Part 6

Then when the room was all quiet the shadow of the goose lifted its left foot and began singing—singing just as the shadow of a goose always sings—with the left foot—very softly with the left foot—so softly you must listen with the softest little listeners you have deep inside your ears.

And this was the song, this was the old-time, old-fashioned left foot song the shadow of the goose sang for Hoo Hoo:

Be a yang yang if you want to. Be a hoo hoo if you want to.

The yang yangs always yang in the morning. The hoo hoos always hoo in the morning.

Early in the morning the putters sit putting, Putting on your nose, putting on your ears, Putting in your eyes and the lashes on your eyes, Putting on the chins of your chinny chin chins.

And after singing the left foot song the shadow of the goose walked around in a long circle, came back where it started from, stopped and stood still with the proud standstill of a goose, and then stretched its neck sticking up straight and long, longer than any time yet, and then bended its neck bent and twisted in longer bends than any time yet.

Then the shadow took itself off the wall, fluttered and flickered along the ceiling and over the bed, flew out of the window and was gone, leaving Hoo Hoo all alone sitting up in bed counting her pink toes.

Out of the corners of her eyes she looked up at the wall of the room, at the place where the shadow of the goose put itself like a picture. And there she saw a shadow spot. She looked and saw it was a left foot, the same left foot that had been singing the left foot song.

Soon Yang Yang came yang-yanging into the room holding to her mother’s apron. Hoo Hoo told her mother all the happenings that happened. The mother wouldn’t believe it. Then Hoo Hoo pointed up to the wall, to the left foot, the shadow spot left behind by the shadow of the goose when it took itself off the wall.

And now when Yang Yang and Hoo Hoo sleep all night with their eyes shut and wake up in the morning with their eyes open, sometimes they say, “Our Oklahoma home is in Oklahoma,” and sometimes they sing:

Be a yang yang and yang yang if you want to. Be a hoo hoo and hoo hoo if you want to.

9. One Story About Big People Now and Little People Long Ago.

_People_: Peter Potato Blossom Wishes

Three Whispering Cats

Hannah

Hannah More

Susquehannah

Hoom Slimmer

How a Skyscraper and a Railroad Train Got Picked Up and Carried Away from Pig’s Eye Valley Far in the Pickax Mountains

Peter Potato Blossom Wishes sat with her three cats, Hannah, Hannah More, and Susquehannah, one spring morning.

She was asking different kinds of questions of the three cats. But she always got the same answers no matter what she asked them.

They were whispering cats. Hannah was a yes-yes cat and always whispered yes-yes and nothing else. Hannah More was a no-no cat and always whispered no-no and nothing else. And Susquehannah was a stuttering cat and whispered halfway between yes and no, always hesitating and nothing else.

“The bye-low is whistling his bye-low and bye-low again,” Peter said to herself with a murmur. “It is spring in the tall timbers and over the soft black lands. The hoo hoo and the biddywiddies come north to make a home again. The booblow blossoms put their cool white lips out into the blue mist. Every way I point my ears there is a bye-low whistling his bye-low and bye-low again. The spring in the timbers and black lands calls to the spring aching in my heart.”

Now the three whispering cats heard what Peter Potato Blossom Wishes was murmuring to herself about the spring heartache.

And Hannah, the yes-yes cat, answered yes-yes. Hannah More, the no-no cat, answered no-no. And Susquehannah, the stuttering cat, hesitated halfway between yes-yes and no-no.

And Peter rubbed their fur the right way, scratched them softly between the ears, and murmured to herself, “It is a don’t-care morning—I don’t care.”

And that morning her heart gave a hoist and a hist when she saw a speck of a blackbird spot far and high in the sky. Coming nearer it hummed, zoomed, hong whonged ... shut off the hong whong ... stop-locked and drop-locked ... and came down on the ground like a big easy bird with big wings stopped.

Hoom Slimmer slid out, wiped his hands on the oil rags, put a smear of axle grease on Peter’s chin, kissed her on the nose, patted her ears two pats—and then they went into the house and had a late breakfast which was her second breakfast and his first.

