any good place to keep ‘em. I couldn’t afford to take chances of ‘em
gettin’ frost-bitten any more. You know how easy potatoes freeze. You
have to watch out while you’re peddlin’ ‘em in the fall and winter and
some days you don’t dare take ‘em out at all. Before I got home I
thought I’d have another drink so I stopped at a saloon where they
always had the pollin’ place and where a good many politicians usually
hung out; and I found some of the boys there, and the fellow that was
runnin’ for assessor was in the saloon. He asked us all to drink a
couple o’ times, and then he told us how easy he was in assessin’ the
poor people’s property, and asked us to vote for him. We all said we
would, and then he told us how he was assessor last year and how he’d
stuck it onto the rich people and the corporations and how they was all
against him this year. We all liked that, and then he gave us another
drink. I was gettin’ so I felt it just a little, but of course I wa’n’t
drunk. I could walk all right and talk pretty straight. I don’t suppose
I’d taken more’n ten or twelve drinks in all day, and you know that
won’t hurt anybody. I don’t know what I would’ve done such a cold day if
it hadn’t been for the drinks. Oh, yes, in the last place they got to
talkin’ about the alderman and said as how he wa’n’t goin’ to give out
any turkeys this year. I didn’t like that and some of the fellers had
quarreled about ‘em and then some of ‘em had been givin’ ‘em to us and
we didn’t see what right he had to quit. They said the reason he wa’n’t
goin’ to give ‘em was because a lot of the fellers had quarreled about
‘em and then some of ‘em had taken his turkeys and voted the other
ticket, and some people had found fault with him because they didn’t get
any turkey, and it looked as if he was losin’ votes instead of makin’
‘em. Well, I’d been dependin’ on the turkey and it made me feel a little
blue, for I didn’t know how I was goin’ to get anything for
Thanksgivin’, and I didn’t think that you could have much of a
Thanksgivin’ just on potatoes and mebbe a little pork. So I wa’n’t
feelin’ none to good when I got on the wagon and drove away from the
last place. It seemed as if everything had turned against me and I
didn’t know what I was goin’ to do. It’s funny how much difference luck
makes with a feller. You know somethin’ can happen in the mornin’ and
make you feel good all day, and then again somethin’ will go wrong and
no matter what you are doin’ it seems as if there was a sort of a weight
pullin’ down on you. Well, I felt kind of blue as I drove home. I don’t
think I could hardly have kept up only for the whiskey I’d drunk. I was
kind of wonderin’ what it was all for and I didn’t see any reason for
anything, or any chance that anything would be any better, or any real
reason for livin’.
“Before I went to the house I drove up to the barn and unhitched the
horse and led him in, and then I run the wagon in, and took the potatoes
out and put ‘em under a little bag of hay that I had in the corner, and
threw the horse blanket over ‘em. Then I unharnessed the horse and
bedded him down and gave him some hay and a little oats. I’d watered him
at one of the last places I stopped—one of them troughs they have in
front of saloons. Then after I got the horse tended to I went into the
house.”
* * * * *
Hank got up and went to the door and spoke to the guard. He was still
sitting on the stool and talking to the prisoner in the next cell. Once
more he handed Hank a cigar.
“Give one to Jim,” he said. “I can’t do much more for him, poor devil;
I’m awful sorry.”
Jim came up and took the cigar and looked down at the guard.
“I don’t s’pose nothin’ has come for me, has there?”
“No, not yet,” was the answer.
“Well, I presume it’s’ no use.”
Just then the noise of pounding and driving nails and low voices was
heard over in the court yard.
“What’s that?” Hank asked.
“Don’t you know! That’s the fellers buildin’ the scaffold; they always
do it the night before. Strange, ain’t it; somehow it don’t seem to me
as if it was really me that was goin’ to be hung on it; but I s’pose it
is. Now, isn’t it strange about the governor; just one word from him
could save my life. I’d think he’d do it, wouldn’t you? I s’pose he
don’t really think how it seems to me. I know I’d do it, no matter what
anyone had done.
