Winter), and we brought him out of the front bedroom, putting him on the rug before the fireplace. For the first time he became one of us.
As long as he lay all the time in bed, we called him William Armstrong, even though it was
formal and sounded as if we were referring to one of our ancestors, but with his creeping
around on the deerskin rug and beginning to talk, something had to be done about his name. It
was I who renamed him. When he crawled, he crawled backwards, as if he were in reverse
and couldn't change gears. If you called him, he'd turn around as if he were going in the other
direction, then he'd back right up to you to be picked up. Crawling backward made him look
like a doodle-bug, so I began to call him Doodle, and in time even Mama and Daddy thought
it
was a better name than William Armstrong. Only Aunt Nicey disagreed. She said caul babie
should be treated with special respect since they might turn out to be saints. Renaming my
brother was perhaps the kindest thing I ever did for him, because nobody expects much from
someone called Doodle.
Although Doodle learned to crawl he showed no signs of wolle