3

ROLLING STONES

By that, I don't mean that he was offish, because he looked very pleasant. He had a sort of a way about him that seemed to mean that he expected people to be a little respectful—which was queer in a tramp. He didn't make his own cigarettes, either, but took a smoke out of a silver-looking case. He snapped his match into the water, and, while he was watching it sizzle, he asked: “Do you smoke?”

“Everybody does at the swimming pool,” I answered.

“Come ashore and have one, then,” he invited. “My name's Lefty.”

I swam in and started up toward him, but the white bull terrier stood in front of me with a growl that meant business. I didn't want to ask no questions; I just dived backward, and, as my toes went up in the air, I could feel how close his teeth snapped at them.

“Your dog doesn't like me,” I told him.

“He is only a little nervous about having people come up to me without asking leave,” answered Lefty. “Sit down, Smiler.”

Smiler sat down and grinned at his boss, but he kept the fishy corner of one eye pegged down on me all the time.

“You can come out now,” Lefty said. “He won't bother you. This young fellow is a friend of mine, Smiler,” he said to the dog.

Coming ashore beside that dog was a good deal like picking red-hot coals out of the fire. When there is a growed-up man around, you got to act sort of easy and natural, no matter how you might be feeling. My legs felt terrible naked when I stepped past Smiler's nose to get one of Lefty's cigarettes.

I sat down on the edge of the sun and the shadow, so's I could dry off without getting chilly. Lefty said: “You live with the lady that loves music, I guess?”

“I guess I do,” I answered.

“Do you like music, too?” he asked.

“Her kind of everything I hate,” was my reply.

His eyes slid over toward me gradual, then flickered up and down me quick and powerful, like the headlights of an automobile.

“She is a hatchet-faced old cow, isn't she?” he said.

It is sort of comfortable to be asked opinions by a growed-up man. I told him that what she looked like was nothing compared to what she was inside.

“She is a maiden aunt, I suppose,” said Lefty.

“She is all of that, and then something!”

Lefty gave me a grin that froze sort of halfway on his face. He looked all at once as though he seen something my way that scared him. I looked beyond me with a sort of sick feeling that maybe Aunt Claudia might be sneaking up behind. There was nothing in sight. Then he asked: “Were you doing that singing in her house?”

“Me? Oh, yes,” I replied.

“Could you,” asked Lefty, “sing ‘Ben Bolt’?”

When I told him I could, he picked up his violin and played it. I sang it through which is easy because no hard notes was put in it. That was why Aunt Claudia never bothered me none to sing it, because she mostly liked me to try things where I had to squawk for a while up near the top of my throat. And that violin had a way of coming right in on the note with you and boosting you along, or else, where you were sailing along in the nicest, saddest parts, the violin would be saying things quite different, but very harmonious, if you know what I mean. Half the time I was almost forgetting what I was singing, I was listening so hard to the funny tricks that he was doing.

When I got through, he said: “You need a lot of training. Who has been teaching you?”

“The minister,” I answered.

“I thought so. The fool has been forcing you on the high notes. Don't force yourself, kid. If I never see you again, just remember that. It doesn't sound well, and it will ruin your voice sooner or later.”

He got out a knife, then, and began to whittle a twig. I watched him at first because it was such a fine knife with an ivory handle onto it; in a minute I was watching because of the things that he was doing with the blade. He slit the bark off that twig, and he began to gouge into it as though it was dough or clay. First thing you know he had shaped out the hull of a boat, long and low and racy-looking. He drilled out a couple of holes in the deck, stuck in two twigs for masts, and fetched a big leaf for one of the masts. Then he put it in the water.

It was no bigger than a handful, altogether, but it was mighty graceful on that smooth water. When I blew at it, it slid along with its image beside it very slick, and went clean out into the center of the pool, washing a tiny little ripple on each side of it.

