Harris and Me by Gary Paulsen

Author:Gary Paulsen
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (www.hmhco.com)

LUMBERJACK LOWNGE

The other three buildings looked much the same except one of them had a glass window in the front and was apparently a dry goods store.

I couldn’t for the life of me see what everybody was so excited about. There were already six or seven trucks parked in the street—not in any order, just left where they stopped, as Knute now did with our truck—and as the engine died with a gasp, a thin boy about my age walked out of the door and onto the porch. He was holding a bottle of Nesbitt’s orange pop and as soon as he saw our truck he turned and tried to get back in the door.

He was far too slow.

“Hunsetter, you gooner!” Harris bellowed as he piled over the side of the truck. “Where the hell is my aggie shooter?”

Harris bounced once on the ground and landed on top of the boy. Orange pop sprayed in the air as they went down and rolled into the street in a cloud of dirt and curses. It was a view of Harris I was becoming accustomed to, and I was wondering if I should help or get a bucket of water or pry them apart with a stick when Clair took my arm.

“Come on inside, dear. They’ll be in when they’re done playing...”

It was becoming evening and the room was dark—the only light came through the open door—and it took a moment for my eyes to get accustomed to the dim light.

When they did I saw a plank bar down the left side of the room with no stools, three tables on the right with benches instead of chairs. At the back of the room there was a small wooden platform next to what I took to be a back door. On the platform there were two fiddle cases and an accordion so big it seemed that it would take two men to play it.

The room was full of people, all of a set piece with us—clean but in rough clothes. The women in starched dresses, the men in overalls. There were young people scattered here and there, all drinking Nesbitt’s orange pop. Glennis and Clair waved at somebody and went to sit at the tables while Knute and Louie went to stand near some men at the plank bar.

I knew nobody, but for the moment it didn’t matter. I was watching Louie.

He drank like he ate. A man in the back of the bar—also dressed in bib overalls, although he was wearing a tie with his work shirt—gave Louie and Knute each a tall, dark bottle of beer. Knute took a drink and put his down to speak to a man next to him but Louie stared straight ahead and simply upended the bottle and pushed it in to the back of his throat and drained it, licking the bottle opening dry with his tongue when it was empty.

He set it on the bar and the bartender brought him another one. He did the same.

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