Dragonfly ducked John Till’s awkward fist and dived behind a tree. John, who was getting drunker every minute because of the whiskey he had drunk, stumbled over a tree root and fell down again in the snow.
“We’d better search him for the letter,” Big Jim said.
Old Man Paddler let us do that. But there wasn’t a letter in any of his pockets, which was hard to believe.
“I’ll bet you tore it up,” Dragonfly said.
John Till said, “I don’t know anything about a letter.”
Well, we really had to get going, and there wasn’t any use to argue with a drunk man, who was getting drunker every minute.
Circus took Dad’s flashlight and hurried back to the log to get the possum, which was almost half skinned. With all of us helping a little as well as talking, he finished skinning it and tossed the carcass over into the swamp.
We started right away to Poetry’s house, with Circus carrying the very pretty grayish-white possum pelt draped over his arm. John Till didn’t want to go along, but Old Man Paddler said he had to. So he shuffled along with us.
“He stole that possum out of Circus’s dad’s trap on Bumblebee Hill,” Dragonfly said to Old Man Paddler. “We caught him right in the act of skinning it. We followed his tracks all the way, so we know he took it.”
And then I got the surprise of my life, for Old Man Paddler said, “The traps on Bumblebee Hill belong to John. I’ve just made arrangements with Dan Browne to let John trap there.”
Dan Browne was Circus’s dad’s name. Maybe you know, too, that Old Man Paddler owned nearly all the land all around Bumblebee Hill and also the woods.
Well, John Till had denied having stolen my suitcase, and not only that, but Old Man Paddler himself said that the traps on Bumblebee Hill actually belonged to John Till himself. So things were more mixed up than ever.
But who did steal my suitcase and knock me into the middle of the snowdrift? Who was the man who had written the letter and shoved it into our mailbox? If it wasn’t John Till, then it had to be Shorty Long’s dad.
“It’s got to be John Till or Shorty Long’s dad,” Dragonfly said to me, as he and Poetry and Little Jim and I walked along behind Old Man Paddler and Big Jim and Circus and John Till.
“Why?” Little Jim’s mouselike voice asked, and I could see he didn’t want it to be either one of them.
“Because,” Dragonfly said, “the letter you told us about said the gang had been beating up on his son, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Poetry said. “That’s what Bill said it said—that it was a pity that a family can’t move into a neighborhood without a gang of roughnecks beating up on his boy. And we’ve had fights with both Shorty Long and Bob Till, haven’t we?”
“And licked both of them,” Dragonfly said, and I knew he was right. We’d had fights with both Bob and Shorty, so either one of their dads could have written the letter.
Once when Little Jim and I were side by side, as we nearly always are, he said to me, “They’re going to sing church hymns, and Old Man Paddler is going to give a talk out of the Bible just before everybody goes home.”
“They are?” I said, and somehow I began to feel very good on the inside of me, as though I had either done something I should have or else hadn’t done something I shouldn’t have.
All of a sudden I had the kindest feeling for old hook-nosed John Till! I didn’t even hate him. I could just see him, in my imagination, sitting with all the Sugar Creek Gang and their parents and also a few girls in Poetry’s basement, with everybody singing one of our pretty church songs and Little Jim’s mom playing the piano that I knew Poetry’s parents had put in their recreation room.
Then I could imagine John Till sitting in a chair with the rest of the people and listening to Old Man Paddler, who would sit with his Bible open in his gnarled old hands and tell everybody something wonderful. Boy, oh, boy! John Till would have to listen, for if he didn’t— well, he’d be scared we’d call the sheriff. It might be the first time in his life he would hear an honest-to-goodness talk from the Bible from somebody who really believed it and lived it. It certainly wouldn’t hurt him any.
And then I remembered what Dad had said too—that sometimes a person needs a friend first before he becomes a Christian.
We were hurrying along as fast as we could, when all of a sudden Dragonfly said, “Listen, everybody!”
