Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 1-6

by Paul Hutchens

  “Because,” Poetry answered. “I really wanted there to be a ghost—even if there isn’t any such thing.”

  Well, just that minute the old man saw us coming. He straightened up, stood his ax against the block of wood, and said in his kind old voice, “Good afternoon, Poetry. Good afternoon, Bill.”

  “We brought your shirt,” I said, holding out the package.

  Poetry said, “And two dozen cookies from Bill’s mom—I mean, Mrs. Collins.”

  “Well, well,” the old man said with sunshine in his voice. “Come on in the house a while, and I’ll get you something to take back with you.” He carried the shirt in one hand and the sack of cookies in the other.

  We followed him inside and sat down on a couple of homemade wooden chairs.

  Old Man Paddler walked to the trapdoor in his floor, lifted it up, and went down into his cellar.

  The minute his white hair disappeared into that dark hole, I remembered the time he had fallen down that same stairway and had hurt his leg. He would maybe have frozen to death if our gang hadn’t come to his cabin that day and saved his life.

  I remembered, too, that it wasn’t much of a cellar—about ten feet square.

  Well, I was sitting there feeling proud of myself and the gang to think that we’d saved his life, when Poetry—who was sitting on half of his chair—jumped, lost his balance, and went kersquash on the floor.

  “’S’matter?” I asked.

  He was almost white. He looked at me, then picked himself up off the floor and said, “Did you hear that?” His voice had a husky whisper in it.

  “Hear what?”

  “A door slam shut!”

  I looked at him and said, “You’re getting to be like Dragonfly—scared of ghosts.”

  “I-I a-am not! But I did hear a door slam somewhere!”

  “What of it?” I asked, scolding him. “Can’t a door slam without giving you the jitters? That was the wind maybe, blowing the woodshed door shut.”

  I looked out the window. The woodshed door was wide open and propped open with a stick, and besides that, the wind wasn’t blowing.

  Just that minute Old Man Paddler’s white head and long beard came up the cellar steps. He had in his hand a little box full of reddish-colored pieces of wood that looked like a lot of chips from our woodpile at home.

  Sassafras roots, I thought, remembering that Little Jim always liked sassafras tea so well.

  Mr. Paddler shut the trapdoor, with both of us helping a little. Then he said, “If you aren’t in a hurry, I’ll make some tea, and we can have a little party with your cookies.”

  But we were supposed to be in a hurry, so he didn’t urge us to stay. He opened the sack of cookies, though, and put them on a plate. Then he put the sassafras roots in the paper bag for us to take home, half for Poetry’s parents and the other half for mine.

  I counted the cookies while he was taking them out, and there were exactly twenty-four, just as my mom had said there would be in the first place.

  “Your arithmetic is getting worse,” I said to Poetry. “There are just twenty-four. You can’t count straight.”

  He grinned and said, “I’m still good at subtraction.” Then he grinned again and started whistling to himself. I never did find out what he meant or why he had that mischievous look in his eye.

  The minute we got out the door, ready to start down the little hill toward the spring where the old man got his drinking water, Poetry turned around quick and said, “Mr. Paddler, do you believe in ghosts?”

  9

  We might have known the old man didn’t believe in ghosts or disembodied spirits hanging around this world, making pounding noises in caves or slamming doors. He explained why he didn’t believe in them, and we started on home.

  We followed the winding old wagon trail partway and then cut off and went through the swamp to save time. Just as we started to disappear into the thick woods, we heard a car coming in low gear up the trail. Looking down, we saw a beautiful green coupe, and we knew right away whose it was.

  “Miss Lilly!” Poetry and I exclaimed under our breath and ducked down behind some second growth oaks to hide until the car went purring past.

  “What’s she doing going up to Old Man Paddler’s?” Poetry asked me.

  “I don’t know,” I said, but I felt myself liking both of them at the same time, thinking maybe if Miss Lilly had been the old man’s daughter, she would have had a very nice father.

