Brief Moment in Time Read online

  When we pulled the stick out, something followed it. It was gray and white like a rabbit; it had round eyes and long ears like a rabbit. All we had to do was grab it. But when it came out, it flew away! J.D. and I stood there, dumbfounded, and watched that rabbit fly. We knew that rabbits couldn’t fly, but this one sure did. We both watched it fly right off into the sky!

  “I don’t think we’d better tell anyone about this,” J.D. said.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “No one’s gonna believe us.”

  “We both saw it. They’ve got to believe us.”

  “I still don’t think we ought to tell them.”

  We walked home thinking about what we had just seen.

  When we got home, Mother had dinner on the table, and everybody was eating. We sat in our usual places and made our report about Ol’ Brownie and her calf.

  While we were eating our dinner of fried chicken, biscuits, flour gravy, and beans, I told the story of the flying rabbit. By the time I finished the telling, everyone was laughing so hard that they couldn’t eat.

  “I told you not to tell them,” J.D. said shaking his head.

  Father left us in suspense for a while, but then he explained: “There was probably a horned owl in the hole that the rabbit ran in to, and while you were poking into the hole, it was the owl you were feeling with the stick. The stick wouldn’t catch in the owl’s feathers, so you couldn’t pull it out. When you pulled the stick out, the owl had had enough of being poked and decided to come out and fly away. When the owl came out, you thought it was the rabbit that you had chased into the hole. The owl was the same color as the rabbit. It had big round eyes like a rabbit. Its horned feathers looked like a rabbit’s ears. You expected to see a rabbit. So when it flew away, you were sure you had seen a rabbit fly.”

  My family would never let us forget about the “flying rabbit” and laughed about it during many a meal. We were just a couple of little boys, and it was an honest mistake.

  THE DRAGON

  On a crisp autumn day in 1930, Everett, J.D., and I were cutting logs into firewood. J.D. and I were sawing the logs into blocks, and Everett was splitting them.

  Our neighbor, Mr. James Nelson, was visiting with Dad. They stopped by to see how we were doing.

  My brothers and I were talking about hunting. December 2nd was coming soon—the beginning of fur season, when we’d go into the forest to trap and shoot animals. Then we would skin them and prepare their pelts to be sold. Selling pelts was a way to make extra money. It was important, and we were looking forward to it.

  Dad and Mr. Nelson listened for a while. Mr. Nelson told us that we should be careful in those deep woods because there was a dragon that lived there. He said the dragon had wings and could fly. We had seen hawks, owls, and a few eagles, so—perhaps there were some dragons, also.

  We knew about every kind of animal that lived in those woods, but we’d never seen a dragon. Since Mr. Nelson was an adult, he must know something we didn’t, so we listened carefully. The expression on Dad’s face gave me cause to think that perhaps Mr. Nelson was just trying to scare us. But I wasn’t sure, and Dad wasn’t denying the story, so I just listened.

  “Mr. Nelson, what do dragons eat?” I asked.

  “Their favorite food is children, but they’ll eat a pig or a chicken if they can’t catch any children,” he replied seriously.

  That bit of information made me pay a lot closer attention.

  “I saw one just a couple of weeks ago in the north edge of the woods,” he said.

  Dad and Mr. Nelson got up and walked to the barn. They were kind grinning as they walked away. Mr. Nelson’s story seemed strange—I didn’t know what to make of it. On our hunting trips, we sometimes went all the way through the woods. His story about the dragons gave me reason to think that maybe we shouldn’t go there.

  “Ah, don’t pay any attention to him; he’s just kidding,” Everett said.

  We continued cutting wood and forgot all about the dragon.

  ***

  December came, and the weather turned cold, so the fur would be good. Cold weather makes the fur take a good grip on the animal’s skin. If you take the pelt before the weather gets cold, the fur won’t hold; it will just drop off and the fur is no good.

