The men looked out a moment at the iron corridor and then lighted their cigars and sat down. Hank could hardly speak. Somehow this simple contact with his old friend had driven away all the feeling of the crime that he had brought with him to the jail. He no longer thought of him as Jackson, the wife-murderer, but as Jim, the boy he once knew and the man that had worked in the switch-yards and grown up by his side.
Out in the street they heard a steady stream of carriages and the merry laugh of men and women passing by. Hank listened to the voices and asked who they were.
“Oh, the people drivin’ past in their carriages to the theater. You know all the northside swells drive down Dearborn Avenue past the jail. I wonder if they ever think of us in here, or if they know what is goin’ to be done tomorrow. I s’pose if they do they think it’s all right. What a queer world it is. Do you s’pose one of them was ever in here? Well, I don’t believe I’d be either if only I’d had their chance.”
The two men sat stripped almost to the skin; the putrid prison air soaked into Hank at every pore. The sweat ran from his face and he felt as if the great jail were a big oven filled with the damned and kept boiling hot by some infernal imps. Here and there along the big corridors they heard the echo of a half demoniac laugh, a few couplets of a ribald song, and the echoing sound of the heavy boots of a guard walking up and down the iron floor. Silently they smoked their cigars almost to the end and then Jim again took up his story.
III
When I made up my mind to quit the railroad I looked ‘round for somethin’ else to do. It was kind of hard times just then and a good many were out of work and I couldn’t find anything that suited me. Of course I never had much schoolin’ and ‘twa’n’t every kind of job I could hold anyhow. I went back out to the stock yards, but they was layin’ off men and there wa’n’t anything there. One mornin’ I went over to see Sol Goldstein. He was a nice old man that we used to buy potatoes of. He told me that he was gettin’ so old and kind of sick that he thought he’d have to give up peddlin’ and let his boys take care of him the rest of his time. He said he didn’t think it would be very long anyhow, and they could do that much for him so long as he’d done so much for them. He said as I hadn’t any job why didn’t I buy his horse and express wagon and go to peddlin’. I could take his license, that hadn’t run out yet, and go right along over his route. I told him I hadn’t any money to buy his horse and wagon with, but he told me that didn’t make any difference, I could pay for ‘em when I earnt the money. So I made a bargain; got the horse and wagon and harness and two old blankets for fifty dollars. Of course they wa’n’t worth much: the horse had a ringbone and the heaves and kind of limped in one of its hind legs. Goldstein said that was on account of a spavin, but he told me there was another one comin’ on the other hind leg and as quick as that got a little bigger he’d stop limpin’ because he couldn’t favor both hind legs to once. Goldstein said the ringbone had been killed and the heaves wouldn’t bother him much. All I had to do was to wet the hay before I fed him. So I bought the rig. I didn’t know nothin’ about horses but I knew what Goldstein said was all right for we’d been friends a long time.
“I went down to Water Street and bought a load of potatoes and went to work. I haven’t time to tell you all about my peddlin’: anyhow it ain’t got much to do with the case, not much more’n any of the rest. My lawyer always said any time I told him anything, ‘Well, what’s that got to do with your killin’ her?’ and the judge said about the same thing whenever we asked any questions. He couldn’t see that anything I ever done had anything to do with it except the bad things. He let ‘em prove all of them and they looked a good deal worse when they was told in court and in the newspapers than they seemed when I done ‘em. I guess there ain’t nobody who’d like to hear every bad thing they ever done told right out in public and printed in the newspapers. I kind of think ‘twould ruin anyone’s character to do that, ‘specially if you wa’n’t allowed to show the goods things you’d done.
“I hadn’t been peddlin’ very long until an inspector asked me for my license and I showed it to him, and he said that it wa’n’t any good, that I couldn’t use Goldstein’s license; that it was just for him, and that I must stop peddlin’ until I went down to the City Hall and paid twenty-five dollars for another one. I didn’t know where to get the twenty-five dollars; anyhow I don’t see why anyone should have to pay a license for peddlin’; nobody but poor people peddles and it’s hard enough to get along without payin’ a license. Anybody don’t have to pay a license for sellin’ things in a store and I don’t think it’s fair. But I went and seen the alderman and told him about it, and he said he could get it fixed and to go right on just as if nothin’ had happened and if anyone bothered me again to send ‘em to him. So I went right ahead. I don’t know what he done but anyhow I wa’n’t bothered any more until Goldstein’s license had run out.
“Peddlin’ is kind of hard work. You’ve got to get up before daylight and go down and get your potatoes and veg’t’bles and things, then you have to drive all over and ask everyone to buy, and most people won’t take anything from you ‘cause you’re a peddler and they’re ‘fraid you’ll cheat ‘em. Of course we do cheat a little sometimes. We get a load of potatoes cheap that’s been froze, and then again we get a lot of figs that’s full of worms and roll ‘em in flour and then sell ‘em out, but all figs is full of worms, and I guess ‘most everything else is, even water, but it’s all right if you don’t know or think anything about it. And of course, half of the year it’s awful hot drivin’ ‘round the streets and the other half it’s awful cold, and sometimes it rains and snows and you get all wet and cold, and it ain’t very healthy either. Most peddlers have the consumption, but then there’s lots of poor people has consumption. It’s funny, too, about where you can sell stuff; you’d think you ought to go where people has got money but this ain’t no use; they never will buy nothin’ of peddlers and they won’t even let you drive on their high-toned streets, even after you’ve paid a license. If you want to sell anything you’ve got to go among the poor people. Of course they can’t buy very much, but then they pay more for what they get. It’s queer, ain’t it, the way things are fixed; them as works hardest has to pay the most for what they eat, and gets the poorest stuff at that. Did you ever go and look at one of them meat markets on the south side? Do you s’pose that they’d take any of the meat that’s in ours? They might buy it for their dogs and cats but they wouldn’t eat it themselves.