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Show the coming of the Fourth without a cap pistol? No. This was the day, I decided, that Mother must have meant when she'd declared, "Oh, of course, when the right time comes." Pursued by the friend with the menacing gun and bang, bang, "You're dead." I galloped down to Father's office. Luckily or unluckily he could see me soon between appointments. Before his honest, penetrating eyes I quailed inside but I stuck to my plea. "Did Mother really say I should give you the money for the cap pistol?" he asked. With a slight uneasiness but fortified by something like moral certainty bolstered by long impatience, I looked him stoutly in the eye and assured him she had. Of course I knew he referred to that particular day but I felt that this had to be the time she'd meant when she'd said, "Pretty soon now." Doubtfully he put the money in my hand. I hurried off to make the purchase, a cap pistol and several rolls of caps. Then the splendid explosions of my new weapon blasted away any misgivings that lingered in my mind. When I walked into the house for dinner, however, another explosion awaited me. Father'd asked Mother if she had told me that day I might go to him and get the money. She admitted she had not. "You lied to me, Carlton!" Father thundered. The eruption of his wrath was fearsome. In later years I have suspected that he recalled his lies about the gambling in Stavanger and his using his choir-boy duties as cover-up. He didn't want a son of his, his only son, to stumble into the depths of sin into which he had plunged himself long ago. Mother had by this time remembered bases for misunderstanding. She attempted to soften his anger. A week or so back she had told me, "Yes, sometime soon. . ." But her gentleness was to no avail. He believed he owed it to me to punish the lie. Then and there he laid me across his knees and gave me the benefit of his powerful arms and large hands. No Indian inured to torture, no Stoic, no Spartan, I broke forth in |
