Peewee/Chapter 2

It was too early for truant officers to be inquisitive upon the streets, but habit dictated that Peewee should travel by the alleys. When he had assured himself that he had got away from the house without being followed or observed, he made for the alley south of it. The month was June; the morning was warm and cloudy. Traveling east along the alley, thoughtful and with his worn shoes splashing in the mud, he attempted to adjust his thought to what had happened. Was the woman who had died really his mother? If she was, what did that mean? The vagueness of his knowledge regarding fathers and mothers made it difficult to realize this.

His mother!

He recalled that, at the asylum, there had been a "mother superior" whom everybody feared. At the Boys' Home there had been ​"cottage mothers" who represented discipline over the boys. A father, in his first acquaintance with the term, had signified a grave man dressed in black who wore the symbol of the cross somewhere about his person. These early ideas of the meaning of the words "mother" and "father" had been supplemented later by recognition of a more intimate relation. But he had not seen anything particularly pleasant or desirable in the relation. He had seen indifferent mothers, oblivious of their children; virago mothers, who beat them; drunken mothers; mothers who regarded children as an asset and lived upon their earnings. His knowledge of fathers was that they, even more definitely still, represented unpleasant authority over children. In having neither he had felt a sense of freedom.

He took the card out of his pocket as he walked along, and spelled out and repeated the name which he had written on it—"Walter Wendell Markyn." The sick woman, he realized, had been "nuts" at the time when she had given him this name, and he did not deceive ​himself in his precocious wisdom, as to what sort of person she had been. These facts did not, however, controvert her evidence as to his father's name. Any assertion of authority over him which she might have represented had been obviated by her death. What, in this respect, did the card represent? The card excited in him a mild, impersonal curiosity. Having seen his mother, he was beginning to wonder, though without any immediate intention of investigating, what sort of person his father might be.

At Halsted Street, where the alleys changed to north and south, he turned south as far as Jackson. He halted and hesitated here. Until four o'clock he would not take the risk of entering the "loop," and he had intended to go south beyond its limits and then east to the lake, where probably he would find some boys in bathing. He turned back instead now on his steps as far as Monroe Street and traveled eastward to Canal. Long freight sheds here stretched along the street; men shouted, swore; the pavements roared under the wheels of scores of trucks.

​Peewee could not remember back to the time when he had first noted among these trucks those which bore the name. "Markyn Transfer Company" and had spelled out the name upon them as he had the names upon other wagons.

It was this familiarity of the name which had made it easy for him to read when the woman had had him write it for her. There was not necessarily, he comprehended, a connection between the name upon the trucks and the name upon the card in his pocket. He sat down under the freight shed, looking at the trucks. It did not particularly incommode him that he had not breakfasted and might not lunch. Frequently he neglected these formalities. He could not have told, either, exactly what he was waiting for, though he watched continually the faces of the Markyn drivers. He had watched faces on the streets almost since boyhood, governing his acts accordingly. Toward noon, there arrived a truck with a fat, good-natured driver. The man swung himself from his seat, and went into the freight shed. Peewee arose at once and climbed up to the driver's seat. A half hour later, the truck ​having been unloaded and reloaded, the man ascended to the seat beside him.

"Where you going, kid?" he inquired, agressively.

"Nowhere."

The reply appeared satisfactory, for the man started the truck. They progressed for several blocks in silence.

"Who's Markyn?" Peewee inquired abruptly.

The driver turned and looked at him. "What's Markyn to you?"

Peewee's face maintained immobility. "Nothin'."

"What do you ask for?"

"Because the name is on the wagon."

The man reflected upon this connection. "Markyn's dead," he asserted.

Peewee considered. Would his mother have given him his father's name if that father had been dead? She might, if she were completely "nuts." If not, she would have known of the death, he thought. The statement seemed to establish that the Markyn whose name was on ​the trucks was not his father, but to let the assertion pass without contradiction would end the conversation.

"Like bunk he is!" he answered.

They advanced again in silence. The driver reached finally into the hip pocket of his trousers and extracted a worn billfold. He opened it and took out a worn slip of newspaper.

"Can you read?" he asked.

"Of course," Peewee said promptly.

"All right. You say the old man ain't dead; I say he is. Who's right?"

He gave the slip to the boy, who unfolded it and looked at it. The article was rather long; it had been defaced by carrying so that Peewee could not read the smaller printing, but the larger letters at the top were plain. He spelled them out: "Jeifrey Markyn, Second, one of the builders of Chicago, dies in Pasadena, California."

"I say, who's right?" the man insisted.

"You are," said Peewee.

"He was a good guy," the man asserted—"a good guy. He give me my first job. When ​the old man died I cut this out of the paper and kept it ever since."

