Ozarksville, Missouri. Rhoda May Gruber. Mrs. Efrim’s hold-up man. George Brush’s criminal record: Incarceration No. 3.
In spite of the absorbing occupation that entered his life with the appearance of Elizabeth and the problems of her education, George Brush’s mind was filled with the coming interview on Sunday. In order to quiet his anticipation he decided to fill in the time with work. There were a number of professional calls in the vicinity waiting to be made, but first he decided to journey some distance and confer with a certain mathematics teacher and high-school principal at Ozarksville in lower Missouri. Arriving at the town, he discovered that he had more than a day’s free time on his hands—the man he had come to see was away on a tour of inspection in the rural districts—and he decided to put into practice a plan that had long appealed to him. He resolved to pass a day in silence, following the example of his master, Gandhi. From four o’clock on Thursday until four o’clock on Friday not a word would pass his lips; and to mark the occasion still more solemnly he decided that not a particle of food would enter them.
He now communicated with the outside world by means of paper and pencil. The staff of the Baker Hotel was astonished to discover that its guest had been visited by so sudden an attack of laryngitis. On Thursday night, Mr. Baker, staring at the sky from the railing of his veranda, asked Brush whether he thought it was going to snow. Brush drew out his pad and gravely wrote the word, “No.” He was mistaken. The next morning he woke up to find that it had been snowing during the night; it grew warmer, however, the snow changed to rain and presently cleared to a mild winter day. He spent the morning in his room, light-headed from hunger, but rendered strangely happy by what he took to be the spiritual benefits of the experiment. Soon after two o’clock he started out for a walk, having put some apples in his pocket in anticipation of the stroke of four. He was strolling down a street looking at the houses to right and left when his glance fell upon an arresting sight. A little girl was sitting on the front steps of a house and a few yards from the sidewalk; around her neck was a placard which read, “I AM A LIAR.” Brush stared at the little girl and the little girl, pursing up her mouth importantly, stared at him. He hesitated only a moment, however. He walked up the path to the house and, drawing out his pencil and pad, wrote:
“What is your name?”
The little girl took his writing materials from him and wrote, “Rhoda May Gruber.”
“You can talk?” wrote Brush.
Rhoda May insisted on being given the pencil and paper again. She wrote, “Yes.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Ten years.”
“Talk. You can talk,” wrote Brush.
“Yes,” wrote Rhoda May, “only I cannot talk now because I have been noty.”
“Are your father and mother home?”
“Yes.”
Brush hesitated, but it was too late. The Grubers had become aware of the unusual conversation on their front steps. They came out upon the porch.
“What’s goin’ on here?” asked Mr. Gruber, darkly.
Brush smiled reassuringly up at him.
Mrs. Gruber said, shrilly: “Rhoda May, git up off that step. Come here to me.”
Mr. Gruber followed her with his eyes. “Take that thing off your neck,” he said. “What did this man say to you?”
Mrs. Gruber gave Rhoda May a sharp pull and clutched her to her skirts. Rhoda May began to cry. Mr. Gruber turned back to Brush.
“What do you want? Eh? What is it you want?”
Brush began writing on his pad.
“You’re deef-’n’-dumb, is that it?”
Brush shook his head, still smiling.
“You’re not deef-’n’-dumb? Then what is it? . . . Rhoda May, what did this man say to you? . . . There’s something funny about this,” he said, raising his eyebrows significantly. “You’d better run over to the Jones’ telephone and call Mr. Warren or the sheriff.” Then he turned back to Brush. “What is it you want? Are you selling something?”
Brush raised his head from his work, shook it, pointed at Rhoda May, then at the placard, and went back to his writing.
Rhoda May’s wails rose louder. Her father slapped her smartly and roared: “Git in the house. Git in there. . . . You git in there, too, Mary. I’ll tend to this.”
Mrs. Gruber put out one trembling hand. “Now do be careful, Herman.”
Brush now presented his statement: “I will be back later to talk to you about that punishment. I think you’ll see what I mean.”
Whereupon, walking down the path backwards, with gestures of cordiality, he returned to the sidewalk.
“You show up here again,” called Gruber, “and I’ll lick the hide off you, d’ya hear? I’ll get the police on you, d’ya hear?”
Brush nodded, making gestures of pacification with his hands.
“You come around here and I’ll knock your teeth out!” bellowed Gruber, and went into the house, slamming the door on Rhoda May’s howls.