  One cold day when we didn’t have to work, Everett picked up Dad’s 22-caliber rifle, and we went into the woods to see if we could shoot a possum, a skunk, a civet cat, or perhaps get lucky and come across a muskrat. The value of the pelts was a deciding factor in determining what we hunted for. A possum's pelt was worth about two dollars, and that was a lot of money in 1930. The pelt of a skunk was worth about four dollars, and a muskrat was worth nine dollars.

  When we caught or shot an animal, we removed its skin, stretched it over a board with the fur side in, scraped the excess tissue from the hide, and then hung it up to cure. The skins had to be cured. No one would pay for raw skin. Skinning a skunk was a smelly job, but the pelt was worth a lot of money, so we did it, if we were lucky enough to catch one.

  We had been out almost all day, and we weren’t having much luck. All we had to show for our time were two small possums. We had just about decided to call it a day when we came upon the tracks of a skunk. We could tell by the tracks that it was a big one. Maybe worth five dollars! We were so sure that we could catch it that we were already spending the money. The tracks led us deeper and deeper into the dense forest. The fall rain had left the leaves wet and soft, and we made very little noise as we followed the trail. There could be anything hiding in all that brush, and it could creep right up on us before we knew it was there.

  After about an hour, we felt we were getting close. We ran faster, and faster trying to close the gap, when all of a sudden we found ourselves on the north side of the big woods. The tracks led on across a meadow, and beyond the meadow was a creek with a stand of trees along both sides. The skunk could hide among those trees, so we hurried across.

  On a grassy slope beyond the creek, we saw something strange charging down the hill with its black wings flapping. We had never seen anything like that before, so we stopped and looked at each other wondering what we should do.

  “Is that the dragon Mr. Nelson was talking about?” I asked.

  What should we do? We believed our skunk was just ahead, among those trees. The dragon would reach the creek before we could. At best, we were going to lose the pelt. If the dragon were as bad as Mr. Nelson said, we might lose a lot more than that pelt. It was obvious that the dragon had seen us. Frightful sounds were coming from the beast, and it was without a doubt coming after us!

  “Everett! Shoot it!” J.D. and I shouted.

  Everett drew a bead and fired. The dragon folded its wings, ran back up the hill and disappeared into the trees. We gave up on chasing the skunk and walked home carrying the two possums. When we got home, we told Dad about the dragon.

  “You didn’t shoot it, did you?” he exclaimed.

  “I shot at it, and it ran back up the hill,” Everett said.

  “Did it seem to be hurt when it was running up the hill?”

  “No, it was running pretty good.”

  “That’s good,” Dad said, as he heaved a big sigh. “How did you happen to miss? You can shoot better than that.”

  “I don’t think I missed,” Everett replied, “but I must have, because it sure was running! It looked like a man when it was running.”

  At that time, Mr. Nelson drove his wagon into the farmyard and showed Dad the hole in his coattail.

  “How could you have gotten a hole like that in your coattail and not have a wound on your body?” Dad asked.

  Then Mr. Nelson showed us how he pulled his coattail up over his head and waved it to frighten us as he came down the hill.

  “You’re damn lucky you didn’t get killed,” Dad said. “Those boys can shoot a rifle pretty good.”

  “I’ll never pull a crazy stunt like that again,” Mr. Nelson said, and agreed that he was lucky. He g
ave a nervous laugh as he rode away.

  THE CHRISTMAS OF THE LITTLE RED WAGON

  In 1932, America was in the grip of the Great Depression, and the central states were experiencing a severe drought. This was before social security, welfare, unemployment insurance, and food stamps. People were going hungry.

  I was seven, the fourth in a family of five children. We had worked all year to grow and harvest fields of cotton, corn, and wheat. But we couldn’t sell what little we had grown. This was the second year in a row that we hadn’t made enough money to pay expenses. Debts were piling up. The only payday a farmer gets is when he sells what he has produced. The drought and the accompanying depression made it necessary for Father to mortgage the farm to get money to plant new crops.

