The Fires of Spring

  “Thank you, Judge!” he said in great excitement.

  “I hope y’ll want to thank me ten years from now,” the judge said. At the deaf home across the beautiful street two mutes were arguing about a lawnmower. In fury, one pushed the other. They struggled for a moment, and in the hot summer air David and the judge could hear the weird, ghostlike mouthings of the mutes. David looked at the judge and shivered. The fat judge swallowed hard. In eighteen years of listening to that strange penetrating sound of mutes quarreling he had never grown accustomed to it. He wiped his face and signified by his scowl that David was to be gone.

  David hitch-hiked to his first job. A big Packard pulled up and a man with a cigar invited him to jump in. “Where y’ off to, son?” the man asked with real interest.

  “I’m getting a job,” David replied as nonchalantly as he could.

  The man tilted his cigar into an imperative angle and studied his passenger. “Well! What’s a little twerp like you good for?” When David grinned, the business man asked seriously, “Do ya smoke?”

  “No.”

  “Do ya gamble? Spend a lot of money? Get drunk?”

  “No,” David reported proudly.

  “How about women? Do ya chase after every skirt ya see?”

  “Oh, no!”

  “Well!” the man shouted, banging the steering wheel and roaring with laughter. “Ya may be goin’ to a job, but ya could never work for me!”

  “Why not?” David asked somewhat crestfallen.

  “I’ll tell ya why! I run a real tough business. Competition! Terrific! I got to have men who are in trouble, men with two or three women their wife don’t know about. Heavy drinkers, gamblers. Especially men who play the horses. Because a man in trouble has damned well gotta work.”

  “How can you trust men like that?” David asked.

  “Ya can’t!” The big fellow chuckled. “But ya’ watch ’em like hawks so they don’t steal ya blind, and ya just work ’em till they collapse. Because when they make money, you make money!” He looked suspiciously at David and concluded, “So maybe what the Sunday-school teachers has been tellin’ ya is a lotta bunk! Be a bum and be rich! That’s the new rule!”

  When the Packard stopped at Paradise the talkative business man grabbed David’s arm. “Son,” he whispered, “I just give you ten thousand dollars’ worth of advice. Now I’m gonna give ya some more. Likewise free. Son, you’re goin’ in to ask for your first job. Here’s a buck. Get yourself a haircut. A shoe shine. Smile. Look neat. Make folks think you’re prosperous. When ya smoke, smoke cigars. Because everybody loves the poor but honest farm boy. But nobody hires him. And right now, son, you look like a farm boy.” The big car whirred away, and before the dust had settled, David was in search of a barber shop.

  “You like me to fix your hair up real nice?” the barber asked.

  “Yes,” David replied. When the job was done—shine, facial, singe, shampoo—the barber said. “That’ll be a dollar and ten cents.”

  “Whew!” David whistled.

  “You got that much, ain’t you?” the barber asked suspiciously.

  “I got it.”

  The barber breathed more easily and said, “And I may say that you got in return just about the finest all-in-one special we ever turned out. Look at him, Oscar!”

  In an aura of sweet smells and high hopes David entered Paradise Park and sought out the manager. He remained in a kind of twitching daze until he heard the wonderful words, “Well, Mr. Harper! You’re hired!”

  A guide was dispatched to take him to his job. No sooner had they left the office building than the guide whispered, “Boy, are you lucky!”

  “I know,” David replied, for he knew how lucky he was to have a man’s job at fourteen.

  “What I mean is,” the sharp-eyed guide explained, “you’re gettin’ the one job where you can steal as much as you want.”

  “Steal?” David repeated.

  “Ssssh!” the wiry guide cautioned. “See that big skinny bastard? He’s a stoolpigeon. Watch out for that one!”

  “What do you mean, steal?” David pursued.

  “Here we are!” the guide announced, leading his charge into a grove of pleasant trees. “You’re a lucky dog!”

  A ruggedly built man in overalls stepped out from a little building that looked like a railway station and reached for David’s hand. “Glad to see ya, kid. You ever run one of these things?”

