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Jack-Knife Man

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<h2> XVI. JAIL UNCLES </h2> THE county jail stood back of the courthouse, on Maple Street, and was a three-story brick building, flush with the sidewalk, with barred windows. To the right was the stone-yard where, when the sheriff was having good trade, you could hear the slow tapping of hammers on limestone as the victims of the law pounded rock, breaking the large stones into road metal. As a factory the prisoners did not seem to care whether they reached a normal output of cracked rock or not. Seated on a folded gunny-sack laid upon a smooth stone in this yard, Booge was receiving justice at the hands of the law. He pulled a rough piece of limestone toward him, turned it over eight or ten times to find the point of least resistance, settled the stone snugly into the limestone chips, and—yawned. Eight or ten minutes later, feeling chilly and cramped in the arms, he raised his hammer and let it fall on the rock, and—yawned! The other prisoners—there were five in all—worked at the same breathless pace. The stone-yard was protected from the vulgar gaze of the outer slaves of business and labor by a tall board fence, notable as the only fence of any size in Riverbank that never bore circus posters on its outer surface. Several times within the memory of man there had been “jail deliveries” from the stone-yard. In each case the delivery had been effected in the same manner. The escaping prisoner climbed over the fence and went away. One such renegade, recaptured, told why he had fled. “I won't stay in no hotel,” he said, “where they've got cockroaches in the soup. If this here sheriff don't brace up, there won't none of us patronize his durn hotel next winter.” Peter, enveloped in his blanket serape, pulled the knob of the door-bell of the jail and waited. He heard the bell gradually cease jangling, and presently he heard feet in the corridor, and the door opened. “Well, what do you want?” asked the sheriff's wife. “If you want Ed, he ain't here. You'll have to come back.” “I've come to give myself up,” said Peter. “My name's Peter Lane.” “Well, it don't make any difference what your name is,” said Mrs. Stevens flatly. “You can't give yourself up to me, and that's all there is to it. Every time the weather turns cold a lot of you fellows come around and give yourselves up, and I'm sick and tired of it. I won't take another one of you unless you 're arrested in a proper manner. Half the time Ed can't collect the board money. If you want to get in here you go down to the calaboose and get arrested in the right way.” “But I'm sort of looked for here,” said Peter. “Joe Venby knows I'm coming here, and if Ed was here—” “Oh, if Ed was here, he'd feed you for nothing, I dare say!” said Mrs. Stevens. “He's the easiest creature I ever see. If it wasn't for me he'd lose money on this jail right along.” “Can't I come in and wait for Ed?” asked Peter. “I ought to stay here when I'm wanted. I don't want Ed or Joe to think I'd play a trick on them.” “You can't come in!” said Mrs. Stevens. “The last man that come and gave himself up to me stole a shell box off my what-not, and I won't have that happen again. You can come back after a while.” “Can't you let me wait in the stone-yard?” asked Peter. “See here!” said the sheriff's wife. “I'm busy getting a meal, and I've no time to stand talking. Ed locked them boarders in the yard when he went away, and he took the key. If you want to get into that stone-yard, you'll have to climb over the fence, and that's all there is to it. I have no time to fritter away talking.” She slammed the door in Peter's face, and Peter turned away. The fence was high but Peter was agile, and he scrambled up and managed to throw one leg over, and thus reached the top. “Come on in,” Booge's gruff voice greeted him, and Peter looked down to see the tramp immediately below him. “They got Buddy,” said Peter, as he dropped to the ground inside the fence. “Did, hey?” said Booge, stretching his arms. “I was sort of in hopes you'd kill that old kazoozer, if you had to. I don't like him. He's the feller that married me and Lize, and I ain't ever forgive him. One Merdin was enough in a town. I was all of that name the world ought to have had in it—” “Merdin?” said Peter. “Is that your name?” “Why, sure, it is. Didn't I ever tell you?” asked Booge. “No, I guess I didn't. Come to think of it, it wasn't important what you called me, and Buddy sort of clung to 'Booge.' Where is the little feller?” “Your name's Merdin? And your wife was Lize Merdin?” repeated Peter, staring at the tramp. “Is that so?” “Cross my heart. If you want me to, I'll sing it for you.” “Booge,” said Peter soberly, “she's dead. Your wife is dead.” The tramp was serious now. “Lize is dead?” he asked. “Honest, Peter?” “She's dead,” Peter repeated. “She died in my boat. She come there one awful stormy night, and she died there. She was run out of Derlingport, and she died, and I buried her.” Booge put down his stone-hammer and for a full minute stared at the chapped and soiled hands on his knees. Then he shook his head. “Ain't that peculiar? Ain't that odd?” he said. “Lize dead, and she died in your boat, and—why!” he cried suddenly, “Buddy 's my boy, ain't he?” “Yes,” said Peter, “he's your boy.” “Ain't that queer! Ain't that strange!” Booge repeated, shaking his bushy head. “Ain't that odd? And Buddy was my boy all the time! And he's a nice little feller, too, ain't he? He's a real nice little feller. Ain't that odd!” He still shook his head as he picked up the hammer. He