Peewee/Chapter 1

Peewee, as he preferred to call himself—H. Seabury, as he was known to certain municipal and county authorities who would have confined him in some home for dependent children if they had known where he was—was advancing nervously in West Madison Street, Chicago. He looked at intervals apprehensively over his shoulder at a man following some thirty feet behind him, noting that the man timed his steps with his own. When Peewee hastened, the man hastened; when Peewee slowed, he slowed; when Peewee stood still, the man stood still. The boy's tentative conclusion from this was that the man was an agent of the Juvenile Court.

From his earliest memory—when he had been one of innumerable little figures, all under three ​feet in height, clothed in washable garments of white and blue, who marched to meals under discipline of women who wore wide white starched hats—agents of the Juvenile Court had been the only persons who concerned themselves actively about Peewee. Who his father and mother had been he did not know. For business reasons, when asked his age, he answered ten; he was, as established by court records, probably not more than eight, and even for that age he was surprisingly small. The name Peewee, which he much preferred, had been given him by his associates in the orphanage because of this diminutive size; his other name, which he had carried officially since the age of three, had been manufactured in court for him, in order that he might have a name, his own not being known. He had run away from the asylum at the age of six. He had run away, within another year, from a "Boys' Home." His life since then had been a succession of confinements in various charitable institutions and of astute escapes. The means by which he provided for his existence, when the county or charity were ​not providing for it, was by selling newspapers.

Peewee sold his newspapers between four o'clock in the afternoon and seven—the hours during which children are not subject to interference by the authorities on the downtown streets. He could not sell them on the corners, which are places of proprietorial right and themselves are bought and sold; so he sold them in the middle of the block, where no supervision is exercised. His trade was mostly feminine. Whatever the boy's ancestry had been, he had a face which sent a pang to every childless woman's heart—a distinctive, unforgetable face, large violet eyes shaded by long lashes of deepest widow's black and a mouth of childish innocence. Dirt, to which he paid no heed, and disfiguring garments which had descended to him from some larger boy, could not make him unattractive to women. "Girls" of thirty, working in offices and living in clubs, went three blocks out of their way to buy their papers of him at night, and other women, passing to or from their limousines—women with clear eyes and transparent skins, giving out scents of perfumes and of furs—ex​claimed over him and stopped and forced their escorts to give him money.

Peewee was inordinately wise for his age, though more wise in evil than in good, but he had never tried to find out the nature of his feelings towards these women. Something mostly pleasant, but partly painful, was stirred in him by them. He took pride in the methods he had acquired of attracting their attention. When, however, he had accomplished this, another feeling not capable of analysis succeeded; an internal warning told him that it might bring tears. He could not remember ever having cried; he shrank from tears and ridiculed them, as he did all soft things. He put his dirty hand surreptitiously against the women's furs and breathed deeply in their scents. When they had passed on, leaving the probability that he would never see them again, a momentary feeling of loss and loneliness came to him; then he turned his attention again to the street, where something interesting was always happening.

Two other things were characteristic of him: Places—this was the first one—were indiffer​ent to him. When he encountered unpleasant circumstances anywhere, he prevented their repetition by going away from that place and subsequently avoiding it. People in mass—this was the second characteristic—were intensely interesting to him. If two persons stopped to talk upon the sidewalk, he went close to them and listened; he was an expert on the multi-logue of crowds. He was fully conscious of his own insignificance and that people talked in his presence as though he were not there.

Peewee's independence made him a problem to the authorities. If the man now following him was an agent of the Juvenile Court, his latest long period of liberty, during which his expertness had made recapture seem almost improbable, was now about to terminate.

He was beginning to consider, however, that his follower did not act like any officer of a public sort. Such an officer, having suspected or identified Peewee, would have laid hands upon him at once. He would hardly have followed, as this man had done, for so many blocks that the boy long ago had lost count. At Desplaines ​Street, and again at Halsted Street, Peewee, with a cautious eye upon the man, had attempted to turn south. In each instance the man had hastened forward within arm's reach; then Peewee, in panic, had resumed his former course. That the man had fallen promptly back to the position he had held before gave grounds for an inference that he did not think it necessary to molest Peewee so long as they continued to go west.

