The Peck's Bad Boy Megapack

by George W. Peck

  “Well, Pa was paralyzed, and he and the other deacon rushed out to pick up the minister and the first old man, and when they struck the step they went kiting. Pa’s feet somehow slipped backwards, and he turned a summersault and struck full length on his back, and one heel was across the minister’s neck, and he slid down the steps, and the other deacon fell all over the other three, and Pa swore at them, and it was the worst looking lot of pious people I ever saw. I think if the minister had been in the woods somewhere, where nobody could have heard him, he would have used language. They all seemed mad at each other. The hired girl told Ma there was three tramps out on the sidewalk fighting Pa, and Ma she took the broom and started to help Pa, and I tried to stop Ma, ’cause her constitution is not very strong and I didn’t want her to do any flying trapeze bizness, but I couldn’t stop her, and she went out with the broom and a towel tied around her head. Well, I don’t know where Ma did strike, but when she came in she said she had palpitation of the heart, but that was not the place where she put the arnica. O, but she did go through the air like a bullet through cheese, and when she went down the steps a bumpity-bump, I felt sorry for Ma. The minister had got so he could set up on the sidewalk, with his back against the lower step, when Ma came sliding down, and one of the heels of her gaiters hit the minister in the hair, and the other foot went right through between his arm and his side, and the broom like to pushed his teeth down his throat. But he was not mad at Ma. As soon as he see it was Ma he said, ‘Why, sister, the wicked stand in slippery places, don’t they?’ and Ma she was mad and said for him to let go her stocking, and then Pa was mad and he said, ‘look-a-here you sky-pilot, this thing has gone far enough,’ and then a policeman came along and first he thought they were all drunk, but he found they were respectable, and he got a chip and scraped the soap off of them, and they went home, and Pa and Ma they got in the house some way, and just then the letter-carrier came along, but he didn’t have any letters for us, and he didn’t come onto the steps, and then I went up stairs and I said, ‘Pa, don’t you think it is real mean, after you and I fixed the soap on the steps for the letter-carrier, he didn’t come on the step at all,’ and Pa was scraping the soap off his pants with a piece of shingle, and the hired girl was putting liniment on Ma, and heating it in for palpitation of the heart, and Pa said, ‘You dam idjut, no more of this, or I’ll maul the liver out of you,’ and I asked him if he didn’t think soft soap would help a moustache to grow, and he picked up Ma’s work-basket and threw it at my head, as I went down stairs, and I came over him. Don’t you think my Pa is unreasonable to get mad at a little joke that he planned himself?”

  The grocery man said he didn’t know, and the boy went out with a pair of skates over his shoulder, and the grocery man is wondering what joke the boy will play on him to-get even for the cayenne pepper.

  CHAPTER XXXIV.

  HIS PA GETS MAD—A BOOM IN COURT-PLASTER—THE BAD BOY DECLINES BEING MAULED!—THE OLD MAN GETS A HOT BOX—THE BAD BOY BORROWS A CAT!—THE BATTLE!—“HELEN BLAZES”—THE CAT VICTORIOUS!—THE BAD BOY DRAWS THE LINE AT KINDLING WOOD!

  “I was down to the drug store this morning, and saw your Ma buying a lot of court-plaster, enough to make a shirt, I should think. What’s she doing with so much court-plaster?” asked the grocery man of the bad boy, as he came in and pulled off his boots by the stove and emptied out a lot of snow, that had collected as he walked through a drift, which melted and made a bad smell.

  “O, I guess she is going to patch Pa up so he will hold water. Pa’s temper got him into the worst muss you ever see, last night. If that museum was here now they would hire Pa and exhibit him as the tattooed man. I tell you, I have got too old to be mauled as though I was a kid, and any man who attacks me from this out, wants to have his peace made with the insurance companies, and know that his calling and election is sure, because I am a bad man, and don’t you forget it.” And the boy pulled on his boots and looked so cross and desperate that the grocery man asked him if he wouldn’t try a little new cider.

  “Good heavens!” said the grocery man, as the boy swallowed the cider, and his face resumed its natural look, and the piratical frown disappeared with the cider. “You have not stabbed your father, have you? I have feared that one thing would bring on another, with you, and that you would yet be hung.”

