But you weren’t there, were you? Besides, I had to make up my own mind—what little I had at the time.
One thing I wasn’t going to do—I wasn’t going to rush into a temper-bloated fight with a skillful boxer such as Shorty had proved to me he was. Besides, I’d licked him once in a one-sock fight, and it hadn’t done him a bit of good. Not even a little bit.
But I couldn’t decide for Poetry. Besides, he hadn’t had his fight with Shorty yet. And if ever a boy was mad at anything, it was Poetry when he thought somebody was being bullied.
I yelled for him to stop a minute, while I was getting myself out of the mayapple patch. I expected to see him charge like a bull straight for Shorty Long.
But Poetry had more presence of mind than I thought. When he got to within about fifteen feet of Shorty, he stopped, and I stopped beside him. The two of us glared at the one of him, and he glared back at us, while Dragonfly was leaning against the linden tree and still breathing hard. Lugging that heavy pail of water up that hill had been too much for him.
And then I saw the savage-looking knife in Shorty’s hand and the smoldering look in his eyes as he stood beside his water pail. The tub was right behind him and also the rope he used at different times to lead or try to lead his cow to water or to the corral for milking.
It seemed I was letting Poetry be the leader just then, especially when he called out, “You’ve made a slave out of Roy Gilbert long enough! You’re going to release him now! Come on, Dragonfly! You’re coming with us!”
That little guy was still struggling for breath. “I–I can’t. I–can’t walk–yet.” And he kept on struggling to breathe. He started to come toward us, though.
But he got stopped by his big boss thundering back at him, “Stop!”
Dragonfly stopped, but I saw him make a quick little jerk of his head, and I noticed that he was breathing harder than ever, struggling and panting and acting so helpless that Shorty needn’t have worried about his trying to get away. I’d seen him fighting for breath many times, but never had he worked as hard as that.
I knew now was the time. I’d have to run the risk of being able to dodge the knife, which that bully was probably dumb enough to actually use if we attacked him. But I thought I could do it.
Like a charging football lineman, I started toward Shorty and Dragonfly, who was behind him and still panting.
“Back there! You get back!” I shook both my fists and shouted fiercely. “Back, you lummox!”
Just that second Dragonfly dropped to the ground.
And just that second Shorty did step back—or started to. But his heels bumped into a boy who for some reason was on his hands and knees right behind him. Shorty lost his balance and leaned sideways to try to regain it. The boy behind him grabbed him around the knees and one second later by the wrist of the hand that had the knife in it and—
That Dragonfly was a wiry little guy. He was fighting like a tiger, holding onto the knife hand and butting Shorty in the stomach with his head even before Poetry and I could get there, which I tell you we really did in a thundering hurry.
“Quick!” Dragonfly exclaimed. “The rope, over there by the linden tree! Get it!”
And we got it!
In less than four minutes—my powerful biceps helping quite a lot—we made short work of Shorty Long. We got both his hands and his feet tied and stretched him out on the ground on the closely cropped bluegrass by the Black Widow Stump. The grass there had been eaten down to the ground by Paul Bunyan’s blue cow.
I was still panting and getting my breath from having worked so hard so fast, and so was Poetry. But Dragonfly—he was breathing normally! Not even as hard as we were!
“Hey!” I said to him. “You haven’t got the asthma anymore! The excitement was good for you. It waked up your adrenalin glands.”
“Who said anybody had the asthma?” that little guy said disdainfully.
“But you were panting for breath! You could hardly live five minutes ago!”
“I don’t get asthma till the ragweeds come. This is still the last of May.”
I looked at his grinning face, and he looked back at me, then up at the sky with an indifferent expression as much as to say, “I thought that would be a good way to get myself saved. I got tired of doing all his hard work for nothing.” Then his face took on a mussed-up look, and I knew he was going to sneeze, which right away he did—a nice long-tailed sneeze that could have been heard a long ways away.
