“Now, don’t let that worry you, Eva. That’s part o’ my job.”
“Who’s going to tend jail when there’s anybody locked up in it?”
“I am, o’ course.”
“And who’s going to be street commissioner, truant officer, chief of the fire depart—”
“You are, Eva,—but I’m going to look after everything, mind you. All you got to do is to see that I git somethin’ to eat whenever I need it, an’ a bed to sleep in at night, an’ I’ll—”
“A bed to sleep in, you ninny!” she cried. “You’re going to sleep in the same bed you’ve been sleeping in for forty years. What are you talking about? Ain’t you going to sleep with me if I appoint you deputy marshal?”
“Certainly,” Anderson made haste to assure her. “Unofficially, o’ course,” he went on, with profound regard for the ethics involved.
“Well, I’ll think it over,” she said wearily. “Don’t bother me now, you two; can’t you see I’m making apple butter?”
“I hope you will consent to run, Mrs. Crow,” put in the wily Mr. Squires, “if only for the sake of showing Minnie Stitzenberg that it won’t do her any good to be saying things about—well, about anybody in particular.” He concluded very lamely.
“Has that woman been saying things about me?” demanded Mrs. Crow.
“I ought to have sense enough to keep my mouth shut,” said Harry, scowling darkly. Catching the astonished look on Anderson’s face, he hastily suggested that they “beat it.”
Out in the front yard Anderson halted him. “Has Minnie been saying anything about my wife, Harry Squires?”
Harry first looked over his shoulder and then winked. “Not that I know of,” he said, chuckling. “But I guess it’s safe to go ahead and print the ticket with Mrs. Crow’s name on it.”
Never in all its sedentary existence had Tinkletown experienced a livelier campaign.
“If you vote for Minnie Stitzenberg, I’ll never speak to you again,” was the common argument of the Crowites, and “Don’t you ever try to look me in the face again if you vote for that old Mrs. Crow,” was the slogan of the opposition.
Mrs. Crow conducted her own campaign.
Anderson discovered to his great dismay that his meals were not only irregular in the matter of time, but frequently did not materialize at all. His wife and daughters neglected him completely. On three separate occasions after waiting until nearly eight o’clock for his supper, he strolled disconsolately over to the equally abandoned home of Alf Reesling.
“I’m a mighty poor cook,” confessed Alf on the first occasion, a hungry, harassed look in his eyes. “But anything’s better’n starvin’, ain’t it?”
“It shore is,” said Anderson with feeling.
“I ain’t seen a petticoat around my house since half-past nine this mornin’,” lamented Alf, upsetting a pan of milk while trying to get a plate of cold ham out of the icebox. “It’s terrible.”
“Lemme take your knife, Alf. I’ll peel the pertatoes—if you’ll tell me where they are.”
“I don’t know where anything is,” said Alf, leaning dejectedly against the kitchen sink.
“Well,” said Anderson, “let’s look.”
“If the election was a week further off, I’d give up an’ go to drinkin’ again,” said Alf on another occasion. “I’d sooner drink myself to death than starve. Starvation is a terrible end, Anderson. Worse than hangin’, they say.”
“Only four days more,” sighed Anderson, clipping off a hunk of bologna. “My wife says if I’ll hold out till after election, she won’t never leave the kitchen ag’in long as she lives.”
“That’s what mine says. Sherman was only half right. War may be hell for men, but, by gosh, women are hell for war. An’ that’s what it is—war, Anderson, war to the hilt. Every woman in town’s got her knife out an’, my God, how they’re slashin’ each other! There won’t be a whole woman left.”
“Well, I’d be satisfied with half a one,” mused Anderson, a faraway look in his eyes.
The day before the election, Mrs. Crow played her trump card. She had treasured an open boast made years before by the disappointed old maid who now opposed her. Minnie, before attaining years of discretion and still smarting under the failures of youth, had spitefully announced that she was a spinster from choice. With great scorn she had stated, while sitting on Mrs. Crow’s porch, that she would die an old maid a hundred times over sooner than marry any one in Tinkletown. And, she added, the best proof that she meant what she said was the fact that nearly every man in town had asked her to marry him before he asked any one else!
