Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 7-12

by Paul Hutchens

  Anyway, I crept stealthily up our carpeted stairway. Pretty soon I was around the corner of the bannister and in my own room where I took down the wire clothes hanger on which I had actually remembered to hang my corduroy pants the last time I had taken them off.

  I had to be very quiet because there was an open register in the floor of our other upstairs room, which was used to let in warm air from the living room downstairs. My pants were only about half on when I thought I heard something. I heard my name, and without realizing I was doing what is called “eavesdropping” and that maybe I shouldn’t have done it, I sneaked very quietly into that other room and leaned over the register and listened.

  Strange things were going on down in that room. There were my mom and pop, standing together with Mom’s pretty gray-brown hair against Dad’s right shoulder. He was leaning down to her with his face kind of buried against the top of her head, and I could hear my mom crying a little. I could also hear her saying in a half-muffled voice, “Of course I care that it happened. That was such a lovely bowl—the only heirloom from my grandmother I really ever liked—and of course I care that my nice waxed floor is all spoiled, but—”

  Then Mom stopped talking, and my dad leaned down and kissed her hair and whispered something I couldn’t hear and wasn’t supposed to anyway. And then Mom went on in a tearful voice that somehow also sounded sort of happy, and this is what she said: “But I promised Him I’d trust Him, and I suppose this is one of the ‘all things.’”

  “I guess it is, Mother,” I heard him say, and then I knew they liked each other a lot.

  But I couldn’t help wondering what they meant by “all things.” Maybe they meant that everything I ever did was wrong or ever would do was going to be wrong.

  And then I heard Dad say, “But we have to be sure we love Him,” and Mom said, “Sometimes I don’t think I do—not nearly enough.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t either,” Dad said.

  Well, it certainly didn’t make me feel very good to hear that. Didn’t my parents love me very much? I could hardly blame them, I thought, and then I heard my dad say something else that made me feel even stranger inside, and that was, “I’d rather take a licking myself than do what I have to do right now.”

  “What’s that?” Mom asked.

  And Pop said, “I have to give our boy a switching out in the woodshed. I promised him one this morning, and—”

  “Can’t we forgive him this time?” Mom interrupted him. “I don’t like to have it happen just before I go away for a week. I’d feel terrible.”

  So would I, I thought, but somehow it seemed maybe I ought not to put on my corduroy pants under my others. So I didn’t. Instead, I hung them back on the hanger and started to whistle a little. And it was the same tune my dad had been whistling when he’d started to the house a little while before.

  Then a voice called from downstairs, and it was Dad saying, “That you up there, Bill?”

  “Yep!” I called back down cheerfully.

  “Come on down here a minute.” His voice didn’t sound very cheerful.

  In a minute I was down in the living room where Mom and Pop were, and they both turned and looked at me with strange expressions in their eyes that seemed to say, “Well …”

  “Let’s get it over with,” I said to Dad, and he and I went into the kitchen and through it to the back door, across the back porch, down the back steps, past the broom I’d use to sweep off the snow from my boots. Then we passed the water tank, where the white smoke was coming out of the stovepipe. I followed along not very far behind Dad, and in a very short time we came to the woodshed. The old door’s hinges squeaked worse than I’d ever heard them squeak before.

  We went inside. It was a whole lot nicer woodshed than the one we had at school. It wasn’t dark inside, even with the door shut, because we had a window on the west side, which was the direction in which there was going to be a very pretty sunset after a while and which I always liked to watch. In fact Dad and Mom and I used to like to watch the sunset together when we all liked each other a lot and when none of us had done anything to make trouble.

  But when I saw my dad reach up to the top of a tool cabinet which he had on the wall and take down a couple of old beech switches, I knew we wouldn’t get to enjoy any sunset together that evening. I felt the way Mom had said she’d feel—I hated to have such a thing happen just when she was going away. I wanted her to remember me as being a good boy and with all of us liking each other a lot as we nearly always do most of the time at our house.