  We were so poor that Father had to wrap his feet in burlap when he worked in the fields to save his shoes for going into town. The only things we could sell were butter and eggs, and we used the money they brought in to buy necessities such as salt, baking powder, and medicines. Everything else that we used or ate, we either grew or made on the farm.

  The school was five miles away in a small town called Amber. Naoma, Everett, J.D. and I rode a bus to school. The townspeople were poor, also. The merchants depended on the farmers to buy their merchandise, but the farmers had no money. So the merchants had to close their stores, and that created an even greater hardship.

  Our family didn’t go hungry, because we lived on a farm with animals, gardens, and orchards. We had milk and butter from our cows, meat and eggs from our chickens, and from our pigs we got meat and oil. We preserved what we grew in our garden by canning in the summer, which provided food through the winter. We gathered pecans and black walnuts that grew wild along the creek. The townspeople didn’t have these advantages, so they went hungry.

  Since our cows produced more milk than we could use, we gave some to the people who came by at milking time. They were proud, and they didn’t want to accept charity, but they had no choice. For some, it was the only food they would have all day. They didn’t always express their gratitude with words, but their faces said it plainly.

  Each year, on Christmas Eve, the school put on a Christmas pageant. I was one of the Three Wise Men. We practiced singing, “We Three Kings of Orient Are,” until I could sing it in my sleep. I still hum the song; it left an indelible mark on my memory.

  The Christmas tree stood on the stage at one end of the gymnasium. The students decorated it with handmade ornaments: colored paper cut into strips and pasted together to form links into chains. We also strung popcorn to add decoration. Evergreen trees were too expensive, so we used branches from regular trees and gathered mistletoe that grew wild along the creeks and placed it on the bare branches to add greenery.

  The school placed gifts for each child under the Christmas tree. The gift was a red mesh bag that contained an apple, an orange, nuts, and a few pieces of hard candy. The gifts were passed out after the play. It was the only Christmas gift most of the children would receive. I waited eagerly to receive mine because it was the only time I’d get an orange—I wouldn’t see another for a year.

  Money for buying the gifts was obtained by holding a community box supper after the autumn harvest. Women prepared boxes of food and wrapped them in gaily colored paper, decorated with ribbons. Some of the women baked a pie or a cake. People gathered at the gymnasium, and the boxes were auctioned to the highest bidder.

  The boxes, even in those hard times, brought the enormous sum of two or three dollars. It was a compliment to the girl or woman when the food she prepared sold for the highest price, and it was the talk of the town for days.

  Christmas Eve was crisp and cold. The bus didn’t run at night, so we walked to the pageant. Mother and Dad never attended. They probably felt their clothes were inappropriate, but I would have been proud to have them witness my performance in the play.

  After the pageant, Naoma, Everett, J.D., and I walked home. Stars illuminated the light covering of snow, and the frozen clods made crunching sounds as we walked. We kept our hands warm by stuffing them in our pockets, and we talked about the Christmas play and the people we saw. It was so cold that our breath turned to steam. We had fun watching the steam coming out of our mouths, making it appear that we were smoking.

  By the time we got home, we were tired and cold. Mother, Dad, and our baby brother Valatus had already gone to bed, but they had left a fire in the stove. I wanted to eat my apple before going to bed, but when I opened the bag, the apple rolled under the bed. I crawled under the bed to get it. Lo and behold! There was a little red wagon under the bed! It was gleaming red, with yellow wheels and black tires. The tongue and frame were black, and the wheels sported silver hubcaps. It was beautiful. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  Where could it have come from? Mother and Dad didn’t have enough money to buy something like that! But there it was. They had bought it somehow and then concealed it so they could surprise us in the morning. I couldn’t hide my excitement. When I crawled out from under the bed, my sister and brothers saw the expression on my face and looked under the bed to see what had caused it. They, too, were astonished. Somehow our parents had managed to buy one gift that we could all share. I was so excited I could hardly sleep. I lay in my bed thinking of the sacrifice they had made to buy such an expensive present.

