Harris and Me

by Gary Paulsen

  Harris and me.

  There was a figure for me.

  A strange feeling came over me, seeing the figure. I somehow had never belonged—always felt like a visitor. And though we were related I never thought of myself as part of the family in some way; I considered myself more an observer than an outsider, a friend who watches.

  The figure made my role different, carved it in time. I wasn’t just a visiting second cousin. I was somebody, a part of this place, this family. I belonged.

  I picked up the figure that represented me and looked more closely at it. It was wearing a mouse-hair coat and had a smile and white teeth inside the little smile. It couldn’t have looked less like me but at the same time made me think more of myself, my life, than anything ever had before and I was crying when I set it down, crying to myself thinking that I felt like I was home.

  “What’s wrong?” Harris was working on the bicycle when I came back down and he saw my red eyes.

  “Dust. I was up in the granary.”

  “Did you find ’em?”

  “What... Oh, no.” Harris was still suffering from the purloined pictures and his sore business and believed that Louie had hidden the pictures somewhere in the granary. Harris felt he had proprietary rights and was hoping to find the pictures and steal them back. “I didn’t see them.”

  “He’s probably got ’em under something. Did you look under things?”

  “No...”

  “Well, it don’t matter. Here, look at this—ain’t this a beauty?”

  He pointed to the bike with the pulley wired/taped onto the rear wheel. He had reaffixed the wheel to the rear and held it up to spin it to show that it rotated freely.

  I nodded dubiously. It seemed more like a rotating bandage than anything else, and I couldn’t see how it would possibly work, but I didn’t have Harris’s enthusiasm and optimism, couldn’t see the big picture as well as he did.

  He had also manufactured a crude wooden platform, which was bolted above the pedals and rusty chain guard with two U-bolts.

  “For the motor.”

  I nodded again but in truth I didn’t think there would ever be a chance to try it. Knute and the rest didn’t go to town that often. Usually somebody stayed home. But I was wrong again. The next day Knute fired up the truck and took Clair and Glennis to town and Louie took the team six miles to a neighbor’s to get the horses shod.

  Harris watched the grain wagon trundling off down the driveway with Louie sitting up in the high seat.

  He had a crescent wrench hidden behind his back and as soon as Louie was well clear of the house he went for the washing machine.

  I grabbed his suspenders and stopped him. “Just so you know—I’m not taking the blame this time.”

  “They won’t even know we done it.”

  “You’ve done it.”

  “Yeah. They won’t even know. We’ll hook her in and make a few runs and put the motor back on the washing machine.”

  “Just the same. No matter what, I’m not taking the blame.”

  He nodded. “Sure. But you’ll see, there won’t be no problem...”

  Of all the understatements Harris made that summer, it was perhaps the greatest.

  At no time during the ensuing disaster did I think the contraption would really work. I helped him unbolt the four bolts that held the motor to the washing machine and helped him carry it to the bike and put it on the platform.

  He had an old auger bit-and-brace and a long V-belt from the granary, one of the spares for the binder. It took him just a few minutes to remove the back wheel of the bike and loop the belt through and put the wheel back on, fit the belt into the taped pulley, and then connect it to the drive pulley on the motor.

  He adjusted the motor into position, marked the holes, and then augered four holes through the wooden platform and bolted the motor in place with the belt tight.

  “There,” he said. “She ought to fly.”

  Or blow up, I thought. “How are you going to start it?” The kick starter was up against the frame.

  “I’ll push the bike until she fires, then jump on. You be running in back of me and climb on when I get on.”

  “I’m not riding that thing.”

  He studied me. “You chicken.”

  “I’m still not riding it.”

  He frowned. “All right. We need a timer so’s we can check our speed. You run get the alarm clock from the folks’ bedroom.”

  I did as he told me. It was a brass clock with two bells on top and a hammer that went back and forth to ring them.

  “Take the other bike to the end of the driveway and when I start the engine and you hear me let her rip, you check the clock and then when I get to the end of the driveway you check her again and we’ll be able to figure out how fast I went.”

  I was skeptical. My personal feelings were that he would never get the contraption out of the yard, let alone to the end of the driveway. But Harris had surprised me before—almost continuously—and so I took the other bike and dutifully pedaled to the end of the driveway and waited.

  And waited.

  I checked the clock numerous times as I heard Harris trying to start the motor back in the yard.

  Put-n-put-n-put...

  And it would die. I found later that the motor died because Harris had already unhooked the governor and it was getting too much gas and was choking out. I also decided still later that it was probably God trying to save Harris from himself. But even divine intervention didn’t work, and in truth Harris was so determined probably nothing could have saved him. Or, as Harris put it later, speaking of God: “At least He could have stopped me from unhooking that stupid governor...”

  The motor started, finally, with a stuttering put-n-put-n-put and as soon as I saw Harris begin to move I looked down at the clock. I couldn’t have had my eyes down for more than three seconds, but when I brought them up I was surprised to see that Harris had already moved toward me some distance.

  Several other things were happening by this time that would determine Harris’s fate. The engine, starved of gasoline all its life on the washing machine by the mechanical governor, responded in explosive gratitude for the chance at freedom. It went from the subdued put-n-put-n-put to a healthy BAM-BAM-BAM that I could hear easily from the end of the driveway.

