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"A Baby ***" by Amrose bierce
If you had seen little Jo standing at the street corner in the rain, you would hardly
have admired him. It was apparently an ordinary autumn rainstorm, but the water which fell
upon Jo (who was hardly old enough to be either just or unjust, and so perhaps did not come
under the law of impartial distribution) appeared to have some property peculiar to itself:
one would have said it was dark and adhesive -- sticky. But that could hardly be so, even
in Blackburg, where things certainly did occur that were a good deal out of the common.
For example, ten or twelve years before, a shower of small frogs had fallen, as is credibly
attested by a contemporaneous chronicle, the record concluding with a somewhat obscure
statement to the effect that the chronicler considered it good growing-weather for Frenchmen.
Some years later Blackburg had a fall of crimson snow; it is cold in Blackburg when winter
is on, and the snows are frequent and deep. There can be no doubt of it -- the snow in
this instance was of the colour of blood and melted into water of the same hue, if water
it was, not blood. The phenomenon had attracted wide attention, and science had as many explanations
as there were scientists who knew nothing about it. But the men of Blackburg -- men
who for many years had lived right there where the red snow fell, and might be supposed to
know a good deal about the matter -- shook their heads and said something would come
of it.
And something did, for the next summer was made memorable by the prevalence of a mysterious
disease -- epidemic, endemic, or the Lord knows what, though the physicians didn't -- which
carried away a full half of the population. Most of the other half carried themselves
away and were slow to return, but finally came back, and were now increasing and multiplying
as before, but Blackburg had not since been altogether the same.
Of quite another kind, though equally 'out of the common,' was the incident of Hetty
Parlow's ghost. Hetty Parlow's maiden name had been Brownon, and in Blackburg that meant
more than one would think.
The Brownons had from time immemorial -- from the very earliest of the old colonial days
-- been the leading family of the town. It was the richest and it was the best, and Blackburg
would have shed the last drop of its plebeian blood in defence of the Brownon fair fame.
As few of the family's members had ever been known to live permanently away from Blackburg,
although most of them were educated elsewhere and nearly all had travelled, there was quite
a number of them. The men held most of the public offices, and the women were foremost
in all good works. Of these latter, Hetty was most beloved by reason of the sweetness
of her disposition, the purity of her character and her singular personal beauty. She married
in Boston a young scapegrace named Parlow, and like a good Brownon brought him to Blackburg
forthwith and made a man and a town councillor of him. They had a child which they named
Joseph and dearly loved, as was then the fashion among parents in all that region. Then they
died of the mysterious disorder already mentioned, and at the age of one whole year Joseph set
up as an orphan.
Unfortunately for Joseph the disease which had cut off his parents did not stop at that;
it went on and extirpated nearly the whole Brownon contingent and its allies by marriage;
and those who fled did not return. The tradition was broken, the Brownon estates passed into
alien hands, and the only Brownons remaining in that place were underground in Oak Hill
Cemetery, where, indeed, was a colony of them powerful enough to resist the encroachment
of surrounding tribes and hold the best part of the grounds. But about the ghost:
One night, about three years after the death of Hetty Parlow, a number of the young people
of Blackburg were passing Oak Hill Cemetery in a wagon -- if you have been there you will
remember that the road to Greenton runs alongside it on the south. They had been attending a
May Day festival at Greenton; and that serves to fix the date. Altogether there may have
been a dozen, and a jolly party they were, considering the legacy of gloom left by the
town's recent sombre experiences. As they passed the cemetery the man driving suddenly
reined in his team with an exclamation of surprise. It was sufficiently surprising,
no doubt, for just ahead, and almost at the roadside, though inside the cemetery, stood
the ghost of Hetty Parlow. There could be no doubt of it, for she had been personally
known to every youth and maiden in the party. That established the thing's identity; its
character as ghost was signified by all the customary signs -- the shroud, the long, undone
hair, the 'far-away look' -- everything. This disquieting apparition was stretching out
its arms toward the west, as if in supplication for the evening star, which, certainly, was
an alluring object, though obviously out of reach. As they all sat silent (so the story
goes) every member of that party of merrymakers -- they had merrymade on coffee and lemonade
only -- distinctly heard that ghost call the name 'Joey, Joey!' A moment later nothing
was there. Of course one does not have to believe all that.
