“Don’t you know! That’s the fellers buildin’ the scaffold; they always do it the night before. Strange, ain’t it; somehow it don’t seem to me as if it was really me that was goin’ to be hung on it; but I s’pose it is. Now, isn’t it strange about the governor; just one word from him could save my life. I’d think he’d do it, wouldn’t you? I s’pose he don’t really think how it seems to me. I know I’d do it, no matter what anyone had done.
“But it’s gettin’ late and I must go on with my story or I won’t get it finished before—before you have to go. It’s pretty hard to tell all ‘bout this part, but I’m goin’ to tell it to you honest and not make myself any better’n I am. I’ve thought about this a good deal when I’ve tried to account for how I done it, and I guess I can tell everything that happened. When I look at it now it seems years ago, almost a lifetime, not as if it was last November. I guess it’s because so much has happened since then. It seems, too, as if it wa’n’t me that was doin’ it, but as if ‘twas someone else. I guess that’ll make it easier for me to tell; anyhow, I want you to know how it was, and then some time you can tell the boy, if you think it’s the right thing to do.”
IV
I forgot to tell you about the steak. I don’t see how I left that out, for, really, that’s what caused the whole trouble. It beats all what little things will do, don’t it? Now, lots o’ times in my life it has seemed as if the smallest things had the most to do with me. There was that red waist, for instance, that she wore that day she was waitin’ on the table. I ‘most know I never would have paid any attention to her if it hadn’t been for that red waist. And then that beefsteak—in one way I’m goin’ to get hung on account of that beefsteak. How many times since that I’ve just wished I hadn’t stopped and bought it. But you see I was feelin’ cold all day, and when I come ‘round Thirty-fifth Street the wind kind of got in my face worse’n it had done before, and it sort of struck me through the chest too; my legs didn’t feel it quite so much, because they had the blanket over ‘em. Well, just as I got up to the second corner there was a saloon right in front of me. This was before I got to the corner when I met the senators, and I thought I’d go in and get a drink; and then right on the other side was that meat market and there was a lot of chickens and steak and things hangin’ in the window, and they looked mighty good, for I hadn’t had much to eat all day. At first I thought I’d go and get a drink, and then I thought I could get enough steak for supper for just about what the drink would cost, and the steak would do the most good, and besides she and the kid could have some of that, and I thought it would make her feel pleasanter and liven her up a bit. We hadn’t been gettin’ along any too well for some time.
“So I pulled up the horse a minute and went into the shop and asked the butcher about the steak hangin’ in the window, and he told me that it was sixteen cents a pound and that it was a sirloin steak. I thought that was most too much and asked him if he hadn’t some cheaper kind. He said yes, that a rump steak was just as good, and he showed me one of them and the whole piece came to fifteen cents—just the price of a glass of whiskey—and I bought it and rolled it up in a piece of brown paper and went away.
“Now I was tellin’ about this to the good guard that likes to get statistics for the Citizens’ Association, and I told him it was the beefsteak that brought me here, and that if I had only got the whisky instead of the steak it wouldn’t have happened, but he argued the other way, and then when I stuck to my story he got kind of mad about it and said it was them drinks I had with the senators and the assessor that really done it, and if it hadn’t been for the drinks I’d have known better, and he said he was goin’ to put it down that way, and I’m sure he did. I hain’t no doubt but a good many of the figgers we see about penitentiaries and things is got up the same way.
“Well, when I unhitched the horse and got him tended to and the potatoes covered up and all, I took the steak and started for the house. You know where I live—the barn is just back of the cottage, and there’s a kind of little alley behind the barn and then the switch-yards come in; the railroad curves up toward the house after it passes the barn so it gets pretty near the kitchen. Of course, the trains bother us a good deal and the switch engines are goin’ back and forth all the time, and the house is pretty old and not very big, but all them things has to be taken into consideration in the rent, and I got it enough cheaper to make up. I presume that’s the reason no poor people live out on the avenues, because the rents is so high, and in one way mebbe the switch tracks is a good thing, for if it wa’n’t for them I’d had to go out to the stock yards to live, and I’d rather have the engines and the smoke than the smell. Some of them Settlement people are tryin’ to have a park made, out along the tracks right close to where we lived. Of course, flowers and grass would be nice, but I s’pose if they got the park some fellers would come along and pay more rent than we could afford and then we’d have to go out to the stock yards. It seems as if us poor people gets the worst of it no matter how you fix it. But I’m takin’ an awful long while to get into the house; seems as if I’m tellin’ you everything I’ve thought of ever since I’ve been locked up here in jail. It’s mighty good of you to set and listen, and I’ll always remember it as long as I live, though I guess that ain’t sayin’ much.
