The Peck's Bad Boy Megapack

by George W. Peck

  “What, did your Pa get a black eye, too? I hadn’t heard about that,” said the grocery man, giving the boy a handful of unbaked peanuts to draw him out. “Didn’t get to fighting, did he?”

  “No, Pa don’t fight. It is wrong, he says, to fight, unless you are sure you can whip the fellow, and Pa always gets whipped, so he quit fighting. You see, one of the deacons in our church lives out on a farm, and his folks were going away to spend the 4th, and he had to do all the chores, so he invited Pa and Ma to come out to the farm and have a nice quiet time, and they went. There is nothing Pa likes better than to go out on a farm, and pretend he knows everything. When the farmer got Pa and Ma out there he set them to work, and Ma shelled peas while Pa went to dig potatoes for dinner. I think it was mean for the deacon to send Pa out in the corn field to dig potatoes, and set the dog on Pa, and tree him in an apple tree near the bee hives, and then go and visit with Ma and leave Pa in the tree with the dog barking at him. Pa said he never knew how mean a deacon could be, until he had sat on a limb of that apple tree all the afternoon. About time to do chores the farmer came and found Pa, and called the dog off, and Pa came down, and then the farmer played the meanest trick of all. He said city people didn’t know how to milk cows, and Pa said he wished he had as many dollars as he knew how to milk cows. He said his spechulty was milking kicking cows, and the farmer gave Pa a tin pail and a milking stool and let down the bars, and pointed out to Pa ‘the worst cow on the place.’ Pa knew his reputation was at stake, and he went up to the cow and punched it in the flank and said, “hist, confound you.” Well, the cow wasn’t a histing cow, but a histing bull, and Pa knew it was a bull as quick as he see it put down its head and beller, and Pa dropped the pail and stool and started for the bars, and the bull after Pa. I don’t think it was right in Ma to bet two shillings with the farmer that Pa would get to the bars before the bull did, though she won the bet. Pa said he knew it was a bull just as soon as the horns got tangled up in his coat tail, and when he struck on the other side of the bars, and his nose hit the ash barrel where they make lye for soap, Pa said he saw more fireworks than we did at the Soldier’s Home, Pa wouldn’t celebrate any more, and he came home, after thanking the farmer for his courtesies, but he wants me to borrow a gun and go out with him hunting. We are going to shoot a bull and a dog, and some bees, may be we will shoot the farmer, if Pa keeps on as mad as he is now. Well, we won’t have another 4th of July for a year, and may be by that time my girl’s polonaise and hair will grow out, and that bull may become gentle, so Pa can milk it. Ta-ta.”

  CHAPTER XXI.

  WORKING OK SUNDAY—TURNING A GRINDSTONE IS HEALTHY—“NOT ANY GRINDSTONE FOR HENNERY!”—THIS HYPOCRISY IS PLAYED OUT— ANOTHER JOB ON THE OLD MAN—HOW THE DAYS OF THE WEEK GOT MIXED—THE NUMEROUS FUNERALS—THE MINISTER APPEARS—THE BAD BOY GOES OVER THE BACK FENCE.

  “Hello,” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in looking sick at heart, and all broke up, “How is your muscle this morning?”

  “All right enough,” said the boy, with a look of inquiry, as though wondering what was coming next. “Why?”

  “O, nothing, only I was going to grind the hatchet, and some knives and things, this morning, and I thought maybe you would like to go out in the shed and turn the grindstone for me, to develop your muscles. Turning a grindstone is the healthiest thing a boy can do.”

  “That is all right enough,” said the bad boy, as he took up a sweet cracker, “but please take a good look at me. Do I look like a grindstone boy? Do I resemble a good little boy that can’t say ‘no,’ and goes off and turns a grindstone half a day for some old duffer, who pays him by giving him a handful of green currants, or telling him he will be a man some day, and the boy goes off one way, with a lame back, while the good man goes the other way, with a sharp scythe, and a chuckle at the softness of the boy? You are mistaken in me. I have passed the grindstone period, and you will have to pick up another sardine who has never done circular work. Not any grindstone for Hennery, if you please.”

  “You are getting too smart,” said the grocery man, as he charged a pound of sweet crackers to the boy’s father. “You don’t have to turn the grindstone if you don’t want to.”

