But this time the ruffian didn’t double up with pain. Instead, he met Poetry’s charge with his two worst friends, and gave Leslie Thompson a savage straight-down wham-sock on the back of his shoulders. And Poetry himself went down, not saved out of his trouble and not getting through it but slumped to his knees right in the middle of it.
On the way down, he squawked to me, “Let ’em have the box! We can get it back later!”
One of the rough, tough guys grabbed up the box from the cave floor, while the other held the light on us and barked fiercely, “Now, no more monkey business! Do as we say, and you won’t get hurt. I have a knife pointed your way. See?”
I thought I did see something shining in his free hand as he moved to the cellar door, inserted a key in the lock, opened the door, and ordered us in.
And that’s when I woke up to the fact that those boys had known not only the path that led to the cave but also the way through it, and where the basement door key was kept, and maybe a lot of other things only the Sugar Creek Gang was supposed to know.
We had to take orders, now that they had our box and a knife and might decide to use the knife on us if we didn’t obey. But I tell you, it’s one of the hardest things a boy ever has to do—to do something you’re ordered to do when you don’t want to.
Through the open door we went into Old Man Paddler’s cellar. And that’s when I heard the sound of rain on the clapboard roof of the old man’s cabin. And the reason we could hear it was because the trapdoor at the top of the short stairway was open.
Like captured prisoners, with maybe a knife at our backs and with the brown box in the hands of our captors, we climbed those cellar steps to the old man’s kitchen.
There we found for sure that they did have a switchblade. When I saw its gleaming steel, cold chills swept all over me, and I thought, What if they had used it on us when we had had our fight at the branch bridge? Or what if we had been dumb enough to have tackled them down in the cave?
We had to take orders now!
One of our captors lit the kerosene lamp on the kitchen table. The minute he did, I noticed that the window drapes were closed so that nobody outside could see in.
I also got a glimpse of the large map of the West Indies on the wall above the table, on which the old man had maybe a dozen different-colored pins in different places. One extralarge redheaded pin was right in the center of Palm Tree Island, where his twin brother, Kenneth, lived. Used to live, I mean.
Just seeing that redheaded pin, which the gang had seen so many times when we had visited the old man, was like a knife blade turning in my heart, because in my mind I was seeing another little brown box sitting on the top shelf of a Collins closet.
My eyes took in several other things as they made one quick sweep the minute the kerosene lamp was lit. There was a small camp stove on the kitchen worktable, and the sink was half filled with unwashed dishes—almost all the old man had for everyday use. The blanket on his double bed was wrinkled, as was also the usually neat bedspread, which meant somebody had probably been sleeping there.
Dragonfly was noticing other things and not just what he was seeing. All of a sudden he got a mussed-up expression on his face and let out a stormy sneeze.
He got a short, sharp order from one of our captors: “Stop that!”
But Dragonfly couldn’t, because the kind of sneeze he gets when he smells something like what I myself was smelling right that minute is the kind nobody can stop.
The strange odor in the room was not the smell of cooking, or of camp stove gasoline, or of the kerosene lamp. It was different from the burning pine odor you get from a just-lit match.
My eyes took in a fast circle of everything, and I saw over on the old man’s antique console table, one end of which was attached to the wall, a saucer half filled with ashes and cigarette butts. And that’s when I realized that the strange odor in the room was the same kind I’d smelled earlier in the day—the odor of whirligig beetles stampeding in the shaded water near the mouth of the branch.
It was a very sickening odor—like too-ripe apples, or overripe papaws, or licorice mixed with moldy muskmelon. It was also like the smell of the poison leaves of the jimsonweeds that grow in barnyards around Sugar Creek territory.
My jaw went shut with temper when I saw the saucer the cigarette ashes were in. It was a very beautiful saucer that I knew belonged to a special set of chinaware the old man himself never used but kept behind glass doors in his wife’s china closet.
That set of dishes was very rare, my mother had said once when she was visiting the old man with some of the other Sugar Creek mothers, taking measurements for the new drapes they were going to make for his windows. “Genuine bone china,” Poetry’s mother said, she being a member of the Quester’s Club and having studied antiques. “Bone china,” she explained, “is made of the very finest clays, mixed with bone ash.”
Now why in the world would the words bone ash land with a splash in my mind at a time like that, unless somewhere back in a secret corner of it I was thinking about bone ashes in a box that had come in the mail from Palm Tree Island that very morning.
Knowing the old man himself never used any kind of ashtray, and that the only smoke you ever smelled in his cabin was the sweet woodsy smell of logs burning in his fireplace, and knowing how tenderhearted his thoughts always were for his wife, Sarah, who was buried under the big pine tree on Bumblebee Hill, and seeing and smelling the rotten papaw-smelling ashes in the bone china saucer—it all set my temper on edge.
Without knowing how mad I was, I all of a sudden exploded. “That saucer belongs to Sarah Paddler’s antique bone china set! If she knew you used it for cigarette stubs and ashes, she’d turn over in her grave!”
