“And what was it you saw him do? How did he kill himself?” they all
asked together.
I didn't know. So I just bellered and boo-hooed some more. Things were
getting past anything I could see the way out of.
“He might have hung himself to one of the iron rings in the joists above
the forge,” says another woman.
“He climbed on to the forge and tied the rope to one of those rings, and
tied the other end around his neck, and then he stepped off the forge
and swung. Was that how he did it, Danny?”
I nodded. And I bellered louder than ever. I knew that Hank was down in
that cistern below the kitchen, a corpse and a mighty wet corpse, all
this time; but those women kind of got me to thinking he was hanging out
in the blacksmith shop by the forge, too.
Pretty soon one woman says, shivery: “I wouldn't want to have the job of
opening the door of the blacksmith shop the first one!”
And they all shivered, and looked at Elmira, and says to let some of
the men open that door. And Mis' Alexander says she'll run and get her
husband and make him do it. And all the time Elmira sits moaning in that
chair. One woman says Elmira ought to have a cup of tea, and she'll lay
off her bonnet and go to the kitchen and make it for her. But Elmira
says no, she can't a-bear to think of tea, with poor Hennery hanging out
there in the shop. But she was kind of enjoying all that fuss being made
over her, too. And all the other women said: “Poor thing!” But most of
them were mad because she said she didn't want any tea, for they wanted
some and didn't feel free to take it without she took some. They coaxed
her and made her see that it was her duty, and she said she'd have some
finally.
So they all went out to the kitchen, taking along some of the best room
chairs, Elmira coming, too, and me tagging along. The first thing they
noticed was those flatirons on top of the cistern lid. Mis' Primrose
says that looks funny. But Mis' Rogers says Danny must have been playing
with them. “Were you playing they were horses, Danny?”
I was feeling considerable like a liar by this time, but I nodded. I
couldn't see any use hurrying things up. I was bound to get a licking
pretty soon anyhow. I could always bet on that. So they picked up the
flatirons, and as they picked them up there came a splashing noise in
the cistern. I thought to myself that Hank's corpse would be out of
there in a minute, and then I'd catch it. One woman says: “Sakes alive!
What's that noise?”
Elmira says the cistern is full of fish and it must be some of the
biggest ones flopping around. If they hadn't been worked up and excited
and talking all together and thinking of Hank hanging out in the
blacksmith shop they might have suspicioned something, for that flopping
and splashing kept up steady. Maybe I should have mentioned sooner it
had been a dry summer and there was only three or four feet of water in
the cistern and Hank wasn't in scarcely up to his big hairy chest. 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 says
afterward. And he allows he'll keep quiet in there and make believe he
is drowned and give her a good scare and make her feel sorry for him.
But when the cistern door was opened he heard a lot of clacking tongues
like a hen convention, and he allowed she had told the neighbours, and
he'd scare them, too. So he laid low. And the woman that looked in, she
sees nothing, for it's as dark down there as the insides of the whale
that swallowed Jonah. But she left the door open and went on making tea,
and there wasn't scarcely a sound from that cistern, only little ripply
noises like it might have been fish. Pretty soon Mis' Rogers says:
“It has drawed, Elmira; won't you have a cup?” Elmira kicked some more,
but she took hers. And each woman took hers. And one woman, a-sipping of
hers, she says:
“The departed had his good points, Elmira.”
Which was the best thing had been said of Hank in that town for years
and years.
Old Mis' Primrose, she always prided herself on being honest, no
matter what come of it, and she ups and says: “I don't believe in any
hypocritics at a time like this, any more'n any other time. The departed
wasn't any good, and the whole town knows it, and Elmira ought to feel
like it's good riddance of bad rubbish, and such is my sentiments and
the sentiments of truth and righteousness.”