  The thing was a miniature train for children, the Pennsylvania and Reading Rail Road. It consisted of an electric locomotive, a coal car, six gondola passenger cars, and a caboose. There was much gilt, a powerful headlight and a whistle. “It runs by electricity,” the man in overalls explained. “It’s a lot of fun. You oughta pay for this job. Now this handle works exactly like a motorman’s control on a trolley. Four speeds ahead. Two back. No brakes, so you got to judge things carefully. Because every time you jump the track we fine you one buck. Let’s take a spin.”

  By this time nine passengers were seated in the train, and the locomotive started slowly on its beautiful trail through the grove of tall trees. It passed among shadows and out into the brilliant light along the lake. Then it darted among the thrilling jungle of props and spars which held up the Hurricane. High aloft a carload of screaming girls sped over the violent dips of the great ride. The railroad left the tortuous trestles and crept back among the delicate shadows, around a bend, up a tiny hill and home to the station. The passengers left and others climbed aboard.

  “Now you take her around!” the man said.

  “Not yet!” David protested.

  “Well, you’re goin’ to!” the man said. “Wait’ll I get the fares.” He grabbed an alligator bag and cried, “All fares on the Pennsylvania and Reading Rail Road. Everybody pay up, or out you go. There’s no foolin’ on this line.” He treated the grown-ups like children and the children like grown-ups. Then he shouted “All aboard!” raising his voice on the board the way real conductors did. “Take ’er out!” he commanded imperiously.

  David pulled the whistle cord and his train went “Whoo! Whooooooo!” He threw the pointer into the first notch. Thrillingly, the wheels whirred. Then they caught, and the P and R was off on its first trip under new management.

  “Now this bend is a bad one,” the man warned. “Some day we’ll rebuild this. You need speed for the next hill, so just about here … Let her have it!” David wrenched the pointer hard right, and his train whizzed around the bend and in among the trestles of the Hurricane. Above him a tandem of cars roared past. The Hurricane passengers screamed, and in the railroad the children squealed with vicarious pleasure. The man said, “That’s good timing. Always try to have the train under here when the Hurricane goes by. Kids love it.”

  Exhilarated and confident, David led his train back toward the wooden station. At his ear the engineer gave instructions: “Lots of speed here … watch … now … toss her hard into reverse!” The engine groaned and came to a protesting halt. “That’s it!” the man said approvingly.

  On the next trip he showed David how to jump the track. After the locomotive had ripped up the grass he called, “Everybody out! But keep away from the third rail!” An old man picking up paper came over to help.

  “Worst wreck in forty years!” he said in a high voice to the children. Some onlookers helped and the locomotive was shoved back into place. “Everybody push ’er up the hill!” the old man cackled, and as people strained, the wheels slowly took hold. “All aboard!” the engineer shouted, and children scrambled into their seats. “That’s all there is to that,” the man said.

  “Doesn’t anybody ever get hurt?” David asked.

  “Nah!” the man said deprecatingly. “Up there!” he said, pointing to the cars roaring past on the Hurricane. “That’s where they get hurt. Forever!”

  “You mean those cars jump the track, too?” David asked in awe.

  “You bet they do!” the engineer replied. “You’ll see one of ’em rip over the edge
some day. People fly through the air like crazy birds. See that lilac tree? All its branches torn off. A full train landed there last year.”

  “What happened to the people?” David asked dully.

  “What the hell do you suppose happened to them?” the man countered. “One thing you can be sure. They ain’t smellin’ lilacs. They got a snootful of lilacs that day.” He laughed at his grisly joke.

  “It wasn’t in the papers,” David observed.

  “It’s never in the papers,” the man said reassuringly. “That would be bad for business.” David looked up at the towering structure while the man droned on, “It’s really pretty safe. Two men walk over every inch of it every day. Then somebody takes an empty car around just as fast as he can. Sometimes he goes too fast, and he gets killed. The last guy went too fast. Now I have the job.” David gaped at his instructor with astonishment.

  “You took the empty car around today?” he asked.

  “Every day.”

  “What are you doing on this little ride?” David inquired.

