IV
I forgot to tell you about the steak. I don’t see how I left that out, for, really, that’s what caused the whole trouble. It beats all what little things will do, don’t it? Now, lots o’ times in my life it has seemed as if the smallest things had the most to do with me. There was that red waist, for instance, that she wore that day she was waitin’ on the table. I ‘most know I never would have paid any attention to her if it hadn’t been for that red waist. And then that beefsteak—in one way I’m goin’ to get hung on account of that beefsteak. How many times since that I’ve just wished I hadn’t stopped and bought it. But you see I was feelin’ cold all day, and when I come ‘round Thirty-fifth Street the wind kind of got in my face worse’n it had done before, and it sort of struck me through the chest too; my legs didn’t feel it quite so much, because they had the blanket over ‘em. Well, just as I got up to the second corner there was a saloon right in front of me. This was before I got to the corner when I met the senators, and I thought I’d go in and get a drink; and then right on the other side was that meat market and there was a lot of chickens and steak and things hangin’ in the window, and they looked mighty good, for I hadn’t had much to eat all day. At first I thought I’d go and get a drink, and then I thought I could get enough steak for supper for just about what the drink would cost, and the steak would do the most good, and besides she and the kid could have some of that, and I thought it would make her feel pleasanter and liven her up a bit. We hadn’t been gettin’ along any too well for some time.
“So I pulled up the horse a minute and went into the shop and asked the butcher about the steak hangin’ in the window, and he told me that it was sixteen cents a pound and that it was a sirloin steak. I thought that was most too much and asked him if he hadn’t some cheaper kind. He said yes, that a rump steak was just as good, and he showed me one of them and the whole piece came to fifteen cents—just the price of a glass of whiskey—and I bought it and rolled it up in a piece of brown paper and went away.
“Now I was tellin’ about this to the good guard that likes to get statistics for the Citizens’ Association, and I told him it was the beefsteak that brought me here, and that if I had only got the whisky instead of the steak it wouldn’t have happened, but he argued the other way, and then when I stuck to my story he got kind of mad about it and said it was them drinks I had with the senators and the assessor that really done it, and if it hadn’t been for the drinks I’d have known better, and he said he was goin’ to put it down that way, and I’m sure he did. I hain’t no doubt but a good many of the figgers we see about penitentiaries and things is got up the same way.
“Well, when I unhitched the horse and got him tended to and the potatoes covered up and all, I took the steak and started for the house. You know where I live—the barn is just back of the cottage, and there’sa kind of little alley behind the barn and then the switch-yards come in; the railroad curves up toward the house after it passes the barn so it gets pretty near the kitchen. Of course, the trains bother us a good deal and the switch engines are goin’ back and forth all the time, and the house is pretty old and not very big, but all them things has to be taken into consideration in the rent, and I got it enough cheaper to make up. I presume that’s the reason no poor people live out on the avenues, because the rents is so high, and in one way mebbe the switch tracks is a good thing, for if it wa’n’t for them I’d had to go out to the stock yards to live, and I’d rather have the engines and the smoke than the smell. Some of them Settlement people are tryin’ to have a park made, out along the tracks right close to where we lived. Of course, flowers and grass would be nice, but I s’pose if they got the park some fellers would come along and pay more rent than we could afford and then we’d have to go out to the stock yards. It seems as if us poor people gets the worst of it no matter how you fix it. But I’m takin’ an awful long while to get into the house; seems as if I’m tellin’ you everything I’ve thought of ever since I’ve been locked up here in jail. It’s mighty good of you to set and listen, and I’ll always remember it as long as I live, though I guess that ain’t sayin’ much.
“When I come up to the door I heard the kid cryin’ and she was scoldin’ him about somethin’ he’d done and tellin’ him to go in the bedroom and stay till supper was ready and to quit his squallin’ or she’d thrash him. Of course, generally, she was good to him, and I don’t mean to say she wa’n’t, but sometimes she got out of patience with him, same as all women does, I s’pose. Of course you have to make allowances for her. She dassent let the boy go to play back of the house, for there was the yards and the cars, and you know children always goes ‘round cars; then she couldn’t let him go in front for the electric road was there, and you know about that little boy bein’ run over a year ago down at the corner. Then there’s buildin’s on both sides of us, so she had to have the kid right in the house all the time less’n she went out with him, and of course he got kind of tired settin’ in the house all day with nothin’ to do but look out in front and see the switch engines. Still I sometimes thought she was crosser to him than she ought to have been at that.
