Soup (3 page)

Soup’s worst idea was when he’d put a blindfold over your eyes. There was something about just not being able to see that made each torture more unbearable than it really was. Then you never knew what Soup was going to do to you. The fact that he never could think of anything very painful was beside the point. The blindfold was pain enough.

Another one of Soup’s torture tests was an Indian Burn. This inhumanity was only possible if there was a length of rope left over, after the victim was bound to
a tree, and two torturers. A small piece of rope was pulled back and forth across a naked arm or leg. Indian Burns usually produced little heat on the limb of the fortunate captive; but on a hot July day, the Indian usually worked up quite a lather. If there were two Indians, it also burned their hands as well, as there was little or no coordination when two Indians were yanking and counter-yanking.

Sooner or later I could always work free when Soup rode off to “rustle more cattle” and before he “returned to the hideout.” But there was another kid who lived near us who was the meanest, bloodthirstiest redskin that ever held anybody captive. And
her
name was Janice Riker. She was the biggest and strongest and meanest kid that the world ever knew. She had a mop of thick, wiry black hair and beady black eyes. She had the body of a hunchbacked, bowlegged ape and the brain power of a fully ripened bean.

Janice was a twelve-year-old giant at a time when most of us were nine or ten. At school, she was a year behind me and two years behind Soup. Miss Kelly was rarely impressed with her sums or her spelling. But as a mistress of torture, Janice was a real prodigy. When Janice Riker tied you to a tree, you knew you were tied
for sure. Your hands went purple in ten seconds. Her knots were braided triumphs that took more rope than the loops around your body. And the one thing you’d have to say for Janice, she never forgot to put rope around your neck. Tight.

When the knots were all secure, Janice produced the dirtiest hanky in town, which was used as a blindfold if you were lucky; and if you were unlucky, as a gag. But seeing as Janice was such a perfectionist, she was usually willing to make a minor sacrifice for her torturous art. She’d kick off a shoe and use one of her smelly old stockings. Janice Riker sure had style.

If that wasn’t enough, then came torture. Janice started things by stuffing a bug up your nose. The bug didn’t go for the idea any more than the nose did and usually made its merciful escape. But by then Janice was just warming up to her trade. She’d yank down your britches and tell you she’d caught a hornet. That happened to me once. Only Janice wasn’t faking. She really did have my britches down and she really did have an honest-to-goodness hornet. A real mad one! Janice let me see it, by lifting her stocking up over one of my eyes.

That was when Soup and Cubby came along.

Janice Riker was the only person in the world that Soup was afraid of, except for Miss Kelly, of course. But as for Soup’s old dog Cubby,
he
wasn’t afraid of the living or dead. Cubby was a mean one-eyed coon-hound. Nights when the moon was full, you’d hear Cubby up on the ridge running after fur, and from a good mile off you’d hear him bugle. It was about the second most beautiful sound anybody ever heard.

The first came on the day that Cubby bit into the backside of Janice Riker and made her scream like it was murder. It was a holy note to my ears. Cubby never did take to me a whole lot. But he sure took to Janice, especially after she kicked him in the chops. Nobody with half a brain ever kicks a mean one-eyed coondog. I wouldn’t kick Cubby if he’d been dead for three days.

But then Janice was about as smart as a bean.

And I wasn’t much smarter the day I tied Aunt Carrie up. She let me do it, of course, thinking it was all a game and that she’d be able to turn loose right quick. She was willing. She put her back to one of those small tap maples in the little hollow west of our house, and she let me run around and around with my lasso. Aunt Carrie thought it was all a big joke, not realizing that I was a graduate of the Janice Riker Torture School.

“Okay,” I said, “get loose, Aunt Carrie.”

She wiggled and tugged, yanked and twisted. Then she asked me to cut her loose. I didn’t. So then she ordered me to cut her loose. I still didn’t. Aunt Carrie then promised me a present. I would get a “good sound thrashing” if she were not set free this instant. She would give it to me herself.

