Sudden Jim — Reading Notes

No; not unless you took the mill.” The old man chuckled.

Jim snorted. “Pretty sure how I’d decide, weren’t you?”

“Well, seein’ as you’re my son—and your ma’s—I wasn’t more ’n a mite worried. I figgered you was sound timber, but there was always the chance that sap rot had got at you. That envelope there was the stock certificates, all indorsed over to you, inside of it. Take ’em. You’re the proprietor of the Ashe Clothespin Company now. I’m through with it. Fifty years of work to earn a couple of years of play for ma and me. When we’re gone write us often. We’ll need to hear from you. But don’t you dast to mention clothespins to me—either good or bad about ’em. I’m through. Through for good and all—and it’s up to you.”

“Done.” said young James.

Young Jim Ashe rode from five o’clock in the morning until two in the afternoon on a train that carried him through a stretch of the State of Michigan that not even a local poet had ventured to call lovely. It was flat as an exhausted purse—indeed, it was an exhausted purse, for its wealth in straight, clean pine had long since poured from it, down its rivers to mills where it had been minted into money. With this money a second generation that did not know a wanigan from a cook-shanty, cork pine from Norway, nor the difference between the Doyle and Scribner scales, was getting its names in the Sunday papers and illustrated magazines as bold and hardy owners of imported Chow dogs.

At the end of nine hours of travel through the sort of scenery that would make the decorations of a modern New York hotel a restful diversion, Jim thought even a game of coon can with a traveling-man which, as everybody knows, is the world’s most futile method of passing time—would be a boon from heaven. But there was neither drummer nor cards. He was not the sort of person who could sit and think, and when tired of that omit the thinking and just sit. So he brooded. Long before he reached Diversity he was terribly sorry for himself, which, after all, is a species of mild pleasure enjoyed by many. One conclusion he did reach—namely, that Diversity must be the ultimate fag-end of desolation trimmed with a fringe of black despair. When the train stopped at Diversity’s depot he looked out and felt that conclusion to be sound.

The first thing he saw was heat. He could see it rising in little wiggling waves from the blackened sand; he could see it at work raising more blisters on the paint of the station; he could see it struggling in vain to reduce the weight of the baggage-master, who was also telegraph-operator, station-agent, porter, and information bureau. The next thing he saw was a jumble of form and color that would have made immortal a cubist who could have caught it and labeled it “A Hole Raveled in Civilization’s Heel.” But if the cubist had caught it he probably would have called it “Gentleman in Union Suit Climbing a Telegraph Pole,” and so passed Fame by on the other side.

The station reminded him for all the world of a flabby, disreputable redbird, squatting in the midst of an hilariously ragamuffin brood which sat back on its tails and derided her scurrilously. The progeny consisted of coal-sheds, warehouses, nondescript buildings where nothing was or apparently ever had been done, a feed-mill and a water-tank. All of them seemed to detest the perpendicular; most of them leered through doors squeezed to the shape of a clumsy diamond. Fire, thought Jim, would bring a merciful release to the whole of them.

He alighted with all the pleasant anticipation of a Christian martyr about to dip into a caldron of boiling oil. No one was there to meet him, for no one knew he was coming. He didn’t know where to go and didn’t much care. All directions seemed equally unpromising. However, before plunging into the unknown he stopped in the shade of the building, mopped his forehead, and took an observation.

Standing with the sun beating down upon her was a young woman who looked at the departing train with an expression like one Jim had seen on a girl’s face as she stood in the bread-line. It spoke hunger. In spite of his own discomfort Jim was interested, and there can be no doubt he stared. He stared long enough to observe that the young woman was dark, with a heap of curling hair so black that even the old, hard-working simile of the raven’s wing was not of the slightest use to him. She was small, but had one of those exquisite figures which just a little startle one.

She did not impress Jim as at all pretty, but she did impress him as a young person who might find difficulty in letting somebody else have his own way.

She continued to stare hungrily after the train, but presently she turned her eyes so they met Jim’s stare. In a second she comprehended he was staring, and she flashed resentment at him. She even bit her lip with vexation. Then she turned abruptly—but very gracefully, Jim noticed—and walked across the tracks.