  The next morning when Dad got the gift from under the bed, we kids pretended to be surprised. We learned later that they had sold a calf to get the money for it.

  We rode the little red wagon on paths and trails made by animals. There were no paved roads or sidewalks, so we coasted down bumpy hills and used it to haul feed for the animals. We played with that wagon until we wore the wheels off. We repaired the wheels and wore them off again. We finally outgrew it. The last I remember of the wagon was its battered bed being used as a feeding trough for the chickens.

  Of all the presents I ever received, that present is one of the most treasured. I will always remember the Christmas of the little red wagon. We were poor, but we were blessed in many ways. I think back on those times with fond memories.

  SNOWBALL

  I was walking home from where the school bus dropped me off. The bus stop was more than a mile from our house. I don’t know how cold it was, but the water in the wagon tracks was frozen, so it must at least have been in the twenties. The earflaps of my winter cap pulled down and tied under my chin, but my ears were still cold. I wanted to rub them, but I was afraid—I imagined they might break and fall off like chipped ice. I had my gloved hands stuffed into my jacket pockets, but they were still cold.

  In spite of the howling of the wind, I heard a tiny sound. I stopped to listen. It sounded like the mewing of a kitten. Nah, that couldn’t be, I thought. Not out here, in this kind of weather. I started to move on. But there—I heard it again! It seemed to come came from what appeared to be a bundle of rags or a bag lying in a gully. I crawled into the gully to take a look. I picked up the sack, opened the drawstring, and peeked inside.

  It appeared that someone had tossed a mother cat and her litter of kittens into the gully to get rid of them. They were all dead but one. The survivor was a tiny kitten, so white it looked like a snowball lying there. The kitten was all but dead. I picked it up and put it inside my jacket to keep it warm. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, but I couldn’t leave it there in the cold to die. Somehow I wasn’t so cold, now that I was concerned about keeping the kitten warm.

  As soon as I walked into the house, I went to the stove to get warm. Mother was busy in the kitchen preparing supper, but she was never too busy to check on her family. She came into the living room to check on me.

  “What have you got under your jacket?” was the first thing she said.

  How could she notice that I had something under my jacket? The kitten was so small I didn’t think anyone would notice. I reached inside my jacket and removed the kitten. Mother took it in her hands, shook her head. “It sure is a pretty little thing,” sh
e said, “but it’s too young to survive without its mother’s milk. Where did you find it?”

  I related the story of finding the kitten.

  “I’m pleased that you have a good heart and want to save its life,” Mother said, “but I’m afraid it’s hopeless. I suggest you take it out into the field and bury it.”

  “Mom, I can’t do that. It’s still alive, and I sure can’t kill it and then bury it. May I try to save it?” I pleaded.

  “How will you feed it?”

  “We have eyedroppers. I could heat cow’s milk, warm it just enough to make it like its mother’s milk, and feed the kitten with an eyedropper.”

  “Son, I don’t think it will work, but if you want to try, I’ll help you all I can. You know that if you manage to get it to live, you won’t be able to keep it in the house. Your father has a rule—no animals inside the house. I’ll talk to him and see if he’ll let you keep it in the house until it’s old enough to live on its own. He may not even let you keep it in the barn. The rule on this farm is that everything must earn its own keep. How can a cat pay its own way?”

  “It could catch mice. There are always mice in the granary.”

  “Yes, that’s a possibility. If you can convince your father to give it a try, then it’s all right with me. Now, get that kitten taken care of. You have chores to do before supper, and then you have to do your homework before you go to sleep. You’d better get busy.”

  I took Snowball—that’s what I named the kitten—to the barn and milked one of the cows and fed the kitten warm milk with an eye dropper. Snowball didn’t want to take the milk from the eyedropper at first, but after trying again and again he began hungrily taking the milk. After feeding the kitten, I put it back inside my jacket to keep it warm, and it was soon fast asleep.