Pioneer, Go Home!

by Richard Powell

  "Oh Arthur, don't be so abrupt. I may find a way to keep both of us happy. But in the meanwhile try to take things calmly, will you? Because if you persecute these wonderful people, I'll start giving them every kind of state aid I can lay my hands on. I simply won't have them chased away. Think of the prestige involved, if our state can come up with the first definitive study of the Kwimpers of Cranberry County."

  "All right," Mr. King said. "You've got me over a barrel. All I hope is you rim into half the trouble with them that I have. You'll end up thinking they'd be too close if they were back in Jersey. Well, let me know when you're ready to scream for help." He clumb into his car and turned it around and only bent one fender on a bridge piling as he took off.

  Miss Claypoole shrugged her shoulders and said, "He's so abrupt, like all the planned economy people. They don't want to wait a moment for their bright new world. Well, Toby—may I call you Toby?—I hope we're going to be good friends."

  "Yes ma'am," I said. "I am always glad to be friends with everybody and even with Mr. King if he would let me."

  "Did you know what Arthur King meant, when he said that you probably had an I.Q. of seventy?"

  "I reckon he meant I am not very smart."

  "I hope it didn't hurt your feelings, Toby."

  "Well," I said, "maybe I'm not smart in Mr. King's way but I am smart in my own way, and one thing I am smart about is not letting my feelings get hurt easy."

  "Some day I'd like to give you an I.Q. test. Have you ever had one?"

  "Oh, lots of them. But I got to warn you, the fellers that give me them tests always go off looking confused. One of them said right out the test proved either I was an idiot or he was, and he warn't too sure which it was and he would be happier if he hadn't give me no test."

  "How perfectly fascinating! Can we sit down somewhere and talk, Toby? I don't think I can perch on that rail the way you were doing. We could sit in my car if you don't mind."

  I told her I warn't really dressed to sit around in a car with just swimming trunks on, but she said it didn't matter and we clumb in. When we got in, she said it was hot which I already knowed, and she loosened up the top of her white blouse and took off them tortoise-shell glasses and when she done that you wouldn't say she was a plain girl after all.

  "Toby," she said, "one thing you said interested me. You used the word idiot. Have you ever heard any other outsiders apply that name to you or to the other Kwimpers?"

  "Well," I said, "maybe what you are getting at is do the Kwimpers know that some folks call us crazy. Well, some folks do call us crazy only not usually when a Kwimper is listening on account of some Kwimpers can be more abrupt even than Mr. King. But it never riled me none, except once when a feller on another football team kept shouting 'Cwazy Kwimper' at me. It warn't a bad joke at first but it didn't wear good, so I run a play through him and he warn't saying much of anything when they drug him off the field. What I think is that us Kwimpers are not crazy but just different."

  "So you played football, did you? I bet you were marvelous. What did you do on the team?"

  "Mostly I throwed and caught passes."

  "Yes, but which did you do most of the time?"

  "Oh, I done them both at the same time."

  "Toby, I thought I understood football but I don't understand that. How did you throw and catch passes at the same time?"

  "I got to go back a ways to explain," I said. "Pop give me a football when I was a little kid, and I liked playing football but there warn't nobody to play it with. So I would go out where the woods was thin and throw that football up and run to catch it. I done that whenever I could, and in six-seven years I got so I could throw that football up pretty high and out pretty far, and run and catch it."

  "Didn't you say there were trees where you were throwing?"

  "Yes ma'am. And if a ball bounced off a tree I didn't do too good catching it."

  "But how could you run through trees watching the ball without running into a tree?"

  "What you had to do was know where the ball was coming down, so you could watch the trees and not watch the ball. Then when I started playing football on the team, I knowed where the ball was going and they didn't, and running in and out of other fellers was just like dodging them trees, only softer if you happened to run up against one of them. Them passes went for a lot of touchdowns and there warn't a high school in our part of the state done much with us."