Now, at that moment, as was afterward ascertained, Joey was wandering about in the sagebrush
on the opposite side of the continent, near Winnemucca, in the State of Nevada. He had
been taken to that town by some good persons distantly related to his dead father, and
by them adopted and tenderly cared for. But on that evening the poor child had strayed
from home and was lost in the desert.
His after history is involved in obscurity and has gaps which conjecture alone can fill.
It is known that he was found by a family of Piute Indians, who kept the little wretch
with them for a time and then sold him -- actually sold him for money to a woman on one of the
east-bound trains, at a station a long way from Winnemucca. The woman professed to have
made all manner of inquiries, but all in vain: so, being childless and a widow, she adopted
him herself. At this point of his career Jo seemed to be getting a long way from the condition
of orphanage; the interposition of a multitude of parents between himself and that woeful
state promised him a long immunity from its disadvantages.
Mrs. Darnell, his newest mother, lived in Cleveland, Ohio. But her adopted son did not
long remain with her. He was seen one afternoon by a policeman, new to that beat, deliberately
toddling away from her house, and being questioned answered that he was 'a doin' home.' He must
have travelled by rail, somehow, for three days later he was in the town of Whiteville,
which, as you know, is a long way from Blackburg. His clothing was in pretty fair condition,
but he was sinfully dirty. Unable to give any account of himself he was arrested as
a vagrant and sentenced to imprisonment in the Infants' Sheltering Home -- where he was
washed.
Jo ran away from the Infants' Sheltering Home at Whiteville -- just took to the woods one
day, and the Home knew him no more for ever.
We find him next, or rather get back to him, standing forlorn in the cold autumn rain at
a suburban street corner in Blackburg; and it seems right to explain now that the raindrops
falling upon him there were really not dark and gummy; they only failed to make his face
and hands less so. Jo was indeed fearfully and wonderfully besmirched, as by the hand
of an artist. And the forlorn little *** had no shoes; his feet were bare, red, and
swollen, and when he walked he limped with both legs. As to clothing -- ah, you would
hardly have had the skill to name any single garment that he wore, or say by what magic
he kept it upon him. That he was cold all over and all through did not admit of a doubt;
he knew it himself. Anyone would have been cold there that evening; but, for that reason,
no one else was there. How Jo came to be there himself, he could not for the flickering little
life of him have told, even if gifted with a vocabulary exceeding a hundred words. From
the way he stared about him one could have seen that he had not the faintest notion of
where (nor why) he was.
Yet he was not altogether a fool in his day and generation; being cold and hungry, and
still able to walk a little by bending his knees very much indeed and putting his feet
down toes first, he decided to enter one of the houses which flanked the street at long
intervals and looked so bright and warm. But when he attempted to act upon that very sensible
decision a burly dog came browsing out and disputed his right. Inexpressibly frightened,
and believing, no doubt (with some reason, too), that brutes without meant brutality
within, he hobbled away from all the houses, and with grey, wet fields to right of him
and grey, wet fields to left of him -- with the rain half blinding him and the night coming
in mist and darkness, held his way along the road that leads to Greenton. That is to say,
the road leads those to Greenton who succeed in passing the Oak Hill Cemetery. A considerable
number every year do not.
Jo did not.
They found him there the next morning, very wet, very cold, but no longer hungry. He had
apparently entered the cemetery gate -- hoping, perhaps, that it led to a house where there
was no dog -- and gone blundering about in the darkness, falling over many a grave, no
doubt, until he had tired of it all and given up. The little body lay upon one side, with
one soiled cheek upon one soiled hand, the other hand tucked away among the rags to make
it warm, the other cheek washed clean and white at last, as for a kiss from one of God's
great angels. It was observed -- though nothing was thought of it at the time, the body being
as yet unidentified -- that the little fellow was lying upon the grave of Hetty Parlow.
The grave, however, had not opened to receive him. That is a circumstance which, without
actual irreverence, one may wish had been ordered otherwise.