Читать книгу Roy Blakeley's Elastic Hike - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 8

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We started out good and early. Gee, I guess it was as early as eight o’clock. Anyway, Bennett’s wasn’t open because Pee-wee wanted to stop in there for a soda; he doesn’t call sodas food. “It isn’t food if you drink it,” he said.

I said, “You don’t drink ice cream, do you?” He said, “Ice cream doesn’t count.”

“Will you listen to that?” Warde began, laughing. “It counts with me all right.”

Pee-wee said, “Anyway, let’s wait till Bennett’s opens.”

“Absolutely, positively, refused by a unanimous majority,” I said. “I’m the head Silver Fox and I’m the head of this pilgrimage and what I say goes, and ice cream sodas are food and we’re not going to eat anything like that till we get to the old toll-gate and Dinkey cuts D. W. in the wood.”

“Do you say ice cream is food?” the kid shouted, kind of hanging back in front of Bennett’s.

“Now we’re going to have a debate,” Warde said. “Is ice cream strawberry or vanilla and if not why should it?”

“That’s absolutely true,” I said. “It’s the truest lie I ever heard.”

All the while Dinkey was laughing so hard he could hardly stand up. I saw right away that he was going to make a good Silver Fox. All he needed was a little time to get good and crazy.

I said, “This is a swell kind of a shine——”

“You mean shrine!” Pee-wee shouted.

“We’re Silver Foxes, all except you,” I said, “and you don’t shrine silver, you shine it. I’m wrong and you’re right as I usually am. Did we start out for Bennett’s, or did we start out for the old toll-gate?”

“Do you know anything about logic?” the kid shouted.

“I know all about French history, I mean French pastry,” I said.

“Do you say you chew ice cream?” the kid wanted to know, all the while kind of hanging back. “I know because I don’t chew it, so let’s hear you answer that argument.”

“That’s not an argument,” I said. “He calls it an argument about his chewing ice cream.”

“What is it, then?” the kid shouted.

“It’s a habit,” I said.

“Do you drink it?” the kid said. “You got to either eat it or drink it. I drink it so I got a right to wait here till Bennett’s opens and have a chocolate soda.”

Warde said, “He may be right about that, maybe we’d better wait.”

Honest I wish you could have seen Dinkey Waters. He just sat down on the doorstep in front of Bennett’s and began laughing so loud he shook all over. Then Warde sat down alongside of him and I sat down alongside of Warde and the kid sat down too, and there we were all sitting in a row on the doorstep of Bennett’s having an argument about whether you chew ice cream or drink it. Some bunch of pilgrims, hey?

I said, “Well, we’ve done fine so far. We’ve come about one thirty-secondth of a mile; that was some hike! And already we’re talking about eats.”

“You mean drinks!” the kid shouted. “I said I wouldn’t eat anything and I’m not going to, not till I get there——”

“You bet you’re not,” I said.

He said, “But I can drink an ice cream soda. I’ll leave it to Dinkey, do you chew ice cream?”

“I think you absorb it,” Dinkey said.

“He doesn’t know what that word means,” Warde put in.

“Maybe you kind of press it with your tongue,” Pee-wee said. “But that’s more drinking it than eating it. Anybody that says you don’t have to chew a thing to eat it is crazy, and if you don’t chew it then it’s a beverage——”

“A which?” I asked him.

“Something that you drink,” he shouted. “You learn that in the second grade.”

“All right then,” I said, “why is a raspberry sundae? If crack means the same as split what’s the difference between a wise crack and a banana split? You could say a banana crack just as well, or a wise split, it’s the same only different. The w is silent as in hash. Come on, let’s finish our pilgrimage. We have four miles and ninety-nine one-hundredths yet to go.”

Pee-wee said, “I’m not a Silver Fox and I’m not going to be bossed by you because you’re crazy anyway, because even your sister says so.”

“You can’t believe my sister,” I said; “she’s all the time saying things about me that are true. I tell you what we’ll do, we’ll have a citizens’ jury. We’ll ask the first man that comes along if you chew ice cream and if he says no then we’ll sit here and wait till Bennett’s opens. Do you agree to that, or do you agree to it—which?”

“No, we do,” said Warde.

“Who’ll be the one to ask him?” Pee-wee wanted to know. All the while he was looking up and down the street for the girl that works in Bennett’s. I guess he often beats her there in the morning.

“I’ll be the one,” I said, “because I’m the head of this membership pilgrimage. So that’s settled because we all believe in the jury system or they wouldn’t have juries of awards in the Scouts.”

“The first man that comes along,” Warde said. “If any man should come along ahead of the first one?” Dinkey said.

“Then we’d have to start all over again,” I told him. “I see you’re going to make a dandy Silver Fox.”

So then all of a sudden along came a Chinaman.

I said, “Hey, mister, would you kindly tell me whether you drink ice cream or chew it?”

He said, “Belly good e chewey, nicey day.”

“It’s as clear as mud,” I said; “the pilgrims are ordered to all stand up and proceed upon their pilgrimage to the Shine.”

“Here comes a wop,” Dinkey shouted.

“The jury has decided,” I said, “and there will be no eats till we get to the old toll-gate.”

Just then along came the girl that works in Bennett’s. But by the time she got to the store we had started off; Pee-wee was kind of hanging behind, but he came along just the same.