Part 3
“Of course I hadn’t any money so I went to jail, but in a day or two she went to the judge and cried and told him I was all right when I wasn’t drunk and she got me out. I never thought that judge done right to lecture me the way he did. I don’t think that strikin’ your wife is as bad as strikin’ your child, and still ‘most everybody does that. Most women can defend themselves but a little child can’t do anything. Still, of course, I don’t defend strikin’ your wife, only one word kind of brings on another and it sounds different in the newspaper from what it really is.
“Well, after I got home from the jail we talked it over together and made up our minds we’d better part. Things had gone so bad with us that we thought it wa’n’t worth while to try any more and mebbe we’d both be better off alone. She was real sensible about it and was goin’ to keep the boy. I promised to give ‘em half my wages and was to see him whenever I wanted to.
“When we got our minds made up we went to see about a lawyer. She’d been goin’ over to the Settlement a good deal for advice and they’d been good to us but they didn’t like me; they blamed me for ever’thing that happened, and of course them settlement ladies wa’n’t none of ‘em married and they couldn’t understand how a feller would drink or fight with his wife. They didn’t know what allowance a woman has to make for a man, same as a man does for a woman—only a different kind. When she told ‘em what we were goin’ to do they all said, ‘No, you mustn’t do that. You must make the best of it and stay together’; they said that even if I promised to give her half my money I never would do it, but would go off and she’d never see me again. If they knew anything about what I thought of the boy they wouldn’t have said it. Then they said it would be a disgrace and that it would disgrace the child. I wish now we’d done it anyway. It would have been better for the child than it is now. Then she went to see the priest. We were both born Catholics, although we hadn’t paid much attention to it. That was the reason we went to St. Joe to get married. The priest told her that she mustn’t get a divorce, that divorces wa’n’t allowed except on scriptural grounds. Of course we couldn’t get it on them grounds. There never was nothin’ wrong with her— I’ll always say that—and as for me I don’t think she ever suspected anything of that kind. Even if I had wanted to I never had any money, and besides I’ve had to work too hard all my life for anything like that. Then when I went to the lawyer he said it would cost fifty dollars, but I hadn’t any fifty dollars. So we made up our minds to try it again. I don’t see, though, why they charge fifty dollars. If a divorce is right a man ought not to have it just because he’s got fifty dollars when a poor man can’t get it at all.
“It was a little better for a while. We both had a scare and then when we talked of quittin’ I s’pose we thought more of each other. Anyhow we’d lived together so long that we’d kind of got in the habit of it. But still it didn’t last long; I don’t believe ‘twas right for us to stay together after all that had happened and the way we felt and had lived up to that time. If we’d only separated then—but we didn’t, and it’s no use talkin’ about it now.
“It was just about this time that Jimmy Carroll was killed and she didn’t want me to work in the yards after that. She was ‘most as ‘fraid as I was so we made up our minds that I’d quit. It was then that I went to peddlin’; but wait a minute before I tell that, let’s go and speak to the guard.”
The two men got up and went to the iron door and looked out through the bars at the shining electric lights in the corridors. The guard sat near the door talking with the prisoner in the next cell. He looked up and put two cigars through the grates.
“Is there anything I can do for you, Jackson?”
“No, I guess not. Nothin’ more has come from him, has there?”
“No, but it’s early yet.”
“Well, I guess it’s no use.”
The men looked out a moment at the iron corridor and then lighted their cigars and sat down. Hank could hardly speak. Somehow this simple contact with his old friend had driven away all the feeling of the crime that he had brought with him to the jail. He no longer thought of him as Jackson, the wife-murderer, but as Jim, the boy he once knew and the man that had worked in the switch-yards and grown up by his side.
Out in the street they heard a steady stream of carriages and the merry laugh of men and women passing by. Hank listened to the voices and asked who they were.
“Oh, the people drivin’ past in their carriages to the theater. You know all the northside swells drive down Dearborn Avenue past the jail. I wonder if they ever think of us in here, or if they know what is goin’ to be done tomorrow. I s’pose if they do they think it’s all right. What a queer world it is. Do you s’pose one of them was ever in here? Well, I don’t believe I’d be either if only I’d had their chance.”
The two men sat stripped almost to the skin; the putrid prison air soaked into Hank at every pore. The sweat ran from his face and he felt as if the great jail were a big oven filled with the damned and kept boiling hot by some infernal imps. Here and there along the big corridors they heard the echo of a half demoniac laugh, a few couplets of a ribald song, and the echoing sound of the heavy boots of a guard walking up and down the iron floor. Silently they smoked their cigars almost to the end and then Jim again took up his story.
