It, and Other Stories

Gouverneur Morris

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• Publié par: sewyer
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 43
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of IT and Other Stories, by Gouverneur Morris
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Title: IT and Other Stories
Author: Gouverneur Morris
Release Date: January 30, 2009 [EBook #27934]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IT AND OTHER STORIES ***
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COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published March, 1912

TO ELSIE
I
Crown the heads of better men
With lilies and with morning-glories!
I'm unworthy of a pen—
These are Bread-and-Butter stories.
Shall I tell you how I know?
Strangers wrote and told me so.
II
He who only toils for fame
I pronounce a silly Billy.
I can't dine upon a name,
Or look dressy in a lily.
And—oh shameful truth to utter!—
I won't live on bread and butter.
III
Sometimes now (and sometimes then)
Meat and wine my soul requires.
Satan tempted me—my pen
Fills the house with open fires.
I must have a horse or two—
Babies, oh my Love—and you!
G. M.
Aiken, February 10, 1912.
CONTENTS
It
Two Business Women
The Trap
SapphiraThe Bride's Dead
Holding Hands
The Claws of The Tiger
Growing Up
The Battle of Aiken
An Idyl of Pelham Bay Park
Back There in the Grass
Asabri
[Pg 3]IT
Prana Beach would be a part of the solid west coast if it wasn't for a half circle
of the deadliest, double-damned, orchid-haunted black morass, with a solid
wall of insects that bite, rising out of it. But the beach is good dry sand, and the
wind keeps the bugs back in the swamp. Between the beach and the swamp is
a strip of loam and jungle, where some niggers live and a god.
I landed on Prana Beach because I'd heard—but it wasn't so and it doesn't
matter. Anyhow, I landed—all alone; the canoemen wouldn't come near
enough for me to land dry, at that. Said the canoe would shrivel up, like a piece
of hide in a fire, if it touched that beach; said they'd turn white and be blown
away like puffs of smoke. They nearly backed away with my stuff; would have if
I hadn't pulled a gun on them. But they made me wade out and get it myself—
thirty foot of rope with knots, dynamite, fuses, primers, compass, grub for a
week, and—well, a bit of skin in a half-pint flask with a rubber and screw-down
top. Not nice, it wasn't, wading out and back and out and back. There was one
[Pg 4]shark, I remember, came in so close that he grounded, snout out, and made a
noise like a pig. Sun was going down, looking like a bloody murder victim, and
there wasn't going to be any twilight. It's an uncertain light that makes wading
nasty. It might be salt-water soaking into my jeans, but with that beastly red light
over it, it looked like blood.
The canoe backed out to the—you can't call 'em a nautical name. They've one
big, square sail of crazy-quilt work—raw silk, pieces of rubber boots, rattan
matting, and grass cloth, all colors, all shapes of patches. They point into the
wind and then go sideways; and they don't steer with an oar that Charon
discarded thousands of years ago, that's painted crimson and raw violet; and
the only thing they'd be good for would be fancy wood-carpets. Mine, or better,
ours, was made of satinwood, and was ballasted with scrap-iron, rotten ivory,
and ebony. There, I've told you what she was like (except for the live
entomological collection aboard), and you may call her what you please. The
main point is that she took the canoe aboard, and then disobeyed orders.
Orders were to lie at anchor (which was a dainty thing of stone, all carved) till
further orders. But she'd gotten rid of me, and she proposed to lie farther off, and
come back (maybe) when I'd finished my job. So she pointed straight in for
[Pg 5]where I was standing amid my duds and chattels, just as if she was going tothump herself ashore—and then she began to slip off sideways like a
misbegotten crab, and backward, too—until what with the darkness tumbling
down, and a point o' palms, I lost sight of her. Why didn't I shout, and threaten,
and jump up and down?
Because I was alone on Prana Beach, between the sea and the swamp. And
because the god was beginning to get stirred up; and because now that I'd
gone through six weeks' fever and boils to get where I was, I wished I hadn't
