Part 5

I made him play it all the time I was in the car: some day, when you and I get out, Delacour, I’ll call on your bank and teach it to you.

_Delacour_: Maybe you’ve already taught it to me. Maybe Ah was that passenger.

_Raidler_: Maybe he was!

_Joe_ (_with wide-open eyes_): Was you, boss?

_Jennings_: By God, I don’t know whether you’re joking or not, you old pudding-bag!

_Porter_: Gentlemen, gentlemen, remember the spirit of this hallowed hour. Ten million pairs of parents in the United States are hanging up stockings for their little ones; at such a moment the hardest heart turns to sentimentality, the trigger-finger of the grimmest killer is stayed, the burglar becomes sociable—

_Raidler_: Yea, Bill! Did I ever tell you how Jersey Pete ran into the fellow that had rheumatism?

_Porter_: If the story be in fit spirit for Christmas, let us have it.

_Raidler_: Jersey Pete was helping himself in a rich man’s bedroom, when the guy woke up, and Pete covered him with a gun and told him to hoist his hands. The guy raised his right hand, but he says, “I can’t raise my left, I got inflammatory rheumatism.” “Hell,” says Pete, “I’m sorry for you. It hits me in the same place.” “Did you ever try rattlesnake oil?” says the guy. “Gallons of it,” says Pete; “if all the snakes I’ve used the oil of was strung out in a row they’d reach eight times as far as Saturn, and the rattles could be heard at Valparaiso, Indiana, and back.” “Some use Chiselum’s pills,” says the guy. “Fudge,” says Pete, “I took ’em five months. No good. I had some relief the year I tried Finkelham’s Extract, Balm of Gilead Poultices, and Potts’ Pain Pulverizer; but I think it was the buckeye I carried in my pocket that done the trick.” So then they got to be friends, and Pete helped the guy to get his duds on, and took him out and blew him to a drink.

_Jennings_: Bill will make a story out of that and I’ll swipe a few stamps from the State of Ohio, and the editors will eat it up. They love these sympathetic gunmen and soft-hearted bandits.

_Raidler_: The story reminds me! When do we get taken to get a drink?

_Judge_: Suh, the wassail waits! (_brings steaming saucepan of punch to the table_)

_Jennings_: Hurrah! Hurrah!

_Raidler_: Lead me to it!

_Judge_: Let me infawm you, suh, this is no smuggled stuff, suh. The essential ingredient is genuine old hand-made Clover Leaf ’59, Private Stock. (_ladles it into glasses_)

_Jennings_: No desert rat was ever thirstier.

_Delacour_: Save some for me, there!

_Joe_ (_sidles up with eager interest_): Jes a drap fo de niggeh, Jedge, jes a drap. (_as he gets it_) Thank’ee, boss, thank’ee.

_Jennings_: Give us a toast, Bill.

_All_: A toast! A toast!

_Porter_ (_rising_): Gentlemen: to the ten million mothers and fathers of families who are now occupied in filling stockings and decorating trees in this our Christmas nation! To the ten million little boys who have whispered a want, and are waiting in an ecstasy of anticipation! To the ten million little girls who have asked for a dolly, in a pink silk dress, one that shuts her eyes when you lay her down, and when you squeeze her, says “Mamma!” May they have their twenty million desires.

_All_: Hurrah! (_they drink_)

_Jennings_: That seems far off from the Ohio Pen, Bill.

_Porter_: Not so far as you may think, Colonel. It is the Day We Celebrate.

_Raidler_: Give us another, nearer home.

_Porter_: Gentlemen: to one who celebrates his Christmas lying on a hospital cot, fearing every moment the last hemorrhage that will carry him off. To Jimmie Valentine, and his promised pardon!

_All_ (_at first taken aback; then, soberly_): Jimmie Valentine.

_Jennings_: And his pardon! (_a pause_) Boys, if he don’t get that pardon, there’s going to be hell to pay in this place.

_Raidler_: Right you are, Al!

_Jennings_: If there’s anything the men have been more stirred up about, it was before I came in here.

_Raidler_ (_hitting the table_): Well, by Jesus, he earned that pardon!

_Porter_: Surely he’s going to get it!

