“I told her I guessed Pa had gone to sleep by this time, but I heard a good deal of noise in the room about an hour ago, and may be he was taking a bath. Then I slipped up stairs and looked over the banisters. Ma said something about heavens and earth, and where is the huzzy, and a lot of things I couldn’t hear, and Pa said damfino and its no such thing, and the door slammed and they talked for two hours. I s’pose they finally layed it to me, as they always do, ’cause Pa called me very early this morning, and when I came down stairs he came out in the hall and his face was redder’n a beet, and he tried to stab me with his big toe-nail, and if it hadn’t been for these pieces of brick he would have hurt my feelings. I see they had my chum’s sister’s clothes all pinned up in a newspaper, and I s’pose when I go back I shall have to carry them home, and then she will be down on me. I’ll tell you what, I have got a good notion to take some shoemaker’s wax and stick my chum on my back and travel with a circus as a double headed boy from Borneo. A fellow could have more fun, and not get kicked all the time.”
And the boy sampled some strawberries in a case in front of the store and went down the street whistling for his chum, who was looking out of an alley to see if the coast was clear.
CHAPTER VI.
HIS PA IS A DARN COWARD—HIS PA HAS BEEN A MAJOR—HOW HE WOULD DEAL WITH BURGLARS—HIS BRAVERY PUT TO THE TEST—THE ICE REVOLVER—HIS PA BEGINS TO PRAY—TELLS WHERE THE CHANGE IS—“PLEASE MR. BURGLAR SPARE A POOR MAN’S LIFE!”—MA WAKES UP—THE BAD BOY AND HIS CHUM RUN—FISH-POLE SAUCE—MA WOULD MAKE A GOOD CHIEF OF POLICE.
“I suppose you think my Pa is a brave man,” said the bad boy to the grocer, as he was trying a new can opener on a tin biscuit box in the grocery, while the grocer was putting up some canned goods for the boy, who said the goods where (sp.) for the folks to use at a picnic, but which was to be taken out camping by the boy and his chum.
“O I suppose he is a brave man,” said the grocer, as he charged the goods to the boy’s father. “Your Pa is called a major, and you know at the time of the reunion he wore a veteran badge, and talked to the boys about how they suffered during the war.”
“Suffered nothing,” remarked the boy with a sneer, “unless they suffered from the peach brandy and leather pies Pa sold them. Pa was a sutler, that’s the kind of a veteran he was, and he is a coward.”
“What makes you think your Pa is a coward?” asked the grocer, as he saw the boy slipping some sweet crackers into his pistol pocket.
“Well, my chum and me tried him last night, and he is so sick this morning that he can’t get up. You see, since the burglars got into Magie’s, Pa has been telling what he would do if the burglars got into our house. He said he would jump out of bed and knock one senseless with his fist, and throw the other over the banister. I told my chum Pa was a coward, and we fixed up like burglars, with masks on, and I had Pa’s long hunting boots on, and we pulled caps down over our eyes, and looked fit to frighten a policeman. I took Pa’s meerschaum pipe case and tied a little piece of ice over the end the stem goes in, and after Pa and Ma was asleep we went in the room, and I put the cold muzzle of the ice revolver to Pa’s temple, and when he woke up I told him if he moved a muscle or said a word I would spatter the wall and the counterpane with his brains. He closed his eyes and began to pray. Then I stood off and told him to hold up his hands, and tell me where the valuables was. He held up his hands, and sat up in bed, and sweat and trembled, and told us the change was in his left hand pants pocket, and that Ma’s money purse was in the bureau drawer in the cuff box, and my chum went and got them, Pa shook so the bed fairly squeaked and I told him I was a good notion to shoot a few holes in him just for fun, and he cried and said please Mr. Burglar, take all I have got, but spare a poor old man’s life, who never did any harm! Then I told him to lay down on his stomach and pull the clothes over his head, and stick his feet over the foot board, and he did it, and I took a shawl strap and was strapping his feet together, and he was scared, I tell you. It would have been all right if Ma hadn’t woke up. Pa trembled so Ma woke up and thought he had the ager, and my chum turned up the light to see how much there was in Ma’s purse, and Ma see me, and asked me what I was doing and I told her I was a burglar, robbing the house. I don’t know whether Ma tumbled to the racket or not, but she threw a pillow at me, and said “get out of here or I’ll take you across my knee,” and she got up and we run. She followed us to my room, and took Pa’s jointed fish pole and mauled us both until I don’t want any more burgling, and my chum says he will never speak to me again. I didn’t think Ma had so much sand. She is brave as a lion, and Pa is a regular squaw. Pa sent for me to come to his room this morning, but I ain’t well, and am going out to Pewaukee to camp out till the burglar scare is over. If Pa comes around here talking about war times, and how he faced the enemy on many a well fought field, you ask him if he ever threw any burglars down a banister. He is a frod (sp.), Pa is, but Ma would make a good chief of police, and don’t you let it escape you.”
