“Hey, look at this!”
It was a picture of a giant tug-a-war with a whole bunch of men trying to pull each other through a big pit of mud.
Well, that was the best picture in the paper, and we sat around and talked about it for a long time. We were just about to go home for dinner when that sorry Homer Ray walked up.
“Hey, what are the dummies up to now?”
“We’re readin’ a newspaper from Los Angles, California,” said Tiny.
Homer Ray moved over to where he could see what Tiny was looking at, and Tiny pointed to the picture of the tug-a-war.
Well, Homer Ray kinda laughed, and then he looked at our bunch of guys, and I could see that pea brain of his trying to think. ’Course, we knew he was trying to come up with some way to get back at us for the red-food-dye trick. My gosh, everybody in town would just laugh when Homer Ray walked by.
“Wanta have a tug-a-war? My bunch against yours.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah, you get twenty kids and I’ll get twenty, and we’ll have a giant tug-a-war.”
“Nah, we’re not stupid, Homer Ray. Heck, you’re a bunch bigger than we are,” said John Clayton.
“Oh, I figured that, you bunch of chickens, you yellow-belly, sap-sucking cowards, bunch a whiny babies. Hell, I’m just one person. Y’all will have twenty and I’ll have twenty, and look at Tiny. He’s bigger that any two kids I could ever get on my team.” ’Course, that made us all so mad we couldn’t see straight, and, heck, he was right about Tiny, so I said, “Okay, Homer Ray, we’ll get up a team, and Saturday afternoon after we get back from the picture show at the Ritz, we’ll have the tug-a-war.”
“Okay, I’ll find a good place, and let you know where.”
“Fine, Homer Ray. You pick the place, and we’ll be there,” I said.
I guess it didn’t seem to be no big deal, just twenty kids trying to pull each other through what I figured would be a big mud hole. Shoot, as hot as it was, getting pulled through a mud hole might be fun.
But I knew one thing: That worthless Homer Ray is one sneaky kid, and he was so mad about the “blood” water in the baptistery that he was bound and determined to get back at me and John Clayton. Well, so what if his team beat us in a tug-a-war?
The next day Homer Ray came by the breadbox, and we started talking about where we’d have the tug-a-war.
“I’ve found the perfect place,” Homer Ray said. “Y’all come on and follow me.”
We followed Homer Ray over to the town baseball field, and he kept going until he was behind the left field fence. Heck, we figured he wanted to do the tug-a-war on the ball field, but, no, he’d found a spot that just made a shiver go up my back.
“We’re gonna do the pulling right here. Y’all told me to pick the place, and this is it. Your bunch will be over there, and I’ll have my team over here. All you gotta do is to pull all of us across to this side—not just one kid, but you gotta pull everybody across the line.”
“You must think we’re crazy, Homer Ray,” I said. “They ain’t no way on god’s green earth I’m gonna have a tug-a-war in a bull nettle patch.”
“’Fraid your gonna lose? You yellow-bellies, whiny little cowards. Hell, if you win, you’ll pull us through that bunch of bull nettle. And listen, you can’t go back on your word. You agreed I could pick the place.”
I looked at our bunch of guys, and they were mad as I was. Shoot, I figured Tiny could at least fall down, and we might not win, but surely they couldn’t pull Tiny all the way through that bull nettle patch.
“Okay, we’ll do it,” I said. My team looked a little unsure, but I whispered, “They’ll never pull Tiny through that bull nettle. He’s too heavy.”
Well, everybody felt a little better, and we left to go start getting up a team. Heck, that proved to be a lot harder that I had ever figured since Homer Ray had already picked all of the bigger kids for his team. The next day we were up sixteen kids, and some of those kids were real little, when two colored boys, Joe Rel Henry and his brother, Billy Ray, came by the breadbox.
Wow, when I looked at Billy Ray and saw his arms and legs, I knew for durn sure we needed him on our team.
“Billy Ray, Joe Rel, we’re gonna have the biggest tug-a-war Norphlet has ever seen, and we need y’all to be on our team.”
