Mary Emma & Company (22 page)

“Nineteen,” I told him.

He pointed his finger at each one of us as he counted, and asked, “Would you be tellin' me how you're goin' to divvy nineteen into half, and a half into sixteens?”

“Well,” I told him, “we got enough paving blocks to make a pile bigger than all the timbers put together. Some of the boys might want to take blocks instead of a timber; the blocks won't have to be sawed to make fire wood, and the timbers will.”

“True. True,” he said. “And how many blocks do you call the equal of a beam?”

“We haven't thought about that yet,” I told him. “How many would you think was fair?”

Cop Watson went over to the pile of blocks we'd tossed up over the rim, bounced one of them in his hand a few times, and said, “Well now, there's two ways o' lookin' at it: the work, and what comes out of it. Them that takes block'll have no sawin' to do, and that's half o' the job, so them that takes beams ought to get the double out of it when it's in shape for burnin'.” He ran a little finger inside the circle of his ear, and looked back and forth between the block in his hand and the big timber hanging from the axles of the running gear. “How about callin' it a hunderd even?” he asked. “How many of yous would take a hunderd blocks in the place of a timber?”

The boys divided exactly even. The laziest eight said they'd take blocks, and the other eight said nothing.

With the division all worked out, we decided that we'd take one load to our house and then a load to some other boy's house, alternately, and they'd draw straws to find out in what order we'd take them: the longest straw first and the shortest last. That was the fairest way we could do it, because we had no idea of how many we could haul that afternoon. Nobody could work on Sunday, and any that didn't get hauled before Monday were pretty apt to be swiped. It was Cop Watson who figured out the scheme that made it possible for us to haul every last block and timber before the nine o'clock curfew sounded.

Once a timber was up on the roadway there was no sense in seventeen of us going to deliver it; four or five could trot and pull the load. So I picked the biggest four, and told the others to watch that our rafts didn't drift away as the tide rose, and that they might lug all the blocks up to the roadway, where they'd be handy for loading.

We took the first timber to our house, wheeling it to one edge of the back lawn, and it unloaded as easily as it had loaded. All I had to do was to put down blocks and have the boys pry up one end at a time, while I pulled the bolt and drew the chain out from under.

I don't believe we were gone from the beach more than fifteen minutes, and when we got back Cop Watson was showing the boys how to make a wagon body with some pieces of driftwood board, some bent nails, and the hatchet. “There's no sense at all, at all, in squanderin' daylight,” he told me as we came trotting up with the empty running gear. “Them dry blocks don't weigh next to nothin', and with a body on that contraption you can be haulin' a load o' blocks atop and a beam beneath.”

Once we knew how to get the beams from the river to the roadway it wasn't a very tough job. It didn't take over five minutes to hook on and snake one up, and with the driftwood box to hold them, seventeen of us could toss on a hundred blocks in almost nothing flat. Whoever was going to get the timber or the blocks went along to show us where to unload, and by making two deliveries at one trip we saved nearly half our time.

When we delivered the third load at our house, half the kids in the neighborhood were there to watch us, and Mother came out to tell us what a fine job we'd done. When I told her we'd just started and that we still had eight more timbers to bring home, she said, “Gracious sakes! You boys must be bone-tired and nearly starved to death. After one or two more loads you must stop for supper and some rest.”

“We can't,” I told her. “If we do we'll never be finished by curfew time, and anything we don't haul tonight will probably be swiped by Monday.”

“Oh, you mustn't work right through without eating,” she told me, but she didn't say right out and out that I'd have to stop for supper, so I just told her we'd be back in a little while, and we trotted away.

Our next deliveries were nearly down to Salem Street, so it was almost six o'clock before we got back to our house with a load. I didn't want to give Mother too much of a chance to come out and tell me I'd have to stop for supper, so we just dropped the timber, tipped the body up to spill the blocks, and started back out of the yard. We'd only gone as far as the kitchen steps when Grace opened the door and said, “Don't be in such a rush! You wait right where you are till I get down there!”

