University of Virginia Library

4. Part IV

To us, in the coaches, the collision seemed like the production of an imaginative person's conception of the end of the world. I bounced around between the floor and the roof until what was left of the thing that had been a train once more established a comparative equilibrium. Then I crawled out through a ragged absence of floor, and took a look at the corn-field we had entered and broken. We hadn't plowed quite as much of that field as the farmer had, but we'd gone deeper. I gave thanks for my deliverance and resolved to start going to church again.

Just then Dick crawled beside me.

"Eddie's pinned down," he gasped.

"Give me a hand with him!"

So I crawled back inside, and we started trying to lift things off poor Eddie. There was an awful lot on him. And what a screaming came from underneath! It sent the shivers up and down my spine to hear it.

"Don't yell so, Eddie!" I begged.

"We'll have you out in a minute."

We had taken enough carpentry and upholstery off him by that time to enable him to twist his head around. He looked up at me and said:

"I'm not yelling. What you hear is this humorist under me laughing at another joke."

It was the fat man! Eddie was bedded down on him as comfortable as a Persian princess on forty-seven sofa-pillows. The fat man was speaking extemporaneously, and the form of his remarks was an argument for the use of a manuscript. The tenor of his speech was something like this:

"Save me! Save me! Help! Help! Take your foot out of my eye! You're gouging my ear off! Oh, Lord, I'm dying! Now I lay me down to sleep — quit digging your knee into my stomach, will you? If I ever get up out of this I'll knock your block! Oh, Lord, I'm dying! Help!

There wasn't a thing holding him down but Eddie. As soon as we got Eddie loose the fat one could have got up all right; but I thought of the big diamond in his tie, and of my own destitute condition. When I lifted Eddie off him, I slipped a stray seat-back on, and knelt on it to give it weight.

"Are you in much pain?" I asked him.

"I'm dying!" he said. "I can feel myself getting weaker. Can't you save me?"

"There's a heavy timber across your back," I told him. "We'll do our best. Have courage! We won't desert you."

"I just want a crack at that sharp-angled fool who used me for a mattress," he wailed. "Oh, Lord, I'm dying! Help! Save me!"

After I'd sat for a while on the seat-back I'd laid across him, in order to make the rescue seem more difficult, and Dick and I had both heaved and groaned as if we were straining our ligaments to free him from the death-trap in which he was imprisoned, I got up and we saved him.

He wasn't much hurt. Between cussing Eddie and praying, he'd injured his vocal chords somewhat; but aside from that and a few bruises he was all right. He was peeved because we wouldn't let him lick Eddie.

"The little rabbit used my face for a foot-rest," he complained. "When the crash came, he picked out my softest spots and settled down on 'em. Don't tell

me he didn't do it purposely! If he'd had an osteopath's map of my anatomy he couldn't have picked out the tender places better. It was cold-blooded, scientific, intentional torture, I tell you!"

But we finally cooled him off and he introduced himself. He was Roland B. Kemmer, proprietor of the Bonavita Hotel at Paskamatqua Beach.

"You gentlemen saved my life," he told Dick and me. "Any time I can do anything for you, just let me know."

I spoke for our side. I didn't dictate or even suggest just what he should do for us, but I intimated that almost anything would be welcome, and that there was no time like the present.

"It's fate!" Kemmer declared. "I can use you two boys to our mutual advantage. We need presentable young men at the beach — young college men who can dance and play tennis, handle a canoe conservatively, and flirt discreetly. We've been frightfully shy of men this year. That's bad, very bad! Where there are no men, the women leave; and where the women have left, no men will come. The absence of men at a summer hotel is apt to be the first link in a chain of misfortune that leads directly to bankruptcy. Come with me! I'll give you free room and board at the hotel, all the privileges of the place, and a salary of — say twenty dollars a week for the summer. In return you have a good time, and see to it that the young ladies stopping at my hostelry do the same. Agreeable?"

Agreeable? Could he ask such a question and keep a straight face? I looked at Dick, and Dick looked at me, and then we both looked at Eddie. That was a mistake. If we hadn't looked at him we might have been able to leave him. Poor little Eddie!

His expression of pitiful appeal would have made a cat stay in a dog-kennel. I wanted to leave him, but I couldn't. His utter helplessness preyed on my conscience.

What would he do if we left him? Starve, probably! Sit out in the open and patiently wait for death, like the boob he was! If he'd had just a modicum of sense — enough, say, to know better than to waste his time pounding sand in a rat-hole, I could have laughed harshly and done my duty by myself; but he didn't. There he stood, a helpless, hopeless, pitiful boob, waiting to be left to his fate.

The claim for protection that his helplessness presented compelled me to take a chance with the first law of nature.

"Will it be possible for you to make use of our friend in some way?" I asked Kemmer. "He's with us, and I feel responsible for him in a way."

"Use him?" Kemmer shouted. "Him? I'll give him good money to hang by the heels and let me use him for a punching-bag! He deliberately stuck his foot in my eye, I tell you! Use him? I'll pay his way if he'll go down to old man Carlson's hotel, at the other end of the beach from us and hoodoo the place!"

I didn't try to defend Eddie. What was the use? There's no sense in arguing that two and two don't make four.

"I know," I said. "But he doesn't mean any harm, and he's with us, you see. We can't very well leave him."

"Admirable!" Kemmer said. "Shows a splendid spirit of loyalty. Too bad it's wasted on such a poor cause! Well, if he'll obey my orders, I'll give him his board and room, but no salary. We have some elderly ladies at the Bonavita who enjoy croquet and leisurely strolls. I can use him as an escort for them. They frequently require some one to carry their lunches and camp-stools for them."

"I'm sure you can depend upon me to do my best," Eddie said humbly.

"I'm sorry I put my foot in your eye, sir."

"If you didn't have two good friends to intercede for you, you'd be a darn sight sorrier!" Kemmer blustered. "I don't want you around, but I'm going to

try and put up with you as a favor to your two friends, who saved my life while you were trying to murder me."

So the three of us went with Kemmer to the Bonavita Hotel at Paskamatqua Beach. Dick and I got right into the swim as regular bathers, and Eddie took up his duties as the old ladies' life-guard. While Dick and I swam and played tennis and golf and danced and canoed with as fine a bunch of peacherinoes as ever troubled a boarding-school, Eddie carried chairs and tables for the hens who had ceased to cackle when they laid a birthday, and did his bit with croquet-mallets and parasols. Between times he sat on the veranda and read nice novels out loud to his flock.