Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 31-36

by Paul Hutchens

  Dr. Gordon himself decided to drive Circus home, while Mom phoned his mother part of what had happened to prepare her for the news and maybe keep her from getting some kind of shock herself when she saw the doctor driving into their place with their only son.

  In only a little while, the Collins family was alone—each one with his own thoughts. Mine especially were the kind I get sometimes when I know I’ve done something wrong and can’t be sure what until my folks tell me.

  It was like the quiet after a storm, and I could hardly believe my ears when I heard Mom say kindly to Charlotte Ann, “Come on, dear, we’ll get cleaned up and your dress changed. You can wear your new pink dress the rest of the day.”

  “She got stung by a bee,” I started to explain, “and we were trying to give her first aid. I was just going to put on a little clay from the puddle there, and—”

  “You accidentally put on too much?” Dad asked in a very strange tone of voice.

  “That’s it!” I said. “It was an accident.”

  “I see also that you put a little first aid on my bee hat.”

  If it had been the right time to be funny, I’d have said, “Well, it got stung, too, you know. The bees stung it instead of me!” But anything funny right then wouldn’t have seemed funny. So I swallowed my thoughts and stared at Dad’s hat. It was still on its crown in the water puddle, and several butterflies were fluttering above it like yellow-and-white flowers with winged petals.

  “Before you begin,” my grim-faced father said to me, “I want to tell you that I’m going to believe everything you say and accept your story exactly as you tell it. A thing like this couldn’t happen all by itself. You run and get the groceries first and carry them into the house.”

  I stared at him, wondering if I was hearing right—especially his kind tone of voice.

  “Go on,” he said, “get the groceries and take them into the kitchen, and we’ll talk later.”

  I went toward the car for the groceries. When I came back, I stopped at the kitchen door and asked Dad, “Do I have to take them inside?”

  “You do,” he said. He opened the screen for me, and I went into the house where Mom and Charlotte Ann were. I was wishing there would be some kind of veil a boy could wear to keep from getting stung with what would probably be some very sharp words.

  When I walked into our kitchen with the large grocery sacks in my arms, I expected a swarm of words to come flying at me from wherever Mom was. Instead, she wasn’t even in the kitchen. She was in the bathroom with Charlotte Ann, and my sister was giggling as though she was having the most fun a child could ever have.

  I understood why Charlotte Ann was so happy when I heard Mom say, “Here we go! Off with the wing feathers! In just a minute now we’ll have the whole pheasant skinned.”

  It was the same trick Dad used on Charlotte Ann every summer evening when he was fooling her into thinking it was fun to go to bed by day. He played a game with her, pretending she was a pheasant and that he was skinning her. And Charlotte Ann would be out of her day clothes into her night ones in only a few minutes, without realizing what had happened.

  “Sing the pillar song,” I heard Charlotte Ann say.

  And Mom sang it to her—the one you already know about on account of my singing it to her myself that very day.

  It seemed I ought to take advantage of Mom’s good humor, which might not be so good if she happened to see or hear her son in the kitchen. I very quietly set the grocery sacks on the table. Then I crept like a striped caterpillar to the kitchen door and went out, shutting the screen door more quietly than I had in a long time. When I reached the pitcher pump, Dad was just closing the apiary gate. He turned and came toward me, carrying Charlotte Ann’s freckle-faced doll.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” I began, but Dad cut in to say, “That’s all right. You don’t have to apologize. Just tell the story as it happened.”

  His kind voice was like a boy’s hand stroking a kitten, so it was easy for me to tell him everything you already know—about the soft-ball game, how we were playing with Dragonfly’s ball—which he wasn’t supposed to have taken off the top of their kitchen cabinet for another day—and we had been right in the middle of a lot of fun when I knocked the home run.

  When I got that far, Dad cut in again to say, “Home run? That’s fine! Where’d the ball go-how far?”

  “That’s what started the trouble,” I told him. “I knocked it all the way over the top of the chicken house, and it landed in the bee yard, whamming into one of the hives the war was on in. And because in a little while Dragonfly would have to go home and put the ball back where he wasn’t supposed to have taken it from, somebody had to go in and get it.

