“Why didn’t you answer me when I called?” Pop asked, and I remembered an old joke our family had read in a magazine and which we had laughed over, so I said, “I didn’t hear you the first two times.”
“Bright boy,” Pop answered, and I answered with another old joke, saying, “I’m so bright my parents call me ‘son.’”
Pop grinned and when I asked him how come we had to get the chores done so early, he explained, “There’s a special prayer meeting for the men of the church. That’s why your mother’s in town now—she went in to get the shopping done this afternoon—she and Mrs. Till.”
It was a good thing we did get the chores done early—a very good thing—because there were a lot of important other things that had to happen that day to make this story even more mysterious, and to clear up some of the cloudy questions in my mind. Nearly everything had to happen before sundown, only of course I didn’t know it at the time, or I’d have hurried even faster with my part of the chores.
I was up in our haymow alone throwing down alfalfa hay when I looked out the east window and saw our car coming down the road, with Mom at the steering wheel and Little Tom Till’s Mom with Charlotte Ann in her lap in the front seat with her. Only a few minutes before I had been thinking about Mrs. Till in a very special way, so when I saw her in the car with Mom, I got the queerest feeling.
Throwing down hay was something I always liked to do because it is like a man’s job; also there was something nice about being alone in a big wide alfalfa-smelling haymow where a boy could think a boy’s thoughts, talk to himself, and whistle, and even sing, and nobody could hear him.
Sometimes when I’m in the haymow, I climb up on the long, axe-hewn beam that stretches across the whole width of the barn from one side to the other, and imagine myself to be Abraham Lincoln who had split so many logs with an ax. I raise my voice and quote all of his Gettysburg address, feeling fine while I am doing it, and important, and glad to be alive. Maybe I would be President of the United States, some time, myself.
I always hated to stop when the last word was said, and I would have to be Theodore Collins’ son again, with years and years of growing yet to do before I would be a man.
Well, I had just said in my deepest, most dignified voice, “... that this nation under God may have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” and was still standing listening to my imaginary audience clap their hands, and thinking about the part of my speech which said, “all men are created equal,” and was also thinking of the Till family—old hook-nosed John Till himself; his oldest boy Bob, and Little Tom, his other son, who wanted to be a good boy and was, part of the time. I was remembering the manila envelope which Little Jim had left at the Tills’ back door and was thinking about Mrs. Till who had such a hard time just to keep from being too discouraged to want to live....
Then is when I heard our car coming and saw Mom with Mrs. Till beside her. I quickly threw down another forkful of hay, hurried to the ladder and climbed down, leaving Abraham Lincoln to look after himself—and to get off the log the best way he could.