A Son of the City

Startled from a sound sleep, he fumbled blindly beneath the bed that he might throttle the insistent alarm clock before the clamor awakened the other members of the household. Then he lay back and listened breathlessly for parental voices of inquiry as to what he might be doing at the unearthly hour of half-past three on a late September morning.

Far down the railroad embankment which passed the rear of the house, an engine puffed lazily cityward with a load of empty freight cars. Over the elevated tracks a mile to the south, a train rumbled somnolently towards the park terminal, and under the eaves of the house, just above his room, two sparrows squabbled sleepily. Inside, the only audible sounds were the chirpings of a cricket somewhere down the hall, and the furious, muffled pounding of his own little heart.

He glanced from the window near the head of his bed. The air was oppressive with a strange, almost rural quietude. In the east, a faint streak of light brought the tree tops of the park into indistinct relief, and to the north a thin line of smoke floated apathetically from a hotel chimney to show that a light breeze from the west augured favorably for the morning's sport.

Stockings, knickerbockers, and blouse were drawn on with unwonted rapidity. His coat and necktie he left hanging over the back of the chair, disdained as unnecessary impediments on a fishing trip. Then with a final glance from the window at the fast-graying sky, he reached behind the bookcase for his carefully concealed pole and tackle, gathered his shoes in one hand, and tiptoed down the pitchy hall with the stealth of a cat.

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Down the stairway he went, step at a time, scarcely daring to breathe as he shifted his weight again and again from one foot to the other. On the first landing, a board creaked with alarming distinctness. Came a maternal voice:

"John."

Her son hugged the stairway in a very agony of fear lest his carefully made plans had been spoiled. Why hadn't he walked along the end of the steps as bitter experience had taught? He knew that board was loose. Again the well-known tones:

"John, what are you doing?"

A subdued babel of conversation in the big south room followed, in which his father's deep bass took a prominent part.

"Nonsense, Jane, you're imagining things!"

"But you know I forbade fishing during school mornings. And he was looking at the DuPree's weather vane when he watered the lawn last night. Get up and see what he's doing."

John drew a sigh of relief as the deep voice sounded a sleepy protest. Minutes passed. His legs became cramped from inaction, yet he dared not stir. Were his parents asleep? Or was Mrs. Fletcher waiting merely until some tell-tale noise enabled her to order John senior forth on an expedition which would result in certain detection? If he had only avoided that misstep!

Then the kindly fast-mail thundered over the railroad tracks and enabled the seeker after forbidden pleasures to scurry to the first floor under cover of the disturbance.

In the hallway, the boy deposited his shoes and tackle very cautiously on the carpet, and tiptoed over to the unused grate. There he extracted from behind the gas log a package of sandwiches, surreptitiously assembled after supper the night before. Then with both hands grasping the doorknob firmly, he strained upwards, that weight be thrown off the squeaking hinges as much as possible, and swung the door back, inch by inch, until the opening permitted a successful exit.

The old cat bounded from her bed on the window ledge with a thud and mewed plaintively for admittance as he stood with one hand on the screen door, and fumbled in his pockets. Sinkers, spare hooks, a line with a nail at one end on which to string possible victims of his skill, "eats," his dollar watch that he might know when breakfast time came around-all present and accounted for.

The family pet protested volubly as he blocked her ingress with one foot and closed the door as slowly and noiselessly as it had swung open. A moment spent in lacing his shoes, a consoling pat for puss, and he was off on the dogtrot for Silvey's house, with tackle swinging easily to and fro in one hand and a noiseless whistle of exultation coming from half-parted lips which became more and more audible as his rapidly echoing footsteps increased the distance from home. For he had made good his escape, the strange fragrance of the cool, early air with its absence of city smoke went to his head like wine and set his pulses a-throb with a very joy of living, and five hours, three hundred glorious minutes, if the excursion were stretched a bit past breakfast time, of enchanting, tantalizing sport lay before him.

A short distance from the corner, he turned in abruptly at a frame house which was distinguished from its neighbors by unusually ornate fretwork about the porch and gables, and tiptoed gently over the struggling grass on the narrow sidelawn. For it was here that the Silvey family lived, and if Bill were his boon companion with tastes akin to his, strange to relate, the Silvey elders were light sleepers with the same propensities as his own parents for curbing unlawful fishing expeditions, and there was need of caution.

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He fumbled momentarily along the dark sidewall, yanked at a cord which swayed idly to and fro with each light air current, and gazed expectantly upward. Nothing happened. Again a jerk, given this time with a certain vindictive delight. A muffled "Ouch!" came from the open window as a splotch of animated white appeared indistinctly behind the dark screen.

