Unit 5 Lesson 3 The Orphanage Is High

The orphanage is high in the Carolina mountains. I was there in the autumn. I wanted quiet, isolation, to do some troublesome writing. I wanted mountain air to blow out the malaria from too long a time in the subtropics. I was homesick too, for the flaming of maples in October, and for corn shocks and pumpkins and black-walnut trees.... I found them all living in a cabin that belonged to the orphanage. half a mile beyond the orphanage farm. When I took the cabin, I asked for a boy or man to come and chop wood for the fireplace....

I looked up from my typewriter one late afternoon, a little startled. A boy stood at the door and my pointer dog, my companion, was at his side and had not barked to warn me. The boy was probably twelve years old, but undersized. He wore overalls and a torn shirt, and was barefooted. He said, "I can chop some wood today."

.... "You? But you're small."

"Size don't matter, chopping wood," he said. "Some of the big boys don't chop good. I've been chopping wood at the orphanage a long time."

"Very well. There's the ax. Go ahead and see what you can do." I went back to work, closing the door....

He began to chop. The blows were rhythmic and steady, and shortly I had forgotten him, the sound no more of an interruption than a consistent rain. I suppose an hour and a half passed and I heard the boy's steps on the cabin stoop.... The boy said, "I have to go to supper now," he said, "I can come again tomorrow."

I said, "I'll pay you now for what you've done," thinking I should probably have to insist on an older

boy.... We went together back of the cabin. An astonishing amount of solid wood had been cut.... "But you've done as much as a man," I said. "This is a splendid pile."

I looked at him, actually, for the first time. His hair was the color of the corn shocks and his eyes, very direct, were like the mountain sky when rain is pending - gray, with a shadowing of that miraculous blue.... I gave him a quarter.

"You may come tomorrow afternoon," I said, "and thank you very much." He looked at me, and at the coin, and seemed to want to speak, but could not, and turned away....

At daylight I was half wakened by the sound of chopping. Again it was so even in texture that I went back to sleep. When I left my bed in the cool morning, the boy had come and gone, and a stack of kindling was neat against the cabin wall. He came after school in the afternoon and worked until time to return to the orphanage.