Tag: Adventure

  • Once there was a King

    Once there was a King

    “Once there was a King” the story was written by Rabindranath Tagore; “Once upon a time, there was a King.”

    When we were children there was no need to know who the king in the fairy story was. It didn’t matter whether he was called Shiladitya or Shaliban, whether he lived at Kashi or Kanauj. The thing that made a seven-year-old boy’s heart go thump, thump with delight was this one sovereign truth, this reality of all realities: “Once there was a king.”

    But the readers of this modern age are far more exact and exacting. When they hear such an opening to a story, they are at once critical and suspicious. They apply the searchlight of science to its legendary haze and ask: “Which king?”

    The story-tellers have become more precise in their turn. They are no longer content with the old indefinite, “There was a king,” but assume instead a look of profound learning and begin: “Once there was a king named Ajatasatru.”

    The modern reader’s curiosity, however, is not so easily satisfied. He blinks at the author through his scientific spectacles and asks again: “Which Ajatasatru?”

    When we were young, we understood all sweet things; and we could detect the sweets of a fairy story by an unerring science of our own. We never cared for such useless things as knowledge. We only cared for truth. And our unsophisticated little hearts knew well where the Crystal Palace of Truth lay and how to reach it. But to-day we are expected to write pages of facts, while the truth is simply this:

    “There was a king.”

    I remember vividly that evening in Calcutta when the fairy story began. The rain and the storm had been incessant. The whole of the city was flooded. The water was knee-deep in our lane. I had a straining hope, which was almost a certainty, that my tutor would be prevented from coming that evening. I sat on the stool in the far corner of the verandah looking down the lane, with a heart beating faster and faster. Every minute I kept my eye on the rain, and when it began to diminish I prayed with all my might: “Please, God, send some more rain till half-past seven is over.” For I was quite ready to believe that there was no other need for rain except to protect one helpless boy one evening in one corner of Calcutta from the deadly clutches of his tutor.

    If not in answer to my prayer, at any rate, according to some grosser law of nature, the rain did not give up.

    But, alas, nor did my teacher!

    Exactly to the minute, in the bend of the lane, I saw his approaching umbrella. The great bubble of hope burst in my breast, and my heart collapsed. Truly, if there is a punishment to fit the crime after death, then my tutor will be born again as me, and I shall be born as my tutor.

    As soon as I saw his umbrella I ran as hard as I could to my mother’s room. My mother and my grandmother were sitting opposite one another playing cards by the light of a lamp. I ran into the room, and flung myself on the bed beside my mother, and said:

    “Mother, the tutor has come, and I have such a bad headache; couldn’t I have no lessons to-day?”

    I hope no child of immature age will be allowed to read this story, and I sincerely trust it will not be used in textbooks or primers for junior classes. For what I did was dreadfully bad, and I received no punishment whatever. On the contrary, my wickedness was crowned with success.

    My mother said to me: “All right,” and turning to the servant added: “Tell the tutor that he can go back home.”

    It was perfectly plain that she didn’t think my illness very serious, as she went on with her game as before and took no further notice. And I also, burying my head in the pillow, laughed to my heart’s content. We perfectly understood one another, my mother and I.

    But everyone must know how hard it is for a boy of seven years old to keep up the illusion of illness for a long time. After about a minute I got hold of Grandmother and said: “Grannie, do tell me a story.”

    I had to ask this many times. Grannie and Mother went on playing cards and took no notice. At last, Mother said to me: “Child, don’t bother. Wait till we’ve finished our game.” But I persisted: “Grannie, do tell me a story.” I told Mother she could finish her game tomorrow, but she must let Grannie tell me a story there and then.

    At the last, Mother threw down the cards and said: “You had better do what he wants. I can’t manage him.” Perhaps she had it in her mind that she would have no tiresome tutor on the morrow, while I should be obliged to be back at those stupid lessons.

    As soon as ever Mother had given way, I rushed at Grannie. I got hold of her hand, and, dancing with delight, dragged her inside my mosquito curtain onto the bed. I clutched hold of the bolster with both hands in my excitement and jumped up and down with joy, and when I had got a little quieter said: “Now, Grannie, let’s have the story!”

    Grannie went on: “And the king had a queen.”

    That was good, to begin with. He had only one!

    It is usual for kings in fairy stories to be extravagant in queens. And whenever we hear that there are two queens our hearts begin to sink. One is sure to be unhappy. But in Grannie’s story, that danger was past. He had only one queen.

    We next hear that the king had not got any son. At the age of seven, I didn’t think there was any need to bother if a man had no son. He might only have been in the way.

    Nor are we greatly excited when we hear that the king has gone away into the forest to practice austerities in order to get a son. There was only one thing that would have made me go into the forest, and that was to get away from my tutor!

    But the king left behind with his queen a small girl, who grew up into a beautiful princess.

    Twelve years pass away, and the king goes on practicing austerities, and never thinks all this while of his beautiful daughter. The princess has reached the full bloom of her youth. The age of marriage has passed, but the king does not return. And the queen pines away with grief and cries: “Is my golden daughter destined to die unmarried? Ah me, what a fate is mine!”

    Then the queen sent men to the king to entreat him earnestly to come back for a single night and take one meal in the palace. And the king consented.

    The queen cooked with her own hand, and with the greatest care, sixty-four dishes. She made a seat for him of sandal-wood and arranged the food in plates of gold and cups of silver. The princess stood behind with the peacock-tail fan in her hand. The king, after twelve years’ absence, came into the house, and the princess waved the fan, lighting up all the room with her beauty. The king looked in his daughter’s face and forgot to take his food.

    At last, he asked his queen: “Pray, who is this girl whose beauty shines as the gold image of the goddess? Whose daughter is she?”

    The queen beat her forehead and cried: “Ah, how evil is my fate! Do you not know your own daughter?”

    The king was struck with amazement. He said at last: “My tiny daughter has grown to be a woman.”

    “What else?” the queen said with a sigh. “Do you not know that twelve years have passed by?”

    “But why did you not give her in marriage?” asked the king.

    “You were away,” the queen said. “And how could I find her a suitable husband?”

    The king became vehement with excitement. “The first man I see to-morrow,” he said, “when I come out of the palace shall marry her.”

    The princess went on waving her fan of peacock feathers, and the king finished his meal.

    The next morning, as the king came out of his palace, he saw the son of a Brahman gathering sticks in the forest outside the palace gates. His age was about seven or eight.

    The King said: “I will marry my daughter to him.”

    Who can interfere with a king’s command? At once the boy was called, and the marriage garlands were exchanged between him and the princess.

    At this point, I came up close to my wise Grannie and asked her eagerly: “When then?”

    In the bottom of my heart, there was a devout wish to substitute myself for that fortunate wood-gatherer of seven years old. The night was resonant with the patter of rain. The earthen lamp by my bedside was burning low. My grandmother’s voice droned on as she told the story. And all these things served to create in a corner of my credulous heart the belief that I had been gathering sticks in the dawn of some indefinite time in the kingdom of some unknown king, and in a moment garlands had been exchanged between me and the princess, beautiful as the Goddess of Grace. She had a gold band on her hair and gold earrings in her ears. She had a necklace and bracelets of gold, and a golden waist chain round her waist, and a pair of golden anklets tinkled above her feet.

    If my grandmother were an author, how many explanations she would have to offer for this little story! First of all, everyone would ask why the king remained twelve years in the forest? Secondly, why should the king’s daughter remain unmarried all that while? This would be regarded as absurd.

    Even if she could have got so far without a quarrel, still there would have been a great hue and cry about the marriage itself. First, it never happened. Secondly, how could there be a marriage between a princess of the Warrior Caste and a boy of the priestly Brahman Caste? Her readers would have imagined at once that the writer was preaching against our social customs in an underhand way. And they would write letters to the papers.

    So I pray with all my heart that my grandmother may be born a grandmother again, and not through some cursed fate take birth as her luckless grandson.

    With a throb of joy and delight, I asked Grannie: “What then?”

    Grannie went on: Then the princess took her little husband away in great distress, and built a large palace with seven wings, and began to cherish her husband with great care.

    I jumped up and down in my bed and clutched at the bolster more tightly than ever and said: “What then?”

    Grannie continued: The little boy went to school and learnt many lessons from his teachers, and as he grew up his class-fellows began to ask him: “Who is that beautiful lady living with you in the palace with the seven wings?”

    The Brahman’s son was eager to know who she was. He could only remember how one day he had been gathering sticks and a great disturbance arose. But all that was so long ago that he had no clear recollection.

    Four or five years passed in this way. His companions always asked him: “Who is that beautiful lady in the palace with the seven wings?” And the Brahman’s son would come back from school and sadly tell the princess: “My school companions always ask me who is that beautiful lady in the palace with the seven wings, and I can give them no reply. Tell me, oh, tell me, who you are!”

