I unrolled myself from the snowdrift and up onto my knees and then onto my feet, Poetry helping me a little. I couldn’t see too well because of some crazy old tears that got in my eyes along with the snow.
After I was up, I got my cap and shook the snow off it and out of it at the same time. Then I just stood there and panted and glared at that big lummox, who was as tall as Big Jim, the leader of our gang, and was almost as big around as Poetry. I was still mad, although he had knocked the wind and some of the temper out of me at the same time.
Poetry grunted as he stooped over and picked up his sled rope.
The new guy and I stood there, looking at our caps and panting and knocking snow off ourselves. Every now and then we looked at each other at the same time and kind of walked around a little and looked at each other mad-like. I was thinking all the time about where I should have hit him and hadn’t and where I’d do it next time. I still couldn’t see straight, so I yelled at him, with tears in my voice, “You—you great big lummox. You hit me in the stomach!” That started Poetry, who is always quoting a poem of some kind or other, to quoting one. He said, quoting from the “Night Before Christmas”:
“A little round man with a little round belly
That shook when he laughed like a
bowlful of jelly.”
But it wasn’t funny.
“Keep still!” I said to Poetry.
Then the new guy spoke up and said saucily to Poetry, “So you’re the one they told me was a poet. Well, you remind me of a poem too—
“You’re a poet, and you don’t know it
And if you had whiskers you’d be a go-at!”
Just then a snowball came sizzling from behind our barn and crashed against the new guy’s cap. It fell off again and into a snowdrift. It was Circus who had thrown the snowball. By the time I could turn around and look to see which one of the gang it was, he had changed from walking on his feet and was on his hands, coming right toward us.
The gang had planned to go to the cave that afternoon and then through the cave up to Old Man Paddler’s cabin in the hills. The other end of the cave was in the basement of his old clapboard-roofed house, which looked like the house Abraham Lincoln was born in.
In another jiffy we heard a yell from near our front gate, and it was a little guy dressed in a mackinaw and a fur hat. He was carrying a stick, and I knew it was Little Jim.
“Hi, Little Jim!” I yelled to him and decided not to even look at the big lummox again.
“Hi,” Little Jim called back. Then he yelled to the new guy and said, “Hi, Shorty! Mom says you can ride with us tomorrow if you want to.” Little Jim came tumbling up to where we were, stopping every now and then to make rabbit tracks in the snow with his stick.
And then another snowball came sizzling from a different direction, and this time it was little spindle-legged Dragonfly, whose nose turns south at the end and whose eyes are bigger than his head, almost. He came shuffling through the snow from around the other side of the house.
And then all the Sugar Creek Gang was there —Big Jim with his fuzzy mustache; Little Jim with his stick, who was the best Christian in the gang and maybe in the whole world; Dragonfly with his dragonfly-like eyes; barrel-shaped Poetry, who knew 100 poems by heart; Circus, our acrobat, with his monkey face; and last of all, Tom Till, whose hair was as red as mine, whose temper was as hot as mine, and whose freckles were just a little thicker on his face than mine. Counting me, that was all of us.
Well, the question was, what to do with the new boy.
“What’s your name?” I said to the big lummox, forgetting I didn’t want to talk to him at all.
He was making a snowball and getting over his temper. And at the same time I was getting partway over mine.
He didn’t answer until after he’d thrown the snowball at Mixy, who was out in the shadow of the barn again. Then he answered just as the snowball left his hands, and the words sounded as if they were being thrown hard straight at me.
“Shorty Long!” he said.
“Shorty Long!” I exclaimed.
“Sure!” Little Jim piped up. “His name is Shorty Long, and he is going to ride along with all of the Foote family tomorrow to Sunday school and church.”
And that goes to show that Little Jim was about the only one of the Sugar Creek Gang who had the right attitude toward the new boy who had moved into our neighborhood.