We all stopped dead still in our tracks, old John Till stopping last of all. And then we all heard it—horse’s hoofs going gallopety-sizzle across the Sugar Creek bridge, terribly fast. We knew that our new teacher was on his way back from wherever he had been, and we wondered where he was going and why. Right away we couldn’t hear him anymore—not just then anyway.
7
Soon we came to Poetry’s lane, climbed over the fence, and started toward the lighted house. There were all kinds of car tracks in the lane and horse tracks also. Some of the parents probably had come in sleighs. A lot of cars were parked by the gate at Poetry’s house, as well as several sleighs, and we knew our parents and probably a lot of babies and girls of the neighborhood were there already.
We really had a wonderful time in Poetry’s new basement even though later on, when Mr. Black came, he made us feel that we had to be more quiet than we wanted to be.
The basement was all lighted with new electric lights—Poetry’s family was the only family in our neighborhood to have their own electric generator. It certainly would be a good place for the gang to play games and do things, I thought, when I saw the green-topped Ping-Pong table and its little white net and four new paddles and balls. The dartboard hanging on the cream-colored wall had the kind of backboard so that a mother wouldn’t care if your dart happened to miss the target and stick into it. Also it made me feel good when I saw the big lazy chairs to lounge in and a small radio and even the piano with songbooks on it. Poetry’s accordion was on top of the piano, and there was a fireplace and floor lamps and everything. The floor was made out of some kind of different-colored asphalt tile, Poetry told me, which made the old dark basement at our house look like nothing.
For a minute I was glad Mom wasn’t there, because it might start her to worrying a little bit about our basement. But Mom didn’t worry out loud as much as she used to, because she was a better Christian than she had been before Charlotte Ann was born.
Well, it was a great neighborhood gathering. Nearly every one of the gang’s parents was there, and a lot of the girls from Sugar Creek School, and also some babies who didn’t know how to keep quiet and some who did.
Everybody was standing up or sitting down and talking about this or that or somebody or somebody else, and everybody was talking to everybody with nobody listening to anybody. Sitting off in a corner, looking at pictures in a magazine by a floor lamp, was John Till in his old clothes, acting as though he was bored to death with what was going on.
Little Jim’s dad, who was the township trustee and always made everybody like him by being interested in them, went around from one lonesome-looking person to another, making them glad they had come. He didn’t have very much luck with old John, though.
It wasn’t until Little Jim was asked to play a piano solo on the program, which started pretty soon, that John Till showed any interest. Poetry and Dragonfly and I were sitting on the stairway that led up to their kitchen, at the top of which was a door leading out into their yard.
“Look!” Poetry said. “Little Tom’s dad is keeping time with his feet.”
Pretty soon Circus was ordered to sing a solo. First, he was asked by the chairman of the meeting. Then, when he didn’t want to, he was ordered to by his mom. Since that was a rule in our gang—you had to obey your parents—Circus sang it. The song was:
What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear.
John Till looked down all the time.
I was sitting there on a step with Poetry, with Dragonfly behind and above us. I could ima
gine that maybe John was thinking about his sins and maybe being sorry for them. And then I also was thinking about what Dad had said about some people needing to have a friend before they decided to become Christians. I thought that maybe nobody who was an honest-to-goodness Christian had ever been as kind to John Till as Old Man Paddler was and that maybe sometime that mean old drunkard would even want to have the Friend Circus was singing about.
It was when Old Man Paddler was called on to make what they called the “Dedicatory Prayer” that we heard a noise outside that sounded like a horse galloping, getting closer and closer to the house. Then, while he was making his way through the crowd up to the little desk near the fireplace, we heard a noise outside that sounded like a horse snorting. And then Dragonfly sneezed.
I knew it was Mr. Black coming late to the dedication. We were all sorry, although I wished for a moment that he had come sooner and had heard Little Jim play and Circus sing. Maybe he would have decided that we were not such a tough gang as he thought, and he might have been kinder to us the next day.