    The princess said: “Let it pass to-day. I will tell you some other day.” And every day the Brahman’s son would ask: “Who are you?” and the princess would reply: “Let it pass to-day. I will tell you some other day.” In this manner four or five more years passed away.

    At last, the Brahman’s son became very impatient and said: “If you do not tell me to-day who you are, O beautiful lady, I will leave this palace with the seven wings.” Then the princess said: “I will certainly tell you to-morrow.”

    Next day the Brahman’s son, as soon as he came home from school, said: “Now, tell me who you are.” The princess said: “To-night I will tell you after supper when you are in bed.”

    The Brahman’s son said: “Very well”; and he began to count the hours in expectation of the night. And the princess, on her side, spread white flowers over the golden bed, and lighted a gold lamp with fragrant oil, and adorned her hair, and dressed herself in a beautiful robe of blue, and began to count the hours in expectation of the night.

    That evening when her husband, the Brahman’s son, had finished his meal, too excited almost to eat, and had gone to the golden bed in the bedchamber strewn with flowers, he said to himself: “To-night I shall surely know who this beautiful lady is in the palace with the seven wings.”

    The princess took for her food that which was left over by her husband and slowly entered the bedchamber. She had to answer that night the question, who was the beautiful lady that lived in the palace with the seven wings. And as she went up to the bed to tell him she found a serpent had crept out of the flowers and had bitten the Brahman’s son. Her boy-husband was lying on the bed of flowers, with face pale in death.

    My heart suddenly ceased to throb, and I asked with the choking voice: “What then?”

    Grannie said: “Then …”

    But what is the use of going on any further with the story? It would only lead on to what was more and more impossible. The boy of seven did not know that, if there were some “What then?” after death, no grandmother of a grandmother could tell us all about it.

    But the child’s faith never admits defeat, and it would snatch at the mantle of death itself to turn him back. It would be outrageous for him to think that such a story of one teacherless evening could so suddenly come to a stop. Therefore the grandmother had to call back her story from the ever-shut chamber of the great End, but she does it so simply: it is merely by floating the dead body on a banana stem on the river and having some incantations read by a magician. But in that rainy night and in the dim light of a lamp death loses all its horror in the mind of the boy, and seems nothing more than a deep slumber of a single night. When the story ends the tired eyelids are weighed down with sleep. Thus it is that we send the little body of the child floating on the back of sleep over the still water of time, and then in the morning read a few verses of incantation to restore him to the world of life and light.

  • The Homecoming

    The Homecoming

    “The Homecoming” the story was written by Rabindranath Tagore; Phatik Chakravorti was ringleader among the boys of the village. A new mischief got into his head. There was a heavy log lying on the mud-flat of the river waiting to be shaped into a mast for a boat. He decided that they should all work together to shift the log by main force from its place and roll it away. The owner of the log would be angry and surprised, and they would all enjoy the fun. Everyone seconded the proposal, and it was carried unanimously.

    But just as the fun was about to begin, Mākhan, Phatik’s younger brother, sauntered up and sat down on the log in front of them all without a word. The boys were puzzled for a moment. He was pushed, rather timidly, by one of the boys and told to get up; but he remained quite unconcerned. He appeared like a young philosopher meditating on the futility of games. Phatik was furious. “Mākhan,” he cried, “if you don’t get down this minute I’ll thrash you!”

    Mākhan only moved to a more comfortable position.

    Now, if Phatik was to keep his regal dignity before the public, it was clear he ought to carry out his threat. But his courage failed him at the crisis. His fertile brain, however, rapidly seized upon a new manœuvre which would discomfit his brother and afford his followers an added amusement. He gave the word of command to roll the log and Mākhan over together. Mākhan heard the order and made it a point of honor to stick on. But he overlooked the fact, like those who attempt earthly fame in other matters, that there was peril in it.

    The boys began to heave at the log with all their might, calling out, “One, two, three, go!” At the word “go” the log went; and with it went Mākhan’s philosophy, glory and all.

    The other boys shouted themselves hoarse with delight. But Phatik was a little frightened. He knew what was coming. And, sure enough, Mākhan rose from Mother Earth blind as Fate and screaming like the Furies. He rushed at Phatik and scratched his face and beat him and kicked him, and then went crying home. The first act of the drama was over.

    Phatik wiped his face, and sat down on the edge of a sunken barge by the river bank, and began to chew a piece of grass. A boat came up to the landing and a middle-aged man, with gray hair and dark moustache, stepped on shore. He saw the boy sitting there doing nothing and asked him where the Chakravortis lived. Phatik went on chewing the grass and said: “Over there,” but it was quite impossible to tell where he pointed. The stranger asked him again. He swung his legs to and fro on the side of the barge and said: “Go and find out,” and continued to chew the grass as before.

    But now a servant came down from the house and told Phatik his mother wanted him. Phatik refused to move. But the servant was the master on this occasion. He took Phatik up roughly and carried him, kicking and struggling in impotent rage.

    When Phatik came into the house, his mother saw him. She called out angrily: “So you have been hitting Mākhan again?”

    Phatik answered indignantly: “No, I haven’t! Who told you that?”

    His mother shouted: “Don’t tell lies! You have.”

    Phatik said sullenly: “I tell you, I haven’t. You ask Mākhan!” But Mākhan thought it best to stick to his previous statement. He said: “Yes, mother. Phatik did hit me.”

    Phatik’s patience was already exhausted. He could not bear this injustice. He rushed at Mākhan and hammered him with blows: “Take that,” he cried, “and that, and that, for telling lies.”

    His mother took Mākhan’s side in a moment, and pulled Phatik away, beating him with her hands. When Phatik pushed her aside, she shouted out: “What! you little villain! Would you hit your own mother?”

    It was just at this critical juncture that the grey-haired stranger arrived. He asked what was the matter. Phatik looked sheepish and ashamed.

    But when his mother stepped back and looked at the stranger, her anger was changed to surprise. For she recognized her brother and cried: “Why, Dada! Where have you come from?”

    As she said these words, she bowed to the ground and touched his feet. Her brother had gone away soon after she had married, and he had started the business in Bombay. His sister had lost her husband while he was there. Bishamber had now come back to Calcutta and had at once made enquiries about his sister. He had then hastened to see her as soon as he found out where she was.

    The next few days were full of rejoicing. The brother asked after the education of the two boys. He was told by his sister that Phatik was a perpetual nuisance. He was lazy, disobedient, and wild. But Mākhan was as good as gold, as quiet as a lamb, and very fond of reading. Bishamber kindly offered to take Phatik off his sister’s hands and educate him with his own children in Calcutta. The widowed mother readily agreed. When his uncle asked Phatik if he would like to go to Calcutta with him, his joy knew no bounds and he said: “Oh, yes, uncle!” in a way that made it quite clear that he meant it.

    It was an immense relief to the mother to get rid of Phatik. She had a prejudice against the boy, and no love was lost between the two brothers. She was in daily fear that he would either drown Mākhan some day in the river, or break his head in a fight, or run him into some danger. At the same time, she was a little distressed to see Phatik’s extreme eagerness to get away.

    Phatik, as soon as all was settled, kept asking his uncle every minute when they were to start. He was on pins and needles all day long with excitement and lay awake most of the night. He bequeathed to Mākhan, in perpetuity, his fishing-rod, his big kite, and his marbles. Indeed, at this time of departure, his generosity towards Mākhan was unbounded.

    When they reached Calcutta, Phatik made the acquaintance of his aunt for the first time. She was by no means pleased with this unnecessary addition to her family. She found her own three boys quite enough to manage without taking anyone else. And to bring a village lad of fourteen into their midst was terribly upsetting. Bishamber should really have thought twice before committing such an indiscretion.

    In this world of human affairs, there is no worse nuisance than a boy at the age of fourteen. He is neither ornamental nor useful. It is impossible to shower affection on him as on a little boy, and he is always getting in the way. If he talks with a childish lisp he is called a baby, and if he answers in a grown-up way he is called impertinent. In fact, any talk at all from him is resented. Then he is at the unattractive, growing age. He grows out of his clothes with indecent haste; his voice grows hoarse and breaks and quavers; his face grows suddenly angular and unsightly. It is easy to excuse the shortcomings of early childhood, but it is hard to tolerate even unavoidable lapses in a boy of fourteen. The lad himself becomes painfully self-conscious. When he talks with elderly people he is either unduly forward, or else so unduly shy that he appears ashamed of his very existence.

    Yet it is at this very age when, in his heart of hearts, a young lad most craves for recognition and love; and he becomes the devoted slave of anyone who shows him consideration. But none dare openly love him, for that would be regarded as an undue indulgence and therefore bad for the boy. So, what with scolding and chiding, he becomes very much like a stray dog that has lost his master.

    For a boy of fourteen, his own home is the only Paradise. To live in a strange house with strange people is little short of torture, while the height of bliss is to receive the kind looks of women and never to be slighted by them.