“But it’s gettin’ late and I must go on with my story or I won’t get it
finished before—before you have to go. It’s pretty hard to tell all
‘bout this part, but I’m goin’ to tell it to you honest and not make
myself any better’n I am. I’ve thought about this a good deal when I’ve
tried to account for how I done it, and I guess I can tell everything
that happened. When I look at it now it seems years ago, almost a
lifetime, not as if it was last November. I guess it’s because so much
has happened since then. It seems, too, as if it wa’n’t me that was
doin’ it, but as if ‘twas someone else. I guess that’ll make it easier
for me to tell; anyhow, I want you to know how it was, and then some
time you can tell the boy, if you think it’s the right thing to do.”
IV
I forgot to tell you about the steak. I don’t see how I left that out,
for, really, that’s what caused the whole trouble. It beats all what
little things will do, don’t it? Now, lots o’ times in my life it has
seemed as if the smallest things had the most to do with me. There was
that red waist, for instance, that she wore that day she was waitin’ on
the table. I ‘most know I never would have paid any attention to her if
it hadn’t been for that red waist. And then that beefsteak—in one way
I’m goin’ to get hung on account of that beefsteak. How many times since
that I’ve just wished I hadn’t stopped and bought it. But you see I was
feelin’ cold all day, and when I come ‘round Thirty-fifth Street the
wind kind of got in my face worse’n it had done before, and it sort of
struck me through the chest too; my legs didn’t feel it quite so much,
because they had the blanket over ‘em. Well, just as I got up to the
second corner there was a saloon right in front of me. This was before I
got to the corner when I met the senators, and I thought I’d go in and
get a drink; and then right on the other side was that meat market and
there was a lot of chickens and steak and things hangin’ in the window,
and they looked mighty good, for I hadn’t had much to eat all day. At
first I thought I’d go and get a drink, and then I thought I could get
enough steak for supper for just about what the drink would cost, and
the steak would do the most good, and besides she and the kid could have
some of that, and I thought it would make her feel pleasanter and liven
her up a bit. We hadn’t been gettin’ along any too well for some time.
“So I pulled up the horse a minute and went into the shop and asked the
butcher about the steak hangin’ in the window, and he told me that it
was sixteen cents a pound and that it was a sirloin steak. I thought
that was most too much and asked him if he hadn’t some cheaper kind. He
said yes, that a rump steak was just as good, and he showed me one of
them and the whole piece came to fifteen cents—just the price of a glass
of whiskey—and I bought it and rolled it up in a piece of brown paper
and went away.
“Now I was tellin’ about this to the good guard that likes to get
statistics for the Citizens’ Association, and I told him it was the
beefsteak that brought me here, and that if I had only got the whisky
instead of the steak it wouldn’t have happened, but he argued the other
way, and then when I stuck to my story he got kind of mad about it and
said it was them drinks I had with the senators and the assessor that
really done it, and if it hadn’t been for the drinks I’d have known
better, and he said he was goin’ to put it down that way, and I’m sure
he did. I hain’t no doubt but a good many of the figgers we see about
penitentiaries and things is got up the same way.
“Well, when I unhitched the horse and got him tended to and the potatoes
covered up and all, I took the steak and started for the house. You know
where I live—the barn is just back of the cottage, and there’s a kind of
little alley behind the barn and then the switch-yards come in; the
railroad curves up toward the house after it passes the barn so it gets
pretty near the kitchen. Of course, the trains bother us a good deal and
the switch engines are goin’ back and forth all the time, and the house
is pretty old and not very big, but all them things has to be taken into
consideration in the rent, and I got it enough cheaper to make up. I
presume that’s the reason no poor people live out on the avenues,
because the rents is so high, and in one way mebbe the switch tracks is
a good thing, for if it wa’n’t for them I’d had to go out to the stock
yards to live, and I’d rather have the engines and the smoke than the
smell. Some of them Settlement people are tryin’ to have a park made,
out along the tracks right close to where we lived. Of course, flowers
and grass would be nice, but I s’pose if they got the park some fellers
would come along and pay more rent than we could afford and then we’d
have to go out to the stock yards. It seems as if us poor people gets
the worst of it no matter how you fix it. But I’m takin’ an awful long
while to get into the house; seems as if I’m tellin’ you everything I’ve
thought of ever since I’ve been locked up here in jail. It’s mighty good
of you to set and listen, and I’ll always remember it as long as I live,
though I guess that ain’t sayin’ much.
