I wasn’t sure I understood—not Shorty, anyway—but I think I did understand big John Fenwick better.
In that fast second, I felt myself liking Shorty’s Uncle John very, very, very much, and I didn’t exactly hate Shorty Long. I even almost halfway liked him.
There wasn’t anything in particular we could do at the Maple Leaf then, so we moseyed down to the empty dock, filed past and along the shore to the bridge, crossed it, and took the side path to the papaw bushes. Already the papaw fruit was beginning to ripen, I noticed. It had turned a brownish color like ripe bananas. I knew that on the inside of each papaw was a yellowish custard center with flat brown seeds as big as marbles. The papaw leaves themselves were maybe twelve inches long and hung in clusters all over the bushes like long, wide, flat green icicles.
There wasn’t very much we wanted to do. It was such a lazy day, and not even our folks wanted us to work in the garden, mow the lawn, or pick strawberries—things a boy gets to do on weekdays. So we ambled along toward the spring. Little Jim whammed away at different kinds of weeds with his stick as we went.
At the spring, the leaning linden tree didn’t have a single bee swimming around among its creamy yellow flowers, because there weren’t any flowers anymore. They had changed into smallish nuts the shape of Mom’s Alderman peas, only a lot smaller. So what used to be thousands of sweet-smelling flowers were now flower seeds, each cluster hanging from the center of a long narrow leaf, which wasn’t a leaf, John Fenwick had taught us, but was a bract and was the Lord’s way of making new linden trees.
“In the fall, the sail-like leaf lets go from the tree that gave it birth and takes off in the wind to some hiding place where it lets nature bury it under a leaf or beside a fallen log. And by and by you have another linden tree.”
We had learned a lot of things like that, most of which John had read to us out of the manuscript of a book he was writing.
As we sort of dreamed along toward the Collins house, it seemed that God was everywhere, breaking the bread of life and feeding the hungry world with Bible truth. He was also feeding His nature world all the time with rain and sunshine and reseeding it. It seemed a shame that when the Savior was here, His enemies hated Him enough to drive nails into His hands and feet. It just didn’t seem right to hate anybody—not even anybody!
And then the Fenwicks’ time in Maple Leaf was about over, and only a little more than a week was left.
The gang had another get-together one lazy afternoon—an afternoon so hot we had to go in swimming.
As soon as we were through swimming and diving and water fighting and were under the Snatzerpazooka tree dressing, we heard the sound of the Vida Eterna coming from up the creek in the direction of Shorty Long’s place.
We quickly looked toward the east, expecting to see a man in a boat with a chubby boy in the stern driving, but instead it was John alone. He had come from his favorite fishing place upstream and had two of the biggest bass I had ever seen, except for Old Whopper himself, who was maybe five inches longer and a lot bigger around.
“What k–kind of bait did you use?” Dragonfly wanted to know.
John surprised us. “A dead minnow!”
I felt skeptical because any boy knows a bass will bite on live minnows but not on dead ones.
Still sitting in the boat, its prow resting on the sandy shore, John opened his new three-drawer tackle box and showed us what he called his “injured minnow.” It looked exactly like a live minnow, but it had a three-barbed hook dangling from its tail and another from one side. It also had a shining spinner at its mouth where it was attached to a six-inch leader.
I had my eyes on about thirteen other artificial lures lying in separate compartments in the tackle box, and I thought how I’d like to have a box like that and a lot of fancy lures.
“Want to see how it works?” John asked us. When we said we did, he quickly attached the leader to his fishing line and dropped the minnow into the water at the edge of the boat. Instead of sinking, the live-looking “dead” minnow rolled over on its side and lay like flotsam on the surface. One of its artificial eyes was above the water and the other under, looking for all the world like an honest-to-goodness chub, the kind we catch in our seine in the fast water under the branch bridge.
