Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 7-12

by Paul Hutchens

  I turned around quickly to the door to find that Little Jim and Poetry were already inside and I’d been standing out there by what used to be a gate, watching Mr. Black and his horse all by myself! Even Dragonfly was inside, although he had opened one of the windows and was leaning halfway out and breathing fresh air so he wouldn’t sneeze, because he was allergic to smoke.

  That schoolhouse certainly looked strange with the sunlight coming in the windows and shining through the bluish smoke. Things at first weren’t very clear to my eyes. But when they became accustomed to the smoky light, I saw a really crazy-looking schoolhouse.

  There on the teacher’s desk, upside down, was the teacher’s great big swivel chair. The brooms and the mop were piled on top of that. And written in great big letters on the blackboard was Poetry’s poem about a teacher not having any hair. The old Christmas tree, which had been standing so pretty and straight in a corner of the platform, was lying on the floor, and the popcorn and paper chains that the Sugar Creek pupils had made were in a tangled-up mess all over the tree and the floor. The stove door was open, and the firebox was half filled with snow, which maybe Mr. Black had scooped in to put out the fire he’d started a while ago.

  All that mess, with the turned-over tree and Poetry’s poem and the topsy-turvy desk and chair, meant that those two boys had not only put the board across the chimney but had crawled into the schoolhouse through one of the windows, had upset things, had printed the poem there for our teacher to see, and—well, you can guess I wasn’t feeling very much like a gentleman. I knew that if Shorty Long and Bob Till were right there right that minute, I’d probably prove to them that I wasn’t one either.

  It was Little Jim who woke us up that something had to be done. We were all sort of standing helpless, looking around at the mess, when he piped up and said in a voice that sounded as if he was the leader of the gang, “Hey, you guys! Let’s do something before he gets back. Let’s straighten things up, and maybe when he comes he’ll believe that we didn’t do it!”

  Then Dragonfly whirled around from his window and said, “They’re clear down to Circus’s house already, and the horse just turned into their barnyard,” which made me want to make a dive for the window to look too.

  But I didn’t, because all of a sudden Little Jim said something else: “Let’s start the fire for him real quick, and that’ll show him we like him.”

  That started my mind to working. “We can’t,” I said. “The board’s still across the chimney, and we can’t get it off.”

  And that started Poetry to thinking. He went straight to the long shelf along the back wall. Right there where they had been—there was some stovepipe wire beside them—were the pliers.

  Poetry and I ran back outside, and, with him holding the ladder and with me all trembling inside but not too nervous to climb, I went up the ladder again, hand over hand, and in less than a half-dozen worried jiffies had our swing board off the chimney and tossed it into a snowdrift. When I was down again, Poetry and I whisked the ladder back behind the school-house and covered it and the swing board with snow.

  When we got back inside, we saw that Little Jim and Dragonfly had used their hands and the little fire shovel and scooped as much of the snow out of the stove as they could. They had laid the fire again, the way we all knew how to do from having seen our parents do it. Poetry shoved his hand in his pocket for his waterproof matchbox, and in a little while we had a roaring fire in the big round iron stove.

  Then all of us started cleaning up the school-house as fast as we could.

  Poetry grabbed an eraser and, as quick and as fierce as a cat jumping on a mouse, leaped toward the blackboard and swished his poetry into nothing. Little Jim found a dustcloth and went up one row of seats and down another, carefully dusting each one just as I imagine he’d been taught at home, not swishing the cloth around too fast, which would make more dust. I began to try to untangle the Christmas tree from the popcorn strings and paper chains, thinking how nice the tree would look standing in the corner again.

  And then all of a sudden Dragonfly called, “Hey, everybody! Come here, quick! See what I found!”

  Dragonfly had been standing by a wide-open window because there was still too much smoke in the room for him to breathe without sneezing. The Sugar Creek School’s great big unabridged dictionary was wide open on a shelf that was fastened to the wall by that window.

  Before we could get there, Dragonfly said excitedly, “It’s Mr. Black’s diary!”

