Soup by Robert Newton Peck Page B

was! A hole in the fence. The gaping gate to freedom. An escape from punishment and shame, not to mention pain. Even the way Mama said “that nurse” meant she wanted to believe that her good boy told the truth. All I had to do was say that I was just trying to follow Miss Kelly’s sterling, character-building directive. But I couldn’t.
    “Well, I guess I knew it was wrong. But I can’t stand it when Miss Boland asks that question. I didn’t wantto lie to her. So Soup and I figured it all out ahead of time. And I knew the other kids would laugh, because they knew I was going to say it. Soup and I drew straws. I lost. Mama, I guess you ought to whip me proper.”
    I got a licking.
    I was lying upstairs on my bed, my eyes shut tight against the hurt. But I could tell by the sting of the whacks that Mama wasn’t switching me very hard. Her head was even turned away like she hated the job.
    She hit the wall a lot.

 

Chapter Two

Apples and Mrs. Stetson
     
    S OUP WAS my best pal.
    His real and righteous name was Luther Wesley Vinson, but nobody called him Luther. He didn’t like it. I called him Luther just once, which prompted Soup to break me of a very bad habit before it really gotformed. As soon as the swelling went out of my lip, I called him Soup instead of Thoop.
    He first discouraged his mother of the practice of calling him Luther. (Using a different method, of course.) She used to call him home to mealtime by yelling, “Luther!” But he never answered to the name. He’d rather miss supper. When his mother got wise, she’d stand out on their back porch, cup her hands to her mouth, and yell, “Soup’s on!”
    From a distance (their farm was uproad next to ours) all you could hear was “Soup.” And that was how the kids who were playing ball in the pasture started thinking his name was Soup, because he answered to it.
    When it came to getting the two of us in trouble, Soup was a regular genius. He liked to whip apples. But that was nothing new. Every kid did. The apples had to be small and green and hard, about the size of a golf ball. The whip had to be about four to five foot long, with a point on the small end that you’d whittle sharp with your jackknife. You held the apple close to your chest with your left hand and pushed the pointed stick into the apple, but not so far as it’d come out the yonder side. No matter how careful you speared the apple, a few drops of juice would squirt on your shirt.They dried to small, tiny brown spots that never even came out in the wash.
    Sassafras made the best whips. You could swing a sassafras whip through the air so fast it would whistle. The apple would fly off, and you’d think it would never come down. To whip an apple was sport enough for most of us, but not for old Soup.
    “Watch this,” he said.
    “What?” I said.
    We were up in the apple orchard on a hillside that overlooked town. Below us was the Baptist church.
    “I bet I can hit the Baptist church.”
    “You better not, Soup.”
    “Why not?”
    “We’ll really catch it.”
    “No we won’t. And what’s more, I bet this apple can hit the bell in the belltower and make it ring.”
    “Aw, it won’t go that far.”
    “Oh, no?”
    Soup whipped his apple, and I was right. It landed far short of the Baptist church.
    “Watch me,” I said. And with my next throw I almost hit the church roof.
    “My turn,” said Soup.
    I’ll have to admit that Soup put all he had into his next throw. The whip made a whistle that would’ve called a dead dog. That old apple took off like it’d been shot out of a gun, made a big arc through the sky, and for a few long seconds I thought we’d hear that old bell ring for sure.
    But we never heard the sounding brass. What we heard was the tinkling cymbal of a broken window. Breaking a pane of plain old glass wasn’t stylish enough for Soup. It had to be stained glass. Even the sound of that stained glass shattering had color in it. I just stood there looking