Peewee gave the slip back to the man, and as soon as the truck stopped he got down and sat upon the curb to think. His conversation with the truck driver had not demonstrated any connection between the name upon the truck and name upon the card, but it had not, he recognized, proved that there was no connection. When the truck had proceeded along Desplaines Street, where he had left it, he got up and went east along Madison. He had spent the whole morning under the freight-shed; it was now early afternoon and he had decided, in his increasing interest, to take the chance of going into the "loop." Having crossed the river, he again took to the alleys, crossed Wells Street and sat down inside the alley mouth to wait.

The alley smelled of printer's ink; on the street front outside men were delivering bundles of newspapers to the waiting wagons. There were boys in the alley surreptitiously gambling for pennies and some unhappy looking men whom Peewee recognized as unemployed per​sons waiting to graft copies of the paper and look up "Help Wanted." A boy of fifteen came from a door opening on the alley, crossed to a lunchroom and returned, carrying something in a paper bag. Peewee had risen and was awaiting him.

"Hello," he offered.

The older boy was gracious. "Hello, kid," he vouchsafed.

Peewee squirmed ingratiatingly. "I know what it is you do," he asserted.

The other boy denied upon general principles. "You do not!"

"Oh, yes, I do; the wagonman told me. When someone dies you tell 'em what to print."

The older boy was flattered. "You said it, kid."

"I think you can't always find 'em."

The older boy betrayed corrupting associations. "The hell I can't!"

"I think you can't always," Peewee repeated.

The older boy grew angry. "Say, what are you talking about? I know my job. Say, you think I don't?"

​"I can tell some that you can't find," Peewee insisted.

"You think you can? You come on; I'll show you!"

They ascended a narrow, dirty stair the smell of printer's ink growing stronger, to a small, dingy room filled with books, with bound files of newspapers, and, at one end, with filing cases and a table with a telephone. The older boy halted in front of the filing cases.

"This here is called the bone-yard," he announced. "Some call it the morgue. When someone dies, the local room calls me, and I give 'em the dope. You say I can't do it? You ask me about somebody. Shoot!"

Peewee pretended to reflect. "Find Markyn," he directed.

"Markyn? Say, that's easy."

The older boy selected one of the envelopes from a filing case and held it out. "There!" he exclaimed. "Say, ain't I right?"

"I'll see," Peewee answered.

He carried the envelope to the table, emptied it of its contents and began to look them over. ​The envelope had been completely filled with clippings from magazines and newspapers; some of these were pictures; he found it hard to learn anything where there was so much to be deciphered. The telephone rang and the other boy, answering it, received some instruction and set about fulfilling it.

Peewee bent over the clippings in absorption. "Jeffrey Markyn," he read, "came to Chicago from Connecticut in 1858. First of the name in this locality, he was a dealer in grains." He put this aside; he was not interested in Jeffrey Markyn, but in someone named Walter.

He picked up another. "The Markyn-Beman Wheat Corner." What did that mean? "In the late 80's, Markyn and his partner, Matthew Beman, made an attempt to corner the Chicago wheat market, which ended in temporary ruin for the Markyn family. This was the origin of the feud between them and the Bemans following which, Markyn and Beman never spoke again." What was feud?

"Associated with Beman, with whom he had put over a hundred business deals in the twenty ​years during which the men had been close friends, Markyn had secretly been buying wheat for months through a dozen brokers. The day upon the Board, when Markyn, believing the corner completed, attempted to close in, only to find that Beman, his supposed partner, had double crossed him and, while buying with one hand, had been secretly selling with the other, is historic and has been described by an eye-witness as follows."

Peewee let the clipping fall; there was no possibility of understanding stuff like that. He took up one of the pictures and spelled out the caption. "Idle Hour, the Southern California residence lately purchased by Jeffrey Markyn, Third." He tried another of the printed slips. "The formation of the transfer company in 1888, by which Jeffrey Markyn, Second, re-established the fortunes of the Markyn family—" There was no interest in this; what Peewee had read showed only that these particular Markyns were regarded as important people. It made it, in that way, less probable that he himself could have any connection with ​them. He had become incredulous of any such connection, but he breathed more quickly as he began to spell out the caption below the picture which had lain underneath this last printed slip:

"Mrs. Walter Wendell Markyn and her sister-in-law, Mrs. Arthur Cord."

