Lyin' Like a Dog, The Yankee Doctor, The Danged Swamp! 3-Volume set

by Richard Mason

  Well, Rosalie just lit up and gave me the biggest smile. “Oh, Richard, I sure do. In fact I have so many funny books I’ve stacked them in the garage. If I come up with two hundred are we partners?”

  “Yes, Rosalie.” Then I reached out and squeezed her hand, and she gave me a little hug.

  “That funny book is gonna make us rich,” I whispered to her.

  “Come on, Richard; let’s go over to my garage and see how many I have.”

  I’ll admit I was real surprised that she’d barely speak to me one minute, and now she was acting like we were the best friends, and maybe even boyfriend and girlfriend, but, shoot, I didn’t care a whit, because this was turning out so much better than I ever hoped it would. When we opened up Rosalie’s garage, I knew she might have enough to finish out the eight hundred. My gosh, over one of the shelves there were stacks and stacks of almost new funny books.

  “I never read a funny book but once, so I guess they really pile up. Daddy lets me buy all I want,” said Rosalie.

  Me and Rosalie counted funny books, but even though it looked like tons of funny books, she only had two hundred and six, which only gave us six hundred and twelve. Heck, I went ahead and made Rosalie a full partner and told her she’d have to help us get the last two hundred some way. We stacked them up on my wagon and headed for John Clayton’s house where we were keeping them. As we left Rosalie’s house, her daddy watched us leave, and he was kinda shaking his head.

  “Rosalie, whatever you do, don’t tell your daddy why we’re taking these funny books. Heck, if the word ever gets out, we’ll never get that upside-down funny book from Ears.”

  “Oh, I won’t, Richard. This is a secret just between us.” Then Rosalie squeezed my hand like we were partners, and I smiled all the way to John Clayton’s house.

  I got home after me and Rosalie took her funny books over to John Clayton’s house, and Daddy yelled at me to come in the house and listen to the radio. Something real exciting had happened.

  “Richard, I heard at the refinery that we dropped an atom bomb on the Japs. Walter Winchell will be on in a few minutes and he’ll have the details on his newscast.”

  “What’s an atom bomb, Daddy?”

  “Well, I’m not sure, son, but evidently from what I heard out at the refinery, it must be some kind of a super bomb. Everybody said it blew the Jap city of Hiroshima nearly off the map, and a lot of people and thinking that might make the Japs surrender.”

  “Gosh, you mean the War might be over in a few days?”

  “That’s right, son; now hush. Walter Winchell is about to come on.”

  Wow, the whole family just hovered around that radio and then old Walter Winchell just started rattling:

  “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. North and South America, and all the ship at sea. Let’s go to press. August 6th, 1945, will be remembered in history at the day the first atomic bomb was used in a war. The atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, and early reports indicate the entire center of the city has been destroyed.”

  Well, Walter Winchell went on and on about the atom bomb, and then he said, “Military commanders are reviewing the situation, and based on their assessment, this might be a death blow to the Japs. An unconditional surrender could come at any time.”

  Well, let me tell you right now, me, Momma, and Daddy all just jumped up yelling we were so excited. Heck, we’d just heard the day before that Uncle J. R.’s squadron in Europe had been transferred to the Pacific, and we were worried the Japs were gonna shoot him down. Walter Winchell went off after another ten minutes, and I got to tune in a couple of my radio shows. Shoot, even listening to The Lone Ranger I couldn’t get my mind off the funny books we’d got from Rosalie, and, yeah, Rosalie being my partner was part of it.

  Shoot, I was so excited I could hardly stand it. Heck, with Rosalie’s funny books we were now over six hundred, and last week I’d talked to Doc about getting some of the funny books he couldn’t sell from the man who sold them to him. Heck, if Doc came through, we’d have all we needed. Wow, just thinking about having all them thousands of dollars that we were gonna get for the upside-down funny book made my head swim. ’Course, John Clayton griped that we’d probably given away a huge, god-awful amount of money by taking Rosalie as a partner, but, heck, having the prettiest girl in the whole entire school as a partner and maybe as a girlfriend was worth a bunch to me. I daydreamed about me and Rosalie having all that money and going to El Dorado and buying all kinda stuff, then maybe going over to the Garrett Hotel and eating a big meal in their dining room. Shoot, in a few years I’d be buying a car and no telling what else.

