Tom Slade on a Transport

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

TOM MEETS ONE FRIEND AND IS REMINDED OF ANOTHER

As Tom Slade went through Terrace Avenue on his way to the Temple Camp office, where he was employed, he paused beside a truck backed up against the curb in front of a certain vacant store. Upon it was a big table and wrestling with the table was Pete Connigan, the truckman—the very same Pete Connigan at whom Tom used to throw rocks and whom he had called a “mick.” It reminded him of old times to see Pete.

The vacant store, too, aroused dubious memories, for there he had stolen many an apple in the days when Adolf Schmitt had his “cash grocery” on the premises, and used to stand in the doorway with his white apron on, shaking his fist as Tom scurried down the street and calling, “I’ll strafe you, you young loafer!”

Tom had wondered what strafing was, until long afterward he heard that poor Belgium was being strafed; and then he knew.

“Wal, ef ’tain’t Tommy Slade!” said Pete, with a cordial grin of surprise. “I ain’t seen ye in two year! Ye’ve growed ter be a big, strappin’ lad, ain’t ye?”

“Hello, Pete,” said Tom, shaking the Irishman’s brawny hand. “Glad to see you. I’ve been away working on a ship for quite a while. That’s one reason you haven’t seen me.”

“Be gorry, the town’s gittin’ big, an’ that’s another reason. The last time I seen ye, ye wuz wid that Sweet Cap’ral lad, an’ I knocked yer two sassy heads tergither for yez. Remember that?”

“Yes,” laughed Tom, “and then I started running down the street and hollered, ‘Throw a brick, you Irish mick!’?”

“Ye did,” vociferated Pete, “an’ wid me afther ye.”

“You didn’t catch me, though,” laughed Tom.

“Wal, I got ye now,” said Pete, grabbing him good-naturedly by the collar. And they sat down on the back of the truck to talk for a few moments.

“I’m glad I came this way,” said Tom. “I usually go down Main Street, but I’ve been away from Bridgeboro so long, I thought I’d kinder stroll through this way to see how the town looked. I’m not in any particular hurry,” he added. “I don’t have to get to work till nine. I was going to walk around through Terrace Court.”

“Ben away on a ship, hev ye?” questioned Pete, and Tom told him the whole story of how he had given up the career of a hoodlum to join the Scouts, of the founding of Temple Camp by Mr. John Temple, of the summers spent there, of how he had later gotten a job on a steamer carrying supplies to the allies; how he had helped to apprehend a spy, how the ship had been torpedoed, how he had been rescued after two days spent in an open boat, of his roundabout journey back to Bridgeboro, and the taking up again of his prosaic duties in the local office of Temple Camp.

The truckman, his case-spike hanging from his neck, listened with generous interest to Tom’s simple, unboastful account of all that had happened to him.

“There were two people on that ship I got to be special friends with,” he concluded....