“All right,” Poetry said, “I’ll be Crusoe, and you be his Man Friday.”
“I will not,” I said. “I’m already Crusoe. I thought of it first, and I’m already him.”
Poetry and I frowned at each other, almost half mad for a minute until his fat face brightened up and he said, “All right, you be Crusoe, and I’ll be one of the cannibals getting ready to eat your man Friday, and you come along and rescue him.”
“But if you’re going to be a cannibal, I’ll have to shoot you, and then you’ll be dead,” I said.
That spoiled that plan for a jiffy, until Poetry’s bright mind thought of something else, which was, “didn’t Robinson Crusoe have a pet goat on the island with him?”
“Sure,” I said, and Poetry said, “All right, after you shoot me, I’ll be the goat.”
Well that settled that, but which one of the gang should be the colored slave, whom Robinson Crusoe saved on a Friday and whom he named his Man Friday, we couldn’t decide right that minute.
It was Poetry who thought of a way to help us decide which other one of the gang to take along with us.
“Big Jim is out,” I said, “’cause he’s too big and would want to be the leader himself, and Robinson Crusoe has to be that.”
“And Circus is out, too,” Poetry said, on account of he’s almost as big as Big Jim.