When his breathing was normal again, he straightened up in his chair, smiled, and said, “That was pretty close. The worst spell I’ve had for a long time.” He looked the three of us over. “You ready to hear what I want to tell you? You can pass it on to the rest of the boys of your club.”
And in a little while we were in the midst of listening to one of the strangest, saddest stories I’d heard in my life. I won’t take time to write every word of it for you, but this is most of it:
Before Mr. Robinson was born, his parents were slaves way back in American history in the time of Abraham Lincoln. Some slave owners were very kind to their slaves, and others were not.
One night Ben’s parents ran away. They hid in haystacks and barns in the daytime and traveled at night, getting farther and farther away from the part of America where they had been living.
“Finally,” he said, “they reached the Sugar Creek country, and here my mother became very ill. But they were afraid to try to get a doctor, and a baby boy was born dead!
“Then another baby boy was born, and a half hour after that my mother died. I was that second baby.
“My father knew he couldn’t stay here. He would have to go on or be caught and taken back. He waited till night, went to a farmhouse, and borrowed a spade without permission. Then, somewhere in this area, he dug a grave and buried my mother and my little twin brother. He returned the spade and then, taking me with him, hurried on north, hoping to reach Canada. But they caught up with us and took us back to the plantation. Then the Civil War broke out. Father ran away again and joined the Union army and was finally killed in the battle of Bull Run. I grew up without knowing anything of all this—not until many years later.
“I was adopted into a Christian family, and my new parents were very kind to me, giving me a good education in school and in the church. But I kept thinking of my real father and mother, wondering who they were. All I could learn was that they had been slaves, that they had run away from their master, and that both had died when I was very young.
“I might never have known anything of all this if my father hadn’t written it all down. Some time ago, after I had finished a series of lectures on my experiences in Africa, a lady in my audience handed me a very old campaign poster with some words and arrows scrawled on the back. Apparently, Father had wanted a record of his wife’s death and his son’s birth. And he’d drawn a rough map so he could return someday and put up a proper marker on the grave.
“The lady who gave it to me had just that week found it in an old trunk in her grandfather’s home. Her grandfather had been a soldier in the Confederate army. In the battle of Bull Run, he had killed a Union soldier in hand-to-hand fighting. In his dying moments, that soldier had said, ‘The paper in my pocket! Find my son and give it to him.’”
Benjamin Robinson, sitting sadly in our captain’s chair by the door of our weaverbird house, looked like a very tired, very old, but wonderful human being, I thought.
He wasn’t through talking, though, and he went on. “The writing on the poster described what my father called ‘the Sugar Creek Territory.’ I know that this is the area he meant. It’s the only Sugar Creek country in America that could possibly fit the description.”
Again the old stranger stopped, his eyes brightening for a minute as they followed the flight of a swallowtail butterfly that came floating through the air near where we were and lighted on a half-rotten apple near the outdoor fireplace. Swallowtails like rotten fruit almost better than they do orange-colored milkweed flowers.
“I hope,” Mr. Robinson said, “there will be swallowtail butterflies in heaven. I’m afraid I’ll miss them if there aren’t.”
But he let his story be interrupted for only a few seconds. Right away he went back to it again. “As soon as I find where my mother and little brother were buried, I’ll put up a marker. And that’s why I’m here.”
I could hardly see straight for the tears that all of a sudden were in my eyes. I couldn’t help but think, What if my own wonderful mother were buried in the woods or along the bayou near here and nobody knew for sure where?
My sad thoughts were interrupted by Little Jim’s piping up and asking, “What was your little brother’s name?”
“Benjamin,” was the surprising answer.
“But that’s your name,” Poetry put in.
“That’s right. My parents had planned to name their new baby Benjamin, if it was a boy. When he was born dead, they gave the name to me.”
I noticed Dad’s tape measure lying in the grass beside the captain’s chair. “We’ll be glad to help you find their grave if you want us to,” I offered.
“Thank you, son. You boys are certainly kind to an old man. I’m not sure, but I think I found it this afternoon.”
He yawned, his eyes closed, and he stretched, the way Dad does before he decides he has to take a nap. “I think my new medicine makes me sleepy.”
We left him lying on the cot we had brought for him and went back to our different homes, wondering just where his mother and little brother’s grave was.
What kind of marker would he put up? It would seem strange having a tombstone somewhere in the woods. Just where would it be? Also, he’d need help to put one up, especially if it was a large stone. Somebody would have to bring it out from town in a wagon or a truck. Would he put up just one, or would there be two?
There was something else I was wondering as I passed “Theodore Collins” on our mailbox and started across the road to help Theodore Collins finish the chores in our barn. What if their grave was on Gilberts’property?
At the supper table, where Charlotte Ann had better baby manners than she had for a long time, Dad astonished me by saying, “I stopped at the Green Corn on the way home from town. Remember the rainy night when Ben Robinson borrowed your tree house motel?”
I remembered, and I was beginning to feel unhappy again toward the Gilberts for having turned him away, when Dad explained.
