Stand By: The Story of a Boy's Achievement in Radio

  CHAPTER III

  HOT WIRES

  Lee's screech and the crashing clatter of glass and tin brought oldPompey on the run to see what the "devils in the jar" had done now toMarse Lee.

  From the next room sounded the pounding of Uncle Gem's cane as hethumped the floor to summon someone to tell him what was happening.

  Lee hurried to his uncle, looking rather sheepish, and rubbing his elbowwhere the "prickles" still tingled.

  "No, sir, not hurt; just got kicked a little," he reassured the old man."That thing I made looked mighty innocent, but it had power toit--more'n I thought for."

  Lee Renaud's first experiment lay smashed all over the floor, but hedidn't care. He could make another Leyden Jar, for he still had theshaped pieces of tin, the knob, and the rest of the necessities. Inspite of the smash, he was terrifically thrilled--he had tapped power,real power that time! He had learned something important too:electricity was not anything to be played with. It was as dangerous asit was powerful.

  With his next Leyden Jar, Lee went forward more carefully. There was acontrivance of his own that he wanted to try out this time, too.

  And a very crude contrivance it was--nothing more than a length of wireand two long slivers of a broken window pane.

  The boy gave the wire a twist around the outer tin and left one endfree. Then he charged the inner tin negatively at the friction machine,and the outer tin (wire and all) positively, at the positive pole of themechanism.

  Next, oh so carefully, gripping the free end of the wire between the twostrips of glass--he didn't crave any more shocks like that first one--hebrought the wire close, and closer up towards the brass knob.

  Before he could ever touch wire to knob--Wow! There it came! Snap,crackle, across the air-gap shot a spark an inch long!

  Lee's hands trembled a little as he laid aside his glass pincers. Sureenough, he had done something this time. That was such livelyelectricity he had gotten penned up in the glass jar that it couldn'twait for any connecting metallic pathway to be made but had to goleaping across the air-gap.

  Power! Power! He was tapping it--and getting a wild excitement out ofthe job.

  It was all true! True! Just like the old book said!

  And the musty, ancient volume was full of queer diagrams and elegantlystilted descriptions of other strange experiments. As he turned thepages, Lee Renaud longed to try out more of these things--all of them,if possible.

  "Think of it!" Lee muttered admiringly. "That old fellow, Volta, withoutany friction wheel at all, just piled up some metal and wet cloth andgot an electric current! By heck, I want to try that! I want to make a'Voltaic Pile,' too!"

  The makings of the Voltaic Pile sounded simple enough. Just some discsof iron and copper piled up with circles of wet flannel placed inbetween. Volta had connected his iron discs and his copper discs withtwo different wires. Next he touched the ends of the two wires together,and--hecla! He found that electricity began to flow between the copperand the iron.

  But when he started out on the hunt for this material, Lee soon ranaground. He got some pieces of iron all right, and as for flannel, amoth-eaten wool shirt in an attic trunk would do for that. But thecopper--there seemed to be none anywhere on the whole Renaud place.

  Finally old Pompey came to the rescue.

  "I don't know nothing 'bout copper, but you might find it down in MarseSargent's junk pile. He's been dead a long time, but he sho must athrowed away a heap of stuff in his day. Folks been carrying offwhat-not-and-everything from that junk pile in the gully for years--andthere's still yet junk left there smothered down in the weeds and thebushes."

  Following Pompey's directions, young Renaud strode along the littlewoods path that the old darky had pointed out to him. At first he wentforward whistling gayly, but after a while the spell of the forest laidits silence upon him. Sometimes the narrow trail wound through the pineywoods where a little breeze soughed mournfully in the tree tops and theafternoon sun slanted downwards to cast a weaving of shadows upon theground. Then again the little path dipped into close glades of live oakwhere the long gray moss dripped down from the branches, and where thesunshine could scarce penetrate to dapple the shadows. It was eerie outhere in the woods, and silent--no, not exactly silent either. Now andthen a bird call drifted on the air. And occasionally there came aslight crackle of brush. Now Lee heard it off to the side of him, nowdirectly behind. Was that a stealthy padding, a footstep--was he beingfollowed?

  Time and again the boy whirled around quickly, but never could catchsign of any movement whatever, or of any hulking form lurking back inthe shadows.

