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Stolen Day
by Sherwood Anderson
It must be that all children are actors. The whole thing started with a boy on our street named Walter, who had inflammatory rheumatism. That's what they called it. He didn't have to go to school.
Still he could walk about. He could go fishing in the creek or the waterworks pond. There was a place up at the pond where in the spring the water came tumbling over the dam and formed a deep pool. It was a good place. Sometimes you could get some big ones there.
I went down that way on my way to school one spring morning. It was out of my way but I wanted to see if Walter was there.
He was, inflammatory rheumatism and all. There he was, sitting with a fish pole in his hand. He had been able to walk down there all right.
It was then that my own legs began to hurt. My back too. I went on to school but, at the recess time, I began to cry. I did it when the teacher, Sarah Suggett, had come out into the schoolhouse yard.
She came right over to me.
"I ache all over," I said. I did, too.
I kept on crying and it worked all right.
"You'd better go home," she said.
So I went. I limped painfully away. I kept on limping until I got out of the schoolhouse street.
Then I felt better. I still had inflammatory rheumatism pretty bad but I could get along better.
I must have done some thinking on the way home.
"I'd better not say I have inflammatory rheumatism," I decided. "Maybe if you've got that you swell up."
I thought I'd better go around to where Walter was and ask him about that, so I did—but he wasn't there.
"They must not be biting today," I thought.
I had a feeling that, if I said I had inflammatory rheumatism, Mother or my brothers and my sister Stella might laugh. They did laugh at me pretty often and I didn't like it at all.
"Just the same," I said to myself, "I have got it." I began to hurt and ache again.
I went home and sat on the front steps of our house. I sat there a long time. There wasn't anyone at home but Mother and the two little ones. Ray would have been four or five then and Earl might have been three.
It was Earl who saw me there. I had got tired sitting and was lying on the porch. Earl was always a quiet, solemn little fellow.
He must have said something to Mother for presently she came.
"What's the matter with you? Why aren't you in school?" she asked.
I came pretty near telling her right out that I had inflammatory rheumatism but I thought I'd better not. Mother and Father had been speaking of Walter's case at the table just the day before. "It affects the heart," Father had said. That frightened me when I thought of it. "I might die," I thought. "I might just suddenly die right here; my heart might stop beating."
On the day before I had been running a race with my brother Irve. We were up at the fairgrounds after school and there was a half-mile track.
"I'll bet you can't run a half mile," he said. "I bet you I could beat you running clear around the track."
And so we did it and I beat him, but afterward my heart did seem to beat pretty hard. I remembered that lying there on the porch. "It's a wonder, with my inflammatory rheumatism and all, I didn't just drop down dead," I thought. The thought frightened me a lot. I ached worse than ever.
"I ache, Ma," I said. "I just ache."
She made me go in the house and upstairs and get into bed.
It wasn't so good. It was spring. I was up there for perhaps an hour, maybe two, and then I felt better.
I got up and went downstairs. "I feel better, ma," I said.
Mother said she was glad. She was pretty busy that day and hadn't paid much attention to me. She had made me get into bed upstairs and then hadn't even come up to see how I was.
I didn't think much of that when I was up there but when I got downstairs where she was, and when, after I had said I felt better and she only said she was glad and went right on with her work, I began to ache again.
I thought, "I'll bet I die of it. I bet I do." I was pretty sore at Mother.
"If she really knew the truth, that I have inflammatory rheumatism and I may just drop down dead any time, I'll bet she wouldn't care about that either," I thought.
I was getting more and more angry the more thinking I did.
"I know what I'm going to do," I thought; "I'm going to go fishing."
I thought that, feeling the way I did, I might be sitting on the high bank just above the deep pool where the water went over the dam, and suddenly my heart would stop beating.
And then, of course, I'd pitch forward, over the bank into the pool and, if I wasn't dead when I hit the water, I'd drown sure.
They would all come home to supper and they'd miss me.
"But where is he?"
Then Mother would remember that I'd come home from school aching.
She'd go upstairs and I wouldn't be there. One day during the year before, there was a child got drowned in a spring. It was one of the Wyatt children.
Right down at the end of the street there was a spring under a birch tree and there had been a barrel sunk in the ground.
Everyone had always been saying the spring ought to be kept covered, but it wasn't.
So the Wyatt child went down there, played around alone and fell in and got drowned.
Mother was the one who had found the drowned child. She had gone to get a pail of water and there the child was, drowned and dead.
This had been in the evening when we were all at home, and Mother had come running up the street with the dead, dripping child in her arms. She was making for the Wyatt house as hard as she could run, and she was pale.
She had a terrible look on her face, I remembered then.
"So," I thought, "they'll miss me and there'll be a search made. Very likely there'll be someone who has seen me sitting by the pond fishing, and there'll be a big alarm and all the town will turn out and they'll drag the pond."
I was having a grand time, having died. Maybe, after they found me and had got me out of the deep pool, Mother would grab me up in her arms and run home with me as she had run with the Wyatt child.
