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Humoresque

F >> Fannie Hurst >> Humoresque




A curtain of heat that was almost tangible hung from the glass roof. The
Ossified Man, sworn by clause of contact impervious alike to heat and
cold, urged his reclining wheel-chair an imperceptible inch toward the
neighboring sway of Miss Hoag's palm-leaf. She widened its arc, subtly.

"Ain't it a fright?" she said.

"Sacred Mother of the Sacred Child!" said the Ossified Man, in a
_patois_ of very south Italy.

Then Miss Hoag turned to the right, a rail partitioning her from the
highly popular spectacle of the Baron de Ross, christened, married, and
to be buried by his nomenclature in disuse, Edwin Ross MacGregor.

"Hot, honey?"

The Baron, in a toy rocker that easily contained him, turned upon Miss
Hoag a face so anachronistic that the senses reeled back. An old face,
as if carved out of a paleolithic cherry-stone; the years furrowed in;
the eyes as if they had seen, without marveling, the light of creation;
even the hands, braceleted in what might have been portière-rings,
leanly prehensile. When the Baron spoke, his voice was not unlike the
middle C of an old harpsichord whose wires long since had rusted and
died. He was frock-coated like a clergyman or a park statue of
a patriot.

Of face, a Chaldean sire; of dress, a miniature apotheosis of the
tailor's art; of form, a paleolithic child.

"Blow me to a ice-cream cone? Gowann, Teenie, have a heart!"

Miss Hoag billowed into silent laughter. "Little devil! That's six
you've sponged off me this week, you little whipper-snapper!"

The Baron screwed up into the tightest of grimaces.

"Nice Teenie--nice old Teenie!"

She tossed him a coin from the small saucerful of them on the table
beside her. He caught it with the simian agility of his tiny hands.

"Nice Teenie! Nice old Teenie!"

A first group had strolled up, indolent and insolent at the spectacle of
them.

"Photographs! Photographs! Take the folks back home a signed photograph
of Teenie--only ten cents, one dime. Give the kiddies a treat--signed
photograph of little Teenie!"

She would solicit thus, canorous of phrase, a fan of her cardboard
likenesses held out, invitational.

Occasionally there were sales, the coins rattling down into the china
saucer beside her; oftener a mere bombardment of insolence and
indolence, occasionally a question.

This day from a motorman, loitering in uniform between runs, "Say,
skinnay, whatcha weigh?"

Whatever of living tissue may have shrunk and quivered deep beneath the
surface of Miss Hoag was further insulated by a certain professional
pride--that of the champion middleweight for his cauliflower ear, of the
beauty for the tiny mole where her neck is whitest, the _ballerina_ for
her double joints.

"Wanna come up and dance with me and find out?"

"O Lord!"--receding from the crowd and its trail of laughter. "O Lord!
Excuse me. Good night!"

A CHILD: Missus, is all of you just one lady?

"Bless your heart, little pettie, they gimme a good measure, didn't
they? Here's a chocolate drop for the little pettie."

"Come away! Don't take nothing from her!"

"I wouldn't hurt your little girl, lady. I wouldn't harm a pretty hair
of her head; I love the kiddies."

"Good-by, missus."

"Good-by, little pettie."

A MAN: Say, was you born in captivity--in this line o' work, I mean?

"Law, no, friend! I never seen the light of the show business up to
eight year ago. There wasn't a member of my family, all dead and put
away now, weighed more 'n one-fifty. They say it of my mother, she was
married at ninety pounds and died at a hundred and six."

"You don't say so."

"I was born and raised on a farm out in Ohio. Bet not far from your part
of the country, from the looks of you, friend. Buckeye?"

"Not a bad guess at that--Indiana's mine."

"Law! to my way of thinking, there's no part of the Union got anything
on the Middle States. Knock me around all you want, I always say, but
let me be buried in the Buckeye State. Photographs? Signed photographs
at ten cents each. Take one home to the wife, friend, out in Indiana.
Come, friends, what's a dime? Ten cents!"

