He said it must have been a mistake of the boy that delivers groceries.
“Then you must hire the boy to make mistakes, for it has been so every time we have had sweet potatoes for five years,” said the boy. “And about green corn. You have a few ears stripped down to show how nice and plump it is, and if we order a dozen ears there are only two that have got any corn on at all, and Pa and Ma gets them, and the rest of us have to chew cobs. Do you hope to wear a crown of glory on that kind of corn?”
“O, such things will happen,” said the grocery man with a laugh, “But don’t let’s talk about heaven. Let’s talk about the other place. How’s things over to your house? And say, what’s the matter with you. You are all dressed up, and have got a clean shirt on, and your shoes blacked, and I notice your pants are not raveled out so at the bottoms of the legs behind. You are not in love are you?”
“Well, I should smile,” said the boy, as he looked in a small mirror on the counter, covered with fly specks. “A girl got mashed on me, and Ma says it is good for a boy who hasn’t got no sister, to be in love with a girl, and so I kind of tumbled to myself and she don’t go no where without I go with her. I take her to dancing school, and everywhere, and she loves me like a house afire. Say, was you ever in love? Makes a fellow feel queer, don’t it? Well sir, the first time I went home with her I put my arm around her, and honest it scared me. It was just like when you take hold of the handles of a lectric battery, and you can’t let go till the man turns the knob. Honest, I was just as weak as a cat. I thought she had needles in her belt and was going to take my arm away, but it was just like it was glued on. I asked her if she felt that way too, and she said she used to, but it was nothing when you got used to it. That made me mad. But she is older than me and knows more about it. When I was going to leave her at the gate, she kissed me, and that was worse than putting my arm around her. By gosh, I trembled all over just like I had chills, but I was as warm as toast. She wouldn’t let go for much as a minute, and I was tired as though I had been carrying coal up stairs.”
“I didn’t want to go home at all, but she said it would be the best way for me to go home, and come again the next day, and the next morning I went to her house before any of them were up, and her Pa came out to let the cat in, and I asked him what time his girl got up, and he laffed and said I had got it bad, and that I had better go home and not be picked till I got ripe. Say, how much does it cost to get married?”
“Well, I should say you had got it bad,” said the grocery man, as he set out a basket of beets. “Your getting in love will be a great thing for your Pa. You won’t have any time to play any more jokes on him.”
“O, I guess we can find time to keep Pa from being lonesome. Have you seen him this morning? You ought to have seen him last night. You see, my chum’s Pa has got a setter dog stuffed. It is one that died two years ago, and he thought a great deal of it, and he had it stuffed, for a ornament.
“Well, my chum and me took the dog and put it on our front steps, and took some cotton and fastened it to the dog’s mouth so it looked just like froth, and we got behind the door and waited for Pa to come home from the theatre. When Pa started to come up the steps I growled and Pa looked at the dog and said, “Mad dog, by crimus,” and he started down the sidewalk, and my chum barked just like a dog, and I “Ki-yi’d” and growled like a dog that gets licked, and you ought to see Pa run. He went around in the alley and was going to get in the basement window, and my chum had a revolver with some blank cartridges, and we went down in the basement and when Pa was trying to open the window my chum began to fire towards Pa. Pa hollered that it was only him, and not a burglar, but after my chum fired four shots Pa run and climbed over the fence, and then we took the dog home and I stayed with my chum all night, and this morning Ma said Pa didn’t get home till four o’clock and then a policeman came with him, and Pa talked about mad dogs and being taken for a burglar and nearly killed, and she said she was afraid Pa had took to drinking again, and she asked me if I heard any firing of guns, and I said no, and then she put a wet towel on Pa’s head.”
“You ought to be ashamed,” said the grocery man “How does your Pa like your being in love with the girl? Does he seem to encourage you in it?”
