Evening star. [volume], September 08, 1946, Page 23, Image 100

About Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972

Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

                
M\ wish I could walk
a tightrope," I said
brother stayed on at Shiloh: forever young,
forever remembered.
Our neighbor, Mrs. Figgis, was working
‘ W IBW’flfiWBS; and now she came over and
began to cut roses along the fence.
Crambo and I ate another plum apiece
and talked some more. We talked about
Santa Cruz, where we were going on our
vacation, and how I would swim in the surf
while Crambo collected shells along the
beach. We talked about what we would
do after we came home, in the long fall and
winter that stretched ahead.
I said, without much hope: “I wish I
could learn to whistle through my teeth —
whistle loud, and walk good on a tightrope.
What would you like?”
“Well, thinking of Herb going away to
college and all puts me in mind to learn
Greek,” Grambo said. “I always had an
idea to take it up, and I believe I will.”
Mrs. Figgis stopped cutting roses, put
her head over the fence and burst out
laughing. “Well, if you two don't make a
pair,” she said. “Greek! Greek at your age!
My goodness, what next?”
Grambo didn’t say anything. I finished
another plum and snapped the pit 90 hard
it hit Duke’s paw and woke him up. He
flagged me with his tail once or twice, and
went back to sleep.
Mrs. Figgis was still laughing. "The
Greek language! Why you’d never ... I
mean, you’d be ... ”
Grambo still didn’t say anything. She
sat very straight on the steps, her hands
folded in her apron, the toes of her black
buttoned shoes pointing straight ahead.
Mrs. Figgis had stopped laughing. “What
I thought was...” She picked up her
scissors and her garden gloves. “I guess I
better be going in,” she said lamely.
“We won’t detain you,” Grambo said.
I waited until the door closed after her.
“What did she mean?” I asked.
“She meant that I’m too old to start
learning Greek.”
“Are you?”
Grambo didn’t answer for a minute. Then
die said, “How many plum pits have you?”
I counted the pits beside me on the step.
' ‘Twelve.”
M “Get your sand spade.” Grambo said.
“We’re going to plant them.”
We dug 9ome holes here and there: by
the fence, along the wall, in the south
comer, over against the carriage house.
Then we dropped a pit in each one.
“When we plant these plum seeds,”
Grambo asked, “what are we planting?”
“Plum trees.”
“Yes, and what else.”
I thought. "Plums.”
“Yes, and what else?”
“Plum jam.”
Yes, and what else?”
“I guess that’s about all we planted.” I
packed the ground down over the last seed
and left my thumb mark on top to sign it.
“All that I can think of, anyway.”
“No,” Grambo said. “We planted some
thing more. Something better.”
“Is it a secret?”
“Not exactly. Because some day you’ll
know it.”
“When? Tomorrow?”
“Probably not.”
“When I’m ten?”
“I don’t know.”
“When?”
“Sometime. You might be far away
across the ocean, or in a crowded room, or
up on a mountain top — and then all at
once you’ll remember today. All of it. The
plum pits and the spade and ..."
“Will I remember Duke, too?”
“Yes — and the fence and sun, and you’ll
remember Mrs. Figgis and what she said,
and you’ll remember me.”
“And then will I know what else we
planted with the pits?”
“Then you’ll know.”
Well, one of our seeds germinated and
grew and bore. Before my grandmother
died at 95 we sat many another afternoon
on the back steps talking, and eating plums
— from our own tree, this time.
The tree does not belong to me now —
not any more, that is, than all trees belong
to me — and it is far away. I cannot look
at its branches throwing patterns of black
lace against the winter sky. I cannot see it
burst into blossom in the spring.
Yet it makes no difference. Each year I
live, 1 gamer the plum tree’s harvest.
For of course I know now, and so, too,
do you, what my grandmother planted
with the pit. She planted the promise of
a tomorrow. The End
Others may boast
larger cars,
•osther homes . . . but
no
bodv ci
can smo
be a
better cigarette!
MARLBORO