mark tidd wasn’t given much to exercise, but that isn’t saying he couldn’t stir around spry if there was some good reason. he never wanted to play baseball or tag or anything where you had to run, and usually when a game was going on he’d be lying under a tree reading a book. he said it was a lot easier reading about a game than playing it, and more interesting than watching the kind we played. he read a good deal, anyhow, mostly, i guess, because you can sit so still to do it, and rest at the same time if you want to; and it was surprising the things he got to know about that were useful to us. seemed like almost everything we wanted to do mark would have read about some better way of doing it, and that’s how we came to get up the k. k. k., which stands for ku klux klan.
we were all sitting in tidd’s yard where the shade of the barn fell, and nobody had said anything for quite a spell. i was beginning to want to do something, and it was easy to see that plunk and binney were wriggling around uneasy like; but mark he lay with his little eyes shut tight, looking as peaceful and satisfied as a turtle on a log. all of a sudden the idea popped into my head, and i yelled right out, “let’s git up a secret society.”
mark opened one eye and sort of blinked at me, and plunk and binney sat up straight.
“what’ll we call it?” binney wanted to know.
“who’ll be officers?” plunk asked.
“i dunno,” i says, sharp like, because they seemed to think i ought to have the whole thing planned out for them to do without their lifting a hand.
mark rubbed his eyes and rolled over on his side. “what’s the main thing about a s-secret society?” he asks.
“payin’ dues,” i says, quick.
“havin’ somethin’ to eat,” binney guessed.
“naw,” mark grunts, contemptuous. “the main thing about a secret society is the s-s-secret.”
we could see in a minute that he was right about that.
“so,” he went on, “if we’re goin’ to have a secret society the first thing is to git a s-s-secret to have.”
“i don’t know no secret,” binney said, shaking his head hard.
“nor me,” said plunk.
i thought a minute, because i knew a couple of secrets, but they were secrets i didn’t calculate to tell anybody, least of all mark and plunk and binney; so i just shook my head, too.
“we’ll make a secret,” mark told us.
“how?” i wanted to know, because i didn’t see how you could go to work to make a secret, but i might have known mark would find a way.
“did you ever hear of the k-k-k-ku k-k-k-klux k-k-k-klan?”
“what?” i asked.
he said it over again.
“i didn’t git it that time,” i told him. “sounds like a tongue-tied hen tryin’ to cackle.”
mark sort of scowled at me and did it all over, but not one of us could make a thing of it.
“write it,” i said; “that’s the only way we’ll ever git it.”
at first he wasn’t going to do it, but we argued with him that it wasn’t any use spoiling a good thing like a secret society just because he couldn’t mention plain a name he wanted to tell us; so at last he wrote it down on a piece of paper. what he wrote was ku klux klan.
“it don’t make no sense,” binney said. “what language is it, anyhow? dutch?”
“it ain’t no language. it’s a name.”
“oh.”
“of the most p-p-powerful secret society that ever was.”
“i reckon it was over in russia or somewheres. it sounds like it.”
“it was right here in the united states.”
“hum,” i said, because that name didn’t sound a bit like the united states to me.
“it was after the war.”
“the spanish war?”
“no. the north and south war.”
“oh.... that one. what was it for?”
“for protection. they went ridin’ around at night rightin’ wrongs and scarin’ folks and runnin’ things in general. they wore white sheets over their heads.”
“gee. honest?”
“it’s in the histories.”
“and it was secret?”
“the most secret thing ever was. even men in it didn’t know who one another was.”
“let’s have one,” plunk yelled, squirming around like he was sitting on an ant’s nest. “i kin git a sheet.”
“who’s goin’ to b’long?” i said; and then we all looked at one another.
“nobody but us four,” binney whispers, because he’s beginning to feel secret already. there wasn’t any argument to that, so we agreed to be a ku klux klan, and to have our secret meeting-place in a little cave up across from the island where the swimming-hole was. it wasn’t much of a cave. just a little round room dug out of the hill by somebody a long time ago. i couldn’t stand up straight in it, and when we four was all inside there wasn’t much room left—not with mark tidd taking up the space he did.
well, each of us got a sheet and hid it there, and we kept potatoes to bake and an old frying-pan and a kettle and other things like that in case of emergency, for there was no knowing what might come up with an organization like ours, and we knew we had to be ready. mark made up passwords and grips and secret signs; and we had an alphabet all of our own that we could write letters to one another in, which was fine, even though there never seemed to be anything very secret to write. but there come to be later on, and there was a time when we was glad of the cave and the potatoes and the frying-pan. but that wasn’t until the next spring, and lots of things happened before then.
i guess maybe it was a month after we organized the klan when the stranger came to town. we were cooking dinner up at the cave that day—a black bass, four perch, and a couple of blue-gills, with baked potatoes—and we were just scouring the dishes with sand when we looked down and saw uncle ike bond come ambling along the river. uncle ike drove the bus when it was necessary and fished the rest of the time, which was most of the time; and he caught fish, too; lots of them. i guess he got a good many on night lines.
binney jenks yelled down at uncle ike, and he looked up to see who it was. when he recognized mark tidd he sat down sort of tired on a log and motioned for us to come. he was a great friend of mark’s since the day the tidds moved to town; and he let on to folks that mark was the smartest boy in wicksville, which i wouldn’t be surprised if he was.
we all went down the hill, three of us running, and mark panting along behind and puffing and snorting.
