CHAPTER III
A FEAST AND AN EXCURSION
NINE free hours!--or, to be exact, eight, since the best part of onewould have to be devoted to the flat in order to avoid trouble. However,Johnnie never did his work any sooner than he actually had to; and thathour of labor should be, as always, the last of the nine, this for thesake of obeying Big Tom at the latest possible time, of circumventinghis wishes, and thwarting and outwitting him, just to the degree thatsafety permitted.
So! For eight hours Johnnie would live his dreams. And, oh, the thingshe could do! the things!
But before he could begin the real business of the day, he had to putGrandpa to sleep again. This was best accomplished through tiring thelittle old man with a long, exciting train trip. "Oo, Grandpa!" criedJohnnie. "Who wants to go ride-ride on the cars?"
"Cars! cars! cars!" shrilled Grandpa, his white-lashed, milky-blue eyesdancing. At once, impatiently, he fell to tapping on the floor with hiscane, while, using his other hand, he swung the wheel chair in a circle.Across his shrunken chest, from one side of the chair to the other, wasa strand of rope that kept him from tumbling out of his seat. To hastenthe promised departure, he began to throw his weight alternately againstthe rope and the back of the chair, like an excited baby.
"Wait now!" admonished Johnnie. He took off his apron and wadded it intoa ball. Then with force and fervor he sent the ball whizzing under thesink. "Where'll we go?" he cried. The bottoms of his trouser legs hungabout his knees in a fringe. Now as he did another hop-skip into theair, not so much because of animal spirits as through sheer mentalrelief, all that fringe whipped and snapped. "Pick out a place,Grandpa!" he bade. "Where do y' want t' go?"
"Go! go! go!" chanted the old man. Not so long ago he had been able tocall up a score of destinations--most of them names that had to do withthe Civil War campaigns which, in the end, had impaired his brain andcost him the use of his legs.
Johnnie proceeded to prompt. "Gettysburg?" he asked; "Shiloh?Chick'mauga? City of Washingt'n? Niaggery Falls?"
"Niaggery Falls!" cried Grandpa, catching, as he always did, at whateverpoint was named last. "Where's my hat? Where's my hat?"
He never remembered how to find his hat, though it always hungconveniently on the back of the wheel chair. It was the dark,broad-brimmed, cord-encircled head covering of the Grand Army man. As heturned his head in a worried search for it, Johnnie set the hat atop thewhite hair.
Johnnie had named Niagara last because he liked best to visit thatWonder of Nature. He did not know why--except that the name seemedcuriously familiar to him. It was familiar to Grandpa, too, in a dimway, for he had visited "the Falls" on his wedding trip. And everyrepetition of the imaginary journey thrilled him.
"Chug! chug! chug!" he began, the moment he felt the hat. His imitationof a starting engine was so genuine that it shook his spare frame fromhis head to his slippered feet. "Chug! chug! chug!"
But Johnnie was not ready to set off. The little, old soldier had notyet eaten his breakfast, and if he did not eat he would not go to sleeppromptly at the conclusion of the trip, nor stay asleep.
"Oh, Grandpa," began the boy coaxingly, as he hastily dished up a saucerof oatmeal, another saucer of prunes, and poured a glass of milk,"before we start we got t' eat our grand banquet! It's a long way toNiaggery, y' know. So here we both are at the Grand Central Station!"(The Station was situated on or about the center of the kitchen.)
"Station!" echoed Grandpa. "Chug! chug! chug!"
"No, Grandpa,"--Johnnie's manner of handling the old man was comicallymature, almost motherly; his tone, while soothing, was quietly firm, asif he were speaking to a younger child. "See! Here's the fine table!"
Up to this table, still strewn with unwashed dishes and whateverremained of breakfast, the pair of travelers drew. Then Johnnie, withthe air and the lavishness of a millionaire, ordered an elaborate andtasty breakfast from a waiter the like of whom was not to be foundanywhere save in his own imagination.
This waiter's name was Buckle, and he had served Johnnie faithfully forthe past several years. In all ways he was an extraordinary person ofhis kind, being able to furnish anything that Grandpa and Johnnie mightcall for, whether meat, vegetable or fruit, at any time of the year,this without regard to such small matters as seasons, the difficultiesof importing, adverse hunting laws, and the like. Which meant thatGrandpa could always have his venison, and Johnnie his choice offruits--all from the deft hand of a man quick and soft-footed, and fullof low bows, who wore a suit of red velvet fairly loaded with gold bandsand brass buttons.
"Mister Buckle," began Johnnie (for such an august creature in redvelvet could not be addressed save with a courteous title), "a turkey,please, an' some lemon pie, an' some strawberry ice cream an' fifteenpounds of your best candy."
"Candy! candy! candy!" clamored Grandpa, impatiently beating on thetable with his spoon like a baby.
Buckle was wonderful. As Johnnie's orders swept him hither and thither,how he transformed the place, laying down the articles called for upon acrisp red tablecloth that was a glorious full brother to one thatbelonged to the little Jewish lady who lived upstairs. But Grandpa tooklittle interest in Buckle, though he picked eagerly enough at the viandswhich Johnnie urged upon him.
