The best gifts came last. Theo and Norman had been quite extravagant. They had sent Jessica a fur muff and my father a sheared beaver cap. To me they had given shoe ice skates, very rare in our region in those days. I eagerly awaited our next game of hockey.
My father brought forth from his pocket a small buckskin pouch and poured into his hand seven beautifully cut and polished agates. They were ringed like Rascal’s tail, from golden yellow through oak-leaf brown to deep maroon. With unexpected forethought he had sent our best rough stones from Lake Superior to a gem-cutting firm in Chicago, insisting that they be returned in time for Christmas.
My father was pleased by our response. He chose three agates for Jessica and three for me. Then he did a most surprising thing. Calling for Rascal, he handed him the handsome little stone that the raccoon himself had found.
Always fascinated by shining objects, Rascal felt it carefully, sat up, holding it between his hands to examine it and smell it, then carried it to the corner where he kept his pennies and unceremoniously dropped it among his other treasures. He came back chirring cheerfully.
This might well have topped the gift-giving. But one more large package still lay amidships, “To Sterling, from Jessica.” I was very curious but could not imagine what it might be. Upon removing the wrappings I found an unbelievable present—enough heavy, strong white canvas to cover my entire canoe. I was near to unwanted tears, but Jessica saved the day.
“Now perhaps we can get this canoe out of the living room,” she said.
Wowser, Rascal, and the cats were soon asleep around us. My father asked Jessica to read from the second chapter of St. Luke, as Mother had done on so many Christmas Eves.
“And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus . . .
“And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger: because there was no room for them in the inn . . .
“And there were in the same country, shepherds, abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night . . .
“And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them . . . and they were sore afraid.”
Faintly through the drifting snow came the strains of the church organ playing “Silent Night, Holy Night.”
We put out all the pets except my raccoon—the cats to curl in the hay of the barn, Wowser to sleep in his double-walled doghouse on his blankets. But Rascal went to bed with me. As we dropped off to sleep I wondered if at midnight raccoons speak as other animals are said to do.
It is good to remember that I was given those swift and shining skates early enough in my life so that I could use them for three happy winters. By the fourth winter I was in a wheel chair. And even when I learned to walk, I was never able to skate again.
At twelve, however, I could skate all day, play hockey for hours, and cut simple figures on the ice. It is the nearest thing to flying which man has achieved. Or so it seems in memory.
I had taught Rascal to be a living coonskin hat. He would take a firm grip on my ruck of curly hair, brace his strong hind paws on the collar of my Mackinaw, and enjoy the wildest rides he had ever experienced as we glided forward and backward over Culton’s ice pond just south of the railroad tracks.
Slammy Stillman, who had weak ankles as well as a weak brain, came to Culton’s pond one day, clamped on his skates, and came wobbling into the gay throng. Rascal and I saw a chance for well-deserved revenge. Without so much as touching the town bully we rushed him and turned on a dime, throwing shaved ice in his unhandsome face.
He went down screaming, “Mad ’coon! Mad ’coon! I’ll teach you a lesson.”
But the jeering laughter of fifty boys and girls must still be ringing in his ears. He never gave either of us another moment of trouble.
The wall telephone in the living room rang insistently through the echoing reaches of our house at two A.M. on a foggy morning in February. I leaped from bed to answer. The voice that came booming over the wire was that of my Uncle Fred.
“Is your father there?”
“He’s asleep upstairs.”
“Well, wake him up, Sterling. It’s case weather.”
“Case weather,” I shouted with excitement. “I’ll wake him. And we’ll be out there in less than an hour if we can start the Oldsmobile.”
“OK, son.”
“May I bring Rascal?”
There was a good-natured chuckle at the other end. “Sure, fetch him along. We need all the extra hands we can rally.”
“Case weather, Daddy,” I shouted up the curving stairway. “Uncle Fred needs us right away.”
I lit a fire in the kitchen stove, prepared a pot of coffee and a skillet of eggs, and hurried to wake Rascal. He came to the kitchen blinking like a sleepy owl.
