The Horse in My Garage and Other Stories Read Online Free Page A

Needless to say, I instantly became enormously proud of my great-grandfather. Later, however, Gram told me the wound consisted of getting one of his big toes shot off! This struck me right away as a suspicious wound. Think about it. There are the big toes, tramping along in the dirt and mud, and one Confederate soldier says to another, “Bart, I bet you can’t shoot off one of that Yank’s big toes.” Well, it would be an impossible shot. Also, had I been in my great grandfather’s shoes at that moment, with a whole army shooting at me, I can tell you my two big toes would have been moving very fast. They wouldn’t be standing around just waiting to get shot off. Then there was the possibility that if you got a big toe shot off, you would be sent to the rear, to a hospital, or even all the way home. Getting a big toe shot off would be like having one of the Rebs do you a favor. Big toes aren’t of that much use anyway. All my pride in that wound evaporated. A big toe! Years later, when I was doing some research on my ancestors, I discovered that my great-grandfather wasn’t in the infantry but the cavalry! His big toe was way up there on the side of a horse and easy to pick off. Furthermore, I learned that Archibald Hall fought in nearly every major battle of the Civil War from beginning to end. He apparently wasn’t someone to be bothered much by the loss of a big toe. Anybody named Archibald, of course, learns to be a fearless fighter early on.
    My grandmother told these stories sitting in the dark by our old wood-burning stove whenever the electricity went off and the lights out, her rocking chair squeaking away as she created magical pictures in the dark.
    During World War I, my father, Frank McManus, received a commendation from his commanding officer, Major Douglas MacArthur, chief of staff of the Rainbow Division during the war. The commendation was for defending a particular hill. When I was six, he died of cancer, which I believe was the result of his having inhaled a dose of mustard gas during the war.
    My mother, Mabel, was a country school teacher. She earned $75 a month teaching all eight grades, putting on plays for parents, Christmas parties for the pupils, cooking the hot lunch at noon and serving it, getting our drinking water out of a creek, hauling in the firewood, and keeping the old barrel stove going, its sides eaten through by heat and rust, but the holes putting on a wonderful light show across the ceiling during the dark of night.
    This was at the old log school house far back in the woods near Priest Lake, Idaho. The two years we spent at that school pretty well shaped my approach to life. I ran free for two whole years, when I should have been in first and second grade. Mom never paid much attention to my education, her time and energy used up on the pupils she was paid to teach, so I was allowed to run wild along Goose Creek and in the surrounding woods and mountains whenever I wanted, which was most of the time. During winter, I went to sleep every night listening to wolves howl as they made their nightly hunt along the ridge above the school. “Send Pat out!” they seemed to be howling. “Send Pat out!”
    Mom flunked me in second grade. I once heard her tell friends that her daughter, Patricia, six years my senior, was very smart, but Pat was “slow.” Many years later, we came across my second grade report card in her papers. Under the part that said “Reason for Failure,” she had written, “Too many absences.” When you think about it, that is a remarkable achievement, for someone who lives at the school. As I say, those two years at the little log cabin school shaped all of my future life. From then on, my major goal was to achieve as much freedom as possible. Rich was OK, but I could live without it, as long as I was free.
    Patricia eventually became widely known as “the Troll,” one of the most popular