Four o’clock found Brush several miles from town, stumbling about in the mud of the road. As he looked at his watch and found that the vow was accomplished, he was filled with a satisfaction that was almost ecstasy. He turned back toward the town and did a quarter of an hour’s running, then slowed down and ate an apple. He gazed with affection at the squatters’ frame cabins, at the hound dogs that hesitantly approached the gates in the wire fences, at the chickens that had ventured out in the pale wintry sunshine. The path amid the dried weeds at the side of the road gave way to a sidewalk of planks. In the distance he could see a few rusty automobiles drawn up before the long arcade made by the projecting fronts of the stores beside the post-office.
At the edge of the town he came upon a store, or rather two stores thrown into one, that bore a sign: “N. Efrim, Dry Goods and Notions.” One door had been boarded up. In the windows lay a disordered mass of such objects as dress patterns, slates, kites, and licorice whips. It occurred to Brush that he might buy some milk chocolate here, and seeing a row of dolls in the window, that he might take one of them as a peace-offering to the Grubers.
Mrs. Efrim was sitting by the window, knitting, when Brush entered the store. She was a wrinkled old woman with the head of an intelligent and dolorous monkey. Over a thick woolen dress she was wearing a frayed sweater, and over the sweater a short greenish-black cape trimmed with rusty braid. She pushed her spectacles farther down her nose and looked over them at Brush.
“I’d . . . I’d like a doll, please,” said Brush.
Mrs. Efrim laid aside her knitting and, putting her hands on her knees, painfully rose to her feet. They inspected the dolls together.
“It’s for a girl ten years old,” said Brush. “I guess you may know her. Her name’s Rhoda May Gruber.”
Mrs. Efrim nodded. Brush told her about the placard.
“Ain’t that terrible, now!” said Mrs. Efrim.
They looked at one another and became great friends. Both were pining for conversation. They agreed that that was no way to bring up children. Brush, a little mysteriously, alluded to the fact that the bringing up of little girls had recently become a problem in his life. Mrs. Efrim had six children and Brush was glad to hear about their good and bad traits. He suddenly remembered that he was hungry, and offered Mrs. Efrim an apple, adding that he had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, but that he felt fine. When he came to pay for the doll and the milk chocolate he laid a ten-dollar bill on the counter. Mrs. Efrim, making change, had a moment’s hesitation before the cash register.
“I’ll go and change it at the drug store,” said Brush.
“No, no. I have it. You’ll see. I have it fine, only it’s hid.”
“Hid?”
Mrs. Efrim looked at him and nodded mysteriously. “It don’t do to have money in the till these days. No, sir. It don’t hurtyour knowing where it’s kep’. Look!” Whereupon she put her hand behind a bolt of cloth and drew out a packet of one dollar bills and pushing aside some spools of ribbon came upon a store of fives. “That’s the way we do it.”
“I see.”
The purchase was completed, but Brush lingered on, looking about the shop enviously.
“Young man,” said Mrs. Efrim, who had again seated herself by the window, “do you know how to thread a needle?”
“I certainly do, Mrs. Efrim. I can sew pretty well, too.”
“Well, my eyes aren’t as good as they used to be. My children—every morning before they go off to school and to work—every morning they thread me up five or six needles, but sometimes they give out. Now, if you could thread me two or three needles . . .”
“I’d like to.”
So it was that when the hold-up man entered Mrs. Efrim’s store he came upon Brush standing by the window, threading needles.
“Stick up your hands,” he roared. “Stick’m up, you two!”
“Ach Gott!” cried Mrs. Efrim.
“Stand where you are and keep your mouths shut. One peep out of you and you’re dead. Do you speak English?—Eh? Spika Inglis?”
“Yes,” replied Brush and Mrs. Efrim.
“All right, then. Now stay where you are.”
This burglar was a nervous young man, new to the work and considerably hampered by the fact that the bandana handkerchief which he had tied about his nose was continually slipping and falling about his shoulders. He was given to crouching and glaring, and what he lacked in terrifying appearance he tried to make up for by shouting and by pointing his revolver squarely at the noses of his victims. He slowly crept over to the counter, keeping his eyes and his aim on Brush, opened the cash register and swept the silver change out of the drawer. Then he began uncertainly looking about for objects of value. Brush and Mrs. Efrim stood side by side with arms upraised. Brush’s face shone with happy excitement. He glanced downward, trying to meet Mrs. Efrim’s eyes in an exchange of intimate amusement.