“expectin’ any visitors?” uncle ike asked of mark.
“no,” said mark, and sat down.
“um!” grunted uncle ike.
he pulled out his pipe and fussed at it with his jack-knife before he filled it and lighted up. “looks kinder like you was goin’ to have some,” he said.
mark didn’t answer anything or ask questions, because if you do uncle ike is apt to shut up like a clam and not tell you another thing. he waited, knowing ike’d tell on if there was anything to say. the old man puffed away for a spell and then asked:
“father’s makin’ some sort of a whirligig, ain’t he?”
“yes. he’s inventin’ a e-e-engine.”
“um!” grunted uncle ike. “calc’late it’s wuth anythin’?”
mark nodded yes.
“feller come in on the mornin’ train that seemed tolerable int’rested in sich whirligigs,” said uncle ike. “he allowed to set onto the seat with me and asked was i acquainted in town—me! asked was i acquainted in town!” it was hard for me to tell whether this made uncle ike mad or tickled him. he was that way, and you never could make him out. sometimes when he was maddest he looked most tickled, and when he was most tickled he looked maddest.
“i allowed as how i knowed a few of the citizens by sight and more’n a dozen to speak to,” uncle ike went on, “and then he up and begun wantin’ to know. when folks gits to the wantin’-to-know stage on short acquaintance i git to the don’t-want-to-tell stage, and mister man didn’t collect no amazin’ store of knowledge, not while he was a-ridin’ on my bus.”
he stopped talking and looked at mark, and mark looked at him. then uncle ike winked at mark. “if i was a smart boy,” he said, “and a stranger feller come to town snoopin’ around and askin’ questions about whirligigs, i’d sorter look into it, i would. and if that stranger feller was askin’ about the i-dentical kind of a whirligig my father was makin’ in the barn and calc’latin’ to git rich out of i’d look into it perty close. and if my father was one of these here inventor fellers that forgits their own names and would trust a cow to walk through a cornfield i’d be perty sharp and plannin’ and keep my eye peeled. that’s what i’d do, and i ain’t drove a bus these twenty years for nothin’, neither. the place to git eddicated,” he said, “is on top of a bus. there ain’t nothin’ like it. there’s where you see folks goin’ away and comin’ home, and there’s where you see strangers and actors and travelin’-men, and everybody that walks the face of the earth. colleges is all right, maybe, for readin’ and writin’, but when it comes to knowin’ who you kin depend on and who you got to look out for the bus is the place.”
“did he ask about f-f-father?” mark wanted to know.
“he didn’t mention him by name,” said uncle ike, grinning. “but he says to me, says he, ‘this is a nice town,’ says he, ‘and a town that looks as if there was smart folks in it. it’s lettle towns like this,’ he says, ‘that inventors and other great men comes from,’ says he. ‘have you got any inventors here?’ he asks.
“‘there’s pete biggs,’ i says. ‘he’s up and invented a way to live without workin’.’
“‘is that all?’ he asks, kind of disappointed.
“‘wa-al,’ i says, like i was tryin’ hard to remember, ‘i did hear that slim peters invented some kind of a new front gate that would keep itself shut. but ’twan’t no go,’ i says, ‘’cause slim he had to chop down the gate with a ax,’ i says, ‘the first time he wanted to go through it. it was a fine gate to stay shut,’ i says, ‘but it wa’n’t no good at all to come open.’
“‘ain’t there anybody here tryin’ to make an engine?’ he put in.
“‘engine?’ says i. ‘engines is already invented, ain’t they? what’s the use inventin’ when some other feller’s done it first?’
“‘i mean a new kind of an engine,’ he says, ‘a kind they call a turbine?’
“‘oh,’ says i. ‘i ain’t met up with no engines like that, not in wicksville. we ain’t much on fancy names here, and i guess if a wicksville feller had invented anythin’ he wouldn’t have named it that—he’d ’a’ called it a engine right out.’
“‘umph!’ says the feller, like he was mad, and then got out at the hotel. i stopped long enough to see him talkin’ with bert sawyer, so it’s likely he knowed all bert did inside of ten minutes. and that’s all there was to it.” he looked at mark with his eyes twinkling.
mark got up kind of slow, blinking his eyes and looking back at uncle ike.
“i guess i’ll go home,” he said.
uncle ike slapped his knee and laughed a rattling kind of laugh way down in his throat. “there,” he whispered, like he was talking confidential to binney and plunk and me, “what’d i tell you? hey? what’d i tell you? don’t take him long to make up his mind, eh? quicker’n a flash; slicker’n greased lightnin’!”
we went off up the hill after mark, leaving uncle ike sitting on the log laughing to himself and slapping his leg every minute or so. he sat there till we were out of sight.