The crowd, treacle-slow, and swinging its children shoulder-high, would
shuffle on, pause next at the falsetto exhortations of the Baron, then
on to the collapsibilities of the Boneless Wonder, the flexuosities of
the Snake-charmer, the goose-fleshing, the terrible crunching of Jastrow
the Granite Jaw. A commotion, this last, not unlike the steam-roller
leveling of a rock road.

Miss Hoag retired then back to her chair, readjusting the photographs
to their table display, wielding her fan largely.

"Lord!" she said, across the right railing, "wouldn't this weather fry
you!"

The Baron wilted to a mock swoon, his little legs stiffening at a
hypotenuse.

"Ice-cream cone!" he cried. "Ice-cream cone, or I faint!"

"Poor Jastrow! Just listen to him! Honest, that grinding goes right
through me. He hadn't ought to be showing to-day, after the way they had
to have the doctor in on him last night. He hadn't ought to be eating
that nasty glass."

"Ain't it awful, Mabel!"

"Yes, it's awful, Mabel! A fellow snagging up his insides like Jastrow.
I never knew a glass-eating artist in my life that lived to old age. I
was showing once with a pair of glass-eating sisters, the Twins Delamar,
as fine a pair of girls as ever--"

"Sure, the Delamars--I know 'em."

"Remember the specialty they carried, stepping on a piece of plate glass
and feeding each other with the grounds--"

"Sure."

"Well, I sat up for three weeks running, with one of them girls--the
red-haired one, till she died off of sorosis of the liver--"

"Sure enough--Lizzie Delamar!"

"Lida, the other one, is still carrying the act on street-fair time, but
it won't surprise me to hear of her next. That's what'll happen to
Granite Jaw one of these days, too, if he--"

"Pretty soft on the Granite Jaw, ain't cha? M-m-n! Yum-yum! Pretty
soft!" When the Baron mouthed he became in expression Punchinello with
his finger alongside his nose, his face tightening and knotting into
cunning. "Pretty soft on the Granite Jaw! Yum--yum--yum!"

"Little devil! Little devil! I'll catch you and spank you to death."

"Yum! Yum!"

"It's better to have loved a short man
Than never to have loved atall."

"Little peewee, you! Jastrow ain't short. Them thick, strong-necked kind
never look their height. That boy is five feet two, if he's an inch.
Them stocky ones is the build that make the strong kind. Looka him lift
up that cannon-ball with just his left hand. B-r-r-r-r! Listen how it
shakes the place when he lets its fall! Looka! Honest, it makes me sick!
It's a wonder he don't kill himself."

"Better to have loved a short man
Than never to have loved atall."

The day, sun-riddled, stare-riddled, sawdusty, and white with glare,
slouched into the clanging, banging, electric-pianoed, electrifying
Babylonia of a Coney Island Saturday night. The erupting lava of a
pent-up work-a-week, odoriferous of strong foods and wilted clothing,
poured hotly down that boulevard of the bourgeoise, Ocean Avenue. The
slow, thick cir culation of six days of pants-pressing and
boiler-making, of cigarette-rolling and typewriting, of
machine-operating and truck-driving, of third-floor-backs, congestion
and indigestion, of depression and suppression, demanding the spurious
kind of excitation that can whip the blood to foam. The terrific
gyration of looping the loop. The comet-tail plunge of shooting the
chutes; the rocketing skyward, and the delicious madness at the pit of
the stomach on the downward swoop. The bead on the apple juice, the dash
of mustard to the frankfurter, the feather tickler in the eye, the
barker to the ear, and the thick festival-flavored sawdust to the
throat. By eleven o'clock the Freak Palace was a gelatinous congestion
of the quickened of heart, of blood, of tongue, and of purse. The crowd
stared, gaped, squirmed through itself, sweated.

By twelve o'clock, from her benchlike throne that had become a
straitjacket to the back, a heaviness had set in that seemed to thicken
Miss Hoag's eyelids, the flush receding before doughiness.

A weary mountain of the cruelly enhancing red silk and melting sequin
paste, the billowy arms inundated with the thumb-deep dimples lax out
along the chair-sides, as preponderous and preposterous a heroine as
ever fell the lot of scribe, she was nature's huge joke--a practical
joke, too, at eighteen dollars a week, bank-books from three trust
companies, and a china pig about ready to burst.

