THE OFFICE OF THE County Commissioners, Room No. I, courthouse. It is morning. Sitting in silence around the large table in the center of the room are MR. LERCH, superintendent of the county almshouse; MR. MUKENS, janitor of the almshouse; and MR. YOST, an inmate of the almshouse. Presently MR. WADE, chairman of the Board of County Commissioners, enters through a door marked “Private.”
MR. WADE
I reckon you gentlemen know what I called this little meeting for. You all seen them pieces in the papers where people are getting burned up down to the almshouse, and I got to lay the matter before the commissioners, account of them people down in the lower end of the county raising so much hell about it. So I thought the thing to do was for us to kind of get together and listen to this man here that done all the talking and see what he’s got to say for hisself.
MR. LERCH
All I got to say, Mr. Wade, is this here stuff in the papers is a pack of lies from start to finish and that’s all there is to it. What gets me is this here man here, and the county’s been feeding him three year now, and he goes and tells them paper men a pack of lies like this here.
MR. MUKENS
Four year.
MR. LERCH
Four year, and that’s all the gratitude he’s got!
MR. YOST
I hope Christ may kill me if I knowed they was paper men. Then I never told them all that stuff they put in. They made up a whole lot theirself.
MR. WADE
I don’t want you to think it’s what you call a reflection on you, Mr. Lerch, because I know how fine you been running things out at the almshouse and all like of that. But it’s them people down in the lower end of the county. You know how they are.
MR. LERCH
Don’t tell me nothing about them people down in the lower end of the county, Mr. Wade. I know ’em.
MR. MUKENS
Half of ’em’s already in the almshouse and half of ’em got relations that’s in.
MR. WADE
Of course now, I believe in Christian burial.
MR. LERCH
Mr. Wade, every decent man believes in a Christian burial. I don’t see how them paper men can look theirself in the face to print all that stuff, just on this man’s say-so.
MR. YOST
I hope Christ may kill me if I told ’em all that stuff they put in. They done made a whole lot of it up.
MR. WADE
And the county feeding you four year! It’s just like Mr. Lerch says, you had ought to be ashamed of yourself.
MR. LERCH
And there ain’t nobody down there been treated no better than he is. Same as if he was in his own house, only better.
MR. YOST
I never knowed they was paper men. They come up to me and made out like they was just looking around.
MR. WADE
Well, what did you tell ’em?
MR. YOST
I didn’t tell ’em nothing scarcely, excepting what I hear tell, one thing another. Nothing excepting what a whole lot of them was talking around.
MR. MUKENS
What about that there jawbone?
MR. WADE
Yes, how about that there jawbone? How did they put it in about that there jawbone if you didn’t show them no jawbone?
MR. LERCH
Mr. Wade, you hit it right on the head. That there is just what I want to know. How did they put it in about that there jawbone if he didn’t show them no jawbone?
MR. YOST
I ain’t saying I didn’t tell them nothing about no jawbone. What I say is they done made up a whole lot of lies and put it in.
MR. LERCH
You ain’t no more seen a jawbone down there than you seen a whale. How come you to tell them men any such lie as that?
MR. YOST
I hope Christ may kill me if I didn’t find a jawbone down here. I got that jawbone, right here in my coat pocket.
[He fumbles in his pocket and produces what is unquestionably a human mandible, the teeth still sticking in it.]
MR. LERCH
That there just goes to show what kind of man he is, Mr. Wade. He done showed them paper men that jawbone, just like they said he done.
MR. MUKENS
A fellow could of told he was lying, all along.
MR. WADE
Where did you get that jawbone?
MR. YOST
Found it in the ashes when I was hauling ’em away from the furnace. I pulled it right out of the bucket. Thought it was a clinker, first off, and pulled it right out of the bucket.
MR. LERCH
Who told you to pick the clinkers out of the bucket? You was to haul the ashes away from the furnace, and not pay no attention to them clinkers.
MR. MUKENS
And the county has been feeding him four year! Seems like the court had ought to take back the commitment of a fellow like that.
MR. YOST
Them men never said they was paper men. They just made out like they was looking around, one thing another, and then all them pieces come out in the paper.
MR. WADE
How do you know that there is a jawbone?
MR. YOST
Them men said it was a jawbone. It looks like a jawbone.
MR. MUKENS
That there might be a dog’s jawbone.
MR. WADE
What else did you tell them paper men?
MR. YOST
I didn’t tell them nothing. I didn’t tell them ary other thing. They done made up all the rest of them things they put in.
