Part 4

“There was feller came over here to the jail to talk to our Moral Improvement Club and he had some queer ideas. Most of the prisoners rather liked what he said and still they thought he was too radical. I never heard any such talk before and I don’t quite see how they let him do it, but I’ve thought about what he said a good deal since then and think mebbe there’s somethin’ in it. He was a good deal different from the other ones that come. Most of ‘em tell us about our souls and how we can all make ‘em white if we only will. They all tell us that we are a bad lot now; but he kind of claimed that the people inside the jail was just like the people outside, only not so lucky; that we done things because we couldn’t help it and had to do ‘em, and that it’s worse for the people on the outside to punish the people on the inside than to do the things we done. Now, I hain’t had anything to do but think about it and what I done, and it don’t seem as if I could help it. I never intended to kill anybody but somehow everything just led up to it, and I didn’t know I was gettin’ into it until it was done, and now here I am. Of course, when I was out I used to rail about these criminals and think they was awful bad just the same as everyone else did, but now I see how they got into it too, and how mebbe they ain’t so bad; even them car-barn murderers,—if they’d been taken somewhere out west on a ranch where they could have had lots of air and exercise and not put in school which wa’n’t the place for boys like them, I believe they’d ‘ve come out all right and been like most other boys and sobered down after they got older. I really think if they’d been taken away they’d ‘ve tried to be good and if they’d been given plenty of exercise, like herdin’ cattle and things like that, mebbe it would have been just as good as to kill ‘em. Anyhow there was them Younger boys and Frank James who killed so many people and they are out now and all right. Nobody’s afraid of ‘em and they won’t likely never do anything of that kind any more.

“But I’m gettin’ clear off’n my subject again, just as I always am. I was tellin’ you about that day. Well, after I gave the lady the half peck of potatoes I went on peddlin’, but didn’t seem to sell much. I ought to ‘ve got through by two or three o’clock. It was a long enough day for me, and the horse, too, but I had so many potatoes left that I couldn’t stop, so I kept on. I got down around Thirty-fifth Street and was pretty cold and went into a saloon where I saw one of the boys. One of ‘em was runnin’ for the legislature and he asked us all to take a drink, and of course we did; then he asked us to take another and we done that; and in a few minutes that feller that was runnin’ for the senate, he come in and he asked us all to take a drink and of course we done that, and he said a few words about the election and how he hoped we all would vote for him, and we told him we would, and that as near as we could find out all the boys was with him, that the other feller was a kind of stiff anyhow. He went out, and then, just as I was leavin’, the feller that was runnin’ against him, he come in and he set ‘em up a couple of times and said he hoped we was all with him, and of course we told him we was, and then he went away. Well, of course, I took whiskey every time because I was cold and that kind of warmed me up. Then I went out to the wagon again and drove on down Thirty-fifth Street to sell the rest of the potatoes. Finally the horse began to go lame, and seemed pretty tired, and I turned back toward the house, peddlin’ on the way. I guess I didn’t sell anything after I left Thirty-fifth Street, though I kept callin’ out until my voice got kind of husky and all stopped up. I guess it was the cold air that I wa’n’t used to yet. The snow was comin’ down pretty fast as I drove along and the wind was blowin’ quite a bit in my face and it was a bad night. It commenced gettin’ dark pretty soon after. You know the days are short along the last of November.

“Then I kep’ thinkin’ about the cold weather. I always hated winter anyhow, and I hadn’t expected ‘twould turn cold quite so quick and of course I wa’n’t ready for it. I couldn’t seem to think of anything but the winter. I s’pose that was the reason I done the things I did afterward. I got to thinkin’ about the house and how many cracks there was in it and how much coal it took to heat it. Then I began to think about the price of coal and how it’s cheaper in the summer than in the winter, and how the price keeps goin’ up so much a month all the time until winter, so, of course, all the rich people can get their coal in the summer when it was cheap and leave the poor people to get it in the winter when it got high. Then I thought how everything seemed to be against the poor and how you couldn’t get on no matter what you done.