III
When I made up my mind to quit the railroad I looked ‘round for somethin’ else to do. It was kind of hard times just then and a good many were out of work and I couldn’t find anything that suited me. Of course I never had much schoolin’ and ‘twa’n’t every kind of job I could hold anyhow. I went back out to the stock yards, but they was layin’ off men and there wa’n’t anything there. One mornin’ I went over to see Sol Goldstein. He was a nice old man that we used to buy potatoes of. He told me that he was gettin’ so old and kind of sick that he thought he’d have to give up peddlin’ and let his boys take care of him the rest of his time. He said he didn’t think it would be very long anyhow, and they could do that much for him so long as he’d done so much for them. He said as I hadn’t any job why didn’t I buy his horse and express wagon and go to peddlin’. I could take his license, that hadn’t run out yet, and go right along over his route. I told him I hadn’t any money to buy his horse and wagon with, but he told me that didn’t make any difference, I could pay for ‘em when I earnt the money. So I made a bargain; got the horse and wagon and harness and two old blankets for fifty dollars. Of course they wa’n’t worth much: the horse had a ringbone and the heaves and kind of limped in one of its hind legs. Goldstein said that was on account of a spavin, but he told me there was another one comin’ on the other hind leg and as quick as that got a little bigger he’d stop limpin’ because he couldn’t favor both hind legs to once. Goldstein said the ringbone had been killed and the heaves wouldn’t bother him much. All I had to do was to wet the hay before I fed him. So I bought the rig. I didn’t know nothin’ about horses but I knew what Goldstein said was all right for we’d been friends a long time.
“I went down to Water Street and bought a load of potatoes and went to work. I haven’t time to tell you all about my peddlin’: anyhow it ain’t got much to do with the case, not much more’n any of the rest. My lawyer always said any time I told him anything, ‘Well, what’s that got to do with your killin’ her?’ and the judge said about the same thing whenever we asked any questions. He couldn’t see that anything I ever done had anything to do with it except the bad things. He let ‘em prove all of them and they looked a good deal worse when they was told in court and in the newspapers than they seemed when I done ‘em. I guess there ain’t nobody who’d like to hear every bad thing they ever done told right out in public and printed in the newspapers. I kind of think ‘twould ruin anyone’s character to do that, ‘specially if you wa’n’t allowed to show the goods things you’d done.
“I hadn’t been peddlin’ very long until an inspector asked me for my license and I showed it to him, and he said that it wa’n’t any good, that I couldn’t use Goldstein’s license; that it was just for him, and that I must stop peddlin’ until I went down to the City Hall and paid twenty-five dollars for another one. I didn’t know where to get the twenty-five dollars; anyhow I don’t see why anyone should have to pay a license for peddlin’; nobody but poor people peddles and it’s hard enough to get along without payin’ a license. Anybody don’t have to pay a license for sellin’ things in a store and I don’t think it’s fair. But I went and seen the alderman and told him about it, and he said he could get it fixed and to go right on just as if nothin’ had happened and if anyone bothered me again to send ‘em to him. So I went right ahead. I don’t know what he done but anyhow I wa’n’t bothered any more until Goldstein’s license had run out.
“Peddlin’ is kind of hard work. You’ve got to get up before daylight and go down and get your potatoes and veg’t’bles and things, then you have to drive all over and ask everyone to buy, and most people won’t take anything from you ‘cause you’re a peddler and they’re ‘fraid you’ll cheat ‘em. Of course we do cheat a little sometimes. We get a load of potatoes cheap that’s been froze, and then again we get a lot of figs that’s full of worms and roll ‘em in flour and then sell ‘em out, but all figs is full of worms, and I guess ‘most everything else is, even water, but it’s all right if you don’t know or think anything about it. And of course, half of the year it’s awful hot drivin’ ‘round the streets and the other half it’s awful cold, and sometimes it rains and snows and you get all wet and cold, and it ain’t very healthy either. Most peddlers have the consumption, but then there’s lots of poor people has consumption. It’s funny, too, about where you can sell stuff; you’d think you ought to go where people has got money but this ain’t no use; they never will buy nothin’ of peddlers and they won’t even let you drive on their high-toned streets, even after you’ve paid a license. If you want to sell anything you’ve got to go among the poor people. Of course they can’t buy very much, but then they pay more for what they get. It’s queer, ain’t it, the way things are fixed; them as works hardest has to pay the most for what they eat, and gets the poorest stuff at that. Did you ever go and look at one of them meat markets on the south side? Do you s’pose that they’d take any of the meat that’s in ours? They might buy it for their dogs and cats but they wouldn’t eat it themselves.
