HOW I come not to have a last name is a question that has always had
more or less aggervation mixed up with it. I might of had one jest
as well as not if Old Hank Walters hadn't been so all-fired, infernal
bull-headed about things in gineral, and his wife Elmira a blame sight
worse, and both of em ready to row at a minute's notice and stick to it
forevermore.
Hank, he was considerable of a lusher. One Saturday night, when he come
home from the village in his usual fix, he stumbled over a basket that
was setting on his front steps. Then he got up and drawed back his foot
unsteady to kick it plumb into kingdom come. Jest then he hearn Elmira
opening the door behind him, and he turned his head sudden. But the kick
was already started into the air, and when he turns he can't stop it.
And so Hank gets twisted and falls down and steps on himself. That
basket lets out a yowl.
“It's kittens,” says Hank, still setting down and staring at that there
basket. All of which, you understand, I am a-telling you from hearsay,
as the lawyers always asts you in court.
Elmira, she sings out:
“Kittens, nothing! It's a baby!”
And she opens the basket and looks in and it was me.
“Hennerey Walters,” she says--picking me up, and shaking me at him like
I was a crime, “Hennerey Walters, where did you get this here baby?” She
always calls him Hennerey when she is getting ready to give him fits.
Hank, he scratches his head, for he's kind o' confuddled, and thinks
mebby he really has brought this basket with him. He tries to think of
all the places he has been that night. But he can't think of any place
but Bill Nolan's saloon. So he says:
“Elmira, honest, I ain't had but one drink all day.” And then he kind o'
rouses up a little bit, and gets surprised and says:
“That a _baby_ you got there, Elmira?” And then he says, dignified: “So
fur as that's consarned, Elmira, where did _you_ get that there baby?”
She looks at him, and she sees he don't really know where I come from.
Old Hank mostly was truthful when lickered up, fur that matter, and she
knowed it, fur he couldn't think up no lies excepting a gineral denial
when intoxicated up to the gills.
Elmira looks into the basket. They was one of them long rubber tubes
stringing out of a bottle that was in it, and I had been sucking that
bottle when interrupted. And they wasn't nothing else in that basket but
a big thick shawl which had been wrapped all around me, and Elmira
often wore it to meeting afterward. She goes inside and she looks at
the bottle and me by the light, and Old Hank, he comes stumbling in
afterward and sets down in a chair and waits to get Hail Columbia for
coming home in that shape, so's he can row back agin, like they done
every Saturday night.
Blowed in the glass of the bottle was the name: “Daniel, Dunne and
Company.” Anybody but them two old ignoramuses could of told right off
that that didn't have nothing to do with me, but was jest the company
that made them kind of bottles. But she reads it out loud three or four
times, and then she says:
“His name is Daniel Dunne,” she says.
“And Company,” says Hank, feeling right quarrelsome.
“_Company_ hain't no name,” says she.
“_Why_ hain't it, I'd like to know?” says Hank. “I knowed a man oncet
whose name was Farmer, and if a farmer's a name why ain't a company a
name too?”
“His name is Daniel Dunne,” says Elmira, quietlike, but not dodging a
row, neither.
“_And company_,” says Hank, getting onto his feet, like he always done
when he seen trouble coming. When Old Hank was full of licker he knowed
jest the ways to aggervate her the worst.
She might of banged him one the same as usual, and got her own eye
blacked also, the same as usual; but jest then I lets out another big
yowl, and she give me some milk.
I guess the only reason they ever kep' me at first was so they could
quarrel about my name. They'd lived together a good many years and
quarrelled about everything else under the sun, and was running out of
subjects. A new subject kind o' briskened things up fur a while.
But finally they went too far with it one time. I was about two years
old then and he was still calling me Company and her calling me Dunne.
This time he hits her a lick that lays her out and likes to kill her,
and it gets him scared. But she gets around agin after a while, and they
both see it has went too fur that time, and so they makes up.
