When Poetry read his verse, it looked as if his parents had picked out the verses for both of us to read. But we knew they hadn’t, because we had pulled them out of the middle of the box ourselves. Anyway, there it was, and Poetry’s squawky voice read it without even hesitating: “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you [Ephesians 4:32].”
I knew right away that I was supposed to be kind to Shorty Long and to forgive him.
Poetry’s mom and dad read their verses, and his dad prayed, thanking the Lord for our breakfast and also for forgiving us all our sins on account of Jesus Himself. I guess maybe I’d never thought about it that way before. But right that minute, while I had my eyes shut and while I could hear the teakettle singing on their stove and while I could smell the fried eggs and bacon—and also while I knew Poetry’s mom was wondering if the pancakes were ready to be turned over—Poetry’s dad said in his prayer, “And we know that the reason why You are able to forgive us at all is because Your Son, Jesus, died for us, and so our sins have all been atoned for.”
Poetry’s mom had to leave the table then for a second to look after the pancakes. I forgot to keep my eyes closed and watched her instead, so I missed the rest of the prayer. But I knew that God couldn’t take any people to heaven just because they were good, but because of Jesus Himself. All of a sudden I felt something kind of warm inside my heart, as if I loved Somebody very much, and I was glad I was alive. He could forgive even the worst person in the world for the same reason.
Poetry’s dad was kind of like my dad—not praying very long when he knew a hungry boy was waiting for his breakfast. So right away he was through, and we all talked about different things, especially what had happened the night before.
“What’ll we do with all the pie and cake and sandwiches that were left over?” Poetry’s dad said.
Poetry said, “I could probably manage to eat two or three of the blackberry pies, if I had to.”
I said, “I could probably manage to help you.”
But Poetry said, “I wouldn’t think of making you.”
It had been all settled the night before, though, by the different parents. Because that day was Old Man Paddler’s birthday, they had decided that the Sugar Creek Gang could go up to his cabin right after school and take him a whole basketful of pie and cake and sandwiches and salads and fried chicken and stuff. We would have a picnic supper in his old clapboard-roofed cabin in front of his fireplace. Boy, oh, boy, that would be fun!
Pretty soon breakfast and chores were over, and Poetry and I were in our warm clothes and boots on our way down the lane to the highway. There wasn’t even a car track, because it had snowed for a long time after the party was over the night before. It was certainly a pretty day and not even very cold, with the sun shining and everything.
“Look,” I said to Poetry. “Here is where I had the scuffle last night with whoever it was, and here is where he knocked the living daylights out of me.”
We both looked and could see where there was a big dent in the snowdrift, but it was nearly filled with snow again. Poetry walked over to where I’d landed on my head and started digging around in the snowdrift with his boots, shuffling the snow this way and that.
I said, “What are you doing that for?”
Poetry grunted, “I’m looking for a clue.”
“A clue?” I said. “What for? What kind of a clue?”
“Oh, anything to prove that old John Till did write that note.”
I’d already about decided it couldn’t have been John Till, so I said to Poetry, “Didn’t we see shoe tracks last night here in the snow? And when we caught John Till, he had boots on, didn’t he? And besides, I think Shorty Long’s dad wrote it.”
And then Poetry let out a war whoop and made a dive for something his boot had scooped up. There it was in his hand—an envelope that looked exactly like the one I’d taken out of our mailbox just before dark the night before.
Sure enough, it was the envelope. Since Poetry had never seen the letter before, I let him read it clear through. And did it make him mad!
“It won’t take us long to find out if it was John Till who wrote it,” he said. “Here comes Little Tom.”
And shuffling along toward us was that little redheaded boy himself. His face was kind of sad, and we both felt sorry for him because he was the only one of our gang who had a dad like that. As you know, Circus’s dad used to be an alcoholic but wasn’t anymore because he had given his heart to the Lord. The Lord had fixed it for him and made him into a neat guy.
“Hi, Tom Till!” we both said at the same time.
