More Jonathan Papers Part 8

Whats the matter there?

Why, it seems to have pulled clear of its moorings. You look at it.

He looked, with that expression of meditative resourcefulness peculiar to the true Yankee countenance. Hmneeds new wood there,and there; that stuffll never hold. And so the old bottle was patched with new skin at the points of strain, and in the zest of reconstruction Jonathan almost forgot to regret the walk. Well have it to-morrow night, he said: the moon will be better.

The next evening I met him below the turn of the road. Wonderful night its going to be, he said, as he pushed his wheel up the last hill.

Yes I said, a little uneasily. I was thinking of the kitchen pump.

Finally I brought myself to face it.

There seems to be some troublewith the pump, I said apologetically. I felt that it was my fault, though I knew it wasnt.

More trouble? What sort of trouble?

Oh, it wheezes and makes funny sucking noises, and the water spits and spits, and then bursts out, and then doesnt come at all. It sounds a little like a cat with a bone in its throat.

Probably just that, said Jonathan: grain of sand in the valve, very likely.

Shall I get a plumber?

Plumber! Ill fix it myself in three shakes of a lambs tail.

Well, I said, relieved: you can do that after supper while I see that all the chickens are in, and those turkeys, and then well have our walk.

Accordingly I went off on my tour. When I returned the pale moon-shadows were already beginning to show in the lingering dusk of the fading daylight. Indoors seemed very dark, but on the kitchen floor a candle sat, flaring and dipping.

Jonathan, I called, Im ready.

Well, Im not, said a voice at my feet.

Why, where are you? Oh, there! I bent down and peered under the sink at a shape crouched there. Havent you finished?

Finished! Ive just got the thing apart.

I should say you had! I regarded the various pieces of iron and leather and wood as they lay, mere dismembered shapes, about the dim kitchen.

It doesnt seem as if it would ever come together againto be a pump, I said in some depression.

Oh, thats easy! Its just a question of time.

How much time?

Heaven knows.

Was it the valve?

It wa.s.several things.

His tone had the vagueness born of concentration. I could see that this was no time to press for information. Besides, in the field of mechanics, as Jonathan has occasionally pointed out to me, I am rather like a traveler who has learned to ask questions in a foreign tongue, but not to understand the answers.

Well, Ill bring my sewing out hereor would you rather have me read to you? Theres something in the last number of

Noget your sewingblast that screw! Why doesnt it start?

Evidently sewing was better than the last number of anything. I settled myself under a lamp, while Jonathan, in the twilight beneath the sink, continued his mystic rites, with an accompaniment of mildly vituperative or persuasive language, addressed sometimes to his tools, sometimes to the screws and nuts and other parts, sometimes against the men who made them or the plumbers who put them in. Now and then I held a candle, or steadied some perverse bit of metal while he worked his will upon it. And at last the phnix did indeed rise, the pump was again a pump,at least it looked like one.

Suppose it doesnt work, I suggested.

Suppose it does, said Jonathan.

He began to pump furiously. Pour in water there! he directed. Keep on pouringdont stopnever mind if she does spout. I poured and he pumped, and there were the usual sounds of a pump resuming activity: gurglings and spittings, suckings and sudden spoutings; but at last it seemed to get its breatha few more long strokes of the handle, and the water poured.

What time is it? he asked.

Oh, fairly lateabout tenten minutes past.

Instead of our walk, we stood for a moment under the big maples before the house and looked out into a sea of moonlight. It silvered the sides of the old gray barns and washed over the blossoming apple trees beyond the house. Is there anything more sweetly still than the stillness of moonlight over apple blossoms! As we went out to the barns to lock up, even the little hencoops looked poetic. Pa.s.sing one of them, we half roused the feathered family within and heard m.u.f.fled peepings and a smothered _clk-clk_. Jonathan was by this time so serene that I felt I could ask him a question that had occurred to me.

Jonathan, how long _is_ three shakes of a lambs tail?

Apparently, my dear, it is the whole evening, he answered unruffled.

The next night was drizzly. Well, we would have books instead of a walk.

We lighted a fire, May though it was, and settled down before it. What shall we read? I asked, feeling very cozy.

Jonathan was filling his pipe with a leisurely deliberation good to look upon. With the match in his hand he pausedOh, I meant to tell youthose young turkeys of yoursthey were still out when I came through the yard. I wonder if they went in all right.

I have always noticed that if the turkeys grow up very fat and strutty and suggestive of Thanksgiving, Jonathan calls them our turkeys, but in the spring, when they are committing all the naughtinesses of wild and silly youth, he is apt to allude to them as those young turkeys of yours.

I rose wearily. No. They never go in all right when they get out at this timeespecially on wet nights. Ill have to find them and stow them.

Jonathan got up, too, and laid down his pipe. Youll need the lantern, he said.

We went out together into the May drizzlea good thing to be out in, too, if you are out for the fun of it. But when you are hunting silly little turkeys who literally dont know enough to go in when it rains, and when you expected and wanted to be doing something else, then it seems different, the drizzle seems peculiarly drizzly, the silliness of the turkeys seems particularly and unendurably silly.

We waded through the drenched gra.s.s and the tall, dripping weeds, listening for the faint, foolish peeping of the wanderers. Some we found under piled fence rails, some under burdock leaves, some under nothing more protective than a plantain leaf. By ones and twos we collected them, half drowned yet shrilly remonstrant, and dropped them into the dry shed where they belonged. Then we returned to the house, very wet, feeling the kind of discouragement that usually besets those who are forced to furnish prudence to fools.

Nine oclock, said Jonathan, and were too wet to sit down. If you could just shut in those turkeys on wet days

Shut them in! Didnt I shut them in! They must have got out since four oclock.

Isnt the shed tight? he asked.

Chicken-tight, but not turkey-tight, apparently. Nothing is turkey-tight.

Theyre bigger than chickens.

Not in any one spot they arent. Theyre like coiled wirewhen they stretch out to get through a crack they have _no_ dimension except length, their bodies are mere imaginary points to hang feathers on. You dont know little turkeys.