Klee Wyck

15 Juice

It was unbelievably hot. We three women came out of the store each eating a juicy pear. There was ten cents' express on every pound of freight that came up the Cariboo road. Fruit weighs heavy. Everything came in by mule-train.

The first bite into those Bartletts was intoxicating. The juice met your teeth with a gush.

The juice trickled down his chin--his tongue jumped out and caught it; he sipped the oozing juice from the holes our bites had made. He licked the drops running down the rind, then with his eyes still on the pear, he held it out for me to take back.

Some days later I had occasion to ride through the Indian village. All the cow ponies were busy--the only mount available was an old, old mare who resented each step she took, and if you stopped one instant she went fast asleep.

Laying his hand on my sleeping steed, Doctor Cabbage smiled up at me.

Indian boys were playing football in the street of their village. I drew up to ask direction. The ball bounced exactly under my horse's stomach. The animal had already gone to sleep and did not notice. Out of a cabin shot a whirl of a little man, riddled with anger. It was Doctor Cabbage.

I was on the store step, so I could look right into his eyes. They were dry and filmed. The skin of his hands and face was shrivelled, his clothes nothing but a bunch of tatters hanging on a dry stick. I believe the wind could have tossed him like a dead leaf, and that nothing juicy had ever happened in Doctor Cabbage's life.

I was considering the most advantageous spot to set my bite next when I saw Doctor Cabbage's eye over the top of my pear, feasting on the fruit with unquenched longing.

I thanked Doctor Cabbage for the compliment and for his gallant rescue.

His eyes squinted at the fruit as if he could not quite believe his ears and that all the pear in his hands belonged to him. Then he took bite after bite, rolling each bite slowly round his mouth, catching every drop of juice with loud suckings. He ate the core. He ate the tail, and ticked his fingers over and over like a cat.

He confiscated the ball and scolded the boys so furiously that the whole team melted away--you'd think there was not a boy left in the world.

After he had asked, his dry tongue made a slow trip across his lips and went back into his mouth hotter and dryer for thinking of the fruit.

A gleam burst through his filmed eyes. He drew the hot air into his throat with a gasp, held his hand out for the pear and then took a deep greedy bite beside mine.

"You brave good rider," he said, "Skookum tumtum (good heart)!"

"Yes."

"Would you like it?"

"No, it's all yours."

"Me eat him every bit?"

"Is it a good apple?"

"Hyas Klosshe (very good)," he said, and trotted up the hill as though his joints had been oiled.

I woke my horse with great difficulty, and decided that honour for conspicuous bravery was sometimes very easily won.