  "What high school did you go to, Toby?"

  "Oh, this warn't high school where I played. It was grade school. We couldn't find no grade schools that would play us, and it warn't easy to get high schools neither on account of they didn't like getting whomped by no grade school."

  "You must have been magnificent. If you could only have gone to college!"

  "Oh, I went to college," I said, trying not to take on big about it. "I went to Princeton."

  "You . . . went . . . to . . . Princeton?"

  Yes ma am.

  "You actually went there and attended classes?"

  Yes ma am.

  "Toby," she said, "now I see why people who have given you I.Q. tests have gone off talking to themselves. Tell me about going to Princeton."

  "It was just a thing of always wanting to go there and play football for them Tigers. So one October when I was nineteen I hiked up there from home and found them Tigers having practice and got talking with this feller Charlie that was coaching them. We got along real good and I told him how I always wanted to play for them Tigers and he give a laugh and said I'd get killed and I said it didn't look too hard to me. So one thing led to another and they lent me an outfit and let me try. They was real nice fellers and Charlie told them not to lay me out, so it warn't hard to let go of a pass and run out and catch it for a touchdown. You might say they bore down after that, but I throwed myself five more passes and took a couple runs around end and made a few more touchdowns. Them fellers was really hitting hard by that time but mostly I warn't where they was hitting."

  "What happened after that, Toby?"

  "Well, after we ended up playing, Charlie took me to talk to a couple of the professors. I stayed the night with one of them that taught what they called psychology, and the next day he took me to two of his classes and kind of bragged about me to the fellers in them classes. That afternoon that professor and all them football coaches had a big session with me, and it ended up they sure wished I could stay at Princeton and play football but they had a rule you had to go to high school first and I hadn't done that so I couldn't stay at Princeton. They all looked right sorry about it. One of them said of course Yale would probably take me and another one said Oh God don't say that because they really might and then where would we be. But I said if I couldn't go to Princeton I didn't want to go nowhere."

  Miss Claypoole said, "This is going to be the most fascinating experience of my life. I'm so glad you talk freely, because I'll want to talk to you about your dreams and your friends and your parents and relatives and—"

  "Well, ma'am," I said, "I don't mind talking about me but when it comes to the rest you'll have to talk to Pop, and you'll find he don't like to talk to outsiders about the Kwimpers."

  "Oh, I'm sure I'll get along nicely with him. We'll just talk about you, then. Do you still have all those football muscles, Toby? Tense your arm and let me see." I made a muscle for her and she put a hand on my arm and counted the muscles and found they was all there. "Magnificent," she said. "Simply magnificent! Toby, did anyone ever tell you that you're a very handsome young man?"

  "No ma'am. Not unless you would count girls."

  "I think I would. I noticed that both you and those two little boys I saw running around—twins, aren't they? —look very much alike. You all have blue eyes and pale golden hair. Is that true of all the Kwimpers?"

  "Yes ma'am. Except Pop has lost his hair."

  "You even have little silky golden hairs on those tanned legs of yours, don't you?" She reached out a hand and run her fingertips along
my leg and I give a jump on account of she hit a real ticklish spot. She laughed a little, and said, "That's because I happened to touch a very sensitive nerve that runs up the inside of your leg right along there."

  She put out a fingertip to show me and then all of a sudden stopped, and I took notice there warn't no sunlight coming in the car window beside me no more on account of somebody was standing there. I looked up and seen Holly. Most times Holly is a right pleasant kid to have around, but it looked like things warn't going well for her and maybe them twins hadn't done their lessons good that day.

  "If you have finished tickling Toby's leg," Holly said, "I'd like to borrow him for a chore."

  "Who would this be?" Miss Claypoole said, yanking back her hand like it had touched a hot stove.

  I said, "This is Holly who is our babysitter."

  "She doesn't look like a Kwimper to me."

  "No ma'am. Holly is a Jones, but we don't hold it agin her. Holly, this is Miss Claypoole who is County Welfare Supervisor."