I got up from the porch and went around the house. I got my fishing pole and lit out for the pool below the dam. Mother was busy—she always was—and didn't see me go. When I got there I thought I'd better not sit too near the edge of the high bank.
By this time I didn't ache hardly at all, but I thought:
"With inflammatory rheumatism you can't tell," I thought.
"It probably comes and goes," I thought.
"Walter has it and he goes fishing," I thought.
I had got my line into the pool and suddenly I got a bite. It was a regular whopper. I knew that. I'd never had a bite like that.
I knew what it was. It was one of Mr. Fenn's big carp.
Mr. Fenn was a man who had a big pond of his own. He sold ice in the summer and the pond was to make the ice. He had bought some big carp and put them into his pond and then, earlier in the spring when there was a freshet, his dam had gone out.
So the carp had got into our creek and one or two big ones had been caught—but none of them by a boy like me.
The carp was pulling and I was pulling and I was afraid he'd break my line, so I just tumbled down the high bank, holding onto the line and got right into the pool. We had it out, there in the pool. We struggled. We wrestled. Then I got a hand under his gills and got him out.
He was a big one all right. He was nearly half as big as I was myself. I had him on the bank and I kept one hand under his gills and I ran.
I never ran so hard in my life. He was slippery, and now and then he wriggled out of my arms; once I stumbled and fell on him, but I got him home.
So there it was. I was a big hero that day. Mother got a washtub and filled it with water. She put the fish in it and all the neighbors came to look. I got into dry clothes and went down to supper—and then I made a break that spoiled my day.
There we were, all of us, at the table, and suddenly Father asked what had been the matter with me at school. He had met the teacher, Sarah Suggett, on the street and she had told him how I had become ill.
"What was the matter with you?" Father asked, and before I thought what I was saying I let it out.
"I had the inflammatory rheumatism," I said—and a shout went up. It made me sick to hear them, the way they all laughed.
It brought back all the aching again, and like a fool I began to cry.
"Well, I have got it—I have, I have," I cried, and I got up from the table and ran upstairs.
I stayed there until Mother came up. I knew it would be a long time before I heard the last of the inflammatory rheumatism. I was sick all right, but the aching I now had wasn't in my legs or in my back.
( 1,744 words ) TOP
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课文二
逃学记
舍伍德·安德森
一定是所有的孩子都会演戏。整个故事源于一个住在我们街上的小男孩，他叫渥尔特，有风湿性关节炎，人们都这么叫这病。他不用上学。
