Well, you never can tell how things are going to go in this world, I
guess. I don't mean that I spent all my time thinking how getting the
tricycle with two seats would make Mamie Little think more of me than
she thought of Toady Williams, because I didn't. I had school and my
chores and me and Swatty and Bony was building a capstan in our side
yard, to pull up stumps and move houses if we wanted to, but once in a
while I did think how I would ride up to Mamie Little's front gate on
the tricycle and say, “Say! wanta take a ride?”
It looked as if it wouldn't be long before Herb and Fan got married,
because they hadn't fought for a long while and Fan was embroidering
towels by day and by night. One reason it all looked good was that Miss
Murphy, who was my teacher and had had Herb for a while, had gone away
for a while and Miss Carter was substituting for her in our room. So Fan
needn't be jealous of Miss Murphy any more.
So I felt pretty good mostly but I was feeling pretty mean this day,
because Swatty and Bony had been let out on time and Miss Carter had
kept me in after school. I was feeling mean because they would be
working on the capstan, and it was the day we thought we would get it
finished and begin capstaning things with it, and I wouldn't be home
when they got it done. I wanted to be there when they started to use
it. So that made me feel mean one way, and teacher made me feel meaner,
another way.
I liked Miss Carter better than any teacher I ever had. So all I did
was not know my geography-lesson, or my arithmetic-lesson or my
grammar-lesson, or my history, and I missed in spelling. I guess maybe I
read all right, because she didn't say I didn't, but maybe she forgot to
talk about that because she was so busy saying my deportment was bad and
it was certainly an outrage that my copy-book was so poorly kept. So she
kept me in to study, and it was four o'clock pretty soon, and she put
her papers in her desk and shut down the lid and came back to my seat.
Everybody else had gone home. I was sort of scared. I thought she was
going to say her patience was exhausted and then whale me with the
rawhide she kept in the closet.
But she didn't. She came back to where I was, and when she got to my
seat she sat down in it beside me and I had to move over so she would
have room. I guess I ought to have put my hands in my pockets, but of
course I didn't know what she was going to do, and the first thing she
did was to put her left hand on top of my hand and hold it, like that,
on top of my desk. So I tried to pull it away, but she held on. So then
she put her arm--her right arm--along the desk back of me, and I felt
mighty mean. A boy don't like to be armed around that way, or his hand
held like that.
“George,” she said, “what is it? Why are you acting the way you are? Are
you doing it to try to distress me?”
Well, I couldn't say anything to that, could I? I just looked at the top
of the desk and moved my feet around.
“Tell me!” she said as if she wasn't mad at all but as if she was
sorry. “I can't understand it. It is no use for you to pretend you can't
learn your lessons, for I have seen that it is no trouble at all for
you, when you want to. And you are such a naturally good, well-behaved
boy at heart--why are you trying to act as if you were not? Are you
doing it to distress me?”
I guess I sort of said “No!” I don't know what I did say. I felt pretty
bad, with my hand held like that and her arm right there and liable to
get around my shoulders the way she does to the girls when she's fond of
them and they disappoint her and she has a talk with them and makes them
cry.
“Then what is it, George?” she asked.
Well, you can't blat right out and say nothing is the matter only you
don't feel like learning any old lessons or anything, can you? There
wasn't anything the matter. I didn't have it in for teacher or anything.
I just didn't feel like learning any lessons about then, and it was mean
of teacher to let on I was doing things because I didn't like her or
something. So I didn't say anything. I sort of scrooged down in my seat
so she couldn't put her arm around me any more than it was.
“Is it Mamie Little?” she asked then, all of a sudden.
That was an awful mean thing to say, and I guess she knew it was,
because when a fellow has a girl he don't want anybody to know it or
talk about it. He'll fight any fellow that says it, but he can't fight
his teacher when she says it.
“I think it must be Mamie Little, George,” she said next, “because
I have noticed you keep your eyes on her more than you do on your
lessons.”
That made me squirm, I guess! But that wasn't the worst. She wasn't
hardly started.
“I don't blame you for liking Mamie, George,” she said. “She is a sweet
child and I love her, too, and I am glad you are fond of her; but don't
you think she would like you better if you learned your lessons and
behaved in a manner she could admire, instead of trying to attract her
attention by smarty tricks? Don't you think a boy with your ability
should try to impress her by his excellence rather than by his smarty
tricks?”
