He tilted back in his chair, and we laughed together at the picture he
had drawn of two wet, mad, and muddy boys. “Rolled in that mud, till we
were smeared with it,” he said. And: “Didn’t speak to each other till it
come time to eat lunch and we remembered we’d left it at the big hole.”
He had laughed till there were tears in his eyes. Now the mirth passed;
and by and by he sighed aloud, said wistfully:
“Ah, well. Poor old Jim. He drank himself to death. Died of the D T’s.”
The words were like a shock of cold water; I shivered as though the
winds of tragedy had blown upon me. In my thoughts I had been seeing
this Jim Snow; freckled, and covered with mud, and fighting so long as
he had breath to fight; and protesting in hurt at the end: “I was only
catching the fish for you.” A likeable boy, Jim Snow.... And in an
instant the picture was shattered; there stood in its place the
apparition of a dreadful, sodden, wrecked and ruined man.... The thing
was horribly abrupt.
“For God’s sake, Chet,” I protested.
“Yes,” he said soberly. “Yes.”
I tried by a callous tone to insulate myself against the impinging
tragedy. “Went to the devil?” I hazarded.
“I guess his father drove him to it, ruined him,” Chet explained. “There
wasn’t any harm in Jim. Just a mischievous boy, full of high spirits and
fun, like a colt. His father was a churchly man; a religious man. A
sober man. And he used to beat Jim, for his pranks, awfully.” He shook
his head, seemed faintly to shudder at the recollection. “I’ve seen him
take Jim out into the barn; and I’ve heard Jim yell. Yell and screech.
‘Oh, father! Father!’”
My tongue seemed sticking in my mouth. I made a brave show of refilling
my pipe; the cheery flame of the match seemed to lighten the dark
shadows that oppressed us both. Chet laughed again, mindful of a new
incident. One of these practical jokes boys have played since there were
boys to play them. But as Chet told it, tragedy overhung the tale.
“His father was a cobbler,” he explained. “A good one, too. He used to
make a good living out of his shop. Had a big family, and they did well.
Time Jim begun to be able to work, he used to work in the shop,
helping.”
He warmed to his tale. “There was a bench, by the counter,” he
continued. “Folks used to sit down there when they had to wait. Jim was
always up to something; and one day when his father was at home, Jim
took a gimlet and bored a little hole in that bench. Then he fixed a
brad under that hole, with a spring, and a string on it. And he took
this string under the counter and back to the seat where he used to be
when he was working. He fixed it with a piece of wood, like a trigger,
there.”
Chet, spreading his arms wide, illustrated the motion which a cobbler
makes in drawing his thread through the leather. “When his arm went out
like that,” he said, “he could just reach this piece of wood. And when
someone was sitting on the bench, some times he’d just give it a rap;
and the brad would come up through and stick into them, and they’d get
up in a hurry, I want to tell you.”
“He couldn’t do that when his father was around,” I suggested.
“He never did but once,” Chet agreed. “One day a boy came in that Jim
didn’t like. I was there that day; and I knew about this thing Jim had
fixed up; and when the other boy sat down on the bench, I kind of tipped
my head to Jim. I was sorry about that, after; because Jim was never one
to be dared. His father was there; but Jim winked back at me, and then
he gave that wooden trigger a good hard poke, and he must have rammed
that brad into the boy pretty hard, because he come right up into the
air, holding on to himself and yowling.”
He slapped his knee at the memory. “Well, sir, he danced around there
like a crazy man. I remember his name was Elnathan Hodge. He danced
around and he yelled; and Jim’s father stood there looking at him and
frowning awfully, so that I was scared, and I edged over toward the
door. Jim’s father just stood, waiting for the boy to quiet down. He was
a stern, solemn man; and his voice used to be enough to make us boys
tremble.
“By and by he said, slow and steady: ‘What’s the matter with you,
Elnathan?’
“And Elnathan says: ‘Jim stuck a needle into me.’
“The old man looked from him to Jim, and Jim was mighty busy, sewing on
a sole.
“‘How did he stick a needle into you, Elnathan?’ says the old man. And
Elnathan pointed to the bench. He was a big boy, bigger than us; but he
was always kind of a sissy. That’s why we never liked him.
“‘Right up through that hole, it come,’ he told Jim’s father.”
“A nice boy, Elnathan!” I commented.
“Jim and me licked him for it afterwards,” Chet explained. “But that
didn’t do a bit of good then. The old man went and looked under the
bench and saw where the string went through under the counter; and then
he followed it out through the shop to the back. He took his time about
it, never looking toward Jim, pretending not to know he was there, like
a cat with a hurt bird. Traced the string all back till he come to where
Jim was sitting. And he didn’t say a word then, but just reached down
and got Jim by the collar and started for the back room, dragging Jim
after him; and Jim’s heels were clattering on the floor. After he’d shut
the door, we heard the first whacks of the strap he kept there, and
heard Jim yell; and then me and Elnathan put out the front door and ran
away. And we could hear Jim yelling, begging....”