Belle Prater's Boy by White Ruth

Author:White, Ruth [White, Ruth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Published: 1996-03-26T00:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

The next morning it rained early on; then the sun came out bright, and a warm steam rose up from the ground. I loved to go mushing through the grass when it got like that. But if I wasn’t careful I would step on an earthworm. They were crawling up to the sun to tan their slinky pink bodies on the walkway or rocks or any bare place they could find.

“Catch me some fat, juicy ones, Gypsy,” Grandpa said, as he took his toolbox around the side of the house. “There’s some baby birds out there in the orchard and I’m thinking their mama died. We’ll go feed ’em.”

“Oooo, no, I’m not about to put my fingers on BELLE PRATER’S BOY 111 them,” I said, sounding for all the world like Mama. “Maybe Woodrow will do it when he comes back.”

When the rain stopped, Granny and Woodrow had walked to the Piggly Wiggly to buy groceries. I was practicing the piano when they left or I would have gone with them.

I followed Grandpa around to where he was fixing some shaky railing on his wraparound first-floor porch. He was on the Slag Creek side, on his knees nailing a brace against a rail. I got down beside him and commenced handing nails to him.

“Grandpa, how come the way a person looks is so important?” I said.

“A person had orta put up a good appearance, I reckon,” he said.

Even though Grandpa was a schoolteacher at one time and knew better, he sometimes let his grammar slide back to the way he talked when he was a boy on the top of Wiley Mountain. He called it his everyday voice.

“But what if there’s something a person can’t help?” I said, raising my voice to the normal shout.

“Like what?” he shouted back.

“Like crooked teeth,” I said. “You can’t help them.”

“You could get braces,” Grandpa came back.

“Well, supposing I had a big wart on my nose?” I said.

“Doc would take it off for nothing,” Grandpa said.

“He’s good about stuff like that, and the Lord knows, we wouldn’t have our pretty Gypsy going around town with a wart on her nose.”

“What about crossed eyes?” I said.

“Oh,” Grandpa said. “Is somebody poking fun at Woodrow?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Buzz Osborne. He’s so mean.”

“You never could tell them Osbornes a dadblamed thing. No need to try,” Grandpa said.

“It seems like anytime a person wants to hurt another person’s feelings, he says nasty things about his looks,” I said, exasperated. “What possible difference could it make how a person looks if he is a good person?”

“It shouldn’t make no difference a’tall,” Grandpa said. “But it does to most folks.”

“Being good-looking ain’t everything,” I went on. “Look at Eleanor Roosevelt. She’s plain, but she’s the most wonderful person. And she’s accomplished so much. Miss Hart says it makes her proud to be a woman.”

“And Miss Hart’s right as rain,” Grandpa said. “And look also at Abraham Lincoln. I reckon an uglier man was never born. But see what-all he did for his country.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.