Benjamin West and His Cat Grimalkin Read online

  “Ho, ho! Look at Grimalkin!” laughed Benjamin nervously.

  A heavy silence was the only answer.

  Slowly Benjamin got up and walked over to the pine dresser. If only John or Thomas or Samuel or Joseph would come to get Papa! But Door-Latch Inn was as still as a meetinghouse. Only the hens clucked beneath the windows.

  With trembling hands, Benjamin took the stack of pictures from the bottom drawer of the dresser. He handed Papa the one of Sally.

  It was as if Papa hated even to touch it. Gingerly he laid it on his lap. He reached into his pocket and took out his square-rimmed spectacles. Slowly he adjusted them under his beetling brows. Then he brought the picture up close.

  For a long moment he said nothing. Grimalkin lowered his tail at the awful stillness. Mamma’s spoon dropped out of her hand with a loud clatter.

  Finally Papa placed the drawing on the table. “The image of Sally should be carried in our hearts,” he said, as he looked up over the rims of his spectacles. “Not on a piece of paper. Pictures fade; memories remain green forever.”

  “Green!” shouted Benjamin. “How I long to put green into my pictures! I tried to draw a hummer bird yesterday, as he dipped his beak into a flower. I wanted to paint his shiny green head. But all I had was red and black ink.”

  Papa shook his head, as he looked at the pictures of redheaded woodpeckers and swamp roses and bushes with scarlet berries.

  “It would be better to study cabbages and turnips. Or even gooseberries,” he said with a sniff. “These are gay and gaudy. Pride in pictures shows a worldly spirit.”

  “But, Papa! I am not proud of these pictures. I aim to do better. Much better. If only I had more colors!”

  At this Papa gave up. “Tell me why it is that thee must draw?” he asked.

  Now Benjamin was at a loss. How could he explain the need for putting things on paper? How could he explain that?

  “Was it that Sally’s smile is fleeting and thee wished to hold it?” asked Mamma.

  “That’s it, Mamma. That’s it! The hummer bird, too, is gone in winter. Yet I could capture him on paper.”

  Now Grimalkin stretched his muscles and looked up at Papa as if he wished to add a few remarks. First he uttered a little sneeze to attract attention, as people sometimes clear their throats. Then he started talking.

  “Yee-oo, mrr-aow, mee-aw-oo, ye-ah-oo.” Louder and louder he talked until finally he flung back his head and opened his mouth so wide it showed all the black ridges inside.

  Papa sat silent and thoughtful for a moment. Then his eyes twinkled. “Grimalkin is right,” he said. “To preserve good actions on paper can do no harm. Benjamin is but a lad, Mamma. He will outgrow this.” Then turning to Benjamin he said, “Thee may continue with thy drawing—if it does not interfere with chores.”

  Benjamin wanted to scoop Grimalkin up in his arms and dance in circles like a whirl beetle. He wanted to toss Papa’s hat to the sky. He wanted to hug Papa until they both gasped for breath. But all he said was, “Thank thee, Papa. Now I shall see about Nanny Luddy’s shoe.” And he frisked Grimalkin’s whiskers for pure joy.

  Chapter 6

  A-LEAFING

  There!” exclaimed Papa the next morning as he swung a sack of corn on Nanny Luddy’s back. “Hop up in front of the sack and sit firm, Benjamin. Thee is a great stout lad of seven.”

  “I am rising eight, Papa,” corrected Benjamin.

  “By my life!” chuckled Papa. “Time thee was taking the corn to Miller Clinkenbeard’s for grinding. Thy brother Samuel is needed in the fields.”

  Grimalkin came streaking across the courtyard and leaped up on the sack of corn, his paws clinging to Benjamin’s coat.

  At first Benjamin felt big and important to take over Samuel’s work. But it turned out to be a great disappointment. Miller Clinkenbeard did not take his customers in turn. He ground the grain for the grownups first. Sometimes Benjamin had to wait for hours. To make matters worse, the miller treated him like a baby—chucking him under the chin, ruffling his hair and teasing him about needing a cat for company. And when it came time to go, he would actually try to lift Benjamin and Grimalkin, too, onto Nanny Luddy’s back.

  Grimalkin sometimes laid back his ears and scratched at the miller.

  “Please, sir,” Benjamin would say, “Grimalkin and I can mount Nanny by ourselves. If thee will hoist the sack of meal across her back, we can be off.”

