Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 7-12

by Paul Hutchens

  I knew my face was as red as my hair, and it was just too bad that the distance between Shorty Long and me was too far for one of my already doubled-up fists to reach his jaw.

  “Look there!” Poetry said, gesturing toward our farm. “There are three cows, twenty-four pigs, and thirty-eight sheep!”

  Well, I happened to know that was exactly right, because I knew how many cows and pigs and sheep we had. But I also knew that Poetry didn’t know, because Dad had just bought a lot of sheep. So I said to him, “For once you’re right. But how can you tell?”

  A half dozen others of us all of a sudden spoke up and said, “All right, smart guy, how can you count so fast?”

  Then Poetry laughed and straightened up and said, “Fish. You’re fish. I knew you would bite on that nice fat worm. It’s as easy as pie to tell how many farm animals there are in a field or pasture or barnyard, if you know your arithmetic. You just count all the legs, and divide by four, and you have the answer.”

  I have to admit that Poetry’s joke made me feel like a fish, all right, and I also have to admit that it was funny. “You didn’t make that one up yourself,” I said to him, and he said, “Nope, I just read it in a magazine!”

  And Dragonfly, who hadn’t been getting any attention but had spent most of his time on the ride talking to and listening to Shorty Long—both of them talking Openglopish—all of a sudden swished his dad’s red bandanna out of his pocket and started sneezing. He actually sneezed six times in a row and said, “Thopis cropazopy opold opoats stropaw! OpI’m opallopergopic topo opit!” which in our language means, “This crazy old oats straw! I’m allergic to it.” And it looked as if he was.

  Miss Brown—I mean, Mrs. Jesperson—wasn’t helping drive just then. She was, in fact, looking at all of us as if she thought we were the finest gang of schoolkids she ever saw (which maybe we were—she’d never taught in any other school). Then she said, “How did you like Palm Tree Island, Roy?”—meaning Dragonfly. “Were you allergic to anything down there?”

  “He was allergic to everything,” Little Jim piped up.

  And Shorty Long, trying to say something bright, said, “He was so snobbish, he turned up his nose at everything!” which maybe was a little funny but not much.

  In a few minutes the horses were going like a house afire down a nice, pretty little hill. After that we crossed a narrow iron bridge, which spanned a small stream named Wolf Creek. Then we went up a hill on the other side, and all of a sudden we came to a white church at the top of the hill on the left side, which was the church where all the Sugar Creek Gang and most of their parents went every Sunday and also in the middle of the week on prayer meeting night.

  Right across the road from the church was another country schoolhouse, which had two rooms in it and also had two teachers, and almost three times as many boys and girls went to it as went to our school.

  Seeing a lot of boys and girls outside reminded us that it was still the noon hour. The boys and girls were playing in the churchyard, which was almost twice as large as the schoolyard we played in at Sugar Creek School. They had made a big circle and were playing fox and geese in the snow, which is a game we all have a lot of fun playing at our school too.

  Seeing the church must have reminded our pretty lady other teacher of some of the short Christian choruses that we used to sing in our school. She was an honest-to-goodness Christian schoolteacher and liked the gospel songs very much and also had a good singing voice. Cheerfully she said, “Let’s sing a chorus for the boys and girls out there.” She started to sing one that we all liked and which our school used to sing for opening exercises.

  As soon as she started it, I looked over at Shorty Long to see what he would think about it, not knowing whether he believed in songs like that and being almost sure he didn’t. He didn’t act like the kind of person who would like them. I studied his face to see what he was thinking. Almost all of us were singing noisily, though also a bit bashfully, and also enjoying it, mostly on account of our liking our friendly other teacher so well. We liked the song even better because we liked her. I also liked it better because I thought Shorty Long didn’t.

  Well, he really didn’t. He just sat there looking glum and bored and looking around at different ones of us to see if there were any of us who didn’t like it either, but all of us did. He also looked as if he felt more important than any of the rest of us, and it seemed he was looking to see if any of us felt as snobbish as he did, and none of us did. So he was the only one who wasn’t trying to sing except Dragonfly, who didn’t have a good voice and who was what is called a monotone, meaning his tones were all on the same pitch and sounded like a small frog croaking along Sugar Creek in the summertime.

