All of a sudden, Dragonfly said, “My mom saw another ghost last night!”
I stopped sweeping and said saucily, “Stop saying stuff like that! You know there isn’t any such thing as a ghost.”
And Dragonfly replied equally as saucily as I had, “You know it, and I know it, but my mother doesn’t know it. Say, come here, will you?” he raised his voice excitedly.
In a jiffy Poetry and I were beside him, Poetry dropping an eraser and a piece of chalk on the way, and I stopping to pick up the broom I’d just dropped.
“See here!” Dragonfly said. “Here’s what it says a ghost is!”
I looked at the place where his crooked fingernail was pointing, and it said: “Ghost, noun, 1.A disembodied spirit.”
“What’s disembodied mean?” Dragonfly wanted to know, and for a second I knew he was believing the same thing his mother believed.
I sighed and looked at Poetry, who, as he had done yesterday, put his forefinger up to his lips and said, “‘Two ears and only one mouth have you.’”
Poetry interrupted himself then and said, “Here, let’s look up the word disembodied,” which he did, and pretty soon my blue-gray eyes and Poetry’s sky-blue ones and Dragonfly’s brown balloon-shaped ones were all looking at the definition of the word disembody, and Poetry’s squawky voice was reading.
“Verb, transitive, to free from the body.”
And that meant a ghost was a spirit free from its body.
“See there!” Dragonfly said triumphantly. “It doesn’t say there isn’t any such thing!”
No, it didn’t, and I was remembering the pounding noise I’d heard in the cave yesterday, which might have been Little Jim’s stick against the old sycamore tree and probably was.
Well, pretty soon Miss Lilly would be there and, a little later, the rest of the seventeen pupils who came to our little red brick school-house.
Even though it had rained hard during the night, the sun was out now. It was going to be a very cheerful day—and hard for us to keep the grins off when we thought of the lamb that was locked up out in the woodshed and would stay there until Poetry went to let it out.
And then we heard a car. It was Miss Lilly herself in her green coupe, stopping right under the big sugar tree not far from the tall, long-handled pump.
She sort of looked like a lily that morning, I thought, as she stepped out onto the grass-covered ground. Her pretty, long brown hair was very carefully combed the way Little Jim’s mom combed hers. She was wearing a brown-and-white dress, the white being kind of lily designs. She had several books and a lunch basket, which, as quick as we could get to her car, Poetry and Dragonfly and I offered to carry into the schoolhouse.
“Good morning, boys!” her musical voice said to us very cheerfully, and she smiled at us in a way that made me desire to study hard all day—that is, as soon as I could after the lamb had come in.
At that minute I heard a sound coming from the woodshed as though something was trying to get out the door. I also heard a lamb bleating.
I could feel my hair acting funny under my cap, and I could see Poetry’s face turn red and Dragonfly’s eyes get bigger.
Miss Lilly looked around quickly and exclaimed, “What was that?”
And Poetry squawked indifferently, looking at me before I could look away. “That—that was probably a—maybe some new kind of bird singing. There’s always some new bird around.”
Miss Lilly laughed and said, “You always have an answer, don’t you, Poetry? It is a nice day, isn’t it?” Then she started toward the door of the school, with us carrying the different things for her.
Whew! I thought. That was a close shave! She had actually heard the lamb, and she could have also seen the little cloven-foot tracks there in the mud too, if she had looked, but she hadn’t.
Well, right after that, children started to come from different directions, some across the fields, some down the lane, and others on the road. Pretty soon our gang was all there, which was all the boys there were in our school. The rest of the children were just girls, some big and some little and most of them with different-colored and different-sized hair ribbons in their different-colored hair, and all of them carrying lunch boxes and some of them books.
They all came through the little wooden gate not far from the tall, long-handled iron pump, playing and saying different things to each other, most of them being noisy, except for a few very bashful girls who were coming to school for the very first time that year.
Big Jim was standing right beside me when Sylvia’s little sister came walking through the gate. Sylvia, you know, is our minister’s oldest daughter. She had been in the eighth grade the year before and was going to town to high school this year. Big Jim had had to stay out of school one whole year before he moved into Sugar Creek territory a few years ago, because he had had an operation. So he was still in eighth grade, for which we were very glad.
All of a sudden, Sylvia’s little sister, Jeanelle, came sidling up to Big Jim with her pigtails flopping down on her neck and handed him something that I guessed was a note. Big Jim shoved it into his pocket quick and started whistling and walking off across the schoolyard by himself, yawning and acting indifferent and stretching his arms lazily.
Soon the last bell rang, and all of us who were outside went storming in—that is, we went like lions up to as far as the door, then we went inside like a lot of lambs. Just as we got to the door, I slipped the woodshed key to Poetry, who shoved it into one of his pockets and went innocently to his seat across the room from me. The smallest kids sat in the front seats near the teacher’s desk. In a few moments everybody was quiet.