_Joe_: Sho, boss, he _got_ to get it!

_Jennings_: If they’re going to give it, why don’t they? Are they waiting for him to be dead?

_Porter_: The warden says the governor promised.

_Jennings_: Hell! The promise of a politician!

_Raidler_: I know this—there’s one man in the place don’t expect it, and that’s Jimmie.

_Jennings_: I notice he talks about it every day, all the same.

_Porter_: The Colonel is right about that; he is hoping, yet trying not to admit the hope—because he can’t bear to lose it.

_Jennings_: Nobody has to tell me about that—I went with him when he did the job. He’d have died before he let the main finger see what was going on inside him; but he wants that pardon, and he wants to see his old mother before his last hemorrhage.

_Raidler_ (_indicating the Judge and Delacour_): Look at them two old toads sitting there! All they’re thinking about is, how dangerous to turn out a man that might be able to open one of their safes!

_Judge_: Well, suh, you must admit, suh—

_Raidler_: Admit nothing! You’re a pair of bloodsucking Shylocks.

_Jennings_: Isn’t the poor devil dying?

_Judge_: Yes, suh, but he might teach someone else that trick—

_Raidler_: Godalmighty, will you listen to that? Aint he had chance to teach a hundred of ’em here? Aint the papers published how he done it?

_Jennings_: Boys, that was one of the prettiest sights you ever laid your eyes on! Just as quick as you could move your fingers, he turned that dial, and I held a watch on him—twelve seconds to a dot, and he swung back the door. “There you are, gentlemen!” You should have seen that crowd of reporters and politicians—you could have bowled the whole row of them over with a feather.

_Raidler_: Yes, and for a bunch of lying crooks in office! What difference does it make to Jimmie whether one set of thieves or another got that money? I’ve done jobs I’m ashamed of in my life, but never anything as dirty as those fellows up there in the state capitol do all the time. I’m not _their_ kind of crook!

_Jennings_: I remember when I was on trial, a religious lady came to cry over me. She thought I was a sweet-looking little fellow, and she said, “Can it really be, Mr. Jennings, that you are thief?” “No, ma’am,” says I; “I’m a robber.” “And what is the difference, Mr. Jennings?” “About forty-five years, ma’am,” says I. But she didn’t know what I meant.

_Delacour_: Mr. Jennin’s, Ah’m thinkin’ we have guided this conversation into painful channels.

_Raidler_: Give us some more punch, Judge.

_Judge_: I am desolated to infawm you, suh, that’s all there is.

_Jennings_: _What?_ You call that a celebration?

_Judge_: I made it good and strong, suh.

_Jennings_: Yes; but this is Christmas eve!

_Raidler_: And you agreed to bring the makings! Why, you grasping old note-shaver, you skinny old white bond-worm—

_Jennings_: This is not Christmas at all, this is a swindle, a hold-up, a crime! I’ll denounce you to the main finger!

_Judge_: You know the danger, suh, if you get drunk in this place—

_Raidler_: Drunk? Hell and blazes, what do you mean, drunk on one glass of punch?

_Jennings_: How would you know when I’m drunk?

_Porter_: The Colonel has certain standards of his own, Judge. If he were drunk, the air of this room would be full of fluttering white pigeons, emerging from those pigeon-holes now apparently full of mail; every postage-stamp would become a shining red or green eye, according to the denomination, winking cross-eyed if the stamp were canceled; a pink classic nymph would emerge from yon doorway and dance upon the table, treading lightly between the dishes; the tops of the shelves would be traversed by a company of beribboned cats, marching in stupendous aerial procession. A few things like that, and the Colonel would know that Christmas had come to stay.

_Delacour_ (_getting to his feet_): Mr. Porter, Ah would sho’ly like to see those phenomena. Ah will see what Ah can do.

_Raidler_: Hurrah for the fat boy!

_Jennings_: Does your prison bootlegger work nights?

_Delacour_: Ah’ll see about it. There are ways, and ways. (_exit right_)

_Raidler_: There’s graft for you! His money can get anything, any time.

_Judge_: You’ll manage to forgive his liquor, suh!