It certainly was case weather—fog so thick you could cut it with a knife. By the time we had eaten, started the car, and driven beyond the street lights of the town, we wondered if we would be able to follow the icy ruts.
Lamplight glimmered from the windows of almost every farmhouse. Lanterns, enhaloed by the fog, bobbed along the paths leading to the tobacco sheds.
Case weather—usually a sudden February thaw—softened the tobacco leaves, making it possible to handle them without damage. The warm, moist atmosphere might blanket the region for only a few hours or for several days. During that unpredictable interval, every lath loaded with tobacco plants must be taken from the drying sheds and piled in the stripping house, there to be covered with canvas to keep the moist leaves from freezing. It was back-breaking labor at breakneck speed, but filled with a desperate sort of excitement—a sporting event on which each tobacco farmer was betting his whole year’s crop.
We expected Uncle Fred to call us at any time of the day or night when case weather began. And the number of automobiles and buggies groping their way through the fog showed that many others from Brailsford Junction were on a similar mission.
The chains were on the car all winter, and we were very grateful for the added traction as we slithered through slush and mud. But we safely reached the old homestead at last.
Without stopping at the lamplighted kitchen where Aunt Lillie was undoubtedly preparing an early feast, we hurried to the largest tobacco shed where Uncle Fred and my three cousins were already high among the beams handing down the pungent, pliable tobacco. Rascal and I scrambled swiftly to the rafters to take our place in that human elevator. The raccoon was slightly bewildered by this new game. But he loved excitement and was content to perch nearby, his eyes green-gold in the lantern light. He must have thought we were slightly insane in a harmless sort of way.
I worked hard and fast on those high beams for nearly an hour, but I was no match for my father, and certainly unable to compete with Uncle Fred and his three husky boys. True, the laths of tobacco plants were not as heavy as they had been during the harvesting, but they were heavy enough as I balanced among the rafters. Trying to maintain my equilibrium, I let one lath of tobacco slip. It fell thirty feet to the floor, missing by inches the men below me. This was my first intimation that I was becoming tired; and my father said quietly, “Sterling, you’d better take your raccoon and go in to see Aunt Lillie.”
I felt ashamed to have dropped the tobacco, and to have proved again that I was not fully capable of doing a grown man’s work. But to drop another lath might mean an injury to someone below. So, taking Rascal and one of the lanterns, I made my way up the slope to the kitchen door.
Aunt Lillie hugged me, stroked the raccoon, and said, “We shouldn’t have called you at two in the morning. . . . Come have some coffee and hot muffins.”
“I love case weather,” I said, “and your muffins are wonderful.” I gave a bite to Rascal, who immediately begged for more.
“I’m glad you came in to visit with me, Sterling. How are my menfolks doing?”
“We’ve taken down four tiers at one end,” I said. “Maybe a quarter of the crop . . . but I dropped a lath, Aunt
Lillie.”
“Well, you’re just a little boy,” Aunt Lillie said.
“I’m not a little boy any more,” I protested. “I’m twelve years old, and I weigh nearly one hundred pounds. With Rascal on my shoulder I weigh one hundred and eleven.”
“You’re both growing up,” Aunt Lillie said sadly. “I don’t like to see things change—children growing up, their parents growing old.”
“You’re not old, Aunt Lillie.”
“I’m forty-seven.”
“That was the age of my mother,” I said. “Will she be forty-seven forever, Aunt Lillie?”
Aunt Lillie failed to answer for a moment, and then she asked me if I wouldn’t like more muffins and coffee. We sat quietly for a time, each thinking his own thoughts.
“Well, Sterling,” Aunt Lillie said finally, “I suppose you’ll eventually be going to college, to learn a profession and to make something of yourself.”
“We take it for granted—going to college.”
“Your Uncle Fred will never send our boys—or even let them earn their way through school.”
There was no bitterness in her voice. She stated this tragedy as a matter of fact that could not be altered. I understood the situation more completely than she realized. Uncle Fred was the only uncle on either side of my family who had left college before graduation. I had heard him say that he didn’t want any of his boys to get the superior notion that they knew more than he did.