Lefty and I smiled. It was so pretty and so small that it would have been spoiled if you had laughed out loud. I said that I would go in and fetch it out again, but Lefty said: “Never do any work that a dog can do for you. Go bring it to me, Smiler!”

That white dog got up, walked down to the water, dived in, and took the boat in his mouth.

“Careful!” said Lefty.

It was funny to see that dog wag his tail in the water to show that he understood. He shifted his grip on the boat, took hold of the end of it, and came swimming in with it, wagging his tail as if to call attention to what an extra good dog he was. When he got to the bank, the leaf that was the sail fell out of the boat. I stooped to pick it up, but he stopped me with a terrible growl. I never seen a dog that could say so little and yet mean so much when he twitched back the corners of his lips.

Lefty took the boat from him, and, while Smiler stood by wagging his tail, admiring his boss, and cussing me out of the corner of his eye, Lefty told me to come up.

He took Smiler right by the muzzle and held him so hard it hurt.

“Now sock him good and hard!” said Lefty. “Double up your fist and hit him as hard as you can!”

I doubled up my fist and got ready to hit him. He knew what was coming. And he didn't budge, just looked up to me very quiet. I dropped my fist and told Lefty that I couldn't sock the dog. It was too much like hitting another boy that was being held for you.

“All right,” said Lefty. “That was the way I taught him to follow me…by licking him. I used to have an old brown dog along with me with just about as many tricks as Smiler, here. One day Smiler came out and gave my brown dog a grab and a shake. That was the end of him. I managed to catch Smiler…which wasn't much trouble, because in those days he didn't know how to run away. He made quite a fight of it for a while, and then I beat him to a pulp. I didn't think he could walk. When I got about a mile away from that town, I looked back and there was that white pup trailing along behind me. He's kept on trailing for six whole months and never backed up from anything all that time.”

It was interesting to hear about the dog, of course. It was more interesting to see by this that Lefty was a regular tramp. He had had another dog before this one to beg for him, and he was still keeping at it.

Most of the tramps that I had seen were ragged and didn't use a razor more than once a week. Lefty could have stepped right in the way he was behind a counter in a gents' furnishing store, or any place like that where a man has to dress up real fine. Why, I wondered, did he want to be a tramp?

“But,” Lefty continued, “if you don't want to be the boss, I'm not going to make you. Only, that Smiler will walk right over you until you show him that you're the master.”

I asked what difference that would make, when I would probably never see the dog after today. Lefty looked straight at me for a long time. Before he answered, he blew out a little puff of smoke and punched a hole in it. Then he said: “Because I've taken pity on you, kid. And you're going along with me.”

It took the breath out of me. I had heard, now and then, about tramps running away with boys. I edged away from him a little and looked at the top of Gunther's Hill and wondered if I could run to the top of it before Lefty could catch me.

He didn't seem to notice. He had half closed his eyes, the way that a man does when he is seeing something almost too good to be true.

“When I was about your age,” said Lefty, “I had a voice, though it wasn't a patch on yours. It was good enough to cart me all over the world. I've gone where I liked, and, when I ran out of money, I used to just take off my hat in the street and sing. Well, the windows would fly open, and the money drop like rain. It didn't matter where. Marks, francs, Mexican dollars…music is a language that the whole world understands, and I've had my share of the fun. Same as I'm going to show you how to have your share of it! Yes, I've made up my mind. You're a pretty good kid. There's no reason in the world why that old goat of a minister should make capital out of you, or the hatchet-faced dame give you a whacking when you get home.”

When I saw that he didn't mean to take me by force, it made me look at the idea again. Of course, you can see for yourself that I wasn't having such a lot of fun at home there with Aunt Claudia.

“But I would have to go back and get clothes,” I said.

“No, you're fixed the way you are…if you want to come. Of course, it would be a lot of trouble sneaking you out of the county and a lot of danger to me. But I've taken a liking to you. I don't know why. If you say the word, I'll take you along with me.”