“Elmira, I give in,” says Hank. “His name is Dunne.”
“No,” says she, tender-like, “you was right, Hank. His name is Company.”
So they pretty near got into another row over that. But they finally
made it up between em I didn't have no last name, and they'd jest call
me Danny. Which they both done faithful ever after, as agreed.
Old Hank, he was a blacksmith, and he used to lamm me considerable, him
and his wife not having any kids of their own to lick. He lammed me when
he was drunk, and he whaled me when he was sober. I never helt it up
agin him much, neither, not fur a good many years, because he got me
used to it young, and I hadn't never knowed nothing else. Hank's wife,
Elmira, she used to lick him jest about as often as he licked her, and
boss him jest as much. So he fell back on me. A man has jest naturally
got to have something to cuss around and boss, so's to keep himself
from finding out he don't amount to nothing. Leastways, most men is like
that. And Hank, he didn't amount to much; and he kind o' knowed it, way
down deep in his inmost gizzards, and it were a comfort to him to have
me around.
But they was one thing he never sot no store by, and I got along now to
where I hold that up agin him more'n all the lickings he ever done. That
was book learning. He never had none himself, and he was sot agin it,
and he never made me get none, and if I'd ever asted him for any he'd
of whaled me fur that. Hank's wife, Elmira, had married beneath her, and
everybody in our town had come to see it, and used to sympathize with
her about it when Hank wasn't around. She'd tell em, yes, it was so.
Back in Elmira, New York, from which her father and mother come to our
part of Illinoise in the early days, her father had kep' a hotel,
and they was stylish kind o' folks. When she was born her mother was
homesick fur all that style and fur York State ways, and so she named
her Elmira.
But when she married Hank, he had considerable land. His father had left
it to him, but it was all swamp land, and so Hank's father, he hunted
more'n he farmed, and Hank and his brothers done the same when he was a
boy. But Hank, he learnt a little blacksmithing when he was growing up,
cause he liked to tinker around and to show how stout he was. Then,
when he married Elmira Appleton, he had to go to work practising that
perfession reg'lar, because he never learnt nothing about farming. He'd
sell fifteen or twenty acres, every now and then, and they'd be high
times till he'd spent it up, and mebby Elmira would get some new
clothes.
But when I was found on the door step, the land was all gone, and Hank
was practising reg'lar, when not busy cussing out the fellers that had
bought the land. Fur some smart fellers had come along, and bought up
all that swamp land and dreened it, and now it was worth seventy or
eighty dollars an acre. Hank, he figgered some one had cheated him.
Which the Walterses could of dreened theirn too, only they'd ruther
hunt ducks and have fish frys than to dig ditches. All of which I hearn
Elmira talking over with the neighbours more'n once when I was growing
up, and they all says: “How sad it is you have came to this, Elmira!”
And then she'd kind o' spunk up and say, thanks to glory, she'd kep' her
pride.
Well, they was worse places to live in than that there little town, even
if they wasn't no railroad within eight miles, and only three hundred
soles in the hull copperation. Which Hank's shop and our house set in
the edge of the woods jest outside the copperation line, so's the city
marshal didn't have no authority to arrest him after he crossed it.
They was one thing in that house I always admired when I was a kid. And
that was a big cistern. Most people has their cisterns outside their
house, and they is a tin pipe takes all the rain water off the roof and
scoots it into them. Ourn worked the same, but our cistern was right in
under our kitchen floor, and they was a trap door with leather hinges
opened into it right by the kitchen stove. But that wasn't why I was
so proud of it. It was because that cistern was jest plumb full of
fish--bullheads and red horse and sunfish and other kinds.
Hank's father had built that cistern. And one time he brung home some
live fish in a bucket and dumped em in there. And they growed. And they
multiplied in there and refurnished the earth. So that cistern had got
to be a fambly custom, which was kep' up in that fambly for a habit.