Well, it wasn’t any more than half a jiffy later that all of us boys heard Mom call again, “Hurry up, you boys, if you want a piece of blackberry pie!”
I turned around and looked up to the house at Mom, and I saw the most astonished expression on her face. You see, when she had first called us there had been only three of us, and that would have meant only three pieces of pie for her to spare. But when she called this time, there were eight of us, including Shorty Long, who looked like he could have eaten three pieces himself and still have room for several more. Two whole pies would be gone, and I wouldn’t have any for dinner tomorrow, I thought.
It didn’t take all of us boys very long to get up to where that pie was waiting for us, and it certainly didn’t take any of us very long to get our pieces of pie eaten. Mom brought them out and let us eat them right there in the snow rather than take us all in the house and get snow all over her floor, which she nearly always mopped especially clean on Saturday so it would be that way on Sunday.
Pretty soon the gang, including the new boy, was on its way through the woods, wading through the snow, following the footpath that goes to the spring. There wasn’t any path visible, but we knew exactly where it was supposed to be, so we made a new one. Next thing we knew we were up along the edge of Sugar Creek, not far from the old sycamore tree. All of a sudden Poetry, who was walking beside me—both of us were ahead of the rest—said, “I’ve got a letter for Old Man Paddler. My dad got it at the post office. It’s from Palm Tree Island.”
“Palm Tree Island!” I said, remembering that Old Man Paddler had a map of Palm Tree Island on the wall of his cabin and that he was especially interested in that caterpillar-shaped place. None of the gang knew just why he was interested in it, but most of us had been secretly hoping that maybe this old man, who had sent us all on a camping trip to the north woods one summer and also had sent us all to Chicago and had paid for both trips himself, might someday decide to spend some of his money to send us down there to see missionaries at work. The old man was especially interested in missionaries and was always praying for them.
“Sure!” Poetry said as he pulled off one of his gloves with his teeth, reached into a pocket, and pulled out a letter.
“Let me see it,” I said and took it from his hand. I Iooked at the strange stamp and the strange writing. “What’s Correo Aereo?”
“Goose!” Poetry said. “Correo Aereo is Spanish for Airmail, of course. They wanted it to come in a hurry. It’s an important letter.”
Well, I let out a yell that brought all the gang running. “Look!” I cried. “An airmail letter from Palm Tree Island!”
While the gang was running through the snow to get to where I was, I noticed that the letter was postmarked Palacia, which Poetry said was the capital of Palm Tree Island.
Pretty soon the gang had all come and looked at the letter and helped me make a lot of different kinds of noise.
Then we were at the mouth of the cave. Some of us had brought our flashlights along, and we turned them on. The next thing we knew we were walking Indian fashion, one at a time, through that cave, stooping a little here and squeezing through a tight place there, on our way up toward Old Man Paddler’s cabin. It was a whole lot quicker to get to his place by going through the cave than by following the old snowdrift-covered road around through the hills.
Pretty soon we came to the big wooden door that opened into the basement of Old Man Paddler’s house.
Big Jim knocked a couple of times, then we heard a voice from upstairs say, “Who—who’s there?” We knew it was Old Man Paddl
er’s high-pitched, quavering voice. In my mind’s eye I could see his long, white whiskers and his very gray eyes. You couldn’t always see his eyes because sometimes they were hidden behind the thick lenses of his glasses.
Pretty soon the basement door opened, and all the gang was in the cellar and climbing up the stairs and going through the trapdoor into his cabin. There was a nice fire crackling in the fireplace, and hot water was sizzling in the teakettle on the stove, making the windows all steamed up. And right there on the table was a panful of broken-up pieces of red sassafras roots, which we were going to have made into sassafras tea in just a little while.
“A letter for you, Mr. Paddler,” Poetry said politely and took out of his pocket the airmail letter, which had been postmarked Palacia, and handed it to the old man.
“Thank you, Poetry,” he said. “Sit down, boys.”
