I guess maybe I’ll never again enjoy the wonderful taste of sunfish and catfish rolled in cornmeal and fried in butter till they are a golden brown.
My eyes rested on several other things in the room. One of them was the mantel on the north wall between the window and the front door. The mirror standing on the mantel had a triangular piece of glass missing out of the lower lefthand corner. That mirror had been broken by my parents’ only son one day when he’d lost his temper about something and tossed an ash walking stick he’d brought into the house with a ker-wham onto the living-room floor. The stick had bounced from the floor to the corner of the mirror and back to the floor again. The mirror had never had new glass put in, so that ever since, when I looked at my outer self in it, I also saw a hot-tempered boy’s inner self.
By the mantel was the library table, and on it lay Mom’s brown-leather Bible.
All of a sudden it seemed I ought to get up and go over to the Bible and open it to see if I could find anything in it about how a boy could be a better boy and—if he was his own boss-make himself behave himself.
I got a fine surprise when I did do what it had seemed I ought to do, though what I read didn’t make me happy at first. In fact, it made me feel even worse than Wordsworth had been feeling while he wandered lonely as a cloud. The marked verse in the New Testament part of the Bible where Mom had put a bookmark said, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
It came to me then, like a streak of lightning in a dark thundercloud, that I, Bill Collins, ought to admit to my mother and to the One whose book the Bible was, that I had actually done more than neglect my work and disobey my parents. I had honest-to-goodness-for-sure sinned.
What I needed to do was to come straight out and say so to God—and right now!
I walked over to the big chair near the bedroom door, where I’d seen Mom on her knees quite a few times with Dad beside her, and down I went.
With my eyes shut, I said, “What I did yesterday was worse than disobedience. It was a sin against You, and I would like to have my heart washed, like it says.”
And the strangest thing flashed on my inner eye right then. I saw a boy I knew pretty well—because his shadow goes in and out with me all the time—come storming into the living room with a hot temper and slam an ash walking stick down onto the floor. With my inner ear I could almost hear the breaking of the mirror. The next thing I knew I was saying out loud, “And the mirror I broke. I guess I never did confess that, either. If that sin is still buried in a corner of my heart somewhere, I’d like to have it cleaned out, too.”
In a flash, I was finished with my prayer and off my knees and feeling fine. Then I ran out of the living room through the kitchen and outdoors onto the board walk like a streak of two-legged lightning on my way to the garden. Inside I was feeling as light as a floating feather, and it didn’t seem to matter whether I got to go with the gang on its Saturday afternoon hike to Old Man Paddler’s cabin or not.
That is, it didn’t seem to matter until I’d finished the Golden Bantam sweet corn and was getting another drink from the iron pitcher pump’s pitcher-shaped spout, watching the yellow butterflies lazying their way back to their water puddle again.
I was still feeling fine inside at the time. I could have danced with a host of beech switches like the one lying across the two tenpenny nails above the workbench in the woodshed. And that’s when the party-line phone rang in the house, two extralong longs and a very short short.
“Our number!” I, the boss, exclaimed to me. “You answer it, Son, and see who it is. Tell ’em I’m busy for the afternoon—tied up until four o’clock. After that I can talk or have company.”
I was in the house, letting the door slam behind me, and all the way through the kitchen and into the living room before I had finished giving myself the orders.
“Hello,” I said in a businesslike voice. “Bill Collins’s residence speaking!” I did sound very dignified, I thought, and was proud of my voice, which, beginning a few months ago, had almost begun to change a little the way a boy’s voice is supposed to do when he gets old enough.
But the ducklike voice on the other end of the party line wasn’t dignified. Instead it was very excited. It was good old Poetry himself, the roundest member of our gang. Leslie “Poetry” Thompson was calling from Old Man Paddler’s cabin. He was half shouting as he told me, “Drop everything and run like a deer to the cave and lock the door! We left it wide open when we came up so we could see our way better—we only had one flashlight!”
What Poetry was yelling for me to do didn’t make sense until he managed to get across to my vacant mind that they had found some vandals in the cabin!
“They’d smashed things up, knocked over the window planter and the old man’s dish cabinet. One of them’s got his radio, and they’re both down in the cave! They went storming down the stairs and into the cellar, and they’re in the cave right now! Hurry up!” Poetry wound up yelling!
“OK! OK!” I shouted back, and in a fleeting flash I was pedaling furiously down the road on my bike on the way to the sycamore tree to get the spare key. Then I would fly to the big wooden door of the cave and lock it before the vandals could get there and get out.
I knew it was quite a long way from the old man’s cellar through the cave to its mouth, and it’d take them quite a while if they had to make it in the dark without a flashlight. But if they had a flashlight, even with the narrow places and the up-and-down places and the one slippery place, they might easily beat me in what was maybe one of the most important races I’d ever run in my half-long life.
If I’d been watching more carefully instead of thinking so worriedly, maybe I’d have missed running over that sharp rock in the road and my front bike tire wouldn’t all of a sudden have gone swoosh … hisssssss! Its flat sides began to scrape, and I had to slam on my brakes, swing myself off, push the bike out to the side of the road, and lean it any old way it happened to land against the trunk of a maple tree.