“Once in a while I used to take the kid along with me when I was sellin’ things, and he always liked to go, but if it commenced to rain or turned cold I had to go back with him, and then he always got tired before night. So I didn’t take him very often. I kind of laid out to take him when she done the washin’, so he’d be out of her way, and he used to kind of like to drive, and I amused him a good deal that way.
“I think mebbe I made about as much peddlin’ as I did on the railroad, but not any more, after I paid for my horse feed and the rent of the barn and gettin’ the wagon and harness fixed once in a while. Anyhow I didn’t get out of debt any faster, and the furniture men kept threatenin’ me until I went to one of them chattel-mortgage fellers and borrowed the money and mortgaged all I had and paid five dollars for makin’ out the papers and five percent a month for the money. This didn’t seem like so very much but it counts up pretty fast when you come to pay it every month. Then one day my horse up and died. I didn’t know what was the matter with him. He seemed all right at night and in the mornin’ he was dead. I didn’t know what to do at first so I went and seen the alderman. He gave me a letter to some men who run a renderin’-plant and I went out there and bought an old horse for five dollars. It was one they was goin’ to kill, and it seemed too bad to make him work any more; still I guess he’d rather work than be killed; that’s the way with people and I guess horses is about like people. I always thought that horses had about the worst time there is; they can’t never do anything they want to, they have to get up just when you tell ‘em to and be tied in a stall and eat just what you give ‘em and depend on you to bring ‘em water. Even when they’re goin’ along the road they can’t turn out for a mud hole but have to go just where you want ‘em to and never have a chance to do anything but work.
“This horse wa’n’t much good but I managed to use him in my business. The boys would holler at me and ask me if I was goin’ to the bone-yard or the renderin’-plant, and once or twice one of the humane-officers stopped me and came pretty near takin’ it away and killin’ it, but nobody ever saw me abusin’ it, and I fed it all I could afford. I remember one night in the winter, about the coldest night we had, I heard it stampin’ and I couldn’t go to sleep. I knew it was stampin’ because it was so cold. We didn’t have any too much cover ourselves, but it worried me so much I got up and went out to the barn and strapped an old blanket on the horse and then came back and went to bed. I guess this was the other horse though, the one that died, for I didn’t have this last one over a winter. But I don’t know as it makes any difference which horse it was.
“Well, I can’t tell you all about my peddlin’, it ain’t worth while, and I must go on and tell you about how it happened. It was on the 26th day of November. You remember the day. There’s been a lot said about it in the newspapers. It was just three days before Thanksgivin’. I remember I was thinkin’ of Thanksgivin’, for we’d been livin’ pretty poorly, not very much but potatoes, for it was a rather hard fall on all us poor folks. I always hated to take the money for the things I sold but I couldn’t help it. You know I couldn’t give things away as if I was Rockefeller or Vanderbilt. Well, I knew we was goin’ to get a turkey from the alderman Thanksgivin’, just two days later, and I should have thought that would have cheered me up, but it didn’t. That mornin’ it was pretty cold when I got up. It was the first snow of the season, one of them blindin’, freezin’ days that we get in November, and then, of course, I wa’n’t used to the cold weather and wa’n’t dressed for it either. I didn’t have much breakfast for we didn’t have much stuff in the house. She got up and fried some potatoes and a little pork and that was about all, and then I hitched up the old horse and drove away. No one else was on the street. There wa’n’t generally, when I started after my loads in the mornin’. The old horse didn’t like to go either; he kind of pulled back on the hitch strap when I led him out of the barn, the way you sometimes see horses do when they hate to go anywhere or leave the barn. I s’pose horses is just like us about bein’ lazy and sick, and havin’ their mean days, only they can’t do anything about it. Well, I went down and got my load. In the first place I had some trouble with the Dago where I got the potatoes; they were pretty good ones but had been nipped a little by the frost in the car, and he couldn’t have sold ‘em to the stores, at least to any of the stores on the north side or the south side. They was just such potatoes as had to go to us poor folks and most likely to peddlers, and he wanted to charge me just about as much as if they was all right. I told him that I’d some trouble in sellin’ ‘em and I ought to make somethin’ off’n ‘em. He said I’d get just as much as I could for any kind, and I told him that I might possibly, but if I was goin’ to pay full price I wanted my customers to have just as good potatoes as anyone got, and besides I might lose some of my customers by sellin’ them that kind of potatoes. Then he dunned me for what I owed him and threatened not to trust me any more and by the time I left with my load I was worried and out of sorts, and made a poor start for the day.
