“I’ll bet he’s shot Chippy-chip-chee!” Circus cried.
And I figured that was exactly what Shorty had done. He’d spotted the cute little chipmunk, which always used the Black Widow Stump for his lookout, taken a bead on him with his new .22, and killed him.
“Come on!” Big Jim ordered us. “Let’s go see.” He broke into a gallop with five barefoot boys lighting out after him as fast as we could go.
Poetry, puffing along behind me, asked in a frustrated voice, “What if he decides old Long Neck Blue is a varmint!”
“Varmints,” as most any farm or ranch boy knows, is the name hunters give to small animals that make themselves a nuisance around the neighborhood, such as rats, mice, and weasels.
As we panted along, I said to Poetry over my shoulder, “Shorty Long is the biggest varmint in the whole country!”
Before we reached the board fence that separated the nettle patch from the spring, we heard another shot, and, as we came storming up the incline to the base of the leaning linden tree, there was still another crack from Shorty’s rifle.
We burst out into the open, expecting to see Chippy-chip-chee lying dead or dying at the base of the Black Widow Stump, and maybe the big Long boy standing gloating over him. But instead, I saw Shorty over in the direction of the bridge, his rifle lifted and pointed toward a large nest of leaves high in the top of the butternut tree that grew there.
Again there was the sharp, ear-jarring crack of a rifle and a puff of gray blue smoke. And from that leafy nest there was a rustling movement followed by a flurry of rusty brown wildlife.
One of the more than twenty flying squirrels we knew lived in the woods came streaking out of the nest. He crawled in a hurry to the end of a long branch and poised a second. Then, like a boy taking a headfirst leap from a high diving board into a swimming pool, that cute little animal brother of ours spread its flying membrane and took off for the ground. He glided in a long slant in the direction of the base of another butternut tree, where he landed in a grassy place with a plop-plop. In a streak of a second he was on his way up that tree, climbing as fast as a cat scared of a dog, up and up and round and round to the very top, and out to the end of a long branch. There he spread his sails again, and away he went.
It was a fine sight—that cute little, smart little, scared little not-varmint was up maybe five trees and down again in only a few excited minutes. He got almost as far as the papaw bushes before he disappeared into a den in the top of the old maple growing there.
All this time, the boy with the rifle acted as if he didn’t know we were watching him. He kept his eyes focused on the fleeing flying squirrel. Then he shrugged like the fox in a certain fable every boy knows, who seemed to say, “Those old grapes are sour. They’re not fit for a fine fox like me!”
Shorty looked at his wristwatch and took off down the path to the bridge, where, after he crossed it, he could go down the embankment to the Maple Leaf and the new white boat—and where he could begin to be the very polite, courteous, adopted nephew of a missionary. It seemed he was a kind of boy angel when he was with the Fenwicks and a not-angel when he was with us.
It also seemed not a one of us could say a word. There was a mixed-up feeling in my mind that I couldn’t handle and didn’t understand until Circus broke our tense silence by saying, “He didn’t even look at us! What’s he think we are anyway? Some kind of doormats to wipe his feet on?”
That, Bill Collins, I thought, explains the way you feel. A boy can’t stand being ignored, even by his enemy.
Then from behind me, interrupting the stormy weather in my mind, there came the friendly, coaxing voice of Little Jim, saying, “Come on, Chippy. Come on! We won’t hurt you! Here’s a little snack I brought for you.”
Swinging my eyes toward the Black Widow Stump, I saw the curly-haired, cutest member of the gang down on his haunches, holding out his hand. And coming timidly toward him was Chippy-chip-chee, bouncing his tail and making quick little runs and starts and stops toward an unshelled peanut that Little Jim had just tossed out to him.
It was like coming out of a tornado, safe and sound, into a very friendly sunshiny day.
Taking a final look toward the bridge, I saw, way out in the middle on his way across, a boy in tan slacks, carrying a rifle and sort of strutting along as if he was the king of the world and the boss of all the people in it.
