I took a quick look at the sun, which was just above Dad’s head as he stood there by the grape arbor, and I knew I had maybe an hour yet before the sun would go down. The way I felt that very second, it seemed it would take a lot longer than that.
“What time is it?” I yelled to Mom, still thinking about how long it would be before the sun would go down.
And she said from the side porch, “It’s time to gather the eggs,” and Dad said from under the grape arbor, “It’s time to start the chores.”
I picked up another rock, wanting to throw it at something, which is what a boy likes to do when he’s half mad. But I just stood there looking at my dad and also down at my bare feet, which were digging themselves into the sand of the driveway.
And just then I looked down the road toward Poetry. He was walking backward, watching in our direction to see what was going to happen, if anything.
He saw me looking, and I whirled real quick, with my rock still in my hand, made a wide sweep with my arm to throw it across the road into the woods, and—well, it happened again! That crazy rock went low and sailed right straight toward our tin mailbox, which has my dad’s name, “Theodore Collins,” on it. Wham! It struck that box right in the center, making a terribly loud noise.
Then it bounced back toward me, having made a big dent in the box, and there I was—in Dutch with my parents and mad at both of them and at myself.
What can a boy do at a time like that? I certainly didn’t know what, but I had to do something. So I just stood there, looking at the dent in the mailbox and saying and doing nothing until Dad said, “You can come on in the house a minute, William”—William being the name he uses on me instead of Bill whenever I’ve done something I shouldn’t.
I looked around quick for something to pick up and carry with me, such as a stick or a twig—not to protect myself but to have something to hold onto. I felt maybe like a drowning person feels when he looks around in the water for something to hold onto and, seeing a little stick or even a floating straw, makes a grab for it.
My eyes spied a branch about two feet long, and I quick picked it up and carried it with me, swishing it around and striking at a swarm of gnats that were in front of my face.
The sun was getting lower, I thought, and there were three tempers that would have to hurry up and get over with before it went down—Mom’s and Dad’s and mine.
All of a sudden, I thought I saw a way to help Dad’s temper and maybe Mom’s too, so I said quicklike and as cheerfully as I could, “I’ll get the eggs as fast as I can!” Whirling around, I made a dive out across the barnyard for the barn, dodging the chicken coop where old Andrew Jackson had been crowing a little while before.
But I was like one of Circus’s hounds on a leash, which tries to run but gets stopped quickly when it gets to the end of the leash. My dad’s voice was like a leash when he said. “Stop! Come here!”
For some reason I did, all of a sudden realizing that the branch in my hand would make a fine switch for Dad to use on me and dropping it as if it had been a very hot potato.
Well, it’s the most terrible feeling in the world to be on the “outs” with your parents. I’d been that way a few times in my life, and I didn’t know what to do. I actually hadn’t done anything wrong on purpose, but all of a sudden I realized I had been thinking only about myself and what fun I could have and not about how tired Mom might be and how she might need help. Even though I hated to admit it, I knew I was wrong.
“Bring the switch with you,” Dad said.
I stooped, picked it up, and carried it to him, walking sideways and striking at different things and not looking at his gray eyes below his shaggy reddish-brown eyebrows or at his reddish-brown mustache.
I knew I was in for something. I had been told plenty of times not to throw rocks at our chickens or any of our cows or pigs or sheep or horses and also not at Theodore Collins’s name on our mailbox.
Suddenly Dad said in a very pleasant voice, “You’re getting to be a good shot, Bill. You going to be a pitcher on the Sugar Creek School ball team this fall when school starts?”
What on earth? I thought. Why such a kind voice?
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” I said. “I just wanted to throw a rock. I—”
“I know it,” Dad said. “I used to feel like that myself when I was a boy.”
