Evening star. [volume], May 26, 1929, Page 4, Image 94

About Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972

Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

                
4
(LIGHTNIN G-fy OmtelStßle
BUT how in the world did you ever come
to take me for Lester? That's what gels
me. Yes, I know you ain't seen either
of us for three years, and taking into
Recount how much we favor each other it'd be
natural enough if you wasn't to be just sure
which one of us it was. Coming on me sud
denly this way, sitting by a mountain shack
a hundred miles from nowhere, you might
well've hesitated. But there's the point: You
never did. No, there you come around the cor
ner, give me one look, hold out your hand as
If before you thought, and, "Why, good heav
ens! Hullo, Lester!” Says you. “Where's
John?” ,
. And all the while, me John!
I Well, then, you say. where's Lester? Well,
tester’s all right. Look here, I know you, and
I’d trust you with my last cent. Only you
know how things go. And they might stT.l
get Lester for that, I s’pose. The law’s that
way. The law would never tak_* into account
that no fatal harm ever come to no one through
St fas It turns out—oh, yes. I've heard) —no
jnore’n it’d take into account that Lester is—
well —different. No, let’s leave Lrster where he
Js, if it’s all the same to you.
But your taking me for him. without so much
as a quiver; that's the queer thing. You never
mistook us in the old days, nor any one else.
.Why, anybody in town could'vc said in a wink
this one’s Lester or this one’s John. How
could they? You know better’n I do. And
yet they do say that? no matter how much
twins favor each other, yet if you're used to
’em there’s something different.
{"kNLY look here. I can say it where an
■ other couldn't. You know er, well as I do
that there was a difference between Lester and
jne. As a boy I was stronger’n Lester. If
there was a kite In a tree, I was the one to
climb the tree. If we had to go anywhere aft
er dark, I went first. Or when it came to mak
ing a living I was the one to undertake it.
Mind, I ain’t complaining. I was glad to do it.
You never knew why Lester was scared of
lightning, did you? But you knew he was. Yes,
for I remember ’twas you and Tom Lake come
with me that night the herring factory was
struck and we found Lester jammed so tight
under the wood-shed floor, to home, we had to
- pry off a plank to get him clear.
Course, I always knew he was scared of
lightning. Many and many's the night I been
waked by a tempest to find Lester in bed with
me, and the touch of him cold as ice. I re
member seeing him there by the flashes, sit
ting bolt up and bis eyes staring open. And
every time it come he’d beg me to look—lode
all around —look. Look at what? Couldn’t say.
Only look! "D'ye see anything, John? Not
anything *t all?”
He made me feel queer enough, I can tell
you, with that high-pitched, unnatural voice.
Well, one time he told me. It was a Sunday
afternoon, and we was lying on the beach
innkrtng at the clouds. Once in a long while it
come like that. It’s hard to explain. I don’t
know’s you'd understand anyway; you never was
born twin with another. But sometimes, when
everything was dead quiet and nobody else
about and nothing to do, a funny kind of a
dreamy softness-like used to come over us; it
was ’s if all I want to do was to take hold of
tester’s hand and lay there and kind o’ forget.
And if I had a secret, or if Lester had a secret
—did you ever see the mist coming off the
ground of an early morning—that easy? Oh,
doggone it, I don’t know how to—it just sounds
foolish. But anyway
Well, anyway, Lester told me why he was
scared of lightning. It wasn’t he was
scared of, being struck. No, he says he even
Wish sometimes he could be. It was something
As fisc.as he could make out it must've
been some dream he’d had, several times, he
thought likely. He was in the dark, trying to
go somewheres, creeping on his hands and
knees. There come a stroke of lightning that
run right down through his body like an ice
cold flame. And just then, right before him
on the ground, he seen the face of a woman.
He seen hei there where he could've touched
her with his hand, and her eyes was wide open,
ataring at him—dead—dead as a door nail.
I ,YYE wasn’t himself; you’ll just have to under
' i** stand that. Maybe It’s the electricity in
the air. Maybe it’s something else. I’ve read
something in a book since I was here, and I’ve
got to thinking maybe ’twas something come
down to him—something our ma might possibly
have got scared by before me and Lester was
jx>m. That happens.
