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  Contents

  1. A Note from Miss Kelly

  2. Apples and Mrs. Stetson

  3. Rope

  4. Corn and Acorn

  5. Cheating Mr. Diskin

  6. A Football Valve Is Hard to Find

  7. A Barrel of Chicken

  8. Hoedown with Chester Morris

  9. Eddy Tacker Was a Bully

  10. Shoes

  Chapter One

  A Note from Miss Kelly

  Dear Mrs. Peck,

  Your son Robert made a rude remark to Miss Boland, our school nurse. Perhaps it was not intended to be as coarse as it sounded. Miss Boland thinks that you (his mother) should be informed of this. I quite agree.

  Miss Kelly

  I stood stock-still in the kitchen while my mother read the note. Underneath my corduroy knickers, the underwear was starting to itch my legs. But I didn’t scratch. Instead I just stood there and masterminded various routes of escape.

  “What does the note say, Mama?”

  This was step one. Soup and I had, of course, both read the note over and over all the way home and could have recited it upside-down in a barrel of water. But by asking Mama what it said, she would have to believe in my innocence. And as I asked the question, I made sure my eyes were open as wide and pure as I could force them. It was also a good trick not to blink as long as possible, which made your eyes water.

  “Let me see it,” said Aunt Carrie.

  Aunt Carrie read the note, looked at Mama, and made her customary statement. It was what she always said, usually about ten times in just the forenoon.

  “What he needs is a good, sound thrashing.”

  “Yes,” said Mama, “he certainly does.”

  “No, I don’t,” I said. “It was all a mistake. Honest. It was really Miss Kelly’s fault.”

  “Miss Kelly’s fault?”

  When either Mama or Aunt Carrie started asking instead of telling, I knew that the cause was not lost. There was still a chance to miss the whip, if I could just keep talking. And so I made the explanation as long-winded as possible to let their ire cool. Soup always said it was important to keep talking.

  But I must advance with caution, being careful not to demean the noble name of Miss Kelly, who for the past one hundred years had taught first, second, third, and fourth grade (I was in third) in the small red brick Vermont schoolhouse. Kids who were my fellow classmates often remarked that their mothers and fathers had learned many a stern lesson from no other than Miss Kelly herself. So there was no way that I could push all the blame on such a worthy soul. I must step with stealth.

  “Well,” I said, “I don’t really mean it was all Miss Kelly’s fault. But the other day, she was teaching us on how to talk.”

  “A lesson you don’t need,” said Aunt Carrie, who believed that little boys and little girls should be seen and not heard—a rule that applied until our ages caught up to hers, which would be never.

  “Miss Kelly said that when you talk to somebody it’s like you’re playing ball. First the somebody asks you a question, and that means they throw the ball to you. But you have to do more than just catch a question like you catch a ball. Here’s the important part. You have to throw the ball back. When somebody asks how you are, you just can’t say, ‘Fine.’ You say, ‘Fine, thank you, and how are you?’”

  “What does all this have to do with …?”

  “Everything,” I said. “Miss Kelly said you have to throw the ball back. So I threw it back, and by mistake the ball hit Miss Boland.”

  Miss Boland, who was our school nurse, was about three times as big as Miss Kelly and about ten times as big as I was. You couldn’t throw a ball anywhere in the whole world and not hit Miss Boland. That’s when I got to thinking about it and almost giggled. Could have been a disaster, laughing when on trial.

  “You hit Miss Boland?” said Mama. “I’m afraid, Robert, that I don’t see all of this. Miss Kelly’s note says you said something to Miss Boland. Did you?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Exactly,” said Aunt Carrie, adjusting her calico apron as if it were a judge’s robe, “what did you say?”

  “It’s Miss Boland’s job to be the school nurse,” I said. “She comes around once a week to look at our teeth and see if we wash our hands. And she always looks in our hair to find cooties.” (Nothing ever made Miss Boland happier than to discover wildlife in the thickets of some kid’s hair.)

  “Hmm,” said Mama, “there’s no lice in your hair.” From that you could tell already that she wasn’t too keen on Miss Boland.

  Now was the time to start praising Miss Boland a bit to sound fair. I’d build up Miss Boland before I destroyed her, to heighten her fall. My one regret was that Soup wasn’t here to enjoy my performance.

  “Come to the point,” said Aunt Carrie.

  “She’s a good nurse,” I said. “She was just doing her job, that’s all. It really wasn’t Miss Boland’s fault. She’s supposed to ask me the question. She asks that awful question to every kid she sees.”

  “What question?”

  “Did your bowels move today? And so I said, ‘Yes, did yours?’ I did what Miss Kelly said to do,” I said, talking like a machine gun. “Miss Boland threw me the question ball, and I caught it and threw it back. That’s the important part. So you really can’t fault Miss Boland. She was only doing her job, like when she looks in my head for bugs. She’s a good nurse. I just can’t blame Miss Boland for all of this. Honest, Mama, it’s not really her doing. If you’re going to blame anybody, you’ve got to blame Miss Kelly or me.”