_Raidler_: Oh, I’ll drink liquor any time I can get it; but all the same, it’s a rotten graft. They’d put me in the hole if they knew I was taking the stamps to mail out Bill’s stories to the magazines, but the men that run this prison will let the big contractors steal tens of thousands of dollars, and take their share of the rake-off. Oh, yes, this is the sweet land of liberty—for the money-squeezers that live in Bankers’ Row—

_Judge_: Mr. Raidler has mounted his soap-box again!

_Porter_: Gentlemen, gentlemen; you are mixing your occasions. This is not an election campaign, nor yet the grand and glorious Fourth of July. Colonel, do you remember Hop-along Bibb, that charming person we met in San Salvador, and how he mixed his celebrations when he got liquor on board?

_Jennings_: Tell the story, and cheer them up!

_Porter_: A short tale and a merry one. Hop-along Bibb was down and out, so he married himself to a snuff-brown lady who kept a rum-shop in the Calle de los Forty-seven Inconsolable Saints. When his credit was played out there, he went to work on a banana-plantation, along with an English tramp by the name of Liverpool Sam. If you’ve never been in a banana grove, gentlemen, it will be hard to imagine what that means. The place is as solemn as a Rathskeller at seven a. m. You can’t see the sky for the foliage about you, and the ground is knee deep in rotting leaves. Hop-along and Liverpool slept in a grass hut, along with red, yellow, and black employes, and there they’d lie all night fighting mosquitoes and listening to the monkeys squalling and the alligators grunting and splashing in the lagoon. After they had been there a few months they had lost all sense of the fugiting of tempus—there was nothing to tell them about the seasons, so when they came back to town, and found the American consulate all decorated with flowers and flags, they weren’t sure what it meant. A preacher man took pity on their penniless estate, and gave Hop-along two dollars and told him to celebrate the day; so they bought a quart of rum, and got drunk under a cocoanut tree, and then Hop-along decided to celebrate proper and patriotic, so he jumped onto Liverpool and licked him to a frazzle and then dragged the remains back to the preacher. “Look at this, sir,” says he—“look at this thing that was once a proud Britisher. You gave us two dollars and told us to celebrate the day. The star-spangled banner still waves! Hurrah for the stars and eagles!” To which the preacher answers: “Dear me! Fighting on this day of days! On Christmas day, when peace on earth—” “Christmas day?” says Hop-along. “Hell, man! I thought it was the Fourth of July!”

(_a burst of laughter; they pound on the table_)

_Joe_: Haw, haw, haw! (_then, discovering that he has attracted attention to himself, he shrinks back abashed_)

_Jennings_: Bill, ’tis a sad thing to contemplate what drink will do to the mind of a man.

_Porter_: Take my advice, Colonel; steer clear of it.

_Raidler_: I say, let Bill write that story and earn the makings for next Christmas!

_Jennings_: I wish that fat old financial parasite would come with the makings for this one.

_Raidler_: If he don’t hurry, I’ll forget what I’ve already had.

_Jennings_ (_the door opens and Valentine enters, left_): Jimmie Valentine!

_Valentine_ (_feeble, barely able to stagger, grey in color, with face drawn_): Hello—boys.

_Jennings_ (_springs to help him_): What’s the matter? (_Joe also helps, and they lead Valentine to Jennings’ seat_)

_Valentine_ (_speaks with difficulty_): Nothin’, boys—nothin’ special. Just thought—like to be with friends. Buck me up.

_Joe_ (_in voice of grief_): Po Jimmie Valentine!

_Raidler_: Something’s gone wrong!

_Valentine_: I let ’em take me to the dinin’ room; thought—cheer me up—Christmas carols—singin’—Jesus Christ (_the corners of his mouth drawn down, his voice becomes a snarl of fury_) Little Jesus—meek an’ mild—angels singin’—heavenly child. Hell and damnation! (_they divine something serious, and gradually an idea dawns upon them; they stare in horror_)

_Jennings_: My God, Jimmie!

_Porter_: What have they done?

_Raidler_: Speak up, man!

_Valentine_: Brought me the news—Christmas present—love and mercy.

_Jennings_: You don’t mean it?

_Valentine_: Yeah—guv’ner turned me down. No pardon—too dangerous.

_Raidler_: Who told you that?

