Old Mr. Flood by Joseph Mitchell Read Free Book Online Page B

of striped pants and a box-back coat and I would grab the telephone and get in touch with preachers of all descriptions—preachers, priests, rabbis, the Salvation Army, the Mohammedans, Father Divine, any and all that would come, and I’d say to them, “Pray, brothers, pray! It can’t do me no harm and it might possibly do me some good.” And while they prayed I’d sit there and sing the “Rock of Ages” and drink all the liquor that the doctor would allow.’ I thought that’d shut him up, but I was just wasting my breath. Next he wanted to know had I made my will, had I given much thought to what I wanted cut on my tombstone, did I have any favorite hymns I wanted sung at my funeral. ‘Shut up,’ I said to him, ‘for the love of God, shut up!’ And this morning I came downstairs, and I had a hangover to begin with, a katzenjammer, and he had that estimating look in his eye, and he said to me, ‘Good morning, Old Man Flood. How you feeling? You look a bit pale.’ And I flew off the handle and danced around andmade a holy show of myself. If he inquires about my health one more time, if he so much as says good morning, I’m going to answer him politely, like a gentleman, and I’m going to wait until he looks the other way, and then I’m going to pick up something heavy and lay him out.”
    “The way I look at it,” said Mr. Maggiani, “those questions Mr. Mooney asks you, they’re personal questions. I wouldn’t stand for it.”
    “I’m not going to stand for it any longer,” said Mr. Flood. “I’m going to put my foot down. All I want in this world is a little peace and quiet, and he gets me all raced up. Here a while back I heard a preacher talking on the radio about the peacefulness of the old, and I thought to myself, ‘You ignorant man!’ I’m ninety-four years old and I never yet had any peace, to speak of. My mind is just a turmoil of regrets. It’s not what I did I regret, it’s what I didn’t do. Except for the bottle, I always walked the straight and narrow; a family man, a good provider, never cut up, never did ugly, and I regret it. In the summer of 1902 I came real close to getting in serious trouble with a married woman, but I had a fight with my conscience and my consciencewon, and what’s the result? I had two wives, good, Christian women, and I can’t hardly remember what either of them looked like, but I can remember the face on that woman so clear it hurts, and there’s never a day passes I don’t think about her, and there’s never a day passes I don’t curse myself. ‘What kind of a timid, dried-up, weevily fellow were you?’ I say to myself. ‘You should’ve said to hell with what’s right and what’s wrong, the devil take the hindmost. You’d have something to remember, you’d be happier now.’ She’s out in Woodlawn, six feet under, and she’s been there twenty-two years, God rest her, and here I am, just an old, old man with nothing left but a belly and a brain and a dollar or two.”
    “Life is sad,” said Mr. Maggiani.
    “And the older I get,” continued Mr. Flood, “the more impatient I get. I got no time to waste on fools. There’s a young Southern fellow drops into the Hartford barroom every night before he gets on the ‘L’; comes from Alabama; works in one of those cotton offices on Hanover Square. Seemed to be a likable young fellow. I got in the habit of having a whiskey with him. He’d buy around, I’d buy a round. Night before last, when he dropped in, I was sitting at a table with a colored man. When I was in the house-wrecking business, this colored man was my boss foreman. He was in my employ for thirty-six years; practically ran the business; one of the finest men I’ve ever known; raised eight children; one’s a doctor. In the old days, when my second wife was still alive, he and his wife came to our house for dinner, and me and my wife went to his house for dinner; played cards, told stories, listened to the phonograph. When