Danny\'s Own Story, by Don Marquis

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DANNY'S OWN STORY
BY

DON MARQUIS

TO
MY WIFE

CHAPTER I

HOW I come not to have a last name is a
question that has always had more or less
aggervation mixed up with it. I might
of had one jest as well as not if Old Hank Walters
hadn't been so all-fired, infernal bull-headed about
things in gineral, and his wife Elmira a blame sight
worse, and both of em ready to row at a minute's
notice and stick to it forevermore.

Hank, he was considerable of a lusher. One
Saturday night, when he come home from the vil-
lage in his usual fix, he stumbled over a basket that
was setting on his front steps. Then he got up and
drawed back his foot unsteady to kick it plumb
into kingdom come. Jest then he hearn Elmira
opening the door behind him, and he turned his
head sudden. But the kick was already started
into the air, and when he turns he can't stop it.
And so Hank gets twisted and falls down and steps
on himself. That basket lets out a yowl.

"It's kittens," says Hank, still setting down and
staring at that there basket. All of which, you
understand, I am a-telling you from hearsay, as
the lawyers always asts you in court.

Elmira, she sings out:

"Kittens, nothing! It's a baby!"

And she opens the basket and looks in and it was
me.

"Hennerey Walters," she says -- picking me
up, and shaking me at him like I was a crime, "Hen-
nerey Walters, where did you get this here baby?"
She always calls him Hennerey when she is getting
ready to give him fits.

Hank, he scratches his head, for he's kind o'
confuddled, and thinks mebby he really has brought
this basket with him. He tries to think of all the
places he has been that night. But he can't think of
any place but Bill Nolan's saloon. So he says:

"Elmira, honest, I ain't had but one drink all
day." And then he kind o' rouses up a little bit,
and gets surprised and says:

"That a BABY you got there, Elmira?" And
then he says, dignified: "So fur as that's consarned,
Elmira, where did YOU get that there baby?"

She looks at him, and she sees he don't really know
where I come from. Old Hank mostly was truth-
ful when lickered up, fur that matter, and she
knowed it, fur he couldn't think up no lies excepting
a gineral denial when intoxicated up to the gills.

Elmira looks into the basket. They was one of
them long rubber tubes stringing out of a bottle
that was in it, and I had been sucking that bottle
when interrupted. And they wasn't nothing else
in that basket but a big thick shawl which had
been wrapped all around me, and Elmira often
wore it to meeting afterward. She goes inside
and she looks at the bottle and me by the light,
and Old Hank, he comes stumbling in afterward
and sets down in a chair and waits to get Hail
Columbia for coming home in that shape, so's he
can row back agin, like they done every Saturday
night.

Blowed in the glass of the bottle was the name:
"Daniel, Dunne and Company." Anybody but
them two old ignoramuses could of told right off
that that didn't have nothing to do with me, but
was jest the company that made them kind of
bottles. But she reads it out loud three or four
times, and then she says:

"His name is Daniel Dunne," she says.

"And Company," says Hank, feeling right
quarrelsome.

"COMPANY hain't no name," says she.

"WHY hain't it, I'd like to know?" says Hank.
"I knowed a man oncet whose name was Farmer,
and if a farmer's a name why ain't a company a
name too?"

"His name is Daniel Dunne," says Elmira, quiet-
like, but not dodging a row, neither.

"AND COMPANY," says Hank, getting onto his
feet, like he always done when he seen trouble
coming. When Old Hank was full of licker he
knowed jest the ways to aggervate her the worst.

She might of banged him one the same as usual,
and got her own eye blacked also, the same as
usual; but jest then I lets out another big yowl,
and she give me some milk.

I guess the only reason they ever kep' me at
first was so they could quarrel about my name.
They'd lived together a good many years and
quarrelled about everything else under the sun, and
was running out of subjects. A new subject kind
o' briskened things up fur a while.

But finally they went too far with it one time.
I was about two years old then and he was still
calling me Company and her calling me Dunne.
This time he hits her a lick that lays her out and
likes to kill her, and it gets him scared. But she
gets around agin after a while, and they both see
it has went too fur that time, and so they makes up.

"Elmira, I give in," says Hank. "His name is
Dunne."

"No," says she, tender-like, "you was right,
Hank. His name is Company." So they pretty
near got into another row over that. But they
finally made it up between em I didn't have no
last name, and they'd jest call me Danny. Which
they both done faithful ever after, as agreed.

