Larry Evans

“ A rare, amused smile tugged at the corners of Young Denny’s lips as he crossed the open yard to the crest of the hill. But when the groaning buggy came to a standstill and Old Jerry flung the reins across the mare’s wide back, to dive and burrow in frantic haste under the seat for the customary roll of advertisements, without so much as a glance for the boy who strode slowly up to the wheel, that shadow of a smile which had touched his face faded into concerned gravity. He hesitated a moment, as if not quite certain of what he should do.
“Is there––there isn’t any one sick, is there?” ”

“ Denny Bolton’s long, tanned face was entirely grave––even graver than usual. Just a hint of wistfulness that would never quite leave them showed in his eyes and lurked in the line of his lips––an intangible, fleeting suggestion of expectation that had waited patiently for something that had been very long in the coming. And the black felt hat and smooth black suit which he wore finished the picture and made the illusion complete. His face and figure, even there in the doorway of Hogarty’s Fourteenth Street place, could have suggested but one thing to an observant man. ”

“ Hogarty had one other reason that morning which accounted for his absolute serenity. From Third Avenue to the waterfront any one who was well-informed at all––and there was no one who had not at least heard whispers of his fame––knew that the thin-faced, hard-eyed, steel-sinewed ex-lightweight who dressed in almost funeral black and white and talked in the hushed, measured syllables of a professor of English, loved one thing even more than he loved to see his own man put over the winning punch in––say the tenth. It was common gossip that a set of ivory dominoes came first before all else. ”

“ But no one, not even Morehouse, knew when Old Jerry disappeared that night after Jed Conway had come hurtling from his corner, only to lift and whirl and go crashing back before the impact of The Pilgrim’s leaping gloves. At first the plump newspaper man believed that the surging, shouting wave of humanity which had broken comber-like over the ropes to hail a newer favorite had separated the little, bird-faced man from him. ”

“ It was a white night––a night so brilliant that the village lights far below in the hollow all but lost their own identity in the radiance of that huge, pale moon; so white that the yellow flare of the single lamp in its bracket, in the back kitchen of the old Bolton place on the hill seemed shabbily dull by contrast.
Standing at the window in the dark front room of the house, peering out from under cupped palms that hid her eyes, Dryad could almost pick out each separate picket of the straggling old fence that bounded the garden of the little drab cottage across from her. ”

“ Again that promise of something ominous blackened the pupils––something totally dangerous that harmonized perfectly with the snarl upon his lips.
Hogarty’s whole attitude was that of a man who wanted to believe and yet who, because he knew that the very measure of his eagerness made him doubly easy to convince, had resolved not to let himself accept one spurious proof. And all his skepticism was shot through and through with hate––a deadly, patient sort of hatred for someone which was as easy to see as it was hard for the big-shouldered boy to understand. ”

“ It was Old Jerry’s hour––the one hour of the day in which his starved appetite for notoriety ever supped of nourishment––that moment when the small knot of loiterers upon the sidewalk, always, face for face, composed of the same personnel as the unvarying nightly circle about the Tavern stove, gave way before him and the authority of the “Gov’mint” which he personified.
Since that first morning, years back, which had hailed his initial appearance with the mail bags slung over one thin shoulder, he had made the most of that daily entrance upon the stage of publicity. ”

“ John Anderson’s lips always moved when he worked. His fingers, strong and clean-jointed and almost womanishly smooth––the only part of the man not pitifully seared with age––flew with a bewildering nimbleness one moment, only to dwell the next with a lingering caress upon the shaping features before him; and for each caress of his finger tips there was an accompanying, vacantly gentle smile or an uncertainly emphatic nod of the silvered head which gave the one-sided conversation a touch of uncanny reality. ”

“ Slender and boy-like in her little blouse and tight, short skirt the girl was half-hidden in the hollow of his shoulder. Once, watching with his head cocked pertly, sparrowlike, on one side, the old man’s eyes went to the white-bandaged knuckles of Denny’s right hand; once while he waited Old Jerry saw her lift her face––saw the big, shoulder-heavy figure fold her in his arms and bend and touch the glory of her hair with his lips while she clung to him, before she turned and went slowly toward the open kitchen door. ”

“ Old Jerry was glad of the storm. The leaden grayness of the low-hanging clouds matched perfectly his own frame of mind, and the cold touch of the rain soothed his hot head, too, as it swept in under the buggy hood, and helped him to think a little better. There was much that needed readjusting.
Throughout the early hours of that morning he drove with a newspaper spread flat upon his knees––the afternoon edition of the previous day, which, in the face of other matters, he had had neither the necessary time nor enthusiasm to examine until it was an entire twelve hours old. ”

“ They had all forgotten Old Jerry’s interruption; they had forgotten everything else but the Judge’s recital, that was climbing to its climax. That room was very quiet when the speaker paused and waited for his words to sink in––very quiet until a half-smothered giggle broke the stillness.
There was an unholy glee in that mirth––a mocking, lilting note of actual joy which rang almost profane at such a moment. Man for man it brought that circle erect in the chairs; man for man they sat and stared at the grotesque figure which was rocking now in a paroxysm of laughter too real for simulation. ”

“ Leaning against the table there in the half light of the room, a slow smile curled back the corners of her lips, still childishly quizzical in contrast with that slim roundness of body which was losing its boyish litheness in a new slender fullness that throbbed on the threshold of womanhood. She smiled deprecatingly as she lifted one hand to search in the breast of the blouse that was always just enough outgrown to fail of closing across her throat, and drew out the thing which the Judge had delivered with every possible flourish, barely a few hours back. ”

