A slow grin broke over Junior’s face. He looked at his father with an impudent leer. His eyes focussed on the surgical bandages decorating the Senior Moreland’s head, and then slowly and deliberately, he said: “He’s a darn good shot, ain’t he?”
Taken unexpectedly and in a tender spot, Moreland Senior caught his breath sharply as he studied his son.
“Of course, that burglar stuff is all right to feed Mother,” said Junior. “A woman will swallow anything, and Mother’s a regular boa constrictor, if you tell it to her real impressively. But you needn’t dish out that burglar dope to me. You didn’t have luck to brag of manhandling Jason for busting my head, did you, Dad?”
Moreland Senior lifted his right hand, also in surgical bandages, and then with the tips of the injured member, he slowly felt across his damaged head. He leaned forward to look at his reflection in the mirror.
“For God’s sake, don’t come to the bank to-day,” he said. “It’s going to look damned funny to the people of this town to see both of us in bandages. Keep your mouth shut and leave this to me. I’ll see to it that you don’t come in contact with that scorpion in school again. He don’t know it, but he’s through going to a school that I run.”
Moreland Senior lifted the hurt hand toward the blue of the bathroom ceiling and eased his soul of mighty oaths. He swore that he would yet punish Jason to within an inch of his life; that he never should enter the high school again; and that whatever he attempted in life should be a failure.
Junior reinforced his wavering legs by taking a seat on the broad wooden rim surrounding the tin bath tub, while he looked at his father speculatively.
“Dad,” he asked slowly, “why the hell have you got it in so strong for Jason Peters? He can’t help it because his mother is a washerwoman and he can’t produce anything in the shape of a father. Every one’s got to admit he has the best brains of any boy in my class. I hate the pasty-faced, mewling thing, but I’m forced to tell you that there’s something in him when he can stand at the head of his classes, and when he can get away with you and me both the same night.”
Then Junior squared his shoulders, threw up his handsome bandaged head, and laughed until he started a pain that stopped the laughter. The Senior Moreland hurriedly left the bathroom, closing the door behind him with undue emphasis.
Among the thick branches of the Ashwater forest there were a few small openings. A brilliant morning ray of October sunshine found one of these and shot its level beam straight into the pallid face of a sleeping boy curled on the damp, frosty ground. Stiff with cold in his physical frame, stiff with terror yet in his heart, Jason opened his eyes, deeply set in an attractive framework, a forehead of intelligence above, the remainder lean and intellectual. At first he was so numbed that it was difficult to realize where he was or how he had got there. Then slowly he arose and made his way to the sunlight of the meadow; there he sat on the stump of a felled tree and began an effort to command a continuous procession of thought. He began as far back as he could remember, and year by year, he came down the progression of his days. He tried to figure out why the woman with whom he had lived had not been to him as other mothers were to their sons. She had worked hard, they had been poor; but many women in the village had worked harder, had larger families and been less capable of taking care of them. He had seen all of them evince for their children some degree of solicitude and of love. He could recall neither of these things ever having been proffered him.