cigars and sat down. Hank could hardly speak. Somehow this simple
contact with his old friend had driven away all the feeling of the crime
that he had brought with him to the jail. He no longer thought of him as
Jackson, the wife-murderer, but as Jim, the boy he once knew and the man
that had worked in the switch-yards and grown up by his side.
Out in the street they heard a steady stream of carriages and the merry
laugh of men and women passing by. Hank listened to the voices and asked
who they were.
“Oh, the people drivin’ past in their carriages to the theater. You know
all the northside swells drive down Dearborn Avenue past the jail. I
wonder if they ever think of us in here, or if they know what is goin’
to be done tomorrow. I s’pose if they do they think it’s all right. What
a queer world it is. Do you s’pose one of them was ever in here? Well, I
don’t believe I’d be either if only I’d had their chance.”
The two men sat stripped almost to the skin; the putrid prison air
soaked into Hank at every pore. The sweat ran from his face and he felt
as if the great jail were a big oven filled with the damned and kept
boiling hot by some infernal imps. Here and there along the big
corridors they heard the echo of a half demoniac laugh, a few couplets
of a ribald song, and the echoing sound of the heavy boots of a guard
walking up and down the iron floor. Silently they smoked their cigars
almost to the end and then Jim again took up his story.
III
When I made up my mind to quit the railroad I looked ‘round for
somethin’ else to do. It was kind of hard times just then and a good
many were out of work and I couldn’t find anything that suited me. Of
course I never had much schoolin’ and ‘twa’n’t every kind of job I could
hold anyhow. I went back out to the stock yards, but they was layin’ off
men and there wa’n’t anything there. One mornin’ I went over to see Sol
Goldstein. He was a nice old man that we used to buy potatoes of. He
told me that he was gettin’ so old and kind of sick that he thought he’d
have to give up peddlin’ and let his boys take care of him the rest of
his time. He said he didn’t think it would be very long anyhow, and they
could do that much for him so long as he’d done so much for them. He
said as I hadn’t any job why didn’t I buy his horse and express wagon
and go to peddlin’. I could take his license, that hadn’t run out yet,
and go right along over his route. I told him I hadn’t any money to buy
his horse and wagon with, but he told me that didn’t make any
difference, I could pay for ‘em when I earnt the money. So I made a
bargain; got the horse and wagon and harness and two old blankets for
fifty dollars. Of course they wa’n’t worth much: the horse had a
ringbone and the heaves and kind of limped in one of its hind legs.
Goldstein said that was on account of a spavin, but he told me there was
another one comin’ on the other hind leg and as quick as that got a
little bigger he’d stop limpin’ because he couldn’t favor both hind legs
to once. Goldstein said the ringbone had been killed and the heaves
wouldn’t bother him much. All I had to do was to wet the hay before I
fed him. So I bought the rig. I didn’t know nothin’ about horses but I
knew what Goldstein said was all right for we’d been friends a long
time.
“I went down to Water Street and bought a load of potatoes and went to
work. I haven’t time to tell you all about my peddlin’: anyhow it ain’t
got much to do with the case, not much more’n any of the rest. My lawyer
always said any time I told him anything, ‘Well, what’s that got to do
with your killin’ her?’ and the judge said about the same thing whenever
we asked any questions. He couldn’t see that anything I ever done had
anything to do with it except the bad things. He let ‘em prove all of
them and they looked a good deal worse when they was told in court and
in the newspapers than they seemed when I done ‘em. I guess there ain’t
nobody who’d like to hear every bad thing they ever done told right out
in public and printed in the newspapers. I kind of think ‘twould ruin
anyone’s character to do that, ‘specially if you wa’n’t allowed to show
the goods things you’d done.