“When I come up to the door I heard the kid cryin’ and she was scoldin’
him about somethin’ he’d done and tellin’ him to go in the bedroom and
stay till supper was ready and to quit his squallin’ or she’d thrash
him. Of course, generally, she was good to him, and I don’t mean to say
she wa’n’t, but sometimes she got out of patience with him, same as all
women does, I s’pose. Of course you have to make allowances for her. She
dassent let the boy go to play back of the house, for there was the
yards and the cars, and you know children always goes ‘round cars; then
she couldn’t let him go in front for the electric road was there, and
you know about that little boy bein’ run over a year ago down at the
corner. Then there’s buildin’s on both sides of us, so she had to have
the kid right in the house all the time less’n she went out with him,
and of course he got kind of tired settin’ in the house all day with
nothin’ to do but look out in front and see the switch engines. Still I
sometimes thought she was crosser to him than she ought to have been at
that.
“When I opened the door she was just takin’ the boy into the bedroom. In
a minute she come out and kind of slammed the door hard, and said,
‘Well, you’ve got home, have you?’ I said yes, I’d got home. That’s
every word I said. Then she said it was a pity that them drunken friends
of mine couldn’t keep me out all night spendin’ the money for whisky
that I ought to use in the house. I told her that I hadn’t spent no
money for whisky. She said ‘Yes, your face looks it, and your breath
smells it.’ Then I told her that I did take one drink but the assessor
bought it for me. Then she landed into the assessor, and told me I was
in pretty company goin’ ‘round with him; that Mrs. McGinty had told her
all about what kind of a man he was and she didn’t want to hear any more
about him. Then I asked her about when supper would be ready, and she
said she hadn’t begun to get it yet, that she’d been doin’ the washin’
and had that brat of mine to take care of all day, and she’d get the
supper when she got ready. Of course I was hungry and cold, and that
made me kind of mad, only I didn’t say much, but laid the beefsteak on
the table and unrolled it so’s she could see it. I thought mebbe that
would kind of tempt her, and I told her she’d better cook it and fry a
few potatoes. She made some remark about the steak, and about how I’d
better got a soup bone, or a chicken, or somethin’ cheaper, and no
wonder I was in debt with all the money I spent for whisky, and when I
did bring anything home to eat it had to be somethin’ that cost a good
deal more’n I could afford. Then I said that this was a rump steak and
only cost fifteen cents, and she said I could get a soup bone that
weighed six or seven pounds for that, and I hadn’t any business to throw
away my money. Then she kind of stopped for a few minutes and took the
steak out into the kitchen. Where we’d been was in the settin’ room. I
went in to see the kid a few minutes and kind of quieted him down, and
so long as he laid on the bed and seemed kind of like as if he’d go to
sleep I shut the bedroom door and come out again. Then I picked up the
paper and read about the alderman not goin’ to run any more, and that
was the real reason why he wa’n’t goin’ to give us any more turkeys;
then I looked at the sportin’ page and then I read a long story about a
feller that had killed someone and left ‘em dead in the house, and then
run away, and how they’d found ‘em dead and had offered a thousand
dollars reward for the feller who killed the other one. Then I read
about a murder trial that they was just havin’ and how the jury had
found the feller guilty and he was goin’ to be hung, and how he never
moved a muscle, and how his mother screamed and fell over in a swoond
when the clerk read the verdict. While I was readin’ she kept comin’ out
and into the settin’ room, bringin’ dishes and things to set the table.
You know we generally et in the settin’ room. Ev’ry time she come in she
kind of glared at me, but I let on not to notice her.