“I flew till I came to Pig’s Eye Valley in the Pickax Mountains,” Hoom Slimmer told her. “The pickax pigs there run digging with their pickax feet and their pickax snouts. They are lean, long-legged pigs with pockets all over, fat pocket ears ahead and fat pocket tails behind, and the pockets full of rusty dust. They dip their noses in their pockets, sniff their noses full of rusty dust, and sneeze the rusty dust in each other’s wrinkly, wriggly, wraggly faces.

“I took out a buzz shovel and scraper, pushed on the buzzer, and watched it dig and scrape out a city. The houses came to my ankles. The factories came to my knees. The top of the roof of the highest skyscraper came up to my nose.

“A spider ran out of a cellar. A book fell out of his mouth. It broke into rusty dust when I took hold of it. One page I saved. The reading on it said millions of people had read the book and millions more would read it.”

Hoom Slimmer reached into a pocket. He took out in his hand a railroad train with an engine hooked on ahead, and a smoking car, coaches and sleeping cars hooked on behind.

“I cleaned it nice for you, Peter,” he said. “But the pickax pigs sneezed rusty dust on it. Put it in your handkerchief.”

“And now,” he went on, “I will wrap off the wrappers on the skyscraper.... Look at it!... It is thirty stories high. On top is a flagpole for a flag to go up. Halfway down is a clock, with the hands gone. On the first floor is a restaurant with signs, ‘Watch Your Hats and Overcoats.’ Here is the office of the building, with a sign on the wall, ‘Be Brief.’ Here the elevators ran up and down in a hurry. On doors are signs, bankers, doctors, lawyers, life insurance, fire insurance, steam hoist and operating engineers, bridge and structural iron and steel construction engineers, stocks, bonds, securities, architects, writers, detectives, window cleaners, jewelry, diamonds, cloaks, suits, shirts, sox, silk, wool, cotton, lumber, brick, sand, corn, oats, wheat, paper, ink, pencils, knives, guns, land, oil, coal, one door with a big sign, ‘We Buy and Sell Anything,’ another door, ‘We Fix Anything,’ and more doors, ‘None Such,’ ‘The World’s Finest,’ ‘The Best in the World,’ ‘Oldest Establishment in the World,’ ‘The World’s Greatest,’ ‘None Greater,’ ‘Greatest in the World,’ ‘Greatest Ever Known.’”

And Hoom Slimmer put his arms around the skyscraper, lifted it on his shoulder, and carried it upstairs where Peter Potato Blossom said to put it, in a corner of her sleeping room. And she took out of her handkerchief the railroad train with the engine hooked on ahead and the smoking car, coaches and sleeping cars, hooked on behind. And she put the railroad train just next to the bottom floor of the skyscraper so people on the train could step off the train and step right into the skyscraper.

“Little railroad trains and little skyscrapers are just as big for little people as big railroad trains and big skyscrapers are for big people—is it not such?” she asked Hoom Slimmer.

And for an answer he gave her a looking glass half as long as her little finger and said, “The women in that skyscraper used to look at themselves from head to foot in that looking glass.”

Then Peter sang out like a spring bird song, “Now we are going to forget the pickax pigs sneezing rusty dust, and the Pig’s Eye Valley and the Pickax Mountains. We are going out where the bye-low is whistling his bye-low and bye-low again, where it is spring in the tall timbers and over the soft black lands, where the hoo hoo and the biddywiddies come north to make a home again and the booblow blossoms put their cool white lips out into the blue mist.”

And they sat under a tree where the early green of spring crooned in the black branches, and they could hear Hannah, Hannah More and Susquehannah, whispering yes-yes, no-no, and a hesitating stutter halfway between yes-yes, and no-no, always hesitating.

