Читать книгу Uncle Sam's Outdoor Magic - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 4

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Bobby took his belated way down the hill toward home. He still sullenly maintained his wish to be alone in the world, although he hoped never to see Arizona nor to hear of it again. He could not rid his mind of those dreadful words, the very thought of which seemed to stifle and suffocate him; and to make it worse, he was on the verge of a cold.

The house of Bobby’s uncle was close by the river and separated from it only by a large field. It was a simple little cottage, in very poor repair, for Mr. Clausen had always found it difficult to make two ends meet—so difficult indeed that it seemed to Bobby as if the two ends were never within a mile of each other, and the space between filled up with debts and arguments and bickerings, just as several of the broken windows were filled up with rags.

Mr. Clausen’s business was somewhat varied. He kept chickens and sold eggs; he had mushrooms growing in flat boxes in the cellar; he solicited subscriptions for a farm journal; and when he had nothing else to do, which was about two-thirds of the time, he sat in the kitchen and played an accordion.

Bobby had lived with his aunt and uncle almost ever since he could remember. His father had died when he was a very little boy, and he remembered something of the life which he and his mother had spent together afterward. It was a pleasant life, in which he had done pretty much as he pleased. Then his mother died and Bobby remembered being driven by Mr. Bronson in his buggy, over to Bridgeboro, where there was a river. The memory of his mother’s death was fresh in his mind at the time, and curiosity about his new foster-parents was not lacking; but from the moment when his future home was determined the thought uppermost in his mind was that he was going where there was a river. But sometimes when the floods came he had heard his uncle express a lazy man’s wish that he could move to a “hot, dry climate,” and he had even heard him mention Arizona.

The Clausen cottage was, indeed, as near to the river as any boy could wish, for it was at the end of one of the streets which fizzled out in the marshland bordering the stream. Just at the point where the marshland ceased to be marsh and became more or less dry land, stood the Clausen cottage. The river was about fifty yards distant, and the edge of the marsh about twenty yards distant. You could tell the Clausen cottage by the piece of brown paper which had replaced the glass in the kitchen window. There was also an “encumbrance” on the cottage, and there had been a time when Bobby had searched diligently for this, thinking that it might be some architectural feature or novelty, until he learned from the disputations of his aunt and uncle that it had something to do with money which Mr. Clausen ought to pay but never did pay.

As Bobby entered the house on this particular afternoon his aunt greeted him with her customary word of warning. She was like a signal in his path, indicating what was ahead of him. But his mood this afternoon was too sullen for her remarks to make any impression upon him. He was so thoroughly disgusted with his vacation, with the day’s experience, with everything in general, that he felt his fondest dream would be realized if he could be alone in the world like the Black Ranger, or even in Arizona, despite its hot, dry climate.

“Where have you been, Bobby?” she asked, not unkindly. “Your uncle has been looking for you since three o’clock. You’d better go right down; he’s in the cellar. Things are in a dreadful state. You should have been home two hours ago. You’ve only yourself to blame; you’d better go right down.”

Heedless of this ominous hint, Bobby descended the dark, narrow stairs and presently became aware of a condition which he might have anticipated. The cellar was flooded. The entire lower step of the stairs was under water, and his uncle’s precious mushroom-boxes were floating about clumsily. Mr. Clausen, in shirtsleeves and high rubber boots, was standing on a grocery box close to one of the windows, manipulating the dilapidated galvanized-iron pump which, first and last, had pumped water enough out of the Clausen cellar to make a lake.

Bobby had never seen it like this before. The week of incessant rain would naturally have caused high tides, but the clearing, coming with the full moon, had brought the water clear up over the marsh; it was now coming into the cellar through the cold-air box of the furnace, and it was evident that if flood-tide were not already reached another hour’s rise would submerge the adjacent land and bring the water level with the sills of the cellar windows.

“Where’ve you been?” demanded Mr. Clausen, pausing and turning indignantly to Bobby.

“I was kept in.”

“Kept in till five o’clock?”

“No. I stopped at Bronson’s; they have a flood there, too.”

“What were you kept in for?”

“For not knowing my geography and for saying I’d like to go to Arizona.”

“And do you suppose I’m going to stand here pumping my arm off while you’re loafing up at Bronson’s?”