  Well, if there is anything a person wants to read, and shouldn’t, and must not, it’s somebody else’s diary, unless that person tells him to. My parents had told me that when I was little. So I knew Dragonfly shouldn’t be reading Mr. Black’s diary.

  Coming up to where he was, I saw him looking at a pretty leather-bound notebook lying flat open on top of the big open dictionary. I said, “Stop reading that! It’s not good etiquette,” which means not good manners.

  I certainly wasn’t going to turn any pages of the diary and read them, I said to myself, remembering what my parents had told me. But when I got to where Dragonfly was and looked to see if it really was Mr. Black’s diary, without even trying to I saw on the page that was half open, written in printed letters, these words:

  The Sugar Creek Gang had the worst of

  teachers,

  And “Black” his name was called.

  For some reason it didn’t look very funny there. In fact, it seemed that anybody who had first thought up such a poem must have been crazy in the head.

  I knew I shouldn’t have been reading it, and I decided to quit quick, which I did. But I saw one other thing just as my eyes were leaving the page, and it was: “Things have come to a showdown with the boys. I know I’m going to have to take drastic action soon.”

  “What’s ‘drastic’ mean?” Dragonfly wanted to know, just as I turned away.

  I knew he’d read what I’d read, so I said, “I don’t know, but whatever it is, I’ll bet it’ll hurt like everything.” I reached out my hand and laid it down flat on the open diary, so I wouldn’t read anything else.

  Then Dragonfly said, “Psst! Listen!”

  We all listened, and things were so quiet in that still half-smoky room that we could hear only the crackling of the fire in the stove.

  All of a sudden there was a step on the schoolhouse porch, and the door was thrust open. There stood Mr. Black himself, looking right straight at us.

  11

  Tell, when four boys get caught doing something they’re not sure they’re supposed to be doing, they don’t know what to do or what to say. Sometimes they start talking right away to explain why they are doing what they’re doing—which is what we started to do.

  But all of us talking at once didn’t make sense, so we stopped.

  This is what we all did say though: Dragonfly said, “Good morning, Mr. Black!” which is what you say to a teacher when it is morning and you are trying to be polite. Poetry said, “Somebody wrote a crazy poem about you on the black, Mr. Blackboard, and I erased it.” Little Jim said, “That certainly was a good sermon this morning, Mr. Black.” And I, William Jasper Collins, with my torn trousers and my freckled face and my rumpled red hair and my mussed-up mind said, “I hope you don’t have to shoot him if he broke his leg. He didn’t break it, did he?”

  All of us said most of these things at the same time, while we were standing in a semicircle around the unabridged dictionary with the open notebook on it.

  Mr. Black was puffing and panting—he was Poetry-shaped as well as the stove—but all of a sudden he said, “Wait, boys, don’t move! I want to get your pictures right where you are and as you are.”

  Before we could decide to move or not to move, he whirled around, hurried over toward the shelf where we always set our lunch boxes on schooldays, and came back with his camera, which we hadn’t noticed had been there.

  What on earth he wanted a picture of us for, I didn’t know, unless it was so he could prove
to anybody who didn’t believe it that we were a bunch of roughnecks. Quick as a blinding flash he had our picture taken, and then he whirled about as if he wanted to take some more pictures. He stopped and stared at the Christmas tree, which I had stood back up in the corner, with the popcorn and paper chains tangled up on it, and at the erased blackboard, and at his desk, which didn’t have any chairs upside down on it.

  He said, “Who straightened up this room? Did you boys do that?”

  “Yes sir,” I said, “we did. We wanted to prove to you that we didn’t do it.”

  “You what!”

  “We wanted to prove to you that we didn’t do it!” Little Jim said.

  Mr. Black looked at Little Jim and at all of us as though he thought we were even crazier than we felt, and he said, “Prove you didn’t do what?”

  “That we didn’t put the board across the—ouch!” Dragonfly started to talk but stopped his sentence with an ouch when I quick kicked him on the shin.