10. Three Stories About the Letter X and How It Got into the Alphabet.

_People_: An Oyster King

Shovel Ears

Pig Wisps

The Men Who Change the Alphabets

A River Lumber King

Kiss Me

Flax Eyes

Wildcats

A Rich Man

Blue Silver

Her Playmates, Singing

There are six hundred different stories told in the Rootabaga Country about the first time the letter X got into the alphabet and how and why it was. The author has chosen three (3) of the shortest and strangest of those stories and they are told in the next and following pages.

Pig Wisps

There was an oyster king far in the south who knew how to open oysters and pick out the pearls.

He grew rich and all kinds of money came rolling in on him because he was a great oyster opener and knew how to pick out the pearls.

The son of this oyster king was named Shovel Ears. And it was hard for him to remember.

“He knows how to open oysters but he forgets to pick out the pearls,” said the father of Shovel Ears.

“He is learning to remember worse and worse and to forget better and better,” said the father of Shovel Ears.

Now in that same place far in the south was a little girl with two braids of hair twisted down her back and a face saying, “Here we come—where from?”

And her mother called her Pig Wisps.

Twice a week Pig Wisps ran to the butcher shop for a soup bone. Before starting she crossed her fingers and then the whole way to the butcher shop kept her fingers crossed.

If she met any playmates and they asked her to stop and play cross-tag or jackstones or all-around-the-mulberry-bush or the-green-grass-grew-all-around or drop-the-handkerchief, she told them, “My fingers are crossed and I am running to the butcher shop for a soup bone.”

One morning running to the butcher shop she bumped into a big queer boy and bumped him flat on the sidewalk.

“Did you look where you were running?” she asked him.

“I forgot again,” said Shovel Ears. “I remember worse and worse. I forget better and better.”

“Cross your fingers like this,” said Pig Wisps, showing him how.

He ran to the butcher shop with her, watching her keep her fingers crossed till the butcher gave her the soup bone.

“After I get it then the soup bone reminds me to go home with it,” she told him. “But until I get the soup bone I keep my fingers crossed.”

Shovel Ears went to his father and began helping his father open oysters. And Shovel Ears kept his fingers crossed to remind him to pick out the pearls.

He picked a hundred buckets of pearls the first day and brought his father the longest slippery, shining rope of pearls ever seen in that oyster country.

“How do you do it?” his father asked.

“It is the crossed fingers—like this,” said Shovel Ears, crossing his fingers like the letter X. “This is the way to remember better and forget worse.”

It was then the oyster king went and told the men who change the alphabets just what happened.

When the men who change the alphabets heard just what happened, they decided to put in a new letter, the letter X, near the end of the alphabet, the sign of the crossed fingers.

On the wedding day of Pig Wisps and Shovel Ears, the men who change the alphabets all came to the wedding, with their fingers crossed.

Pig Wisps and Shovel Ears stood up to be married. They crossed their fingers. They told each other other they would remember their promises.

And Pig Wisps had two ropes of pearls twisted down her back and a sweet young face saying, “Here we come—where from?”

Kiss Me

Many years ago when pigs climbed chimneys and chased cats up into the trees, away back, so they say, there was a lumber king who lived in a river city with many wildcats in the timbers near by.

And the lumber king said, “I am losing my hair and my teeth and I am tired of many things; my only joy is a daughter who is a dancing shaft of light on the ax handles of morning.”

She was quick and wild, the lumber king’s daughter. She had never kissed. Not her mother nor father nor any sweetheart ever had a love print from her lips. Proud she was. They called her Kiss Me.

She didn’t like that name, Kiss Me. They never called her that when she was listening. If she happened to be listening they called her Find Me, Lose Me, Get Me. They never mentioned kisses because they knew she would run away and be what her father called her, “a dancing shaft of light on the ax handles of morning.”

But—when she was not listening they asked, “Where is Kiss Me to-day?” Or they would say, “Every morning Kiss Me gets more beautiful—I wonder if she will ever in her young life get a kiss from a man good enough to kiss her.”

One day Kiss Me was lost. She went out on a horse with a gun to hunt wildcats in the timbers near by. Since the day before, she was gone. All night she was out in a snowstorm with a horse and a gun hunting wildcats. And the storm of the blowing snow was coming worse on the second day.