  He was being foolish, that was all. He kept telling himself that it wasjust the soughing of the pine boughs, the ghostly, shaking curtain ofthe long moss that had gotten on his nerves. Best thing for him to dowas to keep his mind on what he had come for, and wind up his businessout here in the woods.

  It was all as old Pomp had said. Just beyond the scarred snag of thelightning-blasted pine, a flat-hewn log lay across the gulch for afoot-bridge. Then a "tollable piece" on down the gully, where it woundin close behind what had once been a rich man's house, Lee found afascinating tangle of cast-offs partly buried in matted vegetation anddrift sand. One wheel and the metal skeleton of what once must have beena dashing barouche, debris of broken china and battered kitchenutensils, rusted springs, a splintered table leg--a little of everythingreposed here!

  As Lee dug into the tangle of junk and vines, there came again thecautious crackle of a twig. Someone was watching him. He was sure ofthat. But why--what did it mean?

  It was after he had started home that the mystery solved itself somewhatfor him. Lee was stepping along in the dusk, rather jubilant over havingunearthed an old copper pot. Its lack of bottom didn't matter--all hewanted was copper. And he hoped a bent strip of metal was zinc. Voltahad used zinc in another experiment.

  Lee strode forward, full of plans of what he was going to try next. Thena tingle of fear knocked plans out of his head as the bushes parted anda hand reached out and grabbed him by the pants leg.

  All manner of things flashed through Lee Renaud's mind. Remembering howloungers at the store had looked their dislike of him, and how Poolakhad carried prejudice further and had taken a shot at his friction-wheelexperimenting, Lee had full reason to tingle with fear at that clutchinghand. Stealthy footsteps had dogged him all up and down these woods, andnow he was being dragged off.

  The boy stiffened and tightened his grip on the copper pot. He'd put upa fight against whatever was happening to him!

  Then as the bushes parted more fully and Lee saw the owner of theclutching hand, he almost dropped the pot in his surprise. Awizen-faced, shock-headed youngster stood before him, one arm upliftedas if to shield his face.

  "You--you don't look so turrible," said the child. "I bin following youall evening, and you don't look so harmful. Anyhow, Jimmy Bobb allowedhe wanted to set eyes on you, and I come to take you to him--"

  "Jimmy Bobb, who's he? What does he want with me?" queried Lee.

  "Jimmy's my older brother, only he ain't near so big as me. He hadinfantile para--para something--"

  "Paralysis, was it?" put in Lee.

  "Yeah, that's what a doctor what saw him one time said it was. ButJohnny Poolak, him that preaches when the spell gets on him, said itwarn't nothing but tarnation sin what twisted Jimmy all up. I dunno. ButJimmy, he can't move by himself, just got to sit one place all the time.He heard 'em talking 'bout you. He don't never see nothing much and hewanted to see you. But promise you won't conjure up no imps, no nothingand hurt him."

  Lee Renaud felt a wave of pity for the bleak existence of the crippledone, though caution stirred in him too. He didn't exactly like to mix inwith these Cove people. In every meeting with them, he had sensed theirantagonism toward him. If he happened to tread on the toes of theirignorance and superstition, why, like as not they'd fill him full ofbuckshot! He turned back into t
he path that led toward home.

  "Say, you, ain't you coming?" The child clung to him with desperate,clutching hands. "Jimmy, he's so powerful lonesome. He said to me,'Mackey, you go git that there furriner and bring him down here. Folkstell how he's got store-bought clothes and slicks his hair and looksdifferent an' all. And I ain't never seen nothing different in all mylife.' And I promised Jimmy I'd get you. Please, mister, you--you--"

  "I--yes." The child was so insistent that Lee Renaud found himselffollowing down the path. This by-trail twisted in and out through somethickets and suddenly came out before the clean-swept knoll whereon wasperched Mackey Bobb's home.

  Lee Renaud may have thought he had seen poor folks before, but now hefound himself face to face with real poverty. The dwelling was a squarelog cabin with a log lean-to on behind. Inside was bareness save for ahomemade bedstead spread with a faded old quilt and one chair set by thewindow opening that had no glass but merely closed with a heavy shutterof wooden slabs. Although it was summer, a fire blazed up themud-and-wattle chimney. Before it knelt a lanky woman in a faded wrapperand a sunbonnet, frying something in a skillet.