“I guess I’m allergic to cow’s hair a little bit! Is there a cow around here somewhere?” And I could tell by the happy grin on his face that he had come back into our gang and was going to be one of us the rest of the summer and all his life.
“You tricked me!” Shorty growled from where he was lying over by Babe’s drinking water. “I’ll make you pay for it, you little crooked-nosed scalawag!”
I boiled at that. I could call Dragonfly a crooked-nosed boy when I was talking about him or writing it in a story, but I had never said it in any way that would be an insult.
But Shorty was helpless there in spite of his grunting and squirming and swearing, so I couldn’t condescend to do anything to hurt him.
But we did have to decide what to do with him—and whether or not to punish him. And if we punished him, what kind of punishment would it be?
What kind did he deserve?
It was Big Jim who helped us decide. He all of a sudden came over the brow of the hill from the direction of my house to ask us about something that was even more important.
I heard him coming before I saw him and also before I saw Little Jim, the very littlest member of the gang, running along beside him like a small spring lamb in a pasture. Seeing that cute little fellow with his innocent face always makes me feel fine. It also makes me feel kinder toward anybody I’m having trouble with. So I was glad he had come along, because he usually didn’t have as much trouble with his attitudes as I did.
Just then there was an earsplitting screaming yell from near Babe’s tub of drinking water. “Help! They’re torturing me!” Shorty’s voice was wild enough and loud enough to have been heard three town blocks away.
And then I heard an answer from away up along the bayou! “Where are you?”
“Down by the spring! Hurry!” Shorty’s voice sounded as if he was being half killed.
I looked in the direction of the bayou, where I knew the robin family now had a cute little family of baby robins in their nest. And right that second there was a neighborhood uproar of robins’ voices and thrushes’ voices, scolding.
And then I saw a round man waddling toward us.
“It’s Shorty’s dad!” Dragonfly cried, and his face was afraid again. “What’ll we do now?”
7
I’d seen Shorty’s two-hundred-twenty-five-pound father quite a few times since they had moved into our neighborhood that spring and also when they had lived here before. But I had never felt I knew him very well. He always had been very busy, or his mind seemed he was thinking about somebody or someplace far away, even when he was within only a few feet of me. It always seemed he was thinking about something more important than what any of us were doing or saying.
The path Mr. Long was walking on had taken him behind two or three evergreens. “Look at that fancy shirt!” Poetry whispered to me as the two-hundred-or-so pounds came into sight again.
The sport shirt he was wearing was a bright gold color with purple grapes all over it, but the thing I noticed when he got up close was his mustache. It was certainly a sporty one, too small for such a broad face, and because he kind of strutted when he walked, the mustache made him look like a sissy. But the fierce-looking beech switch he was carrying made him look dangerous.
I don’t know what happened to Shorty’s mind during the few minutes between the time when he had called for help and when he saw his father with the beech switch coming down the path and into the open space where we were. But he took one look at the switch and right away was a
different boy, as if he was scared of his shadow.
“What have you been doing all morning, Guenther?” his father thundered. “Don’t you ever stop to think your mother might need a little help?”
He stomped over to where his boy was all tied up, looked down at him, scowling, and demanded, “Now you get yourself untied and get home and get busy in the garden! Do you hear me?”
Then that heavy body of Shorty’s father swung around, and I felt his beady eyes boring into me and into all of us. “Don’t you boys ever do anything but waste your time playing cops and robbers? Let’s see you get those ropes off my son, and be quick about it! I’d think you could all find a little something to do at home! How do you expect my boy to amount to anything—playing around with a gang of loafers!”
For some reason I was having trouble with my attitude again, and I thought that there were enough of us boys with strong enough muscles to make short work of Shorty’s father too. Dragonfly could plop down behind him, one of us could give him a powerful shove, and, when he landed on the ground, the rest of us could pile all over him and teach him how to be courteous in one easy lesson.
It wasn’t a good idea. Anyway, Big Jim didn’t seem to think so.
