THE FATEFUL GUM-DROP
Pee-wee sat upon the railing of the porch reading the handbook and
eating gum-drops. The particular gum-drop with which we are conceived
was black, symbolic of the dark cloud which overhung Pee-wee. He wore
his negligee scout attire. His scout hat was on the back of his head
exposing his curly hair.
Upon his round countenance was the well-known scowl which was partly the
result of his deep schemings and cogitations and partly the result of
his defensive attitude toward the troop, and toward Roy Blakeley in
particular. It was not the scowl of ill nature. Rather was it the scowl
of a hero. It seemed to say, “Come on, you bunch of jolliers, I can
handle you!” It was a scowl that no artist could paint. It was a
tremendous scowl to be worn by such a small boy, and it was said in the
troop that this was the cause of his being top-heavy and falling off
roofs and fences, and diving into cracker jars and provision barrels.
Certain it is that wherever Pee-wee went, he went head first.
It may have been because his left stocking was afraid of his scowl that
it always shrank from it, pursuing a downward course, and the act of
pulling up his stocking had become second nature to Pee-wee, so that he
did it instinctively whenever he started or stopped, whether it was
necessary or not.
He traveled in two directions, horizontally and vertically. When he
traveled horizontally he usually went scout pace. And when he went up in
the air (which he did on an average of a hundred times a day) he
traveled by means of his voice, which was of such volume as to strike
terror. With the exception of the inside of his head, the parts of him
which were most crowded to capacity were his pockets. To say that his
brain was like an attic would be doing it an injustice. Rather was it
like a rummage sale or like San Francisco after the earthquake.
There is no word in the English language suitable to describe Pee-wee’s
appetite. Though he carried bananas stuck in his belt like cartridges
and was usually provisioned with innumerable cookies, it cannot be said
that he ate between meals, since his life consisted of one continuous
meal. But he scrupulously observed one intermission from eating and that
was the time spent in sleeping. Ingenious though he was, and full of
inspirations, he had never hit on an idea for sleeping and eating at the
same time.
When Pee-wee stood upon the ground he was exactly four feet and
three-sixteenths of an inch high, but when he went up in the air his
greatness baffles description. When in scout negligee he always wore his
sleeves rolled up which somehow bespoke his terrible combativeness. When
he wore his jacket a score of merit badges were displayed instead of his
bare arms. These were interspersed with campaign and advertising
buttons. Upon the front of his scout hat was a lone button as large as a
fifty-cent piece, advising the beholder to use _Rizeman’s Yeast_.
Perhaps this was the secret of Pee-wee’s going up in the air so readily.
Need I conclude this faithful description by saying that Pee-wee was an
all-around scout of the first class? When he held up his right hand with
the three middle fingers extended, they reminded him of the three
helpings of dessert which he often had at Temple Camp, and he remembered
the twelve good scout laws because they were an even dozen like ten
cents’ worth of licorice jawbreakers.
So there he sat upon the railing of his porch looking over the camping
hints in the scout handbook and eating gum-drops. Suddenly he dropped a
gum-drop, a black one, and as he slid down from the railing in quest of
it in the flower-bed below, his handbook slipped out of his other hand
and fell among the bushes.
He first recovered the black gum-drop, and having dusted it off, placed
it where it would never again go down except inside him. Then he lifted
the handbook and casually noticed that it had fallen open at pages four
hundred and four and four hundred and five. These were in the section
describing scout games, and, as Pee-wee glanced half-interestedly at the
headings, his idle gaze was arrested by a particular heading and he read
the paragraph which followed it:
RELAY RACE
One patrol pitted against another to see who can get a
message sent a long distance in shortest time by means of
relay of runners (or cyclists). The patrol is ordered out to
send in three successive notes or tokens (such as sprigs of
certain plants) from a point, say, two miles distant or
more. The leader in taking his patrol out to the spot drops
scouts at convenient distances, who will then act as runners
from one post to the next and back. If relays are posted in
pairs, messages can be passed both ways.
Suddenly, with a wild hallo, he announced to the world at large, “_I’ve
got an inspiration! I’ve got an inspiration!_ I’m glad I dropped that
gum-drop, because I’ve got an inspiration! I know what I’m going to do!
I’ve got a peach of an idea! _Oh, boy_, I know what I’m going to do!”
He did not know what he was going to do, far from it. But he knew what
he _thought_ he was going to do.
“I’m going to—I’m going to start something!” he said in the full
exuberance of his new idea.
Never in all his life did Scout Harris, Alligator, formerly Raven and
Pollywog, say a truer word. He was certainly going to start something.