It was a great comfort to Hank, fur all them Walterses was great fish
eaters, though it never went to brains. We fed em now and then, and
throwed back in the little ones till they was growed, and kep' the dead
ones picked out soon's we smelled anything wrong, and it never hurt the
water none; and when I was a kid I wouldn't of took anything fur living
in a house like that.
Oncet, when I was a kid about six years old, Hank come home from the
bar-room. He got to chasing Elmira's cat cause he says it was making
faces at him. The cistern door was open, and Hank fell in. Elmira was
over to town, and I was scared. She had always told me not to fool
around there none when I was a little kid, fur if I fell in there I'd be
a corpse quicker'n scatt.
So when Hank fell in, and I hearn him splash, being only a little
feller, and awful scared because Elmira had always made it so strong,
I hadn't no sort of unbelief but what Hank was a corpse already. So I
slams the trap door shut over that there cistern without looking in,
fur I hearn Hank flopping around down in there. I hadn't never hearn
a corpse flop before, and didn't know but what it might be somehow
injurious to me, and I wasn't going to take no chances.
So I went out and played in the front yard, and waited fur Elmira. But
I couldn't seem to get my mind settled on playing I was a horse, nor
nothing. I kep' thinking mebby Hank's corpse is going to come flopping
out of that cistern and whale me some unusual way. I hadn't never been
licked by a corpse, and didn't rightly know jest what one is, anyhow,
being young and comparitive innocent. So I sneaks back in and sets
all the flatirons in the house on top of the cistern lid. I hearn some
flopping and splashing and spluttering, like Hank's corpse is trying to
jump up and is falling back into the water, and I hearn Hank's voice,
and got scareder yet. And when Elmira come along down the road, she seen
me by the gate a-crying, and she asts me why.
“Hank is a corpse,” says I, blubbering.
“A corpse!” says Elmira, dropping her coffee which she was carrying home
from the gineral store and post-office. “Danny, what do you mean?”
I seen I was to blame somehow, and I wisht then I hadn't said nothing
about Hank being a corpse. And I made up my mind I wouldn't say nothing
more. So when she grabs holt of me and asts me agin what did I mean
I blubbered harder, jest the way a kid will, and says nothing else. I
wisht I hadn't set them flatirons on that door, fur it come to me all at
oncet that even if Hank _has_ turned into a corpse I ain't got any right
to keep him in that cistern.
Jest then Old Mis' Rogers, which is one of our neighbours, comes by,
while Elmira is shaking me and yelling out what did I mean and how did
it happen and had I saw it and where was Hank's corpse?
And Mis' Rogers she says, “What's Danny been doing now, Elmira?” me
being always up to something.
Elmira she turned around and seen her, and she gives a whoop and then
hollers out: “Hank is dead!” and throws her apern over her head and sets
right down in the path and boo-hoos like a baby. And I bellers louder.
Mis' Rogers, she never waited to ast nothing more. She seen she had a
piece of news, and she's bound to be the first to spread it, like they
is always a lot of women wants to be in them country towns. She run
right acrost the road to where the Alexanderses lived. Mis' Alexander,
she seen her coming and unhooked the screen door, and Mis' Rogers she
hollers out before she reached the porch:
“Hank Walters is dead.”
And then she went footing it up the street. They was a black plume on
her bunnet which nodded the same as on a hearse, and she was into and
out of seven front yards in five minutes.
Mis' Alexander, she runs acrost the street to where we was, and she
kneels down and puts her arm around Elmira, which was still rocking back
and forth in the path, and she says:
“How do you know he's dead, Elmira? I seen him not more'n an hour ago.”
“Danny seen it all,” says Elmira.
Mis' Alexander turned to me, and wants to know what happened and how it
happened and where it happened. But I don't want to say nothing about
that cistern. So I busts out bellering fresher'n ever, and I says:
“He was drunk, and he come home drunk, and he done it then, and that's
how he cone it,” I says.
“And you seen him?” she says. I nodded.