  Well, there was something awfully nice about a whole gang of boys and girls singing that chorus the way we used to. One of the reasons we all liked Miss Brown—Mrs. Jesperson, I mean—very much was that she not only claimed to be a Christian but she acted like one. She was sort of like one of the peach trees in my dad’s orchard, which was not only a peach tree but actually had big, luscious peaches on it every year. She also understood boys, not getting mad at us if at any time we made a mistake and not always looking for somebody to blame something on.

  I stopped singing when I noticed Shorty Long looking disgusted and grumbling to Dragonfly at the same time, and I got my ear close and heard him say, “It’s sissified! It sounds like a lot of pigs squealing. Who wants to have a Sunday school all the time!”

  Dragonfly got a funny look on his face, which I’d never seen there before, and all of a sudden I had the strangest feeling around my chest. It was a scared kind of feeling, as if maybe Dragonfly was believing Shorty Long. I looked at Big Jim’s fuzzy mustache and at his face to see what he thought, since he was the leader of our gang. And right away I felt better, because he was singing along with all the rest of us, except that he was doing it in a more dignified way on account of being older. I noticed he was watching our minister’s daughter, Sylvia, who was the oldest girl in the sled and also maybe the prettiest. She was singing too. I sort of felt that Big Jim liked the song better because she liked it.

  Poetry was squawking along beside me in his half-boy’s-half-man’s voice. Circus’s extra sweet voice sounded good. Little Jim’s was like the voice of a little musical mouse.

  Well, Dragonfly still had that odd look on his face as though he was ashamed of all of us or else couldn’t stand to be made fun of by Shorty Long. Right away I knew Shorty was what the Bible calls “tempting” Dragonfly to be ashamed of being a Christian, and also right away I didn’t like Shorty Long even worse.

  I noticed something else too, and that was that Shorty Long was showing something to Dragonfly secretly, something printed on a piece of paper. He would hold it behind his coat, and then he and Dragonfly would look at it.

  Just then Dragonfly looked at me, and he had the strangest look in his eyes. Then both of them started talking Openglopish again, which none of the rest of us knew well enough to understand. I could talk it pretty well but couldn’t hear it half as well, and they were talking it so fast.

  I had a feeling that whatever they were talking about wasn’t something I would like if I heard it—and then I saw it wasn’t only something printed they were looking at, but there were also some drawings. I got just a glimpse of them before Shorty Long saw me looking and shoved them inside a brown envelope. It looked as if there was some printing at the bottom of the drawings, which he was reading in Openglopish to Dragonfly.

  Dragonfly still had that look on his face as if he was doing something he oughtn’t.

  Well, there must have been some boys who attended that two-room school who felt as uppish as Shorty Long looked right that minute and who didn’t appreciate good music, or else they were just ordinary boys who, the minute they saw anybody going past in the wintertime, wanted to throw snowballs at them. Some of those boys stopped playing and dashed out of their fox-and-geese ring toward the road and started scooping up
handfuls of snow and making snowballs and throwing them toward us, which they shouldn’t have done because they might hit our horses.

  I wanted to have a good old-fashioned snowball fight, and I wished that the horses would stop and we could all jump out and have one.

  It looked easy not to get hit. All we had to do was to duck down into the wagon box, and the snowballs would either fly over our heads or hit the sideboard or somewhere, anywhere except hit us. Before I could get down, though, one hard snowball crashed against my shoulder, and our teacher commanded, “Quick! Down—all of you—so you won’t get hit!”

  And every one of us ducked while a whole shower of snowballs went swishing over our heads like a flock of white pigeons flying over our barn.

  Then suddenly I felt myself being jerked and jostled, and all of us bumped into each other, and the sleigh bells on the horses started jingling and jangling and acting as if they had gone wild.