Gee! I felt mean! Running a fellow's girl in on him like that! I was
so ashamed all over that I couldn't move. I didn't dare to move even a
finger. I couldn't do anything but swallow.
“Now, we won't say anything more about it,” she said, and she patted my
hand! “You know how much I like you, George, and how proud I usually am
of you, and I think Mamie is fond of you, too. I don't think you need to
be a smarty to attract her. If you don't care to do it for me, George,
tell me you will try to learn your lessons and behave better on Mamie's
account. You will, won't you? Say you will!”
I guess I tried to say I would, but I couldn't even swallow. I didn't
know how I'd even get away from there, because Miss Carter might stay
until I said I would or something, and I couldn't work my voice: it had
dried up, I guess. But I didn't have to say anything. Miss Carter put
her hand on my head and let it stay there a minute, and then she smiled
and jumped up as if everything was fixed and I had said I would, and she
said: “All right, George; you can go home.” And I went, you bet.
Well, that settled Miss Carter with me! She had been one of the three
women I thought were dandy, because the other two were my mother and my
grandmother that everybody calls “Ladylove” because she is so dear, but
after that I was done with Miss Carter. Anybody that would talk to a
fellow about his girl as if she _was_ his girl! I guessed maybe I would
n't go back to school any more unless I could get transferred to another
teacher's room.
So I felt pretty mean and sore and everything when I got home, and I
started around to the side yard, where Swatty and Bony were finishing
the capstan, and all at once my mother came to the end of the porch and
pulled the vines aside and said:
“George, come here!”
I tried to think what I had done to make her say it like that, but I
couldn't, only a fellow is always doing something, so it didn't matter
much what it was. I went around and onto the porch.
“Yes, ma'am,” I said.
“George,” my mother said in the way they call severe, “Mrs. Martin was
here.”
“Yes'm,” I said, for I didn't know what else to say, because I didn't
know why Mrs. Martin had been there. I knew who Mrs. Martin was and
where she lived, because she was the lady that had the lame boy that
would never grow up but would always be about five years old. He was
thirteen years old, and he played with a rag doll and always stayed
in his yard, but sometimes he looked out between the fence-pickets.
Sometimes when I went downtown on errands and got a nickel for it and
bought some candy, I'd give him a piece when I went by, and so would
Swatty and so would Bony. Sometimes he'd say, “Where you get that ball?
I want it!” just like a little baby, and if we didn't give it to him,
he'd cry, but we couldn't give him our ball, could we? So when we went
by his house we hid anything he might cry for, so he wouldn't cry for
it. That was all I knew about Mrs. Martin, only she was a widow and she
was cross sometimes. Anyway, sometimes she looked cross.
“George,” my mother said--and I guess she never spoke to me any sadder
than she did then--“Mrs. Martin told me something I would never have
believed of my boy. I have always thought you were a kind-hearted,
considerate boy. Oh, George, why--why did you strike that poor, helpless
little cripple?”
“I did not! I didn't do any such thing! It ain't so!” I said, because I
knew she meant I had hit Sammy Martin.
My mother sort of threw out her hand.
“Don't!” she said. “It is enough without that. It is enough to be a
bully without being a liar. Mrs. Martin has told me--”
“I ain't a liar!” I said, because I was so mad I could have cried. “If
she said that, she's a liar; that's what she is!”
Well, I oughtn't to have called a lady that, or anybody, but I was so
mad I didn't think. I wasn't thinking about how I said it, and when a
fellow's mother looks at him the way my mother was looking at me, and
won't believe him when he's telling the truth, what's he going to do? I
guess my mother was feeling pretty bad herself or she wouldn't have said
any such thing to me as that I was one. Because I wasn't one! Not about
that! I had never hit Sammy Martin. I had never done anything to him but
give him candy once in a while.
“George!” said my mother, and she was sad about it, as if she was now
quite hopeless about me.
Then she went on, as quietly as if we were at a funeral:
“That poor child's mother came here to beg me to protect her child
against you--to beg me to ask you not to harm him again! You called him
to the fence and struck him across the face with a stick or a switch.