Grace didn't often try to boss me around when I was with other boys, and I think I might have told her to mind her own business, but she closed the door too soon, so all I could do was wait. But we didn't have to wait long. In another minute she opened the door and came down the steps with the bean pot in her hands. It must have been straight out of the oven, because she was carrying it with pot-holder mittens. Mother was right behind her with a big pan of gingerbread, wrapped in a towel, and a box of plates and cups and knives and forks. “Now just hold on a minute,” she told me as she set them on the block box. “Gracie will be right here with a loaf of brown-bread and a pail of cocoa. She's going along to see that you boys get some supper into you. You can eat it right down there at the river, and she'll bring the dishes home when you're through. Now do be careful, and don't strain yourselves with those great pieces of lumber.”

I think the sliding at the clay pit must have done something to Grace. She didn't try to be a bit grown-up that evening, but rode down to the beach on the old wagon, and laughed and joked with the boys all the time she was dishing up our supper. Half a dozen of the boys told me I didn't know how lucky I was to have a sister like her, and, of course, I didn't mention the way she usually tried to boss me around. As soon as we'd eaten they made me take the next load right back to our house, and I think it was mainly so the bigger boys could go along and ride Grace back on the wagon.

With every trip we made the tide rose higher and the pull up the beach was easier. After supper nobody doubted that we'd get the job finished before curfew time, so we didn't bother with turns any longer, but went wherever we could deliver a timber and a load of blocks right in the same neighborhood. It was half-past-eight when we pulled away from Foster's Beach with the last timber and the last paving block. That was the eleventh timber we took to our house, and we must have taken more than a thousand blocks along with them. After it was unloaded I helped Allie pull the running gear back to its place behind Dion's barn, and I was running up our back steps just as the curfew bell rang.

23

Every Little Bit Helps

W
E'D
had to hurry so much in bringing the wood home Saturday night that we didn't have time to be very neat about it. We just pulled the running gear onto any part of our back lawn where there was room for the wheels, dropped the timber and dumped off the load of paving blocks. When I took Mother out to see it in daylight Sunday morning she said, “My! My! Did you ever see anything like it in your life! Why, those big sticks will keep us in firewood for a couple of years, and I don't know how we'll ever use up all the kindling those paving blocks will make. I don't see how in the world you boys managed to do it.”

“It wasn't hard,” I told her. “No matter how big a piece of wood is, it doesn't weigh anything when it's in water, and the wagon wheels made it easy to bring them home. I didn't plan that we'd use all the blocks ourselves. If Philip and I split them into kindling I'll bet we'd find lots of people who would be glad to buy it for twenty-five cents a cart load. That's a good bargain, because they'd have to pay twice that much for kindling at the store.”

“Why, that's a splendid idea,” Mother said. “In that way you and Philip would have a little business of your own, and you could put your profits away toward buying the school clothing you children will need next fall. But, good heavens! From the way you're growing you'll need some new clothes before summer gets here. Are you sure you're not making a pig of yourself at the store, Son?”

“No, ma'am, I'm not,” I told her. “I never eat more than two pieces of candy in any one day, and I only eat cheese and crackers when Mr. Haushalter gives them to me.”

“Mmmmm, hmmmm, but right now we'll have to think some about clearing up this yard,” Mother said. “I wouldn't be able to hang out laundry with these big sticks scattered all around the way they are, and what's more they'll soon kill all the grass that's under them. Do you think they could be piled up neatly, over there in one corner?”

“Well,” I told her, “if I can get all the boys over here we could lie on our backs and roll them over that way, but we could never pile them up; it would take a derrick to lift one. But if we had a good two-handled saw, Philip and I could cut them into pieces right where they are. Then they wouldn't be too heavy to pile up.”

“Hmmmm, together with your job at the store that would take the rest of the summer,” Mother said, “and long before that our lawn would be completely ruined. I wonder if Uncle Frank could give you any help with them.”

I'd been so busy for the past few days that I hadn't even thought about Uncle Frank. But when Mother mentioned his name I wanted to show him the job I'd done more than I wanted anything else in the world. Of course, I knew he couldn't lift one of those timbers any more than I could. And even if he were strong enough, he couldn't do it on Sunday, but I said, “I'll run right over and get him now.”

“No, no,” Mother said quickly, “not now. Maybe after church, and after we've had our dinner, you might go over and talk to him about it. I'm not at all sure he'll be able to help us, but we must find some way of moving them, for I simply must have this space for hanging out laundry, and we can't ruin Mr. Perkins' nice lawn.”