  “They called me chicken, and I couldn’t stand that. But I wouldn’t have gone if I hadn’t wanted to keep him from getting punished. He has a very hot-tempered father.”

  “So you decided to do your good turn for the day and help Roy deceive his parents!”

  “No, sir,” I said to Dad. “I knew it was wrong. And what he did was wrong. But I still didn’t want him to get punished.” I finished with a little worried hope in my voice, because my mind was in the toolshed looking at three beech switches on the lower horns of the gun rack.

  “Well,” I went on, “I was scared. You know how scared I am of the bee yard. That’s why I borrowed your veil and also why I left the gate open so I could get out in a hurry.

  “I hadn’t any sooner crawled around to where I could get the ball than I saw Charlotte Ann coming toward the open gate. I yelled to her to stay back, and she wouldn’t. She kept coming, dragging her doll by the arm. That’s when I forgot there were seventy bees all around my veil as mad as hornets, and I started toward her, yelling and ordering her to go back and accidentally taking all those bees with me.

  “And that’s when Circus jumped like an antelope over the board fence and rushed across the bee yard. He picked Charlotte Ann up and carried her out into the orchard and under the branches of the Maiden-blush apple tree. And that’s also how come he got stung seven times on the arms and shoulders and how come Charlotte Ann got stung only once.

  “The bee that stung Charlotte Ann on the arm—it left its stinger in, so I scraped it off with Poetry’s knife, like you taught me how to do. When I couldn’t find the medicine cabinet key, we decided to put clay on it so it wouldn’t swell so much and would quit hurting. But I guess Charlotte Ann remembered the switching Mom had given her for getting herself all spattered with mud, so—well, she tried to run away from the doctor, and the doctor ran after her and brought her back to the operating table and—and then you came home.”

  All this time, Dad and I had been standing under the crossbeam of the grape arbor, not more than nine feet from the beech switches in the toolshed. I had made the story a little longer so that, in case there was a hot temper inside my father, it would have a chance to cool off a little.

  “That, Son,” Dad astonished me by saying, “is a very satisfactory explanation. A little long, perhaps, but as I told you a while ago, I’m going to accept it. Now I think we’d better get started on the rest of the garden before chore time. Did you find enough fish worms to go fishing?”

  What on earth! I thought. And without planning to, I said, “Aren’t you going to give me a licking?”

  Dad pumped himself a drink of water but handed me one first, saying, “Why should I? Why punish a boy for thinking? You did just right with your sister, Son! I’m proud of you! I’m not sure I could have done any better.”

  All of a sudden it was a wonderful sunshiny afternoon, and my heart was as light as a feather in a whirlwind.

  I guess maybe there isn’t a thing in the world that feels better to a boy than when he and his father are forgiven to each other and there is a twinkle in his eye as though he likes you and thinks you are even better than you hope you are.

  Right away my biceps ordered me to skin the cat on the crossbeam above my head. I was up and over and skinning it in a s
plit second. Then I swung my whole body up and sat on the crossbeam. I’d started to flap my arms and was about to crow, when Dad said to me, “Something fell out of your shirt pocket.”

  I looked down at what he had in his hands and said, “That’s a letter from Old Man Paddler. It came this morning.”

  Being interrupted like that, I forgot to crow and came down fast.

  Right then Mom came out the back door. Charlotte Ann in her new pink dress was with her. That little sister of mine was grinning like everything and was holding her arm out for me to see, saying, “Ban’age! I got a ban’age!”

  I looked at the place on her arm where the bee had stung her, and Mom had tied a white bandage on it. A “ban’age” was something Charlotte Ann was always proud to wear. Sometimes she wanted one on when there wasn’t anything wrong at all.

  “Look!” Mom said cheerfully, lifting her face and stretching her neck in the direction of the south pasture. “There goes a whirlwind!”

  I looked where she was looking and saw a funnel of dust and grass and leaves circling crazily along in the middle of the south pasture, coming toward the walnut tree.

