THE SPECTRE
25
"There's some things I don't understand, but, gee, I like the sound
of it."
"What do your folks think?"
His face sobered and became wistful. "They're just not interested,
I guess," he said slowly. "Y'see, Dad and Mom work so damn hard, and
with everything going to pieces--. They're tired all the time, like
animals, almost. Naomi's sick, has been for four or five days, and
Jenny--. Naomi's my little sister," he broke off to explain. "Jenny's
our milk cow. She's sick too. The rest of the kids are too small to take
much interest." He brooded silently. "Gee, I wish Dad was like he was
during the strike. His eyes are different now, like he was always just
getting up or going to sleep."
I took the booklet gently from his unresisting hands. "What is it
you don't understand?" I asked. And so, as the sun dropped over us, the
boy and I, our heads together, pored slowly over a book written over a
hundred years ago, called the Communist Manifesto. We read and
talked for about an hour when a tired-looking woman came out of what
I later learned was the barn and headed up the road in the direction from
which I had come.
"Mom" he yelled, "where you going?"
"After Doc Luffner," she flung back over her shoulder, never pausing.
"For Naomi?"
I
asked.
"No, for Jenny. Doc Luffner is the vet. She must be doing worse."
"What about Naomi?"
"Not so good, she ain't. Florie's with her. Florie's next oldest to
me." He stirred uneasily. "I guess maybe I'd better go see if I can help
Dad." He rose to his feet.
"Well, I guess I gotta get going," I said.
"So-long," he said.
"So-long," I said.
I got a little ways down the road when he yelled: "What's your
name?"
"Dan, what's yours?"
"Laurie."
"So-long, Laurie."
"So-long, Dan ." He hobbled away and disappeared into the barn.
I went slowly down the road, puffing at a rolled cigarette. The sun had
set; the air was still murky with heat. And I was no longer in a hurry
to get to the highway. Dusk gathered and deepened but with it came
no stir of wind. It was, I think, what the farmers
111
the middle-west
call tornado weather. I walked, rested on a fallen tree trunk for about
fifteen minutes, then was up again, rolling a cigarette. Someone behind
me called. I could not make out what was said and it was already too