All the other women sings out: “W'y, Mis' Primrose, I never!” But down
in underneath more of 'em agreed than let on to. Elmira she wiped her
eyes and says:
“Hennery and me had our troubles, there ain't any use denying that, Mis'
Primrose. It has often been give and take between us and betwixt us. And
the whole town knows he has lifted his hand against me more'n once. But
I always stood up to Hennery and I fit him back, free and fair and open.
I give him as good as he sent on this earth and I ain't the one to carry
a mad beyond the grave. I forgive Hennery all the orneriness he did to
me, and there was a lot of it, as is becoming to a church member, which
he never was.”
All the women but Mis' Primrose says: “Elmira, you _have_ got a
Christian sperrit!” Which did her a heap of good, and she cried
considerable harder, leaking out tears as fast as she poured tea in.
And each one present tried to think up something nice to say about
Hank, only there wasn't much they could say. And Hank in that cistern,
listening to every word of it.
Mis' Rogers, she says: “Before he took to drinking like a fish, Hank
Walters was as likely a lookin' young feller as ever I see.”
Mis' White, she says: “Well, Hank he never was a stingy man, anyhow.
Often and often White has told me about seeing Hank treating the crowd
down in Nolan's saloon just as come-easy, go-easy as if it wasn't money
he'd ought to have paid his honest debts with.”
They sat there that way telling of what good points they could think of
for ten minutes, and Hank hearing it and getting madder and madder all
the time. By and by Tom Alexander came busting into the house.
“What's the matter with all you women?” he says. “There's nobody hanging
in that blacksmith shop. I broke the door down and went in, and it's
empty.”
There was a pretty howdy-do, then, and they all sing out:
“Where's the corpse?”
Some thinks maybe someone has cut it down and taken it away, and all
gabbled at once. But for a minute or two no one thought that maybe
little Danny had been egged on to tell lies. And little Danny ain't
saying a word. But Elmira grabbed me and shook me and said:
“You little liar, what do you mean by that story of yours?”
I thought that licking was about due then. But whilst all eyes were
turned on me and Elmira, there came a voice from the cistern. It was
Hank's voice, but it sounded queer and hollow, and it said:
“Tom Alexander, is that you?”
Some of the women screamed, for they thought it was Hank's ghost. But
Mis' Primrose says: “What would a ghost be doing in a cistern?”
Tom Alexander laughed and yelled down into the cistern: “What in blazes
you want to jump in there for, Hank?”
“You darned ijut!” said Hank, “you quit mocking me and get a ladder, and
when I get out'n here I'll learn you to ask me what I wanted to jump in
here for!”
“You never saw the day you could do it,” says Tom Alexander, meaning the
day Hank could lick him. “And if you feel that way about it you can stay
down there, for all of me. I guess a little water won't hurt you any,
for a change.” And he left the house.
“Elmira,” sings out Hank, mad and bossy, “you go get me a ladder!”
But Elmira, her temper rose up, too, all of a sudden.
“Don't you dare order me around like I was the dirt under your feet,
Hennery Walters,” she says.
Hank fairly roared, he was so mad. “When I get out'n here,” he shouted,
“I'll give you what you won't forget in a hurry! I heard you a-forgivin'
me and a-weepin' over me! And I won't be forgive nor weeped over by no
one! You go and get that ladder!”
But Elmira only answered: “You was drunk when you fell in there, Hank
Walters. And you can stay in there till you get a better temper on to
you.” And all the women laughed and said: “That's right, Elmira! Spunk
up to him!”
There was considerable splashing around in the water for a couple of
minutes. And then, of a sudden, a live fish came a-whirling out of
that hole in the floor, which he catched with his hands. It was a big
bullhead, and its whiskers around its mouth was stiffened into spikes,
and it landed kerplump on to Mis' Rogers' lap, a-wiggling, and it horned
her on the hands. She was that surprised she fainted. Mis' Primrose,
she got up and licked the fish back into the cistern and said, right
decided:
“Elmira Walters, if you let Hank out of that cistern before he's signed
the pledge and promised to jine the church, you're a bigger fool than I
take you for. A woman has got to make a stand!”