Chippy-chip-chee made a quick short run, grabbed up little Jim’s peanut, and, like a streak of happiness, took off for the stump. He scooted up its bark-covered side, perched himself on his haunches, held the peanut in his front paws, and chewed away on it.
For a few minutes it seemed a very peaceful world. But we hadn’t any sooner started up the long wildflower-bordered barefoot boys’ footpath toward our house, where we would separate and each go his own way to report to his parents what nice human beings the Fenwicks were, than there came the crack of a rifle from somewhere down the creek.
We all stopped and stared at each other’s startled face, not a one of us saying anything until Big Jim came out with, “Maybe he thinks soft-shelled turtles are targets.” He clenched his teeth, and his eyes were squinting from thinking hard thoughts.
Little Jim spoke next, and his trembling voice showed that the fire in Big Jim’s tone had set fire to his mind. “A bullet could kill Old Whopper too! If it happened to hit the rock and glance off into the water!”
Well, we had to go on. Pretty soon it would be lunchtime. And no matter how good an excuse we might think we had for being late, it wouldn’t be worth all the words we would have to use to explain it to our folks.
We had work to do all afternoon. Little Jim had his piano lesson to take. Poetry had to help his father build a new hog house. Big Jim and Circus, living close to each other, were going to work in each other’s gardens. Dragonfly was supposed to help his mother around the Tall Corn Motel, this being the beginning of the tourist season for them. And I, Bill Collins—sometimes called William Jasper Collins when my father, Theodore, thought I had done something wrong and needed to be talked to and at—had to work in our own garden with the Ebenezer onions, the Alderman peas, the pole beans, and the Early Egyptian beets.
When I came into the yard, Mom was on the phone with somebody—some other Sugar Creek mother, maybe—and I got to the yellow rosebush just outside the window in time to hear her say in her most cheerful telephone voice, “I think that’s just wonderful, Mrs. Long. Just wonderful. You can put that down as an answer to prayer.”
Then, seeing me standing outside, she said into the phone, “Here’s Bill now. He’ll be glad to hear it, I’m sure.”
But I wasn’t glad to hear it. What Mom told me then just couldn’t be the truth. It just couldn’t be!
Can you imagine what my wonderful gray-brown-haired mother told me Shorty Long’s mother could put down as an answer to prayer? This is what:
“For a week now, ever since the Fenwicks arrived in the States, Shorty has been behaving like a little gentleman, being especially courteous around the home, doing helpful things without having to be reminded several times—things like that.
“And because today is his birthday, his father gave him the new rifle he’d been wanting and had been promised, if he earned it with good behavior.”
I just couldn’t tell Mom what had come into my mind right then. My mother was the teacher of the women’s Sunday school class at our church. All the women in the class called her about their home problems as well as asking Bible questions, and Mom got an answer to some prayer or other almost every day for some of the mothers. How could I tell her that Shorty Guenther Long was not a better boy—was maybe even worse—and that he had only been pretending to be good just to get the rifle no boy with his mind should ever have!
“I’ll wash up and help set the table,” I offered and started toward the iron pitcher pump, near which we kept our outdoor wash-stand, a hand towel, and soap.
Right that minute my little sister, Charlotte Ann, was tr
ying to pump the pump to get a drink she maybe didn’t need. She was always pumping herself about thirty drinks a day.
This time, though, she wasn’t getting a drink for herself but for her favorite doll, Elsie Jo. “Elsie Jo’s terribly thirsty,” my shining-eyed, dark-haired, rosy-cheeked, extrapretty three-year-old sister looked up at me and said.
I helped her fill Elsie’s bottle and warned her, “You have to be careful with Elsie Jo when you’re around the water trough. She hasn’t learned to swim yet, and she might drown. Promise me you’ll be careful.”
Charlotte Ann was already on her way to the doll buggy by the side porch and didn’t hear me—or wasn’t interested, anyway, but only wanted to help Elsie Jo drink her water.
