“Maybe they’ve got quadruplets,” I said. “I’ll climb up and take a look,” which I started to do. But when I had climbed high enough to look in, there wasn’t any mother robin on the nest. There wasn’t even any nest!—not any whole nest but just a part of one.
Down on the ground again, I looked under the plum tree to see if there were any eggs or baby birds, and there weren’t. But there was something else I hadn’t seen before. A lot of bird feathers were scattered all around not far from the base of the tree, and there was one piece of chewed bird wing.
I stood with tears in my eyes, not able to see for a minute, I was so sad. Then I felt something warm and furry brushing past my bare legs. Looking down I saw Mixy purring around, sniffing innocently at the feathers and at the piece of chewed bird wing. She blinked up at me, mewed, and started off on a proud, straight-up-tailed walk toward the grape arbor.
I couldn’t help but notice how extrafat she looked, as if she had had a very big breakfast of something or other. Then I knew what had happened to the robins’ nest and to the robin whose feathers were scattered around the base of the plum tree. And it was then that my thoughts changed to action, and I started with a set jaw toward the grape arbor where Mixy was.
“Sorrow is knowledge,” I said to myself. “Lots of knowledge! You are going to the head of the class right now, young lady!”
I picked up a willow switch I’d dropped yesterday—it was safe to leave a switch like that lying around the place on account of Dad and Mom were using what they called “psychology” on me that year. They hadn’t used a single switch on me all summer and hadn’t even needed to.
But psychology wouldn’t work on a cat, I decided in a hot-tempered hurry. I picked up the chewed bird wing at the same time I did the switch and, with a very special plan in my mind for Mixy’s education, hurried on toward the grape arbor. Mixy had made a big mistake, and she was going to make a big discovery in just about another minute.
I didn’t know at the time whether it was Mixy’s conscience—if a cat has a conscience—or if it was the switch that made her a coward. But for some reason, I hadn’t any sooner started on a businesslike run in her direction, waving the switch in one hand and the chewed bird wing in the other, than she started on a scaredy-cat race for the open screen door where Mom was standing. She squeezed past Mom’s ankles and disappeared into the kitchen.
With my mind still set on giving Mixy a switching within an inch of her life, I also dived for the screen door and started to squeeze through past Mom as the cat had done.
But quick as scat, Mom was all of a sudden in the whole doorway, saying, “Not so fast, young man!”
“Let me through!” I exclaimed. “That cat’s got to learn that sorrow is knowledge. No black-and-white cat’s going to climb up into the plum tree and destroy a robin’s nest and kill and eat that robin’s only wife!”
I kept on struggling to get past and couldn’t because Mom was bordered on one side by Charlotte Ann and on the other by a businesslike broom.
Mom’s words also blocked the way. Her voice was calm but very determined. “We don’t punish anybody or anything around this farm while we’re still very angry. Maybe Mixy tore up the nest and killed and ate Mother Robin, and maybe she didn’t. There are other cats in the neighborhood, you know.
“And even if she did, she’s only a cat, and cats are carnivorous. Carnivorous animals have to have meat to eat—raw meat. Their systems require it.”
“They don’t have to tear up birds’ nests and eat robins!” I protested, my eyes searching past the doorway for a glimpse of Mixy. “Let her eat mice! The granary’s full of mice. If she wasn’t too lazy to move out of her tracks to catch even one of them, I’d think more of her! But no! She’s too choosy! She has to have beautiful red-breasted bird flesh! She wants to stop beautiful birdsongs! She—she—”
Again I tried to squeeze past, and again I got stopped by Mom’s broom and by her voice. “Mixy’s deserving of a little special love and understanding these days and a forgiving spirit.”
I was still warm tempered. “I’ll forgive her after I punish her,” I exclaimed.
But Mom got her way, and Mixy went free. The next afternoon, though, I found out why Mom had been extracareful to keep Mixy from getting punished.