The news spread like wildfire the instant Mrs. Crow released it. Mrs. Crow’s veracity was not a thing to be questioned.
When the returns were all in, Mrs. Crow was found to have received 573 votes (women included), out of a total of 601 cast. Miss Stitzenberg held the German vote solid, including seven from her own sex who could afford to disregard the slander because they had been safely married in Germany long before coming to Tinkletown.
* * * *
The day after the new marshal’s induction into office Anderson appeared with his star glittering so brightly that it dazzled the eye. His shoes were polished, his clothes brushed and—shocking to relate—his trousers creased. In all his career as marshal he had never gone to such extremes as this. He was, however, not in a happy frame of mind. His customary aplomb was missing.
“Well, of all the—” began Alf Reesling. Then, before Anderson could put in a word of warning, he shouted to the group in front of Lamson’s store: “Hey! Look at the dude!”
Anderson, very red in the face, declined a seat on a soap box.
“If I’d knowed she was goin’ to act like this, I’d a voted ag’in her myself,” he said rather wanly. “She started in bossin’ me the very minute she got my place as marshal. She’s laid down the law to me, an’, by crickety, she says if I’m goin’ to be her deputy I’ve got to look like this every day. Look at them shoes! And these pants! No, I can’t set down. I don’t dare risk sp’ilin’ the creases my daughter Susie put in ’em ‘fore I was up this mornin’.”
VICIOUS LUCIUS
Lucius Fry lived up back of the Power-house on the outskirts of Tinkletown. He had a wife, two children and a horse and buggy. For a great many years he had led a quiet, peaceful, even suppressed existence. Being a rather smallish, bony sort of man, with a large Adam’s apple and bow legs, he was an object of considerable scorn not only to his acquaintances but to his wife and children, and after a fashion, to his horse.
The latter paid absolutely no attention to him when he said “Get-ap,” or when he applied the “gad”; she neither obeyed the command nor resented the chastisement. She jogged along in her own sweet way quite as if he were nowhere in the vicinity. His wife abused him, and his children ignored him. No one, it would appear, had the slightest use or respect for Lucius Fry.
He was, by profession, a well-digger. The installation of a water-works system in Tinkletown had made him a well-digger in name only. For a matter of five or six years, barring the last six months, he had been in the employ of his wife. She took in washing, and it was his job to collect and deliver the “wash” three times a week. In return for this he received board and lodging and an occasional visit to the moving-picture theatre. One of his daughters clerked in the five-and-ten-cent store, and the other, aged twelve, was errand girl to Miss Angie Nixon, the fashionable dressmaker.
Lucius had married very much above him, so to speak. That is to say, his wife was something like nine or ten inches the taller of the two. When they appeared on the street together,—which was seldom,—you could see him only if you chanced to be on that side of her. Mrs. Fry was nearly six feet tall and very wide, but Lucius was not much over five feet two. He had a receding chin that tried to secrete itself behind a scant, dun-colored crop of whiskers, cultivated by him with two purposes in view; first, to provide shelter for his shrinking chin, and second, to avoid the
arduous and unnecessary task of shaving.
Roughly speaking, Lucius was a shiftless creature. It had long been the consensus of opinion—freely expressed throughout Tinkletown—that he did not amount to a tinker’s dam.
However that may be, some six or seven months prior to the incidents about to be related, Mr. Fry himself wrought a tremendous and unbelievable change in the foregoing opinion. Almost in the wink of an eyelash he passed through a process of transmogrification that not only bewildered him but caused the entire community to sit up and take notice of him.
It all came about in the oddest sort of way. For a number of years Lucius had been in the habit of currying the old grey mare on Saturday mornings. Away back in his mind lurked an hereditary respect for the Sabbath. He wanted old Peggy to be as clean as possible on Sunday—observing the same principle, no doubt, that induces a great many people to take a bath on Saturday night. Moreover, he changed the bedding in her stall on Saturdays, employing a pitchfork and a spade.
For a number of years Peggy had put up with these attentions, responding amiably to his directions—such as “Get over, dern ye,” or “Whoa, back,” “Stan’ still, can’t ye?” and so on.
