Miss Murdock,--"Special"

________________________________________________
Title:     Miss Murdock,--"Special"
Author: Francis Hopkinson Smith [More Titles by Smith]

A row of gas jets hooded by green paper shades lighting a long table at which sit half a dozen men in their shirt sleeves writing like mad; against the wall other men,--one drawing Easter lilies, another blocking in the background around a photograph, a third pasting clippings on sheets of brown paper. Every few minutes a bare-headed boy in a dirty apron, with smudged face and ink-stained fingers, bounds into the stifling, smoke-laden room, skirts the long table, dives through a door labelled "City Editor," remains an instant and bounds out again, his hands filled with long streamers of proof.

In the opening and shutting of the swinging door a round-bodied, round-headed man in his shirt sleeves comes into view. Covering his forehead, shielding his eyes from the glare of the overhead gas jet, is a half-moon of green leather held in place by strings tied behind his ears. The line of shadow caused by this shade makes a blank space about his eyes and brings into relief his pale, flabby cheeks, hard, straight mouth, and coarse chin. Only when he lifts his head to give some order, or holds the receiver of the telephone to his ear, can his eyes be exactly located. Then they shine like a cat's in a cellar,--gray, white, gray again, with a glint of metallic green,--always the same distance apart, never wavering, never blinking. Overstrung, overworked, nervous men, working at high pressure, spurred by the merciless lash of passing minutes, have these eyes. So do cornered beasts fighting for air and space. Eleven-thirty had just been tolled by the neighboring clock; deliverance would come when the last form of the morning edition was made up. Until then safety could only be found in constant attack.

Outside the city editor's office, sprawled over a pile of mail sacks, between the long table and the swinging door, lay Joe Quinn, man-of-all-work,--boy, in fact, for he was but nineteen, big for his age, with arms and legs like cordwood and a back straight and hard as a plank. Joe's duty was to keep his eyes peeled, his ears open, and his legs in working order. If a reporter wanted a fresh pad, a cup of water, or a file of papers, Joe brought them; sometimes he foraged for sandwiches and beer,--down four pair of stairs, across the street into a cellar and up again; sometimes he carried messages; oftener he made an elevator of himself, running between the presses in the basement and the desk behind the swinging door. Fifty trips in a single night had not been an unusual tally.

To the inmates of the room the boy was known as "Joe" or "Quinn" or "Sonny." To the man with the half-moon shade over his eyes he was "Say" or "That Damned Kid." High-strung, high-pressure editors omit the unnecessary, condensation being part of their creed.

Up in the Franconia Notch, in a little hollow under White Face and below Bog Eddy, Joe had been known as "Jonathan's boy," Jonathan being the name his father went by, the last half never being used,--there being but one "Jonathan"--the one whom everybody loved.

The cabin was still standing, where Joe was born,--a slant of logs with a stone chimney and some out-buildings; and his old father was still alive, and so was his mother and his little "Sis." Summer mornings the smoke would curl straight up from the rude stone chimney, catch a current of air from the valley, and stretch its blue arms toward the tall hemlocks covering the slope of the mountain. Winter mornings it lay flat, buffeted by the winds, hiding itself later on among the trees. Joe knew these hemlocks,--loved them,--had hugged them many a time, laying his plump, ruddy cheek against the patches of cool moss velveting their sides. "Nothin' like trees," his old father had told him,--"real human when ye know 'em."

To-night, as he lay stretched out on the mail sacks, his ears unlatched, listening for the sound of the night city editor's bell, or his gruff "Say, you!" his mind kept reverting to their bigness and wide, all embracing, protecting arms. A letter from Jonathan received that morning, and still tucked away in his inside pocket, had revived these memories.

"They've started to cut roads, son," it read. "I was out gummin' yesterday and got up under White Face. Won't be nothing left if they keep on. Cy Hawkins sold his timber land to them last winter and they've histed up a biler on wheels and a succular saw, and hev cleared off purty nigh every tree clean from the big windslash down to the East Branch. It ain't going into building stuff; they're sending it down to Plymouth to a pulp mill and grinding it up to print newspapers on, so the head man told me. Guess you know all about it, but it was news to me. I told him it was a gol-darn-shame to serve a tree so, being as how trees had feelings same as men, but he laughed and said it warn't none of my bizness, and I guess it ain't. Beats all what some folks will do for money."