  That ought to do it, I thought. Mentioning my name and Miss Kelly’s in the same breath would certainly put me in the company of those who are beyond suspicion. To punish me now would be like laying a rod to Miss Kelly herself. No one in our town would dare think of performing such a profanity. How could a sane mind even entertain a yank down of Miss Kelly’s britches? They were probably made of iron.

  “Did you apologize to Miss Boland?”

  “Well, not right off. Because for a while I didn’t see how I’d said anything wrong. Honest. All I did was throw back the ball, and I guess Miss Boland didn’t catch it. What made it worse was when the other kids laughed.”

  “They laughed?” Aunt Carrie spoke in disbelief.

  “Yes,” I said. “Not all the children laughed. Soup did and a few of the cut-ups. And that’s what made it worse.”

  “What do you mean … worse?”

  “Miss Boland thought they were laughing at her.”

  “Were they?”

  “No, they were laughing at me, I guess.”

  “What did Miss Kelly say?”

  “Miss Kelly asked the class what was so funny. Nobody answered. So then Miss Boland went over and whispered in Miss Kelly’s ear. All the wh
ile Miss Boland was whispering, Miss Kelly was looking right at me.”

  “And she never made you apologize to Miss Boland?”

  “I did that before she told me to. Honest. But the kids were laughing, and I don’t guess Miss Boland heard me say I was sorry. So you can’t say this fuss is all Miss Boland’s fault.”

  “No one said it was,” said Aunt Carrie, “except you.”

  “It’s not Miss Boland’s fault at all,” I said. “But I had to tell you the straight of it, so you’d understand why she does these things.”

  “What things?” said Mama.

  “Looks in your hair for lice. She found a cootie in my hair once.”

  “She did not.”

  “Yes, she did. Honest. It was right after I’d been rassling with Rolly McGraw.”

  “Stories,” said Aunt Carrie. “He’s telling stories again. What he needs is a good, sound thrashing.”

  “He’s just going through a stage,” said Mama, “and it all started when he began to see so much of Soup.”

  “It’s not Soup’s fault either,” I said. “If you have to blame somebody, I’m the one who made the mistake. Blame me.”

  “We shall.” Aunt Carrie’s voice rapped out like a gavel.

  But I knew my confession would impress Mama, especially when I heaped the guilt of all the others upon my own little back, insisting that they not share the shame. I was right. My mother believed in me as solidly as I believed in her.

  “Robert,” she said, “were you rude to that nurse on purpose? Or were you only trying to do as Miss Kelly taught you all to do?”

  There it was! A hole in the fence. The gaping gate to freedom. An escape from punishment and shame, not to mention pain. Even the way Mama said “that nurse” meant she wanted to believe that her good boy told the truth. All I had to do was say that I was just trying to follow Miss Kelly’s sterling, character-building directive. But I couldn’t.

  “Well, I guess I knew it was wrong. But I can’t stand it when Miss Boland asks that question. I didn’t want to lie to her. So Soup and I figured it all out ahead of time. And I knew the other kids would laugh, because they knew I was going to say it. Soup and I drew straws. I lost. Mama, I guess you ought to whip me proper.”

  I got a licking.

  I was lying upstairs on my bed, my eyes shut tight against the hurt. But I could tell by the sting of the whacks that Mama wasn’t switching me very hard. Her head was even turned away like she hated the job.

  She hit the wall a lot.

  Chapter Two

  Apples and Mrs. Stetson

  SOUP WAS my best pal.

  His real and righteous name was Luther Wesley Vinson, but nobody called him Luther. He didn’t like it. I called him Luther just once, which prompted Soup to break me of a very bad habit before it really got formed. As soon as the swelling went out of my lip, I called him Soup instead of Thoop.

  He first discouraged his mother of the practice of calling him Luther. (Using a different method, of course.) She used to call him home to mealtime by yelling, “Luther!” But he never answered to the name. He’d rather miss supper. When his mother got wise, she’d stand out on their back porch, cup her hands to her mouth, and yell, “Soup’s on!”

  From a distance (their farm was uproad next to ours) all you could hear was “Soup.” And that was how the kids who were playing ball in the pasture started thinking his name was Soup, because he answered to it.

  When it came to getting the two of us in trouble, Soup was a regular genius. He liked to whip apples. But that was nothing new. Every kid did. The apples had to be small and green and hard, about the size of a golf ball. The whip had to be about four to five foot long, with a point on the small end that you’d whittle sharp with your jackknife. You held the apple close to your chest with your left hand and pushed the pointed stick into the apple, but not so far as it’d come out the yonder side. No matter how careful you speared the apple, a few drops of juice would squirt on your shirt. They dried to small, tiny brown spots that never even came out in the wash.

  Sassafras made the best whips. You could swing a sassafras whip through the air so fast it would whistle. The apple would fly off, and you’d think it would never come down. To whip an apple was sport enough for most of us, but not for old Soup.

  “Watch this,” he said.

  “What?” I said.

  We were up in the apple orchard on a hillside that overlooked town. Below us was the Baptist church.

  “I bet I can hit the Baptist church.”