Oh, don't deny it! She has seen you coax him to the fence before and
give him candy, and when he came crying to her with a welt rising on
his poor face, he told her you had done it. And I thought you were--I
thought--”
So then she cried, and I couldn't do anything but stand there and
feel--oh, I don't know how I felt! I guess I had never felt like that in
my life. It wasn't so, and I knew it wasn't so, and nobody would ever
believe it wasn't so. I couldn't do anything but stand there and wish
I was dead or grown up or something. I just stood and looked down, and
once in a while I blinked. So then, after a while, my mother wiped her
eyes and walked past me without saying anything or looking at me and
went into the house, and I stood there awhile and then I sort of turned
and went to the edge of the porch and sneaked around to the back yard.
It wasn't fair to think such things of me when they were not so, and
I felt awful bad. I never wanted to see my mother again. So then Swatty
saw me and shouted.
“Come on!” he yelled. “We've got her done! She's a dandy!”
So I ran to where the capstan was, and she was a dandy!
I guess you know what capstans are--the things they use in moving
houses? In Riverbank they move a lot of houses, because people are
always wanting to build other houses where houses already are, and you
can't move a house without a capstan. They have them on boats, too, but
not quite the same kind. The house-moving kind is like a square box,
without sides. In the middle, up and down, is a kind of roller that the
rope rolls onto, and the roller has to stick up above the top of the box
so there can be a place to stick a pole into to turn the roller. When
they move houses they set the capstan in the middle of the street a long
way from the house, and carry a rope back and fasten it to the house,
and then a horse that is fastened to the pole walks around and around
the capstan, stepping over the rope every time he passes it, and winds
up the rope, and that pulls the house. Only we didn't have any horse,
so we thought maybe we'd use Swatty's cow. But we didn't. We turned the
capstan ourselves. All the time we were making the capstan Swatty said
the cow would turn it, but when we got it done he said:
“Who ever heard of a cow turning a capstan?”
“I did,” I said. “In the Bible-book there is a picture of a cow turning
a capstan.”
“Well, that ain't the same thing,” Swatty said. “That's a Bible-cow, and
ours is part Alderney and part Holstein.”
“And this isn't any cow-capstan, anyway,” Bony said. “A cow couldn't
work this capstan, because a cow has two toes, and she'd get the rope
caught between her toes and fall and kill herself.”
“Whose cow are you saying would fall and kill herself--my cow?” Swatty
asked, the way he did when he meant: “Take it back or I'll lick you!”
Then he says: “You'd better not say my cow would fall and kill herself.
If my cow couldn't step over a rope without getting it between her toes,
I'd take her and kill her.”
“Aw, you would not!” I said.
“Yes, I would, too!” Swatty said. “We had a cow once that couldn't step
over a rope without getting it between her toes, and my father took her
down to the river and killed her. You needn't say we'd have a cow that
can't step over a rope--”
“I never said it,” I said.
“Well, if you didn't say it, who did say it, I'd like to know,” Swatty
asked. “Bony didn't say it and you'd better not say he said it, because
he came over and helped me finish the capstan, and you stayed in school
and let us do it.”
“I didn't stay in school; I was kept in.”
“Well, you say you was, but I don't have to believe it, do I?”
Swatty said. “I don't have to believe everything you say just because
I'm--because I'm in your yard, do I?”
Well, I saw Swatty wanted a fight, and I wanted a fight anyway. I felt
like it. So I said; “Who are you calling a liar?”
I went up close to him, and he went up close to me; and then I pushed
him and he pushed me back; and then I hit him and he hit me back. And
when he had me down and asked me if I had had enough and got off of me,
we went ahead with the capstan. I wasn't hurt _anywhere_ except on the
inside of my cheek, where a tooth cut it.
The capstan was a good one. Swatty showed how it worked, and pushed the
pole around, and it worked fine. So then I got my sled out of the barn,
where it had been since last winter, and we took turns being pulled on
the sled. So then we wished we had a house to move, but there wasn't
any house or building we dared move. I bet we could have done it. So we
looked for something we couldn't move without a capstan, so we could use
the capstan to move it. There is no use having a capstan if you haven't
anything to do with it. You might just as well not have made one. So I
said:
“I'll tell you! Let's pull up the old stump that's in our front yard!”
“All right--let's!” Swatty said.
We had a lot of trees in our yard--a big silver poplar in the back yard
that was twice as big around as a barrel, and a yellow-mellow apple,
and a Benoni apple, and a black-heart cherry, and a row of pines leading
down to the gate, and big maples inside the fence, and maybe some more.
