“Gee, ma kin fry these—huh?”
“You bet.”
Brown-legged, dusty, tired, we tramp back to the kitchen door. There she is, plump, tolerant, smiling—a gentle, loving understanding of boys and their hungry, restless ways written all over her face.
“Yes, they’re fine. We’ll have them for supper. Wash and clean them, and then wash your hands and feet and come in.”
On the grass we sit, a pan between us, cleaning those penny catches. The day has been so wonderful that we think the fish must be perfect. And they are, to us. And then the after-supper grouping on the porch, the velvety dusk descending, the bats, the mosquitoes, the smudge carried about the house to drive out the mosquitoes, tales of Indians and battle chiefs long dead, the stars, slumber.
I can feel my mother’s hand as I lean against her knee and sleep.
By just such long, hot yellow roads as Ed and I traversed as boys Franklin and I came eventually to Vincennes, Indiana, but only after traversing a region so flat and yet so rich that it was a delight to look upon. I had never really seen it before—or its small, sweet simple towns—Paxton, Carlisle, Oaktown, Busseron. The fields were so rich and warm and moist that they were given over almost entirely to the growing of melons—water and cantaloupe, great far flung stretches of fields. Large, deep-bodied, green-painted wagons came creaking by, four, five, and six in a row, hauling melons to the nearest siding where were cars. There were melon packing sheds to be seen here and there, where muskmelons were being labeled and crated. It was lovely. At one point we stopped a man and bought two watermelons and sat down by the roadside to eat. Other machines passed and the occupants looked at us as though we had stolen them.
“Here we are,” I said to Franklin, “three honest men, eating our hard-earned melons, and these people believe we stole them.”
“Yes, but think of our other crimes,” he replied, “and anyhow, who wouldn’t—three men eating melons by a roadside, the adjoining fields of which are dotted with melons.”
The man who had passed in the buggy had leered at us in such a convicting way.