Soup (2 page)

“She did not.”

“Yes, she did. Honest. It was right after I’d been rassling with Rolly McGraw.”

“Stories,” said Aunt Carrie. “He’s telling stories again. What he needs is a good, sound thrashing.”

“He’s just going through a stage,” said Mama, “and it all started when he began to see so much of Soup.”

“It’s not Soup’s fault either,” I said. “If you have to blame somebody, I’m the one who made the mistake. Blame me.”

“We shall.” Aunt Carrie’s voice rapped out like a gavel.

But I knew my confession would impress Mama, especially when I heaped the guilt of all the others upon my own little back, insisting that they not share the shame. I was right. My mother believed in me as solidly as I believed in her.

“Robert,” she said, “were you rude to that nurse on purpose? Or were you only trying to do as Miss Kelly taught you all to do?”

There it was! A hole in the fence. The gaping gate to freedom. An escape from punishment and shame, not to mention pain. Even the way Mama said “that nurse” meant she wanted to believe that her good boy told the truth. All I had to do was say that I was just trying to follow Miss Kelly’s sterling, character-building directive. But I couldn’t.

“Well, I guess I knew it was wrong. But I can’t stand it when Miss Boland asks that question. I didn’t want
to lie to her. So Soup and I figured it all out ahead of time. And I knew the other kids would laugh, because they knew I was going to say it. Soup and I drew straws. I lost. Mama, I guess you ought to whip me proper.”

I got a licking.

I was lying upstairs on my bed, my eyes shut tight against the hurt. But I could tell by the sting of the whacks that Mama wasn’t switching me very hard. Her head was even turned away like she hated the job.

She hit the wall a lot.

S
OUP WAS
my best pal.

His real and righteous name was Luther Wesley Vinson, but nobody called him Luther. He didn’t like it. I called him Luther just once, which prompted Soup to break me of a very bad habit before it really got
formed. As soon as the swelling went out of my lip, I called him Soup instead of Thoop.

He first discouraged his mother of the practice of calling him Luther. (Using a different method, of course.) She used to call him home to mealtime by yelling, “Luther!” But he never answered to the name. He’d rather miss supper. When his mother got wise, she’d stand out on their back porch, cup her hands to her mouth, and yell, “Soup’s on!”

From a distance (their farm was uproad next to ours) all you could hear was “Soup.” And that was how the kids who were playing ball in the pasture started thinking his name was Soup, because he answered to it.

When it came to getting the two of us in trouble, Soup was a regular genius. He liked to whip apples. But that was nothing new. Every kid did. The apples had to be small and green and hard, about the size of a golf ball. The whip had to be about four to five foot long, with a point on the small end that you’d whittle sharp with your jackknife. You held the apple close to your chest with your left hand and pushed the pointed stick into the apple, but not so far as it’d come out the yonder side. No matter how careful you speared the apple, a few drops of juice would squirt on your shirt.
They dried to small, tiny brown spots that never even came out in the wash.

Sassafras made the best whips. You could swing a sassafras whip through the air so fast it would whistle. The apple would fly off, and you’d think it would never come down. To whip an apple was sport enough for most of us, but not for old Soup.

“Watch this,” he said.

“What?” I said.

We were up in the apple orchard on a hillside that overlooked town. Below us was the Baptist church.

“I bet I can hit the Baptist church.”

“You better not, Soup.”

“Why not?”

“We’ll really catch it.”

“No we won’t. And what’s more, I bet this apple can hit the bell in the belltower and make it ring.”

“Aw, it won’t go that far.”

“Oh, no?”

Soup whipped his apple, and I was right. It landed far short of the Baptist church.

“Watch me,” I said. And with my next throw I almost hit the church roof.

“My turn,” said Soup.

I’ll have to admit that Soup put all he had into his next throw. The whip made a whistle that would’ve called a dead dog. That old apple took off like it’d been shot out of a gun, made a big arc through the sky, and for a few long seconds I thought we’d hear that old bell ring for sure.

But we never heard the sounding brass. What we heard was the tinkling cymbal of a broken window. Breaking a pane of plain old glass wasn’t stylish enough for Soup. It had to be stained glass. Even the sound of that stained glass shattering had color in it. I just stood there looking at that tiny little black star of emptiness that was once a window pane. It was like somebody busted my heart.

“No,” I said, in almost a whisper.

I wanted the glass to fly up into place again, like it never happened. So that the little black star would erase away like a bad dream. But there it was and there it stayed.

“No,” said Soup.

My feet were stuck to the ground like I was standing in twin buckets of mortar. I couldn’t run. Not even when a lady ran out of the side door of the church and
pointed up at us. Even though she was far below, it felt like her finger took a stab right into my chest. It was a pain, just like when you get stuck with the tip of a sword.

To make matters worse, it was Mrs. Stetson.

My family wasn’t Baptist. But I guess that she knew Mama and Aunt Carrie real well, because she came to call almost every week. Religion was her favorite subject. You’d be hard put to find a soul who knew more about God than Mrs. Stetson. She was a walking, talking Bible, which she could quote chapter and verse. Get her started and it went on like rain. Forty days and forty nights. Just to be in the same room with Mrs. Stetson was like being caught in a downpour. She sure could drench a body with scripture.

But what she was saying now was far from holy. And if there was anything Mrs. Stetson was poor at, it was talking as she climbed full-speed up a steep hill. By the time she reached me, she was so out of breath from the uphill scolding that she couldn’t say a word.