  All the way home Benjamin’s face would smart at the memory of Miller Clinkenbeard’s laughter.

  As time went by, Benjamin’s chores doubled. There never seemed a moment left for drawing. Once he had eagerly sanded down some poplar boards and was all ready to draw the weather-vane horse on the barn when along came Papa. At sight of the drawing boards he squinted his eyes and pursed his lips. Then suddenly his face lighted.

  “Benjamin!” he exclaimed. “Has thee noted how the sheep are leaving their wool on bushes and weeds? I would have thee pluck these bits of fleece and put them in a sack. Only watch against the ram that he does not butt thee or Grimalkin.”

  “Yes, Papa,” sighed Benjamin as he took the sack that Papa offered.

  There was no penfold for the sheep. They browsed far and wide. And wherever they went they left behind their telltale bits of fleece. Benjamin had to spend a whole morning collecting a small sack of wool.

  Meanwhile his fingers ached to draw. “I declare!” he complained to Grimalkin. “I would like to exchange places with thee!”

  Grimalkin at the time was rocking on his hind feet and slapping at a piece of fleece that had been lifted by the wind. He forgot his play at sound of Benjamin’s voice and came over to lick his hand as cats will.

  “Someday,” Benjamin promised him, “I shall do a fine portrait of thee, Grimalkin. Someday when I have green color to match thy eyes. And someday when I have time!” he added grimly.

  From sunup to sundown, he worked. The truth of the matter was that in all the Province of Pennsylvania no lad was kept busier. Up at five—cleaning the hen house, bringing in wood, drawing water from the well, feeding the chickens, gathering eggs, pulling weeds in Mamma’s kitchen garden, cleaning out ashes in the fireplace, taking pitchers of warm water and fresh towels to the travelers’ rooms.

  And once these chores were done, Papa’s mind seemed to buzz with new duties. “Benjamin! It would please Mamma to have a new butter paddle. Whittling is a fine activity. It gives the mind time to think on God.” Or, “Benjamin! We sorely need a birdhouse to attract the martins. Foxes have been carrying off our chickens. If we had martins now, they would send out an alarm note to warn the chickens.”

  And Benjamin would spend hours making a birdhouse for the martins or a butter paddle for Mamma.

  “I shall be glad to go to school!” Benjamin told Grimalkin fiercely. “I can draw in my copybooks then. And I shall be glad when the days grow shorter. I can draw at night by candlelight.”

  But Benjamin was wrong. There was no time in school for drawing. Schoolmaster Snevely had a sharp eye for ornament. “Copybooks need no decoration!” he said, tapping his birch rod on Benjamin’s knuckles.

  Even at candlelighting time the work did not let up. Papa could think up indoor tasks as quickly as outdoor ones.

  It was: “Here, lad, thee can whittle some treenails for me.” Or, “Here, Benjamin, this be a good time to polish pewter for Mamma, or to crush herbs in the wooden mortar, or to string slices of apple for drying.”

  One moon-white night Benjamin took a poplar board to bed with him, thinking to draw a silhouette of Grimalkin against the moon. But he awoke at dawn to find his arms locked about the board. He had been too exhausted for anything but sleep.

  At the wash bench the next morning Samuel eyed Benjamin and then burst into a great roar of laughter. “Oh, ho! Thy face is growing as long as Nanny Luddy’s,” he bellowed. “Thee should be over at the horse trough instead of the wash bench.”

  This was more than Benjamin could bear. And just when
things looked their very blackest, suddenly everything brightened. That very morning when Benjamin arrived at school the children were huddled about a sign tacked on the door. The sign read:

  It pains me to be abroad on business for the day. Do not tarry. Return to your homes at once. Come tomorrow—sharp at eight.

  Silas Snevely

  Schoolmaster

  If it pained Schoolmaster Snevely to be away, it did not pain the children at all. In spite of their Quaker training, they whooped and shouted. Many of them stayed to play fox and geese in the schoolyard. But Benjamin raced home.

  “Mamma!” he cried. “Master Snevely is away. The school door is barred. Please, may Grimalkin and I go off into the forest?”

  Mamma was busy dipping the girls’ caps and neckerchiefs into a kettle of starch and indigo blue. She straightened up and turned a searching look on Benjamin.

  “With thy drawing boards?” she questioned.

  Benjamin nodded.