“I hadn’t got my potatoes more’n two-thirds sold out and I didn’t have any good place to keep ‘em. I couldn’t afford to take chances of ‘em gettin’ frost-bitten any more. You know how easy potatoes freeze. You have to watch out while you’re peddlin’ ‘em in the fall and winter and some days you don’t dare take ‘em out at all. Before I got home I thought I’d have another drink so I stopped at a saloon where they always had the pollin’ place and where a good many politicians usually hung out; and I found some of the boys there, and the fellow that was runnin’ for assessor was in the saloon. He asked us all to drink a couple o’ times, and then he told us how easy he was in assessin’ the poor people’s property, and asked us to vote for him. We all said we would, and then he told us how he was assessor last year and how he’d stuck it onto the rich people and the corporations and how they was all against him this year. We all liked that, and then he gave us another drink. I was gettin’ so I felt it just a little, but of course I wa’n’t drunk. I could walk all right and talk pretty straight. I don’t suppose I’d taken more’n ten or twelve drinks in all day, and you know that won’t hurt anybody. I don’t know what I would’ve done such a cold day if it hadn’t been for the drinks. Oh, yes, in the last place they got to talkin’ about the alderman and said as how he wa’n’t goin’ to give out any turkeys this year. I didn’t like that and some of the fellers had quarreled about ‘em and then some of ‘em had been givin’ ‘em to us and we didn’t see what right he had to quit. They said the reason he wa’n’t goin’ to give ‘em was because a lot of the fellers had quarreled about ‘em and then some of ‘em had taken his turkeys and voted the other ticket, and some people had found fault with him because they didn’t get any turkey, and it looked as if he was losin’ votes instead of makin’ ‘em. Well, I’d been dependin’ on the turkey and it made me feel a little blue, for I didn’t know how I was goin’ to get anything for Thanksgivin’, and I didn’t think that you could have much of a Thanksgivin’ just on potatoes and mebbe a little pork. So I wa’n’t feelin’ none to good when I got on the wagon and drove away from the last place. It seemed as if everything had turned against me and I didn’t know what I was goin’ to do. It’s funny how much difference luck makes with a feller. You know somethin’ can happen in the mornin’ and make you feel good all day, and then again somethin’ will go wrong and no matter what you are doin’ it seems as if there was a sort of a weight pullin’ down on you. Well, I felt kind of blue as I drove home. I don’t think I could hardly have kept up only for the whiskey I’d drunk. I was kind of wonderin’ what it was all for and I didn’t see any reason for anything, or any chance that anything would be any better, or any real reason for livin’.

“Before I went to the house I drove up to the barn and unhitched the horse and led him in, and then I run the wagon in, and took the potatoes out and put ‘em under a little bag of hay that I had in the corner, and threw the horse blanket over ‘em. Then I unharnessed the horse and bedded him down and gave him some hay and a little oats. I’d watered him at one of the last places I stopped—one of them troughs they have in front of saloons. Then after I got the horse tended to I went into the house.”

* * * * *

Hank got up and went to the door and spoke to the guard. He was still sitting on the stool and talking to the prisoner in the next cell. Once more he handed Hank a cigar.

“Give one to Jim,” he said. “I can’t do much more for him, poor devil; I’m awful sorry.”

Jim came up and took the cigar and looked down at the guard.

“I don’t s’pose nothin’ has come for me, has there?”

“No, not yet,” was the answer.

“Well, I presume it’s’ no use.”

Just then the noise of pounding and driving nails and low voices was heard over in the court yard.

“What’s that?” Hank asked.

“Don’t you know! That’s the fellers buildin’ the scaffold; they always do it the night before. Strange, ain’t it; somehow it don’t seem to me as if it was really me that was goin’ to be hung on it; but I s’pose it is. Now, isn’t it strange about the governor; just one word from him could save my life. I’d think he’d do it, wouldn’t you? I s’pose he don’t really think how it seems to me. I know I’d do it, no matter what anyone had done.

