Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 7-12

by Paul Hutchens

  “I’m not fighting!” I barked at her. And it didn’t seem that I was. I was just sort of wrestling with Shorty Long.

  All of a sudden we let loose of each other and shuffled to our feet and stood panting and looking at each other, the way two roosters do when they’ve fought awhile and are resting and looking at each other and getting ready to dive into each other again.

  “What’d you take my books out of my desk for?” I said to Shorty Long.

  And he said, “It’s none of your business. I was looking for something important.”

  Then Dragonfly piped up from somewhere, “He was looking for something he lost on the sleigh ride.”

  So that was it! And for some reason I began to lose some of my temper. I said to him, “Oh, well, that’s different! Go ahead and look! Only I’d appreciate it if you’d put all my books back in very carefully. Of course, I couldn’t ask you to think of asking permission to get into my desk. I couldn’t ask you to think at all. A guy has to have brains to do that!”

  And with that not-very-nice remark, which I shouldn’t have made, I whirled around, stooped, picked up my books myself and shoved them back into my desk, being only a little less careful than I always was when I put them in.

  Then I heard my dad’s voice calling from outside saying, “Hurry up, Bill!”

  I did. There wouldn’t have been any fun staying and finishing the fight even if it had been one, with nobody in that schoolroom rooting for me or caring whether I got licked or not.

  So l shoved the last book into its place, dodged around the end of the row of seats, and grabbed my lunch box off the long shelf by the door. I opened the door and yelled out to my dad, “Coming!” and was quickly on my way out to our long green car, leaving my troubles behind me.

  The only thing was, though, I seemed to have a whole heartful of trouble inside me. I was very sad all the way home.

  “Don’t you feel happy, Bill?” Dad asked as we were driving along down the lane past one of our neighbor’s houses—the only neighbor we had who didn’t have any children.

  And when he asked me that, I felt a great big lump come into my throat. I blinked and looked out through the frosted window. Not being able to see through it very well on account of the frost, I rolled it down and looked out at the clean snow, the pretty drifts, and the blotches of snow in the fir trees that were like big, clean packs of cotton. And for some reason I didn’t feel nearly as clean as the trees. I wished that whatever was hurting on the inside of me would quit so I could talk, but I didn’t dare answer Dad because there would be tears in my voice, which I didn’t want him to hear. Also, right that minute I saw our house and the red woodshed, and I rolled the frosted window up again just as Dad swung through our gate, which he had left open.

  Our car made a wide circle around the drive, rolled past the plum tree, and stopped close to the tank where we watered our horses. White smoke was coming out of the little stovepipe of the oil-burning stove that was down at the bottom of the tank, keeping the water from freezing so our horses and cattle could have drinking water without our having to chop holes in the ice. (Sometimes in the winter it got so cold around Sugar Creek that our big water tank would freeze all the way to the bottom. So we needed that stove.)

  Mom opened the kitchen door, looked out, and said, “Hello, Billy Boy,” which I didn’t like very well, on account of it sounded like I was littler than I was. In fact, I didn’t want to be called Billy anymore at all but only Bill, like other men whose names are “William.”

  I was already out of the car, so I sort of grunted back to Mom, “Hullo.”

  And she said, “What’s the matter? Aren’t you glad your cousin Wally has a new baby sister?”

  I wasn’t. Actually I didn’t know of a thing in the world that could have made me glad right that minute.

  “Let’s get going on the chores right away,” Dad ordered.

  I started toward the house, where I nearly always went first when I came home, to get a sandwich—which Mom sometimes let me have because after school I was always as hungry as the wolf that ate up Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother.

  “Wait a minute, Bill. The barn! We do the chores in the barn—not the house!” Dad said.

  And because I was feeling pretty sad, all of a sudden I just wanted to scream. Everything I had done or started to do all day had either been wrong or else someone had thought it was. I not only wanted to scream, but I did. I screamed and screamed and screamed.

  And Mom said, “What on earth!”

