The Brimming Cup Part 28

When he had collected a lot, he began to lay the sticks. He did it just as Father had showed him, but it seemed lots harder to get them right.

And it took a lot more than one match to get it started. He didn't have a bit of breath left in him, by the time he finally got it going. And my, weren't his hands black! But he felt very much set up, all the same, that he had done it. In his heart Paul knew that there was nothing anybody could do which he could not.

They hung the slimpsy slices of bacon from forked sticks, Paul showing Mr. Welles how to thread his on, and began to cook them around the edges of the fire, while the two little trout frizzled in the frying-pan. "I'm so glad we got that last one," commented Paul. "One wouldn't have been very much."

"Yes, it's much better to have one apiece," agreed Mr. Welles.

When the bacon was done (only burned a little at the edges, and still soft in the thicker places in the center of the slice), and the fish the right brown, and 'most shrunk up to nothing, they each of them put a trout and a piece of bacon on his slice of bread and b.u.t.ter, and gracious! didn't it taste good.

"You must have done this before," said Mr. Welles, respectfully; "you seem to know a good deal about camping."

"Oh, I'm a good camper, all right," agreed Paul. "Mother and I have gone off in the woods, lots of times. When I was littler, I used to get spells when I was bad. I do still, even now, once in a while."

Mr. Welles did not smile, but continued gravely eating his bread and bacon, his eyes on the little boy.

"I don't know what's the matter. I feel all snarled up inside. And then the first thing you know I've done something awful. Mother can tell when it first gets started in me, the least little teenty bit. _How_ can she tell? And then she takes me off camping. She pretends it's because she's feeling snarled up, herself. But it's not. She never is. Why not?"

He considered this in silence, chewing slowly on a vast mouthful of bread. "Anyhow, we leave the little children with Toucle, if she's there," (he stopped here an instant to inspect Mr. Welles to make sure he was not laughing because he had called Elly and Mark the "little children." But Mr. Welles was not laughing at him. He was listening, _really_ listening, the way grown-ups almost never did, to hear what you had to say. He did like Mr. Welles. He went on,) "or if Toucle's off somewheres in the woods herself, we leave them down at the Powers' to play with Addie and Ralph, and we light out for the woods, Mother and I.

The snarleder up I feel, the further we go. We don't fish or anything.

Just leg it, till I feel better. Then we make a fire and eat."

He swallowed visibly a huge lump of unchewed bread, and said, uncorking a thermos bottle, "I asked Mother to put up some hot coffee."

Mr. Welles seemed surprised. "Why, do you drink coffee?"

"Oh no, none of us kids ever take it. But I thought you'd like some.

Grown-up folks mostly do, when they eat out-of-doors."

Mr. Welles took the cup of steaming coffee, ready sugared and creamed, without even saying thank you, but in a minute, as they began their second round of sandwiches, filled this time with cold ham from home, he said, "You've got quite a way of looking out for folks, haven't you?

"I like to," said Paul.

"_I_ always liked to," said Mr. Welles.

"I guess you've done quite a lot of it," conjectured the little boy.

"Quite a lot," said the old man, thoughtfully.

Paul never liked to be left behind and now spoke out, "Well, I expect I'll do a good deal, too."

"Most likely you will," agreed the old man.

He spoke a little absently, and after a minute said, "Paul, talking about looking out for folks makes me think of something that's bothering me like everything lately. I can't make up my mind about whether I ought to go on, looking out for folks, if I know folks that need it. I keep hearing from somebody who lives down South, that the colored folks aren't getting a real square deal. I keep wondering if maybe I oughtn't to go and live there and help her look out for them."

Paul was so astonished at this that he opened his mouth wide, without speaking. When he could get his breath, he shouted, "Why, Mr. Welles, go away from Ashley to live!" He stared hard at the old man, thinking he must have got it twisted. But Mr. Welles did not set him straight, only stared down at the ground with a pale, bothered-looking face and sort of twitched his mouth to one side.

The little boy moved over closer to him, and said, looking up at him with all his might, "Aw, Mr. Welles, I _wish't_ you wouldn't! I _like_ your being here. There's lot of things I've got planned we could do together."

It seemed to him that the old man looked older and more tired at this.

He closed his eyes and did not answer. Paul felt better. Mr. Welles couldn't have been in earnest.

How still it was in the woods that day. Not the least little flutter from any leaf. The sunlight looked as green, as green, coming down through the trees that way, like the light in church when the sun came in through the stained-gla.s.s windows.

