“Hello,” said Claude, bustling5 in as if he were in a great hurry. “Have you seen Ernest Havel? I thought I might find him in here.”
Bayliss swung round in his swivel chair to return a plough catalogue to the shelf. “What would he be in here for? Better look for him in the saloon.” Nobody could put meaner insinuations into a slow, dry remark than Bayliss.
Claude’s cheeks flamed with anger. As he turned away, he noticed something unusual about his brother’s face, but he wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of asking him how he had got a black eye. Ernest Havel was a Bohemian, and he usually drank a glass of beer when he came to town; but he was sober and thoughtful beyond the wont6 of young men. From Bayliss’ drawl one might have supposed that the boy was a drunken loafer.
At that very moment Claude saw his friend on the other side of the street, following the wagon7 of trained dogs that brought up the rear of the procession. He ran across, through a crowd of shouting youngsters, and caught Ernest by the arm.
“Hello, where are you off to?”
“I’m going to eat my lunch before show-time. I left my wagon out by the pumping station, on the creek8. What about you?”
“I’ve got no program. Can I go along?”
Ernest smiled. “I expect. I’ve got enough lunch for two.”
“Yes, I know. You always have. I’ll join you later.”
Claude would have liked to take Ernest to the hotel for dinner. He had more than enough money in his pockets; and his father was a rich farmer. In the Wheeler family a new thrasher or a new automobile9 was ordered without a question, but it was considered extravagant10 to go to a hotel for dinner. If his father or Bayliss heard that he had been there-and Bayliss heard everything they would say he was putting on airs, and would get back at him. He tried to excuse his cowardice11 to himself by saying that he was dirty and smelled of the hides; but in his heart he knew that he did not ask Ernest to go to the hotel with him because he had been so brought up that it would be difficult for him to do this simple thing. He made some purchases at the fruit stand and the cigar counter, and then hurried out along the dusty road toward the pumping station. Ernest’s wagon was standing under the shade of some willow12 trees, on a little sandy bottom half enclosed by a loop of the creek which curved like a horseshoe. Claude threw himself on the sand beside the stream and wiped the dust from his hot face. He felt he had now closed the door on his disagreeable morning.
Ernest produced his lunch basket.
“I got a couple bottles of beer cooling in the creek,” he said. “I knew you wouldn’t want to go in a saloon.”
“Oh, forget it!” Claude muttered, ripping the cover off a jar of pickles13. He was nineteen years old, and he was afraid to go into a saloon, and his friend knew he was afraid.
After lunch, Claude took out a handful of good cigars he had bought at the drugstore. Ernest, who couldn’t afford cigars, was pleased. He lit one, and as he smoked he kept looking at it with an air of pride and turning it around between his fingers.
The horses stood with their heads over the wagon-box, munching14 their oats. The stream trickled15 by under the willow roots with a cool, persuasive16 sound. Claude and Ernest lay in the shade, their coats under their heads, talking very little. Occasionally a motor dashed along the road toward town, and a cloud of dust and a smell of gasoline blew in over the creek bottom; but for the most part the silence of the warm, lazy summer noon was undisturbed. Claude could usually forget his own vexations and chagrins17 when he was with Ernest. The Bohemian boy was never uncertain, was not pulled in two or three ways at once. He was simple and direct. He had a number of impersonal18 preoccupations; was interested in politics and history and in new inventions. Claude felt that his friend lived in an atmosphere of mental liberty to which he himself could never hope to attain19. After he had talked with Ernest for awhile, the things that did not go right on the farm seemed less important. Claude’s mother was almost as fond of Ernest as he was himself. When the two boys were going to high school, Ernest often came over in the evening to study with Claude, and while they worked at the long kitchen table Mrs. Wheeler brought her darning and sat near them, helping20 them with their Latin and algebra21. Even old Mahailey was enlightened by their words of wisdom.