Old Hank, he was a blacksmith, and he used to
lamm me considerable, him and his wife not having
any kids of their own to lick. He lammed me when
he was drunk, and he whaled me when he was sober.
I never helt it up agin him much, neither, not fur
a good many years, because he got me used to it
young, and I hadn't never knowed nothing else.
Hank's wife, Elmira, she used to lick him jest about
as often as he licked her, and boss him jest as much.
So he fell back on me. A man has jest naturally
got to have something to cuss around and boss,
so's to keep himself from finding out he don't
amount to nothing. Leastways, most men is like
that. And Hank, he didn't amount to much; and
he kind o' knowed it, way down deep in his inmost
gizzards, and it were a comfort to him to have me
around.

But they was one thing he never sot no store by,
and I got along now to where I hold that up agin
him more'n all the lickings he ever done. That
was book learning. He never had none himself,
and he was sot agin it, and he never made me get
none, and if I'd ever asted him for any he'd of
whaled me fur that. Hank's wife, Elmira, had
married beneath her, and everybody in our town
had come to see it, and used to sympathize with
her about it when Hank wasn't around. She'd
tell em, yes, it was so. Back in Elmira, New
York, from which her father and mother come to
our part of Illinoise in the early days, her father
had kep' a hotel, and they was stylish kind o'
folks. When she was born her mother was homesick
fur all that style and fur York State ways, and so
she named her Elmira.

But when she married Hank, he had considerable
land. His father had left it to him, but it was all
swamp land, and so Hank's father, he hunted
more'n he farmed, and Hank and his brothers
done the same when he was a boy. But Hank,
he learnt a little blacksmithing when he was growing
up, cause he liked to tinker around and to show how
stout he was. Then, when he married Elmira
Appleton, he had to go to work practising that
perfession reg'lar, because he never learnt nothing
about farming. He'd sell fifteen or twenty acres,
every now and then, and they'd be high times till
he'd spent it up, and mebby Elmira would get
some new clothes.

But when I was found on the door step, the land
was all gone, and Hank was practising reg'lar,
when not busy cussing out the fellers that had bought
the land. Fur some smart fellers had come along,
and bought up all that swamp land and dreened
it, and now it was worth seventy or eighty dollars
an acre. Hank, he figgered some one had cheated
him. Which the Walterses could of dreened theirn
too, only they'd ruther hunt ducks and have fish
frys than to dig ditches. All of which I hearn
Elmira talking over with the neighbours more'n
once when I was growing up, and they all says:
"How sad it is you have came to this, Elmira!"
And then she'd kind o' spunk up and say, thanks to
glory, she'd kep' her pride.

Well, they was worse places to live in than that
there little town, even if they wasn't no railroad
within eight miles, and only three hundred soles
in the hull copperation. Which Hank's shop and
our house set in the edge of the woods jest outside
the copperation line, so's the city marshal didn't
have no authority to arrest him after he
crossed it.

They was one thing in that house I always
admired when I was a kid. And that was a big
cistern. Most people has their cisterns outside
their house, and they is a tin pipe takes all the rain
water off the roof and scoots it into them. Ourn
worked the same, but our cistern was right in under
our kitchen floor, and they was a trap door with
leather hinges opened into it right by the kitchen
stove. But that wasn't why I was so proud of it.
It was because that cistern was jest plumb full of
fish -- bullheads and red horse and sunfish and
other kinds.

Hank's father had built that cistern. And one
time he brung home some live fish in a bucket and
dumped em in there. And they growed. And
they multiplied in there and refurnished the earth.
So that cistern had got to be a fambly custom, which
was kep' up in that fambly for a habit. It was a
great comfort to Hank, fur all them Walterses was
great fish eaters, though it never went to brains.
We fed em now and then, and throwed back in the
little ones till they was growed, and kep' the dead
ones picked out soon's we smelled anything wrong,
and it never hurt the water none; and when I was
a kid I wouldn't of took anything fur living in a
house like that.

Oncet, when I was a kid about six years old,
Hank come home from the bar-room. He got to
chasing Elmira's cat cause he says it was making
faces at him. The cistern door was open, and Hank
fell in. Elmira was over to town, and I was scared.
She had always told me not to fool around there
none when I was a little kid, fur if I fell in there
I'd be a corpse quicker'n scatt.

So when Hank fell in, and I hearn him splash,
being only a little feller, and awful scared because
Elmira had always made it so strong, I hadn't no
sort of unbelief but what Hank was a corpse already.
So I slams the trap door shut over that there cistern
without looking in, fur I hearn Hank flopping around
down in there. I hadn't never hearn a corpse flop
before, and didn't know but what it might be some-
how injurious to me, and I wasn't going to take no
chances.