"Cheer up, Ossi! It might be worse," she said across the left rail, but
her lids twitching involuntarily of tiredness.

"Sacred Mother of the Sacred Child!" said the Ossified Man, in Italian.

The sword-swallower, at the megaphone instance of the barker, waggled
suddenly into motion, and, flouncing back her bushy knee-skirts and
kissing to the four winds, threw back her head and swallowed an
eighteen-inch carpenter's saw to the hilt. The crowd flowed up and
around her.

Miss Hoag felt on the undershelf of her table for a glass of water,
draining it. "Thank God," she said, "another day done!" and began
getting together her photographs into a neat packet, tilting the
contents of the saucer into a small biscuit-tin and snapping it around
with a rubber band.

The Baron de Ross was counting, too, his small hands eager at the task.
"This Island is getting as hard-boiled as an egg," he said.

"It is that," said Miss Hoag, making a pencil insert into a small
memorandum-book.

"You!" cried the Baron, the screw lines out again. "You money-bag tied
in the middle! I know a tattooed girl worked with you once on the St.
Louis World's Fair Pike says you slept on a pillow stuffed with
greenbacks."

"You're crazy with the heat," said Miss Hoag. "What I've got out of this
business, I've sweated for."

Then the Baron de Ross executed a pirouette of tiny self. "Worth your
weight in gold! Worth your weight in gold!"

"If you don't behave yourself, you little peewee, I'll leave you to plow
home through the sand alone. If it wasn't for me playing nurse-girl to
you, you'd have to be hiring a keeper. You better behave."

"Worth your weight in gold! Blow us to a ice-cream cone. Eh, Ossi?"

The crowd had sifted out; all but one of the center aisle of grill
arc-lights flickered out, leaving the Freak Palace to a spluttering kind
of gloom. The Snake-charmer, of a thousand iridescencies, wound the last
of her devitalized cobras down into its painted chest. The Siamese Twins
untwisted out of their embrace and went each his way. The Princess
Albino wove her cotton hair into a plait, finishing it with a rapidly
wound bit of thread. An attendant trundled the Ossified Man through a
rear door. Jastrow the Granite Jaw flopped on his derby, slightly askew,
and strolled over toward that same door, hands in pocket. He was thewed
like an ox. Short and as squattily packed down as a Buddha, the great
sinews of his strength bulged in his short neck and in the backs of the
calves of his legs, even rippled beneath his coat. It was as if a
compress had reduced him from great height down to his tightest
compactness, concentrating the strength of him. Even in repose, the
undershot jaw was plunged forward, the jowls bonily defined.

"Worth her weight in gold! Blow us to a ice-cream cone. Eh, Jastrow?
She's worth her weight in gold."

Passing within reach of where the Baron de Ross danced to his ditty of
reiteration, Jastrow the Granite Jaw reached up and in through the rail,
capturing one of the jiggling ankles, elevating the figure of the Baron
de Ross to a high-flung torch.

"Lay off that noise," said Jastrow the Granite Jaw, threatening to
dangle him head downward. "Lay off, or I'll drown you like a kitten!"

With an agility that could have swung him from bough to bough, the Baron
de Ross somersaulted astride the rear of Jastrow the Granite Jaw's great
neck, pounding little futile fists against the bulwark of head.

"Leggo me! Leggo!"

"Gr-r-r-r! I'll step on you and squash you like a caterpillar."

"Don't hurt him, Mr. Jastrow! Don't let him fall off backwards. He is so
little. Teenie'll catch you if you fall, honey. Teenie's here in back
of you."

With another double twist, the Baron de Ross somersaulted backward off
the shoulder of his captor, landing upright in the outstretched skirts
of Miss Hoag.

"Yah, yah!" he cried, dancing in the net of skirt and waggling his hands
from his ears. "Yah, yah!"

The Granite Jaw smoothed down the outraged rear of his head, eyes
rolling and smile terrible.

"Wow!" he said, making a false feint toward him.