And the boy took his canned ham and lobster, and tucking some crackers inside the bosom of his blue flannel shirt, started for Pewaukee, while the grocer looked at him as though he was a hard citizen.
CHAPTER VII.
HIS PA GETS A BITE—HIS PA GETS TOO MUCH WATER—THE DOCTOR’S DISAGREE—HOW TO SPOIL BOYS—HIS PA GOES TO PEWAUKEE IN SEARCH OF HIS SON—ANXIOUS TO FISH—“STOPER I’VE GOT A WHALE!”—OVERBOARD—HIS PA IS SAVED—GOES TO CUT A SWITCH— A DOLLAR FOR HIS PANTS.
“So the doctor thinks your Pa has ruptured a blood vessel, eh,” says the street car driver to the bad boy, as the youngster was playing sweet on him to get a free ride down town.
“Well, they don’t know. The doctor at Pewaukee said Pa had dropsy, until he found the water that they wrung out of his pants was lake water, and there was a doctor on the cars belonging to the Insane Asylum, when we put Pa on the train, who said from the looks of his face, sort of red and blue, that it was apoplexy, but a horse doctor that was down at the depot when we put Pa in the carriage to take him home, said he was off his feed, and had been taking too much water when he was hot, and got foundered. O, you can’t tell anything about doctors. No two of ’em guesses alike,” answered the boy, as he turned the brake for the driver to stop the car for a sister of charity, and then punched the mule with a fish pole, when the driver was looking back, to see if he couldn’t jerk her off the back step.
“Well, how did your Pa happen to fall out of the boat? Didn’t he know the lake was wet?”
“He had a suspicion that it was damp, when his back struck the water, I think. I’ll tell you how it was. When my chum and I run away to Pewaukee, Ma thought we had gone off to be piruts, and she told Pa it was a duty he owed to society to go and get us to come back, and be good. She told him if he would treat me as an equal, and laugh and joke with me, I wouldn’t be so bad. She said kicking and pounding spoiled more boys than all the Sunday schools. So Pa came out to our camp, about two miles up the lake from Pewaukee, and he was just as good natured as though we had never had any trouble at all. We let him stay all night with us, and gave him a napkin with a red border to sleep on under a tree, cause there was not blankets enough to go around, and in the morning I let him have one of the soda crackers I had in my shirt bosom and he wanted to go fishing with us. He said he would show us how to fish. So he got a piece of pork rind at a farm house for bait, and put it on a hook, and we got in an old boat, and my chum rowed and Pa and I trolled. In swinging the boat around Pa’s line got under the boat, and come right up near me. I don’t know what possessed me, but I took hold of Pa’s line and gave it a “yank,” and Pa jumped so quick his hat went off in the lake.”
“Stoper,” says Pa, “I’ve got a whale.” It’s mean in a man to call his chubby faced little boy a whale, but the whale yanked again and Pa began to pull him in. I hung on, and let the line out a little at a time, just zackly like a fish, and he pulled, and sweat, and the bald spot on his head was getting sun burnt, and the line cut my
hand, so I wound it around the oar-lock, and Pa pulled hard enough to tip the boat over. He thought he had a forty pound musculunger, and he stood up in the boat and pulled on that oar-lock as hard as he could. I ought not to have done it, but I loosened the line from the oar-lock, and when it slacked up Pa went right out over the side of the boat, and struck on his pants, and split a hole in the water as big as a wash tub. His head went down under water, and his boot heels hung over in the boat. “What you doin’? Diving after the fish?” says I as Pa’s head came up and he blowed out the water. I thought Pa belonged to the church, but he said “you damidyut.”