“Where is he?” says she and Elmira, both to oncet.
But I was scared to say nothing about that there cistern, so I jest
bawled some more.
“Was it in the blacksmith shop?” says Mis' Alexander. I nodded my head
agin and let it go at that.
“Is he in there now?” asts Mis' Alexander. I nodded agin. I hadn't meant
to give out no untrue stories. But a kid will always tell a lie, not
meaning to tell one, if you sort of invite him with questions like that,
and get him scared the way you're acting. Besides, I says to myself, “so
long as Hank has turned into a corpse and that makes him dead, what's
the difference whether he's in the blacksmith shop or not?” Fur I hadn't
had any plain idea, being such a little kid, that a corpse meant to be
dead, and wasn't sure what being dead was like, neither, except they had
funerals over you then. I knowed being a corpse must be some sort of
a big disadvantage from the way Elmira always says keep away from that
cistern door or I'll be one. But if they was going to be a funeral in
our house, I'd feel kind o' important, too. They didn't have em every
day in our town, and we hadn't never had one of our own.
So Mis' Alexander, she led Elmira into the house, both a-crying, and
Mis' Alexander trying to comfort her, and me a tagging along behind
holding onto Elmira's skirts and sniffling into them. And in a few
minutes all them women Mis' Rogers has told come filing into that room,
one at a time, looking sad. Only Old Mis' Primrose, she was awful late
getting there because she stopped to put on her bunnet she always wore
to funerals with the black Paris lace on it her cousin Arminty White had
sent her from Chicago.
When they found out Hank had come home with licker in him and done it
himself, they was all excited, and they all crowds around and asts me
how, except two as is holding onto Elmira's hands which sets moaning in
a chair. And they all asts me questions as to what I seen him do, which
if they hadn't I wouldn't have told em the lies I did. But they egged me
on to it.
Says one woman: “Danny, you seen him do it in the blacksmith shop?”
I nodded.
“But how did he get in?” sings out another woman. “The door was locked
on the outside with a padlock jest now when I come by. He couldn't of
killed himself in there and locked the door on the outside.”
I didn't see how he could of done that myself, so I begun to bawl agin
and said nothing at all.
“He must of crawled through that little side window,” says another one.
“It was open when I come by, if the door _was_ locked. Did you see him
crawl through the little side window, Danny?”
I nodded. They wasn't nothing else fur me to do.
“But _you_ hain't tall enough to look through that there window,” says
another one to me. “How could you see into that shop, Danny?”
I didn't know, so I didn't say nothing at all; I jest sniffled.
“They is a store box right in under that window,” says another one.
“Danny must have clumb onto that store box and looked in after he seen
Hank come down the road and crawl through the window. Did you scramble
onto the store box and look in, Danny?”
I jest nodded agin.
“And what was it you seen him do? How did he kill himself?” they all
asts to oncet.
_I_ didn't know. So I jest bellers and boo-hoos some more. Things was
getting past anything I could see the way out of.
“He might of hung himself to one of the iron rings in the jists above
the forge,” says another woman. “He clumb onto the forge to tie the rope
to one of them rings, and he tied the other end around his neck, and
then he stepped off'n the forge. Was that how he done it, Danny?”
I nodded. And then I bellered louder than ever. I knowed Hank was down
in that there cistern, a corpse and a mighty wet corpse, all this time;
but they kind o' got me to thinking mebby he was hanging out in the shop
by the forge, too. And I guessed I'd better stick to the shop story, not
wanting to say nothing about that cistern no sooner'n I could help it.
Pretty soon one woman says, kind o' shivery:
“I don't want to have the job of opening the door of that blacksmith
shop the first one!”
And they all kind o' shivered then, and looked at Elmira. They says to
let some of the men open it. And Mis' Alexander, she says she'll run
home and tell her husband right off.