“I didn’t know the cellar was flooded.”

“You knew it would be.”

“I didn’t think about it, but if I had thought about it I’d have plugged up the air-box opening under the porch.”

This remark had the effect of a red flag before a bull. Bobby, in his customary humor, would not have said such a thing, but his sense of accumulated wrong and dissatisfaction made him reckless of consequences, and he knew that his uncle would not miss the sting of this guarded shot. Mr. Clausen, like most lazy and inefficient men, was morbidly touchy on the point of his shiftlessness, and Bobby’s reference to a small piece of work which any intelligent person living so near the river would naturally do in the spring, precipitated the climax of the wrath which had been brewing all the afternoon.

“Oh, you would, would you?” demanded Mr. Clausen, sneeringly.

“Yes, I would,” said Bobby, with sullen frankness.

“And I must not only do the work that belongs to you, and that any boy that has a home given him free and nothing said ought to be glad to do, but I must hear my duty told me, must I?”

“I didn’t say you ought to do it; I said I’d have done it,” Bobby corrected.

“Then why didn’t you do it?” roared his uncle.

“Because I didn’t think of it,” said Bobby. For a moment he thought his uncle would strike him. “Do you want me to pump?” he asked.

“Do you think I want you to stand there and watch me?” retorted his uncle, vacating the grocery box. “You pump now till the tide turns, if it ever does, and we’ll see about your telling me my duty—we’ll settle that when you’ve finished—and whether your home is furnished you so you can loaf up at Bronson’s. Maybe you’d like to live at Bronson’s!”

“I would,” said Bobby, sullenly.

“Well, sir,” said his uncle, icily, “when you get through pumping you come up-stairs and we’ll talk things over. If you stop pumping I can hear you.”

“I ain’t going to stop—not till I have to.”

“Know what’s waiting for you, hey?”

Bobby was not afraid of what was awaiting him; it had awaited him too often, and his uncle’s vulgar inference as to why he would stick to his work made him indignant and ashamed.

“I meant I’d stick to it as long as I could—because I don’t feel good. I got a cold, and I feel hot—and it makes me dizzy. If I got something coming to me I’d rather have it now and have it over with. I’m not scared of it.”

Bobby was so honest that it stuck out all over him, and what his uncle called impertinence and insolence was usually simply the expression of his downright straightforwardness. He had a way of speaking frankly and bluntly about the whippings he received which sometimes nettled his uncle.

Mr. Clausen stamped up the stairs into the kitchen, where he forbade his wife, who had overheard the conversation, to go down and interrupt the boy, even on the pretext of giving him a cup of coffee.

Bobby began to pump, pump, pump, as he had done so many times before. The little boy who had come to Bridgeboro in high glee because there was a river there had come to find that it meant only work for him. Most of the Bridgeboro boys had canoes; their fathers were all members of the boat club; there were fishing and motor-boating and swimming; and already they were talking of the Commodore’s Run, which was to open the boating season in a week or two. Bobby could not go on this because his uncle had been dropped from the club and now denounced the club and forbade him to accept any of its hospitalities.

“If I ever hear of your going near the boat-house or taking any favors from that crowd, I’ll skin you,” Mr. Clausen had said. So Bobby eschewed the tempting boat club, just as he eschewed the Scouts because young Mr. Sprague, the real-estate man, was Scoutmaster and was not on friendly terms with Mr. Clausen on account of some mortgage or other. Yet all these people appeared to like Bobby himself, which seemed strange to him, for he had grown up to believe that a man’s enemies were also his son’s enemies, and he had never quite overcome his surprise that Mr. Bronson treated him in such a spirit of comradeship, when all the while Mr. Clausen owed Mr. Bronson some money and was forever denouncing him.

So it befell that when Bobby had a little time to himself, which was not often, he was still barred from many of the pleasures which the other boys enjoyed. He had come to hate the river, and even the springtime, for that season, which meant the painting of canoes, the overhauling of balky engines, and the hoisting of bright colors upon the boat-club cupola, meant only monotonous pumping for him. When the high tides came and the boys flocked down to see the larger boats launched, Bobby was usually in the cellar, and he would watch his schoolmates and companions enviously from the cellar windows as they went down the raised board-walk across the swamp to the boat-house. By hanging around they were pretty sure to get free rides in the “try-outs.”

