II
He tilted back in his chair, and we laughed together at the picture he had drawn of two wet, mad, and muddy boys. “Rolled in that mud, till we were smeared with it,” he said. And: “Didn’t speak to each other till it come time to eat lunch and we remembered we’d left it at the big hole.” He had laughed till there were tears in his eyes. Now the mirth passed; and by and by he sighed aloud, said wistfully:
“Ah, well. Poor old Jim. He drank himself to death. Died of the D T’s.”
The words were like a shock of cold water; I shivered as though the winds of tragedy had blown upon me. In my thoughts I had been seeing this Jim Snow; freckled, and covered with mud, and fighting so long as he had breath to fight; and protesting in hurt at the end: “I was only catching the fish for you.” A likeable boy, Jim Snow.... And in an instant the picture was shattered; there stood in its place the apparition of a dreadful, sodden, wrecked and ruined man.... The thing was horribly abrupt.
“For God’s sake, Chet,” I protested.
“Yes,” he said soberly. “Yes.”
I tried by a callous tone to insulate myself against the impinging tragedy. “Went to the devil?” I hazarded.
“I guess his father drove him to it, ruined him,” Chet explained. “There wasn’t any harm in Jim. Just a mischievous boy, full of high spirits and fun, like a colt. His father was a churchly man; a religious man. A sober man. And he used to beat Jim, for his pranks, awfully.” He shook his head, seemed faintly to shudder at the recollection. “I’ve seen him take Jim out into the barn; and I’ve heard Jim yell. Yell and screech. ‘Oh, father! Father!’”
My tongue seemed sticking in my mouth. I made a brave show of refilling my pipe; the cheery flame of the match seemed to lighten the dark shadows that oppressed us both. Chet laughed again, mindful of a new incident. One of these practical jokes boys have played since there were boys to play them. But as Chet told it, tragedy overhung the tale.
“His father was a cobbler,” he explained. “A good one, too. He used to make a good living out of his shop. Had a big family, and they did well. Time Jim begun to be able to work, he used to work in the shop, helping.”
He warmed to his tale. “There was a bench, by the counter,” he continued. “Folks used to sit down there when they had to wait. Jim was always up to something; and one day when his father was at home, Jim took a gimlet and bored a little hole in that bench. Then he fixed a brad under that hole, with a spring, and a string on it. And he took this string under the counter and back to the seat where he used to be when he was working. He fixed it with a piece of wood, like a trigger, there.”
Chet, spreading his arms wide, illustrated the motion which a cobbler makes in drawing his thread through the leather. “When his arm went out like that,” he said, “he could just reach this piece of wood. And when someone was sitting on the bench, some times he’d just give it a rap; and the brad would come up through and stick into them, and they’d get up in a hurry, I want to tell you.”
“He couldn’t do that when his father was around,” I suggested.
“He never did but once,” Chet agreed. “One day a boy came in that Jim didn’t like. I was there that day; and I knew about this thing Jim had fixed up; and when the other boy sat down on the bench, I kind of tipped my head to Jim. I was sorry about that, after; because Jim was never one to be dared. His father was there; but Jim winked back at me, and then he gave that wooden trigger a good hard poke, and he must have rammed that brad into the boy pretty hard, because he come right up into the air, holding on to himself and yowling.”
He slapped his knee at the memory. “Well, sir, he danced around there like a crazy man. I remember his name was Elnathan Hodge. He danced around and he yelled; and Jim’s father stood there looking at him and frowning awfully, so that I was scared, and I edged over toward the door. Jim’s father just stood, waiting for the boy to quiet down. He was a stern, solemn man; and his voice used to be enough to make us boys tremble.
“By and by he said, slow and steady: ‘What’s the matter with you, Elnathan?’
“And Elnathan says: ‘Jim stuck a needle into me.’
“The old man looked from him to Jim, and Jim was mighty busy, sewing on a sole.
“‘How did he stick a needle into you, Elnathan?’ says the old man. And Elnathan pointed to the bench. He was a big boy, bigger than us; but he was always kind of a sissy. That’s why we never liked him.
“‘Right up through that hole, it come,’ he told Jim’s father.”
“A nice boy, Elnathan!” I commented.
“Jim and me licked him for it afterwards,” Chet explained. “But that didn’t do a bit of good then. The old man went and looked under the bench and saw where the string went through under the counter; and then he followed it out through the shop to the back. He took his time about it, never looking toward Jim, pretending not to know he was there, like a cat with a hurt bird. Traced the string all back till he come to where Jim was sitting. And he didn’t say a word then, but just reached down and got Jim by the collar and started for the back room, dragging Jim after him; and Jim’s heels were clattering on the floor. After he’d shut the door, we heard the first whacks of the strap he kept there, and heard Jim yell; and then me and Elnathan put out the front door and ran away. And we could hear Jim yelling, begging....”