I got the washbasin from its stand near the grape arbor and carried it to the pump platform, gave the pump a few fast, squeaking strokes, carried the water back to the stand, and reached for the bar of soap we keep there. I was scrubbing away when I noticed Mixy, our old black-and-white cat, taking a dust bath beside the hollyhocks. She was rolling over and over the way cats do, getting her ordinarily shining fur a rusty brown color.
A second later, Mixy was finished with her bath. Maybe deciding she needed a little love, she began to stroke herself by brushing back and forth against and between my ankles.
At almost the same minute, Charlotte Ann decided she had been without a brother long enough or else Elsie Jo had stopped crying for a drink. Anyway, my very pretty, dark-haired, long-eyelashed, brown-eyed sister came toddling over to wash her hands in my sudsy water.
Well, seeing those little brown, suntanned hands rinsing themselves in water that was a lot more soiled than they were gave me a very proud feeling toward the only sister I had up to now. It was as cheerful a feeling as I get sometimes when I see a saucy little whirlwind spiraling out across the south pasture. I quickly stop whatever I am doing and go chasing after it, toss myself into it, and dodge my way along in it until all of a sudden it whirls itself into nothing.
Quicker than a meadowlark’s melody that seems to come from all around you, and you don’t know where it is and can’t see it, my glad feeling made me quickly dry my hands on the roller towel that hung from the grape arbor crossbeam, swoop my sister up into my arms, and start stumbling along with her toward the house, where in a few minutes lunch would be ready. Charlotte Ann was squealing and giggling all the way, as though she liked her big brother even better than she did Elsie Jo.
I managed to open the screen door and squeeze through. Charlotte Ann was still happy and laughing. But Mixy squeezed through behind me and sailed, with bushy tail upright, straight through the kitchen into the living room, just in time for Mom to see her and call out, “Don’t let that cat in! You know what she does when she gets in!”
I set my sister down with a swoosh, dived into the living room after Mixy, and got there just in time to see her make a Jack-be-nimble, Jack-be-quick jump onto Mom’s neatly made bed in the bedroom that is just off the living room. She landed right in the middle of Mom’s brand-new, green-and-white-striped, extrafancy bedspread! And on top of that—on top of the bedspread, I mean—our black-and-white and dusty brown cat rolled happily over and over and over!
5
But a mother’s green-and-white brand-new bedspread is no place for a black-and-white and dusty brown cat to wallow in like a bear wallowing in a swamp or Old Red Addie in her favorite wallowing place behind the barn.
In less time than it would take for a rooster to crow in the morning, I scooped up Mixy, carried her to the front door, and dashed out into the yard. I tossed her overboard, dropping her upside down in a grassy place behind the yellow rosebush, and saying to her with a scolding voice, “Flotsam, jetsam, and lagan! You can decide for yourself which of the three you want to be!”
But that cat landed on her feet, and, before I could turn to go back into the house, she spied a milkweed butterfly loping along in the air near the peony bush. She took off after it as if she was as innocent as the blood red peony flowers themselves.
When I came back into the house again, Mom was standing just inside the bedroom door, staring down at her new bedspread as though she couldn’t believe it. There were tears in her eyes, and I knew there was a storm in her heart.
Trying to think of something cheerful to say at a time like that, I could think of only one word, and it was, “Frustrations?”
Still standing and looking, Mom nodded, while Charlotte Ann, whose happiness had been to blame for starting everything, tugged at Mom’s apron, saying with a whining voice, “I’m hungry!”
And that reminded Mom of something in the kitchen. The smell and smoke of something hot and maybe burning on the stove also reminded her. She came back into her mother’s world as fast as the man in the poem “The Night Before Christmas,” when out on the lawn he heard such a clatter, he sprang from his bed to see what was the matter.
I got to the kitchen myself in time to see her quickly pick up a potholder, grab a skillet of something burning on the range, and dive to the back door with it to keep the smoke from smoking up the whole house. The kitchen was already so thick with it you could hardly see.
“I’ll get the table set,” I offered again, and Mom didn’t say a word. Her lips were pressed tightly together. There was a Shorty Long in her life, too, I happened to think. And for some reason I had a feeling that was as kind and wonderful as the one I had had when a few minutes before I’d looked down into the shining eyes of my sister, Charlotte Ann.
