The Jack-Knife Man

When the vision of Buddy’s eyes grew dim Peter was always able to bring it back by humming Booge’s song, and before the winter was over Peter had crowded his clock shelf with toys and had constructed another shelf, which was filling rapidly, for while he made many duplicates he kept one of each for Buddy – “Buddy’s menagerie,” he called them. Thus he kept his own interest alive, too, for when it flagged he made a new animal, making it as he thought Buddy would like it made and so that it would bring that happy “Ho! ho! That’s a funny old squ’arl, Uncle Peter.”

One letter Peter wrote, soon after the visit to his boat, which was to Mrs. Vandyne. It brought this answer: “My husband called at the place you mentioned, but the little girl is there no longer. I can find no trace of her. Mr. Briggles, I understand, has had to leave this state and no one knows where he is.”

Peter had no time to go to town. Mrs. Montgomery had been as good as her word, and had, on her return to New York in midseason, introduced the “Peter Lane Jack-Knife Toys” to her Arts and Crafts Club, and to two of those small shops on the Avenue that seem so inconspicuous and yet are known to every one. The toys, after their first few weeks as a fashionable fad, settled into a vogue and James Vandyne, whom Mrs. Montgomery had wisely asked to act as Peter’s agent, received letters from other shops, and from wholesalers, asking for them. The toys were, of course, almost immediately counterfeited by other dealers, and it was Vandyne who wisely secured copyrights on Peter’s models, and who, later in the winter, sent Peter a small branding-iron with which he could burn his autograph on each toy.

Peter’s farmer friend stopped at the bank on each trip to town, delivering the toys, which Vandyne tagged and turned over to the express company. The farmer brought back such supplies as Peter had commissioned him to buy. The entire business was crude and unsystematic, even to Peter’s method of packing the toys in hay and sewing the parcels in gunny-sacking, but it all served. It was naïve.

When the ice in the river went out, and that in Big Tree Lake softened and honeycombed, Peter put aside his jack-knife for a few days and repaired the old duck-blind that had been Booge’s damp and temporary home, and built two more, knowing George Rapp and his friends would be down before long. He built two more bunks in the narrow shanty-boat and cleared a tent space on the highest ground near the boat, constructing a platform four feet above the ground, in case the high water should come with the ducks. All this put a temporary close to his toy-making, but Peter was ready for Rapp when the first flock of ducks dropped into the lake, and that night he sent the farmer’s hired man to town with a message to Rapp. Late the next evening Rapp and his two friends found Peter waiting for them at the road, and the best part of the night was spent getting the provisions and duck-boats to the slough. The four men dropped asleep the instant they touched their beds, and it was not until the next morning, when Peter was cooking breakfast that he had an opportunity to ask a question that had been in his mind.

“George,” he said, “you didn’t ever hear where they took Buddy to, did you?”

Rapp looked up, and stared at Peter until the match with which he had been lighting his pipe burned his fingers, and he snapped them with pain.

“Do you mean to tell me you don’t know where that boy is?” he asked. “Well – I’ll – be – Petered! Why, Mrs. Potter’s got him!”

Peter was holding a plate, but he was quick, and he caught it before it struck the floor.

“I – I caught that one,” he said in silly fashion.

“You’re going to catch something else when Widow Potter sees you,” said George Rapp.

XIX. PETER GOES TO TOWN

ONE DAY, if we saw a woman gowned as Mrs. Montgomery was gowned when she visited Riverbank, we would laugh her to ridicule, but the toys Peter Lane whittled that winter are still admired for their design and execution. There is a collection of them in the rooms of the Riverbank Historical Society. We laugh, too, when we see photographs of Main Street as it was when Peter came to town after his winter on Big Tree Lake, with the mud almost hub deep. That was before the new banks were built or the brick-paving laid, and Main Street was a ragged, ill-kept thoroughfare, with none of the city airs it has since donned. But as Peter stepped out of the First National Bank, and stood for a minute on the steps in the warm spring sunshine, the street looked like an old friend, and this was the more odd because it had never looked like a friend before.

Jim Vandyne had just cashed the checks and money orders Peter had accumulated during the winter. They were for small amounts – a few dollars each – and not until the cashier had pushed the pile of crisp bills under the wicket, mentioning the amount, did happy-go-lucky Peter realize how much his winter earnings had amounted to.

“Quite a lot of money,” Jim had said. “How would you like to open an account?” and Peter had opened his first bank account. The warm, leather-bound bank-book now reposed in his pocket. Peter could feel it pressing against him, and he could feel the extra bulge the check-book made in his hip pocket. He felt like a serf raised to knighthood, with armor protecting him against harm. As he stood there, Mr. Howard, the bank’s president, came briskly down the street. He was a short, chubby man, and he had always nodded cheerfully to Peter, but now he stopped and extended his hand.

“How do you do!” he said cheerfully. “Jim Vandyne has been telling me what you have been doing this winter. Glad to know you are making a go of it.”

