After a couple more drinks,for which I insisted on paying,Nelson decided to go.We parted true comradely,and I wandered down the wharf to the Razzle Dazzle.Spider was just building the fire for supper.
"Where'd you get it?"he grinned up at me through the open companion.
"Oh,I've been with Nelson,"I said carelessly,trying to hide my pride.
Then an idea came to me.Here was another one of them.Now that I had achieved my concept,I might as well practise it thoroughly.
"Come on,"I said,"up to Johnny's and have a drink."Going up the wharf,we met Clam coming down.Clam was Nelson's partner,and he was a fine,brave,handsome,moustached man of thirty--everything,in short,that his nickname did not connote.
"Come on,"I said,"and have a drink."He came.As we turned into the Last Chance,there was Pat,the Queen's brother,coming out.
"What's your hurry?"I greeted him."We're having a drink.Come on along.""I've just had one,"he demurred."What of it?--we're having one now,"I retorted.And Pat consented to join us,and Imelted my way into his good graces with a couple of glasses of beer.Oh!I was learning things that afternoon about John Barleycorn.There was more in him than the bad taste when you swallowed him.Here,at the absurd cost of ten cents,a gloomy,grouchy individual,who threatened to become an enemy,was made into a good friend.He became even genial,his looks were kindly,and our voices mellowed together as we talked water-front and oyster-bed gossip.
"Small beer for me,Johnny,"I said,when the others had ordered schooners.Yes,and I said it like the accustomed drinker,carelessly,casually,as a sort of spontaneous thought that had just occurred to me.Looking back,I am confident that the only one there who guessed I was a tyro at bar-drinking was Johnny Heinhold.
"Where'd he get it?"I overheard Spider confidentially ask Johnny.
"Oh,he's been sousin'here with Nelson all afternoon,"was Johnny's answer.
I never let on that I'd heard,but PROUD?Aye,even the barkeeper was giving me a recommendation as a man."HE'S BEEN SOUSIN'HEREWITH NELSON ALL AFTERNOON."Magic words!The accolade delivered by a barkeeper with a beer glass!
I remembered that French Frank had treated Johnny the day I bought the Razzle Dazzle.The glasses were filled and we were ready to drink."Have something yourself,Johnny,"I said,with an air of having intended to say it all the time,but of having been a trifle remiss because of the interesting conversation I had been holding with Clam and Pat.
Johnny looked at me with quick sharpness,divining,I am positive,the strides I was making in my education,and poured himself whisky from his private bottle.This hit me for a moment on my thrifty side.He had taken a ten-cent drink when the rest of us were drinking five-cent drinks!But the hurt was only for a moment.I dismissed it as ignoble,remembered my concept,and did not give myself away.
"You'd better put me down in the book for this,"I said,when we had finished the drink.And I had the satisfaction of seeing a fresh page devoted to my name and a charge pencilled for a round of drinks amounting to thirty cents.And I glimpsed,as through a golden haze,a future wherein that page would be much charged,and crossed off,and charged again.
I treated a second time around,and then,to my amazement,Johnny redeemed himself in that matter of the ten-cent drink.He treated us around from behind the bar,and I decided that he had arithmetically evened things up handsomely.
"Let's go around to the St.Louis House,"Spider suggested when we got outside.Pat,who had been shovelling coal all day,had gone home,and Clam had gone upon the Reindeer to cook supper.
So around Spider and I went to the St.Louis House--my first visit--a huge bar-room,where perhaps fifty men,mostly longshoremen,were congregated.And there I met Soup Kennedy for the second time,and Bill Kelley.And Smith,of the Annie,drifted in--he of the belt-buckled revolvers.And Nelson showed up.And I met others,including the Vigy brothers,who ran the place,and,chiefest of all,Joe Goose,with the wicked eyes,the twisted nose,and the flowered vest,who played the harmonica like a roystering angel and went on the most atrocious tears that even the Oakland water-front could conceive of and admire.
As I bought drinks--others treated as well--the thought flickered across my mind that Mammy Jennie wasn't going to be repaid much on her loan out of that week's earnings of the Razzle Dazzle."But what of it?"I thought,or rather,John Barleycorn thought it for me."You're a man and you're getting acquainted with men.Mammy Jennie doesn't need the money as promptly as all that.She isn't starving.You know that.She's got other money in the bank.Let her wait,and pay her back gradually."And thus it was I learned another trait of John Barleycorn.He inhibits morality.Wrong conduct that it is impossible for one to do sober,is done quite easily when one is not sober.In fact,it is the only thing one can do,for John Barleycorn's inhibition rises like a wall between one's immediate desires and long-learned morality.
I dismissed my thought of debt to Mammy Jennie and proceeded to get acquainted at the trifling expense of some trifling money and a jingle that was growing unpleasant.Who took me on board and put me to bed that night I do not know,but I imagine it must have been Spider.
