O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 — Grit

"_Mektoub_!"

GRIT

By TRISTRAM TUPPER From _Metropolitan Magazine_ Grit was dead.

There was no mistake about that.

And on the very day of his burial temptation came to his widow.

Grit's widow was "Great" Taylor, whose inadequate first name was Nell--a young, immaculate creature whose body was splendid even if her vision and spirit were small.

She never had understood Grit.

Returning from the long, wearisome ride, she climbed the circular iron staircase--up through parallels of garlic-scented tenement gloom--to her three-room flat, neat as a pin; but not even then did she give way to tears.

Tears!

No man could make Great Taylor weep!

However, drawing the pins from her straw hat, dyed black for the occasion, she admitted, "It ain't right."

Grit had left her nothing, absolutely nothing, but an unpleasant memory of himself--his grimy face and hands, his crooked nose and baggy breeches....

And Great Taylor was willing that every thought of him should leave her forever.

"Grit's gone," she told herself.

"I ain't going to think of him any more."

Determinedly Great Taylor put some things to soak and, closing down the top of the stationary washtubs, went to the window.

The view was not intriguing, and yet she hung there: roofs and more roofs, a countless number reached out toward infinity, with pebbles and pieces of broken glass glittering in the sunlight; chimneys sharply outlined by shadow; and on every roof, except one, clothes-lines, from which white cotton and linen flapped in the wind at the side of faded overalls and red woollen shirts.

They formed a kind of flag--these red, white, and blue garments flying in the breeze high above a nation of toilers.

But Great Taylor's only thought was, "It's Monday."

One roof, unlike the rest, displayed no such flag--a somewhat notorious "garden" and dance hall just around the corner.

And adjacent to this house was a vacant lot on which Great Taylor could see a junk-cart waiting, and perhaps wondering what had become of its master.

She turned her eyes away.

"I ain't going to think of him."

Steadying her chin in the palms of her hands, elbows on the window-sill, Nell peered down upon a triangular segment of chaotic street.

Massed humanity overflowed the sidewalks and seemed to bend beneath the weight of sunlight upon their heads and shoulders.

A truck ploughed a furrow through push-carts that rolled back to the curb like a wave crested with crude yellow, red, green, and orange merchandise.

She caught the hum of voices, many tongues mingling, while the odours of vegetables and fruit and human beings came faintly to her nostrils.

She was looking down upon one of the busiest streets of the city that people sometimes call the Devil's Own.

Grit had wrested an existence from the débris of this city.

Others have waded ankle-deep in the crowd; but he, a grimy, infinitesimal molecule, had been at the bottom wholly submerged, where the light of idealism is not supposed to penetrate.

Grit had been a junkman; his business address--a vacant lot; his only asset--a junk-cart across the top of which he had strung a belt of jingling, jangling bells that had called through the cavernous streets more plainly than Grit himself: "Rags, old iron, bottles, and ra-ags."

This had been Grit's song; perhaps the only one he had known, for he had shoved that blest cart of his since a boy of thirteen; he had worn himself as threadbare as the clothes on his back, and at last the threads had snapped.

He had died of old age--in his thirties.

And his junk-cart, with its bells, stood, silent and unmanned, upon the vacant lot just around the corner.

Great Taylor had seen Grit pass along this narrow segment of street, visible from her window; but his flight had always been swift--pushing steadily with head bent, never looking up.

And so it was not during his hours of toil that she had known him....

Nell closed the window.

She was not going to think of him any more.

"Ain't worth a thought."

But everything in the room reminded her of the man.

He had furnished it from his junk-pile.

The drawer was missing from the centre table, the door of the kitchen stove was wired at the hinges; even the black marble clock, with its headless gilt figure, and the brown tin boxes marked "Coffee," "Bread," and "Sugar"--all were junk.

And these were the things that Grit, not without a show of pride, had brought home to her!

Nell sank into a large armchair (with one rung gone) and glowered at an earthen jug on the shelf.

Grit had loved molasses.

Every night he had spilt amber drops of it on the table, and his plate had always been hard to wash.