  I walked up to my house that afternoon in the best mood even though I knew I’d hafta help Daddy in the garden. Heck, we’d planted a big garden that spring, and, as the summer passed, I always had to work in the garden. Sometimes Daddy would have me cleaning out the weeds, or fixing the rabbit fence, or maybe picking vegetables. Heck, it would durn sure be something because they ain’t much just “sitting-around time” at my house.

  I’d been home about an hour, and I’d spent most of that time picking the vegetables I’d worked so hard to tend all summer. You know, if you don’t pick squash or okra every day, it’ll get too big, and if I bring Momma a large squash or a pod of okra that’s over three inches long, she’ll toss it aside to give the hogs. ’Course, the danged hogs is always happy to eat them vegetables, but, shoot, hogs are happy to eat almost anything. If a chicken happens to get caught pecking around in the pig pen, it’s just another meal for the hogs, and after watching our hogs gobble up snakes, fish, chickens, rats, and almost anything I threw in their pen, it got kinda hard to eat my breakfast bacon.

  I remember that day because we spent most of the first hour picking the last of them purple-hull peas. When we finished the peas, we started on the tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, squash, and peppers.Daddy absolutely loves hot peppers, and our garden always has a bunch. I’d tried a small bite of one early in the summer when they was small and hadn’t picked up all the heat that a late summer pepper would have, and my mouth felt like it was on fire. That was it for the danged peppers.

  Well, we finished picking before Momma had supper ready, so me and Daddy were just fooling around in the backyard right outside our back door. Me and old Sniffer were playing fetch with an old rag ball, and I was still in a good mood from being with Rosalie. Heck, it had been a great day, and I was just laughing and kidding around when I picked up one of the big, long, deep red peppers, one of the largest in the basket, and I held it up and said to Daddy, “I’ll bet you a dollar, I can eat this whole pepper.” Heck, I knew they weren’t no way on god’s green earth I’d want to put that pepper in my mouth, much less eat it, but if it was for a whole dollar, which would buy twenty used funny books, I might just do it.

  Well, Daddy looked at me and shook his head.

  “You know better than that.”

  Heck, he’d just tossed off the idea that I’d eat that big pepper, and it kinda made me mad, and I smarted back.

  “Well, I guess you’re ’fraid you’ll lose a dollar, huh?”

  “Son, don’t kid around. You know you’re not ’bout to eat that pepper.”

  Well, I still didn’t have any plans to even touch that danged pepper, but I wasn’t about to back down without at least mouthing off a little more.

  “Ha! ’Fraid you’re gonna lose a dollar―huh, huh; huh?”

  When I said that, with all them “huh’s,” I kinda figured I’d said way too much because I did a little chicken-like hop just to rub it in. Big mistake, a really big mistake, ’cause now I kinda had Daddy backed into a corner that I sure didn’t mean to, and here it came.

  “Richard, you just can’t stay out of trouble, can you? Okay, you’re on. Eat the pepper, or give me your dollar.”

  Dang, I really couldn’t believe he said that. Heck, I started to “uh,” and “well,” and then hemmed and hawed, trying to come up with something to get me outta the mess I was in. Eithe
r I’d back down and look like some chicken-livered little kid, or I’d try one more time to see if Daddy would back down. So I picked up the pepper and looked at him.

  “Well, Daddy, you’re fixing to lose a dollar. This is your last chance. Better get out your dollar. Hey, wait a minute. Let’s make it two dollars. Still wanna bet?”

  Shoot, I thought, that’s just about the smartest thing I’ve said in a long time, because Daddy looked a little surprised, and I started to breathe a little easier. Well, just as I was taking a deep breath, hoping he’d let me out of this mess I’d gotten myself into, he said, “I hope you have two dollars because you know durn well you’re not going to eat that whole pepper.”

  Dang, Daddy was gonna teach me a lesson about mouthing off, and on top of that, I didn’t have two dollars if I lost the bet. Shoot, I’d spent every last cent to my name buying funny books.

  Just then I had the most smartest thought I’ve had in my whole entire life, at least I thought it was at the time.