“What are you laughing at, you big hyena,” said the burglar. “Wipe that smile off your face or I’ll plug you.”
Brush assumed a grave expression, and the burglar continued his search. There was a long pause, filled only by the rumblings in Brush’s famished stomach.
At last the burglar turned and said: “I didn’t come in here for two dollars and a quarter, you two. There’s some more money somewhere here and I’m going to get it.” He addressed Brush: “Take off your coat and throw it on the floor,—here by me. One extra move from you and you get it in the belly. Do you hear?”
“Yes,” said Brush.
The burglar rested the revolver on the counter, retied the bandana about his face, and carefully went through Brush’s pockets. He found two apples, a purse containing two dollars, a nail file, copies ofKing Lear and other classics, some newspaper clippings about India and an application for a marriage license.“Can I say something?” asked Brush.
“What the hell’s the matter with you—can you say something? What is it?”
“There’s hardly any money in that coat, but I know where you can find some. . . . I’ll pay you back, Mrs. Efrim, when it’s all over.”
The burglar stared at Brush, pointing the revolver at his eyes. “Well, where is it?”
“I won’t say anything if you point that gun at me like that,” said Brush. “You ought to know better than that.”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“You don’t really mean to kill us, but you might kill us by accident.”
“I don’t, eh?”
“No, of course not. Notkill. Never point a gun at a person. That’s a rule everybody ought to know.”
“Well, Ido mean to shoot you, so keep your face shut. Now where’s this money you were talking about?”
“Iwant to tell you about it, but I won’t tell you until you point that gun at the window.”
The burglar turned the barrel a fraction to the left and shouted, “All right now, spit it out.”
“You’ll find some money on the shelf behind the cash register,” said Brush, calmly, “behind that roll of blue cloth.”
“Gott—enu!” cried Mrs. Efrim. “How can you tell him that! You’re crazy! Telling him that!”
The man was looking at the bolt of cloth suspiciously: “So you say! So you say! What’s the trick, eh?”
Brush said in a low, urgent whisper to Mrs. Efrim: “I’ll pay you back, Mrs. Efrim. He needs it a lot more than we do. I swear to you you won’t lose a cent.” Then he continued to the burglar, “And there’s some more in five-dollar bills behind those spools of ribbon.”
Mrs. Efrim wailed still more loudly than before. Brush entered into an earnest debate with her. The hold-up man, still distrustful of the hiding-places, tried to follow the argument.
“You see, Mrs. Efrim, this is very interesting to me, because I have a theory about thieves and robbers. I’ll explain it to you afterwards. Really, I’ll pay you it all back.”
“I don’t want your money. I want my own,” said Mrs. Efrim.
The hold-up man finally outshouted them: “Say, shut up, you two. What’s the idea? Who do you think I am, anyway? I’m not fooling. I’m serious. Now what’s all this about money over here?”
Brush repeated the directions. The man extracted the money from its hiding-places.
“All right, now. Where’s some more. Out with it.”
“That’s all I know about over there,” said Brush, “but if you’ll let me put my hand down I’ll get you some I have here.”
“Where?”
“In my . . . my watch pocket, here.”
“Say, what is this?” cried the man, as though in pain. “You keep your hands up or I’ll shoot you.”
“Well, I’d like to give you twenty dollars I have here.”
“Keep your hands up! Say, are you yellow or cuckoo, or what? Keep your hands up. Where’s this money?”
Brush motioned with his chin toward the pocket.
There was silence for a moment while they stared at one another.
Brush said, quietly: “You want money, don’t you? That’s what you came for. Well, I want to give you some. You need it a lot more than I do. Only you won’t let me put my hand down to get it.”
At that moment a gust of wind flung open the warped door of Mrs. Efrim’s shop and then slammed it shut with a tremendous detonation. The current of air rushed through the room, tossing the window curtains toward the ceiling and flinging a shower of the exposed objects over the floor. The burglar was so alarmed that the gun went off in his hand and the bullet shattered the window pane. Mrs. Efrim, wailed louder than ever. The burglar let fall the revolver, jumped across the counter, and sank on one knee, still crying: “What is this, anyway? What’s going on here?”
Brush picked up the gun and planted himself in the middle of the room. With furrowed brow, he pointed the barrel towards a corner of the ceiling.
“Nowyou hold up your hands,” he said. “I don’t believe in weapons of any kind, but I want you to stay there while I say something.”
