Old Man's Boy Grows Up

by Robert Ruark

  “But don’t you want to spend the night in the bush in that tent all by yourself?” I asked young Twain, who is called Twain because his first name is Mark, if that makes any sense.

  “No,” said young Mark Twain.

  “Why?” said I.

  “I’m too scared,” said young Mark, a tad of appalling frankness.

  I admire honesty in the young, and this particular spate of a rare commodity reminded me of some days when I had a tent pitched under the magnolia tree in Southport, North Carolina, to which I retreated when the adults became too heavy to bear. It was a tent quite like young Twain’s tent, and no more distant from the house.

  We had a difference of opinion, as I recall, my people and I, and I determined to run away and embark on a life of piracy, rapine, and highway robbery. I was a red-hot six years old, and the Irish was showing. The whole world was wrong, and you could have called me Parnell.

  “Good-bye, cruel world,” I said, more or less, and departed for a life of shame.

  I must say that the Old Man took it in stride when I announced my intention to trek. “You sure you going to give us all up and run off to live with the Injuns?” he said gently. “I mean, we don’t get no chance to mend our ways and maybe keep you with us until you get out of the sixth grade?” The Old Man had a dirty twinkle, but this was dirtier than usual, and made me even madder.

  “You’ll be sorry when I’m gone,” I said. “There won’t be nobody around the place to fetch the firewood and run the errands and clean the fish. You’ll be sorry, all right.”

  The Old Man heaved a sigh. “That’s what I was afeard of,” he said. “Without I got you, they”—he gestured in the general direction of Miss Lottie and the other grownups—”they’ll be making me do your work. Maybe I could run away with you?”

  “No sir.” I was very firm. I figured even at my tender age that running away was something a boy had to do all by himself or it didn’t count.

  “No sir,” I said. At the time I had not encountered Mr. Dickens and his Sydney Carton, and the bad gag about “it is a far, far better thing that I do” had not crept into my working vocabulary, but I was thinking it all right.

  “I’m going now,” I said, full of dignity and trepidation.

  “Well, good-bye,” the Old Man said. His tone was solicitous. “You got everything you’ll need? Matches? Hatchet for firewood? Air rifle to shoot birds with? You better take some eggs and bacon to tide you over until you start living off the country. And be careful of snakes. If you do get struck try to cut a cross over the bite, tie on a tourniquet, pour in some gunpowder, set it afire, and if you can find somebody to suck the poison out of the wound do so. Gettin’ snake-bit is a messy business when you’re off on your own, because you generally can’t reach the place you’re bit to suck out your own poison.”

  The Old Man fired up his pipe and looked at me under lowered lids.

  “You ain’t going to find it very comfortable,” he said. “I mind well I run away once when I was a kid. Of course, we ain’t got any Injuns now, except some tame ones in Robeson County, but in them days the place was populous with redskins. A man come home with his hair on was an exception. I knowed one feller, he got scalped before he was dead. The Injun run off with his hair, and when the man come to he was prematurely bald. Had to buy a wig to cover his shame.”

  “There ain’t any Injuns around now except some Brass Ankles,” I said. “And they ain’t really Injuns.”

  “True,” the Old Man said. “But you want to watch out for such things as wild hogs and wild cats and the stray panther now and then. That air rifle is all right for robins and such—like that mockingbird you killed that made your Grandma so mad—but a BB gun don’t stack up very high against a wild boar. And when you’re reduced to eatin’ what you can find in the way of herbs I suggest you watch out for the poisonous toadstools and the berries I don’t even know about myself. What might seem like a sparkleberry to you might be something entirely different when they do the autopsy.”

  “You’re just tryin’ to scare me,” I said. “I’m leavin’. Goodbye.”

  “Would you mind shakin’ hands?” the Old Man said, and shoved out his paw. “We may never meet again in this life.”

  Feeling very noble, I took his hand, shook it, and went off to the wilds of my tent. I figured I would mount the expedition from the tent, straighten out my gear, pack my rucksack, and depart before dawn.