Jim flushed uncomfortably and looked about to see if anybody had noticed his bit of bad manners and its result. In a ramshackle buggy drawn up to the platform sat an old man with square white whiskers. Possibly “sat” is not the precise word to use, for the old man rested mainly on the back of his neck, allowing the rest of his body to clutter up the space intended only for his legs and feet. Jim picked up his bag and approached.

“Could you drive me to the hotel?” he asked.

The old man looked at Jim’s feet, at his ankles, his knees, his belt-buckle, his cravat, finally into his eyes. This took time, and the sun was hot on Jim’s head.

“I could,” said the old man, finally. Then he wiggled the lines. “Giddap, Tiffany,” he said, wholly oblivious to Jim’s presence on earth. “Giddap there. Stir yourself. G’long.”

Jim stood goggling after him, as nonplussed as if the old fellow had suddenly developed the old-fashioned dragon habit of spouting smoke and flames. Behind Jim the fat station-agent laughed twice, thus: “Heh! Heh!” which was all he could manage on account of his weight and the heat. Jim’s ears burned; he snatched up his grip and followed in the wake of the buggy.

He halted before a sign which proclaimed that here was the Diversity House. There did not seem to be a great deal of bustle connected with this establishment; as a matter of fact, there was no sign of life at all unless you count an unshaven gentleman in white woolen socks and a calico shirt, who lent the support of his back to a post on the piazza and snored feebly. Jim went in. The office was deserted. He coughed. In another month Jim knew how useless it was to seek to attract attention in that hotel by coughing, indeed by anything short of exploding dynamite on the floor. Next he tried kicking the counter. At best it was only a hollow-sounding sort of kick and got no results whatever. Jim was growing impatient, so he inserted three or four fingers in his mouth and whistled. It was a lovely, ear-splitting, sleep-piercing whistle, and Jim heard a movement on the porch.

The gentleman of the white socks peered through the window, feeling of his ear as though it had been sorely abused, and looked at Jim disapprovingly.

“Gosh all hemlock!” exclaimed the gentleman, mildly.

“Are you the proprietor?” Jim demanded.

The gentleman stared some more. “Who? Me? Ho! Don’t calc’late to be,” he said.

“If he is he hain’t let on to nobody. Seems though he might be over t’ the printin’-office playin’ cribbage.”

“What do I do? Wait till he comes back before I get a room?”

“Hain’t no objections, but mostly they go up and pick out the room they like.”

Jim sighed impatiently and placed his bag on the counter.

“Can you tell me where the new mill is being built?”

“Down the road a piece. Keep right a-goin’ and you can’t miss the dum thing.”

“Thank you,” said Jim, and started out to inspect the plant of which he had become proprietor.

Jim walked down the street, which did not run ahead in a straight line, but meandered about aimlessly as though trying for all it was worth to keep under the shade of the fine big maples which bordered it. Nobody could blame it. In fact, Jim thought it showed extraordinary intelligence for an illiterate, unpaved, country clodhopper of a road, for the shade was the pleasantest, most friendly thing he had found in Diversity.

In five minutes he rounded a bend and came upon a flat which seemed like a huge platter on which somebody was trying to fry a number of large and small buildings. Half an eye could tell the buildings were new, indeed unfinished. Heat-waves radiated from their composition roofs, and as for their corrugated-iron sides, Jim fancied their ugly red was not due so much to paint as to the fact that they were red-hot. Everywhere were men hurrying about as if it were a reasonable day and they weren’t in the least danger of sunstroke. Inside Jim could hear the clang of hammers, the rasp of saws, the multitude of sounds which denote the business of an army of workmen.

It looked very big and raw and uninviting to him. There was nothing homey about it at all. It didn’t even look interesting, and Jim stood under a tree and wished his father had chosen some other calling than the manufacture of clothespins. He mopped his head and wrinkled his nose, and grew very gloomy at the thought that down there on that unspeakable flat lay the work of his future years. His dreams had been of something very different.