"Trying to pull my big toe off?" angrily.

John snickered. "Got the worms?" he asked.

Silvey swallowed his wrath and nodded. "Sh-sh, not so loud. You'll wake the folks. The can's on the back steps. Ain't many worms though. I hunted under the porch and down the tracks and all over. But the ground's too dry."

John shook the nearly empty can disparagingly as Silvey joined him on the back lawn a moment later.

"Jiminy," he whispered, "that all you could find?"

His chum nodded. "Maybe there's old worms or minnies from yesterday left on the pier. Or we can cut up the first fish for perch bait. Come on! Beat you over the tracks."

They scaled the wire fence which barricaded the embankment, and cut across the long parallel lines of rails like frisky colts. Past the few unkempt buildings of the neighborhood dairy, over the small bit of pasturage where the master thereof kept a dozen cows that his customers might think their milk was fresh, daily, and across the cement road, they scampered at top speed, to pull up panting just inside the park.

"Bet you I get to the lagoon bridge first," said Silvey when their breathing grew less labored.

Off they raced again, now on the trim gravel walks, now on the springy dew-laden turf, frightening a myriad of insects from their shelters as the pair brushed aside protruding shrubbery and brought a chorus of reproof from rusty-plumed grackles who were gathering in the open spaces for the long migration south.

As their footsteps echoed and re-echoed between the stone buttresses of the wooden planked bridge, John halted to dig frantically at his shoe top.

"Wait a minute, Sil. My heel's full of cinders."

He shook the offending boot free of the irritants, relaced it and leaned over the bridge rail for a moment. From beneath, northward, stretched the park lagoon calm and dark in the uncertain morning light. Fronting him rose the stately columns and porticoes of the park museum, once a member of an exposition whose glories are almost forgotten, which now veiled its need of repair in the kindly dawn and formed a symphony in gray with the willow-studded, low-lying lagoon banks. The air throbbed with the subdued noises of awakening animal life. In a shrub near them, a catbird cleared his throat in a few harsh notes as a prelude to a morning of tuneful parody, and on the slope below, a fat autumn-plumaged robin dug frantically in the sod for fugitive worms.

"My! Isn't it just peachy?" breathed John ecstatically.

"Yes," assented his companion, intent upon the lesser spectacle of the robin. "Don't you wish you could find worms like he does, Fletch?"

Once more they resumed their journey lakewards, breaking into the inevitable dogtrot as the long, dark pier came in sight. At the land end, John stooped to pick up a few sun-dried minnows which lay on a plank, and a little farther on Silvey grabbed eagerly at an earth-filled tomato can.

"Nary a worm," he exclaimed in disgust, as he threw the tin into the lake.

But shortly, their diligent search was rewarded by finding a tobacco-tin which contained at least a dozen samples of the squirming bait, and the anxiety regarding that problem was permanently allayed.

But one disciple of Izaak Walton had arrived before the boys, and he sat crouched in a huddled, lonely heap at the end of the pier, in a manner which seemed scarcely human. As they drew nearer, John broke into a sudden exclamation:

"Old hunchback! Been out here all night again. Wonder if he's caught anything!"

As they passed the first of his multitude of throwlines and poles, John leaned forward and peered down on the water.

"Look, Sil," he pointed at the long string of perch which floated to and fro with the sluggish water. "Aren't they peaches?"

He made a motion as if to joint his rod. The cripple drew a sharp, hissing breath from between thick, distorted lips and waved him away. Silvey caught his chum's arm warningly.

"No use of fishing beside him," he asserted. "Don't you know that, John? Brings bad luck to everyone 'cept himself, he does. I tried it one morning. He kept hauling them in, all the time, and I couldn't catch a thing."

John shook his head skeptically as they moved over to the other side of the pier.

"He does!" reiterated Silvey. "Never's the day I've been out here that he hasn't a lot. And look at that," as a shining, squirming object rose unwillingly from the water. "I'll bet I couldn't catch one if I was there. It's because he's hunchbacked, I'm telling you."

As John jointed his bamboo pole, he cast a furtive glance at the poor, misshapen being, and caught a touch of Silvey's superstitious fear.

"Maybe," he admitted, as he reached for the worm can.

Hooks baited, the boys dropped their lines in the water and sat down to dangle their legs to and fro over the pier's edge as they waited for the first hint as to the morning's luck. Possibly a quarter of an hour elapsed before Silvey's light steel rod gave a twitch, to be followed by another and still another. Its owner jerked a denuded hook high in the air.

