“Oh, yes, Doctor. There’s just one or two little things that have been worrying me, Doctor. I’ve taken them to the Lord in prayer, but he doesn’t seem to help me much. I’m sure you can. Now why did Joshua need to have the sun stand still? Of course it happened—it says so right in Scripture. But why did he need to, when the Lord always helped those Jews, anyway, and when Joshua could knock down big walls just by having his people yell and blow trumpets? And if devils cause a lot of the diseases, and they had to cast ’em out, why is it that good Baptist doctors today don’t go on diagnosing devil-possession instead of T.B. and things like that? Do people have devils?”
“Young man, I will give you an infallible rule. Never question the ways of the Lord!”
“But why don’t the doctors talk about having devils now?”
“I have no time for vain arguments that lead nowhere! If you would think a little less of your wonderful powers of reasoning, if you’d go humbly to God in prayer and give him a chance, you’d understand the true spiritual significances of all these things.”
“But how about where Cain got his wife—”
Most respectfully Jim said it, but Dr. Quarles (he had a chin-whisker and a boiled shirt) turned from him and snapped, “I have no further time to give you, young man! I’ve told you what to do. Good morning!”
That evening Mrs. Quarles breathed, “Oh, Willoughby, did you ’tend to that awful senior—that Lefferts—that’s trying to spread doubt? Did you fire him?”
“No,” blossomed President Quarles. “Certainly not. There was no need. I showed him how to look for spiritual guidance and—Did that freshman come and mow the lawn? The idea of him wanting fifteen cents an hour!”
Jim was hair-hung and breeze-shaken over the abyss of hell, and apparently enjoying it very much indeed, while his wickedness fascinated Elmer Gantry and terrified him.
V
That November day of 1902, November of their Senior year, was greasy of sky, and slush blotted the wooden sidewalks of Gritzmacher Springs. There was nothing to do in town, and their room was dizzying with the stench of the stove, first lighted now since spring.
Jim was studying German, tilted back in an elegant position of ease, with his legs cocked up on the desk tablet of the escritoire. Elmer lay across the bed, ascertaining whether the blood would run to his head if he lowered it over the side. It did, always.
“Oh, God, let’s get out and do something!” he groaned.
“Nothing to do, Useless,” said Jim.
“Let’s go over to Cato and see the girls and get drunk.”
As Kansas was dry, by state prohibition, the nearest haven was at Cato, Missouri, seventeen miles away.
Jim scratched his head with a corner of his book and approved:
“Well, that’s a worthy idea. Got any money?”
“On the twenty-eighth? Where the hell would I get any money before the first?”
“Hellcat, you’ve got one of the deepest intellects I know. You’ll be a knockout at the law. Aside from neither of us having any money, and me with a Dutch quiz tomorrow, it’s a great project.”
“Oh, well—” sighed ponderous Elmer, feebly as a sick kitten, and lay revolving the tremendous inquiry.
It was Jim who saved them from the lard-like weariness into which they were slipping. He had gone back to his book, but he placed it, precisely and evenly, on the desk, and rose.
“I would like to see Nellie,” he sighed. “Oh, man, I could give her a good time! Little Devil! Damn these co-eds here. The few that’ll let you love ’em up, they hang around trying to catch you on the campus and make you propose to ’em.”
“Oh, gee! And I got to see Juanita,” groaned Elmer. “Hey, cut out talking about ’em will you! I’ve got a palpitating heart right now, just thinking about Juanny!”
“Hellcat! I’ve got it. Go and borrow ten off this new instructor in chemistry and physics. I’ve got a dollar sixty-four left, and that’ll make it.”
“But I don’t know him.”
“Sure, you poor fish. That’s why I suggested him! Do the check-failed-to-come. I’ll get another hour of this Dutch while you’re stealing the ten from him—”
“Now,” lugubriously, “you oughtn’t to talk like that!”
“If you’re as good a thief as I think you are, we’ll catch the five-sixteen to Cato.”
They were on the five-sixteen for Cato.
The train consisted of a day coach, a combined smoker and baggage car, and a rusty old engine and tender. The train swayed so on the rough tracks as it bumped through the dropping light that Elmer and Jim were thrown against each other and gripped the arm of their seat. The car staggered like a freighter in a gale. And tall raw farmers, perpetually shuffling forward for a drink at the water-cooler, stumbled against them or seized Jim’s shoulder to steady themselves.
To every surface of the old smoking-car, to streaked windows and rusty ironwork and mud-smeared coconut matting, clung a sickening bitterness of cheap tobacco fumes, and whenever they touched the red plush of the seat, dust whisked up and the prints of their hands remained on the plush. The car was jammed. Passengers came to sit on the arm of their seat to shout at friends across the aisle.
But Elmer and Jim were unconscious of filth and smell and crowding. They sat silent, nervously intent, panting a little, their lips open, their eyes veiled, as they thought of Juanita and Nellie.
The two girls, Juanita Klauzel and Nellie Benton, were by no means professional daughters of joy. Juanita was cashier of the Cato Lunch—Quick Eats; Nellie was assistant to a dressmaker. They were good girls but excitable, and they found a little extra money useful for red slippers and nut-center chocolates.
“Juanita—what a lil darling—she understands a fellow’s troubles,” said Elmer, as they balanced down the slushy steps at the grimy stone station of Cato.
When Elmer, as