  “Okay, get your two dollars ready ’cause you’re ’bout to lose this bet!”

  Heck, I’d been trying to figure out how I could actually eat the pepper, if I had to, without setting my mouth on fire, and I’d come up with a fool-proof way. Wow, I was just about laughing as I thought about taking Daddy’s money and buying another forty used funny books.

  “Just a minute, Daddy, I’ll be right back.”I ran in the house to the kitchen, then back out in the yard to where Daddy was standing, and held up a piece of soft white bread. Daddy looked a little puzzled, but when I started peeling the crust off and wrapping the pepper in the bread, he shook his head like he thought maybe I’d outsmarted him.

  “Look, Daddy, I’m gonna wrap this pepper in this piece of bread and when I swallow it, I won’t even taste the pepper. This is gonna be the easiest two dollars I’ve ever earned!” And I danced around, holding the pepper up over my head. I was thinking, What a great idea, I’m so smart.

  “Better start gettin’ that two dollars out,” I snickered.

  Daddy looked like he thought I might have come up with something, and I thought, I’m just eleven years old, and I’ve outsmarted my daddy outta two dollars. Heck, this had been such a great day, and now I was gonna finish it out by earning some easy money and adding forty funny books to our stack.

  I smiled like a winner, waved the pepper around one more time, rolled it up in the piece of bread, and popped the bread and pepper in my mouth. Everything was working out great until I tried to swallow the bread and pepper whole. Shoot, I figured I just wasn’t trying hard enough, and I gagged a couple of times trying to swallow it. There was no way. It was way, way too big. I stood there for a long minute with my mouth completely full of white bread with a big red pepper rolled up inside, gagging as I tried to swallow everything.

  Then I made one of the most biggest mistakes of my whole entire life. I decided that if I chewed it up real, real fast―you know, just chomp down, chew like crazy, and then swallow it―I could get it down before the pepper burned my mouth. Well, I kinda counted in my mind One two, three, and then, look out, I started to chew as fast as I could. You know, I found out real quickly you can’t chew and swallow fast enough to beat the flaming heat a pepper puts out. Heck, I hadn’t even chomped down twice until it felt like a fire was in my mouth. Shoot, I was making whiny, woofing sounds, trying to chew up all that bread which, by the way, was another really dumb mistake, because it took longer to chew everything up and swallow it.

  Whoa, hold on to your dang horses! I’ve been hurt a bunch, but nothing, and I mean nothing in the whole entire world, has ever set my mouth on fire like that. Heck, after the first bite, I knew the whole pepper-eating bet was just the most stupidest thing I’d done in a long time.

  No kidding, I thought my mouth was on fire, and as fast as I chewed and swallowed the pepper, it didn’t seem to make no difference. Finally, the last bite went down, and when it cleared my throat, I screamed so loud that Daddy even jumped, and I didn’t stop. I grabbed the hose and washed my mouth out, but the pepper still had me in its grip.

  Sniffer started howling at the top of his lungs.

  Hoooooooo! Hoooooooo! Hoooooo!

  “Ahaaaaa! Ahaaaaaa! Ahaaaaaa!”

  It sounded like a boy and a dog were being murdered.

  Momma opened the kitchen door and ran out to where I was screaming, still running the hose in my mouth.

  “Richard, what’s wrong?

  “Ahaaaaa! Ahaaaaa!”

  Hooooooo! Hoooooooo!

  “Jack, what’s the matter with Richard?”

  “He just ate a whole red pepper.”

  “He what? You let him eat a whole red pepper?”

  Boy, Momma was mad now, and Daddy was backing away.

  “Sue, it was Richard’s idea.”

  Well, that wasn’t near good enough for Momma.

  “Richard’s idea? He’s just eleven years old, and you let him eat a whole red pepper?”

  Wow, Momma lit into him, accusing Daddy of everything from being mean to kids to just being really dumb.

  “Sue, listen; it really was Richard’s idea!”

  “Really, and if he had wanted to jump off the house, would you have let him?”

  “Well, no, but…”

  “But what?”

  Daddy was really crawfishing now, and nothing he could say made any difference to Momma. Momma went back into the kitchen and came back with a big spoon of fresh butter, which she put in my mouth.

