.
“Who wouldn’t?” muttered Little Arthur.
“You’re a genius,” said Jo admiringly. “Have a hunk of cake.”
She produced a box of cake from beneath the duster she had managed to retain and tore off the cover.
“Just a little,” said the chief.
“Go on. Take a lot.”
He accepted the cake and munched.
“Good cake,” he observed. “I like cake. You know — good cake.”
Little Arthur decided that here was a man who would be at home in any surroundings. He was the same as a dog or any other animal. His reactions were the simple ones of the brute. The girl was like him. Little Arthur, to show how much nicer he was than his companions, produced his knife and cut himself a slice of cake.
“Nice, ain’t it?” said the chief, rolling his eyes at the little man. “Orange icing’s good.”
Little Arthur waited until his mouth was clear, then spoke with marked distinctness.
“Not bad for store cake,” he replied. “It’s sticking on your chin.”
“What?” asked the black-faced man.
“The crumbs,” said Little Arthur.
The man once more laughed coarsely.
“If that’s all,” he got out. “Bah!”
“That’s not all,” replied Little Arthur meticulously. “There’s bits of waste and coal dust and oil.”
“I guess that chin can stand it,” the man remarked, not even taking the trouble to wipe his chin.
“No doubt,” agreed the pickpocket, “but I almost can’t.”
“What do you mean?” the other demanded truculently.
“Oh, nothing,” said Little Arthur, “only there’s a lady present and you ain’t doing yourself justice with that chin. Looks like an ashcan, it does.”
“Oh, all right,” the chief grumbled, looking furtively at Josephine, now seated on the box by the chicken. “All right. Here goes.”
He produced a wad of waste from his pocket and drew it across his chin.
“That makes your chin look better,” said Arthur, “and the rest of your face worse.”
“Don’t mind him,” Jo put in. “I like your face as it is. Let’s take a look at the chicken.”
With a steel rod the man raised the washtub. Three pairs of eyes were fastened on the chicken.
“Smells good,” said the man. “She’ll be done pretty soon now — sooner than in a regular oven.”
She was. The chicken was done, or partly done, in a surprisingly short time. The man with the face refused.
“No, thank you, lady,” he protested. “I put on the feed bag before we shoved off. Take her up to your young man with the compliments of the chef.”
For some reason Jo blushed. She realized she was blushing, and that made her blush all the more. The girl was amazed. She had never thought of herself as having a young man. With her it had always been grabbing off a guy or being grabbed herself. She had never had a real, acknowledged young man for herself. Hers had been the easy-come, easy-go type, For a moment she caught a mental image of Peter’s pale, bony face with its sardonically set mouth and mild blue eyes full of vagrant fancies. God knows what he actually thought of her. She had not tried to show herself in an any too favorable light. Making herself impudent and more than plenty tough. True, he wasn’t quite a young man, but then she did not care much for that sort. There and then amid the smells and grime of the ship’s clanking bowels she knew that Peter meant much to her and that she was going to make herself mean even more to Peter in spite of all the Yolanda Wilmonts in the world. But perhaps he was dead by now. She had forgotten about his wound.
“Thanks, chief,” she said, holding out a hand to his. “Got to hurry. Grab that bird, Little Arthur, and come right along.”
“Here,” said the man with the black face, producing a thick cup, and tipping the gravy from the pan into it. “Here. Might as well take this along. It’ll strengthen the young feller up.”
“God bless your black face, chief,” said the girl as she turned to the ladder. “You’re white, clean white inside.”
“I know that poem, too,” cried the man, as if someone had touched a button somewhere concealed about him. “I can say it all by heart.”
“Wish he hadn’t said that,” thought Josephine as she toiled up the ladder. “If Peter knows that poem I’ll eat this chicken myself and throw the bones in his face.”
CHAPTER TEN
Dinner Is Served
“LISTEN, PETER,” SAID Jo a few minutes later. “Do you know any poetry?”
Peter skidded back to consciousness with a wince. His arm was bad. Little flames of pain licking stiff flesh.
“What’s that?” he asked, blinking at the girl. “Do I know any what?”
“Poetry,” said Jo. “You know. Like Milton or Ogden Nash?”
“I can’t quote a line written by either gentleman,” Peter told her. “Did you wake me up with the weird hope that I’d say little pieces for you?”
“No,” went on Jo, “but if you’re sure you don’t know any poetry and you swear never to learn any, I’ll give you a cup of chicken soup and a chunk of the chicken from which it oozed.”
“I don’t know any poetry and I never will,” said Peter in a disgusted voice. “I don’t feel at all like poetry unless it’s composed entirely of bad words.”
“Good!” exclaimed Jo, then hesitated. It could not be true. “Sure you don’t know anything about the mighty God that made you and you’re white, clean white, inside?” she asked, watching his face anxiously.
“No,” said Peter, “and I doubt very much if I am. Got a lot of different colors inside. So have you.”
“Let’s not go into that,” Jo hastily put in. “Here take this soup and get that inside. Little Arthur, break out your magic knife and carve that ruddy chicken. I’ve got some cake and a small ration of coffee.”