  “Naw, I haven’t stabbed him. It was another cat that stabbed him. You see, Pa wants me to do all the work around the house. The other day he bought a load of kindling wood, and told me to carry it into the basement. I have not been educated up to kindling wood, and I didn’t do it. When supper time came, and Pa found that I had not carried in the kindling wood, he had a hot box, and he told me if that wood was not in when he came back from the lodge, that he would warm my jacket. Well, I tried to hire some one to carry it in, and got a man to promise to come in the morning and carry it in and take his pay in groceries, and I was going to buy the groceries here and have them charged to Pa. But that wouldn’t help me out that night. I knew when Pa came home he would search for me. So I slept in the back hall on a cot. But I didn’t want Pa to have all his trouble for nothing, so I borrowed an old torn cat that my chum’s old maid aunt owns, and put the cat in my bed. I thought if Pa came in my room after me, and found that by his unkindness I had changed to a torn cat, he would be sorry. That is the biggest cat you ever see, and the worst fighter in our ward. It isn’t afraid of anything, and can whip a New Foundland dog quicker than you could put sand in a barrel of sugar. Well, about eleven o’clock I heard Pa tumble over the kindling wood, and I knew by the remark he made, as the wood slid around under him, that there was going to be a cat fight real quick. He come up to Ma’s room, and sounded Ma as to whether Hennery had retired to his virtuous couch. Pa is awful sarcastic when he tries to be. I could hear him take off his clothes, and hear him say, as he picked up a trunk strap, ‘I guess I will go up to his room and watch the smile on his face, as he dreams of angels. I yearn to press him to my aching bosom. I thought to myself, mebbe you won’t yearn so much directly. He come up stairs, and I could hear him breathing hard. I looked around the corner and could see he just had on his shirt and pants, and his suspenders were hanging down, and his bald head shone like a calcium light just before it explodes. Pa went in my room, and up to the bed, and I could hear him say, ‘Come out here and bring in that kindling wood, or I will start a fire on your base-burner with this strap.’ And then there was a yowling such as I never heard before, and Pa said, ‘Helen Blazes,’ and the furniture in my room began to fall around and break. O, my! I think Pa took the torn cat right by the neck, the way he does me, and that left all the cat’s feet free to get in their work. By the way the cat squawled as though it was being choked, I know Pa had him by the neck. I suppose the cat thought Pa was a whole flock of New Found-land dogs, and the cat had a record on dogs, and it kicked awful. Pa’s shirt was no protection at all in a cat fight, and the cat just walked all around Pa’s stomach, and Pa yelled ‘police,’ and ‘fire,’ and ‘turn on the hose,’ and he called Ma, and the cat yowled. If Pa had had the presence of mind enough to have dropped the cat, or rolled it up in the mat-trass, it would have been all right, but a man always gets rattled in time of danger, and he held onto the cat and started down stairs yelling murder, and he met Ma coming up.

  “I guess Ma’s night-cap, or something, frightened the cat some more, cause he stabbed Ma on the night-shirt with one hind foot, and Ma said ‘mercy on us,’ and she went back, and Pa stumbled on a hand-sled that was on the stairs, and they all fell down, and the cat got away and went down in the coal bin and yowled all night. Pa and Ma went into their room, and I guess they anointed themselves with vasaline, and Pond’s extract, and I went and got into my bed, cause it was cold out in the hall, and the cat had warmed my bed as well as it had warmed Pa. It was all I could do to go to sleep, with Pa and Ma talking all night, and this morning I came down the back stairs, and havn’t been to breakfast, cause I don’t want to see Pa when he is vexed. You
let the man that carries in the kindling wood have six shillings worth of groceries, and charge them to Pa. I have passed the kindling wood period in a boy’s life, and have arrived at the coal period. I will carry in coal, but I draw the line at kindling wood.

  “Well, you are a cruel, bad boy,” said the grocery man, as he went to the book and charged the six shillings.