There were trees all over town, lots of them, and you would have thought
there had always been trees, but I guess that isn't so. People planted
them. When people came to Riverbank and made a town of it, they planted
the trees because there were none when they came, and I guess they
liked it better with trees growing than when it was all bare. I know my
grandmother did.
My grandmother was an old, old woman, and she lived with us because the
house had been built by my grandfather, and my grandfather had planted
the trees. That was a long time before I was ever born. We called my
grandmother “Ladylove,” because I guess that is what my grandfather
called her. Nobody ever called her anything else but Ladylove, not
“Gran'ma” or anything like that.
I guess nobody ever loved trees the way she loved them. I guess she was
always sorry she had come away from Pennsylvania where there are lots of
trees and hills. Sometimes, early in the morning, she would come out on
the porch and look up and say, “I lift up mine eyes to the hills!” and
then she would sigh and shake her head. That was because there was no
hills in Riverbank when she lifted? up her eyes from our porch, and I
guess she was thinking of the hills in Pennsylvania, because when she
was a girl and lived there, there were always hills to lift up her eyes
to--hills that were covered with trees.
That was the way my grandmother Ladylove was, as old as old, and nobody
ever loved trees the way she did. She liked boys too. She liked all the
boys that ever came to play with me. She was the only one that never
scolded me. Plenty of times when we had fresh cookies and nobody was to
touch a single one until the next day, Ladylove would see us playing in
the yard and she would come out with a china plate with a napkin on it
piled up with cookies. Then she would say a verse of poetry and give us
the cookies and go into the house just as happy as could be. Sometimes
she would forget she had brought us any and would come right out with
another plateful and say the poetry over again and be just as happy over
that one as she was over the other.
When I said, “Let's pull the old stump that's in the front yard,” I
didn't think anything but that it would be a good thing to pull. I
didn't even know it had ever _been_ a tree; it had always been a stump
since I was a little bit of a kid, anyway. It wasn't much of a stump
any more. It was only about as high as my knee, and right at the ground
it was only as big around as a man's knee. Once I had a little hatchet,
but it wouldn't cut much, but I chopped the stump with it. I could only
chop off a little splinter at a time, and I never got much off. It only
made the stump raggedy at the top. It was just an old stump that wasn't
worth anything and wasn't any good to anybody.
Swatty and Bony and me started to move the capstan into the front yard
where the stump was. It was so heavy we could hardly wiggle it, so after
we had moved it an inch or two I said:
“Aw! we can't move it!”
So Bony said the same thing; but Swatty stood and looked at the capstan
awhile, and then he said: “Yes, we can move it, too! We can make it move
itself.”
“How can we?”
“You come ahead and I'll show you,” he said; and he did. He drove a
stake into the ground about as far as our capstan rope would reach, and
fastened the rope to it. Then he made Bony turn the capstan pole, and
that wound up the rope, and the capstan just had to move toward the
stake. When we got it to the stake we knocked the stake out with an
axe and put it in again farther along. That way we moved the capstan to
where we wanted it. Swatty thought of how to do it.
So then we had the capstan in the front yard, and we tied the rope
around the old stump and tried to pull it, but the capstan just moved
up to the stump. So Swatty said he knew what was the matter and that we
were all crazy because we didn't think of it before, and that all the
house-movers, when they were moving houses, drove stakes in front of
their capstans to keep them from moving, and stakes behind them to keep
them from tipping up.
We got some stakes and did it. Swatty drove the stakes because he was
strongest, and anyway, he knew how to swing an axe, because he had
often studied how the circus roughnecks swung them. Anyway he said he
had. He said he had sat for over an hour and just studied how they swung
axes at stakes and that then he asked one roughneck to let him try
it, and he did, and he drove over a hundred. He said that while he was
driving stakes Mr. Barnum came out of the big tent and watched him, and
that he liked the way he was driving stakes so well that he offered him
a hundred dollars a year just to drive stakes for the circus. So I asked
Swatty if he took up the offer, and he said he did. He said he went with
the circus all over the United States, driving stakes, and that he drove
so many he got so he could drive a stake with one blow. So then he said
he went to Mr. Bamum and asked him to pay him two hundred dollars a
year, but Mr. Bamum said he couldn't afford it. He said Swatty was worth
two hundred dollars a year but the show couldn't afford it. So, Swatty
said, he came home. That's what Swatty said, but I didn't hardly believe
it. But, anyway, we had to let him drive the stakes.