“I hadn’t been peddlin’ very long until an inspector asked me for my
license and I showed it to him, and he said that it wa’n’t any good,
that I couldn’t use Goldstein’s license; that it was just for him, and
that I must stop peddlin’ until I went down to the City Hall and paid
twenty-five dollars for another one. I didn’t know where to get the
twenty-five dollars; anyhow I don’t see why anyone should have to pay a
license for peddlin’; nobody but poor people peddles and it’s hard
enough to get along without payin’ a license. Anybody don’t have to pay
a license for sellin’ things in a store and I don’t think it’s fair. But
I went and seen the alderman and told him about it, and he said he could
get it fixed and to go right on just as if nothin’ had happened and if
anyone bothered me again to send ‘em to him. So I went right ahead. I
don’t know what he done but anyhow I wa’n’t bothered any more until
Goldstein’s license had run out.
“Peddlin’ is kind of hard work. You’ve got to get up before daylight and
go down and get your potatoes and veg’t’bles and things, then you have
to drive all over and ask everyone to buy, and most people won’t take
anything from you ‘cause you’re a peddler and they’re ‘fraid you’ll
cheat ‘em. Of course we do cheat a little sometimes. We get a load of
potatoes cheap that’s been froze, and then again we get a lot of figs
that’s full of worms and roll ‘em in flour and then sell ‘em out, but
all figs is full of worms, and I guess ‘most everything else is, even
water, but it’s all right if you don’t know or think anything about it.
And of course, half of the year it’s awful hot drivin’ ‘round the
streets and the other half it’s awful cold, and sometimes it rains and
snows and you get all wet and cold, and it ain’t very healthy either.
Most peddlers have the consumption, but then there’s lots of poor people
has consumption. It’s funny, too, about where you can sell stuff; you’d
think you ought to go where people has got money but this ain’t no use;
they never will buy nothin’ of peddlers and they won’t even let you
drive on their high-toned streets, even after you’ve paid a license. If
you want to sell anything you’ve got to go among the poor people. Of
course they can’t buy very much, but then they pay more for what they
get. It’s queer, ain’t it, the way things are fixed; them as works
hardest has to pay the most for what they eat, and gets the poorest
stuff at that. Did you ever go and look at one of them meat markets on
the south side? Do you s’pose that they’d take any of the meat that’s in
ours? They might buy it for their dogs and cats but they wouldn’t eat it
themselves.
“Once in a while I used to take the kid along with me when I was sellin’
things, and he always liked to go, but if it commenced to rain or turned
cold I had to go back with him, and then he always got tired before
night. So I didn’t take him very often. I kind of laid out to take him
when she done the washin’, so he’d be out of her way, and he used to
kind of like to drive, and I amused him a good deal that way.
“I think mebbe I made about as much peddlin’ as I did on the railroad,
but not any more, after I paid for my horse feed and the rent of the
barn and gettin’ the wagon and harness fixed once in a while. Anyhow I
didn’t get out of debt any faster, and the furniture men kept
threatenin’ me until I went to one of them chattel-mortgage fellers and
borrowed the money and mortgaged all I had and paid five dollars for
makin’ out the papers and five percent a month for the money. This
didn’t seem like so very much but it counts up pretty fast when you come
to pay it every month. Then one day my horse up and died. I didn’t know
what was the matter with him. He seemed all right at night and in the
mornin’ he was dead. I didn’t know what to do at first so I went and
seen the alderman. He gave me a letter to some men who run a
renderin’-plant and I went out there and bought an old horse for five
dollars. It was one they was goin’ to kill, and it seemed too bad to
make him work any more; still I guess he’d rather work than be killed;
that’s the way with people and I guess horses is about like people. I
always thought that horses had about the worst time there is; they can’t
never do anything they want to, they have to get up just when you tell
‘em to and be tied in a stall and eat just what you give ‘em and depend
on you to bring ‘em water. Even when they’re goin’ along the road they
can’t turn out for a mud hole but have to go just where you want ‘em to
and never have a chance to do anything but work.
“This horse wa’n’t much good but I managed to use him in my business.