  “Good-bye sir,” I called and choked back a sob. Frankly, I was on the hook and there wasn’t any way to get out of running away except to run away.

  You know how lonely it can be in a tent, even in the side yard, when the night falls and there’s no place to go except the tent, with the world opening up ahead of you and no point of fixed destination?

  Yes. Just about that lonely. The house was maybe thirty yards away. It could have been a million miles, because my pride had removed it from my ken. There were lights and laughter, but I, the outcast, was now not allowed to share either lights or laughter. I was stuck in a tent, ringed round by loneliness.

  Night noises came on. Late-blooming mockingbirds tuned in. Bugs zoomed and swooshed and plunked against the canvas. Frogs croaked. The whippoorwills made a symphony of sadness. Things popped and cracked and boomed and snapped and crackled—and stalked by on careful feet. Over there an owl hooted. Over yonder a dog howled, which meant somebody was dead. A lonely, frightened colored boy started a sad song to stave off the demons of the dark until he got home to Foxtown.

  And me? I had acute claustrophobia complicated by active fright and a vague guilt consciousness. I was trapped in a tent, and over thataway lay the far shores. And I didn’t know precisely how I was going to achieve those far shores. Certainly not in the middle of the night, with all the sounds and the things—all the birds, bugs, and beasts—against me.

  But I couldn’t leave the tent, although the rustle I had just heard was certainly a moccasin, an adder, or a rattler. A man has his pride. Once you start to run away you got to run away. I peeked out of the tent flap and the house had never seemed brighter, gayer. Life was in the house, and there I was dead stone cold in the dark in a tent.

  “Make a fire,” I said aloud. But then I considered that I would have to go and rob the house of firewood, which was a poor way to start a life of crime. Also, there wasn’t any flue in the tent.

  Anyhow, it was too hot for a fire, although a fire might have been a heavy help against the mosquitoes, which were now beginning a concerted dive on my carcass.

  Now I was hungry. Figuring that I would live off the country I had spurned the Old Man’s suggestion about bacon and eggs. There was no country I could five off of at this moment It was the wrong season for figs and grapes and pecans, which were all we grew in this plot.

  The mosquitoes buzzed and my belly growled. Lone and lorn in a tent, with civilization thirty yards away and me too proud to compromise. The owl hooted louder, the whippoorwill keened. The dead-man dog howled.

  Footsteps padded softly across the lawn. “You all right in there?” The Old Man’s voice was soft. “Anything I can do?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Don’t worry about me,” and I must have snuffled back half a sob.

  “Well,” the Old Man said, “I’m kind of a committee. I’m speaking on behalf of your ma and pa and grandma. They reckon that maybe there was wrong on both sides, and if you could see your way clear to make a parley we might be able to straighten things out.

  “Mind you,” the Old Man said, “we ain’t askin’ you to give in on anything that offends your sense of what’s right and wrong. It’s just that we’re havin’ deep-dish apple pie for dinner, and it seems a shame to waste the spare slice. You reckon you could come in under a flag of truce and we could work the whole thing out tomorrow morning after the ham and hominy?”

  Even at six years old I wasn’t no fool. I knew a concession when I saw one. I stuck my head out of the tent. My relieved soul wanted to cry, but I made the voic
e cool and bored.

  “I’m willing to talk business if you are,” I said, when what I wanted to do was jump up and wrap myself around his neck and weep out of sheer relief, not knowing then that the old gent had really pulled me off the hook and left my self-respect intact.

  That’s why, I suspect, I’m glad my boy Mark Robert was honestly scared to spend the night in that tent in Limuru. He didn’t have to go through that horrible evening I spent before we called the conference next day. There is nothing as lonesome as a tent when the home fires are burning within spittin’ distance, and I do not recommend running away unless there is a circus handy to join.

  And there are so few circuses handy these days that running away seems scarcely worth the effort, especially if they are having deep-dish apple pie on the night of departure.

