Virgin With Butterflies Read Online Free PDF Page B

you couldn’t very well blame him for thinking, and me not saying a word. How could I?
    Pop didn’t even know Willie was in jail up in Champagne. He thought like Ma did that Willie had gotten a job in Chicago after he had left Uncle Ulrich’s butcher shop. Willie had gone up to Champagne with the money he got out of Uncle Ulrich’s cash drawer, and got himself into some trouble with a girl that had advertised in the Mattoon paper for a job. Uncle Ulrich had answered the ad with a letter but Willie had opened the letter before it was mailed. After he read it he thought he could use the letter and the money as a kind of an introduction to the girl. And so that’s what Willie did. And that’s how he had gotten himself into jail.
    So there he is, in the Champagne jail for what they call assault in the papers.
    Well, it was awful. Willie called me up at the beauty parlor and so I was the only one knew he was in jail in Champagne. And I had to go see Uncle Ulrich at the shop, which I would have rather died than do at any time, especially having to ask a favor.
    I had to try to get Uncle Ulrich to promise me that when it was time for the trial he’d go to Champagne and get Willie off, because Ma was beginning to show signs that scared me. So I just had to get Uncle Ulrich to promise.
    I didn’t need no safety pin this time, for Uncle Ulrich was so mad he never even thought of anything like that and that was a relief, because by this time we were living with them and I had to watch my step and his, too.
    Well, when he said he wouldn’t go and that he’d letWillie get what was coming to him, I was pretty hopeless. So I tried my last bluff. I said I knew why Uncle Ulrich had wrote the letter. I didn’t know this but I said I did. And I didn’t really know why Nettie, his other cashier, had left Mattoon, either, but I said I did, and that if he didn’t go up there and do something for Willie, I would tell Aunt Helga and Pop all the things I knew about—things him and Willie had been up to, both separate and together. So when the time for the trial came, he went. But I didn’t trust him not to just pretend that he had tried to help and couldn’t. So I just had to get to Champagne and see for myself. Well, I got to Champagne and sat right in the front row and you bet Uncle Ulrich saw me sitting there, and he didn’t dare not do what he had promised me. And him being a prominent butcher from out of town with money and influence and a good lawyer, he got Willie off.
    And that’s why I couldn’t explain to Pop why I rode with that soft-lipped drummer to Champagne. And that’s why Pop cussed and swore so, just like Jeff would have done about me now if he hadn’t been drinking coffee in the Greek’s and not seen me as I went by on the other side of the street.
    â€œWhat’ll I do when I get to Mulloy’s?” I thought, and “What are you doing,” I thought, “going on this wild goose chase? That little gentleman is nothing to you, what if he has got eyes like Spot? That’s not enough to make you go to Mulloy’s where you’ve only ever been once and swore never to get into nothing like that again.”
    Mulloy’s is a kind of a slumming place, see? It’s a hotel and what they call swell people come there late atnight to gamble, and for all sorts of stuff, I’ll say. And these socialites, or whatever they are, sure spend money like pouring it down a rat hole.
    I remembered that night when I first got to Chicago with a dollar sixty-five and no prospects and there, waiting for me to give me my first workout was Harry Mulloy. And if it hadn’t been for a miracle I might not be here now but somewhere I don’t like to even think of. For Mulloy sure made it all sound believable—how was I to know what extra work there was to being a hat-check girl at his place. But except for a miracle, which was