_Valentine_: It’s in the papers. Somebody yelled it in the dinin’ room—broke up their Christmas carols. Men howlin’ like devils.

_Raidler_: Now ain’t that a horror?

_Jennings_: God damn the crooks that run this state!

_Joe_: Oh, po Jimmie Valentine!

_Valentine_: Take it easy, boys—I expected it.

_Raidler_ (_strikes his fist on the table_): They kept the news for today!

_Jennings_ (_shaking his clenched hands in the air_): And you can’t do a damned thing! You’ve got to take it!

_Valentine_: Forget it, forget it.

_Porter_ (_rises suddenly, pale with anger_): This is the end for me! I’ll stand no more! (_starts toward the door_)

_Jennings_ (_in alarm_): What do you mean, Bill?

_Porter_: I mean I’m going to have it out with the warden.

_Jennings_: What can you do?

_Porter_: At least I can tell him what I think of him and his prison.

_Valentine_: No, no! (_general confusion of protest_)

_Jennings_ (_leaps up and stops him by main force_): Good God, Bill, have you gone crazy?

_Porter_: I’ve watched the cruelty and the stealing and the rottenness in this place till I’ve been sick at my stomach; I’ve kept my mouth shut, I’ve looked out for myself and my own skin. But this is the limit; I’m going to speak up for Jimmie, if it’s my last act on earth.

_Valentine_: Forget it, Mr. Porter.

_Jennings_: Bill, you shan’t do it. Hold him, Joe! Wait, and listen to me!

_Joe_ (_helping Jennings_): Naw, Misteh Porteh, naw suh!

_Raidler_ (_unable to move, but reaching over the table as if to help_): Keep your shirt on, Bill!

_Valentine_: Sit down, Mr. Porter—there’s nothin’ to that.

_Jennings_: Bill, let’s take a knife off this table and cut our two throats. Will you do that with me?

_Porter_: What, Colonel?

_Jennings_: Jimmie here would care, and Raidler, and half a dozen other men in the place—all as helpless as he is, sitting here paralyzed. Tomorrow we’d be buried, and in three days we’d be forgotten, and the graft would be going right on. Bill Porter, who do you think you are? What do they care for you?

_Porter_: I care for myself, Colonel.

_Jennings_: How much? My God, man, they’d take you down to the basement, and tie you flat on your stomach, and beat you with paddles till every inch of you was one black and bloody wound. Ain’t that right, Jimmie?

_Valentine_: Sure it’s right—he knows it.

_Jennings_: They’d give you the water—stuff a hose in your mouth, and fill you till you fainted and turned black all over! Are you ready for that?

_Valentine_: Come, sit down, Mr. Porter.

_Porter_ (_weakening_): Colonel—

_Jennings_: Bill, you can’t go up against this machine—you’re not built of that kind of stuff. Wait till you get out—then tell somebody if you want to; but there’s nothing you can do now, you’ve got to swallow your grief—this time, like all the other times. Come back here, Bill, and sit down. (_leads him to his seat; the door opens, right, and Delacour enters with a quart bottle in his hand_) Ah! Our banker friend arrives—just in the nick of time! Here, Bill, this is the remedy—an old remedy, tried and true, for the troubles a man can’t endure.

_Valentine_: Sure—give him a drink.

_Jennings_ (_takes the bottle from the Judge_): What’s this label say? “Spiritus frumenti.” A nice, pious medical label! Down in Latin-America, you remember, they call it “Espiritu de la Vina.” There too they sometimes have troubles more than mortal flesh can stand; and they know Dr. Barleycorn’s old-established remedy. (_he pours a glass full_) Drink, Bill, take it quick, take it raw, and slide into oblivion. When you come out again, things will be duller, your grief won’t weigh so heavy, you’ll have a headache and a fuzzy tongue and a few other things to think about. (_presses the glass upon him_) Down with it! For Jimmie and me, if not for yourself, Bill! (_as Porter drinks_) There, that’s better! That’s the philosopher! (_as Porter drains the glass and sinks back into his chair, Jennings pours the rest of the bottle into the other five glasses_) Here, gentlemen, we won’t wait for Creole style, we’ll take it a la Texas. (_sings_)

Like every regular fellow I takes my whiskey clear For I’m a rambling rake o’ poverty and a son of a gambolier!