  Then Poetry and I hurried along, stopping only for a jiffy at the cave and listening but not hearing anything. We went on to Poetry’s house, each one of us thinking and talking—feeling fine, because we did not believe there was any such thing as a ghost—and pleased that we were going to sleep in the cave that Friday night, if our parents would let us.

  “We must not tell our folks we think we’ve heard anything,” I said to Poetry, “or they’ll be afraid to let us sleep there.”

  “Or else they’ll laugh at us for being superstitious,” Poetry panted.

  We’d been running hard for a minute because we felt so good. We stopped at his gate to catch our breath.

  “There just isn’t any sense to what we thought we heard,” Poetry said, and there wasn’t.

  Well, it was time for me to go home and help Dad with the chores, so I told Poetry, “So long,” which means, “Good-bye for a while,” or else, “It will be just so long until we see each other again.”

  It was while I was up in our haymow throwing down forkfuls of alfalfa hay for our horses and cows that I heard my dad downstairs talking to somebody, so I listened, and it was Old Man Paddler!

  How in the world! I thought. How did he get here so quick? Why, that old man had to walk with a cane, and he certainly couldn’t walk as fast as Poetry and I could—although I suppose I did get home a little later because I had stopped at Poetry’s house. But then, of course, he could have ridden with Miss Lilly in her car, I thought.

  “No,” my dad’s big half-gruff voice said. “I don’t think there is any use to try. The law is the law, and that settles it. I do hate to see a boy have to go to reform school for his first offense, though.”

  Then Old Man Paddler’s trembling voice came floating up to me, sounding kind of like a screech owl’s voice does at night as he said, “I keep thinking, what if it was my William that was in trouble?”

  “I know, I know,” Dad’s big voice answered.

  And then my dad said something that made me feel creepy all over and made me wonder what was going to happen. It also made me a little angry.

  My dad said, “Well, I’ll have a talk with him and see if I can get him to change his ways.”

  What! I thought. Are they talking about me?

  “Thank you, Mr. Collins,” Old Man Paddler said. “That will help, I am sure. Maybe it’s just a whim of an old man, but I believe it’s worth trying. Some of the world’s greatest men have been made of bad-boy material. If I remember right, you were active yourself when you were only a little red-haired—” His voice was lost as one of our cows let out a very sorrowful bawl.

  I stood there in the haymow, feeling hot inside, and worried, and wondering what I’d done wrong. I couldn’t think of anything except the lamb at school and my having given the woodshed key to Poetry and helping him to do his mischievous prank.

  Both my dad’s voice and Old Man Paddler’s were getting fainter, so I knew they were walking away. I peeped through a crack between the weatherboarding of the barn and saw them walking toward our house, my dad’s bushy reddish-brown hair and the old man’s white hair side by side, with the going-down sun shining on them.

  They stopped right under the crossbeam that goes over our grape arbor, near our iron pitcher pump, and my mom came out with her blue apron on and stood there with her hands on her hips as a person sometimes does when she is angry about something and is trying to decide what to do about it.

  I wished—how I wished—I could have heard what they were saying about me, but I couldn’
t. Maybe Miss Lilly had told my parents about the lamb at school or maybe something else I’d done, which I couldn’t think of, and I began to imagine all kinds of things about to happen to me.

  I was down on my knees there on the alfalfa, looking through the crack and listening to pigeons cooing high in the rafters somewhere and feeling very worried. Maybe you wouldn’t be interested in knowing what I did then, but I said a few words to my best Friend, whom I was beginning to like very much because He was with me all the time and always let me know when I had done right or wrong. I knew that He knew I hadn’t done anything actually wrong on purpose, and I also knew He would understand a boy’s mind.

  All of a sudden, while I was still peeping through the crack in the barn and looking at the round sun, which was going down like a big red globe, I remembered the globe on Miss Lilly’s desk. And I could see one of her pretty white hands on the top of the world and the other white hand on the top of the lamb’s head.