“When I opened the door she was just takin’ the boy into the bedroom. In a minute she come out and kind of slammed the door hard, and said, ‘Well, you’ve got home, have you?’ I said yes, I’d got home. That’s every word I said. Then she said it was a pity that them drunken friends of mine couldn’t keep me out all night spendin’ the money for whisky that I ought to use in the house. I told her that I hadn’t spent no money for whisky. She said ‘Yes, your face looks it, and your breath smells it.’ Then I told her that I did take one drink but the assessor bought it for me. Then she landed into the assessor, and told me I was in pretty company goin’ ‘round with him; that Mrs. McGinty had told her all about what kind of a man he was and she didn’t want to hear any more about him. Then I asked her about when supper would be ready, and she said she hadn’t begun to get it yet, that she’d been doin’ the washin’ and had that brat of mine to take careof all day, and she’d get the supper when she got ready. Of course I was hungry and cold, and that made me kind of mad, only I didn’t say much, but laid the beefsteak on the table and unrolled it so’s she could see it. I thought mebbe that would kind of tempt her, and I told her she’d better cook it and fry a few potatoes. She made some remark about the steak, and about how I’d better got a soup bone, or a chicken, or somethin’ cheaper, and no wonder I was in debt with all the money I spent for whisky, and when I did bring anything home to eat it had to be somethin’ that cost a good deal more’n I could afford. Then I said that this was a rump steak and only cost fifteen cents, and she said I could get a soup bone that weighed six or seven pounds for that, and I hadn’t any business to throw away my money. Then she kind of stopped for a few minutes and took the steak out into the kitchen. Where we’d been was in the settin’ room. I went in to see the kid a few minutes and kind of quieted him down, and so long as he laid on the bed and seemed kind of like as if he’d go to sleep I shut the bedroom door and come out again. Then I picked up the paper and read about the alderman not goin’ to run any more, and that was the real reason why he wa’n’t goin’ to give us any more turkeys; then I looked at the sportin’ page and then I read a long story about a feller that had killed someone and left ‘em dead in the house, and then run away, and how they’d found ‘em dead and had offered a thousand dollars reward for the feller who killed the other one. Then I read about a murder trial that they was just havin’ and how the jury had found the feller guilty and he was goin’ to be hung, and how he never moved a muscle, and how his mother screamed and fell over in a swoond when the clerk read the verdict. While I was readin’ she kept comin’ out and into the settin’ room, bringin’ dishes and things to set the table. You know we generally et in the settin’ room. Ev’ry time she come in she kind of glared at me, but I let on not to notice her.
“Pretty soon I smelt the steak fryin’ and went out in the kitchen. When I got out there I found the steak fryin’ in the skillet all right and her just takin’ up the tea kettle to pour water on it. Now this made me mad, for that wa’n’t no way to fry steak. You know yourself that you lose all the flavor of the steak by pourin’ water on it; that makes it more like boiled meat than it does like beefsteak. I just saw her in time, and I called out, ‘What are you doin’? Put down that kettle. Don’t you know better’n to pour water on beefsteak?’ She said, ‘You shut up and go back in the settin’ room, or I’ll pour the water on you.’ I said, ‘No, you won’t; put down that kettle. How many times have I told you better’n to pour water on steak? It’s hard enough for me to get the money for a steak without lettin’ you spoil it that way.’ I started to grab her hand, but before I could reach it she tipped the nozzle over into the skillet and poured a lot of water in, and the steam and hot water and grease kind of spattered up in my face. I don’t know whether I struck her or not; anyhow I grabbed the kettle, and when the nozzle turned round some of the hot water got onto me, and burned me a little. I put the kettle down and said, ‘Damn you, what do you mean by spoilin’ the steak every time I get it? If you ever do a thing like that again, I’ll cut your throat.’
