THE APOTHEOSIS OF HUGHIE THORNTON
nna was an epistle to Pogue's entry and my only excuse for dragging Hughie Thornton into this narrative is that he was a commentary on Anna. He was only once in our house, but that was an "occasion," and for many years we dated things that happened about that time as "about," "before" or "after" "the night Hughie stayed in the pigsty."
We lived in the social cellar; Hughie led a precarious existence in the sub-cellar. He was the beggar-man of several towns, of which Antrim was the largest. He was a short, thick-set man with a pock-marked face, eyes like a mouse, eyebrows that looked like well-worn scrubbing brushes, and a beard cropped close with scissors or a knife. He wore two coats, two pairs of trousers and several waistcoats—all at the same time, winter and summer. His old battered hat looked like a crow's nest. His wardrobe was so elaborately patched that practically nothing at all of the originals remained; even then patches of his old, withered skin could be seen at various angles. The thing that attracted my attention more than anything else about him was his pockets. He had dozens of them and they were always full of bread crusts, scraps of meat and cooking utensils, for like a snail he carried his domicile on his back. His boots looked as if a blacksmith had made them, and for whangs (laces) he used strong wire.
He was preëminently a citizen of the world. He had not lived in a house in half a century. A haystack in summer and a pigsty in winter sufficed him. He had a deep graphophone voice and when he spoke the sound was like the creaking of a barn door on rusty hinges. When he came to town he was to us what a circus is to boys of more highly favored communities. There were several interpretations of Hughie. One was that he was a "sent back." That is, he had gone to the gates of a less cumbersome life and Peter or the porter at the other gate had sent him back to perform some unfulfilled task. Another was that he was a nobleman of an ancient line who was wandering over the earth in disguise in search of the Grail. A third, and the most popular one, was that he was just a common beggar and an unmitigated liar. The second interpretation was made more plausible by the fact that he rather enjoyed his reputation as a liar, for wise ones said: "He's jist lettin' on."
On one of his semi-annual visits to Antrim, Hughie got into a barrel of trouble. He was charged—rumor charged him—with having blinked a widow's cow. It was noised abroad that he had been caught in the act of "skellyin'" at her. The story gathered in volume as it went from mouth to mouth until it crystallized as a crime in the minds of half a dozen of our toughest citizens—boys who hankered for excitement as a hungry stomach hankers for food. He was finally rounded up in a field adjoining the Mill Row meeting-house and pelted with stones. I was of the "gallery" that watched the fun. I watched until a track of blood streaked down Hughie's pock-marked face. Then I ran home and told Anna.
"Ma!" I yelled breathlessly, "they're killin' Hughie Thornton!"
Jamie threw his work down and accompanied Anna over the little garden patches to the wall that protected the field. Through the gap they went and found poor Hughie in bad shape. He was crying and he cried like a brass band. His head and face had been cut in several places and his face and clothes were red.
They brought him home. A crowd followed and filled Pogue's entry, a crowd that was about equally divided in sentiment against Hughie and against the toughs.
I borrowed a can of water from Mrs. McGrath and another from the Gainers and Anna washed old Hughie's wounds in Jamie's tub. It was a great operation. Hughie of course refused to divest himself of any clothing, and as she said afterwards it was like "dhressin' th' woonds of a haystack."