And all the time Elmira is moaning in that chair. One woman says Elmira
orter have a cup o' tea, which she'll lay off her bunnet and go to the
kitchen and make it fur her. But Elmira says no, she can't a-bear to
think of tea, with poor Hennerey a-hanging out there in the shop. But
she was kind o' enjoying all that fuss being made over her, too. And all
the other women says:
“Poor thing!” But all the same they was mad she said she didn't want any
tea, for they all wanted some and didn't feel free without she took it
too. Which she said she would after they'd coaxed a while and made her
see her duty.
So they all goes out to the kitchen, bringing along some of the best
room chairs, Elmira coming too, and me tagging along behind. And the
first thing they noticed was them flatirons on top of the cistern door.
Mis' Primrose, she says that looks funny. But another woman speaks up
and says Danny must of been playing with them while Elmira was over
town. She says, “Was you playing they was horses, Danny?”
I was feeling considerable like a liar by this time, but I says I was
playing horses with them, fur I couldn't see no use in hurrying things
up. I was bound to get a lamming purty soon anyhow. When I was a kid I
could always bet on that. So they picks up the flatirons, and as they
picks em up they come a splashing noise in the cistern. I thinks to
myself, Hank's corpse'll be out of there in a minute. One woman, she
says:
“Goodness gracious sakes alive! What's that, Elmira?”
Elmira says that cistern is mighty full of fish, and they is some great
big ones in there, and it must be some of them a-flopping around. Which
if they hadn't of been all worked up and talking all to oncet and all
thinking of Hank's body hanging out there in the blacksmith shop they
might of suspicioned something. For that flopping kep' up steady, and a
lot of splashing too. I mebby orter mentioned sooner it had been a dry
summer and they was only three or four feet of water in our cistern, and
Hank wasn't in scarcely up to his big hairy chest. So when Elmira says
the cistern is full of fish, that woman opens the trap door and looks
in. Hank thinks it's Elmira come to get him out. He allows he'll keep
quiet in there and make believe he is drowned and give her a good scare
and make her sorry fur him. But when the cistern door is opened, he
hears a lot of clacking tongues all of a sudden like they was a hen
convention on. He allows she has told some of the neighbours, and he'll
scare them too. So Hank, he laid low. And the woman as looks in sees
nothing, for it's as dark down there as the insides of the whale what
swallered Noah. But she leaves the door open and goes on a-making tea,
and they ain't skeercly a sound from that cistern, only little, ripply
noises like it might have been fish.
Pretty soon a woman says:
“It has drawed, Elmira; won't you have a cup?” Elmira she kicked some
more, but she took hern. And each woman took hern. And one woman,
a-sipping of hern, she says:
“The departed had his good pints, Elmira.”
Which was the best thing had been said of Hank in that town fur years
and years.
Old Mis' Primrose, she always prided herself on being honest, no matter
what come, and she ups and says:
“I don't believe in no hippercritics at a time like this, no more'n no
other time. The departed wasn't no good, and the hull town knowed it;
and Elmira orter feel like it's good riddance of bad rubbish and them is
my sentiments and the sentiments of rightfulness.”
All the other women sings out:
“W'y, _Mis' Primrose_! I never!” And they seemed awful shocked. But down
in underneath more of em agreed than let on. Elmira she wiped her eyes
and she said:
“Hennerey and me has had our troubles. They ain't any use in denying
that, Mis' Primrose. It has often been give and take between us and
betwixt us. And the hull town knows he has lifted his hand agin me
more'n oncet. But I always stood up to Hennerey, and I fit him back,
free and fair and open. I give him as good as he sent on this here
earth, and I ain't the one to carry no annermosities beyond the grave. I
forgive Hank all the orneriness he done me, and they was a lot of it, as
is becoming unto a church member, which he never was.”
And all the women but Mis' Primrose, they says:
“Elmira Appleton, you _have_ got a Christian sperrit!” Which done her a
heap of good, and she cried considerable harder, leaking out tears as
fast as she poured tea in. Each one on em tries to find out something
good to say about Hank, only they wasn't much they could say. And Hank
in that there cistern a-listening to every word of it.
