So I left it to him to get the tickets and we might as well of set on the Adams Street bridge. I said to Stevens, I said:
“If these is the seats Mr. Stagg digs up for his old pals, I suppose he leads strangers twenty or thirty miles out in the country and blindfolds ’em and ties ’em to a tree.”
Now of course it was the bunk about he and Stagg bein’ so close. He may of been introduced to him once, but he ain’t the kind of a guy that Stagg would go around holdin’ hands with. Just the same, most of the people he bragged about knowin’, why it turned out that he really did know ’em; yes, and stood ace high with ’em, too.
Like, for instance, I got pinched for speedin’ one night and they give me a ticket to show up in the Speeders’ court and I told Stevens about it and he says, “Just forget it! I’ll call up the judge and have it wiped off the book. He’s a mighty good fella and a personal friend of mine.”
Well, I didn’t want to take no chances so I phoned Stevens the day before I was supposed to appear in court, and I asked him if he’d talked to the judge. He said he had and I asked him if he was sure. So he said, “If you don’t believe me, call up the judge yourself.” And he give me the judge’s number. Sure enough, Stevens had fixed it and when I thanked the judge for his trouble, he said it was a pleasure to do somethin’ for a friend of Tom Stevens’s.
Now, I know it’s silly to not appreciate favors like that and not warm up to people that’s always tryin’ to help you along, but still a person don’t relish bein’ treated like they was half-witted and couldn’t button their shirt alone. Tom and Belle meant all right, but I and Ada got kind of tired of havin’ fault found with everything that belonged to us and everything we done or tried to do.
Besides our apartment bein’ no good and our clothes terrible, we learned that my dentist didn’t know a bridge from a mustache cup, and the cigarettes I smoked didn’t have no taste to them, and the man that bobbed Ada’s hair must of been mad at her, and neither of us would ever know what it was to live till we owned a wire-haired fox terrier.
And we found out that the liquor I’d been drinkin’ and enjoyin’ was a mixture of bath salts and assorted paints, and the car we’d paid seventeen hundred smackers for wasn’t nowheres near as much of a car as one that Tom could of got for us for eight hundred on account of knowin’ a brother-in-law of a fella that used to go to school with the president of the company’s nephew, and that if Ada would take up aesthetic dancin’ under a dame Belle knew about, why she’d never have no more trouble with her tonsils.
Nothin’ we had or nothin’ we talked about gettin’ or doin’ was worth a damn unless it was recommended or suggested by the Stevenses.
Well, I done a pretty good business this fall and I and Ada had always planned to spend a winter in the South, so one night we figured it out that this was the year we could spare the money and the time and if we didn’t go this year we never would. So the next thing was where should we go, and we finally decided on Miami. And we said we wouldn’t mention nothin’ about it to Tom and Belle till the day we was goin’. We’d pretend we was doin’ it out of a clear sky.
But a secret is just as safe with Ada as a police dog tethered with dental floss. It wasn’t more than a day or two after we’d had our talk when Tom and Belle sprang the news that they was leavin’ for California right after New Year’s. And why didn’t we go with them.
Well, I didn’t say nothin’ and Ada said it sounded grand, but it was impossible. Then Stevens said if it was a question of money, to not let that bother us as he would loan it to me and I could pay it back whenever I felt like it. That was more than Ada could stand, so she says we wasn’t as poor as people seemed to think and the reason we couldn’t go to California was because we was goin’ to Miami.
This was such a surprise that it almost struck ’em dumb at first and all Tom could think of to say was that he’d been to Miami himself and it was too crowded and he’d lay off of it if he was us. But the next time we seen ’em they had our trip all arranged.
First, Tom asked me what road we was goin’ on and I told him the Big Four. So he asked if we had our reservations and I told him yes.
“Well,” he said, “we’ll get rid of ’em and I’ll fix you up on the C. & E. I. The general passenger agent is a friend of mine and they ain’t nothin’ he won’t do for my friends. He’ll see that you’re treated right and that you get there in good shape.”
So I said:
“I don’t want to put you to all that trouble, and besides I don’t know nobody connected with the Big Four well enough for them to resent me travelin’ on their lines, and as for gettin’ there in good shape, even if I have a secret enemy or two on the Big Four, I don’t believe they’d endanger the lives of the other passengers just to see that I didn’t get there in good
