Of course that made me feel kind o’ rotten, and I says:
“Brace up, boy! The best thing you can do is go to Atlanta and try hard. You’ll be up here again next year.”
“You can’t tell me where to go!” he says, and he wasn’t cryin’ no more. “I’ll go where I please—and I’m li’ble to take you with me.”
I didn’t want no argument, so I kep’ still. Pretty soon he goes up to the lookin’-glass and stares at himself for five minutes. Then, all of a sudden, he hauls off and takes a wallop at his reflection in the glass. Naturally he smashed the glass all to pieces and he cut his hand somethin’ awful.
Without lookin’ at it he come over to me and says: “Well, goodbye, sport!”—and holds out his other hand to shake. When I starts to shake with him he smears his bloody hand all over my map. Then he laughed like a wild man and run out o’ the room and out o’ the hotel.
Well, boys, my sleep was broke up for the rest o’ the season. It might of been because I was used to sleepin’ in all kinds o’ racket and excitement, and couldn’t stand for the quiet after he’d went—or it might of been because I kep’ thinkin’ about him and feelin’ sorry for him.
I of’en wondered if he’d settle down and be somethin’ if he could get married; and finally I got to b’lievin’ he would. So when we was dividin’ the city series dough I was thinkin’ of him and the girl. Our share o’ the money—the losers’, as usual—was twelve thousand seven hundred sixty bucks or somethin’ like that. They was twenty-one of us and that meant six hundred seven bucks apiece. We was just goin’ to cut it up that way when I says:
“Why not give a divvy to poor old Elliott?”
About fifteen of ’em at once told me that I was crazy. You see, when he got canned he owed everybody in the club. I guess he’d stuck me for the most—about seventy bucks—but I didn’t care nothin’ about that. I knowed he hadn’t never reported to Atlanta, and I thought he was prob’ly busted and a bunch o’ money might make things all right for him and the other songbird.
I made quite a speech to the fellers, tellin’ ’em how he’d cried when he left us and how his heart’d been set on gettin’ married on the series dough. I made it so strong that they finally fell for it. Our shares was cut to five hundred eighty apiece, and John sent him a check for a full share.
For a while I was kind o’ worried about what I’d did. I didn’t know if I was doin’ right by the girl to give him the chance to marry her.
He’d told me she was stuck on him, and that’s the only excuse I had for tryin’ to fix it up between ’em; but, b’lieve me, if she was my sister or a friend o’ mine I’d just as soon of had her manage the Cincinnati Club as marry that bird. I thought to myself:
“If she’s all right she’ll take acid in a month—and it’ll be my fault; but if she’s really stuck on him they must be somethin’ wrong with her too, so what’s the diff’rence?”
Then along comes this letter that I told you about. It’s from some friend of hisn up there—and they’s a note from him. I’ll read ’em to you and then I got to beat it for the station:
Dear Sir: They have got poor Elliott locked up and they are goin’ to take him to the asylum at Kalamazoo. He thanks you for the check, and we will use the money to see that he is made comf’table.
When the poor boy come back here he found that his girl was married to Joe Bishop, who runs a soda fountain. She had wrote to him about it, but he did not read her letters. The news drove him crazy—poor boy—and he went to the place where they was livin’ with a baseball bat and very near killed ’em both. Then he marched down the street singin’ “Silver Threads Among the Gold” at the top of his voice. They was goin’ to send him to prison for assault with intent to kill, but the jury decided he was crazy.
He wants to thank you again for the money.
I can’t make out his last name—but it don’t make no diff’rence. Now I’ll read you his note:
Old Roomy: I was at bat twice and made two hits; but I guess I did not meet ’em square. They tell me they are both alive yet, which I did not mean ’em to be. I hope they got good curve-ball pitchers where I am goin’. I sure can bust them curves—can’t I, sport?
That’s all of it, fellers; and you can see I had some excuse for not hittin’. You can also see why I ain’t never goin’ to room with no bug again—not for John or nobody else!
This is just between I and you. I don’t want it to go no further. In the first place a feller that’s had rotten luck as long as Red is entitled to the credit when his club fin’lly comes through and cops. In the second place if I was to tell the newspapers or the public that I was the one that really done it they’d laugh at me. They’d say: “How
