Ellis Butler: The Jack-Knife Man

“I don’t believe a word of it!” snapped Mrs. Potter. “If there is a child down there he ought to be in bed long ago.”

“Yes’m,” agreed Peter meekly. “That’s so. You wouldn’t put even a dog that size to bed hungry. So, if you could let me have about half-a-dozen eggs, I’ll go right back.”

“Six eggs at three cents is eighteen cents,” said Mrs. Potter firmly, looking Peter directly in the eye. She was not bad looking. Her cheek bones were rather high and prominent and her cheeks hollow, and she had a strong chin for a woman, but the downward twist of discouragement that had marked her mouth during her later married years had already disappeared, giving place to a firmness that told she was well able to manage her own affairs. Peter drew his alarm-clock from beneath his coat and stood it on the kitchen table.

“I brought along this alarm-clock,” he said, “so you’d know I’d come back like I say I will. She’s a real good clock. I paid eighty cents for her when she was new, and I just fixed her up fresh to-day. She’s running quite – quite a little, since I fixed her.”

Mrs. Potter did not look at the clock. She looked at Peter.

“So!” she exclaimed. “So that’s what you’ve come to, Peter Lane! Pawnin’ your goods and chattels! That’s what shiftless folks always come to in the end.”

“And so, if you’ll let me have half-a-dozen eggs, and maybe some pieces of bread and butter and a handful of coffee,” said Peter, “I’ll leave the clock right here as security that I’ll come up first thing in the morning and saw wood ‘til you tell me I’ve sawed enough.”

Mrs. Potter took the clock in her hand and looked at Peter.

“How old did you say that boy is?” she asked.

“Goin’ on three, I should judge. He’s a real nice little feller,” said Peter eagerly.

Mrs. Potter put the clock on her kitchen table.

“Fiddlesticks! I don’t believe a word of it. Who else have you got down there?”

“Just his – his parent,” said Peter, blushing. “I wisht you could see that little feller. Maybe I’ll bring him up here to-morrow and let you see him.”

“Maybe you won’t!” said the widow. “If you ‘re hungry you can set down and I’ll fry you as many eggs as you want to eat, but you can’t come over me with no story about visitors bringin’ you children on a night like this! No, sir! You don’t get none of my eggs for your worthless tramps. Shall I fry you some?”

Peter looked down and frowned. Then he raised his head and looked full in the widow’s eyes and smiled. Nothing but the direct need could have induced him to smile thus at the widow for he knew and feared the result. When, once or twice before, he had looked into her eyes and smiled in this way – unthinkingly – she had fluttered and trembled like a bird in the presence of an overmastering fascination, and Peter did not like that. Such power frightened him. 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.”