Jack London - Michael, Brother of Jerry

Behind the curtain all was ready on the full stage. The dogs sat on their chairs in abject silence with Davis and his wife menacing them to remain silent, while, in front of the curtain, Dick and Daisy Bell delighted the matinйe audience with their singing and dancing. And all went well, and no one in the audience would have suspected the full stage of dogs behind the curtain had not Dick and Daisy, accompanied by the orchestra, begun to sing “Roll Me Down to Rio.”

Michael could not help it. Even as Kwaque had long before mastered him by the jews’ harp, and Steward by love, and Harry Del Mar by the harmonica, so now was he mastered by the strains of the orchestra and the voices of the man and woman lifting the old familiar rhythm, taught him by Steward, of “Roll Me Down to Rio.” Despite himself, despite his sullenness, the forces compulsive opened his jaws and set all his throat vibrating in accompaniment.

From beyond the curtain came a titter of children and women that grew into a roar and drowned out the voices of Dick and Daisy. Wilton Davis cursed unbelievably as he sprang down the stage to Michael. But Michael howled on, and the audience laughed on. Michael was still howling when the short club smote him. The shock and hurt of it made him break off and yelp an involuntary cry of pain.

“Knock his block off, dearest,” Mrs. Davis counselled.

And then ensued battle royal. Davis struck shrewd blows that could be heard, as were heard the snarls and growls of Michael. The audience, under the sway of the comic, ignored Dick and Daisy Bell. Their turn was spoiled. The Davis turn was “queered,” as Wilton impressed it. Michael’s block was knocked off within the meaning of the term. And the audience, on the other side of the curtain, was edified and delighted.

Dick and Daisy could not continue. The audience wanted what was behind the curtain, not in front of it. Michael was taken off stage thoroughly throttled by one of the stage-hands, and the curtain arose on the full set—full, save for the one empty chair. The boys in the audience first realized the connection between the empty chair and the previous uproar, and began clamouring for the absent dog. The audience took up the cry, the dogs barked more excitedly, and five minutes of hilarity delayed the turn which, when at last started, was marked by rustiness and erraticness on the part of the dogs and by great peevishness on the part of Wilton Davis.

“Never mind, honey,” his imperturbable wife assured him in a stage whisper. “We’ll just ditch that dog and get a regular one. And, anyway, we’ve put one over on that Daisy Bell. I ain’t told you yet what she said about me, only last week, to some of my friends.”

Several minutes later, still on the stage and handling his animals, the husband managed a chance to mutter to his wife: “It’s the dog. It’s him I’m after. I’m going to lay him out.”

“Yes, dearest,” she agreed.

The curtain down, with a gleeful audience in front and with the dogs back in the room over the stage, Wilton Davis descended to look for Michael, who, instead of cowering in some corner, stood between the legs of the stage-hand, quivering yet from his mishandling and threatening to fight as hard as ever if attacked. On his way, Davis encountered the song-and-dance couple. The woman was in a tearful rage, the man in a dry one.

“You’re a peach of a dog man, you are,” he announced belligerently. “Here’s where you get yours.”

“You keep away from me, or I’ll lay you out,” Wilton Davis responded desperately, brandishing a short iron bar in his right hand. “Besides, you just wait if you want to, and I’ll lay you out afterward. But first of all I’m going to lay out that dog. Come on along and see—damn him! How was I to know? He was a new one. He never peeped in rehearsal. How was I to know he was going to yap when we arranged the set behind you?”

“You’ve raised hell,” the manager of the theatre greeted Davis, as the latter, trailed by Dick Bell, came upon Michael bristling from between the legs of the stage-hand.

“Nothing to what I’m going to raise,” Davis retorted, shortening his grip on the iron bar and raising it. “I’m going to kill ’m. I’m going to beat the life out of him. You just watch.”

Michael snarled acknowledgment of the threat, crouched to spring, and kept his eyes on the iron weapon.

“I just guess you ain’t goin’ to do anything of the sort,” the stage-hand assured Davis.

“It’s my property,” the latter asserted with an air of legal convincingness.

“And against it I’m goin’ to stack up my common sense,” was the stage-hand’s reply. “You tap him once, and see what you’ll get. Dogs is dogs, and men is men, but I’m damned if I know what you are. You can’t pull off rough stuff on that dog. First time he was on a stage in his life, after being starved and thirsted for two days. Oh, I know, Mr. Manager.”

“If you kill the dog it’ll cost you a dollar to the garbage man to get rid of the carcass,” the manager took up.

“I’ll pay it gladly,” Davis said, again lifting the iron bar. “I’ve got some come-back, ain’t I?”

“You animal guys make me sick,” the stage-hand uttered. “You just make me draw the line somewheres. And here it is: you tap him once with that baby crowbar, and I’ll tap you hard enough to lose me my job and to send you to hospital.”

“Now look here, Jackson . . . ” the manager began threateningly.

“You can’t say nothin’ to me,” was the retort. “My mind’s made up. If that cheap guy lays a finger on that dog I’m just sure goin’ to lose my job. I’m gettin tired anyway of seein’ these skates beatin’ up their animals. They’ve made me sick clean through.”

The manager looked to Davis and shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

“There’s no use pulling off a rough-house,” he counselled. “I don’t want to lose Jackson and he’ll put you into hospital if he ever gets started. Send the dog back where you got him. Your wife’s told me about him. Stick him into a box and send him back collect. Collins won’t mind. He’ll take the singing out of him and work him into something.”

Davis, with another glance at the truculent Jackson, wavered.

“I’ll tell you what,” the manager went on persuasively. “Jackson will attend to the whole thing, box him up, ship him, everything—won’t you, Jackson?”

The stage-hand nodded curtly, then reached down and gently caressed Michael’s bruised head.

“Well,” Davis gave in, turning on his heel, “they can make fools of themselves over dogs, them that wants to. But when they’ve been in the business as long as I have . . . ”

A post card from Davis to Collins explained the reasons for Michael’s return. “He sings too much to suit my fancy,” was Davis’s way of putting it, thereby unwittingly giving the clue to what Collins had vainly sought, and which Collins as unwittingly failed to grasp. As he told Johnny:

“From the looks of the beatings he’s got no wonder he’s been singing. That’s the trouble with these animal people. They don’t know how to take care of their property. They hammer its head off and get grouched because it ain’t an angel of obedience.—Put him away, Johnny. Wash him clean, and put on the regular dressing wherever the skin’s broken. I give him up myself, but I’ll find some place for him in the next bunch of dogs.”

Two weeks later, by sheerest accident, Harris Collins made the discovery for himself of what Michael was good for. In a spare moment in the arena, he had sent for him to be tried out by a dog man who needed several fillers-in. Beyond what he knew, such as at command to stand up, to lie down, to come here and go there, Michael had done nothing. He had refused to learn the most elementary things a show-dog should know, and Collins had left him to go over to another part of the arena where a monkey band, on a sort of mimic stage, was being arranged and broken in.