But I couldn’t let a flat tire keep me from getting to the cave before some powerful-muscled vandals came storming out like bats out of a cavern.
Hurry—hurry—hurry. My bare feet flew down the road to the branch bridge and across it. I took a side glance to the left toward Poetry’s house several hundred yards away and saw the Collins family car parked in their driveway not far from the side door. I hoped Mom wouldn’t be sitting near any of the windows of the big house and see me. Her afternoon’s peace and quiet would be upset, if it wasn’t already upset by Charlotte Ann’s cranky-sleepy fussing.
In another second I had dived down the bank on the other side of the branch and was following it to Sugar Creek. The surface of the creek itself was as quiet as Wordsworth on a couch. Not a ripple was dancing on it. It was, in fact, as smooth as glass and as clear as a living-room mirror.
Over brush piles and around fallen logs, through narrow places where the path was bordered by weeds as high as a man’s head, I went on and on and still on, wondering, worrying, hoping. Also, even though what I was doing was right, it still seemed something was chasing me, something like a boy’s shadow reminding him that he had left an unfinished garden somewhere in another world.
I was within maybe a hundred feet of the sycamore tree now, and I could see the wide-open door.
Maybe, as I dashed past on my way to the hollow tree to get the key, I could quick slam the door shut and make it darker inside and harder for the vandals to see their way. That would slow them down—unless they had already come out and were already gone in some direction or other.
Puff … puff … pant … pant. My lungs were hurting from working so hard to keep me in enough breath.
It seemed all the time that I was an even better boy than I knew I was, because I not only wanted to help bring the vandals to justice, but I also wanted to help the gang earn the reward money.
One thought was bothering me, t
hough. Was one of the boys Big Bob Till, whose mother was sick in bed and needed an operation? And if Bob was one of the culprits, would our catching him be like walking on his mother’s heart?
I was within a few feet of the cave door. And then—in another few seconds—I was there.
Slam! The door went shut with a bang, and I knew it would be as dark inside as a night without any moon or stars.
It was on to the sycamore tree. I was hardly able to see for the sweat in my eyes and my mussed-up hair.
And then, all of painful sudden I was down, with my right big toe hurting as though a horse had stepped on it. Suddenly I had a headache from striking my head on the same tree root I had already stubbed my toe on.
I got up again and limped on to the tree. I had my arm inside and my fingers on the key, and that’s when I heard voices. I heard the big wooden door of the cave open. I also saw it swing wide and boys come rushing out. I was so dizzy from the pain in my toe and foot and head that it seemed there were maybe even four or five boys, but I couldn’t tell.
One thing my muddled mind let me know was that it was too late to lock the door. The trap we were trying to set had been sprung, and the “rats” had gotten away.
One thing I could do, and that I started to do, refusing to let my aching head and my bruised big toe stop me. I could give chase to see which way whoever I was chasing would go, and I could also get to the Thompsons’ house and phone the sheriff.
And then I was on my kind of wobbly feet and running. I told myself I just had to keep them in sight.
Well, any boy knows that whenever he gets hurt, there is first of all a fierce, fast rush of pain to the place where he gets hurt. Then, a very few seconds later, if his injury is not serious, a sort of hot feeling comes into the place and he feels better.
I hadn’t been running long when I heard a voice behind me, and then another and another. It was the good old Sugar Creek Gang itself, out of the cave and giving chase with me—all of us like six hounds on a hot coon trail.
In fact, Circus, whose father is a hunter and owns and hunts at night with a true bluetick hound and a purebred Black and Tan, let out a long, wailing bawl as if he was a hound himself. His high-pitched, trembling bawl was so much like old Black and Tan’s that it almost seemed we all were actually on a hot coon chase.
“They’re heading for our barnyard!” Poetry cried behind us. “What’re they running toward where anybody lives for?”
What were they heading for, anyway? I wondered. I now managed to see through the thicket of bushes ahead of us that there were two husky-looking teenage boys—not four or five. They were dressed in dark jeans and gray T-shirts.
“Let’s head ’em off!” Circus cried and shot out ahead of the rest of us toward the Thompsons’ toolshed. The swiftest runner of the gang was going like a curly-headed arrow now and gaining fast.
Dragonfly, panting and wheezing a little on account of his asthma, cried out, “There th–th–there th–th–theyg–g–o!”
And there they did go, like boys in a hundred-yard dash in a track meet, not toward the toolshed now but toward the heavy shrubbery that fenced in the Thompsons’ big grassy lawn —also straight toward Theodore Collins’s car, parked in the driveway near the Thompsons’ side door.
Well, a brain-whirling fear swept into my mind then, and a frightening question thundered itself at me: What if Mom left the key in the ignition?
In seconds, my question would be answered. One of the rough boys we’d been chasing—the one who was carrying Old Man Paddler’s radio —swung past the Thompsons’ spirea hedge and scooted like a streak for the car door. The larger boy circled the car. Then two doors opened and banged shut again in a noisy hurry.
