Ma Pettengill

by Harry Leon Wilson

A couple days later I was going through that same street and when I turned a corner next to the Plunkett house, here was little Shelley addressing a large red-faced man on the back of an ice wagon that had stopped there. It was some shock to my first notions of the angel child. I gathered with no trouble whatever that the party on the ice wagon had so far forgot his own manners as to call little Shelley a sissy. It was a good three-to-one bet he was now sorry he spoke. Little Shelley was using language beyond his years and words that had never been taught him by his lady mother. He handled them words like they was his slaves. Three or four other parties stopped to listen without seeming to. I have heard much in my time. I have even been forced to hear Jeff Tuttle pack a mule that preferred not to be packed. And little Shelley was informing, even to me. He never hesitated for a word and was quick and finished with the syllables.

The ice-wagon man was peeved, as he had a right to be, and may of been going to talk back, but when he saw the rest of us getting Shelley he yelled to the man in the front to drive on. It was too late, quick as he went, to save the fair repute of himself and family, if Shelley's words was to be took seriously. Shelley had invaded the most sacred relationship and pretended to bare a hideous scandal. Also the iceman himself couldn't possibly of done half the things Shelley hotly urged him to do.

Us people that had seemed to linger walked right on, not meeting each other's eye, and Shelley again become the angel child, turning in at his gate and walking up the path in a decorous manner with his schoolbooks under his arm. I first wondered if I shouldn't go warn Arline that her child had picked up some words that would get him nowhere at all with his doting pastor. Little could the fond woman dream, when she tucked him in after his prayers at night, that talk such as this could come from his sweet young lips. How much mothers think they know of their sons and how darned little they do know! But I decided to keep out of it, remembering that no mother in the world's history had ever thanked a person for anything but praise of her children.

Still, I couldn't help but worry about Shelley's future, both here and hereafter. But I talked to other people about it and learned that he was already known as a public character to everyone but his own dear mother. It was these here curls that got him attacked on every hand by young and old, and his natural vigour of mind had built him up a line of repartee that was downright blistering when he had time to stop and recite it all. Even mule skinners would drive blocks out of their way just to hear little Shelley's words when someone called him sissy or girl-boy.

It seems Shelley never took any of these troubles to his mother, because he was right manly and he regarded curls as a natural infirmity that couldn't be helped and that his poor ma shouldn't be blamed for. He'd always had curls, just as other unfortunates had been disfigured or maimed from birth, so he'd took it as a cross the Lord had give him to bear. And he was willing to bear it in silence if folks would just let him alone. Otherwise, not. Oh, most surely not!

I kind of kept watch on Shelley's mad career after that. It was mad most of the time. He had already begun to fight as well as to use language, and by the time he was ten he was a very nasty scrapper. And ready—it soon got so that only boys new-come to town would taunt him about his golden locks. And unless they was too much out of Shelley's class he made believers of 'em swiftly. From ten to twelve he must of had at least one good fight a day, what with the new ones and the old ones that still couldn't believe a boy in velvet pants with curls on his shoulders could really put it over on 'em. His mother believed his clothes was tore and his face bunged up now and then in mere boyish sports, and begged him not to engage in such rough games with his childish playmates. And Shelley, the little man, let her talk on, still believing he was like little Paul McNamara, that had a crooked foot. He wasn't going to shame his mother as well as himself.

I don't know just how Shelley ever got his big illumination that curls was not a curse put on him by his Maker. But he certainly did get it when he was round twelve. After two years of finish fights he suddenly found out that curls is optional, or a boy's own fault, if not his mother's, and that they may be cured by a simple and painless operation. He'd come to the observing age. They say he'd stand in front of Henry Lehman's barber shop every chance he'd get, watching the happy men getting their hair cut. And he put two and two together.

Then he went straight to his mother and told her all about his wonderful and beautiful discovery. He was awful joyous about it. He said you only had to go to Mr. Lehman's barber shop with thirty-five cents, and the kind Mr. Lehman would cut the horrible things off and make him look like other boys, so please let him have the thirty-five.

Then Shelley got a great shock. It was that his mother wanted him to wear them things to please her. She burst into tears and said the mere thought of her darling being robbed of his crowning glory by that nasty old Henry Lehman or any one else was breaking her heart, and how could he be so cruel as to suggest it?

The poor boy must of been quite a bit puzzled. Here was a way out of something he had thought was incurable, and now his mother that loved him burst into tears at the thought of it. So he put it out of his mind. He couldn't hurt his mother, and if cutting off his disgrace was going to hurt her he'd have to go on wearing it.