would ring and the crowd – us too – would rush in, like starving, and hack and pull and stuff their mouths, till in fifteen minutes the platters would be bare and the floor covered with grease and bones. “Animals, we’re animals,” Parson would say, but I couldn’t think of any animal that acted so bad. Maybe animals in strange lands do. Still I did like eating at inns, even though I wouldn’t want it steady. I could hold my own and get my share. I’d bought myself a jackknife.
I got glum, a little, in towns. It wasn’t the work that did it, though the work got heavy then, taking boxes of heavy books down from the top of the van and toting them to courthouse steps and all. I never would’ve noticed, I expect, except for that how likely a courthouse is to be built on a hill. It wasn’t the work I minded, but the change that came over Parson Peel.
To be fair, I should take that back. He didn’t change, except that he’d have on a ruffled shirt and a weskit with two rows of buttons and all to match. Inside himself he was just the same only to more people. He looked his kind interested look at lots of people, and listened as close to them as he ever did to me, leaning forward from the box he sat on, saying, “Tell me!” He taught and explained and smiled at everybody just like at me, and made them laugh like he did me, and it somehow, yes, I admit, took me down. I didn’t like it.
In town he’d get asked to people’s houses too, and it never crossed his mind I might like to go along, or at least might like to be asked if only so I could say no. People who’d read the book he wrote would get to talking about one or another idea with him and then say, “Let’s finish this up over a dram at home,” and off Parson would go, saying, “Mind the shop, Sam,” over his shoulder. Or he’d go off with a jag of dirty shirts and bedclothes to find someone to do them up for him, and it’d be hours before he came whistling back with a tale to tell, of what the washerwoman’s life was like and if she prayed or sang or wept or had a friend or hoped for Heaven. He always wanted to know the ways people kept going. No matter how much the same the ways might be, he was always interested. If it hadn’t been I didn’t want to be like Pa or Edward White, I might’ve thought Parson should take some of that interest in his business.
Sometimes I felt tempted to mess up the business, but I never did because I was proud, too, that I could read enough to give people the book they asked for, and change money, and that Parson trusted me. Business was good. I wouldn’t’ve believed, especially in a hard summer, that people would turn over their hard-earned money for what couldn’t feed or clothe or shelter them, for just words such as they could set down themselves if their arm could stand the strain. Ma always said, “Talk’s free,” and what’s writing but just another form of talk? As well try to sell air, I would’ve thought, except I could see for myself the hunger people felt for our wares – not just Bard’s Compendium of the Theory and Practice of Midwifery , or guides to the wilderness, which made some sense, but history and biography and made-up stories and rhymes, Bibles and dictionaries and thoughts . All these were brought by plain sensible people, as well as fine folk.
I’ve been putting-off telling it, but there was a problem about fights too. I mean, in town I’d get in fights. Back where I said how boys ran after us? It wasn’t only that, which I liked. They hung around the van too, as I guess they couldn’t help, and sometimes I let myself be drawn into a little bragging about Parson, and one thing would lead to another, and anyway it’s touchy business being envied, so oftener than I care to recollect, there’d be the boys drawing back to make room for a fair fight, just a solid circle with me and somebody else blocked up in it and everybody yelling, “Hit ’im! Git ’im!” It was just
I got glum, a little, in towns. It wasn’t the work that did it, though the work got heavy then, taking boxes of heavy books down from the top of the van and toting them to courthouse steps and all. I never would’ve noticed, I expect, except for that how likely a courthouse is to be built on a hill. It wasn’t the work I minded, but the change that came over Parson Peel.
To be fair, I should take that back. He didn’t change, except that he’d have on a ruffled shirt and a weskit with two rows of buttons and all to match. Inside himself he was just the same only to more people. He looked his kind interested look at lots of people, and listened as close to them as he ever did to me, leaning forward from the box he sat on, saying, “Tell me!” He taught and explained and smiled at everybody just like at me, and made them laugh like he did me, and it somehow, yes, I admit, took me down. I didn’t like it.
In town he’d get asked to people’s houses too, and it never crossed his mind I might like to go along, or at least might like to be asked if only so I could say no. People who’d read the book he wrote would get to talking about one or another idea with him and then say, “Let’s finish this up over a dram at home,” and off Parson would go, saying, “Mind the shop, Sam,” over his shoulder. Or he’d go off with a jag of dirty shirts and bedclothes to find someone to do them up for him, and it’d be hours before he came whistling back with a tale to tell, of what the washerwoman’s life was like and if she prayed or sang or wept or had a friend or hoped for Heaven. He always wanted to know the ways people kept going. No matter how much the same the ways might be, he was always interested. If it hadn’t been I didn’t want to be like Pa or Edward White, I might’ve thought Parson should take some of that interest in his business.
Sometimes I felt tempted to mess up the business, but I never did because I was proud, too, that I could read enough to give people the book they asked for, and change money, and that Parson trusted me. Business was good. I wouldn’t’ve believed, especially in a hard summer, that people would turn over their hard-earned money for what couldn’t feed or clothe or shelter them, for just words such as they could set down themselves if their arm could stand the strain. Ma always said, “Talk’s free,” and what’s writing but just another form of talk? As well try to sell air, I would’ve thought, except I could see for myself the hunger people felt for our wares – not just Bard’s Compendium of the Theory and Practice of Midwifery , or guides to the wilderness, which made some sense, but history and biography and made-up stories and rhymes, Bibles and dictionaries and thoughts . All these were brought by plain sensible people, as well as fine folk.
I’ve been putting-off telling it, but there was a problem about fights too. I mean, in town I’d get in fights. Back where I said how boys ran after us? It wasn’t only that, which I liked. They hung around the van too, as I guess they couldn’t help, and sometimes I let myself be drawn into a little bragging about Parson, and one thing would lead to another, and anyway it’s touchy business being envied, so oftener than I care to recollect, there’d be the boys drawing back to make room for a fair fight, just a solid circle with me and somebody else blocked up in it and everybody yelling, “Hit ’im! Git ’im!” It was just
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