As he pumped he realized that the pumping would continue now more or less for a couple of weeks. Then he would have to get out the collection of trusty old barrel-staves and lay them along in the mud outside from the front door to the back door and from the back door to the woodshed.

On this particular black Monday the water was higher in the cellar than he had ever before known it to be, but undoubtedly the tide was near to flood and would recede before the level of the windows was reached. A good deal of water was percolating through the stone foundation, however, and a good deal more coming in through the air-box.

As Bobby pumped his head seemed to swim, so dizzy was he, and he was hot and uncomfortable. If he needed any proof of his theory that no fun was to be had with water, here it was in abundance, for even after the rain had ceased and the bright spring sunshine come at last, the water still bothered him and made him weary and discouraged.

“I was right, anyway,” he said to himself, as he pumped away. “And that will be a good argument for Mr. Bronson when I see him. Gee! but up there it’s better—that kind of a flood.”

It was rather more interesting—the flood up at Bronson’s—than this accumulation in the gloomy cellar with the mushroom-boxes floating aimlessly about. They were getting some fun out of it at Bronson’s, too, and it would never reach the house, that was sure, because the ditch that wound its way through the rhododendron bushes would carry off most of the water before it got that far.

There was an idea, thought Bobby, as he worked the long pump-handle up and down—there was a bully idea! His uncle had been talking of getting the little three-horse-power gasoline engine which Warren had discarded from his boat and using it to pump in the cellar—sometime or other—if Warren would let him pay for it at some future time. Why wouldn’t it be a good idea to dig a ditch along the side of the house so that the water would flow into it and be carried off to the sewer, maybe, or back to the river?

This idea, which he believed wholly original, struck him so forcibly that he resolved to make a venture upon it. He would pause for a few minutes’ rest, go up into the kitchen for a drink of water (for he was very thirsty), get his leather glove, for the pump-handle was blistering his hand, and tell his uncle about his idea.

He found his aunt and uncle in the kitchen. Mr. Clausen was sitting with his feet in the oven, and it was evident to Bobby that his aunt had been championing him, and that his uncle was in a very disagreeable mood.

“I got an idea,” said Bobby. “It ain’t what I came up for—I came up to get a drink and to give my hand a rest for a minute.”

“Does your head ache, Robby?” asked his aunt, looking at his flushed face.

“It don’t exactly ache, but I was thinking if sometime I dug a ditch along outside the house like the Scouts have when they go camping—that’s one thing that put it in my head—Roy Blakely told me about how they dig drain ditches to keep the water from getting into the tents, and up at Bronson’s—”

“Have you pumped all that water out?” asked Mr. Clausen, in ominous disregard of Bobby’s great idea.

“Let him tell us,” urged his aunt, weakly. “Yes, Robby?”

It was characteristic of Bobby that his sullenness should have all but vanished in the light of his sudden inspiration, and that he should have forgotten even the threatened punishment in his generous anxiety to lay his idea before his uncle. And now, as he stood, with his enthusiasm somewhat dashed by Mr. Clausen’s icy tone, his sopping trousers clinging to his legs, plainly sick, and embarrassed at the unexpected turn of affairs, he was a pitiable figure. He was quick to take the little grain of encouragement his aunt offered, and he smiled at her and began again.

“I was—”

“Have you finished pumping?” interrupted Mr. Clausen, coldly.

“N-no, I haven’t— I just— I’m going down again—”

Mr. Clausen withdrew his feet slowly from the oven, pushed his chair back, arose leisurely, and said, “Go up-stairs.”

“Let him tell us,” urged Mrs. Clausen.

“Go up-stairs,” Mr. Clausen repeated, ignoring her.

Mrs. Clausen had learned from bitter experience not to cross her husband. More than once she had flared up, only to find that her protests made Bobby’s lot all the harder.

“I’d—I’d—rather have it now, anyway,” he said to her, “because then I can pump without having to think about it—and, anyway, it gives me a rest—kind of.”

He went manfully up the stairs, his uncle following silently, and left his aunt wringing her hands and crying in the kitchen.

The little “rest” was soon over. Bobby came down the stairs drawing quick, spasmodic breaths, and descended into the cellar. Mr. Clausen walked grimly over to the kitchen cupboard and stood something in a corner within it. Presently the rattling of the loose old pump-handle could be heard again.

