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131 pages

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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. 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.

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	27 septembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819927853
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0100€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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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 questionthat has always had more or less aggervation mixed up with it. Imight of had one jest as well as not if Old Hank Walters hadn'tbeen so all-fired, infernal bull-headed about things in gineral,and his wife Elmira a blame sight worse, and both of em ready torow at a minute's notice and stick to it forevermore.
Hank, he was considerable of a lusher. One Saturdaynight, when he come home from the village in his usual fix, hestumbled over a basket that was setting on his front steps. Then hegot up and drawed back his foot unsteady to kick it plumb intokingdom come. Jest then he hearn Elmira opening the door behindhim, and he turned his head sudden. But the kick was alreadystarted into the air, and when he turns he can't stop it. And soHank gets twisted and falls down and steps on himself. That basketlets out a yowl.
“It's kittens, ” says Hank, still setting down andstaring at that there basket. All of which, you understand, I ama-telling you from hearsay, as the lawyers always asts you incourt.
Elmira, she sings out:
“Kittens, nothing! It's a baby! ”
And she opens the basket and looks in and it wasme.
“Hennerey Walters, ” she says— picking me up, andshaking me at him like I was a crime, “Hennerey Walters, where didyou get this here baby? ” She always calls him Hennerey when she isgetting 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 withhim. 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 hesays:
“Elmira, honest, I ain't had but one drink all day.” And then he kind o' rouses up a little bit, and gets surprisedand says:
“That a BABY you got there, Elmira? ” And then hesays, dignified: “So fur as that's consarned, Elmira, where did YOUget that there baby? ”
She looks at him, and she sees he don't really knowwhere I come from. Old Hank mostly was truthful when lickered up,fur that matter, and she knowed it, fur he couldn't think up nolies excepting a gineral denial when intoxicated up to thegills.
Elmira looks into the basket. They was one of themlong rubber tubes stringing out of a bottle that was in it, and Ihad been sucking that bottle when interrupted. And they wasn'tnothing else in that basket but a big thick shawl which had beenwrapped all around me, and Elmira often wore it to meetingafterward. She goes inside and she looks at the bottle and me bythe light, and Old Hank, he comes stumbling in afterward and setsdown in a chair and waits to get Hail Columbia for coming home inthat shape, so's he can row back agin, like they done everySaturday night.
Blowed in the glass of the bottle was the name:“Daniel, Dunne and Company. ” Anybody but them two old ignoramusescould of told right off that that didn't have nothing to do withme, but was jest the company that made them kind of bottles. Butshe reads it out loud three or four times, and then she says:
“His name is Daniel Dunne, ” she says.
“And Company, ” says Hank, feeling rightquarrelsome.
“COMPANY hain't no name, ” says she.
“WHY hain't it, I'd like to know? ” says Hank. “Iknowed a man oncet whose name was Farmer, and if a farmer's a namewhy ain't a company a name too? ”
“His name is Daniel Dunne, ” says Elmira, quietlike,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 wasfull of licker he knowed jest the ways to aggervate her theworst.
She might of banged him one the same as usual, andgot her own eye blacked also, the same as usual; but jest then Ilets out another big yowl, and she give me some milk.
I guess the only reason they ever kep' me at firstwas so they could quarrel about my name. They'd lived together agood many years and quarrelled about everything else under the sun,and was running out of subjects. A new subject kind o' briskenedthings up fur a while.
But finally they went too far with it one time. Iwas about two years old then and he was still calling me Companyand her calling me Dunne. This time he hits her a lick that laysher out and likes to kill her, and it gets him scared. But she getsaround agin after a while, and they both see it has went too furthat 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 rowover that. But they finally made it up between em I didn't have nolast name, and they'd jest call me Danny. Which they both donefaithful ever after, as agreed.
