Part 18

One trick Jim had was the knack of changin’ his voice. He could make you think he was a girl talkin’ and he could mimic any man’s voice. To show you how good he was along this line, I’ll tell you the joke he played on me once.

You know, in most towns of any size, when a man is dead and needs a shave, why the barber that shaves him soaks him five dollars for the job; that is, he don’t soak _him_, but whoever ordered the shave. I just charge three dollars because personally I don’t mind much shavin’ a dead person. They lay a whole lot stiller than live customers. The only thing is that you don’t feel like talkin’ to them and you get kind of lonesome.

Well, about the coldest day we ever had here, two years ago last winter, the phone rung at the house w’ile I was home to dinner and I answered the phone and it was a woman’s voice and she said she was Mrs. John Scott and her husband was dead and would I come out and shave him.

Old John had always been a good customer of mine. But they live seven miles out in the country, on the Streeter road. Still I didn’t see how I could say no.

So I said I would be there, but would have to come in a jitney and it might cost three or four dollars besides the price of the shave. So she, or the voice, it said that was all right, so I got Frank Abbott to drive me out to the place and when I got there, who should open the door but old John himself! He wasn’t no more dead than, well than a rabbit.

It didn’t take no private detective to figure out who had played me this little joke. Nobody could of thought it up but Jim Kendall. He certainly was a card!

I tell you this incident just to show you how he could disguise his voice and make you believe it was somebody else talkin’. I’d of swore it was Mrs. Scott had called me. Anyways, some woman.

Well, Jim waited till he had Doc Stair’s voice down pat; then he went after revenge.

He called Julie up on a night when he knew Doc was over in Carterville. She never questioned but what it was Doc’s voice. Jim said he must see her that night; he couldn’t wait no longer to tell her somethin’. She was all excited and told him to come to the house. But he said he was expectin’ an important long distance call and wouldn’t she please forget her manners for once and come to his office. He said they couldn’t nothin’ hurt her and nobody would see her and he just _must_ talk to her a little w’ile. Well, poor Julie fell for it.

Doc always keeps a night light in his office, so it looked to Julie like they was somebody there.

Meanw’ile Jim Kendall had went to Wright’s poolroom, where they was a whole gang amusin’ themselves. The most of them had drank plenty of gin, and they was a rough bunch even when sober. They was always strong for Jim’s jokes and when he told them to come with him and see some fun they give up their card games and pool games and followed along.

Doc’s office is on the second floor. Right outside his door they’s a flight of stairs leadin’ to the floor above. Jim and his gang hid in the dark behind these stairs.

Well, Julie come up to Doc’s door and rung the bell and they was nothin’ doin’. She rung it again and she rung it seven or eight times. Then she tried the door and found it locked. Then Jim made some kind of a noise and she heard it and waited a minute, and then she says, “Is that you, Ralph?” Ralph is Doc’s first name.

They was no answer and it must of came to her all of a sudden that she’d been bunked. She pretty near fell downstairs and the whole gang after her. They chased her all the way home, hollerin’, “Is that you Ralph?” and “Oh, Ralphie, dear, is that you?” Jim says he couldn’t holler it himself, as he was laughin’ too hard.

Poor Julie! She didn’t show up here on Main Street for a long, long time afterward.

And of course Jim and his gang told everybody in town, everybody but Doc Stair. They was scared to tell him, and he might of never knowed only for Paul Dickson. The poor cuckoo, as Jim called him, he was here in the shop one night when Jim was still gloatin’ yet over what he’d done to Julie. And Paul took in as much of it as he could understand and he run to Doc with the story.

It’s a cinch Doc went up in the air and swore he’d make Jim suffer. But it was a kind of a delicate thing, because if it got out that he had beat Jim up, Julie was bound to hear of it and then she’d know that Doc knew and of course knowin’ that he knew would make it worse for her than ever. He was goin’ to do somethin’, but it took a lot of figurin’.

Well, it was a couple days later when Jim was here in the shop again, and so was the cuckoo. Jim was goin’ duck-shootin’ the next day and had came in lookin’ for Hod Meyers to go with him. I happened to know that Hod had went over to Carterville and wouldn’t be home till the end of the week. So Jim said he hated to go alone and he guessed he would call it off. Then poor Paul spoke up and said if Jim would take him he would go along. Jim thought a w’ile and then he said, well, he guessed a half-wit was better than nothin’.

