It was a hard jolt for me, one of
the most bitterest I ever had to face. And it all came about through my own
foolishness too . Even
yet sometimes, when I think of it, I want to cry or swear or kick myself
Perhaps, even now, after all this time, there will be a kind of satisfaction
in making myself look cheap by telling of it.
It began at three o'clock one
October afternoon as I sat in the grandstand at the fall trotting and pacing
meet at Sandusky, Ohio.
To tell the truth, I felt a little
foolish that I should be sitting in the grandstand at all. During the summer
before I had left my home town with Harry Whitehead and, with a nigger named
Burt, had taken a job as swipe with one of the two horses Harry was
campaigning through the fall race meets that year. Mother cried and my sister
Mildred, who wanted to get a job as a school teacher in our town that fall,
stormed and scolded about the house all during the week before I left. They
both thought it something disgraceful that one of our family should take a
place as a swipe with race horses. I've an idea Mildred thought my taking the
place would stand in the way of her getting the job she'd been working so
long for.
But after all I had to work, and
there was no other work to be got. A big lumbering fellow of nineteen
couldn't just hang around the house and I had got too big to mow people's
lawns and sell newspapers. Little chaps who could get next to people's sympa
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thies by their sizes were always
getting jobs away from me. There was one fellow who kept saying to everyone
who wanted a lawn mowed or a cistern cleaned, that he was saving money to
work his way through college, and I used to lay awake nights thinking up ways
to injure him without being found out. I kept thinking of wagons running over
him and bricks falling on his head as he walked along the street. But never
mind him.
I got the place with Harry and I
liked Burt fine. We got along splendid together. He was a big nigger with a
lazy sprawling body and soft, kind eyes, and when it came to a fight he could hit like Jack
Johnson. He had Bucephalus, a big black pacing stallion that could do 2.09 or
2. 10, if he had to, and I had a little gelding named Doctor Fritz that never
lost a race all fall when Harry wanted him to win.
We set out from home late in July
in a box car with the two horses and after that, until late November, we kept
moving along to the race meets and the fairs. It was a peachy time for me,
I'll say that. Sometimes now I think that boys who are raised regular in
houses, and never have a fine nigger like Burt for best friend, and go to
high schools and college, and never steal anything, or get drunk a little, or
learn to swear from fellows who know how, or come walking up in front of a
grandstand in their shirt sleeves and with dirty horsey pants on when the
races are going on and the grandstand is full of people all dressed
up--what's the use of talking about it? Such fellows don't know nothing at
all. They've never had no opportunity.
But I did. Burt taught me how to
rub down a horse and put the bandages on after a race and steam a horse out
and a lot of valuable things for any man to know. He could wrap a bandage on
a horse's leg so smooth that if it had been the same color you would think it
was his skin, and I guess he'd have been a big driver too and got to the top like Murphy and Walter Cox and the
others if he hadn't been black.
Gee whizz, it was fun. You got to
a county seat town, maybe say on a Saturday or Sunday, and the fair began the
next Tuesday and lasted until Friday afternoon. Doctor Fritz would be, say in
the 2.25 trot on Tuesday afternoon and on Thursday afternoon
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Bucephalus would knock 'em cold in
the "free-for-all" pace. It left you a lot of time to hang around and listen to horse
talk, and see Burt knock some yap cold that got too gay, and you'd find out
about horses and men and pick up a lot of stuffyou could use all the rest of
your life, if you had some sense and salted down what you heard and felt and
saw.
And then at the end of the week
when the race meet was over, and Harry had run home to tend up to his livery
stable business, you and Burt hitched the two
horses to carts and drove slow and
steady across country to the place for the next meeting, so as to not
over-heat the horses, etc., etc., you know.
Gee whizz, gosh amighty, the nice
hickorynut and beechnut and oaks and other kinds of trees along the roads,
all brown and red, and the good smells, and Burt singing a song that was
called Deep River, and the country girls at the windows of houses and
everything. You can stick your colleges up your nose for all me. I guess I
know where I got my education.