Joe thought so too,--had been thinking so ever since he broke the seal of the letter that the postmaster at Woodstock had directed for his father. "Dad's right; trees have feelings," he kept repeating to himself. And, as to being human, he could recall a dozen that he had talked to and that had talked back to him ever since he could remember. His father had taught him their language on the long days when he had trailed behind carrying the gum bag or had hidden in the bushes while the old man wormed himself along, his rifle in the hollow of his arm, or when the two lay stretched out before their camp fire.

"Dogs and trees, my son, will never go back on ye like some folks I've hearn tell of. Allers find 'em the same. See that yaller birch over thar?--Well, I've knowed that birch over forty-two year and he ain't altered a mite, 'cept his clothes ain't as decent as they was, and his shoes is give out 'round the roots. You kin see whar the bark's busted 'long 'round his toes,--but his heart's all right and he's alive and peart, too. You'll find him fust tree out in the spring,--sometimes 'fore the sugar sap's done runnin'. Purty soon, if you watch him same's me, ye'll see him begin to shake all over,--kind o' shivery with some inside fun; then comes the buds and, fust thing ye know, he gives a little see-saw or two in the warm air and out busts the leaves, and he a laughin' fit to kill. Maybe the birds ain't glad, and maybe them squirrels that's been snowed up all winter with their noses out o' that crotch, ain't jes' holdin' their sides, and maybe, too, them little sunbeams don't like to sneak in and go to sleep on the bark all silvery and shinin' like the ribbons on Sis's hat! They're human, them trees is, I tell ye, son,--real human!

"And ye want to treat 'em with some perliteness, too they're older'n anything 'round here 'cept the rocks; and they've been holdin' up the dignity of this valley, too,--kind o' 'sponsible for things. That's another thing ye mustn't forgit. The fust folks that come travellin' through this notch--'bout time the Injins quit,--took notice on 'em, I tell ye. That's what they come for. Bald Top and White Face was all right, but it was the trees that knocked 'em silly. That's what you kin read in the book school-teacher has, and that's true. And see how they treat their brothers that git toppled over,--by a windslash, maybe, or lightnin' or a landslide, or some such cussed thing, givin' 'em a shoulder to lean on same as you would help a cripple. When they're clean down and done for it ain't more'n a year or two 'fore they got 'em kivered all over with leaves, and then they git tergether and hev a quiltin' party and purty soon they're all over blankets o' green moss, and the others jes stand 'round solemn and straight like's if they was mountin' guard over their graves.

"It's wicked to kill most anything 'less ye got some use--and a good one, too,--for the meat, but it's a durned sight meaner to cut down a tree that took so long to grow and that's been so decent all its life, 'less ye can't do without the stuff ye git out'n it."

Joe had listened and had drunk it all in, and his love for the tall giants away back in the deep wilderness had never left him. It was these dear old friends more than anything else that had kept him at home, under plea of helping his father, months after he knew he ought to be up and doing if he would ever be of any use to the old man in his later years.

It was Plymouth first, as stable boy, and then down to Nashua and Boston as teamster and freight handler, and then, by what he considered at the time a lucky chance--(Katie Murdock, from his own town, and now a reporter in the same newspaper office with himself, had helped), man of all work in this whirl where he felt like a fly clinging to a driving wheel.

Stretching out his stout saw-log legs and settling his big shoulders into the soft cushions made by the sacks, his mind went back to the old sawmill,--Baker's Mill,--and the dam backed up alongside the East Branch. An old kingfisher used to sit on a limb over the still water and watch for minnows,--a blue and white fellow with a sharp beak. He had frightened him away many a time. And there was a hole where two big trout lived. He remembered the willows, too, and the bunch of logs piled as high as the mill. These would be rolled down and cant-hooked under its saw when the spring opened, but Baker never ground any one of them up into wood pulp. It went into clapboards to keep out the cold, and shingles to keep off the rain, and the "waste" went under the kettles of the neighbors, the light of the jolly flames dancing round the room. He had carried many a bundle home himself that the old man had sent to Jonathan. Most everybody sent Jonathan something, especially if they thought he needed it.