  “That’s what I thought,” says the boy as he takes a handful of blueberries. “You grindstone sharps, who are always laying for a fool boy to give taffy to, and get him to break his back, don’t play it fine enough. You bear on too hard on the grindstone. I have seen the time when a man could get me to turn a grindstone for him till the cows come home, by making me believe it was fun, and by telling me he never saw a boy that seemed to throw so much soul into turning a grindstone as I did, but I have found that such men are hypocrites. They inveigle a boy into their nest, like the spider does the fly, and at first they don’t bear on hard, but just let the blade of the axe or the scythe touch the grindstone, and they make a boy believe he is a bigger man than old Grant. They bet him he will get tired, and he bets that he can turn a grindstone as long as anybody, and when the boy has got his reputation at stake, then they begin to bear on hard, and the boy gets tired, but he holds out, and when the tools are ground he says he is as fresh as a daisy, when he is tired enough to die. Such men do more to teach boys the hollowness of the world, and its tricky features, than anything, and they teach boys to know who are friends and who are foes. No, sir, the best way is to hire a grown person to turn year grind one. I remember I turned a grindstone four hours for a farmer once, and when I got through he said I could go to the spring and drink all the water I wanted for nothing. He was the tightest man I ever saw. Why, tight! That man was tight enough to hold kerosene.”

  “That’s all right. Who wanted you to turn grindstone anyway? But what is it about your Pa and Ma being turned out of church? hear that they scandalized themselves horribly last Sunday.”

  “Well, you see, me and my chum put up a job on Pa to make him think Sunday was only Saturday and Ma she fell into it, and I guess we are all going to get fired from the church for working on Sunday. You see they didn’t go to meetin’ last Sunday because Ma’s new bonnet hadn’t come, and Monday and Tuesday it rained and the rest of the week was so muddy no one called, or they could not get anywhere, so Monday I slid out early and got the daily paper, and on Tuesday my chum he got the paper off the steps and put Monday’s paper in its place. I watched when they were reading it, but they did not notice the date. Then Wednesday we put Tuesday’s paper on the steps and Pa said it seemed more than Tuesday, but Ma she got the paper of the day before and looked at the date and said it seemed so to her but she guessed they had lost a day somehow. Thursday we got Wednesday’s paper on the steps, and Friday we rung in Thursday’s paper, and Saturday my chum he got Friday’s paper on the steps, and Ma said she guessed she would wash to-morrow, and Pa said he believed he would hoe in the garden and get the weeds out so it would look better to folks when they went by Sunday to church. Well, Sunday morning came, and with it Saturday’s daily paper, and Pa barely glanced it over as he got on his overalls and went out in his shirt sleeves a hoeing in the front garden. And I and my chum helped Ma carry water to wash. She said it seemed like the longest week she ever saw, but when we brought the water, and took a plate of pickles to the hired girl that was down with the mumps, we got in the lilac bushes and waited for the curtain to rise. It wasn’t long before folks began going to church and you’d a dide laughing to see them all stop in front of where Ma was washing and look at her, and then go on to where Pa was hoeing weeds and stop and look at him, and then drive on. After about a dozen teams had passed I heard Ma ask Pa if he knew who was dead, as there must be a funeral somewhere. Pa had just hoed into a bumblebee’s nest and said he did not know of any that was dead, but knew some that ought to be, and Ma she did not ask any foolish questions any more. After about twenty teams had stopped, Ma she got nervous and asked Deacon Smith if he saw anything green; he said something about desecration, and drove away Deacon Brown asked Pa if he did not think he was setting,
a bad example before his boy; but Pa, he said he thought it would be a good one if the boy could only be hired to do it. Finally Ma got mad and took the tub behind the house where they could not see her. About four o’clock that afternoon we saw a dozen of our congregation headed by the minister, file into our yard, and my chum and I knew it was time to fly, so we got on the back steps where we could hear. Pa met them at the door, expecting some bad news; and when they were seated, Ma she came in and remarked it was a very unhealthy year, and it stood people in hand to meet their latter end. None of them said a word until the elder put on his specs, and said it was a solemn occasion, and Ma she turned pale, and wondered who it could be, and Pa says ‘don’t keep us in suspense, who is dead?’ and the elder said no one was dead; but they called as a duty they owed the cause to take action on them for working on Sunday. Ma, she fainted away, and they threw a pitcher of water down her back, and Pa said he guessed they were a pack of lunatics, but they all swore it was Sunday, and they saw Ma washing and Pa out hoeing, as they went to church, and they had called to take action on them. Then there was a few minutes low conversation I could not catch, and then we heard Pa kick his chair over and say it was more tricks of that darned boy. Then we knew it was time to adjourn, and I was just getting through the back fence as Pa reached me with a barrel stave, and that’s what makes me limp some!”