Why, one of those little burgs of
towns you come to on the way, say now on a Saturday afternoon, and Burt says,
"Let's lay up here." And you did.
And you took the horses to a
livery stable and fed them, and you got your good clothes out of a box and
put them on.
And the town was full of farmers
gaping, because they could see you were race horse people, and the kids maybe
never see a nigger before and was afraid and run away when the two of us walked down their main
street.
And that was before prohibition
and all that foolishness, and so you went into a saloon, the two of you, and all the yaps come and
stood around, and there was always someone pretended he was horsey and knew
things and spoke up and began asking questions, and all you did was to lie
and lie all you could about what horses you had, and I said I owned them, and
then some fellow said "will you have a drink of whiskey" and Burt
knocked his eye out the way he could say, offhand like, "Oh well, all
right, I'm agreeable to a little nip. I'll split a quart with you." Gee
whizz.
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But that isn't what I want to tell
my story about. We got home late in November and I promised mother I'd quit
the race horses for good. There's a lot of things you've got to promise a
mother because she don't know any better.
And so, there not being any work
in our town any more than when I left there to go to the races, I went off to
Sandusky and got a pretty good place taking care of horses for a man who
owned a teaming and delivery and storage and coal and real estate business
there. It was a pretty good place with good eats, and a day off each week,
and sleeping on a cot in a big barn, and mostly just shovelling in hay and
oats to a lot of big good-enough skates of horses, that couldn't have trotted
a race with a toad. I wasn't dissatisfied and I could send money home.
And then, as I started to tell
you, the fall races come to Sandusky and I got the day offend I went. I left
the job at noon and had on my good clothes and my new brown derby hat, I'd
just bought the Saturday before, and a stand-up collar.
First of all I went downtown and
walked about with the dudes. I've always thought to myself, "Put up a
good front" and so I did it. I had forty dollars in my pocket and so I
went into the West House, a big hotel, and walked up to the cigar stand.
"Give me three twenty-five cent cigars, " I said. There was a lot
of horsemen and strangers and dressed-up people from other towns standing
around in the lobby and in the bar, and I mingled amongst them In the bar
there was a fellow with a cane and a Windsor tie on t hat it made me sick to
look at him. I like a man to be a man and dress up, but not to
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please and looking down on the
swipes coming out with their horses, and with their dirty horsey pants on and
the horse blankets swung over their shoulders, same as I had been doing all
the year before. I liked one thing about the same as the other, sitting up
there and feeling grand and being down there and looking up at the yaps and
feeling grander and more important too. One thing's about as good as another,
if you take it just right. I've often said that.
Well, right in front of me, in the
grandstand that day, there was a fellow with a couple of girls and they was
about my age. The young fellow was a nice guy all right. He was the kind
maybe that goes to college and then comes to be a lawyer or maybe a newspaper
editor or something like that, but he wasn't stuck on himself. There are some
of that kind are all right and he was one of the ones.
He had his sister with him and
another girl and the sister looked around over his shoulder, accidental at
first, not intending to start anything--she wasn't that kind--and her eyes
and mine happened to meet.
You know how it is. Gee, she was a peach! She had
on a soft dress, kind of a blue stuff and it looked carelessly made, but was
well sewed and made and everything. I knew that much. I blushed when she
looked right at me and so did she. She was the nicest girl I've ever seen in
my life. She wasn't stuck on herself and she could talk proper grammar
without being like a school teacher or something like that. What I mean is,
she was O.K. I think maybe her father was well-to-do, but not rich to make
her chesty because she was his daughter, as some are. Maybe he owned a drug
store or a drygoods store in their home town, or something like that She
never told me and I never asked.
My own people are all O.K. too
when you come to that. My grandfather was Welsh and over in the old country,
in Wales h was--but never mind that.
The first heat of the first race
come off and the young fellow setting there with the two girls left them and
went down to make
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a bet. I knew what he was up to,
but he didn't talk big and noisy and let everyone around know he was a sport
as some do. He wasn't that kind. Well, he come back and I heard him tell the
two girls what horse he'd bet on, and when the heat was trotted they all
halfgot to their feet and acted in the excited, sweaty way people do when
they've got money down on a race, and the horse they bet on is up there
pretty close at the end, and they think maybe he'll come on with a rush, but
he never does because he hasn't got the old juice in him, come right down to
it.
