Elijah of Buxton Read Free Page B

back stoop to wash my hands quick as I could. When I came out front, Ma tipped the cookie jar at me again and I dug my hand right in.
    Ma was right, it felt like Pa’d et near all of ’em. But as I moved my hand ’round in the bottom of the jar, I felt one n’em rope cookies … and Mrs. Brown must’ve
just
brung these cookies over, ’cause the last one left was still warm!
    I pulled the cookie outta the jar.
    My heart quit beating, my blood ran cold, and time stood still!
    My fingers were wrapped ’round the neck of the worst-looking snake in Canada West!
    I screamed, “Snake!” and afore I knowed it, I was tearing off ’cross the road into the woods. By the time I worned myself out I must’ve run two miles. I stopped and leaned ’gainst a tree, waiting for my breathing to catch up to me. Something made me look down in my hand.
    I screamed, “Snake!” for the second time.
    But this time I remembered to turn the snake’s neck a-loose and throwed it down.
    I wouldn’t’ve thought I had enough strength left in me to run, but being afeared and being tired look like two things you caint feel at the same time.
    When I ran back up on our stoop, Ma’s and Pa’s faces were wet with tears. Pa was leaning over the side of his rocker like he’s having a fit.
    I’d been so afeared and trusted my folks so much that it didn’t come to me till right then that that snake hadn’t crawled into the cookie jar on his own, he must’ve had some help. It was a true shock when I figured out Ma was setting this whole thing up as a lesson!
    When my voice finally came back I said, “Ma! How could you do that?”
    They rolled!
    Pa fought to catch his breathing. “Well, Elijah, seem to me what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”
    It’s a horrible feeling when the people who’re supposed to raise you go out of their way to scare you for no good reason, and making it worst was that they were getting so much enjoying outta it. ’Sides, fair’s fair, and scaring your ma with something as harmless as a toady-frog calls for getting switched, not getting terrorfied.
    â€œWhy would you do that?” I was crying so hard that the words were getting choked down in my throat. “Ma, you’re always telling me I can dish it out but I caint take it, so if you know that, how could you do this to me? And ’sides that, you know how much I hate snakes!”
    â€œMmm-hmm, ’bout the same ’mount that I hate toady-frogs.”
    â€œBut, Ma! Toady-frogs ain’t nothing! Snakes are dangerous! ’Twaren’t no toady-frog that gave Adam and Eve a apple, ’twas a snake! And you ain’t never heard of nothing called a hoop
toady-frog
, have you? No! That’s ’cause they’re harmless! It’s snakes what’ll kill you!”
    Pa was slapping his sides so hard it’s a wonder he didn’t bust no ribs. You couldn’t do nothing but expect that kind of rudeness from him, but the way Ma was carrying on was terrible shocking!
    â€œMa! I thought we were trying to make it so’s I wouldn’t be so fra-gile! Look at me, I caint quit shaking!”
    I could see I was wasting my breath. If people could die from laughing too hard, I’d be a orphan.
    I know it probably ain’t right to feel this way ’bout your own ma and pa, but I was sore disappointed in the way they were acting. Afore I got in bed that night, I even used a stick to flip my pillow over. I was so shooked up that I wanted to make sure Ma waren’t gonna carry on this lesson no further.

’Bout the only good thing that came from Ma’s snake-in-the-cookie-jar lesson was there waren’t no one else ’round to see it, not even Cooter. It wouldn’t’ve been no time atall afore everyone in the Settlement knowed ’bout what happened. And even if Cooter and me
are
best