Short Stories, - [books to read fiction .txt] 📗

Timmy was as sturdy a youngster as ever the west side turned out; he was as manly and self-reliant as the average Chicago 9-year-old. He was the cock of the walk among all his companions—the best swimmer, the best fighter, and the best pitcher in the ward. The neighborhood was lonesome without Timmy. People could not imagine “what was on the boy,” once so hearty and vigorous, to keep to his bed.

The little invalid lay stretched out on his couch as flat and as pallid as a pancake, in the front room away up in Sylvester Mulligan’s ten-story flat building. The neighbors were coming in droves to cheer up the ailing youngster.

“You’re not goan to lave me, yer poor ould mither, are ye, Timmy asthore?” wailed his mother, rocking from side to side in her frenzy of grief, like a ship in a storm, her voice choked with grief, her eyes drowned in tears.

“Ye were allus a dutiful child to me, Timmy alanna, and ye wud not be afther lavin’ yer poor old mither to fight the wurld alone, now wud ye? You’re the only boy I have left, Timmy, and ye’ll not lave me now afther raisin’ ye as long as I have. Sphake to him, Father Murphy; plase do, yer Rivirince—he’ll moind you; he wuz allus a good-hearted boy, though a thrifle wild. Rayson wid him, father; the fayver has rached his brain, and he turns his face to the wall from me. He won’t sphake to me. Oh, it’s heart-scalded I am!”

“What’s this I hear, Timmy, about your talking of dying,” cheerfully sung out the good Father Murphy, approaching the bedside of the little sufferer, and taking the boy’s wasted hand in his own. “Why, your worth a dozen dead men, yet. I could never spare you in the world. Who could I put in your place as monitor in the school; who else could I get to run my errands and to bring me my Evening News, eh? Why, Timmy, my boy, you are indispensable to the parish—you’re a little pillar of the church—all by yourself. You’re only pretending to be sick—you who were always so strong and hearty, with the rosiest cheeks and the brightest eye of all the lads for squares around. Brace up, and leave all thoughts of dying to old folks like your mother and myself. Do you hear, Tim?”

Tim did hear, nodding his head feverishly upon his clammy pillow. His eyes burned with an unnatural fire. They had the appealing glance of a wounded deer; it would melt your heart but to look at them.

The little invalid tossed uneasily upon the bed; his curling hair, damp with perspiration and pain, strayed uneasily o’er the pillow; his thin hands beat the coverlid with the petulance of a sturdy youngster unused to such close confinement. Yet he spoke not a word.

“Haven’t you a word for your old teacher, Tim, my boy?” asked Father Murphy, softly.

“Where’s Corkey O’Neill?” yelled out Timmy, suddenly, heedless of the worthy priest’s entreaty. “I wanter see Corkey; bring ’im up ’ere immejiate.”

Corkey was instantly produced, shuffling shamefacedly across the room to the bedside of his stricken comrade. Tim’s brow was knitted in meditation. His fingers played a tattoo on the blanket. He had a load on his mind he wanted to dump. Turning restlessly, he unburdened himself thus:

“I done ye up two weeks ter day, Corkey.”

Corkey admitted the “doing up.”

“But I fout ye fair, Corkey; I didn’t use brass knuckles?”

Corkey was forced to declare that brass knuckles took no active part in the youthful encounter.

“Ye sed I wuz a ’snide,’ Corkey, didn’t ye?”

It appeared that Corkey had said so.

“I t’umped ye pretty hard. I blacked both o’ yer eyes—or wuz it ony one?”

It was “ony one,” for Corkey still bore the echo of it on his tinted left optic.

“Well, wot I wanter say, Corkey, is I’m sorry I bunged you up so bad. I don’t believe I could whip you the way I am here, but ef you want satisfaction ye can take it out o’ me now—if you bear enny hard feelings.”

“I wouldn’t hit a dying kid, not fur de hull west side,” cried out Corkey, sobbing as if his heart would break, “ye only guv me wot I deserved, Timmy; I had no right roastin’ you de way I did.”

“Who duz the Red Hots play a Sunday?”

