The Red and Gold Shoe
The Red and Gold Shoe part 3/7
Leaning back, Joseph looked high into the sky where flights of snowy white egrets winged their way toward the lakes set in the rolling hills of a national park. Or he watched giant jet planes zoom over.
"When I grow up, I shall fly," he always said, repeating it every day to make sure it would happen. Joseph planned to do everything that needed no legs. So he would fly like a jet plane, or an egret. Or he would drive a train. Engine drivers don't need legs, not with all those many wheels whirling so fast to carry them along.
Whenever a long-distance train thundered down the track, they watched it go, their hearts beating fast with excitement and a little fear. It made the ground heave and shake, and unable to contain themselves, Lata and Joseph yelled and shouted, waving madly at the startled laces of the passengers in the windows. As the train flew past, the invisible rush of its wings blew against their faces and lifted their hair. It was a thrilling moment but it never lasted long enough.
Joseph breathlessly, not looking at his legs lying side by side like the limp broken wings of a bird.
"OF course you will !" cried Lata, still feeling her heart thudding. "And will you wave to me as you go past?"
"I'll blow the whistle all the way through here and make Momin Sheikh's pigeons on the factory roof go straight up into the air with fright, and scatter the people in all directions, and shake old Amma's house so that she will shout: 'It's that devil Joseph again I Nobody else takes a train through here like that! He would bring the roof down on a tired old woman's head, would he?' "
Joseph was not really a boaster. He needed to talk big sometimes because he felt so small and unimportant the rest of the time.
Lata laughed as she hopped first on one foot and then on the other. It wasn't only because of the train that she was feeling like this. There was something else: she had a secret, and now that she had enjoyed it for long enough, she was going to tell it to Joseph.
Standing before him on the slope, she said: "I have ten coppers !"
"From where?" he cried in pleased surprise as she held up the coin.
"Amma gave it to me before she left for work."
Here was wealth indeed ! One whole ten-copper coin ! And now came the sweet agony of trying to decide how to spend it in such a way that they wouldn't be sorry afterwards. It was terrible to have to say: "Those peanuts were not so good, were they? We should have bought the cotton candy --one ball for you and one for me." But then how to be absolutely sure? Cotton candy went much too fast, and it left only a little taste of sweetness behind. Puffed rice went further, And a twist of toffee pulled off the vendor's pole and shaped into a butterfly or a bird stuck to the teeth and went even further. While a lemon drop could last for days if you sucked it only now and then and kept it wrapped in a piece of paper in your pocket.
Continue The Red and Gold Shoe part 4/7
The other parts
No comments:
Post a Comment