For some reason, though, I still didn’t feel good. It seemed Dad thought Mom was to blame for calling me in such a scolding voice, and I didn’t like Mom to have to feel sad. I looked quick at her, and—would you believe it? —she had a smile on her face. She looked at Dad a minute; their eyes just looked and looked at each other. It was as though they were thinking kind of friendly things to each other and also liked each other a lot. My grayish-brown-haired mom and my reddish-brown-haired dad were wonderful parents, I thought, and I was awfully glad they liked each other.
In minutes the storm I had thought was coming was all over, and we were a happy family again. Neither one of my parents even mentioned the chicken coop or the mailbox. All of us were working like a house afire to get the chores done.
I helped Mom awhile first because my sister, Charlotte Ann, was too terribly little to do housework. First, I did one of the most important chores Mom ever lets me do around the house, which was to water her African violets-pretty green-leafed plants with bluish-purple flowers, which she grows in some very rich soil in a dish and keeps on the window ledge in our north window. An African violet is the kind of flower that has to grow in the shade without any direct sunshine on it. When you water it, you don’t dare put even a drop on its leaves unless the water and the air in the room are about the same temperature. You have to very carefully pour the water on the soil itself or down where the roots are.
Even while I was squirting in a little water at a time with the eye dropper that I always used, I heard Mom humming a song of some kind in the kitchen. It was one we sometimes used in church, and the chorus goes: “Wonderful, wonderful Jesus, in the heart He implanteth a song …”
For some reason, as I looked down at the pretty bluish-purple flowers with their gold centers, I felt very happy. It seemed my parents were treating me like an African violet. Instead of putting cold water on me by scolding me and punishing me a lot, they were sort of watering my heart. I don’t know how to explain it, but I could feel that they were pretty smart parents, and I liked them a terrible lot.
Next day, when Little Jim and I were talking, he said to me, “Mom lets me water her Saintpaulia, too.”
“Let’s you do what to her what?” I said.
And he said, “That’s the Latin name of the African violet. I saw it in a book—Saintpaulia.”
Well, pretty soon most of the chores were done, and we were having supper while it was still daylight, and the sun was still not down. It was what Dad said at the table when he asked the blessing that got me started to thinking again about the stone house and Old Tom the Trapper and ghosts.
This is what Dad said in his big, deep-toned voice, “Please bless Old Man Paddler as he writes his book on ‘The Christian After Death.’”
For a minute my thoughts left Dad and the kitchen table filled with our good supper. I was again thinking about a dead red fox and an arrow sticking through Old Tom’s chest. I thought of the stone house and of how wild Circus’s dad’s new bluetick hound had acted when he first smelled the strange-looking tracks at the spring.
Dad had finished his prayer, and he and Mom were talking about Old Man Paddler, before I interrupted them with an important question. Mom had just said, “You know, I think that old man is a genius. It’s almost uncanny the things he knows about the Bible and everything else. I’ll bet it’ll be a wonderful book.”
“You know what James Russell Lowell said a genius is, don’t you?” Dad said to her.
Mom said, “No, what?”
Dad said, “Talent is that which is in a man’s power; genius is that in whose power a man is” —something like that. I cou
ldn’t understand it, but I knew it was important.
Anyway, I piped up and said, “Our gang is going to visit Old Tom the Trapper’s grave next week—can we?”
Dad came out of his grown-up world quick and said, “You’re going to visit Old Tom the Who’s what?”
“Old Tom the Trapper’s grave under the big maple tree beside the old haunted house.”
Dad quickly looked at Mom, and Mom at Dad, and both of them at me. I looked down at my plate and scooped my fork under a pile of raw-fried potatoes and started to take a bite. Some of the thin slices fell off the fork on the way up to my mouth.
“Too big a bite, Bill,” Mom said, and I frowned, knowing it before she told me.
Just that second, Charlotte Ann made a whimpering noise in the other room—she’d been napping. Mom excused herself, got up from the table to go in and see what was wrong, and Dad and I were alone for a minute.
“Who told you about Old Tom?” Dad asked.
“Old Man Paddler,” I answered. “We were up to see him today.”