  “Fillin’ in,” the man explained. “The boy that had this job got arrested yesterday. Stole too much money.”

  “Stole?” David repeated.

  The engineer nudged David’s hand to indicate that more speed was necessary for the last hill. “It’s like this,” he explained. “When you sell a ticket, you get a dime. Each ticket is numbered, so in the morning the Company takes down the number on your first ticket. At night all they have to do is subtract the number on your last ticket, multiply by ten cents, and that’s how much you owe.”

  “How could a fellow steal against such a system?” David asked.

  “He can’t, usually,” the engineer agreed. “Because on all other rides one guy sells and another collects. But here we don’t do enough business to hire two men. You sell and you also collect, so what’s to prevent you from sellin’ the same cardboards over and over? Huh?”

  David’s attention was diverted by a peculiar circumstance, and he began, “That woman …” but the engineer gripped his wrist in an icy grasp. When the woman had seated herself in the train, David whispered, “She gave you a two-dollar bill!” Again the engineer squeezed David’s wrist and dragged him along to the locomotive. They made the trip in silence, and when the woman led her children away, the man took a big, deep breath and handed David fifty cents.

  “That’s yours,” he said.

  David left the coin in his open hand. “Are you going to keep that dollar?” he asked.

  “Sure!” the engineer explained, folding David’s fingers over the money. “That’s the rule. You mustn’t steal from the Company. But if somebody leaves her change, that’s yours. When you’ve been here a while, you’ll learn how to get rich on other people’s mistakes.”

  “What do you mean?” David asked.

  “You’ll find out!” the engineer replied with a big wink. “This is my last trip.” He hurried down the long line of passengers and sold each one a ticket, but David noticed that he was reselling old ones and pocketing the money. The boy said nothing about this, but when the Pennsylvania and Reading was under the trestles the man whispered, “About them tickets. The Company expects you to steal a little dough each day. Hell, they pay you only $2.14 for a fifteen-hour day. Hardly covers carfare and meals. So if you steal a couple of bucks daily, nobody’ll howl. But don’t try to steal more’n that, or I’ll catch you sure.”

  “You?” David gasped.

  “Sure,” the man said, wiping his nose. “I’m your boss. I run this railroad.”

  Paradise Park paid its cashiers $2.14 a day. Grown men with fine winter jobs gave up those jobs to work at the Park. Men with families and automobiles drove thirty miles to work for $15 a week. In his first ten days David found out why.

  At nine o’clock one night a woman with three children—two of her own and one of her sister’s in Manyunk—came to the train, obviously harried by the sticky, noisy children. David gave her four tickets and stuffed the bill she handed him into his alligator bag. Not until this woman was well on her way home to Torresdale did he discover that she had given him a five-dollar bill.

  Two nights later a party of adult drunks boarded the train for a noisy spree. Two different men paid for the tickets and one gave David a two-dollar bill, which was forgotten in the clamor. David made eight extra dollars that week. Then, slowly, he began practicing ways to make people forget their money. He did not admit to himself that this was dishonest, for he was not stealing from the Company, and then one day he cashiered for Max Volo, and that night he had to admit to himself that he was becoming a crook.

  The rheostat on the locomotive broke, and David was ordered to sell tickets at the loganberry stand. He remembered the cool drinks he had bought Marcia Paxson and her parents, and he approached the stand with pleasant memories, but he was even more pleased when he saw behind the counter the same excited, flash-smiled little man. “My name’s Dave Harper!” the boy reported. “I remember you from when I was just a kid. First forty cents I ever spent at one time. I was standing right here, and you made my girl’s father buy two extra drinks!”

  “I know! I know!” the quick little man said, wiping the metal bar with great speed. “We were innerducin’ the stuff. You’ll like it here.”

  “Hey! You!” a guard yelled. “Don’t you know cashiers is not supposed to talk to ticket-takers! Get in your box.” An elderly man appeared and showed David his badge. “No selling tickets over on my beat. You get in that box and stay there.”