  I remembered what she’d said too, and, hardly knowing it, I said out loud to myself, “Behold the Lamb of God that takes away Bill Collins’s sins.”

  Quick as a flash, I was standing up again and starting to throw down more hay. And then I heard my mom’s cheerful voice calling me to supper.

  There is something wonderful about the way a boy’s mom’s voice sounds when it comes waving across the barnyard to tell you supper is ready. You begin to smell raw-fried potatoes right away, and you can even see the table before you get there. You can see your plate set with the silverware placed just right and your big blue mug filled with rich cold milk standing in its place. And there would be steaming, wonderful-smelling potatoes, bread and butter, a salad of some kind, and maybe a piece of cold leftover blackberry pie.

  That is, you feel that way if everything is all right between you and your parents.

  When I got down out of the haymow, I saw Old Man Paddler standing by our front gate, and Miss Lilly’s car was there. She waved at me, and I tipped my straw hat to her, and even Old Man Paddler turned around and said, “Hello, Bill.”

  Then he climbed into her car, and they drove off down the road. A jiffy later—when I was in our bathroom washing the day’s different kinds of dirt off my hands and face and neck and ears—I heard the boards rumbling on the Sugar Creek bridge, and I knew it was Miss Lilly’s car with Old Man Paddler in it going toward Tom and Bob Till’s house, and I wondered why.

  Pretty soon our family was sitting down at the table with Charlotte Ann in her high chair between Mom and me, and Dad straight across the table from us.

  Supper smelled so good that I was about to forget what I was worried about, until Dad’s prayer asking the blessing started me feeling bothered again. He said in his big voice, which had a sad note in it, “Please, heavenly Father, bless the boys of the Sugar Creek Gang and keep them from all harm and danger. Bless our own son with his many temptations and problems and …”

  The second he said problems, my thoughts were back in the schoolhouse, thinking of Mr. Brown’s sheep and his lumber bill and how many pounds of wool his many sheep had, of Poetry’s lamb and of how it acted when it was in school, of the key to the woodshed door, which I’d given Poetry, of Miss Lilly and Old Man Paddler, and everything else.

  My thoughts came back to Dad’s prayer just as he finished. “And help Mother and me to be the right kind of parents, so we shall be able to stand unashamed before Thee at Thy coming again. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.”

  Hmm, things must have been happening fast around Sugar Creek, I thought. Something unusual was going on.

  When we were half through eating, there was another car at our front gate, and this time it was Mr. Foote, Little Jim’s dad. He came hurrying across the yard, looking excited about something, and the first thing I knew he was at the door.

  Right away I thought of Bob Till, who had been paroled to him, or was supposed to have been. And I thought of the crazy note written in indelible pencil that Little Jim had found on the floor of his dad’s car.

  We finished supper right away, and I went out to where Little Jim was standing in our big swing under the walnut tree, pumping up and down, while Mom and Dad and Mr. Foote talked to each other about something—what, I didn’t know.

  But I did know that Mr. Foote was the township trustee, and that sometimes when boys made trouble in school the teacher had to send them to him to get a good talking to.

  Things looked bad, and I was worried.

  “Hi, Little Jim,” I said sadly.

  “What are you so sad about?” he asked, pumping himself higher.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Does your dad know about the lamb at school?”

  Little Jim stopped pumping and said, “I’m going to stay at your house tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause my parents are going away somewhere.”

  “Why?” I said, and then I remembered that Little Jim hadn’t answered my other question, so I asked it again. “Does your dad know about my—about the lamb at school?”

  He looked kind of sad himself at my questions, and he said, “I don’t know—I don’t guess so.”

  Just that minute Charlotte Ann started to cry about something in the house, and Little Jim lifted his feet, his small hands holding onto the rope on each side of the swing, and then he let himself sit down on the board seat—kerplop. “What’s that?”

  “Oh, that!” I said. “That’s Charlotte Ann crying.”

  “I wish I had a little baby sister,” he said wistfully.