The Baron, shrill with hysteria, plunged into a fold of Miss Hoag's
skirt.

"Don't hurt him, Jastrow. He's so awful little! Don't play rough."

THE BARON (_projecting his face around a fold of skirt_): Worth her
weight in go-uld--go-uld!

"He's always guying me for my saving ways, Jastrow. I tell him I 'ain't
got no little twenty-eight-inch wife out in San Francisco sending me
pin-money. Neither am I the prize little grafter of the world. I tell
him he's the littlest man and the biggest grafter in this show. Come out
of there, you little devil! He thinks because I got a few hundred
dollars laid by I'm a bigger freak than the one I get paid for being."

Jastrow the Granite Jaw flung the crook of his walking-stick against his
hip, leaning into it, the flanges of his nostrils widening a bit, as
if scenting.

"You old mountain-top," he said, screwing at the up-curving mustache,
"who'd have thought you had that pretty a penny saved?"

"I don't look to see myself live and die in the show business, Mr.
Jastrow."

"Now you said something, Big Tent."

"There's a farm out near Xenia, Ohio, where I lay up in winter, that I'm
going to own for myself one of these days. I've seen too many in this
business die right in exhibition, and the show have to chip in to bury
'em, for me not to save up against a rainy day."

"Lay it on, Big Tent. I like your philosophy."

"That's me every time, Mr. Jastrow. I'm going to die in a little
story-and-a-half frame house of my own with a cute little pointy roof, a
potato-patch right up to my back steps, and my own white Leghorns
crossin' my own country road to get to the other side. Why, I know a Fat
in this business, Aggie Lament--"

"Sure, me and the Baroness played Mexico City Carnival with Aggie
Lament. Some heavy!"

"Well, that girl, in her day, was one of the biggest tips to the scale
this business ever seen. What happens? All of a sudden, just like
that--pneumonia! Gets up out of bed, eight weeks later, skin and bones
--down to three hundred and sixty-five pounds and not a penny saved. I
chipped in what I could to keep her going, but she just down and died
one night. Job gone. No weight. In the exhibit business, just like any
other line, you got to have a long head. A Fat's got to look ahead for a
thin day. Strong for a weak day. That's why I wish, Mr. Jastrow, you'd
cut out that glass-eating feature of yours."

"How much you got, Airy-Fairy? Lemme double your money for you!"

"She's worth her weight in gold."

"Lemme double it!"

"Like fun I will. A spendthrift like you!"

"Which way you going?"

"We always go home by the beach. Shapiro made it a rule that the Bigs
and Littles can't ever show themselves on Ocean Avenue."

"Come on, you little flea; I'll ride you up the beach on my shoulder."

"Oh, Mr. Jastrow, you--you going to walk home with me--and--Baron?"

"Come on was what I said."

He mounted the Baron de Ross to his bulge of shoulder with veriest toss,
Miss Hoag, in a multi-fold cape that was a merciful shroud to the bulk
of her, descending from the platform. The place had emptied itself of
its fantastic congress of nature's pranks, only the grotesque print of
it remaining. The painted snake-chests closed. The array of gustatory
swords, each in flannelet slip-cover. The wild man's cage, empty. The
tiny velocipede of the Baron de Ross, upside down against rust. A hall
of wonder here. A cave of distorted fancy. The Land of the Cow Jumped
over the Moon and the Dish Ran away with the Spoon.

Outside, a moon, something bridal in its whiteness, beat down upon a
kicked-up stretch of beach, the banana-skins, the pop-corn boxes, the
gambados of erstwhile revelers violently printed into its sands. A
platinum-colored sea undulated in.

The leaping, bounding outline of Luna Park winked out even as they
emerged, the whole violent contortion fading back into silver mist.
There was a new breeze, spicily cool.

Miss Hoag breathed out, "Ain't this something grand?"

"Giddy-ap!" cried the Baron, slappity-slappity at the great boulder of
the Granite Jaw's head. "Giddy-ap!"

They plowed forward, a group out of Phantasmagoria--as motley a
threesome as ever strode this side of the Land of Anesthesia.