I was out gathering eggs at the time. Looking under a loose board in the barn floor, where sometimes there was an egg or two in a nest I knew was there, I saw Mixy lying on her side in the place where the nest had been. And lying with her were five of the cutest little shut-eyed baby kittens you ever saw, having their afternoon lunch.
Mixy looked up at me through half-closed green eyes and mewed a proud mew as much as to say, “See there, smarty! This is why your mother wouldn’t let you give me a switching yesterday!”
A lump of something came into my throat as I looked down at Mixy, who for the very first time in her life had become a mother. All of a happy sudden, I was very proud of her.
I forgot all about gathering eggs. I swung myself off my hands and knees, ducked past the ladder that leads to the haymow, and raced by the corner cupboard, where Dad keeps his medicines for the stock and his special library of farm books, in a hurry to get to the house to tell Mom about Mixy’s new family.
As happy as I was, though, and glad about Mixy, as well as proud of her, I was still remembering the sad feeling I’d had yesterday when I climbed up into the plum tree and saw the robins’ nest all torn up and realized that Mother Robin had been killed and eaten. Maybe somebody’s stray cat had wandered into the neighborhood. Maybe some friend of Mixy’s, I thought.
There was also a lot of sorrow that week for some of the people who lived over in Halifax County. Vandals not only burned a cross in Mr. Ballard’s yard just outside his door, but they had thrown rocks at his house and broken quite a few of his windows.
To frighten them away, Sam had fired two shotgun blasts out into the night—being careful, Dad found out, to shoot straight up in the air, so that nobody would get hurt.
The vandals came back the next night and pushed over one of Sam’s small outbuildings, and they did the same thing to several white families in the neighborhood.
All that week, while our friendly tenant was living in the Sociable Weaverbird Motel, I felt good that our gang was being kind to him.
For a while it even looked as if Dragonfly was going to get rid of some of his graveclothes. One morning he came up with an idea. “Why doesn’t he move into a real motel like other people. The Green Corn could stand a little more business!”
Imagine that! We were all lying on the grass in the shade of the Little Jim Tree at the time. Dragonfly was chewing on the soft end of a stalk of timothy grass he had just pulled, which a boy likes to do because of the crisp, sweet taste of timothy.
“He has two more days before his week is up,” I reminded Dragonfly, still surprised at his changed attitude.
Little Jim piped up with a question, “Is Shorty still staying at the Green Corn?”
Dragonfly stifled a sneeze, sighed, and answered, “They had to move. They had the double unit right next to the office, which is where I sleep, and I was allergic to some paint he was using. I have to sneeze enough as it is.”
I got another surprise when he came out with, “I don’t like Shorty anymore.”
“How come?” Circus asked.
“He’s too uppity about black people,” Dragonfly answered. “He fooled me into putting those signs at the spring and at our tree house. He even charged me fifty cents apiece for them. But when Mr. Robinson came over to see Dad and Mother and offered to pay them extra rent because the tree house was on our property, I knew black people weren’t all bad, like Shorty said they were!”
Dragonfly let out a heavy sigh, then added, “I don’t see how I could have been such a dumb bunny. I should have remembered what a fool he made out of me that summer he almost broke up our gang.”
For several seconds, not a one of us said a word.
T
hen Big Jim looked at Dragonfly and asked, “Want to tell us about Mr. Robinson’s visit?”
And Dragonfly did.
It happened on an evening when the Gilberts’ vacancy sign was on, and they had seven units with nobody in them. Dragonfly’s parents were feeling pretty sad when the old man came hobbling into the motel court.
He’d noticed, he told them, that their boy was having difficulty breathing, and he wondered if they had heard about a new asthma medicine that was helping a lot of people.
I don’t know how the old man found out the Gilberts had money problems, but he told them he’d saved quite a lot of money through the years, and, if they’d let him, he’d like to use some of it to help their boy.
Dragonfly finished his story, and when I looked at him, there were actual tears in his eyes. “Shorty Long is wrong!” he said with his fists doubled up. “Black people are not all bad.”
