In Pawn — A Closer Reading

ng Harvey would not let Lem do. He would not let him drive the horse. He told Lem it was not safe, but a kitten could have driven the old gray wreck. Harvey liked to drive the horse. It was a gentle occupation, suitable for a contemplative mind. It gave him an excuse to sound authoritative. He could shout at the horse if it flicked its tail at a fly, “dod-baste” at it if the tail went over a rein:

“Dod-baste you, you brute! Lem, git down an' lift that line from under that hoss's tail,” he would command.

In the few years since Lem's mother had died Harvey had been in half a dozen businesses, all centering around the horse and the small house on the ample vacant lot on Elm Street. He had tried the retail ice business, the milk business, a carter's trade, a vegetable market, a small grocery business, and, finally, the junk business. He had a perfectly good excuse for failure in each--unfair, dod-basted, ruinous, cut-throat competition--and now this same Nemesis was attacking his junk business. The Russian Jews had come to Riverbank--especially Moses Shuder.

At the time when a great pogrom and persecution was taking place in Russia tender-hearted Riverbank had raised a fund to pay the passage of some of the Russian Jews from Poland to Riverbank. Eight came, with their families. Riverbank looked at them, said they were perfectly awful creatures, and kept as far from them as possible, and the Russian Jews began picking up old bottles, empty tin cans, bits of rags, and pieces of paper. They found wealth--meager wealth at first--beside the fences, in the roads, in vacant lots, where no American would have bothered to look for it.

Presently Moses Shuder was buying the scrap iron and old bottles that his fellows picked up. He hired a vacant lot and built him a rough shed, and from a despised, ignored alien became “competition” and the rival junkman of Riverbank. He bought an old bone-bag of a horse, bought other horses, bought the lot he had rented, bought a small cottage. Poorly clad, meek, shrewd, silent when abused and voluble when bargaining, Moses became a fixture and a feature. He lent money to Russian Jews who came from the old country and sent them out with peddlers' packs of tinware, cheap dry-goods, and profitable small notions. Before he had been in Riverbank many years Mrs. Shuder began wearing a hat and talk-ing of the time when Our People would erect a synagogue.

Before Moses Shuder and his fellows had been in Riverbank long, Harvey began to feel pessimistic about the junk business.

“Dod-basted fleas, hoppin' around everywhere all the time,” he said. “Live on a crust of bread an' half a drink of water. Don't know how to live like human folks. If this kind o' thing keeps on I want to get out o' the junk business, that's what!”

The trouble with Harvey was not that Moses Shuder was in the junk business, but that Harvey was not and never had been. The bitter truth about Harvey is that he had never been in any business. He had merely let one or another business frame his copious leisure; his businesses were no more than excuses for being lazy. They camouflaged what otherwise would have been disgraceful sloth.

Harvey had been a farmhand until he married the farmer's daughter. Then he had teased her to sell the farm and they had come to town. Half the price of the farm went the first year, part of it to purchase the lot and shack on Elm Street and the rest to make good the loss incurred by Harvey's mode of doing business. Then his wife put her foot down. She went to a lawyer and had the remaining money tied up in such a manner that Harvey could not touch it, and from thereafter all he ever had was the twenty-five dollars a month his wife allotted to him from the income. While she lived he received that twenty-five dollars a month and after she died he continued to receive it. She had been a weary, weak creature, but he had never been able to change her resolution in this one matter. The money was for Lem.

When the vegetable market dried up and blew away with the last of Harvey's capital, Lem's mother had been dead several years and Harvey turned to his sister. He went up the hill to where she conducted a boarding-house and explained to her the great opportunity that awaited the man who started a grocery on Elm Street at that particular moment. In the end he came away with the money.

“I ain't askin' you to give me it with nothin' to show for it, Sue,” he told her. “I would n't ask that. I would n't take it if you offered it to me that way. I aim to give you my note for it, my regular signed note, drawin' seven per cent interest, until paid. A man might go back on his word, but a note is a note. It's got to be paid as an' when specified.”