"How do you like it at Mrs. Bostum's boarding-house, Mr. Jastrow? I
never stop anywheres else on the Island. Most of the Shapiro concession
always stops there."

"Good as the next," said Mr. Jastrow, kicking onward.

"I was sorry to hear you was ailing so last night, Mr. Jastrow, and I
was sorry there was nothing you would let me do for you. They always
call me 'the Doc' around exhibits. I say--but you just ought to heard
yourself yell me out of the room when I come in to offer myself--"

"They had me crazy with pain."

"You wasn't so crazy with pain when the albino girl come down with the
bottle of fire-water, was he, Baron? We seen him throwing goo-goos at
Albino, didn't we, Baron?"

THE BARON _(impish in the moonlight)_: He fell for a cotton-top.

"He didn't yell the albino and her bottle out, did he, Baron?"

"It's this darn business," said Mr. Jastrow, creating a storm of
sand-spray with each stride. "I'm punctured up like a tire."

"I been saying to the Baron, Mr. Jastrow, if you'd only cut out the
glass-eating feature. You got as fine a appearance and as fine a strong
act by itself as you could want. A short fellow like you with all your
muscle-power is a novelty in himself. Honest, Mr. Jastrow, it--it's a
sin to see a fine-set-up fellow like you killing yourself this way. You
ought to cut out the granite-jaw feature."

"Yeh--and cut down my act to half-pay. I'd be full of them
tricks--wouldn't I? Show me another jaw act measures up to mine. Show me
the strong-arm number that ever pulled down the coin a jaw act did. I'd
be a, sweet boob, wouldn't I, to cut my pocket-book in two? I need
money, Airy-Fairy. My God! how I got the capacity for needing money!"

"What's money to health, Mr. Jastrow? It ain't human or freak nature to
digest glass. Honest, every time I hear you crunching I get the chills!"

Then Mr. Jastrow shot forward his lower jaw with a milling motion:

"Gr-r-r-r-r!"

"She's sweet on you, Jastrow, like all the rest of 'em."

"Better to have loved a short man
Than never to have loved atall."

"Baron, I--I'll spank!" "Worth her weight in gold!"

"Where you got all that money soaked, Big Tent?" "Aw, Mr. Jastrow, the
Baron's only tormenting me."

"She sleeps on a pillow stuffed with greenbacks." "Sure I got a few
dollars saved, and I ain't ashamed of it. I've had steady work in this
business eight years, now, ever since the circus came to my town out in
Ohio and made me the offer, but that's no sign I can be in it eight
years longer. Sure I got a few dollars saved."

"Well, whatta you know--a big tent like you?"

"Ain't a big tent like me human, Mr. Jastrow? Ain't I--ain't I
just like any other--girl--twenty years old--ain't I just
like--other--girls--underneath all this?"

"Sure, sure!" said Mr. Jastrow. "How much you to the good, little one?"

"I've about eleven hundred dollars with my bank-books and pig."

"'Leven hundred! Well, whatta you know about that? Say, Big Tent, better
lemme double your money for you!"

"Aw, you go on, Mr. Jastrow! Ain't you the torment, too?"

"Say, gal, next time I get the misery you can hold my hand as long as
your little heart desires. 'Leven hundred to the good! Good night! Get
down off my shoulder, you little flea, you. I got to turn in here and
take a drink on the strength of that! 'Leven hundred to the good!
Good night!"

"Oh, Mr. Jastrow, in your state! In your state alcohol's poison. Mr.
Jastrow--please--you mustn't!"

"Blow me, too, Jas! Aw, say--have a heart; blow me to a bracer, too!"

"No, no, Mr. Jastrow, don't take the Baron. The little fellow can't
stand alcohol. His baroness don't want it. Anyways, it's against the
rules--please--"

"You stay and take the lady home, flea. See the lady home like a
gentleman. 'Leven hundred to the good! Say, I'd see a lady as far as the
devil on that. Good night!"