“Hi,” he said.
He was carrying his lunch in a tin pail, and all of a sudden I noticed something that made me feel sadder. He was wearing shoes that were a lot too big for him, which meant that his parents either couldn’t afford to buy him new ones when he needed them or for some other reason he had to wear an old pair of his dad’s or brother’s. That can happen when a boy’s dad won’t live the right kind of a life or won’t work the way he ought to.
Little Tom acted kind of bashful. But because he was a great little guy, we forgave him for having an alcoholic for a dad, which he couldn’t help anyway. So we chatted along, not mentioning the night before at all.
I kept looking at his big flopping shoes, and I thought he was pretty brave to wear them if he had to and not say anything about it or act as if he was ashamed. All of a sudden I wished I was grown up and had a lot of money and could buy shoes for all the boys and girls in the world who needed them and couldn’t afford them. Also I wished, so hard it made me mad, that I could make everybody quit making and selling and drinking whiskey and beer and stuff—beer being almost as bad as whiskey, Dad says, because it helps create an appetite for whiskey.
Suddenly Poetry stopped walking and said, “I forgot my report card. What’ll Mr. Black say? He was mad at me yesterday for not bringing it.”
I’d taken mine the day before, so I didn’t have to worry about that, for which I was glad.
“I’ve got mine,” redheaded Tom Till said and pulled it out of his inside coat pocket.
When Tom said that, Poetry spoke up quickly and excitedly. “Who signs yours—your mother or your dad?”
“My dad,” Little Tom said. “He’s the best writer. Mom can’t write very well because of having arthritis in her right hand.”
“Let me see your grades,” Poetry said.
Little Tom was pretty smart and not ashamed to let anybody see his grades, so he handed the envelope with his report card in it to Poetry.
Almost the second Poetry had it in his hand, he pulled the card out and looked at the handwriting on it, which I could see said, as plain as day, “John B. Till.”
I really felt glad inside, because that handwriting wasn’t any more like the awkward writing on the note I’d received the night before than a dog’s tracks in the snow are like a chicken’s.
I actually sighed out loud when I saw that, because I was glad it wasn’t John Till, even though the gang had once beat up on his oldest boy and I had licked the stuffings out of Tom once before he joined our gang.
Poetry looked at me to see if I was looking at the handwriting, which I was, and since he had already read the note a little while before, he grinned to himself and said, “Well, Bill Collins, you’re right.”
“About what?” Little Tom said.
Poetry had enough sense to say, “You’re pretty smart to get such good grades.”
“Sure,” Little Tom said. “My dad used to be one of the smartest men in the whole country. He still reads an awful lot.” Little Tom didn’t seem to know anything about what had happened last night, so we didn’t tell him.
“Is your dad home?” I said to him.
And he said, “Yep. Came home last night.”
Tom seemed sad, though, and I knew it was because his dad had been in jail. Probably any boy who has a dad who has been in jail feels k
ind of strange inside and ashamed.
We three walked along together in the snow. I kept wishing Tom had a pair of new shoes or else a pair of nice warm boots to wear, so every now and then I looked down at his too-big shoes, feeling sorry for him.
All of a sudden Poetry gasped out loud, and Tom and I both said at the same time, “’S’-matter?” which is what most of us always say to anybody who gasps as he had just done.
Poetry yawned, using one of his mittened hands to half cover up his mouth at the same time, the way you’re supposed to do in public when you’re trying to be polite. “Nothing,” he said. “I just thought of something.”
But I knew it must be something important, so he and I just sort of dropped back behind Little Tom. As soon as he had a chance, he said, “Do you see what I’ve been seeing, Bill Collins?”
“What?” I said.
He said, “Look at those shoe tracks!”
I looked at the tracks Tom Till’s shoes were making. And there it was as plain as day—one of the shoes had a hole partway through its sole, and it was leaving a track in the snow exactly like the one we all had seen the night before and had followed to the bridge where it had disappeared.