“But it’s gettin’ late and I must go on with my story or I won’t get it finished before—before you have to go. It’s pretty hard to tell all ‘bout this part, but I’m goin’ to tell it to you honest and not make myself any better’n I am. I’ve thought about this a good deal when I’ve tried to account for how I done it, and I guess I can tell everything that happened. When I look at it now it seems years ago, almost a lifetime, not as if it was last November. I guess it’s because so much has happened since then. It seems, too, as if it wa’n’t me that was doin’ it, but as if ‘twas someone else. I guess that’ll make it easier for me to tell; anyhow, I want you to know how it was, and then some time you can tell the boy, if you think it’s the right thing to do.”

IV

I forgot to tell you about the steak. I don’t see how I left that out, for, really, that’s what caused the whole trouble. It beats all what little things will do, don’t it? Now, lots o’ times in my life it has seemed as if the smallest things had the most to do with me. There was that red waist, for instance, that she wore that day she was waitin’ on the table. I ‘most know I never would have paid any attention to her if it hadn’t been for that red waist. And then that beefsteak—in one way I’m goin’ to get hung on account of that beefsteak. How many times since that I’ve just wished I hadn’t stopped and bought it. But you see I was feelin’ cold all day, and when I come ‘round Thirty-fifth Street the wind kind of got in my face worse’n it had done before, and it sort of struck me through the chest too; my legs didn’t feel it quite so much, because they had the blanket over ‘em. Well, just as I got up to the second corner there was a saloon right in front of me. This was before I got to the corner when I met the senators, and I thought I’d go in and get a drink; and then right on the other side was that meat market and there was a lot of chickens and steak and things hangin’ in the window, and they looked mighty good, for I hadn’t had much to eat all day. At first I thought I’d go and get a drink, and then I thought I could get enough steak for supper for just about what the drink would cost, and the steak would do the most good, and besides she and the kid could have some of that, and I thought it would make her feel pleasanter and liven her up a bit. We hadn’t been gettin’ along any too well for some time.

“So I pulled up the horse a minute and went into the shop and asked the butcher about the steak hangin’ in the window, and he told me that it was sixteen cents a pound and that it was a sirloin steak. I thought that was most too much and asked him if he hadn’t some cheaper kind. He said yes, that a rump steak was just as good, and he showed me one of them and the whole piece came to fifteen cents—just the price of a glass of whiskey—and I bought it and rolled it up in a piece of brown paper and went away.

“Now I was tellin’ about this to the good guard that likes to get statistics for the Citizens’ Association, and I told him it was the beefsteak that brought me here, and that if I had only got the whisky instead of the steak it wouldn’t have happened, but he argued the other way, and then when I stuck to my story he got kind of mad about it and said it was them drinks I had with the senators and the assessor that really done it, and if it hadn’t been for the drinks I’d have known better, and he said he was goin’ to put it down that way, and I’m sure he did. I hain’t no doubt but a good many of the figgers we see about penitentiaries and things is got up the same way.

“Well, when I unhitched the horse and got him tended to and the potatoes covered up and all, I took the steak and started for the house. You know where I live—the barn is just back of the cottage, and there’s a kind of little alley behind the barn and then the switch-yards come in; the railroad curves up toward the house after it passes the barn so it gets pretty near the kitchen. Of course, the trains bother us a good deal and the switch engines are goin’ back and forth all the time, and the house is pretty old and not very big, but all them things has to be taken into consideration in the rent, and I got it enough cheaper to make up. I presume that’s the reason no poor people live out on the avenues, because the rents is so high, and in one way mebbe the switch tracks is a good thing, for if it wa’n’t for them I’d had to go out to the stock yards to live, and I’d rather have the engines and the smoke than the smell. Some of them Settlement people are tryin’ to have a park made, out along the tracks right close to where we lived. Of course, flowers and grass would be nice, but I s’pose if they got the park some fellers would come along and pay more rent than we could afford and then we’d have to go out to the stock yards. It seems as if us poor people gets the worst of it no matter how you fix it. But I’m takin’ an awful long while to get into the house; seems as if I’m tellin’ you everything I’ve thought of ever since I’ve been locked up here in jail. It’s mighty good of you to set and listen, and I’ll always remember it as long as I live, though I guess that ain’t sayin’ much.