“Now, of course, I hadn’t no idea of cuttin’ her throat, no matter how often she done it. ‘Twas just a way I had of showin’ how mad I was about what she’d done. You see she done it a-purpose for I’d told her plenty of times before, and I told her then before any of the water got into the skillet, and she just poured it in to spite me. Then she said, ‘You drunken loafer, I’d like to see you try to cut my throat. I just dare you to do it. You don’t need to wait until you bring home another steak; ain’t likely I’ll be here by the time you bring home any more steak. I don’t care what the Settlement people and the priest say about it, I’m going to quit you. I’ve stood this thing just as long as I’m goin’ to,’ and she fairly screamed, just on purpose, so the neighbors could hear.
“Now I didn’t want them to know we was fightin’, and I seen that she was so mad she couldn’t control herself and didn’t care who heard or what happened. The neighbors had come in once before, but they’d got pretty well used to our fights. But I thought it had gone about far enough and the steak couldn’t be helped, so I went back into the settin’ room and picked up the paper. In a few minutes she come in and says, ‘Well, come, your old steak’s ready, you’ve made so much fuss about it you’d better come and eat it and let it shut your mouth.’ And she went on into the bedroom and got the kid. I drew up my chair and set down to the table. She put the kid into the high chair and then she set down on the other side. I cut up the steak and give each of ‘em a piece with some fried potatoes, then we had some bread and butter and some tea. She poured out the tea and handed me a cup. There wa’n’t any milk for the tea and I asked her why that was. She told me she didn’t have any money to buy tickets, and if I wanted milk I’d better leave some money to buy tickets instead of spending it all for whiskey. I didn’t make much of any answer to this but commenced eatin’ my steak. Besides bein’ boiled it was cooked almost to a crisp, and you couldn’t hardly tell whether it was beefsteak or what it was; all the taste was out of it and gone into the water and the steam. I put some of the gravy on the potatoes; this was better’n the steak and tasted more like beef. I et up the potatoes and the steak and a few pieces of bread and butter, and cut up the kid’s steak and showed him how to hold his knife so’s to eat without cuttin’ himself, and I didn’t say a word to her and she didn’t say a word to me. Of course, I could see by the way she looked that she was mad, and I presume she could see that I was, too; and probably both of us thought it was just as well not to say anything, ‘specially so long as the kid was there. All the time I was eatin’ I kept thinkin’ about the way she’d poured the water into the steak and spoilt it, and how I’d been lookin’ forward to it ever since I bought it on Thirty-fifth Street, and the more I thought of it the madder I got. If it had been the first time I don’t think I’d have minded it near so much, but I’d told her about it ev’ry time I brought home a steak, and it seemed as if always we had a row pretty near as big as this, and every time she managed to pour the water into it and spoil it in spite of all that I could do. And this time it had been just the same thing again. Anyone would have been mad if they’d been in my place; don’t you think so yourself?
“Well, I finished my supper without sayin’ a word to her, and she didn’t say a word to me, and then I got up and went back into the settin’ room and picked up the paper and commenced readin’ again. In a minuteshe come along through with the kid and took him into the bedroom to put him to bed. After she’d been in there a while she came out and shut the door, and stood up for a minute lookin’ over toward me. I thought she was waitin’ for me to speak, so I just kept my eyes on the paper like as if I was readin’, but I wa’n’t. I hadn’t cooled off a great deal since she poured the water on the steak, and could see that she hadn’t neither, so I thought mebbe it was as well to have it out, but I was goin’ to wait for her to begin. Of course, I hadn’t no idea then of doin’ anything like what I did. I was just mad and reckless and didn’t care much, and would keep thinkin’ of the steak, and you know all the time I was thinkin’ I could feel a kind of prickin’ up in my head, as if a lot of needles was runnin’ up toward my hair. I s’pose it was the blood runnin’ up there. That feller that I told you about that was talkin’ to us over here kind of made out that a man was a good deal like a machine, or an engine of some kind, and when the steam was turned on he had to go. He said that if the blood was pumped up in the head it made us do things; it made some people write poetry, and some make speeches, and some sing, and some fight, and some kill folks, and they couldn’t really help it if they was made that way and the blood got pumped up in the head. I believe there’s a good deal in it. You know when the blood don’t circulate down in your feet they get cold and kind of dead, and then if you put ‘em into a pail of hot water or even cold water, and then rub ‘em hard with a towel, they get prickly and red, and you can feel the blood comin’ back to ‘em and feel ‘em wake up again.