MR. WADE
How about this here piece about you seeing Mr. Lerch and Mr. Mukens throwing a stiff in the furnace?
MR. LERCH
Mr. Wade, you hit it. That there is just what I want to know. I just been waiting for you to ask him.
MR. MUKENS
Me too. I just been waiting.
MR. YOST
I don’t remember saying nothing about that. I don’t remember good what I did tell them, account of them not saying they was paper men, one thing another. We just kind of talked along, like of that.
MR. WADE
Then that there was another lie, wasn’t it? You didn’t see no stiff throwed on the furnace no more than I did, did you?
MR. YOST
I hope Christ may kill me if I didn’t see Mr. Lerch and Mr. Mukens throw a stiff right in the furnace.
MR. WADE
Then you did tell the paper men all this here stuff they put in, didn’t you?
MR. YOST
I don’t just recollect. But they done made a whole lot of it up.
MR. LERCH
How do you know it was a stiff?
MR. YOST
I knowed it was a stiff by the smell. I smell it soon as the fire hit it. Didn’t smell like no other meat. Had a kind of funny smell to it.
MR. MUKENS
I never heared the beat of that.
MR. LERCH
That there just goes to show how much truth there is in all this stuff you read in the papers.
MR. WADE
How come you to see all this here?
MR. YOST
I hid out on them. I heared a lot of talk, one thing another, and then one day I heared a fellow died in there, and I hid out on them, right down in the cellar.
MR. WADE
And the county has been feeding you four year!
MR. YOST
I hope Christ may kill me if I didn’t see them throw a stiff right in the furnace. I hid out on them, and first thing you know, I hear the door upstairs open easy like, and here come Mr. Lerch and Mr. Mukens, carrying a stiff on a stretcher, one to his head and one to his feet. Then, when they got to the furnace, Mr. Mukens throwed the door open, he did, and then him and Mr. Lerch shoved him in on the fire.
MR. WADE
And then you hollered for the paper men?
MR. YOST
I didn’t holler for no paper men, no sir! I run, I did, after Mr. Lerch and Mr. Mukens went away. And I never knowed they was paper men. They made out like they was just looking around.
MR. WADE
What else did you tell the paper men?
MR. YOST
I never told them nothing else. That there is all I told them, only they made up a whole lot theirself and put it in.
MR. WADE
So that there is all you seen, or think you seen?
MR. YOST
That there is all I seen, but I heared a plenty of talk going around.
MR. WADE
We don’t want to know what you heared. We want to know what you seen.
MR. YOST
That there is all I seen, but I heared a plenty.
MR. LERCH
Don’t that beat all, Mr. Wade? Here this fellow finds a jawbone somewheres around, maybe he digs it up out of the graveyard, and thinks he seen a stiff throwed in the furnace, and that’s all there is to this talk and stuff you see in the newspapers.
MR. MUKENS
And come to find out he don’t know if it was a stiff or not.
MR. WADE
Seems to me them fellows would get tired of printing all the lies they print. They could of come to me or you and none of this stuff would of come out. Now we got the people down in the lower end of the county all stirred up and the commissioners is got to act on it. You know how them people in the lower end of the county is.
MR. LERCH
Don’t tell me! I know them.
MR. MUKENS
My wife’s people lives down there, and I never seen the beat. Ain’t nothing ever suits them.
MR. WADE
If them fellows would only print the truth I wouldn’t mind. It’s them lies that gets me.
MR. LERCH
Of course now, I ain’t saying we ain’t burned some of them people up—cremating them, I call it, regular cremation. But all this stuff about not having no Christian praying for them, why there ain’t nothing to that. I’m for Christian praying same as anybody else. I been a church member for twenty-five year now, and from what them fellows has put in the paper you would think I was brother-in-law to the devil.
MR. MUKENS
And me his stepchild.
MR. LERCH
Why, Mr. Wade, the grand jury would be after me in a minute if I tried to bury all them people. I’m under a bond, I am.
MR. WADE
Them is the things people never understand.
MR. LERCH [to Mr. Yost]
How come you to tell all them lies on me, when you knowed them people gets put away as good as anybody could ask for?
MR. YOST
I never knowed they was paper men. If I had of knowed they was paper men, I wouldn’t never told them nothing.
MR. LERCH
Why, Mr. Wade, me and Mr. Mukens figured it up one night, and you ain’t got a idea what it would cost to bury all them people.
MR. WADE
I ain’t got no doubt of it.
MR. MUKENS
Something tremenjous. Nobody wouldn’t never believe it.