“When I come up to the door I heard the kid cryin’ and she was scoldin’ him about somethin’ he’d done and tellin’ him to go in the bedroom and stay till supper was ready and to quit his squallin’ or she’d thrash him. Of course, generally, she was good to him, and I don’t mean to say she wa’n’t, but sometimes she got out of patience with him, same as all women does, I s’pose. Of course you have to make allowances for her. She dassent let the boy go to play back of the house, for there was the yards and the cars, and you know children always goes ‘round cars; then she couldn’t let him go in front for the electric road was there, and you know about that little boy bein’ run over a year ago down at the corner. Then there’s buildin’s on both sides of us, so she had to have the kid right in the house all the time less’n she went out with him, and of course he got kind of tired settin’ in the house all day with nothin’ to do but look out in front and see the switch engines. Still I sometimes thought she was crosser to him than she ought to have been at that.

“When I opened the door she was just takin’ the boy into the bedroom. In a minute she come out and kind of slammed the door hard, and said, ‘Well, you’ve got home, have you?’ I said yes, I’d got home. That’s every word I said. Then she said it was a pity that them drunken friends of mine couldn’t keep me out all night spendin’ the money for whisky that I ought to use in the house. I told her that I hadn’t spent no money for whisky. She said ‘Yes, your face looks it, and your breath smells it.’ Then I told her that I did take one drink but the assessor bought it for me. Then she landed into the assessor, and told me I was in pretty company goin’ ‘round with him; that Mrs. McGinty had told her all about what kind of a man he was and she didn’t want to hear any more about him. Then I asked her about when supper would be ready, and she said she hadn’t begun to get it yet, that she’d been doin’ the washin’ and had that brat of mine to take care of all day, and she’d get the supper when she got ready. Of course I was hungry and cold, and that made me kind of mad, only I didn’t say much, but laid the beefsteak on the table and unrolled it so’s she could see it. I thought mebbe that would kind of tempt her, and I told her she’d better cook it and fry a few potatoes. She made some remark about the steak, and about how I’d better got a soup bone, or a chicken, or somethin’ cheaper, and no wonder I was in debt with all the money I spent for whisky, and when I did bring anything home to eat it had to be somethin’ that cost a good deal more’n I could afford. Then I said that this was a rump steak and only cost fifteen cents, and she said I could get a soup bone that weighed six or seven pounds for that, and I hadn’t any business to throw away my money. Then she kind of stopped for a few minutes and took the steak out into the kitchen. Where we’d been was in the settin’ room. I went in to see the kid a few minutes and kind of quieted him down, and so long as he laid on the bed and seemed kind of like as if he’d go to sleep I shut the bedroom door and come out again. Then I picked up the paper and read about the alderman not goin’ to run any more, and that was the real reason why he wa’n’t goin’ to give us any more turkeys; then I looked at the sportin’ page and then I read a long story about a feller that had killed someone and left ‘em dead in the house, and then run away, and how they’d found ‘em dead and had offered a thousand dollars reward for the feller who killed the other one. Then I read about a murder trial that they was just havin’ and how the jury had found the feller guilty and he was goin’ to be hung, and how he never moved a muscle, and how his mother screamed and fell over in a swoond when the clerk read the verdict. While I was readin’ she kept comin’ out and into the settin’ room, bringin’ dishes and things to set the table. You know we generally et in the settin’ room. Ev’ry time she come in she kind of glared at me, but I let on not to notice her.

