CHAPTER XLV
AN INDIANA VILLAGE
While we were sitting on the veranda—Franklin’s father and myself—Speed came by on his way down town, and Mr. Booth, having gathered a sense of approval, perhaps, for the pornographic document from my attitude, drew it out and showed it to him.
“Gee!” exclaimed Speed, after reading it. “I must get some of those.”
Soon after, Franklin came out and, seeing the document and reading it, seemed troubled over the fact that his father should be interested in such a thing. I think he felt that it threw an unsatisfactory light on his sire, or that I, not understanding, might think so; but, after I made it clear that it was more or less of a Cervantesque bit of humor to me, he became more cheerful.
A little while thereafter we went downtown, Franklin and I, to inspect the village, and to see some of those peculiar natives of whom he had been talking. I think he must have a much better eye for rural and countryside types and their idiosyncrasies than I have, for I failed to gather any of those gay nuances which somehow he had made me feel were there. Little things in rural life which probably attract and hold his attention entirely escape me, as, for instance, the gaunt and spectacled old gentleman looking over his glasses into the troublesome works of his very small Ford. My own powers of observation in that direction, and my delight in them, are limited to a considerable extent by my sense of drama. Is a thing dramatic? Or at least potentially so? If not, it is apt to lose interest for me. As for Franklin, he was never weary of pointing out little things, and I enjoyed almost more of what was to be seen here and elsewhere because of his powers of indication than from my own observation.
Thus, on the way west, he had been telling me of one man who was almost always more or less sick, or thought he was, because, through one of the eccentricities of hypochondria, he discovered that one got more attention, if not sympathy, being sick than well. And when we came to the postoffice door here he was before it, complaining of a pain in his chest! It seemed to me, in looking at him, that by a process of thinking, if that were really true, he had made himself ill. He looked “very poorly,” as he expressed it, and as though he might readily sink into a destructive illness. Yet Franklin assured me that there had really been nothing the matter with him to begin with, but that jealousy of sympathy bestowed upon a cripple, the one who was to run our car for us south from here, had caused him to resort to this method of getting some for himself!
Also, there was another young man who had been described to me as a village wag—one of three or four who were certain to amuse me; but when he now came forward to greet me, and I was told that this was the person, I was not very much interested. He was of the type that has learned to consider himself humorous, necessarily so, with a reputation for humor to sustain. “I must be witty,” says such a one to himself, and so the eye is always cocked, the tongue or body set for a comic remark or movement. The stranger feels obliged by the very atmosphere which goes with such a person to smile anticipatorially, as who should say, something deliciously funny is soon to be said. I did not hear anything very humorous said, however.
Incidentally, I also met Bert, the crippled boy, who was to be our chauffeur south from this point. He was a youth in whose career Franklin seemed greatly interested, largely, I think, because other people of the village were inclined to be indifferent to or make sport of him. The boy was very bright and of a decidedly determined and characterful nature. Although both legs, below the hips, but not below the ankles, were practically useless, due to a schooltime wrestling bout and fall, he managed with the aid of a pair of crutches to get about with considerable ease and speed. There was no least trace of weakness or complaint or need of sympathy in his manner. Indeed, he seemed more self-reliant and upstanding than most of the other people I met here. How, so crippled, he would manage to run the car puzzled me. Franklin’s father had already expressed himself to me as opposed to the idea.
“I can’t understand what he sees in that fellow,” he said to me early this morning. “He’s a reckless little devil, and I don’t think he really knows anything about machinery. Frank will stick to him, though. If it were my machine, I wouldn’t have him near it.”
Now that I looked at Bert, though, I felt that he had so much courage and hope and optimism—such an intriguing look in his eyes—that I quite envied him. He was assistant mail clerk or something at the post office, and when I came up and had been introduced through the window, he promptly handed me out several letters. When I told Franklin what his father had said, he merely smiled. “The old man is always talking like that,” he said. “Bert’s all right. He’s better than Speed.”