* * * * *

At Mrs. Bostum's boarding-house, one of a row of the stare-faced
packing-cases of the summer city, bathing-suits drying and kicking over
veranda rails, a late quiet had fallen, only one window showing yellowly
in the peak of its top story. A white-net screen door was unhooked from
without by inserting a hand through a slit in the fabric. An uncarpeted
pocket of hall lay deep in absolute blackness. Miss Hoag fumbled for the
switch, finally leaving the Baron to the meager comfort of his
first-floor back.

"Y'all right, honey? Can you reach what you want?"

The Baron clambered to a chair and up to her. His face had unknotted,
the turmoil of little lines scattering.

"Aw!" he said. "Good old tub, Teenie! Good old Big Tent!"

A layer of tears sprang across Miss Hoag's glance and, suddenly gaining
rush, ran down over her lashes. She dashed at them.

"I'm human, Baron. Maybe you don't know it, but I'm human."

"Now what did I do, Teenie?"

"It--it ain't you, Baron; it--it ain't anybody. It--it's--only I just
wonder sometimes what God had in mind, anyways--making our kind. Where
do we belong--"

"Aw, you're a great Heavy, Teenie--and it's the Bigs and the Littles got
the cinch in this business. Looka the poor Siamese. How'd you like to be
hitched up thataway all day. Looka Ossi. How'd you like to let 'em stick
pins in you all for their ten cents' worth. Looka poor old Jas. Why, a
girl's a fool to waste any heartache gettin' stuck on him. That old
boy's going to wake up out of one of them spells dead some day. How'd
you like to chew glass because it's big money and then drink it up so
fast you'd got to borrow money off the albino girl for the doctor's
prescription--"

The tears came now rivuleting down Miss Hoag's cheeks, bouncing off to
the cape.

"O God!" she said, her hand closing over the Baron's, pressing it. "With
us freaks, even if we win, we lose. Take me. What's the good of ten
million dollars to me--twenty millions? Last night when I went in to
offer him help--him in the same business and that ought to be used to
me--right in the middle of being crazy with pain, what did he yell every
time he looked at me, 'Take her away! Take her away!'"

"Aw now, Teenie, Jas had the D.T.'s last night; he--"

'"Take her away!' he kept yelling. 'Take her away!' One of my own kind
getting the horrors just to look at me!"

"You're sweet on the Granite Jaw; you are, Teenie; that's what's eating
you--you're sweet on the Granite Jaw--"

Suddenly Miss Hoag turned, slamming the door afterward so that the
silence re-echoed sharply.

"What if I am?" she said, standing out in the hall pocket of absolute
blackness, her hand cupped against her mouth and the blinding tears
staggering. "What if I am? What if I am?"

Within her own room, a second-floor-back, augmented slightly by an
immaculate layout of pink-celluloid toilet articles and a white
water-pitcher of three pink carnations, Miss Hoag snapped on her light
where it dangled above the celluloid toilet articles. A summer-bug was
bumbling against the ceiling; it dashed itself between Miss Hoag and her
mirror, as she stood there breathing from the climb and looking back at
herself with salt-bitten eyes, mouth twitching. Finally, after an
inanimate period of unseeing stare, she unhooked the long cape, brushing
it, and, ever dainty of self, folding it across a chair-back. A
voluminous garment, fold and fold upon itself, but sheer and crisp
dimity, even streaming a length of pink ribbon, lay across the bed-edge.
Miss Hoag took it up, her hand already slowly and tiredly at the
business of unfettering herself of the monstrous red silk.

Came a sudden avalanche of knocking and a rattling of door-knob, the
voice of Mrs. Bostrum. landlady, high with panic.

"Teenie! Jastrow's dyin' in his room! He's yellin' for you! For God's
sakes--quick--down in his room!"

In the instant that followed, across the sudden black that blocked Miss
Hoag of vision, there swam a million stars.

"Teenie! For God's sakes--quick! He's yellin' for you--"

"Coming, Mrs. Bostrum--coming--coming--coming!"

In a dawn that came up as pink as the palm of a babe, but flowed rather
futilely against the tired, speckled eye of incandescent bulb dangling
above the Granite Jaw's rumpled, tumbled bed of pain, a gray-looking
group stood in whispered conference beside a slit of window that
overlooked a narrow clapboard slit of street.

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