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 Ihadn'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?