So I went out and played in the front yard, and
waited fur Elmira. But I couldn't seem to get my
mind settled on playing I was a horse, nor nothing.
I kep' thinking mebby Hank's corpse is going to
come flopping out of that cistern and whale me
some unusual way. I hadn't never been licked by
a corpse, and didn't rightly know jest what one is,
anyhow, being young and comparitive innocent.
So I sneaks back in and sets all the flatirons in the
house on top of the cistern lid. I hearn some flop-
ping and splashing and spluttering, like Hank's
corpse is trying to jump up and is falling back into
the water, and I hearn Hank's voice, and got
scareder yet. And when Elmira come along down
the road, she seen me by the gate a-crying, and she
asts me why.

"Hank is a corpse," says I, blubbering.

"A corpse!" says Elmira, dropping her coffee
which she was carrying home from the gineral
store and post-office. "Danny, what do you
mean?"

I seen I was to blame somehow, and I wisht then
I hadn't said nothing about Hank being a corpse.
And I made up my mind I wouldn't say nothing
more. So when she grabs holt of me and asts me
agin what did I mean I blubbered harder, jest the
way a kid will, and says nothing else. I wisht I
hadn't set them flatirons on that door, fur it come
to me all at oncet that even if Hank HAS turned
into a corpse I ain't got any right to keep him in
that cistern.

Jest then Old Mis' Rogers, which is one of our
neighbours, comes by, while Elmira is shaking
me and yelling out what did I mean and how did
it happen and had I saw it and where was Hank's
corpse?

And Mis' Rogers she says, "What's Danny been
doing now, Elmira?" me being always up to some-
thing.

Elmira she turned around and seen her, and she
gives a whoop and then hollers out: "Hank is
dead!" and throws her apern over her head and
sets right down in the path and boo-hoos like a
baby. And I bellers louder.

Mis' Rogers, she never waited to ast nothing
more. She seen she had a piece of news, and she's
bound to be the first to spread it, like they is always
a lot of women wants to be in them country towns.
She run right acrost the road to where the Alexan-
derses lived. Mis' Alexander, she seen her coming
and unhooked the screen door, and Mis'
Rogers she hollers out before she reached the
porch:

"Hank Walters is dead."

And then she went footing it up the street.
They was a black plume on her bunnet which nodded
the same as on a hearse, and she was into and out
of seven front yards in five minutes.

Mis' Alexander, she runs acrost the street to
where we was, and she kneels down and puts her
arm around Elmira, which was still rocking back
and forth in the path, and she says:

"How do you know he's dead, Elmira? I seen
him not more'n an hour ago."

"Danny seen it all," says Elmira.

Mis' Alexander turned to me, and wants to know
what happened and how it happened and where
it happened. But I don't want to say nothing
about that cistern. So I busts out bellering fresher'n
ever, and I says:

"He was drunk, and he come home drunk, and
he done it then, and that's how he cone it," I says.

"And you seen him?" she says. I nodded.

"Where is he?" says she and Elmira, both to
oncet.

But I was scared to say nothing about that there
cistern, so I jest bawled some more.

"Was it in the blacksmith shop?" says Mis'
Alexander. I nodded my head agin and let it go
at that.

"Is he in there now?" asts Mis' Alexander. I
nodded agin. I hadn't meant to give out no untrue
stories. But a kid will always tell a lie, not meaning
to tell one, if you sort of invite him with questions
like that, and get him scared the way you're acting.
Besides, I says to myself, "so long as Hank has
turned into a corpse and that makes him dead,
what's the difference whether he's in the black-
smith shop or not?" Fur I hadn't had any plain idea,
being such a little kid, that a corpse meant to be dead,
and wasn't sure what being dead was like, neither,
except they had funerals over you then. I knowed
being a corpse must be some sort of a big disad-
vantage from the way Elmira always says keep
away from that cistern door or I'll be one. But
if they was going to be a funeral in our house, I'd
feel kind o' important, too. They didn't have em
every day in our town, and we hadn't never had
one of our own.

So Mis' Alexander, she led Elmira into the house,
both a-crying, and Mis' Alexander trying to comfort
her, and me a tagging along behind holding onto
Elmira's skirts and sniffling into them. And in a
few minutes all them women Mis' Rogers has told
come filing into that room, one at a time, looking
sad. Only Old Mis' Primrose, she was awful late
getting there because she stopped to put on her
bunnet she always wore to funerals with the black
Paris lace on it her cousin Arminty White had sent
her from Chicago.

