Lantana Lane Read Online Free PDF Page B

pity he had not made it five while he was about it. “But I put in another acre of bananas, too,” he added expansively, “and a hundred damn paw-paws.”
    â€œYou got a man to help you, though,” Herbie pointed out.
    Tommy smiled his wise and secret smile. Herbie’s farm was better than most real real ones, but it would clearly be better still if it were like his own.
    â€œYou picking to-day, Herbie?”
    â€œNo, I been around, but there ain’t enough to make up a case.”
    â€œMe man’s picking down at my place—he’ll get fifty, I reckon.”
    â€œGot your cases made?”
    â€œI got enough for to-day. I’ll be making more to-morrow.”
    â€œAh,” said Herbie with a perfectly genuine sigh, “that’s the best day for making cases—to-morrow.”
    Tommy’s father—who well knew that a prosperous farm must be mechanised—had given him a tractor for Christmas, and when Herbie needed any hauling done Tommy pedalled it down to the fence, and Herbie lifted it over, and Tommy did the job for him. Herbie (who was mechanised only to the extent of a home-made wheelbarrow) found this a great convenience, for Tommy’s tractor was well known to be of almost unlimited horse-power, and had recently dragged a log weighing one hundred tons up the hill from Late Tucker Creek in less than five minutes. All its machinery was clearly painted on its side, and a trifling adjustment with a spanner—or a stick, if no spanner were handy—converted it instantly to a bulldozer. One morning when it had been so converted Tommy announced vaingloriously:
    â€œI could shift that damn lantanna of yours in one day, Herbie, I bet.”
    â€œReckon we better let it be, Tommy. I got all the land I can manage.”
    â€œWell, there’s that damn patch of groundsel—I could shift that.”
    â€œNo hurry—it ain’t going to seed yet awhile.”
    But Tommy was being properly brought up by a good farmer, and he said severely : “Me dad says it don’t do to let groundsel get a hold.”
    True. Herbie eyed it uneasily. It did not occur to him (and this, no doubt, was why Tommy so valued his company), to say with amused and indulgent heartiness that Tommy had better go and get it out, then; for he had committed himself to the reality of imagination, and though the imaginary situation must be treated as real, he must not insult Tommy by seeming to suggest that Tommy actually believed it to be so. He must not subject Tommy to the embarrassment of finding himself and his tractor pitted, in very truth, against a forest of groundsel. Tommy trusted him to stall; and he stalled.
    â€œMaybe I’ll get on to grubbin’ it out,” he conceded, and added hastily: “To-morrow.”
    But Tommy would not allow this. He knew all about to-morrow. Herbie must not suppose that because he kept the demands of his farm within reasonable bounds, he could ignore its real reality, and play about with to-morrows in this shameless manner. “There’s too much to grub out,” he objected. “It’d take you months and years. You want a damn bulldozer.”
    â€œWell,” countered Herbie, “I might buy a bulldozer one day.”
    â€œWhen?” demanded Tommy ruthlessly; and Herbie, hard-pressed, replied : “When I win the Casket.”
    Herbie was very busy all the next morning. First there was a finer sunrise than usual, prolonged by a bank of low-lying cloud which filled the air like a luminous red dust. Then, when he had just finished his milking, and was going down to his pines to do some chipping, he almost trod on a very newly-shed snake skin, so he had to squat on his heels and study that for a long time. After he had been chipping for an hour or so, he noticed that someone had begun burning off on the far hillside across Late Tucker Creek, and the spectacle of blue smoke melting into the blue