We kept walking until we came to Fayette. We went into Carl Van
Remortal's store. Gramp sat on a chair by the big iron stove and I sat
on his knee on his good leg. The stove must be real old, because it's
got 1926 on its door in big iron letters.
"Tell me the pictures you see in Mr. Van's mind," Gramp whispered in my
ear, "but don't let him hear you."
"He's making pictures of the fishing boats coming in," I said. "In the
pictures he's talking to Jack La Salle and giving him some money for
his fish.... The pictures are getting all mixed up now. He's putting
the fish in ice in boxes, but other pictures show him in church. Jack
La Salle is in the church too, and Mr. Van's sister Margaret is dressed
in a long white dress and standing alongside him."
"He's thinking that Jack La Salle will be marrying Margaret pretty
soon," Gramp said. "What else is he thinking?"
"The pictures are coming so fast now that I can't name them all," I
said.
Mr. Lawrence St. Ours came into the store, and Gramp told me to read
what he was thinking. I looked inside his head.
"He's making pictures of himself driving a car, and buying bread, and
bacon, and piling hay on his farm, and ..." I said, but then I had to
stop. "All the pictures come so fast that I can't read them," I told
Gramp. "Everybody makes blurry pictures like that most of the time."
"Instead of trying to tell me what the pictures are, see if you can
understand what they mean," Gramp said.
I tried but it was awful hard and pretty soon I got tired and Gramp and
I left the store and went back home.
The next morning Gramp and I went out in the barn and Gramp said, "Now
let's see what we got here." He had me try to do a lot of things, like
lifting something without touching it, and trying to make chickens run
by making a picture of them doing that and putting it in their minds.
But I couldn't do any of them.