One never-to-be-forgotten Saturday morning in the spring of the year, Peggy happened to be peevish. The cause of her peevishness was a swarm of intensely active flies. Mr. Fry was accustomed to an occasional swish of her tail across his face. He even welcomed it, for the flies bothered him almost as much as they did Peggy. On mornings when he felt unusually tired, he was rather grateful to Peggy for including him in the sweep of her tail.
But on this particular morning the exasperated nag planted one of her hoofs on Mr. Fry’s toes while he was engaged in brushing out the kinks in her mane.
Mrs. Fry happened to be in the stable at the time, seeing if the hens had mislaid anything in the hay. She was astonished by the roar of a mighty oath, followed almost instantly by a thunderous thump on the barrel-like anatomy of the family horse. A second or two later Peggy’s head came in for a resounding whack, and the stream of profanity increased to a torrent.
Springing to her feet, the surprised lady cast a startled glance over the manger into the stall. Her husband had old Peggy backed up against the partition and was preparing to deliver a third blow with the spade when she called out to him: “Stop it, you little fool!”
Mr. Fry’s attention was diverted. Peggy was spared the impending blow. Instead, the outraged hostler charged around the partition, through a narrow passage and into the presence of his wife. He hobbled painfully. Inarticulate sounds issued from his compressed lips. He gripped the spade-handle so tightly that cords stood out on his rather formidable forearms.
Mrs. Fry got as far as “You ugly little—” and then, as he bore down upon her, turned to flee. He altered his course, and as she passed him on the way to the open door, the flat of the spade landed with impelling force upon the broadest part of her person. The sound was not so hollow as that which resulted from the wallop on Peggy’s ribs, but its echo was a great deal more far-reaching. Indeed, Mrs. Fry’s howl could have been heard a quarter of a mile away. She passed through the door into the barnyard on the wing, as it were.
Lucius blindly took another swing at her with the spade as she made her exit. Missing her by several feet, he spun completely around several times with the momentum; then, not to be deprived of the full measure of triumph, he hurled the implement after her retreating figure. Rage improved the accuracy as well as the force of his effort. The spade caught Mrs. Fry below the waistline and for nearly a month thereafter she was in the habit of repairing with female visitors to an upstairs bedroom where she proudly revealed to them the extensive welt produced by her husband’s belated return to power.
Not completely satisfied, however, he set out in pursuit of her, principally on one foot, but with a swiftness that surprised both of them. Overtaking her near the barnyard gate, he pulled up suddenly, realizing the peril of being too precipitate. He was rushing into disaster. She was likely to turn and snatch the offensive away from him. But just as he was on the point of turning to run the other way, she flopped down on her knees and began begging him for God’s sake to spare her! Her eyes were tightly closed, and her arms were raised to shield her face.
Seizing this fine opportunity, he edged around in front of her, took the most careful, deliberate aim, and forthwith planted his fist solidly upon her unprotected nose.
He had always wanted to do it, but never before had the opportunity presented itself. He couldn’t remember when he had caught her with her eyes closed before. She invariably stayed awake longer than he did at night, telling him the same thing she had told him the night before, and in the morning she kicked him out of bed before his eyes were open. Now here was the golden, long-desired chance. It might never occur again. So he swung with all his might and main.
Mrs. Fry involuntarily arose from her knees, balanced on her heels for a second or two and then sat down some distance away with the same heels in the air.
Then and there Lucius Fry ceased to be a person of no consequence.
Two or three neighbours, bent on rescuing Mrs. Fry, got no nearer than the barn-lot fence. Lucius, still hopping around on one foot, gathered up a stick of stove-wood in each hand, and let fly at them with such determination and precision that they decided to let him go ahead and murder her.
When Mrs. Fry’s daughters hurried into the house a short time afterward, they found their mother dressing and bandaging Mr. Fry’s foot and chokingly inquiring if she was hurting him. Between sentences she applied a wet towel to a prodigious, unrecognizable object that had once been her nose.
Juliet, the elder, planted herself in front of her father and passionately inquired if it was true that he had dared to strike her mother.
