You Can’t Win

I am now librarian of the San Francisco Call.

Do I look like one? I turn my chair so I can look in the mirror. I don’t see the face of a librarian. There is no smooth, high, white forehead. I do not see the calm, placid, composed countenance of the student. The forehead I see is high enough, but it is lined with furrows that look like knife scars. There are two vertical furrows between my eyes that make me appear to be wearing a continual scowl. My eyes are wide enough apart and not small, but they are hard, cold, calculating. They are blue, but of that shade of blue farthest removed from the violet.

My nose is not long, not sharp. Nevertheless it is an inquisitive nose. My mouth is large⁠—one corner of it is higher than the other and I appear to be continually sneering. I do not scowl, I do not sneer; yet there is something in my face that causes a man or woman to hesitate before asking to be directed to Dr. Gordon’s church. I can’t remember a time that any woman, young or old, ever stopped me on the street and asked to be directed. Once in a great while a drunk will roll over to where I am standing and ask how he can get to “Tw’ninth ’n’ Mission.”

One stormy day I came out of the post office and as usual handed up the paper to Tommy, whose habit it was to glance at the headlines and return it to me. This day, however, he found something that interested him. He put the horses’ lines between his legs and crossed his knees on them. I sat beside him on the box and shivered in the wind. He read on and on, column after column, then turned to an inner page, fighting the paper in the wind.

At last, and it seemed an hour, he folded it up carefully and returned it to me. “Good news today, Tommy?” “No, boy, no good news. Bad news, awful news, terrible news.” He spoke in an awed voice, a voice that carried reverence. “Terrible news⁠—Jesse James has been murdered, murdered in cold blood and by a traitor.”

He fell silent and spoke to me no more that day. Later he told me many things about Jesse James. He worshiped him, and like many other good people of Missouri firmly believed that neither of the James boys ever fired a shot except in defense of their rights.

I delivered the mail and hastened to tell the other boys that Jesse James was dead, “murdered.”

He was gone so long that I was getting worried when he silently appeared from the other side; he had gone around the house. I left the porch and joined him beside a window he had found unfastened. He pointed to some vines nearby, where I took my stand to wait till he rejoined me. I watched him intently, a pupil, apt at learning. The bottom of the window was about even with his shoulder. He stood with arms upraised, hands against the window sash, slowly, silently pushing it up. I listened, but he made no sound. The night was calm, still, dead.

Then came a blinding flash of fire and the deadly roar of a rifle. Broken glass, falling, tinkled, and a woman shrieked once hysterically.

My eyes had never left Smiler. He staggered back from the window clutching his throat with both hands; his legs trembled like a spent fighter’s, as he sank slowly to his knees.

For a moment I shrank with fear and shock, cold and helpless, into the vines beside the house. The flash and deafening explosion coming out of the still night when my nerves were at their highest tension petrified me on the spot. Then my legs ran away with me and I found myself at the back gate to the alley, the way we came in, fumbling at the latch. My mind was clearing up now. The gate was open. I was wondering whether to run up or down the alley, into the city or out of it. I expected to hear more shots. Then I thought of Smiler, and looked back.

I was hanging from the top of the porch, feeling for a foothold on the railing, when a pair of arms encircled me, and, thinking it was Sanc helping me down, I said softly, preparing to let go my handholds, “Have you got me?”

The arms tightened around my waist like iron bands, pinning me to the porch post, helpless.

“Yes, damn you, I’ve got you good!” said a strange voice. “Oh, Clarence, come out here. I’ve got a burglar, red-handed.”

Captured red-handed, as I was, my mind turned to Sanc. I could not believe he had deserted me. Another man joined my captor in response to his call and they began tugging and hauling me, trying to break my hold on the porch roof. I could see myself being beaten, mauled, despoiled of my loot, and thrown into the patrol wagon by the two outraged and angry citizens.

Just when I was ready to let go all holds and fall into their arms, I felt the iron clasp of the one that had me around the body slacken slowly. One of them exclaimed: “Look out!” Then I heard Sanc’s voice. It was not clear and soft as usual. There seemed to be a slight impediment or obstruction in his speech, which was positive enough but so different that I doubted for a minute if it was he. His precise and careful English was gone, too.

“Hey, youse, let go uh that guy or I’ll tear your heads off. Want to git yourselves plugged over a bunch of junk dat’s insured? Git inside an’ stay there or I’ll smoke the both of youse off.”

My confidence came back, and I found a foothold on the porch rail. My captors were backing slowly, silently toward the door they came out of.

On a long table in the center of the room a metal lamp in a dish burned dimly. The tired laundrymen snored or breathed heavily. Here a muscular brown arm hung limply over the side of a bunk below the curtain, and there a foot protruded. The door to the old man’s room was open, and I stood there a long time till I could pick out his gentle, regular breathing from the chorus of wheezes, grunts, and snores in the bunk room. I had hoped to find him lying on his back. I don’t know just why, but that was the way I had him in my rehearsals. Sure enough he was in that position, sleeping like a baby.

Holding the handkerchief at arm’s length, I saturated it liberally with the chloroform and returned the bottle to my pocket. Then I knelt beside him and held the handkerchief above his nostrils. With the first breath of it he stirred uneasily, and slowly turned over, facing the wall. Here was something I hadn’t anticipated. I was sure he hadn’t enough; he breathed regularly again. I must give him more. Reaching over him, I held the stuff near his nose as before. One whiff, and he floundered away from it, turning over, facing me, but still asleep.

I grew alarmed. This tossing from side to side would soon wake him. I thought of giving it up and going away quietly. My heart was pounding with the suspense.