  “Oh, my mouth, my mouth!” I moaned.

  Momma walked back into the kitchen after giving Daddy a stare that would scare anybody. My mouth started feeling better, and I thought, Wow, that hurt, but I won the bet.

  I walked over to Daddy and said, “You owe me two dollars.”

  “What?”

  “I ate the whole pepper. You owe me two dollars.”

  Daddy reached in his pocket and pulled out the bills, and as he gave them to me, he said, “Richard, you know you got yourself into this mess. It was your idea. Now, I want you to go in the kitchen and tell your mother exactly how all of this happened. Now, go on in, right now.”

  I hesitated. Momma durn sure wasn’t mad at me a bit. She blamed Daddy for the whole danged stupid thing, and she was so mad at him that he wouldn’t have dared go in the kitchen.

  “Well, Richard, go on in. What are you waiting for?”

  I looked at Daddy. He was upset, but not at me because he knew I was the only one who could get Momma back in a good mood. Then I had another idea. This one was really just out-of-this-world smart.

  Maybe, I can get something else outta this. I might as well try, I thought. I turned away from the kitchen door and walked back to where Daddy was standing.

  “Richard, I said go talk to your mother.”

  “Daddy, we had a bet, but it was only if I could eat the pepper. It didn’t include talkin’ to Momma.”

  “What?”

  He looked at me, and he could tell something else was coming.

  “I’ll do it for a dollar.”

  Wow, Daddy had this shocked look on his face like he couldn’t believe I had said that, but then that shocked look turned into a frown.

  “You little blackmailer! Richard, cut me a switch.”

  Shoot, I knew right then a dollar was way too much, and started dropping my price.

  “Wait a minute, Daddy. How ’bout fifty cents?”

  “Young man, you have just gotten yourself into more trouble than you can imagine.”

  I started over to cut a switch and then I had the very best smartest thought I’ve ever had. I looked back at Daddy, trying to hold back a smile, and asked, “What are you gonna tell Momma when she asks you why you’re switchin’ me?”

  “What?”

  Well, heck, I’m not the smartest kid around, but I durn sure knew Daddy didn’t want Momma any madder at him.

  He stood there looking at me for a minute, and then he gave in.

  “I can’t believ
e this, my own son! Okay, here’s fifty cents. Go talk to your mother, and you had better tell her the truth, or you’ll get the switching of your life.”

  Shoot, I started regretting not holding out for more, but I decided not to press my luck. Heck, that fifty cents would buy another ten funny books. Well, I stuck them two quarters in my pocket and jumped around like I was gonna run make things right with Momma.

  “I will, Daddy. I promise. I’ll tell her everything.” I walked into the kitchen, where Momma was setting the table.

  “Richard, how is your mouth? Do you need some more butter?”

  She came over and put her arms around me. Heck, I sure hated to pass up some of Momma’s sympathy because I could usually get a little something extra outta her, but I could see Daddy through the screen door, and I knew I’d durn sure had better tell Momma the whole story. Well, I explained what had happened and how I had just been fooling around and really didn’t think the pepper would burn, she nodded her head and stepped to the door.

  “Jack, Richard told me what happened, but you shouldn’t have let him eat the pepper, and it better not happen again.”

  Daddy knew the worst was over, and after a good meal of fresh vegetables, our

  house was back to normal.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Homer Ray schemes to get even

  A few days later, we were sitting on the breadbox talking about how Doc was gonna help us get them last one hundred and fifty funny books when Tiny came up, waving something.

  “Y’all look at this,” Tiny said.

  Well, Tiny held up a paper from Los Angeles, which was really interesting ’cause nobody, and I mean nobody, had ever seen a paper from outside of Arkansas.

  “My uncle just got back from the War, and they landed in Long Beach, California. Shoot, he brought us a whole bunch of stuff from California, and this paper was what they used to pack the crate. Heck, I’ve been all mornin’ smoothin’ it out where we could read it,” said Tiny.

  Well, Tiny had done a pretty good job of smoothing out the paper, and we spread it out on the breadbox and looked at every page. ’Course, we were really interested in the sports section, and we were pouring over it when John Clayton pointed down at a picture at the bottom of one of the pages.