CRIPPLE JOE AND THE SHOWMAN
Returning home from Reading on a Sunday not long ago, I was forced to lie over at Pottsville for three long hours. I was angry with myself for leaving Reading on Sunday, for the trains are so infernally chaotic and uncertain on this day of mental distress. I must reach Williamsport in time to catch the evening train on the Pennsy at 7.10, or be obliged to lie over until Monday morning. Everybody in the station was feeling about as blue as I was, for we were all travelers, and opposed to three hours of monotonous delay. I walked the station outside and inside for about an hour, and once as I passed the door leading into the toilet room I heard a plaintive voice at my feet. I looked down and beheld a small body—a wee boy sitting flat on the floor. He was looking up to me and speaking, but I could not distinguish the words. I stooped down and asked the boy to repeat his words: “Won’t you help a poor cripple?”
“Sure!” I exclaimed, as I caught sight of the poor twisted legs doubled up under his body, and I reached into my pocket and handed him a couple of coins. He reached out his hand and took my donation, and while he was looking at them I sat down in a nearby seat. He then looked up into my face with gratitude in his eyes and exclaimed: “Oh, thank you!” Then he caught the arms of the seat and pulled himself into the adjoining seat with his stout arms, looked into my face again and repeated: “Oh thank you.”
I was interested in the boy, so I asked: “How did you become so helplessly crippled?” “Born that way,” he replied carelessly, and then whistled to a boy across the station room. The boy shouted back: “Hello Joe, what luck today?” “Good!” the cripple replied, jingling several coins in his pocket. Just then a red faced man came in through the south door and Joe caught sight of him and called: “Hello, Charley!” Charley didn’t turn his face our way, so the boy gave a shrill little whistle, and the man turned toward us. “Hello, Charley! Come over here.”
The red faced man crossed the room hurriedly and Joe held out his hand, pulled it back and removed his soiled glove, then extended the hand again, saying: “It’s awfully muddy, and I get my gloves soiled crawling around on the floor.”
The red faced man took Joe’s hand in his and greeted the cripple warmly, but was called away before he could say more. While the red faced man was talking to the man who called him away from us, I turned to Joe and inquired: “Is he your brother?” The boy laughed and replied: “Oh, no; he’s a showman—gave a show here last night—a good one, too—I met him up at the opera—”
He stopped talking and whistled in a high key, like steam escaping under high pressure. The red faced man came back to us again and the boy said, in accusing tones: “Say, Charley, you went back on me—you weren’t as good as your word. You promised to pass me into the show, and you didn’t show up, so I had to cough up fifteen cents of my money.”
“Well, that’s too bad!” the man said. “I’ll just pay you back right here.”
He began to search through his pockets carefully, and finally exclaimed: “I haven’t got a cent of change in my pockets now, but you wait here until I buy my ticket, and I’ll have some change then. I’m going away on the 1.50 train.”
“You’re foolin’, ain’t you, Charley? You’re goin’ away without livin’ up to your promise, ain’t you, Charley?”
“Bet your life I ain’t Joe! I’m going to get change when the ticket window opens and then——”
He went off to talk to his friend again at the opposite end of the room, but every five minutes lame Joe would just whistle to him and say, “You won’t forget, Charley!”
I became interested. Would the showman prove true to his promise? He surely would. No man who could deliberately deceive a poor little cripple like Joe could possibly possess enough sentiment in his soul to please an audience. Once when Joe wasn’t looking, Charley winked at me and smiled. What did he mean? Was he amused at Joe’s doubts, or was he tasting the joke he was going to play on the poor boy later on? So certain was I of this that I began to look at the man more closely. His face was a puzzle. Not a bad face, but no doubt a lover of a practical joke. Maybe he thought it a great joke that any one should expect to have his entrance money refunded after the show was over.
I began to hate the man for what he intended to do, and pitied the boy more and more, as so many people passed by unheeding his petition, “Won’t you help a poor cripple?” They couldn’t help but hear, but so many people have grown calloused to the appeals of the unfortunate that they can pass through a shower of appeals without even putting up an umbrella.
One man even declared to me, on the side, that Joe’s begging should be prohibited. He said it encouraged begging in other boys who were not cripples. He said the town of Pottsville should support the boy in comfort, and not drive him to begging for a living. In his own city he paid an annual poor tax for the support of the indigent people, and stopped at this. He was opposed to begging.
I suggested that maybe the sound of a beggar’s voice kept our hearts mellow and our charity warm toward the world and God’s miserable poor. He gave me a look of contempt and passed on. I do not know his profession. He might have been a lawyer or a minister or a doctor. Anyhow, he was no worse than the showman who was going to fool poor Joe.
Then the ticket window went up and there was a rush of people. I heard Joe’s voice above the noise of tramping feet: “Don’t forget, Charley!”
I felt like crying. Poor crippled Joe! The crowd was rushing for the train. I saw Charley stop and drop several coins into Joe’s outstretched hand, and heard his “Oh, thank you, Charley! I’ll go to your show every time you come back to Pottsville.”