I turned around awfully quick to Dragonfly to shush him from sneezing again. That little guy really was looking miserable. For the first time I noticed a sty on his right eye, and I felt sorry for him because I’d had some sties myself.
He sneezed again three times, and I knew it was either the horse or else just the fact that Dragonfly was thinking about the horse. Then, just as Old Man Paddler asked everybody to stand up, Dragonfly sneezed again. This time he turned his face to one side and half smothered the sneeze in his handkerchief.
He certainly had a funny way of sneezing. First, he would half open his small mouth, and then he would grab his nose and blink his eyes several times, as if he was really going to do something important. Next, he’d take a big breath, and both eyes would shut real tight. Then out would come the silliest little sneeze you ever heard. That is, it always sounded like that if he could get hold of his nose quick enough. But if the sneeze came too quick, it sounded just like anybody’s ordinary sneeze. And a teacher in a schoolhouse couldn’t tell whose it was.
But this time Dragonfly’s sneeze was crazier than usual. Half the people who were near us looked around to see what kind of an explosion had happened.
Dragonfly’s sty had caused it. When he shut his eyes tight, as he always does, it must have hurt his sty, because right after the tail end of his funny little sneeze, he said, “Ouch!” as though I had pinched him.
I hadn’t, although I wanted to. It wasn’t any time to be funny—right when Old Man Paddler was getting ready to make the dedicatory prayer.
Just as the old man was about to begin to pray, there was a knock at the door right behind us at the top of the stairs. Poetry’s mom looked over at us boys and nodded for one of us to open the door to let in whoever it was. I didn’t want to, thinking it was Mr. Black, but I did. And that’s who it was.
Everything would have been interrupted for a minute if Old Man Paddler had known somebody was coming in, but he was at the farthest end of the basement and didn’t hear. So he just went right on getting ready to pray.
Most of the people bowed their heads, and the rest of them looked at the stairway to see who was coming in. Most of those who were looking were some girls from the Sugar Creek School who had been looking toward the stairway anyway because of Dragonfly’s sneeze.
Well, while our teacher was coming partway down the stairs so that he could see and hear, Old Man Paddler started to pray. I was glad Mr. Black was there for that, because it was the nicest prayer I’d ever heard that kind, long-whiskered old man pray. It was all about Poetry’s family and the nice basement and how it was going to be used for the right purposes and only for the glory of the Lord and things like that.
Part of the prayer, which I was especially glad Mr. Black was hearing, was “And may nothing ever be done here which will bring dishonor to Your name—nothing said or done, nothing that is worldly or unworthy of the name Christian. Bless all the boys who will play here, the boys of the Sugar Creek Gang …”
Then he told the Lord that we were a pretty fine gang of boys, which I also thought was good for Mr. Black to hear, even if it wasn’t always true all the time. The prayer finished something like this: “And if there are any here tonight who do not know You, who are not saved, may they come to realize that the Lord Jesus Christ died for them and that they may be saved simply by turning from their sins and trusting in Him.”
When the prayer was finished, Mr. Black very quietly and with very good manners came on down the steps and into the basement. He was met by Poetry’s mom and dad, and everybody started to get introduced to him.
Then Poetry’s dad decided it would be a good thing to introduce him to everybody at once, so he clapped his hands for attention.
And then—would you believe it?—just when everybody was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop, Dragonfly got that funny look on his face, reached for his handkerchief, blinked his eyes, shut them quick, grabbed his nose, and let out that silly little sneeze, and again he said “Ouch!”
Well, Mr. Black heard him. He looked around as quick as a flash, saw who it was, and frowned. Some of the girls giggled, and then Poetry’s dad introduced Mr. Black, who made a very nice speech. But I didn’t like it very well, because of not liking him very well.