When they found out Hank had come home with
licker in him and done it himself, they was all
excited, and they all crowds around and asts me
how, except two as is holding onto Elmira's hands
which sets moaning in a chair. And they all asts
me questions as to what I seen him do, which if
they hadn't I wouldn't have told em the lies I did.
But they egged me on to it.

Says one woman: "Danny, you seen him do it
in the blacksmith shop?"

I nodded.

"But how did he get in?" sings out another
woman. "The door was locked on the outside with
a padlock jest now when I come by. He couldn't
of killed himself in there and locked the door on
the outside."

I didn't see how he could of done that myself,
so I begun to bawl agin and said nothing at all.

"He must of crawled through that little side
window," says another one. "It was open when I
come by, if the door WAS locked. Did you see him
crawl through the little side window, Danny?"

I nodded. They wasn't nothing else fur me to
do.

"But YOU hain't tall enough to look through that
there window," says another one to me. "How
could you see into that shop, Danny?"

I didn't know, so I didn't say nothing at all; I
jest sniffled.

"They is a store box right in under that window,"
says another one. "Danny must have clumb onto
that store box and looked in after he seen Hank
come down the road and crawl through the window.
Did you scramble onto the store box and look in,
Danny?"

I jest nodded agin.

"And what was it you seen him do? How did
he kill himself?" they all asts to oncet.

_I_ didn't know. So I jest bellers and boo-hoos
some more. Things was getting past anything I
could see the way out of.

"He might of hung himself to one of the iron
rings in the jists above the forge," says another
woman. "He clumb onto the forge to tie the rope
to one of them rings, and he tied the other end
around his neck, and then he stepped off'n the forge.
Was that how he done it, Danny?"

I nodded. And then I bellered louder than ever.
I knowed Hank was down in that there cistern, a
corpse and a mighty wet corpse, all this time; but
they kind o' got me to thinking mebby he was hang-
ing out in the shop by the forge, too. And I guessed

I'd better stick to the shop story, not wanting to
say nothing about that cistern no sooner'n I could
help it.

Pretty soon one woman says, kind o' shivery:

"I don't want to have the job of opening the door
of that blacksmith shop the first one!"

And they all kind o' shivered then, and looked at
Elmira. They says to let some of the men open
it. And Mis' Alexander, she says she'll run home
and tell her husband right off.

And all the time Elmira is moaning in that chair.
One woman says Elmira orter have a cup o' tea,
which she'll lay off her bunnet and go to the kitchen
and make it fur her. But Elmira says no, she can't
a-bear to think of tea, with poor Hennerey a-hang-
ing out there in the shop. But she was kind o'
enjoying all that fuss being made over her, too.
And all the other women says:

"Poor thing!" But all the same they was mad
she said she didn't want any tea, for they all wanted
some and didn't feel free without she took it too.
Which she said she would after they'd coaxed a
while and made her see her duty.

So they all goes out to the kitchen, bringing along
some of the best room chairs, Elmira coming too,
and me tagging along behind. And the first thing
they noticed was them flatirons on top of the cistern
door. Mis' Primrose, she says that looks funny.
But another woman speaks up and says Danny must
of been playing with them while Elmira was over
town. She says, "Was you playing they was
horses, Danny?"

I was feeling considerable like a liar by this time,
but I says I was playing horses with them, fur I
couldn't see no use in hurrying things up. I was
bound to get a lamming purty soon anyhow. When
I was a kid I could always bet on that. So they
picks up the flatirons, and as they picks em up they
come a splashing noise in the cistern. I thinks to
myself, Hank's corpse'll be out of there in a minute.
One woman, she says:

"Goodness gracious sakes alive! What's that,
Elmira?"

Elmira says that cistern is mighty full of fish,
and they is some great big ones in there, and it must
be some of them a-flopping around. Which if
they hadn't of been all worked up and talking
all to oncet and all thinking of Hank's body hanging
out there in the blacksmith shop they might of
suspicioned something. For that flopping kep' up
steady, and a lot of splashing too. I mebby orter
mentioned sooner it had been a dry summer and
they was only three or four feet of water in our
cistern, and Hank wasn't in scarcely up to his big
hairy chest. So when Elmira says the cistern
is full of fish, that woman opens the trap door and
looks in. Hank thinks it's Elmira come to get him
out. He allows he'll keep quiet in there and make
believe he is drowned and give her a good scare
and make her sorry fur him. But when the cistern
door is opened, he hears a lot of clacking tongues
all of a sudden like they was a hen convention on.
He allows she has told some of the neighbours,
and he'll scare them too. So Hank, he laid low.
And the woman as looks in sees nothing, for it's
as dark down there as the insides of the whale
what swallered Noah. But she leaves the door
open and goes on a-making tea, and they ain't
skeercly a sound from that cistern, only little,
ripply noises like it might have been fish.

