CHAPTER 13
That night my head buzzed as if it held a swarm of irate bees. Part of the time I slept, but most of the time I lay awake, like a dog after a fight, expecting another attack from unseen quarters. We lay abed late the next morning, Bunny on his cot, and Dick and I in our big bed, propped up on our pillows. We talked, and of course Mrs. Raleigh was the all-absorbing subject. Bunny broke out in a fit of laughter as he drolly repeated that awful harangue we had been subjected to. “ Oh, what a trio we are, ” he grinned, “ an outcast, a borrower, and a hobo. ”
Dick was more matter of fact. “ Mrs. Raleigh is a beauty, and she has worked this bunch to the limit; but she’s in for it now, and I fear we are, too; but the boys won’t stand for her game when they are convinced of the truth. They’ll swing around our way any day, you will see. However, we’re not going to stay in this town much longer—a few months, perhaps, and we’d better let the club handle the job. But if Mrs. Raleigh ever turns up where we happen to be there’s going to be a squall. ” Dick put the whole situation in one effort, then threw himself back on his pillow.
“ You see, ” rejoined Bunny, reflectively, “ our tribe is like a nation whose greatest danger is sometimes from within. These factions we find carry on little civil wars, and then comes along a case like the ‘ She-mute ’ to set all sides in a turmoil. Mrs. Raleigh is what we might call a bad egg in our case—we find bad eggs in every case. ” Bunny yawned and stretched his arms, then suddenly, “ Boys, let’s take a hike this morning—let’s get out of this atmosphere and strike for the mountains and the canyons, it’ll clear our heads. ”
Dick had letters to write, but I was free, so Bunny and I prepared for a day’s outing. Dick and I had outing clothes, our open road things, and Dick lent his suit to Bunny, who supplemented it with his old sweater and shoes. Thus outfitted, we set off, stopping once to make up a lunch at a delicatessen.
Bunny cut a funny figure in those oversize clothes, the trouser legs rolled up over and over, the bagging hips and overlapping waistline where his belt drew in the surplus; the coat sleeves turned back and his curly head covered with a kind of pull-down cap. He had told us how sensitive his ears were to cold, and especially to cold winds, so he had provided against this by a judicious selection of headgear.
We saved time by taking a car to the outskirts of the city, then struck off up a canyon over whose rock-strewn floor rushed a splendid stream. From the way the mountains rose over us as we proceeded, it seemed as if we were descending into the very bowels of the earth; but really, we were ascending rapidly, the mountains growing greater and higher, too.
Bunny did almost all the talking, and it bore largely on his own fortunes and his view of life. I had mingled with hearing people long after I lost my hearing, so I retained their point of view well into my years of youth; Bunny had been plunged into the world of silent people as soon as his ears failed him, at the age of nine, remaining in that world almost exclusively until young manhood, then going forth to make his own way. And he had made his way, and the process of making that way had developed in him an admirable independence and a sense of observation which had given him a fine understanding of human nature, such as I did not begin to possess. His hardships and sufferings had had a tendency to wean him from the spiritual side of life, a quality whose absence I had already marked; yet he was by no means an atheist. Deprived of his hearing, his speech impaired to a mortifying degree,* without support other than his own making, he had acquired an obvious way of doing things that would neither see nor allow interference. His sense of the primary law of self-preservation was intensely augmented by reason of the fact that as one sense was entirely destroyed, and another partially so, and he himself left to his fate, the will, ego, had swung to another channel and grown in effectiveness. His attitude toward society as it affected the deaf was radical, and guided by his viewpoint, he had ever been preaching and working to bring the world to see the deaf as he saw them, as he was himself.