“How?” I asked her, laughing.

This was a mistake. I’d gone beyond the point of no return, and Aunt Carrie had a temper of a wet cat.

I began to wonder how I’d ever untie Aunt Carrie without getting thrashed. So I told her how sorry I was and that it was all in fun. To prove my good faith, I started working on the ropes. She quieted down some, and a bit of the red drained out of her cheeks. But it was a funny thing about those knots. I remember tying them as tight as I could. All of Aunt Carrie’s struggling must have cinched them up even snugger. The knots seemed to be much smaller now. It was hard to tell where one loop locked into the next.

I was actually doing my best to untie the rope, but not fast enough for Aunt Carrie. She figured she was being put upon, so she started struggling again, which really didn’t help loosen those knots that seemed to get more snug with each of her spasms.

CRASH!

It started to thunder. The skies were getting darker and darker as the knots seemed to shrink up tighter and tighter. Aunt Carrie started to panic. She was as scared of thunderstorms as Janice was of Cubby. Even in the house, she’d cover her eyes with a dry cloth during an electric storm and put rubbers on her feet.

“Run to the house and get a kitchen knife,” Aunt Carrie screamed at me, her little voice almost lost in the wind.

This I did. And the rain was really coming down so hard, I was soaked by the time I made it to the kitchen door. I got a knife (a dull one) and hurried out into the storm. The air was white with water, and the thunder was crashing down like Old Ned had a headache and there wasn’t any Anacin.

“Good thing we’re under a tree, Aunt Carrie,” I said, as I sawed at the knots with little or no progress.

I was taking pains to destroy as little of my lasso as possible. Aunt Carrie had her eyes shut and was yelling bloody murder. She was now totally out of control. But somehow I heard her remark that during a thunderstorm, under a tree was the worst place to be. A big bolt hit nearby, and Aunt Carrie charged like a stuck
boar. The lasso snapped, and her hands were free. That’s when she made a slight error. She started to run forward, forgetting that her ankles were still roped to the tree. Aunt Carrie landed face down in a somewhat muddy spot.

Whether I needed it or not, as soon as we got back to the house, Aunt Carrie gave me a good, sound thrashing. I tried to explain that if Janice Riker had held her captive, things would have been far worse.

It didn’t do any good.

“M
INE’S GREEN
,” I said.

“The brown ones are better,” said Soup.

“Who says?”

“Me, that’s who.”

“How come the brown acorns are better, Soup?”

“Look here and I’ll show ya.”

Taking the green acorn from my hand, before my fingers were quite ready to release it, Soup held it up next to his brown one. His acorn was rounder and fatter. The moon on my acorn was still green, the moon on his had mellowed to a rich, creamy, perfectly rounded spot.

“See?” said Soup. “Brown acorns are ripe. And before it gets real dry, that’s the best time to hollow it out for an acorn pipe.”

Soup had his jackknife and I had mine. But my first error was clicking out the big blade, a natural mistake that was soon corrected as Soup pointed out that the
small
blade of a jackknife was special made to carve out acorns. Lucky for me our pockets were bumpy with spares, because I ruined the first three while Soup only spoiled one. At last the delicate surgery was performed. Under Soup’s supervision, I even poked a tiny hole up from the point where the pipe stem would fit.

“Soup.”

“Yeah?”

“What’ll we use for a pipe stem?”

“Blue daisy.”

“Honest?”

“Sure, but it can’t be green. There ain’t no hole up through the middle of the shaft unless it’s brown and dry.”

It was early October, the peak of the season for carving an acorn pipe according to Luther Wesley Vinson, the only available expert. Soup’s theory did not concern the acorn. It was because blue daisy weeds bloomed at the start of September. But by October, the shafts were
halfway green and partway brown; dry enough to be stiff and straight for a pipe stem, yet green enough to cut.