  David climbed into his narrow booth and grinned back at Max Volo. The little manager of the loganberry stand was about five-feet-three. He even wore his white apron with a flair, and his black hair was always combed. He had big teeth, which he showed liberally when he smiled. His quick eyes seemed to miss nothing, and he moved his head jerkily as if vainly trying to keep up with his inquisitive stares. Less than twenty minutes after the guard had warned David, Max started swearing at his pimply-faced clean-up boy: “I told you a dozen times to clean out that box!” He dragged his helper over to David’s booth and tore open the door. “Look at that dirt!” he cried, belting the boy across the head. Then, quick as a viper on hot sand, he thrust a wad of old tickets into David’s hand and slammed the door. “We’ll get this cleaned up,” he said.

  Under the change board David fumbled with the second-hand tickets but would not take them from their tight rubber bands. At the end of an hour Max Volo, standing behind the loganberry dispenser, glared at David. In a flash that no one else could have seen he held up an untorn ticket, whisked it under the counter and indicated by cutting his left forefinger in half with his right that he and David would split all stolen money fifty-fifty.

  As the day wore on, David tried slipping one or two of the old tickets into his left hand and palming them so they looked as if he were tearing them off the regular roll. He had disposed of perhaps a hundred in this manner when a thin man approached the booth. David watched him coming, but out of the corner of his eye he also saw Max Volo suddenly freeze into an attitude which fairly telegraphed terror. David had only a few seconds in which to interpret this unsent signal, but he guessed that the approaching man was one of the Company spotters, the stoolpigeons that spied on everyone in a vain effort to prevent theft. With exaggerated gestures of honesty, David clearly tore off a fresh, new ticket and handed it to the spotter. Almost imperceptibly the stoolpigeon studied the ticket and its number. Then he handed it to Max Volo who ostentatiously tore it cleanly in half and tossed it into the chopper.

  For a long time David was afraid to pass any old tickets, but as night fell and crowds continued to buy drinks, he disposed of his last seventy-five. When he added up his accounts, he had $29.80 too much. He stuffed the money into his shoe and walked slowly down to the cashier’s office, where he delivered his unused tickets and the Company’s money.

  A middle-aged man in a black alpaca coat sat at a table with four armed guards. Each cashier walked up, dropped his all
igator bag on the table and stood at attention. The head cashier droned: “Tickets morning, 31857. Tickets night 35085. Tickets sold, 3228. Receipts, $322.80. Plus morning change, $50.00. Money deposited, $372.80.” The man in alpaca checked the numbers and tossed the money to a guard to count. If there was any money extra, the Company kept it. If there was a shortage, it was deducted from the weekly pay of $15.00.

  From the cashiers’ office to the trolley that would take David home to the poorhouse was a distance of about a mile, and it was along this dark pathway that thieving ticket men lay in wait for their cashiers and their share of the day’s stolen profits. As David walked the lonely mile, watching the stars, he wondered at what point Max Volo would appear to demand his cut, for the money was bulky in his shoe. Suddenly a dark form melted from a tree trunk, grabbed David by the wrist, and hauled him back into the bushes.

  “You were swell, kid!” Max chortled. “I figure you owe me $13.20. And I was real proud of you when you got my signal about the stoolpigeon. I’d like to knife that creep.”

  “This is too risky for me,” David admitted.

  “Easy goes!” Max whispered, pressing his quick, hard hand over David’s lips. “You and me could tear this Park wide open. You’re smart! You’re my type. But look, I have to pay a rake-off to my helper, who knows all about this. So I think you oughta give me an extra, say, four bucks.” His voice was cold, demanding. David gave him two two-dollar bills. Max lit a match to check the bills and handed them back in horror. “Me take a two! Christ, kid, don’t jinx me!” He wouldn’t touch the unlucky bills, and when David handed him a five he said, “Why don’t we make it five even, hmm?” Then he grabbed David by the elbow and whispered, “Now for fifty dollars I can get you transferred to the loganberry stand permanent. We could steal the brass rails, you and me!”

  “Not me,” David said with complete finality.

  “Think it over,” Max said and magically disappeared among the shadows. David looked carefully about him and stepped unobtrusively back into the road.