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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.
迈克的父亲总是驾着一辆脏兮兮的深红色的卡车。下雨的时候，我和迈克就爬到驾驶室里。雨水打在车窗上有很大的声响，听起来就像是石块儿打在屋顶上。车里充满着男人的气味——他们的工作服、工具、烟草以及脏靴子和发出酸奶酪气味的袜子。还有湿漉漉的长毛狗，那是我的狗兰杰，我们把它也带来了。有一天，我们把兰杰带出来，他去追赶一只臭鼬，那只臭鼬掉过头向它喷射。妈妈不得不立即停下手里的活，驾车到镇上去买了几大罐子的番茄汁。迈克把兰杰哄到盆里，然后我们把番茄汁倾倒在它身上，再用刷子刷它的毛发，看起来就好像我们在用鲜血给它洗澡。
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.
我家的农场很小——9英亩。正是因为它足够小，我可以探索它的每个角落。这里的每一棵树都有其特殊的神态。比如，榆树看上去宁静安详，橡树则咄咄逼人，枫树亲切友好，而山楂树则老气横秋，脾气暴躁，甚至河岸上的坑凹都有它们自己的的特征。
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.
八月的河是条水道，几乎也是一条石头路。我和迈克光着脚，趟着河水，从一个雪白的石块儿上跳到另一个上，滑倒在水面下的脏石头上。于是我们吃力地在一团团长着扁平叶子的睡莲中蹚行，两腿陷在缠绕的睡莲根中。
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.
我在远离农场的乡村学校读书，可迈克自春天起就去了镇上的学校，所以镇上的男孩儿和迈克都非常熟悉。在河岸上更远处还有镇上的女孩儿。她们可能是尾随男孩子从镇上来到这里的，但又要装作并不是跟着他们来的，再或者是男孩子企图欺负她们尾随而来的。但又无论怎样，他们一起来了，游戏也就可以玩了。这是一场战争的游戏。男孩儿们分成两队，然后躲在由树枝、水草支成的障碍物后开始他们的战斗。主要武器就是棒球大小的泥球。你需要用力将粘土捏成球状，需要许多这种球，因为每一个球只能掷一次。