  “O, I don’t know. I think Pa is cruel. A man who will take a poor kitty by the neck, that hasn’t done any harm, and tries to chastise the poor thing with a trunk strap, ought to be looked after by the humane society. And if it is cruel to take a cat by the neck, how much more cruel is it to take a boy by the neck, that had diphtheria only a few years ago, and whose throat is tender. Say, I guess I will accept your invitation to take breakfast with you,” and the boy cut off a piece of bologna and helped himself to the crackers, and while the grocery man was cut shoveling off the snow from the sidewalk, the boy filled his pockets with raisins and loaf sugar, and then went out to watch the man carry in his kindling wood.

  CHAPTER XXXV.

  HIS PA AN INVENTOR THE BAD BOY A MARTYR—THE DOG-COLLAR IN THE SAUSAGE—A PATENT STOVE—THE PATENT TESTED!—HIS PA A BURNT OFFERING—EARLY BREAKFAST!

  “Ha! Ha! Now I have got you,” said the grocery man to the bad boy, the other morning, as he came in and jumped upon the counter and tied the end of a ball of twine to the tail of a dog, and “sicked” the dog on another dog that was following a passing sleigh, causing the twine to pay out until the whole ball was scattered along the block. “Condemn you, I’ve a notion to choke the liver out of you. Who tied that twine to the dog’s tail?”

  The boy choked up with emotion, and the tears came into his eyes, and he said he didn’t know anything about the twine or the dog. He said he noticed the dog come in, and wag his tail around the twine, but he supposed the dog was a friend of the family, and did not disturb him. “Everybody lays everything that is done to me,” said the boy, as he put his handkerchief to his nose, “and they will be sorry for it when I die. I have a good notion to poison myself by eating some of your glucose sugar.

  “Yes, and you do about everything that is mean. The other day a lady came in and told me to send up to her house some of my country sausage, done up in muslin bags, and while she was examining it she noticed something hard inside the bags, and asked me what it was, and I opened it, and I hope to die if there wasn’t a little brass pad-lock and a piece of a red morocco dog collar imbedded in the sausage. Now how do you suppose that got in there?” and the grocery man looked savage.

  The boy looked interested, and put on an expression as though in deep thought, and finally said, “I suppose the farmer that put up the sausage did not strain the dog meat. Sausage meat ought to be strained.”

  The grocery man pulled in about half a block of twine, after the dog had run against a fence and broke it, and told the boy he knew perfectly well how the brass pad-lock came to be in the sausage, but thinking it was safer to have the good will of the boy than the ill will, he offered him a handfull of prunes.

  “No,” says the boy, “I have swore off on mouldy prunes. I am no kinder-garten any more. For years I have eaten rotten peaches around this store, and everything you couldn’t sell, but I have turned over a new leaf now, and after this nothing is too good for me, Since Pa has got to be an inventor, we are going to live high.”

  “What’s your Pa invented? I saw a hearse and three hacks go up on your street the other day, and I thought may be you had killed your Pa.”

  “Not much. There will be more than three hacks when I kill Pa, and don’t you forget it. Well, sir, Pa has struck a fortune, if he can make the thing work. He has got an idea about coal stoves that will bring him several million dollars, if he gets a royalty of five dollars on every cook stove in the world. His idea is to have a coal stove on castors with the pipe made to telescope out and in, and rubber hose for one joint, so you can pull the stove all around the room and warm any particular place. Well, sir, to hear Pa tell about it, you would think it would revolutionize the country, and maybe it will when he gets it perfected, but he came near burning the house up, and scared us half to death this morn-ing, and burned his shirt off, and he is all covered with cotton with sweet oil on, and he smells like salad dressing.

