“Sorrow has taught her to sit still,” Dad remarked. “Sorrow is knowledge.”
I joined in the conversation by quoting Dad’s other quote, “She who never made a failure has probably never made a discovery.”
Mom acted as if she hadn’t even heard. Instead, she said, “All the excitement made us forget to ask the blessing.” She looked at Dad, who was what is called the head of our family—and most of the time was.
The twinkle that had come into his eyes when I had quoted his quote went out the way a firefly’s flash fades a second after it is turned on, and a moment later all our heads were bowed. All our eyes closed except Charlotte Ann’s, which, I’d noticed, were wide open and looking at the ceiling where three or four flies were buzzing about.
Part of Dad’s prayer was about Charlotte Ann herself. For a minute it seemed he was almost bragging to God about what a fine baby she was, when he said, “Bless our dear little girl, so lively, so filled with childish enthusiasm, and so normal. Help us to know how to train her. Give Mother and me a little education for ourselves while we are bringing her up and while we are making so many failures. Help us all to make some new and very important discoveries as we live along the rugged road of life. Give us a greater love for Your beloved Son, our Savior, for each other, and for people of every color.”
I couldn’t understand why suddenly Dad’s voice began to choke as if it had tears in it. He finished his prayer right away.
When I opened my eyes again, his and Mom’s were already open. They were looking at each other, and their eyes had tears in them. Also, Dad’s calloused right hand was on the table, clasped around Mom’s kind of small hand. I knew the storm in our family was really over and that Mom and Dad were the best pair of parents in the whole world.
Finishing my piece of freshly baked apple pie, I asked to be excused. Getting the nod from Dad, who at the same time got a nod from Mom, I was out of my chair and across the room to pick up my straw hat from the floor, where I wasn’t supposed to have left it, and was outdoors in a flash.
I got as far as the iron pitcher pump before I heard the screen door slam too loud behind me. And I got as far as the grape arbor and was swinging by my legs upside down before Dad’s voice crashed into my peace of mind, demanding, “Come back here, young man, and correct your mistake!”
It was a new way of saying, “Come back here and close that door like a gentleman!” which order I had heard that summer as many times as there were yellow and white butterflies ringing the puddle by the iron kettle. His words scattered my peaceful thoughts in all directions, sending them flying.
My folks must have thought that as soon as I had closed the door quietly, which I did kind of fast, I would dash on out across the barnyard or somewhere else quite a ways from the door. But I didn’t. I stayed there for a second or two, just thinking.
And that’s how come I happened to overhear Dad say to Mom, “We may have to try a little sorrow on our son. I’m afraid he’s a little slow learning that screen doors are not firecrackers and that every day, a hundred times a day, it is not the Fourth of July.”
I went on back to the grape arbor then and tested my powerful biceps by chinning myself a few times on the crossbeam. After that then I lazied out across the yard and past the plum tree, in the top of which Robin Redbreast and his wife had their nest. I went on to the walnut tree swing, where, with a half-innocent feeling in my mind, I opened the front gate and went through, shutting it like a gentleman so the noise of the latch wouldn’t hurt Mom’s nerves. Then I stopped.
My still innocent mind was urging me to go on past “Theodore Collins” on our mailbox, slowly cross the gravel road, then make a flying leap over the rail fence and race like a cotton-tail down the path toward the spring—where I hoped some of the gang might be waiting for some of the rest of the gang to come and play with them.
I was thinking and wondering about the old stranger too, wondering how he slept last night. It would be a good idea to see if there was anything he needed, such as a pail of water from the spring or anything else.
Of my own free will—I think—I went back to the house, stopping by the side door near the ivy arbor that shades the porch there.
“I almost made a mistake,” I said to Mom and Dad, with a joke in my voice.
“You are a very bright boy,” Dad answered. “The discovery you are about to make is hanging on the towel rack by the dishpan.”
Just that second I heard a cardinal calling from somewhere. Its voice was so cheerful, as a cardinal’s voice always is, that my heart became as light as a feather in a whirlwind. I looked toward the top of the walnut tree, and there on one of the highest branches was a splash of red as pretty as the red hair ribbon one of Circus’s many sisters wears to school.
Mom was up and out of her chair in a hurry and standing at the screen door, looking up at the walnut tree. A second later she exclaimed under her breath, “Oh, oh! Isn’t he magnificent!”
Before Dad could get out of his captain’s chair and to the door, there was a flash of red streaking across the sky and over our house roof to somewhere on the other side.
Without thinking, I swung into a fast run and circled the house in a hurry to get another glimpse of Mom’s favorite bird, the kind that always made her happy just to see or hear it. I found out how much the cardinal actually cheered up Mom about three minutes later.
I was on the west side of the house, standing near the rain barrel at the corner, straining my eyes out into the orchard to see if I could catch a glimpse of fiery red in the foliage of one of the trees. Right away, I saw him. He was at the very top of Old Jonathan, my favorite apple tree.
Any minute now, I’d stop looking out into the orchard and would look down into the rain barrel. It was half filled with yellowish brown water caught from the last rain. I would see my reflection in it, and then I would yell down into it just to hear the big round hollow sound it always made. That was another of my favorite sounds around our place.
