The Secret

This is a story about my brother Delos and I. We were about 9 and 11 at the time. His full name is Delos Lance McGaughey. He has one son that carries his name. He died in 1970. He wasn't just my brother he was my first, "best friend ".


The Secret


One very cool fall Sunday morning, after the chores were done, Delos went off to explore in the woods by himself.
He was gone all morning, and when he returned back home that afternoon, he had something wrapped up in his shirt.
I asked him what he had in his shirt. He said, “If I show you, will you promise not to tell dad because it has to be a secret?”, and of course, I promised.
Delos carefully opened his shirt up, for me to peek inside. He had found and caught a small chipmunk.
The chipmunk didn’t try to get away, and we just observed it for a few minutes.
Its tail would switch back and forth, like animals will do when they are really agitated. It had somehow been on the ground and had been hurt or possible sick. We kept looking at it but nothing seemed to look like it was broke, or anything.

Usually, a wild animal will bite you if you do catch them, but this one didn’t attempt to bite him or run away. Delos felt that something was wrong with it and he needed to protect it and help nurse it back to health again.
He figured that, if he caught it, he could make it his pet.

This was something all of us kids did at one time or other. We even had little homemade cages for the small things we would catch and bring home to make into pets.
One time we had found a baby fawn, and one of the boys brought it home, and we took care of it and eventually it got big and left us to go back into the wild.

Well anyway, this chipmunk was now destined to be Delos's new pet. He didn’t want me to tell dad, because he didn’t like it when we would get wild animals and bring them home. He said they usually always would die, and he was right, but all of us had to try.

Delos decided that he wanted to keep the pet chipmunk in his room, which was not allowed. Dad wanted us to keep all wild animals outside, and for a very good reason.

Anyway he got an empty Shredded Wheat box and put some cotton from an old mattress, in it.
Now Delos figured, his pet chipmunk had a wonderful bed to recover on, and this box was small enough to fit nicely under your his bed, and it had a lid that could be closed, but the ends would still let air in.
Delos was really a fairly neat person. He made his bed almost ever day. So he was sure the chipmunk would be very happy there.

We all went to bed that night and in the morning Delos had observed the chipmunk and told me that it must have been really tired, because it was still sleeping. He had left some pieces of bread in the box for the chipmunk to eat, so he figured it would do just fine until we got back from school.

I am not sure just how long that chipmunk “slept” but it was a day or two
.
That next night when I went to bed I noticed some fleas in my bed. I guess I never really thought too much about it, and just killed the ones I saw, and went to sleep.
In the morning, we all hurried around and did our chores, and got ready for school.
Delos was in such a hurry, that he forgot all about his new pet.
We came home from school and was busy with chores again, and never even gave our new house pet, any thought whatsoever.

What happened later that evening was something I will never ever forget.

We kids had gone to bed around 8:30, just after the World Tomorrow program on the radio was over.
I noticed quite a few more of those nasty fleas in my bed; I killed them, climbed into bed, blew out the lanter, and snuggled under the covers for a good nights sleep.

Around 10:30 p.m. I heard Dad in his bedroom.
His bedroom was an L shaped room, and his bed was at one end of the L and Delos's bed was at the other end of the room, with a blanket drawn across the room, so he could have his own space.
Dad was stomping around and hollering at the top of his lungs. He was as mad as I had ever heard him.
He ended up waking everyone up, and we had to go see what was causing all this hollering.
I grabed my flashlight, and jumped out of bed and went and stood outside their bedroom door and asked Dad, “What’s the matter, are you O.K.?”

He loudly hollered, “Don’t come in the room, I have fleas in my long johns, I have fleas in my bed. How in the world did they ever get in my long johns, now I have to take them off and pick the fleas out?”

I am not too sure exactly what all dad said to Delos, but I do know that he was in a whole pile of trouble.
He had that chipmunk under his bed, and it had died. When the chipmunk’s body cooled off, those fleas ,that are on all wild animals, went looking for some more warm bodies to feed off us, and that was us!

Dad was boiling mad at us. He didn’t care that it was 10:30 at night, and it was pitch black outside, he made us take that died chipmunk right back where Delos had found it, which was over at the prairie in the trees close by my favorite Rock.

We were lucky he wasn’t going to give us a good hard beating.

I was scared to death of the dark, and I didn’t like the idea one bit, I was pretty mad at Delos and Dad for putting my life in danger like this, because we could get eaten by a mountain lion or something.
Delos wasn’t really afraid of the dark, but he knew that there were animals out at night looking for food. He grabbed his flashlight, and the shredded wheat box with his dead chipmunk in it, and we headed up the hill to return it to its home.

I was mad at him, but mostly I was afraid.
I remember telling him he better help me pray that no mountain lion kills us, and he better never, ever ask me to keep a secret for him again.
I think we ran and prayed all of the way there, and am absolutely sure we ran and prayed all the way home.