“ We’re out here in this canyon, Mickey, like many another hiker today. Some of those hikers are going to get hurt, but you and I are not. When I was a boy I wanted a bicycle, but my parents rose up in horror, saying I would be killed the first time I ventured on the streets. Well, I saved my money and bought one, and I kept the wheel a secret two months by hiding it in a shed at another boy’s home. One day Dad took sick and I had to go for my aunt just as fast as I could make it. Mother wasn’t home—away a week. I slipped off and got my bike and was at my aunt’s house in ten minutes. She got to our house so astonishingly quick that Dad at first mistook her for a close-by neighbor. When he asked Aunt how she got around here so soon and she told him, Dad gave me a look that made me laugh aloud. Surprise and thankfulness and anger all mixed up, each emotion trying to outdo the other, winding up with an expression of utter resignation, and I knew I was forgiven. Dad never kicked about that wheel, and I kept it in our shed after that. ”
Bunny paused and took a survey of the canyon. A wild animal ran across the road a hundred yards ahead which we both said must be a wild cat. “ There! ” exclaimed Bunny. “ Now, if someone knew that cat was near, and he saw us walking along, he would say, ‘ Those deaf people are in danger, we could hear that animal breaking through the brush, or hear its cry if far away, they should not be alone. ’ You, Mickey, like me, don’t think of danger, yet are always alert enough to be ready for it if it’s near. Try to impress that upon some well meaning hearing friend and see how far you succeed. ”
“ I know it, Bunny, I’ve tried the very thing. No use; but I don’t see what you’re driving at. ”
“ Doesn’t it suggest the matter of life insurance which the companies deny us fellows? Don’t you know how the employers are always afraid to hire a deaf man fearing he’ll get hurt, and then they’d have to face the cost? ”
I saw the argument.
“ And now we have the automobile, and the law would have it that we deaf be denied a license. Well, that law isn’t passed yet, and why should it be? Aren’t we driving autos as we used to ride bikes? And are the papers full of accidents caused by deaf drivers? We deaf are always looking, watching, while the hearing people are always talking, talking, and getting into trouble—because they don’t use their eyes. ”
We had passed a number of hiking parties, and all of these people had shown a curious interest in our talk. Once we had been stopped by some who wanted to talk with us, to make some inquiry about the road. In this party were two, a young man and a woman, who showed a desire to keep at a little distance, whose faces were expressive of pride and a very discernable show of contempt for us.
“ Did you notice the proud ones? ” asked Bunny, a sneer changing his face. “ I know it to be a fact that some people are so proud that in the presence of people like us they actually gather themselves together and walk away. I know of a rich and proud family in which is a deaf-mute son, and that poor fellow has been sent away, far away, into the keeping of others, paid to be his companions, that the family might be free of the idea of his existence as one of them. Mickey, I have met deaf people all over this land, and we all think pretty much alike, but I haven’t met one hearing person who has not mingled long with the deaf, who understands us, and I don’t ever expect to. We’re misunderstood and underrated, and that right in the face of our convincing enough lives. We do about everything the hearing fellows do, we’ve invaded about every field, from common labor right up to the fine arts. Yes, fine arts, look at our Edsum, the painter, out in California, and our Dermit, the sculptor, in the same state; look at Wills, our etcher, and Warrens, the inventor. That skyscraper Seattle boasts of is the work of a deaf architect, but how many people know it? Why, there’s a big, swell church in that same city designed and built by this same one of our tribe, Copperton, and how many of those worshippers it weekly shelters ever show a grain of interest in our people? We’re in a big boat, Mickey, and on a rough sea over which soft winds seldom blow, we must row, row with our own good arms, and I say, old boy, I have rowed, and I know whereof I speak—yes, speak, speak with these hands whose silent language has been so much to you and me, to Dick, and to all of our tribe; and these people, these worshippers, for instance, are loud in their desire to destroy it. Yes, they who will not lend a hand in our common interest would destroy the very thing that makes our lives worth the living. ”
I turned to face him, saying “ What do you mean? ”
“ They hate this sign language, and believe that every deaf person can and should read the lips, an idea spread by propagandists, and if we can’t, we are not to be reckoned with. Some people think they can sing, or paint, or write. Of these a few succeed, while most of them fail. Same way with this lipreading art, some will learn it while others fail, and then there is nothing left for them but our signs and the alphabet, which would be denied them; then follows the moron, the deaf man or woman with the wrecked brain. I tried lipreading—my mother made me—until I was convinced of the folly of further effort. I couldn’t half learn to read the lips, whereupon my teacher said I was a weak-minded, hopeless creature, and sent me home! ”
It was now noon, and we sought a place to eat our lunch near a spring. The walk had kept us warm, so had the spirited conversation kept us mentally warm, but the climax, for me, came when Bunny, after we had finished our lunch, told how he had been buoyed up by a great poem, how, in his darkest hours, when confronting the world’s coldness and meanness and selfishness, the strong, courage-giving lines had put in him greater strength and firmer resolve. He stood before me, rendering the poem in his wonderfully expressive and impressive signs, and clear fingerspelling until I was fairly lifted off my feet with emotion. It was Henley’s poem, “ Unconquerable, ” and no man ever uttered those masterful lines with the force and beauty that came out of Bunny’s signs:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced or cried aloud;
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody but unbowed.