  And Dad said, “That’s a fine way to act when you can’t get your own way. See if we let you go again away down to Palm Tree Island by airplane and have a good time. Young man, I’m afraid you’re getting to be too independent. You’re—”

  Mom’s voice cut in as though she thought maybe we ought to change the subject. She asked pleasantly, “How did you like your new teacher today, Bill?”

  “I didn’t!” I said.

  “Well!” she said. “You don’t need to take my head off!”

  Right away I was sorry. I had the best mom in the world and also the best dad, and I didn’t believe in talking back to them or being sassy, so now I felt even worse.

  “They were having a scuffle in the snow when I drove up,” Dad said to Mom, “and Mr. Black was so jolly.”

  I wanted to speak up and say, “We were having a fight!” but I realized that that would be contradicting my dad, which somehow I didn’t want to do.

  But I was feeling worse every minute.

  “What’ll I do first?” I asked him. “Throw down hay for the horses?”

  “Nope, gather the eggs first before it gets dark. In fact, you’ll have to have the flashlight even now. You can go in the house for that, if you want to.”

  That meant I could probably get a sandwich while I was there, if Mom had one ready.

  For a minute, though, I forgot that I’d come home early, and since Mom nearly always gathered the eggs herself in the wintertime before I came home from school, I said to Dad, “Aren’t the eggs gathered yet? I thought Mom always gathered them!” and on account of my not feeling very good, my voice sounded cranky again and disgusted because the eggs weren’t already gathered and because I had to gather them myself.

  Anyway, I made a dash past the woodshed door and was in such a hurry to get in the house and get the flashlight that I gave my feet only a couple of swipes on the doormat. But I hadn’t any more than shoved the door open than Mom yelled to me, “Bill, wipe your feet carefully! I’ve just mopped the kitchen floor!”

  I gave my shoes maybe seven swipes apiece, then swished into the house, shutting the door decently, and went around in different directions looking for Dad’s big flashlight.

  I finally found it on the dresser in his and Mom’s bedroom, and while I was in there I saw my baby sister, Charlotte Ann, sitting up in her crib, which had a Scotch terrier design on it. She had her pretty blackish-reddish curls brushed into a sort of curl on the top of her head. I could see that her face had maybe just been washed. It looked like it had had soap on it. Beside her on the table was a bar of soap in a soap dish. Charlotte Ann had on what Mom called a “combed wool shirt.”

  Seeing me must have made her want to stand up. She scrambled and grunted her way to her feet, holding onto the bars of her crib and standing up on both pink bare feet. Also right that minute, she decided she wanted to get out of her bed—and I at the same time decided that she ought not to. So I tried to make her sit down again.

  Now, beside the soap dish on the table was a bowl filled with warm water, which meant that Mom had been getting her ready to go along on the trip to Brown City to see Cousin Wally’s new baby sister.

  Well, that bowl of water shouldn’t have been there. Anyway, Mom probably shouldn’t have waxed the hardwood floor of that bedroom, and there shouldn’t have been a rug on it right where I was standing.

  Before I could even guess what was going to happen, it had happened—Charlotte Ann caught hold of th
e flashlight, which she had decided she wanted, and which was probably the reason she had stood up in the first place, and I was trying to make her let go and make her sit down at the same time.

  “Hey, you!” I said. “I’ve had enough for one day. Do as I tell you, will you! Let go! You’ve got to learn to take orders if you want to get anywhere in this life! Let go!”

  I couldn’t just jerk the flashlight away from her. That would be rude, and also that would make her cry. I’d tried that once before when I was taking something away from her, and she had set up a howl worse than any two of Circus’s pop’s big hound dogs make when they’ve treed a coon.

  So I tried to twist the flashlight out of her hand without hurting her, and I didn’t know there was wax on the floor under the rug. But there was. Ker-slippety-swish-swoosh-BUMP, my feet went in one direction and I in the other. The table was tall and not very wide, and my up-in-the-air feet got tangled up with it. Almost before I hit the floor good and hard, the little table and the soap dish and the bowl of sudsy water did the same thing.