_Joe_: Jes a drap fo de niggeh, boss. (_he gets a share, and they all lift their glasses, sing the chorus, and drink_)

_Valentine_ (_lifts his half-empty glass_): Here’s to my next hemorrhage—may she come quick!

_Jennings_: A happier world for Jimmie!

_Raidler_: Where they’ll give him his pardon!

_All_ (_in a flat and feeble tone_): Hurrah! Hurrah! (_Porter sinks his head into his arms on the table, in which position he remains during the following scene. Joe brings chair for Jennings, who sits down, singing and orating; the other members of the party cheer and pound upon the table, and the lights begin to wink and stagger, alternately red and white; red searchlights play here and there, producing a drunken effect_)

_Jennings_ (_sings_):

In the sweet bye and bye We shall meet on that beautiful shore

_All_:

We shall sing on that beautiful shore The melodious songs of the blest, And our spirits shall sorrow no more, Not a sigh for the blessing of rest. In the sweet bye and bye, We shall meet on that beautiful shore, In the sweet bye and bye, We shall meet on that beautiful shore.

_Jennings_: Fellow members of the Recluse Club, the shore which I select for our meeting is one you come to as you sail south from Galveston, fleeing from the bloodhounds of the law. Our great master of literature, Bill Porter, has described it in one of his immortal compositions, which I have this day been privileged to read. (_takes manuscript from pocket and reads_) “A clump of banana plants interposed their broad shields between him and the sun. The gentle slope from the consulate to the sea was covered with the dark-green foliage of lemon-trees and orange-trees just bursting into bloom. A lagoon pierced the land like a dark, jagged crystal, and above it a pale ceiba-tree rose almost to the clouds. The waving cocoanut palms on the beach flared their decorative green leaves against the slate of an almost quiescent sea. His senses were cognizant of brilliant scarlet and ochres amid the vert of the coppice, of odors of fruit and bloom and the smoke from Chanca’s clay oven under the calabash-tree; of the treble laughter of the native women in their huts, the song of the robin, the salt taste of the breeze, the diminuendo of the faint surf running along the shore.”

Such is the coast of Honduras after you have had a sufficient inoculation of the native aguardiente; otherwise it seems as I have jotted down on the margin of this manuscript: “Take a lot of Filipino huts and a couple of hundred brick-kilns and arrange ’em in squares in a cemetery. Cart down all the conservatory plants in the Astor and Vanderbilt greenhouses, and stick ’em about wherever there’s room. Turn all the Bellevue patients and the barbers’ convention and the Tuskegee school loose in the streets, and run the thermometer up to 120 in the shade. Set a fringe of the Rocky Mountains around the rear, let it rain, and set the whole business on Rockaway Beach in the middle of January.”

Fellow members of the Recluse Club, the day that Bill Porter and I first met on that beautiful shore, I was a wonderful object for the eye to behold. I had been attending a dinner-dance in the best society of Galveston, when I got the tip that the minions of the law had the house surrounded. I made my escape by a stratagem, and got aboard a steamer in the Gulf of Mexico, clad in a silk hat and dress-suit; in which costume I sailed for two weeks, battered in storms, and losing one tail off my coat. So I was dumped out in the little town of Trojillo, where I first saw our genial master of letters, seated in front of the consulate, clad in spotless white. Recognizing our common condition of fugitivity, we pooled our fates; I had thirty thousand dollars sewed up in my belt which I had got with the help of two sticks of dynamite, from the Wells-Fargo express car on a Santa Fe train. Together we went to worship at the shrine of the reigning divinity of Central America, a lady called Espiritu de la Vina, to whom they chant hymns by day and especially by night—(_he sings_)

A beber, a beber, a apurar Las Copas de licor Que el vino hara olvidar Las penas del amor.

(_Espiritu de la Vina enters, dancing and singing; Jennings joins in dance with her_)

De este sabroso jugo, la blanca espuma Aleja de las penas la negra bruma, Si dios hubiera hecho De vino el mar, de vino el mar, Yo me volviera pato, para nadar, para nadar:— Esta es la vida, bebamos mas, Esta es la vida, bebamos mas.