“Maybe he already has part of his parents in Texas,” Little Jim said as we left the bridge and the brown river behind us.
In my mind’s eye I could still see the tears in the boy’s eyes. I felt so sorry for him I wished we could have put him right in the car with us and taken him across, but we couldn’t.
That night, to my absolutely astonished surprise, we saw Dad’s twenty-five-cent boy again.
The whole gang of us and our four chaperons went to church in the big, brown tent to hear the quartet and the boy evangelist. That was the most interesting meeting! It was just like one we had one summer in a large tent back home when some of our Sugar Creek Gang had been saved.
That was the time, as you maybe remember, when Circus’s alcoholic dad started the Christian life, too. He had been sitting outside the tent in the dark, watching and listening, and when he saw his boy, Circus, go hurrying down the long grassy aisle to the platform to receive the Savior, it had melted his hard, cold heart. He had quickly ducked under the tent’s side wall, scrambled in and onto his feet, still half drunk, and staggered down the aisle, crying out loud as he went, “That’s my boy! That’s my boy!”
That wonderful night, he and Circus and most of us and a lot of other people went into what is called an inquiry room beside the platform, where all of us had prayed on our knees in the long, mashed-down, brown grass. That had been the beginning of a new life for the whole Brown family—Brown is Circus’s last name. After that, almost right away Circus’s dad got a good job and started making a decent living for his large family of all girls except for one boy.
The boy evangelist’s tent was nearly filled with different kinds of people. A lot of them were dressed in their working clothes, and nobody seemed to care. Mexicans—or Latin Americans, as Dad called them—and ordinary Americans and maybe even some illegals were all more or less mixed up in the different sections.
It felt good to hear everybody singing the same songs and choruses we used in our own church. Some of the numbers were sung in Spanish and some in English. Part of one chorus, which the black-haired Mexican children on the front rows almost yelled their heads off on, was:
Hay perdon por la sangre de Jesus,
Hay perdon por su muerte in la crus—
When they translated it for us, I found it meant:
There is pardon by the blood of Jesus,
There is pardon by His death on the cross—
I liked the song right away, and in only a few minutes all the gang—who were sitting in two rows, behind and in front of each other away off to one side near one of the tent’s side walls—were singing like a house afire along with the rest of the people
It seemed the Mexicans enjoyed singing it even better than we did, especially the children. They worked as hard singing as a gang of boys dashing lickety-sizzle through the woods to see which one could get to the swimming hole first.
But it certainly seemed different to hear a boy not more than eleven or twelve years old preach to a tentful of people, quoting dozens of Bible verses, not having to stop to think what to say next, and every now and then slamming home something important. It was like a boy taking a fierce, hard swing at a hard-pitched baseball and hitting it and knocking a home run and all the people thinking it was grand and yelling for him—except that the tentful of different kinds of people didn’t yell or shout.
But when the boy preacher said something extraimportant, several of the ministers who were sitting on the platform behind him would say, “Amen.” Also, a number of the people who were sitting around us did the same thing kind of quietly. “Amen,” as you maybe know, means “That’s right” or “That’s what I think too.” It almost means about the same as saying “Atta-boy,” only it is more reverent.
It was when the quartet was singing the same song we had heard last night coming from the sound truck that my curiosity made me look around the tent to see what different people might be thinking. And that was when I saw the little twenty-five-cent boy we had found hidden in the trunk of our car!
When I first glimpsed him, he was crawling in under the tent’s side wall. A second later he was on the edge of a bench beside a Mexican with a mustache. I noticed the man kind of slip his arm around the boy’s shoulders as though he knew him and liked him a lot—the way my dad does me sometimes. Maybe it was his dad.
As I said, the quartet was singing “I Won’t Have to Cross Jordan Alone,” and that had reminded me of the Rio Grande and of the boy in our trunk. When I looked around and saw him, I realized that he had either snitched a ride with somebody else or he had done what thousands of other Mexicans do—waded or swum or been rowed across the river.
Seeing that interesting little guy, I almost forgot what else was going on around me. I nudged Poetry in his side and jerked my thumb in the direction of the boy.
Poetry looked and saw and let out an exclamatory whistle, which he shouldn’t have done.
I noticed that there was a worried expression on the man’s face and that he began whispering something to the boy, the way a boy’s father does when a boy has done something he shouldn’t have or maybe when the father thinks he has. Then the man raised his finger to his lips, which meant “Keep still,” and he went on paying attention to what was going on on the platform.
Right that second the quartet finished, and a middle-aged minister, who had a forehead that reached all the way back to the back of his head, stood up and in a very kind voice asked if there were any people here who knew in their hearts that nothing could save a person from his sins except the Savior Himself.
“If there is anyone here who knows that and wants to trust Christ alone for his salvation, will he please raise his right hand?”
I noticed that several hands went up.
Then the minister asked all of us to shut our eyes and bow our heads, which we did, while he prayed a very nice, friendly prayer asking God to bless all the people who had raised their hands.
A little later we all stood up, and anybody who wanted to become a Christian that very night was supposed to go forward and into a small, friendly-looking canvas room beside the platform.