  And Mr. Jesperson yelled to the horses, “Whoa! Steady, boys!” But his voice didn’t do any good. Also I could see him pulling hard on the lines he was driving with.

  Our team must have been hit with a half-dozen hard snowballs by some of the boys who couldn’t throw straight—or else they had thrown at the horses on purpose.

  I began to be excited, not even thinking of being scared at first, when the horses started running down the road as fast as they could. Mr. Jesperson was still holding onto the lines as tight as he could and pulling and calling, “Whoa!”

  At the same time, our pretty lady other teacher was holding onto her husband, and the horses were acting terribly scared. In fact, the sleigh bells were making enough noise to scare any horses into running away.

  I had seen a runaway once. It was a team hitched to a wagon with nobody in it, running down the road as fast as they could go, looking to be going maybe thirty or forty miles an hour, which is terribly fast for a team of horses and a wagon.

  Almost right away we came to a road that turns south and our team decided to turn down that road, and our big sled slid and skidded around the corner terribly fast. Before we had time to get scared any worse, the back of the sled flew around with a grinding noise and swished into a ditch where there was a deep snowdrift.

  It is a strange feeling being scared and not having time to think, and not being sure whether you are in danger but knowing you are, and hoping you won’t get hurt and wondering if you will, and thinking about your mom and dad and your baby sister, and wondering if you’ll get hurt bad enough so you’ll be knocked unconscious and won’t see anybody for a while. Most of the girls began to scream and scream and scream, as if they were already terribly hurt.

  The next thing we knew, that wagon box skidded off its foundation into the ditch and turned upside down with all of us either in it or dumped out of it at the same time.

  The next thing I knew, I couldn’t see anything because I was underneath the wagon box. It was dark. I could hear kids screaming all around me, and I wondered if anybody was badly hurt and hoped nobody was, not even me.

  So there we were, many of us under that upside-down wagon and some of us outside in the snowdrifts, and all of us making a lot of noise. I could hear kids screaming all around me, because so many of us were scared almost half to death. I was a little bit scared myself.

  5

  I guess it was a good thing there was a great big fluffy snowdrift there, because it turned out that hardly a one of us got hurt. Big Jim had a scratch on the back of his hand, which wasn’t bad and which Sylvia’s mom dressed right away. Our sled had been kind enough to turn upside down almost in front of our minister’s house. Sylvia’s mom put a little antiseptic on the hand and then tied it up with a bandage.

  Sylvia’s father came out to help turn the wagon right side up again. In a few minutes a half-dozen neighbor farmers were there and most of the kids from the other school. The men put the wagon box on again. Joe Jesperson had stopped the horses almost right away after the accident, and they hadn’t run away as I was afraid they would.

  Sylvia’s father, who is one of the best ministers we ever had and who preaches all his sermons from the Bible, told us we ought to be thankful, which we were. Also he was the kind of minister who was always looking for a chance to tell people things about the Savior, so he asked everybody to be quiet.

  I was glad he was there, because I’ll have to admit I was trembling inside, and I knew I must have been more scared than I thought I was. He was not only a very nice human being who liked kids and had laughed when he found out none of us was really hurt, but he said it would be a good time for us to stop and give thanks to the Lord Himself for having spared us all.

  And do you know what? Right out there along that roadside with all the farmers there and nearly all the kids from the other school and both their lady teachers there, every single one of us bowed our heads, and Sylvia’s father said, “I don’t believe it’s too cold to ask the men if they will take off their hats while we pray.”

  I knew he was giving us boys a compliment when he didn’t say “the men and boys.” He called us all men. I took off my brown fur cap, Little Jim took off his small reddish cap, Big Jim took off his gray cap, which had a long black bill that was broken, and Circus swished off his very old blue cap, which didn’t have any earmuffs on it but was large enough to be pulled down over his ears. Poetry took off his brown fur cap. Poetry and I liked each other a lot, and whenever we could we bought clothes alike. Dragonfly’s cap was already off, and he was knocking the snow out of it and off it, and Little Tom Till, whom I hadn’t paid much attention to but who was also a member of the Sugar Creek Gang, had his cap off, and his red hair, which was as red as mine, was all mussed up and powdered with snow.