“Pretty soon I smelt the steak fryin’ and went out in the kitchen. When I got out there I found the steak fryin’ in the skillet all right and her just takin’ up the tea kettle to pour water on it. Now this made me mad, for that wa’n’t no way to fry steak. You know yourself that you lose all the flavor of the steak by pourin’ water on it; that makes it more like boiled meat than it does like beefsteak. I just saw her in time, and I called out, ‘What are you doin’? Put down that kettle. Don’t you know better’n to pour water on beefsteak?’ She said, ‘You shut up and go back in the settin’ room, or I’ll pour the water on you.’ I said, ‘No, you won’t; put down that kettle. How many times have I told you better’n to pour water on steak? It’s hard enough for me to get the money for a steak without lettin’ you spoil it that way.’ I started to grab her hand, but before I could reach it she tipped the nozzle over into the skillet and poured a lot of water in, and the steam and hot water and grease kind of spattered up in my face. I don’t know whether I struck her or not; anyhow I grabbed the kettle, and when the nozzle turned round some of the hot water got onto me, and burned me a little. I put the kettle down and said, ‘Damn you, what do you mean by spoilin’ the steak every time I get it? If you ever do a thing like that again, I’ll cut your throat.’

“Now, of course, I hadn’t no idea of cuttin’ her throat, no matter how often she done it. ‘Twas just a way I had of showin’ how mad I was about what she’d done. You see she done it a-purpose for I’d told her plenty of times before, and I told her then before any of the water got into the skillet, and she just poured it in to spite me. Then she said, ‘You drunken loafer, I’d like to see you try to cut my throat. I just dare you to do it. You don’t need to wait until you bring home another steak; ain’t likely I’ll be here by the time you bring home any more steak. I don’t care what the Settlement people and the priest say about it, I’m going to quit you. I’ve stood this thing just as long as I’m goin’ to,’ and she fairly screamed, just on purpose, so the neighbors could hear.

“Now I didn’t want them to know we was fightin’, and I seen that she was so mad she couldn’t control herself and didn’t care who heard or what happened. The neighbors had come in once before, but they’d got pretty well used to our fights. But I thought it had gone about far enough and the steak couldn’t be helped, so I went back into the settin’ room and picked up the paper. In a few minutes she come in and says, ‘Well, come, your old steak’s ready, you’ve made so much fuss about it you’d better come and eat it and let it shut your mouth.’ And she went on into the bedroom and got the kid. I drew up my chair and set down to the table. She put the kid into the high chair and then she set down on the other side. I cut up the steak and give each of ‘em a piece with some fried potatoes, then we had some bread and butter and some tea. She poured out the tea and handed me a cup. There wa’n’t any milk for the tea and I asked her why that was. She told me she didn’t have any money to buy tickets, and if I wanted milk I’d better leave some money to buy tickets instead of spending it all for whiskey. I didn’t make much of any answer to this but commenced eatin’ my steak. Besides bein’ boiled it was cooked almost to a crisp, and you couldn’t hardly tell whether it was beefsteak or what it was; all the taste was out of it and gone into the water and the steam. I put some of the gravy on the potatoes; this was better’n the steak and tasted more like beef. I et up the potatoes and the steak and a few pieces of bread and butter, and cut up the kid’s steak and showed him how to hold his knife so’s to eat without cuttin’ himself, and I didn’t say a word to her and she didn’t say a word to me. Of course, I could see by the way she looked that she was mad, and I presume she could see that I was, too; and probably both of us thought it was just as well not to say anything, ‘specially so long as the kid was there. All the time I was eatin’ I kept thinkin’ about the way she’d poured the water into the steak and spoilt it, and how I’d been lookin’ forward to it ever since I bought it on Thirty-fifth Street, and the more I thought of it the madder I got. If it had been the first time I don’t think I’d have minded it near so much, but I’d told her about it ev’ry time I brought home a steak, and it seemed as if always we had a row pretty near as big as this, and every time she managed to pour the water into it and spoil it in spite of all that I could do. And this time it had been just the same thing again. Anyone would have been mad if they’d been in my place; don’t you think so yourself?