“Now,” John said to us, “if you yourself were a fish hiding down under the water somewhere, very hungry, and waiting for breakfast, dinner, or supper to come swimming past, and all of a sudden, out of a clear sky, a minnow like this came splashing down like it had fallen from a tree, wouldn’t you think your supper was being handed to you on a silver platter?”
“Old Whopper wouldn’t think that!” Little Jim said proudly. “He’d know minnows don’t grow on trees. He’d maybe race out to take a look at it, but he’d just give his tail a disgusted flip, turn around, and swim back to bed.”
“All right,” John said, “let’s find out what little old ‘injured minnow’ here can do. See that stump in the water away over there on the other side? I’ll risk a guess there’s a bass or two, hungry for dinner even in the afternoon, when bass generally are too lazy to bite.”
With that, John turned, gave his shining casting rod a swing, and Old Injured sailed out across our swimming hole and landed with a splash about two feet from the stump. Then John began to whisper under his breath, counting, “One, two, three …” while the “injured minnow” lay right there in the center of the little splash it had made when it struck the water.
“Twenty-one, twenty-two …”
At the count of thirty, John gave the tip of his rod a little flip. And away out near the stump, the minnow made a small splash on the surface.
Twice John counted to thirty, giving a quick flick of his wrist each time. And then something startling happened. There was a splash, a double splash, and, like lightning on the end of a fishing line—thunder and lightning and a tornado—a bass shot up into the air, shaking his shining body furiously, trying to throw the injured minnow out of his mouth, and not being able to. And in less time than it would take me to write all of it, John Fenwick had landed a whopper of a smallmouth bass!
There was a lot of excitement around that boat while he was reeling in the medium-sized whopper and while the bass was still fighting against being caught. In the middle of all the action, the closed tackle box got in the way.
And before we knew what was happening, it was off the boat seat and into the water.
I lunged for it and missed, but I needn’t have worried. It had fallen onto its side and—like the salt and pepper shakers on our table at home, which won’t stay on their sides when you accidentally tumble them over but are quickly upright again—that new, shining tackle box was upright and floating.
“Never have to worry about losing it in an upset,” John told us. “A friend of ours in Pennsylvania gave it to us for Christmas last year when he learned we were going to have an enforced furlough.”
I set the tackle box back on the boat seat and made sure the catch was fastened, glad for John that it hadn’t been open when it fell into the water, or we would have had to search all over the creek bottom for the maybe thirteen lures the three trays had in them.
Little Jim, wide-eyed at what had been going on, glad we had caught such a big fish, and also feeling sorry for the fish because it got caught, all of a sudden pointed with his stick toward something floating out in the center of our swimming hole. He exclaimed, “Look! There’s another big fish, floating like it was dead!”
We all looked where Little Jim was pointing, and, sure enough, there was a fish. Its body was swollen as if it had maybe been dead for quite a while. It was drifting along with the current.
That’s when John Fenwick, still a missionary in spite of being on furlough, taught us a very important lesson, which was as good as any sermon our pastor had ever preached. He said, “Every boy in the world can take his choice of what kind of life he wants to live. Always remember this—something my own father once taught me—any old dea
d fish can float downstream. It’s the live fish that swim upstream.”
While big John was talking, he had a small fire in his eye that made me proud to be his friend. And I could almost hear myself thinking to myself and saying, Bill Collins, what kind of boy are you going to be in life? Are you going to be any old dead fish, or are you going to be alive? You can take your choice.
In a few minutes John would be on his way back to the Maple Leaf, where Elona would be waiting. And she would hurry down to the dock to help him beach the boat—not wanting him, because of his heart, to drag the Vida Eterna up onto the sand.
I was surprised to hear myself saying something else to myself right then, and it was, I’m making my choice right now. My jaw and my mind were set as I said it.
“Want to ride down to the Maple Leaf with me?” John asked us.
Dragonfly said, “Sure!”
The rest of us thought the same thing, and some of us said so.