  "How lucky," Holly said. "Because it's plain to me that somebody's welfare needs a lot of supervising around here."

  "Holly is educated real good and has even gone through high school," I told Miss Claypoole. "And I bet she could have gone to Princeton like me except they don't take girls."

  Holly said, "We're all out of fresh water, Toby. Could you make some trips to the well?"

  "I filled that fresh water barrel last night, Holly."

  "The twins were playing around it, and I think they pushed it over."

  "Well," I said, "I'll go, but them twins is getting mighty strong to push over a barrel of fresh water that weighs a couple hundred pounds."

  Miss Claypoole said, "Maybe they had help, Toby.

  I'll tell you what. You introduce me to your father, and I'll talk to him while you do your chores."

  I took her to the shack and met her up with Pop, and went to look at that fresh water barrel. It looked like them twins had tipped her over, all right, because it was lying on its side. But them twins warn't really that strong, because I seen where a big chunk of wood had been used for a pivot, and a length of two-by-four had been used for a lever to get under the barrel and tip her over, and even little kids can tip over a heavy barrel if they use a big enough lever.

  Most times it takes me about ten trips to our well to fill that barrel, because we only had two pails I could use. There must have been a leak in that barrel, though. For a while I couldn't hardly gain on the water level. Maybe being tipped over and drying out had opened up that barrel some. I spent more than an hour getting it full again and getting the wood swole up so it stopped leaking. So it got to be too late for Miss Claypoole to have another talk with me.

  I don't think she did too good talking with Pop, because what little I heard, all Pop was doing was bragging on that rest room he had built. Miss Claypoole said goodby to me and said we would have a lot of nice talks later on, and that before she left she would just try out that wonderful rest room. Pop and me was setting on the porch after she went into the rest room, and we heard the rumble the tank gives when you leap up off the seat, and all of a sudden there was a screech and Miss Clay- poole come flying out of there. She was real upset because she clumb right in her car and took off.

  "Pop," I said, "them twins has got to stop playing that joke on people."

  "I think you're right, Toby," Pop said. "Only this time it warn't them twins because you can see them across the road helping the Jenkinses sort out shells for the jewelry things they make."

  "Well," I said, "nobody else was around to play that joke, so I reckon this is just a day when water is doing things by itself like leaking out of barrels and flushing johns, and maybe it is like the pull of the moon when we get high tides."

  Holly come around the side of the shack and set down with us. She was looking a lot more smoothed down than earlier when I had thought maybe the twins hadn't been doing their lessons, so I reckon she must have put across one of her lessons pretty good.

  9

  WE DIDN'T have no business at the bridge that night so I was out there by myself with a cane pole and a plug making figure- eights on the water, seeing if some big old snook laying under the bridge wanted to try straightening out the gang hooks. While I was out there I heard footsteps and looked and was real startled because there was a girl coming toward me, and as far as I knowed there hadn't been no girls around. She had on a white dress that looked nice in the moonlight. But when she got up close it warn't really a girl at all but Holly.

  "Well," I said, "I near about didn't know you in that dress."

  "I got it a few days ago and thought I would try it out. Do you like it, Toby?"

  "It looks good," I said. "But of course it could be just the moon which has a tricky light and can fool you. I see you got a ribbon to put around your hair, too. That is a handy thing to keep hair out of your eyes."

  "Would you like my hair better if it were blond, Toby?"

  "Well, I reckon I'm partial to blond hair. But a person has to take the hair they are born with, so it don't do no good to wish for blond."

  "Oh, Toby, what you don't know! That Miss Claypoole of yours doesn't have natural blond hair. She dyes it."

  "I would almost think that would be cheating. How did you work out that she dyes it?"

  "Because nobody has dark eyebrows and blond hair naturally."

  "Then maybe a person can't say it's cheating because she would dye her eyebrows too if she didn't want you to know."

  "Did you like her, Toby?"