  “ ‘Thee may continue with thy drawing,’ ” said Mamma softly, “ ‘if it does not interfere with chores.’ Those were Papa’s words. I remember them well. Yes, son. Thee may go. And I shall fix a packet of lunch for thee and some bonny clabber for Grimalkin.”

  Benjamin leaped into the air. He picked up Grimalkin and set him on his head like a coonskin cap.

  “But what if Papa finds me in the woods and thinks up a chore?” he asked suddenly, peering out from under Grimalkin’s furry body.

  “I have already thought of a chore,” replied Mamma.

  Benjamin bit his lips. Not Mamma! he thought bitterly. Not Mamma, too!

  Mamma went on with her starching. “It is a fine day to go a-leafing,” she said. “I need a goodly supply of oak leaves to line the oven floor when I bake my bread. A whole winter’s supply I need. Take the stick by the door and string it thick with leaves.”

  There was a smile between them. Going a-leafing was no chore. None at all. The woods were wild with leaves. In a twinkling he could string the stick. Then the day would be his. His!

  He could hardly wait for Mamma to slice the rye-an’-Injun bread and the cold ham left over from yesterday’s dinner. Then while she wrapped the bonny clabber in a cabbage leaf and flavored a little jug of ciderkin with molasses and ginger, Benjamin made his own plans. He filled his pockets with charcoal. He took a small rough board from the pine dresser, and began sanding it frantically. He kept one eye on the door. Papa and the boys were in the flax patch. “And may they stay there!” he prayed as he rubbed and rubbed.

  At last he was ready! With his poplar board and his lunch bulging in his knapsack, he and Grimalkin went out.

  The world was red and gold with autumn. Benjamin took a deep breath, as if to inhale his freedom in one gulp. Then he cleared the wash bench in a flying leap.

  As he crossed the kitchen garden he looked up at the scarecrow. “Do not expect us at noontide,” he said, as he shook the empty tattered sleeve. Then he grinned at his own foolishness.

  The road in front of the inn was deserted. There was not a horse or traveler in sight—only a sow and her pink family.

  “How does thee do, Friend Sow?” asked Benjamin in passing. “What’s that? Thee would like to have thy picture drawn? It vexes me sorely to disappoint thee. But Grimalkin and I are going a-leafing,” he laughed out.

  The road was lined on either side with red sumac. Benjamin parted the bushes and found a narrow Indian trail. And just that quickly he and Grimalkin had entered the forest.

  Chapter 7

  “LITTLE QUEKEL FRIENDS”

  How still it was! Benjamin stopped a moment to listen to the stillness. And then he found that it was not still at all. A hazelnut dropped with a thud at his feet. Bird wings whistled through the forest. And in the distance there was the crackling sound of fire. Benjamin sniffed the wind and followed his nose in great excitement.

  “The Indians! They must be firing the forest to kill off the brush,” he cried. “Make haste, Grimalkin!”

  Grimalkin had stopped to sharpen his claws on a tree. He finished the job to his full satisfaction, then bounded after Benjamin.

  Little banners of smoke now came winding around the tree trunks like ribbons on a Maypole. Benjamin broke into a run.

  “I hope it is old Sassoonan!” he panted as he ran. “If it is, he will bake fish for thee, Grimalkin, and corn cakes for me.”

  Suddenly Benjamin burst full upon the Indians. The splendor of the sight held him motionless. A great circle of fire was licking at the base of a white fir tree. And around the tree danced Chief Sassoonan and his three sons, Bear and Elk and Beaver. Each waved long poles with moistened rags tied at the ends. Then, as soon as the fire leaped above a certain line on the tree trunk, they snuffed it out with the wet rags. There was a loud hissing sound as the water quenched the fire.

  “Why, I know what they are doing!” exclaimed Benjamin. “They are going to fell the tree and hollow out a bark boat!”

  The Indians had not heard. They were too close to the crackling of the fire and the hissing of the water.

  With quick inspiration Benjamin squatted down on the earth and began sketching the scene on his poplar board. As the Indian figures took shape, he frowned. “I long to paint them a good copper-brown,” he said to Grimalkin, who lay curled in the crotch of a tree just above Benjamin’s head. “It seems as if I’m never content.”

  Just then the Indians came running toward Benjamin, their voices raised in a shrill cry. And to the crashing and snapping of boughs, the fir tree toppled to earth.

  Grimalkin, trembling in fear, leaped onto Benjamin’s shoulder.