Yet even panic could not drive Peewee much further out of the districts which he knew. He observed frequent half-open doors giving upon stairways which went upward in the buildings that they passed; other doors led down to basements. He reflected that in a neighborhood with which he was acquainted some of these would have offered opportunity for abrupt escape. There were no openings upon the street front except doors, for the alleys here ran east and west. To attain an alley he would have to turn either south or north. He had already twice tried south; at the next street intersection, he darted quickly north. But he had not gone twenty feet when he felt the man's clutch upon his wrist.

Previous experience now guided Peewee; he ​fell at once into a docile walk. He did not speak and the man did not speak. They walked on steadily a block more to Washington Boulevard, and there the man turned them west. As Peewee looked up, the man rewarded his docility by displaying a police badge. But this badge of the Burke and Mundy private detective agency only gave a new perplexity to the boy. The varieties of police were known to him. He could understand that a private detective might have preferred not to lead him through the streets so long as he himself was following the direction wished. But what could any private detective want of him? And where could he be taking him? There were no court rooms out this way.

Washington Boulevard, east of Union Park, is a district which the city, having once made, has now unmade. Great houses front the asphalt where the motors roll; but the original inhabitants no longer occupy these houses. The brick and limestone faces are defaced by paint; the iron railings of thirty-five years ago are disintegrating with rust. Delicatessens have crept into the basements; manufacturing has taken the first floors; the stables have become machine shops. ​On nearly every door furnished rooms are advertised for rent.

The house in front of which the man halted Peewee was detached—a limestone pile of former grandeur, surrounded by a small unkempt yard. The man seemed familiar with the place. He rang the bell decisively, and when, after an interval, it was answered by a slatternly old woman with gray hair falling over her eyes, he pushed her aside and led Peewee in. They ascended a musty smelling stair to an equally musty smelling, dusky hall. The door upon which the man knocked, after following this hall, was opened by a frivolous looking colored girl in high-heeled, expensive shoes. The man and the business he came upon appeared known to her, for she motioned them to come in without making any inquiry. She looked curiously at the boy. The man pushed Peewee ahead of him into a room of what had been once an ornate suite of double bedrooms, dressing room and bath. Only part of these rooms were visible; the door of the furthest room was closed. Curtains of imitation lace, gray with dust, cov​ered the windows of the room they were in, which seemed now used as a salon. The furniture was of the second-hand sort and had been maltreated. The yellowed keys of the small piano were charred by cigarette stubs.

The negro girl went away, teetering on her high heels, and could be heard knocking at one of the inner doors. Then a middle-aged trained nurse appeared. She too looked curiously at Peewee.

"This is the boy?" she asked.

"This is him," the man replied.

The nurse looked at Peewee. "You're the little boy that sells newspapers on Madison Street between Wells Street and La Salle?"

Peewee felt more at ease in the presence of the nurse. What it was that was happening to him, he could not divine, but it was at least nothing in the regular course of justice and charity. "Yes'm," he confirmed.

"I picked him up this evening," the man explained, "after he'd sold out his papers. He was headed this direction and I let him come and only laid hands upon him a few blocks back. The ​lady received the report I and the other operative made to the chief?"

"I believe so. Is there something you want to add to that?"

"No; that covers all that we found out."

"You understand that you are to leave him here."

"That was the instructions."

The man went out. When the door had closed upon him, Peewee felt more comfortable. He was less afraid of women than of men, and the sex of this middle-aged trained nurse gave him confidence in her. The look of curiosity on her face had become a more definitely centered interest.

"How far can you remember back, little boy?" she asked.

He merely stared up at her.

"You don't understand," she decided. "When you think back, as far back as you can to the time when you were very little, what is it that you think of?"

He put one foot upon the other—the instinctive expression of embarassment among those ​who stand upon wet pavements. His memory traveled backward to the Greenwood Boys' Home.

"Are you thinking back?"

"Yes'm."

"What is it you remember?"

"The boys."

The reply seemed unintelligible to her.

"Can't you remember anything before that?"

"Yes'm."

"What?"

He returned mentally to the orphan asylum.

"The Sisters."

She seemed again not to understand.

"Before that," she insisted. "Don't you remember anyone earlier still?"

