When Egypt Went Broke | Page 5

old sheep, so cynics said, were trained to hold the
lambs by their tails and lower them head downward among the rocks to
graze. Poor men usually own dogs. But dogs would not live long in
Egypt, the cynics went on to assert; the dogs ran themselves to death

hustling over the town line to find dirt enough to bury a bone.
Mr. Britt could see his statue in the cemetery.
Down the street was a one-story brick building, the only brick structure
in the town. Set into the front of this building was a replica of the statue
in the cemetery. Britt had secured special rates by ordering two statues
from the stonecutter. Britt possessed vanity. He had hidden it,
begrudging the cost of gratifying it. The crust of his nature, hardening
through the years, had pressed upon that vanity. The statues, his
refurbished beard, and his rehaired head had relieved the pressure
somewhat, but the vanity was still sore. In his new mood he was
dreading a blow on that sore spot. He realized what kind of a grudge he
was carrying around. A vague sense of an unjust deal in life is more
dangerous to the possessor than an acute and concrete knowledge of
specific injury. The vagueness causes it to be correlated to insanity.
Britt, putting his belated aspirations to the test, hoped that nobody
would presume to hit on that sore spot. He knew that such an adventure
might be dangerous for the person or persons who went up against him.
He buttoned his overcoat, settled the cigar rigidly into one corner of his
mouth, stared with approval at the stone image of himself in the facade
of Britt Block, and walked to the edge of the porch.
Across the street sat a little building above the door of which was a sign
inscribed, "Usial Britt, Shoemaker." That it was a dwelling as well as a
shop was indicated when a bare and hairy arm was thrust from a side
window and the refuse in a smoking iron spider was dumped upon the
snow. Simultaneously it was shown that more than one person tenanted
the building: a man, bareheaded, but with a shaggy mat of roached hair
that served in lieu of a hat, issued from the door. The wanton
luxuriance of the hair would have stirred envy in any baldheaded man;
but Tasper Britt exhibited a passion that was more virulent than envy.
The man who came forth was "Prophet Elias." It was the newcomer,
the religious fanatic, the exhorter against oppression of the people by
usury, the fearless declaimer who named Tasper Britt in diatribe and
was setting the folks by the ears.

The Prophet's morning greeting did not make for amity. He stood
straight and pointed in turn to the visible statues and then to Tasper
Britt, in person. "Baal, and the images of Baal!" he shouted. "Stone, all
three!"
Then he stepped from the door and spread a prodigiously big
umbrella-- an umbrella striped in dingy colors and of the size of the
canopies seen over the drivers of delivery wagons. The employment of
such a shield from the sun in midwinter indicated that the Prophet was
rather more than eccentric; his garb conveyed the same suggestion. He
wore a frayed purple robe that hung on his heels when he came striding
across the street. On a broad band of cloth that once had been white,
reaching from shoulder to waist, diagonally across his breast, were the
words, "The Light of the World."
Tasper Britt surveyed him with venomous gaze as he advanced. But
Britt shifted his stare and put additional venom into the look he gave a
man who came to the door and stood there, leaning against the jamb
and surveying the scene with a satisfied grin. There was no need of the
name "Britt" above his head to proclaim his kinship with the man who
stood on the tavern porch. The beard of the Britt in the door was gray,
and his head was bald. But he was Tasper Britt, in looks, as Britt
unadorned ought to have been. There was something like subtle
reproach in his sticking to nature as nature had ordained. And the folks
of Egypt had been having much to say about Usial Britt putting this
new touch of malice into the long-enduring feud between twin
brothers--even though he merely went on as he had been going, bald
and gray. But because Usial had taken to going about in public places
wherever Tasper appeared, and unobtrusively got as near his brother as
possible on those occasions, and winked and pointed to himself and
suggested "Before using!" the malice was apparent.
Usial, in the door, stroked his smooth poll complacently and grinned.
Tasper, on the porch, shook