“Well, I set perfectly still while she stood by the mantel-piece. First she picked up one thing and then another and kind of dusted ‘em and put ‘em back. She done this till she had dusted ever’thing on the mantel-piece, and all the time she would be lookin’ over toward me, but I kept my eyes down on the paper and pretended to be readin’. I knew that she didn’t dust the things because she wanted to dust, for she always dusted in the mornin’ just after she swept. I knew she did it because she was nervous and mad, and was waitin’ for me to begin. Of course, sometimes when you are mad the longer you wait the more you get over it, and then sometimes the longer you wait the madder you get. It’s like a boiler not usin’ any of its steam while the fire is goin’; if it waits long enough somethin’s got to happen.
“Finally, after she got everything dusted she looked over straight at me and says, ‘Are you goin’ to read that paper all night?’ I told her I was if I wanted to, that it was none of her business how long I read it; there was a part of it that I’d like to give her to read if she wanted to; it was the cookery department, and had a recipe for frying steak. Of course, there wa’n’t no such thing in the paper, and I just made it up and said it to be sassy, and I knew I shouldn’t have been throwin’ it up to her, but I was so mad I really didn’t think how ‘twould sound. Then she said she didn’t want any advice from me or the paper either, about cookin’, and she wanted me to understand that the cookin’ was none of my business and she’d tend to that herself in her own way, and if ever I interfered again she’d leave me and take the kid with her. She said she learned cookin’ long before she ever knew me. Then I said I thought she could make money by startin’ a cookin’ school; all them rich folkson Prairie Avenue would come over to get her to learn them how to fry steak. She said she guessed she knew more ‘bout fryin’ steak than I did, and when I boarded at the restaurant I was mighty glad to get steak fried that way, and I only grumbled about it now because I was so mean and didn’t know how to treat a woman, and a man like me never had no right to have a decent wife. Then I said I wished I hadn’t; I’d be a mighty sight better off by myself than livin’ with her and havin’ her spoil everything that came in the house, and I wished I was back boardin’ in the restaurant where she found me. She said I didn’t wish it half so much as she did, that she got along a good deal better when she was waitin’ on the table than she had since she married me; then she had a chance to get out once in a while and see someone and have a good time, but now she stayed to home from one year’s end to another lookin’ after me and my brat. I told her I guessed the brat was just as much hers as it was mine, and I didn’t think that was any way to speak about the boy. Of course I really knew that she didn’t say it because she had anything against him, but just because she was mad at me. She always liked him, and I can’t make any complaint of the way she treated him, and I want him to know it when we’re both dead, and I don’t want him to get any idea that she wa’n’t perfectly square. I kind of want you to fix it, if you can, so ‘twon’t look to him as if either of us was to blame, but I guess that won’t be an easy thing to do.
