“Say, Uncle Ike, did you see this in the paper about fifty ambulances
being lost, on the way to Tampa, Florida, last year?” said the
red-headed boy, as Uncle Ike sat in an armchair, with his feet on the
center-table, his head down on his bosom, his pipe gone out, yet hanging
sideways out of the corner of his mouth, and the ashes spilled all over
his shirt bosom. “Seventeen carloads of ambulances that started
all right for Tampa, never showed up, and the government is writing
everywhere to have them looked up. Wouldn't that skin you?” and the boy
stood up beside Uncle Ike, took his pipe out of his mouth, filled it
again, brushed the ashes off his shirt, and handed him a lighted wax
match that he had found somewhere. Uncle Ike put the match to his
pipe, took a few whiffs, stuck up his nose, threw the match into the
fireplace, and said:
“Where did you get that tallow match? Gosh, I had just as soon light my
pipe with kerosene oil. Always give me a plain, old-fashioned brimstone
match, if you love me, and keep out of my sight these cigarette
matches, that smell like a candle that has been blown out when it needed
snuffing.” And the old man began to wake up, as the tobacco smoke went
searching through his hair and up to the ceiling. “And so the government
lost fifty ambulances in transit, eh? Well, they will be searching the
returned soldiers next, to see if the boys got away with them, and never
think of looking up the contractors, who probably never shipped them at
all. It must be that the boys got tired of embalmed beef, and ate
the ambulances. When a man is hungry you take a slice of nice, fresh
ambulance, and broil it over the coals, with plenty of seasoning, and
a soldier could sustain life on it. The government must be crippled
for ambulances, and I think we better get up a subscription to buy some
more. An ambulance famine is a terrible thing, and I have my opinion
of a soldier who will steal an ambulance. When I was in the army, I
remember that at the battle of Stone River we----”
“Oh, Uncle Ike, please don't tell me any of your terrible army
experiences,” said the boy, as he remembered that he had heard his uncle
tell of being in at least a hundred battles, when the history of the
family showed that the old man was only south during the war for about
six months, and he brought home a blacksnake whip as a souvenir, and
it was believed that he had worked in the quartermaster's department,
driving mules. “Let us talk about something enjoyable this beautiful
day. How would you like to be out on a lake, or river, today, in a boat,
drifting around, and forgetting everything, and having fun?”
“I don't want any drifting around in mine,” said Uncle Ike, as he got
up from his chair, limped a little on his rheumatic leg, and went to the
window and looked out, and wished he were young again. “Don't you ever
drift when you are out in a boat. You just take the oars and pull,
somewhere, it don't make any difference where, as long as you pull. Row
against the current, and against the wind, and bend your back, and make
the boat jump, but don't drift. If you get in the habit of drifting when
you are a boy, you will drift when you are a man, and not pull against
the stream. The drifting boy becomes a drifting business man, who sits
still and lets those who row get away from him. The drifting lawyer sits
and drifts, and waits, and sighs because people do not find out that he
is great. He wears out pants instead of shoe leather. When you see a
man the seat of whose pants are shiny and almost worn through, while
his shoes are not worn, except on the heels, where he puts them on the
table, and waits and dreams, you can make up your mind that he drifted
instead of rowed, when he was a boy, out in a boat. The merchant who
goes to his store late in the morning, and sits around awhile, and
leaves early in the afternoon, and only shows enterprise in being cross
to the clerk who lets a customer escape with car fare to get home, is a
drifter, who stands still in his mercantile boat while his neighbors who
row, and push, and paddle, are running away from him. The boy who drifts
never catches the right girl. He drifts in to call on her, and drifts
through the evening, and nothing has been done, and when she begins to
yawn, he drifts away. She stands this drifting sort of love-making as
long as she can, and by and by there comes along a boy who rows, and
he keeps her awake, and they go off on a spin on their wheels, and
they can't drift on wheels if they try, because they have got to keep
pushing, and before he knows it the drifting boy finds that the boy who
rows is miles ahead with the girl, and all the drifting boy can do is to
yawn and say, 'Just my dumbed luck.' Dogs that just drift and lay in
the shade, and loll, never amount to anything. The dog that digs out the
woodchuck does not drift; he digs and barks, and saws wood, and by and
by he has the woodchuck by the pants, and shakes the daylights out
of him. He might lay by the woodchuck hole and drift all day, and the
woodchuck would just stay in the hole and laugh at the dog. The pointer
dog that stays under the wagon never comes to a point on chickens, and
the duck dog that stays on the shore and waits for the dead duck to
drift in, is not worth the dog biscuit he eats.
