Wild Boy by James Lincoln Collier

Author:James Lincoln Collier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AudioGO
Published: 2013-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

I was tired of everybody saying I was ornery. I didn’t think I was ornery as they said. Some ornery, maybe, I had to give them that, for there was them times when I lost hold of myself. But I was only ornery sometimes.

So what if I was ornery, anyway? What business was it of theirs? Look at Pa, he could be blame ornery hisself. He didn’t have no right telling anybody else they was ornery. Did I get it from him? I hoped not. I didn’t want to get anything from Pa. Rather take after Ma. Pa said I got smart from Ma, if I was smart, which a lot of times I wasn’t so sure about. I didn’t mind taking after Ma. She wasn’t ornery. Not as I remembered her anyway. Five years since she left. I was only seven and most likely didn’t know the truth of her anyway. But she wasn’t ornery, I was sure of that. Used to say poems to me when she put me to bed. She knew a slew of poems. One about “The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck.” “Paul Revere’s Ride” of course. She could say the whole thing right through, although I couldn’t be sure of that, because I usually fell asleep halfway through.

Ma was always on me about speaking right—didn’t let me say “ain’t” and such. She said her and Pa didn’t have much education and she wanted me to have some. Pa said my speech got a whole lot worse since she left. Wouldn’t doubt it neither: Pa didn’t stay on me about it the way she done. Pa said it come from hanging around with Charlie Williams, but I never saw where his speech was a lot worse than mine was. We was like peas in a pod, Charlie’s ma always said.

Ma liked having me help in the kitchen. Stir the cake dough in her big yellow bowl, wash up the pots and pans, mash the spuds with her big wooden masher. She always said I was a big help to her. Don’t reckon I was, how much use can a four-fíve-six-year-old kid be? But I believed it then. She said she liked having me around. Gave her someone to chitchat with. I guess Pa wasn’t much of a one for chitchat. Come to think of it, I guess Ma must have been lonely for company a lot of the time. Oh, she had her friends, I reckon. Used to go over and sit with Widow Wadman sometimes. Sit in the shade of Widow Wadman’s porch doing her sewing, the two of them side by side on a bench. Sometimes I’d play out in the yard while they talked, scratching designs in the dirt with a stick, or pretending I was a hunter on a horse chasing buffalo. Widow Wadman done most of the talking. Ma, she wasn’t much of a talker, I guess. Come to think of it, probably she was a little bit shy.

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