"No'm."

"Not a single person?"

"No'm."

"Not—your mother?"

"No'm."

She took his hands, holding him in front of her.

"I'm going to take you in to see your ​mother," she said. "That's why you were brought here—to see her. You must be very careful. You must answer if she speaks to you, but you mustn't talk much. Do you understand?"

"Yes'm."

"Then wait here a minute."

She left him, and he looked after her with increasing interest. Was his mother here? What the nurse had said seemed to make that certain. The nurse could not be his mother; she had spoken of taking him to her. His mother could not be the old woman who had opened the street door. The operative had spoken of a lady. He hoped, if the lady was his mother, she would prove to be pretty. He recalled some of the women who had given him money, and hoped she might be one of those.

The nurse returned and led him to the closed door of the furthest room and opened it and pushed him in ahead of her. He blinked as he peered about with interest, for the room was partly darkened.

It was a large bedroom, with furniture which, ​like that in the other rooms, had passed through different hands. A multitude of frippery toilet articles, defaced by misuse, scattered the dresser among portraits of several different men in tinsel frames. There was a stand with medicines, a pallet for the nurse, a large bed. The room was filled with a heavy scent of perfume. As by degrees the objects in the room, which had appeared to him at first only as outlines, acquired distinctness, Peewee surveyed with disappointment the woman in the bed, who moved excitedly at sight of him. She was not now pretty, whatever she might once have been. Her blonde hair was drawn tightly back from a narrow forehead marked with fine blue veins; her full lips were cracked and puffed; her cheek bones seemed pushing through the tight drawn, hectic skin, and her eyes were startlingly wild and bright.

"She is very ill," the nurse whispered to him "Be careful."

"If you will go out!" the woman said to the nurse.

The nurse hesitated doubtfully.

​"If you will go out!" the woman repeated.

The nurse went out and closed the door upon them.

"Come here." The woman stretched out to him her thin, blue-veined hands covered with rings.

He was not, he told himself firmly, afraid of her; there was therefore no name for the feeling aroused in him by the wildness of her manner. It was this feeling that forced him to obey her. She caught his hands with her burning hot ones and drew him to her.

"My baby!" she whispered, "My baby! I've got you back. You've been away from me so long."

He resisted as her hands crept upward on his arms and clutched him down against her breast.

"You must kiss me," she said. "You know—your mother. A pretty kiss for mother."

She turned his face between her hands, and pressed her fiery lips hard upon his. He could hear the nurse pacing up and down outside the door uneasily.

​The woman's trembling fingers began to smooth his hair. "They've dressed you wrong," she said. "I don't like this suit. They should have put on your velvet suit and the Eton collar. We will tell them you must have that on, and we'll go riding in the park. Would you like to ride in the park with mother? Would you like to have a pony? My baby! My little Walter! You have been away so long. Now you will never go away again. You will stay with me always. Unless something happens. So much has happened."

Her words seemed to bring some thought to her; her gaze wandered uncertainly.

"If something happens—" she repeated.

Her grasp slackened, and he drew himself away, held only by one hand.

"I sent the nurse away. They don't know I'm so clever. Can you write, Walter?"

"Yes'm."

"Names? Can you write names?"

"I can write down the letters."

"Go over to the dresser. Open the top drawer. Do you find some cards there? Men's ​cards. Men's cards! Take any one of them. We only need the back of it. Have you got one?"

"Yes'm."

"Is there a pencil in the drawer?"

"Yes'm."

"Bring it here. Bring the card here with it. Rest it here on the bed. Write 'W'—big 'W'."

He wet the pencil tip against his tongue and did as she directed.

"Write 'a'—little 'a'. Write it close behind the other. Now 'l'. Now 't'."

He obeyed, laboriously forming the letters as she directed until they reached clear across the card.

"Can you read what it spells?"

He hesitated. "Markyn," he said, looking uncertainly at the last word.

"That is it. Now read the rest."

"I can't."

"No? That is easier than what you read."

"I'll spell it out."

"Put down your head and I'll whisper. ​'Walter Wendell Markyn' is what it spells. You can read it now, can't you? Can you?"

"Yes'm."

"Now write numbers. Write '1'. Write '6'."