  Mr. Black’s eyes opened wide. Then for the first time he seemed to notice that the fire was going again and that the stove wasn’t smoking. So he scratched his head above his left ear, hurried over to the stove with the camera in his hand, set his camera on his big desk, opened the stove’s door and shut it again, and just stood there, looking first at the stove and then at us.

  I wished I knew what he was thinking. Then I noticed his eyes glance off in the direction of the blackboard and to the beech switches that were lying on a ledge at the top. I could just see myself and all of us getting a switching in about seven jiffies. I started to edge toward the door.

  But he must have guessed what I was thinking, because he barked a command, “William Collins! Stop where you are!”

  I stopped stock-still, trembling inside, wondering what the word “drastic” was going to mean.

  Then Mr. Black barked to me, “Go to the blackboard and get me those beech switches!” There was a tone to his words that made me start toward the blackboard instead of toward the only door the schoolhouse had. I had to pass Dragonfly’s open window, which was still open because there was still some smoke in the room. It would have been easy for me to make a dive out of that window, but I didn’t want to leave the gang alone there with an angry teacher.

  I also had to pass close to the unabridged dictionary, and all of a sudden I decided that if I knew what the word “drastic” meant, it might give me an idea what to do next. So I stopped and quick turned the pages to the letter D and was trying to find “drastic” when Mr. Black barked, “Young man! What are you doing?”

  I jumped but made myself say as calmly as I could, over my shoulder, “I just wanted to look up an important word first. I’ll get the switches in just a minute.”

  “If the word is punishment,” Mr. Black said angrily, “it’s a noun, and it means beech switches. Bring them to me!”

  I knew I had to do it. I stopped looking in the dictionary and, feeling simply terrible inside because of not having done anything wrong on purpose, but knowing Mr. Black wouldn’t believe us even if we told him, I got the switches and took them toward him. But I was so nervous I dropped one.

  Little Jim is very quick when he makes up his mind to do something. He made a dive for the floor, picked up the switch I’d dropped, quickly took the other one out of my hand, handed them both to Mr. Black, and said very politely, “Here you are, sir, with all the old brown dead leaves gone from every one of them.”

  What on earth? I thought, looking at Little Jim’s face and then at Mr. Black’s.

  Our teacher’s face all of a sudden had the strangest expression on it, and he looked at Little Jim as if he wondered what on earth himself. Then he looked at me, and his face was hard again.

  Right that second I remembered my torn trousers, and the place where they were torn clear through to the skin. The scratch was still hurting, so I said, “If you’re—if you’re going to lick me, d-don’t hit me on my scratched thigh!” I turned sideways to him, stooped over partway, and showed him my torn trousers and the reddish scratch on my leg, which for some reason didn’t look half as bad as I wished it did right at that minute.

  Mr. Black frowned and asked fast, “Where’d you get that scratch?”

  Dragonfly said, “When he was up on the—ouch!”

  I stopped Dragonfly with a kick on his shin again.

  “What’s that? Where’d you say he got it?” Mr. Black barked his question to Dragonfly.

  And before any of us could stop him, Dragonfly said, “On the schoolhouse roof.”

  I just couldn’t believe Dragonfly was that dumb—that he didn’t know he oughtn’t to tell where I’d gotten that scratch. I remembered with a mad thought that we’d had trouble with Dragonfly once before because he had been friends with Shorty Long.

  There wasn’t any time to think or to remember anything else Dragonfly had done, but it certainly didn’t feel good to have one of our own gang be a tattletale. Why, he was supposed to be one of my very best friends!

  I looked at Little Jim and Poetry to see what they thought and to see if they could think of anything that might keep us from getting a licking with those leafless beech switches. Poetry had a pucker on his forehead as though he was thinking or maybe trying to, and Little Jim had that innocent lamblike look on his small face, which, when he looks like that, always reminds me of the picture his mom has on the wall above their piano in their house. It’s a picture of the Good Shepherd with a little lamb in His arms, with the Good Shepherd’s hand on the little lamb’s poll, which is the top of its head.

