Summer Adventure

Author: Wilson Rawls (USA)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: Before the age of fourteen, I lived happier than any other child. In this world, I was truly carefree. In fact, I had already begun to believe that my path to growth would be smooth, without any difficulties. But just when everything seemed to be going my way, something went wrong. A group of monkeys got involved with me. They nearly drove me to despair, and joy left me forever. If the trouble caused by the monkeys had been limited to myself, that would not have been so bad. But I had dragged my grandfather into it, so I felt quite dreadful. Because my grandfather was my companion, he always tried his best to help me. I even tricked and coaxed my adorable dog, Roddy, into helping me deal with the monkeys' trouble. But the result was even worse than what I and my grandfather had done. Gradually, Roddy grew to hate me, the monkeys, and everything else so much that it wouldn't even come out of its den when I called it. That was already the late 19th century, but it was as vivid as if it had happened yesterday. In short, at that time, we moved to a newly settled place. The farm we lived on was called the Land of Cherokees. Because it was located right in the middle of the Cherokee region, stretching from the hilly areas of the Ozark Mountains to the narrow strip of land along the western bank of the Illinois River in northeastern Oklahoma. For anyone who wanted to find a group of wild monkeys, this might have been the last place left in the world. When my parents came here to settle down, I was not much bigger than a small kangaroo. But when I grew a little older, my father told me everything. How long he and my mother had been married; how they had rented land to farm by trading grain in Missouri; how unhappy they were living that way, because in those years, tenant farmers were treated no better than greedy and selfish thieves—no one respected you. My mother and father were young and full of vigor at the time, though the discrimination they faced was almost unbearable, they restrained themselves and continued to farm the rented land while saving every dollar they could, hoping one day to buy a farm of their own. But just when everything was going smoothly, something unexpected happened. My mother gave birth to twins, me and my sister Daisy. My father said I was the first to be born, and he had never seen a stronger child than me. I was like a ripe blueberry, sun-kissed and reddish; I was also as lively and adorable as a squirrel in a cage. But Daisy was different. She was born with a bent right leg, and it was obvious from the outside that something was wrong with it. The doctor said that the problem with Daisy's leg was not serious and could be fixed with surgery on the muscles and tendons. He said some doctors in Oklahoma could make a withered leg as straight as a rifle barrel. But it would cost quite a lot of money, and money was exactly what my father and mother lacked. My mother cried often during those days and often prayed, but it seemed that nothing helped. It was already bad enough being a tenant farmer in that rented land, but now they had a daughter with a withered leg and couldn't afford to treat it—what a double blow! Later...