The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy Part 7

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 ill.u.s.trations 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 appet.i.te 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, Sat.u.r.day night, and had the gla.s.ses 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 gla.s.s. You'd a dide to see him look at himself. His face looked as big as two faces, through the gla.s.s, 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Hennery, your Pa is a mighty sick man 197]

"But when Pa put on that condensed s.h.i.+rt, 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 s.h.i.+rt, 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 gla.s.s and cried, he looked so. He sat down in a chair and panted, he was so out of breath, and the s.h.i.+rt 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 b.u.t.ton 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 s.h.i.+rt 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:--

COLIC OR CHOLERA INFANTUM

YOU PAYS YOUR MONEY

AND TAKES YOUR CHOICE.

CHAPTER XXIII.

GHOSTS DON'T STEAL WORMY FIGS--A GRAND REHERSAL--THE MINISTER MURDERS HAMLET--THE WATER-MELON KNIFE--THE OLD MAN WANTED TO REHERSE THE DRUNKEN SCENE IN RIP VAN WINKLE--NO HUGGING ALLOWED--HAMLET WOULDN'T HAVE TWO GHOSTS-"HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE AN IDIOT."

"I am thy father's ghost," said a sheeted form in the doorway of the grocery, one evening, and the grocery man got behind the cheese box, while the ghost continued in a sepulchral voice, "doomed for a certain time to walk the night," and, waving a chair round, the ghost strode up to the grocery man, and with the other ghostly hand reached into a box of figs.

"No you ain't no ghost," said the grocery man, recognizing the bad boy.

"Ghosts do not go prowling around groceries stealing wormy figs. What do you mean by this sinful masquerade business? My father never had no ghost!"

"O, we have struck it now," said the bad boy as he pulled off his mask and rolled up the sheet he had worn around him. "We are going to have amateur theatricals, to raise money to have the church carpeted, and I am going to boss the job."

"You don't say," answered the grocery man, as he thought how much he could sell to the church people for a strawberry and ice cream festival, and how little he could sell for amateur theatricals. "Who is going into it and what are you going to play?"

"Pa and Ma, and me, and the minister, and three choir singers, and my chum, and the minister's wife, and two deacons, and an old maid are rehersing, but we have not decided what to play yet. They all want to play a different play, and I am fixing it so they can all be satisfied.

The minister wants to play Hamlet, Pa wants to play Rip Van Winkle, Ma wants to play Mary Anderson, the old maid wants to play a boarding school play, and the choir singers want an opera, and the minister's wife wants to play Lady Macbeth, and my chum and me want to play a double song and dance, and I am going to give them all a show. We had a rehersal last night, and I am the only one able to be around to-day. You see they have all been studying different plays, and they all wanted to talk at once. We let the minister sail in first. He had on a pair of his wife's black stockings, and a mantle made of a linen buggy lap blanket and he wore a mason's cheese knife such as these fellows with poke bonnets and white feathers wear when they get an invitation to a funeral or an excursion. Well, you never saw Hamlet murdered the way he did it. His interpretation of the character was that Hamlet was a Dude that talked through his nose, and while he was repeating Hamlet's soliloquy, Pa, who had come in with an old hunting suit on, as Rip Van Winkle, went to sleep, and he didn't wake up till Lady Macbeth came in, in the sleep-walking scene. She couldn't find a knife, so I took a slice of watermelon and sharpened it for her, and she made a mistake in the one she was to stab, and she stabbed Hamlet in the neck with a slice of watermelon, and the core of the melon fell on Pa's face, as he lay asleep as Rip, and when Lady Macbeth said, 'Out d.a.m.ned spot,' Pa woke up and felt the gob of watermelon on his face and he thought he had been murdered, and Ma came in on a hop, skip and jump as 'Parthenia,' and threw her arms around a deacon who was going to play the grave digger, and began to call him pet names, and Pa was mad, and the choir singers they began to sing, 'In the North Sea lived a whale,' and then they quit acting. You'd a dide to see Hamlet. The piece of watermelon went down his neck, and Lady Macbeth went off and left it in the wound under his collar, and Ma had to pull it out, and Hamlet said the seeds and the juice was running down inside his s.h.i.+rt, and he said he wouldn't play if he was going to be stabbed with a slice of melon, so while his wife was getting the melon seeds out of his neck, and drying the juice on his s.h.i.+rt, I sharpened a cuc.u.mber for Lady Macbeth to use as a dagger, but Hamlet kicked on cuc.u.mbers, too, and I had more trouble than any stage manager ever had. Then Pa wanted to rehea.r.s.e the drunken scene in Rip Van Winkle, where he hugs Grechten and drinks out of a flask behind her back, and he got one of the choir singers to act as Grechten, and I guess he would have been hugging till this time, and have swallowed the flask if Ma had not taken him by the ear, and said a little of that would go a good ways in an entertainment for the church. Pa said he didn't know as it was any worse than her prancing up to a grave digger and hugging him till the filling came out of his teeth, and then the minister decided that we wouldn't have any hugging at all in the play, and the choir girls said they wouldn't play, and the old maids struck, and the play come to a stand still."

