“It’s a good deal like my begging supper and breakfast of you.” He
hadn’t meant it that way. “No,” he said, “you’re takin’ the only way
to see the country. Why, man, I used to travel like you, before I was
married, except I didn’t take no book nor poetry nor nothin’, and
wasn’t afeered of box-cars the way you are.... I been in every state in
the Union but Maine. I don’t know how I kept out of there.... I’ve been
nine years in this house. I don’t know but what I see as much as when I
was on the go....
“That fellow Gallic over there that was shootin’ that pistol at the
sky killed a man named Bothweinis last year and got off free. It was
Gallic’s wedding and Bothweinis brought fifty dollars and said he was
goin’ to break all the plates in the house. He used up twelve dollars.
He broke seven plates and kissed the bride seven times. Then the bride
got drunk. She was only fifteen years old. She hunted up Bothweinis and
kissed him and cried, and Gallic chased him down towards Shickshinny
and tripped him up, and shot him in the mouth and in the eye.... The
bride didn’t know no better.... He was an awful sight when they brought
him in. The bride was only a kid. These Bohunk women never learn no
sense anyway. They’re not smart like Cawcasian women, and they fade in
the face quick.”
He reflected: “My wife’s a wonderful woman. I have been with her nine
years, and she learns me something every day, and she still looks good
in her Sunday clothes.”
He became lighter in tone again. “What these Bohunks need is a priest
and a church to make them behave. They mind a priest some, if he is a
good priest. They’re all Catholics, or no church....”
“Seems though sometimes a man’s got to shoot. Some of them devils over
there used to throw rocks at my door, but one Sunday I filled ’em
full of buckshot and they quit. The justice upheld me. I didn’t have
to pay no fine. They’ve been pretty good neighbors since, pretty good
neighbors.”
There was a sound as though the flagstones of eternity had been ripped
up. He saw I didn’t like it and said consolingly, “They’ll stop and
go to supper pretty soon. They eat too much to do anything but set,
afterwards. They don’t have nothin’ to eat in the old country but raw
turnips. Here they stuff themselves like toads. I don’t see how they
save money the way they do. The mine owners squeeze the very life out
of ’em and they wallow in beer. I’ve always made big money, but somehow
never kept it. Me and my wife are spenders. But I ain’t afraid, for I
am the only man on the street that can dig the hardest coal. I could
dig my way out of hell with my pick, and by G---- once I did it, too.”
The wife came to the door newly decked in an elaborate lace waist,
torn, alas, at the shoulder. Husband was right. She looked good. She
announced radiantly: “Come to supper.”
Then she rushed down between the houses and shouted: “Jimmy and Frank,
come here! What you doin’? Get down off that roof. What you doin’,
associatin’ with them Polack children? What you doin’ with them
switches?” Then she swore heartily, as unto the Lord, and continued,
“They’re helpin’ them Polack kids switch that poor little drunk
American child. Come down off that coal shed!”
They slunk into sight. She snatched their switches from them.
“Who started it?”
Jimmy admitted he started it. He looked capable of starting most
anything, good or bad. He had eyes like black diamonds, a stocky frame,
and the tiny beginnings of his mother’s voice.
“I don’t know whether to lick you or not,” she said judicially.
Finally: “Go up to bed without supper.”
Jimmy went.
She addressed us in perfect good humor, as a musical volcano might:
“Come and eat.”