The week before the Sunday School picnic Mrs. Humphrey sent a big basketful, with lots of fancy things in it, so when it was finished Grace had to pack it in six or seven suit boxes. We had several customers in the store when Philip and Muriel went past with the delivery, but I noticed that they were having some trouble with slipping boxes when they crossed Spring and started up Washington Street. Between customers I kept an eye on them as they went up Washington, and when they turned out of sight down Otis Street I began to worry about them. As soon as we’d taken care of all the customers I asked Mr. Haushalter if I could take the bicycle and ride up to see how Philip and Muriel were getting along.
Except for getting my name down on the book again, it was lucky that I went. When I turned the corner at Otis, Philip and Muriel were only halfway down the block, and they were having plenty of trouble. Three boys were laughing and shouting as they knocked boxes off the cart, Philip and Muriel were both trying to push them away, but with three against two they weren’t doing any good. Just as I got there one of the boys grabbed the side of the cart and tipped it over, spilling the whole basketful of clean laundry out into the street.
I was so mad I was seeing red, and the boys were so busy they didn’t see me coming. Maybe that’s how I managed to get in as many good licks as I did, right at the start. The boys were all bigger than we were, and in a fair fight they could have licked us easy enough, but that wasn’t a fair fight: I didn’t tell them, “Put your fists up!” before I swung, Philip kicked one of them in the shins, and Muriel used a stick. Of course, a girl couldn’t have been expected to fight with her fists, and the stick Muriel picked up wasn’t much bigger than a ruler, but she waded into those boys as if she were swinging a sword. And Philip couldn’t be blamed very much for kicking. He’d never been in a real fight before, there were two boys punching at him, and he was just fighting back with everything he had.
I don’t think the whole fight lasted more than two minutes, but it was plenty hot while it did last. And it was the bicycle that really stopped it. I didn’t have time to stand it up against a tree when I got there, but just jumped off and let it fall in the street. Then I went mainly after the boy who had tipped the cart over. He was a little bigger than the other two, and as I fought with him he tried to angle around so he could tramp on the spilled clothes. But Muriel beat him away with her stick, and I kept punching at his face and stomach until I had him going backwards.
If you can keep the one you’re fighting going backwards he can’t get set to punch very hard, and you can get in some real good licks. I did, and with every one he kept going faster until his feet got tangled up in the front wheel of the bicycle. When he started to fall he twisted around to save himself, but he didn’t get his hands up quick enough, and landed face-down on the brick paving. I’d bloodied his nose and got a good sock into one eye before he fell, but whatever I hadn’t done to his face, the bricks did. And they took all the fight out of him. Before I could get around the bike he scrambled to his feet, bawling, and ran toward Central Avenue. And the other boys ran after him.
Until the fight was over neither Philip nor I knew that we’d been hit, or that ladies on both sides of the street were standing on their front piazzas, shouting for us to stop. As soon as the boys had gone the ladies came running to help us pick up the clothes, and to see how much we had been hurt. One of them told me if I’d pinch my nose tight for a minute it would stop bleeding, and another wiggled Philip’s front teeth to see if they were loosened enough that he ought to go to a dentist. There’s one thing I’ll have to say for those boys: they didn’t hit Muriel, but they couldn’t have missed Philip’s face or mine with many punches. We were both a little messed up, and three spokes were broken out of the front wheel of the D & H bicycle.
Of course, there was nothing we could do but take the mussed and dirty laundry home. I didn’t stop at the store, because I didn’t want to tell Mr. Haushalter about the bicycle right then, or to have him see me looking the way I did. Mother didn’t scold me at all for getting into the fight, and Grace said for us not to feel bad about their having to do most of the laundry over again. She held a cold, wet cloth against my eye, so it wouldn’t turn too black, and she was real careful not to hurt my nose when she washed the blood off it.
It was nearly an hour before I’d taken a bath, changed my clothes and got back to the store. I hadn’t finished telling Mr. Haushalter that I was sorry about the bicycle, and that I’d pay for getting it fixed, when Cop Watson came in. “So it’s another fight you’ve been in,” he said to me, and he said it as if he had come to arrest me.
“Yes, sir,” I told him, “but it wasn’t my fault.”
“Divil a bit, it wasn’t!” he said. “It was you what flung the first punch, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, “but I had to. There were three boys knocking boxes off our laundry cart, and one of them tipped it over.”
“Ah, go on with you! Don’t be givin’ me none o’ your fairy tales!” he said roughly. “They was walkin’ down the street and your brother and sister was takin’ up the whole sidewalk with their wagon, and when the boys tried to squeeze past a box tumbled off, so you come up from behind and go to slingin’ fists and beatin’ ’em with a club.”
“I didn’t either!” I told him. “I didn’t have a thing in my hands, and I wouldn’t have hit them if they hadn’t knocked the boxes off the cart and tipped it over on purpose.”