"Well, that beats anything I ever heard tell of. It's a shame for people outside the profession to do play acting, and I won't go to the entertainment unless I get a pa.s.s," said the grocery man. "Did you rehea.r.s.e any more?"

"Yes, the minister wanted to try the ghost scene," said the boy, "and he wanted me to be the ghost. Well, they have two 'Markses' and two 'Topsies' in Uncle Tom's cabin, and I thought two ghosts in Hamlet would about fill the bill for amateurs, so I got my chum to act as one ghost.

We broke them all up. I wanted to have something new in ghosts, so my chum and me got two pair of Ma's long stockings, one pair red and one pair blue, and I put on a red one and a blue one, and my chum did the same. Then we got some ruffled clothes belonging to Ma, with flounces and things on, and put them on so they came most down to our knees, and we put sheets over us, clear to our feet, and when Hamlet got to yearning for his father's ghost, I came in out of the bath room with the sheet over me, and said I was the huckleberry he was looking for, and my chum followed me out and said he was a twin ghost, also, and then Hamlet got on his ear and said he wouldn't play with two ghosts, and he went off pouting, and then my chum and me pulled off the sheets and danced a clog dance. Well, when the rest of the troop saw our make up, it nearly killed them. Most of them had seen ballet dancers, but they never saw them with different colored socks. The minister said the benefit was rapidly becoming a farce, and before we had danced half a minute Ma she recognized her socks, and she came for me with a hot box, and made me take them off, and Pa was mad and said the dancing was the only thing that was worth the price of admission, and he scolded Ma, and the choir girls sided with Pa, and just then my chum caught his toe in the carpet and fell down, and that loosened the plaster overhead and about a bushel fell on the crowd. Pa thought lightning had struck the house, the minister thought it was a judgment on them all for play acting, and he began to shed his Hamlet costume with one hand and pick the plaster out of his hair with the other. The women screamed and tried to get the plaster out of their necks, and while Pa was brus.h.i.+ng off the choir singers Ma said the rehearsal was adjourned, and they all went home, but we are going to rehea.r.s.e again on Friday night. The play cannot be considered a success, but we will bring it out all right by the time the entertainment is to come off."

"By gum," said the grocery man, "I would like to have seen that minister as Hamlet. Didn't he look funny?"

"Funny! Well, I should remark. He seemed to predominate. That is, he was too fresh, too numerous, as it were. But at the next rehearsal I am going to work in an act from Richard the Third, and my chum is going to play the Chinaman of the Danites, and I guess we will take the cake.

Say, I want to work in an idiot somewhere. How would you like to play the idiot. You wouldn't have to rehea.r.s.e or anything--"

At this point the bad boy was seen to go out of the grocery store real spry, followed by a box of wooden clothes-pins that the grocery man had thrown after him.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE CRUEL WOMAN AND THE LUCKLESS DOG--THE BAD BOY WITH A DOG AND A BLACK EYE-WHERE DID YOU STEAL HIM?--ANGELS DON'T BREAK DOGS' LEGS--A WOMAN WHO BREAKS DOGS' LEGS HAS NO SHOW WITH ST. PETER--ANOTHER BURGLAR SCARE--THE GROCERY DELIVERY MAN SCARED.

"h.e.l.lo!" said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in with a black eye, leading a hungry looking dog that was walking on three legs, and had one leg tied up with a red silk handkerchief. "What is this--a part of your amateur theater? Now you get out of here with that dog, mighty quick. A boy that hurts dogs so they have to have their legs tied up, is no friend of mine," and the grocery man took up a broom to drive the dog out doors.

"There, you calm, yourself," says the boy to the grocery man, as the dog got behind the boy and looked up at the grocery man as though he was not afraid as long as the bad boy was around. "Set up the crackers and cheese, sausage, and pickles, and everything this dog wants to eat--he is a friend of mine--that dog is my guest, and those are my splints on his broken leg, and that is my handkerchief that my girl gave me, wound around it, and you touch that dog except in the way of kindness, and down comes your house." And the boy doubled up his fists as though he meant business.

"Poor doggie," said the grocery man, as he cut off a piece of sausage and offered it to the dog, which was declined with thanks, expressed by the wagging tail. "Where did you steal him?"

"I didn't steal him, and he is no cannibal. He won't eat your sausage!"

and the boy put up his elbow as though to ward off on imaginary blow.

"You see, this dog was following off a pet dog that belonged to a woman, and she tried to shoo him away, but he wouldn't shoo. This dog did not know that he was a low born, miserable dog, and had no right to move in the society of an aristocratic pet dog, and he followed right along. He thought this was a free country, and one dog was as good as another, and he followed that woman and her pet dog right into her door yard. The pet dog encouraged this dog, and he went in the yard, and when the woman got up on the steps she threw a velocipede at this dog and broke his leg, and then she took up her pet and went in the house so she wouldn't hear this dog howl. She is a nice woman, and I see her go to meeting every Sunday with a lot of morocco books in her hands, and once I pumped the organ in the church where she goes, and she was so pious I thought she was an angel--but angels don't break dogs' legs. I'll bet when she goes up to the gate and sees St. Peter open the book and look for the charges against her, she will tremble as though she had fits. And when St. Peter runs his finger down the ledger, and stops at the dog column, and turns and looks at her over his spectacles, and says, "Madam, how about your stabbing a poor dog with a velocipede, and breaking its leg?" she will claim it was an accident; but she can't fool Pete. He is on to everybody's racket, and if they get in there, they have got to have a clean record."

