Beat the Turtle Drum Read Online Free PDF

something about a good laugh that’s very salubrious. That’s a word I learned last week. It’s a very good word, very adult-sounding. I’m trying to figure out a way to work it into a poem. So far, no luck. It isn’t easy to rhyme things with.
    â€œWhat’s all the racket?” Sam appeared at the door of our room. “Toot and I could hear you all the way down the street. Your mother said to come up and find out what was going on.”
    Together, Sam and Tootie look like Laurel and Hardy. Sam is tall for his age and thin. His cowlicks make him look even taller. Tootie is short and still in possession of his baby fat.
    Sam told me last week Tootie told him he wished they were brothers.
    Sam was embarrassed. “I told the kid he already had three brothers, what’d he want another one for. And he said I was nicer than any of his real brothers. What do you say to a little kid when he says something like that?”
    Tootie got in the habit of taking Sam’s hand when they crossed the street or maybe when they walked down the block where a ferocious dog lived.
    â€œI told him he was getting too old for that,” Sam said. “Imagine if some wise guy saw us holding hands. I don’t even like to think about it. I told him he’d have to quit it.”
    Now when Tootie walks with Sam he clasps his hands behind his back and paces, his head down. I told him he looked like a world leader at a conference. He was pleased.
    â€œKate and I were just talking about what my grandmother’s giving me for my birthday,” Joss said. Her face was red. We looked at each other and started to giggle again.
    â€œIt must be awful funny,” Tootie said. He looks anxious a lot, as if he hoped to please people but isn’t exactly sure how to go about it. I think that comes from the fact that he’s the least bright kid in a big smart family and he gets teased a lot. Too much teasing can destroy a person’s self-confidence.
    Once Joss punched a kid who was giving Tootie a hard time. The kid was bigger than she was, but she knocked him down anyway. She took him by surprise. He never expected a wiry little kid to be so strong. Her strength was as the strength of ten because she was so mad. From then on, Tootie was Joss’s shadow. I think he would’ve given his life for her if he could. No one has ever hero-worshipped me the way Tootie does Joss. I’m not sure I’d be up to it. No one has ever thought I was perfect, which is probably just as well.
    â€œLet’s go over to Essig’s and see how Prince is,” Joss said. As the big day approached, she could feel Prince’s hot breath on her neck and hear him whinny in our garage.
    On our way out, we went through the kitchen and got a couple of bananas and cookies to eat on the journey. Sam took a huge handful. That ride to West Norwalk took a lot out of us.
    â€œDon’t be such a pig,” I told Sam. Boys his age are very greedy, I’ve noticed. More than girls, I mean.
    â€œYou know who you remind me of?” I asked Sam as we started out. Joss and Tootie were already down at the rotary, waiting for us.
    Sam had to unlock his bike. He has a very valuable ten-speed bike, and he wasn’t taking any chances. Sam’s father told him he’d pay one half if Sam could cough up the other half. Sam never stopped moving until he earned that money. He mowed lawns, baby-sat, washed windows, you name it. So now, even when he left his bike alone for a second, he locked it.
    â€œA very sinister-looking character was prowling around our house the other day,” Sam said. “He looked like a bike thief to me. I’m thinking of taking out insurance.”
    â€œWhat’s a bike thief look like anyhow?” I asked. Sometimes Sam didn’t listen.
    â€œHe is lean and hungry and evil-looking,” Sam said. “He loiters a lot. I called up the police and reported a suspicious-looking