Tramping on Life | Page 4

the Pennsylvania Dutch country doctor who married Aunt
Alice, came driving in from Antonville, five miles away, once or twice
a week to tend to Millie, free, as we were too poor to pay for a doctor. I
remember how Uncle Beck caught me and whipped me with a switch.
For I constantly teased Aunt Millie to make her scream and cry.
* * * * *
"Granma," I used to call out, on waking in the morning....
"Yes, Johnnie darling, what is it?"
"Granma, yesterday ... in the woods back of Babson's barn, I killed
three Indians, one after the other." (The funny part of it was that I
believed this, actually, as soon as the words left my mouth.)
A silence....
"Granma, don't you believe me?"
"Yes, of course, I believe you."
Aunt Millie would strike in with--"Ma, why do you go on humouring
Johnnie while he tells such lies? You ought to give him a good
whipping."
"The poor little chap ain't got no mother!"
"Poor little devil! If you keep on encouraging him this way he'll
become one of the greatest liars in the country."
A colloquy after this sort took place more than once. It gave me
indescribable pleasure to narrate an absurd adventure, believe it myself
in the telling of it, and think others believed me. Aunt Millie's scorn
stung me like a nettle, and I hated her.
In many ways I tasted practical revenge. Though a grown girl of
nineteen, she still kept three or four dolls. And I would steal her dolls,
pull their dresses for shame over their heads, and set them straddle the
banisters.
* * * * *
We took in boarders. We had better food. It was good to have meat to
eat every day.
Among the boarders was a bridge builder named Elton Reeves. Elton
had a pleasant, sun-burnt face and a little choppy moustache beneath
which his teeth glistened when he smiled.
He fell, or pretended to fall, in love with gaunt, raw-boned Millie.

At night, after his day's work, he and Millie would sit silently for hours
in the darkened parlour,--silent, except for an occasional murmur of
voices. I was curious. Several times I peeked in. But all I could see was
the form of my tall aunt couched half-moonwise in Elton Reeve's lap. I
used to wonder why they sat so long and still, there in the darkness....
* * * * *
Once a grown girl of fourteen named Minnie came to visit a sweet little
girl named Martha Hanson, whose consumptive widower-father rented
two rooms from my grandmother. They put Minnie to sleep in the same
bed with me....
After a while I ran out of the bedroom into the parlour where the
courting was going on.
"Aunt Millie, Minnie won't let me sleep."
Millie did not answer. Elton guffawed lustily.
I returned to bed and found Minnie lying stiff and mute with fury.
* * * * *
Elton left, the bridge-work brought to completion. He had a job waiting
for him in another part of the country.
It hurt even my savage, young, vindictive heart to see Millie daily
running to the gate, full of eagerness, as the mail-man came....
"No, no letters for you this morning, Millie!"
Or more often he would go past, saying nothing. And Millie would
weep bitterly.
* * * * *
I have a vision of a very old woman walking over the top of a hill. She
leans on a knobby cane. She smokes a corn-cob pipe. Her face is
corrugated with wrinkles and as tough as leather. She comes out of a
high background of sky. The wind whips her skirts about her thin
shanks. Her legs are like broomsticks.
This is a vision of my great-grandmother's entrance into my boyhood.
I had often heard of her. She had lived near Halton with my Great-aunt
Rachel for a long time ... and now, since we were taking in boarders
and could keep her, she was coming to spend the rest of her days with
us.
At first I was afraid of this eerie, ancient being. But when she dug out a
set of fish-hooks, large and small, from her tobacco pouch, and gave
them to me, I began to think there might be something human in the old

lady.
She established her regular place in a rocker by the kitchen stove. She
had already reached the age of ninety-five. But there was a constant,
sharp, youthful glint in her eye that belied her age.
She chewed tobacco vigorously like any backwoodsman (had chewed it
originally because she'd heard it cured toothache, then had kept up the
habit because she liked it).
Her corncob pipe--it was as rank a thing as ditch digger ever poisoned