And this other, the being who had left a frail weakling to bear the brunt alone, for what must the son thank him? For the inherited fiend's appetite that marred him, no more. The son well knew that the craving was the intensified replica of the father's crowning vice. He had learned, moreover, that the parent had deemed it a witty thing to ply the son with toddy while in his cradle. The son took to it with an avidity of grave presage, but which delighted the tippling parent. This was the heritage from his father, a heritage that held in fee wastes of black bog and hungry mire, with death squatting grimly in the midst. Ah, what a goodly patrimony he had left, this absent one; what wealth indeed!
The boy in the bed winced as beneath the impact of a blow. He struck clenched hands together fiercely. "Oh, God!" he breathed, the tone combining the bitter venom of a curse with the agonized entreaty of a prayer.
A moment more he lay in silence, vague eyes fixed on a gray and resurrected past. He stirred uneasily. "Ah, well, this won't do!" he muttered, and flinging off the coverings he rolled off upon the floor. The sunlight dazzled his eyes and he blinked like a bat as he drew the shade. He swayed unsteadily for a moment, wincing as a sharp pain stabbed his throbbing head, dying in needle-like prickings just behind the eyes. With a discouraged groan he made his way to the wash stand, and emptying the pitcher into the bowl, plunged his fevered head into the refreshing contents and held it there. It was very pleasant, the coolness, and a brisk rubbing with a crash towel added decidedly to the relief. Dressing with shaking fingers, he was finally ready and left the house, blinking swollen eyes owlishly in the clear sunlight. He stopped at a restaurant just long enough to swallow a cupful of black coffee in order to neutralize a bevy of differing tastes that tenanted his mouth, vying in stale mustiness. Again he sought the open air, wandering aimlessly.
Clearly the coffee was not enough, for his head throbbed worse than before. Involuntarily he steadied it with one hand, to keep it on, while he put into Kelly's drug store for a bromo. Kelly's was popular with the boys. It was open nights and they could buy whisky in the back room, after all the other places were closed, and secure bromo over the soda water fountain in the morning.
Micky absorbed his bromo in a gloomy, introspective mood. The bracer, as it is generally understood, he was minded this morning to avoid as if it had been a pestilence. He was wont to say that a bracer was to him but a limited stop-over, that he would be sure to be traveling again before noon. He had travelled far enough this trip, far enough to menace a future, which had never seemed so bright. Disquieting recollections gnawed at Micky's mind. A girl's face, eloquent with horror and disgust, seen as through a mist in the lighted street, confronted his shamed, wakened consciousness, while he writhed inwardly. And, too, his post with the Courier? Had he lost it? How much latitude would they extend to drunkards?
A drunkard! He shuddered at the repellent thought, yet what else was he? What else any man who allowed the infernal appetite to lure him from duty to be performed? Not once but many times had he, O'Byrn, fallen by this standard. Repeatedly had he been cast off, with the goal of reputation and success in sight, because of the little red devil, who journeyed with him the broad land over, making its hateful presence known at riotous intervals that resulted in swift changes and shifts of scene for the little Irishman. If, indeed, he had not lost his post with the Courier, it was due to the fortunate interruption of a spree that might otherwise have lasted a week. O'Byrn's soul went out in gratitude to Dick. Even though it should prove that he had lost both his place and his lady, it was a melancholy pleasure to Micky to have sobered so soon. He thought with deep self-disgust of prior orgies; of wild days and wilder nights, piling deliriously upon each other while sleep was unknown, a stranger to be banished; when all things loomed distorted, unreal, through a red haze. So it would go until, with abused nature exhausted, he would sink into a sodden stupor. From this he would finally emerge a shaking wreck, with the blackest of memories and usually with the blankest of futures, for his job usually went with his spree. The latter was always of inconvenient length for the demands of a newspaper office.
Something of these horrors he had communicated to Dick some time before. "This thing has played the devil with me, Dick," he had said. "I want excitement. Drinking is a means to the end. Then, first I know, it's an end to my means. That and my infernal itch for shifting have made me a scoffing and a byword. If I could get chained down, and lost my thirst, I might make good. I've come near it a lot of times and then the cussed coupling would break and I'd go slidin' down the grade again. Then it would be the bumpers out. I guess it'll be that way till I'm backed onto the siding for good. But I'm headed right now, and, if you ever catch me toyin' with the lush, I want you to joyously jack my jeans clear to my lodgings. Knock me down, pick me up and knock me down again."
"That's all very well, Micky," Dick had replied with a remonstrating bellow of a laugh, "but I'm not enough of a pharisee for that, you know, for I'm no total abstainer myself."
"Yes, but you're about two-thirds of a one," replied the other. "You don't know what an appetite means. You drink, when you drink at all, for good fellowship, because someone asks you to. Left to yourself, you'd never think of it. If you ever take too much, it means you're on the water wagon for a number of months, because you dread the feeling of the morning after. You're one of those lucky devils that can monkey with the stuff for a lifetime and never acquire the faintest vestige of a thirst. Now as for me, I can't coquette with it. I have to walk sideways past a saloon with my face turned the other way, across the street to the undertaker's. I've simply got to let it alone. Why? Because a lot of hard jolts have taught me that it's a lot stronger than I am unless it's held down with both hands. Sometimes I can take a glass and let it alone, but oftener the first glass is only a drop in the bucket that starts a demand to annex the whole well. Then there's a roaring Rip Van Winkle that I come out of a week or two later to find my job miles behind and me countin' ties and waitin' for a freight. That's the worst of it, Dick," with a red flush of shame. "It's thinkin' that you're just as liable to fall asleep at the switch, when you're on duty. Now that's what I'm carrying over the country with me. That's what I'm fightin'. First one on top, then the other. But whichever way, Dick, it's hell!"
There had ensued a silence, broken by Dick's voice, unwontedly sober.