“When I come up to the door I heard the kid cryin’ and she was scoldin’ him about somethin’ he’d done and tellin’ him to go in the bedroom and stay till supper was ready and to quit his squallin’ or she’d thrash him. Of course, generally, she was good to him, and I don’t mean to say she wa’n’t, but sometimes she got out of patience with him, same as all women does, I s’pose. Of course you have to make allowances for her. She dassent let the boy go to play back of the house, for there was the yards and the cars, and you know children always goes ‘round cars; then she couldn’t let him go in front for the electric road was there, and you know about that little boy bein’ run over a year ago down at the corner. Then there’s buildin’s on both sides of us, so she had to have the kid right in the house all the time less’n she went out with him, and of course he got kind of tired settin’ in the house all day with nothin’ to do but look out in front and see the switch engines. Still I sometimes thought she was crosser to him than she ought to have been at that.
“When I opened the door she was just takin’ the boy into the bedroom. In a minute she come out and kind of slammed the door hard, and said, ‘Well, you’ve got home, have you?’ I said yes, I’d got home. That’s every word I said. Then she said it was a pity that them drunken friends of mine couldn’t keep me out all night spendin’ the money for whisky that I ought to use in the house. I told her that I hadn’t spent no money for whisky. She said ‘Yes, your face looks it, and your breath smells it.’ Then I told her that I did take one drink but the assessor bought it for me. Then she landed into the assessor, and told me I was in pretty company goin’ ‘round with him; that Mrs. McGinty had told her all about what kind of a man he was and she didn’t want to hear any more about him. Then I asked her about when supper would be ready, and she said she hadn’t begun to get it yet, that she’d been doin’ the washin’ and had that brat of mine to take care of all day, and she’d get the supper when she got ready. Of course I was hungry and cold, and that made me kind of mad, only I didn’t say much, but laid the beefsteak on the table and unrolled it so’s she could see it. I thought mebbe that would kind of tempt her, and I told her she’d better cook it and fry a few potatoes. She made some remark about the steak, and about how I’d better got a soup bone, or a chicken, or somethin’ cheaper, and no wonder I was in debt with all the money I spent for whisky, and when I did bring anything home to eat it had to be somethin’ that cost a good deal more’n I could afford. Then I said that this was a rump steak and only cost fifteen cents, and she said I could get a soup bone that weighed six or seven pounds for that, and I hadn’t any business to throw away my money. Then she kind of stopped for a few minutes and took the steak out into the kitchen. Where we’d been was in the settin’ room. I went in to see the kid a few minutes and kind of quieted him down, and so long as he laid on the bed and seemed kind of like as if he’d go to sleep I shut the bedroom door and come out again. Then I picked up the paper and read about the alderman not goin’ to run any more, and that was the real reason why he wa’n’t goin’ to give us any more turkeys; then I looked at the sportin’ page and then I read a long story about a feller that had killed someone and left ‘em dead in the house, and then run away, and how they’d found ‘em dead and had offered a thousand dollars reward for the feller who killed the other one. Then I read about a murder trial that they was just havin’ and how the jury had found the feller guilty and he was goin’ to be hung, and how he never moved a muscle, and how his mother screamed and fell over in a swoond when the clerk read the verdict. While I was readin’ she kept comin’ out and into the settin’ room, bringin’ dishes and things to set the table. You know we generally et in the settin’ room. Ev’ry time she come in she kind of glared at me, but I let on not to notice her.