And that’s when my question was answered. Mom had left our key in the ignition! The engine leaped into life, and as quick as a cat starting in a fast race toward a tree to get away from a chasing dog, the Collins family car was gone. And I was startled to remember that on the key ring with the ignition key were several others. One of them was the key to our house!
First, the car shot backward a few feet, stopped with a screeching of brakes, and then it was off toward the Thompsons’ red barn, following their circular drive.
Where on earth were they going?
I needn’t have wondered. A second later, the car was cutting a wide circle and heading back again straight toward where six boys were standing and staring.
“Out of the way!” Big Jim cried to us.
Six boys leaped aside just in time as our car swooshed past us toward the open gate, slowed down, then shot forward and through. It swung onto the road and went storming down the hill toward the branch bridge.
I was on the ground at the side of the Thompsons’ driveway, where I’d landed in my headlong dive for safety, when I heard the house door open and the excited, worried voice of my mother.
She came rushing out to where the car had been. “Charlotte Ann!” she exclaimed. “She was asleep in the backseat!”
5
Now what do you do at a time like that? There we were—six upset boys, startled half out of what few wits we had but glad to be alive and unhurt, and maybe the finest mother there ever was in the whole world, worried half to death because the stolen car had her little girl asleep in the backseat. And that car, I could tell from the wake of boiling dust it was making as it roared up the hill on the other side of the branch bridge, was going maybe seventy miles an hour with a lunatic at the wheel!
In a whirlwind of a situation like that, you just stare and feel frightened and numb, and you can’t do a thing at first—not till somebody’s mind comes to life, which Big Jim’s did right then. “We’ve got to phone the sheriff about the stolen car and tell him there’s a baby in the backseat!”
That made sense and brought most of us out of our numb, dumb feeling. One thing was sure. We couldn’t do anything with our muscles right now. Even anything we could plan with our minds, we couldn’t do.
It was Big Jim who went racing toward the house and in to the Thompsons’ phone to warn the sheriff about the stolen car and Charlotte Ann in the backseat.
You hear quite a lot about car thieves and how the police give chase, sometimes going a hundred miles an hour. Also sometimes there is shooting from one car to another and terrible accidents in which the people in the runaway car get hurt or even killed.
Big Jim hadn’t any sooner gone into the house to make the phone call than he was out again, calling for my mother to give him some information the sheriff had to have—and quick.
I certainly learned something I didn’t know about what every car owner ought to keep in his wallet or in a pocket or handbag all the time, so that if his car does get stolen, the police will know what to look for when you call them.
It’s not enough to call up and say, “My car was just stolen with my little sister in the backseat! Hurry up and find it for us!”
What the sheriff wanted to know was about nine things: the car’s license number, its engine number, its make, model, year, color; did it have any special accessories, any dents, bumps, or noticeable scratches?
That put Mom and her son into more trouble.
“My handbag’s in the car!” Mom exclaimed, “and all the papers! Wait, let me talk to him!”
Well, it looked like the Collins family would have to learn a pretty hard lesson about how to be prepared in case their car was ever stolen again.
I was after Mom as fast as I could follow, and I wasn’t more than a few feet from her while she told the sheriff—which wasn’t the sheriff, anyway, but was his special deputy answering the phone for him—“The car is a four-door, green—”
Mom gave him the license number, which she’d forgotten and I hadn’t, and told the sheriff’s deputy about the right fender. Our clothesline post had been in the way one day when she was turning around in the yard. The new fender had been put on but wasn’t painted yet.
“I left my handbag with all the papers in it in the car!” Mo
m said. “And my baby’s in the backseat!”
Everything that was going on certainly upset the peace and quiet of our day. My heart was as if it had a voice in it saying, “Charlotte Ann—my beautiful little baby sister! Don’t let her get hurt! And if I haven’t been forgiven for all the things I’ve done against her that a brother shouldn’t, wash that out of my life, too!”
I couldn’t tell by the way I felt whether my prayer asking forgiveness got answered right then. There was still a heavy feeling in my chest that was terrible—absolutely terrible!
When Mom hung up the phone and for a second her eyes looked into mine, I think I never saw anybody suffering so much.
“It’s my fault! I shouldn’t have left the key in the ignition,” she said.
And then my wonderful mother did something she’d never done before in her whole life. It had always been the other way. From the time I was little, when anything had hurt my heart or some part of my body, I’d gone rushing to her for help, especially when I was very little, like Charlotte Ann. But suddenly my mother came rushing blindly toward me. Throwing her arms around me and burying her face against my shoulder, she sobbed. “Oh, Bill! What’ll we do! What can we do?”
It was the first time in my life my mother’s tears had run down my face. Also it was the first time in my life I’d ever felt she was looking to her son for strength to stand a terrible heartache.
I didn’t feel like talking. But I heard my own husky voice answering in her ear that was still against my cheek, “We’ll pray, Mother, and God will step in and take charge of things.”
It seemed a long time before what I told Mom came true. In fact, it wasn’t until quite a while later that day that we found out God really was looking out for us and that He was using other people in the neighborhood to help Him do it. He was looking after those other people at the same time.
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 31-36 Page 13