“The Gilberts had their No Vacancy sign on because those last two units had been reserved by telephone. But there was a bridge out, and the people didn’t come. So, Son—” Dad stopped and looked at me with an I-told-you-so expression in his eyes. Then he finished. “—the Gilberts aren’t the hard-hearted people you think they are.”
Mom sighed and said, “I’m very glad to hear that. I didn’t want to believe it.”
My father took a sip of coffee, wiped his mustache with his napkin, and really astonished me with, “What I know you’ll be surprised to learn is that the Longs are back. They didn’t like the climate where they moved, and they’ve come back to their farm. They’ve been staying at the Green Corn this week, while their home is being redecorated and modernized.”
A bewildered feeling swept into my mind as I realized that the peace and quiet of the Sugar Creek territory was going to be interrupted again. My first question was, “Are they going to take over the woods again? Will Shorty have his blue cow again?”
A whirlwind of unhappy memories picked me up and sent me spinning through the worried summer we’d spent when the Longs had lived here before. That was maybe the worst summer the gang had ever had, and it was all because of the short, stocky Long boy, named Guenther, whose nickname was Shorty.
Shorty had a short temper and used it on almost everything and everybody, and especially on Theodore Collins’s short-tempered son.
Most of our trouble had been caused by Shorty’s blue cow, Babe, which they had pastured in the woods across the road from our place. Shorty himself had named her Babe after the blue ox in the stories of the Northwest lumberjack Paul Bunyan.
But Babe had been anything but a baby. She certainly couldn’t be cow-sat, as I found out one sad morning when she broke into our clover field and stuffed herself with dew-wet clover, almost died, and scared Mom and me half to death.
But, I thought, as I sat across the table from my father, I had saved Babe’s life.
Shorty Long’s meanest action that summ
er had been to almost break up our gang by turning Dragonfly against the rest of us.
It was what Dad said next that turned on a light in my mind and made me feel all whirl-windy and bothered.
“You boys won’t need to worry about having trouble with the Long boy this summer. He’s calmed down a lot, his father told me. He’s developing his talent for painting and has done some very fine landscapes. Right now he’s doing sign painting—he’s especially good at lettering—and hopes to make a little extra money working for the Sugar Creek Art Designers.”
What on earth! In fact, double what on earth! My mind flew down to the spring and read two signs, very neatly lettered, one of which said White and the other Black.
Another sign came into my brain, the one that had been standing on Ben Robinson’s captain’s chair and read White Only.
There’s one other thing you ought to know that Dad learned at the Green Corn that afternoon. One reason the Longs had moved to Sugar Creek was that the community where they lived for a year was still having race problems, and Guenther was building up some bitter feelings against black people.
When Dad finished telling us what he’d learned at the Green Corn, I thought I understood Dragonfly a little better and didn’t feel quite so hurt in my heart against him. But I did feel very stubborn about one of the worst boy enemies I’d ever had in all my half-long life—Guenther “Shorty” Long.
That short-tempered, fierce-fighting, mean-minded boy had moved back into our territory again, and already he was causing trouble by painting signs for maybe Dragonfly to put up at the spring and at our tree house, and—I felt sure—was making the heart of an old man feel terribly sad.
Mom looked at Dad and sighed again. “Dragonfly’s parents are such fine people, and the Longs too. I can’t understand why Guenther is such a bully—I mean—excuse me for using such a word about a boy who doesn’t have any excuse to be that way.”
Dad’s answer surprised me. “Some boys are born leaders. They seem to have to have followers. If they can get the right kind of training, they’ll make their mark in the world and do a lot of good.”
“I know.” Mom nodded and added, “But the poor followers—the boys who have wishy-washy hearts and can’t stand on their own two feet!”
And again Dad surprised me when he said to Mom—neither of them looking in my direction, even though I knew their thoughts and their words were meant for me—“Until a boy finds out he has two feet to stand on, his parents have to teach him how to walk.”
I looked at Charlotte Ann in her chair. For the flash of a few seconds, I thought about how many times she had fallen down while she was learning to walk. I’d seen her take a tumble maybe forty times a day—in the kitchen, in the living room, out on the lawn, all over everywhere.
My thoughts came back into our kitchen in time to hear Mom say something about Dragonfly’s parents, his mother in particular.
“Lilly is such a sincere person, so tenderhearted. She’s trying the best way she knows to bring up her boy in the way he ought to go, like it says in Proverbs, ‘Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it.’ I’ve been watching the family grow these years since the time we all were down on the Mexico border, and they surrendered their lives—” She stopped, swallowed a lump of love or something that had come into her throat, and she couldn’t finish.
I knew she was remembering a very wonderful night when the Gang had all been down at the bottom of the United States on a winter vacation. Dragonfly’s parents and mine had been with us as chaperones, and both Dragonfly’s parents had heard the gospel and had been saved.
Dragonfly himself, I remembered, had trusted in Christ one day down along the creek when he was coming down a sycamore tree as Zachaeus did in the Bible. But he was still wishy-washy minded and had been easily influenced by Guenther Long.
Mom added one more thing right then. “I didn’t want to think they’d have any bitterness toward a person of another race. What’s the difference, anyway, what the color of a person’s skin is?”