Then his mind reverted to his own share in the whirl about him. It wasn't a job he liked, but there wasn't anything else offering, and then Katie might want somebody to look after her, and so it was just as well he had the job. He and Katie had been schoolmates together not so long ago, in the wooden schoolhouse near the crossroads. She had gone to college, and had come home with a diploma. She was two or three years older than he was, but that didn't make any difference to a boy and girl from the same village when they had grown up alongside of each other. He wondered how long it was to July, when he was promised a week,--and so was Katie. He knew just what they'd do; he could get two passes to Plymouth,--his old friend the freight boss had promised him that,--then about daylight, the time the train arrived, he'd find Marvin, who drove the stage up the valley and past his old home, and help him curry his team and hitch up, and Marvin would give them a ride free. He could feel the fresh air on his cheeks as he rattled out of the village, across the railroad track and out into the open. Tim Shekles, the blacksmith, would be at work, and old Mother Crawport would be digging in her garden, early as it was; and out in the fields the crows would be hunting corn; and pretty soon down would go the wheels into the soft, clean gravel of the brook that crossed the turnpike and out again on the other side dripping puddles in the dirt; and soon the big trees would begin, and keep on and on and on,--away up to the tops of the mountains, the morning sun silvering the mists sweeping up their sides,--and--

"Say! you! Wake up! He's been hollering at you for five minutes. GIT!"

Joe sat up and rubbed his eyes. The fresh air of the morning had vanished.

"Yes, sir." He was on his feet now, alert as a terrier that had sniffed a rat.

"YES, SIR, eh! How many times do you want me to call you? Go and find Miss Murdock, and send her here on the run. Tell her to get her hat and cloak and show up in two minutes. I've got an assignment for her on the East Side,--just come over the 'phone. Hurry now! That damned kid ought to be--"

But Joe was already out of the room and down two pair of stairs. Before the minutes were up he was back again, Katie Murdock with him. She was sliding her arm into the sleeve of her jacket as she entered.

"Forty-third and First Avenue, Miss Murdock," said the night city editor, lifting his head so that the cat eyes had full play. "Girl overboard from one of the ferry boats,--lives at 117.--Drowned, they say,--some fellow mixed up in it. Take your snapshot along and get everything. Find the mother if she's got one and--"

But the girl had gone. She knew the value of time,--especially at that hour, even if she had been but a week in her new department of "Special." Her chief knew it, too, or he wouldn't have sent her at that hour. There was time--plenty of time if everything went right,--thirty minutes, perhaps an hour,--to spare, but they were not hers to waste.

"Wait for me, Joe," she said, as she hurried past him. "We'll go up town together, soon as the presses start."

Joe threw himself again on the pile of sacks and kept his ears open for orders. It was a bad night for Katie to go out. She was plucky and could hold her own,--had done so a dozen times,--once in a street car when some fellow tried to be familiar,--but he didn't like her to go, all the same. Nobody who looked into her face and then down into her blue eyes would ever make any mistake, but then some men mightn't take the trouble to look. He'd wait for her, no matter how late it might be. When she came in she would be out of breath, and perhaps hungry,--then he'd take her over to Cobb's for a cup of coffee.

During the interim Joe's legs had been kept busy. Not only had he rushed downstairs and up again half a dozen times, springing to the night city editor's curse, or pound, or shout, whichever had come handiest, but he had also been twice to the corner for frankfurters for reporters who hadn't had a crumb to eat for hours. He was unwrapping the second one when Katie burst in.

Her hat and coat were dripping wet and her hair hung in disorder about her pale face. Her notes were nearly completed; she had worked them out on the elevated on her way downtown. Joe absorbed her with a look, and slid to her side. Something in her face told him of her errand; something of the suffering, and perhaps horror,--and he wanted to get close to her. The girl had reached the editor's desk now, and was waiting until he had finished the paragraph his pen was inditing.

"Well," he said, laying down his pen,--"What have you got?" He was running his cat eyes over the girl's notes as he spoke,--taking in at a glance the "meat" of her report. Then he added,--"Get any snaps?"

"No, sir, I--"

"Didn't I tell you I must have 'em?"

"Yes, but I couldn't do it. The mother was half crazy and the two little children would have broken your heart. She was the only one who could earn anything--"

"And you got into the house and had the whole bunch right in your fist and never snapped a shutter! See here, Miss Murdock I ain't running a Bible class and you're not working in the slums,--you can keep that gush for some other place. You had your camera and flash,--I saw you go out with them. I wanted everything: corpse of girl, the mother, children; where she was hauled out,--who hauled her out,--her lover,--she went overboard for some fellow, you remember,--I told you all that. Well, you're the limit!"