“Pretty soon I smelt the steak fryin’ and went out in the kitchen. When
I got out there I found the steak fryin’ in the skillet all right and
her just takin’ up the tea kettle to pour water on it. Now this made me
mad, for that wa’n’t no way to fry steak. You know yourself that you
lose all the flavor of the steak by pourin’ water on it; that makes it
more like boiled meat than it does like beefsteak. I just saw her in
time, and I called out, ‘What are you doin’? Put down that kettle. Don’t
you know better’n to pour water on beefsteak?’ She said, ‘You shut up
and go back in the settin’ room, or I’ll pour the water on you.’ I said,
‘No, you won’t; put down that kettle. How many times have I told you
better’n to pour water on steak? It’s hard enough for me to get the
money for a steak without lettin’ you spoil it that way.’ I started to
grab her hand, but before I could reach it she tipped the nozzle over
into the skillet and poured a lot of water in, and the steam and hot
water and grease kind of spattered up in my face. I don’t know whether I
struck her or not; anyhow I grabbed the kettle, and when the nozzle
turned round some of the hot water got onto me, and burned me a little.
I put the kettle down and said, ‘Damn you, what do you mean by spoilin’
the steak every time I get it? If you ever do a thing like that again,
I’ll cut your throat.’
“Now, of course, I hadn’t no idea of cuttin’ her throat, no matter how
often she done it. ‘Twas just a way I had of showin’ how mad I was about
what she’d done. You see she done it a-purpose for I’d told her plenty
of times before, and I told her then before any of the water got into
the skillet, and she just poured it in to spite me. Then she said, ‘You
drunken loafer, I’d like to see you try to cut my throat. I just dare
you to do it. You don’t need to wait until you bring home another steak;
ain’t likely I’ll be here by the time you bring home any more steak. I
don’t care what the Settlement people and the priest say about it, I’m
going to quit you. I’ve stood this thing just as long as I’m goin’ to,’
and she fairly screamed, just on purpose, so the neighbors could hear.
“Now I didn’t want them to know we was fightin’, and I seen that she was
so mad she couldn’t control herself and didn’t care who heard or what
happened. The neighbors had come in once before, but they’d got pretty
well used to our fights. But I thought it had gone about far enough and
the steak couldn’t be helped, so I went back into the settin’ room and
picked up the paper. In a few minutes she come in and says, ‘Well, come,
your old steak’s ready, you’ve made so much fuss about it you’d better
come and eat it and let it shut your mouth.’ And she went on into the
bedroom and got the kid. I drew up my chair and set down to the table.
She put the kid into the high chair and then she set down on the other
side. I cut up the steak and give each of ‘em a piece with some fried
potatoes, then we had some bread and butter and some tea. She poured out
the tea and handed me a cup. There wa’n’t any milk for the tea and I
asked her why that was. She told me she didn’t have any money to buy
tickets, and if I wanted milk I’d better leave some money to buy tickets
instead of spending it all for whiskey. I didn’t make much of any answer
to this but commenced eatin’ my steak. Besides bein’ boiled it was
cooked almost to a crisp, and you couldn’t hardly tell whether it was
beefsteak or what it was; all the taste was out of it and gone into the
water and the steam. I put some of the gravy on the potatoes; this was
better’n the steak and tasted more like beef. I et up the potatoes and
the steak and a few pieces of bread and butter, and cut up the kid’s
steak and showed him how to hold his knife so’s to eat without cuttin’
himself, and I didn’t say a word to her and she didn’t say a word to me.
Of course, I could see by the way she looked that she was mad, and I
presume she could see that I was, too; and probably both of us thought
it was just as well not to say anything, ‘specially so long as the kid
was there. All the time I was eatin’ I kept thinkin’ about the way she’d
poured the water into the steak and spoilt it, and how I’d been lookin’
forward to it ever since I bought it on Thirty-fifth Street, and the
more I thought of it the madder I got. If it had been the first time I
don’t think I’d have minded it near so much, but I’d told her about it
ev’ry time I brought home a steak, and it seemed as if always we had a
row pretty near as big as this, and every time she managed to pour the
water into it and spoil it in spite of all that I could do. And this
time it had been just the same thing again. Anyone would have been mad
if they’d been in my place; don’t you think so yourself?