I hadn’t planned to put in what I thought of to say right then, but it was out before I knew it. “God has a right to write with any color ink He wants to.”
Dad cleared his throat, wiped his mustache with his napkin, took a drink of coffee, and his eyes met Mom’s in the same way I’d seen them meet quite a few times when he thought she was a pretty wonderful human being. Then he stood, went to the stove, came back with the coffeepot, and poured Mom and himself each another cup.
Charlotte Ann held up her mug, which Dad filled with white milk, and she didn’t know the difference.
Then Dad said something that was as good a sermon as I’d ever heard in church. It was, “When Lazarus came out of the grave, he was alive all right, but he was still bound with his graveclothes. The Gilberts are new Christians. They have everlasting life, but like a lot of all of us, they—and we—need to help set each other free from bad habits and unkind feelings that displease the Lord. Also, it just may be that the Longs have never even heard the Savior’s voice calling them to life. We ought to pray for them as well as for ourselves.”
When I went up to my room that night, I was remembering what Dad had said about graveclothes. I also was remembering the Bible story itself, which, before we’d left the table, he had read to us from the eleventh chapter of John.
And in my thoughts I was back in Bible times with the disciples, out in the cemetery where Lazarus was buried. It seemed the Savior was standing just outside the open cave, which was the kind of grave it was, and there were hundreds of people watching to see what He would do.
Then the Lord called out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!”
And out Lazarus came—only, in my thinking, there were two boys with him, one a spindle-legged, pop-eyed little guy named Roy Gilbert and the other a big, stocky boy named Guenther Long, and both boys were wrapped round and round with grave wrappings. It seemed I was supposed to rush up quick and help the disciples unwrap Dragonfly and Shorty.
As I pulled Mom’s nice, sweet-smelling sheet up over me, it felt good to be alive but not to be awake. I’d have to get some sleep. There were a lot of important things to do in the morning.
The very next thing I knew it was morning, and ahead of me was a wonderful day—also, a very exciting and even dangerous one.
Before I tell you about it, I have to tell you first about something sad that happened at our house that shows how one of Dad’s best quotes came to life in one of the nine lives of our old black-and-white cat.
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The quote that got mixed up with Mixy was one of Dad’s newest ones, “Sorrow is knowledge.”
I don’t suppose Mixy had cat sense enough to remember what she learned, but it wouldn’t be my fault if she didn’t, because I was mixed up with Mixy in her very sad experience.
This is the way it happened.
My almost-favorite bird around our place is Robin Redbreast. That spring, as I’ve already told you, he and his wife had built their nest in the top of our plum tree in a crotch where three branches grew out from the main trunk. It was a perfect place for a robin family. Mom especially enjoyed watching them build it.
Redbreast had been the first bird to come from the South that spring. He and his robin wife had worked hard, gathering clay beside our pump, carrying it in their bills to their house site, mixing it with sticks and grass, and making a bowl-shaped nest of mud before lining it with soft material for the eggs to be laid in—and the altricial robin babies to be hatched in and to live in till they reached the fledgling stage. It was very interesting to watch Mrs. Robin—which I did with my binoculars—shaping the mud shell so it would be nice and round and just the right size. She used her light brown body to do it, turning herself round and round and round.
Mixy seemed even more interested in the robins’ house building than the rest of the Collins family. Every now and then she would watch and watch and watch, especially when eithe
r one of the robin parents got too close to where she had been sleeping in the sun.
One morning I saw her sneak up close to where Mr. Robin was getting a drink at the kettle under the pump spout. Then she made a quick leap with the greatest of ease straight for him, as if there was nothing in the world she would rather have for breakfast than raw robin.
But he was wider awake than anything and was up on the crossbeam at the east end of the grape arbor in a flash of scared wings. From there he took off for the walnut tree.
Mixy stopped in her tracks and looked up at me with innocent green eyes, as much as to say, “Who cares? That old robin is not fit for a fine cat like me.”
Another day, when Mixy was again acting interested in the robins, I spoke sharply to her. “Listen,” I said. “You are not going to have robin for breakfast or for dinner or for supper! If you have to have a meat dinner, get down to the barn and help yourself to those three mice I saw in the granary yesterday!”
She mewed up at me, and her lazy green eyes looked past me at nothing at all. She seemed to be saying, “Mice? They’re not fit for a fine cat like me. It’s birds I’m after.”
The days went by, the nest was finished, and Mr. Robin and his wife settled down to what Mom called “happy housekeeping.”
Then, one day when I climbed up to see how they were getting along, I peeked into the nest and saw four robin’s egg blue eggs lying in the little round, grass-lined mud cup. I knew that, before long, four awkward, homely, naked little robin babies would be hatched.
Mixy seemed to get lazier and fatter. She didn’t show any interest in mice at all. She didn’t even bother to do much of anything except lie around in the sun and eat whatever we fed her. Mom always saw to it that she got all she wanted to eat and drink.
Then one morning, when I was standing by the rain barrel, watching baby mosquitoes wriggling in the water, Mom came to the kitchen door and called to me, “What’s happened to our robin? He didn’t sing me awake this morning, and I haven’t seen either one of them!”
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 31-36 Page 7