“Then I said she was mighty glad to give up the job she had at the restaurant to marry me. She said I asked her to get married, that she didn’t ask me. Then I told her that, of course, she didn’t ask me, but she gave me a mighty good chance, and that I believed she just got that red waist and fixed up her hair the way she did to ketch me, and when I spoke to her about marryin’ it didn’t take her very long to throw up her job, and take me so she could get supported without doin’ anything. Then she said that if she spent any money to get that red waist to ketch me she was throwin’ it away, and that if I thought she ever worked for anyone else as hard as she did for me and my brat that I was mistaken, and it didn’t make any difference what she done, I never gave her any thanks or did anything for her. If I ever had any time I spent it with them drunken loafers and politicians and never went anywhere with her; that she wa’n’t no better’n a slave, and what was she doin’ it all for; pretty soon she’d be old long before her time. Her looks was all gone now, and she hadn’t even had a new dress for over a year. I told her that I didn’t know what she wanted of looks, she never was a prize beauty and ‘twa’n’t very like anybody’d ever be fool enough to marry her again, if anything happened to me. And she said if she ever got rid of me there wouldn’t be much danger of her marryin’ anyone else, she had men enough to last as long as she lived; that all they ever thought of was what they could get to eat and drink, that I’d made more fuss over that miser’ble beefsteak than anyone would over their soul, and she didn’t see why she ever stood it from me, and she was just as good as I ever was and knew just as much, and worked a good deal harder, and didn’t run ‘round nights and get drunk and spend all the money with a lot of loafers, and be in debt all the time and have the collector runnin’ after me. I told her I had just about enough of that kind of talk, and wouldn’t stand no more of it from her; it was bad enough for her toburn up the beefsteak and spoil it without blackguardin’ me and callin’ me names; she was mighty glad to get the clothes and the grub I bought her and to live in my house and have me work hard every day in the cold to get money while she just stayed to home and played with the kid, and if she said another word to me I’d smash her face. Then she said, ‘Yes, you miserable wife-beater, you kicked me once, didn’t you, but you needn’ think you can kick me or lay hands on me again. I ain’t afraid of you nor any of your low-lived drunken crew!’ Then she kind of reached back to the mantel and took hold of a plaster Paris lady I’d bought of a peddler, just as if she was goin’ to throw it at me, same as she throwed that dish once before. I seen what she was doin’ and I grabbed her arm and said, ‘You damned bitch, don’t try that on me’; and I gave her a kind of shove over toward a chair and she missed the chair and fell on the floor.
“Of course, you know I didn’t really mean anything when I called her a damned bitch; that is, I didn’t mean any such thing as anyone might think from them words. You know us fellers down to the yards don’t think very much about usin’ that word, and we never really mean anything by it. But I don’t think ‘twas a very nice word to use and have always been sorry I said it, even if I did kill her.
“Well, she jumped up off’n the floor and made towards the table, like she’d grab a knife, and by this time I had a prickly feelin’ runnin’ all through my head and up into my hair, and I didn’t really think of anything but just about her and what she was doin’. I don’t believe I even thought about the kid in there on the bed. Mebbe if I had I wouldn’t have done it.
“Well, when she made for the table that way, I just run over between her and the table, and said, ‘Damn you, if you move another step I’ll knock your damned brains out!’ Them’s the very words I said. I didn’t really think what I’d do, but of course I was mad and didn’t mean to give up to her, and wanted to show her who was boss, and that’s all I thought about. Then she come right up to me and sort of throwed her arms back behind her, and throwed her head back, and her hair hung down all kind of loose, and her eyes glared like electric lights, and she looked right at me and just yelled so I thought the people could hear her all over the ward. And she said, ‘Kill me! you miserable drunken contemptible wife-beater; kill me, I just dare you to kill me! Kill me if you want to and then go in there and kill the boy, too; you’d better make a good job of it while you’re at it! Kill me, you coward, why don’t you kill me?’
“Just then I happened to look down by the stove and seen the coal pail, and there was the poker in the pail. The poker was long and heavy. Of course I hadn’t ever thought anything about the poker, but I looked down there and seen it, and she kept yellin’ right at me, ‘Kill me! Kill me!’ I said: ‘Shut up your mouth, damn you, or I will kill you!’ But she just yelled back, ‘Why don’t you do it! Kill me! Kill me! You miserable dirty coward! Kill me!’ Then I looked down at the poker and I just reached and grabbed it, and swung back as hard as ever I could.
“Her face was kind of turned up toward me. I can see it now just as plain—I s’pose I’ll see it when I’m standin’ up there with the black cap over my eyes. She just leaned back and looked up as I swung my arm and she said: ‘Kill me! Kill me!’ And I brought it down just as hard as ever I could right over her forehead,—and she fell down on the floor.”