One of the ruffians, I now noticed, had extralong curly hair reaching down to his shoulders. The other had short hair, which suddenly explained to my mind the reason they had motorcycled back to the lilac bushes. It was to try to find the wig Poetry had pulled off in our scuffle an hour earlier.
The one with the long curly hair was the one holding the knife and giving orders to the other one. He answered my word explosion by saying, “Listen, little boy! If you don’t hold your tongue, you’ll be lying face down in your own grave!”
In a fair fight the nine of us could have licked the six of them but not when there was a switchblade in the right worst friend of the older, savage-faced boy.
We had to let them do what they were doing right that minute, which was tying us, one at a time, into hardbacked chairs, with our hands behind us and our feet tied to the chair legs.
8
It took those rough, tough guys only a few minutes to tie up all three members of the Thompson, Gilbert, and Collins Frogs Legs Supply Company and to tape our mouths shut with adhesive tape.
And that’s when the phone started ringing again. The boy with the switchblade knife, whose dark hair reached down to his shoulders, jumped as if he had been shot. He made a dive for the phone, not to answer it but to stop the shorter-haired boy from answering.
For a few minutes, there in the yellowish light of the kerosene lamp, it looked as though there might be a fight between our captors themselves, though the one with the knife looked savage enough to scare anybody into letting him be the boss. The other boy, who had just finished taping Dragonfly’s mouth, was standing near the old man’s woodbox, filled with the firewood that we, the Gang, had carried in for him. He stood now with squinting eyes and a worried look on his face. He spoke then, and his voice was kind of like the prodigal son’s voice must have sounded—if anybody had heard it—and what he said was: “I’m tired of being a Son of Lucifer. I want to go home.”
“Home!” the long-haired, bearded one sneered. “You mean back to the supermarket and the police station! You do remember the supermarket, don’t you? And, of course, you remember this!” With that, he laid his right hand on the box, still tied with the knotted red ribbon.
The phone rang. It must have rung seven
or eight times before it stopped. Then it started again, and this time I counted the rings—exactly seven before it stopped.
That’s when I heard a new sound beside me. It was Dragonfly whimpering and straining in his chair as if he was fighting for every breath he was taking through his nose.
The next thing I knew, the junior member of the Thompson, Gilbert, and Collins Frogs Legs Supply Company had tilted his chair sideways, and over he went thump-thump-ker-thump onto the kitchen floor. At the same time there was a sound outside the cabin like the rumble of thunder, along with another sound like a scraping or scratching and a thump-thump-thumping on the metal roof of the old man’s upstairs back porch.
And now, still another sound—a little like thunder but a little more like a boy playing the drums. And then a loud voice from maybe as far away as the old man’s woodshed said, “All right in there! You’re surrounded! Come on out with your hands up!”
Even though the startling voice outside sounded as if it was coming through a bullhorn being used by the sheriff or the police, and maybe it meant we were going to be rescued, still, for some reason, it didn’t make me feel happy. I’d been sort of hoping we could figure out our own way to free ourselves and get back the stolen box.
And then things began to happen fast there in the cabin. While Dragonfly was struggling around on the floor, still tied to his turned-over chair, while the rain was dinning on the roof, while the thundery voice outside was bellowing like a monster bullfrog—right in the mixed-up middle of all that excitement, I saw a wild look come into the eyes of the fierce-faced bearded boy with the knife. He quickly grabbed up the flashlight, which was on the table beside the box, scooped up the box itself, rushed to the open trapdoor, and down he went like a scared bullfrog with a boy carrying a gunnysack after him.
I heard the big wooden door downstairs squeak on its hinges and then footsteps running back into the cave, crunch-crunch-crunchety-crunch-crunch-crunch, getting farther and farther away.
In my mind’s eye I saw a picture in one of our school readers of Peter Rabbit running for his life to get away from Mr. McGregor, who was chasing him with a rake.
But that was only for a fleeting second. What my imagination began fast to imagine was that long-bearded, long-haired fugitive swerving this way and that, hurrying, hurrying, hurrying toward the mouth of the cave. I saw him coming out just above the base of the sycamore tree, leaping down, racing in the path along the creek to the boat, and on and on and on and still on to the lilacs, then swinging onto the motorcycle and roaring away, taking the little brown box with him and hurrying with it to Mary Jane Moragrifa somewhere for the reward.
Inside the cabin, the beardless, short-haired Son of Lucifer stood as if he didn’t know what on earth to do. He was like a rambler rose somebody had torn the trellis away from, and it didn’t have anything to cling to.
Now, also, the phone, which was only a few feet from where I was still tied to my chair, began ringing again. And this time the short-haired boy picked it up and listened a few seconds. As plain as day, I heard a husky voice saying, “Raid! There’s going to be a raid. Hide everything!”
The phone went click on the other end. The blue-eyed, beardless boy looked wildly around the room, started toward the trapdoor, stopped, then jumped as the thundery bullhorn outside called again. “We’re giving you to the count often. One—two—three-four–”
At the count of five, our captor swung toward Sarah Paddler’s walnut bureau-cabinet, took a key out of his jeans pocket, and with hurrying, trembling hands fitted it into the lock of one of the bureau’s two doors. While he had his back to us and was turning the key, I noticed his boylike face in the mirror, and I wondered what he was really afraid of.
