The Court of Boyville

by William Allen White

During the two weeks after the appearance of the glad tidings on the bill-boards, the boys of Willow Creek spent many hours in strange habiliments, making grotesque imitations of the spectacles upon the boards. Piggy Pennington rolled his trousers far above his knees for tights, and galloped his father's fat delivery horse up and down the alley, riding sideways, standing, and backwards, with much vainglory. To simulate the motley of the tight-rope-walking clown, Jimmy Sears wore the calico lining of his clothes outside, when he was in the royal castle beyond his mother's ken. Mealy donned carpet slippers in Pennington's barn, and wore long pink-and-white striped stockings of a suspiciously feminine appearance, fastened to his abbreviated shirt waist with stocking-suspenders, hated of all boys. Abe Carpenter, in a bathing-trunk, did shudder-breeding trapeze tricks, and Bud Perkins, who nightly rubbed himself limber in oil made by hanging a bottle of angle-worms in the sun to fry, wore his red calico base-ball clothes, and went through keg-hoops in a dozen different ways. In the streets of the town the youngsters appeared disguised as ordinary boys. They revelled in the pictured visions of the circus, but were sceptical about the literal fulfilment of some of the promises made on the bills. Certain things advertised were eliminated from reasonable expectation: for instance, the boys all knew that the giraffe would not be discovered eating off the top of a cocoanut-tree; nor would the monkeys play a brass band; and they knew that they would not see the "Human Fly" walk on the ceiling at the "concert." For no boy has ever saved enough money to buy a ticket to the "concert." Nevertheless, they gloated over the pictures of the herd of giraffes and the monkey-band and the graceful "Human Fly" walking upside down "defying the laws of gravitation;" and they considered no future, however pleasant, after the day and date on the bills. Thus the golden day approached, looming larger and larger upon the horizon as it came. In the interim, how many a druggist bought his own bottles the third and fourth time, how many a junk-dealer paid for his own iron, how many bags of carpet rags went to the ragman, the world will never know.

Now, among children of a larger growth, in festive times hostile demonstrations cease; animosities are buried; but in Boyville a North-ender is a North-ender, a South-ender is a South-ender, and a meeting of the two is a fight. Boyville knows no times of truce. It asks nor offers quarter. When warring clans come together, be it workday, holiday, or even circus day, there is a clatter of clods, a patter of feet, and retreating hoots of defiance. And because the circus bill-boards were frequented by boys of all kiths and clans, clashes occurred frequently, and Bud Perkins, who was the fighter of the South End, had many a call to arms. Indeed, the approaching circus unloosed the dogs of war rather than nestled the dove of peace. For Bud Perkins, in a moment of pride, issued an ukase which forbade all North End boys to look at a certain bill-board near his home. This ukase and his strict enforcement of it made him the target of North End wrath. Little Miss Morgan, his foster-mother, who had adopted him at the death of his father the summer before the circus bills were posted, could not understand how the lad managed to lose so many buttons, nor how he kept tearing his clothes. She ascribed these things to his antecedents and to his deficient training. She did not know that Bud, whom she called Henry, and whose music on the mouth-organ seemed to come from a shy and gentle soul, was the Terror of the South End. Her guileless mind held no place for the important fact that North End boys generally travelled by her door in pairs for safety. Such is the blindness of women. Cupid probably got his defective vision from his mother's side of the house.

The last half of the last week before circus day seemed a century to Bud and his friends. Friday and Saturday crept by, and Mealy Jones was the only boy at Sunday-school who knew the Golden Text, for an inflammatory rumor that the circus was unloading from the side-track at the depot swept over the boys' side of the Sunday-school room, and consumed all knowledge of the fifth chapter of Acts, the day's lesson. After Sunday-school the boys broke for the circus grounds. There they feasted their gluttonous eyes upon the canvas-covered chariots, and the elephants, and the camels, and the spotted ponies, passing from the cars to the tents. The unfamiliar noises, the sight of the rising "sea of canvas," the touch of mysterious wagons containing so many wonders, and the intoxicating smell that comes only with much canvas, many animals, and the unpacking of Pandora's box, stuffed the boys' senses until they viewed with utter stoicism the passing dinner hour and the prospect of finding only cold mashed potatoes and the necks and backs of chickens in the cupboards. They even affected indifference to parental scoldings, and lingered about the enchanting spot until the shadows fell eastward and the day was old.

When a boy gets on his good behavior he tempts Providence. And the Providence of boys is frail and prone to yield. So when Bud Perkins, who was burning with a desire to please Miss Morgan the day before the circus, went to church that Sunday night, any one can see that he was provoking Providence in an unusual and cruel manner. Bud did not sit with Miss Morgan, but lounged into the church, and took a back seat. Three North End boys came in and sat on the same bench. Then Jimmy Sears shuffled past the North Enders, and sat beside Bud. After which the inevitable happened. It kept happening. They "passed it on," and passed it back again; first a pinch, then a chug, then a cuff, then a kick under the bench. Heads craned toward the boys occasionally, and there came an awful moment when Bud Perkins found himself looking brazenly into the eyes of the preacher, who had paused to glare at the boys in the midst of his sermon. The faces of the entire congregation seemed to turn upon Bud automatically. A cherub-like expression of conscious innocence and impenetrable unconcern beamed through Bud Perkins's features. The same expression rested upon the countenances of the four other malefactors. At the end of the third second Jimmy Sears put his hand to his mouth and snorted between his fingers. And four young men looked down their noses. In the hush, Brother Baker—a tiptoeing Nemesis—stalked the full length of the church toward the culprits. When he took his seat beside the boys the preacher continued his discourse. Brother Baker's unctuousness angered Bud Perkins. He felt the implication that his conduct was bad, and his sense of guilt spurred his temper. Satan put a pin in Bud's hand. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Satan moved the boy's arm on the back of the pew, around Jimmy Sears. Then an imp pushed Bud's hand as he jabbed the pin into the back of a North Ender. The boy from the North End let out a yowl of pain. Bud was not quick enough. Brother Baker saw the pin; two hundred devout Methodists saw him clamp his fingers on Bud Perkins's ear, and march him down the length of the church and set him beside Miss Morgan. It was a sickening moment. The North End grinned as one boy under its skin, and was exceeding glad. So agonizing was it for Bud that he forgot to imagine what a triumph it was for the North End—and further anguish is impossible for a boy.

Miss Morgan and Bud Perkins left the church with the congregation. Bud dreaded the moment when they would leave the crowd and turn into their side street. When they did turn, Bud was lagging a step or two behind. A boy's troubles are always the fault of the other boy. The North End boy's responsibility in the matter was so clear—to Bud—that, when he went to justify himself to Miss Morgan, he was surprised and hurt at what he considered her feminine blindness to the fact. After she had passed her sentence she asked: "Do you really think you deserve to go, Henry?"

The blow stunned the boy. He saw the visions of two weeks burst like bubbles, and he whimpered: "I dunno." But in his heart he did know that to deny a boy the joy of seeing Willie Sells on his three Shetland ponies, for nothing in the world but showing a North-ender his place, was a piece of injustice of the kind for which men and nations go to war. At breakfast Bud kept his eyes on his plate. His face wore the resigned look of a martyr. Miss Morgan was studiously gracious. He dropped leaden monosyllables into the cheery flow of her conversation, and after breakfast put in his time at the woodshed.