Joe had moved up closer, now. He was formulating in his mind what would happen to Katie if he caught the night city editor under his chin and slammed his head against the wall. He knew what would happen to the editor and to himself, but it was Katie's fate that kept his hands flat to his sides.

"I would rather throw up my position than have done it, sir," Katie pleaded. "There are some things never ought to be printed. This drowned girl--"

The night city editor sprang from his chair, brushed the pile of notes aside with his hand, and shouted

"Say, you! Find that damned boy, somebody, if he isn't asleep!"

Joe, who was not ten feet away, stepped up and faced him,--stepped so quickly that the man backed away as if for more room.

"Get a move on and send Miss Parker here. Hunt for her,--if she isn't downstairs she may be at Cobb's getting something to eat. Quick, now!" Then he turned to Katie

"You better go home, Miss Murdock. You're tired, maybe: anyhow, you're way off. Miss Parker'll get what we want,--she isn't so thin-skinned. Here, take that stuff with you,--it's no use to me."

The girl reached across the desk, gathered up the scattered notes, and without a word left the room. On the way downstairs she met Miss Parker coming up, Joe at her heels. She was older than Katie,--and harder; a woman of thirty-five, whose experience had ranged from nurse in a reformatory to a night reporter on a "Yellow." The two women passed each other without even a nod. Joe turned and followed Katie Murdock downstairs and into the night air. Miss Parker kept on her way. As she glided through the room to the city editor's office, she had the air of a sleuth tracking a criminal.

Once outside in the night air, Joe drew Katie from under the glare of the street lamp. Her eyes were running tears,--at the man's cruelty and injustice, she who had worked to any hour of the night to please him.

Joe was boiling.

"I'll go back and punch him, if you'll let me. I heard it all."

"No, it'll do no good,--both of us would get into trouble, then."

"Well, then, I'll chuck my job. This ain't no place for any decent girl nor man. Was it pretty bad where you went, Katie?"

"Bad! Oh, Joe, you don't know. I said, last week, when I forced my way into the room of that poor mother whose son was arrested, that I'd never report another case like it. But you ought to have seen what I saw to-night. The poor girl worked in a box factory, they told me, and this man hounded her, and in despair she threw herself overboard. The room was full when I got there,--policemen,--one or two other reporters,--no woman but me. They had brought her in dripping wet and I found her on the floor,--just a child, Joe,--hardly sixteen,--her hair filled with dirt from the water,--the old mother wringing her hands. Oh, it was pitiful! I could have flashed a picture,--nobody would have cared nor stopped me,--but I couldn't. Don't you see I couldn't, Joe? He has no right to ask me to do these things,--nobody has,--it's awful. It's horrible! What would that poor mother have said when she saw it in the paper? I'll go home now. No, you needn't come,--they'll want you. Go back upstairs. Good-night."

Joe watched her until she caught an uptown car, and then turned into the side door opening on the narrow street. A truck had arrived while they were talking, and the men were unloading some great rolls of paper,--enormous spools. "What would dad say if he saw what his trees had come to?" Joe thought, as he stood for a moment looking them over,--his mind going back to his father's letter. One roll of wood pulp had already been jacked up and was now feeding the mighty press. The world would be devouring it in the morning; the drowned girl would have her place in its columns,--so would every other item that told of the roar and crash, the crime, infamy, and cruelty of the preceding hours. Then the issues would be thrown away to make room for a fresher record;--some to stop a hole in a broken window; some to be trampled under foot of horse and man; many to light the fires the city over.

"My poor trees!" sighed Joe, as he slowly mounted the steps to the top floor. "There ain't no common sense in it, I know. Got to make sumpin' out o' the timber once they're cut down, but it gits me hot all the same when I think what they've come to. Gol-darn-shame to serve ye so! Trees has feelin's, same's men,--that's what dad says, and that's true!"

Miss Parker had done her work. Joe saw that when he opened the paper the next morning: saw it at a glance, and with a big lump in his throat and a tightening of his huge fists. Flaring headlines marked the first page; under them was a picture of the girl in a sailor hat,--she had found the original on the mantel and had slipped it in her pocket. Then followed a flash photo of the dead girl lying on the floor,--her poor, thin, battered and bruised body straight out, the knees and feet stretching the wet drapery,--nothing had been left out. Most of the details were untrue,--the story of the lover being a pure invention, but the effect was all right. Then, again, no other morning journal had more than a few lines.