All through Sunday School and church I tried to figure out some way of moving those timbers and piling them up, and as soon as we'd finished dinner I ran over to Uncle Frank's house. I knew that if I tried to tell him anything about the wood it might sound like bragging, so I just told him we needed some help at our house as soon as he could come over.

“Shall I bring my tools?” he asked. “You know, I won't be able to do any work outside on Sunday, don't you?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, “I know it. But this isn't a job anybody could do with tools. It's one Philip and I can't do by ourselves, and Mother wondered if you could help us with it.”

“Don't you think you'd better tell me what the job is, so I'll know what I might need?” Uncle Frank asked.

“Well, you'd need a derrick more than anything else,” I told him, “but I can't explain the job to you. I could show you better when we get over there. Do you think you'd be able to come now?”

All the way over to our house I kept talking about something else, so Uncle Frank wouldn't have a chance to ask me any more questions. Then, when we turned down the driveway at the side of the fire station and he saw our back yard, he shouted, “For the love of Pete! Did a tidal wave strike you?”

“No, sir,” I told him, “but a flood tide struck the river, and I guess you know the Wellington Bridge caught fire and the firemen tore out two big sections of it. Well, this is just some of the pieces I picked up and brought home.”

“You what?” he said, as if he'd caught me lying to him.

“Well, I didn't pick them up all alone,” I told him. “Some of the other boys helped me, and I helped them, and we divided fifty-fifty. This was my share. But what I need to know is how to pile the big timbers up. Mother says we'll have to put them in a nice neat pile, over there in the corner, but Philip and I couldn't budge one of them.”

“How in the name of Moses did you ever get them home?” he asked.

“That was easy enough,” I told him. “We just chained wagon wheels on top of them while they were floating in the water at Foster's Beach. There was nothing to wheeling them home.”

“Anybody might know you were Charlie Moody's boy,” he said, “and it looks to me as if you folks were going to get along all right . . . if enough bridges burn down. But that isn't getting these joists piled, is it, and I'll be jiggered if I can tell you how to do it without sawing them up. Ten men couldn't lift one of them.”

On warm Sunday afternoons the firemen sometimes used to bring their chairs out and sit in the sun to read the paper. The lieutenant and the other regular fireman at our station came out while Uncle Frank and I were talking about the timbers. The lieutenant stood his chair down, then came over and said to Uncle Frank, “Wasn't that quite a job those kids did yesterday? Bill and I were standing by to give 'em a hand with the unloading, but they didn't seem to need it.”

“Don't know yet how they ever did it,” Uncle Frank told him, “but they'll sure need plenty of help to get them moved from where they dropped them. He says he wants to pile them up over in that corner.”

“What you going to do with 'em after you get 'em piled up?” the lieutenant asked me.

“Saw them up for firewood if I can get hold of a two-handled saw,” I told him.

“Ought to make good kindling,” he said. “A man couldn't find better, but this pitchy stuff would burn awful fast for firewood. A cord wouldn't go as far as half a ton of coal.” Then he asked Uncle Frank, “How do you figure on moving and stacking 'em?”

“Don't know,” Uncle Frank told him. “Soft as this ground is, a man couldn't move them on rollers. And what's more, he couldn't pry them up to get rollers underneath without tearing the lawn to pieces.”

“Have to lay planks down and skid 'em,” the lieutenant said. “Might be Bill and I'll have a chance to give it a try tomorrow. That is, if we don't get called out. Little late now for overheated stoves, and too early for brush fires; we might get a chance at it. Got an extra horse here we're training right now; wouldn't hurt him to get a little exercise.”

Both Uncle Frank and I thanked the lieutenant and he started away toward his chair. He'd gone only halfway when he turned back to Uncle Frank and said, “Hear you're quite a cribbage player. Drop in some evening when you've nothing better to do.”

After Uncle Frank had told the lieutenant that he'd come to the firehouse some night to play cribbage, and after he'd talked to Mother for a little while, I walked back to his house with him. “I wish we'd brought along the big cross-cut saw we had for sawing railroad ties in Colorado,” I told him as soon as we were started. “With a saw like that Philip and I could whack those timbers into stove lengths pretty fast, but I don't think a buck-saw would work on stuff that big, and two-handled cross-cuts cost a lot of money.”