“I guess he was talking to the fish. Wall, sir, my chum took hold of Pa’s foot and the collar of his coat and held him in the stern of the boat, and I paddled the boat to the shore, and Pa crawled out and shook himself. I never had no ijee a man’-pants could hold so much water. It was just like when they pull the thing on a street sprinkler. Then Pa took off his pants and my chum and me took hold of the legs and Pa took hold of the summer kitchen, and we rung the water out. Pa want so sociable after that, and he went back in the woods with his knife; with nothing on but a linen duster and a neck-tie, while his pants were drying on a tree, to cut a switch, and we hollered to him that a party of picnicers from Lake Side were coming ashore right where his pants were, to pic-nic, and Pa he run into the woods. He was afraid there would be some wimmen in the pic-nic that he knowed, and he coaxed us to come in the woods where he was, and he said he would give us a dollar a piece and not be mad any more if we would bring him his pants. We got his pants, and you ought to see how they was wrinkled when he put them on. They looked as though they had been ironed with waffle irons. We went to the depot and came home on a freight train, and Pa sneezed all the way in the caboose, and I don’t think he has ruptured any blood vessel. Well, I get off here at Mitchell’s bank,” and the boy turned the brake and jumped off without paying his fare.
CHAPTER VIII.
HE IS TOO HEALTHY. AN EMPTY CHAMPAGNE BOTTLE AND A BLACK EYE—HE IS ARRESTED—OCONOMOWOC FOR HEALTH—HIS PA IS AN OLD MASHER—DANCED TILL THE COWS CAME HOME—THE GIRL PROM THE SUNNY SOUTH—THE BAD BOY IS SENT HOME.
“There, I knew you would get into trouble,” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as a policeman came along leading him by the ear, the boy having an empty champagne bottle in one hand, and a black eye. “What has he been doing Mr. Policeman?” asked the grocery man, as the policeman halted with the boy in front of the store.
“Well, I was going by a house up here when this kid opened the door with a quart bottle of champagne, and he cut the wire and fired the cork at another boy, and the champagne went all over the sidewalk, and some of it went on me, and I knew there was something wrong, cause champagne is to expensive to waste that way, and he said he was running the shebang and if I would bring him here you would say he was all right. If you say so I will let him go.”
The grocery man said he had better let the boy go, as his parents would not like to have their little pet locked up. So the policeman let go his ear, and he throwed the empty bottle at a coal wagon, and after the policeman had brushed the champagne off his coat, and smelled of his fingers, and started off, the grocery man turned to the boy, who was peeling a cucumber, and said:
“Now, what kind of a circus have you been having, and what do you mean by destroying wine that way! and where are your folks?”
“Well, I’ll tell you. Ma she has got the hay fever and has gone to Lake Superior to see if she can’t stop sneezing, and Saturday Pa said he and me would go out to Oconomowoc and stay over Sunday, and try and recuperate our health. Pa said it would be a good joke for me not to call him Pa, but to act as though I was his younger brother, and we would have a real nice time. I knowed what he wanted. He is an old masher, that’s what’s the matter with him, and he was going to play himself for a batchelor. O, thunder, I got on to his racket in a minute. He was introduced to some of the girls and Saturday evening he danced till the cows come home. At home he is awful fraid of rheumatic, and he never sweats, or sits in a draft; but the water just poured off’n him, and he stood in the door and let a girl fan him till I was afraid he would freeze, and just as he was telling a girl from Tennessee, who was joking him about being a nold batch, that he was not sure as he could always hold out a woman hater if he was to be thrown into contact with the charming ladies of the Sunny South, I pulled his coat and said, ‘Pa how do you spose Ma’s hay fever is to-night. I’ll bet she is just sneezing the top of her head off.” Wall, sir, you just oughten seen that girl and Pa. Pa looked at me as if I was a total stranger, and told the porter if that freckled faced boot-black belonged around the house he had better be fired out of the ball-room, and the girl said the disgustin’ thing, and just before they fired me I told Pa he had better look out or he would sweat through his liver pad.
“I went to bed and Pa staid up till the lights were put out. He was mad when he came to bed, but he didn’t lick me, cause the people in the next room would hear him, but the next morning he talked to me. He said I might go back home Sunday night, and he would stay a day or two. He sat around on the veranda all the afternoon, talking with the girls, and when he would see me coming along he would look cross. He took a girl out boat riding, and when I asked him if I couldn’t go along, he said he was afraid I would get drowned, and he said if I went home there was nothing there too good for me, and so my chum and me got to firing bottles of champane, and he hit me in the eye with a cork, and I drove him out doors and was just going to shell his earth works, when the policeman collared me. Say, what’s good for a black eye?”
The grocery man told him his Pa would cure it when he got home, “What do you think your Pa’s object was in passing himself off for a single man at Oconomowoc,” asked the grocery man, as he charged up the cucumber to the boy’s father.
“That’s what beats me. Aside from Ma’s hay fever she is one of the healthiest women in this town. O, I suppose he does it for his health, the way they all do when they go to a summer resort, but it leaves a boy an orphan, don’t it, to have such kitteny parents.”
