A Boy Who Thinks Quite a Deal by David Hutto

A Boy Who Thinks Quite a Deal | David Hutto

Ma gave me a piece of lemon pie, then said, “You can’t stay here and get a bomb on your head.”

What if she got a bomb on her head? If I couldn’t stay in Liverpool, why was she staying? She just said, “You have to go until the war is over. It probably won’t take long.”

“There aren’t any bombs where we live.”

“The Germans don’t know where you live. Anyway, Mr. Churchill said the children need to leave the cities.”

“Why aren’t you coming?” I asked.

“Somebody has to work. The men are going off to war.”

“I could be the man of the house.”

“That’s not a job for eight-year-old boys,” Ma said. “You have to be ten for that.”

Da went to the army, and sometimes he wrote letters. Ma would read me the parts he wrote for me, but I missed Da. Before he went in the army, Da worked for the BBC on the radio every day. Two times when I was home sick from school I heard him. He was talking about adult stuff, but even if it was boring, I still liked hearing me Da on the radio. The best thing was when he would talk to me after work.

“We learned kinds of trees in Norway,” I told Da one day.

“Did you? And what kinds of trees grow in Norway?”

“Oak trees, like here, and birch and spruce. Maybe ash. I’m not sure if that’s a tree. I don’t remember all of them.”

“That’s a lot to know,” Da said. “Maybe I should start studying to keep up. If I need to know Norwegian trees, I’ll have to ask you.”

I especially liked when Da would read me stories. Me favorite book was The Leprechaun’s Album of Lively Tales, because it had stories like the one about the brown hen tricking the fox or the one with the seven dogs and the seven thieves.

Then I got sent to live in the country with me grandma, Nanna Evans. I used to like Nanna Evans’ house when we went to visit sometimes, but it felt different after I had to go live there. Ma brought me right after school, so instead of playing all summer with me bezzies Julian and Ralph, I just had the toys Ma let me bring, a train set and a box of toy soldiers Da gave me and a ball. There weren’t any kids around except the cook’s little girl Amelia. Amelia was only four and she was a girl.

The day Ma brought me on the train, Nanna Evans picked us up in her car and we drove to her house. We were having tea, and she said, “Well, Archie, I hope you’ll enjoy a little time here. It’ll be like a summer vacation. Aren’t you in the third year of school now?”

“Yes ma’am,” I said.

“I hope you’re studying hard and learning.”

“He does well,” Ma said. “He’s got a hard head, but it has things in it.”

“I know the names of some countries in South America,” I told Nanna Evans.

“Good for you, Archie. I suppose Brazil is one of them. Would you like some more peas?”

“No, ma’am.” 

Ma only stayed two days and then left. Nanna Evans knew I was sad, and she said, “Why don’t I take you to see the horse who’s staying here. We didn’t have a horse when you were here before.” We walked to the pasture, and I saw a gray horse who Nanna Evans said was named Napoleon. When the horse saw us, he came to the edge of the fence and nodded his head up and down and Nanna Evans gave him a piece of apple.

I said, “Are you afraid he’ll bite you?”

“No, he’s a tame old horse.” Then she petted him on the nose.

Elizabeth Evans to her friend Hetty Bevan:

Just as I wrote before, Jennie brought my grandson Archie to live with me until the war is over. I’ve asked Wendell, the dairyman, to deliver extra milk while the boy is here, and Wendell agreed that he’ll exchange the milk for apples from our trees. Archie is a pleasant boy, well mannered, and Jennie deserves credit for that, more than her husband, as far as I’m concerned. The boy speaks with that unfortunate Scouse accent, but a proper education can take care of that. I know Archie is sad to be here, and I can’t say I blame him. I myself would not like being uprooted from living here in Lindenchapel. If anyone is to blame, of course, it’s Mr. Hitler.

A week after Ma left, I saw a bush with white flowers, and a lot of petals fell on the ground. The petals looked like snow, like it was winter with snow everywhere. I started to think about polar bears and what if I was hunting them? Then I found some polar bear tracks and followed them to the big ice wall behind the house where the polar bear lived. Polar bears can be dangerous, so I didn’t get too close.

“What are you doing?”

I turned around and the girl Amelia was standing in the yard.

“I’m playing,” I said.

“You want to play having tea?”

Who would want to play having tea? “No,” I said. “I’m chocker.”

“What is that?”

She didn’t even know how to talk to Liverpool people. “Chocker is busy. I’m hunting a bear.”