Everybody clapped for him—except some of us. I looked at Poetry. Instead of clapping, he was using one hand to fan his face. Circus was looking at me and, instead of clapping, had one of his hands upside down and was spanking it, as though it was a boy getting a licking. Little Jim, who was over on the piano bench, pretty close to Mr. Black, had his two hands together and was going to clap until he saw the frown on my face. Then he just slipped his hands down onto his lap and clapped a tiny bit. Dragonfly had to hold his nose with his handkerchief and couldn’t clap at all. Only Big Jim clapped, and I knew it was because he wanted to be good-mannered.
It looked like the whole gang had the same stubborn feeling I had in my mind. It was the way Mr. Black kept his eye on us all the time, as though he wondered what on earth kind of people we were, or if we were even human beings. That bothered me, and yet it seemed all the grown-up people there liked him, especially the mothers.
He really made a good speech, though. I wouldn’t have time to tell you all about it—I’ll only give you the first few words. He said, after they made him go up to the other end of the room to talk, “Ladies and gentlemen, parents and families of the Sugar Creek School District, I feel very much at home in this friendly gathering tonight—much more so than the Hoosier schoolmaster felt in the famous book by that name, even though my experiences on my first day of teaching have led me to think that I may have the privilege of living over in reality some of the disturbing and ludicrous experiences of that famous teacher—”
I lost out on the next few words, because Dragonfly whispered in my ear and wanted to know what “ludicrous” meant. Since I knew the word meant something ridiculous, something that would make people laugh, I said, “The way you sneeze is ludicrous.”
That night, after the party was over and everybody was gone, Poetry and I were alone upstairs in his room getting ready to go to bed. I asked him, “Have you ever read any of the ludicrous experiences in the book called The Hoosier Schoolmaster?”
He said, “No, have you?”
“No,” I answered.
“But I’ve got the book,” he said. He slid off the edge of the bed, shuffled across the room in his flapping pajamas, and took a small book out of his library.
After we had said our prayers and climbed in, we sat up in bed for a few minutes with his bed lamp on and read a little out of the book. But what we read made us mad, because the boys in the story were a really tough gang, and the man teacher was almost a perfect angel. It made me mad to think Mr. Black would compare our gang to the actual roughnecks in that story.
“Look here!” Poetry said. “Look at this picture!”
I looked, and it was a full-paged gl
ossy picture of a teacher upon the roof of the school-house, holding a board on the top of the chimney. The door of the schoolhouse was open, and a gang of tough-looking boys was tumbling out along with a lot of smoke. The story told about how one day the boys had locked the teacher out, and he had been smarter than they were and had climbed up on the roof and put a board over the chimney. Then the stove had smoked and smoked, and the boys had to unlock the door and, choking and sputtering, had to come out.
Well, we had to go to sleep sometime. So we sighed to each other, and Poetry turned out the light.
The next thing I knew it was morning. It was a nice day, a whole lot warmer than it was the day before, but there was a lot of trouble ahead for us all.
8
The first thing I thought about when I woke up was all the things that had happened the night before—the stolen and found-again suitcase, the fight we’d had with John Till, and the dedication of Poetry’s parents’ basement. As I nearly always do, I woke up sooner than I wanted to. I wanted to go right back to sleep again but couldn’t, because Poetry’s mom called upstairs to where we were and said to come on down to breakfast.
It was a very interesting breakfast—bacon and eggs and pancakes. First, though, we all sat very quietly behind our plates while Poetry’s dad passed a little box around for each one of us to take out a small card. Each card had a Bible verse printed on it. Then each one of us took turns reading out loud what was printed on our cards.
I sort of stared at mine when I saw what it was, and for some reason I was glad my dad wasn’t there to hear me read it. This is what it was: “He who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him diligently [Proverbs 13:24].” I knew that meant that parents were supposed to punish their boys when they needed it, so that their boys wouldn’t be spoiled and grow up to be like John Till or Shorty Long’s dad, or Bob Till, or Shorty Long himself.
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