Beyond the place of wrath and tears,
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul!*
Bunny finished. I clasped his hand, eagerly. “ It was splendidly done, Bunny, ” I cried; “ and you have given me new courage. But as for lipreading, when I find a deaf person like Mabel, our Lady in the Jar miracle, I can understand how people will encourage that manner of communication. I know people do hate our signs, and I also know that lipreading is too difficult to learn ever to be such a success as its supporters claim it will be. But I wish it could be—I wish we might all learn to read the lips—it’s a mighty good thing—when one can learn it—Mabel did. ”
We spent another half hour discussing just such things as had been going over, then turned our steps homeward. For variety, we hit a trail which led us to another canyon through which ran the narrow gauge railroad. We followed this line of steel as it wound its way through the tortuous, ever-descending canyon, but never once did we venture on the tracks. Better it were to venture along narrow ledges, or climb up a steep bank than to risk our lives on the tracks in a narrow canyon. We had met numerous parties during the day, and now some of these people again turned up on their way home in this canyon. They were utterly reckless walking the tracks, talking, playing, carefree and quite oblivious of any danger that might come. We walked so much faster than these parties that we would overtake them and soon lose sight of them due to the numerous turns and high walls. Toward evening we sighted a couple some distance ahead where the road lay straight for a quarter mile. We soon drew near them. It was our habit frequently to turn our heads to see if all were safe from the rear, and on this particular road, to watch for approaching trains. Not far ahead of us was a bridge spanning a now dry waterway some ten feet below. Out upon the trestles we saw our happy couple step, laughing and teasingly jostling each other as they stepped from trestle to trestle. Instinctively Bunny and I looked back, and there—heavens!—appeared a puffing engine with its crowded train of cars! Ahead, out on the bridge, that foolish pair were oblivious of the threatening danger. Bunny and I gave a knowing look at each other, and one more hurried glance behind. Then we leaped forward, I yelling a warning. Both of the imperilled hikers turned, then, as they took in the situation, seemed glued to the spot by terror. The train was coming on, the heavy downward grade making a quick stop impossible. Bunny and I flew. He outdistanced me, for all the shortness of his legs, and reaching the bridge, leaped like a goat from trestle to trestle, sometimes taking three at a bound. Reaching the now terrified couple, Bunny deliberately pushed the quaking man over the side of the bridge, and as he did so I drew up and we caught the pale and trembling girl by the arms and fairly lifted her into the air as we rushed along, clearing the bridge about eight seconds ahead of the grinding train!
We had saved them, this foolish pair. The girl was only badly scared, and very nerve-wracked; but her escort was somewhat bruised up. I thought of Bunny’s prophecy that some of those hikers would get hurt.
The train came to stop, and many of the passengers got out. We were surrounded by a gaping and wonder-struck crowd, who seemed to find our rescue act all the more wonderful because we could not hear.
That thankful couple overwhelmed us with their gratitude, and insisted that we go back to the city with them in the train, at their expense, and we did. The man took my pad and wrote: “ What can we ever do for you boys to repay you?—we’ll do most anything. ”
I handed the pad to Bunny. Quick as a flash he replied, in his uncertain voice, “ Just do this, friends, if ever you meet a deaf fellow in trouble, help him. That’s all. ”
The engineer and fireman of the smoking engine were upon us, and, being told that Bunny and I were deaf, stood staring at us in astonishment. People poured out of the coaches, but the trestles held them back. The conductor ordered all back in the train, and we re-crossed the bridge and got in a coach, and neither the pair we saved nor we paid fares—the conductor saw to that, saying, jokingly, “ It’s on the house—I mean the train. ”