Harris and me : a summer remembered (12 page)

"I will."

"You make them bring you back."

"I will."

And the deputy pulled away and we left Harris standing there by the side of the driveway. I looked back out the rear window and he was waving one hand so I waved back but soon he was lost from view and the rest of the farm was gone and we were on the road heading back to town.

The deputy spat out the window. "Nice people, the Larsons. You have a good summer?"

And it was all there. The horses and the pigs and Ernie and the pictures and Louie and swimming and going to see the Gene Autry movie—all there at once, filling me so that I had to look out the window and hide my eyes.

"Yes. I did. I had a nice summer."

Epilogue

t

hree weeks after I had returned home I received a small package with the following letter inside:

Dear Gooner:

You know I don't write so good so Glen-nis is doing this for me except I'm worried she won't say what I want and I don't trust the big . . .

There, right there she hit me. I didn't say nothing wrong and she whacked me, so you can see things ain't changed a whole lot.

I thought I'd killed Ernie when I ran over him with a wheelbarrow full of sand when

he wasn't looking but I didn't. Kill him, I mean. The son . . . There, she hit me again. Ernie laid there for a minute and then got up and made it under the granary before I could get the wheelbarrow turned around for another run on him. I would have turned faster except I wetted the sand down to make it good and heavy and the extra weight slowed me some.

Everybody else is fine. Pa broke a finger but it don't seem to bother him none. Ma is cooking. Glennis is looking all moon-eyed at Clyde Peterson . . . There, she hit me again. But she is. He's took to hanging around smelling at the gatepost . . . I wish she'd stop that. I keep getting whacked and don't even mean it.

Buzzer is all right although he seems cross sometimes and popped me once last week.

I found some graves back down off the house from homesteaders and was thinking I'd dig them up and look for treasure but I'll wait until you come back for that.

Well, that's all for now. Oh, Louie come in the other day and told me to mail you what's in the package. He said you'd know what it was.

Bye, you old gooner, and I hope you can come home soon.

Harris

I unwrapped a piece of paper in the box and found the small figure that had been me in Louie's diorama. I held the mouse-furred little statue for a long time, rolling it in my fingers, then I put it on a win-dowsill where I could see it while I drifted to sleep that night and dreamed of horses and farms and corn and girls with blond hair and Tarzan and Gene and a bicycle that did a hundred miles an hour, carrying a freckled boy in bibs . . .

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