    It was anguish to Phatik to be the unwelcome guest in his aunt’s house, despised by this elderly woman and slighted on every occasion. If ever she asked him to do anything for her, he would be so overjoyed that he would overdo it; and then she would tell him not to be so stupid, but to get on with his lessons.

    The cramped atmosphere of neglect oppressed Phatik so much that he felt that he could hardly breathe. He wanted to go out into the open country and fill his lungs with fresh air. But there was no open country to go to. Surrounded on all sides by Calcutta houses and walls, he would dream night after night of his village home and long to be back there. He remembered the glorious meadow where he used to fly his kite all day long; the broad river-banks where he would wander about the live-long day singing and shout for joy; the narrow brook where he could go and dive and swim at any time he liked. He thought of his band of boy companions over whom he was despot; and, above all, the memory of that tyrant mother of his, who had such a prejudice against him, occupied him day and night. A kind of physical love like that of animals, a longing to be in the presence of the one who is loved, an inexpressible wistfulness during absence, a silent cry of the inmost heart for the mother, like the lowing of a calf in the twilight,—this love, which was almost an animal instinct, agitated the shy, nervous, lean, uncouth and ugly boy. No one could understand it, but it preyed upon his mind continually.

    There was no more backward boy in the whole school than Phatik. He gaped and remained silent when the teacher asked him a question, and like an overladen ass patiently suffered all the blows that came down on his back. When other boys were out at play, he stood wistfully by the window and gazed at the roofs of the distant houses. And if by chance he espied children playing on the open terrace of any roof, his heart would ache with longing.

    One day he summoned up all his courage and asked his uncle: “Uncle, when can I go home?”

    His uncle answered: “Wait till the holidays come.”

    But the holidays would not come till October and there was a long time still to wait.

    One day Phatik lost his lesson book. Even with the help of books he had found it very difficult indeed to prepare his lesson. Now it was impossible. Day after day the teacher would cane him unmercifully. His condition became so abjectly miserable that even his cousins were ashamed to own him. They began to jeer and insult him more than the other boys. He went to his aunt at last and told her that he had lost his book.

    His aunt pursed her lips in contempt and said: “You great clumsy, country lout! How can I afford, with all my family, to buy you new books five times a month?”

    That night, on his way back from school, Phatik had a bad headache with a fit of shivering. He felt he was going to have an attack of malarial fever. His one great fear was that he would be a nuisance to his aunt.

    The next morning Phatik was nowhere to be seen. All searches in the neighborhood proved futile. The rain had been pouring in torrents all night, and those who went out in search of the boy got drenched through to the skin. At last Bishamber asked help from the police.

    At the end of the day, a police van stopped at the door before the house. It was still raining and the streets were all flooded. Two constables brought out Phatik in their arms and placed him before Bishamber. He was wet through from head to foot, muddy all over, his face and eyes flushed red with fever and his limbs trembling. Bishamber carried him in his arms and took him into the inner apartments. When his wife saw him she exclaimed: “What a heap of trouble this boy has given us! Hadn’t you better send him home?”

    Phatik heard her words and sobbed out loud: “Uncle, I was just going home; but they dragged me back again.”

    The fever rose very high, and all that night the boy was delirious. Bishamber brought in a doctor. Phatik opened his eyes, flushed with fever, and looked up to the ceiling and said vacantly: “Uncle, have the holidays come yet?”

    Bishamber wiped the tears from his own eyes and took Phatik’s lean and burning hands in his own and sat by him through the night. The boy began again to mutter. At last, his voice became excited: “Mother!” he cried, “don’t beat me like that…. Mother! I am telling the truth!”

    The next day Phatik became conscious for a short time. He turned his eyes about the room as if expecting someone to come. At last, with an air of disappointment, his head sank back on the pillow. He turned his face to the wall with a deep sigh.

    Bishamber knew his thoughts and bending down his head whispered: “Phatik, I have sent for your mother.”

    The day went by. The doctor said in a troubled voice that the boy’s condition was very critical.

    Phatik began to cry out: “By the mark—three fathoms. By the mark—four fathoms. By the mark——.” He had heard the sailor on the river-steamer calling out the mark on the plumb-line. Now he was himself plumbing an unfathomable sea.

    Later in the day Phatik’s mother burst into the room, like a whirlwind, and began to toss from side to side and moan and cry in a loud voice.

    Bishamber tried to calm her agitation, but she flung herself on the bed, and cried: “Phatik, my darling, my darling.”

    Phatik stopped his restless movements for a moment. His hands ceased beating up and down. He said: “Eh?”

    The mother cried again: “Phatik, my darling, my darling.”

    Phatik very slowly turned his head and without seeing anybody said: “Mother, the holidays have come.”

  • The Cabuliwallah

    The Cabuliwallah

    “The Cabuliwallah,” wrote by Rabindranath Tagore; My five years’ old daughter Mini cannot live without chattering. I really believe that in all her life she has not wasted a minute in silence. Her mother often vexed at this and would stop her prattle, but I would not. To see Mini quiet is unnatural, and I cannot bear it long; accounting services. And so my own talk with her is always lively.

    One morning, for instance, when I was in the midst of the seventeenth chapter of my new novel, my little Mini stole into the room, and putting her hand into mine, said: “Father! Ramdayal the door-keeper calls a crow a krow! He doesn’t know anything, does he?”

    Before I could explain to her the differences of language in this world, she was embarked on the full tide of another subject. “What do you think, Father? Bhola says there is an elephant in the clouds, blowing water out of his trunk, and that is why it rains!”

    And then, darting off anew, while I sat still making ready some reply to this last saying: “Father! what relation is Mother to you?”

    With a grave face, I contrived to say: “Go and play with Bhola, Mini! I am busy!”

    The window of my room overlooks the road. The child had seated herself at my feet near my table and was playing softly, drumming on her knees. I was hard at work on my seventeenth chapter, where Pratap Singh, the hero, had just caught Kanchanlata, the heroine, in his arms, and was about to escape with her by the third-story window of the castle, when all of a sudden Mini left her to play, and ran to the window, crying: “A Cabuliwallah! a Cabuliwallah!” Sure enough in the street below was a Cabuliwallah, passing slowly along. He wore the loose, soiled clothing of his people, with a tall turban; there was a bag on his back, and he carried boxes of grapes in his hand.

    I cannot tell what were my daughter’s feelings at the sight of this man, but she began to call him loudly. “Ah!” I thought, “he will come in, and my seventeenth chapter will never be finished!” At which exact moment the Cabuliwallah turned and looked up at the child. When she saw this, overcome by terror, she fled to her mother’s protection and disappeared. She had a blind belief that inside the bag, which the big man carries, there were perhaps two or three other children like herself. The pedlar meanwhile entered my doorway and greeted me with a smiling face.

    So precarious was the position of my hero and my heroine, that my first impulse was to stop and buy something since the man had been called. I made some small purchases, and a conversation began about Abdurrahman, the Russians, the English, and the Frontier Policy.

    As he was about to leave, he asked: “And where is the little girl, sir?”

    And I, thinking that Mini must get rid of her false fear, had her brought out.

    She stood by my chair and looked at the Cabuliwallah and his bag. He offered her nuts and raisins, but she would not tempt, and only clung the closer to me, with all her doubts increased.

    This was their first meeting.

    One morning, however, not many days later, as I was leaving the house, I was startled to find Mini, seated on a bench near the door, laughing and talking, with the great Cabuliwallah at her feet. In all her life, it appeared, my small daughter had never found so patient a listener, save her father. And already the corner of her little sari was stuffed with almonds and raisins, the gift of her visitor. “Why did you give her those?” I said, and taking out an eight-anna bit, I handed it to him. The man accepted the money without demur and slipped it into his pocket.

    Alas, on my return an hour later, I found the unfortunate coin had made twice its own worth of trouble! For the Cabuliwallah had given it to Mini; and her mother, catching sight of the bright round object, had pounced on the child with: “Where did you get that eight-anna bit?”

    “The Cabuliwallah gave it me,” said Mini cheerfully.

    “The Cabuliwallah gave it you!” cried her mother much shocked. “O Mini! how could you take it from him?”

    I, entering at the moment, saved her from impending disaster, and proceeded to make my own inquiries.

    It was not the first or second time, I find, that the two had met. The Cabuliwallah had overcome the child’s first terror by a judicious bribery of nuts and almonds, and the two were now great friends.

    They had many quaint jokes, which afforded them much amusement. Seated in front of him, looking down on his gigantic frame in all her tiny dignity, Mini would ripple her face with laughter and begin: “O Cabuliwallah! Cabuliwallah! what have you got in your bag?”

    And he would reply, in the nasal accents of the mountaineer: “An elephant!” Not much cause for merriment, perhaps; but how they both enjoyed the fun! And for me, this child’s talk with a grown-up man had always in it something strangely fascinating.

    Then the Cabuliwallah, not to be behindhand, would take his turn: “Well, little one, and when are you going to the father-in-law’s house?”