And as soon as the bass was safe in the net with the other two, we pushed farther out from shore to where the water was deep enough for the propeller to work. In a few seconds there was a roar as the starter cord of the motor did what a starter cord is supposed to do. And away we went putt-putting downstream, the wind in our faces, our shirt sleeves flapping, and the shoreline drifting past as we skimmed happily along.
I was sitting in the seat just ahead of John, riding backward, when he surprised me with, “Want to steer it?”
Did I want to steer it! There was nothing I wanted to do more.
John adjusted the throttle so that we would be going only as fast as a boy rowing slowly. He and I changed seats, and I myself, Bill Collins, Theodore Collins’s first and worst and only son, was the captain of the Vida Eterna, riding down Sugar Creek. My crew of six sailors was sitting in the seats in front of me, the prow of my vessel was raised a little, and the waves were parting like deep snow being hit by a snow-plow. Behind us the water was churning in the wake of my ship, which right then, when John told me to move the throttle to the left, leaped into life and began racing downstream maybe twice as fast as it had been.
In almost no time we passed the spring and somebody’s old flat-bottomed, homemade, un-painted boat chained to a small maple sapling there. And then we were out in the middle of the creek, headed for the bridge.
It seemed all ten eyes of five of my crew were looking at me with envy, but I couldn’t be bothered. I was the captain, and they were only the crew.
It was Little Jim who brought me back to Sugar Creek right then when he yelled, “Look out! You’re going to smash into the big rock!”
And I did look out, by shoving the steering handle of the outboard to the left. That is, that was what I thought I was doing. Instead, I must have opened the throttle, because the Vida Eterna came to furious life and headed straight for the rock. It looked like a big gray-white freight car rushing toward me.
How we missed that monster rock I didn’t know until afterward: Then I remembered, as we went sailing safely past, that John had quickly leaned over and shoved the steering handle in the right direction. We made a sharp, sideways turn and roared across the roof of Old Whopper’s house like a jet zooming over the tops of the twin pignut trees—missing the big rock by only a few feet.
I wasn’t very proud of myself as I kept the throttle where it belonged and, as John guided me with his voice, steered past the mouth of the branch, made a wide, slow circle, and nosed the Vida Eterna up to the sandy beach beside the Maple Leaf dock.
John shut off the motor so that we could glide in instead of racing in and hitting the shore or the dock with a wham.
Elona came out of the cabin and called us to come on up for a snack. As I climbed kind of slowly up the winding path to the outdoor fire-place, I noticed there was a bed of live coals and a pot of coffee on the grate, as if she had been expecting her husband and was waiting for him the way Mom had been waiting for Dad that night in the moonlight by the plum tree.
Soon John was sitting in his big lawn chair drinking his coffee, and the gang was drinking a cool drink of what you already know Elona called Costa Rican punch. All of a sudden the missionary caught at his chest, dropped his cup, leaned forward, and began to breathe hard, as if he had just landed a big fish and had had too much excitement bringing it to net.
Like a streak of flurrying green lightning, which was the color of Elona Fenwick’s clothes, she was across the open space to him and searching in his shirt pocket for something. She brought out a small brown bottle, took out a tablet of some kind, and slipped it under John’s tongue.
She was panting as hard as he was, and there was a worried expression on her face as well as on his.
Turning to us, she said, “He’ll be all right in a minute. That’s why we’re here in the States instead of in Central America. John’s heart has been on the warpath, so we have to be very careful. As long as we keep watching, and he keeps his nitroglycerin tablets handy, he’ll be all right.”
But the worry on her face showed it was not all right in her mind. She was afraid for her husband—afraid, maybe, that he might not always have his pills with him or might not be able to take one quickly enough.
But in a little while John was breathing as normally as any of us, and we finished our visit. We asked if there was anything we could do around the place. There was, and we did it, and then we went on home.
