Free Pride by William Wharton Page A

a cat this color, have you?”
    And that’s the way it happened. That’s the way I got to keep Cannibal. Mom insisted I buy flea powder and rub it into the fur. Dad said I could get some cat food and he’d take it out of my “salary” when we started building porches again. He turned to Mom.
    â€œThis is one of the things we can afford now I’m back working with J.I. But, Dickie, I have to tell you, I don’t think this tiny thing can live very long. Be prepared for him to die.”
    The rule is Cannibal must stay in the cellar and under no circumstances come upstairs. When he makes messes I’m to clean them up. The first time Mom smells cat in the cellar, out Cannibal goes with the other alley cats in the alley. Dad says he’ll make a sandbox; he tells me where there’s some sand at a construction site on the other side of Long Lane.
    I’m so happy I can keep him I have a hard time remembering all the things I’m supposed to do and not do. Dad passes Cannibal into Laurel’s hand and works his finger out of Cannibal’s mouth. Cannibal looks up into Laurel’s eyes and I’m afraid he’s going to spring for her jugular vein. But he sits quietly there, crouching, ready to spring. If he springs he’ll only fall off onto the cellar floor. I guess he has that figured out already because he doesn’t do anything, only keeps his eyes open, shifting from side to side and hissing if one of us makes any kind of fast move.
    Dad and Mom go back upstairs. Laurel and I stay down with Cannibal. I know we’ll have great times playing with him. I only hope Dad isn’t right and that Cannibal will live. I know if there’s anything I can do to keep him alive, I will.

PART 2
    S ture Modig was born in 1896 to Swedish immigrant parents on a 320-acre dairy farm in Wisconsin. His parents had worked fifteen years as domestics and saved $2,000, with which they’d bought their farmland. The land cost $20,000. They took a $10,000 first mortgage and an $8,000 second.
    They soon had a team of horses, three brood sows, and forty milking cows. They were living in a waterless, toiletless frame house when Sture was born. Sture’s father had first built the barn for his animals while he lived with his bride in a combination hut-tent. Then he built the house so they could have children before it was too late.
    Sture’s parents had married in their mid-thirties after the long thrifty years in service. Sture was born when his mother was forty. She almost died in childbirth, so he was an only child.
    Sture was the sole luxury in his parents’ lives, and from the beginning it was apparent he was truly an exceptional person.
    Sture Modig was one of those few people who live up to their names. Modig in Swedish means “brave,” and if there is one word to describe Sture both as child and man it’s “brave”; he did not seem subject to the normal fears with which all of us are assailed. He was also “brave” in the German sense of the word, brav , that is: well-behaved, willing.
    Sture walked unaided at nine months and seemed to have an unnatural ability for converting sound into language. He was speaking words at eighteen months and could converse clearly at two years. Soon, he could also imitate, and seem to converse with, most of the animals around which he lived.
    At four, he could settle a frisky calf or cow using only sounds he made with his mouth. He spoke with the barn cats and the farmhouse dog; with the pigs. He could imitate the sounds and call to him most birds, including domestic chickens and ducks.
    Sture liked helping his parents. By five he was helping with household tasks such as dusting, sweeping, straightening; hauling water from the well. He was so small he carried the water in a quart milk pail. He’d go the fifty yards to the well four times as often as his mother, but in the end he’d fill the large water