  Charlotte Ann screamed, and Mom came hurrying in to find out what all the noise was about and to say “Bill Collins! What on earth—” which is what Mom sometimes says when such unearthly things happen.

  I can’t take time to tell you now what else happened. I knew my dad had already planned for me to spend some time in the woodshed, and I hoped Mom would understand. I didn’t know what I would have done if I had been Mom and had worked hard to wax the bedroom floor and then have an awkward boy upset a bowl of sudsy water on it and send the water swishing in every direction there was. And also if at the same time the very pretty bowl went ker-crash against the floor and broke into maybe a thousand pieces, which it did.

  I certainly expected Mom to make a lot of noise with her voice, the way she sometimes did. Instead I saw her face turn white as if she was terribly afraid or something, and she sort of lifted her hand to her forehead and swayed as though she was dizzy. Then she reached toward the ledge of the window that looks out onto the road and caught herself from falling. And then she staggered over to the edge of the bed and sat down on the very pretty green-and-white chenille spread. She held her hand to her heart, which was probably beating very fast, and said in a very kind voice that had a faraway sound in it, as if she was talking to Somebody else and not to me, “That’s another one of the ‘all things,’ I suppose.”

  “What?” I said, looking up at her from the floor where I was sitting.

  Mom still had a sort of faraway look in her eyes as she answered me. “I promised Him I’d trust Him.”

  “Promised who what?” I asked, glad if she wanted to talk about anything else besides me and feeling absolutely terrible inside—terrible.

  “I’ll tell you later,” she said. “You just run along and gather the eggs. I’ll have this cleaned up in a little while.”

  And when I looked at my mom’s face, it had the kindest look I had ever seen on it except for maybe that time when I had walked into that same bedroom the day after Charlotte Ann was born and saw her lying there with the new baby beside her. Her face had looked maybe like an angel’s face looks, it was so kind.

  I scrambled to my feet, feeling very strange inside and liking my mom a lot. I hurried out through the living room and kitchen, not intending to stop to make myself a sandwich. But I saw one Iying there on the worktable beside the big water pail, which always stands in the corner near the kitchen door. I knew Mom had made it for me, and I liked her even better.

  She was right behind me, getting the mop out of the broom closet, and I heard her humming a song we used to sing in church. It made me feel a little bit sadder, on account of I was sorry I had made such a mess for her to clean up. When I went out the door with the egg basket on my arm and Dad’s flashlight in my hand and was on the way past the woodshed, I remembered the words of the song she was humming:

  “What a Friend we have in Jesus,

  All our sins and griefs to bear;

  What a privilege to carry

  Everything to God in prayer.”

  And I began to get a warm feeling inside of me. I was glad I had that kind of a mother. I sort of knew that while she was cleaning up the mess I had accidentally made, she would be humming that song all the way through and also she probably would be thinking of the words. And Mom, being an honest-to-goodness Christian, would probably be doing what the song said, that is, she would be praying.

  I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before, but while I was up in our dark haymow, flashing the light into the dark corners where several of our old hens always laid their eggs, Mom’s idea seemed to be a very good one. I thought that even a boy ought to get down on his knees somewhere all by himself when he was having different kinds of troubles and pray about them. Once I’d heard our minister say, “Any old coward can mumble along on the Lord’s Prayer in church when everybody else is praying too, but it takes a real man to get down by himself and pray to God all alone.”

  Anyway, suddenly, with everything in the world having gone wrong all day, and with my having lost my temper so many times and having also said a lot of things I shouldn’t have, and with my dad not understanding me very well, and with Mom being so kind to me and maybe right that minute on her knees cleaning up my mess, it seemed that I ought to be brave enough to pray.

  Besides, that hen’s nest was right under the big cross beam that had the crack in it, where a long time ago I put my New Testament while I was waiting for Circus’s pop to be saved. I took off my cap as our minister had had us all do along the roadside that day, and I got down on both of my knees in the sweet-smelling alfalfa hay right beside the hen’s nest.