He shrugged his shoulders and walked rapidly down on to his property, acting very much like a man with a tender tooth on his way to the dentist’s.

As he walked along the side of the biggest building he encountered a small Italian boy with a big pail of water.

“Son,” he said, “where’s the office? Where’s the boss?”

The big black eyes lighted; white teeth gleamed.

“You lika drink? Sure. I take you da office.”

Jim drank and followed the boy, whose bare feet seemed miraculously to take no harm from the rubbish he walked over.

“Me Pete.” he said, pointing to himself. “Me carry da drink.” Then he pointed to a small frame shack. “Dat da office,” he said.

Jim walked through the half-open door. Nobody was there. On a drafting-table were drawings and blue-prints; a roll-top desk was littered with papers and letters. Jim sat down in a revolving-chair to wait for the return of Mr. Wattrous, the engineer in charge of construction. It was very hot and stuffy, so he removed hat and coat and made himself at home.

A man with a red face, a wilted collar, and a leather document case entered presently.

“Afternoon,” he said, sinking into a chair and mopping his face. “White’s my name. Fire-proof paint. Jenkins was sick, so I came up, but I guess you and me can fix things as well as him, eh?”

Before Jim could reply the individual continued: “Now we can’t afford to pay you any fifteen per cent. commission out of our own pockets. ’Tain’t right we should. But here’s what we will do: We’ll stand seven and a half and we’ll just add seven and a half to the face of the invoices. See? You’ll get your fifteen all right and we won’t get stung for but half of it. Neat scheme and fair to all sides, eh?”

“Does sound neat,” Jim said, “but not economical.”

Mr. White laughed, as at a witticism.

“You poor engineers has got to live,” he said.

“True. Just out of curiosity, what price would you be making us if there weren’t any commissions to pay?”

“Umm, well—I guess we could figure twenty per cent. off what it’s going to cost you.”

Jim said nothing, but scratched his head. He wondered if Wattrous had added twenty per cent. to costs all the way through. If so he had not been a profitable investment.

“You’ll O. K. the invoices?”

“I guess likely I will—hereafter,” said Jim, and turned to observe a heavy-set man in corduroys and laced boots who entered with a roll of drawings in his hands. This person looked inquiringly from Jim to White.

“Make yourselves at home,” he said, ironically.

“Much obliged,” said Jim, feeling now for the first time a real interest in life. Indeed, he felt a sort of humorous interest. The situation was not without its ludicrous appeal. “Mr. Wattrous,” he said, “allow me to present Mr. White. Mr. White sells fire-proof paint.”

Wattrous scowled, seemed a bit perplexed. As for White, his jaw dropped and he stared at Jim and then at Wattrous with the expression of a man who has been violently struck in the wind.

“Yes,” said Jim, “Mr. White is generous. The way he hands out commissions would astonish you. Why, he’s going to give you fifteen per cent. just for buying paint from him.”

Wattrous thrust out his jaw. “Who the devil are you?” he said.

“Ashe,” said Jim; “James Ashe. I’m the fellow that owns this mill.”

Mr. White made an unsuccessful attempt to rise, but fell back under Wattrous’s furious glance; he tried again, more successfully, and scuttled out of the office at a speed that threatened further to wreck his already lamentably wilted collar. Jim turned sharply to Wattrous. He felt unlike himself; felt the urge of a will he had not before experienced; felt a sense of confidence; felt, indeed, a desire to do something and to do it without delay.

“You, Wattrous—of course you’re fired.” His voice hardened, became peremptory without his volition. It seemed to do so of its own accord, and Jim was conscious of mild surprise at it. “Get off the job, and get quick,” he said, “before I decide to pitch you off.”

Wattrous was of two minds. The first was to bulldoze this young man and see if he couldn’t roar his way out of his unpleasant predicament; the other was to make matters worse by the application of personal violence. He would have admired to thrash Jim. Jim read his mind and pointed to the door.

Wattrous hesitated an instant, then swung on his heel and strode away muttering.

“I hope he meets up with White,” Jim said to himself with a grin. “Nobody’ll get hurt who doesn’t deserve it.” Then he leaned back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling, reviewing the last few moments. He had made a new acquaintance—the acquaintance of Jim Ashe functioning in an emergency—and it was a surprise to him.