"Say, look-a-here," said the grocery man, as he looked at the boy in astonishment as he unwound the handkerchief to dress the dog's broken leg, while the dog looked up in the boy's face with an expression of thankfulness and confidence that he was an able pract.i.tioner in dog bone-setting, "what kind of talk is that? You talk of heaven as though its books were kept like the books of a grocery and you speak too familiarly of St. Peter."

"Well, I didn't mean any disrespect," said the boy, as he fixed the splint on the dog's leg, and tied it with a string, while the dog licked his hand, "but I learned in Sunday school that up there they watch even the sparrow's fail, and they wouldn't be apt to get left on a dog bigger than a whole flock of sparrows, 'specially when the dog's fall was accompanied with such noise as a velocipede makes when it falls down stairs. No sir, a woman who throws a velocipede at a poor, homeless dog, and breaks its leg, may carry a car load of prayer books, and she may attend to all the sociables, but according to what I have been told, if she goes sailing up to the gate of New Jerusalem, as though she owned the whole place, and expects to be ushered into a private box, she will get left. The man in the box office will tell her she is not on the list, and that there is a variety show below, where the devil is a star, and fallen angels are dancing the cancan with sheet-iron tights, on brimstone lakes, and she can probably crawl under the canvas, but she can't get in among the angelic hosts until she can satisfactorily explain that dog story that is told on her. Possibly I have got a raw way of expressing myself, but I had rather take my chances, if I should apply for admission up there, with this lame dog under my arm than to take hers with a pug that hain't got any legs broke. A lame dog and a clear conscience beats a pet dog, when your conscience feels nervous.

Now I am going to lay this dog in the barrel of dried apples, where your cat sleeps, and give him a little rest, and I will give you four minutes to tell me all you know, and you will have three minutes on your hands with nothing to say. Unb.u.t.ton your lip and give your teeth a vacation."

"Well, you _have_ got gall. However, I don't know but you are right that woman that hurt the dog. Still, it may have been her way of petting a strange dog. We should try to look upon the charitable side of peoples'

eccentricities. But say, I want to ask you if you have seen anything of my man that delivers groceries. Sat.u.r.day night I sent him over to your house to deliver some things, about ten o'clock, and he has not showed up since. What do you think has become of him?"

"Well, by gum, that accounts for it. Sat.u.r.day night, about ten o'clock we heard somebody in the back yard, around the kitchen door, just as we were going to bed, and Pa was afraid it was a burglar after the church money he had collected last Sunday. He had got to turn it over the next day, to pay the minister's expenses on his vacation, and it made him nervous to have it around. I peeked out of the window and saw the man, and I told Pa, and Pa got a revolver and began shooting through the wire screen to the kitchen window, and I saw the man drop the basket and begin to climb over the fence real sudden, and I went out and began to groan, as though somebody was dying in the alley, and I brought in the basket with the mackerel and green corn, and told Pa that from the groaning out there I guess he had killed the grocery delivery man, and I wanted Pa to go out and help me hunt for the body, but he said he was going to take the midnight train to go out west on some business, and Pa lit out. I guess your man was scared and went one way and Pa was scared and went the other. Won't they be astonished when they meet each other on the other side of the world? Pa will shoot him again when they meet, if he gives Pa any sa.s.s. Pa says when he gets mad he had just as soon eat as to kill a man."

"Well, I guess my man has gone off to a Sunday pic-nic or something, and will come back when he gets sober, but how are your theatricals getting along?" asked the grocery man.

"O, that scheme is all busted," said the boy. "At least until the minister gets back from his vacation. The congregation has noticed a red spot on his hand for some time, and the ladies said what he needed was rest. They said if that spot was allowed to go on it might develope into a pimple, and the minister might die of blood poison, superinduced by overwork, and they took up a collection, and he has gone. The night they bid him good bye, the spot on his hand was the subject of much comment.

The wimmen sighed, and said it was lucky they noticed the spot on his hand before it had sapped his young life away. Pa said Job had more than four hundred boils worse than that, and he never took a vacation, and then Ma dried Pa up. She told Pa he had never suffered from blood poison, and Pa said he could raise cat boils for the market, and never squeal. Ma see the only way to shut Pa up was to let him go home with the choir singer. So she bounced him off with her, and he didn't get home till most 'leven o'clock, but Ma she set up for him. Maybe what she said to Pa made him go west after peppering your burglar. Well, I must go home now, 'cause I run the family, since Pa lit out. Say, send some of your most expensive canned fruit and things over to the house. Darn the expense." And the bad boy took the lame dog under his arm and walked out.