“So it was Little Tom Till who knocked the living daylights out of you last night at the entrance to our lane!” Poetry said.
“It was not!” I said. “He not only couldn’t, but he wouldn’t.”
Little Tom, who wasn’t very far ahead of us, whirled around and said, “Did one of you guys call me?”
“We were just talking,” Poetry yelled up to him, and we all went on, Poetry and I following the tracks.
It certainly was a mystery, I thought.
Then Poetry said to me, “That proves it was old Hook-nose, because those are probably his shoes, and Tom is wearing them to school this morning.”
“But old Hook-nose was wearing boots last night, wasn’t he?” I said.
Poetry and I sighed to each other and had to stop talking for a while. We had come to Circus’s house, and he and a whole flock of girls, who were his sisters, came out to go to school with us.
After that we came to Shorty Long’s house, and I felt a tight feeling on the inside of me when he came out. I was remembering the fights I’d had with him, but also tumbling around and over and over in my mind was the Bible verse that Poetry had read at their breakfast table, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.”
So, hardly knowing I was going to, I said, “Hi, Shorty!”
He stood stock-still and looked at me, astonished. But I noticed that there was mischief in his eye, as though he was not shocked to hear me using a friendly voice but was pretending to be shocked.
“Hopi, Bopill,” he said, which was the crazy new language the Sugar Creek Gang had been using and was called “Openglopish.” What he said meant, “Hi, Bill!’’
The way to talk Openglopish, you know, is to just put an “op” in front of every vowel sound in every word you say. I didn’t like that language very well, especially because of all the trouble I’d had with Shorty Long, who liked it a lot. But I certainly didn’t want any more fights, and if it was right for me to make up with him, if I could, and try to get along without fighting, I was going to try to.
So I said to him half cheerfully, “Hopi, Shoportopy Lopong,” which is, “Hi, Shorty Long!”
I grinned at him, sort of feeling, though, that it must have been a silly grin.
But there wasn’t going to be any chance to make up very soon, I found out, because Shorty Long said to me, “You look like a possum when you grin like that.”
I didn’t like that at all, remembering what a really sick grin possums get on their faces sometimes. Of course, if Little Jim or Poetry or Big Jim or Circus or Dragonfly had said that to me, I’d have laughed and would have known they didn’t mean anything by it. But I have to admit I didn’t like it.
So when he said “possum,” I remembered the possum that John Till had been skinning the night before at the mouth of the cave, and how I’d thought all along, while we were trailing the man who had knocked the living daylights out of me, that it was the same man who had written the crazy note in the crazy handwriting, and that of course it was Shorty Long’s dad.
All of a sudden, I felt myself getting hot in my mind, and I decided to face Shorty Long with the idea right that minute. So I said to him, “Your father’s handwriting is like a possum’s handwriting. It’s the craziest, awkwardest handwriting anybody ever wrote in his life, and he can’t spell for sour apples.” I had my right hand in my outside coat pocket, clasping the envelope with the letter in it as tight as anything.
“You’re crazy,” Shorty Long said. “My father used to teach handwriting. He used to be a schoolteacher!”
“Oh, he did, did he?” I said. “All right, take a look at this letter which he shoved in our mailbox last night.” Of course, I didn’t know that it was his dad who had done it, but I thought I could find out pretty soon if I pretended that his dad had.
I stopped where I was, pulled that envelope out of my pocket, opened it, and held it out toward Shorty Long. “Come here, the rest of you guys,” I said.
And Circus and Poetry and Little Jim and Little Tom Till and I and also Shorty Long stood reading that crazy note, which somebody had put in our box.
It took my eyes only a jiffy to go galloping all the way down the page, reading every word written in that crazy, awkward handwriting. I read the whole thing once more.
When Shorty Long finished reading it, he gasped and had the strangest look on his face. “My dad didn’t write that!” he said.