Mis' Rogers, she says:
“Afore he took to drinking like a fish, Hank Walters was as likely
looking a young feller as I ever see.”
Mis' White, she says:
“Well, Hank he never was a stingy man, nohow. Often and often White has
told me about seeing Hank, after he'd sold a piece of land, treating the
hull town down in Nolan's bar-room jest as come-easy, go-easy as if it
wasn't money he orter paid his honest debts with.”
They set there that-a-way telling of what good pints they could think of
fur ten minutes, and Hank a-hearing it and getting madder and madder
all the time. The gineral opinion was that Hank wasn't no good and
was better done fur, and no matter what they said them feelings kep'
sticking out through the words.
By and by Tom Alexander come busting into the house, and his wife, Mis'
Alexander, was with him.
“What's the matter with all you folks,” he says. “They ain't nobody
hanging in that there blacksmith shop. I broke the door down and went
in, and it was empty.”
Then they was a pretty howdy-do, and they all sings out:
“Where's the corpse?”
And some thinks mebby some one has cut it down and took it away, and all
gabbles to oncet. But for a minute no one thinks mebby little Danny has
been egged on to tell lies. Little Danny ain't saying a word. But Elmira
she grabs me and shakes me and she says:
“You little liar, you, what do you mean by that tale you told?”
I thinks that lamming is about due now. But whilst all eyes is turned on
me and Elmira, they comes a voice from that cistern. It is Hank's voice,
and he sings out:
“Tom Alexander, is that you?”
Some of the women scream, for some thinks it is Hank's ghost. But one
woman says what would a ghost be doing in a cistern?
Tom Alexander, he laughs and he says:
“What in blazes you want to jump in there fur, Hank?”
“You dern ijut!” says Hank, “you quit mocking me and get a ladder, and
when I get out'n here I'll learn you to ast what did I want to jump in
here fur!”
“You never seen the day you could do it,” says Tom Alexander, meaning
the day he could lick him. “And if you feel that way about it you can
stay there fur all of me. I guess a little water won't hurt you none.”
And he left the house.
“Elmira,” sings out Hank, mad and bossy, “you go get me a ladder!”
But Elmira, her temper riz up too, all of a sudden.
“Don't you dare order me around like I was the dirt under your feet,
Hennerey Walters,” she says.
At that Hank fairly roared, he was so mad. He says:
“Elmira, when I get out'n here I'll give you what you won't fergit in a
hurry. I hearn you a-forgiving me and a-weeping over me, and I won't be
forgive nor weeped over by no one! You go and get that ladder.”
But Elmira only answers:
“You wasn't sober when you fell into there, Hennerey Walters. And now
you can jest stay in there till you get a better temper on you!” And all
the women says: “That's right, Elmira; spunk up to him!”
[Illustration: 0039]
They was considerable splashing around in the water fur a couple of
minutes. And then, all of a sudden, a live fish come a-whirling out
of that hole, which he had ketched it with his hands. It was a big
bullhead, and its whiskers around its mouth was stiffened into spikes,
and it lands kerplump into Mis' Rogers's lap, a-wiggling, and it kind
o' horns her on the hands, and she is that surprised she faints. Mis'
Primrose, she gets up and pushes that fish back into the cistern with
her foot from the floor where it had fell, and she says right decided:
“Elmira Walters, that was Elmira Appleton, if you let Hank out'n that
cistern before he has signed the pledge and promised to jine the church
you're a bigger fool 'n I take you to be. A woman has got to make a
stand!” With that she marches out'n our house.
Then all the women sings out:
“Send fur Brother Cartwright! Send fur Brother Cartwright!”
And they sent me scooting acrost town to get him quick. Which he was the
preacher of the Baptist church and lived next to it. And I hadn't got no
lamming yet!