Mrs. Walter Wendell Markyn? Who was she? His father's wife? Did the caption identify him with these important Markyns? There would not be two people by that name. He gazed intently at this picture of two ladies. She was very pretty, he thought—his father's wife, if it was his father. She would be the one upon the left. She was like the women who had given him money upon the streets, only she was more beautiful than any of those women. She seemed quite young. She was outdoors, carrying a parasol; her face was sweet and tender, her gaze frank and kind. His throat closed up, and he trembled with vaguely painful feelings. After looking at her a long while, he put the picture aside and turned to the next clipping. "Walter Wendell Markyn and Marion Beman are married. Society romance ends a feud orig​inating more than twenty years ago upon the Board of Trade." He looked at the date upon the clipping—"September 12, 1913"—and stopped to think.

The facts of birth were known to him, not uncertainly as to most children, but definitely; for he had heard them discussed without reserve. He did not know exactly when he had been born, but the ages of young children can be closely told, and he had learned during his appearances in court that, when he had been assigned to the orphan asylum, he must have been not over two. He had not been born, then, when this marriage had taken place. His father—was it his father?—had had a wife; a—what did the headlines call new wives?—a bride. What part in this, then, had been borne by the woman who had died on the West Side? It must be, surely, that she had been only "nuts." She could not be his mother; or else this Walter Wendell Markyn could not be his father.

The other boy, having finished his errand, had come back and was observing him.

​"Well? Can't I find 'em?"

"Sure."

Peewee backed guardedly away and, when he had attained a safe distance, turned and went out. As he came out into the alley, he found the pavements wet with falling rain. He went around in front, got his papers from the wagonman and, opening one paper out, put it about the others to protect them from the wet. He did not consider whether he minded being wet himself; to be wet, if it rained in business hours, was customary. His too large clothing became sticky with the rain and clung to him, his shoes became pulpy, the visor of his cap softened and hung down in front of his eyes. In the late afternoon, he suddenly took the damp card from his pocket, wrapped it in several thicknesses of newspaper so that the pencil marks might not become obliterated, and put it back. Toward seven in the evening when he had disposed of his papers, he disregarded his usual direction of departure, which was toward the West Side, and began moving slowly north.

Not having decided what he meant to do with ​reference to the man who might be his father, he progressed as a stray dog goes, with frequent side excursions to examine objects which excited his curiosity, and with many halts. He sat for a time in the shelter of a warehouse beside the river, watching a pile driver being laid up for the night. At dark, he bargained at the rear door of a Greek lunchroom for a piece of pork between two slices of unbuttered bread and sat down in the alley to eat it. He observed with impersonal interest by the light through the lunchroom door that his hands, which had grown cleaner through handling the wet newspapers, had grown cleaner still through handling the bread. After dining he again moved north.

At ten o'clock, following many side excursions and pauses for inspection of area-ways and yards, he reached Division Street and North State. Until now there had been street cars running in the street, and the buildings had been stores over which people lived, or apartment buildings of somber, dingy brick. At this point the car tracks curved aside and the buildings were dwellings which increased in size and ​fineness with each succeeding. block. He must be drawing near the place. The numbers upon the house fronts were approximating that upon his card and a short way ahead of him the street appeared to end, its globed street lamps, which glittered hazily in the rain and were reflected on the wet pavement, circling into the curved drives of Lincoln Park. His heart beat more quickly, as he finally identified the house he sought and sat down across from it to inspect it at his ease.

It stood upon a corner—an immense square structure of Roman brick and sandstone, surrounded by a twelve foot wrought iron fence. He had expected, after what he had learned at the newspaper office, that it would be a fine house, but this expectation was not definite. Now, seeing its great shape and its shining windows, he grew excited. Personal experience had shown him more boys who did not live with their fathers than who did, but he knew that his experience was contrary to the general fact. Suppose he went to this Walter Wendell Markyn and, on looking at him, found him to be ​a kind-appearing man. Suppose, he showed him the card and said to him, "She says I am your son." Wouldn't he then live in that house, have plenty to eat, wear good clothes, and ride in motor cars? They might even let him drive the motor.

The windows of a number of rooms were lighted and the shades were up, but he could see no one in the rooms. At the rear of the house there was a gate on the iron fence and beyond that a paved court and other windows with lights. While he looked, one of these lights winked out and a man crossed the court and entered the house at a basement door.

The circumstance interested Peewee by its demonstration that this door was not locked. He went and tried the gate and found that he could get in. He crossed the court and pushed gently at the door. It opened, showing a dimly lighted, vacant hall. He went in and let the door close noiselessly behind him. Voices and laughter came to him from a room at the further end of the hall, and he moved cautiously forward until he could look in. There were several ​people in the room—young women in neat black clothes with little squares of lace upon their heads and men in liveries such as he had often admired when he saw them get down and open the limousine doors.

At his right a dark stair curved sharply up. He hesitated. No one, it appeared, had heard him come in; he could hear no one speaking or moving on the floor above. He looked again at the curving stair, and moved toward it, and still keeping his eyes upon the lighted door, he began to go upward step by step.