And that is when I heard Mom’s voice coming through the open window of the room just off the kitchen. The tone of her voice was the kind she always used when she was talking to Somebody special, the most important Person in the world—the One who made the world in the first place and all the cardinals and other birds and everything else in nature.
Just to show you what a wonderful mother I really have, I’ll quote part of what she said:
“Thank You, heavenly Father, for sending the cardinal just when You did. I was so upset and angry. I didn’t want to be, but I couldn’t help it. With all the excitement at the table, I guess I forgot that You were still on the throne.”
Mom’s voice choked then, and it seemed all the world was still, so still I could have heard a caterpillar crawling on a cabbage leaf. Then the cardinal whistled again. This time he was on the other side of the house.
Mom was right. The One who had made the world was still running it. It felt good to be alive.
Looking down into the rain barrel, seeing my face reflected in its yellowish brown water, I felt extrafine inside. I was remembering another song my parents had taught me when I was little enough to like a song like that. I still thought it was kind of nice, and Charlotte Ann liked it extrawell. I could sometimes put her to sleep with it. Sometimes she even tried to sing it herself, having a hard time pronouncing the words and making them sound like:
One there lived si’ by si’,
Two litta maids,
Each one dressed just alike,
Hair down in braids;
Blue gingham pin’fores
’Tockings o’ red;
Litta sunbonnets tied
On each pitty head.
It was what Mom called a “story song.” The second verse tells how the two little girls who lived side by side were angry at each other. One of them said, “You can’t play in my yard!”
But the other said:
“I don’t want to play in your yard.
I don’t like you a
nymore;
You’ll be sorry when you see me
Sliding down my cellar door;
You can’t holler down my rain barrel,
You can’t climb my apple tree;
I don’t want to play in your yard,
If you won’t be good to me.”
The song was as cute as Charlotte Ann herself—when she was cute, which was quite often, even at the dinner table.
After humming the song there by the rain barrel, I heard myself saying to myself, “Those two girls certainly didn’t act very sociable,” which they didn’t in the first part of the song.
There was another stanza, though, that told about how, the very next day, they were lonesome for each other and were sorry about their quarrel. So they made up and were good friends all the rest of their lives.
My thoughts were interrupted then by Dad’s voice booming from somewhere in the house, coming through the room where Mom was and out the window to where I was by the rain barrel. “There’s somebody coming in at the front gate!”
My heart leaped with a different glad feeling. I was almost sure whoever was at the front gate would be one of the gang. I swung away from the rain barrel and swished toward the grape arbor in a hurry to get past it, then over the board walk and across the grassy yard to see whichever one of the gang it would be.
My wild dash turned thirty-seven hens into an excited scatter, as if they thought the end of the world had come and they had better fly for their lives.
At the two-foot-high washstand Dad had put beside the board walk so that we could wash our faces and hands outdoors if we wanted to—or if Mom wanted us to—I stopped dead still. Somebody on crutches was hobbling across the yard toward the ivy-shaded side porch, and it was the old black man, the tenant who was living in our tree house.
I was especially surprised to see Mr. Robinson using crutches, when yesterday he had had only a cane. I hadn’t noticed any crutches around the place—but then, of course, he could have had them there somewhere.
That wasn’t what really surprised me, though. The thing that absolutely astonished me was that he had only one leg! Yesterday he had had two! But where his left leg should have been, there was only an empty trouser leg, pinned up with a safety pin, fastened about halfway between where his knee would have been and his hip.
He kept right on coming across the yard. He passed the plum tree, where the robin parents had their nest and where right that minute they were scolding like everything because somebody was trespassing on their territory.
When he reached the ivy-shaded porch, I noticed that he was wearing a hearing aid, which he hadn’t had on yesterday.
It seemed then that he saw me for the first time. Panting for breath, he focused his eyes on me and asked politely, “Are your parents home?”
I could hardly hear his question for wondering what had become of his other leg.
Mom came to the side door then, and I noticed she had found time somewhere to straighten her hair a little.
The old man steadied himself with his crutches, smiled a friendly smile, took a deep breath of the hot afternoon air, and said with a tired sigh, “It’s such a warm day. But it’s cooler down by the creek.”
My curiosity right that minute was the kind that could have killed a wildcat, it was so strong. Before Mom could say a word, I heard my voice explode a question at him. “How come you got only one leg, when yesterday you had two?”
“Only one leg?” The old man looked down at the short trouser leg and answered me. “I have an artificial limb. I take it off once in a while to rest my stump. I lost my flesh-and-blood leg years ago in a fight with a lion.”
I must have been staring with a wide-open mouth, for he added in explanation, “When I was big-game hunting in Africa.” Then, as if losing a leg in a fight with a lion wasn’t anything worth talking about, he changed the subject and asked, “Do you folks have a tape measure I may borrow? A fifty- or hundred-foot one? I’ll bring it back later this afternoon.”
Dad was at the door then, too, and so was Charlotte Ann, half hiding between her parents and clinging to Mom’s blue, flower-bordered apron.