  "Oh, I could take her or leave her."

  "I didn't like to see her tickling your leg that way."

  "It didn't tickle much. All it done was get a little jump out of me."

  "That isn't the point, Toby. The point is that one thing can lead to another."

  "Like what, Holly?"

  "Hasn't your father ever talked to you about . . . about

  sex?"

  "Well, one time a girl at school had me kind of pinned in a corner and done a lot of giggling at me for some reason, and a teacher come along and asked me questions I didn't know the answer to, and he said I should go home and talk to Pop about the birds and the bees and how you can learn about men and women from them."

  "And did you, Toby?"

  "Oh, I done what he said. Pop and me set down first and talked about bees. There is plenty of bees in Cranberry County and Pop and me knowed all about them. There is that queen bee that takes off with a bunch of drones, and wears them drones to a frazzle until they die off like flies or maybe like bees, but that don't tell you about men and women because when it comes to women they don't want no drone that wears out but a man that sticks around to do chores."

  "Maybe it would have been better to talk about the birds, Toby."

  "Well, we done that, and you got to admit them female birds is smarter than any queen bee because I mean they keep them male birds hard at it building nests and bringing worms and bugs and things, but Pop said not to take that for an example because no man ought to let no woman get away with that. So when we done talking I asked Pop right out what I ought to know about sex, and he scuffled around a bit and said just to watch myself, that was all, just watch myself. That warn't very helpful because if a girl has you kind of pinned in a corner and is giggling at you, it's not easy to watch yourself on account of you're busy watching her."

  "Oh dear," Holly said. "This is much worse than I thought. Toby, as far as girls are concerned, you're just about unprotected. I'll bet you've never even kissed a girl, have you?"

  "When I was a kid there was a couple I kind of pecked on the cheek."

  "You've never kissed a girl on the lips?"

  "Well, no," I said. "It don't really seem too sanitary to me unless you would both brush your teeth first, and I

  never had no toothbrush along when the subject come

  up."

  "Toby Kwimper, someday a woman is going to tie you into knots! And the trouble is, it will probably
be a woman who doesn't really care for you at all."

  "Well," I said, "I will try to get frightened about it, but right at the moment it seems interesting."

  "That's what makes it so dangerous. Nobody else is going to look out for you, so I guess it's up to me to give you a lesson. I think you ought to learn what it's like when you kiss a girl on the lips."

  "I think I'll find out it is not sanitary."

  "But you can't be sure! So you ought to give it a try."

  "Well, all right," I said. "But I don't know where we will find no girl."

  "How about me, Toby?" she said in a voice so small you near about had to listen for it twice. "You could pretend I'm a girl."

  I give her a careful look. She had put on some of them high heels, which was the first time I ever seen her in them, and it brung her up high enough so I wouldn't have to do no crouching to get to her. And while she warn't what I would really call a girl, that moon worked some tricks with light and shadow so if you didn't know it was just Holly you might be fooled. The ribbon done something more for her hair than just keep it out of her eyes, like I thought at first, and her hair took on the deep shiny color you get in cedar water pools in Cranberry County.

  "I'll give it a try and do the best I can to think of you as a girl," I said. "Now how would I start?"

  She sniffled once or twice, and said, "I'm not sure I feel right about this."

  "Well," I said, "if them sniffles mean you're getting a cold, you hadn't ought to feel right about it because then we'll both get a cold, because like I said this is not sanitary."

  "I'm not getting a cold!" she said. She stamped her right foot down hard and then said ow! on account of she warn't used to stamping her foot in high heels and hit the bridge sooner than she planned on.

  "Well," I said, "I'm glad to hear you're not getting a cold, because there's nothing like a summer cold to make a person feel dragged out. But if it isn't a cold, there must be something else you're not feeling right about."

  "I just feel a little shy, Toby."

  "I'm not what you would call raring to go myself," I said. "But if you don't tell me how to start we won't get far."