Everybody congratulated her. "Square beat," one man said, at which her gray, cold face lightened up.

"Glad you liked it," she answered with a nod of her head,--"I generally 'get there.'"

When the night city editor arrived--the city editor was ill and he had taken his place for the day--he reached out and caught her hand. Then he drew her inside the office. When she passed Joe again on her way out, her smile had broadened.

"Got her pay shoved up," one of the younger men whispered to another.

When Katie came in an hour later, no one in the room but Joe caught the dark lines under her eyes and the reddened lids,--as if she had passed a sleepless night,--one full of terror. She walked straight to where the boy stood at work.

"I've just seen that poor mother, Joe. I saw the paper and what Miss Parker had said and I went straight to her. I did not want her to think I had been so cruel. When I got to her house this morning there was a patrol wagon at the door and all the neighbors outside. A woman told me she was all right until somebody showed her the morning paper with the picture of her drowned daughter; then she began to scream and went stark mad, and they were getting ready to take her to Ward's Island when I walked in. You've seen the picture, haven't you?"

Joe nodded. He had seen the picture,--had it in his hand. He dare not trust himself to speak,--everybody was around and he didn't want to appear green and countrified. Then again, he didn't want to make it harder for Katie. She had had nothing to do with it, thank God!

The door of the office swung open. The editor this time caught sight of Katie, called her by name, and, with a "Like to see you about a little matter," beckoned her inside and shut the door upon them both.

A moment later she was out again, a blue envelope in her hand.

"He's got me discharged, Joe. Here's a note from the city editor," she said. Her voice quivered and the tears stood in her eyes.

"Fired you!"

"Yes,--he says I'm too thin-skinned."

Joe stood for a moment with the front page of the paper still in his hand. Something of Jonathan came into his face,--the same firm lines about his mouth that his father had when he crawled under the floor timbers of the mill to save Baker's girl, pinned down and drowning, the night of the freshet.

Crushing the sheet in his hand Joe walked straight into the city editor's office, a swing in his movement and a look in his eye that roused everybody in the room.

"You've got Katie Murdock fired, she says," he hissed between his teeth. "What fur?" He was standing over the night city editor now, his eyes blazing, his fists tightly closed.

"What business have you to ask?" growled the editor.

"Every business!" There was something in the boy's face that made the man move his hand toward a paper weight.

"She's fired because she wouldn't do your dirty work. Look at this!"--he had straightened out the crumpled sheet now: "Look at it! That's your work!--ain't a dog would a-done it, let alone a man. Do you know what's happened? That girl's mother went crazy when she saw that picture! You sent that catamount, Miss Parker, to do it, and she done it fine, and filled it full o' lies and dirt! Ye didn't care who ye hurt, you--"

The man sprang to his feet.

"Here!--put yourself outside that door! Get out or I'll--"

"Git out, will I!--ME!--I'll git out when you eat yer words,--and you WILL eat 'em. Down they go--"

Joe had him by the throat now, his fingers tight under his chin, his head flattened against the wooden partition. In his powerful grasp the man was as helpless as a child.

"Eat it,--swallow it!--MORE--MORE--all of it! damn ye!"

He was cramming the wad between the editor's lips, one hand forcing open his teeth, the other holding his head firm against the wall.

Then flinging the half strangled man from him he turned, and facing the crowd of reporters and employes--Miss Parker among them,--shouted:--

"And ye're no better,--none o' ye. Ye all hunt dirt,--live on dirt and eat dirt. Ye're like a lot o' buzzards stuck up on a fence rail waitin' fur an old horse to die. Ain't one o' you reporters wouldn't been glad to do what that catamount over there done last night, and ain't one o' ye wouldn't take pay fur it. Katie Murdock's fired? Yes,--two of us is fired,--me and her. We'll go back whar we come from. We mayn't be so almighty smart as some o' you city folks be, but we're a blamed sight decenter. Up in my country dead girls is sumpin' to be sorry fur, not sumpin' to make money out'er, and settin' a poor mother crazy is worse'n murder. Git out o' my way thar, or I'll hurt some o' ye! Come, Katie!"

[The end]
Francis Hopkinson Smith's short story: Miss Murdock,--"special"

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN