Tramping on Life | Page 6

stomach over which
she had the habit of folding her hard-working hands restfully, when she
talked ... and also there came with her my Great-uncle Joshua, her
husband ... and my second cousins, Paul and Phoebe, their children.
The other children, two girls, were off studying in a nurses' college ...
working their way there.
After the burial Josh and Paul went on back to Halton, where they
worked in the Steel Mills. They left Aunt Rachel and Phoebe to stay on
and pay us a visit.
Paul and Josh were "puddlers"--when they worked ... in the open
furnaces that were in use in those days ... when you saw huge,
magnificent men, naked to the belt, whose muscles rippled in coils as
they toiled away in the midst of the living red of flowing metal.
* * * * *
Phoebe was wild and beautiful in a frail way. She wore a pea green
skirt and a waist of filmy, feminine texture. We instantly took to each
other. She was always up and off, skimming swallow-like in all
directions, now this way, now that, as if seeking for some new flavour
in life, some excitement that had not come to her yet.
We made expeditions together over the country. She joined me in my
imaginary battles with Indians ... my sanguinary hunts for big game....
It was she who first taught me to beg hand-outs at back doors--one day
when we went fishing together and found ourselves a long way off
from home.
Once Phoebe fell into a millpond from a springboard ... with all her
clothes on ... we were seeing who dared "teeter" nearest the end.... I had
difficulty in saving her. It was by the hair, with a chance clutch, that I
drew her ashore.

The picture of her, shivering forlornly before the kitchen stove! She
was beautiful, even in her long, wet, red-flannel drawers that came
down to her slim, white ankles. She was weeping over the licking her
mother had given her.
* * * * *
"I'm afraid your cousin Phoebe will come to no good end some day, if
she don't watch out," said my grandmother to me, "and I don't like you
to play with her much.... I'm going to have Aunt Rachel take her home
soon" ... after a pause, "as sure as I have ten fingers she'll grow up to be
a bad woman."
* * * * *
"Granma, what is a bad woman?"
* * * * *
Aunt Rachel and Cousin Phoebe returned home. Uncle Josh, that slack
old vagabond with his furtive, kindly eye-glances, came for them with
a livery rig.
* * * * *
I think I read every dime novel published, during those years of my
childhood ... across the bridge that Elton had helped build, the new
bridge that spanned the Hickory River, and over the railroad tracks,
stood a news-stand, that was run by an old, near-sighted woman. As
she sat tending counter and knitting, I bought her books ... but for each
dime laid down before her, I stole three extra thrillers from under her
very eye.
From my grandfather's library I dug up a book on the Hawaiian Islands,
written by some missionary. In it I found a story of how the natives
speared fish off the edges of reefs. Straightway I procured a pitchfork.
I searched the shallows and ripples of Hickory River for miles ... I
followed Babson's brook over the hills nearly to its source.
One day, peering through reeds into a shallow cove, I saw a fish-fin
thrust up out of the water. I crept cautiously forward.
It was a big fish that lay there. Trembling all over with excitement, I
made a mad thrust. Then I yelled, and stamped on the fish, getting all
wet in doing so. I beat its head in with the haft of the fork. It rolled over,
its white belly glinting in the sun. On picking it up, I was disappointed.
It had been dead for a long time; had probably swam in there to die ...
and its gills were a withered brown-black in colour, like a desiccated

mushroom ... not healthy red.
But I was not to be frustrated of my glory. I tore the tell-tale gills out ...
then I beat the fish's head to a pulp, and I carried my capture home and
proudly strutted in at the kitchen door.
"Look, Granma, at what a big fish I've caught."
"Oh, Millie, he's really got one," and Granma straightened up from the
wash-tub. Millie came out snickering scornfully.
"My Gawd, Ma, can't you see it's been dead a week?"
"You're a liar, it ain't!" I cried. And I began to sob because Aunt Millie
was trying to