"First bite, first bite!" he shouted, for that honor was ever a point of spirited contest on the pair's many expeditions.

"Hard?" asked John breathlessly.

"Hard!" repeated Silvey, boastfully exultant. "Hard? Goll-e-e-e, yes. Didn't you see him? Bent the tip most a foot. Took the worm, too."

Then the jointed bamboo began to shake ever so slightly and John leaned intently forward.

"Bite?" queried Silvey in turn.

"He's nibbling," said John cautiously without taking his glance from the flexible tip.

"Wait until he takes the hook," advised Bill. John braced himself and yanked a luckless perch high in the air. As it came down on the pier with a thud, his friend sprang to his feet.

"That-a-boy!" he yelled exultantly as his fingers extracted the hook. John brought out the fish stringer, and the unfortunate minnow, firmly tied by the gills, was lowered slowly into the water. The pair watched its spasmodic efforts at escape with a great deal of gusto.

"Ain't so small, is he, John?" asked Silvey optimistically, as he leaned over and looked down from an angle which only a small boy could maintain without losing his balance. "Bet you it's going to be a peach of a day."

The pier was now rapidly filling. A plethoric, sandy-haired German squatted beside the hunchback, watching an unproductive pole with a patience worthy of a better cause. At John's corner, a party of voluble loafers joked noisily as they unwound long, many-hooked throwlines and jointed nondescript rods. Beside Bill, a phlegmatic Scandinavian puffed morosely at an empty pipe. Just beyond, a fat negress shifted her bulk from time to time as she baited the hooks on one of her husband's numerous fishing outfits. Farther landward, a mixed throng-nattily clad business men who were snatching a few minutes of sport before business called, down at the heel out-of-works with nothing to do and all day to do it in, here a woman with a colorful shirtwaist, there a couple of noisy school-boys-made the sides of the pier bristle like the branches of a thicket hedge.

The faint tinge of orange in the eastern sky deepened to a radiant crimson glow. A glistening, fast-widening, crescent sliver of the sun appeared on the horizon and painted a long golden path on the rippled lake, and still the lonely perch waited in vain for a companion in misery.

Silvey jerked his line from the water and examined the untouched bait in disgust.

"Just like it was last time," he ejaculated. "I'm going down the pier and see what the other fellows are catching."

He jammed his pole between two bent nails in a plank and was off, stopping now and then to peer downward at some trophy as he sauntered along. John did likewise with his rod and stretched out on the rough boards to look lazily up at the clear sky. It wasn't half bad after all, even if the fish weren't biting. There was something in this getting up and over to the park before the smoke got into the air, to listen to the songs of the birds and watch the throng of people, that more than atoned for the lack of luck.

He pulled out his watch dreamily-a quarter of six and still but one captive-and let his glance follow the wake of a graceful, white-hulled gasoline cruiser which chugged its way up from the south. Presently Silvey returned to break in upon his revery with the exciting news that a man near the life-preserver post had caught five fish. John sat up.

"What did he catch 'em on?" he asked as he stretched his arms.

"Minnows."

"Let's try a couple of ours."

They scraped the hooks free of the whitened worms with their finger nails and rebaited, only to find that the sun-parched flesh softened and floated away soon after it was lowered into the water.

"Have to buy some fresh ones! Got any money?"

A thorough search resurrected a worn copper that had lain in Silvey's back pocket until he had forgotten it-else the coin had gone the way of many another that had purchased peppermints at the school store. John surrendered a penny that had been given him the night before for a perfect spelling paper. They viewed the scanty hoard on the sun-bleached plank reflectively.

"Ask him." John indicated the Scandinavian, who was well supplied with the desired bait. Silvey stood up and jingled the two pennies in his grimy hand with the air of a young millionaire.

Yes, the fisherman would sell some. How many were desired?

"Aw, give me," the boy paused, as if considering the amount sufficient for their needs, "give me two cents' worth."

The merchant shook his head. "Two cents?" he sneered. "Naw! Won't sell any for less 'n a nickel."

A gaunt, anaemic southerner, who was with the party of idlers, spoke up.

"Yeah, boy. What's the matter?"

Silvey turned ruefully. "Ain't got money enough to buy some minnies," he explained.

The tall figure stooped abruptly, fumbled in a battered basket which held a miscellaneous assemblage of bait, throwlines, newspapers, and food, and drew forth a handful of the diminutive fish.

"Yeah, boy," he smiled.

Silvey offered the two coppers in payment.

"Keep 'em, boy, keep 'em," with an indignant glance at the imperturbable fish monopolist. "I ain't like some folks."