MR. LERCH
First off, Mr. Wade, the county would have to buy more land. That graveyard is all filled up down there. County would have to buy another graveyard. Then we would have to hire two extra men regular, just digging graves. It takes two men a whole morning to dig a grave, and a whole day in wintertime, when the ground is froze.
MR. WADE
Them is the things that runs into money.
MR. LERCH
Then you got to have a box. And I tell you, it ain’t like it used to be, when you could knock a dry-goods box apart and nail it together again and have as good a box as anybody could want.
MR. MUKENS
Them fellows is asking money for boxes, too. A dollar apiece for them, some of them gets.
MR. LERCH
What with the high price of lumber and carpenters’ wages, I tell you a box costs money.
MR. WADE
Lumber and wages is out of sight. I just finished building a storm door on my porch, not no fancy storm door, just a regular storm door, and it cost me seventy-five dollars time I was done with it.
MR. LERCH
It’s a shame what them fellows asks for a day’s work. There ain’t none of them will touch a job for less than ten dollars a day.
MR. WADE
And what’s more, they get it.
MR. MUKENS
They ask railroad fare to come down our way.
MR. LERCH
Time you figure it all up, like me and Mr. Mukens done one night, I expect it would cost twenty-five dollars a head to bury them people.
MR. WADE
I don’t doubt it.
MR. MUKENS
Every cent of it.
MR. LERCH
Then people don’t stop to think how many of them people dies on us down there. We had a hundred and sixty-two last year, and that’s a average of more than three a week. Wintertime is the worst, account of so many of them bums getting committed.
MR. WADE
They ought to send them bums to the county jail.
MR. MUKENS
Jail is the place for them. I always did say so.
MR. LERCH
Time you figure it all up, Mr. Wade, it would cost the county ten thousand dollars a year just to bury them people.
MR. MUKENS
And them nothing but paupers!
MR. LERCH
I tell you, Mr. Wade, I would be afraid for the grand jury to come down there if I had to tell them I was spending ten thousand dollars of the county’s money every year just to bury them people.
MR. WADE
Seems to me like them people’s relations ought to bury some of them.
MR. YOST
Them people’s relations that got burned up ain’t never heared tell of them after they died. Don’t even know they’re dead.
MR. LERCH
Who asked you to get into it? Mr. Wade is the chairman of the County Commissioners, and I would think a fellow that was in the county almshouse would have enough respect for him to shut up until somebody asked him to speak up.
MR. YOST
I didn’t mean nothing, only I hear tell a lot of them people’s relations was looking for them.
MR. WADE
You hear tell a plenty.
MR. LERCH
Well, I tell you how it is, Mr. Wade. It would seem like them people’s relations had ought to bury some of them, but I found out it don’t hardly pay to look them up. Half of them ain’t got money enough to have a funeral anyhow, and the other half you can’t find them.
MR. WADE
I reckon that’s right.
MR. LERCH
Then it makes it bad in summer if you try to keep them people while you’re looking up their relations. You got to ice them, and that costs money.
MR. MUKENS
They won’t keep long in summer.
MR. WADE
The whole trouble is them people down in the lower end of the county. Seems like them people won’t ever listen to reason.
MR. LERCH
Yes, it’s them people down in the lower end of the county that makes it bad. They got a couple of preachers down there that want to be called in all the time, and then when they don’t get no business they put up a holler.
MR. YOST
Then another thing I hear a lot of talk about, how they don’t never have no preacher called in. People dying all the time and they don’t never have no preacher.
MR. LERCH
Don’t that beat all, Mr. Wade? Say, how can you say them things to Mr. Wade, when you know Mr. Mukens is a preacher and you been hearing him preach every Sunday since you been down there?
MR. YOST
Them people want a regular preacher!
MR. LERCH
And you know Mr. Mukens is a regular preacher, Baptist I think it is, a regular preacher with a license. Don’t you know that?
MR. YOST
I never hear tell of it before.
MR. WADE
Are you a reverend, Mr. Mukens? I declare, I never knowed that.
MR. MUKENS
Not Baptist. Disciples of Christ.
MR. LERCH
Now that there just goes to show; Mr. Wade, how much of a kick these preachers is really got.
MR. WADE
Of course, now, I’m for the Christian burial.
MR. LERCH
Why, certainly, Mr. Wade, everybody is for Christian burial. What I mean is, everybody is for putting them away Christian. Me, I don’t see no difference between burying them and cremating them, just so they get put away Christian. When I go, it don’t make no difference to me what they do with me, just so they say a Christian prayer over me, like of that.