I suppose he was plottin’ to get Paul out in the boat and play some joke on him, like pushin’ him in the water. Anyways, he said Paul could go. He asked him had he ever shot a duck and Paul said no, he’d never even had a gun in his hands. So Jim said he could set in the boat and watch him and if he behaved himself, he might lend him his gun for a couple of shots. They made a date to meet in the mornin’ and that’s the last I seen of Jim alive.

Next mornin’, I hadn’t been open more than ten minutes when Doc Stair come in. He looked kind of nervous. He asked me had I seen Paul Dickson. I said no, but I knew where he was, out duck-shootin’ with Jim Kendall. So Doc says that’s what he had heard, and he couldn’t understand it because Paul had told him he wouldn’t never have no more to do with Jim as long as he lived.

He said Paul had told him about the joke Jim had played on Julie. He said Paul had asked him what he thought of the joke and the Doc had told him that anybody that would do a thing like that ought not to be let live.

I said it had been a kind of a raw thing, but Jim just couldn’t resist no kind of a joke, no matter how raw. I said I thought he was all right at heart, but just bubblin’ over with mischief. Doc turned and walked out.

At noon he got a phone call from old John Scott. The lake where Jim and Paul had went shootin’ is on John’s place. Paul had came runnin’ up to the house a few minutes before and said they’d been an accident. Jim had shot a few ducks and then give the gun to Paul and told him to try his luck. Paul hadn’t never handled a gun and he was nervous. He was shakin’ so hard that he couldn’t control the gun. He let fire and Jim sunk back in the boat, dead.

Doc Stair, bein’ the coroner, jumped in Frank Abbott’s flivver and rushed out to Scott’s farm. Paul and old John was down on the shore of the lake. Paul had rowed the boat to shore, but they’d left the body in it, waiting for Doc to come.

Doc examined the body and said they might as well fetch it back to town. They was no use leavin’ it there or callin’ a jury, as it was a plain case of accidental shootin’.

Personally I wouldn’t never leave a person shoot a gun in the same boat I was in unless I was sure they knew somethin’ about guns. Jim was a sucker to leave a new beginner have his gun, let alone a halfwit. It probably served Jim right, what he got. But still we miss him round here. He certainly was a card!

Comb it wet or dry?

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Copyright, 1925, by Liberty Weekly, Incorporated. Copyright, 1926, by Ring W. Lardner.

THE ILL WIND[13]

By ROBERT ROBINSON

(From _Collier’s Weekly_)

As best I can recollect, this is the way it happened:

I got up about the usual time that morning and went out to get some kindling to make a fire with. Well, I noticed that it was kinda still and sultry like, and I told Martha when I got back in that I believed it was going to come a storm. She said she hoped it rained, as the tomatoes needed it bad. You see, we’d set out a five-acre patch of them about a week before. I didn’t tell her that I was afraid that it was going to turn into a sandstorm. I knew she’d have a fit. She always does.

Martha’d worked too hard. You see, we moved on this place more’n fifteen years ago. We were young then, and we figured we’d make no end of money. We came here from Missouri ’cause we wanted to get a start so’s we could give the boy an education. We just had one kid then, Johnnie. We got five now. But that ain’t got nothing to do with the story. As I was saying, Martha’d worked too hard. We had to pay out the place, and it seemed like luck would never break our way. The first year the sod didn’t make enough to pay expenses; then several years we were blown out by sand; the drought got us a couple of times; and then we had a good many other things to happen that kinda took the wind out of our sails.

And then there was another thing that I hate to mention that seemed to worry her no end. You see, Martha was awful religious. She comes from that kind of stock. For some reason or other I ain’t never took to religion much. It always seemed like foolishness to me. That kinda hurt her. And when everything begin to go wrong she laid it to me being so ungodly. I used to laugh and joke her about it, but she took it serious as ever’thing. She’d say:

“All right, you can joke about it all you want to, but some day you’ll see. The Lord’ll exact His toll; He’ll make you pay.”

