Page 38 of Pete and His Precious

“Well, you better be careful, because Aunt Arley might put you to work. She always paid me, but sometimes her jobs are pretty tough.”

“What kind of jobs did you do when you were my age?” she asks, as she moves her feet around splashing a bit.

It seems like she is really enjoying the water. I have to say, I am really enjoying it too. It feels soothing, and while it was cold when I first stepped in, my feet have gotten used to it, and it feels good. I find a big rock, and sit down, listening as Petetalks to Baxley. “Well, I slopped the hogs, which entailed taking the kitchen scraps out and throwing them in the hog pen. That’s what they fed them. Along with a little bit of chop. Which is ground corn mostly, although when we didn’t have a whole lot of corn, we put hay in it too.”

“And they liked that?”

“Yeah. Corn will make them fat, but I don’t know that corn fed animals are the healthiest animals we can eat.” He paused and then as though thinking that that was probably not something a ten-year-old wanted to hear about, he continued on a different subject. “I helped milk the cows. I was able to go out into the field and bring them in when it was milking time. There for a while they had a horse I could ride, which I love. But mostly I just walked. When the milk truck came and emptied the tank, sometimes Pap would put me in the tank so I could walk around the bottom of it and scrub up the sides and the top, which were hard for him to reach, especially as he got older.”

“They put you in the milk tank? Was it dangerous?” Baxley asked. I am thinking the same thing.

“No. Not dangerous at all. I could shimmy my way out if I needed to, and I often did. Now, I wouldn’t want to be in it when it had milk in it, because there was an agitator inside, that I’m sure probably wasn’t safe to be around. Plus, who would want to drink milk after it had a little boy swimming in it?”

That made Baxley laugh, and I laugh too. He is so charming when he wants to be, and he says he’s not good with children, but obviously he is mistaken. Baxley seems enraptured with him. Not in love with him, but just... Like she really likes him and enjoys his company.

“What else did you do?”

“I told you we played in the creek. But, there were goats to milk, and we had to feed the hens, which wasn’t hard, but watering them was a little bit more difficult. They had a lot morehens back then, maybe a hundred, and they had a five gallon waterer. That was pretty heavy for a little boy. But, one of my jobs was to fill it up every day. Because, hens will die if they don’t have water.”

“And you had to carry it to the henhouse?” Baxley asked.

“Yeah. Until I got smart and I used the hose. It was much easier to drag the hose over to the henhouse than it was to carry the five gallon bucket from the shed to the henhouse.”

“How long did it take you to figure that out?”

“I did a whole summer of carrying the five gallon bucket before I realized that I didn’t need to. And, my uncle just kind of looked at me and laughed. I think they figured I would learn more if I figured it out myself.”

“He didn’t tell you? Even though it was too heavy for you?”

“Nope. They were right. You know, when you tell somebody everything, and they don’t have anything left to figure out for themselves, you’re not really doing them any favors.”

“I don’t know,” Baxley said, and she looked like she was thinking about that.

“Well, I think you learn things better sometimes if you get to experience them. Now, big things, like learning to look both ways before you cross the street. It’s better that you learn to do that when someone tells you, rather than after getting hit by a car and decide maybe that wasn’t a good idea after all.”

“Um. You could be dead. And then you can’t learn!” Baxley pointed out.

It makes Pete laugh.

“Exactly. So, that’s probably something that somebody ought to tell you. But, the thing about the heavy water? It’s good for kids to figure things out. Actually, I’m not even sure my uncle knew that it was a smarter way to do it. Maybe he had never figured out that he could fill it up over the chicken coop and hedidn’t have to walk the bucket the whole way from the shed to the coop.”

“And you taught him!” Baxley said, seeming to think the idea of him teaching his uncle something was pretty funny.

We played in the creek a bit more, and then Baxley suggested that she go show him the swans, and we got out of the creek, carrying our shoes and walking on the path while our feet dried off.

“If I would have known that we were doing this, I could have brought some towels down.”

“It’s more fun to walk in your bare feet,” Baxley said, although to my knowledge, she’d never been outside in her bare feet before. Even as a child. Her mother had always had her completely dressed.

Maybe what Pete was saying was absolutely right, and actually applied a little bit to Baxley, although I didn’t really think that he was deliberately talking about her. He didn’t really know what her upbringing was.

To my surprise, it was late afternoon by the time we were done just playing in the backyard. I had a better afternoon than I’ve had in a very long time, and I’m pretty sure Baxley feels the same.

As we are walking back, she says, “Are you coming tomorrow?”

She sounds eager.

“Sure am. I’ll be here at six, which is when they said you wake up, and I’ll be taking you to school, making sure you get in okay. And then I’ll be picking you up when it’s done.”

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