Well, pretty soon we were on our way back to the mission farm for dinner. Pretty soon, also, it would be after dinner, and we could go across the creek to the old man’s house. I could hardly wait!
9
We didn’t get to visit the old man that afternoon, though, because just as the gang got close to his strange-looking house—it was made of palm branches—he came driving around the corner of a barn, which was made out of the same kind of stuff the house was. The brown billy goat was full of pep and seemed not to want to stop. The old man was dressed up in white clothes like the kind so many Islanders wore.
He was polite, and he said to us, “You boys come back tomorrow, and we’ll have a visit.” He looked up at the sky and said, “This is my birthday, you know. Did I ever tell you I was a man when I was born? That I was born in a cell of El Torro Castle, and that I found this lying right under me?” He showed us the machete with the gold-inlaid handle. “Had a big gash on my head too. Right here.”
The old man showed us the scar that Poetry and I had seen in Palacia. It started just above his right eyebrow and ran up into the place where his straw hat covered his hair.
Then, without waiting for him to say, “Get up,” the goat started pawing the ground and champing at the bridle bit and also began to move. And the old man let him go, waving good-bye to us with his machete.
“He’s crazy,” Big Jim said.
“He’s mentally ill,” I said.
“He has green eyes,” Dragonfly said.
“He likes kids,” Little Jim said.
We watched him drive out onto the highway and start toward the suburbs of Palacia. Then we walked across his yard, which didn’t have any grass on it but was swept as clean as a dirt floor and had a lot of pretty flowers planted in different places.
We talked about the old man awhile, and we all decided that even if he did look like we thought Old Man Paddler’s twin brother ought to look, he couldn’t have been his brother because his name wasn’t even Paddler, and he had been born on Palm Tree Island.
“But how could he have been born when he was a man?” Dragonfly asked.
“He said he never was a boy even,” Poetry said.
Then both of us—Poetry and I—told about our experience of getting lost and why. For a while the gang was pretty serious, thinking maybe the old man really was Kenneth Paddler and that he had lost his mind.
We called a special gang meeting to decide what to do, all of us sitting down under a lemon tree in the old man’s yard, not far from the pen where he kept his billy goat. We could look down the hill across his yard to the creek, shining in the sunlight. This time tomorrow we would all be in swimming again; then we’d come back to see the old man as he had invited us to.
Just then Dragonfly sneezed three times real fast. He looked at me kind of scared, said, “I’m allergic to billy goats,” and stood up and sneezed again. That broke up our meeting, and we went home to the missionary’s house.
Well, the next day came quick, and we were all getting ready to go swimming. Dragonfly was feeling fine again, but I noticed he opened his suitcase before we started and took out a great big red bandana handkerchief. “I’m glad Mom made me bring it,” he said to me, and for once Dragonfly’s mom was right.
“Last one in’s a goat’s tail,” I said over my shoulder to Circus, who for a half jiffy was running behind me. And then right away I was behind him. And then I was behind Big Jim also. And then Poetry and I were running together, with Dragonfly and Little Jim puffing along behind us.
Circus got to the swimming hole first. He was nearly always the fastest runner of the gang. His clothes were almost off before he got there, and in seconds he was splashing in the water and saying, “The water’s fine and as warm as Sugar Creek!”
About a minute and seventeen seconds later, I found out that it was, when I touched first one foot into the water and then the other. Then all of a sudden I was all the way in from a shove from behind that came from Poetry, who had been shoved by Dragonfly.
We started having fun right away and felt right at home, in spite of the fact that we didn’t know the names of any of the trees along the shore except the palm and the seiba and the avocado, which is kind of like an elm, and the mahogany, out of which they make reddish furniture, and a mango tree. There were also all kinds of sweet-smelling, drooping flowers. On one side was a banana plantation, looking a lot like an American cornfield, except that the stalks were a lot taller, the blades were about five times as wide, and there were bunches of green bananas hanging from nearly every stalk.
All of us were swimming right away except Dragonfly, who I noticed was wading out carefully, holding his clothes high above his head to keep them dry.
“What’re you doing that for?” I asked.
He yelled back, saying, “We’re going over to see old John Machete, aren’t we, after a while? That means that we’ll have to dress on the other side.”
And it did.
Dragonfly was wading across when all of a sudden Circus yelled, “Hey, gang! Look what I found!”
We all looked and saw in Circus’s wet right hand something that looked like a lottery ticket, and I knew it was Dragonfly’s.
Dragonfly saw it about the same time I did, and he let out a yell. “Hey! Give me that!”
“It’s no good,” Circus said. “I’m going to tear it up.”
“It’s good luck,” Dragonfly said. He tossed his clothes onto the other shore and made a dive for Circus. The two of them made a lot of noisy waves and other kinds of noise. Then Dragonfly started to sneeze and sputter, and I knew he had already won his fight, because Circus is a kindhearted boy. He felt sorry for Dragonfly and let him have his worthless lottery ticket.
But it was already wet, so Dragonfly took it to the bank and spread it out right on top of his clothes to dry. Then he came back in, and we all had a lot of fun for a long time until I heard Dragonfly sneeze. I looked at him, and his lips were kind of blue, which is how I knew we had all been in the water long enough.