And as I watched, what should happen but the man the boy had been sitting beside stepped out into the aisle and was about the third or fourth one to go down to the front. There a Mexican minister quickly stepped off the platform to meet him, shook hands with him, and walked with him into the inquiry room.
I looked around out of the corner of my eye to see what different ones of the gang were thinking. Dragonfly was looking across the tent to where his parents were, and I noticed he swallowed kind of hard several times as though there might be tears trying to get into his eyes from somewhere. He was trying to keep them from doing it by swallowing, as people do in meetings like that.
Then I did get the surprise of my life. There was a rustling movement over where our folks were, and all of a sudden two women-one of them dressed in a new toast-colored suit with a green, flowered hat and the other, Dragonfly’s mother—stepped out into the aisle. Mom had her hand on Dragonfly’s mom’s arm, as though they were good friends, which they were anyway, and both of them went down to the front and into the little room.
I knew that my mother was already born again, so she couldn’t be going down there to become a Christian herself. But I didn’t get to wonder any farther, because right that second I heard a boy sniffling on the other side of Poetry, and I knew it was Dragonfly. I also knew it wasn’t because he was allergic to anything.
Then I heard a sort of sob coming from his throat as he sniffled again and muttered in a gulping voice, “That’s my mother. She’s going to get saved.”
Before you could say Jack Robinson, Dragonfly squeezed past Poetry and me and out into the aisle. Then he shot like a spindle-legged arrow straight for the open canvas door of the inquiry room to be with his mother.
I felt myself fighting tears. But I also felt wonderful inside, because I knew Dragonfly was going to have a saved mother. I was glad M
om knew how to pray and that she knew just what Bible verses to show Mrs. Gilbert so she could accept the Savior. I also knew Mom had a Bible in her handbag, which she always carried with her even when the handbag was already stuffed with everything you could think of.
I wondered for a minute if I ought to go down too, just to be with Dragonfly and let him know I was glad for him, but I waited awhile.
Then I got another surprise. And this time it was the little Mexican boy who went hurrying down the outside aisle!
Little Jim, in the row in front of me, made a dive after him. Then Poetry and I and nearly all the Sugar Creek Gang went too, not to be saved again—you don’t have to do that if you are already saved—but mostly because we wanted to be there when Dragonfly’s mom became a Christian.
Well, it was really great. Maybe twenty people were saved that night before the meeting was over. I guess I never saw any prettier sight in my life than all those people in that friendly little tent room, giving their hearts to God.
Something inside of me felt like a Sugar Creek song—not the kind people sing in church but something like the friendly noise that Sugar Creek itself makes when the water from the spring tumbles into it. All these people with happy tears in their eyes made me think of that. I felt as good as I do when I see a fiery red cardinal winging across a sunshiny sky from one tree to another. For some reason it seemed as if God, who could make such wonderful things as Sugar Creek and redbirds for a boy to enjoy, was turning loose a whole flock of cardinals to fly around in people’s hearts.
About the really prettiest sight I ever saw, though, was when Dragonfly’s dad and my dad came in, too, and very quietly knelt down beside our two moms.
Dragonfly himself, who had been kneeling beside his mom, seemed a lot smaller than he was. He also seemed to want to get a little nearer to what was going on, so he snuggled in still closer and tucked his head beneath her arm and pushed the side of his face up close to hers as though he wanted to be there for protection.
I was afraid that by being so close to my mom he might get a whiff of her face powder and start a sneezing spell, but he didn’t.
Well, while we were in the middle of all that gladness, Dad’s little twenty-five-cent boy and his dad disappeared. One minute they were kneeling with the Mexican minister over in a corner, and the next minute they were gone.
Poetry, who was beside me, noticed first. He nudged his elbow into my ribs and whispered against my left cheek, “Hey, Bill! There goes our adventure! Let’s go after it, or it will be gone forever!”
When Poetry whispered that, I quick opened my eyes in the direction my mind told me to, just in time to see the boy’s bare foot disappearing under the tent flap, which meant that he had crawled out. The man himself was already gone.
6
Well, it certainly wasn’t the right time and not a very dignified way to leave a gospel meeting, but I almost had to follow Poetry. So in a few seconds we were both outside the tent.
“There they go,” Poetry exclaimed in an excited whisper.
My eyes and ears took in a quick circle of things there in the moonlight, such as a lot of palm trees with their husky, rusty, rasping leaves, a small garage with a tile roof, and behind it the dark beginning of an orange or grapefruit grove. Then I spied the man and the boy as they shot out from behind the garage and made a moonlit dash for the grove.
The next thing I knew, I was following Poetry as fast as he could go, right after them.
It was a silly thing to do, I suppose, but I kept on running behind and then beside Poetry deeper and deeper into that grapefruit grove, which was the kind of orchard it turned out to be.
I found that out when I stepped on something large and round about the size of a croquet ball. I stumbled and fell sprawling onto the dusty, cultivated ground. I also fell on several other grapefruit, one of which broke and squished its juice out and up and into my freckled face.
Poetry stooped, caught hold of me, and with a grunt got me to my feet.