I was still a little proud of myself that I had been such a good captain of the boat for a while, even though I was remembering something my smart father had once said. And as I opened the gate near “Theodore Collins” on our mailbox, I was repeating it to myself. “There are two kinds of proud.”
Charlotte Ann came racing out to meet me, bringing Elsie Jo with her. Her bare feet went plop-plopping in the dust of the road.
“How do you do, my friend?” I said down to her, hoping she wouldn’t expect me to swoop her up and carry her into the house, as she sometimes does. I couldn’t swoop her up when she was wearing a nice clean dress like that and while my hands were still smelling of fish from having helped John Fenwick take the three bass out of the net just before we left.
Charlotte Ann’s mind was not on her big brother, however, but on Elsie Jo, who was thirsty again. I watched her lay her pink-dressed doll carefully on the edge of the water trough, then pumped myself a pan of water and carried it to the grape-arbor table to wash my hands, while Charlotte Ann filled Elsie Jo’s bottle.
Even as I was drying my hands on the roller towel, I noticed my weatherworn cane fishing pole leaning against the crossbeam and, wrapped round and round its long yellowish length, my two-year-old fishing line. On the end of the line were a metal sinker, a wire leader, and a single hook on which, when I went fishing, I had to use ordinary fishing worms I myself had to dig. It seemed the captain of the boat ought to have a box full of shining lures that could fool a smart bass into striking even in the daytime when ordinarily a bass should be taking an afternoon nap.
I didn’t have even a floating tackle box in which to keep my lures, which I didn’t have anyway.
I was wallowing around in the middle of my misery about the captain of the boat not having good fishing equipment, when from behind me I heard a little girl scream as if her world was coming to an end.
“Bill! Quick! Elsie Jo’s drowning! Quick!”
7
That was one of the nicest things about being a brother. I had a chance to watch a little sister grow up, even though she was growing too slowly. By the time she would be old enough to be any help to Mom with the dishes, I would be almost too old to keep on helping—or I hoped I would be too old, anyway.
I really needn’t have worried about ever getting too old, though, because my own father—who, it seemed, ought to know better—would sometimes make Mom go into the living room and rest in our easy chair, while he and his young son cleaned up the kitchen.
As I said, that was one of the nicest things about being the brother of a small sister. I got a chance to fin
d out what puzzling people little girls are, too. Honestly, you never saw such an interesting human being, which Charlotte Ann was most of the time. She could be doing one thing and thinking about something else maybe a mile away. Sometimes you would see her looking into Mom’s hand mirror in the downstairs bedroom as though she was an insect looking into an ant lion’s nest under the walnut tree, trying to decide whether it would be safe to tumble into it.
Once I saw her out in the barnyard lying on her dolly blanket, watching the swallows darting around in the late afternoon sky. They were catching moths and other flying things, and she was humming a little tune about brightening the corner where you are. Elsie Jo was resting on her arm at the time, and, when I accidentally happened along, Charlotte Ann shushed me, saying, “Sh! She’s been counting the swallows, and it’s making her sleepy.”
Imagine that! Counting swallows, when anybody knows it’s sheep you are supposed to count when you are trying to make yourself sleepy!
Another time, when she was kneeling at her bedside to say a good-night prayer to God, she finished her little memorized prayer and added, “And please keep watch over Elsie Jo tonight. She’s afraid of the dark.”
I was about to tiptoe out of the room when my neat little sister stopped me, saying, “She’s still afraid of the dark, so leave the light on in the hall.”
Just to help Elsie feel a little more safe, I gave her a little pat on her brown wavy hair and said, “It’s all right, Elsie Jo, your mother’s right here. She’ll take care of you. You just call her if you’re afraid or want a drink of water or anything—”
I didn’t get to finish my advice to Elsie because Charlotte Ann cut in to say, “She’s thirsty now.”
I said to myself as I went out to the pump for a fresh drink for a doll and her mother, When, Bill Collins, will you learn not to put ideas into a doll’s head?
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 25-30 Page 15