The Cookcamp by Gary Paulsen

Author:Gary Paulsen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2014-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

HE BOY followed Gustaf as he walked to the cook trailer. All the other men had stopped the trucks and were walking to the cook trailer as well, and the boy walked with them trying to walk as they walked, with his shoulders back and taking long steps, and he spit and cleared his lip like the men.

He had so much to tell his grandmother about the gravel pile and the cat and how it tipped up and down and frightened him, and when he came into the cook trailer he ran to her.

She was at the stove and smiled at him. “You’re dirty.”

“Oh, Grandma, I rode the cat and Gustaf put my hands on the levers and I got to drive and steer and raise and lower the blade and we rode to the top of the gravel pile and down …”

All the words ran together and his grandmother held up her hand.

“Later. Tell me all of it later. Now you have to eat.”

The men trooped in and took their caps off, slammed them against their legs to knock the dust off, and the boy did the same with his hands, wishing he had a greasy cap to slam against his leg. He moved to the stove to eat sitting on the bunk — except that he didn’t eat at the stove as he had before, didn’t have to wait until the men were done, didn’t have to help with the tables this time.

“When we are men we must eat with the men,” Gustaf said, and motioned to an extra plate next to his on the table. Other men nodded and smiled, and the boy went to the bench and sat at the plate and looked at his grandmother, who also smiled and nodded.

He tried to make himself bigger, but he could not, and still he felt proud that he could sit with the men, although he noticed that one of them, a man named Olaf, helped his grandmother bring food to the tables.

Gustaf heaped food on the boy’s plate and he tried to eat it all but could not, could not eat even a part of as much as the men ate, and when he was so full with stew his stomach was about to burst he looked up at Gustaf.

“I can’t eat more.”

“Then you shouldn’t have taken it,” Gustaf said, but he was smiling, and he used his fork to scrape the boy’s food onto his own plate, from which it quickly disappeared.

The boy was so full he could not eat pie. When they were done Gustaf started to leave, to go back to the cat and the boy started to follow, but Carl, the man who had come to the depot to get him, stopped him with his hand.

“Gustaf doesn’t get you all the time. I need help driving the dump truck this afternoon.”

The boy looked at Gustaf who nodded. “We must share you — good men are hard to find.” And the boy knew he was joking, but it still sounded nice.

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