"I'll tell the world it is.... So you had a fallin' out with the old man, did ye too?"
"I sure did."
"Did he trun a flatiron after you?"
"No," said Wenny laughing, his mouth full of potato.
"Mine did. A red hot one too."
"How did it happen?"
"O, I dunno. Things was pretty rough round our shack anyway. I used to run away for a week at a time an' stay with some guys I knew an' the old man kep' sayin' how's I ought to be workin' to support the family an' all that. He wasn't workin' but he always wanted us kids to work.... An' I come home one night feelin' top notch with a couple of drinks in me. We'd all been down the line, an' I was tellin' myself how I was goin' to lay off that stuff an' hold down a job. An' just as I gits to the house I hears em hollerin' blue murder.... Ma took in washin' an' used to do the ironin' in the evenin's.... Well, I looked through the kitchen winder and, jeeze, there was Ma and the old man chasin' her around the kitchen with the ironin' board an' beatin' at her with it, an' there was a tub full o' clothes to soak by the stove, and Ma just picked up that tub an' dumped it on the old man's head sayin': Take that, ye dirty beast, an' ran out of the house. And, jeeze, I was mad at him... An' I runs in and tells him to quit beatin' up Ma, and he had the clothes all hangin' round his neck and the water pourin' off his neck. But he was roarin' drunk though; jeeze it'd a been funny if I hadn't been so scared. I always was scared of the old man. An' he stood up with his eyes all red lookin' at me scoldin' an' cursin' at him. Curse at yer father, you yellow-bellied bastard, he said. An' then he picked up two flatirons, red hot on the stove, an' came after me... Honest to Gawd, I couldn't move, I was so scared, like when you're scared in your sleep. All I could do—jeeze, I remember it clear as anything—was yell: They're red hot, they're red hot. One of 'em went through the winder with an awful noise an' I ran out of the house and used my legs till I fell down cryin' on the side of the road a mile out o' town.... I jumped a freight an' went to Milwaukee, an' I aint been back since. I'm goin' though in about a year an' plant myself among the weeds. This aint no life for a white man."
"What about girls?"
"O, they don't bother me. I get it now and then. But I don't miss it."
"It bothers me."