The Spyglass Tree Read Online Free PDF Page B

the industrial arts area, and with the book tilted in front of him on the adjustable drafting board, sometimes with the chair turned so that he could rest both legs across the bed.
    But most often he liked to read sitting propped up in bed with the book on his thighs, sometimes smoking one of his fancy pipes which he never took outside the room and sometimes not. But always with a pencil behind his ear and his notebook within easy reach.
    The sketches, blueprints, and watercolors on the wall behind the head of his cot and near the drafting table were his own work. Some were class assignments but most were field sketches ripped from his 8½ʺ × 11ʺ grid pad and thumbtacked up as mementos that sometimes became entries in his ever-present notebook, which he kept like a sea captain’s log and sometimes called his daybook and clay book and clue book, his testament and also his doomsday book of portable property which he used to refer to as the goods not only in the sense of canned, packaged, and dry goods and other provisions for a survival kit, but also in the sense of getting and thus having specific inside information or evidence about something.
    Incidentally, in no time at all you could almost always tell when he was about to reach behind his ear for his pencil for another entry, because he would either move directly back from what he was reading, or stand back from whatever he was inspecting and give it his sidelong stare and close his eyes for a moment, or he would rub his hands as if licking his chops and go into his heh-heh-heh imitation of the mustache-twirling, lip-smacking villainof the penny-dreadful pulp story, but then instead of actually saying ah-ah and all of that, he used to say, Yeah, verily.
    As soon as I saw and heard him do that the first time, I could tell that it was something he probably always did because it reminded me of what Little Buddy Marshall always used to do. Whenever he was about to have to take a chance on something, old Little Buddy Marshall always used to tilt his head to one side and close his right eye and squint like a poker player, studying his cards through the haze of smoke curling up from the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. Then he would suck his teeth two times and say, Hey, mighty right, hey, goddamn right. Hey, shit I reckon.
    When something was good or even outstanding to Little Buddy Marshall, it was either some great shit or some bad shit. So when he judged something to be no good he used to say, Man, that shit ain’t going to stack. Man, ain’t nobody going to tell me you can make some old thin-ass shit like this stack. Man, I bet you my bottom goddamn dollar. Man, I’m telling you. This shit come from running off at the goddamn bowels. I don’t care what nobody say. Because I know good and goddamn well what the goddamn fuck I’m talking about. I’m talking about you looking at some shit that ain’t shit and then I’m talking about something you can put your money on.
    Anytime Little Buddy Marshall used to say, Hey, shit, I reckon, it meant that he was ready to take a chance on something, sometimes even regardless of the consequences. But it was not very long before I realized that when my new roommate said, Yeah, verily, you never knew when he was also going to say, But, on the other hand. Not that he was less willing to take chances. He was even more of a gambler and a rambler than Little Buddy Marshall ever even dreamed of being. But the chances he took were more a matter of calculated risk. Whereas I always knew that Little Buddy Marshall took many more things for granted than I myself ever did.

VI
    A fter lights out most nights I used to talk to him about Gasoline Point and Mobile; he asked about the Gulf Coast and about the bayous and sandbars and canebrakes; he also wanted to hear what I knew about Creoles and Cajuns, and I said I knew much more about Creoles than about Cajuns, but that I did know some and I had been to Chastang and