Then he looked at his wristwatch and at the late afternoon sun. “I’ve got to get home.” He picked up his Thermos, scrambled to his feet, and took off. He’d been carrying the Thermos for about a week now, because he didn’t weigh enough and their family doctor had ordered him to drink chocolate milk between meals so that he could gain weight and maybe have better health.
Ragweed season would come in a little over a month, and if Dragonfly was stronger, he might be able to live through it without having so much asthma.
As I watched the little guy’s thin legs carrying him on a trot across the battleground of the Battle of Bumblebee Hill, on his way to his dad’s cornfield and the Green Corn Motel, I had a warm feeling in my heart. He had been made a fool of by a mean bigger boy, and maybe we ought not to blame him too much for getting all mixed up in his mind toward a lot of things—like that other summer when Shorty Long took over and ran him like a boy riding a motorcycle.
Big Jim spoke then, and what he said made me feel even kinder toward Roy Gilbert. He said, “I’d like somebody to make a motion that we use the rent we’ve received for the Sociable Weaverbird Motel to help the Gilberts pay for Dragonfly’s allergy treatments.”
Big Jim looked around at his little circle of gang members, and all of a sudden every one of us said at almost the same time, “I so move.”
I reached over and broke off a stalk of ragweed that was growing at the base of the Little Jim Tree. It wouldn’t be long now before it would start to flower, and the pollen of a million weeds like it would start flying all over everywhere, making Dragonfly’s nose and eyes water and making it hard for him to breathe. He would have a hard time being glad to be alive.
That night there was more vandalism, some of it pretty bad. It was in all the newspapers now and on the radio. One of the worst things some twisted-minded boys had done was to upset a half-dozen tombstones in one of the town cemeteries.
“Vandalism Sweeping the County” was on the very front page of the Sugar Creek Times when I took it out of the mailbox the next morning.
My heart was pounding as I read it. What if some rough boys should find out about Benjamin Robinson living in our tree house and do something mean to him! What if vandalism should get started right in our own neighborhood.
I started on a fast run toward the house with the mail, passing the plum tree, where a few bird feathers still were scattered, and on toward the kitchen door.
“Here’s the mail!” I cried to Mom, handing her the Times and a letter from Memory City, Indiana, which would be from my cousin Wally’s mother, Dad’s red-haired sister.
Mom’s eyes lit up when she saw the letter. Getting a letter was one of the most important things that ever happens to Mom, and not getting one was one of the worst.
But I wasn’t happy. I was worried. What if something had happened to Mr. Robinson last night?
I left Mom reading the letter and scurried out across the yard. I left the gate open like a forgetful gentleman, raced across the gravel road, squeezed through the rail fence, and seconds later was flying down the little brown path toward the spring—not like a scared cottontail with a hound on his trail but like the hound itself, hot on the trail of some vandalism, if there was any.
When I reached the clearing in sight of our tree house, I stopped. My heart pounded from what I saw. The vandalism had spread to Sugar Creek!
Our tree house looked as if it had been struck by a tornado. It was twisted out of shape. Dried grass and sedge were scattered all over. The entrance was pushed into a ridiculous angle, making it too small for anybody to squeeze through to get in. The captain’s chair was upside down, and the old man’s belongings were in a helter-skelter mess all over the little knoll.
Then I spotted something that made my whole body cringe! Lying near the outdoor fireplace we’d built for our tenant was his artificial leg. It was twisted and trampled into the ground like a bird wing somebody’s cat had chewed on and left there.
The old man himself was gone!
9
I stood looking through my tears at our torn-up tree house: at the strips of canvas that had been a part of the roof, the bare ribs of the old lawn umbrella, the broken-down cot that had been the old man’s bed, the marsh grass all over the place.
The feeling that stormed into my mind was like a tornado, I was so furious at what had been done and at whoever had done it.
As quick as old Bawler leaps into a fight with a coon, I started on the run toward the center of the scattered house, where I stopped and picked up the old man’s artificial leg. I was surprised to find it was almost as light as a feather. It was made out of some very light metal, was jointed at the knee and ankle, and was finished with enamel. The old man’s shoe was still on the foot. It felt very strange, as if I was carrying an actual part of a human being’s body.
