THE CHINA MAIL FRIDAY SUPPLEMEN AUGUST 27, 1937
"DON'T CALL ME DOGGIE!"
(Continued from Page 1) rassed and pass it around. "Here, I say to Hank McElligott.
Examines it and laughs.
Friend" he says, laugh- ing, and he passes it on. Oh, it's funny all right; everybody enjoys it, and above them all I can hear that Broockookoohan!
Now that they're through the President calls for order and makes the announcements.
***So let's all of us get behind old Harry. and turn out for the tournament on Thursday. It doesn't matter if you shoot in the high 150's, the spirit is the thing. Bring along
→ your clubs and one buck............
I know where Al Peeples got that dog biscuit. He sent out when he saw I was here and got it over at George Purdy's, because George is the only druggist in town that had a package of these new style ones with the rounded corners. So I have the satisfac- tion, anyway, of knowing that Al had to spend fifty cents, and that's a few cents more the Dog's Friend Medicated Biscuit. Com- pany gets. That's the first sale în this man's town in a long time if I know anything about it. What I guess I ought to do is join all the luncheon clubs and let all the Al Peepleses in town have their fun every week and maybe some of those yellow-bellies would get to be millionaires after all if they would put their money back in
Well, it is over, and here comes Al the way he usually does to slap me on the back and make sure that I have a proper appreciation of his joke. “Brooohoohoohaw! Aren't sore, are you, Doggie?” "No, I'm not sore.” Of course not. "The old dog biscuit kid, hey Doggie?" Sure. I nod. "Still got all those hounds over at your place, "Doggie?” I nod again. Sure. I've got them. And I'm the old dog biscuit kid and always will be as long as I live in this man's town, and I don't know how I'm going to leave, owing everybody like I do and not owning a thing anymore but the place my daddy left me and it mortgaged all to hell. Yes, that's me all right, the old dog biscuit kid. I'm not man or a citizen or a human be ing or anything, just the old dog biscuit kid. I'm a real joke; I'm funnier than the movies; I don't know how I keep from laughing at myself.
a
"Take you anywhere, Doggie?” be asks. That is to show me that aside from joking he really is a fine fellow at heart" and he wants to keep me his friend
Ordinarily," of course, I would say no, and inside I would think to hell with you, you lard-headed bastard, but this time before the thought really forms I say yes: I have just heard myself say it: "Yes. You can take me home if you're going that way, AL"
"Sare will”
So we start down to his car and I find the thought, growing again in my mind, just as it has grown so many times before. And as be fore it has been there a long time without my knowing it. This time, though, I am not trying to stop it, and I feel all the better for it. It must be a natural thought or I would not think it so often, and stopping a natural thought is cow- ardly. I have stopped it, though, for the same reason that these
fools come here every Tuesday and go to church every Sunday and vote the straight Democratic ticket. And now that I think about it, that is illogical, for it cannot be reconciled with my coming to Service club every Tuesday can get here when I know that I would be more comfortable away. I come because I want to hear them say it again and have them bark at me and kid me and do such things as they did to-day and not be- cause I yearn for their company. I know that; I know how I am in this; and therefore I can't be crazy, then, can I? I am not crazy; I am honest with myself. The thought is what brings "me here before I know I have it. Now, a crazy man never could stop and reason this way and see these things through so clearly and logically. Then I am not crazy, but honest, and to be thoroughly honest I must not fight off the thought if it is a natural thought for me. Looking at it this way it seems as simple as a glass of water.
"What's that?”
"What?" I say.
“Oh, I thought you said some- thing." Al Peeples says, ride along in his car.
as we
"Oh," I say. Isn't that enough for him? I guess I am entitled to my Ettle joke, too.
me
He is a fat lump beside ridiculous in his brown sport coat and his brown and white striped trousers, trying to look young and smart, driving along chatting, at the wheel of his three-thousand- dollar car. There are twenty-five thousand people in this man's town and he is just one of them. I wonder if he ever thinks of that? He is a lump of lard, wind, sweat and braying laughter who man- ages to be crafty and convince people that he is jolly and civic spirited and a friendly sort of leader in their little affairs, but he is just one of twenty- five thousand little dabs of grease that the sun is slowly eva- porating on this strip of sand. He drives along in his three-thousand- dollar car getting a satisfaction out of knowing that after he has played his stupid joke on me and humiliated me again before those men I am borrowing his time and the use of his car and gasoline be- cause I am по longer able to afford a car. He feels superior sitting here beside me. But he is merely one of those loathsome lit- tle grease spots in the sun and I am a will. Would he keep go- ing back for more the way
I have? Would he have
sense enough to know why and guts enough to admit it?
He doesn't know that A7% stronger at this moment than he is or a million like him every- where in the country. What dis- turbs me is that I am pitying him more than I am hating him.
"I forgot something this morn- ing," I say as we front of my hous you'd mind wa A1?"
"No. No, not at all, Doggie.
right here in the car."
So now I am on my way up the walk and it is not another dream.
I am glad that she is at her moth- er's to-day, though I wish her mother could be here with him. They would make a great pair all right. I don't know when I ever felt so good or when my ears and eyes and nostrils were ever so keen. I am missing nothing of this walk up to the house. I could count every blade of grass in the lawn at one glance if I wanted to bother. It all seems outside of life and therefore crazy, but you see I know it, don't I, and if I know it I can't be crazy. I know that I know my own mind as well as I know that my hand feels the round smooth hardness of the knob.
There is no good in waiting. The thing to do is to act calmly and directly while I am so power- ful and he is there in the car. So I open the closet door and I take down the gun. I examine it and make sure that it is loaded. It is á fine automatic shotgun that cost me $150 in Jacksonville two years ago.
Well, there he is, sitting in his car. They say that at a time like this you lose your mental balance temporarily, but my mind was never clearer or steadier.
My mind is clear, yet I feel a soaring sense of superiority and well being as if I were swimming over the surf-froth in the white noon sun. Still, I am not excited. I am comfortable, steady, divinely peaceful, and I know that I never have had more of power or "of
cool sanity than at this moment, more, I am sure than any man now living.
I raise the gun carefully and take deliberate aim through the window at Al Peeples as he sits- at the wheel of his fine car whistl- ing and looking down the pleasant palm-lined street. My finger rests lightly on the sensitive trigger of this shotgun. This, now, is power, it is the ultimate, distilled essence of supreme earthly power, it is, under my half curved, forefinger. the power of life and of death." All I have to do now is give a slight muscular pressure, to loose the merest vagrant tremor of my nerves, and hammer will fall, cap will explode, good, dry eager pow- der will roar and leap and send nine round black balls of buckshot screeching through this window into the body of Al Peeples, and if he wouldn't be the most dumb- founded fat fool in this man's town! It is a godlike happiness, standing here in my library with this sense of detachment and mas- tery, pointing my sleek blu ing shotgun through the at that poor, braying ass, without his se pecting what I am
I am even watching hi Sa lower the gun and make sure once more that it is loaded..
I place the polished stock on the floor and lean over and take cool oily-metal muzzle in my lips and with the tip of my out stretched forefinger I touch the
trigger
Equal to five b
"I can tell
White Horse
blindfold! And to think that at one
time I used simply to ask for whisky and soda!
White Horse is just like a fine liqueur !"
Sole Agents for S. China: JARDINE MATHESON & CO., LTD.