So Sue Redding had the note and Harvey had her money, and for a while he enjoyed sitting behind a counter telling Lem to hand out canned corn and bluing and to weigh out sugar. When Lem was at school Harvey found it more comfortable to sit in the rocker and tell the children who came to buy that he guessed he was out of whatever it was they asked for, and when he had no more money with which to replenish his stock he sold what remained of the grocery and took up the junk business.

The junk business had the advantage of being a slow, sedentary business. When one wished one could sit and smoke; when the weather was favorable one could tell Lem to harness the horse and then take a slow, comfortable drive through bough-shaded streets, nobly heralded by clanking cowbells. There was no money to be made in the junk business as Harvey conducted it, but there could not be much loss. And always, regularly, the twenty-five dollars allowance came to him on the first of the month. It was ideal. Even Moses Shuder, despite Harvey's complaints, was a blessing. He was an excuse for the lack of profit in the junk business and he was something to talk of and grow angry about. Harvey seemed to be, at last, in an ideal business, and one in which he could remain forever. And then the old horse died.

When Lem, sent to feed the horse, came back from the shack at the far end of the lot and reported that the old horse was dead, Harvey “dod-basted” his luck heartily.

“Well,” he drawled a moment later, “if he's dead he's dead, an' it ain't no fault of mine. You go downtown, Lem, an' see who you can git to haul him away for about two dollars.”

The boy hurried away. Harvey puffed at his pipe and looked out of the gate of the junkyard at the street. It was late June. Now and then he slapped the bald spot on his head vigorously. He was giving things more thought than he had given anything in years. His affairs had reached a crisis. He could not be a junkman without a horse and he had no money with which to buy another horse. He owed Sue five hundred dollars and, the way she had been pressing him for payments recently, he knew she was not likely to lend him more. She was pestering him unmercifully for what he already owed her.

With his twenty-five dollars a month he could get along well enough, with no business to demand part of it, but he saw no comfort in life if Sue was to be continually drumming at him and nagging him for the repayment of the money. Except for Sue he could give up the pretense of being in business and take life comfortable, but Sue had only left him in semi-peace because he appeared to be doing business. When she learned that he was not even attempting to make money, she would be too annoying for comfort. Harvey sighed heavily and took up his book. It was the “Lives of the Saints.”

When Lem returned with a negro and a team of horses, Harvey put his hand in his trousers' pocket and gave the negro two dollars and went on reading. A few minutes later he looked up from his book, for the negro's team had stopped with their noses at his shoulder.

“Say, what you haulin' that carcass out this way for?” Harvey demanded. “Whyn't you take it out the back way?”

“'Cause, boss, de gate ain't wide 'nuff. Got to go out dis yere way.”

“Well, dod-baste it! I guess I got to move,” said Harvey, and he got out of his rocker, groaned and moved it three feet to the left, and lost himself in the “Lives of the Saints” again.

Riverbank in June is beautiful. Climbing the hills above the Mississippi the streets are arches of elms and maples, the grass richly green, and the shrubs are in blossom.

Up one of these rather steep hill streets, the last day of June, Harvey Redding climbed, with Lem now at his side and now falling behind to investigate something that caught his attention. Harvey was hot. He had put on a coat and the sun was warm and the climb stiff for a fat man. He stopped once in a while to take off his hat and wipe his face. When he did he called to Lem with unwonted gentleness.

“Lem, you come here! Don't be strayin' around all over the neighborhood!”

To these mild commands Lem paid no attention whatever.

Occasionally, but not often, some one passed them, going up or down the hill. To some of these Harvey spoke, stopping for long conversations about the weather or similar exciting subjects. Those he did not know went by without speaking. Now and then a boy went by and Lem straightened up and looked at him.

The peculiar thing was that although Harvey was on his way to see his creditor sister his fat, puffy face was strangely placid. Now and then, when he paused for breath he folded his plump hands across his plump belly; when he spoke to a foot passenger it was slowly, with carefully chosen words and in a gentle voice. He was almost meek.

