Soup by Robert Newton Peck Read Free Book Online Page A

like a tree into me, and both of us into Mama. It was a mess. Almost all of us were crying. A hand had blood on it. So did one nose, and one dress. My knuckles were swelling up like a baseball glove, and so was Eddy’s face. Five minutes later, the three of us sat in the Pharmacy and ate ice cream.
    Eddy and I shook hands. I took note that he put a bit more pressure on my swollen hand than the sincerityof a handclasp demanded. Eddy went his swollen way home. Mama then snaked me to the Dry Goods Store. With his tape, old Mr. Cottingham, who spoke in fluent grunts, measured my girth and pointed to a pile of knickerbockers on a wooden table. He told me to take off the ones I wore. I was ready to balk at this, but one look at Mama said she had worked up a head of steam. So I thought it best to skin down.
    The first pair of knickers was a perfect fit, and I said so. But Mama thought they looked a bit “pinched,” whatever that is. Off they came. On went a bigger pair. And a scratchier pair. Too baggy. In those, I could be run down by a lame turtle. But helpful old Cottingham said I’d “grow into ’em.” A third pair proved baggier and itchier than the second. I hated them and said so, and naturally Mama and Mr. Cottingham thought they were ideal.
    Just to make sure my new knickerbockers were totally without fit or comfort, they had me climb up and stand on a table. They had me turn around so much, you’d think that’s all I’d ever get to do—stand on a table and rotate.
    Mama still wasn’t satisfied. There were at least another six pairs in my size to try on. So she told me to take them off.
    So I did. And I was standing on the table in my underthings while Mr. Cottingham jerked another sample of his baggiest burlap from the bottom of the pile. I looked over their heads and who did I see, coming into the store with her mother? Norma Jean Bissell, that’s who. They both looked at me and I could have perished. Yanking the baggiest and scratchiest pair up over my hips, I announced how fine they fitted and how heavenly they felt. As they were several sizes too big, “to grow into,” I couldn’t feel a thing from my belt to my calf, where they buckled.
    It was decided I was to wear my new knickers home. The old pair got wrapped, the new ones paid for. We started to leave the store, parading right between Mrs. Bissell and her daughter. Norma Jean pretended that she didn’t see me. I pretended too.
    We walked all the way home to our farm. It felt like I was wading through air. Every step, a pin stuck and restuck into my backside. But at least I was wearing my new knickers, and if I grew a lot every year and lived to be 103, they might finally fit.
    But this was a small indignity. For on this day I could hardly wait to tell Soup how I had whacked Eddy Tacker and made him bleed.

 

Chapter Ten

Shoes
     
    “H EY! I’ M BACK ,” said Soup.
    It was Saturday evening, and he’d been gone all day. But now he was standing at the kitchen door in hisstore clothes and his hair was still combed. Not actually so slicked as to have a part, but it wasn’t all mussed up and curly like usual. For Soup, that was combed.
    “How was it?” I said, as he came in.
    “Great.”
    “Was it as big as they say?”
    “Bigger,” said Soup.
    “Honest?”
    “It’s my guess that Burlington has got to be about the biggest place in the whole world.”
    “How many people did you see, Soup?”
    “Oh,” said Soup, leaning back in the kitchen chair and looking at the ceiling for guidance, “I must of seen a thousand or a million.”
    “Gosh, you must have been so busy saying hello to all those folks, you didn’t have time to get new shoes.”
    “Oh, no?”
    Soup unbuttoned his coat and took off his hat (the plaid one he always wore in winter with the red ear-lappers). Then he slowly unbuckled his left overshoe.
    “Wait’ll you see, Rob. They cost almost three dollars.”
    “Hurry up. I want to see ’em both.”
    Soup had a way of