    Now, most small Bengali maidens have heard long ago about the father-in-law’s house; but we, being a little new-fangled, had kept these things from our child, and Mini at this question must have been a trifle bewildered. But she would not show it, and with ready tact replied: “Are you going there?”

    Amongst men of the Cabuliwallah’s class, however, it well knows that the words father-in-law’s house has a double meaning. It is a euphemism for jail, the place where we are well cared for, at no expense to ourselves. In this sense would the sturdy pedlar take my daughter’s question. “Ah,” he would say, shaking his fist at an invisible policeman, “I will thrash my father-in-law!” Hearing this, and picturing the poor discomfited relative, Mini would go off into peals of laughter, in which her formidable friend would join.

    These were autumn mornings, the very time of year when kings of old went forth to conquest; and I, never stirring from my little corner in Calcutta, would let my mind wander over the whole world. At the very name of another country, my heart would go out to it, and at the sight of a foreigner in the streets, I would fall to weaving a network of dreams, —the mountains, the glens, and the forests of his distant home, with his cottage in its setting, and the free and independent life of far-away wilds.

    Perhaps the scenes of travel conjure themselves up before me and pass and repass in my imagination all the more vividly because I lead such a vegetable existence that a call to travel would fall upon me like a thunder-bolt. In the presence of this Cabuliwallah, I was immediately transported to the foot of arid mountain peaks, with narrow little defiles twisting in and out amongst their towering heights.

    I could see the string of camels bearing the merchandise, and the company of turbanned merchants carrying some their queer old firearms, and some their spears, journeying downward towards the plains. I could see—. But at some such point Mini’s mother would intervene, imploring me to “beware of that man.”

    Mini’s mother is, unfortunately, a very timid lady. Whenever she hears a noise in the street or sees people coming towards the house, she always jumps to the conclusion that they are either thieves, or drunkards, or snakes, or tigers, or malaria, or cockroaches, or caterpillars. Even after all these years of experience, she is not able to overcome her terror. So she was full of doubts about the Cabuliwallah and use to beg me to keep a watchful eye on him.

    I tried to laugh her fear gently away, but then she would turn round on me seriously, and ask me solemn questions: —

    Were children never kidnapped?

    Was it, then, not true that there was slavery in Cabul?

    Was it so very absurd that this big man should be able to carry off a tiny child?

    I urged that, though not impossible, it was highly improbable. But this was not enough, and her dread persisted. As it was indefinite, however, it did not seem right to forbid the man the house, and the intimacy went on unchecked.

    Once a year in the middle of January Rahmun, the Cabuliwallah, was in the habit of returning to his country, and as the time approaches, he would be very busy, going from house to house collecting his debts. This year, however, he could always find time to come and see Mini. It would have seemed to an outsider that there was some conspiracy between the two, for when he could not come in the morning, he would appear in the evening.

    Even to me, it was a little startling now and then, in the corner of a dark room, suddenly to surprise this tall, loose-garmented, much-bagged man; but when Mini would run in smiling, with her “O Cabuliwallah! Cabuliwallah!” and the two friends, so far apart in age, would subside into their old laughter and their old jokes, I felt reassured.

    One morning, a few days before he had made up his mind to go, I was correcting my proof sheets in my study. It was the chilly weather. Through the window, the rays of the sun touched my feet, and the slight warmth was very welcome. It was almost eight o’clock, and the early pedestrians were returning home with their heads covered. All at once I heard an uproar in the street, and, looking out, saw Rahmun being led away bound between two policemen, and behind them a crowd of curious boys.

    There were blood-stains on the clothes of the Cabuliwallah, and one of the policemen carried a knife. Hurrying out, I stopped them and inquired what it all meant. Partly from one, partly from another, I gathered that a certain neighbor had owed the pedlar something for a Rampuri shawl, but had falsely denied having bought it, and that in the course of the quarrel Rahmun had struck him. Now, in the heat of his excitement, the prisoner began calling his enemy all sorts of names, when suddenly in a verandah of my house appeared my little Mini, with her usual exclamation: “O Cabuliwallah! Cabuliwallah!” Rahmun’s face lighted up as he turned to her.

    He had no bag under his arm to-day, so she could not discuss the elephant with him. She at once therefore proceeded to the next question: “Are you going to the father-in-law’s house?” Rahmun laugh and say: “Just where I am going, little one!” Then, seeing that the reply did not amuse the child, he held up his fettered hands. “Ah!” he said, “I would have thrashed that old father-in-law, but my hands are bound!”

    On a charge of murderous assault, Rahmun was sentenced to some years’ imprisonment.

    Time passed away and he did not remember. The accustomed work in the accustomed place was ours, and the thought of the once-free mountaineer spending his years in prison seldom or never occur to us. Even my light-hearted Mini, I am ashamed to say, forgot her old friend. New companions filled her life. As she grew older, she spent more of her time with girls. So much time indeed did she spend with them that she came no more, as she used to do, to her father’s room. I was scarcely on speaking terms with her.

    Years had passed away. It was once more autumn and we had made arrangements for our Mini’s marriage. It was to take place during the Puja Holidays. With Durga returning to Kailas, the light of our home also was to depart to her husband’s house and leave her father’s in the shadow.

    The morning was bright. After the rains, there was a sense of ablution in the air, and the sun-rays looked like pure gold. So bright were they, that they gave a beautiful radiance even to the sordid brick walls of our Calcutta lanes. Since early dawn that day the wedding-pipes had been sounding, and at each beat, my own heart throbbing. The wail of the tune, Bhairavi, seemed to intensify my pain at the approaching separation. My Mini was to marry that night.

    From early morning noise and bustle had pervaded the house. In the courtyard the canopy had to be slung on its bamboo poles; the chandeliers with their tinkling sound must be hung in each room and verandah. There was no end of hurry and excitement. I was sitting in my study, looking through the accounts, when someone enters, saluting respectfully, and stood before me. It was Rahmun the Cabuliwallah. At first, I did not recognize him. He had no bag, nor the long hair, nor the same vigor that he used to have. But he smiled, and I knew him again.

    “When did you come, Rahmun?” I asked him.

    “Last evening,” he said, “I was released from jail.”

    The words struck harsh upon my ears. I had never before talked with one who had wounded his fellow, and my heart shrank within itself when I realized this; for I felt that the day would have been better-omen having he not turn up.

    “There are ceremonies going on,” I said, “and I am busy. Could you perhaps come another day?”

    At once he turned to go; but as he reached the door he hesitated, and said: “May I not see the little one, sir, for a moment?” It was his belief that Mini was still the same. He had pictured her running to him as she used, calling “O Cabuliwallah! Cabuliwallah!” He had imagined too that they would laugh and talk together, just as of old. In fact, in memory of former days he had brought, carefully wrapped up in the paper, a few almonds and raisins and grapes, obtained somehow from a countryman; for his own little fund was dispersed.

    I said again: “There is a ceremony in the house, and you will not be able to see any one to-day.”

    The man’s face fell. He looked wistfully at me for a moment, then said “Good morning,” and went out.

    I felt a little sorry and would have called him back, but I find he was returning of his own accord. He came close up to me holding out his offerings with the words: “I brought these few things, sir, for the little one. Will you give them to her?”

    I took them and was going to pay him, but he caught my hand and said: “You are very kind, sir! Keep me in your recollection. Do not offer me money! —You have a little girl: I too have one like her in my own home. I think of her, and bring fruits to your child—not to make a profit for myself.”

    Saying this, he put his hand inside his big loose robe and brought out a small and dirty piece of paper. With great care, he unfolded this and smoothed it out with both hands on my table. It bore the impression of a little hand. Not a photograph. Not a drawing. The impression of an ink-smeared hand laid flat on the paper. This touch of his own little daughter had been always on his heart, as he had come year after year to Calcutta to sell his wares in the streets.

    Tears came to my eyes. I forgot that he was a poor Cabuli fruit-seller, while I was—. But no, what was I more than he? He also was a father.

    That impression of the hand of his little Pārbati in her distant mountain home reminded me of my own little Mini.

    I sent for Mini immediately from the inner apartment. Many difficulties were raised, but I would not listen. Clad in the red silk of her wedding-day, with the sandal paste on her forehead, and adorned as a young bride, Mini came and stood bashfully before me.

    The Cabuliwallah looked a little staggered at the apparition. He could not revive their old friendship. At last, he smiled and said: “Little one, are you going to your father-in-law’s house?”

    But Mini now understood the meaning of the word “father-in-law,” and she could not reply to him as of old. She flushed up at the question and stood before him with her bride-like face turned down.

    I remembered the day when the Cabuliwallah and my Mini had first met, and I felt sad. When she had gone, Rahmun heaved a deep sigh and sat down on the floor. The idea had suddenly come to him that his daughter too must have grown in this long time and that he would have to make friends with her anew. Assuredly he would not find her as he used to know her. And besides, what might not have happened to her in these eight years?