“Oh, yes, she was up to our house to borry some tea, and Pa patted her on the cheek and hugged her and said she was a dear little daisy, and wanted her to sit in his lap, but when I wanted him to let me have fifty cents to buy her some ice cream he said that was all nonsense. He said: “Look at your Ma. Eating ice cream when she was a girl was what injured her health for life.” I asked Ma about it, and she said Pa never laid out ten cents for ice cream or any luxury for her in all the five years he was sparking her. She says he took her to a circus once but he got free tickets for carrying water for the elephant. She says Pa was tighter than the bark to a tree. I tell you its going to be different with me. If there is anything that girl wants she is going to have it if I have to sell Ma’s copper boiler to get the money, What is the use of having wealth if you hoard it up and don’t enjoy it? This family will be run on different principles after this, you bet. Say, how much are those yellow wooden pocket combs in the show case? I’ve a good notion to buy them for her. How would one of them round mirrors, with a zinc cover, do for a present for a girl? There’s nothing too good for her.”
CHAPTER XVII.
HIS PA FIGHTS HORNETS—THE OLD MAN LOOKS BAD—THE WOODS OF WAUWATOSA—THE OLD MAN TAKES A NAP—“HELEN DAMNATION”— “HELL IS OUT FOR NOON”—THE LIVER MEDICINE—ITS WONDERFUL EFFECTS—THE BAD BOY IS DRUNK!—GIVE ME A LEMON!—A SIGHT OF THE COMET!—THE HIRED GIRL’S RELIGION.
“Go away from here now,” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came into the store and was going to draw some cider out of a barrel into a pint measure that had flies in it. “Get right out of this place, and don’t let me see you around here until the health officer says you Pa has got over the small pox. I saw him this morning and his face is all covered with postules, and they will have him in the pest house before night. You git,” and he picked up a butter tryer and went for the boy who took refuge behind a barrel of onions, and held up his hands as though Jesse James had drawn a bead on him.
“O, you go and chase yourself. That is not small pox Pa has got. He had a fight with a nest of hornets,” said the boy.
“Hornets! Well, I’ll be cussed,” remarked the grocery man, as he put up the butter tryer, and handed the boy a slice of rotten muskmelon. “How in the world did he get into a nest of hornets? I hope you did not have anything to do with it.”
The boy buried his face in the melon, until he looked as though a yellow gash had been cut from his mouth to his ears, and after swallowing the melon, he said: “Well, Pa says I was responsible, and he says that settles it, and I can go my way and he will go his. He said he was willing to overlook everything I had done to make his life unbearable, but steering him onto a nest of hornets, and then getting drunk, was too much, and I can go.”
“What, you haven’t been drunk,” says the grocery man, “Great heavens, that will kill your poor old father.”
“O, I guess it won’t kill him very much. He has been getting drunk for twenty years, and he says he is healthier to-day than he ever was, since his liver has got to working again. You see, Monday was a regular Indian summer day, and Pa said he would take me and my chum out in the woods to gather hickory nuts, if we would be good. I said I would, and my chum said he would, and we got a couple of bags and went away out to Wauwatosa, in the woods. We clubbed the trees and got more nuts than anybody, and had a lunch, and Pa was just enjoying his relidgin first rate. While Pa was taking a nap under a tree, my chum and me looked around and found a hornets’ nest on the lower limb of the tree we were sitting under, and my chum said it would be a good joke to get a pole and run it into the hornet’s nest, and then run. Honest, I didn’t think about Pa being under the tree, and I went into a field and got a hop pole, and put the small end up into the nest, an
d gouged the nest a couple of times, and when the boss hornet came out of the hole and looked sassy, and then looked back in the hole and whistled to the other hornets to come out and have a circus, and they began to come out, my chum and me run and climbed over a fence, and got behind a pile of hop poles that was stacked up.”
“I guess the hornets saw my Pa just as quick as they got out of the nest, cause pretty soon we heard Pa call to ‘Helen Damnation,’ or some woman we didn’t know, and then he took his coat, that he had been using for a pillow, and whipped around, and he slapped hisself on the shoulders, and then took the lunch basket and pounded around like he was crazy, and bime-by he started on a run towards town, holding his pants up, cause his suspenders was hanging down on his hips, and I never see a fat man run so, and fan himself with a basket. We could hear him yell, ‘come on, boys. Hell is out for noon,’ and he went over a hill, and we didn’t see him any more. We waited till near dark because we was afraid to go after the bags of nuts till the hornets had gone to bed, and then we came home. The bags were awful heavy, and I think it was real mean in Pa to go off and leave us, and not help carry the bags.”
