The Bad Boy's Joke with a Stuffed Rattlesnake--He Tells the Old
Groceryman About his Dad's Morbid Appetite.
The old groceryman was sitting on the counter, with his legs stretched
lengthwise, his heels resting on a sack of flour, and his back against
a pile of wrapping paper, his eyes closed, his pipe gone out, and the
ashes sifting from it on the cat that was asleep in his lap. He was
waiting for a customer to come in and buy something to start the day's
business. He had sprinkled the floor and swept the dirt up in a corner,
and he was sleepy. There was a crash in front of the door, a barrel of
axe handles and garden tools had been tipped over on the sidewalk, the
door opened with a jerk and closed with a slam, and the bad boy came in
with a long paper bax, perforated with holes, slammed it on the counter
beside the groceryman's legs, and yelled:
“Wake up, Rip Van Winkle, the day of judgment has come, and you are
still buried. You get a move on you or the procession will go off and
leave you. Say, are you afraid of rattlesnakes?” and the bad boy shook
the paper box, when an enormous rattle came from within, as though a
snake had shaken its tail good and plenty.
“Great Scott, boy, I believe you have got a rattlesnake in that box,”
and he jumped off the counter and grabbed an iron fire poker, while the
boy got out his knife to cut the string on the box. “Now, look here, I
am suffering from nervous prostration, and a snake turned loose in
this store would settle it with me. I am at your mercy, but by the holy
smoke, if I am bitten by that snake I will kill you and your old snake.
Now take that box out of here,” and the old man picked up a hatchet and
got behind a barrel.
“Well, wouldn't that skin you,” said the bad boy, as he sharpened his
knife on a piece of old cheese, and felt of the edge. “Here you have
been telling me for years what a brave man you were, and how you were
not afraid of anything that wore hair, and now you have fits because a
little five-foot rattlesnake, with only ten rattles on, makes a formal
call on you. Gee, but you are a squaw. Why, there is no danger in the
bite of a rattlesnake, since science has taken the matter up. All you
got to do, when a snake bites you and you begin to turn black, is to
drink a couple of quarts of whisky, and bind a poultice of limberg
cheese on the wound, and go to bed for a week or ten days, and you come
out all right,” and the bad boy began to cut the string.
“Now, let up until I wait on these customers,” said the old man, as he
went to the door and let in a committee of women who were to buy some
supplies for a church sociable. The women lined up on each side of the
store, looking at the canned things on the shelves, and the old man was
trying to be polite, when the bad boy opened the box and laid on the
floor a stuffed rattlesnake that was as natural as life, and touched a
rattle box in his pocket, and the trouble began. The women saw the snake
curled up, ready to spring, and they all went through the door at once,
tipping over everything that was loose, and screaming, while the old
man, when he saw the snake, got into the front show window and trembled
and yelled for the police. A policeman rushed in the store and when he
saw the snake he backed out of the door, and the bad boy sat down on
a box and began to eat some raisins out of a box, as though he was not
particularly interested in the commotion.
“Arrest that boy with the snake,” said the groceryman.
“Come out of that wid your menagerie,” said the policeman, shaking his
club.
[Illustration: “Arrest That Boy with the Rattlesnake,” Said the
Groceryman.]
“Come in and get the snake if you want it,” said the boy, “I don't want
it any more, anyway,” and he took the stuffed snake up by the head and
laid it across his lap, and began to shake the rattles, and laugh at the
groceryman and the policeman, and the crowd that had collected in front
of the store. The policeman came in laughing, and the old groceryman
crawled out of the show window, and all breathed free again, and finally
the policeman went and drove the crowd away, and went on his beat again,
after shaking his club at the boy; the groceryman, the snake and the
cat remained in the store. The groceryman took a swig out of a bottle
of whisky, to settle his nerves, and the took up his snake and pushed it
towards the cat, which ran up a stepladder and yowled.
“Do you know, I kind of like you,” said the old groceryman, as he went
up behind the bad boy and took him by the throat, “and I think it would
be a great thing for the community if I should just choke you to death.
You are worse than a mad dog, and you are just ruining my business.”
“I will give you just ten seconds to take you hand off my neck,” said
the bad boy, pulling out a dollar watch, “and when the time is up, and
you have not let loose of me, I will turn loose a couple of live snakes
I have in my pocket, and some tarantulas, and you will probably be
bitten and swell up like a poisoned pup, and die under the counter.”
“All right, let's be friends,” said the old man, as he let go of the bad
boy. “If your parents and the rest of the community can stand having
you around, alive, probably it is my duty to be a martyr, and stand
my share, but you are very trying to the nerves. By the way, put that
confounded stuffed snake in the ice box, and sit down here and tell me
something. I saw your father on the street yesterday, and he is a sight.
His stomach is twice as big around as it was, and he looks troubled.
What has got into him?”
“Well, I'll tell you, dad has got what they call a morbid appetite.