I was standing behind the counter with Mr. Haushalter, and Cop Watson came over and leaned on it. He bent over and looked right into my good eye for a minute, not hard, but just steady. Then he said, “Lad, you’re in trouble up to your neck, and ’twill only go harder with you if you lie about it. One o’ the boys has a’ready been up to the station house with his old man, and the chief’s after tellin’ me the poor lad’s face is beat to a pudd’n’. And that’s not all, at all. There’s a lump the size of a baseball on the top of his noggin, and a welt acrost the side of his jaw where he was beat with a club.”
“Then he’s the one that tipped the wagon over,” I told Cop Watson, “and he’s the one I saw knock the first box off the cart. But I didn’t hit him with a club, and if his face is all beat to a pudding it’s because he landed on it when he fell over the bicycle. He was the one that started the trouble, not me! And if you don’t believe me you ask any of those ladies up on Otis Street. There were three or four of them standing on their front piazzas and shouting for us to stop fighting.”
I don’t think Cop Watson believed me even then, but Mr. Haushalter helped me out by telling him he’d never caught me lying, and that I’d never acted quarrelsome.
“Well, I’ll mosey up the line and have a word with the ladies,” Cop Watson told him, “but mind you, Gus, this is no small offense at all, at all, and I can’t be brushin’ it over easy. The chief’s het up like a teakettle. And don’t be forgettin’: the lad’s name has been wrote down in the book twice before this time. You keep him here in the store till I get back; I might be havin’ to take him up to the station house.”
Just as Cop Watson was going out the doorway, Mr. Haushalter called to him and asked, “Who were they, kids from around the neighborhood?”
Cop Watson turned and told him, “No. From Edgeworth, bad cess to ’em. And, worst of all, it had to be an alderman’s son what got the tar pasted out of him.”
He started to go on out, then turned back again and told me, “If ever you hit a kid again, for glory’s sake pick on a President’s son, an alderman can make it forty times as rough on you.”
I watched Cop Watson all the way up Washington Street, until he turned the corner at Otis. And I was still watching an hour later when he turned the corner to come back. He wasn’t hurrying, but walking with his head down, and his flat feet made him roll a bit from side to side as he came. I didn’t want to have him take me up to the station house, and with every slow step he took my heart seemed to beat faster.
“Well, lad,” he told me when h
e came into the store, “you’ve got them ladies’ sympathy all right, all right, but that’s all you’ve got; and sympathy’ll never, never in the world rub your name off of that book. There wasn’t a livin’ one o’ them seen the start of it. When they heard the hollerin’ and run out the fight was on, but they’ve cleared you of wieldin’ the club. That little sister of yours must be a Tartar when her dander’s up. I’ll not be takin’ you up to the station house when I go in to report, but stay to home this evenin’ I’ll maybe drop by for a word with your mother.”
As Cop Watson talked to me he took out his jackknife, opened it, and whittled a chew off his plug of B-L. After he’d tucked it away in his cheek, he looked at some notes he had in his helmet, brushed his big white mustache back with a hand, and started out. With one foot on the doorstep, he turned back to me and said gently, “For glory’s sake, lad, watch your step.” Then he went out, and I had to swallow hard, because my throat hurt.
I told Mother all about Cop Watson when I went home from work, and that he’d probably come to our house to talk to her about me, but I didn’t tell her that my name had already been down on the bad-boy book twice before. I didn’t want to worry her, and I was sure I could keep it from ever being written down again.
That evening Mother read to Grace and me till after ten o’clock while we were waiting for Cop Watson, but he didn’t come, and she kissed me when I went upstairs to bed.
21
Fire!
SOMETIMES when I thought I’d had the worst luck of anybody in the whole world there would be some good come of it. That’s the way it turned out about our having the fight with the boys from Edgeworth. I found that I had a lot more friends at school than I’d known about. From that time on they kept an eye on Philip and Muriel when they were delivering laundry, and no kids from Edgeworth or anywhere else ever dared to tip over our cart again.
It was only a couple of weeks after the fight that Medford had one of its biggest fires, and that was when it really helped me to have so many new friends. Our house was right next to the Glenwood Fire Station, and we were eating supper when we heard the horses clattering out of their stalls to take their places in front of the engine. Before the alarm sounded they were racing down Spring Street toward Riverside Avenue.
That evening the bell kept tolling and tolling, but it was no combination for a district in our end of town, and I couldn’t understand why our engine had gone out. At last I asked Mother if I might be excused, and went out on the front piazza to look around. The sky to the southeast was so red that the full moon looked to be floating in a sea of blood above the marshes, halfway between Wellington and Somerville.
At first I was sure I must be wrong about the location, because there were no houses within half a mile of the Mystic River, and the marsh grass was too green to burn. While I was standing there trying to figure it out I heard the clanging of two more fire engines, and the pounding of horses’ hoofs as they galloped eastward along Riverside Avenue, going from Medford Square toward the Fellsway. No matter what it was, I knew it had to be an awfully big fire to call out every engine in town, so I ran back into the house and asked Mother if I could go.
“Oh, no, Son!” she told me. “You’re entirely too impetuous to be running off to a big fire after dark.”
