Ourn
worked the same, but our cistern was right in under
our kitchen floor, and they was a trap door with
leather hinges opened into it right by the kitchen
stove. But that wasn't why I was so proud of it.
It was because that cistern was jest plumb full of
fish -- bullheads and red horse and sunfish and
other kinds.
Hank's father had built that cistern. And one
time he brung home some live fish in a bucket and
dumped em in there. And they growed. And
they multiplied in there and refurnished the earth.
So that cistern had got to be a fambly custom, which
was kep' up in that fambly for a habit. It was a
great comfort to Hank, fur all them Walterses was
great fish eaters, though it never went to brains.
We fed em now and then, and throwed back in the
little ones till they was growed, and kep' the dead
ones picked out soon's we smelled anything wrong,
and it never hurt the water none; and when I was
a kid I wouldn't of took anything fur living in a
house like that.
Oncet, when I was a kid about six years old,
Hank come home from the bar-room. He got to
chasing Elmira's cat cause he says it was making
faces at him. The cistern door was open, and Hank
fell in. Elmira was over to town, and I was scared.
She had always told me not to fool around there
none when I was a little kid, fur if I fell in there
I'd be a corpse quicker'n scatt.
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