  I could see Dad’s face with its big shaggy eyebrows, which hung over his eyes like a grassy ledge along Sugar Creek. I looked especially to see if his teeth were shining under his reddish mustache, and they weren’t, so I knew he wasn’t smiling.

  Then he said to me, “Are you ready?”

  I turned sideways toward him and stammered, “Y-yes, s-s-sir!”

  “You know you’ve done a lot of wrong things today?”

  I didn’t know my grammar well enough to tell whether it was a question or a statement.

  I remembered what Mom had said, and, remembering all the things I’d done all day that had gotten me into trouble, I said, “Yes, sir.”

  Some of them hadn’t seemed wrong at the time, but I had talked back to my parents, and that is wrong whether you do it on purpose or not. Also, I seemed to remember Little Jim walking out of our woodshed toward Mr. Black today, and he had looked as innocent as a lamb and had seemed he wanted to take a licking and let the rest of us go free. So I just stood there, waiting, making up my mind there wouldn’t be any noise.

  Pop’s voice sounded very kind as he said to me, “Have you anything to say in self-defense—whether you’re guilty or not guilty?”

  And I said, “I don’t think I did anything wrong on purpose.” When I said that, I really couldn’t remember anything I had done wrong on purpose, and as I looked up at my dad, it didn’t seem right that I was going to get a licking.

  He had one of the switches ready. He stopped and looked at it and then at me and said, “Bill Collins, I’ve never yet caught you telling a lie. I don’t believe you ever told me one in your life.”

  I remembered the story of George Washington, who had cut down a cherry tree once and had told the truth about it. So what Dad said made me feel better.

  “You really feel deep down in your heart that you haven’t done or said anything wrong?”

  And I said, “Not on purpose. But I know I’ve said things I shouldn’t have.”

  My great big dad just stood there looking down at me, and I could see the muscles of his jaw working as though he was thinking hard. Then I saw him swallow as if something was stuck in his throat and he was having a hard time to get it down.

  We both just stood there, neither one of us saying anything.

  Then Dad suddenly turned and walked over to the tool cabinet and took out a hatchet, which looked a little bit like the one I’d seen in that picture of George Washington and the cherry tree story. Very carefully, without saying anything, Pop laid those two switches down on a block of wood, and right there in front of my eyes he made one quick sharp stroke with the hatchet, then another and another and another and another, cutting those switches into maybe a dozen pieces.

  I don’t think I’d ever felt so strange. Dad had used those switches on me a good many times, and his cutting them into little short lengths meant they couldn’t ever be used on me again. If he ever gave me a licking he would have to have something new to do it with.

  Then he gathered up the pieces and tossed them into the little wooden box with handles on it that we used to put kindling wood in.

  I said, “Aren’t you going to—to give me a licking?”

  He straightened up and looked down at me. His eyes almost looked straight through me, yet they had a faraway expression in them as though he wasn’t seeing me at all. I looked right back into his steel-gray blue eyes and kept on looking into them.

  Then he
spoke with his jaw set tight, and the words sort of came out from between his teeth with his lips hardly moving at all. “Bill Collins, right or wrong, I am going to believe you. Furthermore, as far as I am concerned, this is our last trip to this woodshed. Sooner than your mother and I think, you will be a young man. The days of switchings ought to be over with. I know they have sometimes been necessary in the past, but let’s count the past forever past, Bill. Let’s burn the switches tonight—and let’s never again do anything that will make us have to cut another. Shall we?”

  I swallowed something that had gotten into my throat. I felt that my dad was the finest, most wonderful dad in the world, and I made up my mind that he’d never have to cut another switch. But I couldn’t say a word.

  Then his big hand reached out toward me, and I swished my hand out toward his and grabbed it, and the next thing we knew we were holding onto each other’s hands real tight, the way Poetry and I do sometimes when we make a covenant of some kind. I had the greatest dad in all the world.