“Well, I drove over along Bunker Street, among the sheeneys, and commenced calling ‘po-ta-toes.’ Nobody much seemed to buy. A few people came out and picked ‘em all over and tried to jew me down, and mebbe bought half a peck. I don’t know how they thought I could make any money that way. Still the people was all poor; most of ‘em worked in the sweat-shops and hadn’t any money to waste on luxuries. I worked down Maxwell Street and things didn’t get much better. It seemed as if everybody was out there sellin’ potatoes, and it was awful cold, and I hadn’t any coat on, and the horse was shiverin’ every time we stopped. Of coarse I always put the blanket on him if we stayed long, but the blanket was pretty old and patched. Then I drove down south, where the people lives that work in the stock yards. It went some better down there but not very much; anyhow I didn’t get any warmer. Along toward noon I hitched the horse under a shed and gave him a few oats and I went into the saloon and bought a glass of whiskey and took four or five of them long red-hots that they keep on the counter. They tasted pretty good and I never stopped to think what they was made of; whether they was beef, or pork, or horse, or what, though you know everybody always says they work in all the old horses that don’t go to the renderin’-plant and some that does, but they was good enough for me and was hot, and when I went away I felt better and I guess the old horse did, too. Well, I drove on down around the streets and did the best I could. I remember one place where an old lady came out and said she hadn’t had anything to eat since yesterday and there wa’n’t nothin’ in the house, and I up and gave her half a peck, though I couldn’t hardly afford to do it. You know that half a peck was more to me than it is to Rockefeller when he gives a million to the school, but my lawyer wouldn’t let me prove it when I tried; he said the judge would only laugh if he ever mentioned it. The newspapers never printed a word about it either, although I kind of thought it might lighten up the people’s feelin’ some and help me a bit; but they did prove all about the time I struck her and some other things I wa’n’t on trial for, although my lawyer objected all he could and said I wa’n’t on trial for ‘em, which I wa’n’t; but the judge said no, of course I wa’n’t, but they’d show malice, so they went in and was printed in the newspapers, and the jury looked awful at me, but I bet every one of ‘em had done most as bad. When I gave the old woman the half peck of potatoes she called on all the saints to bless me to the end of my days. I felt kind of better as I went away, and thought mebbe they’d do somethin’ for me, and this wa’n’t more than seven or eight hours before it happened.
“Of course, most folks would think that anyone like me wouldn’t have given away a half a peck of potatoes, but they don’t really understand them things; you’ve got to do a thing before you can know all about it. If I was makin’ the laws I wouldn’t let anyone be on a jury and try a feller for murder unless he’d killed someone. Most fellers don’t know anything about how anyone kills a person and why they do it, and they ain’t fit to judge. Now, of course, most everybody would think that anyone who had killed anyone, unless it was in war or somethin’ like that, was bad through and through; they wouldn’t think that they could ever do anything good; but here I give away that half peck of potatoes just because I knew the lady was poor and needed ‘em—and I see things every day here in jail that shows it ain’t so. Just a little while ago one of the prisoners was took down with small-pox and everyone was scared, and another prisoner who was in here for burglary went to the ward and nursed him and took care of him, and took the disease and died. And most all of the fellers will do anything for each other. The other day there were five fellers on trial for robbin’ a safe, and the State’s Attorney done all he could to get one of ‘em to tell on another feller who hadn’t been caught or indicted, and he promised every one of ‘em that he wouldn’t do a thing with ‘em if they’d tell, and he couldn’t get a word out of any of ‘em, and they went to the penitentiary, just because they wouldn’t tell; and the State Attorney and the judge all of ‘em seemed to think that if they could get one feller to tell on someone else that he’d be the best one of the lot and ought to be let out. If you’d just stay here a few days and see some of the wives and fathers and mothers come into the jail and see how they’d cry and go on over some of these people, and tell how good they was to them, it would open your eyes. They ain’t one of them people, unless it’s me, that don’t have someone that loves ‘em, and says they’ve been awful good to ‘em and feel sorry for ‘em and excuses ‘em, and thinks they’re just like everybody else. Now there was them car-barn murderers that killed so many people and robbed so much. Everyone wanted to tear ‘em to pieces and no one had a single good word for ‘em, but you’d ought to seen Van Dine’s mother and how she hung on to her boy and cried about him and loved him and told how many good thing’s he done, just like anyone else; and then that Niedemeyer, who tried to kill himself so he couldn’t get hung, you know he went to a detective and confessed a lot of crimes, so that the detective could get the money after he was hung, and the detective agreed to divide the money with his mother. If you was here a while you’d find these fellers doin’ just as many things to help each other as the people on the outside. It’s funny how human nature is, how anybody can be so good and so bad too. Now I s’pose most people outside can’t see how a murderer or a burglar can do anything good any more than the poor people down our way can see how Rockefeller can charge all of us so much for his oil and then give a million dollars to a church or a school.