The boys would holler at me and ask me if I was goin’ to the bone-yard
or the renderin’-plant, and once or twice one of the humane-officers
stopped me and came pretty near takin’ it away and killin’ it, but
nobody ever saw me abusin’ it, and I fed it all I could afford. I
remember one night in the winter, about the coldest night we had, I
heard it stampin’ and I couldn’t go to sleep. I knew it was stampin’
because it was so cold. We didn’t have any too much cover ourselves, but
it worried me so much I got up and went out to the barn and strapped an
old blanket on the horse and then came back and went to bed. I guess
this was the other horse though, the one that died, for I didn’t have
this last one over a winter. But I don’t know as it makes any difference
which horse it was.
“Well, I can’t tell you all about my peddlin’, it ain’t worth while, and
I must go on and tell you about how it happened. It was on the 26th day
of November. You remember the day. There’s been a lot said about it in
the newspapers. It was just three days before Thanksgivin’. I remember I
was thinkin’ of Thanksgivin’, for we’d been livin’ pretty poorly, not
very much but potatoes, for it was a rather hard fall on all us poor
folks. I always hated to take the money for the things I sold but I
couldn’t help it. You know I couldn’t give things away as if I was
Rockefeller or Vanderbilt. Well, I knew we was goin’ to get a turkey
from the alderman Thanksgivin’, just two days later, and I should have
thought that would have cheered me up, but it didn’t. That mornin’ it
was pretty cold when I got up. It was the first snow of the season, one
of them blindin’, freezin’ days that we get in November, and then, of
course, I wa’n’t used to the cold weather and wa’n’t dressed for it
either. I didn’t have much breakfast for we didn’t have much stuff in
the house. She got up and fried some potatoes and a little pork and that
was about all, and then I hitched up the old horse and drove away. No
one else was on the street. There wa’n’t generally, when I started after
my loads in the mornin’. The old horse didn’t like to go either; he kind
of pulled back on the hitch strap when I led him out of the barn, the
way you sometimes see horses do when they hate to go anywhere or leave
the barn. I s’pose horses is just like us about bein’ lazy and sick, and
havin’ their mean days, only they can’t do anything about it. Well, I
went down and got my load. In the first place I had some trouble with
the Dago where I got the potatoes; they were pretty good ones but had
been nipped a little by the frost in the car, and he couldn’t have sold
‘em to the stores, at least to any of the stores on the north side or
the south side. They was just such potatoes as had to go to us poor
folks and most likely to peddlers, and he wanted to charge me just about
as much as if they was all right. I told him that I’d some trouble in
sellin’ ‘em and I ought to make somethin’ off’n ‘em. He said I’d get
just as much as I could for any kind, and I told him that I might
possibly, but if I was goin’ to pay full price I wanted my customers to
have just as good potatoes as anyone got, and besides I might lose some
of my customers by sellin’ them that kind of potatoes. Then he dunned me
for what I owed him and threatened not to trust me any more and by the
time I left with my load I was worried and out of sorts, and made a poor
start for the day.
“Well, I drove over along Bunker Street, among the sheeneys, and
commenced calling ‘po-ta-toes.’ Nobody much seemed to buy. A few people
came out and picked ‘em all over and tried to jew me down, and mebbe
bought half a peck. I don’t know how they thought I could make any money
that way. Still the people was all poor; most of ‘em worked in the
sweat-shops and hadn’t any money to waste on luxuries. I worked down
Maxwell Street and things didn’t get much better. It seemed as if
everybody was out there sellin’ potatoes, and it was awful cold, and I
hadn’t any coat on, and the horse was shiverin’ every time we stopped.