  Dad and I stepped out the door into the weather, and the sun was getting almost low enough to set.

  He said, “You can put those sticks in the kitchen stove if you want to.”

  But I didn’t want to. I stopped and looked down at my boots and kicked a little snow off the walk.

  And Dad said, “No, I think I’d better do it.”

  With that he turned and went back into the woodshed and shut the door after him, leaving me there all by myself. I noticed our snow shovel leaning against the side of the woodshed. Also I noticed, without anybody telling me, that there wasn’t any path scooped from the side door to the other path I’d made that morning leading out to the front gate and to our mailbox, on which was Dad’s name, “Theodore Collins.”

  I walked under our grape arbor to the other side of the woodshed where the snow shovel was. Dad had left it there when he finished scooping a path out to the chicken house. I was about to take it when I heard his voice inside, and it sounded very strange, as if he was almost crying.

  And before I could get the shovel and go away, I heard him say, “And please, God, help me to be a better father to my fine son. Give me the grace to forgive him as You forgive me for Jesus’ sake. Make us comrades, make us pals, and yet help me to be a faithful father, firm when I have to be and willing to forgive whenever grace is needed …”

  I hurried as fast as I could toward where the snow needed to be shoveled. I couldn’t see very well, and I actually stumbled over the boardwalk that leads from the back door to the iron pitcher pump near the water tank.

  It was getting close to supper time, I thought, already hungry—or rather, still hungry, in spite of the sandwich I’d had.

  I felt good to know I’d thought of shoveling that walk myself without being told to, and I hurried fast to get started with the job so that Mom wouldn’t think of it and tell me to do it.

  First, I grabbed the broom from our back steps and went around to the side porch and started in like a house afire, sweeping off the steps. Then I worked my way out to the path I’d shoveled that morning to the mailbox. During the day quite a little new snow had sifted into it, so I swept it clean all the way out to the gate and around to the mailbox.

  All the time I was feeling fine, knowing that everything was all right between Dad and me. But I was still a little bothered about Mom. And I couldn’t forget that both of them had said they didn’t love me as much as they ought, and I made up my mind that I would make them like me if I could.

  I kept remembering, too, what she had said about what I’d done being one of the “all things.” I decided that whatever she meant, this was one thing I could do that was right. Pretty soon it would be time to eat supper. I decided to get the snow shoveled and then hurry to the house and, without being told to, wash my hands with soap and start right in setting the table. Also I’d ask if there was anything else I could do.

  I was almost done when I heard the woodshed door open, and I knew Dad had finished whatever he had been doing inside.

  Then he called to me and said, “I’ll get the milking done, Bill, and we’ll have supper right away. You can help your mother as soon as you’ve finished out there”—telling me to do something I had already thought of. Dad and Mom were always doing that, not knowing that sometimes I thought of doing things myself.

  But I didn’t even get mad at him. I yelled back, “Okeydoke!” and swished my broom around the gate a little, deciding that he’d meant for me to stop doing what I was doing, that it wasn’t very important, and to go help Mom.

  I wanted to help her, but I was still bothered about what I had done, and I hated to go into the house. But I swept off my boots, went in, hurried into the bathroom and washed my hands even better than I sometimes do, and started in setting the table.

  I noticed that Mom was very quiet and that her eyes were red around the lids as if she had been crying about something. But she was sort of humming a little tune. I also noticed that our box of kindling wood was already beside the stove, and that the little pieces of the beech switches were there on top.

  When I got a chance I went into the other room where Charlotte Ann was on the floor with a stack of alphabet blocks, piling them up and knocking them down.

  Then I sort of eased into the bedroom where there had been the big accident, and the floor was already as clean as it could be. I got a surprise when I looked on the wall just above Mom and Dad’s bed. There was a brand-new, very pretty wall motto I’d never seen there before, and it had a Bible verse on it. I was just staring at it, remembering something, and wondering at the same time, and thinking, and feeling better inside, when all of a sudden Mom came in and stood beside me.