    The marriage-pipes sounded, and the mild autumn sun streamed round us. But Rahmun sat in the little Calcutta lane and saw before him the barren mountains of Afghanistan.

    I took out a bank-note and gave it to him, saying: “Go back to your own daughter, Rahmun, in your own country, and may the happiness of your meeting bring good fortune to my child!”

    Having made this present, I had to curtail some of the festivities. I could not have the electric lights I had intended, nor the military band, and the ladies of the house were despondent at it. But to me, the wedding-feast was all the brighter for the thought that in a distant land a long-lost father met again with his only child.

    The Cabuliwallah wrote by Rabindranath Tagore Image
    The Cabuliwallah wrote by Rabindranath Tagore

  • The Gardenia Corsage

    The Gardenia Corsage

    “The Gardenia Corsage” story wrote By Edith Patterson Hill, Rockford, Illinois.

    My father was an astute observer of human character. Within seconds of meeting someone, he could sum up their strengths and flaws. It was always a challenge to see if any of my boyfriends could pass Dad’s test. None did. Dad was always right they didn’t pass my test either. After Dad died, I wondered how I’d figure it out on my own.

    That’s when Jack arrived on the scene. He was different from any other guy I’d dated. He could sit for hours on the piano bench with my mother, discussing obscure composers. My brother Rick loudly announced that Jack wasn’t a turkey like the other guys I’d brought home. My sister, Denise, belly-laughed with him over old Danny Kaye films. And Jack was great with my brother Chuck, who has a mental disability. One time, Chuck put his greasy hands, just dislodged from a cheeseburger, on Jack’s shoulders, kissed his cheek with ketchup-covered lips and called him by the wrong name, shouting, “Ah, Jeff, I Luv ya!” Jack didn’t miss a beat. “I love you too, George!” Jack passed my family’s test. But what about Dad’s?

    Then came the weekend of my mom’s birthday. Jack was coming down from his home in Milwaukee to Chicago. The day he was supposed to drive, I got a call: “Don’t worry,” he said, “but I’ve been in an accident.” His car had stalled; when he pulled over, another car careened into it. “I’m fine but I need you to pick me up.”

    Thank God he’s okay, I thought, as I drove up to Milwaukee. When I got there, we rushed to a flower shop for something for Mom. “How about gardenias?” Jack said, pointing out a beautiful white corsage.

    “You never see those this time of year,” I said. the florist put the corsage in a box.

    The entire ride, Jack was unusually quiet. “Are you all right?” I asked. We were pulling onto my mother’s street. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” he said. “I might be moving.”

    Moving? When was he going to tell me this? After he packed?

    Then he added, “Moving in with you.”

    I nearly put the car on the sidewalk. “What?” I asked.

    “I think we should get married,” he said. He told me he’d planned his proposal for a fancy restaurant, but after the accident, he decided to do it right away. “Yes,” I whispered. We both sat stunned, tears running down our cheeks, unable to speak. I’d never known such a tender moment. If only Dad were here to give his final approval.

    “Oh, let’s just go inside,” Jack said, laughing. We got out of the car and he walked up the driveway, carrying the corsage. My mother opened the door. “Happy Birthday!” we shouted. Jack thrust the box at her. She opened it up. Suddenly, her eyes brimmed with tears. Jack and I looked at each other. “Mom, what’s wrong?” I asked.

    “I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes. “this is only the second gardenia corsage I’ve ever received. I was given one year ago, long before you kids were born.”

    “From who?” I asked.

    “Your father,” Mom said. “He gave me one right before we were engaged.” My eyes locked on Jack’s as I blinked away tears. Dad’s test? I knew Jack had passed.

  • The Education of Ruby Dell

    The Education of Ruby Dell

    “The Education of Ruby Dell” story wrote By Ruby Bridges Hall, New Orleans, Louisiana

    In November 1960, I walked up the steps of William Frantz Public School in New Orleans, the first black student at the formerly all-white elementary school. Today I am married and a mother of four. Many years have passed since that historic day and today. Those years have brought incredible changes in our country, forged in the crucible of the civil rights movement and the battle to end segregation. Years that changed me as well.

    I was born in Mississippi in 1954, the oldest child of Abon and Lucille Bridges. That year the United States Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision ordering the integration of public schools. Not that I knew anything about school at the time. What I knew and loved was growing up on the farm my paternal grandparents sharecropped.

    It was a very hard life, though, and my parents heard there were better opportunities in the city. We moved to New Orleans, where my father found work as a service station attendant, and my mother took night jobs to help support our growing family.

    As I got a bit older, my job was to keep an eye on my younger brothers and sister, which wasn’t too difficult. Except for church and the long walk to the all-black school where I went to kindergarten, our world didn’t extend beyond our block. But that was about to change.

    Under federal court order, New Orleans public schools were finally forced to desegregate. In the spring of 1960, I took a test, along with other black kindergartners in the city, to see who would go to an integrated school come September. That summer my parents learned I’d passed the test and had been selected to start first grade at William Frantz Public School.

    My mother was all for it. My father wasn’t. “We’re just asking for trouble,” he said. He thought things weren’t going to change, and blacks and whites would never be treated as equals. Mama thought I would have an opportunity to get a better education if I went to the new school—and a chance for a good job later in life. My parents argued about it and prayed about it. Eventually, my mother convinced my father that despite the risks, they had to take this step forward, not just for their own children, but for all black children.

    A federal judge decreed that Monday, November 14, 1960, would be the day black children in New Orleans would go to school with white children. There were six of us chosen to integrate the city’s public school system. Two decided to stay in their old schools. The other three were assigned to McDonogh. I would be going to William Frantz alone.

    The morning of November 14 federal marshals drove my mother and me the five blocks to William Frantz. In the car one of the men explained that when we arrived at the school, two marshals would walk in front of us and two behind, so we would be protected on both sides.

    That reminded me of what Mama had taught us about God, that he is always there to protect us. “Ruby Nell,” she said as we pulled up to my new school, “don’t be afraid. There might be some people upset outside, but I’ll be with you.”

    Sure enough, people shouted and shook their fists when we got out of the car, but to me, it wasn’t any noisier than Mardi Gras. I held my mother’s hand and followed the marshals through the crowd, up the steps into the school.

    We spent that whole day sitting in the principal’s office. Through the window, I saw white parents pointing at us and yelling, then rushing their children out of the school. In the uproar, I never got to my classroom.

    The marshals drove my mother and me to school again the next day. I tried not to pay attention to the mob. Someone had a black doll in a coffin, and that scared me more than the nasty things people screamed at us.

    A young white woman met us inside the building. She smiled at me. “Good morning, Ruby Nell,” she said, just like Mama except with what I later learned was a Boston accent. “Welcome. I’m your new teacher, Mrs. Henry.” She seemed nice, but I wasn’t sure how to feel about her. I’d never been taught by a white teacher before.

    Mrs. Henry took my mother and me to her second-floor classroom. All the desks were empty, and she asked me to choose a seat. I picked one up front, and Mrs. Henry started teaching me the letters of the alphabet.

    The next morning my mother told me she couldn’t go to school with me. She had to work and look after my brothers and sister. “The marshals will take good care of you, Ruby Nell,” Mama assured me. “Remember, if you get afraid, say your prayers. You can pray to God anytime, anywhere. He will always hear you.”

    That was how I started praying on the way to school. The things people yelled at me didn’t seem to touch me. Prayer was my protection. After walking up the steps past the angry crowd, though, I was glad to see Mrs. Henry. She gave me a hug, and she sat right by my side instead of at the big teacher’s desk in the front of the room. Day after day, it was just Mrs. Henry and me, working on my lessons.

    Militant segregationists, as the news called them, took to the streets in protest, and riots erupted all over the city. My parents shielded me as best they could, but I knew problems had come to our family because I was going to the white school. My father was fired from his job. The white owners of a grocery store told us not to shop there anymore. Even my grandparents in Mississippi suffered. The owner of the land they’d sharecropped for 25 years said everyone knew it was their granddaughter causing trouble in New Orleans and asked them to move.

    At the same time, there were a few white families who braved the protests and kept their children in school. But they weren’t in my class, so I didn’t see them. People from around the country who’d heard about me on the news sent letters and donations. A neighbor gave my father a job painting houses. Other folks babysat for us, watched our house to keep away troublemakers, even walked behind the marshals’ car on my way to school. My family couldn’t have made it without our friends’ and neighbors’ help.

    And me, I couldn’t have gotten through that year without Mrs. Henry. Sitting next to her in our classroom, just the two of us, I was able to forget the world outside. She made school fun. We did everything together. I couldn’t go out in the schoolyard for recess, so right in that room, we played games and for exercise did jumping jacks to music.

