The Madman of Piney Woods: Chapters 22–32

I’d followed Father’s advice and was taking the initiative with my work.
Without Miss Cary assigning it to me, I was going to report on the Upper Canada Forensics Competition.

It would be hard for even as good a debater as Spencer or the Holmely boy to disprove that a cardinal and a beet hadn’t been married and given birth to this boy. Then baptized him in a tub of red ink.

I said, “Uh, let me guess. Do they call you Tex?”
“Why, no, they call me Re—Oh, you’re being facetious.”

Maybe I wasn’t being fair, but this little Chatham boy was the most naïve human being I’d ever met.
He was smart, but he believed everything I said about the woods.

My conscience started bothering me right after I told it. This was too easy. This was shooting fish in a barrel.

He wasn’t making his judgments based on being familiar with a particular section of the woods; he had what we scientists call a paradigm and applied it to each situation.

Where I barely noticed a mishmash of tiny, bleached bones at the base of a huge oak, he looked up and pointed out the massive, hidden nest of a great horned owl.

Where I saw stones and moss and lichen and twigs, he saw stories.

Besides leaning a tad too much toward braggadocio, he talked to me as if I was something of an idiot.

I was still in thrall at his ability to read the woods, and I remembered what Father had told me, that many times a flaw in an argument is so obvious that we tend to look right past it, that it was so hard to see because it had been hidden in plain sight.

The press is at once the eye, the ear, the tongue of the people. It is the visible speech if not the voice of the democracy. It is the phonograph of the world.

Several pinecones were arranged around the rock in a way that, once I studied them, didn’t appear random or haphazard.

The only thing that stopped him from being completely insufferable was that he always smiled when he made his questionable comments.

Can you honestly tell me any other vocation or even avocation that gives one an infinite number of mysteries to wonder about?

Can you honestly tell me any other vocation or even avocation that gives one an infinite number of mysteries to wonder about?

The first one says ‘Sympathetic Ace Newspaperman Pities Doltish Chatham Boy and Befriends Him.’

Lonely Buxton Boy Found Drowned in Pond Filled with His Own Sarcasm and Hubris.

That old adage that time flies when you’re having fun has never proven truer than it did on the day of the forensics competition.

“Let’s move quickly, Benji. If we don’t get there in time, I’ll have to walk back to Chatham. If that happens, I’ll invite your parents over so Grandmother O’Toole can demonstrate the proper way a punishment is supposed to be given. Believe me, there’s no reading involved, but it is very Biblical. It’s full of smiting, striking down, and pestilence raining onto the head of a certain worse-than-a-serpent, ungrateful child with red hair.”

Benji said, “One more thing, Red. Did you know the word gullible is not in the dictionary?”
“What?”
“Seriously, it’s a real mystery. Gullible is nowhere in the dictionary.”

When I came back into her office, she’d said, “Were any hogs or sows zooming about up there?”

For some reason, this was hilarious. I guffawed.

Those words and those laughs were like an abandoned fishing shanty crashing through a frozen Lake Erie at the end of winter.

I’m certain he meant that as a good-natured joke, but he has absolutely no idea how bleak and cold Pay can be.

WORLD-FAMOUS NEWSPAPERMAN HORRIBLY MAIMED IN HIS SLEEP!

Three weeks after my delightful supper with the Alstons, on the evening Benji was supposed to join Father and me for supper, I was in a complete dither.

Taking a chance on being shredded by sharp shards of glass would be far better than the guaranteed pain and anguish Grandmother O’Toole’s angry, mean-spirited tongue would doubtless mete out.

Alvin, believe me, I understand your trepidations, but we’re fine.

“As we speak, the dear is wreaking havoc at the home of your great-aunt Margaret in the beautiful City of Roses. We have nothing to worry about. Our dinner tonight with your new friend will be a time of relaxation and peace.”

Tonight, however, Benji appeared to be as stiff as one of the manikins in Curly’s mother’s shop. Or maybe even a corpse.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I said, “you’ve come to the wrong home. The mortuary is three blocks down.”

Who was this lad speaking in this manner? Surely not my talkative, boisterous friend from the swimming hole.

It was simple to deduce what was occurring. I was certain I’d be able to predict how this evening was going to unfold since I knew the checklist that Benji’s parents must have insisted he run through.

There’s an old Irish saying for when a prankster gets his comeuppance and the joke ends up being on him.

I can only imagine the confused look that must have come to Father’s face when Benji hollered over his shoulder, “Thank you very much for having me over for supper, sir, the conversation was stimulating, your company was exhilarating, and that was one of the finest meals I’ve ever had!”

Benji jostled past me as we ran through the kitchen and spilled out onto the back porch.

She has rheumatism. I’m fairly certain we’re safe. I don’t think she can run this far.

I was looking fearfully down the street, half expecting to see a thousand-year-old Irishwoman toddling after us with her cane cutting through the air much like the grim reaper’s scythe, and Benji was nervously sweeping his eyes from pillar to post to be certain he hadn’t been seen by his sweet young siblings.

There’s a rope waiting for me at the gallows, Red, that’s why I’m crying.

Providence can guide one when the way seems lost, and it had to have been Providence that told me there was a third choice: Benji!

I swam along the bottom of the pond toward the north side, where the reeds rose out of the water in a thicket a good twelve or fifteen feet tall.