She produced the cake and thermos bottle. Little Arthur placed the chicken between Aspirin Liz and the Bishop, then attacked it with his invaluable knife. Peter sat drinking an exceedingly pungent liquid which was nearer to chicken grease than chicken soup. However, it was hot and had food value in it. The other passengers looked on with expressions ranging from greed and envy to revulsion bordering on nausea. The little group, through lack of even the most primitive implements, was forced to be rough in its dealings with the chicken. Even Bishop Waller went at his section with tooth and nail. Yolanda strove to be dainty about it and nearly lost her share as a consequence. Soon she was gnashing away as cheerfully as the rest of them.
“My dear,” said Bishop Waller after his portion had disappeared into the pontifical belly, “my dear young lady, how did you manage the chicken, may I ask?”
“We stole him or her,” Josephine replied. “Little Arthur and I.”
The good Bishop thought this over with a slight frown on his fine face. At last his expression cleared, and he favored Jo with a smile.
“I am glad I asked that question after rather than before eating,” he admitted with happy sophistry. “It was a delicious chicken in spite of the irregular circumstances surrounding its getting. But perhaps the less said the easier digested.”
“Was it already cooked?” asked Aspirin Liz.
“No,” replied Josephine. “Just dead. We cooked it down in the engine room. There’s the sweetest man there with a dirty black face and grimy hands. He helped us cook it.”
“Oh, dear!” murmured Yolanda, looking as if she had been poisoned. “A dirty black man!”
“Only his hands and face,” Jo protested. “Don’t know about the rest of his body. May have been as white as yours, if that’s saying anything.”
“It’s saying too much,” Yolanda retorted. “What did you cook it in?”
“A couple of old ashpans,” Jo informed her.
“My word!” said Yolanda, looking at the others with round eyes. “Think what we have inside us besides chicken!”
“A lot of satisfaction,” Peter put in, “where before there was nothing but craving. Good work, Jo! Our tame thief is a credit to his profession.”
“May I ask,” began the Bishop, “why you occasionally refer to this seemingly harmless little chap as being a thief and a criminal?”
“Because he is,” Jo answered proudly. “A regular thief.”
“Only a pickpocket, yer honor,” Little Arthur protested. “Just pockets, yer know. Little pockets. Never much in ’em.”
“But you take what little there is, don’t you, Little Arthur?” Jo insisted.
“Nobody ever minds much,” he answered.
“Nobody has much these days to mind,” Aspirin Liz observed. “You’ll have better and bigger pockets to pick before you die, Little Arthur.”
“I’m thinking of giving it up,” he declared. “Now that I’ve met a holy man — a real, live bishop, that is.”
“Splendid, Little Arthur! Splendid!” cried the Bishop. “I’m gratified my presence has done some good. You might celebrate your career of regeneration by returning to me the watch you borrowed when Mr. Van Dyck asked for the time out there on deck. I’ve been wondering which of you had it.”
“Honest,” said Little Arthur, producing the watch from a side pocket, “that watch had just gone clean out of my mind.”
“Very little can go clean out of your mind,” Aspirin Liz assured him.
“Honest, now,” the small crook repeated. “Honest. I mean it. The Bishop shouldn’t take out a valuable watch like that in a lot of wet fog. It’s fairly criminal, it is. He’ll spoil it.”
“It was most unwise, I’ll admit, with you around,” said the Bishop with a benevolent smile as he courteously accepted the watch. “However, all’s well that ends well. We’ll say no more about it.”
“Thank you, yer honor,” said Little Arthur gratefully.
“Your extensive acquaintance with judges, I imagine, has led you into error,” the Bishop continued. “I do not judge men professionally, Little Arthur. Rather, I endeavor to save them. Privately, I have my own opinions which, I am sorry to say, are not high — far, far from high. I am not ‘your honor.’ If you insist on a title I might bear up beneath the weight of ‘your reverence.’ ”
“Thank you, yer reverence,” said Little Arthur, “Nice-sounding name, that — yer reverence. Never liked ‘yer honor’ much. Always meant worry and trouble and a lot of — —”
“Lying,” Jo helpfully supplied.
A large, rough-looking person wearing a strangely ingratiating smile had been standing for some minutes gazing down from his impressive height upon the remains of the chicken. It speaks well for Josephine Duval’s character that she never suspected anyone of being really bad at heart save herself, and she rarely if ever thought much about that. A few other passengers had gathered unobtrusively round the outskirts of the large, rough-looking man.
“Young lady,” he now inquired, addressing Jo in tones of respectful admiration, “that was a mighty slick trick you did with that chicken. How did you manage to work it, if I may be so bold?”
Flushed with triumph, Jo turned to one whom she fondly believed to be her latest conquest.
“You’re right it was a slick trick,” she told him. “When it comes to the survival of the fittest you can’t afford to stand on ceremony.”
“I should say not,” the man replied, a little overenthusiastically. “What did you do, miss? Let me in on it.”