Dragonfly was the only one who had put his clothes on the other side of the creek, so the rest of us waded back to get ours. We hadn’t any more than got there when I heard Dragonfly let out a yell. He started splashing to the shore where his clothes were. When I looked, there, as plain as day and even plainer, was a big brown goat sniffing at his clothes. I knew right away there was going to be trouble.
The goat looked up at Dragonfly as if he had been interrupted in something he was thinking about. When he lowered his head again, then Dragonfly did yell. “Hey, he’s chewing my lottery ticket!”
I knew that goats eat shirts and ties and old shoes and ivy and things, so I supposed he might like the taste of a lottery ticket also. And as much as I thought Dragonfly was cuckoo for wanting to save the worthless gambling ticket, I hated to see it eaten by a brown billy goat unless Dragonfly fed it to him himself.
I grabbed my clothes and started back across the little creek as fast as I could wade to help Dragonfly.
He was really excited, and of course that helped him not to be so short of breath. In a second, it seemed, he was clambering up the other bank and yelling at the goat, which wasn’t a bit excited but was still chewing on the ticket.
Dragonfly must have been as mad as he had been that time back in the United States when the gang had that fight with the tough town boys. He had gotten socked on the side of the nose by a bully, and after that he’d fought like a little wildcat.
Anyway, he grabbed a stick, made a headfirst dive for the goat, and started hitting him on the head and horns.
Well, I don’t know what I would have done if I had been that goat and had been eating something I’d never tasted before and it was very good, and then something wild had come rushing at me with a club and had started to beat me in different places. I guess maybe I’d have gotten mad and would have done just what that big brown-whiskered billy goat did. First, I’d have been so surprised I’d have dropped what I was eating, t
hen I think I’d have come to my senses and would have decided to fight back.
Anyway, Dragonfly had his ticket and was smoothing it out and probably was feeling terribly bad because part of it had been chewed away and was somewhere down in one of the goat’s stomachs—all goats having two stomachs, one for storage and the other for digesting, like cows.
Poetry started to quote a poem that had popped into his head, and it was:
“There was a man, whose name was Rob,
Who had a goat—he called him Bob.
He loved that goat—oh yes, he did,
He loved that goat, just like a kid.
“One day that goat, so slick and fine,
Stole three red shirts from off the line—”
That was as far as Poetry had gotten with his poem when I heard Circus let out a bloodcurdling scream.
“Dragonfly! Look out! Hey!”
Boy, oh, boy! That goat was mad all right. He was standing about twenty feet from Dragonfly, pawing the ground and had his head down, and that meant trouble. I’d read about bulls and goats and how they get so mad they can’t see straight, and they just lower their heads and dive right straight toward whatever they’re mad at. Anybody or anything that gets in the way had better not.
“Run!” I yelled to Dragonfly.
But Dragonfly couldn’t. He just stood there, looking funny, not having any clothes on yet. He had dropped his stick but was holding onto his lottery ticket, which was crumpled up like a girl’s handkerchief after she has been crying about something.
But Circus was on the job. He really could run fast. He was out of the water and had a big stick in his hand and was ready for the goat.
Circus could also dodge fast, and he had a good mind. “Come on, gang!” he yelled back at us. “We’re going to have an old-fashioned Spanish bullfight.”
He ran over to where Dragonfly’s clothes were lying on the ground and pulled Dragonfly’s great big red bandana out of his pants pocket. Then he shoved Dragonfly out of the way and waved the red handkerchief at the goat.
Well, anything red waved at a mad goat or a mad bull means the bull or the goat “sees red” and will make a headfirst dive straight at whoever is waving it.
Right away the goat was mad at Circus, and his head was down, and he was running right for him.
I saw those horns on the goat, and I knew they were dangerous, so I started screaming, “Circus, look out! Look out—”
Even before I had time to finish what I was yelling, the goat was within a few yards of Circus, who was standing stock-still, waiting. In my mind’s eye I could see him being crashed into terribly hard and with a big hole punched in his stomach from those goat horns.
But just the way they do in a real bullfight on Palm Tree Island, Circus stepped aside, holding the handkerchief out where he had been, and the goat rushed under it like a flash of lightning and went kerswish on past without touching Circus. Dragonfly had already gotten out of the way.
Anyway, the goat was just mad at the red handkerchief now, so he stopped about twenty feet away, looked back at Circus, saw the red handkerchief, and got ready to charge again.
Circus yelled to us then. “You guys get your clothes on. Next time he charges past, I’ll climb up that avocado tree, and we’ll be all right.”
It was a good idea, because I knew Circus could climb fast. So we did, quick.
I guess maybe it would have worked all right, but Circus slipped and fell just as the goat was getting ready to make another charge at him. And that’s where I got myself into trouble—because of being impulsive and also because of liking Circus so well. I didn’t want anything to happen to him, and also I was closer to him than any of the rest of the gang.
I just couldn’t stand to see anything happen to him, so I grabbed the handkerchief myself, and—well, that was how the goat happened to be mad at me instead of Circus and Dragonfly.