It was then the lumber king called in a long, loose, young man with a leather face and hay in his hair. And the king said, “Flax Eyes, you are the laziest careless man in the river lumber country—go out in the snowstorm now, among the wildcats, where Kiss Me is fighting for her life—and save her.”

“I am the hero. I am the man who knows how. I am the man who has been waiting for this chance,” said Flax Eyes.

On a horse, with a gun, out into the snowstorm Flax Eyes rode that day. Far, far away he rode to where Kiss Me, the quick wild Kiss Me, was standing with her back against a big rock fighting off the wildcats.

In that country the snowstorms make the wildcats wilder—and Kiss Me was tired of shooting wildcats, tired of fighting in the snow, nearly ready to give up and let the wildcats have her.

Then Flax Eyes came. The wildcats jumped at him, and he threw them off. More wildcats came, jumping straight at his face. He took hold of those wildcats by the necks and threw them over the big rock, up into the trees, away into the snow and the wind.

At last he took all the wildcats one by one and threw them so far they couldn’t come back. He put Kiss Me on her horse, rode back to the lumber king and said lazy and careless, “This is us.”

The lumber king saw the face of Flax Eyes was all covered with cross marks like the letter X. And the lumber king saw the wildcats had torn the shirt off Flax Eyes and on the skin of his chest, shoulders, arms, were the cross marks of the wildcats’ claws, cross marks like the letter X.

So the king went to the men who change the alphabets and they put the cross marks of the wildcats’ claws, for a new letter, the letter X, near the end of the alphabet. And at the wedding of Kiss Me and Flax Eyes, the men who change the alphabets came with wildcat claws crossed like the letter X.

Blue Silver

Long ago when the years were dark and the black rains used to come with strong winds and blow the front porches off houses, and pick chimneys off houses, and blow them onto other houses, long ago when people had understanding about rain and wind, there was a rich man with a daughter he loved better than anything else in the world.

And one night when the black rain came with a strong wind blowing off front porches and picking off chimneys, the daughter of the rich man fell asleep into a deep sleep.

In the morning they couldn’t wake her. The black rain with the strong wind kept up all that day while she kept on sleeping in a deep sleep.

Men and women with music and flowers came in, boys and girls, her playmates, came in—singing songs and calling her name. And she went on sleeping.

All the time her arms were crossed on her breast, the left arm crossing the right arm like a letter X.

Two days more, five days, six, seven days went by—and all the time the black rain with a strong wind blowing—and the daughter of the rich man never woke up to listen to the music nor to smell the flowers nor to hear her playmates singing songs and calling her name.

She stayed sleeping in a deep sleep—with her arms crossed on her breast—the left arm crossing the right arm like a letter X.

So they made a long silver box, just long enough to reach from her head to her feet.

And they put on her a blue silver dress and a blue silver band around her forehead and blue silver shoes on her feet.

There were soft blue silk and silver sleeves to cover her left arm and her right arm—the two arms crossed on her breast like the letter X.

They took the silver box and carried it to a corner of the garden where she used to go to look at blue lilacs and climbing blue morning glories in patches of silver lights.

Among the old leaves of blue lilacs and morning glories they dug a place for the silver box to be laid in.

And men and women with music and flowers stood by the silver box, and her old playmates, singing songs she used to sing—and calling her name.

When it was all over and they all went away they remembered one thing most of all.

And that was her arms in the soft silk and blue silver sleeves, the left arm crossing over the right arm like the letter X.

Somebody went to the king of the country and told him how it all happened, how the black rains with a strong wind came, the deep sleep, the singing playmates, the silver box—and the soft silk and blue silver sleeves on the left arm crossing the right arm like the letter X.

Before that there never was a letter X in the alphabet. It was then the king said, “We shall put the crossed arms in the alphabet; we shall have a new letter called X, so everybody will understand a funeral is beautiful if there are young singing playmates.”

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.