And then, pretty soon, the horses
came out for the 2.18 pace and there was a horse in it I knew. He was a horse
Bob French had in his string but Bob didn't own him. He was a horse owned by
a Mr. Mathers down at Marietta, Ohio.
This Mr. Mathers had a lot of
money and owned some coal mines or something, and he had a swell place out in
the country, and he was stuck on race horses, but was a Presbyterian or
something, and I think more than likely his wife was one too, maybe a stiffer
one than himself. So he never raced his horses hisself, and the story round
the Ohio race tracks was that when one of his horses got ready to go to the races
he turned him over to Bob French and pretended to his wife he was sold.
So Bob had the horses and he did
pretty much as he pleased and you can't blame Bob, at least I never did.
Sometimes he was out to win and sometimes he wasn't. I never cared much about
that when I was swiping a horse. What I did want to know was that my horse
had the speed and could go out in front if you wanted him to.
- And, as I'm telling you, there
was Bob in this race with one of Mr. Mathers' horses, was named About Ben
Ahem or something like that, and was fast as a streak. He was a gelding and
had a mark of 2.21, but could step in .08 or .09.
Because when Burt and I were out,
as I've told you, the year before, there was a nigger Burt knew, worked for
Mr. Mathers, and we went out there one day when we didn't have no race on at
the Marietta Fair and our boss Harry was gone home.
And so everyone was gone to the
fair but just this one nigger
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and he took us all through Mr.
Mathers' swell house and he and Burt tapped a bottle of wine Mr. Mathers had
hid in his bedroom, back in a doset, without his wife knowing, and he showed
us this Ahem horse. Burt was always stuck on being a driver but didn't have
much chance to get to the top, being a rigger, and he and the other nigger gulped
that whole bottle of wine and Burt got a little lit up.
So the nigger let Burt take this
About Ben Ahem and step him a mile in a track Mr. Mathers had all to himself,
right there on the farm. And Mr. Mathers had one child, a daughter, Linda
sick and not very good looking, and she came home and we had to hustle and
get About Ben Ahem stuck back in the barn.
I'm only telling you to get
everything straight. At Sandusky, that afternoon I was at the fair, this
young fellow with the two girls was fussed, being with the girls and losing
his bet. You know how a fellow is that way. One of them was his girl and the
other his sister. I had figured that out.
"Gee whizz," I says to
myself, "I'm going to give him the dope."
He was mighty nice when I touched
him on the shoulder. He and the girls were nice to me right from the start
and clear to the end. I'm not blaming them.
And so he leaned back and I give
him the dope on About Ben Ahem. "Don't bet a cent on this first heat
because he'll go like an oxen hitched to a plow, but when the first heat is
over go right down and lay on your pile." That's what I told him.
Well, I never saw a fellow treat
any one swelter. There was a fat man sitting beside the little girl, that had
looked at me twice by this time, and I at her, and both blushing, and what
did he do but have the nerve to turn and ask the fat man to get up and change places with
me so I could set with his crowd.
Gee whizz, craps amighty. There I
was. What a chump I was to go and get gay up there in the West House bar, and
just because that dude was standing there with a cane and that kind of a
necktie on, to go and get all balled up.and drink that whiskey, just to show
off.
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Of course she would know, me
setting right beside her and letting her smell of my breath. I could have
kicked myself right down out of that grandstand and all around that race
track and made a faster record than most of the skates of horses they had
there that year.
Because thee girl wasn't any mutt
of a girl. What wouldn't I have give right then for a stick of chewing gum to
chew, or a lozenger,or some liquorice, or most anything. I was glad I had
those twenty-five cent cigars in my pocket and right away I give that fellow
one and lit one myself. Then that fat man got up and we changed places and
there I was, plunked right down beside her.