“Well, I finished my supper without sayin’ a word to her, and she didn’t
say a word to me, and then I got up and went back into the settin’ room
and picked up the paper and commenced readin’ again. In a minute she
come along through with the kid and took him into the bedroom to put him
to bed. After she’d been in there a while she came out and shut the
door, and stood up for a minute lookin’ over toward me. I thought she
was waitin’ for me to speak, so I just kept my eyes on the paper like as
if I was readin’, but I wa’n’t. I hadn’t cooled off a great deal since
she poured the water on the steak, and could see that she hadn’t
neither, so I thought mebbe it was as well to have it out, but I was
goin’ to wait for her to begin. Of course, I hadn’t no idea then of
doin’ anything like what I did. I was just mad and reckless and didn’t
care much, and would keep thinkin’ of the steak, and you know all the
time I was thinkin’ I could feel a kind of prickin’ up in my head, as if
a lot of needles was runnin’ up toward my hair. I s’pose it was the
blood runnin’ up there. That feller that I told you about that was
talkin’ to us over here kind of made out that a man was a good deal like
a machine, or an engine of some kind, and when the steam was turned on
he had to go. He said that if the blood was pumped up in the head it
made us do things; it made some people write poetry, and some make
speeches, and some sing, and some fight, and some kill folks, and they
couldn’t really help it if they was made that way and the blood got
pumped up in the head. I believe there’s a good deal in it. You know
when the blood don’t circulate down in your feet they get cold and kind
of dead, and then if you put ‘em into a pail of hot water or even cold
water, and then rub ‘em hard with a towel, they get prickly and red, and
you can feel the blood comin’ back to ‘em and feel ‘em wake up again.
“Well, I set perfectly still while she stood by the mantel-piece. First
she picked up one thing and then another and kind of dusted ‘em and put
‘em back. She done this till she had dusted ever’thing on the
mantel-piece, and all the time she would be lookin’ over toward me, but
I kept my eyes down on the paper and pretended to be readin’. I knew
that she didn’t dust the things because she wanted to dust, for she
always dusted in the mornin’ just after she swept. I knew she did it
because she was nervous and mad, and was waitin’ for me to begin. Of
course, sometimes when you are mad the longer you wait the more you get
over it, and then sometimes the longer you wait the madder you get. It’s
like a boiler not usin’ any of its steam while the fire is goin’; if it
waits long enough somethin’s got to happen.
“Finally, after she got everything dusted she looked over straight at me
and says, ‘Are you goin’ to read that paper all night?’ I told her I was
if I wanted to, that it was none of her business how long I read it;
there was a part of it that I’d like to give her to read if she wanted
to; it was the cookery department, and had a recipe for frying steak. Of
course, there wa’n’t no such thing in the paper, and I just made it up
and said it to be sassy, and I knew I shouldn’t have been throwin’ it up
to her, but I was so mad I really didn’t think how ‘twould sound. Then
she said she didn’t want any advice from me or the paper either, about
cookin’, and she wanted me to understand that the cookin’ was none of my
business and she’d tend to that herself in her own way, and if ever I
interfered again she’d leave me and take the kid with her. She said she
learned cookin’ long before she ever knew me. Then I said I thought she
could make money by startin’ a cookin’ school; all them rich folks on
Prairie Avenue would come over to get her to learn them how to fry
steak. She said she guessed she knew more ‘bout fryin’ steak than I did,
and when I boarded at the restaurant I was mighty glad to get steak
fried that way, and I only grumbled about it now because I was so mean
and didn’t know how to treat a woman, and a man like me never had no
right to have a decent wife. Then I said I wished I hadn’t; I’d be a
mighty sight better off by myself than livin’ with her and havin’ her
spoil everything that came in the house, and I wished I was back
boardin’ in the restaurant where she found me. She said I didn’t wish it
half so much as she did, that she got along a good deal better when she
was waitin’ on the table than she had since she married me; then she had
a chance to get out once in a while and see someone and have a good
time, but now she stayed to home from one year’s end to another lookin’
after me and my brat. I told her I guessed the brat was just as much
hers as it was mine, and I didn’t think that was any way to speak about
the boy. Of course I really knew that she didn’t say it because she had
anything against him, but just because she was mad at me. She always
liked him, and I can’t make any complaint of the way she treated him,
and I want him to know it when we’re both dead, and I don’t want him to
get any idea that she wa’n’t perfectly square. I kind of want you to fix
it, if you can, so ‘twon’t look to him as if either of us was to blame,
but I guess that won’t be an easy thing to do.