I remembered that Big Jim hadn’t been with us when Poetry and Dragonfly and I had had our scuffle with Guenther Long—what a name for a boy to have! And he hadn’t seen Dragonfly struggle up the hill with the heavy pail of water, either, nor had he read the insulting note that had been tied to the elderberry bush, or anything. He must have thought we were really playing some kind of game and had just tied Shorty up—and when he had screamed for help a few minutes ago, he was just pretending, the way boys do in their games.
Big Jim’s words came out very politely from under his almost mustache: “You’re right, Mr. Long. We do have work at home. But our parents arrange for us to have time to play together, too. We try to cooperate with our parents, and they try to cooperate with the gang.”
Mr. Long whirled and shot back at Big Jim, “Wise guy, eh? You think I don’t cooperate with my son? Well, I would have you know my son doesn’t cooperate with his parents! The essence of cooperation is obedience, unquestioning obedience! Now you get those ropes off my boy! I’ve got to leave for the city in fifteen minutes, and I want him home before I go!”
If Big Jim had known what I knew, and if he had had my mind and my attitude, he would probably have said, “Untie him yourself. It’s your rope, it’s your good-for-nothing son, who probably got his ideas and disposition from his father, and we’re not moving a muscle. Not even one!” Then he would have ordered our gang to walk off and leave those two just-alike people to look after themselves.
Instead, Big Jim was satisfied just to let the muscles of his jaw work as he said to Mr. Long, “Certainly. I’m sure we didn’t realize the situation. We’re glad to cooperate.”
He walked over to where Shorty was lying and began to untie the extrahard knots I myself had tied only a few minutes before. I, with my own jaw muscles working and my teeth pressed tight together, hurried over to help him. Poetry sat on the grass with a set face and smoldering eyes and watched.
Little Jim was on his knees, grunting away on one of the knots, while Dragonfly stood and looked on, holding his nose as if he was trying to stop a sneeze. He probably wasn’t but was holding it for another reason, which was that the whole thing “smelled.”
As soon as Guenther was free, he rolled to his feet, took a quick look at his father and the heavy switch he had in his hand, and started on the run up the bayou path, not even saying good-bye.
And, without a word, the fancy gold-and-purple sport shirt with a man in it followed him.
I let my mind follow them a lot farther than my eyes could see, as Big Jim, Little Jim, Poetry, Dragonfly, and I started up another path through the woods toward home to see if maybe there was something our parents needed us for. All the way, while we explained everything to the two Jims, from the note on the elderberry bush to the washtub at the spring, I was still following with my mind’s eye that small neatly trimmed mustache and the gaudy shirt.
It kind of seemed it wasn’t important anymore whether I ever grew a mustache myself or not. I guess I really didn’t want to wear one, anyway. I just wanted to be big enough to grow one so that I could have my first shave.
That night while Dad and I were doing the chores, he and I happened to be in the haymow at the same time. While I was throwing down quite a few forkfuls of alfalfa, he was looking around, studying the layout of the floor. Then he picked up the basketball that had been lying there and tossed a few baskets, actually hitting several while I worked. It made me grin, because I didn’t expect him to be that good.
“You ought to belong to our team,” I said. “How come you’re so good?”
“Played on a college team once,” he said.
I answered, “Is that so?”
He knew I knew it was so. I’d heard him tell about it many a time when he and Mom were visiting with some other man and his wife. Dad always liked to say, “That’s where I met Mrs. Collins. She saw me playing, and—”
It was an old joke about Mom’s liking his basketball playing so well that she wanted him to take her home that night. “And then, after a few dates,” Dad always wound up by saying, “she liked my playing so well that she asked me to take her to my home. And I’ve had her ever since—and I’ve been working ever since.”
Mom, being smart, always says, “That’s right.”
Dad made another basket, then he called me over and said, “Want to shoot a few before we have to close up the court for the summer?”