First thing on the program was “opening exercises,” which lasted for ten minutes and was the reading of an interesting Bible story out of a children’s Bible storybook and then a short prayer by Miss Lilly herself, with all of us bowing our heads reverently. Then we started off the day’s work, studying and reciting and keeping quiet, which is harder even than hard work unless you are interested in your work.
The first grade did some slow, monotonous reading, which made it hard for me to study. In a one-room schoolhouse you have to study most of the time while somebody else is talking.
That was especially hard for me, for just that minute I was looking at an arithmetic problem that said, “Mr. Brown had 37 sheep whose wool averaged 7 pounds each. He sold the wool at $1.00 per pound and deposited one-half of the money in the State Bank, one-third of it in the Security Bank, and paid his lumber bill with the remaining sum. How much was his lumber bill?”
I looked out of the corner of my eye at Poetry, who was looking at me out of the corner of his eye, and he snickered because he was trying to work the same arithmetic problem I was.
But when Miss Lilly turned around from the blackboard, our faces were as blank as the sheet of paper I was supposed to be working problems on, as also was Poetry’s.
Well, we suffered along for ten or fifteen minutes, each one of the Sugar Creek Gang, even Little Jim, acting very busy. Then all of a sudden Poetry raised one of his big hands and asked to be excused.
Miss Lilly looked at him in the blank way teachers do when they are thinking about something else and nodded her brown head absentmindedly.
Poetry turned sideways, set his feet in the aisle, stood up, and started walking heavily, because his feet are big and he is very heavy himself, toward the only door the schoolhouse had. He pushed open the screen and went out. I kept my face straight and my eyes on my arithmetic, trying to figure out how much Mr. Brown owed the lumberyard and how many pounds of wool his thirty-seven sheep had. I frowned and scowled at that problem and at the thousand or more snickers that were trying to burst out of my mouth.
Some of the windows were still open. I heard Poetry walking toward the woodshed, then I heard the rattle of a steel lock, and I even thought I heard the sound of the key turning in the lock. Then I heard the door swing open, squeak-squeak-squeak.
Why on earth, I thought,
didn’t we think to oil that woodshed door?
And then, a little later, I heard a lot of steps coming toward the schoolhouse on the gravel just outside the door.
I was close to the window, so I took a quick sideways glance and saw that Poetry looked worried. I supposed he had lost his nerve and was trying to get the lamb to change its mind about following him inside. The lamb was all around him and in front of him and behind him and then-Well, I heard water splashing, and I knew what that meant—with a mud puddle not far from the schoolhouse door. Right away I heard steps on the porch, the door opening, and a scuffling noise. And the next thing I knew, there was Poetry coming in and trying to keep the lamb out—or pretending to. I couldn’t tell which.
And then the lamb was inside. Inside! A lamb in our schoolhouse! A muddy lamb with very muddy feet!
6
Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow,
And everywhere that Mary went,
The lamb was sure to go.
It followed her to school one day—
Which was against the rule;
It made the children laugh and play
To see a lamb at school.
And so the teacher put him out …
That’s the way the poem goes, and it certainly sounds like an innocent little jingle, but when you try to act it out in real life as we did— well, it certainly wasn’t.
Somebody ought to rewrite that poem and make it say something like this:
Poetry had a little lamb,
Its fleece a dirty black;
The only place its wool was white
Was high upon its back.
It followed him to school one day,
It made the teacher sick,
I couldn’t study geography,
Nor get my ’rithmetic.
The children didn’t laugh or play,
It made them stare and blush,
And over all that one-room school
There came an awful hush.
And Big Jim, Little Jim, and Tom,
And Circus too, and me
And Dragonfly—the six of us—
Were scared as Poetry.
Something like that would make a good start for a poem that would be more true to life than the one about Mary’s innocent lamb.
There wasn’t anything innocent about our lamb that day. The very minute it and Poetry got inside, it began to act wild. It started running around in different directions, scared and bleating, making muddy tracks everywhere and making the little girls cry. It upset a mop bucket that was by the door under the long shelf where the lunch boxes sat all in a row. That bucket went banging and rolling and emptying its soapy water in different directions all over the floor.
And that’s how I happened to have to stay in at recess to clean up the whole mess. In fact, we had recess right away, a nice long one for everybody except some of us.
Quick as a flash, when that pail of soapy water was turned over, different ones of us raised our feet fast as the water came toward us, like a farmer getting his chickens and hogs out of the way when Sugar Creek goes on a rampage.
Miss Lilly called us to order, saying, “All right, everybody! Quiet, please!”
She stood there behind her desk like a queen, her face saying there was going to be some kind of trouble but not saying what.
As soon as we all quieted down, the lamb did the same thing. And Miss Lilly said to Poetry very sternly, “Leslie, will you please open the door and lead the animal out!”
Leslie “Poetry” Thompson was as meek as a lamb was supposed to be. He stood to his big feet and said politely, “Yes, ma’am!” He walked heavily to the door and opened it.
The lamb all of a sudden saw him and got there almost as quick as he did—and got out even quicker, making a noise as it scampered across the porch and out onto the gravel walk.
Glancing around quick, I saw it stop and lift its head and look back up to the door at Poetry.
