In My Youth (Yesterday's Classics) by James Baldwin

Author:James Baldwin [Baldwin, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 9781599153148
Publisher: Yesterday's Classics
Published: 2010-11-14T23:32:33.902000+00:00

CHAPTER XXI

A Friend Indeed

STRANGERS, did I say? Let me correct that statement Father was not a stranger in Dashville, otherwise he would not have hazarded the plan of sending the fillies home while he and I remained with the disabled wagon. He was intimately acquainted with all the older inhabitants of the county seat and was on friendly terms with the two lawyers and the doctor and all the county officers. There was not the slightest danger, therefore, that when once our plight became known we should be permitted to spend the night in the way which he had proposed. But he was proud, and so independent of spirit that, rather than ask his dearest friend for shelter and lodging, he would willingly have slept in the open field with naught but the stars above him.

"I think there is a blacksmith's shop just at the edge of the town. We will see what we can do there," he said.

Weary and footsore, I followed him along the pathway that skirted the muddy highroad. We met a number of farm wagons full of plain country people who were on their way homeward, and we rightly concluded that the circus had "let out," and that the Great Moral Exhibition was adjourned until "early candle-light" in the evening. In the direction of the big tent we could hear a drum beating and the occasional tooting of a horn, admonishing the people not to disperse until they had paid another fip to see that wonder of wonders, the Fat Woman of Kankakee. I listened to these sounds with a feeling of disgust and weariness, and as I looked at the fast declining sun I would have given all my marbles could I have been safe at home on the warm hearth with Robinson Crusoe in my hand and dear Inviz cuddling down beside me.

The blacksmith was a newcomer in Dashville, but he had heard of father—as who in the world had not?—and was very eager to befriend him. He made no pretense of being a worker in wood, but to his skill in all sorts of iron craft there was no limit, and in the noble art of horseshoeing he held the championship of all the Wabash Country. His big, round, smutty face melted with pity when he learned of our woeful accident, and soon a satisfactory arrangement was made with reference to the disabled wagon. The smith would furnish a piece of timber suitable for a new axletree, he would permit father to use his tools while shaping it into the desired form, and he would put on the necessary irons and attach the new part to the wagon—all for the modest sum of twenty-five cents.

"I wouldn't do it for nobody else," he said in his bluff hearty way; "but, seein' that it's you, I'm only too glad to obleege you; and I hope that you'll remember that I'm runnin' for constable at the next 'lection."

At this father could hardly hold his temper in check.

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