Mrs. Wheeler said she would never forget the night Ernest arrived from the Old Country. His brother, Joe Havel, had gone to Frankfort to meet him, and was to stop on the way home and leave some groceries for the Wheelers. The train from the east was late; it was ten o’clock that night when Mrs. Wheeler, waiting in the kitchen, heard Havel’s wagon rumble22 across the little bridge over Lovely Creek. She opened the outside door, and presently Joe came in with a bucket of salt fish in one hand and a sack of flour on his shoulder. While he took the fish down to the cellar for her, another figure appeared in the doorway23; a young boy, short, stooped, with a flat cap on his head and a great oilcloth valise, such as pedlars carry, strapped24 to his back. He had fallen asleep in the wagon, and on waking and finding his brother gone, he had supposed they were at home and scrambled25 for his pack. He stood in the doorway, blinking his eyes at the light, looking astonished but eager to do whatever was required of him. What if one of her own boys, Mrs. Wheeler thought. . . . She went up to him and put her arm around him, laughing a little and saying in her quiet voice, just as if he could understand her, “Why, you’re only a little boy after all, aren’t you?”
Ernest said afterwards that it was his first welcome to this country, though he had travelled so far, and had been pushed and hauled and shouted at for so many days, he had lost count of them. That night he and Claude only shook hands and looked at each other suspiciously, but ever since they had been good friends.
After their picnic the two boys went to the circus in a happy frame of mind. In the animal tent they met big Leonard Dawson, the oldest son of one of the Wheelers’ near neighbours, and the three sat together for the performance. Leonard said he had come to town alone in his car; wouldn’t Claude ride out with him? Claude was glad enough to turn the mules over to Ralph, who didn’t mind the hired men as much as he did.
Leonard was a strapping27 brown fellow of twenty-five, with big hands and big feet, white teeth, and flashing eyes full of energy. He and his father and two brothers not only worked their own big farm, but rented a quarter section from Nat Wheeler. They were master farmers. If there was a dry summer and a failure, Leonard only laughed and stretched his long arms, and put in a bigger crop next year. Claude was always a little reserved with Leonard; he felt that the young man was rather contemptuous of the hap-hazard way in which things were done on the Wheeler place, and thought his going to college a waste of money. Leonard had not even gone through the Frankfort High School, and he was already a more successful man than Claude was ever likely to be. Leonard did think these things, but he was fond of Claude, all the same.
At sunset the car was speeding over a fine stretch of smooth road across the level country that lay between Frankfort and the rougher land along Lovely Creek. Leonard’s attention was largely given up to admiring the faultless behaviour of his engine. Presently he chuckled28 to himself and turned to Claude.
“I wonder if you’d take it all right if I told you a joke on Bayliss?”
“I expect I would.” Claude’s tone was not at all eager.
“You saw Bayliss today? Notice anything queer about him, one eye a little off colour? Did he tell you how he got it?”
“No. I didn’t ask him.”
“Just as well. A lot of people did ask him, though, and he said he was hunting around his place for something in the dark and ran into a reaper29. Well, I’m the reaper!”
Claude looked interested. “You mean to say Bayliss was in a fight?”
Leonard laughed. “Lord, no! Don’t you know Bayliss? I went in there to pay a bill yesterday, and Susie Gray and another girl came in to sell tickets for the firemen’s dinner. An advance man for this circus was hanging around, and he began talking a little smart, — nothing rough, but the way such fellows will. The girls handed it back to him, and sold him three tickets and shut him up. I couldn’t see how Susie thought so quick what to say. The minute the girls went out Bayliss started knocking them; said all the country girls were getting too fresh and knew more than they ought to about managing sporty men and right there I reached out and handed him one. I hit harder than I meant to. I meant to slap him, not to give him a black eye. But you can’t always regulate things, and I was hot all over. I waited for him to come back at me. I’m bigger than he is, and I wanted to give him satisfaction. Well, sir, he never moved a muscle! He stood there getting redder and redder, and his eyes watered. I don’t say he cried, but his eyes watered. ‘All right, Bayliss,’ said I. ‘Slow with your fists, if that’s your principle; but slow with your tongue, too, — especially when the parties mentioned aren’t present.’”
“Bayliss will never get over that,” was Claude’s only comment.
