Stories of Ourselves: "The Taste of Watermelon" by Borden Deal

A sixteen-year-old boy steals a watermelon from a neighbor, and the aftermath of the theft changes him in ways he didn't expect.

Here are links to our lists for the short stories in Stories of Ourselves:
The Hollow of the Three Hills, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Signalman, The Happy Prince, The Yellow Wall Paper, The Son’s Veto, The Open Boat, The Moving Finger, The Door in the Wall, Sredni Vashtar, How It Happened, Her First Ball, The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection, The Fly in the Ointment, The Custody of the Pumpkin, An Englishman’s Home, The Phoenix, There Will Come Soft Rains, The Prison, The Destructors, Meteor, Billenium, The Lemon Orchard, The People Before, The Enemy, Five-Twenty, A Horse and Two Goats, Report on the Threatened City, The Rain Horse, Ming’s Biggest Prey, The Village Saint, Secrets, The Stoat, Games at Twilight, The Taste of Watermelon, Journey (Patricia Grace), The Bath, My Greatest Ambition, To Da-duh, in Memoriam, Of White Hairs and Cricket, Elephant, Sandpiper, Journey (Shirley Geok-Lin Um), The Third and Final Continent, Tyres, At Hiruharama, Real Time, On Her Knees, The Contest
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. yield
    give or supply
    It was as though he dared the earth not to yield him its sustenance.
  2. sustenance
    the act of providing a means of subsistence or survival
    It was as though he dared the earth not to yield him its sustenance.
  3. glower
    an angry stare
    He was fiercer about his melons than anything else; if you just happened to walk close to his melon patch, you’d see Mr Wills standing and watching you with a glower on his face.
  4. judicious
    marked by the exercise of common sense in practical matters
    It wasn’t considered stealing to sneak into a man’s melon patch and judiciously borrow a sample of his raising.
  5. idle
    silly or trivial
    Just like all other daredevil boys in that country, I guess, Freddy Gray and J.D. and I had talked idly about stealing that giant watermelon.
  6. tart
    harsh
    ‘He ought to be in the house taking care of that wife of his,’ my mother would say tartly.
  7. wraith
    a ghostly figure, especially one seen shortly before death
    She was a wraith of a woman, pale as a butter bean.
  8. chide
    scold or reprimand severely or angrily
    ‘Helen,’ my father would say, chiding, ‘you shouldn’t even think of such a thing.’
  9. scoff
    laugh at with contempt and derision
    We scoffed at him, but secretly in our hearts we knew how he felt.
  10. catapult
    shoot forth or launch
    Freddy Gray made it first, J.D. and I catapulting in right behind him.
  11. brisk
    quick and energetic
    But we got rid of it by a brisk water fight, and then we were all right.
  12. serene
    not agitated
    The big old moon sailed serenely overhead, climbing higher into the sky, and we lay on our backs to look up at it.
  13. lofty
    having or displaying great dignity or nobility
    ‘Don’t kid yourself, son,’ he said loftily.
  14. fateful
    ominously prophetic
    ‘You’ll never make it,’ J.D. said in a quiet, fateful voice.
  15. loom
    come into view indistinctly, often threateningly
    At last the melon loomed up before me, deep green in the moonlight, and I gasped at the size of it.
  16. cumbersome
    difficult to handle or use, especially because of size or weight
    A melon is the slipperiest, most cumbersome object in the world.
  17. venture
    an undertaking with an uncertain outcome
    I lay there, my nostrils breathing up the smell of the earth and the musty smell of the watermelon vines, and I wondered why I was out here in the middle of all that moonlight on such a venture.
  18. bravado
    a swaggering show of courage
    There was more to it than just bravado.
  19. trough
    a narrow depression, as between waves
    It was hard work, pushing it down the trough my body had made through the grass.
  20. bask
    derive or receive pleasure from
    There was no time to bask in their admiration and respect.
  21. dubiously
    in a doubtful manner
    I took out my pocket knife and looked at it dubiously.
  22. gorge
    overeat or eat immodestly
    We gorged ourselves until we were heavy.
  23. sate
    fill to contentment
    We gazed with sated eyes at the leftover melon, still good meat peopled with a multitude of black seeds.
  24. methodical
    characterized by orderliness
    Then I set methodically to work, destroying the rest of the melon.
  25. solemnly
    in a serious and dignified manner
    ‘There was nothing else to do,’ I said, and they nodded solemnly.
  26. sober
    completely lacking in playfulness
    But the depression went with us toward home and, when we parted, we did so with sober voices and gestures.
  27. tacit
    implied by or inferred from actions or statements
    But stealing this great seed melon from a man like Mr Wills lay outside the safe magic of the tacit understanding between man and boy.
  28. wanton
    unprovoked or without motive or justification
    I stopped there, looking down at the wanton waste we had made of the part of the melon we had not been able to eat.
  29. doggedly
    with obstinate determination
    I kept on doggedly, searching out every seed I could find, until at the end I had to crawl over the ground, seeking for the last ones.
  30. humble
    marked by meekness or modesty; not arrogant or prideful
    I looked at him humbly.
Created on Mon Mar 05 14:29:37 EST 2018 (updated Fri Mar 23 15:40:32 EDT 2018)

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