  Then in a flash I was seeing Mr. Black again, standing with one hand on his hip and the other holding one of the beech switches, having laid the other switch down on Sylvia’s little sister’s desk, which was beside him.

  “And what,” Mr. Black said to me, “were you doing on the schoolhouse roof?”

  Well, I hated to tell him, because I thought he wouldn’t believe it. And another reason I hated to tell him was because if I did, it would mean I’d have to tell him somebody else had put the board on the chimney, and that wouldn’t be fair to Little Tom Till, who was Bob’s brother. And my mom was trying to get Shorty Long’s mom to be a Christian, and I hated to be a tattletale about Shorty and Bob. So I just stood there without answering.

  “ Answer me!” he demanded.

  I could see he was getting really angry. I took one quick look at the door to see if I could dive past him and get there first and make a wild dash for home. Then I saw Little Jim’s face, and it reminded me again of the Bible picture above his piano. And that reminded me of a Bible verse I’d memorized, which was, “A gentle answer turns away wrath.” Then I thought of Mr. Black’s pretty horse and said politely, “Your horse is the prettiest horse I ever saw. I hope he didn’t fall and break his leg.”

  I looked at Poetry, and he winked at me and said to Mr. Black, “It’ll get dark pretty soon, and if there’s going to be a cold wave tonight, we’d better help you carry in plenty of wood. We’ll help you bank the fire good.”

  But it was Little Jim who saved us from trouble when he said, “That was a good sermon this morning, wasn’t it, Mr. Black? All of us are going to try not to be mad at you anymore. And if we’ve done anything wrong, we’re sorry. We hope you won’t give us a licking, but if you do, we won’t even get mad.”

  Mr. Black looked down at that innocent-looking little face and kept on looking at it. Then he seemed to get a faraway expression in his eyes, as if he was thinking about something that wasn’t in the schoolhouse. I noticed his hand that had the switch in it was trembling, and I knew he was really mad, because my hands sometimes shake when I feel that way.

  Then he looked as if he was hearing something outside, and, without saying anything and with the switches in his hands, he turned and walked with heavy steps over to the window and looked out. His back was to us, but I could hear him breathing heavily as if he had been running. There was a terrible feeling inside of me, which is the way a boy feels when he kno
ws some grown-up person is awfully angry.

  The four of us stood by the stove and looked at different things, not any of us moving and not a one of us looking at each other, except that I glanced at different ones of us out of the corner of my eye and then looked away again. I could still hear Mr. Black breathing. I didn’t look, but I guessed he was still standing and looking out into the late afternoon sunlight on the snow.

  Then I heard him cough a little and clear his throat and heard him walking. I looked then, and he was going to the blackboard, where, very carefully, as if he was afraid he’d drop one of them, he laid the beech switches on the shelf. Then he turned and sat down in his chair at his desk and picked up a book that was lying there, opened it, and leafed through it slowly.

  What on earth! I thought.

  You could have knocked me over with a turkey feather when I saw the book he was leafing through. I’d never seen it there on that desk before, and I wondered where it had come from. But there it was as plain as day, an honest-to-goodness great big beautiful brown-bound Bible.

  All of us were quiet, and I had such a tense feeling inside that I couldn’t say a word and didn’t want to anyway. The fingers of one of Mr. Black’s hands were sort of drumming on the desk, and he was looking at something in the very front of the Bible in the place where people nearly always write their names to show whose Bible it is.

  Then he began to turn the pages slowly, not looking up at any of us but as though he was thinking about something that wasn’t in the schoolroom.

  I could hear the crackling of the fire in the stove and hear us all breathing. I caught a corner of Poetry’s eye with a corner of one of mine, but I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Little Jim had his small hands stretched out in front of him warming them at the stove, and Dragonfly was trying to get his father’s big red handkerchief out of his pocket before he would sneeze about something. He didn’t get it out quick enough, and the sneeze showered itself on the hot stove and made a sizzling sound. Dragonfly grabbed his nose with the red bandana and stopped most of the next sneeze so that only a little tail of it exploded.