    I remember her explaining integration to me and why some people were against it. “It’s not easy for people to change once they’ve gotten used to living a certain way,” Mrs. Henry said. “Some of them don’t know any better, and they’re afraid. But not everyone is like that.”

    Even though I was only six, I understood what she meant. The people I passed every morning as I walked up the school steps were full of hate. They were white, yet so was my teacher, who couldn’t have been more different from them. She was one of the most loving people I’d ever known. The greatest lesson I learned that year in Mrs. Henry’s class was the lesson Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to teach us all. Never judge people by the color of their skin. God makes each of us unique in ways that go much deeper.

    From her window, Mrs. Henry always watched me walk into the school. One morning when I got to our classroom, she said she’d been surprised to see me talk to the mob. “I saw your lips moving,” she said, “but I couldn’t make out what you were saying to those people.”

    “I wasn’t talking to them,” I told her. “I was praying for them.” Usually, I prayed in the car on the way to school, but that day I’d forgotten until I was in the crowd. Please be with me, I’d asked God, and be with those people too. Forgive them because they don’t know what they’re doing.

    “Ruby Nell, you are truly someone special,” Mrs. Henry whispered, giving me an even bigger hug than usual. She had this look on her face like my mother would get when I’d done something to make her proud.

    Another person who helped me was Dr. Robert Coles, a child psychiatrist who happened to see me being escorted through the crowd outside my school. Dr. Coles volunteered to work with me through this ordeal. Soon he was coming to our house every week to talk with me about how I was doing in school.

    Really, I was doing fine. I was always with people who wanted the best for me: my family, friends, and in school, my teacher. The more time I spent with Mrs. Henry, the more I grew to love her. I wanted to be like her. Soon, without realizing it, I had picked up her Boston accent.

    Neither of us missed a single day of school that year. The crowd outside dwindled to just a few protestors, and before I knew it, it was June. For me, first grade ended much more quietly than it began. I said good-bye to Mrs. Henry, fully expecting her to be my teacher again in the fall.

    But when I went back to school in September, everything was different. There were no marshals, no protestors. There were other kids—even some other black students—in my second-grade class. And Mrs. Henry was gone. I was devastated. Years later I found out she hadn’t been invited to return to William Frantz, and she and her husband had moved back to Boston. It was almost as if that first year of school integration had never happened. No one talked about it. everyone seemed to have put that difficult time behind them.

    After a while, I did the same. I finished grade school at William Frantz and graduated from an integrated high school. I went to business school and studied travel and tourism. For 15 years I worked as a travel agent. Eventually, I married and threw myself into raising four sons in the city I grew up in.

    I didn’t give much thought to the events of my childhood until my youngest brother died in 1993. For a time, I looked after his daughters. They happened to be students at William Frantz, and when I took them there every morning, I was literally walking into my past, into the same school that I’d helped to integrate years earlier.

    I began volunteering three days a week at William Frantz, working as a liaison between parents and the school. Still, I had the feeling God had brought me back in touch with my past for something beyond that. I struggled with it for a while. Finally, I got on my knees and prayed, Lord, whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing, you’ll have to show me.

    Not long after that, a reporter called the school. The psychiatrist Dr. Robert Coles had written a children’s book, The Story of Ruby Bridges; now everyone wanted to know what had happened to the little girl in the famous Norman Rockwell painting that had appeared in Look magazine. No one expected to find me back at William Frantz. Dr. Coles had often written about me, but this was the first book intended for children. To me, it was God’s way of keeping my story alive until I was able to tell it myself.

    One of the best parts of the story is that I was finally reunited with my favorite teacher, Barbara Henry. She reached me through the publisher of Dr. Coles’s book, and in 1995 we saw each other in person for the first time in more than three decades. The second she laid eyes on me, she cried, “Ruby Nell!” No one had called me that since I was a little girl. Then we were hugging each other, just like we used to every morning in first grade.

    I didn’t realize how much I had picked up from Mrs. Henry (I still have a hard time calling her anything else)—not only her Boston accent but her mannerisms too, such as how she tilts her head and gestures with her hands when she talks. She showed me a tiny, dog-eared photo of me with my front teeth missing that she’d kept all these years. “I used to look at that picture and wonder how you were,” she said. “I told my kids about you so often you were a part of my family.”

    We have stayed a part of each other’s lives ever since. It turns out that because of what I went through on the front lines of the battle for school integration, people recognize my name and are eager to hear what I have to say about racism and education today. I speak to groups around the country, and when I visit schools, Mrs. Henry often comes with me. We tell kids our story and talk about the lessons of the past and how we can still learn from them today especially that every child is a unique human being fashioned by God.

    I tell them another important thing I learned in first grade is that schools can be a place to bring people together kids of all races and backgrounds. That’s the work I focus on now, connecting our children through their schools. It’s my way of continuing what God set in motion all those years ago when he led me up the steps of William Frantz Public School and into a new world with my teacher, Mrs. Henry—the world that under his protection has reached far beyond just the two of us in that classroom.

  • Skunk on The Loose

    Skunk on The Loose

    “Skunk on The Loose” story wrote By Elizabeth Sherrill, Hingham, Massachusetts.

    It was a rustling in the woods that made me glance out the window beside my computer. At the edge of the trees, I caught sight of a skunk, his black-and-white pattern duplicating the dappled light. He seemed to be busy burrowing, maybe? My knowledge of skunks began and ended with their dreadful odor.

    The next moment, though, the animal emerged from beneath the trees and zigzagged across the lawn: plume-like tail, striped back and … where his head should have been, a bizarre-looking yellow helmet. As he came closer I saw what the “helmet” was: a plastic yogurt container.

    The cartoon struck a rock, and the creature whirled in another direction, only to bump up against our picnic table. For a second he stood still, shaking his head frantically. But the yogurt carton was wedged fast. The skunk charged blindly back into the woods.

    I stared at him in dismay. How long had he been running in darkness and terror?

    It would be the work of a second for me, I thought, to pull that thing off. But the idea of pursuing a skunk through the undergrowth kept me immobilized at the window. How would I ever catch him? And then what? Wouldn’t he spray me?

    I sat down and tried to pick up the thread of the story due in the mail that afternoon. But I could think only of an animal running till he dropped from exhaustion. Hadn’t this sort of thing happened before? Might animal experts know what to do?

    I dialed the local SPCA. “We only handle domestic animals,” the woman told me. “You want the Department of Wildlife.” She gave me a number in New Paltz, New York.

    By now the skunk was probably a long way off. Maybe someone else would see him. Someone braver and more athletic.

    I dialed the number in New Paltz. A man in the Department of Wildlife listened to my story, then held a muffled conversation. “If skunks can’t see you,” he said, “they don’t spray.”

    Well … that sounded all right, as long as the skunk’s head was inside the container. “What happens after the carton comes off?” I asked.

    “Make sure,” the man advised, “that he doesn’t feel threatened.”

    I wondered how one went about reassuring a terrified skunk.

    “You could throw a blanket over him,” the wildlife man suggested, “then run while he’s finding his way out.”

    “That might work,” I said, but I must have sounded as unsure as I felt because the man asked where I was calling from and began looking up names of conservation officers in my area.

    How long would it take, I wondered, for someone to get here? Where would the skunk be by then? I was gripped by a sudden strange urgency. I thanked the man, hung up and ran outside. Without stopping to change out of my next-to-best slacks, and forgetting about the blanket theory, I ran up our driveway to the road.

    Of course, the skunk wasn’t there. Nor did I know why I was. In his frenzy, when I had seen him last, the animal had been heading the opposite way, straight down the hill into the woods. But my feet never slowed. I turned left and dashed down the street as though rushing to a long-ordained appointment. I had run perhaps a hundred yards when a black-and-white streak emerged from the bushes beside the road and ran straight at me, the carton bumping the pavement with each step.

    I stopped and grabbed hold of the yogurt carton before the astonishment of finding the skunk hit me. The animal was tugging and twisting, unexpectedly strong, to get away. His front claws scrabbled against the slippery yellow plastic, his body strained backward, and still, he could not wrench free of the carton’s vise-like neck. It took both of my hands tugging the other way to hold on until a small black head suddenly popped free.

    And there we were, facing each other, two feet apart. I don’t know what he saw, and how threatening or not the apparition was, but what I saw was a sharp quivering nose, two small round ears, and alert black eyes that stared straight into mine.

    For fully 10 seconds we held each other’s gaze. Then the skunk turned, ran a few yards and vanished into a culvert that goes beneath the road. I stood there, looking after him. Three minutes could not have passed since I had hung up the telephone.

    But a timeless parable had played itself out, I thought as I headed back down the drive. The skunk was all those needs I hesitate to get involved in: Involvement takes time and I have deadlines to meet. I probably can’t do anything anyway. Somebody else can handle it better. Besides, involvement can be ugly, and the stench may rub off on me.

    And all these things, of course, may be true. But I’ve got a yellow pencil holder on my desk, a rather scratched and battered one, to remind me that every now and then God’s answer to a need is me.