’Course, they were ready to join, but I figured I’d better show them the bull nettle patch just to be sure they wouldn’t chicken out when the pulling started. Well, it took some tall talking to convince them that we weren’t gonna get pulled into the bull nettle because we had Tiny as our anchor. Finally, they said okay, but we still needed two more kids to fill out our team.
Those last two boys turned out to be really hard to find and we were just about to have to pick a couple of fifth-graders, which would probably put us real close to being pulled into the bull nettle, when Connie walked up.
“Hear y’all are tryin’ to get up a tug-a-war team,” she said.
“Yeah, Connie, and we’re having a lot of trouble. Homer Ray has already picked the biggest kids, and we might have to settle for a couple of fifth-graders. Do you know anybody that might be good at pullin’?”
“Yeah, I sure do.”
“Really? Who?”
Connie kinda grinned and said, “Me and Naomi.”
“This ain’t a girl’s thing, Connie. Boys only,” said John Clayton.
Whoa, John Clayton shouldn’t have said that because Connie just reached over and gave John Clayton’s arm a twist until he was whining like a little fourth-grader.
“You think me and Naomi can’t out-pull you guys?”
Well, I knew for danged sure I wasn’t gonna find out. Heck, who’d want a couple of girls to show them up? Yeah, I knew right then we had our team, and Homer Ray might make fun of us since we had a couple of colored boys and two girls, but, heck, I thought we sure might surprise him. We walked the girls over to behind the baseball field and showed them the bull nettle patch. Shoot, they just laughed. I kinda felt a little funny since me and John Clayton had whined so much about it, but, hey, let me tell you about bull nettle.Shoot, there ain’t nothing that hurts as bad as stepping on a bull nettle bush. Them bushes grow about a foot high, and they’re real full of bright green leaves that when you look at them real close, you can see little thorns. Heck, those little-bitty stickers don’t look like they could hurt nobody, but let me tell you something: You step in a bull nettle bush, and you’ll think your foot is on fire. Oh, dang, I can’t even tell you how much it hurts, and they ain’t but one thing to do if you do step in one: You gotta pee on your foot. Yeah, I know that sounds kinda bad, but it’s the only way to stop your foot from just burning off. I don’t know how that sorry Homer Ray found that patch of bull nettle, but it was solid green leaves about five feet wide and maybe ten feet long. The rope would be stretched across the bull nettle patch with the white flag right in the middle of the rope. Heck, just standing there looking at that patch of bull nettle made me take a deep breath, and I’ll tell you one thing, there was gonna be some desperate pulling to keep from getting pulled through that stuff.
Well, we had our team, and after me and John Clayton borrowed a long piece of thick rope from the refinery where Daddy worked, we were ready. ’Course, Momma and Daddy thought we were just gonna play a game of tug-a-war with some other kids. They didn’t have no idea we were gonna try and pull each other though a patch of bull nettle. Shoot, they’d have a duck dying fit, if they knew what we were up to.
It was three days until Saturday, and I was already getting excited.
After we got everybody lined up to at the baseball field at two on Saturday we stopped by the newsstand to see Doc, because we were still around one hundred and fifty funny books short.
My gosh, we’d spent every cent we could come up with and had traded nearly everything we owned to get that many funny books. Heck, I’d even traded my prize, store-bought, bow and arrow set to Tiny for fifty funny books. ’Course, I thought Rosa
lie might help us with the extra money we needed, but she told us her daddy had seen her giving away all her funny books, and he’d told her she wasn’t gonna get another cent to buy new ones, if she could give all her old ones away.
But that didn’t matter ’cause Doc had kinda told me that he’d see what he could do about getting some of the old unsold funny books from the man who worked for the funny book company. We ran into the newsstand and I yelled at Doc, “Doc did the man say he’d let us have the unsold funny books?”
“No, Richard, he said it was against company rules for any customer to get the unsold funny books.”
“Aw, Doc, that was our last hope. We’ll never get those last one hundred and fifty funny books.”
Doc kinda smiled and leaned back in his wheelchair.
“Well, Richard, there just might be a way for you and John Clayton to get those funny books.”
“Really, Doc? How?”
“Well, the man did say he couldn’t let the customer have the unsold funny books, but he did say I could buy them from ’em.”
