"Pictures in her mind like you're lazy. And like she wanted to hurt you," I said.
Gramp's eyes got wide. He kept looking at me, and then he said, "Get your cap, Chum. We're gonna take a little walk."
Gramp didn't say anything until we walked all the way to the main road and past Mr. Watchorn's corn field. I walked behind him, counting the little round holes his wooden leg made in the gravel. Finally Gramp said, "Abracadabra."
That was our secret word. It meant that if I was playing one of our games, I was to stop for awhile. Gramp and I had lots of games we played. One of them was where we made believe. Sometimes we'd play that Gramp and I had been working all day, when we really just stayed in the shade telling stories. Then when we got home and Gramma asked us what we had done, we'd tell her about how hard we had worked.
"I really did see mad pictures in Gramma's mind," I said.
"Have you ever seen pictures in anybody's mind before?" Gramp asked.
"I always see them," I said. "Don't you?"
"No," Gramp said after a minute. "Other people can't either. You're probably the only little boy who can."
"Is that bad?"
"No," Gramp answered. "It's good. But remember how I told you that people don't like other people who are different? Well, even though seeing pictures like you do is a wonderful thing, other people won't like you if they know you can do it. So we'll just keep it a secret between us."
I was glad Gramp told me, because he always knows the best things to do. I'm his Chum. I love him better than anyone else in the whole world. Whenever the other kids tease me and call me Crazy Joe I go to Gramp and he tells me funny stories and makes me laugh.
I remember the first time he told me about people hating other people who are different.
"Why do the kids call me Crazy Joe and laugh at me?" I asked him.
"Well, you see," Gramp said slowly, "your Daddy worked for Uncle Sam in a big place where they make things that the government won't tell anybody about. Then your Daddy got sick from something in the big place. After a long time he went up to stay with God. Then God took Mommy too, when He gave you to her. And now you're our little boy, mine and Gramma's. And because you're a very special kind of little boy, the other children are jealous. So I wouldn't play with them any more if they tease you. Just don't let them see you're afraid of them. You'll always be Gramp's Little Joe."
I love Gramp very much....
We kept walking until we came to Fayette. We went into Carl Van Remortal's store. Gramp sat on a chair by the big iron stove and I sat on his knee on his good leg. The stove must be real old, because it's got 1926 on its door in big iron letters.
"Tell me the pictures you see in Mr. Van's mind," Gramp whispered in my ear, "but don't let him hear you."
"He's making pictures of the fishing boats coming in," I said. "In the pictures he's talking to Jack La Salle and giving him some money for his fish.... The pictures are getting all mixed up now. He's putting the fish in ice in boxes, but other pictures show him in church. Jack La Salle is in the church too, and Mr. Van's sister Margaret is dressed in a long white dress and standing alongside him."
"He's thinking that Jack La Salle will be marrying Margaret pretty soon," Gramp said. "What else is he thinking?"
"The pictures are coming so fast now that I can't name them all," I said.
Mr. Lawrence St. Ours came into the store, and Gramp told me to read what he was thinking. I looked inside his head.
"He's making pictures of himself driving a car, and buying bread, and bacon, and piling hay on his farm, and ..." I said, but then I had to stop. "All the pictures come so fast that I can't read them," I told Gramp. "Everybody makes blurry pictures like that most of the time."
"Instead of trying to tell me what the pictures are, see if you can understand what they mean," Gramp said.
I tried but it was awful hard and pretty soon I got tired and Gramp and I left the store and went back home.
The next morning Gramp and I went out in the barn and Gramp said, "Now let's see what we got here." He had me try to do a lot of things, like lifting something without touching it, and trying to make chickens run by making a picture of them doing that and putting it in their minds. But I couldn't do any of them.
After a while he said, "Let's go down to the store again."
We went to the store almost every day after that. Then sometimes we just walked around Fayette, and Gramp had me practice reading what the pictures in people's minds meant instead of just what they looked like. Sometimes I did it real good. Then Gramp would buy me some candy or ice cream.
One day we were following Mr. Mears and I was telling Gramp what I saw in Mr. Mears' mind when Mr. St. Ours drove by in his car. "Mr. Mears is making pictures about feeding meat to Mr. St. Ours's dog and the dog is crawling away and dying," I said to Gramp.
Gramp was real interested. He said, "Watch close and read everything you can about that." I did. After, Gramp seemed very happy. He bought me a big chocolate bar that time. Chocolate is my best kind of candy.
I read lots of things in other people's minds that made Gramp feel good too, and he bought me candy just about every day.
Gramp seemed to have money all the time now instead of having to ask Gramma for any. She wanted to know where he got all the money. But he just smiled with his right cheek like he does and wouldn't tell her. Most of the people in town didn't seem to like Gramp any more. They made mad pictures about him whenever we met them.
Sometimes when we were in the store Mrs. Van would come in and she would talk to me. She was awful nice. But she always had sad pictures in her mind and sometimes she would cough real hard and hold a handkerchief up in front of her mouth.
When she did that Mr. Van used to get sad too. In his pictures Mrs. Van would be dead and laying in a coffin and they would be burying her in a big hole in the ground. Mr. Van was nice too. He gave me crackers and cookies, or sometimes a big thin slice of cheese.
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