Well, the stump didn't come out as easy as we had thought it would. It
was pretty rotten, and it pulled off piece by piece, but the inside was
tough. Our rope was old, too, and broke nearly every time we tautened
it. But it was good fun, anyway. We took turns turning the capstan pole.
One would turn and the other would keep the rope on the stump and the
other would be boss and shout, “Whoa! Get up! Whoa there, you!” A lot
of boys came and looked through the picket fence and wished we would let
them come in and help us capstan the stump, but we wouldn't. What's the
use of having something somebody else hasn't got, if you are going to
let them have it too?
Pretty soon we got the stump all pulled. There was only a hole where it
had been and the rotted wood was scattered around on the grass, and we
felt pretty good about it, because nobody wants old stumps sticking up
in their yards. Swatty said maybe my father would give me a quarter for
pulling the stump and I thought maybe he would, too. We all felt as if
we had done something pretty fine, and I wished I could go and get my
mother and have her come out and see how good our capstan was and have
her say, “Why, that's fine, Georgie! I'll have your father give you
a quarter when he comes home.” But I remembered about Mrs. Martin. I
remembered that my mother would probably never think anything I ever did
again was any good at all. So I didn't call her.
Just then Ladylove--my grandmother--came out of the side door. She stood
a moment on the top step, looking, and then she came down to the grass
and started toward us. She had a plate in her hand, and there were
graham crackers on it, because there were no cookies that day. I guess
she heard us shouting and thought we would like some graham crackers,
because we were boys.
As soon as I saw her I jumped and ran toward her, because she was some
one we could show what we had done.
“Come here, Ladylove,” I shouted. “Come on, we want to show you what we
did with our capstan!”
“Yes! yes!” she said.
So I took the plate of crackers, and with the other hand I sort of
steadied her elbow, because our yard wasn't very smooth and she didn't
walk very steady or very fast. We came to where the capstan was, and she
steadied herself with one hand on it.
“There!” I said. “See what we did, Ladylove! We pulled that old tree
stump right out of the ground. We got rid of that old stump all right!”
Ladylove stood quiet so long that I got frightened. She looked up at the
sky and when she looked down at me there were tears in her eyes. I could
see them.
“My tree! My beautiful tree!” she said. “Ah, Georgie, could you kill my
tree?” And then she closed her eyes and held out her hands and said:
“Degenerate Douglas! Oh, the unworthy lord!
Whom mere despite of heart could so far please
To level with the dust a noble horde,
A brotherhood of venerable trees!”
It wasn't a horde of trees at all, nothing but an old rotten stump and
no good to anybody, but I felt awful bad about it as soon as she spoke
that poetry--not because the old stump was any good but because my
grandmother was so old and seemed to think so much of the old stump.
Me and Swatty and Bony just stood and didn't know what to say. We wished
she had scolded us or something instead of feeling that way.
“Gone! Gone!” she said, letting her hands fall, as if that old stump was
the only thing she ever cared for. “Gone!”
“It is not now as it has been of yore;
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen
I now can see no more!”
Well, we couldn't say anything, could we, when she felt like that? We
could just feel mean. It didn't matter that we knew it was just an old,
rotten, no good stump, because she thought it was a tree and that we had
cut it down. She shook her head, and then:
“Some they have died, and some they have left me,
And some are taken from me; all are departed;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.”
So then she turned and walked away with her head bent down and the tears
running down her cheeks, and I stood there with the plate of graham
crackers in my hand and didn't know what to do or what to say, and
Bony stood and looked kind of scared. I didn't dare look after my
grandmother. I just felt mean and sneaky and ashamed and sort of
miserable about everything, because I knew she thought I had done it
when I knew I oughtn't to have done it. At the step of the side door
she stopped and looked back and then went into the house, all old and
sad-looking. I guessed I had broken her heart, she felt so bad about it.
So then Bony started to go home. He didn't say anything, but he sort of
edged off as if he wanted to sneak away and get out of any trouble I was
in. Swatty spoke right up.
“You come back here!” he said. “You come back, or I'll show you!”