“OK, I’ll hunt a bear, too,” Amelia said.

“Little girls can’t hunt bears,” I said. “It’s too dangerous.”

She looked like she might cry and said, “Jesus says to be nice to everybody, so you have to let me hunt a bear.”

I didn’t want her to start crying because I might get in trouble, so I said, “OK, the bear’s behind that ice.”

“I don’t see any ice.”

“Right there,” I said.

“That’s a fence.”

“No, it’s an ice wall.”

“Oh,” Amelia said, “pretend ice.”

But the polar bear had already left, because it knew little girls aren’t supposed to hunt them. In a few minutes we gave up. I couldn’t play with Amelia. She was too little.

One day Nanna Evans asked if I like to read, and I said I do. She took me to Granddad’s old room and said maybe I could find a book I liked in there. There was a big desk with a lamp and an old radio on it, and a bookcase with a lot of books. “You can come in here whenever you want and look at the books,” Nanna Evans told me.

I was in there a long time looking at Granddad’s books, but the only book I liked was one that had photographs of other countries, like a desert with snakes and some place with a lot of people dancing with big things on their heads. I wished I had more books that told stories or had adventures. Something I liked in that room was a picture on the wall of Ma when she was a girl. It was really strange to think the girl in that picture was me Ma. I kept looking at the picture, and then I think the girl winked at me and she said, “Someday you’ll be me little boy.”

Elizabeth Evans to her friend Hetty Bevan:

You remember the lower pasture where we used to have those two bulls Walter finally sold, that he didn’t get a proper price for because he waited too long. Water under the bridge. In any case, we have an old horse in that pasture now, from one of my neighbors, the one who used to be the chemist here in Lindenchapel. He’s left to join a medical corps, and while he’s gone, he’s paying me to keep the horse,  which belonged to his father. I’ve had the vet take a look at the animal, and he says the poor thing is on its final legs. If the war does not end soon, I’m afraid my neighbor will come home to find his horse gone. For now I’m glad to have the beast here, as I think it cheers Archie up to see it, but he’s going to need more cheering than he’ll get from one old horse. When we were leaving the horse, Archie said “ta ra” so I had to tell him we are not in Liverpool, and please learn to say goodbye properly.

After Nanna Evans showed me the horse, I went to see it sometimes. Napoleon is really old, and Nanna Evans let me take an apple to give him. I was a little bit afraid, but I was pretty brave, and I gave him apples. One day I figured Napoleon must be so old he came from King Arthur days, because the knights back then rode horses like that. The next day when I went to see him, I was thinking he used to carry a King Arthur knight and they would fight dragons and monsters and maybe worse things, only I don’t know what would be worse than dragons or monsters. “Do you miss doing that?” I said and he nodded yes. “You’re probably bored without a knight to ride on you,” I said. “I bet you hate being bored.”

After I talked to Napoleon, I went back to the house to play in the garden, but I heard Amelia there. She was singing the song “Jesus Loves Me” and I know it because it was a song we used to sing in church if Ma took me, only we didn’t go to church much. When I heard Amelia, I was glad she didn’t see me, so I didn’t have to play with her. I went back to the stream, where Nanna Evans told me not to go, but I was only going to look at it just a little bit. There’s a big tree at the stream, the kind that droops down like it’s sad, and I knew that tree was where fairies live. I know a lot about fairies because I read about them, so I knew fairies live next to streams, and I was pretty sure they like big trees, even the droop-down sad kind.

When I was close to the stream, I got down low so I wouldn’t scare the fairies. The queen of the fairies sat under the droop-down tree, and servant fairies brought her some fairy food. The queen said “thank you” the way Ma says you’re supposed to when somebody gives you something, and after she ate the food, the fairies started dancing.

I liked seeing all the fairies and especially the queen, but I wished I had somebody else to play with. Even to hunt polar bears would be more fun with Julian and Ralph, because then you could say, “You go over there, and I’ll go over here and we’ll capture the polar bear in the middle.” Three of us could catch a polar bear.

Elizabeth Evans to her friend Hetty Bevan:

Archie was telling me the other day one of his little tales about leprechauns. I like to give the child a chance to play, but I wasn’t listening too closely because I was peeling apples. I do still like to bake a pie now and then. I know you, in particular, remember how I would win prizes at the fair, when they had judges who could recognize a proper pie. My new cook is willing to bake pies, but I enjoy doing it myself. Archie talked on for a few minutes while I was peeling, but I suppose the poor child realized I wasn’t paying him much attention, so he went outside. Perhaps I missed out on the leprechauns. It seems to me he is a boy who thinks quite a deal. I don’t believe Jennie was ever like that when she was a girl, always such a practical little thing. I suppose I had an easier time raising a girl who was more down to earth.