I got scared and started to run. I also remembered that I had red hair as well as Dragonfly’s red handkerchief. I headed toward the old man’s house.
“Run faster!” Dragonfly yelled.
“Stop!” Circus yelled. “Wave your flag and dodge.”
But my tangled-up brain told me to keep on running, which I did.
I guess old John Machete must have heard something going on, or else he wanted to get his goat to hitch it up and take a ride, because right that minute he came out of his thatched house. He started out across his pretty yard, which didn’t have any grass but had been swept as clean as I knew the dirt floor of his house was.
10
With Dragonfly yelling for me to run and Circus yelling even louder for me to stop and wave the red flag, I didn’t know what to do. So I kept on doing what I was doing, which was running. It seemed that if I ran right straight toward the old man I wouldn’t be in as much danger as if I ran in some other direction, so I kept going.
Also, nearly all the gang was yelling at me to do different things, so I didn’t do any of them but kept straight on toward the old man. I was yelling myself. It was like being in a dream where some fierce wild animal is after me and I can’t run very fast, and I get more and more scared until I wake up. Only now I had sense enough to know that I wasn’t dreaming and that I was as awake as I’d ever be. I thought if that goat really socked me the way they do in comic-strip pictures, I’d probably get hurt terribly bad.
“Help!” I yelled to the old man.
But he just stood there, kind of shading his eyes, not far from a pretty rosebush and a wooden plow and a wooden ox yoke.
I don’t know what made me do it—I certainly didn’t have any sense to do what I did, and it certainly wasn’t fair for me to do it. I should have run for a tree and swung myself around behind it and let the goat ram himself headfirst into the tree. But I didn’t. Instead I ran straight for old John Machete, maybe because I knew he knew the goat and the goat, seeing him, might stop and start to behave himself.
I swooped behind the old man as if he was a tree trunk and stopped right in back of him.
Well, the goat was running terribly fast and was so mad he was blind, I guess. Anyway, the next thing I knew he had run kersquash right into old John Machete, who was already halfway turned around before I dived for him. Then he had swung around the other half, and right then the goat struck him. Just as though the old man was a straw dummy or a scarecrow in a garden, he toppled over. His hands flew up in the air, and he fell kersquash-wham-thud-thud over the old plow. He turned a little while he was falling, and down he went, face first. Even before he got all the way down, I knew what was going to happen. I just knew it. He was going to get terribly hurt.
I’d already been screaming because of being scared myself. Now I started screaming again, because there the old man was, all sprawled out, half on and half off the plow, and his head had struck one end of it.
I guess they call it being hysterical when a boy feels the way I did. When I saw him fall so hard on his head, and I thought how terribly bad he might be hurt and what if he was Old Man Paddler’s brother and might even die, I started to cry and laugh, first one and then the other. My knees suddenly felt weak. Then, as if my mind had made a dive into a dark tunnel, I didn’t know anything—in fact, I didn’t even know I didn’t know anything.
The next thing I did know, I was lying flat on the ground, and somebody was pouring water on my face and neck, and somebody whose voice sounded like Big Jim’s was saying, “He’s coming to. He’s opening his eyes,” which I was and which I did. Right away I sat up and looked around, feeling dizzy in the head.
“Where—what happened?” I started to ask, then stopped because right then I saw the scared look on the rest of the gang’s faces. I also saw the brown billy goat not far away, happily chewing on some leaves that hung low from a lemon tree.
Then I remembered the old man. I swung around just in time to hear him groan and groan again as though he had been terribly hurt. Then he started talking and saying, “You’ve got to let me out of thi
s cell, gentlemen. I tell you I am not a spy. I am a citizen of the United States. I’m a newspaperman.”
He lay back again, gasping, not saying anything more for a minute. Then he started in again. “Let me out of here! I’m not who you think I am! I tell you. I’m—oh, my head! My head!” He started to half talk and half cry again and said, “I tell you, those pictures are for an American newspaper.”
All of a sudden the old man twisted himself to a sitting position and raised one brown hand to his forehead where he had been hurt. He stared for a minute at us. Then he groaned again and turned pale around the eyes and just wilted back against Big Jim’s shoulder like a tree falling along Sugar Creek.
“He’s fainted again,” Poetry said beside me, and he had.
Well, we had to do something. I still didn’t feel very good because of having just fainted myself, but I knew what a guy ought to do when somebody has just fainted. So I said, “Let’s get his head lower than the rest of his body,” which we started to do.
But the old man hadn’t fainted! He opened his eyes and stared around at us and at other things just as if he’d never seen us or his garden or house before.
He looked scared for a minute, but also he looked so fierce that I got the strangest feeling inside. I seemed to be looking at a wild man instead of at old John Machete.
“We’ve got to get him out of the sun,” Big Jim said. He was right, for the sun was shining right straight down into his face.
But we didn’t even have time to carry him over under the lemon tree to the shade or try to get him into his house. He opened his eyes again and swung his arms as though he was fighting to get away from a lot of people. And almost before we could get out of the way of his flying fists, he twisted around and scrambled to his feet, which had new, American-looking shoes on them. He started across the yard toward his thatched-roofed house, calling out like a wild man.
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 7-12 Page 14