But in that case, you’ll say, why wasn’t I
burned with the same iron? Well, there you
are. I been reading, and all that business Is
queer enough, if you only knew it. You can
only say that when me and Lester divided
tip, that was one of the things that went Into
his share. And what a share! Dear me!
When he came running to me in the tempest
that evening—you know the evening I mean—
and tell me what had happened (what he
thought had happened), it seemed to me the
world had ended for us two. I don’t need to
go over it again, that “crime” of Lester’s. You
know it as well’s I do; you knows well’s I
do he wasn't a responsible creature that night,
and as far as I’m concerned that's enough.
But he was like a kid, too horror-struck and
remorseful to do for himself. He was pitiful.
I told him rd take care of him. We had a
good house and a nice piece of land, remem
ber? I locked the house and hove the key
away; I remember it shining now in the light
Where the moon come through the cloud, going
tover into the long grass behind of White’s.
Everything I had in the world but my brother
Went with that key.
1 told Lester to come, and we started down
across the bog toward the "Y.” We was un
lucky, though. We met Ellis —Constable Ellis,
tie squinted at us, and you could see the old
TIIE SUNDAY SPAR, WASHINGTON. D. C., MAY 26. 1929.—PART 7.
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man didn’t know what to do. When we'd pass
ed him, he turned and commenced to follow.
We run. Lester was crying, he was so nervous,
and I was at my wit’s end, I tell you that.
The freight was at the “Y,” same’s I thought,
but seeing Ellis was on our trail we didn’t stop.
We walked and we run all the way to the
Junction that night, getting there about 4 in
the morning. It was still quite dark, and we
had no trouble stowing away in an empty box
car.
That box car landed us in the hills here
after two days and nights (and thank Ood It
wasn’t more) without a drop of water or a
grain of food. Lester seem to suffer from it.
I honestly don’t remember a pang of hunger
or thirst myself, but it seem’s if Lester’s would
kill me. It seem’s if his horror and hopeless
ness was more*n I could bear, I was that work
ed up over it all. Even about his “crime.” It
wasn’t his; it was my own; we’d both done
It. I tell you it was Just the same as it was
them times when we lay watching the clouds
together; same’s if all the time was washed
out, back to the time we was unborn babes,
and both in the same boat, so to speak.
TI/HELL, the first thing we done when we got
‘ T dear of that box car was walk into a
strange mountain town and buy dinner at a
bakery. We set at a table in the rear, eating
buns and drinking coffee, one cup after anotli
This Story- — “ Lightning” hy Wilbur Daniel Steele , Is the
First of a Series by America's Famous Authors —
Each Story Will Be Complete in The Sunday Star Maga
zine—Will Represent the High-Water Mark of the
Particular Author's Work. Each Story is One of the
O. Henry Memorial Award Selections
/ remember seeing him there by the fleshes,
sitting bait up end his eyes storing open.
er. We looked bad enough, I guess, with our
faces pinched up white and a three days’
growth on 'on. and our clothes dusty and beg
ged. It was hot in that bakery; there was a
swarm of files on everything, and the milk
in the coffee was turned a mite, but. I ten you,
what with the food, the relief, and the newness
of all the sights, it was as good as a banquet
in the Adams House.
“Now,” I says to Lester, “we're all right.
Look here. We start from today. We was bom
today, Lester, and life’s all ahead of us. Bee?”
A pink spot come In his cheek; he give me
a funny look, half scared, half hoping, and his
coffee slopped, his hand was shaking so.
“Is that right?” says he. “Honest, do you
believe that, John?” ,
“Sure!” says I, as bold as brass. After a
minute the pink went out of his cheeks, and he
give my foot a nudge with his.
“I wish that girl'd quit watching us so,” says
he under his breath. “She's done nothing else
ever since we come in here.”
She'd gone from the counter when I got a
chance to look? She was' back directly, though,
and a couple of customers with her—customers,
I noticed, that didn't buy. Within five minutes
there was a dozen people in that little bakery,
and If one went out two come in.
Lester begin scratching his wrist. You could
always tell when he was getting nervous, the
way he always scratched his wrist.
“For pity’s sake,” says he, “let's pay and get
out of here!”
“Don’t you mind,” says I. All the same, it
seem to me the place had got as close as an
oven. One man come In and give us a long
look and walked out at a brisk rate, and I
could’ve swore he had a badge on underneath
his coat. Lester wouldn’t leave me be.