“We wuz a goan to play de Hard Times, Timmy, but now dat you’re sick an’ can’t pitch we’ve declared the match off—we’d git skunked.”

“Wot did ye do dat for?” savagely exclaimed Timmy. “I’ve a good mind to black yer other eye for ye.”

“Well, we all made up we wudn’t play till ye got well, Tim; it’s no use going out on de dimund unless you’re pitchin’.”

Mr. Mulligan appeared to see matters in the proper light.

“Well, I guess you’re about right, Corkey,” he was moved to admit. “I guess I’ll hav ter get well. I wanter skunk dat crowd of Hard Times wid me in-shoots and me new snake curve that I’ve been studying out here the last two weeks while I’ve been rastlin’ wid de blankets. Wot duz de gang say about me, Corkey, layin’ here in me bed on the flat o’ me back, like an old granny—me who wuz never sick before?”

“Say, Tim, dey’re orful sorry; they’d cum up here themselves to see ye, ony yer ole ’ooman wudn’t let ’em.”

“Stick yer hed out uv the windy and yell for ’em to come up,” commanded the prostrate pitcher.

Corkey thrust his Bulwer Lytton brow out of the window emitting a yell that caused all the members of the Red Hots to file into the room on tiptoe, wiping their mouths with their coat sleeves, and hanging their heads.

“Hello, fellers!”

“Hello, Tim!”

“Wot’s de matter wid ye, Philly Burke? Wot are ye snivellin’ for? Didn’t ye ever see a sick kid before? An’ you, too, Patsy Carroll—why, I nivir see sich weakeners as you kids before in all me life. You’re a nice gang to let yourself be bluffed by them Hard Times crowd. Ye have no more sand in yer craw than a chicken. I’ve a good notion to sick me poodle on de hull gang o’ ye. Cum up yere, Danger!”

The little black-and-tan that had retreated under the bureau, where he kept up growling and showing his teeth at the crowd of strange visitors, jumped up on the bed and began licking his youthful master’s hand. Then, turning round, he glared fiercely at the roomful of sympathizers, his tail lashing the bed, his little black nose uplifted defiantly. He showed his teeth in a subdued and dangerous snarl, as if looking out for the shins of the undertaker. All through little Tim’s sickness the dog had hung around his master’s room in a subdued and listless manner. When not squatting on the sick boy’s pillow, licking Tim’s hot and feverish hand, and vigilantly guarding his restless slumber, the dog would slink away under the bed, as if the boy’s illness had affected him, also, and had cowed his honest bark and native pluck into a cowardly snarling and showing of his vicious teeth.

“If that dood of a doctor comes a-monkeying around here enny more a-pizening me with the medicines he makes me swaller, we’ll giv him hydrophoby—won’t we, Danger?”

Danger showed his red gums in fierce assent.

“Where’s me ould woman?”

“Here I am, Timmy asthore; what is it?”

“Sind out the kittle for a quart o’ beer. I wanter do the right thing and treat de gang as has called on me. I guess it’ll be about square. Whin ye go over with the growler to Danny Shay’s, Corkey, mind ye scoop in all the free lunch as ye can crib. I guess I could go a little cheese sandwich meself. Be sure you tell Danny Shay to pack the growler as tight as he can, Corkey,” was the latter part of the languid yet hospitable injunction of the stricken Timmy, as he turned over on his side for a refreshing slumber, the vigilant Danger snugly perched on his fifth rib.

Mr. Mulligan, I am pleased to state, recovered in time to give the Hard Times the worst skunking they ever got.

In that match, digging his toenails in the pitcher’s box, his cap cocked rakishly over his left eye, and Danger coaching “on de side” and howling like a demon when his master struck out any of the opposing batsmen, Timmy ladled out to the demoralized Hard Times those justly celebrated curves of his, reinforced with the famous snake shoot which he had acquired while tossing oranges on a feverish bed.

Timmy was carried home to the 19th ward in triumph, Danger bringing up the rear, leaving in his trail the vibrating air churned to a white heat by his wagging tail.