“He don’t have to!” Leonard threw up his head. “I’m a good customer; he can like it or lump it, till the price of binding30 twine31 goes down!”
For the next few minutes the driver was occupied with trying to get up a long, rough hill on high gear. Sometimes he could make that hill, and sometimes he couldn’t, and he was not able to account for the difference. After he pulled the second lever with some disgust and let the car amble26 on as she would, he noticed that his companion was disconcerted.
“I’ll tell you what, Leonard,” Claude spoke32 in a strained voice, “I think the fair thing for you to do is to get out here by the road and give me a chance.”
Leonard swung his steering33 wheel savagely34 to pass a wagon on the down side of the hill. “What the devil are you talking about, boy?”
“You think you’ve got our measure all right, but you ought to give me a chance first.”
Leonard looked down in amazement35 at his own big brown hands, lying on the wheel. “You mortal fool kid, what would I be telling you all this for, if I didn’t know you were another breed of cats? I never thought you got on too well with Bayliss yourself.”
“I don’t, but I won’t have you thinking you can slap the men in my family whenever you feel like it.” Claude knew that his explanation sounded foolish, and his voice, in spite of all he could do, was weak and angry.
Young Leonard Dawson saw he had hurt the boy’s feelings. “Lord, Claude, I know you’re a fighter. Bayliss never was. I went to school with him.”
The ride ended amicably36, but Claude wouldn’t let Leonard take him home. He jumped out of the car with a curt37 goodnight, and ran across the dusky fields toward the light that shone from the house on the hill. At the little bridge over the creek, he stopped to get his breath and to be sure that he was outwardly composed before he went in to see his mother.
“Ran against a reaper in the dark!” he muttered aloud, clenching38 his fist.
Listening to the deep singing of the frogs, and to the distant barking of the dogs up at the house, he grew calmer. Nevertheless, he wondered why it was that one had sometimes to feel responsible for the behaviour of people whose natures were wholly antipathetic to one’s own.
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1
mules
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| 骡( mule的名词复数 )； 拖鞋； 顽固的人； 越境运毒者 | |
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rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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throng
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| n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集 | |
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bustling
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| adj.喧闹的 | |
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wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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automobile
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| n.汽车，机动车 | |
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extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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cowardice
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| n.胆小，怯懦 | |
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willow
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| n.柳树 | |
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pickles
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| n.腌菜( pickle的名词复数 )；处于困境；遇到麻烦；菜酱 | |
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munching
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| v.用力咀嚼（某物），大嚼( munch的现在分词 ) | |
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15
trickled
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| v.滴( trickle的过去式和过去分词 )；淌；使)慢慢走；缓慢移动 | |
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persuasive
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| adj.有说服力的，能说得使人相信的 | |
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chagrins
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| v.使懊恼，使懊丧，使悔恨( chagrin的第三人称单数 ) | |
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impersonal
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| adj.无个人感情的，与个人无关的，非人称的 | |
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attain
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| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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algebra
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| n.代数学 | |
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rumble
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| n.隆隆声；吵嚷；v.隆隆响；低沉地说 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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24
strapped
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| adj.用皮带捆住的，用皮带装饰的；身无分文的；缺钱；手头紧v.用皮带捆扎(strap的过去式和过去分词)；用皮带抽打；包扎；给…打绷带 | |
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scrambled
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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amble
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| vi.缓行，漫步 | |
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strapping
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| adj. 魁伟的, 身材高大健壮的 n. 皮绳或皮带的材料, 裹伤胶带, 皮鞭 动词strap的现在分词形式 | |
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chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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reaper
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| n.收割者，收割机 | |
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binding
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| 有约束力的，有效的，应遵守的 | |
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twine
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| v.搓，织，编饰；（使）缠绕 | |
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32
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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33
steering
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| n.操舵装置 | |
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34
savagely
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| adv. 野蛮地，残酷地 | |
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amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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amicably
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| adv.友善地 | |
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37
curt
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| adj.简短的，草率的 | |
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clenching
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的现在分词 ) | |
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