A Boy and His Father Become Partners
拉尔夫·穆迪 / Ralph Mody
I like all kinds of chocolate. Best of all, though, I like bitter baking chocolate. Mother had bought a bar of it, and somehow I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I was helping Father on the winnower. It was right then I got the idea. I could whack a chunk off the end of that bar of chocolate. Mother would be sure to miss it, but before she had any idea who had done it, I could confess I’d taken it. Probably I would not even get a spanking.
I waited until Mother was out feeding the chickens. Then I told Father I thought I’d go in for a drink of water. I got the bar down, but I heard Mother coming just when I had the knife ready to whack. So I slipped the chocolate into the front of my shirt and left quickly. Before I went back to help Father, I went to the barn and hid the chocolate there.
All the rest of afternoon, I didn’t like to look at Father. Every time he spoke it made me jump. My hands began shaking so much that he asked me what was the matter. I told him it was just that my hands were cold. I knew he didn’t believe me, and every time he looked my way my heart started pounding. I didn’t want the chocolate anymore. I just wanted a chance to put it back without being caught.
On the way out for the cows, I calmed down a little and could think better. I told myself that I hadn’t really stolen the whole bar of chocolate, because I meant to take only a little piece. That’s as much as I would have taken, too if Mother hadn’t come along when she did. If I put back the whole bar, I wouldn’ t have done anything wrong at all.
I nearly decided to put it all back. But just thinking so much about chocolate made my tongue almost taste the smooth bitterness of it. I got thinking that if I sliced about half an inch off the end with a sharp knife, Mother might never notice it.
I was nearly out to where the cows were when I remembered what Father had said once—some of the family money was mine because I had helped to earn it. Why wouldn’t it be all right to figure the bar of chocolate had been bought with my own money? That seemed to fix everything.
But by the time I had the cows headed home, I had begun to worry again. We were nearly to the railroad tracks when I decided to leave the whole matter to the Lord. I picked up a dried soapweed stalk with seedpods on it and decided I would throw it up into the air and take my orders from the way it landed. If it pointed west, I’d take the whole bar back. If it pointed south, I’d take half an inch off the end. If it pointed east, I’d bought the bar with my own money and it wouldn’t be stealing to keep it.
I swung the pod stalk as high as I could. When it came down, it pointed mostly west—but a little south.
That night I couldn’t sleep. I kept trying to remember how much that stalk had really been pointing to the south. At last I got up, slipped out into the yard, and took the ax from the chopping block. Then I went into the barn and got the chocolate. I took it outside and laid it on the lower rail of the corral fence. The moon gave enough light for me to see what I was doing.
Just as I was starting to cut, Father said: “Son!”