Dad sipped his coffee, then said, “Well, if he told you, it must be all right for you to know. You going to take Dragonfly along?”
“Sure,” I said, “that’s one reason why we’re going—to prove to him there isn’t any such thing as a ghost. He’s afraid of ghosts.”
“You know what Sophocles said about fear, don’t you?” Dad said.
I looked at Dad’s eyes and grinned. He was always quoting what some famous somebody said about something. He was always reading and remembering things, and he and Mom often talked about them to each other.
I answered him by saying, “Who said what about what?”
He grinned. “What Sophocles said about fear. Didn’t you say Dragonfly was afraid of ghosts?”
“Who’s Sopho—what’s his name?”
“Sophocles? He was a Greek poet.”
“What’s he got to do with Dragonfly?” I asked, feeling rather important because Dad was talking to me as if I were a grown-up.
“Nothing except that Sophocles said, ‘To him who is in fear, everything rustles.’”
“I still don’t see what that’s got to do with Dragonfly and ghosts,” I said, just as Mom came in with my little sister on her arm.
Charlotte Ann was yawning and acting as if she had just waked up. She was as cute as anything. Her small ears looked like a couple of little dried peaches glued onto the sides of her head.
Dad answered me by saying, “Nothing in particular, except that when you get to the haunted house, everything Dragonfly hears will sound like a ghost—the wind in the leaves, the rubbing of a tree branch against another, the snapping of a twig, everything.”
Well, supper was soon over, and I felt wonderful inside. Both my parents liked me and didn’t hold it against me that I had talked sassy to Mom, and Dad acted as though it was all right for the gang to go see the haunted house.
Just as I was passing Mom’s chair to go outdoors awhile, I stopped and looked down at Charlotte Ann’s pretty soft pink cheeks and said to her, “You’re a nice little girl. I hope when you grow up you won’t talk back to your mother like your big, ugly, freckled-faced brother did today.”
Mom, without looking at me at all, reached out and caught me by my overalls’ suspender and pulled me a little closer. For a minute I stood there beside her with her arm around me. Well, it was the most wonderful feeling in the world to feel the way I felt right then.
Almost right away I was out the kitchen door, dashing toward the barn, picking up sticks and rocks and things and throwing them in different directions but not hitting anything, because I was especially careful not to throw them at anything.
Next week, I thought, when the gang had its next meeting, we’d all go up past Old Man Paddler’s cabin and on down the creek into a territory we’d never visited before. I’d make certain Dragonfly was with us, so we could prove to him that there wasn’t any such thing as a ghost. There we’d finish playing the game of Old Tom the Trapper.
That night, just before I crawled into my upstairs bed, I looked out under the rustling leaves of the ivy that hangs across the upper half of my window. Looking out into the garden with the moon shining on it, I thought about what a pretty moonlight night it was. It felt good to think that God had made such a pretty world, and it seemed for a minute that I liked Him even better than I did my parents. I quickly dropped on my knees the way my parents had taught me to do when I was little and said a short prayer.
Then I crawled into bed and went to sleep.
I had a crazy kind of dream, though, and part of it was about Circus’s new bluetick hound. Dragonfly was picking at all those little blue spots on him, and in my dream each spot was a small blue wood tick that Dragonfly was picking off.
And the next thing I knew it was morning.
5
Our gang had acted out a lot of stories, each one of us taking the part of one of the characters and having what our parents called “innocent fun.” In fact, it seemed that I was pretending to be someone or something else nearly all the time. Sometimes I was a bear that growled and crawled around on the floor of our house. Once, when I was smaller, I was a fire engine and raced from one room of our house to another and up and down the stairs, making a fire-engine noise that must have sounded awful to Mom, because she stopped me and let me go outdoors.
Well, next week finally came, and the gang started out to finish playing Old Tom the Trapper. First, we stopped at the North Road bridge, and I got shot through the chest again. Then, because it would be too far for the gang to carry my dead body all the way to Old Tom’s stone house, I came to life until we got there.
