Davy

Sam took it at last, and for a few seconds things were pretty quiet. Well, often you don’t feel anything right away except the knowledge that the world has come to an end. Sam of course had been brought up on raw corn likker and fried food and religion; all the same, I don’t believe anything in a person’s past could actually prepare him for Mother Spinkton. He got her down, and when his features sort of rejoined each other so that he was recognizable again, I thought I heard him murmur: “This happened to me!” It was all right: any yucks who overheard him probably thought he was looking at the nice kind of eternity. Then as soon as he could move, he turned his head so that the yucks might observe the glow of beatitude or whatever spreading over him, and said: “Ali, praise his name, I can breathe again!”

Well, sure, a man’s bound to feel a surrounding glory at finding himself still able to breathe after a shot of Mother Spinkton. But the yucks hadn’t tried any of her yet, so I guess they didn’t quite understand what he meant. “I was nigh unto death,” says the old rip, “but here I be!” And they all pushed in around him then, wanting to touch and fondle the man who’d been snatched from the grave, even tromple him flat in pure friendliness.

Pa Rumley hopped off the wagon. He and Tom pried Sam loose from the public; then Tom went to work selling bottles — for a few minutes he was passing them out about as fast as he could handle them — and Pa Rumley walked the sick man over to that wagon where the grayhaired woman was still sitting smoking her pipe and enjoying everything. I trailed along, and the girls stuck with me.

It’s hard to believe how much space you can find in one of those long covered wagons. The inverted-U frames supporting the canvas has cross-bars usually of hornbeam, just above head-height, and a light wicker-work platform rests on the cross-bars, making a sort of attic for storing light stuff. Those cross-bars also carry hanging partitions for the cubbyhole compartments that run along both sides of the wagon with a single-file walkway between. Up in front there’s an area without sleeping compartments, just canvas walls with usually a window on each side. For laughs, we always called that area the front room.

That was where Pa Rumley took us sow, to the front room of this wagon, which was the one with his own livingquarters. Because it was the headquarters wagon, the front room was nearly twice the size of those in the others, and had bookshelves, a thing I had never seen nor imagined. This wagon had only four sleeping spaces, two double and two single: singles for Mam Laura and old Will Moon who usually drove the mules, a double for Stud Dabney and his wife, and a double for Pa Rumley with whatever woman was sharing his bunk. Pa swept us in there — Bo

She puffed her pipe till it went out, and rubbed the bowl of it against her thin nose. Studying Sam she was, and he met the stare, and I had the feeling they were exchanging messages that did them good and were none of our business. Though grayer, she was slightly the younger, I believe. At last she said: “From the no’th of Katskil, be’n’t you?”

“Ayah. A’n’t had word of the war lately.”

“Oh, that. It’ll be over in a couple-three months. Rambler life attract you, maybe?”

“Might, allowin’ for the fact I’m a loner by trade.”

“Did a good jobas a volunteer shill out there. Don’t know that I ever saw that done before.”

So’t of come over me all-a-sudden like, the way I wouldn’t want you to think my boy’s the only talented one in the family.”

“You be his Da then?”

“Ai-yah, that’s a special story,” Sam said, “nor I wouldn’t be a one to tell it without his leave.”

She looked at me then, and I felt the kindness rn her, and I told the story, finding it not hard to do. Bo

“Be you,” Mam Laura asked me, “a loner by trade?”

“Likely I must be,” I said, “the way when my Da makes that remark it rings a bell in me. But I like people.”

“So does your Da,” Mam Laura said — “did you think he didn’t, Davy? Nay, I sometimes wonder if loners aren’t the only ones who do.” I was begi

“Yes,” I told her. “Yes!”

“Enough to suffer a little schooling in consequence?”

I had no notion what sort of schooling she meant — while I was knocking off my life story I’d already told her I knew all about how to handle mules. But I said: “Yes, I do — honest, I’d do anything!”

Pa Rumley laughed at that, gargling it in his beard, but Mam Laura aimed her smile mostly at the universe and not at me. “Hoy, Laura,” Pa said, “didn’t I keep telling you I’d raise a big old God-damn scholard for you somewheres, to. squeeze the good out’n them books that’ve been wearing down the mule-power on this wagon all these years? Maybe I’ve even raised you more’n one. Be you a man for the books, Sam Loomis?”

My father looked away through one of the little windows — honest glass they were, sewed cleverly into slots in the canvas so that no wind would dislodge them or force the rain through. For a moment or two he looked older and grayer, my father, than ever before; if there was mirth hidden in his craggy face I couldn’t find it. “That wasn’t my fortune, Pa Rumley,” he said. “I tried once to win me a little learning after my young years were long gone — nay, but it don’t matter. If the lady will teach my boy, I’ll answer for it he’ll mind the lessons and get the good of it.”

Pa Rumley got up and tapped Sam’s shoulder and nodded at me. “He blows that horn pretty good too,” he said. “Well — stick around. You’re lucky — gentlemen hark! Yes sir, it just so happens you hit me at a lucky time: I got over the shock of being born a good while ago, more b’ token I a’n’t dead yet. Best time to tackle a man, understand? — somewhere in there betwix birth and death. If the sumbitch won’t give you a decent answer then he never will.”