He followed her directions until she had finished.

"Can you read it?"

"Yes."

"Do it."

He read the numbers and spelled out the words, "North State Street, Chicago."

"That is it. Put the pencil back in the drawer. Shut the drawer. Put the card in your pocket. Have you done it?"

"Yes."

"Bend over me. I want to whisper. That is your father. His name and his address. Do you understand? That is your father and where he lives."

"Yes'm."

"Don't show the card to people. Don't tell them. Nobody knows. We are the only ones who know. You and I, baby. If something ​happens—you ought to have his name. Now kiss mother—kiss mother pretty, my baby boy!"

He heard the nurse at the door. As the nurse came in, he straightened himself away from the fierce kisses. The nurse disengaged him from the clinging arms.

"He is not to be sent away. You are to keep him here," the woman directed anxiously.

"Of course; I understand that," the nurse assured her.

She led him back to the room where he had been first and went back to her patient.

Peewee sat in the increasing dusk, blinking dazedly about him. He considered first the name which the sick woman had called him—Walter. It must be, he comprehended, what persons would regard as his real name, since his mother had called him that. At the same time, boys did not necessarily bear the same first name as their fathers. He was not certain that he liked the name. He had refused formerly to recognize, except officially, the name which the court had given him. Had the sick woman, as ​his mother, authority to make him accept this name whether he wanted to or not?

The human relations were obscure to him. He had known since he could first remember that he must at some time have had a mother and a father; but exactly what a mother and a father ought to be was something that experience had left indefinite and confused for him. His first feeling toward the woman he just had seen had been simply fear of her. He was not capable of understanding the less clear feelings which he had toward her now. He resented her calling him "baby," but at the same time something seemed swelling in his throat and choking him. So far as he could remember no one before had ever kissed him, the passionate kisses of the sick woman, burning still upon his lips and cheeks, made him uncomfortable and unhappy, without his knowing why they made him so. No one, he realized, was watching him at present and he could have walked out the door and gone away. He decided he would do that, but he sat still and did not go.

The colored girl, dressed now to go out, came ​and switched on the light. She had a tray with food for him. While he ate, she prepared a bed for him upon the couch. She carried away the tray and passed through the room again on her way out a few minutes later.

"Turn off the light when you want to go to bed," she said.

He sat still, after she was gone. The nurse came and looked in upon him. Assured by his manner that he would remain where he was, she did not come again. He saw her come and go, out of and into the sick woman's room at intervals. She went in finally and did not come out again. He turned out the light and lay down upon the couch without taking off his clothes.

He awoke in broad day, and sat up and listened. The decision to go away was now definitely formed in him. He went on tiptoe to the door into the hall and opened it and looked out. There was no one in the hall and he could hear no one. Instead of stepping out, he, partly reclosed the door and went noiselessly to the closed door of the bedroom and listened. He ​stood there a long while, hearing nothing. If the nurse were in the room, he would have heard her move or have heard someone speak by now, he thought. He could not imagine where the nurse could be. Had she gone out? At any rate, the sick woman could not prevent his going away whenever he wished. He turned the knob of the door softly and looked in. The nurse was not in the room. The sick woman lay with eyes closed and without a pillow, her look of immobility sending a sudden tension through him and making the hairs prickle on his skin. He went quietly into the room and stood looking down at her. Should he speak to her and make her open her eyes? Or should he merely go away? Her hand with its many rings lay outside the coverlet, he put out his own hand hesitatingly and touched it, and at the contact the hairs again stood up upon his flesh in warning to him. The immobility of her look was corroborated by the stiffness of the hand, which was now cold instead of burning with fever as it had been the night before.

He drew back from her a little, staring. ​Death, as a fact, was known to Peewee; there had been no one to conspire to keep the knowledge of it from him. He recognized that his mother was dead, but it did not give him any particular feeling of unhappiness. It caused only a dryness in his throat and a sense of physical uneasiness. He backed slowly away, not ceasing to look at her. He felt behind him for the door, found it, and backed out through the opening. Then he reclosed the door. He listened again for the nurse. Not hearing her, he went out quickly into the musty hall, passed through it and down the stairs, opened the entrance door and ran out into the street.