  “You see Pa had a pipe made and some castors put on our coal stove, and he tied a rope to the hearth of the stove, and had me put in some kindling wood and coal last night, so he could draw the stove up to the bed and light the fire without getting up. Ma told him he would put his foot in it, and he told her to dry up, and let him run the stove business. He said it took a man with brain to run a patent right, and Ma she pulled the clothes over her head and let Pa do the fire act. She has been building the fires for twenty years, and thought she would let Pa see how good it was. Well, Pa pulled the stove to the bed, and touched off the kindling wood. I guess maybe I got a bundle of kindling wood that the hired girl had put kerosene on, cause it blazed up awful and smoked, and the blaze bursted out the doors and windows of the stove, and Pa yelled fire, and I jumped out of bed and rushed in and he was the scartest man you ever see, and you’d a dide to see how he kicked when I threw a pail of water on his legs and put his shirt out. Ma did not get burned, but she was pretty wet, and she told Pa she would pay the five dollars royalty on that stove and take the castors off and let it remain stationary. Pa says he will make it work if he burns the house down. I think it was real mean in Pa to get mad at me because I threw cold water on him instead of warm water, to put his shirt out. If I had waited till I could heat water to the right temperature I would have been an orphan and Pa would have been a burnt offering. But some men always kick at everything. Pa has given up business entirely and says he shall devote the remainder of his life curing himself of the different troubles that I get him into. He has retained a doctor by the year, and he buys liniment by the gallon.”

  “What was it about your folks getting up in the middle of the night to eat? The hired girl was over here after some soap the other morning, and she said she was going to leave your house.”

  “Well, that was a picnic. Pa said he wanted breakfast earlier than we was in the habit of having it, and he said I might see to it that the house was awake early enough. The other night I awoke with the awfulest pain you ever heard of. It was that night that you give me and my chum the bottle of pickled oysters that had begun to work. Well, I couldn’t sleep, and I thought I would call the hired girls, and they got up and got breakfast to going, and then I rapped on Pa and Ma’s door and told them the breakfast was getting cold, and they got up and came down. We eat breakfast by gas light, and Pa yawned and said it made a man feel good to get up and get ready for work before daylight, the way he used to on the farm, and Ma she yawned and agreed with Pa, ’cause she has to, or have a row. After breakfast we sat around for an hour, and Pa said it was a long time getting daylight, and bimeby Pa looked at his watch. When he began to pull out his watch I lit out and hid in the storeroom, and pretty soon I heard Pa and Ma come up stairs and go to bed, and then the hired girls, they went to bed, and when it was all still, and the pain had stopped inside of my clothes, I went to bed, and I looked to see what time it was and it was two o’clock in the morning. We got dinner at eight o’clock in the morning, and Pa said he guessed he would call up the house after this, so I have lost another job, and it was all on account of that bottle of pickled oysters you gave me. My chum says he had colic too, but he didn’t call up his folks. It was all he could do to get up hisself. Why don’t you sometimes give away something that is not spiled?”

  The grocery man said he guessed he knew what to give away, and the boy went out and hung up a sign in front of the grocery, that he had made on wrapping paper with red chalk, which read, “Rotten eggs, good enough for custard pies, for 18 cents a dozen.”

  CHAPTER XXXVI.

  HIS PA GETS BOXED—A PARROT FOR SALE—THE OLD MAN IS DOWN ON THE GROCER—“A CONTRITE HEART BEATS A BOB-TAIL FLUSH!”— POLLLY’S RESPONSES
—CAN A PARROT GO TO HELL?—THE OLD MAN GETS ANOTHER BLACK EYE—DUFFY HITS FOR KEEPS—NOTHING LIKE AN OYSTER FOR A BLACK EYE.

  “You don’t want to buy a good parrot, do you,” said the bad boy to the grocery man, as he put his wet mittens on the top of the stove to dry, and kept his back to the stove so he could watch the grocery man, and be prepared for a kick, if the man should remember the rotten egg sign that the boy put up in front of the grocery, last week.

  “Naw, I don’t want no parrot. I had rather have a fool boy around than a parrot. But what’s the matter with your Ma’s parrot? I thought she wouldn’t part with him for anything.”

  “Well, she wouldn’t until Wednesday night; but now she says she will not have him around, and I may have half I can get for him. She told me to go to some saloon, or some disreputable place and sell him, and I thought maybe he would about suit you,” and the boy broke into a bunch of celery, and took out a few tender stalks and rubbed them on a codfish, to salt them, and began to bite the stalks, while he held the sole of one wet boot up against the stove to dry it, making a smell of burned leather that came near turning the stomach of the cigar sign.