Читать книгу Pee-wee Harris, Mayor for a Day - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 10

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It was Thursday and already the anniversary celebration up in Little Valley was on. On Saturday night the new Chipmunk Patrol was to hike up through the woods under Pee-wee’s skillful guidance and contribute to the big concluding program. A great piece of luck had befallen Pee-wee on this very day; the Jansens had returned to Bridgeboro from Europe and Wendy and Billy Jansen (former scouts and good ones at that) had been recruited to make a full patrol. This windfall had so elated Pee-wee that he was celebrating it by sitting on the slanting cellar doors eating a huge and toppling piece of cake, when Bully Bulton strolled around from the lawn and sat down fraternally beside him.

“H’lo, Walt,” said he.

No one ever called Pee-wee Walt; his family called him Walter. Pee-wee was his universal name, though his proper title was Scout Harris.

He glanced sideways in the midst of a huge bite as if to inquire the reason for this chummy salutation. Charlie Bulton sat down beside him.

“What are you doing around this neighborhood?” Pee-wee inquired. He had had many verbal encounters with Bulton, but it is to his credit that he cherished no enmities. You could be friends with Pee-wee by simply being friends with him. Or if you preferred to jolly or assail him he would gladly meet you on that ground. He never seemed to remember his mortal combats, perhaps because he had so many of them. “I got a full patrol,” he said. “They’re all going to take the oath when the troop meets next Friday. I’m going to have them in that troop, it’ll make four patrols.”

Charlie was not much interested in scout procedure. “You got a full troop, hey?” he asked.

“Not a troop, a patrol,” Pee-wee said. “A full patrol is eight scouts; gee whiz, don’t you know that? A troop is three or four patrols.”

“How do you expect me to know when I never had a chance to be in one?” Bulton said.

“You had lots of chances,” said Pee-wee; “any feller’s got chances.”

“Maybe I didn’t have sense enough when I had a chance,” Bulton said.

“Now you admit you haven’t got sense,” Pee-wee said, assailing the last crumbling remnant of cake.

Bully Bulton had often encountered Pee-wee as an adversary, but he had never appealed to him as a political power. The situation was new.

“Why don’t you start a patrol?” Pee-wee said. “Anyway, nobody’d join it because you’re so fresh and bossy.”

These words from the throne caused Charlie to pause and consider his course. “I’d like to join your patrol, that’s one thing,” he said. “I never meant to be fresh with you.”

“Anyway, I don’t care because I can be just as fresh as you can,” Pee-wee said.

Charlie saw that not much was to be gained by remorse. “If you and I were in together we could have some patrol all right,” he said.

“Just the same I’d be the leader of it,” Pee-wee warned.

“Sure you would; who’d try to stop you? Only we’d have a hundred dollars to start with and that’s something, I hope to tell you.”

“Who would?”

“We would.”

“I bet you haven’t got as much as twenty cents,” Pee-wee said.

“I bet my father has.”

“Maybe he has, but I’m not talking about him,” Pee-wee said. “Anyway, I got a full patrol.”

“Yes, full of what?” Charlie sneered. “Hey, listen here, Walt; this is honest and true I’m telling you. My old man says he’ll give a hundred dollars to any patrol I pick out to join.” This was not exactly what Mr. Bulton had said, for he knew something of his son’s status with the Bridgeboro boys. It was to be no matter of autocratic choice with the unpopular Charlie. “I guess a little, ole hundred dollars would start a new patrol off pretty good, hey? And he’d give another couple of hundred, too, after he saw we got started.” This latter announcement was altogether unauthorized.

“Do you expect me to believe that?” Pee-wee asked.

“I’ll take you to my father and you can ask him,” said Bulton. “Only what’s the use as long as you got a full patrol?”

“Scouts can find ways,” Pee-wee said.

And indeed he found many ways through trackless woods as well as over difficulties. But he knew in his heart that he could not stretch a scout patrol to include nine boys. He was the grand champion fixer, but here was something that he could not fix. For it was already fixed:

Scout Harris, patrol leader

Willis Harlen

Eddie Carlo

Bruno Liventi

Tasca Liventi

Peter Tower

Wendy Jansen

Billy Jansen.

It was fixed better than in Pee-wee’s fondest dreams.