The only thing that budged at all was a bird ... was it a flicker? ...

he couldn't make out. It kept hopping around in that big beech tree across the brook. Probably it was worried about its nest and didn't like to have people so near. And yet they sat as still, he and Mr. Welles, as still as a tree, or the shiny water in the pool.

Mr. Welles opened his eyes and took the little boy's rough, calloused hand in his. "See here, Paul, maybe you can help me make up my mind."

Paul squared his shoulders.

"It's this way. I'm pretty nearly used up, not good for much any more.

And the Electrical Company wanted to fix everything the nicest way for me to live. And they have. I hadn't any idea anything could be so nice as living next door to you folks in such a place as Crittenden's. And then making friends with you. I'd always wanted a little boy, but I thought I was so old, no little boy would bother with me."

He squeezed the child's fingers and looked down on him lovingly. For a moment Paul's heart swelled up so he couldn't speak. Then he said, in a husky voice, "I _like_ to." He took a large bite from his sandwich and repeated roughly, his mouth full, "I _like_ to."

Neither said anything more for a moment. The flicker ... yes, it was a flicker ... in the big beech kept changing her position, flying down from a top-branch to a lower one, and then back again. Paul made out the hole in the old trunk of the tree where she'd probably put her nest, and wondered why she didn't go back to it.

"Have you got to the Civil War, in your history yet, Paul?"

"Gee, yes, 'way past it. Up to the Philadelphia Exposition."

Mr. Welles said nothing for a minute and Paul could see by his expression that he was trying to think of some simple baby way to say what he wanted to. Gracious! didn't he know Paul was in the seventh grade? "_I_ can understand all right," he said roughly.

Mr. Welles said, "Well, all right. If you can, you'll do more than I can. You know how the colored people got their freedom then. But something very bad had been going on there in slavery, for ever so long.

And bad things that go on for a long time, can't be straightened out in a hurry. And so far, it's been too much for everybody, to get this straightened out. The colored people ... they're made to suffer all the time for being born the way they are. And that's not right ... in America ..."

"Why don't they stand up for themselves?" asked Paul scornfully. He'd like to see anybody who would make him suffer for being born the way he was.

Mr. Welles hesitated again. "It looks to me this way. People can fight for some things ... their property, and their vote and their work. And I guess the colored people have got to fight for those, themselves. But there are some other things ... some of the nicest ... why, if you fight for them, you tear them all to pieces, trying to get them."

Paul did not have the least idea what this meant.

"If what you want is to have people respect what you are worth, why, if you fight them to make them, then you spoil what you're worth. Anyhow, even if you don't spoil it, fighting about it doesn't put you in any state of mind to go on being your best. That's a pretty hard job for anybody."

Paul found this very dull. His attention wandered back to that queer flicker, so excited about something.

The old man tried to get at him again. "Look here, Paul, Americans that happen to be colored people ought to have every bit of the same chance to amount to their best that any Americans have, oughtn't they?"

Paul saw this. But he didn't see what Mr. Welles could do about it, and said so.

"Well, I couldn't do a great deal," said the old man sadly, "but more than if I stayed here. It looks as though they needed, as much as anything else, people to just have the same feeling towards them that you have for anybody who's trying to make the best of himself. And I could do that."

Paul got the impression at last that Mr. Welles was in earnest about this. It made him feel anxious. "Oh _dear_!" he said, kicking the toe of his rubber boot against the rock. He couldn't think of anything to say, except that he hated the idea of Mr. Welles going.

But just then he was startled by a sharp cry of distress from the bird, who flew out wildly from the beech, poised herself in the air, beating her wings and calling in a loud scream. The old man, unused to forests and their inhabitants, noticed this but vaguely, and was surprised by Paul's instant response. "There must be a snake after her eggs," he said excitedly. "I'll go over and chase him off."

He started across the pool, gave a cry, and stood still, petrified.

Before their eyes, without a breath of wind, the hugh beech solemnly bowed itself and with a great roar of branches, whipping and crushing the trees about, it fell, its full length thundering on the ground, a great mat of s.h.a.ggy roots uptorn, leaving an open wound in the stony mountain soil. Then, in a minute, it was all as still as before.

Paul was scared almost to death. He scrambled back to the rock, his knees shaking, his stomach sick, and clung to Mr. Welles with all his might. "What made it fall? There's no wind! What made it fall?" he cried, burying his face in the old man's coat. "It might just as easy have fallen this way, on us, and killed us! What made it fall?"