Whatever you do, old skate, don't you ever get a morbid appetite.”
“What is a morbid appetite?” asked the old man; as he peeled a banana
and began to eat it. “I can always eat anything that is not tied down,
but I don't know about this morbid business.”
“Scientists say a morbid appetite is one that don't know when it has got
enough. Dad likes good things, but he wants all there is on the table.
Now, at New Orleans, before we came home, dad and I went in a restaurant
to get some oysters, and you know the oysters there are the biggest
in the world. When we got there dad was hungry, and the thought of raw
oysters on the half shell made him morbid. He had a blue point appetite,
and ordered four dozen on the half shell, for himself, and one dozen
for me. Well, you would have dropped dead in your tracks if you had been
there. Six waiters brought on the five dozen oysters, and each oyster
was as big as a pie plate. Six dozen oysters would cover this floor from
the door to the ice box. Dad almost fainted when he saw them, but his
pride was at stake, and he made up his mind if he didn't eat them all
the waiters would think he was a tenderfoot, and so he started in.
The first oyster was as big as a calf's liver, and nobody but a sword
swallower could ever have got it down. Dad cut one oyster into quarters,
and got away with it, and after a while he murdered another, and after
he had eaten three he wanted to go home and leave them. Then is the time
his little boy got in his work. I told dad that if he didn't eat all the
oysters the waiters and the people would mob him, that it was a deadly
offense to order oysters and not eat them, and that they would probably
kill us both before we got out of the place. He said, 'Hennery, I don't
like oysters like I used to, and it seems to me I couldn't eat another
one to save my life, but if, as you say, we are in a country where a
man's life is held so cheaply, by the great horn spoons, I will eat
every oyster in the house, and the Lord have mercy on me.' I told him
that was about the size of it, and he would eat or die, and maybe he
would die anyway, and just then a wicked-looking negro with a big oyster
knife came to the table and looked ugly at dad and said, 'Have another
dozen?' and dad said, 'Yes,' and then he began to eat as though his life
depended on it, and I could hear the great wads of oysters strike with a
dull thud on exposed places inside of dad, and before he got up from the
table he had eaten them all, and he told the man we would be in again
to lunch after awhile. Dad is the bravest man I ever saw, and don't you
forget it. He would have come out all right, I suppose, and lived, if it
hadn't been for his devilish morbid appetite for travel and adventure.
Quick as we got out of the oyster place dad wanted to take a steamboat
ride down the river to the Eades Jetties at the mouth of the river, and
we went on board, and had a nice ride down to the mouth. After we had
looked over the jetties where Eades made an artificial canal big enough
for the largest ocean steamers to come up to New Orleans, the passengers
wanted the captain to run the boat outside the bar, into the blue ocean,
where the waves come from. Gee, but I hope I may live long enough to
forget the ride. We hadn't got a boat's length outside the bar before
the boat began to roll and toss, and I held on to dad's hand, and wished
I was dead. I told him my little tummy ached, and I wanted a lemon.
Dad said my little tummy, with its three oysters in it, was not worth
mentioning, and told me to look at him. Talk about your Mount Pelee, and
your Vesuvius, those volcanoes were tame and uninteresting, compared to
dad, leaning over the railing, and shouting words at the sharks in the
water. Why? he just doubled up like a jack knife, one minute, and then
straightened up like an elephant standing on its hind legs in a circus,
the next minute, and he kept saying, 'Ye-up,' and all the passengers
said 'poor man.' I told them he was not so poor, for he owned a brewery
at home. Dad finally went to sleep with his arm and head over the rail,
and his body hanging limp, down on deck. The boat turned around and went
back into the mouth of the river, and the passengers were thanking the
captain for giving them such a lovely ride, when I thought I would wake
dad up, and so I touched him on the shoulder and asked him if he didn't
want a few dozen more raw oysters, and he yelled murder, and began to
have hydrophobia again, and bump himself. You know the way people do
when they are dissatisfied with the medicine the doctor gives. Well, we
got back to New Orleans, and dad took a hack to the hotel, and told
the driver not to pass any saloon where there were oyster shells on the
sidewalk. We came home next day. Well, I guess I will get my snake out
of the ice box, and go home and comfort dad. But wait a minute till that
Irishman puts that chunk of ice in the ice box, and see if he notices
the snake.” Just then there was a sound as if a house had fallen, a
two hundred pound cake of ice struck the floor, and the Irishman came
running through the grocery with his ice tongs waving, and yelling,
“There's a rattlesnake in yer ice box, mister, and ye can go to h--l for
yer ice.” The groceryman looked at the boy, and the boy looked at the
groceryman, the cat looked at both, the boy took his snake under his arm
and went out, and the old man said:
[Illustration: “Each Oyster Was as Big as a Pie Plate.”]
“Well, you are the limit. Call again, and bring an anaconda, and a
man-eating tiger,” and he went and scraped up the ice.