The Jack-Knife Man

by Ellis Parker Butler

As he walked up the track he planned the interview in advance. “Mrs. Potter,” he would say, “I have come to get my clock. Here is the money, and I'm sorry I had to trouble you to keep it so long.” Then he would lay the money on the kitchen table, and Mrs. Potter, slightly awed by his new clothes, would hand him the clock. “And if possible,” he would say then, “I'd like to speak with Buddy a few minutes.” Mrs. Potter would then call Buddy.

That was as he planned it, but the nearer he approached Mrs. Potter's cove the less likely it seemed to Peter that Mrs. Potter would be much awed by the clothes. By the time he was within half a mile of the cove he was not only sure that Mrs. Potter was not the woman to be awed by anything, but he began to wish he had not bought the clothes. He could imagine her tone as she put her hands on her hips and looked him over and said, “Well, of all the shiftlessness I ever heard tell of! Goin' and dressin' yourself up like a dude, and you not a roof in the world to hide your head under!” He wished he could see himself just once more in a large mirror, so that he might renew the feeling of confidence he had felt at Rosenheim's. Instead, he felt much as a young fellow feels when he dons his first dress-suit and steps upon the dancing-floor. He felt stiff and awkward, and that every garment he wore was a showy misfit. He did not seem to be Peter Lane at all, but some flashy, overdressed, uncomfortable stranger. He suddenly realized that he had hands and feet, and that the new hat was stiff and uncomfortable, and that the tie—so placidly blue in the dusk of the clothing store—was rampantly and screamingly blue in the full light of day. He felt that he had done an inexcusable and reckless thing in buying the new clothes, and he knew Mrs. Potter would tell him so.

Peter decided that, since he was sure to be in for a horrible half hour, he would assert his manhood. If Mrs. Potter scolded he would sass back. He had money in the bank, hadn't he? He had heard enough of her hard words, hadn't he? All right! The minute she said “shiftless” he would speak right up. He would look her firmly in the eye and say something like—“Now, stop! You've talked to me that way before, Mrs. Potter, when I was a poor shanty-boatman, but I've had just about enough of it! I'm tired of that.” He would hide the misery of his clothes in a flood of high words.

That is to say, if Mrs. Potter gave him a chance! For, as Peter turned from the track to the road, and neared the gate, he saw it all depended on Mrs. Potter. If she did not wish him to talk, that would end it, and it was a meek, uneasy, uncomfortable, undecided, miserable Peter that turned in at the gate.

And then, before he could tuck the sleeves of his flannel shirt—which seemed to have grown until they were ridiculously long—into his coat cuffs—which seemed to have become ridiculously short—a young girl jumped from behind one of the old apple trees and stood staring at him. Peter took off his hat as if she had been a princess. He was in the state of mind when he would have taken off his hat to a wax figure.

But the girl stood but for a moment. Then she ran toward him.

“I know who you are!” she cried. “You 're Uncle Peter, ain't you? I'm Susie!”

“Susie?” said Peter. “Are you Susie?” He tried to greet her as a man should greet a strange child, but she would have none of it. She threw her arm around his right arm and hugged it, jumping up and down.

“O Uncle Peter! Uncle Peter!” she cried joyously, and turning, she screamed at the top of her voice: “Bud-dy! B-u-u-u-dy! Bud-dy! Here's Uncle Peter!”

Around the corner of the house popped a hatless, kinky head.