  And there, while the sleigh bells jingled every time the horses moved a little, Sylvia’s father shut his eyes and lifted his kind face up toward the gray sky and prayed.

  It was one of the nicest prayers I think I ever heard. About all I can remember of it is, “Dear heavenly Father, we thank You for the boys and the girls of America and of the whole world—boys and girls of every color and country. And right now, especially, for the boys and girls of Sugar Creek. We thank You for having brought us all safely through this accident without anyone being seriously injured. We thank You for having given the Lord Jesus Christ to die upon the cross of Calvary to be the Savior of anybody and everybody who will believe in Him with all their hearts. We pray that if there are any among us here today who are not yet saved, very soon they will open their hearts to the Savior and let Him come in …”

  Hearing Sylvia’s father say that made me want to open my eyes to see if Shorty Long had his eyes shut, the way you are supposed to have them when you are praying. I opened mine and looked quickly over to Shorty Long, and—would you believe it?—his eyes were wide open. He was just staring at the minister as though he thought he was some weird animal or something.

  We were ready to go again, all of us in the wagon box, when all of a sudden Shorty Long said, “Hey, wait! I’ve lost something!”

  Before the horses could start, he’d climbed over the side of the sled and was out in the snow, looking around to see if he could find whatever he had lost.

  Poetry, who was standing beside me, nudged me in the ribs so hard it almost made me yell, and whispered, “Sh! I’ve got it!”

  Well, you can believe me that I kept still. Whatever it was that Poetry had, it made me feel good to know that he had something Shorty Long was looking for.

  Shorty kept looking in the ditch and all around in the snow, and different ones of the gang, except for Poetry and me, got out and tried to help him. All the time I was wondering what it was Shorty Long had lost and Poetry had found. Dragonfly, who still had a funny look on his face, also was helping Shorty look for whatever it was.

  “Did anybody find anything?” Shorty asked loud enough for us all to hear. “I lost—” And then he stopped whatever he was saying and didn’t finish his sentence.

  When Shorty Long’s
back was turned to us, Poetry—who had his back turned to Shorty and to everybody else—half opened his coat and showed me the tip of a brown envelope in his pocket.

  I had a funny feeling in my mind about that time, wishing I would get a chance to see what Shorty Long had been showing Dragonfly, yet knowing that we couldn’t keep it because it was Shorty’s personal property. Pretty soon Poetry would have to tell Shorty Long he had it and would give it to him.

  All the way back to Sugar Creek School, while we were all having not quite as much fun as we had had before the accident, I had what my dad would have called a “premonition,” which means that I had a feeling that the brown envelope that Poetry had in his pocket had a secret in it that was very important.

  As I said, every time a new boy moved into our neighborhood, we had to find out two things about him, and he had to find them out also. First, he had to find out right away whether he was going to run the gang or whether he was just going to try to. The other thing that had to be decided was, could he join the gang? We had two or three good rules for anybody who could become a member, and one of them was that a boy couldn’t be a liar. Another one was that he had to be respectful to his parents, and even if he wasn’t a Christian, he couldn’t make fun of people who went to church. He was also supposed to go to church, even if his parents didn’t go—which lots of parents don’t, and should.

  As you maybe know, if you’ve read some of the other stories about the Sugar Creek Gang, about half of us were not Christians at first. Little Jim had nearly all the religion there was in the whole gang, but most of us became Christians. Dragonfly was the last one of us to be saved—except for little red-haired Tom Till, whose father wouldn’t believe in God and whose mother had never had a chance in life to be happy, which is maybe one reason Little Tom Till’s big brother, Bob, had turned out to be such a bad boy. It is not easy for a boy to become a Christian unless his father is one too. Most boys do what their dads do—and don’t do what their dads don’t.