“I’d be real careful,” I told her, “and I wouldn’t go too close.”
“No,” Mother said. “With your name on the police book, deservedly or not, I can’t let you run off alone to a fire.”
“Well,” Grace told her, “I’d go with him if you want me to, just to see that he doesn’t get into any trouble, but it can’t amount to much if it’s out in the middle of the marshes.”
“Run along then,” Mother told her, “but don’t be gone more than an hour.”
Until we were away from the house Grace didn’t hurry, but just as soon as we were out of sight she ran so fast it kept me winded to stay abreast of her. When we’d passed the brickyards on Riverside Avenue, we could see yellow flames leaping high into the red glow above them, and they were coming from the Wellington Bridge, where Fellsway Boulevard crossed the Mystic River. It was a wooden bridge, about a quarter of a mile long, with a pair of streetcar tracks in the middle and a wide roadway on both sides.
There seemed to be a hundred policemen holding the crowd back from our end of the bridge, and keeping the Fellsway open so fire engines from Malden and Everett and Reading and Winchester could get through. Grace and I got closer to the fire than most people because we picked our way out through the marshes to a dry hummock right at the edge of the mud flats. From there we could see the whole length of the bridge, clear over to the south end where the Charlestown and Somerville firemen were swarming onto the bridge like ants.
The fire must have started in the engine room, right in the middle of the bridge, where they lifted the big spans to let boats go through. And it was so hot the firemen couldn’t get close to it. To keep the whole bridge from burning down, they were tearing out a section on both sides, back a hundred feet or so from the flames, and letting the planks and timbers fall into the river.
At the time Grace and I reached the hummock the incoming tide was running strong, and the river was spread out nearly to the top of the mud flats. That didn’t worry us, because the top of our hummock was hard, dry clay, so we knew that the tide never came in high enough to cover it.
Of course we knew what a terrible thing a fire was, and what a terrible waste of money, but just the same it was fun to sit there on our hummock watching the crackling, roaring flames, and seeing the geysers of water squirting up from the Boston fire boats, and from half a dozen fire engines at either end of the bridge. The engines from every town on our side of Boston were there, lined up on the bridge where they could pump water out of the river and onto the flames. Under the arch of the feathery streams, between the engines and the fire, a hundred or more firemen were running back and forth on rows of great timbers; prying them loose from the piling and letting them fall into the river.
The bridge had been built with heavy planking across the big timbers, and the roadways paved with wooden blocks that had been soaked in creosote. By the time Grace and I reached our hummock most of the planks and paving blocks had been ripped off, and the tide was floating them up the river past us. Half a dozen firemen would run out onto a girder that was twenty-five or thirty feet long, balance themselves as they reached under to pry it loose from the piling, then race back before it toppled into the river with a splash.
Some of the timbers were caught for a few minutes between the long rows of pilings, but the rising tide always turned them, and the wind drifted them toward our side of the river as they floated upstream through the red glare on the water. I told Grace they looked like an armada of enemy submarines sneaking up the Mystic River to attack Medford.
“Well, I wish some of them would sneak into our cellar,” she told me. “If we had half a dozen of those big timbers they’d make us firewood enough to last all next winter, and if we could burn chunks off them in the furnace it would save us two or three tons of coal.”
“Maybe I can get some,” I said. “They’re just throwing them away, so they don’t belong to anybody.”
“Hmmmfff!” Grace sniffed. “Don’t be so silly! Can’t you see how high the water splashes when they fall? They must weigh a couple of tons apiece. How do you think a little boy like you would ever get one of them out of the river, let alone lugging it clear up to our house?”
“Well, I’ll betcha I’d find some way to do it,” I told her. “I could tie one to stakes on the bank, and saw it into pieces, and haul the pieces home on Philip’s cart.”
“You’d better forget about the whole business,” Grace told me, “and we’d better get home before Mother worries herself to death about us. We’ve already been here more than an hour.”
It wasn’t until Grace said we’d better go home that we noticed our hummock had become an island. The water had risen all around it, and stre
tched for more than a hundred feet back through the eel grass. We had to take off our shoes and stockings to wade back to the Fellsway, and we had to go real slowly, feeling for each step before we took it. Under the water there were deep pot holes of soupy mud, where we could have drowned in a minute if we made a misstep.
Mother didn’t scold us for getting home late, because Grace explained about the trouble we’d had getting off the hummock, but she did tell us to go straight to bed. It couldn’t have been much later than nine o’clock when I went up to bed, but I couldn’t go to sleep for thinking about all that good firewood drifting up the river. I must have stayed awake till way after midnight, thinking about it, and before I went to sleep I had an idea.
The next noon when I was coming home from school Cop Watson was standing at the railroad crossing on Spring Street, talking to the gatekeeper. I didn’t want to interrupt, so I just stood there for a minute. When he looked around and saw me, he leaned over and said, “Glory be! You ain’t been in another fight, have you? That last shiner you got is still green around the edges.”
“No, sir,” I told him, “and I’m not going to get in any more, but I wanted to ask you a question.”