Aunt Lillie undoubtedly thought life on the old farm was heaven. But I was beginning to see lines of worry on her face.
“Now what profession have you chosen?”
“I haven’t thought about it very much, Aunt Lillie. But perhaps I’ll be a doctor.”
“Oh no, Sterling. You couldn’t be a doctor—you’re too tenderhearted. I helped Dr. MacChesney once—when he . . .”
I knew she was remembering the crushed arm of a hired man who had caught his hand in the ensilage cutter. The arm had been amputated on this kitchen table; and Aunt Lillie had administered the chloroform.
“No, perhaps I couldn’t be a doctor.”
“I think I know what your mother would have wished,” Aunt Lillie said. And she looked so much like my mother as she said it that I wondered to whom I was talking in the lamplight of this fog-enshrouded world. I listened as though it were indeed my mother speaking. “I think she would have wanted you to be a writer.”
“A writer?”
“And then you could put it all down,” Aunt Lillie said, “the way it is now . . . case weather, the fog, the lantern light . . . and the voices of the men—hear them—coming in for breakfast. You could keep it just like this forever.”
IX: March and April
EARLY in March the first signs of spring began to appear. My woodchucks came up from their holes under the barn to take a cautious look at the world and decided it would be wiser to sleep for a few more weeks. Meadow mice broke through the old snow crust to view the sky; and their big cousins, the muskrats, made similar forays from their ponds and streams to graze on any vegetation which showed a tint of green.
As the mating season approached, the tabby cats mewed and treaded to attract neighborhood toms. Cottontail rabbits thumped the ground, calling for mates. And skunks wandered for miles seeking the consolation that only another skunk can give.
Rascal was becoming restless and unreasonable. On one moonlit night I heard hair-raising screams of rage. Grabbing a flashlight, I went out to find Rascal and another undoubtedly male raccoon trying to get at each other through the chicken wire. I chased away the intruder and put iodine on Rascal’s scratches. On another evening I heard very different sounds—the tremolo crooning of an amorous female raccoon trying to reach Rascal for more romantic reasons.
I was only twelve, but not unaware of the meaning of spring. The sighing of the wind through the fur-tipped willows and the disturbing voices of the night made me almost as restless as the other young animals now awak-ening.
During a week of unseasonably warm weather we put the screens on the windows and doors. On the first night that we left the doors open, Rascal paid me a surprise visit. Evidently he had learned how to lift the hook from the eye on the door of his cage and he had not forgotten how to open the back screen door to the house. He came to my bedroom, chirring happily, and burrowed under the covers.
I could have padlocked the cage, but decided against it. That would have been a grossly unjust reward for Rascal’s dexterity and his obvious delight in finding his way to freedom.
However, when on a subsequent night my raccoon raided Reverend Thurman’s henhouse, I realized that time was fast running out on our year-long idyl.
Since Christmas I had spent many hours completing my canoe. The most difficult part was stretching and fastening the heavy canvas while the unwieldy fabric was soaking wet. This process did the living room rug a distinct disservice. But I was so pleased with the finished result that my father did not scold me unduly. I asked him to tap the canvas, which had shrunk as tight as a drum over the ribs as it dried. He could see for himself the advantages of nailing it on while wet.
I trimmed the pointed prow and stern with sheet copper, ran a molding around the gunwale, added covered compartments at each end for duffel, and screwed on an outer keel. Except for varnishing the inside and enameling the outside my canoe was ready for service.
“It might be wise to paint it in the barn,” my father suggested.
“That seems reasonable,” I agreed.
“The green you have chosen will look fine in the water,” my father said, “but it doesn’t go very well with the other colors in the rug.”
The canoe was heavier than I thought it would be, so I asked two very good friends of mine—Art Cunningham, a fishing maniac like myself, and Royal Ladd, who owned a player piano—to help me carry the canoe to the barn, where we mounted it on sawhorses. We worked together on varnishing the smoothly sanded interior and enameling the outside with four coats of glossy green. It was a beautiful thing, that long, streamlined canoe.