I looked around for Soup, but he was gone. Good old Soup. So there I stood, with a sassafras stick in my hand and apple-juice spots on the front of my shirt.
Still wet. The mortar in my shoes had now hardened into stone. My ears were ringing with a
tinkle tinkle tinkle
of smashing glass that wouldn’t seem to stop.

“You!” she said.

“Me?”

Her eyes burned with the wrath of the Old Testament. It was plain to behold that Mrs. Stetson believed that you had to smite transgressors so that the ground ran red with their blood until the multitudes were sore afraid. Especially sore. But if anybody ever looked sore, it was Mrs. Stetson.

“Robert Peck!” she said in full voice.

Her big old hands shot out and grabbed my face and my hair. She shook me hard enough to shake off one of my shoes. Then after she stopped shaking me, she twisted my head around so my nose was pointing right at the little black star of that broken window pane.

“Just look what you did!” said Mrs. Stetson. “Look me in the eye and tell the truth. Do you dare say you didn’t?”

“I didn’t.”

This was not the response that she expected. I guess what she really sought was an outburst of guilt, a tear-soaked
plea to ask for the forgiveness of God and Mrs. Stetson—perhaps not in that order of importance.

“I didn’t. Honest, Mrs. Stetson. I didn’t throw an apple that far. Look how far it is.”

“You
did
do it. I saw you do it. And here’s the apple you did it with.” She had a pierced apple in one hand and my switch in the other, and I knew I was a goner.

“But I couldn’t hit the church from way up here. Nobody could.”

“Bosh! Even a fool knows how far an apple will pitch from a stick. Watch.”

You won’t believe what I saw. Mrs. Stetson somehow let go of her senses. She pushed an apple on a stick, and before I could grab her arm, her temper bested reason. Whissshh! You never saw a worse throw in your life, not if you stood up in that old orchard from now until Judgment. Her apple never even headed in the direction of the Baptist church. Nowhere near. But you couldn’t say that apple didn’t have any steam to it. No, sir. It flew off her stick (my stick) like a rifle ball, going east by northeast, and finally tipped over a flower pot with a geranium in it outside old Haskin’s shack window. And the pot cracked the glass.

Crash-tinkle!

Out came old Mr. Haskin with blood in his eye. His language would have made Satan himself cover his ears. Not real fancy swearing, just a long string of old favorites. He pointed at Mrs. Stetson and me, then he started uphill and coming our way fast.

“Run!” yelled Mrs. Stetson. “That man’s a degenerate.”

We ran, Mrs. Stetson and I. She had on two shoes and I wore one, which evened the speed a bit, and we ran as if Hell was a step behind. We ran until we could no longer hear the terrible things that old Haskin shouted he would do to Mrs. Stetson the next time she came near his rotten old shack. We didn’t stop running, Mrs. Stetson and I, until we darted into Frank Rooker’s garage and had bolted the door.

But as we ran in, Soup ran out, after taking one look at Mrs. Stetson. Out the side door he shot, into the arms of Mr. Haskin. Soup still had his switch in hand, and his shirt-front was smelled and spotted with apple juice, which was enough evidence for old Haskin. Borrowing the sassafras switch, the old man gave Soup a fine smarting. I’ll have to admit it sure must have been a sight to see.

From where Mrs. Stetson and I stood panting, we didn’t see it. But we heard it all. Thinking I’d be next, I even winced for poor Soup with every blow. Best of all, we heard him confess up to breaking the window, even though it wasn’t the same glass he got thrashed for. In a way, it really was justice.

Mrs. Stetson was right. There really is a God.

I
’LL SAY THIS
for Soup. He almost always had some rope when rope was called for.

All it was was a gray length of rotten clothesline that his mother or mine no longer trusted to hoist and wave
the family linens. But our rule was that we never
called
it clothesline.

It was rope.

We’d tie four or five feet of it on the end of a crooked old twig to make a whip. With a bit of luck, you’d snap it and make a crack of a sound, and some white cotton tufts would float into the air. Soup was pretty good at snapping other people, especially girls. Then he’d be the lion tamer and I’d be the lion. I never got to be the lion tamer too often.

If we had enough rope, we’d make a lasso. It was never called a lariat, always a lasso, and it was both noun and verb. You could lasso a kid with a lasso. But that was rare as accuracy. Everything and everyone usually got away free.

Soup’s favorite pastime was to tie somebody up. And this is how he always did it. He’d let me tie him up first, and then he’d turn free in no time at all.

But when Soup tied
me
up, I was usually tied up for most of the afternoon. And when he was sure I was securely a trussed-up captive, the torture began. These tortures were much too hideous to talk about, especially to those with faint hearts. The first torture was giving somebody who was tied up “a pink belly.” This consisted
of a few dozen gentle slaps where your shirt was pulled up. Unbearable. That was if the victim was tied to a tree. If there wasn’t any rope (and there were four captors) the captive was spread-eagled in the air and dropped onto the ground several times from a height of up to six inches. This was called giving him “the bumps.”

Or you could rub your knuckles in his hair real fast, and that was a Dutch Rub.

Soup’s favorite torture was to give a “straw mouth.” To do this, you take two heavily-seeded haystraws and cross them into an X. As soon as the victim bites down on the cross, you pull the straws, so that all the seeds come out in his mouth. Bloodcurdling!