It was not much. The bank president was not a great bank president, and the bank was not much of a bank – as great banks go – and he had not, after all, said much, but it made Peter’s brown cheeks glow. Bank presidents do not often stop to shake hands with shanty-boatmen, nor do they pause to congratulate them, although the bank president may be an infernal rascal and the shanty-boatman a moral king. But Peter did not philosophize. He knew that if enough bank presidents shake the hand of an ex-shanty-boatman the world will consider the shanty-boatman respectable enough to raise one freckle-faced, kinky-headed little waif of a boy.

Peter raised his head higher than ever, and he had always held it high. He was a man, like other men, now. He could, if he wished, build another shanty-boat. He could hire it built. He could rent a house and put a carpet on the parlor floor. He could say he was going to Florida and people would believe him. He could – buy a suit of clothes! A whole, complete, entire suit, vest and all! It had been years and years since he could do that, and when he had been able to do it he had always spent the money otherwise. Now he crossed the street and entered the Riverbank Clothing Emporium. It gave him a warming feeling of respectability to be buying clothes, but he did not plunge recklessly. He bought everything he needed, from socks and shoes to tie and hat, but the shoes were stout and cheap, and the shirt a woolen one, and the hat a soft felt that would stand wind and weather.

Mr. Rosenheim himself came and stood by Peter when he was trying on the shoes.

“My wife was showing me the piece about you in the magazine,” he said. “I guess you are the first man in Riverbank to get into magazines. We should be proud of you, Lane.”

“Who, me in a magazine? I guess not.”

“Oh, sure! I read some of it. Some such Art and Crafts magazine, with photo cuts from them toys you make. Ain’t you seen it?”

“Nope! Let me try on a seven and a half B,” he said calmly, but his pulse quickened.

“Well, I suppose you are used to being puffed up already,” said Mr. Rosenheim. “I wish I could get such free advertising.”

When Peter looked at himself in the store mirror he was well satisfied. Mr. Rosenheim nodded his approval.

“That suit looks like it was made for you, Mr. Lane,” he said, and he did not know what a great truth he was uttering, for Peter, so long in rags, and the simple, quiet suit seemed well fitted for each other’s company. Peter went out upon the street, and at the first corner he met – Booge!

He was the same old, frowsy, hairy Booge, and he greeted Peter in the same deep bass.

“Did you get the papers, to rescue the cheeild?” he asked melodramatically. “I hid them under the stone at the corner of the lane. Meet me at midnight! Hush! A stranger approaches!”

There were several strangers approaching, for they were standing on the corner of the two principal streets. Peter grinned.

“George Rapp brought it down to me,” he said. “I thought you were in for six months.”

“Sheriff discharged me,” said Booge. “I ate too much. He couldn’t figure a profit, so he kicked me out.”

“You don’t mean it!”

“No, teacher excused me at noon so I could go to dancing class,” said Booge.

“How did you get out?” Peter insisted. “There wasn’t room for me and Briggles in the same jail,” said Booge. “We was always singin’ out of harmony.”

“Was Briggles in jail?”

“They caught the old kazoozer, kazoozer, kazoozer,They caught the old kazoozer and took him to the jail,”

hummed Booge, “and I got excused so I could go and hunt up Susie: I was her responsible guardian. Ain’t that a joke?”

“What are you going to do now?” asked Peter.

“I dunno!” said Booge thoughtfully. “I ain’t made up my mind whether to run for mayor or buy the op’ry house, but if anybody was to give me a nickel I’d give up whisky and buy beer. If not, I’ll stand around here ‘til I do get arrested. The town cop has promised and promised to do it, but he ain’t reliable. I’ve got so I don’t depend on his word no more.”

Peter took a silver dollar from his pocket and handed it to the tramp, and Booge started across the street to the nearest saloon without farewell. Peter took a step after him and then turned back.

“I guess it’s what he likes,” he said, “and I couldn’t stop him if I wanted to.”

Peter turned into the Star Restaurant and took a seat at one of the red-covered tables.

“Bob,” he said, “can you get me up one of them oyster stews of yours? One of them milk stews, with plenty of oysters and a hunk of butter thawing out on top. Fix me one. And then I want a chicken – a nice, fresh, young chicken, killed about day before yesterday – split open and br’iled right on top of the coals, so the burned smell will come sifting in before the chicken is ready, and I want it on a hot plate – a plate so hot I’ll holler when I grab it. And I want some of your fried potatoes in a side dish – hashed browned potatoes, browned almost crisp in the dish, with bacon chopped up in them. And I want a big cup of coffee with real cream, even if you have to send out for it. And then, Bob, I want a whole lemon meringue pie. A whole one, three inches thick and fourteen inches across. I’ve been wanting to eat a whole lemon meringue pie ever since I was fourteen years old, and now I’m going to. I’m going to have one full, fine, first-class meal and then – ”

“Then what?” asked Bob.

“Then I’m going to go and get an alarm-clock that belongs to me.”

XX. PETER GETS HIS CLOCK

For a man who means to walk it, considering the usual state of the river-road in spring, the railway is the best path between Riverbank and Widow Potter’s farm, and Peter, leaving the town, took to the railway track. He had, he assured himself, a definite purpose in visiting Mrs. Potter. She had expressed her views of a man who fell so low as to pawn his goods and chattels, and the wound still rankled, and Peter meant to have back his alarm-clock. That, he repeated to himself, was why he was going to Mrs. Potter’s, but in his heart he knew this was not so – he wanted to see Buddy. He wanted, before the boy forgot him, to reestablish for a moment the old ties. In short, he was jealous of Mrs. Potter.