  Lee had met these Cove women now and then out on the road, as theycarried eggs or chickens to the store to barter for store-boughtrations. Always they had on wide aprons and sunbonnets. He hadn't knownthey wore these flapping bonnets in the house too.

  The woman rose languidly from her supper cooking and came across theroom. She looked worn out and old without being old. Her clothing wasawkward and her hands were work-roughened, yet she held to a certaindignity.

  "Howdy. I'm right thankful to you for coming," she said. "Jimmy here hasbeen pining for a sight of you. He don't never get to see much."

  Then Lee saw Jimmy, the prisoner of the old homemade armchair by thewindow opening. The boy's limp, twisted legs told why he was a prisoner.The body was undersized, and the face was old with pain, but JimmyBobb's dark blue eyes were eager, interesting eyes.

  "You, Mackey," ordered the woman, "draw out the bench from the shedroom. And now, mister," extending her hand, "lemme rest your hat, andyou set and make yourself comfortable."

  When he had first stood on the threshold of this house of poverty, LeeRenaud had thought he was going to be embarrassed with people sodifferent from any he had ever known. But here he found genuine courtesyto set him at ease. More than that, the terrible eagerness in JimmyBobb's eyes turned Lee Renaud's thoughts entirely away from Lee Renaud.This Jimmy Bobb knew so little, and he wanted to know so much.

  "Is it rightly true," burst from Jimmy before Lee had hardly got settledon the bench, "that you got a whirling glass contraption up at the bighouse what pulls the lightning right down out of the sky?"

  "Well," Lee tugged at his chin in perplexity. How in Kingdom Come washe, who knew so little about electricity, going to explain it to afellow who knew even less? "Well," Lee made another start, "it's kind ofthis way. The glass wheel when turned very, very fast between some furpads, or rubbers, generates a spark of power called electricity. Smartmen have proved that this electricity that we generate and the lightningthat flashes in the sky are full of the same kind of power. Lightning,you know, shoots through the air in zigzag lines."

  "I know. I've watched it often. It goes like this," and the excitedlistener made sharp, jerky motions with his hand.

  "That's it. And the electrical discharge from a man-made battery shootsout jagged, too, like the lightning. Lightning strikes the highestpointed objects. Electricity does that too. Lightning sets fire tonon-conductors, or rends them in pieces. Lightning destroys animal lifewhen it strikes, and electricity acts just that way--"

  "It sounds turrible powerful," muttered Jimmy Bobb. "What and all yougoing to do with this here power you are getting out of the air?"

  "Nothing in particular," said Lee ruefully. "I haven't managed to getany too much of it. But back in the town where I have always lived,there are plenty of folks brainy enough to make electricity do lots ofwork for them. It makes bright lights and runs telephones and streetcars and talking machines--"

  "How might a street car look? Tele--telephone, what's that?"

  So the eager questioning went. Lee Renaud found himself leapingconversationally from point to point, drawing word-pictures of a host ofeveryday conveniences that had seemed so commonplace to him but thatseemed almost like magic when recounted to this boy who had never seenanything.

  In the midst of all this talk, Sarah Ann Bobb, Jimmy's mother, still inthe flopping sunbonnet, came forward bearing a tin platter set with theusual Cove meal of corn pone and fried hog-meat. "Set and eat," she saidhospitably.

  "I--thank you, ma'am, no--" Lee leaped up in confusion. He hadn't knownhe was talking so long. Night had dropped down upon him. "UncleGem--he'll be worried--doesn't know where I am, or what might havehappened to me. I--I reckon I better trot along," Lee stammered, as hereached for his cap that was "resting" where the woman had hung it on awall peg.

  "You, Mackey," said Sarah Ann Bobb with her kind, crude courtesy, "drawout one of these here pine knots from off the fire so you can light himdown the path."

  As Lee said his hasty good-byes, crippled Jimmy Bobb sat in his prisonchair like one dazed.

  "Street cars, 'lectric lights, talking contraptions!" he muttered tohimself. "If," shutting his eyes tightly, then opening them wide, "if Icould only see something myself, oncet, anyway!"