I was thinking about Ma and Da and I wished they would come and get me and then we would go home. Because I was thinking about them, I went back to Granddad’s room to see the picture of Ma when she was a girl, and I looked at it for a long time. She was smiling in that picture, and she had a bow in her hair, not like now. Ma doesn’t smile much now.

Then I looked at the radio on the desk and turned the knob. It made a crackle noise like the radio does at home when Ma turns it on. People were talking on the radio, the same kind of boring talk Ma always listens to. But in a few minutes a man said, “Hello to all the boys and girls listening out there.” He sounded like he was talking from far away. “We’re bringing you this program during the war, and every week we’ll have a different story for your enjoyment. We hope you enjoy hearing our little story.” I couldn’t believe they were going to have stories for children, and I was glad I turned on the radio. Then I heard another man start talking, and it was Da!

“Hello, boys and girls,” Da said. “I’m going to read you a story from a book called The Leprechaun’s Album of Lively Tales.” I was so happy Da had that same book from home, because I really liked that book.

“This story is called Going for a Lucky Walk. There was a woman who used to take her baby out for a stroll, and usually she would take the dog on a leash, so the dog could have a walk. When they went out for walks, the dog would notice things, like cars driving down the street or birds flying overhead. Then when the dog got home, it would talk to the cat. As we all know, cats can’t walk on a leash, so the cat couldn’t go for walks, but the cat was very curious about what was happening outside. Whenever the dog came home, the cat wanted to hear all about it. One time the dog was in a mischievous mood, so when the cat said, ‘What did you see today?’ the dog decided to torment the poor cat. ‘Oh,’ the dog said, ‘there was a parade that went by, with lots of people walking down the street, and everyone was pulling a piece of string attached to a ball of yarn. A hundred balls of yarn were bouncing up and down on the street.’ The cat thought of all those balls of yarn and how he could have been jumping at them. He was very jealous and said, ‘Oh, oh, oh, why can’t I go for walks?’ Then the dog said, ‘And when the parade passed by, a hundred parakeets came down to the street. They were so fat and lazy they could barely fly, and some were just walking on the ground.’ Then the cat was so jealous it began to meow and howl. ‘Oh, why am I stuck in the house? Why can’t I go for walks? Meow, meow!’”

It was funny to hear the story and how Da read it, how he sounded like the dog and cat. I felt really happy after I heard Da reading a story on the radio. After that time every week I would go to Granddad’s room to turn on the radio and listen to another story, like one about Kulijolli, a god from old days who lived in a cold stone house. One day Kulijolli got tired of shivering, so he made a warm spot in the house and it got so warm a fire started, and that’s where fire came from. Another story was about singing butterflies, who could sing better than anything in the world, but people couldn’t hear the butterflies, so they went to sing just for bees.

One day Nanna Evans said, “Archie, you seem to be enjoying your grandfather’s room. Are you finding interesting books in there?”

“I found the one with pictures,” I said. “But I’ve been going to listen to Da on the radio.”

“Is your father still on the radio?”

“Yes, ma’am, he tells stories for children. I listen to him reading stories.”

Elizabeth Evans to her friend Hetty Bevan:

Hetty, I have to tell you what happened this afternoon. I’ve allowed Archie to go to Walter’s old office, which hasn’t been used since he died. I thought the boy might find a book among Walter’s things that would give him some amusement, and of course I made sure to remove the things Walter never should have had to begin with that are not appropriate for a child. There’s a radio in there, and Archie told me that he’s been using it to listen to broadcasts of his father. I was so surprised that I went back to the room when Archie wasn’t there to check, and I was right, that radio has been missing its cord for years. I’m concerned about Archie, and he deserves to know what happened to his father.

One day when Da wasn’t on the radio, I went to me room where I had the toys Ma let me bring. I wanted to throw the ball, but I didn’t have anybody to throw it to, so I bounced it on the floor, except that wasn’t much fun. After that I got the box of toy soldiers Da gave me, and the soldiers fought a big battle, and I let one of the soldiers be Da. Then he said, “Next time I’m on the radio I’ll tell me little boy about how we won.”

Bonus audio of David reading from his story…

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