"Won't have that to do any more," sighed Nell.

Back of the molasses jug, just visible, were the tattered pages of a coverless book.

This had come to Grit together with fifty pounds of waste paper in gunny-sacks; and though Nell had never undergone the mental torture of informing herself as to its contents, she had dubbed the book "Grit's Bible," for he had pawed over it, spelling out the words, every night for years.

It was one thing from which she could not wash Grit's grimy fingermarks, and so she disliked it even more than the sticky molasses jug.

"Him and his book and his brown molasses jug!"

One was gone forever, and soon she would get rid of the other two.

And yet, even as she thought this, her eyes moved slowly to the door, and she could not help visualizing Grit as he had appeared every evening at dusk.

His baggy breeches had seemed always to precede him into the room.

The rest of him would follow--his thin shoulders, from which there hung a greenish coat, frayed at the sleeves; above this, his long, collarless neck, his pointed chin and broken nose, that leaned toward the hollow and smudges of his cheek.

He would lock the door quickly and stand there, looking at Nell.

"Why did he always lock the door?"

mused Great Taylor.

"Nothing here to steal!

Why'd he stand there like that?"

Every night she had expected him to say something, but he never did.

Instead, he would take a long breath, almost like a sigh, and, after closing his eyes for a moment, he would move into the room and light the screeching gas-jet.

"Never thought of turning down the gas."

This, particularly, was a sore point with Great Taylor.

"Never thought of anything.

Just dropped into the best chair."

"It's a good chair, Nell," he would say, "only one rung missing."

And he would remain silent, drooping there, wrists crossed in his lap, palms turned upward, fingers curled, until supper had been placed before him on the table.

"Fingers bent like claws," muttered Great Taylor, "and doing nothing while I set the table."

Sometimes he would eat enormously, which irritated Nell; sometimes he would eat nothing except bread and molasses, which irritated Nell even more.

"A good molasses jug," he would say; "got it for a dime.

Once I set a price I'm a stone wall; never give in."

This was his one boast, his stock phrase.

After using it he would look up at his wife for a word of approval; and as the word of approval was never forthcoming, he would repeat: "Nell, I'm a stone wall; never give in."

After supper he would ask what she had been doing all day.

A weary, almost voiceless, man, he had told her nothing.

But Great Taylor while washing the dishes would rattle off everything that had happened since that morning.

She seldom omitted any important detail, for she knew by experience that Grit would sit there, silent, wrists crossed and palms turned up, waiting.

He had always seemed to know when she had left anything out, and she always ended by telling him.

Then he would take a long breath, eyes closed, and, after fumbling back of the molasses jug, would soon be seated again beneath the streaming gas-jet spelling to himself the words of his coverless book.

So vivid was the picture, the personality and routine of Grit, that Great Taylor felt the awe with which he, at times, had inspired her.

She had been afraid of Grit--afraid to do anything she could not tell him about; afraid not to tell him about everything she had done.

But now she determined: "I'll do what I please."

And the first thing it pleased Great Taylor to do was to get rid of the odious molasses jug.

She plucked it from the shelf, holding the sticky handle between two fingers, and dropped it into the peach crate that served as a waste-basket.

The noise when the jug struck the bottom of the crate startled her.

Great Taylor stood there--listening.

Someone was slowly ascending the circular staircase.

The woman could hear a footfall on the iron steps.

"Grit's gone," she reassured herself.

"I'll do what I please."

She reached for the grimy book, "Grit's Bible," the most offensive article in the room, and with sudden determination tore the book in two, and was about to throw the defaced volume into the basket along with the earthen jug when fear arrested the motion of her hands.

Her lips parted.

She was afraid to turn her head.

The door back of her had opened.

Great Taylor was only ordinarily superstitious.

She had buried Grit that morning.

It was still broad daylight--early afternoon.

And yet when she turned, clutching the torn book, she fully expected to see a pair of baggy breeches preceding a collarless, long-necked man with a broken nose, and smudges in the hollows of his cheeks.