  Neither of us said anything for a minute, then Mom said pleasantly, “Mr. Paddler stopped in today and gave me that. Do you like it?”

  “It’s pretty,” I said, which it was. The words were all in some kind of fancy raised lettering on a beautiful bluish-gray background.

  Then Mom said something I will maybe never forget, and it made me like her a lot, even better than I ever had, and this is what she said: “I’ve decided to make that my life motto. I know it’ll help me to keep from worrying about such things as happened this afternoon.”

  With that she turned and swished out into the other room and through it to the kitchen, just as I heard the back door open and Dad come in, shutting the door after him. Then I heard a cat mewing, and I knew our old black-and-white Mixy had followed him inside and was asking as politely as she could for somebody to please hurry up with her supper.

  I stood there looking at the pretty wall motto, which had shining letters on it, and liked it a lot. I didn’t understand it, though, until later on at the table, when we were having the blessing just before we ate, as we always do.

  Then I looked away from the wall motto and out the window. Somebody was coming up through the woods from Sugar Creek. It looked like a man in old working clothes. He slipped along from one tree to another and from one bush to another, as if he didn’t want anybody to see him.

  He stopped right behind the big cedar tree on the other side of the rail fence just across the yard. My heart began to beat very fast and excitedly, and I felt inside of me that something was going to happen.

  I stood glued to my place, while Charlotte Ann started fussing in the other room. Then the man in the old clothes slipped through the rail fence and glided along the side ditch straight toward our front gate. I wondered if I ought to say, “Hey, Dad! Come here!” but I didn’t. Instead I waited, and I saw that man make a beeline straight for our mailbox, open it, and then close it again real quick as if he’d put something inside, which he probably had.

  The way the man walked reminded me of Shorty Long, but it wasn’t Shorty. Of course, I couldn’t see him very well, because it was darker there by the woods than it was most any other place else right that minute.

  I had a feeling that there was something very important that somebody had put into our mailbox, and I
started trembling inside, because the man, whoever he was, turned and started off like a flash, running like one of the Circus’s pop’s hounds runs after a rabbit that jumps up before him when he’s nosing around a brush pile or somewhere else along Sugar Creek.

  I was about to go and open our front door and run out to the mailbox, but right that second Mom called from the kitchen where we were going to have our supper and said, “All right, Bill, bring Charlotte Ann and come on. Put her in her chair.”

  I don’t know why I decided to keep still and not tell my parents right away what I’d seen. But I got to wondering if maybe there was something in our mailbox that was for me personally and that my parents ought not to see it till after I’d seen it myself. So I decided to wait till after supper; then I’d go dashing out quick. It would be a hard supper to live through, because of my curiosity.

  I felt fine, though, as soon as I had Charlotte Ann in my arms and was starting with her to the kitchen, for I heard a stove lid being moved as if somebody had taken it off and put it on again. And when I stepped into the kitchen, I looked into the woodbox, and the pieces of the beech switches were gone. I didn’t even look at my dad.

  I just felt like a million dollars about everything. Both my parents liked me, and also I had a mystery out in our mailbox waiting for me to solve the minute I had a chance.

  Just before we ate, we all sat very quiet a minute. Mom was having a hard time getting Charlotte Ann to keep still long enough for any of us to pray, and also to fold her hands as we were teaching her to do.

  Well, as I said, it was while we were having the blessing that I found out what my parents meant about “all things” and also what they had meant when they talked about not loving somebody as much as they knew they ought.

  At our house we nearly always took turns praying at the table. Sometimes Pop prayed, sometimes Mom did, and sometimes I did, although I couldn’t pray very well yet. I had always said a little poem prayer since I was Small and had just got started to adding words of my own. Anyway it was Mom’s turn.