Tramping on Life | Page 6

a waist of filmy, feminine texture. We instantly took to each other. She was always up and off, skimming swallow-like in all directions, now this way, now that, as if seeking for some new flavour in life, some excitement that had not come to her yet.
We made expeditions together over the country. She joined me in my imaginary battles with Indians ... my sanguinary hunts for big game.... It was she who first taught me to beg hand-outs at back doors--one day when we went fishing together and found ourselves a long way off from home.
Once Phoebe fell into a millpond from a springboard ... with all her clothes on ... we were seeing who dared "teeter" nearest the end.... I had difficulty in saving her. It was by the hair, with a chance clutch, that I drew her ashore.
The picture of her, shivering forlornly before the kitchen stove! She was beautiful, even in her long, wet, red-flannel drawers that came down to her slim, white ankles. She was weeping over the licking her mother had given her.
* * * * *
"I'm afraid your cousin Phoebe will come to no good end some day, if she don't watch out," said my grandmother to me, "and I don't like you to play with her much.... I'm going to have Aunt Rachel take her home soon" ... after a pause, "as sure as I have ten fingers she'll grow up to be a bad woman."
* * * * *
"Granma, what is a bad woman?"
* * * * *
Aunt Rachel and Cousin Phoebe returned home. Uncle Josh, that slack old vagabond with his furtive, kindly eye-glances, came for them with a livery rig.
* * * * *
I think I read every dime novel published, during those years of my childhood ... across the bridge that Elton had helped build, the new bridge that spanned the Hickory River, and over the railroad tracks, stood a news-stand, that was run by an old, near-sighted woman. As she sat tending counter and knitting, I bought her books ... but for each dime laid down before her, I stole three extra thrillers from under her very eye.
From my grandfather's library I dug up a book on the Hawaiian Islands, written by some missionary. In it I found a story of how the natives speared fish off the edges of reefs. Straightway I procured a pitchfork.
I searched the shallows and ripples of Hickory River for miles ... I followed Babson's brook over the hills nearly to its source.
One day, peering through reeds into a shallow cove, I saw a fish-fin thrust up out of the water. I crept cautiously forward.
It was a big fish that lay there. Trembling all over with excitement, I made a mad thrust. Then I yelled, and stamped on the fish, getting all wet in doing so. I beat its head in with the haft of the fork. It rolled over, its white belly glinting in the sun. On picking it up, I was disappointed. It had been dead for a long time; had probably swam in there to die ... and its gills were a withered brown-black in colour, like a desiccated mushroom ... not healthy red.
But I was not to be frustrated of my glory. I tore the tell-tale gills out ... then I beat the fish's head to a pulp, and I carried my capture home and proudly strutted in at the kitchen door.
"Look, Granma, at what a big fish I've caught."
"Oh, Millie, he's really got one," and Granma straightened up from the wash-tub. Millie came out snickering scornfully.
"My Gawd, Ma, can't you see it's been dead a week?"
"You're a liar, it ain't!" I cried. And I began to sob because Aunt Millie was trying to push me back into ignominy as I stood at the very threshold of glory.
"Honest-to-God, it's--fresh--Granma!" I gulped, "didn't I just kill it with the pitchfork?" Then I stopped crying, absorbed entirely in the fine story I was inventing of the big fish's capture and death. I stood aside, so to speak, amazed at myself, and proud, as my tongue ran on as if of its own will.
Even Aunt Millie was charmed.
* * * * *
But she soon came out from under the spell with, "Ma, Johnnie means well enough, but surely you ain't going to feed that fish to the boarders?"
"Yes, I am. I believe in the little fellow."
"All right, Ma ... but I won't eat a mouthful of it, and you'd better drop a note right away for Uncle Beck to drive in, so's he'll be here on time for the cases of poison that are sure to develop."
* * * * *
Cleaned and baked, the fish looked good, dripping with sauce and basted to an appetizing brown.
As I drew my chair up to