“Gosh, Doc, that’d be great, and then we could buy ’em from you. Is that right?”
“That’s right, Richard, but y’all would have to pay me the wholesale price.”
I was nodding my head ’cause I sure figured the wholesale price was just a few cents, and we could come up with a few dollars if we had to.
“How many do you need?”
“At least, one hundred and sixty, Doc.” I’d added a few more than we actually needed because some of our funny books didn’t have covers on them, and I didn’t want Ears to back out of the trade just because of that. Doc kinda frowned when I said that.
“Okay, let me see what that they’re going to cost you.”
Doc took a pad and started figuring and then turned it up for me to read. He’d circled twenty-six dollars and eighty cents.
“Oh my gosh, Doc; we ain’t got twenty-six eighty. I bet we don’t have a dollar between us―and why is it that much?” I said.
“Listen, Richard, you told me a few weeks ago that you needed two hundred twenty out-of-date funny books, and I bought them with the understanding you’d pay me for them. Now I’m not about to eat these worthless funny books that nobody wants. You’ve gotta take ’em off my hands.”
“Well, yeah, Doc, we did need two hundred and twenty a couple of weeks ago, but we don’t need that many now. Heck, we want all the funny books, Doc, but there ain’t no way on god’s green earth we can come up with the money, well, unless, you could loan us the money.”
“Richard, you know I have a hard and fast rule―no credit for anyone, and that certainly means you.”
“Aw, Doc, it really wouldn’t be credit. Heck, let’s just figure how long it would take me to pay you if I delivered the papers for free, or if you don’t want to do that, then maybe you could just sell them old funny books.” Heck, I knew one thing for danged sure: Doc wasn’t gonna hold on to that bunch of Archie and Veronica and them other sorry funny books, that nobody wanted.
Well, Doc gave me one of them hard looks, muttered something, and then got out his pad and pencil again. “Humm, let’s see; okay, it’ll take you nine weeks of free paper deliveries to pay for these funny books. Is that a deal?”
“Yeah, Doc. Where are the funny books?” Heck, we were so excited I’d have delivered papers free for a whole year just to get them. Well, Doc took us in the back room, and there they were―a big stack of funny books that nobody wanted. We grabbed them up and headed for John Clayton’s house, where we were storing the funny books. We ran into Rosalie on the way to John Clayton’s, and she was as excited as we were.
Wow, was that a lot of funny books. It took three wagons to carry all of them, but when we counted out the last batch, “Seven ninety-nine, eight hundred! Yes, we’ve got ’em! Head for Ears’s house!” I yelled.
We pulled the three wagons of funny books down the sidewalk, and soon we were in Ears’s front yard, yelling for him.
“Ears! Ears! Come here! Hurry! We’ve got the eight hundred funny books!” we were screaming. Listen, I’ve never been so excited in my whole entire life. Well, Ears came out in a few minutes and walked over to the three wagon loads of funny books.
“My gosh, y’all really did get eight hundred. I can’t believe it.”
“They’re all here, Ears. Count ’em if you don’t believe us,” I said.
Ears stood there for a few seconds, and I thought he might be backing outta the trade so I pulled out the paper Ears had signed.
“Okay, Ears, look at this paper. You changed the six hundred to eight hundred, and then you signed. We’ve got the eight hundred funny books and we’re here to trade. Go get the upside-down funny book or give us twenty dollars, and we’ll keep the funny books.”
Ears really wanted to back out, but he finally walked back in his house and came out with the upside-down funny book.
“No trade till I count ’em,” he said.
Well, I’d counted them funny books three times, and it was a slow job, so me, Rosalie, and John Clayton went over and set on Ears’s front steps while he slowly counted the stacks. My gosh, after the first count, Ears went back over each stack of fifty again until he finally stood up and nodded. “Y’all has got ’em. Here’s the upside-down funny book.”
I was so excited I could hardly breathe, and when Ears finally handed me the upside-down funny book. John Clayton and Rosalie yelled out, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” and we walked off leaving Ears with eight hundred funny books.