The boys rebaited their hooks joyfully. The cruiser which John had sighted earlier in the morning drew up within easy distance of the pier and dropped anchor. Two of her crew appeared presently in swimming suits and dove overboard for a morning plunge. From her diminutive, weathered cabin came the rattle of cooking utensils and the hiss of frying bacon as the cook of the day prepared breakfast. Bill stirred restlessly.

"Let's have a look at the sandwiches," he suggested.

They stretched themselves full length on the pier end and, with an occasional eye to the fishing poles, munched the uncouth slabs of bread and jam contentedly. Silvey read the name on the boat's stern with interest.

"Detroit," he gasped. "Gee, Fletch, don't you wish you had a boat like that with all the gasoline to run her?"

John's brown eyes grew dreamy. "Just don't you, though! We could ride down the canal out in the Illinois River and down the Mississippi to St. Louis. No staying after school, no 'rithmetic lessons, no lawns to cut or front porches to wash on Saturdays. We'd get up when we liked and fish when we liked, and loaf around all day. If money ran out, we'd find a place where there wasn't any bridge, and ferry people across the river for a nickel or a dime, or whatever they charge down there. Maybe, too, we could get a lot of red neckties and shirts with brown and yellow stripes and sell 'em to the darkies for a dollar apiece. Sid DuPree says they buy those things and he ought to know. He spent summer before last down South with his ma!"

"Where'd we get the money to buy 'em in the first place?" asked the practical Silvey.

His chum's face clouded. "Shucks, Sil, you're always spoiling things. But," more hopefully, "we needn't really worry about money anyway. All the books I've read about the South tell how kind folks are down there, and how they won't allow a stranger to go hungry, not even if they have to give him their last hunk of cornbread. So if ferrying didn't pay, all we'd have to do would be to land, walk up to the nearest house, and knock at the door. When the big mammy cook-they always have 'em in the books-came to the door, we'd just look at her and say, 'We're hungry.'"

Silvey nodded, content to revel in the glories of the daydream which John's more vivid imagination was spinning.

"We'd go all the way down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Maybe we'd catch some alligators to make things exciting, and maybe some big yellow river catfish. I read about one once that was six feet long. And when we arrived, they'd put our pictures in the newspapers, with a big lot of print after them, just the way they do when someone comes to town here who's done something. We'd win a lot of race cups, and folks would say to their friends, 'See those two kids there? They took a launch all the way down the river from Lake Michigan by themselves.' We'd be it all the time we were there."

Silvey, under the spell of the alluring picture, let his gaze roam dreamily around until it lighted upon an excited group down the pier. He sprang to his feet energetically.

"Fletch! Look! A man drowned, maybe. Come on quick!" Such alluring possibilities may come true in a city.

They sprinted up to the rapidly increasing crowd, and wriggled, boylike, past obstructing arms and between tense bodies until they found themselves in the inner line of the circle. A carp of a size sufficient to excite the envy of the neighboring fishermen lay with laboring gills upon the water-spattered planking. The lads gazed in open-mouthed admiration at the large, glistening scales, the staring eyes, and the twitching, murky red fins.

"Weighs five pounds if he's an ounce," orated the proud captor. "Says I to myself when he bit, 'I've got a bird there,' and I was right."

John turned to his chum with the inevitable question:

"Gee, don't you wish we could catch a fish like that?"

And Silvey made the inevitable reply:

"Just don't you, though!"

They watched breathlessly as the fisherman forced his stringer between the large gills and out through the gaping mouth, and tied it in a secure double knot that there might be no danger of an escape. As the rebellious captive was lowered into the water, and the throng about the spot began to thin, the successful angler seated himself again.

"What'd you catch him on?" John broke out.

"Taters."

"Do big fellows like that bite on potatoes?"

They were assured that such was the case.

"Say," John scratched nervously at a knot in a pier plank as he summoned courage for his request. "Give me a hunk, will you? I never caught a fish that big in my life and I sure want to!"

"Catch." The man's eyes flashed in amusement as he opened a deep cigar box and tossed out a half-boiled tuber.

For a second time that morning, the boys tested a new type of bait. Hoping to change his luck, John cast far out to the very limit of the ten cents' worth of fishing line on his reel and sat, tensely hopeful, for five dragging minutes. Then he jammed the pole into its old resting place between the bent nails.

"No use," he exclaimed in disgust to Silvey.

Hardly were the words out of his mouth before the reel gave a sharp click of alarm. The sagging line grew taut and rose more and more from the water as an unseen something made a frightened break for liberty. John seized the handle as the rod threatened to drop into the water and jumped to his feet.