“I swan,” says the grocery man, “You are too mean to live. But what about your getting drunk?”
“O, I was going to tell you. Pa had a bottle of liver medicine in his coat pocket, and when he was whipping his hornets the bottle dropped out, and I picked it up to carry it home to him. My chum wanted to smell of the liver medicine, so he took out the cork and it smelled just like in front of a liquor store on East Water street, and my chum said his liver was bad, too, and he took a swaller, and he said he should think it was enough to cut a feller’s liver up in slices, but it was good, and then I had a peculiar feeling in my liver, and my chum said his liver felt better after he took a swaller, and and so I took a swaller, and it was the offulest liver remedy I ever tasted. It scorched my throat just like the diptheria, but it beats diptheria, or sore throat, all to pieces, and my chum and me laffed, we was so tickled. Did you ever take liver medicine? You know how it makes you feel as if your liver had got on top of your lights, and like you wanted to jump and holler. Well, sir, honest that liver medicine made me dance a jig on the viaduct bridge, and an old soldier from the soldiers’ home came along and asked us what was the matter, and we told him about our livers, and the liver medicine, and showed him the bottle, and he said he sposed he had the worst liver in the world, and said the doctors at the home, couldn’t cure him. It’s a mean boy that won’t help a nold vetran cure his liver, so I told him to try Pa’s liver remedy, and he took a regular cow swaller, and said, ‘here’s to your livers, boys.’ He must have a liver bigger nor a cow’s, and I guess it is better now.
“Then my liver begun to feel curus again, and my chum said his liver was getting torpid some more, and we both took another dose, and started home and we got generous, and give our nuts all away to some boys. Say, does liver medicine make a feller give away all he has got? We kept taking medicine every five blocks, and we locked arms and went down a back street and sung ‘O it is a glorious thing to be a pirut king,’ and when we got home my heart felt bigger nor a washtub and I thought p’raps my liver had gone to my head, and Pa came to the door with his face tied up in towels, and some yellow stuff on the towels that smelted like anarchy, and I slapped him on the shoulder and shouted, ‘Hello, Gov., how’s your liver,’ and gave him the bottle, and it was empty, and he asked me if we had been drinking that medicine and he said he was ruined, and I told him he could get some more down to the saloon, and he took hold of my collar and I lammed him in the ear, and he bounced me up stairs, and then I turned pale, and had cramps, and I didn’t remember any more till I woke up and the doctor was over me, and Pa and Ma looked scared, and the doc had a tin thing like you draw water out of a country cistern, only smaller, and Ma said if it hadn’t been for the stomach pump she wouldn’t have had any little boy, and I looked at the knobs on Pa’s face and I laffed and asked Pa if he got into the hornets, too. Then the Doc laffed, and Ma cried, and Pa swore, and I groaned, and got sick again, and then they let me go to sleep again, and this morning I had the offulest headache, and Pa’s face looks like he had fell on a picket fence. When I got out I went to my chum’s house to see if they had got him pumped out, and his Ma drove me out with a broom, and she says I will ruin every boy in the neighborhood. Pa says I was drunk and kicked him in the groin when he fired me up stairs, and I asked him how I could be drunk just taking medicine for my liver, and he said go to the devil, and I came over here. Say, give me a lemon to settle my stomach.”
“But, look-a-here,” says the grocery man, as he gave the boy a little dried up lemon, about as big as a prune, and told him he was a terror, “what is the matter of your eye winkers and your hair? They seem to be burned off.”
