Read The Fires of Spring for Free Online

merely because they were in the poorhouse, nor did they beat their brains out because they had lost a farm. No, the women went right on living, fighting, being mean, elbowing for the best seats at supper. It was the men who quit and died.
    In mid-April Mrs. Moomaugh sent David a large bundleof clothes. Its arrival was a great event, and Old Daniel said that something must be done to fix up the boy’s closet, now that he had some clothes.
    So accordingly three men worked all one day building shelves and hammering nails into convenient spots. “I’m going to check this closet every day,” Daniel said. “A boy has to learn to be neat.”
    It was good to have fresh clothes, especially Harry Moomaugh’s, for they fitted fine, and on Sunday morning David dressed in the choice items and reported to his aunt for inspection “
Vhere
’d you get them
clothes?
” she demanded.
    “Mrs. Moomaugh,” David explained.
    “She should
ought
to ’ve brought ’em to me,” his aunt protested.
    “She brought them to Daniel. Because he asked her for them.” The implied censure angered Aunt Reba and she gouged her finger into David’s ears.
    “They clean?” she whined.
    “Yes,” David replied. She turned him around.
    “
Don’t
get messed before church, yet,” she commanded. Then she dismissed him, thinking grimly to herself: “Chust vait! He be fourteen
soon. Then
we see!”
    Church in the poorhouse was held in the afternoon so that David had time on his hands. The day was brilliant and warm, and gradually he wandered over to the woods that fringed the poorhouse fields. As he walked he saw birds flying and the nests of field mice. At the stream a lazy carp drifted with the current. Active sunnies darted among reeds, and a few cattails were beginning to show brown stalks. Milkweed was growing, too, and he noted his three spring favorites: jack-in-the-pulpits, skunk cabbage in fascinating colors, and the superb dogtooth violet.
    “Lots of stuff out today,” he mused. Upstream bullfrogs leaped from the bank. David never tired of watching the lithe young frogs arching into the sunlight, trailing their legs behind as they flashed noiselessly into the pools. One fellow in particular watched him as he approached and then leaped gracefully into the stream. “That’s nice!” David cried approvingly.
    The cool splash of the frog excited him. Looking about, he decided that he was alone, and before he knew what he was about he was naked by the bank. He dipped his toe into the water. It was very cold, but not too cold, he thought. It wouldn’t be so bad if he could leap in all at once, but Toothlesshad warned about ever doing that in a strange pool. So he drove the frogs before him and edged into the water. “Whew!” he whistled. “This is mighty cold!”
    He thought: I’ll get out now. It’ll be almost the same as if I had ducked.” So he retired to the bank, but immediately felt ashamed of himself, so he splashed back into the water and submerged. Chattering, he regained the bank and shivered in the sunlight. He felt tingly. A venturesome bullfrog, thinking no one was about, garrumphed onto a log, saw the boy, and dove far into the pool. “That’s nice!” David laughed.
    At lunch he whispered to Tom, “Went swimming this morning!”
    Tom asked, “Footsie or all the way under?”
    “All the way!” David said belligerently. He could tell when each man at table got the news, for each one stopped eating and stared at him, shivering their shoulders as if they were cold. David shook his head and said, without making sounds, “It wasn’t so cold.”
    After the noonday meal he and crazy Luther Detwiler went down to the highway to mark off the cars. David would read the license plates as they whizzed by. When a state like Montana or Nevada appeared, the men would talk about it for weeks. It didn’t matter to Luther what the licenses were, because for some inexplicable reason he thought that all cars came from Delaware.