A small campfire burned in front of the hut and squatting by the fire was Tupper. He wore the shirt and trousers I had given him and he still had the outrageous hat perched on his head.
"Tupper!" I shouted and he rose and came gravely up the slope to meet me. He wiped off his chin and held out his hand in greeting. It still was wet with slobber, but I didn't mind.
Tupper wasn't much, but he was another human.
"Glad you could make it, Brad," he said. "Glad you could drop over." As if I'd been dropping over every day, for years.
"Nice place you have," I said.
"They did it all for me," he said, with a show of pride. "The Flowers fixed it up for me. It wasn't like this to start with, but they fixed it up for me. They have been good to me."
"Yes, they have," I said.
I didn't know what it was all about, but I went along. I had to go along. There was just a chance that Tupper could get me back to Millville.
"They're the best friends I have," said Tupper, slobbering in his happiness. "That is, except for you and your papa. Until I found the Flowers, you and your papa were the only friends I had. All the rest of them just made fun of me. I let on I didn't know that they were making fun, but I knew they were and I didn't like it."
"They weren't really unkind," I assured him. "They really didn't mean what they said or did. They were only being thoughtless."
"They shouldn't have done it," Tupper insisted. "You never made any fun of me. I like you because you never made any fun of me." And he was right, of course. I'd not made fun of him. But not because I hadn't wanted to at times; there were times when I could have killed him.
But my father had taken me off to the side one day and warned me that if he ever caught me making fun of Tupper, like the other kids, he would warm my bottom.
"This is the place you were telling me about," I said. "The place with all the flowers."
He grinned delightedly, drooling from both corners of his mouth "Ain't it nice?" he said.
We had been walking down the slope together and now we reached the fire. A crude clay pot was standing in the ashes and there was something bubbling in it.
"You'll stay and eat with me," invited Tupper. "Please, Brad, say you'll stay and eat with me. It's been so long since I've had anyone who would eat with me." Weak tears were running down his cheeks at the thought of how long it had been since he'd had someone who would stay and eat with him.
"I got corn and potatoes roasting in the coals," he said, "and I got peas and beans and carrots all cooked up together. That's them in the pot. There isn't any meat. You don't mind, do you, if there isn't any meat?"
"Not at all," I told him.
"I miss meat something dreadful," he confided. "But they can't do anything about it. They can't turn themselves into animals."
"They?" I asked.
"The Flowers," he said, and the way he said it, he made them a proper noun. "They can turn themselves into anything at all — plant things, that is. But they can't make themselves into things like pigs or rabbits. I never asked them to. That is, I mean I never asked them twice. I asked them once and they explained to me. I never asked again, for they've done a lot of things for me and I am grateful to them."
"They explained to you? You mean you talk with them."
"All the time," said Tupper.
He got down on his hands and knees and crawled into the hut, scrabbling around for something, with his back end sticking out, like a busy dog digging out a woodchuck.
He backed out and he brought with him a couple of crude pottery plates, lopsided and uneven. He put them down upon the ground and laid on each of them a spoon carved out of wood.
"Made them myself," he told me. "Found some clay down in the river bank and at first I couldn't seem to do it, but then they found out for me and…"
"The Flowers found out for you?"
"Sure, the Flowers. They do everything for me."
"And the spoons?"
"Used a piece of stone. Flint, I guess. Had a sharp edge on it. Nothing like a knife, but it did the job. Took a long time, though." I nodded.
"But that's all right," he said. "I had a lot of time." He did a mopping job and wiped his hands meticulously on his trouser seat.
"They grew flax for me," he said, "so I could make some clothes. But I couldn't get the hang of it. They told me and they told me, but I couldn't do it. So they finally quit. I went around without no clothes for quite a spell. Except for this hat," he said. "I did that myself, without no help at all. They didn't even tell me, I figured it all out and did it by myself. Afterwards they told me that I'd done real good."
"They were right," I said. "It's magnificent."
"You really think so, Brad?"
"Of course I do," I said.
"I'm glad to hear you say so, Brad. I'm kind of proud of it. It's the first thing in my life I ever did alone, without no one telling me."
"These flowers of yours…"
"They ain't my flowers," said Tupper, sharply.
"You say these flowers can turn themselves into anything they want to. You mean they turned themselves into garden stuff for you."
"They can turn themselves into any kind of plants. All I do is ask them."
"Then, if they can be anything they want to be, why are they all flowers?"
"They have to be something, don't they?" Tupper demanded, rather heatedly. "They might as well be flowers."
"Well, yes," I said. "I suppose they might." He raked two ears of corn out of the coals and a couple of potatoes. He used a pot-lifter that looked as if it were fashioned out of bark to get the pot off the fire. He dumped the cooked vegetables that were in it out onto the plates.
"And the trees?" I asked.
"Oh, them are things they changed themselves into. I needed them for wood. There wasn't any wood to start with and I couldn't do no cooking and I told them how it was. So they made the trees and they made them special for me. They grow fast and die so that I can break branches off and have dry wood for fire. Slow burning, though, not like ordinary dry wood. And that's good, for I have to keep a fire burning all the time. I had a pocket full of matches when I came here, but I haven't had any for a long, long time." I remembered when he spoke about the pocket full of matches how entranced he had always been with fire. He always carried matches with him and he'd sit quietly by himself and light match after match, letting each burn down until it scorched his fingers, happy with the sight of flame. A lot of people had been afraid that he might bunt some building down, but he never did. He was just a little jerk who liked the sight of fire.
"I haven't any salt; said Tupper. "The stuff may taste funny to you. I've got used to it."
"But you eat vegetables all the time. You need salt for that kind of stuff."
"The Flowers say I don't. They say they put things into the vegetables that takes the place of salt. Not that you can taste it, but it gives you the things you need just the same as salt. They studied me to find out what my body needed and they put in a lot of stuff they said I needed. And just down the river I have an orchard full of fruit. And I have raspberries and strawberries that bear almost all the time." I couldn't rightly understand what fruit had to do with the problem of nutrition if the Flowers could do all he said they could, but I let the matter stand. One never got anywhere trying to get Tupper straightened out.
If you tried to reason with him, you just made matters worse.
"We might as well sit down," said Tupper, "and get started on this." I sat down on the ground and he handed me a plate, then sat down opposite me and took the other plate.