  Thinking back on my first journey into fear, when I holed up in the tent, I was suddenly reminded of the second time I absconded. I don’t recall now exactly what I was sore at, but I was mad as a wet hen at something, very possibly school, my parents, or the weather. Also, I had been reading Huckleberry Finn, who had run off down the river with the slave Jim. This is heady fare for a young man resentful of the adult currycomb. My heart was sore and my disposition desperate.

  “What’s graveling you?” the Old Man asked. “You look like you’re about to cloud up and rain.”

  “I am,” I said. “I think I’ll run off. Don’t nobody around here understand me.”

  The Old Man sucked on his pipe and crooked an eyebrow. “That’s a prime pity,” he said. “I know how you feel. If I wasn’t so old and rheumaticky I’d run off with you. Miss Lottie...” He shrugged. “But I guess I’m too old and sot in my ways. However, you don’t want to take this runnin’ away too light. An absconder burns his bridges behind him, because once you’ve lit out there ain’t no returnin’.”

  I muttered something about I didn’t care if I never saw nobody I knew again, except maybe the Old Man, and I guess I just put that in to be polite.

  “Runnin’ away from your responsibility takes a power of preparation, not to mention precautions. The old Injuns used to tie a tree branch to their horses’ tails and sweep away the hoof marks as they moved camp. And any hobo’ll tell you that you got to travel light, but you still got to carry most of the things you need when you’re alone in the woods in the night. Seems to me we better practice a little before you run off permanent. You gonna take your gun? “

  “I better. I’ll have to live off the country. I better take some line and some fishhooks, too.”

  The Old Man looked at me. “You ain’t very big yet,” he said. “A gun, even that little 20-gauge, can get powerful heavy. Or was you planning to steal a raft like Huck Finn and live on that for a spell? A boat ain’t goin’ to take you no farther than Wilmington, unless you care to ride these reefs here on the ebb tide and hit the open sea for Charleston.”

  “I’ll hoof it,” I said, mean and stubborn. “Don’t you worry about me.”

  “I’m not,” the Old Man said, a little too cheerfully. “I just don’t want you to be ashamed in front of the other hobos, for running off without the full kit. Of course, you’ll need two blankets, a hand ax, a knife, a canteen, a skillet, a coffeepot, some iron rations, and some pepper and salt. With that gear you ought to be able to Eve off the country. Any idea where you’re headed?”

  “No”—even more stubborn than before. “West, maybe. Maybe to Canada. I dunno, and I don’t care.”

  “Well, if it’s Canada you got in mind you better take more than two blankets. I’d say about six. It’s cold in Canada. Was you planning to live with the Eskimos, or the Indians and be a trapper, or will you fetch up as a cowboy? That’s if you decide on the West.”

  The Old Man never cracked a smile, but I could see he was up to his old tricks of going along with my tantrums, and this made me even madder. “I’m going somewhere, all right,” I said. “Maybe one day I’ll write and tell you where I wind up. If I ain’t too busy.”

  “They’re a little short on communications in the Arctic,” the old buzzard said. “But I would appreciate a birchbark postcard once in a while, if you can rassle down a caribou and ride it to the nearest trading post. But in the meantime we better get you outfitted, because there’s no tellin’ how long you’ll be gone. In fact, you may be gone for good.

  “Now we’ll do a kind of check-off list, and I’ll see can I get you geared up for the road. I’ll even do more than that. When you’re all ready to roam I’ll drive you a half-dozen miles out of town in the Liz. This is kind of covering your trail. People won’t reckon you’re running away. They’ll just think you and me are going huntin’ or fishin’ like we used to before you got restless.” The Old Man stared at the sky. “I’ll miss you, you know. You got your faults, but you were a pretty good huntin’ and fishin’ partner. I guess I’ll have to stir around some and dig me up another boy.”

  I ignored that one. It hurt, but I let it fly by.

  “Well,” the Old Man said, “there’s no time like now for running away. It’s pretty late in the afternoon, but it might be raining or even snowing tomorrow. It’s a chance you have to take. Now you go collect all your gear, and mind you make them blankets into a tight bundle so you can strap them on your back. And you’re goin’ to need a belt strong enough to carry your ax, your knife, your canteen, your coffeepot, and your skillet. These things don’t pack so good. Too much bulk. And then, of course, you’re goin’ to have to tote your shotgun and a knapsack full of things like fresh socks and underwear and a little salt pork and flour and sugar and salt and coffee. You can’t hit the road without the basic essentials. You can’t go off half-cocked. Get movin’ now.”