  Little Jim and I went over to his car then, and he showed me the very spot on the back floor where he’d found the note that had been written in indelible pencil.

  “Where’s Bob Till now?” I asked.

  “Nobody knows,” Little Jim said and looked sad. “He’s run away again, and now if he gets arrested, he’ll have to go to reform school from one to ten years, Father says.”

  Little Jim always called his dad “Father,” which is a very respectful name, although it didn’t mean he liked him any better than I did my dad, even though I called mine by a shorter name.

  Dad was not only my dad, but he was my pal also. I not only obeyed him, but I also played games with him, such as checkers or caroms in the wintertime and baseball in the summer. And when we worked together, we made a game of it and had lots of fun, making the hard work seem like play.

  Pretty soon, Mr. Foote came out and drove away.

  Little Jim and I carried his suitcase into our house and up to my room. Then we helped Dad finish the chores and later went up to bed, neither of us knowing what important things were going to happen during the night.

  10

  One of the important things that happened ‘that night was about the grandest thing that could ever have happened to Little Jim. His being the littlest member of our gang had always bothered him and made him feel as if he wasn’t very important.

  Just after he and I had crawled into my big bed with the clean, fresh-smelling sheets on it, my dad’s steps started coming up the stairs. Dad nearly always did that—had been doing it ever since I was little. He’d come up to say good night and tell me a short story, or read me one, or quote a poem or a hymn.

  When I was even littler than little, Mom taught me to say my prayer at night and tucked me in, but Dad nearly always liked to have a final look at me to see if I was all right, to see if I had any scratches or bruises or sore toes or black eyes or anything that might need attention of some kind.

  Well, Dad’s heavy-soled leather shoes always sounded good coming up, so Little Jim and I lay there listening and waiting in the dark, each one of us having said his prayers quietly on his knees beside the bed.

  I couldn’t even see Dad at first, because my eyes were still used to the light. When he cleared his throat, he was so close to us he sounded sort of like a bear growling. Grrrrrr! Garumph!

  “Any bumps?” he asked.

  “Nope!” I said.

  “Any scratches needing Merthiolate?”


  “Nope,” I said into my pillow.

  “Any cuts or bruises or black eyes or smashed noses or bee stings or wood ticks that need to be pulled off? Or dirty feet that need washing or—”

  Little Jim’s giggle interrupted him, and Dad said to him, “Little Jim, we’re proud to have you for Bill’s friend. You boys want to hear a poem or something?”

  With that, he started to quote what was one of my favorite poems. It was a hymn in our hymnbook and had been written—the music, I mean—by Mr. Sankey, a singer who used to travel with an evangelist named Dwight L. Moody. The poem in Dad’s gruff kind of dramatic voice went like this:

  “There were ninety and nine that safely lay

  In the shelter of the fold,

  But one was out on the hills away,

  Far off from the gates of gold;

  Away on the mountains wild and bare,

  Away from the tender Shepherd’s care.

  Lord, Thou hast here Thy ninety and nine—

  Are they not enough for Thee?

  But the Shepherd made answer: ‘This of Mine

  Has wandered away from Me …’”

  On and on my dad’s voice went, and I went out on the wings of his voice and looked all around through the mountains and hills and in the desert and among the thorns to help find the one lost sheep, which finally the Shepherd found. I even climbed up on the shoulders of the Good Shepherd and rode along with the little found sheep, only I guess maybe I was the sheep myself.

  It was a great poem, and Dad finished it grandly, standing there in the dark with one hand on the post of the bedstead.

  All of a sudden, Little Jim piped up like a small frog and asked—his small voice close to my right ear—“Is Jesus the Good Shepherd as well as the Lamb of God?”

  And Dad said, “Yes.”

  When morning came and we were on our way to school, Little Jim having his lunch packed with mine, he was the happiest little guy you ever saw, because the night before, while he was at our house, Little Jim got a brand-new baby sister. He could go to the hospital to see her and his mother that very day after school.