Old Hank, he was a blacksmith, and he used to lammme considerable, him and his wife not having any kids of their ownto lick. He lammed me when he was drunk, and he whaled me when hewas sober. I never helt it up agin him much, neither, not fur agood many years, because he got me used to it young, and I hadn'tnever knowed nothing else. Hank's wife, Elmira, she used to lickhim jest about as often as he licked her, and boss him jest asmuch. So he fell back on me. A man has jest naturally got to havesomething to cuss around and boss, so's to keep himself fromfinding out he don't amount to nothing. Leastways, most men is likethat. 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 himto have me around.
But they was one thing he never sot no store by, andI got along now to where I hold that up agin him more'n all thelickings he ever done. That was book learning. He never had nonehimself, and he was sot agin it, and he never made me get none, andif I'd ever asted him for any he'd of whaled me fur that. Hank'swife, Elmira, had married beneath her, and everybody in our townhad come to see it, and used to sympathize with her about it whenHank 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 ofIllinoise in the early days, her father had kep' a hotel, and theywas stylish kind o' folks. When she was born her mother washomesick fur all that style and fur York State ways, and so shenamed 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 soHank's father, he hunted more'n he farmed, and Hank and hisbrothers done the same when he was a boy. But Hank, he learnt alittle blacksmithing when he was growing up, cause he liked totinker around and to show how stout he was. Then, when he marriedElmira Appleton, he had to go to work practising that perfessionreg'lar, because he never learnt nothing about farming. He'd sellfifteen or twenty acres, every now and then, and they'd be hightimes till he'd spent it up, and mebby Elmira would get some newclothes.
But when I was found on the door step, the land wasall gone, and Hank was practising reg'lar, when not busy cussingout the fellers that had bought the land. Fur some smart fellershad come along, and bought up all that swamp land and dreened it,and now it was worth seventy or eighty dollars an acre. Hank, hefiggered some one had cheated him. Which the Walterses could ofdreened theirn too, only they'd ruther hunt ducks and have fishfrys than to dig ditches. All of which I hearn Elmira talking overwith the neighbours more'n once when I was growing up, and they allsays: “How sad it is you have came to this, Elmira! ” And thenshe'd kind o' spunk up and say, thanks to glory, she'd kep' herpride.
Well, they was worse places to live in than thatthere little town, even if they wasn't no railroad within eightmiles, and only three hundred soles in the hull copperation. WhichHank's shop and our house set in the edge of the woods jest outsidethe copperation line, so's the city marshal didn't have noauthority to arrest him after he crossed it.
They was one thing in that house I always admiredwhen I was a kid. And that was a big cistern. Most people has theircisterns outside their house, and they is a tin pipe takes all therain water off the roof and scoots it into them. Ourn worked thesame, but our cistern was right in under our kitchen floor, andthey was a trap door with leather hinges opened into it right bythe kitchen stove. But that wasn't why I was so proud of it. It wasbecause that cistern was jest plumb full of fish— bullheads and redhorse and sunfish and other kinds.
Hank's father had built that cistern. And one timehe brung home some live fish in a bucket and dumped em in there.And they growed. And they multiplied in there and refurnished theearth. So that cistern had got to be a fambly custom, which waskep' 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 wentto brains. We fed em now and then, and throwed back in the littleones till they was growed, and kep' the dead ones picked out soon'swe smelled anything wrong, and it never hurt the water none; andwhen I was a kid I wouldn't of took anything fur living in a houselike that.
Oncet, when I was a kid about six years old, Hankcome home from the bar-room. He got to chasing Elmira's cat causehe says it was making faces at him. The cistern door was open, andHank fell in. Elmira was over to town, and I was scared. She hadalways told me not to fool around there none when I was a littlekid, fur if I fell in there I'd be a corpse quicker'n scatt.
So when Hank fell in, and I hearn him splash, beingonly a little feller, and awful scared because Elmira had alwaysmade it so strong, I hadn't no sort of unbelief but what Hank was acorpse already. So I slams the trap door shut over that therecistern without looking in, fur I hearn Hank flopping around downin there. I hadn't never hearn a corpse flop before, and didn'tknow but what it might be somehow injurious to me, and I wasn'tgoing to