評論
打印
His father drove a dark-red truck that was always muddy or dusty. Mike and I climbed into the cab when it rained, and the rain washed down the windows and made a racket like stones on the roof. The smell was of men—their work clothes and tools and tobacco and mucky boots and sour-cheese socks. Also of damp longhaired dog, because we took my dog, Ranger, in with us. One day when Ranger was with us he chased a skunk, and the skunk turned and sprayed him. My mother had to stop whatever she was doing and drive into town and get several large tins of tomato juice, and Mike persuaded Ranger to get into a tub and we poured the tomato juice over him and brushed it into his hair. It looked as if we were washing him in blood.
邁克的父親總是駕著一輛臟兮兮的深紅色的卡車。下雨的時候，我和邁克就爬到駕駛室里。雨水打在車窗上有很大的聲響，聽起來就像是石塊兒打在屋頂上。車里充滿著男人的氣味——他們的工作服、工具、煙草以及臟靴子和發出酸奶酪氣味的襪子。還有濕漉漉的長毛狗，那是我的狗蘭杰，我們把它也帶來了。有一天，我們把蘭杰帶出來，他去追趕一只臭鼬，那只臭鼬掉過頭向它噴射。媽媽不得不立即停下手里的活，駕車到鎮上去買了幾大罐子的番茄汁。邁克把蘭杰哄到盆里，然后我們把番茄汁傾倒在它身上，再用刷子刷它的毛發，看起來就好像我們在用鮮血給它洗澡。
Our farm was small—nine acres. It was small enough for me to have explored every part of it. Each of the trees on the place had an attitude and a presence—the elm looked serene and the oak threatening, the maples friendly, the hawthorn old and crabby. Even the pits on the river flats had their distinct character.
我家的農場很小——9英畝。正是因為它足夠小，我可以探索它的每個角落。這里的每一棵樹都有其特殊的神態。比如，榆樹看上去寧靜安詳，橡樹則咄咄逼人，楓樹親切友好，而山楂樹則老氣橫秋，脾氣暴躁，甚至河岸上的坑凹都有它們自己的的特征。
The river in August was almost as much a stony road as it was a watercourse. Mike and I took off our shoes and waded—jumping from one bare, bone-white rock to another, slipping on the scummy rocks below the surface, and plowing through mats of flat-leafed water lilies, trapping our legs in their snaky roots.
八月的河是條水道，幾乎也是一條石頭路。我和邁克光著腳，趟著河水，從一個雪白的石塊兒上跳到另一個上，滑倒在水面下的臟石頭上。于是我們吃力地在一團團長著扁平葉子的睡蓮中蹚行，兩腿陷在纏繞的睡蓮根中。
I went to the country school beyond our farm, but Mike had been going to the town school since spring and town boys were not strangers to him. There were girls farther up on the bank. They might have followed the boys out from town—pretending not to follow—or the boys might have come along after them, intending some harassment, but somehow when they had all got together, this game had taken shape. It was a game of war. The boys had divided themselves into two armies that fought each other from behind barricades made of tree branches and water weeds. The chief weapons were balls of clay, about the size of baseballs. You squeezed and patted the sticky clay into as hard a ball as you could make, and there had to be a great many of these balls, because they were good for only one throw.
我在遠離農場的鄉村學校讀書，可邁克自春天起就去了鎮上的學校，所以鎮上的男孩兒和邁克都非常熟悉。在河岸上更遠處還有鎮上的女孩兒。她們可能是尾隨男孩子從鎮上來到這里的，但又要裝作并不是跟著他們來的，再或者是男孩子企圖欺負她們尾隨而來的。但又無論怎樣，他們一起來了，游戲也就可以玩了。這是一場戰爭的游戲。男孩兒們分成兩隊，然后躲在由樹枝、水草支成的障礙物后開始他們的戰斗。主要武器就是棒球大小的泥球。你需要用力將粘土捏成球狀，需要許多這種球，因為每一個球只能擲一次。
