Page 144

By Jack Joseph Smith

for me. They seemed so ugly, when I was sober. There faces were bulky and distorted, somewhat like Dolveskey characters. There was a blind hate raging somewhere down within them, and their laughter was a relieved cry. On one such occasion, a short time after they had arrived, Young Ben came running over a far hill yelling that there was a monster over there, and he had just been picked up by him and tossed twenty feet in the air. Everyone began to run down the hill, and I stood there watching my picnic disappear. Some, who were drunk, fell face first into the creek on their way to see the monster. In a moment, I followed like a fool, to protect my patrons. I had a certain reputation to maintain, as I made enough money on that day to live for the rest of the week, and I didn't want to lose any drinkers. When we arrived at the other side of the next hill, we were startled at the sight of a huge negro man, who must have weighed three hundred and fifty pounds. He was with a group of people who were having a picnic such as ours, which seemed to be in a slight disarray. I stepped up to him and asked, what the trouble was? He immediately swung at me. But he was very fat and reminded me of someone who might be married to Ancha Mima, and his arm moved like a huge treee branch coming at you from high in the sky. It was frightening as hell, but with a little bit of wit and gaging, I was able to move aside. I quickly ran around him, and up to the high side of the hill. He began moving toward me, and I backed up slowly, making sure he wouldn't find position on the above ground. Watching his feet carefully, I caught a slight stumble in his movement, and let him have it. Smack, right in the nose. He went backwards, his big face shaking, and his weight brought him down. But to the unfortinate suprise of a college boy, who found him self in the way, of what must of seemed to him to be, falling tons of flesh. Thomas, I later in a quite pecular way found this to be his name, began to pound the college

Original Scan

Page 144

AI Interpretation

GPT

Seeing O'Dandy's crowd as ugly and distorted once he is sober, the narrator watches his Sunday picnic erupt when a huge man named Thomas is called a monster, and he steps into the trouble to protect both his patrons and his rough little enterprise.

The scene keeps the loose, boozy carnival of the picnic but strips the glamour from the old crowd by making them look swollen, hateful, and absurd. Money, reputation, and the need to manage the crowd matter just as much as courage, so the fight begins already tangled in business and performance.

Claude

Sober, the narrator finds O'Dandy's crowd ugly, their faces 'bulky and distorted, somewhat like Dolveskey characters', until Young Ben runs in shouting about a monster who tossed him 'twenty feet in the air'; following to protect his patrons, the narrator faces 'a huge negro man' of 'three hundred and fifty pounds', dodges an arm 'like a huge treee branch', hits him 'right in the nose', and watches the fallen man, Thomas, begin to pound an unlucky college boy.

The page mixes comic exaggeration with real menace, and the narrator admits his courage is also business, since he 'didn't want to lose any drinkers'. The racial framing of the 'monster' is part of the crowd's panic that the prose both reports and partly shares.