“ The plump mare went forward again. There was something terribly uncanny, even in her relentless advance, but the old man clung to the reins and let her go without a word. When she reached the top she slumped lazily to a standstill and fell contentedly to nibbling grass.
The light in the window was much brighter, viewed from that lessened distance––thin, yellow streaks of brightness that quivered a little from the edges of a drawn shade. An uneven wick might easily have accounted for the unsteadiness, but in that flickering pallor Old Jerry found something ominously unhealthy––almost uncanny. ”

“ There had never been any spoken agreement between them, but since that night, three years ago, Denny Bolton had learned to watch each week end, just at dusk, for the signal to appear. From the first their very loneliness had drawn them together––a childish, starved desire for companionship; and 30 as time passed they only clung the closer, each to the other, as jealously fearful as a marooned man and woman might have been of any harm which might come to the one and leave the other utterly, desolately alone. ”

“ Old Jerry could not follow it––it came too terribly swift for that––but he heard the thudding impact of gloves as Denny hurtled forward in that first savage rush.
“From the gong,” Hogarty had ordered, “from the gong!” The Red, covering and ducking, blocking and swaying beneath the whirlwind of that attack, broke and staggered and set himself, only to break again, and retreat, foot by foot, around the ring. The whole house had come to its feet with the first rush, screaming to a man. Old Jerry, too, was standing up, giddy, dizzy, as he watched Conway weather that first minute. ”

“ The light blinded him for a moment––dazzled him––yet not so completely but that he saw, too clearly for any mistake, the figure that had turned from the stove to greet him. Dryad Anderson’s face was pink-tinted from forehead to chin by the heat of the glowing lids––her lips parted a little until the small teeth showed white beyond their red fullness.
In her too-tight, boyish blouse, gaping at the throat, she stood there in the middle of the room, hands bracketed on delicate hips, and smiled at him. And behind her the lamp in its socket on the wall smoked a trifle from a too-high wick. ”

“ From that moment Old Jerry’s defection from the ranks must be dated, for it was in those bitter hours which followed the yellow-wheeled buckboard’s early morning flight down the main street that the old man woke to the fact that his admiration for the Judge was made of anything but immortal stuff. He weighed the Judge in the balance that morning, and half forgot his own woe in marveling at the discrepancies which he discovered.
Self-deceit may or may not be easy of accomplishment. ”

“ The quizzical smile only widened before the chilly threat of his beady eyes and ruffled forehead. And then, all in one breath, her little pouted chin went up and she burst into a low gurgle of utter enjoyment of the tableau.
“Well,” she demanded, “aren’t you ever going to say anything? Here I am! I––I decided to move today––there really wasn’t any use of waiting. Aren’t you surprised––just a little?”
The meekness of her voice, so wholly belied by her eyes and lips and swaying boy-like body, only tightened the old man’s mouth. ”

“ For years they had whispered, “Just wait, he’ll come to it––he’ll go just like the rest.” And so Young Denny’s final weakening had not been so unexpected as it might have been. And more than once, too, when the Judge’s harsh censure of him who had always been his stanchest supporter had left Old Jerry cringing in his place beside the stove, they had all felt the justice if not a premonition of final retribution to come. It was the debonaire dare-deviltry of Old Jerry’s defiance rather than its unexpectedness which had proved its greatest sensation. ”

“ And then the tap of the gong!
Hogarty was through the ropes with the bell. As Denny dropped upon the stool he stripped the glove from the boy’s right hand and examined it with anxious fingers. The other two were sponging his chest with water––pumping fresh air into his lungs; but Old Jerry’s eyes clung to the calamity written upon Hogarty’s gray features.
Everybody else seemed to understand what had happened––everybody but himself. He turned again to the man next him on the bench. Morehouse, too, had been watching the ex-lightweight’s deft fingers. ”

“ It seemed ages since he had stood against the closed 90 door of the Tavern office and seen Judge Maynard turn and falter before his unsuspected presence––days and days since he had stood there and watched that round moon-like face flush heavily with the first shock of surprise, and realized that the startled light in the shifty eyes of Boltonwood’s most prominent citizen was part fear, part appeal, that he, Denny Bolton, whose name in the estimation of that same village stood for all that was at the other extreme, would confirm and support his barefaced lying statement. ”

“ But most vividly of all, he recalled that day when Jed Conway had disappeared from the village between sundown and dawn and failed to return. That was the same day they discovered the shortage in the old wooden till at Benson’s corner store. And now Jed Conway had come home, or at least his fame had found its way back, and even Old Jerry, whipping madly toward the village to share in his reflected glory, had, for all the perfection of his “system,” failed to leave the very bundle of mail which he had come to deliver. ”

“ It was harder than ever for Old Jerry after that. Each fresh day’s issue brought forth a long and exhaustive comparison of the two men’s chances––of their strength and weaknesses. The technical discussion the old 270 man skipped; it was undecipherable to him and enough that Young Denny was hailed as a certain winner.
And then as the day set for the match crept nearer and nearer, he began to notice a new and alarming change in the tone of that daily column. At first it was only fleeting––too intangible for one to place one’s finger upon it. ”

“ From where he stood, looking out across the valley, Young Denny could see the huge bulk of the Maynard homestead––Judge Maynard’s great box of a house––silhouetted against the skyline, and back of it high piles of timber––framing and sheathing for the new barn that was going up. For Judge Maynard was going to give a barn-raising––an old-fashioned barn-raising such as the hill country had not seen in twenty years.
Already Young Denny knew that there were to be two team captains who would choose from among the best men that the country boasted, the very pick of strength and endurance and daring. ”