Jingo Django (2 page)

Sweep
ho!
Sweep
ho!

Here come General Scurlock's soot devils!

Sweep for your soot,
ho!

From the bottom to the top,

Without a ladder or a rope!

Sweep
ho!
Sweep
ho-o-o-o!

I'd heard it many a time from the orphan house. I had done harder work than scraping down a chimney, but I felt six kinds of a fool marching along in that dunce cap. I dropped it behind the first bush we came to.

But Casharagoo fished it up with his scraper and snuck it back to me. “Old Split-Foot'll
give
you a whippin',” he whispered.

“I've been whipped before,” I said.

“You'll need it in the flues,” he muttered. “It'll keep the muck out of your hair.”

He gazed at me through his wispy, soot-rimmed eyes and I nodded. “What kind of flapdoodle general is he?” I asked.

“That off-ox? Weren't no general at all. Just puts on the flamigigs. He was in the Mexico war a few years back. Lucky if he rose to the rank of private.”

I canted the dunce cap back on my head and General Scurlock gave another blast of his lungs.

Sweep
ho!
Sweep
ho!

Here and there along the streets a window would rise or a door would open and there'd be a beckoning gesture. He'd peel off a couple of boys to clean the chimneys.

“And don't forget to fetch me back the ashes,” he warned.

Finally there was no one left in his ragged army but me. We ended up in an old sidehill house on Salem Street. It had a short chimney at the kitchen and a long one shooting up through an overhanging second story. The back roof almost sloped down to the ground, and that put ideas in my head.

General Scurlock stuck his head up the parlor chimney and said it was a wonder the soot hadn't caught fire, it was so caked up. He haggled with the old widow who owned the place and she finally agreed to thirty-eight cents for the first story and twenty cents for the second. “Nothing extra for clearing out the swallows' nests, me good lady,” he added generously.

General Scurlock fixed my hemp blanket across the fireplace to keep the soot and ash out of the parlor. Then he motioned me behind the blanket.

“Up ye go, Jingo.”

I took one look up the long, narrow flue and said, “No, sir.” The bit of sunlight at the top seemed a mile high.

“Ye ain't scared?” he chuckled.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Why, that's a good, snug flue. Just your size. The first time's the hardest, lad. I'll give ye a
lift
up.”

“No, sir.”

“Ain't ye forgetting that chimney-hid thing? It might be waiting for ye up there.” He plucked a ten-dollar gold piece from his pocket and flashed it before my eyes. “And I'll be waiting for ye down here with this, Jingo Hawks. Think of that!”

“I aim to stay right here on the ground,” I said.

With that he grabbed hold and gave me a heave up the chimney. “Squirrel up there! Once ye reach the top scrape your way back down.”

I managed to brace myself against the bricks, and then with a foothold in the old mortar joints raised myself out of his reach.

“I calculate this is as high as I'm going,” I said. Now that I was in the flue I broke into a sweat at the thought of climbing to the sky.

But he drew his sword and gave me a sharp prod. I scurried up and out of reach, again.

“Use your back and elbows, lad. Keep a-going. And if ye turn up a whale's tooth — why that's the chimney-hid thing. Up toward the top, most likely, and sooted over. Spy out the broken bricks and every deepish crack, eh?”

“I'm as far as I aim to climb,” I answered, wedging myself in as best I could.

He couldn't reach me with his sword point and he was too large himself to squirrel up the flue after me. But he was a chuckling man and a tricksy man and before long he had built a straw fire under me. The smoke and the rising heat began to do me in.

I took one fearsome look at the sky and clawed my way toward it. I scuffed my toes and elbows raw, and all the while he stood below chuckling. That infernal
hatchi-witchu!
I thought.

When I reached daylight I wiped my eyes clear of soot and gazed out, past the rooftops, toward the harbor. I could pick out the orphan house and supposed Mrs. Daggatt was already counting the pennies old Split-Foot would pay her for my labors.

Well, she could wait till the crack of doom. I wasn't going back down that chimney, but I began scraping away. I calculated General Scurlock would duck out of the fireplace when chunks of soot began to fall. A moment later I started down the sloping back roof on my sweaty hands and feet. I tried not to make a sound. When I ran out of roof I wasn't more than ten feet off the ground. I jumped into a row of tall bushes and slipped away.