They introduced themselves and the
fellow's best girl he had with him was named Miss Elinor Woodbury, and her
father was a manufacturer of barrels from a place called Tiffm, Ohio. And the
fellow himelf was named Wilbur Wessen and his sister was Miss Lucy Wessen.
I suppose it was their having such
swell names got me off my trolley. A fellow, just because he has been a swipe
with a race horse and works taking care of horses for a man in the teaming,
delivery, and storage business, isn't any better or worse than anyone else.
I've often thought *at, and said it too.
But you know how a fellow is.
There's something in that kind of nice clothes, and the kind of nice eyes she
had, and the way she had looked at me, awhile before, over her brother's
shoulder, and me looking back at her, and both of us blushing.
I couldn't show her up for a book,
could I?
I made a fool of myself, that's
what I did. I said my name was Walter Mathers from Marietta, Ohio, and then I
told all three of them the smashingest lie you ever heard. What I said was
that my father owned the horse About Ben Ahem and that he had let him out to
this Bob French for racing purposes, because our family was proud and had
never gone into racing that way, in our own name, I mean. Then I had got
started and they were all leaning over and listening, and Miss Lucy Wessen's
eyes were shining, and I went the whole hog.
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I told about our place down at
Marietta, and about the big stables and the grand brick house we had on a
hill, up above the Ohio River, but I knew enough not to do it in no bragging
way. What I did was to start things and then let them drag the rest out of me.
I acted just as reluctant to tell as I could. Our family hasn't got any
barrel factory, and, since I've known us, we've always been pretty poor, but
not asking anything of anyone at that, and my grandfather, over in Wales--but
never mind that.
We set there talking like we had
known each other for years and years, and I went and told them that my father
had been expecting maybe this Bob French wasn't on the square, and had sent
me up to Sandusky on the sly to find out what I could.
And I bluffed it through I had
found out all about the 2.18 pace, in which About Ben Ahem was to start.
I said he would lose the first
heat by pacing like a lame cow and then he would come back and skin 'em alive
after that. And to back up what I said I took thirty dollars out of my pocket and handed it to Mr.
Wilbur Wessen and asked him, would he mind, after the first heat, to go down
and place it on About Ben Ahem for whatever odds he could get. What I said
was that I didn't want Bob French to see me and none of the swipes.
Sure enough the first heat come
off and About Ben Ahem went offhis stride up the back stretch and looked like
a wooden horse or a sick one and come in to be last. Then this Wilbur Wessen
went down to the betting place under the grandstand and there I was with the two girls, and when that Miss Woodbury
was looking the other way once, Lucy Wessen Linda, with her shoulder you
know, Linda touched me. Not just tucking down, I don't mean. You know how a
woman can do. They get close, but not getting gay either. You know what they
do. Gee whizz.
And then they give me a jolt. What
they had done, when I didn't know, was to get together, and they had decided
Wilbur Wessen would bet fifty dollars, and the two
girls had gone and put in ten
dollars each, of their own money too. I was sick then, but I was sicker
later.
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About the gelding, About Ben Ahem,
and their winning their money, I wasn't worried a lot about that. It come out
O.K. Ahem stepped the next three heats like a bushel of spoiled eggs going to
market before they could be found out, and Wilbur Wessen had got nine to two
for the money. There was something else eating et met
Because Wilbur come back after he
had bet the money, and after that he spent most of his time talking to that
Miss Woodbury, and Lucy Wessen and I was left alone together like on a desert
island. Gee, if I'd only been on the square or if there had been any way of
getting myself on the square. There ain't any Walter Mathers, like I said to
her and them, and there hasn't ever been one, but if there was, I bet I'd go
to Marietta, Ohio, and shoot him tomorrow.
There I was, big book that I am.
Pretty soon the race was over, and Wilbur had gone down and collected our
money, and we had a hack downtown, and he stood us a swell supper at the West
House, and a bottle of champagne beside.
