“Teeny is as teeny does,” Uncle Lem said. “How you gonna do it, then?”
“This here gadget,” I told him, kinda proud, “will send Maw’s creamjug ahead into next week some time. This weather, don’t take cream more’n a couple of days but I’m giving it plenty of time. When I bring it back-bingo, it’s sour.” I set the jug on the sled.
“I never seen such a do-lass brat,” Uncle Lem said, stepping forward and bending a wire crosswise.
“You better do it thataway, on account of the thunderstorm next Tuesday. All right now, shoot her off.”
So I shot her off. When she come back, sure enough, the cream was sour enough to walk a mouse.
Crawling up the can there was a hornet from next week, which I squashed. Now that was a mistake. I knowed it the minute I touched the jug. Dang Uncle Lem, anyhow.
He jumped back into the underbrush, squealing real happy.
“Fooled you that time, you young stinker,” he yelled back. “Let’s see you get your thumb outa the middle of next week!”
It was the time-lag done it. I mighta knowed. When he crossed that wire he didn’t have no thunderstorm in mind at all. Took me nigh onto ten minutes to work myself loose, account of some feller called Inertia, who mixes in if you ain’t careful when you fiddle around with time. I don’t understand much about it myself. I ain’t got my growth yet. Uncle Lem says he’s already forgot more’n I’ll ever know.
With that head start I almost lost him. Didn’t even have time to change into my store-bought clothes and I knowed by the way he was all dressed up fit to kill he was headed for somewheres fancy.
He was worried, too. I kept running into little stray worrisome thoughts he’d left behind him, hanging like teeny little mites of clouds on the bushes. Couldn’t make out much on account of they was shredding away by the time I got there but he’d shore done something he shouldn’t. That much anybody coulda told. They went something like this: “Worry, worry-wish I hadn’t done it-oh, heaven help me if Grandpaw ever finds out-oh, them nasty Pughs, how could I a-been such a fool? Worry, worry-pore ole feller, such a good soul, too, never done nobody no harm and look at me now.
“That Saunk, too big for his britches, teach him a thing or two, ha-ha. Oh, worry, worry-never mind, brace up, you good ole boy, everything’s bound to turn out right in the end. You deserve the best, bless you, Lemuel. Grandpaw’ll never find out.”
Well, I seen his checkered britches high-tailing through the woods after a bit, but I didn’t catch up to him until he was down the hill, across the picnic grounds at the edge of town and pounding on the sill of the ticket-window at the railroad station with a Spanish dubloon he snitched from Paw’s seachest.
It didn’t surprise me none to hear him asking for a ticket to State Center. I let him think I hadn’t caught up. He argued something turrible with the man behind the window but finally he dug down in his britches and fetched up a silver dollar, and the man calmed down.
The train was already puffing up smoke behind the station when Uncle Lem darted around the corner. Didn’t leave me much time but I made it too-just. I had to fly a little over the last half-dozen yards but I don’t think anybody noticed.
Once when I was just a little shaver there was a Great Plague in London, where we were living at the time, and all us Hogbens had to clear out. I remember the hullabaloo in the city but looking back now it don’t seem a patch on the hullabaloo in State Center station when the train pulled in. Times have changed, I guess.
Whistles blowing, horns honking, radios yelling bloody murder-seems like every invention in the last two hundred years had been noisier than the one before it. Made my head ache until I fixed up something Paw once called a raised decibel threshold, which was pure showing-off.
Uncle Lem didn’t know I was anywhere around. I took care to think real quiet but he was so wrapped up in his worries he wasn’t paying no mind to nothing. I followed him through the crowds in the station and out onto a wide street full of traffic. It was a relief to get away from the trains.
I always hate to think what’s going on inside the boiler, with all the little bitty critters so small you can’t hardly see ’em, pore things, flying around all hot and excited and bashing their heads together. It seems plumb pitiable.
Of course, it just don’t do to think what’s happening inside the automobiles that go by.
Uncle Lem knowed right where he was headed. He took off down the Street so fast I had to keep reminding myself not to fly, trying to keep up. I kept thinking I ought to get in touch with the folks at home, in case this turned into something I couldn’t handle, but I was plumb stopped everywhere I turned. Maw was at the church social that afternoon and she whopped me the last time I spoke to her outa thin air right in front of the Reverend Jones. He ain’t used to us Hogbens yet.
Paw was daid drunk. No good trying to wake him up. And I was scared to death I would wake the baby if I tried to call on Grandpaw.
Uncle Lem scuttled right along, his checkered legs a-twinkling. He was worrying at the top of his mind, too. He’d caught sight of a crowd in a side-street gathered around a big truck, looking up at a man standing on it and waving bottles in both hands.
He seemed to be making a speech about headaches. I could hear him all the way to the corner. There was big banners tacked along the sides of the truck that said, PUGH HEADACHE CURE.
“Oh, worry, worry!” Uncle Lem thunk. “Oh, bless my toes, what am I going to do? I never dreamed anybody’d marry Lily Lou Mutz. Oh, worry!”
Well, I reckon we’d all been surprised when Lily Lou Mutz up and got herself a husband awhile back-around ten years ago, I figgered. But what it had to do with Uncle Lem I couldn’t think. Lily Lou was just about the ugliest female that ever walked. Ugly ain’t no word for her, pore gal.
Grandpaw said once she put him in mind of a family name of Gorgon he used to know. Not that she wasn’t a goodhearted critter. Being so ugly, she put up with a lot in the way of rough acting-up from the folks in the village-the riff-raff lot, I mean.
She lived by herself in a little shack up the mountain and she musta been close onto forty when some feller from the other side of the river come along one day and rocked the whole valley back on its heels by asking her to marry up with him. Never saw the feller myself but I heard tell he wasn’t no beauty-prize winner neither.
Come to think of it, I told myself right then, looking at the truck-come to think of it, feller’s name was Pugh.
Chapter 2. A Fine Old Feller
Next thing I knowed, Uncle Lem had spotted somebody under a lamp-post on the sidewalk, at the edge of the crowd. He trotted over. It seemed to be a big gorilla and a little gorilla, standing there watching the feller on the truck selling bottles with both hands.
“Come and get it,” he was yelling. “Come and get your bottle of Pugh’s Old Reliable Headache Cure while they last!”
“Well, Pugh, here I am,” Uncle Lem said, looking up at the big gorilla. “Hello, Junior,” he said right afterward, glancing down at the little gorilla. I seen him shudder a little.
You shore couldn’t blame him for that. Two nastier specimens of the human race I never did see in all my born days. If they hadn’t been quite so pasty-faced or just the least mite slimmer, maybe they wouldn’t have put me so much in mind of two well-fed slugs, one growed-up and one baby-sized. The paw was all dressed up in a Sunday-meeting suit with a big gold watch-chain across his front and the way he strutted you’d a thought he’d never had a good look in a mirror.
“Howdy, Lem,” he said, casual-like. “Right on time, I see. Junior, say howdy to Mister Lem Hogben.
You owe Mister Hogben a lot, sonny.” And he laughed a mighty nasty laugh.