MR. WADE
Me neither.
MR. MUKENS
Me neither.
MR. LERCH [to Mr. Yost]
When you go, which it wouldn’t hurt the county none if you went pretty quick, what difference does it make to you whether you get buried or what you call cremated?
MR. YOST
I hear a lot of them say they don’t want to get burnt up.
MR. LERCH
Why? Just tell me that once.
MR. YOST
Some of them is Seven Day Adventists.
MR. WADE
How many of them is Seven Day Adventists?
MR. YOST
There’s a whole lot of them Seven Day Adventists. I’m a Seven Day Adventist.
MR. WADE [to Mr. Lerch]
Is that right?
MR. LERCH
Well, it’s according as according. Sometimes more of them gets committed than other times.
MR. WADE
That kind of makes it bad.
MR. LERCH
Yes, that’s a fact, Mr. Wade, I’ve kind of thought of that myself, that makes it bad. But I say, just because them people thinks they’re going to step out of the grave in a couple of years, that ain’t hardly no reason for the county to spend ten thousand dollars a year burying ’em. Maybe they’re going to step out of the grave and maybe they ain’t.
MR. MUKENS
That there is something nobody can tell.
MR. YOST
And then I hear a lot of talk going around, them people ain’t going to have no white gown.
MR. LERCH
There ain’t nothing to that, Mr. Wade. All them people gets a white gown. Ain’t no fancy gown, but we don’t put them away without no clothes on.
MR. YOST
But the gown it gets burned up in that there furnace just like this here jawbone.
MR. LERCH
That jawbone didn’t get burned up. You got it in your hand.
MR. YOST
I ain’t got the rest of that stiff in my hand. That I ain’t.
MR. WADE
Is them preachers Seven Day Adventists?
MR. LERCH
I believe they are, Mr. Wade.
MR. YOST
Them preachers is raising hell, too.
MR. LERCH
You been talking to them preachers, too, have you? First you talk to the paper men, then you talk to the preachers.
MR. YOST
I never knowed they was paper men.
MR. WADE
Them Seven Day Adventists makes it bad. Course, it don’t make no difference to me. I say if they get put away Christian, that’s all anybody could ask.
MR. LERCH
That’s all anybody could ask, Mr. Wade. And them people gets put away as Christian as I ever hope to get put away. Mr. Mukens prays over every one, and Mr. Mukens can put up as good a prayer as the next one, if you ask me. Even this man can tell you Mr. Mukens can put up a good prayer.
MR. YOST
He prays pretty good, but he ain’t no regular preacher. Not what them people wants for a regular preacher. I hear a lot of talk going on about it.
MR. WADE
What I’m figuring on is what to tell the County Commissioners. Them papers has stirred up such a fuss we got to take action on it.
MR. LERCH
Well, I tell you how it is, Mr. Wade, it don’t make no difference to me, one way or the other. Fact of the matter is, it’ll save me and Mr. Mukens a whole lot of work. It ain’t no light job, carrying them stiffs downstairs like we have to do. But what I say is, if the commissioners think them Seven Day Adventists had ought to be buried regular, why, just let the commissioners give me the money and I’ll bury them regular and put them other people away the way we been doing.
MR. MUKENS
That seems to be perfectly fair and reasonable.
MR. WADE
That there would certainly satisfy them people down in the lower end of the county. Them people is all Seven Day Adventists. What I’m thinking about is the other sections of the county. Maybe we’ll get ’em all stirred up.
MR. LERCH
I don’t think you would, Mr. Wade. When you come to these other people that gets committed, why, nobody don’t know what their religion is. They don’t know theirself.
MR. WADE
Well, I guess we better do it that way then. I’ll call the commissioners in special meeting, and then we can stop all this fuss in the papers. Will you take this man back with you?
MR. LERCH
That I will, Mr. Wade. And thank you for the way you treated me in this here matter. I sure do appreciate it. Because what I say, when a man has done his duty like I have ever since I been down there, why, he kind of hates to see somebody come out and say he ain’t no account and ought to be run out, like of that. I sure do appreciate the way you done, Mr. Wade.
MR. MUKENS
Mr. Wade, I just want to say that you treated me and Mr. Lerch white about this, and if there’s ever a time I can return the favor, why just let me know.
MR. YOST
Thank you, sir, Mr. Wade, thank you, sir. And I never knowed them was paper men, Mr. Wade, I hope Christ may kill me if I did.
MR. WADE
Good day, gentlemen.