Some of us didn’t sit. Some just flopped down on the floor in different directions. But some of us sat on chairs, some on the edges of chairs, and some just kind of propped up against the others.
The old man put on his thick-lensed glasses, which were almost as thick as magnifying glasses, and said, “Boys, if you will excuse me a minute—”
“Sure,” some of us said.
3
The gnarled fingers of the old man tore X open the letter, and I couldn’t help but notice how much his hands trembled. I felt a queer lump in my throat. Maybe he wasn’t in as good health as he had been last year, and he might not live very much longer. Also, right that minute while he was unfolding the letter and starting to read it, I remembered that he had told us once that he had put the Sugar Creek Gang into his will, and that when he died there would be something for each of us. But none of the gang wanted him to die.
Anyway, the kind old man was always giving us something, such as that vacation trip to the north woods and then to Chicago, where Circus had sung on the radio. He acted as if he thought it was fun to give away his money where it would do a boy or somebody else a lot of good. He seemed to enjoy that as much as the Sugar Creek Gang enjoyed swimming and diving in Sugar Creek.
Then, without even having time to think straight, I felt very weird on the inside. I was remembering that the old man had once hinted that he might send the whole gang down to Palm Tree Island for a vacation just to see what it was like to be in a foreign country.
Before Old Man Paddler read the letter, he just glanced at it. Then he took off his glasses and wiped his eyes with his red bandana handkerchief, the kind Dragonfly’s dad used because he was always sneezing like Dragonfly and had to have a large handkerchief. Nearly all the Sugar Creek Gang’s dads used large handkerchiefs because all of our fathers were farmers. And nearly all farmers used that kind of handkerchief, sometimes tying them around their necks to keep the dust out.
The old man laid down his glasses on the table beside his black Bible, lying open as though he had been reading it, which he was always doing. He had several other important-looking books there too, which the gang knew helped explain some hard things in the Bible. The old man would rather read something like that than anything else.
Well, the next thing I knew he had handed the letter to Big Jim and said, “In a minute I want you to read it to us, but first let me tell you a story.”
I was always all set for a story when Old Man Paddler was all set to tell one. He could tell better stories than anybody else I knew. So all of us got ready to listen, and it was a very good story. There was a mystery in it, which, as soon as the old man had finished, I knew was going to get all tangled up with the Sugar Creek Gang.
“So, boys,” he finished, “that’s the end of the story. It’s a sad ending. I’ve never known what happened to my twin brother.”
Old Man Paddler looked across to the wall to the map of Palm Tree Island hanging there, and he had a faraway expression in his eyes. Maybe in his memory he was seeing his brother again. Maybe he was playing with him in and out of Sugar Creek and all around these same hills where our gang had its good times now.
Little Jim was sitting beside me and was leaning up against my right arm. Poetry was chewing gum hard, and all of us looked kind of sad.
Then the old man said, “Boys …”
What he told us then almost made the cold chills run up and down my spine.
He said, “Last night I dreamed my twin brother was alive and that he was down on Palm Tree Island, needing somebody to help him get away from something. It seemed like in my dream that he didn’t have very long to live, and also it seemed he wasn’t saved and didn’t get to go to heaven. In my dream I could see him down there, lonesome and sick and calling for me to help him, and I couldn’t because I couldn’t move …”
The old man stopped, sighed, opened the top of his cookstove, picked up an iron poker, and stirred up the fire. Then he picked up the teakettle and poured boiling water on the sassafras roots, which he had just put into a small pan on the stove. He sat down again and said, “All right, Big Jim, read the letter to us.”
Big Jim did, and a part of the letter, which was from a missionary, said:
Thank you again for the check. It was so thoughtful of you to remember us in this way. We can now buy the refrigerator and thus save many dollars worth of food. Also we can enjoy the luxury of a cold drink now and then. It makes me think of what the Lord Jesus said once about giving a cup of cold water in His Name and getting a reward for it. May the Lord Himself give you a generous reward for your kindness to us, His missionaries. We shall be glad to know more about you and how you happened to know of our need here.
