The Lake
CHARLES SPIELBERGER
GEORGE TILTED
my wheel-chair back, gripped it firmly, and we
slowly descended the steep lawn of the boarding-house to a fenced
meadow. George lifted away the two planks that had been crossed
to bar the gate, doing it quickly because they were hot, and he tried
to push me along. But the ground was too stump-filled and rocky and
dung-crusted for my wheel-chair.
"You'll have to walk," said George. "Why don't you stay with
Ma, and come down later?"
"Mamma promised me I could go, George. She said you'd take
me if I was good in the car. I want to go. I'm going."
"You're always good at the wrong time," said George. "Look,
I'll let you row with me if you wait. How would you like that?"
"I want to go now," I said.
"You'll get tired, and it'll be twice as long. Ma could bring
you to the lake in a couple of minutes. I'd row you around the whote
lake if you'd wait."
"No, I'm going now."
He raised me to my feet, and, with
his
large hands supporting
me below my arm-pits, I struggled along. The sun bit into me, and
the air seemed choked. I wore a metal piece on my left leg, whose
edge cut my flesh now, and I had on a corset-like apparatus for keep–
ing my spine rigid, which twisted about with great discomfort, and
made me sweat miserably. I soon started to pant, my heart swinging
back and forth like an old bell. I stopped to rest. Ahead, at a distance
of perhaps three hundred feet, the lake sprawled, shimmering. I blew
away some green flies that roared about me, in golden armor, stinging
me. At my left was a barn, and fragrance came from hay already
piled to the loft's open windows; to my right, I saw black and white
cows clustered, then a little wood, and, high up and far off, blue–
shawled mountains.
"You've rested enough," said George. "Hurry up now, Jerry.
We'll never get there at this rate. Don't be lazy. Hurry up now.
If