I tried to think of something to say to Mom that would be as good as a pain pill for a headache, but I could only manage to come up with, “Don’t you care too much, Mom. Remember, I’m on your team, and we’re in the same game together. I made a bad fumble without intending to, and the bedspread’s my fault. If you have to send it to the cleaners, I’ll pay for it out of my allowance.”
I had washed my hands of Mixy’s dusty fur and was laying the knives and forks in their places on each side of the plates when, from behind me, Mom put her left cheek against my right one and said, “I’m on your side, too, and we both have Someone else fighting for us.”
Then she added, as she turned on the fan to blow the smoke out of the kitchen, “What’s a little old bedspread anyway! Maybe I was too proud of it. Too proud, too, of the way I had the eggs fried exactly right!”
That’s when I remembered something I’d heard Dad say once, which was, “There are two kinds of ‘proud’—the kind that is right and another kind that is selfish. A man has to have pride in his work and do it the best he can. But if his pride is selfish and snobbish, it’s the kind the Bible condemns when it says, ‘Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before stumbling.’”
It seemed a good time to quote Dad’s words the best I could remember them. I started to, but Mom interrupted me, maybe without knowing she was doing it, by saying, “It’s an answer to prayer.”
Astonished, I asked, “What is?” I wondered how burned food, a smoke-filled kitchen, and a soiled new bedspread could be.
I got a nice surprise when Mom answered as if she were talking to somebody else in the room. “The peace You have just given me.”
I was whistling a tune of some kind in my mind as she took three eggs from the basket in the corner and started over again to fry them exactly right. Then my whispered whistle turned into an out loud one, and the song was “Every Day’s a Wonderful Day!”
It kept on being a wonderful day in spite of a lot of little upsets and almost too much flotsam, jetsam, and lagan, as Mom and Charlotte Ann and I lived our way through it with the help of an innocent, never guilty green-eyed cat.
I swung into the after-lunch work, stopping now and then to feel my muscles to see if they were strong as iron bands. Some of them seemed they were. It felt good to know that when Dad would get home from Indianapolis late that night, all the chores would be done. And I would be proud in the right way that I had done them myself, even if I might not ever be given a new rifle for my
birthday.
It was five o’clock in the afternoon and time to gather the eggs when from the house Mom’s voice quavered out across the barnyard to where I was, near Addie’s apartment. “Bill! Yoo-hoo! Telephone! Poetry!”
I swung out of Addie’s sty, dashed through the gate, shut it with a bang, and raced to the house, stopping only long enough to give my feet several fast swishes on the doormat. Then I went quickly through the kitchen into the living room and answered the phone by the east window.
“Just thought you’d like to know,” Poetry said in a low, secretive kind of voice, “that a white boat with a boy in it is racing up and down the creek, cutting wide circles, stirring up heavy waves, and sending them crashing against the shore, and maybe scaring the daylights out of all the fish in the creek.”
And now, I ask you, what can a boy or a gang of boys do about a thing like that? What can he or they do?
The house of my mind was filled with the smoke of something burning when I finished talking and listening to Poetry. Mom was upstairs at the time, looking after something or other, so I went out through the kitchen to the back door, stomped past the iron pitcher pump, and on to the garden gate.
The Ebenezer onions, the Alderman peas, the pole beans, the Scarlet Globe and White Icicle radishes needed weeding and cultivating, all right, and I didn’t mind using my muscles on them. But how, I asked myself, can you get the noxious jimsonweeds out of the mind of a boy like Shorty Long? How can you?
Spying a little patch of six-inch-tall pigweeds at the edge of the garden, I grabbed up a handful, gave them a yank, and threw them as hard as I could toward Old Red Addie, where they landed right in front of her snuffling snout. She took a lazy sniff at them, looked up, and walked over to her long wooden trough as much as to say, “I’m hungry! How long before supper is ready?” Then she started squealing and grunting as though she was the most neglected hog in the country.
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 25-30 Page 13