“We’re crazy to be doing this,” I said. “How do we know which way they went? Besides we might get lost—oh!” I groaned as a brand-new pain shot through my right foot, the one the grapefruit had been under when I stepped on it.
But it’s never easy to stop Poetry from doing anything exciting he has set his mind on doing. “I’ll bet they’re both illegals,” he said. “Let’s find out where they go and report to the police.”
I was astonished to hear him say that. I knew from what Dad had told me that there were thousands of illegal immigrants in the United States helping harvest the oranges, grapefruit, lemons, sugar beets, cabbage, lettuce, carrots, and stuff. Besides, I had also heard Dad say, “That is a problem for the Mexican and United States government to solve.” So even though I enjoyed a dangerous mystery as well as Poetry did, I certainly didn’t like the idea of doing anything to harm that little twenty-five-cent guy, who, in the trunk of our car that afternoon, had looked as scared and lonesome as a little stray dog that nobody wanted.
So I answered Poetry by saying, “It’s none of our business. Let’s go back to the tent before we get lost”—which, after a one-sided argument, we decided to do.
Poetry started back in one direction, and I started back in the other. Each one of us got stopped by the other’s voice.
“The tent’s this way,” I exclaimed, surprised at his not knowing which way to go.
“It isn’t, either. It’s this way.”
“It is not,” I argued back.
We stayed stopped and looked at each other’s worried moonlit faces, and—well, there we were! Every direction we looked, there were grapefruit trees, all of them the same size. Every direction looked like every other direction. The moon was too straight overhead for us to tell directions by it. Besides, when we left the tent we had run in every direction there is, so it looked as if we were really lost.
Anyway, Poetry was lost, and I didn’t know for sure which way to go—not quite for sure anyway.
How long we might have stayed lost, I don’t know, but pretty soon Poetry said, “Listen. I hear music. They’re singing in the tent again.”
I listened and heard music myself. Somebody was singing a solo. So we started in the direction of the music, glad we now knew which way to go to get back to the gang before they missed us and before two of our chaperons started worrying about us and wondering, What on earth? and, Where?
I felt pretty good when my sense of hearing told me the music was coming from the same direction as my mind had told me to go in the first place.
“How come they moved the tent over on that side of the orchard?” Poetry asked, hating to admit how right I had been or maybe hating to admit how wrong he had been.
“Yeah, how come?” I said with a little mischievous sarcasm in my voice.
We hurried on toward the music. I was puzzled, though, when two or three minutes later the music told me we were almost there but there wasn’t any tent or any electric light.
Poetry grabbed my arm and stopped me stock-still. “Sh!” he whispered and pulled me behind a grapefruit tree.
The mystery in his voice and the way he was grasping my arm scattered a shower of shivers all over me. We were within maybe ten yards of the music, which I noticed, when we stopped, was a man’s voice with a guitar accompaniment. It seemed the music was coming from an old tin-roofed shed of some kind.
What on earth? I thought as the shower of shivers was still falling on me. I realized that our adventure had come to life again. The tree we were hiding behind was at the very edge of the grove. We had either gone all the way through, or else we had come out on a different side from the one the tent was on.
The old shed, which sat in a little clearing, had a banana plant growing on one side of its open door, and some kind of sweet-smelling, flowering vine was sprawled all over a heart-shaped trellis on the other side. For a second I was glad Dragonfly wasn’t there to interrupt our silence with one of his fuzzy sneezes.
There
wasn’t even a light in the old shed, so the door was a big, black rectangular hole. At first I was sure the music was coming from inside, but I soon found out that it wasn’t.
Right that second Poetry put his lips up close to my ear and whispered, “There’s somebody hiding behind the trunk of that palm tree.”
I looked toward the palm, which was about twenty feet from the shed, and saw the shadow of a man there. I also saw a quick rhythmic movement like the movement a person’s wrist makes when he is strumming a guitar or a ukulele.
“What do you suppose is going on?” Poetry asked.
But I couldn’t even guess. That is, I couldn’t at first, but a moment later I saw a light in the shed. Somebody had struck a match, and quick as a flash the whole inside of the room was alive with light from what looked like a kerosene lamp just like the one we used in our upstairs at home.
Why, the old shed wasn’t a shed at all, I thought. It was somebody’s house—maybe the house of a Spanish American or even an illegal’s house! The room I was looking into was about the size of our living room at home.
Then an interesting thing happened. A woman with sparkling jewels in her black hair lit another match, carried it over to the wall across the room, and lit a candle, which was standing on a table. The flickering light from the candle lit up something that was hanging on the wall. It looked like a—it was! It was a crucifix as big as a boy. A crucifix, as you maybe know, is a figure of the Savior fixed to a cross.
Then I saw the woman drop down on her knees and look up to the crucifix for a while as if she was talking to it with her mind. While she was doing that, the music outside stopped and everything was very quiet. Then the woman with the jewels in her hair got up, left the candle burning, and came and stood in the doorway. She called in a low, musical voice something in both Spanish and English, and the English was: “You sing very beautifully, Pedro.”
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 13-18 Page 40