The Jack-Knife Man. Butler Ellis Parker
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The widow, scolding and condemning, he could escape, but the widow fluttering and trembling, was a thing to be afraid of. It made him flutter and tremble, too.
When Peter smiled the widow drew in her breath sharply.
“Six – six eggs – will six eggs be all you want?” she asked hurriedly.
“Yes’m,” said Peter, still smiling, “unless you could spare some bread and butter. He ‘specially asked for butter,” and then he looked down. The widow drew another long breath.
“I don’t believe you’ve got a boy down there, and I don’t believe you’ve got a visitor that deserves nothing,” she said crossly. She was herself again. “I know you from hair to sole-leather, Peter Lane, and if any worthless scamp came and camped on you, you’d lie your head off to get food for him, and that’s what I think you ‘re doing now, but there ain’t no way of telling. If so be you have got a boy down there I don’t want him to go hungry, but if it’s just some worthless tramp, I hope these eggs choke him. You ain’t got a mite of common sense in you. You ‘re too soft, and that’s why you don’t get on. You’d come up here to-morrow and do a dollar’s worth of wood sawing for eighteen cents’ worth of eggs, and then give the eggs to the first tramp that asked you. What you ought to have is a wife. You ought to have a wife with a mind like a hatchet and a tongue like a black-snake whip, and you might be worth shucks, anyway. You just provoke me beyond patience.”
“Yes’m,” said Peter nervously.
Mrs. Potter was cutting thick, enticing slices from a big loaf and spreading them with golden butter.
“I reckon you want jam on this bread?” she asked suddenly.
“Yes, thank you!” said Peter.
“Well, maybe you have got a boy down there,” said Mrs. Potter reluctantly. “You’d be ashamed to ask for jam if you hadn’t. If you had a wife and she was any account you’d have bread and jam when boys come to see you. But I do pity the woman that gets you, Peter Lane! No woman on this earth but a widow that has had experience with men-folks could ever make anything out of you.”
Peter put his hand on the door-knob, ready for instant flight. When he smiled on Mrs. Potter something like this usually resulted and that was why he tried it so seldom. It was he, now, who trembled and fluttered.
“I’m not thinking of getting married at all,” he said. “I couldn’t afford to, anyway.”
“You needn’t think, just because you are no-account, some fool woman wouldn’t take you,” snapped Mrs. Potter. “Look at what my first husband was. Women marry all sorts of trash.”
Peter watched the progress of the bread and jam, trusting its preparation would not be delayed long.
“If they’re asked,” said Mrs. Potter. She seemed very cross about something. She wrapped the slices of bread in a clean sheet of paper from her table drawer, folding in the ends of the paper angrily. “But they don’t do the asking,” she added.
Peter took the parcel, and slipped the six clean white eggs into his pocket. He wanted to get away, but Mrs. Potter stopped him.
“I suppose, if there is a boy down there, I’ve got to give you what’s left of my roast chicken,” she grumbled, “or you’ll be coming up here about the time I get into bed, routing me out for more victuals. If I had a husband, and he was like you, and he had a mind to feed all the tramps in the county, he wouldn’t have to rout me out of bed to do it. He could go to the cupboard himself, and feed them.”
“Now, that clock,” said Peter hastily, “if I was you I wouldn’t depend too much on her alarm to get you up. I can’t say she’s regulated just the way I’d like to have her yet. And I’m much obliged to you.”
“I don’t want your clock!” said Mrs. Potter, but Peter had slipped out of the door, closing it behind him. The widow held the clock in her hand for a full minute, and then set it gently beside her own opulent Seth Thomas.
“I dare say you ‘re about as well regulated as he is,” she said, “and that ain’t saying much for either of you. He ain’t got the eyes to see through a grindstone!”
When Peter returned to the boat, the boy was busily trying to work one of the trot-line hooks out of the sleeve of his jacket, but the woman had dropped back on the bunk and her eyes were closed. She opened them when the rush of cold air from the door struck her face, and looked at Peter listlessly.
“I guess you don’t feel like cooking a couple of eggs,” said Peter, “so if you’ll excuse me remaining here awhile, I’ll do it for you. I’m a fair to middling fried-egg cook. Son, you let me get that hook out of you, and then see if you can eat five or six of these pieces of bread and jam. I could when I was a boy, and then I could wind up with a piece of chicken like this.”
“I hooked myself,” the boy explained.
“I should say you did,” said Peter. “You want to look out for these hooks, they bite a boy like a cat-fish stinger, and that ain’t much fun. I’m right glad you dropped in,” he said to the woman, “because I’ve got such good neighbors. It’s almost impossible to keep them from forcing more eggs and butter and such things on me than I’d know what to do with. ‘Just come on up when you want anything,’ they are always saying, ‘and help yourself.’ So it’s quite nice to have somebody drop in and give me a chance to show my neighbors I ain’t too proud to take a few eggs and such. It would surprise you to see how eager they are that way.”
He scraped the butter from one of the pieces of bread, needing it to fry the eggs in, and he worked as he talked, breaking the eggs into the frying-pan and watching that they were cooked to a turn.
“I certainly am blessed with nice neighbors,” he said. “There’s a widow lady lives a step or two beyond the railroad, and seems as if she couldn’t do enough for me. She just lays herself out to see that I’m overfed. Do you feel like you could eat a small part of chicken?”
The woman let her eyes rest on Peter some time before she spoke.
“I ought to feel hungry, but I don’t,” she said.
“Well, maybe a soft-boiled egg would be better. I ought to have thought of that,” said Peter as if he had been reproved. “You’ll have to excuse me for boiling it in the coffee-pot, I’ve been so busy planning a trip I’m going to take I haven’t had time to lay in much tinware yet.”
“Where did you take the clock?” asked the boy suddenly.
Peter reddened under his tan.
“That clock?” he said hesitatingly. “Where did I take that clock? Well, the fact is – the fact is that clock is a nuisance. That’s it, she’s a nuisance.’ I been meaning to throw that clock into the river for I don’t know how long. Unless you are used to that clock you just can’t sleep where she is. ‘Rattelty bang!’ she goes just whenever she takes a notion, like a dish-pan falling downstairs, all times of the night. So I just thought, as long as I was going out anyway, ‘Now’s a good time to get rid of the old nuisance!’”
“Mama would steal the clock,” said the boy.
“Oh, you mustn’t say that!” said Peter. “You come here and eat these two nice eggs. I hope, ma’am, you don’t think I had any such notion as that. When I have visitors they can steal everything in the boat, and welcome. I mean – ”
“I know what you mean,” said the woman. “You ‘re the white kind.”
“I’m glad you look at it that way,” said
Peter. “The boy, he don’t understand such things, he’s so young yet. Maybe you’d feel better if I propped you up with the pillow a little better. I’ll lay this extry blanket on the foot of the bunk here in case it should get cold during the night. You look nice and warm now.”
“I’m burning up,” said the woman.
“I judge you’ve got a slight fever,” said Peter. “I often get them when I get overtook