但他仍可以四处走动。他可以在小溪或公共池塘边钓鱼。池塘上有一块地方，到了春天，水便哗哗地流过大坝，形成了一个深水池。那真是个好地方。有时你可以在那儿钓到大鱼。
一个春天的早晨，我沿着那条路去上学。其实不顺路，但我想看看渥尔特是不是在那儿。
他只是有风湿性关节炎。他坐在那儿，手里拿着一根钓鱼杆。尽管他有病，走到那儿可是毫无问题。
就在那时我的腿开始痛了，后背也一样，我还是坚持走到了学校，但课间休息的时候我开始哭。就在这时莎拉·苏格特老师走进了校舍大院。
她径直向我走来。
“我浑身疼。”我说。事实的确如此。
我不停地哭，这倒挺有用的。
“你还是回家吧！”她说。
于是我走了，非常痛苦地、一步一拐地离开了。我继续一瘸一拐地走着，直到走出了校区那条街。
现在我感觉舒服一点了，虽然我的风湿性关节炎还是很严重，但已经好多了。
在回家的路上，我不禁想了很多事情。
“我最好还是别说得了风湿性关节炎,”我决定。“得了这病是非常麻烦的。”
我想最好还是去渥尔特那里问问他。于是我去了，但他并不在那儿。
“今天一定没有鱼儿上钩。”我想。
我有一种感觉，如果我说得了风湿性关节炎，母亲、兄弟们和妹妹斯泰拉可能会笑我。他们经常笑我，而我非常不喜欢他们那样。
“笑不笑都一样，”我对自己说：“反正我已经得了这个病。”我又开始疼上了。
我回到家，坐在房前的台阶上。我在那儿坐了好久。只有母亲和两个弟弟在家。瑞已经四、五岁了，而埃尔也有三岁了。
埃尔看到了我。其实我已经坐累了，便躺在走廊上。埃尔是一个安静、严肃的小家伙。
他一定和母亲说些了什么，母亲很快便走了过来。
“你怎么了？怎么不去上课？”她问。
我差点儿就说出自己得了风湿性关节炎，但我想最好还是别说。就在前天吃饭时，母亲和父亲还提到过渥尔特的事。“这病是要影响心脏的，”父亲说。一想到这儿我就吓坏了。“我要死了，”我想：“可能突然一下子死在这里。我的心脏可能会不跳了。”
前天，我和兄弟欧弗比过一场赛跑。放学后，我们到比赛场地玩，看到那儿有一个半英里长的跑道。
“我打赌你跑不了半英里，”他说：“在这个跑道上我就能赢你一大截。”
就这样我们比赛了，我赢了他。但之后我的心脏似乎跳动得非常剧烈。躺在走廊里，我想到了这件事。“真是奇迹啊！我有风湿性关节炎，当时居然没有立刻倒下去死掉。”想到这儿，我吓坏了，感觉比以前更痛了。
“我很痛，妈妈，”我说：“就是痛。”
她扶我进屋，上楼，并让我睡下。
这可不怎么好，要知道正是春暖花开的时候啊。我躺在那里，也许过了一个小时，也许两小时，感觉好多了。
我下床来到楼下。“妈妈，我好一点了，”我说。
母亲说她很高兴。那天她很忙，并没有特别留意我。让我上楼睡觉后，她甚至没再上来看看我。
我躺在那儿时并没有想很多，但一想到我下楼去她那儿，告诉她我感觉好多了，而她只说了声非常高兴便继续工作，我就又开始痛了。
我想：“我一定会因为生这个病死去的，一定会。”我很是生母亲的气。
“我肯定，就算她知道我得了风湿性关节炎，而且任何时候都可能倒下死去，她也同样不会关心的。”我想。
想得越多，我就越生气。
“我知道自己要做什么，”我想：“我要去钓鱼。”
我一边想，一边感受，我会坐在高高的堤岸上，就在河水漫过水坝形成的深水池的上面，突然，我的心脏不跳了。
接着，我当然会向前一头栽下去，从堤岸坠入池中。就算我落水时还没死，也一定会被淹死。
他们都会回家吃饭的，唯独少了我。
“他去哪儿了？”
然后母亲想起来我曾痛苦地从学校回到家里。
她会上楼找我，而我却不在。去年有一天，一个小孩儿淹死在泉水里。是瓦特家的孩子。
就在这条街的尽头，在一棵桦树下面，有一潭泉水。水底还沉着一只大桶。
人们总说应该把这潭泉水遮住，但却没有这么做。
这个瓦特家的孩子就这么走到那儿，一个人玩，然后掉下去淹死了。
正是母亲发现了那个溺水的孩子。她去打水，而那个孩子淹死在那儿。
这事儿发生在傍晚，我们都在家。母亲抱着那个死去的、湿透了的孩子跑到街上。她步履艰难地跑向瓦特家，脸色苍白。
她脸上那可怕的神情我到现在还记得。
“所以，”我想：“他们会想起我，会到处找我。很可能有人看到我坐在池塘边儿钓鱼，这会引起很大的惊慌，整个小镇都将出动，到池塘捞遍。”
我死后将轰动一时。也许，在他们发现我并把我拖出池塘后，母亲会抱着我跑回家，就像抱着瓦特家的孩子那样。
我从走廊里站起来，在房子里绕了一圈，拿了根鱼杆，轻轻地出门，朝大坝下面的池塘走去。母亲很忙——她总是这样——所以没看见我出去。到了那里以后，我想我还是别坐得太靠岸边了。
这时，我并不是非常痛，但我想：
“风湿性关节炎可没准儿。”
“它总是来去无常，”我想。
“渥尔特有这病，他还可以钓鱼，”我想。
先前我已经把鱼线放进池里了。这时，突然有鱼上钩了。这是个大家伙，我知道。我从没钓过这么大的鱼。
我知道它是什么鱼。它是一条芬恩先生养的大鲤鱼。
芬恩先生有一个很大的私人水塘。他夏天卖冰，而水塘就是造冰用的。他买了许多大鲤鱼放在他的水塘里，而今年早些时候，发了一场春洪，他的水坝漏了。
所以鲤鱼游到了我们的小溪里。有一两条大鱼已经被钓到了——但都不是像我这样的小孩儿抓住的。
鲤鱼拼命地向下拉，我拼命地向上拖。我担心它会挣断鱼线，所以只好抓紧线，手忙脚乱地顺着堤岸一路蹭下去，正好掉进池子里。于是，我们就在水里一决胜负。我们挣扎着，搏斗着。最后，我的手伸到了它的腮下，把它抓出了水面。
它的确是条大鱼，几乎有我的一半个头。我把它弄到岸上，一只手抓着它的鳃，往家跑去。
我从未跑得这么辛苦。它很滑，不停地在我手里挣扎。有一次我摔倒了，压在它上面，但我还是把它带回家了。
就这样，我成了大英雄。母亲准备了一个洗衣盆，灌好水，把鱼放了进去。所有的邻居都来看这条鱼。我换了件干衣服，下楼来吃饭。这时，我的一个不智之举把一天都搞砸了。
我们都在吃饭，突然，父亲问我在学校出了什么事。他在路上遇见了莎拉老师，老师告诉他我病了。
“你哪儿不舒服？”父亲问。没等考虑一下应该怎么说，我就脱口而出道：“我得了风湿性关节炎。”他们一阵大笑。这种笑真叫我难受。
所有的疼痛又回来了，我像个傻瓜似地哭起来。
“我的确得了这种病，真的，真的。”我哭了，站起来，冲上楼去。
我一直呆在房里，后来母亲上楼来看我。我知道她会很长一段时间没完没了地讲风湿性关节炎。我的确病了，现在还觉得痛。但这疼痛并非源于我的双腿和后背。
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