Pretty soon a woman says:

"It has drawed, Elmira; won't you have a cup?"
Elmira she kicked some more, but she took hern.
And each woman took hern. And one woman,
a-sipping of hern, she says:

"The departed had his good pints, Elmira."

Which was the best thing had been said of Hank
in that town fur years and years.

Old Mis' Primrose, she always prided herself
on being honest, no matter what come, and she ups
and says:

"I don't believe in no hippercritics at a time like
this, no more'n no other time. The departed
wasn't no good, and the hull town knowed it; and
Elmira orter feel like it's good riddance of bad
rubbish and them is my sentiments and the senti-
ments of rightfulness."

All the other women sings out:

"W'y, MIS' PRIMROSE! I never!" And they
seemed awful shocked. But down in underneath
more of em agreed than let on. Elmira she wiped
her eyes and she said:

"Hennerey and me has had our troubles. They
ain't any use in denying that, Mis' Primrose. It
has often been give and take between us and betwixt
us. And the hull town knows he has lifted his hand
agin me more'n oncet. But I always stood up to
Hennerey, and I fit him back, free and fair and open.
I give him as good as he sent on this here earth,
and I ain't the one to carry no annermosities be-
yond the grave. I forgive Hank all the orneriness
he done me, and they was a lot of it, as is becoming
unto a church member, which he never was."

And all the women but Mis' Primrose, they says:

"Elmira Appleton, you HAVE got a Christian
sperrit!" Which done her a heap of good, and she
cried considerable harder, leaking out tears as fast
as she poured tea in. Each one on em tries to
find out something good to say about Hank, only
they wasn't much they could say. And Hank in
that there cistern a-listening to every word of it.

Mis' Rogers, she says:

"Afore he took to drinking like a fish, Hank
Walters was as likely looking a young feller as I
ever see."

Mis' White, she says:

"Well, Hank he never was a stingy man, nohow.
Often and often White has told me about seeing
Hank, after he'd sold a piece of land, treating the
hull town down in Nolan's bar-room jest as come-
easy, go-easy as if it wasn't money he orter paid
his honest debts with."

They set there that-a-way telling of what good
pints they could think of fur ten minutes, and Hank
a-hearing it and getting madder and madder all the
time. The gineral opinion was that Hank wasn't
no good and was better done fur, and no matter
what they said them feelings kep' sticking out
through the words.

By and by Tom Alexander come busting into the
house, and his wife, Mis' Alexander, was with him.

"What's the matter with all you folks," he says.
"They ain't nobody hanging in that there black-
smith shop. I broke the door down and went in,
and it was empty."

Then they was a pretty howdy-do, and they all
sings out:

"Where's the corpse?"

And some thinks mebby some one has cut it down
and took it away, and all gabbles to oncet. But
for a minute no one thinks mebby little Danny has
been egged on to tell lies. Little Danny ain't
saying a word. But Elmira she grabs me and shakes
me and she says:

"You little liar, you, what do you mean by that
tale you told?"

I thinks that lamming is about due now. But
whilst all eyes is turned on me and Elmira, they
comes a voice from that cistern. It is Hank's
voice, and he sings out:

"Tom Alexander, is that you?"

Some of the women scream, for some thinks it
is Hank's ghost. But one woman says what would
a ghost be doing in a cistern?

Tom Alexander, he laughs and he says:

"What in blazes you want to jump in there fur,
Hank?"

"You dern ijut!" says Hank, "you quit mocking
me and get a ladder, and when I get out'n here I'll
learn you to ast what did I want to jump in here
fur!"

"You never seen the day you could do it," says
Tom Alexander, meaning the day he could lick
him. "And if you feel that way about it you can
stay there fur all of me. I guess a little water
won't hurt you none." And he left the house.

"Elmira," sings out Hank, mad and bossy, "you
go get me a ladder!"

But Elmira, her temper riz up too, all of
a sudden.

"Don't you dare order me around like I was the
dirt under your feet, Hennerey Walters," she says.

At that Hank fairly roared, he was so mad. He
says:

"Elmira, when I get out'n here I'll give you what
you won't fergit in a hurry. I hearn you a-forgiving
me and a-weeping over me, and I won't be forgive
nor weeped over by no one! You go and get that
ladder."

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