  • The Last Tape

    The Last Tape

    “The Last Tape” Story wrote By Nan Pinkston, Stone Mountain, Georgia.

    The bustle of the hospital was a welcome distraction as I opened my new patient’s chart and headed for her room. My son, Eric, had just brought home a disappointing report card, and my daughter, Shannon, and I had argued again about her getting a driver’s license. For the next eight hours, I wanted to throw myself into helping people who I knew had much more to worry about than I did.

    Rebekah was only 32, admitted for chemotherapy after breast cancer surgery. When I entered her room it took me a moment to spot her amid the bouncing forms of three giggling little girls.

    I told Rebekah I would be her nurse and she introduced her husband, Warren; six-year-old Ruthie; four-year-old Hannah; and two-year-old Molly. Warren coaxed the girls away from their mother with a promise of ice cream and assured Rebekah they would return the next day.

    As I rubbed alcohol on her arm to prepare it for the intravenous line, Rebekah laughed nervously. “I have to tell you I’m terrified of needles.”

    “It’ll be over before you know it,” I said. “I’ll give you a count of three.”

    Rebekah shut her eyes tightly and murmured a prayer until it was over. Then she smiled and squeezed my hand. “Before you go, could you get my Bible from the table?” I handed her the worn book. “Do you have a favorite Bible verse?” she asked.

    “‘Jesus wept.’ John 11:35.”

    “Such a sad one,” she said. “Why?”

    “It makes me feel closer to Jesus, knowing he also experienced human sorrow.”

    Rebekah nodded thoughtfully and started flipping through her Bible as I shut the door quietly behind me.

    During the following months, I watched Rebekah struggle with the ravages of chemotherapy. Her hospital stays became frequent and she worried about her children. Meanwhile, I continued to contend with raising my own kids. They always seemed either out or holed up in their rooms. I missed the days when they were as attached to me as Rebekah’s little girls were to her.

    For a time, it had seemed Rebekah’s chemotherapy was working. Then doctors discovered another malignant lump. Two months later, a chest X-ray revealed cancer had spread to her lungs. It was terminal. Help me to help her through this, I prayed.

    One day when I entered her room, I found her talking into a tape recorder. She picked up a yellow legal pad and held it out to me. “I’m making a tape for my daughters,” she said.

    I read the list on her pad: starting school, confirmation, turning 16, first date, graduation. While I worried how to help her deal with death, she was planning for her children’s future.

    She usually waited until the early hours of the morning to record the tapes so she could be free from interruptions. She filled them with family stories and advice trying to cram a lifetime of love into a few precious hours. Finally, every item in her notes had been checked off and she entrusted the tapes to her husband.

    I often wondered what I would say in her place. My kids joked that I was an FBI agent, with my constant questions about where they’d been and who they’d been with. Where, I thought, are my words of encouragement and love?

    It was three o’clock one afternoon when I got an urgent call from the hospital. Rebekah wanted me to come immediately with a blank tape. What topic has she forgotten? I wondered.

    She was flushed and breathing hard when I entered her room. I slipped the tape into the recorder and held the microphone to her lips. “Ruthie, Hannah, Molly this is the most important tape.” She held my hand and closed her eyes. “Someday your daddy will bring home a new mommy. Please make her feel special. Show her how to take care of you. Ruthie, honey, help her get your Brownie uniform ready each Tuesday. Hannah, tell her you don’t want meat sauce on your spaghetti. She won’t know you like it separate. Molly, don’t get mad if there’s no apple juice. Drink something else. It’s okay to be sad, sweeties. Jesus cried too. He knows about sadness and will help you to be happy again. Remember, I’ll always love you.”

    I shut off the recorder and Rebekah sighed deeply. “Thank you, Nan,” she said with a weak smile. “you’ll give this one to them, won’t you?” she murmured, sliding into sleep.

    A time would come when the tape would be played for her children, but right then, after I smoothed Rebekah’s blanket, I got in my car and hurried home. I thought of how my Shannon also liked her sauce on the side and suddenly that quirk, which had annoyed me so many times, seemed to make her so much more precious. That night the kids didn’t go out; they sat with me long after the spaghetti sauce had dried onto the dishes. And we talked without interrogations, without complaints late into the night.

  • Grandma and The Paper Girl

    Grandma and The Paper Girl

    “Grandma and The Paper Girl” Story wrote By Ella Duquette, Syracuse, New York.

    I squinted against the afternoon sunshine, looking out the window for the paperboy. Ever since a stroke had weakened my legs I hadn’t been able to get around so well. I depended on the paper to keep me up to date with the world from which I often felt disconnected. When the paper came late, I got edgy. Finally, I saw someone coming down the street. A girl, no more than 10 or 11 years old, hurled a rolled-up newspaper toward my screen door. It landed with a thud.

    “Just a minute,” I called out the window. “where’s the usual carrier?”

    “I’m the carrier now, lady,” she said, hands on her hips.

    “Well, the old one used to bring the paper into me.”

    “Oh, yeah? well, I can do that.” She came in and plopped the paper onto my lap. I got a better look at her. Frayed shorts and a cropped top and it wasn’t even summered yet. She tossed back her shoulder-length red hair and blew a huge pink bubble.

    “I hate bubble gum,” I said.

    “Tough beans,” she said.

    I gasped. This snippy little thing needed to be taught some manners.

    “The children around here call me Mrs. Lee, after my late husband.”

    “Well, you can call me Kristin,” she said with a sassy tilt of her head, then bounded down the steps.

    Just what I need, I thought. nothing was easy anymore. Simple tasks like dusting and doing laundry were an ordeal these days. And baking, which I used to love, was far too much trouble. My husband, Lee, and most of my friends had passed on. Lately, I had found myself wondering why the Lord had left me behind. It was clear to me, anyway, that if young people today all acted like that smart-alecky paper girl, I had been too long in this world.

    Kristin’s attitude didn’t much improve over the following weeks. Still, I had to admit she never missed a day or forgot to bring the paper inside to me. She even took to sharing some small talk when she stopped by. She came in from a wicked rainstorm once and pulled the paper out from under her coat.

    “H of a day, huh, Gram?” she said, handing me the paper.

    I could feel the muscles in my jaw tense. “Do you talk like that just to shock me?” I asked. “And I’m not your grandmother.”

    “I just talk to all my friends.”

    “Not in this house, you don’t,” I shot back. “In my day you’d have your mouth washed out with soap.”

    She laughed. “you’d have some fight on your hands if you tried it, Gram,” she said.

    I threw up my hands. Why do I even bother with you? I wondered as she strutted down the street.

    But she started coming by after her paper route and other times as well, chitchatting happily about school, her friends. Each time she left it was as if a radio had been turned off. One day a bundle of newspapers slipped from her hands onto the floor and she uttered a dirty word. Instantly she clapped a hand over her mouth and said, “Oops! Sorry, Gram.”

    Well, she’s learned something, I thought, smiling secretly.

    I dug out some of my old photographs and outfits, thinking she might like to see them. She never tired of my stories of growing up on a farm, how we had raised our own food and washed our clothes by hand. All this girl needs is some pushing, I thought. Why else would she keep coming back when I was always fussing at her over her clothes or talk? God, is that why you’re keeping me around for Kristin?

    She showed me her report card when I asked one afternoon.

    “This is awful,” I said.

    “I do better than lots of kids,” she snapped.

    “You’re not ‘lots of kids.’ Have a little pride in yourself.”

    “Oh, Gram, you make such a big deal out of things,” she said. But I kept after her about her grades.

    A short time later Kristin gave up her paper route and shifted her visits to after school. I didn’t ask why she kept coming to see me because—though I wouldn’t have been caught dead admitting it her visits had become the highlight of my days.

    Once she told me, giggling, about some of her friends who had been shoplifting.

    “That’s nothing to laugh about, young lady,” I said. “Shoplifting is stealing, plain and simple.”

    “Well, I didn’t do it.”

    “All the same, you could be guilty by association. Your reputation goes with you all your life, you know.”

    “Oh, Gram, stop preaching.”

    “If you don’t like it, there’s the door,” I declared. But she didn’t leave. In fact, we spent more time together. Still, we had our moments. Like when she baked a cake, then sank down on a chair without laying a finger to the mound of dishes.

    “Come back here and clean up after yourself,” I ordered.

    “No way. I’m not putting my hands in that sink. It’s gross.” She had just polished her nails a ghastly purple.

    “Tough beans!” I blurted. She laughed. Mercy, I thought. Now I’m starting to talk like her. But she did the dishes that day and many another. I taught her how to bake fresh bread and my famous apple pie. It was wonderful to smell those familiar smells coming from the kitchen again.

    One Sunday Kristin stopped by. “You didn’t go to church dressed like that, did you?” I asked. She glanced at her shorts and t-shirt. “All the kids dress like this.”

    “I’ve told you before, Kristin, you’re not ‘all the kids.’”

