Hervig Learns to Write

"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on;"
Omar Khayyam
The Other day Mr. McCray give us some homework to do. He said we should
write a couple pages of a story so we can learn how to tell a story good
and turn it in by Friday. Today is Thursday and I still have not thought
up a story to tell and so now I am going to write about something that
happened last winter and just tell him it is a story. If that is cheating
I sure hope I don't get caught.


Why I Like Nazarenes
by Hervig Vanderstift


The Olafsen family is Nazarenes. They live next door. There is Mr. and
Mrs. Olafsen and they have three boys and one girl. The boys are Reuben
and Buddy and Dean. Dean is same age as me and we are good friends.
Reuben and Buddy are older. The girl is Birdie and she is the youngest.
They are all good Nazarenes and go to prayer meetings and don't even go to
the picture show in town, but one time I seen Mr. Olafsen sneak a chew of
tobacco over behind the barn. They call me Brother Hervig even though I
don't go to prayer meetings. Mrs. Olafsen churns her own butter. Reuben is
a good shot and traps muskrats. They have a new dog named Shep that almost
looks like a Collie only he is smaller and don't have any white on him
like a Collie is supposed to have.

It was snowing all night and today when they got up it was still snowing
and right after breakfast Dean and Reuben and Buddy and Birdie got all
excited because Mr. Olafsen said today is the day they get to try out the
new sled he made for them. Really and truly though, the boys helped him.
It is a homemade sled because Mr. Olafsen is a carpenter and can build
things and he made it out of some lumber he had left over from a house he
built last summer over on Three Hills Road, and it is bigger and stronger
and a lot heavier than a store bought sled.

So the boys helped Mr. Olafsen get the sled out from his workshop in the
cellar and helped him tie it on behind their old Chevrolet and Reuben and
Buddy and Dean piled right on but Mr. Olafsen said not to get so
rambunctious because the snow was already getting deep and he didn't want
to get stuck before they even got started. But once he got the old
Chevrolet out the driveway out there on the main road he stopped and Mrs.
Olafsen and Birdie and her little cousin, "Squirt," who had come up from
Frisco to stay with them for a while, got in and Mrs. Olafsen said to Shep
he should come in the car too, and he started to but then he seen that all
the boys was piling onto the sled and shoving one another off again so as
to get a better seat and laughing and getting back on again and so on. And
then he wants to play, too, so he jumps right plumb into the middle of
them and barks and barks and wiggles back and forth real hard so as they
can't hold him. Well, Mr. Olafsen was kind of excited about all this,
too, so he hollered back to the boys that here we go, and started off but
the old Chevrolet just sat there spinning its wheels for a couple seconds
or so before it gets a little traction and starts off. But slow, because
Mr. Olafsen knows he's dragging a sled with three boys on it, and that's a
big responsibility, and then it starts to move and everybody – even Birdie
and her mom and Squirt hollered hurray a couple of times, and there they
go.

Shep had never been on a sled before and he was just so excited that none
of the boys could hold him, he wiggled so strong, so he just up and jumps
off, and when he lit in the snow his front legs just went out sideways and
he jammed his snout on the road. But he wasn't hurt none because the snow
wasn't really hard and the sled wasn't going very fast yet anyway. He just
got right up again and started running alongside the sled and barking at
the boys.

Pretty soon Mr. Olafsen got a better hang on how to drive in the snow a
little and he gave the old Chevrolet some gas so it gained some speed. The
boys thought that was a real lot of fun and hollered for him to go faster,
but he was too smart for that because he knew they was just boys and he
didn't want for them to fall off or something. And Shep could keep up
real good with the sled, too, running alongside about top speed for him,
and barking real loud all the while. At the boys! He was telling them
that he was having a real lot of fun, too, probably the most he had ever
had in his life because he hadn't never been in the snow before.

The sled would make a kind of rumbling sound once in a while if it came to
a spot where the snow wasn't quite so deep, and then it would skit along
again almost silent for a ways. The boys couldn't hardly see for all the
snow flying around and getting into their eyes, sort of like cold sand,
but they didn't care about that because they was having so much fun.

Mr. Olafsen didn't know it, because he couldn't see that good in back of
him, but the sled wasn't running right straight behind the car. It was
kind of swinging from side to side, and the boys thought that was great,
and hollered and whooped a lot. And Shep thought it was great, too, and
when it swang out towards him where he was running he would jump at it and
play like he wanted to scare it or something, and then when it swang to
the other side he would think he had really scared it and bark some more
at it kind of daring it to come back at him again. And it always did, and
then it got to where he sort of expected what it would do next, and then
the next time he would jump at it again and bark real sassy like he was
saying, "Ha, ha, can't catch me!!"

Just about then one of the boys – I forget which one – reached out to grab
Shep, meaning to catch holt of him and haul him on the sled so he could
ride too. But Shep dodged him and got out of his way too quick. Shep
thought the boys wanted to play a new game now and he thought he would
outsmart them and go around to the other side of the sled and jump on from
there and then jump off again so quick as before they knew what happened.
Maybe he thought that would be a score or something; I don't really know.
Anyway, instead of running around behind the sled and then trying to catch
up, he thought it would be smarter to take a shortcut between the sled and
the car. And so he made a dive for the other side.

But Shep didn't reckon with the tow rope. Actually, they was two tow ropes
– one hooked on to each runner. At the last second he seen the first tow
rope and jumped over it, but he didn't jump far enough to jump over the
other tow rope, too, and he landed on it, and kind of teetered there for
just the teensiest bit of a second before he fell off. And his eyes was
real wide open, like he knew he had made a bad mistake.

Mrs. Olafsen had been watching through the back window with the girls,
taking turns, and waving at the boys. She was the one looking when the
sled ran over Shep. She screamed and hollered, "Stop, Daddy, stop! You run
over Shep!"

Mr. Olafsen stopped as soon as he could, but he knew he had to stop slow
so as the sled don't run under the car and hurt some of the boys. But when
he was stopped, the boys all jumped off of the sled and Mr. Olafsen and
Mrs. Olafsen and Birdie and Squirt all jumped out of the car and they all
ran back to where Shep was. The girls was crying and Mrs. Olafsen was
waving her arms and weeping out loud, "Oh, how awful, Oh how…Don't look
girls, Don't look!! Oh, sweet Jesus!" Some of the boys was crying, but I'm
not supposed to tell that.

The snow all around Shep looked like someone had tried to open a bottle of
ketchup by whopping it on the bottom and it let go all at once.

You're probably wondering if he was dead or if he was just hurt. Well, he
wasn't dead, right then, because he was trying to get up. But he couldn't.
And he howled something awful, even though he couldn't get up. I don't
know what he was trying to say, but that's probably just as well anyway,
and Mrs. Olafsen tried to put her coat around Birdie and Squirt because
they didn't know what to do and it was snowing and cold, and now none of
the boys had dry eyes neither.

But pretty soon Shep began to quiet down and then he just lied there, like
he had had enough. There in the middle of the splattered pink snow. Then,
all of a sudden, everything was quiet.

Except for the sobs and sniffles that still kept up.

And except for old man Rowe's dog under the willow tree down in the draw
where nobody could see him, a long, soft, almost kind of scary,
ahhwoo-ooo-ooo-ooo, aaahhwooooo-ooooo-oooooo.

And Mr. Olafsen turned his back so nobody else could see him too, and
reached into his mackinaw pocket, like for to sneak a chew of tobacco, or
something.

The End c RBC 2010