  It seemed a good time to change any subject my folks might want to start talking about, so I said, “If you like it and want it, I’ll go catch it and bring it back for you!”

  I was off with nobody stopping me, heading bareheaded for the pasture bars near the barn, scooting through, and like a streak racing out into the middle of one of the happiest sights a boy ever sees out in the country.

  It’s not an easy thing to do—staying in the center of a whirlwind, which never knows itself which way it’s going or how long it is going to live. I hadn’t any sooner felt the whirlwind’s wind in my face and all over me and around me than, as quick as scat, it had scattered itself into nothing, and I was running in circles like a chicken with its head off. The only wind was what I myself was making—which is what a whirlwind itself does. It starts out of nowhere, lives a very excited life for a few minutes, and then, quick as a boy can skin the cat on a grape arbor crossbeam, the wind in it dies, and the whirlwind is gone like a burst soap bubble.

  My heart was still as light as a straw in a whirlwind when I pushed myself through the pasture bars on the way back. I ran from the barn to where Mom and Dad were, and my shadow was running toward me, stumbling along in different directions, not watching where she was going, because she was looking down at her arm, then holding it up for me to see and saying, “Ban’age! I got a ban’age!”

  And do you know what? It was almost worth all the worried excitement we had been having for the past hour, just to see how happy that white gauze ban’age made the cute little shadow that goes in and out and up and down and round and round with me.

  A worried thought came to my mind then. What if Dragonfly hadn’t gotten home in time to get his ball back on the kitchen cabinet before his folks got back from town?

  I found out a few minutes later. My shadow and I were all the way to the water puddle—which she walked way out around for some reason—when the phone rang two long longs and a short short, and right away I heard Mom’s voice answer it.

  “Who is it?” I called in through the east window, where I was standing almost before Mom could get to the phone from inside the house.

  I felt fine when she answered through the window, “It’s Roy. He wants to know if we saw his parents in town anywhere. They aren’t home yet.”

  That really made me feel fine. I knew that now there wasn’t a one of the gang that would be missing tomorrow when we went up to Old Man Paddler’s cabin to spend the night—except maybe Circus, who might still not be feeling well from so many bee stings. Also, maybe Dragonfly had learned a good lesson about obeying. I hoped so.

  What a wonderful time we were going to have! As we always do when we spend the night on a hiking or a camping trip, we would lie awake in the dark, tell ghost stories, and laugh and talk about the different things boys like to talk about. It’s almost as important for boys to be mischievous and talk to boys as it is for women to talk to women.

  Dad and I dived into the chores almost right away, since Mom wanted an early supper.

  “There’s just one thing about tomorrow night,” I said to Dad while he and I were washing up at the round-topped table near the iron pitcher pump.

  “One thing what?” he said through the towel he was drying his face with.

  “What if we accidentally stumble onto a wild animal of some kind up there in the hills? Remember, we had to kill a bear once—and we also killed a wildcat. Maybe a boy ought to take his rifle along! Don’t you think—”

  My back was to the kitchen door while I was talking, and I was looking longingly through the toolshed door at the middle horns of the gun rack.

  Dad’s smothered voice stopped me with a cautious “Sh.”

  I shushed just in time to see, out of the corner of my eye, my mother standing in the open door behind me.

  I knew why Dad had stopped me. I didn’t even need to hear him explain a minute or so later, “You do want to go, don’t you?”

  “Sure,” I said, “but—”

  “Then soft-pedal the talk about bears and wildcats!”

  We went in then to supper and to a happy family around the table. Twenty-four hours from now the Gang would be in the middle of a new and wonderful adventure—maybe even a dangerous one.

  Supper over, and the after-supper chores finished, and Charlotte Ann having been put to bed by day—for some new reason she had gone to sleep almost right away—Mom and Dad and I sat on the back steps for a while in the twilight, waiting for night to come.