gotten there. No, I wasn't scared. You wouldn't be if you were alone on a beach,
after sundown, deserted you may say, your legs shaky with being wet, and your
heart hot and mad as fire because you couldn't digest the things you had to put
into your stomach, and if you'd heard that the beach was the most malodorous,
ghoul-haunted beach of the seas, and if just as you were saying to yourself that
you for one didn't believe a word of it—if, I say, just then It began to cut loose—
back of you—way off to the left—way off to the right—why you'd have been
scared.
It wasn't the noise it made so much as the fact that it could make any noise at
all.... Shut your mouth tight and hum on the letter m-mmmmmmm—that's it
exactly. Only It's was ten times as loud, and vibrating. The vibrations shook me
where I stood.
[Pg 6]With the wind right, that humming must have carried a mile out to sea; and
that's how it had gotten about that there was a god loose on Prana Beach. It
was an It-god, the niggers all agreed. You'll have seen 'em carved on paddles
—shanks of a man, bust of a woman, nose of a snapping-turtle, and mouth
round like the letter O. But the Prana Beach one didn't show itself that first night.
It hummed awhile—m-m-m-m-m—oh, for maybe a minute—stopped and began
again—jumped a major fifth, held it till it must have been half burst for breath,
and then went down the scale an octave, hitting every note in the middle, and
giving the effect of one damned soul meeting another out in eternity and yelling
for pure joy and malice. The finish was a whoop on the low note so loud that it
lifted my hair. Then the howl was cut off as sharp and neat and sudden as I've
seen a Chinaman's head struck from his body by the executioner at Canton—
Big Wan—ever seen him work? Very pretty. Got to perfection what golfers call
"the follow through."
Yes. I sauntered into the nearest grove, whistling "Yankee Doodle," lighted a
fire, cooked supper, and turned in for the night. Not!... I took to the woods all
right, but on my stomach. And I curled up so tight that my knees touched my
chin. Ever try it? It's the nearest thing to having some one with you, when you're
[Pg 7]cold and alone. Adam must have had a hard-shell back and a soft-shell
stomach, like an armadillo—how does it run?—"dillowing in his armor."
Because in moments of real or imaginary danger it's the first instinct of Adam's
sons to curl up, and of Eve's daughters. Ever touch a Straits Settlement Jewess
on the back of the hand with a lighted cigarette?...
As I'm telling you, I curled up good and tight, head and knees on the grub sack,
Colt and dynamite handy, hair standing perfectly straight up, rope round me on
the ground in a circle—I had a damn-fool notion that It mightn't be allowed to
cross knotted ropes, and I shook with chills and nightmares and cramps. I could
only lie on my left side, for the boils on my right. I couldn't keep my teeth quiet. I
couldn't do anything that a Christian ought to do, with a heathen It-god strolling
around. Yes, ... the thing came out on the beach, in full view of where I was, but
I couldn't see it, because of the pitch dark. It came out, and made noises with its
feet in the sand—up and down—up and down—scrunch—scrunch—something
like a man walking, and not in a hurry. Something like it, but not exactly. The It's
feet (they have seven toes according to the nigger paddles) didn't touch theground as often as a man's would have done in walking the distance. There'd
be one scrunch and then quite a long pause before the next. It sounded like a
[Pg 8]very, very big man, taking the very longest steps he could. But there wasn't any
more mouth work. And for that I'm still offering up prayers of thanksgiving; for, if
—say when it was just opposite where I lay, and not fifty yards off—it had let off
anything sudden and loud, I'd have been killed as dead as by a stroke of
lightning.
Well, I was just going to break, when day did. Broke so sweet, and calm, and
pretty; all pink landward over the black jungle, all smooth and baby-blue out to
sea. Till the sun showed, there was a land breeze—not really a breeze, just a
stir, a cool quiet moving of spicy smells from one place to another—nothing
more than that. Then the sea breeze rose and swept the sky and ocean till they
were one and the same blue, the blue that comes highest at Tiffany's; a