“O, thunder, didn’t Pa tell you about the comet exploding and burning us all? That was the worst thing since the flood, when Noar run the excursion boat from Kalamazoo to Mount Ararat. You see we had been reading about the comet, which is visible at four o’clock in the morning, and I heard Pa tell the hired girl to wake him and Ma up when she got up to set the pancakes and go to early mass so they could, see the comet. The hired girl is a Cathlick, and she don’t make no fuss about it, but she has got more good, square relidgin than a dozen like Pa. It makes a good deal of difference how relidgin affects different people, don’t it. Now Pa’s relidgin makes him wild, and he wants to kick my pants, and pull my hair, but the hired girl’s relidgin makes her want to hug me, if I am abused, and she puts anarchy on my bruises, and gives me pie. Pa wouldn’t get up at four o’clock in the morning to go to early mass, unless he could take a fish pole along and some angel worms. The hired girl prays when no one sees her but God, but Pa wants to get a church full of sisterin’, and pray loud, as though he was an auctioneer selling tin razors. Say, it beats all what a difference liver medicine has on two people, too. Now that hickory nut day, when me and my chum got full of Pa’s liver medicine, I felt so good natured I gave my hickory nuts away to the children, and wanted to give my coat and pants to a poor tramp, but my chum, who ain’t no bigger’n me, got on his ear and wanted to kick the socks off a little girl who was going home from school. It’s queer, ain’t it. Well, about the cornet. When I heard Pa tell the hired girl to wake him and Ma up, I told her to’ wake me up about half an hour before she waked Pa up, and then I got my chum to stay with me, and we made a comet to play on Pa, you see my room is right over Pa’s room, and I got two lengths of stove pipe and covered them all over with phosphorus, so they looked just as bright at as a comet. Then we got two Roman candles and a big sky rocket, and we were going to touch off the Roman candles and the sky rocket just as Pa and Ma got to looking at the comet. I didn’t know that a sky rocket would kick back, did you? Well, you’d a dide to see that comet. We tied a piece of white rubber garden hose to the stove pipe for a tail and went to bed, and when the girl woke us up we laid for Pa and Ma. Pretty soon we heard Pa’s window open, and I looked out, and Pa and Ma had their heads and half their bodies out of the window. They had their night shirts on and looked just like the pictures of Millerites waiting for the world to come to an end. Pa looked up and seed the stove pipe and he said:
“Hanner, for God’s sake, look up there. That is the damest comet I ever see. It is as bright as day. See the tail of it. Now that is worth getting up to see.”
“Just then my chum lit the two Roman candles and I touched off the rocket, and that’s where my eye winkers went. The rocket busted the joints of the stove pipe, and they fell down on Pa, but Ma got her head inside before the comet struck, and wasn’t hurt, but one length of stove pipe struck Pa endways on the neck and almost cut a biscuit out of him, and the fire and sparks just poured down in his hair, and burned his night shirt. Pa was scart. He thought the world was coming to an end, and the window came down on his back, and he began to sing, “Earth’s but a desert drear, Heaven is my home.” I see he was caught in the window, and I went down stairs t
o put out the fire on his night shirt, and put up the window to let him in, and he said, “My boy, your Ma and I are going to Heaven, but I fear you will go to the bad place,” and I told him I would take my chances, and he better put on his pants if he was going anywhere that there would be liable to be ladies present, and when he got his head in Ma told him the world was not coming to an end, but somebody had been setting off fireworks, and she said she guessed it was their dear little boy, and when I saw Pa feeling under the bed for a bed slat I got up stairs pretty previous now, and don’t you forget it, and Ma put cold cream on where the sparks burnt Pa’s shirt, and Pa said another day wouldn’t pass over his head before he had me in the Reform School. Well, if I go to the Reform School, somebody’s got to pay attention, you can bet your liver. A boy can’t have any fun these days without everybody thinks he is a heathen. What hurt did it do to play comet? It’s a mean father that wont stand a little scorchin’ in the interests of science.”
The boy went out, scratching the place where his eye winkers were, and then the grocery man knew what it was that caused the fire engines to be out around at four o’clock in the morning, looking for a fire.
CHAPTER XVIII.
HIS PA GOES HUNTING. MUTILATED JAW—THE OLD MAN HAS TAKEN TO SWEARING AGAIN—OUT WEST DUCK SHOOTING—HIS COAT-TAIL SHOT OFF—SHOOTS AT A WILD GOOSE—THE GUN KICKS!—THROWS A CHAIR AT HIS SON—THE ASTONISHED SHE DEACON.
“What has your Pa got his jaw tied up for, and what makes his right eye so black and blue,” asked the grocery man of the bad boy, as the boy came to bring some butter back that was strong enough to work on the street. “You haven’t hurt your poor old Pa, have you?”
“O, his jaw is all right now. You ought to have seen him when the gun was engaged in kicking him,” says the boy as he set the butter plate on the cheese box.
The Peck's Bad Boy Megapack Page 6