  “You better not, Soup.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’ll really catch it.”

  “No we won’t. And what’s more, I bet this apple can hit the bell in the belltower and make it ring.”

  “Aw, it won’t go that far.”

  “Oh, no?”

  Soup whipped his apple, and I was right. It landed far short of the Baptist church.

  “Watch me,” I said. And with my next throw I almost hit the church roof.

  “My turn,” said Soup.

  I’ll have to admit that Soup put all he had into his next throw. The whip made a whistle that would’ve called a dead dog. That old apple took off like it’d been shot out of a gun, made a big arc through the sky, and for a few long seconds I thought we’d hear that old bell ring for sure.

  But we never heard the sounding brass. What we heard was the tinkling cymbal of a broken window. Breaking a pane of plain old glass wasn’t stylish enough for Soup. It had to be stained glass. Even the sound of that stained glass shattering had color in it. I just stood there looking at that tiny little black star of emptiness that was once a window pane. It was like somebody busted my heart.

  “No,” I said, in almost a whisper.

  I wanted the glass to fly up into place again, like it never happened. So that the little black star would erase away like a bad dream. But there it was and there it stayed.

  “No,” said Soup.

  My feet were stuck to the ground like I was standing in twin buckets of mortar. I couldn’t run. Not even when a lady ran out of the side door of the church and pointed up at us. Even though she was far below, it felt like her finger took a stab right into my chest. It was a pain, just like when you get stuck with the tip of a sword.

  To make matters worse, it was Mrs. Stetson.

  My family wasn’t Baptist. But I guess that she knew Mama and Aunt Carrie real well, because she came to call almost every week. Religion was her favorite subject. You’d be hard put to find a soul who knew more about God than Mrs. Stetson. She was a walking, talking Bible, which she could quote chapter and verse. Get her started and it went on like rain. Forty days and forty nights. Just to be in the same room with Mrs. Stetson was like being caught in a downpour. She sure could drench a body with scripture.

  But what she was saying now was far from holy. And if there was anything Mrs. Stetson was poor at, it was talking as she climbed full-speed up a steep hill. By the time she reached me, she was so out of breath from the uphill scolding that she couldn’t say a word.

  I looked around for Soup, but he was gone. Good old Soup. So there I stood, with a sassafras stick in my hand and apple-juice spots on the front of my shirt. Still wet. The mortar in my shoes had now hardened into stone. My ears were ringing with a tinkle tinkle tinkle of smashing glass that wouldn’t seem to stop.

  “You!” she said.

  “Me?”

  Her eyes burned with the wrath of the Old Testament. It was plain to behold that Mrs. Stetson believed that you had to smite transgressors so that the ground ran red with their blood until the multitudes were sore afraid. Especially sore. But if anybody ever looked sore, it was Mrs. Stetson.

  “Robert Peck!” she said in full voice.

  Her big old hands shot out and grabbed my face and my hair. She shook me hard enough to shake off one of my shoes. Then after she stopped shaking me, she twisted my head around so my nose was pointing right at the little black star of that broken window
pane.

  “Just look what you did!” said Mrs. Stetson. “Look me in the eye and tell the truth. Do you dare say you didn’t?”

  “I didn’t.”

  This was not the response that she expected. I guess what she really sought was an outburst of guilt, a tear-soaked plea to ask for the forgiveness of God and Mrs. Stetson—perhaps not in that order of importance.

  “I didn’t. Honest, Mrs. Stetson. I didn’t throw an apple that far. Look how far it is.”

  “You did do it. I saw you do it. And here’s the apple you did it with.” She had a pierced apple in one hand and my switch in the other, and I knew I was a goner.

  “But I couldn’t hit the church from way up here. Nobody could.”

  “Bosh! Even a fool knows how far an apple will pitch from a stick. Watch.”

  You won’t believe what I saw. Mrs. Stetson somehow let go of her senses. She pushed an apple on a stick, and before I could grab her arm, her temper bested reason. Whissshh! You never saw a worse throw in your life, not if you stood up in that old orchard from now until Judgment. Her apple never even headed in the direction of the Baptist church. Nowhere near. But you couldn’t say that apple didn’t have any steam to it. No, sir. It flew off her stick (my stick) like a rifle ball, going east by northeast, and finally tipped over a flower pot with a geranium in it outside old Haskin’s shack window. And the pot cracked the glass.

  Crash-tinkle!

  Out came old Mr. Haskin with blood in his eye. His language would have made Satan himself cover his ears. Not real fancy swearing, just a long string of old favorites. He pointed at Mrs. Stetson and me, then he started uphill and coming our way fast.

  “Run!” yelled Mrs. Stetson. “That man’s a degenerate.”

  We ran, Mrs. Stetson and I. She had on two shoes and I wore one, which evened the speed a bit, and we ran as if Hell was a step behind. We ran until we could no longer hear the terrible things that old Haskin shouted he would do to Mrs. Stetson the next time she came near his rotten old shack. We didn’t stop running, Mrs. Stetson and I, until we darted into Frank Rooker’s garage and had bolted the door.