  It didn’t take long to say a few words, but all of a sudden I began to feel very quiet inside and to love my mom and dad a lot. I also loved the One I was talking to, and for some reason I thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to be punished even if I hadn’t done anything wrong on purpose.

  While I was on my knees, I heard a noise outside the barn and up near the house. I looked out through a crack but didn’t see anything. I just noticed the pretty snowdrifts that were piled along the old rail fence across the road from our house. I looked at the pretty woods without any leaves on the trees, and my thoughts went racing down the old footpath that we boys always raced on in the summer and which led straight for Sugar Creek, and the spring, and along the shore to the old swimming hole where we all had so much fun. On especially hot days when we were dusty and sweaty, it felt good to get nice and cool and clean again. And then I heard myself singing another hymn that my mom liked. It was:

  “Whiter than snow, yes, whiter than snow,

  Now wash me and I shall be whiter than

  snow.”

  I was just starting to pick up two snow-white eggs out of the nest when I heard somebody behind me clearing his throat. I jumped and looked quick.

  It was my dad. He had climbed up the haymow ladder and was looking right at me.

  I wondered if he had seen me, and I hoped he hadn’t, even though I knew he himself prayed sometimes right up in that same haymow. But for some reason I wished he hadn’t seen me, if he had.

  “Hi, Dad,” I said cheerfully, but with my heart pounding fast. I picked up the two eggs with one hand and put them in the basket.

  “Hi, Bill,” he said back to me. “Want to throw down the hay for the horses—a little of each—clover and alfalfa?”

  “Sure,” I said. “There were two eggs in this nest today! Do you suppose maybe old Bent Comb laid two in one day?”

  Bent Comb was our old white leghorn hen, which laid her eggs up there. Her red comb was very long and hung down so low on the left side that it half hid one of her eyes.

  “Nope,” he said, “one of those eggs is a glass egg, which I put there this morning just to sort of remind Lady Bent Comb when she comes up that it’s a nice nest in which to lay her egg. Then she won’t go off and start a new nest somewhere where we’ll have to hunt for it.”

&nbs
p; I put the glass egg back into the nest, set the basket down in a safe place, and reached for the pitchfork to throw down the hay.

  Dad said, “I’ll take the eggs to the house, Bill. You feed the horses and then come on up to the house as soon as you can. We want to get that woodshed business over as soon as possible.”

  He took the basket and climbed backwards down the ladder, whistling a tune, and it sounded like the one I’d just been whistling myself.

  10

  Woodshed business” was a funny way to say it, I thought. But I knew my dad was right and that we had better get it over with as soon as possible. But even though I felt a lot better on the inside of me, I knew that pretty soon I wouldn’t feel very good on the outside. It didn’t feel good either to know that my dad thought I needed to be punished, which maybe I didn’t. I couldn’t tell for sure, because Dad nearly always decided that himself. In fact, I hardly ever felt I needed any punishment.

  It took me only a short time to get the hay thrown down for the horses, to put it in their mangers for them to eat, and then to get started on the way up the snow path to the house. Even as slow as I tried to walk, it seemed I was getting there too quick.

  I sort of circled around the woodshed, having to wipe extra snow off my boots before I could get into our kitchen door. That took a little more time but not much.

  It was while I was sweeping off that snow, using the broom Mom always kept at our back door in the wintertime, that an idea came to me that I’d read somewhere in a story. It wouldn’t hurt so much to get spanked, the story said, if I had more clothes on. I knew that I had a heavy pair of corduroy pants upstairs in my room. I could go up and put them on if I had time enough—slipping them on under the pants I already had on, and then the licking I’d get pretty soon wouldn’t be such a noisy one.

  As quietly as I could, I slipped into our kitchen door, realizing right away that Mom and Dad were in the other room somewhere with Charlotte Ann. Maybe Dad was looking at what had happened to the waxed bedroom floor, and maybe he and Mom were talking about me and what I had done and a lot of other things I had been doing all day and why.