“Oh, he didn’t, didn’t he?” I said, making up my mind I was going to accuse him of it until he proved that his dad didn’t. “How do I know he didn’t? Didn’t Little Jim’s parents take your mother to church last Sunday night? And haven’t we been beating up on you without half trying? And—”
Shorty Long surprised me then by a very bright but sarcastic remark. “Yes, and aren’t you the worst roughneck of the whole Sugar Creek Gang?”
Then Shorty Long made a quick move out of the way of where he thought maybe one of my doubled-up fists was going to land.
But I was just bluffing. For some reason, maybe because Poetry’s Bible verse was still sort of holding me back the way a leash holds back a dog from having a fight with another dog, I said, “OK, then, I’m a roughneck. But you’ll have to prove that your dad didn’t write it.”
Shorty Long was pretty smart. He sounded like he had been reading a book written by a lawyer, because he said, “Oh, no, I don’t. The burden of proof rests on you. You have to prove that he did. Where’s your proof?”
For a minute I was flabbergasted. I really couldn’t prove it, could I? I thought.
Little Tom Till spoke up then. “Maybe he’s got his dad’s handwriting on his report card.”
Well, that was a good idea. Shorty Long shoved one of his big hands into his pocket and pulled out his report card. It was signed by Delbert Long, who was his dad, and the handwriting was a slanting, jerky writing that wasn’t any more like the writing on the letter than the man in the moon looks like a giraffe. And it looked to have been written by an intelligent person who certainly would be able to spell better than whoever had written it.
Well, that was that. We all saw both handwritings at the same time and knew that it wasn’t Shorty Long’s dad’s or Little Tom Till’s dad’s. Then who did it? I wondered.
Without planning to be polite, I said to Shorty Long—and I guess I know why I said it —I said, “I’m sorry, Shorty. But who did do it?”
And he said, “Whoever did is going to get into trouble if I ever find out who he is!”
Shorty Long whirled away from us, scooped up a big handful of snow, made it into a ball, got a fierce look on his face, and said, “If I knew who did it, I’d knock the living daylights out of him! The dirty crook!”
He swung his arm wide and threw th
e snowball terribly hard toward the schoolhouse, which wasn’t very far from where we all were right that minute. It sailed high, over the heads of the girls who were up ahead of us, and I could see it was going straight for the blue-gray schoolhouse door.
I don’t know what made me do it, but for some reason I reached out my hand as if I were trying to stop that snowball, only of course it was too late. I couldn’t help but remember the snowball I’d thrown the day before, which had gone whizzing straight for that same door. The door had opened, and our teacher, Mr. Black, had stooped down to adjust the doormat. My ball had struck him right on his half-bald head.
My hand was still out, as if I had thrown the ball myself. I didn’t have time to wonder what would happen if the door would open again like that, for just that second it did. There our new man teacher stood, bareheaded, his big round face looking sort of blank. He had a rope in his hand, which was the bell rope, and he was getting ready to pull it to let us all know how much time we had before we had to come in and take our seats and get to work.
Then Shorty Long’s snowball struck ker-wham-smash against Mr. Black’s chin. Ker-smack against his chin!
And almost before he had had a chance to get over being stunned by the snowball, Mr. Black called out, “All right, William Collins! You can come in and take your seat. That’s a fine way to start your second day of school-just like you started your first one. Hurry up!”
That just burned me up! I hadn’t thrown the snowball, and I could prove it by all the gang. Shorty Long had done it. I was just getting ready to holler to Mr. Black and say so, when the words kind of caught in my throat. I seemed to be like a dog on a leash again, and Poetry’s Bible verse was holding me back. For some reason I wasn’t mad at Shorty anymore, because it looked as if whoever had written the letter had just been trying to stir up trouble for all of us.
Another thing that my dad had always taught me was not to be a tattletale, and nobody in a school likes a tattler, either. So I just shut my teeth and lips tight and pulled my cap down over my eyes and started toward the schoolhouse door as if I was the one who had thrown the snowball.
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 7-12 Page 30