“Is that the kind of man I am?” he asked himself.

Well, here he was. He was on the job, in the very midst of it, a quite different beginning from what he anticipated. He had expected to merge quietly into the affairs of his new property, but he had not merged into it unless one can say that a hammer thrown through a glass window merges into it. He had expected to enter his work with repugnance; now he looked forward to his next official act with a tingle of pleasant anticipation. After all, there might be more to business than he suspected.

“What next?” he asked himself. He had, so to speak, cut off the hand that directed, the head that planned. They must be replaced, and Jim himself had not the technical knowledge to fill the lack. He went to the door and looked out; there, grinning up at him, was little Pete, pail in hand.

“Hello, Misser Boss!” said the boy.

“I take it you’ve been here right along,” said Jim, good-naturedly.

“All da time. I hear you fire Misser Wattrous. Whee!”

“I take it I have your approval.”

“Uh-huh,” said Pete, clearly not at all understanding what approval was. “I tell Italian mans. Dey laugh. You real boss. Speakaqueek—bang! Italian mans lika dat.”

“Fine. Now, Pete, who’s the next boss—who else besides Mr. Wattrous?”

“Oh, Misser Nelson. He boss. Work wit’ da hammer and saw, too.”

“Nelson, to be sure.” Nelson, Jim remembered, was the head millwright in the old plant. “Where is he, Pete?”

Pete led the way. As they neared the main building a young man not older than Jim emerged from the door. His overalls were covered with grease and sawdust, a rule protruded from a narrow pocket; quite evidently he was of the carpentering clan.

“Dat Misser Nelson,” yelled Pete.

“Oh, Nelson!” called Jim.

The young man paused and turned a handsome, sharply cut face toward Jim. It was a dependable face, a likable face, a face, if the steel-blue eyes were to be believed, which belonged to a man whose action would follow swiftly his words, or even precede them. He did not reply to Jim’s hail, but stood waiting.

“Nelson,” said Jim, “my name is Ashe. My father has gone to California and I am in charge here.”

He paused briefly, and Nelson extended his hand with a suddenly brightening smile.

“Glad to know you, Mr. Ashe.”

“I’ve just fired Wattrous. Somebody’s got to take charge in his place. Can you take hold and make this mill run?”

“Good! You’re boss. What are we paying you?”

“Four dollars a day.”

“Wages. Your salary will be thirty-five dollars a week. When can we begin to turn over?”

“Mr. Wattrous figured four weeks.”

“We’ll start to manufacture in three. Put on more men if necessary. Now let’s see where we’re at.”

Nelson showed Jim through the mill, explaining what must be done here, what was lacking there, why this machine sat so, why another machine must be driven from counter-shafting. He told him about the conveyer system, about everything, for mills and machinery were alike strange and mysterious to Jim.

“Is the general plan good?”

“Yes. But if it were my mill I would—”

“It is your mill. Make it run and make it run right. I’m going back to the office to have a look-see at the books and files.”

As he sat in the revolving-chair he felt again a wave of astonishment at himself. Was this Jim Ashe—the same Jim Ashe who got off the train at Diversity an hour ago? Most certainly it was, and yet how little that Jim Ashe knew about himself.

“I guess I’m due for a personal inventory,” he said to himself.

He was aroused from his investigations by the whistle of the hoisting-engine. It was six o’clock. He put on his coat and walked toward the road, and as he went workmen nodded and smiled to him.

“The old man’s son,” he heard as he passed.

“Nelson says he’s hell on wheels,” was another scrap of comment; but the one that pleased him most, because it was unexpected, because it would have pleased most his father, was spoken from the opposite side of the fence out of his view:

“I heard him talkin’ to Nelson. He’ll make things hum.”

“Who will?” asked another voice, apparently joining the group.

“Why, Sudden Jim—Clothespin Jimmy’s boy.”

Jim walked back to the hotel with a new buoyancy in his heart; his first half-day had been good. It had introduced him to himself—and it had won him a name.