Well, she got up, and as usual she cried a little. I didn’t blame her. Poor old Martha! She’d had such dreams, and they’d all been blown away, as you might say. Then too she was a sick woman a lot of the time. She had the neuralgia and the catarrh, and between them, with all the work she did, they kept her feeling mighty poorly.

But, as I was saying, Martha got up, and after she’d had her little cry she was all right. She got Minnie up--that’s our oldest girl--and they started getting breakfast. It weren’t daylight yet, but the east was beginning to get sorta rosy like and you could kinda smell the sun a-coming. I rousted out Henry and Johnnie--they’re our oldest boys--and we started to the barn to feed the stock.

Well, I saw that sure enough we were in for something. The red in the east had spread until it covered quite a bit of the sky, and it didn’t look like it usually does. It was as if somebody had hung a thin yellow veil over it. And I noticed that there was a bank of dark-looking clouds hanging low against the northwest sky line. And so I yelled for Martha to leave breakfast alone and come milk before it started raining, or something. I was purty sure by that time that it weren’t going to be no ordinary rain, but I didn’t want Martha to know it till she had to.

I’ve seen a lot of west Texas storms, and I’ve seen them break records coming up, but I ain’t never seen one that could keep in smelling distance of that one that morning. Why, do you know, by the time Martha and Minnie could get to the cow pen and get one cow apiece milked that bank of clouds was halfway up the sky and going so fast you could see it a-moving. The sun was just peeping over the horizon and looking so red and awful, and the air was so still, and you could hear for miles. I made out ever’ word Old Man Holland said to one of his little boys, who it ’peared had done something he shouldn’t, and it was more’n two miles over to their place. The air had a sort of pressing-down effect. You kinda had to put out an effort to get enough breath to keep you from gasping. And sweat! It just poured down my face.

Well, I went on back in the barn and began shucking some corn to shell so as I could take it to town the next day, Saturday, and get it ground into meal. Directly I heard Martha let out a squeal and I knew something was up. I hurried out and saw her standing in the middle of the cow lot looking about her in a wild sort of way. She kinda looks wild, anyway, when she first gets up, with her hair a-stringing down and her dress askew.

“It’s going to come a cyclone!” she yells to me. And then she tells Minnie to come on, and away they goes to the house lickity split. She hollers and tells me to come on and let’s go down the cellar.

I looked about and, by heck, I felt like making a run for the hole myself. The cloud had spread away over the barn, and on both the east and west there was a rolling, working mass of sand a-tearing along the prairie at a terrific rate. Above I could hear the wind rumbling and growling, and about a mile and a half away I saw bearing down on me a black, awful-looking mass. And there weren’t a breath of air a-stirring where I was. And hot! Gosh, but the sweat was just naturally pouring off me!

Well, you can tell the world that I made fast time getting to the house. By the time I was there Martha had all the kids out in the yard. We went down the cellar, and I managed to pull the door too just as the first whiff of wind hit.

Well, we stayed down there for I guess as long as thirty minutes. By that time the hardest part of the wind, it seemed, had passed. Now, that doesn’t mean that it weren’t blowing yet. Gosh, no! It was still moaning and whistling, making the craziest sound in the cellar flue. I stayed down there till I judged that it was safe to come out, and I started to open up. Martha she kicked some, but I told her I wanted to see what the wind had done to everything. I raised the door a little, and the wind got a whip at it. Danged if it didn’t tear it right out of my hands and bust it into a dozen pieces against the ground. Then there weren’t nothing else to do but come out.

Martha she grabbed the kids and said she weren’t coming out, but when she saw me standing up she judged it was safe, so she took a chance and came about halfway up the steps. There came a moment’s lull about that time. Now, I don’t mean that the wind quit blowing. Land, no! I just mean that it didn’t blow so hard for a minute or so. Martha saw that I knew what I was talking about, so she hustled the kids out, and they got ready to make a run for the house.

Well, about that time along came a hard gust and caught Molly--that’s our second girl--right in the middle and blew her sky-winding. It didn’t hurt her none, and I saw it, so I laughed. Now, maybe that didn’t make Martha mad. Gosh! She started after Molly, who couldn’t seem to get her feet, and danged if Martha didn’t get turned over. Then I seen that it was time for me to take a hand, so I did. I got ’em both on their feet, but Martha, she couldn’t seem to stand. She said it’d hurt her back; that she guessed that I was satisfied now that I had probably killed her; that that’s what I’d been trying to do for a long time.