And then I was running again, past the beech tree with all the initials carved on it, past the garbage can that always was there for picnickers to put their trash in, and was racing through the woods toward home. The faster I ran on that little brown path, the worse I felt. It was just the opposite of the way I usually feel when I am running on that path and a very happy feeling goes racing along inside of me.
I swished past the white foam flowers and wild strawberries and sweetbriers as though they weren’t even there. Their fragrance, which sometimes made me almost sick because it was so sweet, didn’t seem like anything today. I was too full of sadness.
Plop—plop—plop—scrunch—scrunch-scrunch. As I flew along, my feet kept time to something Dad had been quoting all that summer: “Sorrow is knowledge. Sorrow is knowledge. Sorrow is knowledge.”
When I was through the gate at our house, I ran across the yard, passing the plum tree where part of Robin Redbreast’s nest still lay scattered, and past the pump. I yanked open the screen door to the kitchen, hurried through, burst into the living room where Mom was, and, with tears in my eyes and voice, told her what had happened.
I must have looked astonishing to her. I was standing flush-faced and excited, holding the old stranger’s artificial leg in my arms like a jointed piece of wood I’d carried in for the kitchen stove.
I was mixed up in my mind, which is why my tongue got a little twisted in what I was saying. I sort of sobbed out to her, “They—they—somebody’s stray cat—I mean, somebody tore down our tree house and scattered it all over everywhere, and—and has done something terrible to Mr. Robinson. And all that’s left of him is one leg, and I don’t know where the rest of him is, and—”
I didn’t get to finish my sentence, because my mind got interrupted. Through the east window I saw somebody coming through the front gate. It was a bareheaded old man with white hair and long white whiskers. “Look!” I cried to Mom. “It’s Old Man Paddler! He’s home from his vacation!”
Nearly always, when I have seen that kind old man in the woods or anywhere else, he was going kind of slow because he can’t see well anymore and has arthritis in his knees and ankles and quite often uses a cane.
But this time he was in a hurry, as if he was excited about some
thing.
Mom and I reached the side door just as the old man himself did.
He could hardly wait to get through the screen door Mom was holding open for him. Panting for breath, he exclaimed, “Quick, Mrs. Collins! Phone Dr. Manswood! There’s a sick man down at the mouth of the cave! I think he’s having a heart attack!”
Mom was like a skirted arrow on her way to the phone.
I certainly felt helpless, standing there with Mr. Robinson’s leg in my arms. I thought I knew who the sick man at the mouth of the cave was, but I wanted to be sure, so I asked Old Man Paddler, “Is—is he a black man with only one leg?”
Then it seemed Old Man Paddler noticed me for the first time. I could see the puzzled expression in his eyes as he looked at what I had in my arms. Then he answered me with a worried voice, nodding his grizzled head at the same time, “That’s right!”
Hearing him say that, I knew that the person having a heart attack at the mouth of the cave was our very own tenant. I knew also that somebody had to do something to help save his life quick, before the doctor could get there.
“Here, hold this!” I exclaimed to Old Man Paddler. I handed him the artificial leg. Then I swung around to the worktable near the sink, grabbed a clean milk bottle Mom had just washed, and shot out the door to the pump.
The bottle pumped full, I circled the ivy trellis that shades the side porch and the kitchen’s side door and yelled in through the front room’s open window to Mom at the phone, “Tell Dr. Manswood to come to the cave! We’ll be there waiting!”
I was going to be a doctor someday myself, when and if I ever grew up. As I raced to the Collins front gate, it seemed I was already a doctor, answering an emergency call. The milk bottle filled with fresh water was my doctor’s bag. If there was anything in the world I wouldn’t want to happen, it was for the kind old stranger to die before he could put up a tombstone for his mother and his twin baby brother.
He’s got to live! He’s got to! I thought desperately. It seemed my bare feet were filled with lead, although I could tell I was running fast by the wind in my face and the way my shirt sleeves were flapping.
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 31-36 Page 8