    “Well, I suppose you think I should wear one of your old outfits, complete with hat and long white gloves!” she flounced out the door, only to come back a moment later. “I’m sorry, Gram,” she said, giving me a quick hug. “Forgive me?”

    How could I not? Making up with her seemed as natural as making up with one of my own daughters after a fight. Gradually, Kristin started dusting and cleaning up around the house, without the slightest hint from me. She even did my laundry. It chafed at my pride to let her do things I had done for myself all my life—but she was insistent. And this was the same girl who just a short while earlier wouldn’t put her hands in a sink of dirty dishes!

    “How about I set your hair?” she asked one day. “My mom taught me.”

    This was too much. “I’m not so old and helpless that I can’t take care of myself.”

    “Oh, don’t be so stubborn. Come on, Gram,” she wheedled. For the first time, that nickname didn’t annoy me. I gave in, and she proceeded to work several different lathery formulas into my short locks, not letting me look in a mirror until she was done. I had visions of my hair dyed the same awful purple as her fingernails. I was amazed to find it soft, shiny, and still blond. “You’re good at this,” I said, and Kristin beamed.

    I was even more impressed when, shortly after graduating from eighth grade, Kristin brought me a scrapbook filled with certificates of academic achievement.

    “See, I told you-your wasn’t like everybody,” I said, hugging her. “You’re special.” It was wonderful to see she valued my approval. But the best part was seeing she was pleased with herself.

    I still didn’t think much of her study habits. She insisted on keeping the television on when she did homework. I couldn’t fathom how she could concentrate with all that racket.

    But then there was a lot I couldn’t fathom about Kristin’s world. “Gram, do you know there are eight girls pregnant in the freshman class?” she told me. I gasped. “And that’s nothing,” she continued. “In some schools, they have police guards and metal detectors and just about everybody smokes, drinks and takes drugs.”

    I shuddered. It’s so different nowadays, Lord. How can I help her deal with all these things I know nothing about? Then I thought of how far Kristin had already come, and I knew the best thing I could do was to keep being there for her, as she always was for me.

    One evening Kristin brought over a cake mix. “I’m going to bake us a super-duper double-chocolate cake, Gram,” she announced.

    “No way,” I said. “Shortcuts won’t make a cake as good as from scratch.”

    “Oh, come on, Gram. it’s easier this way.”

    “Don’t ‘oh, Gram’ me, young lady. Easier isn’t always better and in this house” She broke into laughter the laughter I had come to know so well and in a moment, I joined in.

    Kristin shook her head and took my hand. “I don’t know what it is, Gram,” she said. “We hardly ever agree on anything and you make me so mad sometimes. But I always come back. I guess I must love you.”

    Who would have known that when I looked out the window for the paper carrier that afternoon five years ago I would end up finding my best friend?

  • A House for Katherine Red Feather

    A House for Katherine Red Feather

    “A House for Katherine Red Feather” story wrote By Robert Young, Bozeman, Montana

    Ten years ago, if you told me I’d give up the business I spent my life putting together to go build houses on Indian reservations instead, I’d have said you were nuts. the Seattle-based loungewear company I started with a partner was cranking out a profit. At 33, I had just married my longtime sweetheart, Anita. I wanted to slow down, have a family, savor life and the rewards of success.

    Then I saw that headline.

    I was in New Mexico on business and picked up a local paper called Indian Country. There it was on the front page, like an epitaph: “Elders Freeze to Death.” How could such a thing happen here in America, the richest country in the world? I tore out the article and stuck it in my pocket.

    That night in my hotel room, meetings done, I read the story again. it seemed so tragic. Somebody the government, the tribal council would no doubt do something to make sure it did not happen again. Still, I tucked the clipping into my briefcase instead of throwing it away. Why I had no idea.

    Two weeks later, another business trip. Another headline staring at me from the local paper. “Taos Woman Starts Adopt-A-Grandparent Program for Aging Native Americans.” According to the article, on reservations across the country, thousands of elderly native Americans struggled not just to make ends meet but simply to stay alive. At the end of the piece, there was a number of people interested in volunteering to call. I didn’t stop to think. I just picked up the phone and dialed.

    Soon I was matched with a “grandparent” Katherine Red Feather, of South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation. I dropped her a note introducing myself. “I am 78 years old,” Katherine wrote back, “and blessed with thirteen children and seven grandchildren. I am so happy to learn I now have another grandchild! Do you have a wife and children of your own? I hope so, as they are one of the most wonderful gifts the Great Spirit can give a person in this life.”

    I told her about Anita, and how she was indeed a godsend. Then I asked Katherine if there was anything I could send her. “Yes,” she wrote. “If it’s not too much trouble, I would very much appreciate a bottle of shampoo and some aspirin. Thank you for your generosity, Grandson.”

    Grandson … Katherine was really taking this program seriously. But shampoo? Aspirin? Why wouldn’t she have such basic items? I decided to visit the reservation after my next business trip and look in on Katherine.

    Pine Ridge Reservation encompasses the two poorest counties in the United States. So the letter from the Adopt-A-Grandparent program had informed me. But I was not prepared for the reality of that poverty. Rutted dirt roads, dilapidated shacks, rusted-out automobiles with entire families living in them…. The dwellings I passed wouldn’t keep a person warm on a chilly fall night like this. In the Dakota winter, temperatures sometimes plunged to 60 degrees below zero. How could people freeze to death on a reservation? The answer was right before my eyes.

    Katherine’s “house” was a small, busted-up trailer pushed against the body of an old school bus. The trailer door opened and a delicate-looking woman wearing slacks and a simple patterned sweater emerged.

    “Grandson! Come in out of the cold.”

    The trailer was dark and barely big enough to turn around in, but the three people sitting by the wood stove stood when Katherine led me inside. “This is Robert,” she announced. “My new grandson. Robert, these are my children. They are your family now too.”

    Katherine must have seen my confusion. “The Great Spirit has chosen you to be a part of my life,” she told me. “We are one family in his eyes.” We sat down to a simple meal of white bread and beans heated on a propane stove.

    There was no running water, so Katherine needed to carry it from a well out back. it was next to an outhouse with a black flag flying overhead. “To scare away the rattlesnakes,” she explained. “They think it’s a hawk.” Katherine took such pains to make me feel at home that it was only at the end of my visit two days later that I could bring myself to ask her, “Isn’t it hard for you to have to fetch wood and water every day?”

    Katherine took my hands in hers. “I know how my life must look to you, Grandson, but all of us here live this way. I’m no different than anyone else.”

    I couldn’t stop thinking about Katherine once I got home to Seattle. The days grew shorter and colder. I looked out the window of my cozy apartment and imagined my new grandmother in that tiny trailer, huddled over her smoky little stove.

    “She needs to be in a place that will keep her warm,” I told Anita one night. “A place where the wind doesn’t blow through the chinks in the walls. Katherine needs a real house.”

    A real house. The moment those words left my lips, I knew what I had to do. At the end of that summer, I took two weeks off and went back to Pine Ridge. Anita and a handful of friends came with me. We were going to build Katherine a house. None of us had built so much as a doghouse before, but I figured that with a simple floor plan and plenty of enthusiasm, we could get the job done.

    Word got around the reservation. Dozens of Katherine’s neighbors and family members pitched in. Toward the end we worked round the clock, my car headlights trained on the site. Finally, the last nail was driven. Katherine’s tribal chairman said a prayer of thanks, and there was a big celebration. It was the first time Katherine had all her relatives together since the Red Feather clan had been divided and made to live on two different reservations years back. She welcomed them all into her house, her eyes brimming with tears of joy.

    Anita squeezed my hand, and I knew what we had done here was bigger than anything I could ever hope to achieve with my business. At last, I understood what Katherine meant about all of us being one family.

    Back in Seattle, I tried to concentrate on my work. Katherine would be safe and warm this winter. But what about all the neighbors who’d pitched in to build Katherine’s house, only to go home to ramshackle trailers? America has about two million tribal members, and some 300,000 of them are without proper homes. What about all those people?

    Building frame houses like we had done for Katherine was impossible. Too expensive and labor-intensive. I had to come up with a design that was warm, inexpensive and easy to build. A little research and I came across straw bale houses. Built from blocks of straw covered with stucco, they’re ideal for reservations. The straw is plentiful on the Great Plains and provides extremely effective insulation.

    Getting straw bale houses built on a large scale, though, would take the organization. A huge investment of time and energy. Time and energy I wouldn’t have if I kept my day job. I sold my half of the business and started a new venture, the Red Feather Development Group, to help native Americans get decent housing. Eventually, Anita and I moved to Bozeman, Montana, in the vicinity of half a dozen reservations.

    To think, none of this would have happened if I hadn’t seen those headlines 10 years ago. Even then I’d known someone would look after elders like my grandmother Katherine. I just never expected that person to be me. But that is how the Great Spirit works.