  Well, sir, I was a sight for sore eyes. I must have weighed about ninety pounds stripped. The gun weighed six, and by the time the Old Man had strapped a blanket roll and a knapsack on my back, and draped a cartridge box around me like a bandoleer, and hung things onto one of those World War I web pistol belts with the hooks on I must have weighed two hundred pounds. It was a pretty hot day for winter, but the Old Man made me wear my Mackinaw too, because he said you never could tell when it would turn real chilly, and catching pneumonia when you were all by yourself in the woods with nobody to nurse you was even too much for a Blackfoot brave.

  “We lost more Injuns from the p-neumonia than we ever did from the cavalry,” the Old Man said, as he helped me, clinking and clanking and sweating, into the Tin Liz. “Seems like most Injuns suffered from a weakness in the chest. That and diphtheria, not to mention starvation when the big snows come and the buffalo crop run short. If I was you—after you decide roughly what you want out of life—I’d head for some place like Mexico, where you can always eat lizards and sleep out of nights if the Aztecs don’t sacrifice you to one of their gods.”

  Not once did he twinkle. He was as stony stem as the preacher when he talked about hellfire and damnation. Mostly I could surprise him in a twinkle, but not this time. No twinkle. Nothing.

  He had to help me into the car; cars had high running boards in those days and boys had short fat legs, and this boy resembled a walking hardware store more than he resembled a boy. I sat down with a clank and a rattle, and all you could see out of this mess of equipment was my face and my feet. Somehow I didn’t feel like Leatherstocking or Dan’l Boone.

  The Old Man cranked up the Liz and off we went, me rattling inside and the Liz rattling outside. The Old Man was garrulous as we rode. He pointed to a cornfield off to the right, with a stand of second-growth pine trees on its rim, and sighed.

  “We had us some mighty good times with the dogs there, didn’t we?” He was talking to himself. “I’m sure goin’ to miss opening day of the quail season, with you not here. I may not even hunt. Huntin’ ain’t much fun by yourself, and I suspect I’m too old to break in another boy, no matter what I said earlier. Maybe I’ll just give up huntin’ altogether. I’m a little old to be alone in the woods, with nobody to run for help if I fall into a
stump hole and bust a leg or something like that. The woods can be mighty lonesome by yourself, and if you get into trouble, well...” His voice trailed off.

  We drove about five miles and he stopped the Liz by a creek. “You know where you are now. You’ve got plenty of water, and the campsite where you and me and Mr. Howard shot your first deer ain’t more’n a mile off yonder. I guess I taught you enough about camping to where I ain’t got to give you any advice about not setting fire to the broom sedge and leavin’ a clean campsite for people who ain’t so fortunate as to be running away.”

  He got out of the car, opened the door, and helped me out. Weighed down as I was, I couldn’t have made it on my own. He clapped me on the back.

  “So long, son,” he said. “And good luck. If you find the time drop me a line once in a while. I’ll be here if I ain’t dead. And don’t worry too much about me and your folks. We’ll all make out.”

  He banged me on the back again, got back into the car, turned her around in a little sandy cut off the main road, and headed back to the village. Dusk had dropped swiftly, and I could see him switch on his headlights. The taillight winked like a malicious red eye.

  I stood in the middle of the road in the night, and watched the taillight disappear over a rise. I have been lonely since, but never quite that lonely. And I often wondered if the Old Man forgot to include a flashlight on purpose, because suddenly the night fell like a great black blanket and there was no moon to lead me to the campsite. Walking through the bush was impossible, encumbered as I was by all the tinware the Old Man had tied to me.

  This was, I believe, the first time I ever realized how big the world, how absent the moon, and how lonely the loner, not to mention how long was eternity, a problem that had been bothering me a lot.