Of coarse I always put the blanket on him if we stayed long, but the
blanket was pretty old and patched. Then I drove down south, where the
people lives that work in the stock yards. It went some better down
there but not very much; anyhow I didn’t get any warmer. Along toward
noon I hitched the horse under a shed and gave him a few oats and I went
into the saloon and bought a glass of whiskey and took four or five of
them long red-hots that they keep on the counter. They tasted pretty
good and I never stopped to think what they was made of; whether they
was beef, or pork, or horse, or what, though you know everybody always
says they work in all the old horses that don’t go to the
renderin’-plant and some that does, but they was good enough for me and
was hot, and when I went away I felt better and I guess the old horse
did, too. Well, I drove on down around the streets and did the best I
could. I remember one place where an old lady came out and said she
hadn’t had anything to eat since yesterday and there wa’n’t nothin’ in
the house, and I up and gave her half a peck, though I couldn’t hardly
afford to do it. You know that half a peck was more to me than it is to
Rockefeller when he gives a million to the school, but my lawyer
wouldn’t let me prove it when I tried; he said the judge would only
laugh if he ever mentioned it. The newspapers never printed a word about
it either, although I kind of thought it might lighten up the people’s
feelin’ some and help me a bit; but they did prove all about the time I
struck her and some other things I wa’n’t on trial for, although my
lawyer objected all he could and said I wa’n’t on trial for ‘em, which I
wa’n’t; but the judge said no, of course I wa’n’t, but they’d show
malice, so they went in and was printed in the newspapers, and the jury
looked awful at me, but I bet every one of ‘em had done most as bad.
When I gave the old woman the half peck of potatoes she called on all
the saints to bless me to the end of my days. I felt kind of better as I
went away, and thought mebbe they’d do somethin’ for me, and this wa’n’t
more than seven or eight hours before it happened.
“Of course, most folks would think that anyone like me wouldn’t have
given away a half a peck of potatoes, but they don’t really understand
them things; you’ve got to do a thing before you can know all about it.
If I was makin’ the laws I wouldn’t let anyone be on a jury and try a
feller for murder unless he’d killed someone. Most fellers don’t know
anything about how anyone kills a person and why they do it, and they
ain’t fit to judge. Now, of course, most everybody would think that
anyone who had killed anyone, unless it was in war or somethin’ like
that, was bad through and through; they wouldn’t think that they could
ever do anything good; but here I give away that half peck of potatoes
just because I knew the lady was poor and needed ‘em—and I see things
every day here in jail that shows it ain’t so. Just a little while ago
one of the prisoners was took down with small-pox and everyone was
scared, and another prisoner who was in here for burglary went to the
ward and nursed him and took care of him, and took the disease and died.
And most all of the fellers will do anything for each other. The other
day there were five fellers on trial for robbin’ a safe, and the State’s
Attorney done all he could to get one of ‘em to tell on another feller
who hadn’t been caught or indicted, and he promised every one of ‘em
that he wouldn’t do a thing with ‘em if they’d tell, and he couldn’t get
a word out of any of ‘em, and they went to the penitentiary, just
because they wouldn’t tell; and the State Attorney and the judge all of
‘em seemed to think that if they could get one feller to tell on someone
else that he’d be the best one of the lot and ought to be let out. If
you’d just stay here a few days and see some of the wives and fathers
and mothers come into the jail and see how they’d cry and go on over
some of these people, and tell how good they was to them, it would open
your eyes. They ain’t one of them people, unless it’s me, that don’t
have someone that loves ‘em, and says they’ve been awful good to ‘em and
feel sorry for ‘em and excuses ‘em, and thinks they’re just like
everybody else. Now there was them car-barn murderers that killed so
many people and robbed so much. Everyone wanted to tear ‘em to pieces
and no one had a single good word for ‘em, but you’d ought to seen Van
Dine’s mother and how she hung on to her boy and cried about him and
loved him and told how many good thing’s he done, just like anyone else;
and then that Niedemeyer, who tried to kill himself so he couldn’t get
hung, you know he went to a detective and confessed a lot of crimes, so
that the detective could get the money after he was hung, and the
detective agreed to divide the money with his mother. If you was here a
while you’d find these fellers doin’ just as many things to help each
other as the people on the outside. It’s funny how human nature is, how
anybody can be so good and so bad too. Now I s’pose most people outside
can’t see how a murderer or a burglar can do anything good any more than
the poor people down our way can see how Rockefeller can charge all of
us so much for his oil and then give a million dollars to a church or a
school.