And I was with that girl and she
wasn't saying much, and I wasn't saying much either. One thing I know. She
wasn't stuck on me because of the lie about my father being rich and all
that. There's a way you know . . . Craps amighty. There's a kind of girl you
see just once in your life, and if you don't get busy and make hay, then
you're gone for good and all, and might as well go jump offa bridge. They
give you a look from inside of them somewhere, and it ain't no vamping, and
what it means is--you want that girl to be your wife, and you want nice
things around her like flowers and swell clothes, and you want her to have
the kids you're going to have, and you want good music played and no rag
time. Gee whizz.
There's a place over near
Sandusky, across a kind of bay, and it's called Cedar Point. And after we had
supper we went over to it in a launch, all by ourselves. Wilbur and Miss Lucy
and that Miss Woodbury had to catch a ten o'clock train back to Tiffin, Ohio,
because, when you're out with girls like that, you can't get careless and
miss any trains and stay out all night, like you can
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with some kinds of Janes.
And Wilbur browed himself to the
launch and it CoSt him fifteen cold plunks, but I wouldn't never have knew if
I hadn't listened. He wasn't no tin horn kind of a sport.
Over at the Cedar Point place, we
didn't stay around where there was a gang of common kind of cattle at all.
There was big dance halls and
dining places for yaps, and there was a beach you could walk along and get
where it was dark, and we went there.
She didn't talk hardly at all and
neither did I, and I was thinking how glad I was my mother was all right, and
always made us kids learn to eat with a fork at table, and not swill soup, and
not be noisy and rough like a gang you see around a race track that way.
Then Wilbur and his girl went away
up the beacn ana Quay and I sat down in a dark place, where there was some
roots of old trees the water had washed up, and after that the time, till we
had to go back in the launch and they had to
catch their trains, wasrit nothing
at all. It went like winking your eye.
Here's how it was. The place we
were setting in was dark, like I said, and there was the roots from that old
stump sticking up like arms, and there was a watery smell, and the night was
like--as if you could put your hand out and feel it--so warm and soft and
dark and sweet like an orange.
I most cried and I most swore and
I most jumped up and danced, I was so mad and happy and sad.
When Wilbur come back from being
alone with his girl, and she saw him coming, Lucy she says, "We got to
go to the train now," and she was most crying too, but she never knew
nothing I knew, and she couldn't be so all busted up. And then, before Wilbur
and Miss Woodbury got up to where we was, she put her face up and kissed me quick
and put her head up against me and she was all quivering and--gee whizz.
Sometimes I hope I have cancer and
die. I guess you know what I mean. We went in the launch across the bay to
the train
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like that, and it was dark too.
She whispered and said it was like she and I could get out of the boat and
walk on the water, and it sounded foolish, but I knew what she meant.
And then quick we were right at
the depot, and there was a big gang of yaps, the kind that goes to the fairs,
and crowded and milling around like cattle, and how could I tell her?
"It won't be long because you'll write and I'll write to you."
That's all she said.
I got a chance like a hay barn
afire. A swell chance I got.
And maybe she would write me, down
at Marietta that way, and the letter would come back, and stamped on the
front of it by the U.S.A. "there ain't any such guy," or something
like that, whatever they stamp on a letter that way.
And me trying to pass myself off
for a bighug and a swell--to her, as decent a little body as God ever made.
Craps amighty--a swell chance I got!
And then the train come in, and
she got on it, and Wilbur Wessen he come and shook hands with me, and that
Miss Woodbury was nice too and bowed to me, and I at her, and the train went
and I busted out and cried like a kid.
Gee, I could have run after that
train and made Dan Patch look like a freight train after a wreck but, socks
amighty, what was the use? Did you ever see such a fool?
I'll bet you what--if I had an arm
broke right now or a train had run over my foot--I wouldn't go to no doctor
at all. I'd go set down and let her hurt and hurt--that's what I'd do.
I'll bet you what--if I hadn't a
drunk that booze I'd a never been such a boob as to go tell such a lie--that
couldn't never be made straight to a lady like her.
I wish I had that fellow right
here that had on a Windsor tie and carried a cane. I'd smash him for fair.
Gosh darn his eyes. He's a big fool--that's what he is.
And if I'm not another you just go
find me one and I'll quit working and be a bum and give him my job. I don't
care nothing for working, and earning money, and saving it for no such boob
as myself
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