  “Be not afraid, kitling,” comforted Benjamin. “All will soon be quiet.”

  At that precise moment Sassoonan spied the white boy and the black cat. His old face wrinkled with pleasure. He raised his hand in a salute.

  “Itah!” he said, in a voice that seemed to come from the bottom of a well. “Itah, my little Quekel friends.”

  “And good be to thee, too!” laughed Benjamin, jumping to his feet.

  Then, solemnly, the old Indian chief and the Quaker lad shook hands. Grimalkin sniffed the chief with approval. He liked the smell of bear’s grease which clung to him.

  Meanwhile Bear and Elk and Beaver had gathered about the drawing board. Their beady eyes never changed expression. For a long time they stared at the picture. Finally Sassoonan joined them and took the board in his hands. He pointed to the tree that Benjamin had drawn.

  “Is good,” he said.

  “Why, he says ‘Good’!” exclaimed Benjamin. “Did thee hear that, Grimalkin? Sassoonan says the tree is good.”

  “Amen!” nodded Bear and Elk and Beaver.

  Again Sassoonan picked up the board. This time he pointed to the Indians dancing around the fire. With a look of displeasure he clenched his right fist and threw out his opened hand as if he were tossing away something very unpleasant.

  His sons shouted and said, “Amen!”

  Benjamin was puzzled. Had he hurt Sassoonan’s feelings?

  For answer Sassoonan rose, his old knees cracking like the fire. With his forefinger he motioned Benjamin to pick up his drawing board and follow. Then he reached into a shelter of brush and drew out a deerskin bag filled with bear’s grease.

  In a single file Benjamin, with Grimalkin on his shoulder, and the three young Indians followed Sassoonan. Silently they wound through the forest gloom.

  Benjamin was not in the least afraid. Sassoonan was an old friend. Each year he came to Door-Latch Inn with things to sell—baskets and brooms, venison meat and wild turkey, deerskin, bearskin, beaver and raccoon. Many times Sassoonan’s clan had raised their wigwams in Papa’s orchard and hobbled their horses in the upland meadows. And once Sassoonan had stayed a whole week at the inn while Papa and Mamma went to the Yearly Meeting in Philadelphia.

  Now they were coming out on grassy land close to the stream that skirted the inn. A bridge, made of a single tree trunk, lay across the stre
am. Sassoonan stooped low. He pointed to the bridge and then to his back. It was plain to see that he wanted to carry Benjamin pickaback, as he used to do when Benjamin was very small.

  Benjamin blushed. He was much too big to ride pickaback now, but Sassoonan was chief of the Turtle Clan. It was a great honor to be carried by a chief. Besides, he could not offend Sassoonan. So with Grimalkin still on his shoulder he climbed onto Sassoonan’s back, trying to make himself as light as possible.

  Benjamin watched the old chief’s feet. They curved around the tree trunk as securely as the claws of a woodpecker. He could hardly wait to try it himself.

  When they reached the opposite bank things happened so fast that Benjamin’s eyes were everywhere at once. At a word from Sassoonan, Bear began scooping up handfuls of red earth. Beaver began scooping up handfuls of yellow clay. Then with a small stone for a muller and a large flat stone for a grinding slab, Bear and Beaver began to grind the lumps of earth. Elk, meanwhile, was gathering mussel shells.

  Beaver finished first. His red earth was powdered very fine. Sassoonan now took a mussel shell from Elk and poured some of the powdered earth into it. Then he mixed it with bear’s grease and stirred and stirred until it formed a reddish-brown paste. At last, with a look of triumph, he handed the mixture to Benjamin and pointed to the drawing board.

  Benjamin dipped his finger into the color. It trembled a little as he painted the Indian figures a rich coppery red.

  “Grimalkin!” he shouted. “At last I have color! Color! Color!”

  Grimalkin acted as if he understood. He leaped several times into the air and mewed his approval.

  “Amen! Amen! Amen!” the Indians cried.

  Suddenly they began stripping pieces of birch bark from a stand of trees near the water. Then they squatted on their heels and began to paint on the bark with the red and yellow colors they had made.

  Benjamin watched openmouthed. The Indians were working with fine skill. Sassoonan was painting a turtle because he was chief of the Turtle Clan. The youngest Indian was painting a beaver because his name meant beaver. The second Indian was painting a bear, and the third an elk.