There was something else peculiar about Harvey this day. He was not smoking his old black pipe. You might have said that he knew Susan would give him Hail Columbia, and that he had prepared for it by assuming in advance an attitude of perfect non-resistance, but this was not the secret of his strangely gentle demeanor.

It was rather late in the afternoon, the warmest time of day. Beyond the neatly painted fences and the trimmed lawns the porches of some of the houses were brightened by the white dresses of ladies. In some of the yards the ladies, and now and then a young fellow, were playing croquet, the balls clicking together with a pleasant sound of well-seasoned wood. Lem put his face to the fences and stared in at these games while Harvey puffed on ahead.

At Sue Redding's gate Harvey paused to wipe his face. The place was large, one hundred and twenty feet of white picket fence along the walk, with a terrace of six feet or more rising steeply inside the fence, so that only at the gate and beyond it could a man see those who sat on the wide porch. Harvey looked at the porch anxiously, but even at that distance--the big, white house was set far back--he could see that Sue was not on the porch, and he was relieved.

“Come here, Lem, dod--I mean, come here, Lem,” he ordered. “Lemme look at your face. Don't seem to do no good to wash your face at all. Well--”

He opened the gate and climbed the steps to the walk that led between two rows of pine trees to the porch.

Two young women, white-clad, were sitting on the step of the porch. One was one of Miss Redding's boarders; the other from a house across the way.

“Miss Redding?” said the boarder, whom

Harvey did not remember to have seen before. “She's in the kitchen, I think. I'll call her--”

“Nemmine,” said Harvey. “Me an' Lem'll go right through. I'm her brother,” he added in explanation. He opened the screen door and passed into the cool, deep hall. Lem followed him.

Sue Redding was making cookies, cutting them out of the flattened dough with a fluted dough-cutter. She was a large woman, almost as heavy as Harvey himself, but remarkably quick in every movement for one so heavy. She turned when Harvey entered, but she did not seem particularly pleased to see him.

“Hello, Lem,” she said, greeting the boy first. “What you want now, Harvey? I don't suppose you've come to pay that note, it ain't likely.”

Harvey seated himself ponderously on one of the kitchen chairs.

“I come to tell you, Sue, that I've given up business,” he said gently, as one not wishing to arouse anger.

The effect was magical. Miss Redding turned on him, her face flushing, her eyes gleaming.

“You come here and dare tell me that, in my own kitchen?” she burst forth. “You don't dare give up business! What did you tell me when I let you go out of the grocery business and into the junk business, Harvey Redding? Did n't you say, 'If you let that note stand, I 'll keep in business until I get it paid up if it takes all my born days!' All right! I suppose you're here to pay up that note, then?”

“A nice right you have to come and say you are going to quit business! Of all the good-for-nothing--”

“The hoss died on me,” said Harvey. “What's that to me?” asked Susan. “I never heard that Moses Shuder ever stopped junking because he did n't have a horse. I never heard that I gave up keeping boarding-house because my cooks packed off without a fare-you-well. Horse, indeed! Harvey Redding, you promised me, when I pushed you for payment when you gave up the grocery business--”

“I know, Susan, I know!”

“And _I_ know!” she declared. “I know what likelihood I've got to get my money back if you give up the only chance you've got to earn money.”

“Of course, I'm mighty sorry,” Harvey began.

“What do I care for your sorry?” she snapped. “I don't want your sorry; I want my money.”

“Well, I ain't got it, Susan,” Harvey said. “I ain't got nothin'. I ain't no good at business. I ain't cut out for it, an' that's a fact. But I got somethin' else in mind.”

“I got an idee,” said Harvey, refusing to be angered, “that if I don't have a business to pull me down all the time, I can save money out of what I get every month an' pay you back that way. I might save ten dollars a month to pay you back, or fifteen, maybe. It's so dod--it's so expensive runnin' a business I just can't save nothin'. With this here Moses Shuder into it, an' hosses dyin' on me, an' everything--”

Miss Redding turned back to her cookies to show that she considered them far more important than anything Harvey might say.

“I dare say!” she said sarcastically.