’Course, we couldn’t keep how much the upside-down funny book was worth a secret now, even if we had wanted to, and before we’d even left downtown, we had told five or six kids. John Clayton had even torn out the World Book page and when he showed kids how much the upside-down stamps were worth, they all just couldn’t believe it. Freckles, John Clayton’s little girlfriend, came up right before we left town, and he ran over to tell her.
“Freckles, I have got some really exciting news. Look at this!” John Clayton gave her the World Book page and pointed to the upside-down stamps and showed her Ears’s upside-down funny book. ’Course, she’d seen the funny book when Ears brought it to class, but she sure didn’t know about the upside-down stamps being worth so much.
“We traded Ears eight hundred funny books for it. We’re rich! If a little old stamp is worth thousands of dollars, ain’t no telling how much a big funny book is worth.”
Freckles said, “Oh, John Clayton, that’s wonderful. You’re so smart! Gosh, it’s gonna be great to know somebody that’ll have a lot of money.”
Finally, John Clayton said, “Uh, well, thanks, Freckles, but don’t worry none. Me and Richard have talked, and we’ve decided that a lot of money ain’t gonna change us a bit. We’ll still be just Richard and John Clayton, and we’ll have the same friends.”
’Course, nobody had ever told John Clayton he was smart before, and I nearly cackled out loud listening to Freckles bragging on him. But were we gonna change the way we treated our friends? I didn’t think so, but thinking back on it, we were changing right then, because we were strutting around like we were crown princes or something.
Finally, after showing the upside-down funny book to every kid we could find, we went back to my house where we hid it under my bed in a box of old clothes.
That next day we bragged a little bit more to the kids we hadn’t seen downtown, and then we started talking about how to sell the upside-down funny book and get the money. My gosh, Rosalie was just right at my side every minute, and when we were downtown, she’d hold my hand. Heck, it didn’t take any time for everybody in town to find out about the upside-down funny book, and we’d just about worn out the World Book page showing it to everybody.
Then the three of us started talking about how to sell the upside-down funny book.
“Heck, I can tell you one thing, John Clayton; there ain’t no way to sell it here in Norphlet or in El Dorado. We have to find someone that collects weird funny books
, and they’ll buy it.”
“Yeah, but how? And who? Where are we gonna find those collectors?” said Rosalie.
“I don’t know, Rosalie, but they probably live somewhere like New York City or California. Say, maybe if we write the people who publish the funny books, they could give us some names and tell us how much the upside-down funny book is worth,” I said.
“Oh, Richard, that’s so smart. You are just the smartest boy in the world to think of things like that,” said Rosalie. Heck, I was just beaming because she moved over closer to me and gave me a little squeeze.
Well, John Clayton kinda frowned at Rosalie because he sure knew I wasn’t the smartest kid around, and he was just putting up with Rosalie, but he nodded. He thought that was a great idea so we looked on the page where it told the publishing company and got an address. You might know—it was in New York City. Wow, I was just breathing real hard just writing them the letter. We mailed it that afternoon.
Dear Publishing Company: We have one of your Captain Marvel funny books where the cover is printed upside-down. Can you give us the name of someone who buys this kind of funny book and tell us how much the funny book is worth?
Thank you.
Richard Mason, Rosalie Davis, John Clayton Reed
I went to sleep that night thinking about what I’d do with all the money we were gonna get for the upside-down funny book. A fur coat for Momma, and a new car for Daddy, and Rosalie! Rosalie! What will I buy her?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Bull Nettle Battle
August 17, 1944
It was another hot summer day, and the temperature had jumped up to over ninety by the time I’d finished my paper route. ’Course, I was still excited about us having the upside-down funny book, but the big tug-a-war through the bull nettle patch was coming up right after we got back from the picture show at the Ritz. That morning before we left for the picture show, I walked over to where we were going to have the tug-a-war, and oh my gosh, I started getting the willies. You know, standing there looking at that bull nettle patch, knowing there was sure a danged good chance I’d get pulled through it that afternoon. Heck, my brain was just clicking trying to figure out some way outta that mess, and then something came to me.
Lyin' Like a Dog, The Yankee Doctor, The Danged Swamp! 3-Volume set Page 12