struck the rock before him several listless blows. “I wonder if Lize told you what become of Susie?” he asked. “I know what become of her,” said Peter. “Briggles got her, too. She's with a—with a lady in town here.” He could not bring himself to tell the imprisoned man what the lady was in reality. “That's fine,” said Booge, laughing mirthlessly. “I knowed all along I'd bring up my family first-class. All we needed to make our home a regular 'God-bless-er' was for me to get far enough away, and for some one to get the kids away from Lize. Do you know, Peter, I feel sort of sorry for Lize, too. That's funny, ain't it?” “Not if she was your wife, it ain't,” said Peter. “Yes, it is,” Booge insisted. “A man don't feel sorry for a wife like that. Generally he's glad when she's gone, but I sort of feel like Lize didn't have a fair show.. She was real bright. If I hadn't married her, she'd probably have worked her way over to Chicago and got in a chorus, or blackmailed some rich feller, but I was a handicap to her right along. She couldn't be out-and-out whole-souled bad when she was a married lady. She'd just get started, and begin whooping things, when she'd remember she was a wife and a mother and all that, and she'd lose her nerve. She never got real bad, and she never got real good. I guess I stood in her way too much.” “You mean you wasn't one thing or the other?” asked Peter. “Yep! That's why I went away, when I did go,” said Booge. “I seen Lize wasn't happy, and I wasn't happy, so I went. The sight of me just made her miserable. She'd come in after being away a week or so, and she'd moan out how wicked she was, and how good I was, and that she was going to reform for my sake, and she'd be unhappy for a month—all regrets and sorrow and punishing herself—and then I'd take my turn and get on a spree, and when I come back, she'd be gone. Then she'd come back and go through the whole thing once more. It was real torture for her. She never fig-gered that my kind of bad was as bad as her kind of bad. I never gave her no help to stay straight, either. I guess what I'd ought to have done was to whack her over the head with an ax handle when she come back, or give her a black eye, but I didn't have no real stamina. I was a fool that way.” “I don't see why you married her,” said simple Peter. “Well, I was a fool that way, too,” said Booge. “She seemed so young and all, to be throwed out by her mother and father, so I just married her because nobody else offered to, as you might say, to give her baby some sort of a dad when it come. It didn't get much of a sort of a dad, either, when it got me. “Then you ain't Susie's pa?” asked Peter. “Lord, no!” “And Buddy?” “Oh, yes! And ain't he a nice little feller? Seems like he's got all Lize's and my good in him, don't it, and none of our bad? And to think I was there with him all the time, and you didn't even like me to be uncle to him! I wonder—Peter, if you ever see him again, just tell him his dad's dead, will you, Peter?”. “If you want I should, Booge,” said Peter reluctantly. “Yes! And tell him some sort of story about his poor but honest parents. Tell him I was a traveling man and got killed in a wreck. Tell him I had a fine voice to sing with, or some little thing like that, so he can remember it. A little kid likes to remember things like that when he grows up and misses the folks he ought to have.” “I'll tell him you were always kind to him, for so you was—in my boat,” said Peter. “I'll tell him that when he was a little fellow you used to sing him to sleep.” “Yes, something like that,” said Booge, and went on breaking rock. Suddenly he looked up. “I wonder if it would do any good for me to give you a paper saying you are to have all my rights in him? I don't know that I've got any, but I'd sort of like to have you have Buddy.” They talked of this for some time, and it was agreed that when Booge had served his term and was released he was to sign such a paper before a notary and leave it with George Rapp, and they were still discussing the possibility of such a paper being of any value when the door of the jail opened and the sheriff came into the stone-yard. “Hello, Peter!” he said. “My wife tells me you want to see me. What's the trouble?” Peter explained. “Well, I'm sorry I've got to turn you out,” said the sheriff regretfully. “I've got the jail so full you mightn't be comfortable anyway, and I've taken in about all I can afford to take on speculation. I'd like to keep you, but I don't see how I can do it, Peter. I don't make enough feeding you fellows to take any risk on not getting paid. I guess you'll have to get out.” “But I'm guilty, Ed,” said Peter. “I guess I am, anyway.” “Can't help it!” said the sheriff firmly. “I don't know nothing about that. If you want to come to jail, you've got to be served with papers in the regular way. The city don't O. K. my bills hit-or-miss no more. I guess you'll have to get out. I can't run the risk of keeping you on your own say-so.” “If you say so, Ed,” said Peter. “If anything comes up, you'll know I've tried to get into jail, anyway. What should you say I ought to do?” “What you ought to do,” said the sheriff, “is to go home and wait until somebody comes and arrests you in proper shape.” “I'll do so, if you say so, Ed,” said Peter. “I'm living in George Rapp's house-boat, down at Big Tree Lake, and if you want me, I'll be there. I'll wait 'til you come.” He shook Booge's hand and the sheriff unlocked the gate of the stone-yard, and Peter passed out into the cold world. <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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