“Then I said she was mighty glad to give up the job she had at the
restaurant to marry me. She said I asked her to get married, that she
didn’t ask me. Then I told her that, of course, she didn’t ask me, but
she gave me a mighty good chance, and that I believed she just got that
red waist and fixed up her hair the way she did to ketch me, and when I
spoke to her about marryin’ it didn’t take her very long to throw up her
job, and take me so she could get supported without doin’ anything. Then
she said that if she spent any money to get that red waist to ketch me
she was throwin’ it away, and that if I thought she ever worked for
anyone else as hard as she did for me and my brat that I was mistaken,
and it didn’t make any difference what she done, I never gave her any
thanks or did anything for her. If I ever had any time I spent it with
them drunken loafers and politicians and never went anywhere with her;
that she wa’n’t no better’n a slave, and what was she doin’ it all for;
pretty soon she’d be old long before her time. Her looks was all gone
now, and she hadn’t even had a new dress for over a year. I told her
that I didn’t know what she wanted of looks, she never was a prize
beauty and ‘twa’n’t very like anybody’d ever be fool enough to marry her
again, if anything happened to me. And she said if she ever got rid of
me there wouldn’t be much danger of her marryin’ anyone else, she had
men enough to last as long as she lived; that all they ever thought of
was what they could get to eat and drink, that I’d made more fuss over
that miser’ble beefsteak than anyone would over their soul, and she
didn’t see why she ever stood it from me, and she was just as good as I
ever was and knew just as much, and worked a good deal harder, and
didn’t run ‘round nights and get drunk and spend all the money with a
lot of loafers, and be in debt all the time and have the collector
runnin’ after me. I told her I had just about enough of that kind of
talk, and wouldn’t stand no more of it from her; it was bad enough for
her to burn up the beefsteak and spoil it without blackguardin’ me and
callin’ me names; she was mighty glad to get the clothes and the grub I
bought her and to live in my house and have me work hard every day in
the cold to get money while she just stayed to home and played with the
kid, and if she said another word to me I’d smash her face. Then she
said, ‘Yes, you miserable wife-beater, you kicked me once, didn’t you,
but you needn’ think you can kick me or lay hands on me again. I ain’t
afraid of you nor any of your low-lived drunken crew!’ Then she kind of
reached back to the mantel and took hold of a plaster Paris lady I’d
bought of a peddler, just as if she was goin’ to throw it at me, same as
she throwed that dish once before. I seen what she was doin’ and I
grabbed her arm and said, ‘You damned bitch, don’t try that on me’; and
I gave her a kind of shove over toward a chair and she missed the chair
and fell on the floor.
“Of course, you know I didn’t really mean anything when I called her a
damned bitch; that is, I didn’t mean any such thing as anyone might
think from them words. You know us fellers down to the yards don’t think
very much about usin’ that word, and we never really mean anything by
it. But I don’t think ‘twas a very nice word to use and have always been
sorry I said it, even if I did kill her.
“Well, she jumped up off’n the floor and made towards the table, like
she’d grab a knife, and by this time I had a prickly feelin’ runnin’ all
through my head and up into my hair, and I didn’t really think of
anything but just about her and what she was doin’. I don’t believe I
even thought about the kid in there on the bed. Mebbe if I had I
wouldn’t have done it.