Carter, and Other People

by Don Marquis

This thought struck Carter himself, and he turned toward another man who had paused in the doorway, with no clear intention, but perhaps with the vague impulse of addressing him, as a point of solid contact and relief from the sense of hurrying nightmare that possessed both the streets and his own spirit.

Startled, he saw that the other man was Willoughby Howard. Carter hesitated, and then advanced a step. But whatever he had to say was interrupted by a crowd that swept past them from Decatur Street in pursuit of a panting negro. The fleeing colored man was struck a dozen times; he fell at the street corner near them, and the mob surged on again into the darkness beyond, already in full chase of another quarry—all but one man, who left the mob and ran back as if to assure himself that the prostrate negro was really dead.

This was a short man, a very short man, a dwarf with a big head too heavy for him, and little bandy legs—legs so inadequate that he wabbled like an overfed poodle when he ran. Carter had seen him twice before that night, dodging in and out among the feet of the rioters like an excited cur, stumbling, falling, trodden upon; a being with bloodshot eyes and matted hair, hoarse voice and menacing fist, drunken and staggering with blood lust; the very Gnome of Riot himself come up from some foul cave and howling in the streets. “Kill them! Kill them!” he would cry, and then shake with cackling laughter. But he was only valiant when there was; no danger. As he approached the negro who lay upon the ground, and bent over him, Willoughby Howard stepped down from the doorway and aimed a blow at the creature with a cane. The blow missed, but the dwarf ran shrieking down Decatur Street.

Howard bent over the negro. The negro stirred; he was not dead. Howard turned toward Carter and said:

“He's alive! Help me get him out of the street.”

Together they lifted the wounded man, moving him toward the curbstone. He groaned and twisted, and they laid him down. Howard poured whisky into him from a pocket flask, and a little later he managed to struggle to a sitting posture on the curb, looking up at them with dazed eyes and a bloody face.

Howard took his slow gaze from the negro and covered his face with his hands.

Carter watched him.

Of all men in the world this was the one whom Carter most honored and most loved—honored and loved, while he envied; he was the only man, perhaps, that could have touched Carter through his crust of bitterness. Carter listened with strained attention for what Howard would say, as if with some premonition that the words would be the cue for the most vital action of his life.

“My God! My God!” said Willoughby Howard, “will this thing never stop?” And then he straightened himself and turned toward the shadow into which Carter had retired, and there was the glow and glory of a large idea on his face; the thought of a line of men never lacking, when once aroused, in the courage to do and die for a principle or a human need. “There is one way,” he cried, stretching out his hands impulsively to Carter, and not knowing to whom or to what manner of man he spoke—“there is one way to make them pause and think! If two of us white men of the better class offer our lives for these poor devils—die in their defense!—the mob will halt; the crowd will think; we can end it! Will you do it, with me? Will you do it?”