Old Man Paddler had drawn a map for us so that we wouldn’t get lost, and after about an hour of walking we finally arrived. It certainly was a spooky-looking place. It was way up on a bluff above Sugar Creek and had a lot of maple and ash and elm and other kinds of trees all around it and ivy clinging to one of the walls. The heavy wooden door looked strong enough to keep out Indians or wild animals. The barn, about a hundred feet away from the house, was twisted into a very ugly shape and was half lying down. There was an old windmill near the house that didn’t have any wheel at the top. The wheel was lying twisted up and partly buried in the dirt at the bottom of the tower.
We walked all around, listening and imagining different things, and then the gang decided to bury me out under the great big maple tree, which was almost two feet thick at the base and had wide-spreading branches covered with large green heart-shaped leaves about the size of Dad’s hand when it’s spread out.
“All right,” Big Jim, who was the director of our play, said. “Lay the poor old man right there till we have his grave ready.”
I plopped my body down on the ground right where I was, made myself limp, and made the gang carry me to where they wanted me. They half dragged me to the base of the tree and left me lying alone, while they took some sticks and pretended to dig a grave. I was lying on maybe a hundred and fifty two-winged maple seeds that looked like the brass key we use to wind the eight-day clock in the kitchen. I was also lying on a root that felt awfully hard in the small of my back. So I rolled over once and then lay very quiet.
I watched what was going on out of the corner of my eye. I felt terribly foolish and wished they would hurry up and get it over with, which they did.
The gang gathered around my imaginary grave and tried to act sad. Little Jim, who had been picking wild flowers, brought a bouquet and laid them on my chest. I was really trying hard to keep a straight face when the flowers made me sneeze, and that made Little Jim giggle. Big Jim shushed us all and said in a very dignified tone, “Friends, let us pause in silence as we pay our respects to the memory of an old man who lived always a clean and respectable life …”
While everybody was quiet, I looked up through the branches of the different trees and saw a very pretty red squirrel. It was going from one branch to another, running along the top side of one, leaping across to anot
her tree, and then following a long overhanging branch that extended out over the moss-covered roof of the house.
All of a sudden, I splintered the silence all to pieces by saying excitedly, “Hey, gang, look! There’s a squirrel!”
That broke up our funeral, which had been long enough anyway. Besides, somehow it didn’t seem right to play funeral, and we all felt better when it was over and I was alive again.
“I’ll be a ghost now,” I said, “and haunt Dragonfly.” I let out a long wail that sounded like a loon I’d heard when we’d been up North.
But Dragonfly didn’t think it was funny and said so. Then all of a sudden he got a strange, scared look on his face and said, “Hey, you guys, listen! I h–hear something. It—it’s inside the house!”
Well, that was one of the reasons we had come up there in the first place—to convince Dragonfly there wasn’t any such thing as a ghost. But he was a hard person to convince of anything. I looked at his worried forehead and noticed that he really almost believed there was a ghost. Just that second also, I saw him give his neck a quick twist, as if he was shaking his head “No.” In fact it seemed he had been doing that every few minutes.
Even though you don’t believe in any such thing as ghosts, when you have somebody in your gang who does believe in them and who actually is worried, it’s sort of like a boy having the measles and the rest of his friends catching them from him. As much as I didn’t believe in ghosts myself, a little later when we all were crowded up close to the door of that house and listening, and I heard a noise that sounded like something moving around in one of the rooms, I felt a creepy feeling go up and down my spine.
I noticed Little Jim was crowded up close to Big Jim and that he had the stick that he nearly always carried with him gripped terribly tight in his small hands.
Big Jim’s face, with its seven or eight fuzzy hairs on its upper lip, looked pretty serious as he pressed his left ear close to the old white doorknob. He listened to what we could all hear even without being any closer—a sound of something moving around over a wooden floor.
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 13-18 Page 26