The Night OperatorPackard, Frank L. (Frank Lucius)
General
The Night Operator
Packard, Frank L. (Frank Lucius)
Fiction; Railroad stories; Short stories
Meanwhile, what with a disturbed condition of marital bliss at home,
Beezer caught it right and left from the train crews, engine crews and
shop hands during the daytime. They hadn't anything against Beezer,
not for a minute, but give a railroad crowd an opening, and there's no
aggregation on earth quicker on the jump to take it. They dubbed him
"Engineer" Beezer, and "Doctor" Beezer; but mostly "Doctor" Beezer--out
of compliment to Regan. And old Grumpy, the timekeeper in the shop,
got so used to hearing it that he absent-mindedly wrote it down "Doctor
Beezer" when he came to make up the pay roll. That put it up to
Carleton, the super, who got a curt letter from the auditors' office
down East, asking for particulars, and calling his attention to the
fact that all medical services were performed by contract with the
company. Carleton scowled perplexedly at the letter, scrawled Tommy
Regan's initials at the bottom of the sheet, plus an interrogation
mark, and put it in the master mechanic's basket. Regan grinned, and
wrote East, telling them facetiously to scratch out the "Doctor" and
squeeze in a "J" in front of the "Beezer" and it would be all right;
but it didn't go--you can't get by a high-browed set of red-tape-bound
expert accountants of unimpeachable integrity, who are safeguarding the
company's funds like that. Hardly! They held out the money, and by
the time the matter was straightened out the pay car had come and gone,
and Beezer got a chance to find out how good his credit was.
Considering everything, Beezer took it pretty well--he went around as
though he had boils.
But if Beezer had a grouch, and cause for one, it didn't make the other
fellow's job look any the less good to Beezer. Mrs. Beezer's sharp
tongue, barbed with contemptuous innuendo that quite often developed
into pointed directness as to her opinion of his opinions, and the kind
of an engineer he'd make, which he was obliged to listen to at night,
and the men--who didn't know what an innuendo was--that he was obliged
to listen to by day, didn't alter Beezer's views on that subject any,
whatever else it might have done. Beezer had a streak of stubbornness
running through the boils.
He never got to blows again. His tormentors took care of that. They
had MacAllister as an example that Beezer was not averse to bringing
matters to an intimate issue at any time, and what they had to say they
said at a safe distance--most of them could run faster than Beezer
could, because nature had made Beezer short. Beezer got to be a pretty
good shot with a two-inch washer or a one-inch nut, and he got to
carrying around a supply of ammunition in the hip pocket of his
overalls.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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