"Gee!" he cried, half frightened by the weight and resistance of the fish, "Gee!"

Silvey strained his eyes far out in an effort to descry the captive. The southerner who had given the minnows sprang forward with a shout of "Play him, boy, play him. Give him line until he turns or he'll break away."

"Can't," John gasped, his heart in his mouth. "It's all out, now."

As the cheap line stretched almost to the breaking point, the fish circled rapidly landward, then, alarmed by the shoaling water, sped back, close by the pier, for the open lake. The minnow monopolist jerked his lines clear of impending entanglement and scowled.

"Take in slack, boy, take in slack," shouted the southerner.

John's fingers spun around like a paper pinwheel. Again the line tightened and again the carp turned to the shore. The news that a big one was hooked spread far down the pier, and the boys, for the first time in their lives, tasted the delight of being the cynosure of the eyes of a rapidly increasing crowd. The man with the potatoes had forced his way to the pier's edge and gave advice with an almost proprietary manner. The fat negress' husband, roused from his inaction, gibbered delightedly as the line circled more and more slowly through the water, while John panted and reeled, slacked and rereeled line until the exhausted fish rose to the surface directly beneath him.

"Gee," gasped Silvey, awe-struck.

"No wonder he fought like an alligator fish," vouchsafed the southerner.

"Who says 'taters don't catch anything?" asked the man of that bait proudly. "Twenty pounds or I'll eat my shirt."

Cautiously, very cautiously, lest the fish make a sudden frightened dash for liberty, John drew in line to raise the captive from the water.

"Y'all wait a minute," said the southerner. "Land him in my minny net. That's safer."

But the minnow net, thanks to its abbreviated handle, lacked an easy two feet of the water, reach as the gaunt, outstretched figure might.

"H'ist away," he ordered finally. "I'll shove under when he gets high enough."

Inch by inch, the quivering body rose from the water. Appeared above the wire rim of the net, first the staring, goggle eyes, then the slowly laboring gills, the twitching side fins, and six inches of glistening scales.

"Now!" shouted the southerner.

Then, as if sensing the imminent danger, the great body gave a convulsive wrench, the light hook tore through the soft-fleshed mouth, and the carp, rebounding from the bark-covered piling, dove into the lake with a splash and disappeared from sight.

"Shucks!" ejaculated Silvey.

John sat down on the pier suddenly and very quietly. His tackle had snarled, and as the throng returned to their own poles, he picked at the tangle of line in the reel while his lower lip trembled piteously.

To have landed that Goliath among fishes! What a triumphal procession it would have been-a march down the home street with such a captive. How Sid DuPree and the Harrison boys would have stared! He rebaited and dropped his line forlornly into the water.

"Maybe he'll bite again," he suggested, hoping against fate.

The minutes dragged. The gaunt, gray-faced southerner stretched out on the pier for a nap. The sandy-haired German rose from his seat beside the hunchback, stretched the stiffness from his arms, and unjointed his pole. The last neatly dressed business man was walking briskly from the pier. Silvey yawned listlessly.

"Breakfast time, ain't it?" he asked.

John's watch showed a quarter after eight. Slowly they reeled in the dripping lines, freed the hooks from all traces of water-soaked bait, and dismounted their rods. As they left the lake shore, the sun's rays became oppressive with heat. The air had lost the cool, fresh fragrance of early morning, and hinted of soot-producing factories and unsavory slaughter houses. Suburban trains thundered incessantly cityward, blending the snorts of their locomotives with the rumble of innumerable elevated trains and the clamoring bells of the surface cars.

When they came to the tall poplars which marked the entrance to the park, Silvey looked down and viewed the fruit of their morning's labors with disgust.

"He's awful small," he said shamefacedly. "Throw him into the bushes."

John raised the diminutive perch into the air and regarded it glumly. "Cat'll eat him, I guess."

"Have to sneak home the back way, then," said Silvey.

The return home by way of the railroad tracks was ever their route when a fishing trip had been unsuccessful, for it avoided conveniently all notice by jeering playmates.

"Don't you wish we'd landed that big fellow?" breathed John, half to himself, as he reviewed mentally that thrilling struggle on the pier.

"Just don't you, though!" echoed Bill, regretfully.

They walked on for some minutes in silence. As they left the cement walk for the little footpath which led across the corner vacant lot to a break in the railroad fence, Silvey roused himself.

"What you going to say to your mother?"

John shrugged his shoulders. "Don't know. What you going to say to yours?"

So they fell to planning their excuses.

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