CHAPTER IX.
HIS PA HAS GOT ’EM AGAIN! HIS PA IS DRINKING HARD—HE HAS BECOME A TERROR—A JUMPING DOG—THE OLD MAN IS SHAMEFULLY ASSAULTED—“THIS IS A HELLISH CLIMATE MY BOY!”—HIS PA SWEARS OFF—HIS MA STILL SNEEZING AT LAKE SUPERIOR.
“If the dogs in our neighborhood hold out I guess I can do something that all the temperance societies in this town have failed to do,” says the bad boy to the grocery man, as he cut off a piece of cheese and took a handful of crackers out of a box.
“Well for Heaven’s sake, what have you been doing now, you little reprobate,” asked the grocery man, as he went to the desk and charged the boy’s father with a pound and four ounces of cheese and two pounds of crackers. “If you was my boy and played any of your tricks on me I would maul the everlasting life out of you. Your father is a cussed fool that he dont send you to the reform school. The hired girl was over this morning and says your father is sick, and I should think he would be. What you done? Poisoned him I suppose.”
“No, I didn’t poison him; I just scared the liver out of him that’s all.”
“How was it,” asked the groceryman, as he charged up a pound of prunes to the boy’s father.
“Well, I’ll tell you, but if you ever tell Pa I wont trade here any more. You see, Pa belongs to all the secret societies, and when there is a grand lodge or anything here, he drinks awfully. There was something last week, some sort of a leather apron affair, or a sash over the shoulder, and every night he was out till the next day, and his breath smelled all the time like in front of a vinegar store, where they keep yeast. Ever since Ma took her hay fever with her up to Lake Superior, Pa has been a terror, and I thought something ought to be done. Since that variegated dog trick was played on him he has been pretty sober till Ma went away, and I happened to think of a dog a boy in the Third Ward has got, that will do tricks. He will jump up and take a man’s hat off, and br
ing a handkerchief, and all that. So I got the boy to come up on our street, and Monday night, about dark, I got in the house and told the boy when Pa came along to make the dog take his hat, and to pin a handkerchief to Pa’s coat tail and make the dog take that, and then for him and the dog to lite out for home. Well, you’d a dide. Pa came up the street as dignified and important as though he had gone through bankruptcy, and tried to walk straight, and just as he got near the door the boy pointed to Pa’s hat and said, “Fetch it!” The dog is a big Newfoundland, but he is a jumper, and don’t you forget it. Pa is short and thick, and when the dog struck him on the shoulder and took his hat Pa almost fell over, and then he said get out, and he kicked and backed up toward the step, and then turned around and the boy pointed to the handkerchief and said, “fetch it,” and the dog gave one bark and went for it, and got hold of it and a part of Pa’s duster, and Pa tried to climb up the steps on his hands and feet, and the dog pulled the other way, and it is an old last year’s duster anyway, and the whole back breadth come out, and when I opened the door there Pa stood with the front of his coat and the sleeves on, but the back was gone, and I took hold of his arm, and he said, “Get out,” and was going to kick me, thinking I was a dog, and I told him I was his own little boy, and asked him if anything was the matter, and he said, “M (hic) atter enough. New F (hic) lanp dog chawing me last hour’n a half. Why didn’t you come and k (hic) ill’em?” I told Pa there was no dog at all, and he must be careful of his health or I wouldn’t have no Pa at all. He looked at me and asked me, as he felt for the place where the back of his linen duster was, what had become of his coat-tail and hat if there was no dog, and I told him he had probably caught his coat on that barbed wire fence down street, and he said he saw the dog and a boy just as plain as could be, and for me to help him up stairs and go for the doctor. I got him to the bed, and he said, “this is a hellish climate my boy,” and I went for the doctor. Pa said he wanted to be cauterised, so he wouldn’t go mad. I told the doc the Joke, and he said he would keep it up, and he gave Pa some powders, and told him if he drank any more before Christmas he was a dead man. Pa says it has learned him a lesson and they can never get any more pizen down him, but don’t you give me away, will you, cause he would go and complain to the police about the dog, and they would shoot it. Ma will be back as soon as she gets through sneezing, and I will tell her, and she will give me a cho-meo, cause she dont like to have Pa drink only between meals. Well, good day. There’s a Italian got a bear that performs in the street, and I am going to find where he is showing, and feed the bear a cayenne pepper lozenger, and see him clean out the Pollack settlement. Good bye.”
The Peck's Bad Boy Megapack Page 3