  Then, too, there was the further bad luck that somehow, in some way, everything held together. Bolts, belts, the bicycle—everything miraculously stayed in one piece and all of the gasoline that poured into the wide open throat of the little Briggs and Stratton engine was translated into power at the back wheel.

  Power and speed.

  From that point on everything came in flashes, flickering scenes of disaster, like watching a stop-action film of a flood or a hurricane hitting the coast of Florida.

  To give him his due, Harris was plucky. Early on the Bendix brake had jammed and the chain—and therefore pedals—had turned with the back wheel. Harris kept his feet on the pedals, or tried to, but as the speed went up and the pedals began to turn faster, much faster than they’d ever turned, his legs became at first a blur, then he held them up, the pedals slapping the bottoms of his bare feet as the bike approached something like terminal velocity with Harris just along for the ride.

  It was amazing that nothing fell apart. As he got closer, his knees up alongside his cheeks, I could see that sense had at last come into his mind and his eyes were wide, huge with fear. His tongue hung out the side of his mouth, spit flying, and he turned into a blur.

  Fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty—the bike had to be doing close to fifty miles an hour when he passed me standing at the end of the driveway.

  “Helpppp meeeeee!” he yelled, the Doppler effect changing the pitch of his plea as he cleared the end of the driveway, flew across in front of me, and hit the ditch on the far side of the county road like a meteorite.

  It was then, as he put it later, that he realized he was in trouble. Making the turn onto the road was clearly imposs
ible but he claims he still thought he could “slow her down in the brush along the ditch.”

  The brush slowed him, all right. It stopped the bike dead in a dazzling, cartwheeling spray of engine, spokes, wheels, frame, and tangled belt. For half a second it was impossible to tell where Harris ended and bicycle began; the whole seemed a jumbled mass of boy and machine.

  Then Harris separated. His body high above the brush, spread-eagled—he claimed later he could see for miles—still moving close to fifty miles an hour, then fell down, down in a curving arc to hit the ground and explode in a flurry of willows, leaves, brush, and dirt.

  Then silence, broken only by the soft hissing of gas running from the tank onto the engine and the ticking of the brass alarm clock.

  “Harris?”

  Nothing.

  “Harris—are you all right?”

  A spitting sound—leaves and dirt being expelled. Then a grunt. “Hell no, I ain’t all right. I was stuck in the dirt like an arrow and I’m all over scratches.”

  “Do you need help?” I couldn’t see him for the brush and willows.

  “Yeah. Help me find my bibs.”

  “Your pants?”

  “Yeah—they come off me somewhere.”

  We looked for half an hour and more, Harris hiding twice when cars went by on the road, and we didn’t find them and we looked for another half hour and we still didn’t find them and we never did.

  We finally gave up. The bike was a total loss but the engine was cast iron and undamaged and we put it on the seat of my bike and held it there while we wheeled it back to the yard and the washing machine, Harris walking alongside naked as a bird and all over scratches as he’d said.

  Later that night we were lying in our beds in the dark, nightbirds singing outside the window, and Harris whispered, “How fast was I going?”

  I shook my head, then realized he couldn’t see me in the dark. “I don’t know.”

  “What did the clock say?”

  “I forgot to look at it.”

  “You forgot?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I go through this and have to tell Pa I lost my pants somewhere and you forgot to look at the clock?”

  “I said I’m sorry.”

  There was a long quiet. “How fast do you think I was going?”

  I thought long before answering, remembered his eyes, his legs pumping, the motor pounding as he went by, the crash in the brushy ditch, the sight of him flying through the air, losing his pants.

  “At least a hundred.”

  Another soft silence, then a sigh. “I thought so—the fence posts looked like chicken netting. It was really something.”

  “Yes. It was really something...”

  12

  In which all things change

  The time of summer ended suddenly enough.

  In the fields along the driveway there was a forty-acre piece in corn. It was silage, or field corn—as opposed to sweet corn—and meant to feed the milk cows in the winter and grew to truly gigantic proportions.

  Plants seven feet tall were not uncommon and from our perspective—between four and five feet—as the stalks grew taller the field became an inviting green jungle. By lying on the ground it was possible to see down the rows through a cleared area about a foot high, before the leaves started. But standing limited visibility to a few feet in any direction and the field became a perfect place to play hide-and-seek.

  Or ambush.

  Or, as Harris put it, “It’s time for cob wars.”

  The corn ears weren’t fully ripe and wouldn’t be until later in the summer, or early fall, when they would be chopped for silage and stored in a silage pit. But they had developed enough to make almost perfect missiles of nearly a pound and when thrown correctly, with a flick of the wrist, if they hit you in the head they’d put you down.

  “It’s this way,” Harris explained to me. “You go in the corn first and be the commie jap and I’ll give you a head start and then come after you.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m GI Joe.”

  “Why do I have to be the commie jap? I want to be GI Joe.”

  Harris studied me and sighed. “Look, who made the game up—me or you?”

  “Well, you...”

  “And who knows the rules?”

