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
traveled 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 forever.
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 tramp 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 bowsing 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 gray, wet fields to right of him and gray, 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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