Stories of Erskine Caldwell Read Free Page B

chasing the yellow tom over Jim and Mrs. Frost’s lawn.
    Just then the kitchen door burst open, and the two little Swedes stood there looking at us, panting and blowing their heads off.
    Mrs. Frost took one look at them, and then she let out a yell, but the kids didn’t notice her at all. “Hey,” one of them shouted, “come out here and help us get the cat. He climbed up in one of your trees.”
    By that time, Mrs. Frost was all for slamming the door in their faces, but I pushed in front of her and went out into the yard with them. Jim came right behind me, after he had finished calming Mrs. Frost, and telling her we wouldn’t let the Swedes come and carry out her furniture and household goods.
    The yellow tom was all the way up in one of Jim’s young maple shade trees. The maple wasn’t strong enough to support even the smallest of the little Swedes, if he should take it into his head to climb to the top after the cat, and neither Jim nor me was hurting ourselves trying to think of a way to get the feline down. We were all for letting the cat stay where he was, till he got ready to come down of his own free will, but the little Swedes couldn’t wait for anything. They wanted the tom right away, then and there, and no wasting of time in getting him.
    “You boys go home and wait for the cat to come down,” Jim told them. “There’s no way to make him come down now, till he gets ready to come down of his own mind.”
    But no, those two boys were little Swedes. They weren’t thinking of going back home till they got the yellow tom down from the maple. One of them ran to the tree, before Jim or me could head him off, and started shinnying up it like a popeyed squirrel. In no time, it seemed to me like, he was up amongst the limbs, jumping around up there from one limb to another like he had been brought up in just such a tree.
    “Good God, Stan,” Jim said, “can’t you keep them out of the trees?”
    There was no answer for that, and Jim knew there wasn’t. There’s no way of stopping a Swede from doing what he has set his head on doing.
    The boy got almost to the top branch, where the yellow tom was clinging and spitting, when the tree began to bend towards the house. I knew what was coming, if something wasn’t done about it pretty quick, and so did Jim. Jim saw his young maple shade tree begin to bend, and he almost had a fit looking at it. He ran to the lumber stack and came back dragging two lengths of two-by-fours. He got them set up against the tree before it had time to do any splitting, and then we stood there, like two damn fools, shoring up the tree and yelling at the little Swede to come down out of there before we broke his neck for being up in it.
    The big Swedes across the road heard the fuss we were making, and they came running out of that three-story, six-room house like it had been on fire inside.
    “Good God, Stan,” Jim shouted at me, “here comes the Swedes!”
    “Don’t turn and run off, Jim,” I cautioned him, yanking him back by his coattail. “They’re not wild beasts; we’re not scared of them. Hold on where you are, Jim.”
    I could see Mrs. Frost’s head almost breaking through the window glass in the kitchen. She was all for coming out and driving the Swedes off her lawn and out of her flowers, but she was too scared to unlock the kitchen door and open it.
    Jim was getting ready to run again, when he saw the Swedes coming towards us like a nest of yellow-headed bumblebees, but I wasn’t scared of them, and I held on to Jim’s coattail and told him I wasn’t. Jim and me were shoring up the young maple, and I knew if one of us let go, the tree would bend to the ground right away and split wide open right up the middle. There was no sense in ruining a young maple shade tree like that, and I told Jim there wasn’t.
    “Hey,” one of the big Swedes shouted at the little Swede up in the top of the maple, “come down out of that tree and go home to your