Ma Pettengill

by Harry Leon Wilson

Arline had the sheriff out at once for her darling, but Shelley got word and beat it farther. He finally got to Seattle, where he found various jobs, and kept his mother guessing for three years. He was afraid she'd make him start the curls again if he come home. But finally, when he was eighteen, he did come, on her solemn promise to behave. But he was no longer the angel-faced darling that had left, and he still expected at least one fight a day, though no longer wearing what would cause fights. He'd formed the habit and just couldn't leave off. A body could hardly look at him without starting something unpleasant. He was round like a barrel now, and tough and quick, and when anything did happen to be started he was the one that finished it. Also, he'd have his hair cut close every five or six days. He always looked like a prisoner that had started to let it grow about a week before he left the institution. Shelley was taking no chances, and he used to get a strange, glittering look in his eye when he regarded little Keats, his baby brother, who was now coming on with golden curls just as beautiful as Shelley's had ever been. But he done nothing sinister.

In time he might of settled down and become a useful citizen, but right then the war broke out, so no more citizen stuff for Shelley. It was almost too good to be true that he could go to a country where fighting was legal; not only that, but they'd give him board and lodging and a little spending money for doing the only thing he'd ever learned to do well. It sure looked like heaven. So off he went to Canada and enlisted and got sent across and had three years of perfect bliss, getting changed over to our Army when we finally got unneutral so you could tell it.

Of course his mother was almost more anguished about his going to war than about having his curls fixed with the sheep shears. She said even if he wasn't shot he would be sure to contract light habits in France, consisting of native wine and dancing, and so forth, and she hoped at least he could be a drummer boy or something safe.

But Shelley never had a safe moment, I guess. No such thing as a quiet sector where he was. He fought at the Front, and then he'd fight at hospitals every time he got took back there for being shot up. He was almost too scrappy even for that war. He was usually too busy to write, but we got plenteous reports of his adventures from other men, these adventures always going hard with whatever Germans got in his way. And I bet his mother never dreamed that his being such a demon fighter was all due to her keeping him in curls so long, where he got the habit and come to love it for its own sake.

Anyway, he fought and fought and had everything happen to him that German science had discovered was useful to exterminate the lesser races, and it finally begun to tell on him, hardened as he was by fighting from the cradle up, as you might say.

It was a glad day for Arline when she got word that he was a broken-down invalid and had landed at an Atlantic Ocean port on his way home. She got arrowroot gruel and jelly and medicinal delicacies and cushions, and looked forward to a life of nursing. She hoped that in the years to come she could coax the glow of health back to his wan cheeks. And I wouldn't put it past her—mebbe she hoped she could get him to let the golden hair grow again, just long enough to make him interesting as he lay coughing on his couch.

And Shelley come home, but his idee of being an invalid wasn't anything like his mother's. He looked stout as a horse, and merely wished to rest up for a couple weeks before getting some other kind of action suited to his peculiar talents. And worse, he wasn't Shelley Vane Plunkett—he was Bugs Plunkett; and his mother's heart broke again. He was shaved like a convict and thicker through than ever, and full of rich outdoor words about what he would do to this so-and-so medical officer for not letting him back into the scrap. Yes, sir; that man is going to suffer casualties right up to the limit the minute he gets out of his uniform—and him thinking the world is at peace once more! Sure, Shelley had been shot through the lungs a couple of times, and one leg had been considerably altered from the original plan, but he had claimed he was a better scrapper than ever before and had offered to prove it to this medical officer right then and there if it could be done quiet. But this fair offer had been rejected.

So here he'd come back, not any kind of a first-class invalid that would be nice to nurse, but as Bugs Plunkett! No sooner did he get to town than letters and postal cards begun to come addressed to Mr. Bugs Plunkett or mebbe B. Plunkett, Esquire; and the cards would be from his old pals in the trenches, many of whom had worse names, even, than Shelley had made for himself.

Also the sick warrior turned down flat the arrowroot gruel and Irish-moss custard and wine jelly and pale broth. He had to have the same coarse food that is et by common working people who have had no home advantages, including meat, which is an animal poison and corrupts the finer instincts of man by reducing him to the level of the brutes. So Arline Plunkett says. Shelley had it, though, ordering it in a bass voice that made the statuary teeter. Steak was cooked in the Plunkett home for the first time since it had been erected, notwithstanding the horrible example it set to little Keats, who still had golden curls as lovely as Shelley's once had been and was fed on fruits and nuts.

Arline couldn't of had any pleasant time with her wandering boy them three weeks he was there. She suffered intensely over the ignominy of this mail that came to him by the awful name of Bugs, with the gossips in the post office telling it everywhere, so that the boys round the cigar store got to calling him Bugs right out plain. And her son seeming proud of this degradation!