WE COLLECT TOLL
After about six weeks and ten years the fishing boat came chugging up
the creek. Anyway it seemed as long as that before it came. The chugging
of that engine sounded good.
“Now for the eats,” Garry said.
Hervey said, “They’ll have a lot of perch and some bass and maybe some
soft-shell crabs.”
“Isn’t there anything in this creek?” the kid wanted to know.
“Nothing except water,” Hervey told him. “Anyway we haven’t got any
fishline, have we? Thank goodness we’ve got some matches, we can start a
fire.”
“We’ll fry them brown, hey?” Pee-wee said, all excited.
“Any color will suit me,” I told him.
“They won’t be any color at all when we get through with them,” Bert
said.
By that time the boat was quite near and we could see a couple of
baskets of fish in the cockpit, and there were two men. Oh boy, how I
longed to eat them, I mean the fish. Pretty soon one of the men shouted
for us to open the bridge, so they could pass.
I called, “Hey, mister, will you give us a couple of fish? We’re perched
up here waiting for some perch.”
He laughed and said sure, but that we should open the bridge. Now the
way to open that bridge was to walk around pushing a big iron handle
like a crowbar only longer. It was kind of like a windlass. I guess one
man could do it all right but it took three of us to get the bridge
started. It wasn’t a very big bridge but I’m not saying anything about
that because we’re not so big either except our appetites and maybe one
reason we couldn’t push so well was because we were hungry.
Garry said, “I guess when the creek is nearly empty boats can go under
this bridge all right.”
I said, “Don’t talk about being empty; I’m so full of emptiness it’s
flowing over. Get your hands on this thing and push. If anything should
go wrong now we’ll have to eat the Animal Cracker.”
So then we all started pushing the long iron handle—it was a lever,
that’s what it was. All the while the boat was standing about twenty
feet away from the bridge and one man was keeping her bow upstream with
a big oar while the other man was kind of fumbling in one of the baskets
picking out a nice big fish. Pretty soon he held one up all wet and
dripping and, oh boy, it looked good. I guess it was nearly a foot long.
He shouted, “How will that one do?”
“Mm-m-_mm_!” I said. “Lead me to it.”
“I know where there’s an old piece of tin in the woods,” Pee-wee said,
all the while pushing the big lever for all he was worth; “a scout is
observant.”
“I could eat a sheet of galvanized iron,” I told him. “A little salt and
pepper and I could eat a piece of railroad track.”
“I mean to cook the fish on,” the kid said; “you’re crazy. Don’t you
know how to fry a fish? I’m going to be the one to cook it because I’ve
got the matches.”
“Hang on to them,” I said; “things are beginning to look better. Keep
pushing; think of fried fish and keep pushing.”
Pee-wee began thinking harder and pushing harder; I could just _see_ him
thinking. And with one hand he felt in his pocket to make sure the
matches were all safe. He carries matches in a box like a cylinder that
shaving soap comes in.
It was kind of hard getting the bridge started but once it was started
it kept moving slowly around. The reason you can move a bridge around
like that is because it’s well balanced. But, gee whiz, I’m glad I’m not
so well balanced because I wouldn’t have so much fun. Underneath the
floor of the bridge were rollers on a track that went around in a
circle. So pretty soon we had turned the bridge so that it was
lengthways to the creek instead of across the creek and there was a
passageway on either side of it where boats could pass.
“Marooned on a desert drawbridge,” Bert said.
“Poor, starving natives,” I said.
Garry said, “It’s like being on an island.”
“A merry-go-round, you mean,” Pee-wee said.
“Let’s call it Merry-go-round Island,” Hervey sang out.
Just then the boat came chugging very slowly along one side of the
bridge and one of the men handed me the fish.
I said, “Many thanks and more of them, mister, you saved our lives.”
“Don’t let it slide out of your hands,” he said; “look out, it’s
slippery.”
“If you let it slip out of your hands you’ll go in after it,” Pee-wee
shouted.
Believe me, I kept tight hold of that fish. It was a dandy fish, it was
big enough for about six people to have all they wanted.
The man said, “That will keep you quiet for a while; be sure to scrape
all the scales off and clean him out good.”
“You leave that to us,” I told him, “we’re boy scouts. Cooking fish is
our middle name. There’s only one thing we do better than cooking fish
and that is eating them. We can eat them till the cows come home and
sometimes the cows stay out all night where we live. Believe me, I never
had much use for Henry Hudson in the history books, but I’m glad he
discovered the Hudson River as well as the Hudson Boulevard.”
“That’s in Jersey City,” Pee-wee shouted. “Do you think that’s named
after Henry Hudson?”
“It’s named after the Hudson automobile,” Garry said.
“Sure it is,” I told him, “just the same as the Hudson River is named
after the Hudson River Day Line; you learn that in the fourth grade;
here, take this fish while I help turn the merry-go-round around,
around, around. Then we’ll eat.”
The boat went chugging up the creek, the men laughing and waving their
hands at us. Pee-wee sat down on the floor of the bridge hugging the
fish as if it were his long lost brother. The rest of us started pushing
the lever.
_But, oh boy, it didn’t push._