“So that's what I come up here to offer you,

Susan,” Harvey said. “I 'll save an' pay. You can count on it.”

“I can't do more than give you my word.”

“You gave me your note, I remember. I guess your word ain't no better. You gave me your word you'd stay in business, as near as I can recall. I don't take much stock in your word.”

Harvey was worried now.

“Susan,” he said, “I don't like you should take this here attitude. I'll say to you I've turned over a new leaf. I 'll say to you I've got my bear-in's at last. I know what I was born to be. Business is no good for me. I know what I was intended for now, but if you're goin' to harass me day by day about that money--”

“You bet I'm going to harass you!” said Susan unfeelingly. “If I don't I won't get back a cent, let alone interest. I'll harass! Make sure of that.”

“If there was any security I could give,” said Harvey.

“With your lot all mortgaged up? A nice lot of security you could give!” She turned to him again. “I know you, Harvey. There ain't a bit of anything in you but laziness. Not a mite. You'll promise whatever comes into your head and the next minute you 'll go right back on your word and oath and written note.”

“Susan, I'll pay you back regular, every month, out of my twenty-five dollars, every cent I can scrape off--”

“I don't believe it!”

Harvey looked around helplessly.

“If I had any security to give you,” he said; and then his eye fell on Lem, standing by the window, looking out at the chickens in the back yard. “I 'll tell you what I 'll do Susan,” he said. “I 'll leave Lem with you. I 'll leave him with you until I get that note paid up in full. He can do chores an' help you out one way an' another. I 'll leave Lem with you until I get you paid up.” The boy at the window turned and looked from his father to his Aunt Susan. Young though he was he felt as if the solid earth had fallen from beneath his feet. He had a sickening feeling that no one wanted him or cared for him.

“He's like to be mine forever, then,” said Susan grimly. “But I'll take him, although, goodness knows, he'll be more of a care than a help. It just shows how worthless you are, Harvey Redding, offering to pawn your only son like he was a piece of junk. You wait until I call Miss Percy. I want a witness, I do!”

“Now, wait!” said Harvey; but she was gone. When she returned she brought the boarder Harvey had seen on the porch.

“Now say it,” Miss Susan commanded.

“All I said was I would leave Lemuel--that's my boy yonder, Miss--to Susan here, to keep until I got a sort of note I owe her paid up.”

“Note and interest,” said Susan.

“Note an' interest,” agreed Harvey.

“That you would leave Lemuel with me, like he was my own, with no fussing or interfering from you, Harvey. That's the understanding. Like he was my own son. Until that note and interest is paid up.”

“Only you ain't to harass me,” stipulated Harvey. “I'm to be left alone. I ain't to be everlastin'ly nagged.”

“That's part of it,” agreed Miss Redding grimly, “if you pay on that note regularly.”

The smile that had beautified Lorna Percy's face when she entered the kitchen was gone now. She looked at the boy by the window. Harvey did not dare look at him, nor did Miss Susan. There was something monstrous in thus putting the child in pawn.

“Well, then?” said Harvey, rising heavily from his chair.

Lem looked at him, his eyes filling with tears. “Am I goin' to stay here?” he asked for-sakenly.

“Oh! you'll love it here,” cried Lorna, going to him suddenly and kneeling before him and putting an arm around him. “Such cookies! Such a yard to play in!”

“Yes, I guess you'll stay here awhile, Lem,” Harvey said slowly. “You'll be a good boy for your aunt, won't you? You won't cut up any ruckus? You be a good boy, Lem, an' I dare say I 'll get you again before long.”

Lorna looked up at Miss Susan. There were tears in the girl's eyes, too.

“May n't I take him out on the porch until the cookies are baked, Miss Susan?” she pleaded.

“Do so,” said Miss Redding grimly. “I want a couple of words with my brother.”

“Well, good-bye, Lem,” Harvey said hesitantly.

“Good-bye,” the boy answered, and Miss Percy took his hand and led him away.

Miss Susan finished cutting her cookies, placed them in the pan, pushed the pan in the oven, and slammed the oven door before she turned to Harvey.