The hold-up man, swearing softly, stooped so that only his eyes appeared above the counter. Mrs. Efrim began pulling at Brush’s sleeve, “Now, you make him give back that money before you do another thing.”
“No, Mrs. Efrim, no! Don’t you understand? This is a kind of experiment. We’re going to give this man a new start in life, don’t yousee? I’ll pay you back every cent that he’s taken.”
“I don’t want your money. I want my own money. That’s all I want. And I’m going to phone Mr. Warren this minute.”
“No, Mrs. Efrim.”
“Yes, I will.”
“Mrs. Efrim,” said Brush severely, “you move over there and put up your hands.”
“Ach, g’rechter Gott!”
“Put up your hands, Mrs. Efrim. I’m sorry, but I know what I’m doing. Burglar,” continued Brush, quietly, “what’s your name?”
There was no answer.
“Do you know a trade of any kind?”
More silence.
“Have you been holding up people long?”
“Oh, shoot me and get this over with,” muttered the burglar, contemptuously, but remained in hiding behind the counter. Brush was not abashed. He continued:
“I’m going to see that you leave this store with about fifty dollars in all. That’ll give you room and board for a while. You go somewhere where you can think things over. Now listen. Even I can see that you’ll never be a very good hold-up man.”
Brush was entering into a discourse on the rewards of honesty when an unfortunate interruption occurred. A customer opened the door of the shop, an old woman who promptly put her hand over her mouth and screamed through it:
“Why, Mrs. Efrim, what’s the trouble?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Robinson,” replied Mrs. Efrim, sullenly. “I don’t know at all.”
Brush turned his head a fraction and said, curtly: “You can’t come in now because we’re busy here. Come back in half an hour.”
“Mrs. Efrim,” gasped Mrs. Robinson, “I’ll call Mr. Warren,” and disappeared.
“That woman’s coming in here has spoiled everything,” said Brush, lowering his gun with an impatient sigh. “I guess we’ll have to hurry.—Mrs. Efrim, there’s a way he can escape through the back of the house, isn’t there?”
“Don’t ask me no questions,” replied Mrs. Efrim. “I’m not going to tell you a thing.”
Brush walked up to the counter and laid some bills on it. “Here’s your money,” he said to the burglar. “The price of the gun’s in it, too. Now you can go. You’d better go out through there.”
The man snatched up the money and, sidling about the room, filled up his cheeks with air, made an explosive sound, and dashed out of the door.
Brush put down the gun carefully. “That was awfully interesting, wasn’t it?” he said, with a constrained laugh. “Now I want to pay you what I owe you.”
Mrs. Efrim did not answer. She crossed the room and closed the till with a bang.
“Mrs. Efrim, don’t be mad at me. I had to act that way to live up to my ideals.”
“You’re crazy.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You are. You’re crazy. Whoever heard of anybody going out of their way to give money to a burglar. Yes, and letting him go free, too. No, I won’t take your money. Look at all that’s been took from you already. Now go away before the police come and arrest you.”
“I’m not afraid of the police.”
“Now you mind what I say—go away.”
“Mrs. Efrim, if I’d done anything wrong I’d apologize. I owe you about thirty-five dollars . . .”
Mr. Warren, the town constable, appeared at the door followed by some men and by Mrs. Robinson.
“Now come out quiet,” commanded Mr. Warren. “Hold up your hands and come quiet.”
Brush said to Mrs. Efrim, smiling: “He thinks I did it! . . . Here I am, Officer.” Mr. Warren handcuffed him. “Oh—oh, Mr. Warren,” said Brush. “I hope I can eat with those things on, because I haven’t eaten anything but an apple for twenty-four hours and I’m very hungry.”
“Lock up your store and come with us, Mrs. Efrim,” said Mr. Warren. “We’ll want your story of what’s been going on.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” said Mrs. Efrim, shrilly. “It was just foolishness. No, I’m not going to leave this store. No, I’m not.”
The officer insisted, however, and presently the procession was making its way down Main Street. As luck would have it Mr. and Mrs. Gruber were standing under the arcade.
“Look! Herman, look!” cried Mrs. Gruber, catching her husband’s arm. “That’s the man!—The kidnapper!”
“Charley Warren,” said Mr. Gruber, “I charge that man with attempting to kidnap my daughter Rhoda May.”
“Follow in behind, Herman,” said Warren.
When they reached the jail, Brush was shown into a cell. He ate another apple, sighed heavily and went to sleep.
Thorton Wilder
Heaven's My Destination
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