  From the trees across the road there was the sound of hundreds of locusts whooping it up. And the katydids were doing what katydids do—saying over and over with their raspy voices, “Katy did. Katy, she did. Katy did. Katy, she did …”

  There was a breeze fanning our cheeks from across Harm Groenwald’s field of new-mown clover hay, which was as sweet as anything a boy ever smells around Sugar Creek.

  Pretty soon, as the afterglow of the sunset faded away and the orange and red and purplish clouds also faded, a little silver saucer of a moon started shining through the top branches of the walnut tree.

  Mom, who was used to going to bed as soon as day was over, sighed, looked up at the moon, then said to Dad or to me—or else just said it as if she was talking to herself in her mind and the words came out without her hardly knowing it—“This is my Father’s world. There’s sleeping splendor in everything.”

  Dad, who was sitting on the other side of Mom, said, “Yes, but if your husband doesn’t get some sleep right now, there won’t be any splendor left in him.” He yawned, then went out to the iron pitcher pump, pumped a tin cup of water, and brought it back for her to drink.

  A little stronger breeze came up then, and from where I sat, even in the half dark I noticed the hollyhocks swaying. Their leaves seemed to be whispering something every boy in the world ought to know—and which you already do know if you’ve read the first part of this book.

  I was sleepy from having been awake for so many hours, but because I was also thirsty, I went out to pump myself a drink. I was surprised to notice how wet the iron handle was.

  Dew doesn’t do what that poet said it did, I managed to think with my sleepy mind. With my voice I yawned back to Dad, who was still sitting with Mom on the back steps. “There’s dew on the pump handle!”

  “On it or under it?” Dad asked back.

  Still wide awake enough to remember the two long words he had used on me in the morning, I said, “On the inferior as well as the superior side.” And it felt fine to be able to use such long words and to understand their meaning.

  Seven minutes later, more or less, when I was in my upstairs room skinning myself out of my clothes, I looked out under the ivy leaves that slanted across the left top corner of the window. In the moonlight I saw the garden, the chicken house, the shadow of old Red Addie’s apartment hog house, and, off to the rig
ht, the apiary, where I knew that—at least until morning—the bee battle was over.

  Then, because a boy’s mind can’t think very well when he is as tired and yawning sleepy as I was, I knelt beside the bed for what turned out to be a very short prayer. I can’t remember what most of it was, I was so sleepy. But I do remember that the first part of it was about Circus, who had saved Charlotte Ann like a mother hen gathering one lone chick under her wings. And I asked God to help Dragonfly learn to obey his parents better.

  “Please, also,” I added, “bless Old Man Paddler in California—and if you ever want the Gang to go out there to go fishing in the Pacific Ocean for mackerel and bonitos, we’ll be willing to go.”

  I can’t even remember finishing the prayer or climbing into bed to lay my head on Mom’s nice clean-smelling, fresh pillowcase. But the next thing I knew, it was morning—the morning of another day, which would have a wonderful night, which the gang was going to spend away up in the hills in Old Man Paddler’s cabin.

  Would there be a mystery or a menace or a danger of some kind where we would have to use our muscles as well as our minds, which would make it a whole lot more interesting than just an adventure of the mind?

  And would Dad let me take my .22 along just in case we stumbled onto a bear or some other wild animal that once in a while moved into the Sugar Creek territory?

  I was out of bed with a bound, ready for work or anything else to make the day move faster. No matter what my parents asked me to do, I would do it with a cheerful whistle.

  A look out the window under the ivy showed me a sunlit garden with dew shining on the black-seeded Simpson lettuce and, along the fence between the house and the orchard, a row of hollyhocks.

  Before making a dive for the head of the stairs to go flying down into the wonderful day—and night—I squinted my eyes at those tall flower-loaded hollyhock stalks and sort of whispered to them, “Will you be quiet, please, and let me be ambitious of my own accord?”

  Down the stairs I went with a bound, like Santa Claus down the chimney in “The Night Before Christmas.” Then I flew through the house and outdoors and across the barnyard to get to the barn in time to help Dad with the chores. As I passed the iron pitcher pump and the garden gate, it seemed I had never felt better in my life. Boy oh boy oh boy oh boy!