“It’s nothing, nothing,” I tell him. I wished
I could believe It. The air of them people set
me thinking. If Constable Ellis had traced us
to the Junction, it was perfectly possible for
him to have found out where every c4r in that
freight was billed to. And there’s always the
telegraph.
“The flies are bad here,” I says to Lester.
“If you’re done, we might’s well move along.”
And I call the girl and paid.
“Is that light?” I asked her in a sharp way,
for in place of looking at the money she kept
her eyes going from one to the other of us, her
mouth half open and her face as red as a beet.
I M m ..I—l *w»ww»wbwwwbwwbhiiwbbbbwmm mi— nw
“Count it,” says I. But she never. And I
didn't trouble to ask her again. Just that
minute I hear some one coming Into the door
behind me, and my heart stopped beating. You
know the way Ellis walks, from that bad leg of
his. Well, it may not've been the least like it.
but I never turned to look. I took Lester by
the elbow, and I says, “Come on quiet,” and I
walk him straight away through the bake room
and out the back door. I never stopped to
think; never stopped to reckon out what chance
in a thousand there was cf old Ellis turning
up in the flesh in that little out-of-the-way
village In the mountains. No sooner’d we got
Into the sunlight outside that door than I just
started out to run. dragging Lester with me.
And I had to drag him, too.
"No,” he keep saying. "Th'ain't no use,
John; no use, no use.”
"You never mind about the use,” I kept tell
ing hbn.
T DON'T know. There was a fence and a big
dump of empty cans, and there was a
woman hoeing potatoes in a back yard. She
had on a gray-and-white check, and she showed
against a line of clothes with one bright red
shirt amongst a lot of white ones. It’s funny
how that sticks in my mind. The only other
thing I remember seeing was a mountain cov
ered with woods, standing up against the sky
in front of us, and then all of a sudden a
smell of corn growing and a rustle breaking
around us like tide-rips. That's where we come,
into a field of it, along the foot of the mountain.
"Lay down,” I says to Lester when we'd come
a doaen rows or so.
“Th'ain't no use,” he kept it up. without
any life to his voice. “I’m going back and
have It over with, John.”
"You go back, Lester,” says I, “and I'll kill
myself.”
He laid down beside me. , *v
By and by Lester begin to talk. He laid with
his hands behind his head and his eyes staring
up at the corn leaves. His whole life come cut.
He was no good, he says, and he knew it. He
had queer ideas and imaginings that scared
him. and it wasn't alone in time of tempest
any more.
I can hoar him going on. monotonous and
dreamy, letting it all come out under the green
com rows. He knew he wasn't the same as
others, and he couldn't keep his mind off his
queemess. He said he had a terrible drawing
toward women—not any one woman—just
women. Yet he was scared of them. He was
scared to be left alone in tlie dark with a
woman or a girl for fear he’d find her dead.
That was what seem to get In the way of
everything he undertook. So he might’s well
be dead himself; better, he says, for then he
wouldn’t be a drag on me no longer, nor a
shame nor a torment to himself.
With that I hitch up and put an arm around
his shoulders, good and tight, and, “Now it's
my turn to talk,” says L
‘‘All this you been telling me is a lie,” I says.
“No,” says he, “it’s every word the truth.”
“No,” says I, “it’s a lie. For it’s all just in
your mind, and It’s wrong. And what's just
in your mind. Lester, and wrong, that's a lie.
And I won’t have it. I won’t stand for it,
Lester—not in a brother of mine. Now—do
you hear what I say? Look here. No. in the
eye. I'm stronger’n you; I’m steadiern you;
Tm braver’n you. Not what you say, but what
I say, is what goes. Get that? Well, it’s a
lie, and I won’t have it. Right here and now
I declare war on it; from this Identical minute
I take sides—with you—and against that
lie. X take responsibility for you. What
strength I got is yours—yours—understand? I
give you everything I got, soul and body.
There!” ,
You know, if either of us’d thought of it. I
sounded as queer as a loon myself. I was trying
so hard to make Lester believe me that I be
lieved myself. I was blowing like a beached
haddock when I got through, and so was he.
"You hear what I soy?” I give him a hard
shake. “I say that that thing has gone
and got out of you—now—from now on!”
The same look come into his face that I'd