Instead, she wheeled to see a pair of fastidiously pressed blue serge trousers, an immaculate white collar, a straight nose and ruddy complexion.

In fact, the man seemed the exact opposite of Grit.

Nell glanced at the open door, back at the man, exhaled tremulously with relief, and breathed: "Why didn't you knock?"

"Sorry if I startled you," puffed the man, entirely winded by the six flights.

"Must have pushed the wrong button in the vestibule.

No great harm done."

"Who are you?

What you want?"

"Junk.

That's one of the things I came to see about--the junk in back of my place.

I suppose it's for sale."

He thrust his white hands into the side pockets of his coat, pulling the coat snugly around his waist and hips, and smiled amiably at Great Taylor's patent surprise.

"You!....

Buy Grit's junk business!"

What did _he_ want with junk?

He was clean!

From head to foot he was clean!

His hair was parted.

It was not only parted, it was brushed into a wave, with ends pointing stiffly up over his temples (a coiffure affected by bartenders of that day); and Nell even detected the pleasant fragrance of pomade.

"You ain't a junkman."

The man laughed.

"I don't know about that."

He studied her a moment in silence.

Nell was leaning back against the washtubs, her sleeves rolled up, her head tilted quizzically, lips parted, while tints of colour ebbed and flowed in her throat and cheeks.

She had attained the ripeness of womanhood and very nearly animal perfection.

The man's attitude might have told her this.

One of his eyes, beneath a permanently cocked eyebrow, blinked like the shutter of a camera and seemed to take intimate photographs of all parts of her person.

The other eye looked at her steadily from under a drooping lid.

"No," he said, after the pause of a moment, "I'm not going into the junk business."

But he wanted to get the rubbish away from the back of his place.

"I'll buy it and have it carted away.

It's too near the 'Garden.'

" He rocked up on his toes and clicked his heels gently.

"I own the house just around the corner."

"I knew it," Nell murmured fatuously.

The man was vaguely familiar, even though she could not remember having seen him before.

"Set your price."

He turned away, and Nell imagined that his camera-like eye was taking instantaneous photographs of all the broken and mended things in the immaculate room.

A wave of hot blood made her back prickle and dyed her throat crimson.

"I don't like rubbish," said the man.

"I don't like junk."

"Who does?"

stammered Great Taylor.

"You dislike junk, and yet there was your husband, a junkman."

He watched her narrowly from beneath his drooping eyelid.

Great Taylor was not of the noblesse, nor did she know the meaning of noblesse oblige; and had she been a man, perhaps she would have denied her former lord and master--once, twice, or even thrice--it has been done; but being a woman, she said: "Leave Grit out of it."

This seemed to please the man from around the corner.

"I think we are going to get on," he said significantly.

"But you must remember that Grit can't take care of you any longer."

"Grit's gone," assented Nell; "gone for good."

"Uhm."

The man allowed his singular eyes to move over her.

"I think we can arrange something.

I've seen you pass my place, looking in; and I had something in mind when I started up here--something aside from junk.

I could make a place over there--matron or cashier.

How would you like that--cashier at the Garden?"

He rocked up on his toes and clicked his heels quite audibly.

"I don't know anything about it."

"You'll soon learn," he was confident.

He mentioned the salary, and that a former cashier was now half owner of an uptown place.

And for half an hour Great Taylor's saturnine mind followed in the wake of his smoothly flowing words.

Why couldn't Grit have talked like that?

she kept asking herself.

Grit never said anything.

Why couldn't he been clean like that, with hair brushed into a curl that sat up like that?

...

The man's words gradually slipped far beyond her, and only his pleasant voice accompanied her own thoughts.

No reason why she shouldn't be cashier at the Garden.

Only one reason, anyway, and that wasn't any reason at all....

On an afternoon more than a year ago she had gone to the place around the corner.

She had told Grit all about it, and Grit had said in his weary voice, "Don't never go again, Nell."

She had argued with Grit.

The Garden wasn't wicked; nothing the matter with it; other people went there of an afternoon; she liked the music....

And Grit had listened, drooping in his chair, wrists crossed and palms turned upward.