“What did I do? Why, I helped myself, of course,” she asserted. “And this little beggar helped me.”
“I found it,” Little Arthur proudly declared.
“Oh,” said the man, beaming so energetically he looked as if he were going to explode. “So you found it. Now that is good.” His voice dropped to a confidential whisper. “And where did you find it, miss?” he asked.
“That would be telling,” Josephine hedged.
“Go on, miss,” the great man almost whined. “Why not tell us? We’re all hungry, too — like yourselves.”
“I suspect the integrity of that large individual’s motives,” Bishop Waller murmured to Peter.
“There’s an air about him,” agreed Peter. “A faint suggestion of menace.”
Jo looked undecidedly at the man for a moment, then her impressionable French heart melted. Besides, it would cost her nothing. Furthermore, she decided, when a man as big as this one got hungry all over he was a danger to his fellow men until glutted with food.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” she began. “There’s a boob of a truckman aboard this ferry — —”
A spasm of terrific emotion passed over the great man’s face.
“Yes, miss,” he broke in, his voice trembling with what Jo fully believed to be eagerness. “You said a boob of a truckman. Hear that, everybody. Ha, ha! A boob of a truckman! That’s good! Oh, that’s very good!”
Pleased by the reception of her words, Josephine endeavored to better them.
“Yes,” she continued, “a regular boob of a truckman. Must be a poor fish — —”
“Ha!” cried the great man. “A poor fish, eh? So he’s a poor fish no less than a boob?”
Jo nodded quite seriously.
“Yes,” she said. “Do you know what he did, the sap-head?”
“What did he do, lady?” the man whispered, as if he were having trouble with his throat. “Tell us what the sap-head did.”
“Why, he left his truck unguarded,” replied Jo. “That’s what the sap-head did — just strolled off and left his truck flat.”
“And what did you do?” asked the great man.
“My dear,” broke in Bishop Waller, “I strongly advise against any further exchange of confidences.”
But the Bishop’s cautious admonition came too late. Jo was in full cry.
“What did we do?” replied the girl. “Why, naturally, we helped ourselves. Little Arthur there yanked out his knife, cut a hole through the canvas covering, and reached out a chicken just as easy as taking a rabbit from a hat. And the funny part of it is the half-wit who’s driving the truck isn’t any the wiser yet. When he discovers that hole I’d like to take a look at his face.”
An amazing transformation had taken place in the great man’s features. They were congealed now in an expression of superhuman malevolence in which a smile of tremendous bitterness cracked about his bared teeth. Outside of the movies Jo had never seen such a face, such an evil, sadistic mask. The man was wheezing as if someone had kicked him in the stomach.
“You’d like to see his face?” he gasped; then, squatting with surprising agility, he flung out: “Then take a good look at it. This is his face, see — the boob’s face, the face of the poor fish — the — the — the—” his voice broke in a sob of rage— “the face of the sap-head. Take a good look at it.”
But Jo had looked at the man’s face once, and it was the last thing in the world she wanted to do again. It was nothing to see, that face. As a matter of fact it was too much to see. The girl closed her eyes, but that awful face still hung suspended in her memory. Then the face moved and brought its baleful influence directly to bear on Little Arthur, who recoiled in mortal terror. Still squatting and with hands extended, their fingers suggestively working, the owner of the face drew near to Little Arthur. In a surprisingly short space of time he was dangling in mid-air and then approaching both his mortal as well as rear end at a high rate of speed. With an effect of complete finality the small man made a large noise as he hit the deck and remained very much there.
Then, as if what had already occurred had not been sufficiently surprising, an even more surprising element literally mingled itself with the situation. Before the great face had time to pick up Little Arthur and do some more things with him, Bishop Waller, with a roar of righteous indignation, launched himself in defense of his so recently acquired convert. It was a magnificent and inspiring spectacle. It became even more stupendous when the bared ecclesiastical head established resounding contact with the ungodly abdomen of the truckman and sent him crashing to the planks. Outside, the fog horn told the fog what the ferryboat thought of it, waves splashed against the sides, and ghostly voices drifted past, but within the cozy cabin the truckman lay stunned while Josephine and Aspirin Liz took up positions and stood waiting for the kill.
In the meantime the highly edified passengers, feeling sure the truckman would never survive to drive his truck to its destination, made a general movement in its direction. One can gain no true conception of the rugged determination of commuters, of their resource and clever teamwork, until one has witnessed them in concerted action. Respectable husbands and fathers — not to mention business executives, clerks, and stenographers — literally swarmed all over the truck. Men accustomed to the feel of golf clubs now swung chickens aloft with equal dexterity. The backbone of the nation was looking for its grub and finding it in lavish quantities. Presently other trucks were attacked by fresh detachments of commuters unable to find standing room on the original one. Everyone seemed to have entered into the spirit of the occasion. Everyone was alert and eager, ready to do his or her bit. Outcries of gratification could be heard as new discoveries were made. In vain did the drivers of the trucks protest. They were borne down and walked over by the sheer weight of numbers.