I had the ball almost before he had finished saying that. But when I realized what he had said, I stopped, with the ball poised in my two hands.
“Maybe we can fix up a basket out on the north side of the barn so you can keep in practice. But the ladino hay’s going to have to have a place up here somewhere, and it’ll be ready to cut next week. I thought you’d like to know about it.”
It was a kind of shock to realize that I was going to have my basketball court all covered with five or six feet of new hay, but I said, “Sure, that’ll be OK. It’s kind of hot up here in the summertime. It’ll be cooler outdoors in the shade of the barn, anyway.”
Then I took careful aim and shot at the basket, while in my mind’s eye I was a college student, and a whole crowd of other college kids was watching a game. And one of the girls watching was the one who was the cause of my knocking the living daylights out of Shorty for saying something bad about her.
I didn’t do so well with my baskets, though.
Dad threw down another forkful of hay and said, “Well, let’s get going. That’s a nice song you’re whistling.”
I didn’t know I had been whistling anything at all, but I listened to myself to see if I was, and sure enough I had been. The words of the song were ones we had on a record we sometimes played on our record player. They were chasing themselves up and down the scale in my mind and were:
I want a girl just like the girl
That married dear old Dad …
“Can you come here a minute, Son?” Dad called from the ladder that led to the downstairs of the barn.
When I got there, just before either one of us started to put a foot on the top rung and go down, Dad put an arm across my shoulder and said, “Bill, your whistling that song reminded me of something I’ve been wanting to say and sort of waiting for a chance that would be just right before doing it. You know what the words are, don’t you?”
“Yes sir,” I answered, feeling his arm across my shoulder and wondering if maybe he had heard about Shorty and he was going to give me some advice of some kind.
Then he said in a confidential tone like the one Poetry uses when he is telling me a secret, “You’re probably a little young to be thinking about things like this. But someday you will, and when you do, keep your mother’s fine high ideals in mind, will you? And her faith in God?”
It’s a
good thing I wasn’t halfway down the ladder at the time, because somehow I couldn’t see straight for some crazy old tears that had gotten into my eyes. The haymow and the opening that the top of the ladder was braced against were all blurred.
“I will,” I said to Dad, having to say it twice because I had sort of lost my voice.
I slipped out from under his arm then, and he went on down the ladder while I took just one more shot at the basket, taking careful aim first. The brown ball arched up in a high curve and whisked down right through the center of the net without even touching the rim.
I had a pretty wonderful mother, I thought, as I dived into the chores, working faster and harder than I had in a long time. It seemed easy to cooperate with Dad, and his having a reddish brown mustache didn’t make a bit of difference. I might even grow one myself someday. In fact, I might even let it keep on growing and not shave it off.
One day soon after that, in fact just two days before Dad’s mowing machine went singing round and round the field cutting the ladino clover, I had my worst experience with an imaginary Paul Bunyan and his honest-to-no-goodness blue cow.
Dad had to go to the city on business of some kind and would have to stay all night-there was some kind of Farm Bureau meeting. He would drive back the next day. Just to be friendly with Mr. Long, Dad offered to take him along with him if he had any business in the city, and Mr. Long did.
It would be my job to be the man of the house, Dad said, and “look after the stock and your mother and your kid sister. Protect them from wolves, and don’t leave any gates open, and gather the eggs and feed the chickens, and give Old Addie some nice fresh straw, and if you have any time left, see if Mother may need a little help around the house.”
“Yes sir,” I answered and saluted him. He was in the car at the time, and Mom was standing with Charlotte Ann on her arm beside the left front door. I heard her say, “Now do drive carefully, Dad.”
“Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure,” Dad said and gave us all a final good-bye, saying to Mom as he drove away—I heard it and probably wasn’t supposed to—“I left a note for you in the egg basket. It may not seem important, but you might want to read it.” Then he was off, and the car swished past the mailbox on the way to Guenther Long’s father’s house to pick him up.
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 25-30 Page 53