We occasionally have guests from the United States, and if you ever happen down this way, we shall be pleased to entertain you. Palm Tree Island, as you know, is a very close neighbor to the United States, being only a ninety-minute trip by air from Miami, Florida …
When Big Jim read that, I felt even more excited, and I just sort of knew something was going to happen to make the whole gang very happy.
Big Jim finished the letter, and all of us were very quiet for a while.
Then the old man sighed heavily and acted as if he was ready to change the subject. He looked across at the map again and said something softly as though he hadn’t meant for us to hear but was speaking to Somebody else in the room. What he said was: “And if he is alive, and needs help, please show us what to do.”
The old man stood again, pushed his Bible back to the other side of the table against the wall, and got busy finishing the sassafras tea.
Dragonfly said in my ear, “Sounded like he was praying. Why didn’t he bow his head and shut his eyes?”
And Little Jim, who had heard Dragonfly say that and was a very smart little guy—and was always saying wise things anyway—said, “He and God are good friends. Besides, maybe he bowed his soul anyway.” Then, just as if he hadn’t said anything important, Little Jim shuffled to his feet and scrambled over to the stairway where Big Jim was sitting on the bottom step. He squeezed in between him and the log wall of the house.
We had our tea party then, and soon after that we were all on our way home again, each one of us talking about what if we ever got to go to Palm Tree Island and, if we did, wishing we could go in the wintertime while it was so cold along Sugar Creek. We were also wishing it was warm enough right that minute to go in swimming, which it certainly wasn’t. As soon as we got out of the cave, we walked along through the snow, which was blowing and drifting now. I looked out across old Sugar Creek’s sad and frozen and very white face and wished I was on Palm Tree Island that very minute, swimming in a creek down there where it was warm. I was wondering, as I waded along beside Poetry and the rest of the gang, if we would ever really get to go.
“If we do,” Poetry said to me in his half boy’s, half man’s voice, “I’m going to look for Old Man Paddler’s twin brother. Say, I’ll bet you something important!”
He stopped, pulled one glove off, held one forefinger up to his lips, and said mysteriously, “Something very, very important.”
“What?” I said.
He said, “I’ll bet if we get to go, we’ll find Old Man Paddler’s twin brother and bring him back with us.”
He caught my arm and pulled me behind a big maple tree and said, “Promise me something, Bill Collins.”
The wind was blowing terribly hard on that side of the tree, so I said, “Sure. Hurry up. I’m cold.”
“Promise me that you and I will find the old man’s brother.”
“He’s dead,” I said.
“How do you know?”
“Because,” I said, “if he was alive he would have come home a long time ago.” That sounded like good sense, and after I’d said it I was proud of myself for having thought of it.
“Promise me!” he demanded gruffly.
I said, “All right, but I don’t believe it.” I really didn’t, although I was already beginning to half hope Poetry might be right.
As I turned in at our gate, my heart was pounding hard because I was going to ask my parents right away if I could go with the gang to Palm Tree Island—if they went.
4
Boy, oh, boy! Just like that time we were on our airplane trip to Chicago, we were doing it again—zooming up through the middle of the sky. Only instead of there being trees and little twisting, winding Sugar Creek down below us, there was the Atlantic Ocean and the long, rough-and-tumble-looking, brown-colored islands called the Florida Keys, which are coral and limestone islands. From our airplane they looked like the skeleton of some ugly dinosaur with his backbone all disjointed, lying down there in the middle of the ocean.
I was sitting beside a window, with Dragonfly sitting beside me. He was holding onto a paper bag, which was for him to put his breakfast in just in case he didn’t want it, as he hadn’t that time we all went to Chicago. But Dragonfly was feeling fine today, and so were all the rest of us as we roared along through and over and under the whitest clouds I had ever seen. All around them was clear blue sky.
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 7-12 Page 9