Эл Дженнингс - Through the Shadows with O'Henry

"Where in hell have you been serenading?" Darby thundered. On a quick impulse I told him of the demon and the apple.

"Ira's only a poor demented creature. He got a lick on the head once. He's harmless as an infant if you handle him right."

Darby looked at me as though I were mad.

"It's a fact. He eats out of my hand."

"If that's true then I'll take him out of there."

We went down the next morning to the cage. The warden ordered the door opened. I could see the dark outlines of Ira's figure. The guard was frightened. Darby took the key, turned the lock and stepped forward. If he had suddenly flung himself under a moving engine, death would not have seemed more certain. Ira drew back, hesitated, then leaped with all his mighty bulk toward Darby.

"Ira!" I shouted. The massive figure stiffened as though an electric voltage had suddenly gone through him. The Prison Demon dropped his arm to the ground and came creeping toward me.

"Be good, Ira," I whispered.

The warden braced himself. We went into the tiny cell room. The stench and filth of the hole came up like a sickening wave against us. "Come outside, Ira," the warden said. I nodded. "If I give you a good job, Ira, will you behave?"

It was the first time Ira had heard a kind word from a prison official. He looked about, his eyes narrowing distrustfully, and began to edge away from the warden.

"He'll treat you square, Ira."

The towering giant could have crushed me in his two hands. He was about a foot taller than I, but he shuffled along at my side, looking down at me with a meek docility that filled the guards with wonder.

The warden made straight for the hospital, ordered good food and skilled attention for the Demon. Three weeks later the Ohio penitentiary had a soft- tongued Hercules in the place of the insensate beast that had been Ira Maralatt. The doctors had found the skull pressing on the brain, operated and removed the "dent" that had sent Ira into his mad fits of murderous, unreasoning rage. Memory returned to him. Ira told a story, moving and compelling in its elemental tragedy.

He had been an iron puddler in the steel mills of Cleveland. Before a furnace, vast and roaring as a hell pit, the half -nude puddler works, stirring the molten iron. He breathes in a red hot, blasting hurricane. He moves in a bellowing clamor louder than the shout of a thousand engines. Only the strongest can withstand the deafening tumult, the scorching air of that bedlam. Ira Maralatt was one of these.

There came a strike in the mills. Ira went home to his wife. He had been married but a year. They had been paying down on a little home. Ira could get no work. The walkout dashed their hopes.

"I'm going to Canaltown, to the mines," he told the girl- wife one day. "I'll be back as soon as it's settled." She walked with him to the gate. He never saw her again. When Ira returned to the little home all that had been dear and sacred to him was gone.

In West Virginia Maralatt got a job in the coal mines. He was working near one of the pillars. A coal car shot along the tracks to the chutes to be filled. The car with its tonnage started down the grade.

Just at the pillar it should have switched. Instead, it came heading straight toward Ira. Further down the track twenty men were working. The car, with the tremendous speed of the runaway, would have crushed them to a pulp.

There was one chance of escape for them. Ira took it. The gigantic hands went out, caught the bolting car and with a smashing force sent the top-heavy four-wheeler sideways.

In the terrible impact Ira caromed against the wall of the mine. The lives of twenty men were saved. The mashed and unconscious form of the gigantic Maralatt was dragged out and sent to the hospital.

Without a thought of himself and his own life, Ira Maralatt had hurled himself across the path of the runaway coal car. If he had died his fellows would have exalted the memory of the man whose splendid courage had saved twenty lives. Ira lived but the sacrifice took a dearer thing than mere existence. It gave him not honor, but a shameful brand. He became the Prison Demon.

After the tragic disaster in the coal mine, Ira lay for months in the hospital. He was finally sent out as cured.

The strike at the steel mills had been settled. Back to Cleveland and the little home the iron puddler went.

There was a pathway, hedged with cowslips, leading up to the door. Ira walked quickly, meaning to surprise the wife who had not heard from him in the months he had been at the hospital.

There were new curtains at the window. A hand rustled muslin drapery aside. A strange face looked with doubtful question on the man at the hedge.

"Good morning, sir," the woman said.

"Good morning, indeed," Maralatt answered, mystified and startled.

"Who lives here?"

"What's that to you?" the woman snapped.

"This is my home and my wife's!" Suddenly excited and trembling, Ira turned upon the strange woman.

"Where is my wife?" Where is Dora Maralatt?"

"Oh, her! She's gone. I don't know where. Got put out. Are you the missing husband?" the woman sneered. "Well, there's your bag and baggage over in the lot there!" With a laughing shrug, she pushed the curtain to its place.

Over in the lot, dumped out like a rubbish heap, Maralatt found the remnants of his home. There was the chest with the wrought-steel corners he had given Dora for a birthday gift—there was the dining-room table and the six chairs that had been the pride of the girl's heart. There, too, was a thing Ira had never seen before—a clothes basket tied with pink stuff and ribbons.

Distracted, enraged, like one suddenly demented, he ran back to the cottage door and banged on the panel.

"Go away from here with your noise," the woman called. "I'll have you arrested!"

"Open the door," Maralatt stormed, "please, I'll not come in. Open it just a moment. My wife, did you see her go? Is she alive? Tell me just that. How long is she gone? Where can she be?"

The woman softened. "Don't get so excited and I'll tell you. She went out alive. But she was pretty well done in. She looked about gone. I don't know where she went. Maybe she's dead now."

"The baby—did it die, too?"

"I don't know about that. She left before it was born. "Well, now, I'm sorry for you, poor fellow, but I don't know where she is. I'll tell you—you might go down to the landlord. He knows. He's the one that ordered those things dumped out. He's down at the same old office."

Before the words were out of her mouth Maralatt bolted down the path, tearing like a wild man through the streets. "Where's my wife?" Where's Dora Maralatt? Where's the girl you put out of the bungalow on the hill?"

In a rushing fury the questions tumbled from his lips. The agent looked at him with contemptuous insult. "Who let this maniac into the office? Throw him out?"

The order calmed Maralatt. He leaned forward, touching the man's hand. "Excuse me, I'm a bit excited. I've been away. You know me, don't you? I was buying that little cottage on C street. I've been sick. I came back. I can't find my wife.

Could you tell me where she is? They say you put her out."

"Oh, you're the missing puddler! Well, you've lost the house. Yes, the woman was put out. I remember it all now. She made a fuss about it. We had to throw her out."

"Where is she?" Maralatt was breathing quick and short in a choking panic. "Where's my wife gone?"

"Oh, get out of here! The house is lost. What do I care about your wife. Why didn't you stick around and look after her?"

"Well, you put her out, didn't you? Where did she go to?"

"The damn' scrub's in hell, where she ought to be! Who cares about your------ of a wife anyway! Get out of here!"

The balance slipped. A blood-crazed panther, Maralatt, leaped over the counter, "My what of a wife! What—what—what—you damned scoundrel! My wife— what? Say it again! You thief, you villain, say it again!"