Finally, when Nell had finished, he had repeated, "Don't go again."

He had not argued, for Grit never argued; he was always too weary.

But this had been one of his longest speeches.

He had ended: "The Devil himself owns that place.

I ought to know, my junkyard's right back of it."

And he had closed his eyes and taken a long, deep breath.

"When I say a thing, Nell, I'm a stone wall.

You can't go there again--now or never."

And that had settled it, for Great Taylor had been afraid of Grit.

But now Grit was dead; gone for good.

She would do as she pleased....

When she looked up the man had stopped talking.

He glanced at the clock.

"What time?"

murmured Great Taylor.

"Five," said the man from just around the corner.

Nell nodded her head and watched as the man's fastidiously pressed trousers and polished shoes cleared the closing door.

Nell immediately went to the looking-glass--a cracked little mirror that hung by the mantelpiece--and studied the reflection of herself with newly awakened interest.

She had never seemed so radiant--her smooth hair, her lineless face, her large gray eyes and perfect throat.

"I ain't so bad looking," she admitted.

Grit had never made her feel this way.

And again she asked herself why he could not have been clean like the man from around the corner.

She rehearsed all that had been said.

She thought of the salary the man had mentioned, and made calculations.

It was more than Grit had averaged for the two of them to live on.

With prodigal fancy she spent the money and with new-born thrift she placed it in bank.

Limited only by her small knowledge of such things, she revelled in a dream of affluence and luxury which was only dissipated when gradually she became conscious that throughout the past hour she had been clinging to a grimy, coverless book.

Damp finger-prints were upon the outer leaves, and the pages adhered to her moistened hand.

She loosened her grip, and the book opened to a particularly soiled page on which a line had been underscored with a thick red mark.

Dully, Great Taylor read the line, spelling out the words; but it conveyed nothing to her intellect.

It was the fighting phrase of a famous soldier: "_I have drawn the sword and thrown away the scabbard_."

"What does that mean?"

she mumbled.

Her eyes wandered to the top of the page, where in larger type was the title: "Life of 'STONEWALL' JACKSON."

"Stonewall," repeated Nell.

"Stonewall!"

The word had the potency to bring vividly before her Grit's drooping, grimy form.

Her ears rang with his ridiculous boast.

His voice seemed no longer low and weary.

"When I say a thing ...

stone wall.

Can't go there again--now or never."

Great Taylor mumbled disparagingly, "He got it from a book!"

And again she read the fighting phrase of Grit's hero: "_I have drawn the sword and thrown away the scabbard_."

"Can't mean Grit," she mused.

"He never threw away anything...."

And she tossed his desecrated Bible toward the peach crate; but missing its aim, the book slid along the floor with a slight rustle, almost like a sigh, and struck the chair-board behind the washtubs, where it lay limp and forgotten.

Back of Nell the clock struck the half hour, and she turned quickly, her heart thumping with the fear of being late.

But the hour was only three thirty.

"Plenty time."

She gazed at the broken clock.

"A good clock," Grit used to say; "keeps time and only cost a quarter."

"Stone wall!...

Humph!..."

Nell transformed the washtubs into a bath by the removal of the centre partition, and within an hour was bathed and dressed.

Sticking the pins through her straw hat, dyed black, she took from the bottom drawer of the cupboard a patent-leather hand-bag with colourful worsted fruit embroidered upon its shining sides.

She thought of the night Grit had brought it home to her, his pride--he had bought it at a store.

But a glance around the room obliterated this memory, and she mumbled, "Wish I warn't never, _never_ going to see this place again!

Wait till I get money...."

She glared at the broken furniture, each piece of which brought back some memory of the man.

She could see him drooping in the armchair, with his wrists crossed, fingers curled.

She glared at the shelf and imagined him fumbling for something that was not there.

She started for the door, then, turning back, reached into the peach crate.

"There!

Keep your old molasses jug!"

she said, in a dry voice, and, replacing the jug on the shelf, she went out into the hall.

Winding down through the tenement-house gloom, Great Taylor was not without fear.

