“And nobody knew you could read?”
“No. Grandmother told me not to say I could, so I didn’t. She read to me often, and that helped. We had a great many books, of course. I liked those with pictures. Once or twice they caught me with a book that had no pictures, and then they’d take it away and say, ‘I’ll find a book for a little boy.’ ”
“Do you remember what books you liked then?”
“Books about animals, I remember. And geographies. It was funny about animals—”
Once you got Timothy started, thought Welles, it wasn’t hard to get him to go on talking.
“One day I was at the zoo,” said Tim, “and by the cages alone. Grandmother was resting on a bench and she let me walk along by myself. People were talking about the animals and I began to tell them all I knew. It must have been funny in a way, because I had read a lot of words I couldn’t pronounce correctly, words I had never heard spoken. They listened and asked me questions and I thought I was just like grandfather, teaching them the way he sometimes taught me. And then they called another man to come, and said, ‘Listen to this kid; he’s a scream!’ and I saw they were all laughing at me.”
Timothy’s face was redder than usual, but he tried to smile as he added, “I can see now how it must have sounded funny. And unexpected, too; that’s a big point in humor. But my little feelings were so dreadfully hurt that I ran back to my grandmother crying, and she couldn’t find out why. But it served me right for disobeying her. She always told me not to tell people things; she said a child had nothing to teach its elders.”
“Not in that way, perhaps—at that age.”
“But, honestly, some grown people don’t know very much,” said Tim. “When we went on the train last year, a woman came up and sat beside me and started to tell me things a little boy should know about California. I told her I’d lived here all my life, but I guess she didn’t even know we are taught things in school, and she tried to tell me things, and almost everything was wrong.”
“Such as what?” asked Welles, who had also suffered from tourists.