Lucius, with rare forethought, had provided himself with a stick of stove-wood before entering the house. He now held it in his right hand. He was not going to take any chances on his wife’s treachery. He was ready for the slightest sign of an uprising. Without answering his daughter’s question, he took a firm grip on the stick and started to arise from his chair, upsetting the pail of water that his wife had been using. Mrs. Fry screeched.
“Don’t hit her! Don’t kill her, Lucius! For God’s——”
“Shut up!” snarled Lucius. “I’m goin’ to belt the life out of her if she comes around here disturbin’ the peace. I’m peaceable now, Stella—we’ve got perfect peace now, ain’t we? But if she tries to—Well, you’ll see what’ll happen, young lady. Go an’ get a mop and clean up that water. D’ye hear me? Beat it!”
“For the Lord’s sake, Juliet, do what he tells you,” begged Mrs. Fry.
“An’ do it quick,” said Mr. Fry.
Having so suddenly—and unintentionally—gained the upper hand in his household, he was determined if possible to retain it. Temporarily at least he had his wife scared almost to death and so submissive that he couldn’t think of half enough indignities to heap upon her, no matter how hard he tried; and his disdainful daughters spoke in hushed voices, and got up every morning to start the kitchen fire, and carried in the wood, and waited on him first at meals, and allowed him to read The Banner before any one else claimed it, and fed the chickens, and behaved as daughters ought to behave. It was too good to be true. But as long as it really appeared to be true, he couldn’t afford to relax for an instant; he went about with a perpetual scowl and swore from morning till night.
Every other week he went out to the stable, and after closing the doors, proceeded to belabour an old saddle with a pitchfork handle. The sounds reaching the back porch of the house caused Mrs. Fry to cover her ears and moan: “Poor old Peggy! O-oh! My gracious! He’ll—he’ll kill her!”
Occasionally he threw a stove-lid or a hatchet or something else at his wife, but his aim was singularly bad, for try as he would, he did not appear to come closer than five or six feet to her with any of the missiles. Once in a while he displayed the most appalling desire t
o destroy everything in sight. On such occasions he smashed chairs, broke up the crockery or tramped all over the garments that Mrs. Fry had just hung out to dry. By mistake, he once picked up a hot stove-lid, and then he swore in earnest. His dutiful wife wrapped his hand up in soda and called the stove-lid a “nasty old thing!”
In a very short time everybody in Tinkletown was talking about Lucius Fry. Some one, lying with a little more enterprise than the rest, started the report that he had gone to Boggs City, the county seat, and had thrashed a bartender who refused to sell him a drink. This report grew until Lucius was credited with having polished off a whole bar-room full of men without so much as sustaining a scratch himself.
When Lucius appeared on Main Street, men who had never noticed him before went out of their way to be polite and friendly. Women who pitied Mrs. Fry looked at him with interest and called him, under their breath, a “big ugly brute.” Children stopped playing and ran when they saw Lucius Fry approaching.
Harry Squires, editor of The Banner, in reporting one of Mr. Fry’s most violent eruptions, alluded to him as “vicious Lucius.” The name clung to the little man. It was some time before the general public could utter it with confidence. Haste was not conducive to accuracy. Rash assuredness frequently turned Mr. Fry into “Vooshious Lishius” or “Lishius Vooshious” or even “V’looshious Ooshious.”
Mrs. Fry, in course of time, grew to be very proud of her master, the despot of Power-house Gully. She revealed her pride every time she fell in with acquaintances on the way to church. In reply to an oft-repeated question as to why Mr. Fry did not go to church with her any longer, she invariably gave the supercilious reply that nowadays when she requested her husband to go to church, he told her to go to hell instead—and that was the kind of a man she respected, she said, not one of your weak-kneed, henpecked cowards who go to church because they are more afraid of their wives than they are of the devil. And while the mountainous Mrs. Fry was no longer able to thrash her five-foot-two husband, she still inspired fear among churchgoers of both sexes and all ages. She frequently asserted that she could lick any man in Tinkletown except her husband—and moreover, if any officer of the law ever attempted to arrest Lucius for what he did to her, she’d beat his head off—that’s what she’d do.
The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories Page 270