When it was nearly dark Bobby pushed up the slanting bulkhead doors and stole quietly out to look about him. Evidently no one was in the kitchen. His head was aching cruelly, his hand was blistered, his arm stiff and weary, and a sense of humiliation was upon him, not from the thought of anything wrong that he had done, but because he had been the victim of a whipping and he hated to face his aunt and uncle afterward. He always felt that way; he did not know why.

Moreover, he was conscious of another feeling which he had not known so much as a little boy. His uncle’s continual reference to his dependence, to the fact that he was “given a home,” were beginning to sting him and, together with the frequent punishments, had begun to touch his pride. He was more stoical about the whippings than he used to be, but they left him with a sense of shame which he could not overcome.

And now, as he stepped wearily out into the waning light, all the disappointment and sense of wrong of that trying week, that long-anticipated Easter vacation, descended upon him. He had done nothing so very wrong, but he had had endless trouble.

“Cracky, but that hurts!” said he, shaking his blistered hand. “There’s some kind of stuff—some kind of ointment—the Scouts use. I wish I knew what it was.”

As he looked about him he realized that he had never before seen such a tide. A little way down-stream toward the boat club the whole field was flooded, and the willow-trees on the club-house lawn seemed to be growing out of the water. Bobby noticed that the floats were higher than the boat-house porch, so that the gangways slanted up to them rather than down. The rectangular “slip” in which the launches floated in their outriggers was entirely obliterated, and the water, encroaching up as far as the tennis-courts, was lapping against the blocks under the boats which were not yet launched. The gangway which extended across the marsh from the boat-house up to River Street looked like a floating pontoon, the water so high beneath it that its supporting timbers were not visible. If the water kept on rising for another half-hour, Bobby thought, the boat-house would be cut off from approach except by rowboat.

Along this walk, which now formed the sole connecting link between the boat-house and the town, a group of club members, with the usual trailing accompaniment of boys, was wending its way homeward. They were evidently taking the high tide as a matter of course, though never before had any of them got their feet wet walking on the wooden gangway.

Bobby, looking from the open bulkhead of the cellar, could hear their laughter as they passed along. There was Tom Van Arlen, with two boys after him, carrying gasoline-cans. There were Wood and Blakely laboring under an inverted canoe, their heads buried in its interior. There was Warren, with a long boathook and a can, probably a paint-can, on the end of it, trudging along like a peddler with his pack. As Bobby looked some one in the rear stooped and, rising, threw a saturated bailing-sponge at one of the boys ahead. Bobby could hear them laughing as they passed out of sight.

Something, he did not know what, made his eyes fill. Perhaps it was just because he was unhappy and disappointed and not feeling good, but it was odd that this boy who could be as stoical as an Indian under physical pain often found himself crying for some reason which he could not explain. In any event, as he looked at the colors on the boat-house cupola, the emblem seemed bespangled, because his eyes were full of tears, and he saw something else, too, which made him rub his eyes with his sleeve to get a clearer look.

A little apart from the other boats and closer to the slip stood Mr. Wentworth’s big cruising launch. Only the upper part of its blocking could be seen, for the land on which it stood was quite submerged, and as Bobby looked at it the bow, which faced him, seemed to wabble a little.

He blinked his eyes and wiped them with his sleeve again and looked hard and long. Sure enough, it was no trick of imagination—Wentworth’s boat was, not exactly moving, but just staggering a little in its blocks. It was still confined, but it was floating.

It would be hard to say just what prompted Bobby to start across that flooded marsh toward Wentworth’s boat. His first thought was to find the anchor, if he could, and cast it into the submerged land to prevent the boat from drifting away. But I suspect, too, that he was glad of an excuse to get away from the house and to be by himself, whatever the consequences. His mood was reckless and perhaps this heedless errand offered him the chance he wanted. Perhaps he was curious to see the inside of that wonderful launch, though, goodness knows, he might have had a hundred rides in it if it hadn’t been for his uncle. For Mr. Wentworth called Bobby “Bobboriums,” and was in the habit of plucking the boy’s hat from his tously head and handing it to him politely when he met him, which was a sign that he liked him immensely.