The launching was on Saunder’s Creek, which had risen many feet above its banks in the spring runoff. In some places the brown flood waters had spread more than a mile in width through the marshes. Art Cunningham and I gave the pencil-slim craft its first workout, skimming over pasture fences, circling into placid backwaters, and streaking down the main current with the ease of a fish or a water bird.
As on the Brule, Rascal rode the prow, fascinated as always by the speed and danger.
Except for the success of the canoe. there was little to be happy about as the season progressed. Reverend Thurman had his shotgun loaded, waiting for one more raid on his henhouse.
Almost as dismaying, Theo and Jessica had finally won their point. We were acquiring a full-time housekeeper whether we wanted one or not. Mrs. Quinn was said to be qualified in every respect: middle-aged, ugly, cranky-clean, and no nonsense. She examined our house minutely, ran her finger over the furniture to show us the dust, and demanded my bedroom for herself.
“That is, if I decide to take the position,” Mrs. Quinn added. “I’ll let you know in a couple of weeks.”
It was sadly apparent that my father would be no match for our new housekeeper. But since we were being allowed two blessed weeks in which to maneuver, I decided to build a second line of defense. The presently unoccupied back bedroom on the second floor was virtually impregnable after I fitted a strong lock on the door and pocketed the key. I explained to my father that I would make my own bed, clean my own room, and let Mrs. Quinn take care of the rest of the place in any way that suited her.
She had expressed herself quite firmly: “No pets in the house!”
I thought that perhaps I might circumvent this unreasonable ruling by preparing a new entrance to my quarters. Opening off the large and airy bedroom was a small study at the very rear of the house. This too would be safeguarded by the lock on the bedroom door. And the little back room furnished another advantage. On
e window at the end of the gable offered enticing possibilities.
Cutting neat cleats, each eighteen inches in length, I nailed them one above another at convenient intervals up the house to that back window. Now Rascal could climb to see me whenever he wished. I could also conveniently entertain some of my other more-or-less human friends—boys of twelve for the most part.
When I showed my father this new ladder, he merely sighed and suggested that I paint the cleats the same color as the house. I thought this was a brilliant idea since it made them practically invisible. My enemies would never be able to spy them out. In any case they wouldn’t know the secret knock: Dum, de, de, dum, dum, DUM DUM, the easily remembered rhythm of “Shave and a Haircut, Six Bits.”
With Rascal for my constant companion in all these preparations, I was exhilarated with my stratagems to foil Mrs. Quinn. But deep in my heart I knew that none of these plans would insure Rascal’s life. He ran the constant peril of being shot.
Moreover, now that he had grown to young adulthood, he was not entirely happy as a domesticated pet. I realized that I was being selfish and inconsiderate to keep him from his natural life in the woods.
In my prayers I always put Rascal first these days: “Bless Rascal and Daddy and Theo and Jessica and Herschel. And make me a good boy, God, Amen.” I suppose I realized that no one needed more protection than my raccoon.
The fourteen days of grace sped by far too swiftly, and the awful moment approached when Mrs. Quinn would confirm her acceptance and move in, bag and baggage. I was certain that she would chase the cats with her broom, flap her apron at the crow, hurt Wowser’s feelings by speaking to him sharply, and insist that I padlock Rascal’s cage. She had been terrified of my raccoon on the day she had inspected us, and she might become his mortal enemy.
One warm and pleasant Saturday I made my decision. I can remember every detail of that day, hour by hour. Rascal and I had slept in my new bedroom. We came down the fifteen steps of the curved stairway, and ate as usual at the dining room table. Rascal was not behaving well that morning. He walked directly across the tablecloth to the sugar bowl, lifted the lid, and helped himself to two lumps. Thirteen pounds of raccoon on the dining room table is quite a centerpiece. But knowing in my heart what I was plotting, I couldn’t scold or slap him.
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