Dannys Own Story | Page 5

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