  “That was real mean in you boys,” said the grocery man. “It will be hard for your Pa and Ma to explain that matter. Just think how bad they must feel.”

  “O, I don’t know. I remember hearing Pa and Uncle Ezra tell how they fooled their father once, and got him to go to mill with a grist, on Sunday, and Pa said he would defy anybody to fool him on the day of the week. I don’t think a man ought to tempt his little boy by defying him to fool his father. Well, I’ll take a glass of your fifty cent cider and go,” and soon the grocery man looked out the window and found somebody had added a cypher to the ‘Sweet cider, only five cents a glass,’ making it an expensive drink, considering it was made of sour apples.

  CHAPTER XXII.

  THE OLD MAN AWFULLY BLOATED—THE OLD MAN BEGINS DRINKING AGAIN—THINKS BETTING IS HARMLESS—HAD TO WALK HOME FROM CHICAGO—THE SPECTACLES CHANGED—A SMALL SUIT OF CLOTHES— THE OLD MAN AWFULLY BLOATED—“HENNERY YOUR PA IS A MIGHTY SICK MAN”—THE SWELLING SUDDENLY GOES DOWN.

  “Come in,” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as the youth stood on the steps in an uncertain sort of away, as though he did not know whether he would be welcome or not. “I tell you, boy, I pity you. I understand your Pa has got to drinking again. It is too bad. I can’t think of anything that humiliates a boy, and makes him so ashamed, as to have a father that is in the habit of hoisting in too much benzine. A boy feels as though everybody was down on him, and I don’t wonder that such boys often turn out bad. What started your Pa to drinking again?”

  “O, Ma thinks it was losing money on the Chicago races. You see, Pa is great on pointers. He don’t usually bet unless he has got a sure thing, but when he gets what they call a pointer, that is, somebody tells him a certain horse is sure to win, because the other horses are to be pulled back, he thinks a job has been put up, and if he thinks he is on the inside of the ring he will bet. He says it does not do any hurt to bet, if you win, and he argues that a man who wins lots of money can do a great deal of good with it. But he had to walk home from the Chicago races all the same, and he has been steaming ever since. Pa can’t stand adversity. But I guess we have got him all right now. He is the scartest man you ever saw,” and the boy took a can opener and began to cut the zinc under the stove, just to see if it would work as well on zinc as on tin.

  “What, you haven’t been dissecting him again, have you?” said the grocery man, as he pulled a stool up beside the boy to hear the news. How did you bring him to his senses?”

  “Well, Ma tried having the minister talk to Pa, but Pa talked Bible, about taking a little wine for the stomach’s sake, and gave illustrations about Noah getting full, so the minister couldn’t brace him up, and then Ma had some of the sisters come and talk to him, but he broke them all up by talking about what an appetite they had for champagne punch when they were out in camp last summer, and they couldn’t have any affect on him, and so Ma said she guessed I would have to exercise my ingenuity on Pa again. Ma has an idea that I have got some sense yet, so I told her that if she would do just as I said, me and my chum would scare Pa so he would swear off. She said she would, and we went to work. First I took Pa’s spectacles down to an optician, Saturday night, and had the glasses taken out and a pair put in their place that would magnify, and I took them home and put them in Pa’s spectacle case. Then I got a suit of clothes from my chum’s uncle’s trunk, about half the size of Pa’s clothes. My chum’s uncle is a very small man, and Pa is corpulent. I got a plug hat three sizes smaller than Pa’s hat, and the name out of Pa’s hat and put it in the small hat. I got a shirt about half big enough for Pa, and put his initials on the thing under the bosom, and got a number fourteen collar. Pa wears seventeen. Pa had promised to brace up and go to church Sunday morning, and Ma put these small clothes where Pa could put them on. I told Ma, when Pa woke up, to tell him he looked awfully bloated, and excite his curiosity, and then send for me.”

  “You didn’t play such a trick as that on a poor old man, did you?” said the grocery man, as a smile came over his face.