As he walked up the track he planned the interview in advance. “Mrs. Potter,” he would say, “I have come to get my clock. Here is the money, and I’m sorry I had to trouble you to keep it so long.” Then he would lay the money on the kitchen table, and Mrs. Potter, slightly awed by his new clothes, would hand him the clock. “And if possible,” he would say then, “I’d like to speak with Buddy a few minutes.” Mrs. Potter would then call Buddy.

That was as he planned it, but the nearer he approached Mrs. Potter’s cove the less likely it seemed to Peter that Mrs. Potter would be much awed by the clothes. By the time he was within half a mile of the cove he was not only sure that Mrs. Potter was not the woman to be awed by anything, but he began to wish he had not bought the clothes. He could imagine her tone as she put her hands on her hips and looked him over and said, “Well, of all the shiftlessness I ever heard tell of! Goin’ and dressin’ yourself up like a dude, and you not a roof in the world to hide your head under!” He wished he could see himself just once more in a large mirror, so that he might renew the feeling of confidence he had felt at Rosenheim’s. Instead, he felt much as a young fellow feels when he dons his first dress-suit and steps upon the dancing-floor. He felt stiff and awkward, and that every garment he wore was a showy misfit. He did not seem to be Peter Lane at all, but some flashy, overdressed, uncomfortable stranger. He suddenly realized that he had hands and feet, and that the new hat was stiff and uncomfortable, and that the tie – so placidly blue in the dusk of the clothing store – was rampantly and screamingly blue in the full light of day. He felt that he had done an inexcusable and reckless thing in buying the new clothes, and he knew Mrs. Potter would tell him so.

Peter decided that, since he was sure to be in for a horrible half hour, he would assert his manhood. If Mrs. Potter scolded he would sass back. He had money in the bank, hadn’t he? He had heard enough of her hard words, hadn’t he? All right! The minute she said “shiftless” he would speak right up. He would look her firmly in the eye and say something like – “Now, stop! You’ve talked to me that way before, Mrs. Potter, when I was a poor shanty-boatman, but I’ve had just about enough of it! I’m tired of that.” He would hide the misery of his clothes in a flood of high words.

That is to say, if Mrs. Potter gave him a chance! For, as Peter turned from the track to the road, and neared the gate, he saw it all depended on Mrs. Potter. If she did not wish him to talk, that would end it, and it was a meek, uneasy, uncomfortable, undecided, miserable Peter that turned in at the gate.

And then, before he could tuck the sleeves of his flannel shirt – which seemed to have grown until they were ridiculously long – into his coat cuffs – which seemed to have become ridiculously short – a young girl jumped from behind one of the old apple trees and stood staring at him. Peter took off his hat as if she had been a princess. He was in the state of mind when he would have taken off his hat to a wax figure.

But the girl stood but for a moment. Then she ran toward him.

“I know who you are!” she cried. “You ‘re Uncle Peter, ain’t you? I’m Susie!”

“Susie?” said Peter. “Are you Susie?” He tried to greet her as a man should greet a strange child, but she would have none of it. She threw her arm around his right arm and hugged it, jumping up and down.

“O Uncle Peter! Uncle Peter!” she cried joyously, and turning, she screamed at the top of her voice: “Bud-dy! B-u-u-u-dy! Bud-dy! Here’s Uncle Peter!”

Around the corner of the house popped a hatless, kinky head.

“Uncle Peter! Uncle Peter!” screamed Buddy, running with a strange little hippety-hop. “O Uncle Peter! My Uncle Peter! My Uncle Peter!” and he threw himself into Peter’s arms, laughing and crying and trembling with joy, repeating over and over, through the laughter and the tears: “My Uncle Peter! My Uncle Peter!”

“My Buddy! My old Buddy-boy!” Peter murmured, hugging him close. “My old Buddy-boy!”

So it happened that he was not thinking of his new clothes when Mrs. Potter came to the kitchen door.

“Well, for the land’s sake, Peter Lane,” she cried, while Buddy clung to his neck and Susie clung around one leg, “it’s about time! I thought you never was cornin’. I been waitin’ here for you, with these two fatherless children – ”

From the kitchen came the rackety-banging of the alarm-clock, proving that, as the clock was set to ring at six, Peter had found a mother for the fatherless children at just seventeen minutes past three.

“If it wouldn’t annoy you too much to get married, Mrs. Potter,” said Peter, gasping at his own temerity, and wiping his forehead on the sleeve of his new coat, “I can – I could – we’d have quite a nice little family to start off with right away.”

“Annoy me? Is that what you call a proposal to marry me, Peter Lane?” asked Mrs. Potter scornfully. “Ain’t you ever goin’ to be able to talk up like a man!”

“Yes, I am,” snapped Peter. “Will you marry me?”

“Yes, I will!” snapped the Widow Potter.

THE END