“No need of buying one,” Uncle Frank told me. “Father's got a good five-footer down to the farm, and he won't be using it this time of year. I'll be going to see him on my next trip into Brunswick, and I'll bring it back for you. You'll probably raise hobb with it on those old spikes, but if you don't yank it, so's to break a tooth, I can keep it tuned up for you. I'll have it up here by Wednesday.”

After I came home from Uncle Frank's I told Philip about our going into partnerships on the kindling wood business, and about our going to save the profits to buy school clothes for everybody that fall. He couldn't have been more tickled if I'd told him he was going to be President of the United States. The first thing he did was to run over to Uncle Frank's to borrow his hatchet, and Mother had to scold him for going out to split kindling on Sunday.

Philip had never really been lazy, but he'd never been much of a hand to hurry either, and he didn't like to get up quite as early in the mornings as I did. But going in partnership worked like sulphur and molasses on him. Monday morning he woke me up and wanted us to go splitting kindling when it was still dark in the corners of our room. Then he was the first one to be excused from the breakfast table, and he was splitting as fast as he could go when I left for my job at the store. At noon Mother had to tell him he couldn't split any more until after he'd picked up the laundry baskets, or until every block was off the lawn and stacked at the end of the garden.

When I came home from work that evening it would have been hard to see that our back lawn had ever been messed up—except for a few little dents and scraped places. The big timbers were stacked up in the corner by the firehouse driveway; two-wide and five-high, with the odd one lying on top like a ridgepole. Philip was splitting kindling, and Muriel and Hal were stacking up the last few paving blocks.

“You oughta been here! You oughta been here, Ralph!” Hal called as he ran to meet me. “The firemens and their horse piled up all the big sticks, and Muriel and I piled up all the little ones. You oughta see that horse pull! I'll betcha he can pull more than an elephant! Look at the holes his feet made in the driveway when he slided 'em up the boards to the top of the pile! Philip says he's going to have this kindling all chopped up by tomorrow night, and he's going to sell it for at least a hundred dollars. I'll bet we'll be rich when he gets it all sold.”

The first thing I did was to go over to the firehouse, to thank the lieutenant for piling up our timbers, and to tell him we'd be glad to bring over as much kindling as they needed. And I just happened to mention that Uncle Frank had taught me how to play cribbage when we were staying at his house. He told me that I didn't need to thank them, that it was good exercise for both them and the horse, and that the City of Medford furnished them with all the kindling they could use. Then, just before I left, he told me to come over some evening and we'd have a rousing good game of cribbage.

My partnership with Philip was about as lopsided as my partnership with the other boys. I might have had the idea, but he did most of the work—he and Muriel and Hal. Of course, I helped with the splitting, because Mother made Philip quit and go to bed at eight o'clock, and she let me work from supper time till curfew. But Muriel went from house to house, taking orders, and Philip and Hal made all the deliveries. With light kindling Hal could be as much help about loading the cart and carrying armfuls into the houses as if he'd been four or five years older.

Right at the beginning we'd decided to heap every cart load in good shape, so we'd be giving people a real bargain, and I think our first customers must have told others about it. Muriel didn't have to go more than two blocks from home before she'd sold all the kindling the blocks would make, and some of the ladies took as many as four loads.

Even Grace had a part in our partnership. Every time Philip came home with a quarter he gave it to her, and every night at supper time she told us how much our profits had been. The profits were almost as much as the sales, because our only expense was for a hatchet of our own.

Uncle Frank brought us Grandfather's long saw on Wednesday evening, but we didn't have any time to use it during the next week. Muriel was so far ahead of us on kindling orders that it kept us jumping to split blocks, and they lasted till almost curfew time on Tuesday. When Grace made her report on Wednesday, every last stick of kindling had been delivered, and she said we had $21.68 in our treasury. Of course, it wasn't a real treasury; just Mother's Wedgwood sugar bowl. At first Mother wouldn't believe the amount was right, but after dinner Grace brought the sugar bowl and counted the money out in three-dollar piles on the table. It came out just the way Grace said it would; anything to do with figures or money usually did.