I
don't know how long General Dirty-Face Jim Scurlock stood behind the fireplace blanket waiting for me to come down.

3

THE CHIMNEY-HID THING

That afternoon I spied a one-legged man at India Wharf. I froze on the spot as if a black cat might cross my path. I didn't reckon he was my pa, but he might have been, and the thought put me in a thumping sweat.

I spun back around the corner of a ship chandler's shop and almost charged into Casharagoo.

“Jingo,” he said with a lightning flash of teeth. I hadn't seen him smile before. “Old Split-Foot's coughin' fire and brimstone. You're doin' cleverly, all in all. But he reasoned you'd turn up along the waterside.”

Sea gulls were squalling overhead. “I aim to sign aboard a clipper ship and sail to China,” I said.

Casharagoo glanced back over his shoulder. “Take my best advice and make a straight shirttail out of here. I've been caught on the wharfs more'n once. Don't you know he's put a dollar reward on you? And he ain't far behind, over at Long Wharf passin' out the news. We're all out lookin' for you.”

That dollar reward must have been a torment to Casharagoo. He as much as had it clasped in his hand. But his eyes kept darting about and he seemed eager for me to be gone. “Cut dirt before it's too late,” he said.

But I stood there like a stump. “I've changed my mind, Casharagoo. I ain't had a bite to eat and my stomach's hollow as a gourd. I hid the morning in a rain barrel and it was half full of water. I'm wore out hopping about like a flea. I calculate I might as well give myself up.”

He gazed at me through his sad, blinking eyes. I figured he could collect that reward and then directly I'd run off again. “Has your brains turned to sawdust?” he said.

“Scraping chimneys is a fine, noble profession. First rate and a half. You just haul me in.”

“Tarnation!” he exploded. “Don't you know he'll take your hide off? And soon as you grow
up
too big for the flues, why he'll kick you out by the seat of your breeches! It's no proper trade at all.”

“My mind's made up,” I said.

“So's mine. Peel out and keep a sharp eye until you get your senses back.”

Suddenly it came to me. If I could make good my runaway he and the other sweeps might be eager to try it again.

“Quick now!”

I nodded. “Quick as I can.” We almost shook hands, but didn't. He turned and I lurched away.

I dodged back to the North End where I had tucked the chimney brush and scraper in a woodpile. I'd have traded them both for a biscuit. But it dawned on me that the one place General Dirty-Face Jim Scurlock wouldn't expect to find me was inside a flue.

Directly I began knocking at back doors and offered to do a bit of scraping for something to eat. A gentle-eyed woman took me in. Her name was Mrs. Jenks.

She said her oven would hardly draw. I gazed up the one-story chimney and then shook my head as if I knew what I was about. “It's dreadful caked with soot, m'am,” I said. “I'm surprised your chimney ain't caught fire.” And then I added, “nothing extra for clearing out the swallows' nests.”

I chipped and scraped and brushed in that flue until the sun went down. When I finished and lit a small fire it drew like an eight-knot breeze. I felt enormously pleased with myself.

She came in from the yard where she was boiling clothes in a wash kettle, stirring them with a ship's oar, and clicked her teeth as she looked me over. I was soot and ashes from head to toe. “You poor, dear orphan,” she sighed.

“I'm not an orphan, m'am,” I answered stoutly and tried to prove it. I said my pa had started out in the flues and now he was master of a China clipper and I meant to follow in his own grand footsteps.

It's not likely that she believed me, but she pretended she did, and marched me out to the yard and tried to scrub me down for supper. I told her I could scrub myself. It was candlelight before I finished. She stuffed me with turnips and fish cakes and all the bean porridge I could eat. Before I left she gave me a chunk of brown bread tied up in an old handkerchief, and that was the
last
I saw of her. She was uncommon nice, and I was sorry I had told her those lies.

The night was dark and I lurked about waiting for it to get darker still. General Scurlock would give me up in a week or so, I thought, and a fresh hiding place took my fancy. If he wouldn't expect to find me in a flue, he'd
never
think to look for me in the orphan house.