“No, boy, whatever you do in this world, don't drift around, but row as
though you were going after the doctor,” and the old man turned from the
window and put his arm around the red-headed boy, and hugged him until
he heard something rattle in the boy's side pocket, and the boy pulled
out a box with the cover off, and a white powder scattered over his
clothes. “What is that powder?” asked the old uncle.
“That is some of this foot-ease that I saw advertised in the paper. Aunt
Almira likes pigs' feet, and she says they lay hard on her stomach; so
I got some foot-ease and sprinkled a little on her pigs' feet for lunch,
and she ate it all right. Say, don't you think it is nice to be trying
to do kind acts for your auntie?”
“Yes; but if she ever finds out about that pigs' foot ease, she will
make you think your trousers are warmer than your hair. You strike me as
being a boy that resembles a tornado. No one knows when you are going
to become dangerous, or where you are going to strike. You and a tornado
are a good deal like a cross-eyed man; you don't strike where you look
as though you were aiming, and suddenly you strike where you are not
looking, and where nobody is looking for you to strike. Nature must have
been in a curious mood when she produced cross-eyed men, red-headed boys
and tornadoes. What do you think ought to be done to Nature for giving
me a redheaded boy to bring up, eh, you rascal?” and the old man chucked
the boy under the chin, as though he wasn't half as mad at Nature as he
pretended to be.
“Uncle Ike, do you think a tornado could be broken up, when it got all
ready to tear a town to pieces, by shooting into it with a cannon, as
the scientific people say?” said the boy, climbing up into the old
man's lap, and slyly putting a handful of peanut shucks down under the
waistband of his uncle's trousers.
“Well, I don't know,” said Uncle Ike, as he wiggled around a little
when the first peanut shuck got down near the small of his back. “These
scientific people make me weary, talking about preventing tornadoes by
firing cannon into the funnel-shaped clouds. Why don't they do it? If
a tornado came up, you would find these cannon sharps in a cellar
somewhere. They are a passel of condemned theorists, and they want
someone else to take sight over a cannon at an approaching tornado,
while the sharps look through a peep-hole and see how it is going to
work. You might have a million cannon loaded ready for tornadoes,
and when one came up it would come so quick nobody would think of the
cannon, and everybody would dig out for a place of safety. Not one
artilleryman in a million could hit a tornado in a vital part. Do these
people think tornadoes are going around with a target tied on them, for
experts to shoot cannon balls at? A tornado is like one of these Fourth
of July nigger-chasers, that you touch off and it starts somewhere and
changes its mind and turns around and goes sideways, and when it finds a
girl looking the other way it everlastingly makes for her and runs into
her pantalets when she would swear it was pointed the other way. No, I
am something of a sportsman myself, and can shoot a gun some, but if
I had a cannon in each hand loaded for elephants, and I should see a
tornado going the other way, I would drop both guns and crawl into a
hole, and the tornado would probably turn around and pick up the guns
and fire them into the hole I was in. That's the kind of an insect a
tornado is, and don't you ever fool with one. A tornado is worse than a
battle. I remember when we were at the battle of Gettysburg----”
“Oh, for Heaven's sake, Uncle Ike, what have I done that you should
fight that war all over again every time I try to have a quiet talk with
you?” and the boy stuffed his fingers in his ears, and got up off the
old man's lap, and the uncle got up and walked around, and when the
peanut shells began to work down his legs, and scratch his skin, and he
found his foot asleep from holding the big boy in his lap, the old
man thought he was stricken with paralysis, and he sat down again, and
called the boy to him and said, in a trembling voice:
[Ilustration: My boy, you are going to lose your Uncle Ike 057]
“My boy, you are going to lose your Uncle Ike. I feel that the end is
coming, and before I go to the beautiful beyond I want to say a few
serious words to you. It is coming as I had hoped. The disease begins at
my feet, and will work up gradually, paralyzing my limbs, then my body,
and lastly my brain will be seized by the destroyer, and then it will
all be over with your Uncle Ike. Remove my shoes, my boy, and I will
tell you a story. When we scaled the perpendicular wall at Lookout
Mountain, in the face of the Confederate guns, and----”
“Can this be death?” said the boy, as he took off one of the old man's
shoes and emptied out a handful of peanut shucks, and laughed loud and
long.
“Well, by gum!” said Uncle Ike, “peanuts instead of paralysis,” and
he jumped up and kicked high with the lately paralyzed legs; “now, I
haven't eaten peanuts in a week, and I suppose those shucks have been in
my clothes all this time. I am not going to die. Go dig some worms and
I will show you the liveliest corpse that ever caught a mess of
bullheads,” and the boy dropped the shoe and went out winking and
laughing as though he was having plenty of fun, and Uncle Ike went to a
mirror and looked at himself to see if he was really alive.