Run To Seed | Page 6

them all. He had not been there three weeks when Mrs. Wagoner was a passenger on the train. Carry was with her. They had moved to town. (Mr. Wagoner was interested in railroad development.) Mrs. Wagoner called him to her seat, and talked to him--in a loud voice. Mrs. Wagoner had a loud voice.
It had the "carrying" quality. She did not shake hands; Carry did and said she was so glad to see him: she had been down home the week before--had seen his mother and Kitty. Mrs. Wagoner said, "We still keep our plantation as a country place." Carry said Kitty looked so well; her new dress was lovely. Mrs. Wagoner said his mother's eyes were worse. She and Kitty had walked over to see them, to show Kitty's new dress. She had promised that Mr. Wagoner would do what he could for him (Jim) on the road. Next month Jim went back to the freight service. He preferred Dick Rail to Mrs. Wagoner. He got him. Dick was worse than ever, his appetite was whetted by abstinence; he returned to his attack with renewed zest. He never tired--never flagged. He was perpetual: he was remorseless. He made Jim's life a wilderness. Jim said nothing, just slouched along silenter than ever, quieter than ever, closer than ever. He took to going on Sunday to another church than the one he had attended, a more fashionable one than that. The Wagoners went there. Jim sat far back in the gallery, very far back, where he could just see the top of Carry's head, her big hat and her face, and could not see Mrs. Wagoner, who sat nearer the gallery. It had a curious effect on him: he never went to sleep there. He took to going up-town walking by the stores--looking in at the windows of tailors and clothiers. Once he actually went into a shop and asked the price of a new suit of clothes. (He needed them badly.) The tailor unfolded many rolls of cloth and talked volubly: talked him dizzy. Jim looked wistfully at them, rubbed his hand over them softly, felt the money in his pocket; and came out. He said he thought he might come in again. Next day he did not have the money. Kitty wrote him she could not leave home to go to school on their mother's account, but she would buy books, and she was learning; she would learn fast, her mother was teaching her; and he was the best brother in the world, the whole world; and they had a secret, but he must wait.
One day Jim got a big bundle from down the country. It was a new suit of clothes. On top was a letter from Kitty. This was the secret. She and her mother had sent for the cloth and had made them; they hoped they would fit. They had cried over them. Jim cried a little too. He put them on. They did not fit, were much too large. Under Dick Rail's fire Jim had grown even thinner than before. But he wore them to church. He felt that it would have been untrue to his mother and Kitty not to wear them. He was sorry to meet Dick Rail on the street. Dick had on a black broadcloth coat, a velvet vest, and large-checked trousers. Dick looked Jim over. Jim winced, flushed a little: he was not so sunburned now. Dick saw it. Next week Dick caught Jim in a crowd in the "yard" waiting for their train. He told about the meeting. He made a double shot. He said, "Boys, Jim's in love, he's got new clothes! you ought to see 'em!" Dick was graphic; he wound up: "They hung on him like breechin' on his old mule. By ----! I b'lieve he was too ------ stingy to buy 'em and made 'em himself." There was a shout from the crowd. Jim's face worked. He jumped for him. There was a handspike lying near and he seized it. Some one grabbed him, but he shook him off as if he had been a child. Why he did not kill Dick no one ever knew. He meant to do it.
For some time they thought he was dead. He laid off for over a month. After that Jim wore what clothes he chose: no one ever troubled him.
So he went on in the same way: slow, sleepy, stuttering, thin, stingy, ill-dressed, lame.
He was made a fireman; preferred it to being a conductor, it led to being an engineer, which paid more. He ran extra trips whenever he could, up and double straight back. He could stand an immense amount of work. If he got sleepy he put tobacco in his eyes to keep them open.