A baby tramp
If you had seen little Jo standing at the street corner in the rain,
you would hardly have admired him. It was apparently an ordinary
autumn rainstorm, but the water which fell upon Jo (who was hardly
old enough to be either just or unjust, and so perhaps did not come
under the law of impartial distribution) appeared to have some
property peculiar to itself: one would have said it was dark and
adhesive--sticky. But that could hardly be so, even in Blackburg,
where things certainly did occur that were a good deal out of the
common.
For example, ten or twelve years before, a shower of small frogs had
fallen, as is credibly attested by a contemporaneous chronicle, the
record concluding with a somewhat obscure statement to the effect
that the chronicler considered it good growing-weather for Frenchmen.
Some years later Blackburg had a fall of crimson snow; it is cold in
Blackburg when winter is on, and the snows are frequent and deep.
There can be no doubt of it--the snow in this instance was of the
color of blood and melted into water of the same hue, if water it
was, not blood. The phenomenon had attracted wide attention, and
science had as many explanations as there were scientists who knew
nothing about it. But the men of Blackburg--men who for many years
had lived right there where the red snow fell, and might be supposed
to know a good deal about the matter--shook their heads and said
something would come of it.
And something did, for the next summer was made memorable by the
prevalence of a mysterious disease--epidemic, endemic, or the Lord
knows what, though the physicians didn't--which carried away a full
half of the population. Most of the other half carried themselves
away and were slow to return, but finally came back, and were now
increasing and multiplying as before, but Blackburg had not since
been altogether the same.
Of quite another kind, though equally "out of the common," was the
incident of Hetty Parlow's ghost. Hetty Parlow's maiden name had
been Brownon, and in Blackburg that meant more than one would think.
The Brownons had from time immemorial--from the very earliest of the
old colonial days--been the leading family of the town. It was the
richest and it was the best, and Blackburg would have shed the last
drop of its plebeian blood in defense of the Brownon fair fame. As
few of the family's members had ever been known to live permanently
away from Blackburg, although most of them were educated elsewhere
and nearly all had traveled, there was quite a number of them. The
men held most of the public offices, and the women were foremost in
all good works. Of these latter, Hetty was most beloved by reason of
the sweetness of her disposition, the purity of her character and her
singular personal beauty. She married in Boston a young scapegrace
named Parlow, and like a good Brownon brought him to Blackburg
forthwith and made a man and a town councilman of him. They had a
child which they named Joseph and dearly loved, as was then the
fashion among parents in all that region. Then they died of the
mysterious disorder already mentioned, and at the age of one whole
year Joseph set up as an orphan.
Unfortunately for Joseph the disease which had cut off his parents
did not stop at that; it went on and extirpated nearly the whole
Brownon contingent and its allies by marriage; and those who fled did
not return. The tradition was broken, the Brownon estates passed
into alien hands and the only Brownons remaining in that place were
underground in Oak Hill Cemetery, where, indeed, was a colony of them
powerful enough to resist the encroachment of surrounding tribes and
hold the best part of the grounds. But about the ghost:
One night, about three years after the death of Hetty Parlow, a
number of the young people of Blackburg were passing Oak Hill
Cemetery in a wagon--if you have been there you will remember that
the road to Greenton runs alongside it on the south. They had been
attending a May Day festival at Greenton; and that serves to fix the
date. Altogether there may have been a dozen, and a jolly party they
were, considering the legacy of gloom left by the town's recent
somber experiences. As they passed the cemetery the man driving
suddenly reined in his team with an exclamation of surprise. It was
sufficiently surprising, no doubt, for just ahead, and almost at the
roadside, though inside the cemetery, stood the ghost of Hetty
Parlow. There could be no doubt of it, for she had been personally
known to every youth and maiden in the party. That established the
thing's identity; its character as ghost was signified by all the
customary signs--the shroud, the long, undone hair, the "far-away
look"--everything. This disquieting apparition was stretching out
its arms toward the west, as if in supplication for the evening star,
which, certainly, was an alluring object, though obviously out of
reach. As they all sat silent (so the story goes) every member of
that party of merrymakers--they had merry-made on coffee and lemonade
only--distinctly heard that ghost call the name "Joey, Joey!" A
moment later nothing was there. Of course one does not have to
believe all that.