The minute the cabinet door was open, I saw on the lower shelf a package the size and shape of the one the bearded boy had just dived down the cellar steps with.
Another brown box!
That younger boy took another worried look all around and said to us, “I hate to leave you tied up, but the police’ll get you loose.” With that, he grabbed up Poetry’s flashlight, and away he went down the cellar stairs, taking the second box with him.
Dragonfly, on the floor beside the telephone, was squirming and grunting, and his face was getting a mussed-up expression as if he was having an even harder time breathing. That really scared me. I knew that whenever he was especially allergic to anything he was near, his nose would swell shut, and he would have to breathe through his mouth. But how could he breathe through his mouth when it was taped shut? How could he breathe at all?
I began to struggle fiercely with the ropes around my wrists and tried to yell to whoever was outside to come on in. It was like being in a dream in which you are in some terrible danger and are trying to call for help and you can’t say a word. But you try and try and try and try. And it was maybe almost the most terrible feeling I had had in my whole life.
Until death do us part, I thought desperately. If only I could yell to whoever was outside to come on in.
I looked at Poetry in his chair beside me, and he was fighting as hard as I was to get his hands untied.
The count often had already been reached, and in another second something would happen. Something would have to happen.
And something did happen. There was the sound now of hurrying steps on the porch and a banging on the door—banging and banging and banging—and then, from upstairs, came the sound of a window opening, as if somebody up there was going out or maybe coming in.
And now that somebody was already in! I could see him at the head of the stairs.
It was another boy, one without a beard.
From the top of the stairway there came down now, two steps at a time, a curly-haired athletic-looking boy with a tape recorder in one hand, and it was Circus Browne, the acrobat of our gang!
What on earth! And double what on earth! Circus’s eyes took in a quick circle of directions, saw us all tied up in our chairs, saw Dragonfly red-faced and struggling for breath. He flew into action and in a flash had Dragonfly’s mouth free. Then he rushed to the door, unbolted it, and threw it wide open, letting in another person—not the sheriff, or the police deputy, or another law-enforcement officer but good old powerful-muscled, fuzzy-mustached, keen-thinking, clean-living Big Jim, our leader!
Big Jim took one sweeping look around the cabin and at us and asked, “What on earth is going on here?”
Dragonfly, with his voice free and able to breathe, started to explain. “We g–g–got k–k–kidnapped! They were going to hold us for r–r–ransom!” That shows what he had been thinking about while we were tied up.
Poetry’s mouth was untaped next, then mine, and our hands and feet were untied, and we all started talking at once.
Circus got in a few words, explaining why he and Big Jim were there. “We found out you were going to stay all night in Poetry’s guesthouse, so we made a tape to scare you a little, just for fun. Then when you weren’t there and there wasn’t any light, we wondered if maybe you might have decided to stay here instead. We knew you had, or we thought you had, when we saw light filtering through the window drapes, and that’s how come—listen!”
Circus pressed a switch on the tape recorder, and there was the beginning of what sounded like a snare drum rolling. Then there came thundering out: “All right, in there! You’re surrounded! Come out with your hands up!”
Circus turned off the recorder’s playback switch. It would have been a good joke if it had been, but it wasn’t.
And right that minute there was another and different sound—not outside or upstairs but down in the cellar. Not way back in the cave somewhere, either, but in the room next to the basement, close to where the old man kept the door key.
In the lamplight we looked into all our startled faces, wondering what on earth and why, and who was down there, and had they maybe been down there all the time, listening.
And now there was the sound of footsteps rushing toward the cellar steps
. In another minute we would know what on earth and why and who!
I guessed why, when from back deep in the cave, we heard now an actual bullhorn and a deep, thundery voice calling and echoing through the cavern and saying, “Listen, Darrel! This is your father! Give yourself up! Your mother’s crying her heart out!”
My mind grabbed a memory then, and it was what the beardless boy had said quite a while ago to the long-haired one, “I’m tired of being a Son of Lucifer! I want to go home!”
In my mind’s eye was another memory also, and it was of a reddish brown mustached father sitting at a kitchen table with an open Bible and saying across to his wife, “Nobody went after the prodigal son. He had to get fed up with the disgusting life he was living.”
The memory got interrupted by fast action, faster than anybody could imagine. I heard it before I saw it, and then I saw it. Up those cellar steps came the long-haired bearded boy, carrying a box wrapped round and round with red ribbon. And in the other hand, ready to stab anybody who tried to stop him, was a gleaming switchblade knife.
There was other action in the room then. It was Big Jim, rushing to the door, making sure it was bolted. And there he stood, his back to the door, his two best friends at his side, his eyes on the knife, his body tense. I knew there was going to be a fierce fight of some kind. It would not be a fistfight, though, but the kind of battle two boys have when one of them has a weapon and that weapon is a knife.
But Big Jim wasn’t the only member of the Sugar Creek Gang who was on the side of the law. There were four other boys, each one with two good, honest best friends and with a mind apiece to help him think.
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 25-30 Page 24