A Death in the Family - James Agee [95]
But her father said, “Doesn’t anybody like to be laughed at,” and took her on his lap, and she pulled her lip in and looked out the window again. Now they could even see the separate trees all over the sides of the mountains like rice, all shades of green and some almost black, and before much longer they were climbing more slowly past the feathery tops of trees and the high shoulders of the mountains and the great deep scoops were turning past them and beneath them as if they were very slowly and seriously dancing in sunlight and in cloud and in shadows almost of night, and now and then they could see a tiny cabin and a corn patch far off on the side of a mountain, and twice they even saw a tinier mule and a man with it, one of the men waved; and high above them in the changing sunlight, slowest of all, the tops of the mountains twisted and changed places. And after quite a while his father said he reckoned they better start getting their stuff together, and before much longer they got off.
That night at supper when Rufus asked for more cheese Uncle Ted said, “Whistle to it and it’ll jump off the table into your lap.”
“Ted!” his mother said.
But Rufus was delighted. He did not know very well how to whistle yet, but he did his best, watching the cheese very carefully: it didn’t jump off the table into his lap; it didn’t even move.
“Try some more,” Uncle Ted said. “Try harder.”
“Ted!” his mother said.
He tried his very best and several times he managed to make a real whistle, but the cheese didn’t even move, and he began to realize that Uncle Ted and Aunt Kate were shaking with laughter they were trying to hold in, though he couldn’t see what there was to laugh about in a cheese that wouldn’t even move when you whistled even when Uncle Ted said it would and he was really whistling, not just trying to whistle.
“Why won’t it jump to me, Daddy?” he asked, almost crying with embarrassment and impatience, and at that Uncle Ted and Aunt Kate burst out laughing out loud, but his father didn’t laugh, he looked all mixed up, and mad, and embarrassed, and his mother was very mad and she said, “That’s just about enough of that, Ted. I think it’s just a perfect shame, deceiving a little child like that who’s been brought up to trust people, and laughing right in his face!”
“Mary,” his father said, and Uncle Ted looked very much surprised and Aunt Kate looked worried, though they were still laughing a little, as if they couldn’t stop yet.
“Now, Mary, ” his father said again, and she turned on him and said angrily, “I don’t care, Jay! I just don’t care a hoot, and if you won’t stand up for him, I will, I can promise you that!”
“Ted didn’t mean any harm,” his father said.
“Course I didn’t, Mary,” Uncle Ted said.
“Of course not,” Aunt Kate said.
“It was just a joke, ” his father said.
“That’s all it was, Mary,” Uncle Ted said.
“He just meant it for a joke,” his father and Aunt Kate said together.
“Well, it’s a pretty poor kind of a joke, if you ask me,” his mother said, “violating a little boy’s trust. ”
“Why, Mary, he’s got to learn what to believe and what not to,” Uncle Ted said, and Aunt Kate nodded and put her hand on Uncle Ted’s knee. “Gotta learn common sense.”
“He’s got plenty of common sense,” his mother flashed. “He’s a very bright child indeed, if you must know. But he’s been brought up to trust older people when they tell him something. Not be suspicious of everybody. And so he trusted you. Because he likes you, Ted. Doesn’t that make you ashamed?”
“Come on, Mary, cut it out, ” his father said.
“But Mary, you wouldn’t think anybody’d believe what I said about the cheese, ” Uncle Ted said.
“Well you certainly expected him to believe it,” she said, with fury, “otherwise why’d you ever say it?”
Uncle Ted looked puzzled, and his father said, trying to laugh,