Читать книгу The Poignant Years - Horace N. Robinson - Страница 11

Their name was Montgomery and they lived across the street from Skippy. They were old and had a coal-burning stove and Mr. Montgomery used a wide-mouthed spittoon. Their house smelled stale as if it had not known fresh air in a decade, kind of like their privy that Mrs. Montgomery called “the closet.”

Granddad taught Skippy to pick up kindling for the old couple soon after the boy started walking. Although the correlation between the twigs of wood and the coal stove was not entirely clear, the kindling gathering soon became a daily ritual in the winter.

Sometimes Mrs. Montgomery would give Skippy a cherry fried pie when he knocked on the door with the kindling. They had three cherry trees and several other fruit trees out by the closet, and a big apple tree right outside Mrs. Montgomery’s kitchen window.

Through the Eyes of a Child

The Fall of Man

Temptation:

The summer was hot and the lone cement step on the front porch was hard, but it made a good place to sit while the sun meandered in and out of the large green leaves of the Sycamore.

Skippy had been watching the apples grow on the big tree just outside Mrs. Montgomery’s kitchen window for weeks. The heaviness of the fruit now brought the branches low and three just-turned-red apples bounced in the wind in wild syncopation.

He could just taste the sweetness! Besides, he knew that Mrs. Montgomery lay down for a nap in mid-afternoon. And he was willing to wait for his chance.

“I can reach the first one with a jump,” he thought, and a quick dash across the street allowed him to work his plan. The first leap he touched the fruit, but the slickness of the apple’s skin made it impossible to grasp. But with another run and an even higher jump, he snared the apple in both hands and ripped it from its limb before tumbling onto the grass.

Now that the technique had been mastered, Skippy backed up farther and made an even faster run and greater leap for apple number two. But this time, he was not even close, as the wind at the very last instant bounced the fruit heavenward and out of reach. With a sigh, the boy grasped his prize, apple number one, and shoved it deep into his overall pocket. He was prepared to dash home, when just as suddenly the wind drove apple number two earthward. Skippy stood flat footed and jumped as high as he could. Using the two-handed method gained in baseball, he clamped onto the low-hanging fruit and snapped it from its mooring. Into the left overall pocket it went, and across the street Skippy scurried to hide in his secret place and suck in the sweetness.

Indulgence:

His secret place was a discarded rodeo trailer that had no wheels. It was rounded in front, resembling an ancient chariot. A big steer was hooked to the trailer in its rodeo days and it was painted a bright red and decorated with white skull and crossbones.

It was a faded pink now and had been parked by the cow barn for years. Skippy first found it playing Hide and Seek, but soon it became his “secret place.”

With two just-turned-red apples bulging from his pockets, he slinked into the shelter of the trailer. Tiny teeth broke the slick skin of the apple and sugary juice ran down his face. Although he did not know any Scripture, he understood “Stolen bread is sweet.”

A second apple met its fate as the well-hidden boy wiped his face and leaned contentedly against the concave front of the trailer.

Consequence:

The apple juice had not quite dried on his plump cheeks when he heard his grandmother’s call. Skippy dragged himself from his secret place but quickly heightened his pace toward his grandmother to feign innocence. He had never seen his grandma look so stern.

“What made you do such a trick?”

“I dunno.”

“You will need to ask Mrs. Montgomery to forgive you. She won’t look at you the same anymore.”

“Why?”

“Why?—What if people stole from each other all the time? What kind of world would we live in? And what about your reputation? Do you want to be known as ‘Skippy, the thief?’”

“How did you know, Grandma—who saw me?”

“Who saw you isn’t the issue, young sprout! As a matter of fact, we all saw you—the Montgomerys, Mr. Marsh, the Kidd family—and God saw you.”

“He did?”

“Mrs. Montgomery uses those first-ripened apples to make apple butter. You eat it on your biscuits during the winter. She thinks she is paying you back for all your kindlin’ gatherin’.”

“She does?”

Days turned into weeks and weeks into a month. Skippy was hoping that Grandma had forgotten his trip to the Montgomery’s for the confession. But it was not to be; Grandma never forgot anything.

“Sonny Boy—come go with me. Mrs. Montgomery has asked to see you.”