  “You bet. Desperate diseases require desperate remedies. Well, Ma told Pa he looked awfully bloated, and that his dissipation was killing him, as well as all the rest of the family. Pa said he guessed he wasn’t bloated very much, but he got up and put on his spectacles and looked at himself in the glass. You’d a dide to see him look at himself. His face looked as big as two faces, through the glass, and his nose was a sight. Pa looked scared, and then he held up his hand and looked at that. His hand looked like a ham. Just then I came in, and I turned pale, with some chalk on my face, and I begun to cry, and I said, ‘O, Pa, what ails you? You are so swelled up I hardly knew you.’ Pa looked sick to his stomach, and then he tried to get on his pants. O, my, it was all I could do to keep from laughing to see him pull them pants on. He could just get his legs in, and when I got a shoe horn and gave it to him, he was mad. He said it was a mean boy that would give his Pa a shoe horn to put on his pants with. The pants wouldn’t come around Pa into ten inches, and Pa said he must have eat something that disagreed with him, and he laid it to watermelon. Ma stuffed her handkerchief in her mouth to keep from laffing, when she see Pa look at his-self. The legs of the pants were so tight Pa could hardly breathe, and he turned pale, and said, ‘Hennery, your Pa is a mighty sick man,’ and then Ma and me both laughed, and he said we wanted him to die so we could spend his life insurance in riotous living.”

  “But when Pa put on that condensed shirt, Ma she laid down on the lounge and fairly yelled, and I laughed till my side ached. Pa got it over his head, and got his hands in the sleeves, and couldn’t get it either way, and he couldn’t see us laugh, but he could hear us, and he said, ‘It’s darned funny, ain’t it, to have a parent swelled up this way. If I bust you will both be sorry.’ Well, Ma took hold of one side of the shirt, and I took hold of the other, and we pulled it on, and when Pa’s head came up through the collar, his face was blue. Ma told him she was afraid he would have a stroke of apoplexy before he got his clothes on, and I guess Pa thought so too. He tried to get the collar on, but it wouldn’t go half way around his neck, and he looked in the glass and cried, he looked so. He sat down in a chair and panted, he was so out of breath, and the shirt and pants ripped, and Pa said there was no use living if he was going to be a rival to a fat woman in the side show. Just then I put the plug hat on Pa’s head, and it was so small it was going to roll off, when Pa tried to fit it on his head, and then he took it off and looked inside of it, to see if it was his hat, and when he found his name in it, he said ‘Take it away. My head is all wrong too.’ Then he told me to go for the doctor, mighty quick. I got the doctor and
told him what we were trying to do with Pa, and he said he would finish the job. So the Doc came in, and Pa was on the lounge, and when the Doc saw him, he said it was lucky he was called just as he was, or we would have required an undertaker. He put some pounded ice on Pa’s head the first thing, ordered the shirt cut open, and we got the pants off. Then he gave Pa an emetic, and had his feet soaked, and Pa said, ‘Doc., if you will bring me out of this I will never drink another drop.’ The Doc told Pa that his life was not worth a button if he ever drank again, and left about half a pint of sugar pills to be fired into Pa every five minutes. Ma and me sat up with Pa all day Sunday, and Monday morning I changed the spectacles, and took the clothes home, and along about noon Pa said he felt as though he could get up. Well, you never see a tickleder man than he was when he found the swelling had gone down so he could get his pants and shirt on, and he says that doctor is the best in this town. Ma says I am a smart boy, and Pa has taken the pledge, and we are all right. Say, you don’t think there is anything wrong in a boy playing it on his Pa once in a while, do you?”

  “Not much, You have very likely saved your Pa’s life. No, sir, joking is all right when by so doing you can break a person of a bad habit,” and the grocery man cut a chew of tobacco off a piece of plug that was on the counter, which the boy had soaked in kerosene, and before he had fairly got it rolled in his cheek he spit it out and began to gag, and as the boy started leisurely out the door the grocery man said, “Lookahere, condemn you, don’t you ever tamper with my tobacco again, or by thunder I’ll maul you,” and he followed the boy to the door, spitting cotton all the way; and, as the boy went around the corner, the groceryman thought how different a joke seemed when it was on somebody else. And then he turned to go in and rinse the kerosene out of his mouth, and found a sign on a box of new, green apples, as follows:—