Now, at that moment, as was afterward ascertained, Joey was wandering
about in the sage-brush on the opposite side of the continent, near
Winnemucca, in the State of Nevada. He had been taken to that town
by some good persons distantly related to his dead father, and by
them adopted and tenderly cared for. But on that evening the poor
child had strayed from home and was lost in the desert.
His after history is involved in obscurity and has gaps which
conjecture alone can fill. It is known that he was found by a family
of Piute Indians, who kept the little wretch with them for a time and
then sold him--actually sold him for money to a woman on one of the
east-bound trains, at a station a long way from Winnemucca. The
woman professed to have made all manner of inquiries, but all in
vain: so, being childless and a widow, she adopted him herself. At
this point of his career Jo seemed to be getting a long way from the
condition of orphanage; the interposition of a multitude of parents
between himself and that woeful state promised him a long immunity
from its disadvantages.
Mrs. Darnell, his newest mother, lived in Cleveland, Ohio. But her
adopted son did not long remain with her. He was seen one afternoon
by a policeman, new to that beat, deliberately toddling away from her
house, and being questioned answered that he was "a doin' home." He
must have traveled by rail, somehow, for three days later he was in
the town of Whiteville, which, as you know, is a long way from
Blackburg. His clothing was in pretty fair condition, but he was
sinfully dirty. Unable to give any account of himself he was
arrested as a vagrant and sentenced to imprisonment in the Infants'
Sheltering Home--where he was washed.
Jo ran away from the Infants' Sheltering Home at Whiteville--just
took to the woods one day, and the Home knew him no more forever.
We find him next, or rather get back to him, standing forlorn in the
cold autumn rain at a suburban street corner in Blackburg; and it
seems right to explain now that the raindrops falling upon him there
were really not dark and gummy; they only failed to make his face and
hands less so. Jo was indeed fearfully and wonderfully besmirched,
as by the hand of an artist. And the forlorn little tramp had no
shoes; his feet were bare, red, and swollen, and when he walked he
limped with both legs. As to clothing--ah, you would hardly have had
the skill to name any single garment that he wore, or say by what
magic he kept it upon him. That he was cold all over and all through
did not admit of a doubt; he knew it himself. Anyone would have been
cold there that evening; but, for that reason, no one else was there.
How Jo came to be there himself, he could not for the flickering
little life of him have told, even if gifted with a vocabulary
exceeding a hundred words. From the way he stared about him one
could have seen that he had not the faintest notion of where (nor
why) he was.
Yet he was not altogether a fool in his day and generation; being
cold and hungry, and still able to walk a little by bending his knees
very much indeed and putting his feet down toes first, he decided to
enter one of the houses which flanked the street at long intervals
and looked so bright and warm. But when he attempted to act upon
that very sensible decision a burly dog came bowsing out and disputed
his right. Inexpressibly frightened and believing, no doubt (with
some reason, too) that brutes without meant brutality within, he
hobbled away from all the houses, and with gray, wet fields to right
of him and gray, wet fields to left of him--with the rain half
blinding him and the night coming in mist and darkness, held his way
along the road that leads to Greenton. That is to say, the road
leads those to Greenton who succeed in passing the Oak Hill Cemetery.
A considerable number every year do not.
Jo did not.
They found him there the next morning, very wet, very cold, but no
longer hungry. He had apparently entered the cemetery gate--hoping,
perhaps, that it led to a house where there was no dog--and gone
blundering about in the darkness, falling over many a grave, no
doubt, until he had tired of it all and given up. The little body
lay upon one side, with one soiled cheek upon one soiled hand, the
other hand tucked away among the rags to make it warm, the other
cheek washed clean and white at last, as for a kiss from one of God's
great angels. It was observed--though nothing was thought of it at
the time, the body being as yet unidentified--that the little fellow
was lying upon the grave of Hetty Parlow. The grave, however, had
not opened to receive him. That is a circumstance which, without
actual irreverence, one may wish had been ordered otherwise.
-THE END-
Ambrose Bierce's short story: A baby tramp
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