We located a weed patch that was laced with blue daisy that seemed, to Soup and to me, created special to be stem material for acorn pipes. Each of us cut several stalks of the brownish green shaft, average length about three inches. With a bit of urging, one end could jam into the little hole near the point, the underside, of the hollowed-out acorn.

“Soup.”

“Yeah?”

“We won’t ever get any tobacco for our pipes.”

“Don’t need it.”

“What’ll we use?”

“Cornsilk,” said Soup.

“Cornsilk? I heard tell that if you smoke cornsilk, your teeth turn yellow. And sometimes even your hair.”

“Who said?”

“Rolly told me,” I said.

“What would Rolly McGraw know about anything? He’s so dumb I bet he goes to school on Saturday.”

On any given day in Vermont, it doesn’t take much brains to find a stand of corn. There was corn on our place and corn on Vinson’s. I still don’t know why we
bothered to climb the fence into Mr. Tanner’s, but we did. Some of the corn was late, and ears stuck out in pairs on almost every other stalk except the runts.

“Boy!” I said, stuffing handful after handful of wet green cornsilk into my pockets, “there’s enough cornsilk here to smoke for the next hundred years. Maybe even a thousand. Look at it all, Soup.”

“A million years at least,” said Soup, whose experience in the fields of agriculture told him what a bumper season it was for cornsilk.

“Boy!” I said again.

“Let me see the silk you’re picking.”

“This,” I said, showing Soup a handful that was long and green and wet.

“That’ll never smoke,” said Soup. “Don’t you know
anything
about smoking? For something to burn it has to be dry. Ever see tobacco?”

“Sure. Lot of times.”

“Well, what color is it?”

“Brown.”

“What color is your cornsilk?”

“Green.”

“Look at mine, Rob. I only pick the dark curly silk at the very end of the ear. Pick the stuff that feels so dry it’ll almost crackle in your hand. See?”

“I see. Gee, Soup, you must know everything.”

“Yeah, I reckon I do. At least about cornsilk.”

It took me another five anxious minutes to void my pockets of wet green cornsilk. Some acorns fell out, and I saved those. My next harvest of smoking material was more selective, and I showed Soup some samples.

“How’s this, Soup?”

“Well, okay. It could be better. Some of yours ought to be spread out on a rag under the kitchen stove for an all-night dry.”

“What if Mama or Aunt Carrie finds it?”

“Then it’ll smoke for sure. In the stove. And that old ass of yours will smoke too, if I got those two ladies sized up right.”

“You sized ’em right,” I said, remembering Aunt Carrie’s apt description of a cigar: A flame in front and a fool in back.

“Rob, one of the things you got to learn …”

“What’s that?”

“You ought to learn that if you’re going to smoke, you got to do it in private. You can’t spread out cornsilk all over the place for the whole doggone world to take note of. You can’t run home and show people stuff that
you
like, but they won’t even spit on. A while back I learned something.”

“What?”

“I learned that my Ma and Pa weren’t made to see everything or know about anything. So I don’t talk about a thing. I wouldn’t say
smoke
if I was on fire. One thing I just got to tell you, Rob.”

“Okay, tell me.”

“A shut mouth can bottle up a barrel of sin.”

As we both sat and leaned our backs to Mr. Tanner’s fence, we stuffed the bowls of our acorn pipes with dry cornsilk. It was pure joy to have Soup for a friend. A lot that Soup said made a heap of sense. He must of been part horse.

“See how I do it?” said Soup.

“Let me see.”

“You have to pack just the right dose of silk into your acorn, or you won’t get enough of a smoke.”

“I know.”

“But there’s one mistake a pipe smoker can’t make.”

“What’s that?”

“You can’t punch the silk in too tight.”

“Let’s not call it silk, Soup. Say tobacco.”

“Okay. You got to put air down in the bowl as well as tobacco. If there isn’t any air, your pipe don’t draw.”

“Draw?”

“It won’t let you suck any smoke into your lungs.”

“Is that where it goes?”

“That’s where.”