“There was feller came over here to the jail to talk to our Moral
Improvement Club and he had some queer ideas. Most of the prisoners
rather liked what he said and still they thought he was too radical. I
never heard any such talk before and I don’t quite see how they let him
do it, but I’ve thought about what he said a good deal since then and
think mebbe there’s somethin’ in it. He was a good deal different from
the other ones that come. Most of ‘em tell us about our souls and how we
can all make ‘em white if we only will. They all tell us that we are a
bad lot now; but he kind of claimed that the people inside the jail was
just like the people outside, only not so lucky; that we done things
because we couldn’t help it and had to do ‘em, and that it’s worse for
the people on the outside to punish the people on the inside than to do
the things we done. Now, I hain’t had anything to do but think about it
and what I done, and it don’t seem as if I could help it. I never
intended to kill anybody but somehow everything just led up to it, and I
didn’t know I was gettin’ into it until it was done, and now here I am.
Of course, when I was out I used to rail about these criminals and think
they was awful bad just the same as everyone else did, but now I see how
they got into it too, and how mebbe they ain’t so bad; even them
car-barn murderers,—if they’d been taken somewhere out west on a ranch
where they could have had lots of air and exercise and not put in school
which wa’n’t the place for boys like them, I believe they’d ‘ve come out
all right and been like most other boys and sobered down after they got
older. I really think if they’d been taken away they’d ‘ve tried to be
good and if they’d been given plenty of exercise, like herdin’ cattle
and things like that, mebbe it would have been just as good as to kill
‘em. Anyhow there was them Younger boys and Frank James who killed so
many people and they are out now and all right. Nobody’s afraid of ‘em
and they won’t likely never do anything of that kind any more.
“But I’m gettin’ clear off’n my subject again, just as I always am. I
was tellin’ you about that day. Well, after I gave the lady the half
peck of potatoes I went on peddlin’, but didn’t seem to sell much. I
ought to ‘ve got through by two or three o’clock. It was a long enough
day for me, and the horse, too, but I had so many potatoes left that I
couldn’t stop, so I kept on. I got down around Thirty-fifth Street and
was pretty cold and went into a saloon where I saw one of the boys. One
of ‘em was runnin’ for the legislature and he asked us all to take a
drink, and of course we did; then he asked us to take another and we
done that; and in a few minutes that feller that was runnin’ for the
senate, he come in and he asked us all to take a drink and of course we
done that, and he said a few words about the election and how he hoped
we all would vote for him, and we told him we would, and that as near as
we could find out all the boys was with him, that the other feller was a
kind of stiff anyhow. He went out, and then, just as I was leavin’, the
feller that was runnin’ against him, he come in and he set ‘em up a
couple of times and said he hoped we was all with him, and of course we
told him we was, and then he went away. Well, of course, I took whiskey
every time because I was cold and that kind of warmed me up. Then I went
out to the wagon again and drove on down Thirty-fifth Street to sell the
rest of the potatoes. Finally the horse began to go lame, and seemed
pretty tired, and I turned back toward the house, peddlin’ on the way. I
guess I didn’t sell anything after I left Thirty-fifth Street, though I
kept callin’ out until my voice got kind of husky and all stopped up. I
guess it was the cold air that I wa’n’t used to yet. The snow was comin’
down pretty fast as I drove along and the wind was blowin’ quite a bit
in my face and it was a bad night. It commenced gettin’ dark pretty soon
after. You know the days are short along the last of November.
“Then I kep’ thinkin’ about the cold weather. I always hated winter
anyhow, and I hadn’t expected ‘twould turn cold quite so quick and of
course I wa’n’t ready for it. I couldn’t seem to think of anything but
the winter. I s’pose that was the reason I done the things I did
afterward. I got to thinkin’ about the house and how many cracks there
was in it and how much coal it took to heat it. Then I began to think
about the price of coal and how it’s cheaper in the summer than in the
winter, and how the price keeps goin’ up so much a month all the time
until winter, so, of course, all the rich people can get their coal in
the summer when it was cheap and leave the poor people to get it in the
winter when it got high. Then I thought how everything seemed to be
against the poor and how you couldn’t get on no matter what you done.