The scheme near took my breath away. I'd be walking on cat-ice every moment, but I would chance it and humbug the sweep master and Mrs. Daggatt, both!

I shied about in the trees and watched the lights of the orphan house go out upstairs and down. It seemed an eternity before Mrs. Daggatt retired for the night. The doors would be locked tight, but that wouldn't keep me out.

I climbed an old branchy elm and was on the roof quick as a squirrel. I had three stone chimneys to choose from. One led down to the west parlor, which was only used on occasions, and I decided on it.

I slipped inside and let myself down, scuttling like a crab, elbow by elbow and toe by toe. It was a black, fearful way down, but I tried not to think about it.

At the bottom the fireplace was large enough to roast an ox. It was swept clean of ashes. Mrs. Daggatt was a bear for cleanliness.

But I had to be careful not to leave footprints. I stood on the hearth and peered about the room. Most of the chairs and things were covered with heavy muslin sheets and they had the glowering look of headstones in a graveyard.

I meant to spend a week in that chimney. I would come out mostly at night to forage the kitchen for things to eat. And I meant to make myself as comfortable as possible.

A sea hammock, I thought!

Well, it took me most of the night to rig it up. I used one of the points of the chimney scraper to chip out a deep crevice in the mortar between the great fire bricks, about eight feet up, on one side of the flue and then the other. It was mouse work. I had to be careful not to make a clatter.

When I finished I returned to the hearth, scooped up the mortar chips and poured them into the ugly vase that always stood on the mantelpiece. Then I snatched a sheet off the nearest chair.

I made large knots in two corners and drew the sheet up the flue with me. I snugged one
end
in the upright crevice and pulled hard and downward against the knot.
Mishto!
It held. Feeling my way like a blind man, I slung the sheet across the flue and worked the other end deep between the bricks. The knot took a firm purchase at the top of the open mortar joint and I gave the sheet another test.
Mishto!
again.

I climbed in gently as a snail. I barely dared breathe for fear the whole thing would give way. But it didn't. Before long I was feeling snug as a seaman. My hammock sagged about three feet above the open fireplace and I considered myself safe from discovery.

I bit off a chunk of brown bread and fancied myself slung in the foc'sle of a China clipper with my pa on deck issuing orders in his soft but gallant voice. Then I forced these moonstruck ramblings out of my head. I was beginning to believe my own vaporish lies.

I slept most of the day. Not a soul came into the west parlor. But the following day, late in the afternoon, I could hear Mrs. Daggatt grumbling and waddling about the room.

And then I saw her hand. I saw it reach up like a fat pink claw and grasp a thing corner-snugged behind the inner ledge of the chimney crosspiece. I held my breath for fear she'd peer up into the flue. But she didn't. And then her hand was gone.

It seemed less than a minute before she put it back. And then
she
was gone and I had the west parlor to myself.

Of course I scuttled down out of my hammock. The thing was soot-blackened and shaped like a powder horn.

I knew what it was at once. Here was General Scurlock's chimney-hid thing!

It was a whale's tooth.

4

MR. JEFFREY PEACOCK, GENT.

The late afternoon sun glowed like moonlight through the parlor curtains. I dropped to my feet to have a closer look at this chimney-hid thing.

I polished the soot off on my breeches and saw scrimshaw markings carved and tattooed all over that whale's tooth. It was nothing uncommon. I'd seen heaps of scrimshaw along Indian Wharf. Whaling men were forever carving mottoes and pictures on whales' teeth to pass the time at sea. Some of them took your breath away, with spidery views of ships and spouting whales and far-off places. They weren't worth much, as far as I knew.

But this one was worth a ten-dollar gold piece to General Scurlock, and that sent my mind whirling. I'd wait till dark, around midnight maybe, and toe it to old Split-Foot's ash shed. I'd give it to Casharagoo; he could claim the reward and we'd divvy it down the middle.

But that's as far as I got in my thoughts. I heard footsteps and made a cat-leap back into the flue. It was Mrs. Daggatt.