After that, Miss Lilly said to all the rest of us, “There will be a short recess for everyone except the boys. Go quietly, please. Turn.”
The girls turned, setting their feet out in the aisles, each one trying to miss the soapy water.
Then Miss Lilly said, “Stand,” and they stood and waited for her to say, “Pass,” which she did, and they went out very quietly, walking as if they were walking on eggs that might break any minute. The second the last girl was out, Miss Lilly went to the door and shut it and walked back to the front of the room. She stood beside her desk with one hand resting on the top of the globe. Her face was sober, and it looked as if the whole world was going to be against us. We didn’t know what to expect, and my heart was pounding.
Little Jim, who was sitting across the aisle from me, was even white, he was so tense inside. Poetry for once in his life didn’t look mischievous. And Circus didn’t have any tree he could climb to let off some of the extra steam that was almost all the time inside him trying to get out.
Dragonfly looked as if he was seeing one of his mother’s ghosts. Little Tom Till’s freckled face and red hair looked the way they always did—his face a little dirty, his hair a little mussed up in different places, especially at the top of the back where he had a cowlick, which means a place where the hair starts growing in different directions. It actually does look like a place on a calf’s back that our old brindle cow has just licked with her rough tongue.
Big Jim looked very calm, though. He had one hand in his pocket, where probably the note was that Sylvia’s little sister had given him, I thought.
Miss Lilly stood for a long time with her hand on the world. I could tell she was thinking what to do with us and couldn’t decide. There was a very pretty sparkling ring on her hand, which looked like a diamond, and I noticed that Big Jim was looking at it and admiring it and maybe wasn’t thinking about any muddy lamb.
Then Miss Lilly cleared her throat, which didn’t need clearing, and said to Poetry, “Leslie, will you step outside, please, and bring your lamb in again?”
He stared at her until she said firmly, “Now, please!”
Poetry walked to the door, looked out, and called the lamb by name, which was “Jerry,” and the lamb, seeing him, was on the steps right away. Then Poetry and the lamb were inside again.
And that lamb, even though it was still dirty, was as meek as could be. It even let Miss Lilly put her hand on it, stroking it, letting her hand move from its forehead across its poll, which is its head, and down its neck to its withers, which is the part of a lamb where its neck and back meet.
Of course, Poetry had to stand beside her and the lamb to make it stay there, but it acted as if it liked to have her stroke it—just as a kitten purrs to show you it really does.
Well, I knew by the expression that came into Miss Lilly’s soft blue eyes that she wasn’t going to scold us.
Instead, her voice got a faraway expression in it, just as her eyes had, and she said, “Boys, members of the Sugar Creek Gang, I wonder if you remember the story of a man named John who lived a long time ago in a beautiful little country right in the very center of the world, known now as Palestine. He was speaking one day to a large crowd of people who had come out along a river to listen to him. This John was a prophet of the God who made the whole world. He had just finished preaching a sermon, when all of a sudden, Someone came walking along the river, a strong young Man whose life was clean and pure and who had never done a wrong thing in His life.
“That young Man, strong and pure in mind and body, walked toward John before all the people. Seeing Him, John raised his great voice and cried out to the people, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’”
And then Miss Lilly lowered her voice, but her face still had that very quiet, faraway look on it as she said, stroking the little lamb’s head and neck, “That young Man was the only Man in all the history of the world who could have taken away … taken away …”
Then Miss Lilly’s faraw
ay voice stopped speaking. She looked at each one of us as though she wasn’t seeing us, and she very gently stroked the head and forehead of the lamb with one hand, looking at it quietly. Then she turned her pretty face and looked across to the globe of the world, where her other hand was resting, and there were tears in her eyes when she decided to go on.
“That young Man’s name was the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the One of whom John the Baptist said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.’”
I looked across to Little Jim, sitting with his little hands in front of him on the top of his desk. His eyes were glued to Miss Lilly, and his fists were doubled up. I thought I saw him swallow something in his throat.
Circus was sitting with his hands on his knees under the desk. Tom Till had his feet out in the aisle but was leaning forward sideways with his chin resting on the back of his hands and his elbows on the desk. Poetry was moving one of his hands around in his desk, feeling for something, which he soon found, and it was his New Testament. He started to open it right away and look up the story Miss Lilly had just told us.
Big Jim and I weren’t doing anything except listening, but something very strange was going on in my mind. All the time she was talking so kindly, I kept thinking of the One she was talking about, and I kept looking at the big round world, which had millions of people on it who didn’t even know yet that Somebody had died for their sins. And I wished everybody who knew about it would hurry up and tell everybody else. I even wished I could tell a lot of people myself. I forgot all about the mischievous prank the Sugar Creek Gang had just played.
Right that minute, while those different thoughts were splashing around in my mind, Miss Lilly said, raising her voice, “And now, Leslie, if you will put your lamb out to pasture, and if you, Bill, will get busy with the mop and pail, we’ll have the schoolhouse ready for business in a few minutes.”
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 1-6 Page 42