"Here's your turkey," pointed out the boy, giving the old man his firstspoonful of cereal. "My goodness, did y' ever _see_ such a drumstick!Now another!--'cause, gee! you'll be starved 'fore ever we git t'Niaggery! Mm! but ain't that turkey fine?"
"Mm! Mm!" agreed the veteran.
"Mister Buckle, I'll take some soda and some popcorn," went on Johnnie,spooning out his own saucer of oatmeal. "And some apples and oranges,and bananas and cherries and grapes."
Fruit was what he always ordered. How almost terribly at times heyearned for it! For the only fruit that ever Barber brought home wasprunes. Johnnie washed them and put them over the fire to boil with aregularity due to his fear of the strap. But he hated them. (Likewise hepitied them--because they seemed such little, old creatures, and grew inthat shriveled way which reminded him somehow of Grandpa.) What helonged for was fresh fruit, which he got only at long intervals, thiswhen Cis carried home to him a few cherries in the bottom of a paperbag, or part of an apple which was generously specked, and so well onits way to ruin, or shared the half of a lemon, which the two sucked,turn about, all such being the gifts of a certain old gentleman with awooden leg who carried on a thriving trade in the vicinity of thenearest public school. But the periods between the contributions were solong, and the amount of fruit consumed was so small, that Johnnie wasnever even a quarter satisfied--except at one of his Barmecide feasts.
Grandpa's oatmeal and milk finished, Johnnie urged the prunes upon him."Oo, lookee at the watermelon!" he cried. "The dandy, bigwatermelon!--_on ice_!"
The mere word "watermelon" always stirred a memory in old Grandpa'sbrain, as if he could almost recall when he, a young soldier of theNorth, had taken his fill of sweet, black-seeded, carnation-tinted pulpat some plantation in the harried South. And now he ate greedily tillthe last prune was gone, when Johnnie had Buckle throw all of the greenrinds into the sink. (It was this attention to detail which invested hisgames with reality.) Then, the repast finished, Grandpa fretted to beaway, whirling his chair and whimpering.
Johnnie had eaten through a perfect menu only as an unfillable boy can.So he dismissed Buckle with a thousand-dollar bill, and the twotravelers were off, Johnnie making a great deal of jolly noise as hefulfilled the duties of engineer, engine and conductor, Grandpa havingnothing to do but be an appreciative passenger.
To the old man the dish cupboard, which was Carthage, in "York State,"never lost its interest, he having lived in that town long years ago,before he marched out of it with a company of men who were bound for theWar. But the morris chair with its greasy cushions, which was thecapital, Albany, and the cookstove, which was very properly Pittsburgh(though the surface of the earth had to be wrenched about in order toput Pittsburgh after Albany on the
way to "the Falls"), both of theseestimable cities also won their share of attention, the special trainbearing the pair making a stop at each, though the passengers, boy andman, longed quite naturally for a sight of the Marvel of Waters whichawaited them at the end of the line.
But Pittsburgh left behind, and Buffalo (the woodbox) all but grindingunder their wheels, neither Grandpa nor Johnnie could withstand longerthe temptation to push forward to wonderful Niagara itself. With loudhissings, toot-toots, and guttural announcements on the part of theconductor, the wheel chair drew up with a twisting flourish--at thesink.
And now came the most exciting moment of all. For here imagination hadto be called upon least. This Niagara was liquid. And held back its vastflood--or poured it--just as Johnnie chose. He proceeded to have itpour. With Grandpa's cane, he rapped peremptorily twice--then once--onthe big lead pipe which, leading through the ceiling as a vent to Mrs.Kukor's sink, debouched in turn into the Barber sink.
A moment's wait. Then some one began to cross the floor overhead with anastonishing sound of rocking yet with little advance--in the way that awalking doll goes forward. This was Mrs. Kukor herself, who wasmotherhood incarnate to Johnnie; motherhood boiled down into anunalloyed lump; the pure essence of it in a fat, round package. Thelittle Jewish lady never objected to this regular morning interruptionof her work. And so the next moment, the miracle happened. Lake Eriebegan to empty itself; and with splashes, gurgles and spurts, thecataract descended upon the pots and pans heaped in the Barber sink.
The downpour was greeted by a treble chorus of delight from thetourists. "Oh, Grandpa!" cried Johnnie, jumping up and down. "Ain't itfine! Ain't it fine!" And "Fine!" chimed in the old man, swaying himselfagainst his breast rope. "Fine! Fine!"
One long half-minute Niagara poured--before the admiring gaze of the twoin the special. Then the great stream became dammed, the rush of itswaters ceased, except for a weak trickle, and the ceiling gave down thesound of a rocking step bound away, followed by the squeaking of achair. Mrs. Kukor was back at work.
The train returned silently to Pittsburgh, the Grand Army hat was takenoff and hung in its place, the blanket was pulled up about Grandpa'sshoulders, and this one of the pair of travelers was left to take hisrest. Comfortable and swift as the whole journey was, nevertheless thefeeble, old soldier was tired. His pale blue eyes were roving wearily;the chair at a standstill, down came their lids, and his head tippedsidewise.
He looked as much like a small, gray monkey as his strapping sonresembled a gorilla. As Johnnie tucked the blanket about the thin oldneck, Grandpa was already breathing regularly, the while he made thefacial grimaces of a new-born child.