Mr. Robinson noticed Charlotte Ann, and his face lit up with a very friendly smile. “Such a pretty baby!” He shook his head and repeated, “Such a pretty baby!” Then he sort of mumbled something to himself, but I heard. He said, “Olive plants. Children are like olive plants around the table.” It was an expression used in the Bible about children.
Mom asked the old stranger if he had had any lunch, and he hadn’t. And right away she was busy dishing up a plate of roast beef and potatoes and gravy and other things we had left over.
“Thank you so kindly, ma’am,” Ben Robinson said courteously when she invited him to come in and eat at the table, “but I’d like to sit out here under this vine, if I may. It’s so friendly and so cool.”
I was surprised to see that, before he ate, the old man bowed his head and closed his eyes, keeping them closed while his lips moved silently. And it seemed maybe God was there in a special way.
Mr. Robinson was taking his last bite of a piece of Mom’s apple pie when, from somewhere around the place, there came the fiery red whistle of the cardinal again, calling, “Cheer! Cheer! Cheer!” or “Peace! Peace! Peace!” depending on what whoever heard him was thinking about.
Mom’s silver fork was on its way to the old man’s mouth, but it stopped. His head jerked up, and his eyes searched the tops of the walnut tree and the plum tree and the other trees across the road in the woods.
“Beautiful! Beautiful!” he exclaimed and kept on looking and listening.
The stranger’s last bite of pie was gone when my mind came back to our circle. He finished his cup of coffee and said, “No, thank you,” to Mom when she offered him a second cup. Then he added, “One is just right for my heart. I have to watch it pretty carefully.”
He struggled to his feet with Dad’s help and was puffing hard by the time he was ready to go. I thought of his whiskey flask, which he kept water in, and looked at his hip pocket to see if it was there. It was.
He’d started to hobble off across the yard when Dad ordered me, “Bill, you run out to the toolshed for the tape measure he wanted to borrow.”
The old man seemed not to have heard, so I called out to him, “Wait, Mr. Robinson!”
A bit later, when I handed him the tape measure, he said, “Thank you, son. You’re a thoughtful boy!” He probably hadn’t heard Dad order me to do what I had just done. “I’ll bring it back to you later. I just wanted to measure something.”
And that was our family’s introduction to one of the most unusual persons that had ever come to Sugar Creek. If only we had known who he was!
I found out more about him that afternoon. A whole lot more!
5
Being called a thoughtful boy made me want to do something that really was thoughtful, so I walked along kind of half behind and half beside the old man and let him through the front gate. Then I closed the gate thoughtfully and stayed with him till he had crossed the road and had worked his way through the rail fence—with me helping a little.
He was pretty spry for an old man with one leg, even though he was short of breath and had to slow down because of it.
Being extracurious about why he wanted our tape measure, I offered, “I’d be glad to help you measure anything, if you like, Mr. Robinson.”
“That’s kind of you,” he puffed as we moved along, “but I won’t need any more help.”
I didn’t know what he meant by more help until quite a long while later. I’ll tell you about it when we get that far in the story.
What did he want the tape measure for?
I walked all the way down to the creek with him and carried him a pail of fresh water from the spring. I was very careful to look around a little before I left. I wanted to see if I could see anything he would need such a long tape measure for, and there wasn’t a thing. I decided not to ask him what. He might think it was
n’t any of my business.
Back home again, I made a beeline for the stack of discouraged dishes and started drying them—after Mom offered me a chance to do it. For a joke, I said to her, “You certainly are a thoughtful mother. It would have taken you a long time to do them all by yourself.”
I didn’t exactly want to be thoughtful all afternoon, though, so I said, “After I get through raking the yard”—Dad had ordered me to do that after I’d finished the dishes—“may I go down to the spring and get you a fresh jug of water?” I was still curious about why the old gentleman had wanted our tape measure.
“As soon as the yard is raked, yes,” she said, then added, “I wonder how old Mr. Robinson is.”
“Rake, rake, rake, on thy hot green grass—oh, me!” I said to myself, making a parody on the poem in our sixth-grade reader that goes, “Break, break, break on thy cold gray stones, O sea!”
In my mind, I was sitting in the cool shade on the log just a few feet from the creek at the best fishing place there is in the daytime. I was watching the different species of dragonflies flitting around my bobber.
I’d been studying dragonflies that summer as well as birds. There certainly were a lot of different kinds. Poetry had started a collection of them and already had about ten different-colored, different-shaped, odd-looking specimens.
One of the most interesting things I had learned about dragonflies was that they eat thousands of mosquitoes. The adult dragon-flies catch the adult mosquitoes in the air. And the dragonfly children, while they are still nymphs living in the water, gobble up the baby mosquitoes living in the same water.
Remembering that there were nearly always a dozen or more baby mosquitoes, still in their wriggling stage, swimming around in our rain barrel, I carried my rake over to the corner of the house, where I rested a little by leaning on its long, strong handle. Looking into the yellowish brown water, I saw my reflection and yelled down at me, “You can’t holler down my rain barrel! You can’t climb my apple tree! I don’t want to play in your yard, if you won’t be good to me!”
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 31-36 Page 4