America Moved. Booth Tarkington
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fell upon me, it expressed a consciousness of being in the presence of something chancy and likely to be objectionable.
A barrier had arisen; I began to feel that almost all grown people were of the opposition; therefore everything had to be concealed from them. Some of them inspired in me a strong uneasiness whenever I saw them.
The General’s Shadow
The one of whom I was most afraid was General Chapman. A principal advantage in the location of the new house we’d built was that it made us closer neighbors of the Chapman family—the general, his lovely wife, whom I’d always called “Auntie Chapman,” and their five small sons, the oldest of whom was no more than a year my senior. The Chapman boys were my most constant playmates. Their mother had a heart that won all children, but the five brothers were somewhat in awe of their father, and I was more so. He’d been an officer of cavalry in the Civil War, and afterward a judge; his eyes, behind the ice of nose glasses, seemed to me disciplinarian and never encouraging. The noisy Chapman house quieted instantly when the general arrived from his law office in the late afternoons; and we of the neighborhood, extraneous noisemakers, went home in a subdued manner. Even in my own front yard, if I was playing there, perhaps with my little gentle old dog, and General Chapman passed by on the sidewalk, I ceased to gambol, felt reproved, and retired with Fritzie to the rear of the house—sometimes slunk into our protective stable to stand brooding there, feeling that I had little right to live.
General Chapman, a kindly man, an old “friend of the family” who’d been one of my father and mother’s wedding party, would have been surprised if he’d known how much I thought about him—“and how”! Grown people, unless they study the matter, have little understanding of the effect they have upon some children. What this patriot, good neighbor, good friend, and able citizen made me feel, merely by the reservedness of his facial expression, was that I ought to be banished from the world. I dreamed about him, dreams of terror, and over and over I planned to make up to myself, someday, for the oppression he put upon me.
This was my plan. The general’s oldest son, George, was, as we say, the image of him; and everyone saw at a glance that when Georgie Chapman grew up he would be exactly like his father in looks and in manner. I wasn’t afraid of Georgie—far from it! I was familiar with him, liked him; I’d several times seen him weep and had even assisted to make him do so. Over and over in my mind I planned a scene that should take place when Georgie became adult, full-grown—forty or fifty, maybe. Georgie would then present to the world precisely the austere appearance that General Chapman did now; but to me he would still be, inside himself, just Georgie Chapman. Inconsistently, in this scene of recompense, I imagined Georgie in the full-sized shell or facsimile of General Chapman; but myself I saw as I still actually was, a boy of nine. I would walk right up to the adult generalesque Georgie, look him full in his nose glasses, give him a push, laugh in loud scorn of his pretensions, and say, “Pooh, you old thing, you! I know you all right! You’re nothing but little old Georgie Chapman. Pooh!”
Thus concretely had I perceived that the child is father to the man, and, meditating upon other boys I knew, saw them in my mind’s eye as they would be when they should be full-grown and changed into members of the adult opposition. I would still know them then and be as intimately familiar with the details of their real characters as I was now; and in this prediction I now seem to have been substantially justified. Boys are likely to comprehend one another’s fundamental characters with a simple clarity—character being more naïvely exposed at that period than later—and adult men who have been “boys together” have a basic knowledge of one another, no matter how they change. After I had grown to manhood, myself, I found that whenever I met a stranger I had an inclination to seek beneath his adult lineaments for the face he’d had when he was a boy. When I can see the boy’s face beneath the man’s I’m fairly sure that I know what sort of person he really is. Meeting General Chapman now for the first time, I’d look for Georgie.
Georgie’s next brother, Launce, also caused me, when I was nine, to make plans for the future. Launce was a carefree strong little boy of whom older people sometimes benevolently said that it was a pleasure to see his animal spirits in action. Usually when they were in action his brothers and I were unhappy. Outdoors he could do everything better than we could, and he could also throw us all down in a heap and jump on us, not caring upon whose face his stout-shod feet landed. He could run, leap, jocosely pull hair, fight, and hurl missiles better than we could; and, laughing heartily, he proved all of this to us whenever he began to feel bored.
Ignominy
He was one of those boys who make the homeward processions of children, after school, into riots; and in our own daily parade he often singled me out to play the poorer part in a jovial performance of which he was fond. Butted from the pavement, I was slammed horribly face down into the gutter, with Launce sitting upon my head and bellowing jollily for everyone’s attention, “Take a head-load, Boothie! Look at Boothie taking a head-load!”
Prostrate, squirming, eyes and mouth filled with dust or mud, I had ignoble glimpses from under the seated Launce of boys and girls rocking in laughter; but I was as helpless as a day-old calf. Later every afternoon I clumsily practiced the manly art with a punching bag in our stable and discouragedly examined muscles that never enlarged enough to fulfill my bitter hope some day to “lick Launce Chapman.”
I couldn’t lick anybody. For one reason, I couldn’t get “mad” enough. Other boys, in conflict, could reach a berserk pitch at which they did actual damage, but I couldn’t get that way. Even when they threw stones at my dog I couldn’t fight for him; could only crouch over him, receiving helplessly the missiles upon my own body. One day I did somehow find myself in a stand-up fight with a rich little German boy of our neighborhood. He may have known how it came about, I didn’t; but there we were, punching each other, with a ring of delighted friends about us, urging us to hit harder and in designated localities, especially the nose. I didn’t wish to hit harder; I forcelessly pounded Louis about the chest and shoulders and was wholly incapable, morally, of directing my fist against any part of his face. Louis had no such delicate compunction. He smashed me on the nose, bloodied it, and evoked from me, unfortunately, the shrill reproachful inquiry, “Louis, did you mean that?”
The happy, boyish countenances about us pressed close upon me; all voices shouted in ecstasy, “Did he mean it? Did he? Look at your nose!”
The Clicks
The most elementary self-defense was beyond me. People of today, accustomed to think youthful felonies a product of strictly modern life, may be surprised to learn that well-dressed little boys in such a town as Indianapolis sixty years ago were often held up and robbed by small gangsters of their own age. We victims didn’t speak of them as gangsters; we knew them as members of what we called “clicks,” deriving the word, I suppose, from “clique.” Skating upon frozen little waters about the fringes of the inland town, or swimming in such fluids in summer, boys from our neighborhood would raise the cry, “Look out! Look out! Here comes Mike Donegan and his click!” Those of us who didn’t or couldn’t flee were surrounded, cursed, overawed, and robbed of penknives, nickels, marbles, tops.
One afternoon Georgie Chapman and I, returning from a matinee, were relieved of belongings almost in the business center of the city. Five or six shabbily dressed boys, none over eleven, an unknown click, surrounded us, pushed us back against a wall; and their chieftain, blaspheming horribly, threatened our throats with the blade of a jackknife.
I said feebly, “My father’s a policeman,” but Georgie, with a silver quarter in his pocket, had the courage to call for help. He shouted at the top of his lungs, “Help! Help! Help!”
Adult passers-by glanced at us absently and went their ways. The thieves took Georgie’s quarter, his necktie and my own, and our handkerchiefs; then walked away—and so did we, in the opposite direction, very resentful, but not inclined to pursue the matter further.
I’d looked forward to being ten years old. In youth the ages of man, expressed in round numbers, loom ahead of him as desirable and impressive—until he attains them. I’d thought that when I reached ten I should automatically be a person of greater consequence than previously, that I should by virtue of years