Now Martha she knew better than that, but when she gets all wrought up she jest has to say something like that. Of course her back weren’t broke. It was just her imagination. She’s got anything beat for imagining things that I ever seen. But you can tell the world that she gave me Hail Columbia just the same.

Well, I finally got ’em all safely in the house, and then I begin to try to see what damage had been done to the other buildings. I expected to see every one of ’em laying slap on the ground. I couldn’t see very well from the window, but I could tell that at least a part of the barn was standing. Then I looked for the chicken house, but it weren’t nowhere to be seen. Right then and there I said to myself that I had to go out and see about it.

Martha she didn’t want me to.

“That’s it. Go out and get yourself killed and then what’ll become of us?” she says with the tears a-running down her cheeks.

Just for fun I put in, kinda innocent like:

“Why, Martha, I didn’t think I amounted to much around here anyway, to hear you tell it.”

Well, sir, I hadn’t no more’n got that out of my mouth than I was sorry as heck that I’d said it. She begin to cry and take on something terrible. Said that I was just making that up; that it was me that didn’t care anything for her; that I’d go out and get my neck broke and leave the poor little children to be orphans. To quiet her I told her I wouldn’t go. And then I begin peering out of the windows of every room that gave me a view of the lots and chicken house; and I begin to wonder out loud what had become of them chickens. D’rectly Martha she says:

“Looks like you’d go out and see about them instead of setting around in here and letting ’em blow away.”

Now, that’s just like Martha. It hadn’t been five minutes before that she was crying because I was thinking of going out. Anyway, I went.

Them chickens was a sight to behold. When the wind took their house and sent it flying from over their heads they was sent rolling and tumbling every which way. Least, I guess they were from the way they were scattered. Some of ’em had caught against the garden fence--it was made out of hog wire--but most of ’em had been blown out across the field where they’d been able to get protection behind some new listed furrows that I had plowed only a few days before.

The cow shed was gone and the fence was down. The cows had drifted up against the wire fence that separated the pasture from the fields. There they stood, their heads down, all hunched up like they used to do on cold winter days. But now, instead of snow caked on their backs, it was sand. Every once and a while an extra hard puff would send ’em forward like it was going to make ’em get in the fence. That kinda skeered me, so I went back to the house and got Johnnie to come and help me put ’em in the horse lot. Martha objected to him going out, but he didn’t listen, just came a-tearing. He was tickled to death to get out. It was a kind of picnic for him. Least, he ’peared to take it that way. All the kids seemed to be having a rip-roaring good time out of the storm. But you can tell the world that I weren’t.

Well, we tried to drive them cows in the lot. Every time we’d turn them against the wind they’d blink their eyes, shake their heads, go a few paces, and then turn around and start tearing back to the fence. About the third time we tried it one of ’em went too far and got in the wire just as I was afraid she would. We tried to get her out, and she pulled and sawed about, which made it all the worse. She got all tangled up and tore down the wire.

We tried to get old Boss out of the fence, but she was helpless. Poor old thing! I seen that she was a goner, so to put her out of her misery I sent Johnnie in the house to get the gun. I told him not to let his ma see him, but it was wasted breath. She spied him on the road out and follered him just a-boiling. Of course she didn’t know what he’d come after the gun for, and it skeered her. Then she saw what’d happened. Of course she laid it on to me. Land, how she did carry on!

We shot Boss. Then I went down and found out that the horses were faring purty well, considering ever’thing. They were all covered in sand, but that weren’t nothing. I fed ’em and killed as much time as I could, ’cause I wanted to stay away from the house as long as possible. I knew good and well that Martha’d pour it onto me hot and heavy when I came in.

But, do you know, when I got in she didn’t say a word for a long time. She was a-setting in the sitting room rocking back and forth in a chair that we’d got from Chicago a couple of years before. She just set there and rocked and looked at me so funny I felt downright creepy. I’d a whole lot druther she’d ’a’ give it to me hot and heavy. Fact is, I tried to start her. I says, kinda funny like:

“Well, it looks like the good Lord don’t like us none a-tall. Don’t look like He’d ’a’ treated you this way, Martha.”