And all the women sing out: “Send for Brother Cartwright! Send for
Brother Cartwright!”
And they sent me scooting down the street to get him quick. He was the
preacher. I never stopped to tell but two or three people on the way to
his house, but they must have spread the news quick, for when I got back
with him it looked like the whole town was at our house.
It was along about dusk by this time, and it was a prayer meeting night
at the church. Mr. Cartwright told his wife to tell the folks that came
to the prayer meeting he'd be back before long, and to wait for him. But
she really told them where he'd gone, and what for.
Mr. Cartwright marched right into our kitchen. All the chairs in the
house was in there, and the women were talking and laughing, and they
had sent to the Alexanderses for their chairs, and to the Rogerses for
theirs. Every once in a while there would be an awful burst of language
come rolling up from the hole where that unregenerate old sinner was
cooped up.
I have travelled around considerable since those days, and I have mixed
up along with many kinds of people in many different places, and some
of them were cussers to admire. But I never heard such cussing before or
since as old Hank did that night. He busted his own records and he rose
higher than his own water marks for previous years. I wasn't anything
but a little kid then, not fit to admire the full beauty of it. They
were deep down cusses that came from the heart. Looking back at it after
these years, I can well believe what Brother Cartwright said himself
that night--that it wasn't _natural_ cussing, and that some higher
power, like a demon or an evil sperrit, must have entered into Hank's
human carcase and given that terrible eloquence to his remarks. It
busted out every few minutes, and the women would put their fingers into
their ears until a spell was over. And it was personal, too. Hank would
listen till he heard a woman's voice he knew, and then he would let
loose on her family, going back to her grandfathers and working downward
to her children's children.
Brother Cartwright steps up to the hole in the floor and says gentle
and soothing like an undertaker when he tells you where to sit at a home
funeral:
“Brother Walters! Oh, Brother Walters!”
“Brother!” yelled Hank, “don't ye brother me, you snifflin',
psalm-singin', yaller-faced, pigeon-toed hyp-percrit, you! Get me a
ladder, gol dern ye, and I'll mount out o'here and learn ye to brother
me, I will!” Only that wasn't anything to what Hank really said; no more
like than a little yellow fluffy canary is like a turkey buzzard.
“Brother Walters,” said the preacher, calm but firm, “we have all
decided that you aren't going to get out of that cistern until you sign
the pledge.”
Then Hank told him what he thought of him and pledges and church doings,
and it wasn't pretty. He said if he was as deep in the eternal fire of
hell as he was in rain water, and every fish that nibbled at his toes
was a devil with a red-hot pitchfork sicked on by a preacher, they could
jab at him until the whole hereafter turned into icicles before he'd
sign anything that a man like Mr. Cartwright gave him to sign. Hank was
stubborner than any mule he ever nailed shoes on to, and proud of being
that stubborn. That town was a most awful religious town, and Hank knew
he was called the most unreligious man in it, and he was proud of that,
too; and if any one called him a heathen it just plumb tickled him all
over.
“Brother Walters,” says the preacher, “we are going to pray for you.”
And they did it. They brought all the chairs close up around the cistern
door, in a ring, and they all knelt down there with their heads on the
chairs and prayed for Hank's salvation. They did it up in style, too,
one at a time, and the others singing out, “Amen!” every now and then,
and they shed tears down on to Hank.
The front yard was crowded with men, all laughing and talking and
chawing and spitting tobacco, and betting how long Hank would hold out.
Si Emery, that was the city marshal, and always wore a big nickel-plated
star, was out there with them. Si was in a sweat, because Bill Nolan,
who ran the saloon, and some more of Hank's friends were out by the
front fence trying to get Si to arrest the preacher. For they said that
Hank was being gradually murdered in that water and would die if he was
held there too long, and it would be a crime. Only they didn't come into
the house amongst us religious folks to say it. But Si, he says he don't
dare to arrest anybody, because Hank's house is just outside the village
corporation line; he's considerable worried about what his duty is, not
liking to displease Bill Nolan.