  “I didn’t know there were any rules...”

  “Me, that’s who. So I have to be the one to hang back and make sure it’s all working right and that makes you the commie jap and me GI Joe. It just figures.”

  It didn’t actually figure that way to me but it was clear that if we were going to play I would have to be the commie jap, and so I at length nodded and moved into the corn.

  It was like stepping into another world. Light filtered down through the plants and cast a green glow that made me want to walk softly and whisper, and I crouched and moved forward carefully.

  I hadn’t gone eight feet when something hit me in the back of the head so hard my eyes crossed.

  “Got you, you gooner commie jap!”

  I wheeled and there was nothing. Just the rustling green corn. I took two steps, started the third, and took another cob in the back of the head.

  “Dammit, Harris—quit that!”

  “...commie jap gooner...”

  And he was gone again. But this time I heard him and thinking I was about to be hit again dropped to my stomach and found the clear area.

  There he was, or his legs. Two rows over and slightly toward the road. I smiled, pulled an ear of corn off the nearest plant, slithered on my belly two rows over, rose suddenly, and threw the cob as hard as I could where he had been standing.

  And missed.

  “Fell for it, you commie jap gooner!”

  And another cob caught me in the back of the head. Somehow as I rose he had dropped and gone around in back of me for a rear attack. This time the cob caught me hard enough to make my ears ring, and rage took over any thought and I went for him.

  From that point on it disintegrated into a catch-me-if-you-can brawl with me chasing him through the corn until I couldn’t run and both of us, finally, falling to the ground, laughing inside the corn near the edge of the driveway.

  “You make a miserable commie jap,” Harris said, lying back in the dirt.

  “That’s because I was supposed to be GI Joe...”

  The sound of a car engine stopped me and we peeped out of the corn just in time to see the deputy’s car go by, headed for the house.

  “It’s the same guy who brought me,” I said. “I wonder what he wants?”

  “You, likely. He’s come to take you home...”

  I knew instantly that Harris was right, that the summer was done, and everything in me rebelled. I had come to belong here, wanted to be here, thought of this as home, Harris as a brother and Glennis as a sister and Knute as a pa and Clair as a mother, and didn’t, didn’t ever want to leave.

  “You don’t got to go.” Harris had read my expression. “You can stay here in the corn. I’ll bring you food and a blanket and they’ll never find you in a hundred years.” His face had a worried, almost frightened look to it and he seemed on the edge of tears.

  It was all too sudden. A part of me nodded, wanted to do it, hide, hide, but I knew it wouldn’t work. I could hear Clair calling from the house now, calling my name and Harris’s name, and fighting it every inch of the way I stood and walked out of the corn and back to the house while Harris stayed in the corn.

  Glennis had my box from the room waiting by the deputy’s car and she smiled and handed it to me.

  “Isn’t this nice?” Clair said. “You’re going home at last...”

  But she didn’t look happy about it and neither did Knute, who came from near the granary, walking with his hands in his bib pockets, balled into fists, looking at the ground. Louie was nowhere to be seen.

  Knute said nothing but stood next to Clair and Glennis was crying silently and I got in the car, all in moments, and the deputy turned arou
nd and we went down the driveway and away from the farm. Or tried to. We hadn’t gone a hundred yards when I saw Harris come boiling out of the corn, his bibs all over mud and his hands waving to stop the car.

  He came to my side and I rolled the window down.

  “You don’t got to stay gone, you know,” he said, and he was crying so naturally I started to cry too. “You can talk to them gooners and tell them you got to come back here.”

  “I will.”

  “You make them bring you back.”

  “I will.”

  And the deputy pulled away and we left Harris standing there by the side of the driveway. I looked back out the rear window and he was waving one hand so I waved back but soon he was lost from view and the rest of the farm was gone and we were on the road heading back to town.

  The deputy spat out the window. “Nice people, the Larsons. You have a good summer?”

  And it was all there. The horses and the pigs and Ernie and the pictures and Louie and swimming and going to see the Gene Autry movie—all there at once, filling me so that I had to look out the window and hide my eyes.

  “Yes. I did. I had a nice summer.”

  Epilogue

  Three weeks after I had returned home I received a small package with the following letter inside:

  Dear Gooner:

  You know I don’t write so good so Glennis is doing this for me except I’m worried she won’t say what I want and I don’t trust the big...

  There, right there she hit me. I didn’t say nothing wrong and she whacked me, so you can see things ain’t changed a whole lot.

  I thought I’d killed Ernie when I ran over him with a wheelbarrow full of sand when he wasn’t looking but I didn’t. Kill him, I mean. The son... There, she hit me again. Ernie laid there for a minute and then got up and made it under the granary before I could get the wheelbarrow turned around for another run on him. I would have turned faster except I wetted the sand down to make it good and heavy and the extra weight slowed me some.

  Everybody else is fine. Pa broke a finger but it don’t seem to bother him none. Ma is cooking. Glennis is looking all moon-eyed at Clyde Peterson... There, she hit me again. But she is. He’s took to hanging around smelling at the gatepost... I wish she’d stop that. I keep getting whacked and don’t even mean it.