Her footfall on the uncarpeted landings and iron treads sounded hollow and strangely loud.

The odours that in the past had greeted her familiarly, making known absorbing domestic details of her neighbours, caused her neither to pause nor to sniff.

She reached the narrow entrance hall, dark and deserted, and, hurrying down its length, fumbled with the knob and pulled open the street door.

Dazzling sunlight, a blast of warm air and the confused clatter of the sidewalk engulfed her.

She stood vacillating in the doorway, thinly panoplied for the struggle of existence.

Her body was splendid, it is true, but her spirit was small.

Despite the sunlight and warmth she was trembling.

And yet, for years she had gone down into this street confident of herself, mingling on equal terms with its wayfarers, her ear catching and translating the sounds that, converging, caused this babel.

Now, suddenly, all of it was meaningless, the peddlers with whom she had bickered and bargained in a loud voice with gestures, breast to breast, were strangers and the street an alien land.

Many things seemed to have passed backward out of her life.

She was no longer Grit's wife, no longer the Great Taylor of yesterday.

She was something new-born, free of will; all the old ties had been clipped.

She could do as she pleased.

No one could stop her.

And she pleased to become a denizen of a world which, though just around the corner, was unrelated to the sphere in which she had moved.

"What's the matter with me?"

she asked herself.

"Nothing to be afraid of.

He's gone.

I'll do as I please."

With such assertions she bolstered her courage, but nevertheless she was trembling....

Glossy-haired women jostled her with their baskets.

Taller by a head, Nell pushed her way oblivious of the crowd.

At the corner she paused.

"I ain't going to be early."

A clock across the avenue, visible beneath the reverberating ironwork of the elevated, seemed to have stopped at the half hour.

It was four thirty.

She watched the long hand until it moved jerkily.

A policeman, half dragging a shrieking woman and followed by a jostling, silent crowd, swept Great Taylor aside and put in a call for the wagon.

She hurriedly rounded the corner and passed a window that displayed a pyramid of varnished kegs backed by a mirror with a ram's head painted on it in colours.

Beyond was the side entrance.

Over the door hung a glass sign, one word in large red letters: "DANCING."

She caught the odour of cheap wine and stale beer.

Again she said, "I ain't going to be early," and moved away aimlessly.

Beyond the end of this building was a vacant lot and Great Taylor moved more swiftly with head averted.

She had passed nearly to the next building before she stopped and wheeled around defiantly.

"I ain't afraid to look," she said to herself and gazed across at Grit's junk-cart, with its string of bells, partly concealed back against the fence.

It was standing in the shadow, silent, unmanned.

She walked on for a few steps and turned again.

The cart was standing as before, silent, unmanned.

She stood there, hands on her hips, trying to visualize Grit drooping over the handle--his collarless neck, his grimy face and baggy breeches; but her imagination would not paint the picture.

"Grit's gone for good," she said.

"Why couldn't he been clean like other people, like the man that owns the Garden?

No excuse for being dirty and always tired like that.

Anybody could push it and keep clean, too--half clean, anyway."

She slipped a glance at the clock.

It stood at twenty minutes before the hour of her appointment.

"A baby could push it...."

She picked her way across the vacant lot to the junk-cart and laid her hand upon the grimy handle.

The thing moved.

The strings of bells set up a familiar jingle.

"Easy as a baby carriage!"

And Great Taylor laughed.

The cart reached the sidewalk, bumped down over the curb and pulling Great Taylor with it went beyond the centre of the street.

She tried to turn back but a clanging trolley car cut in between her and the curb, a wheel of the junk-cart caught in the smooth steel track and skidded as if it were alive with a stupid will of its own.

"It ain't so easy," she admitted.

With a wrench she extracted the wheel, narrowly avoided an elevated post and crashed head on into a push-cart, laden with green bananas resting on straw.

An Italian swore in two languages and separated the locked wheels.

Hurriedly Great Taylor shoved away from the fruit man and became pocketed in the traffic.

Two heavy-hoofed horses straining against wet leather collars crowded her toward the curb and shortly the traffic became blocked.