Once to Every Man

by Larry Evans

That next week marked the beginning of an intimacy unlike anything which Old Jerry had ever before known in all his life, for in spite of the girl’s absolute proprietorship he continued his daily trips up the long hill, not only for the purpose of leaving Young Denny’s bundle of papers and seed catalogues, but to attend to the stock which the boy had left in his care as well. It never occurred to him that that duty was only optional with him now.

He never again attempted either, after that night, to explain his delinquency and deliver Young Denny’s message to her. There seemed to him absolutely no need now to open a subject which was bound to be embarrassing to him. And then, too, a sort of tacit understanding appeared to have sprung up between them that needed no further explanation.

Only once was the temptation to confess to her the real reason for Denny’s sudden going almost stronger than he could resist. That was quite a month later, when the news of the boy’s second battle was flaunted broadcast by the same red-headlined sheet. Then for days he considered the advisability of such a move.

It was not some one to share his hot pride that he 269 wanted; he had lived his whole life almost entirely within himself, and so his elation was no less keen because he had no second person with whom to discuss the victory. He wanted her opinion on a quite different question––a question which he felt utterly incapable of deciding for himself. It was no less a plan than that he should be present at the match which was already hinted at between “The Pilgrim” and Jed The Red––Jeddy Conway, from that very village.

There were days when he almost felt that she knew of this new perplexity of his, felt that she really had seen that account of Young Denny’s first fight and had been watching for the second, and at such times only a mumbled excuse and a hasty retreat saved him from baring his secret desire.

“She’d think I’d gone stark crazy,” he excused his lack of courage. “She’d say I was a-goin’ into my second childhood!”

Yet in the end it was the girl with the tip-tilted eyes who decided it for him.

Spring had slipped into early summer when the day came which made the gossip of “The Pilgrim’s” possible bid for the championship a certainty. It was harder than ever for Old Jerry after that. Each fresh day’s issue brought forth a long and exhaustive comparison of the two men’s chances––of their strength and weaknesses. The technical discussion the old 270 man skipped; it was undecipherable to him and enough that Young Denny was hailed as a certain winner.

And then as the day set for the match crept nearer and nearer, he began to notice a new and alarming change in the tone of that daily column. At first it was only fleeting––too intangible for one to place one’s finger upon it. But by the end of another week it was openly inquiring whether “The Pilgrim” had as much as an even chance of winning after all.

It bewildered Old Jerry; it was beyond his comprehension, and had he not been so depressed himself he would have noted the change that came over the girl, too, these days. He never entered the big back kitchen now to hear her humming softly to herself, and sometimes he had to speak several times before she even heard him.