The Fires of Spring Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Writin’ pomes is wery hard,” he said.
    Old Daniel took charge. “If it’s a poem,” he said, “it should be read. Would you like me to read it?”
    “I’ll read it,” David said. A place was made for him on the bench, and about him stood a circle of wondering old men. The boy’s eyes flashed as he started his new version of the
Iliad
. At lights out he was only half finished, and his audience crept into the light of Daniel’s candle.
    David had now reached the part about the death of Achilles, and for a moment he had to pause, for the candle in Daniel’s hand wavered, wavered in the night. The great pain was upon the old man, the pain that tore at one’s stomach as if the vultures of Prometheus were come back, and once the candle almost went out. Then Tom took it, and David killed the matchless Achilles, and Ajax, and Agamemnon. Hector
    “… lit a fire beneath the horse
    And burned up every Greek.”
    His voice was quivering with joy at wrong righted, David finished his poem. Not seeking admiration—for he had modestly established his own—he looked up at the old faces in the candlelight. Toothless was rapt in admiration. “We ought to send that right in to
The Intelligencer
,” he said.
    When the men were gone Old Daniel asked, “Why did you write it that way?”
    “It was wrong the other way,” David explained.
    “But you can’t change things like that,” Daniel argued.
    “If it’s wrong you can.”
    “We better go to bed,” Daniel said, but before David left he confided, “Some things happen the way the teacher read.”
    “You mean killing people by tricks?”
    “Tricks? Yes. That’s why some of these men are in the poorhouse, David.”
    “Well, then they oughtn’t to be!” the boy cried impulsively.
    “But the good people don’t always win, David.”
    The little boy stuck out his chin. “When I write a story, they win,” he said defiantly.
    Spring in a country poorhouse is a time of pain. Then hearts break and overflow into the somber faces of the defeated. The men, gaunt from their long surrender, look at the stirring earth and compare their present lot with what they had hoped for. In the evenings they stand along the walls and watch the fresh-plowed hilltops. It is different from summer, this watching at dusk, for the men do not await refreshing breezes. They await the haunting memories of their youth.
    When David was eleven, even Old Daniel, suspecting that this was his last spring, grew reminiscent. “When I was a boy,” he mused, “there were sometimes as many as forty barges a day, passing up and down the canal. Bells on the mules tinkled merrily along the towpath, and bargekeepers blew their winding horns to warn the lockmen of their approach. David, you could hear the horns for more than a mile!”
    “What were the barges like?” David asked.
    “They were like ships at sea. They were truly glorious, when I was a boy.” As he recalled the happy days, pain attacked, and he shifted his body into various positions untilhe found one that was comfortable. His silence gave the mad Dutchman a chance to speak.
    “They had fancy barges for picnics,” Luther explained. “When I bought my cigar factory we hired a barge. To Erwinna we went. Oh, the pretty girls that day! Then we took a hayride home. Wery nice, the barges!”
    “Did you ever ride the barges?” David asked Old Daniel.
    “Did I ever!” the frail old man glowed. “The bargemen knew me well.”
    “Warious people lived right on the barges,” Luther explained.
    “There was one family,” Daniel mused. “They were gypsies, we claimed. I rode up and down the canal with them all one summer. I wanted to marry their daughter.”
    “I never got married,” Toothless Tom said.
    An old man interrupted. “On a farm women are good. In a city, no.”
    “I got married,” Luther Detwiler said. He scratched his mad head. “My wife …” He looked beseechingly at David. “Where …” Then he grinned. “My