Pretty soon the gang that Mrs. Cartwright had rounded up at the prayer
meeting came stringing along in. They had brought their hymn books with
them, and they sung. The whole town was there then, and they all sung.
They sung revival hymns over Hank. And Hank, he would just cuss and
cuss. Every time he busted out into another cussing spell they would
start another hymn. Finally the men out in the front yard began to warm
up and sing, too, all but Nolan's crowd, and they gave Hank up for lost
and went back to the barroom.
The first thing they knew they had a regular old-fashioned revival
meeting going there, and that preacher was preaching a regular revival
sermon. I've been to more than one camp meeting, but for just naturally
taking hold of the whole human race by the slack of the pants and
dangling of it over hell fire, I never heard that sermon equalled. Two
or three old backsliders in the crowd came right up and repented all
over again. The whole kit-and-biling of them got the power, good and
hard, and sung and shouted till the joints of the house cracked and it
shook and swayed on its foundations. But Hank, he only cussed. He was
obstinate, Hank was, and his pride and dander had risen up.
“Darn your ornery religious hides,” he says, “you're takin' a low-down
advantage of me, you are! Let me out on to dry land, and I'll show you
who'll stick it out the longest, I will!”
Most of the folks there hadn't had any suppers, so after all the sinners
but Hank had either got converted or sneaked away, some of the women
said why not make a kind of a love feast of it, and bring some victuals,
like they do at church sociables. Because it seemed that Satan was going
to wrestle there all night, like he did with the angel Jacob, and they
ought to be prepared. So they did it. They went and they came back with
things to eat and they made hot coffee and they feasted that preacher
and themselves and Elmira and me, right in Hank's hearing.
And Hank was getting pretty hungry himself. And he was cold in that
water. And the fish were nibbling at him. And he was getting cussed out
and weak and soaked full of despair. There wasn't any way for him to sit
down and rest. He was scared of getting cramps in his legs and sinking
down with his head under water and being drowned.
He said afterward he would have done the last with pleasure if there
had been any way of starting a lawsuit for murder against that gang. So
along between ten and eleven o'clock that night he sings out:
“I give in, gosh dern ye, I give in! Let me out and I'll sign your pesky
pledge!”
Brother Cartwright was for getting a ladder and letting him climb out
right away. But Elmira said: “You don't know him like I do! If he gets
out before he's signed the pledge, he'll never do it.”
So Brother Cartwright wrote out a pledge on the inside leaf of the
Bible, and tied it on to a string, and a pencil on to another string,
and let them down, and held a lantern down, too, and Hank made his
mark, for he couldn't write. But just as Hank was making his mark that
preacher spoke some words over Hank, and then he said:
“Now, Henry Walters, I have baptized you, and you are a member of the
church.”
You might have thought that Hank would have broken out into profanity
again at that, for he hadn't agreed to anything but signing the pledge.
But he didn't cuss. When they got the ladder and he climbed up into
the kitchen, shivering and dripping, he said serious and solemn to Mr.
Cartwright:
“Did I hear you baptizing me in that water?”
Mr. Cartwright said he had.
“That was a low-down trick,” said Hank. “You knowed I always made my
brags that I'd never jined a church and never would. You knowed I was
proud of that. You knowed it was my glory to tell it, and that I set
a heap of store by it, in every way. And now you've gone and took that
away from me! You've gone and jined me to the church! You never fought
it out fair and square, man strivin' to outlast man, like we done with
the pledge, but you sneaked it on to me when I wasn't lookin'!”
And Hank always thought he had been baptized binding and regular. And
he sorrowed and grieved over it, and got grouchier and meaner and
drunkener. No pledge nor no Prohibition could hold Hank. He was a worse
man in every way after that night in the cistern, and took to licking me
harder and harder.