I got a dried bladder in my room,
one that me and my chum got to the slotter house, and I blowed it partly
up, so it would be sort of flat like, and I put it down inside the back
part of my pants, right about where Pa hits when he punishes me. I knowed
when the barrel stave hit the bladder it would explode. Well, Pa came up
and found me crying. I can cry just as easy as you can turn on the water
at a faucet, and Pa took off his coat and looked sorry. I was afraid he
would give up whipping me when he saw me cry, and I wanted the bladder
experiment to go on, so I looked kind of hard, as if I was defying him to
do his worst, and then he took me by the neck and laid me across a trunk.
I didn't dare struggle much for fear the bladder would loose itself, and
Pa said, 'Now, Hennery, I am going to break you of this damfoolishness, or
I will break your back,' and he spit on his hands and brought the barrel
stave down on my best pants. Well, you'd a dide if you had heard the
explosion. It almost knocked me off the trunk. It sounded like firing a
firecracker away down cellar in a barrel, and Pa looked scared. I rolled
off the trunk, on the floor, and put some flour on my face, to make me
look pale, and then I kind of kicked my legs like a fellow who is dying on
the stage, after being stabbed with a piece of lath, and groaned, and
said, 'Pa you have killed me, but I forgive you,' and then rolled around,
and frothed at the mouth, cause I had a piece of soap in my mouth to make
foam.
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