Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 19-24

by Paul Hutchens

  She was quiet for about three minutes, while all we could hear was the lazy ticking of the old clock on the mantel and the sound of the plates and cups and saucers and silverware. Pretty soon Mom said, still sadly, “I feel so sorry for her. Poor thing. If only she could believe and trust in God!”

  I heard myself sigh the same kind of sigh Mom had sighed, and I felt sorry for the woman myself—knowing whom Mom meant.

  Then I guess Mom decided that I ought to know more about Mrs. Everhard. But, first, she told me some things I never knew about the Collins family itself. Using a kind of sad voice, she said, “I want you to know before you get any older. It will help you to understand your mother and father better and all other people who have had to bury a little baby.”

  What? I thought, without saying a word.

  Mom’s voice sounded different from the way I had ever heard her talk as she went on. “Just two years before you were born, Bill, your father and I had to give back to God a very beautiful little three-weeks-old baby girl. She was so very lovely and sweet, and it broke our hearts, but we have tried to thank Him that He let us have her to love for even such a little while.” She stopped, and again all I could hear was the lonely clock ticking so sadly that it seemed it must have felt sorry for Mom, too.

  Still being very serious, she went on. “Then God gave us you to take her place, and you have been a great joy to us.” Again she stopped.

  I knew that if all her thoughts had come out in words, she could have added, “And also a lot of trouble.” But Mom didn’t, and I liked her even better, taking a sideways glance up at her out of the corner of my eye.

  I guess maybe I had seen my mother’s face a million times, but, while it’s nearly always the same, I have never gotten tired of looking at it. She always looks just like my mom, even when she’s all tired out or sad and hasn’t had time to powder her nose from the hard work she is doing in the kitchen or out in the garden or orchard or somewhere.

  She’s a pretty wonderful mom, I thought and swallowed something in my throat, which stopped a couple of tears from getting into my eyes. Then I began working a little harder and faster on the dishes, which I had decided to help dry.

  A little later Mom told me something else about the strange woman and her husband who were camping down in the Sugar Creek woods. It was something Little Jim’s mom had just told her over the phone. Something had happened to the woman’s mind. The doctors called it by some kind of fancy name that meant she was mentally ill and maybe would be for a while until she had time to get well again.

  “Thousands of people get well from being mentally ill,” Mom explained, “just like children do from such things as chicken pox and whooping cough. Sometimes, though, they have to have very special treatment in a special hospital.

  “I can understand how she feels,” she went on, “because, for a long time after we had buried little Nancy, it seemed she couldn’t possibly be dead. She had to be alive, I kept thinking, and I kept imagining I could hear her crying in the other room.”

  “In there where Charlotte Ann is now?” I asked.

  Mom didn’t answer for a minute. She only nodded and sighed again. Then she said, “I never actually heard her voice, of course. And that is what is wrong with the dear little mother who is camping down there in the woods. You boys be very careful to be very kind and—”

  “Is she an honest-to-goodness crazy woman?” I asked.

  Mom replied, “Thoughtful people never say that anymore about a person who is ill in the way Mrs. Everhard is. They always say that they are not well emotionally. We try to understand them and to find out what made them that way. Sometimes, when they themselves come to understand what caused their illness, they begin to get well right away. In fact, some of them get well almost at once. Doctors try to give them something to hope for. It was only the grace of God and my believing in Him that spared me from going to pieces myself,” she said. “He gave your father and me strength to stand the loss of your baby sister.”

  When Mom said “your sister,” I did get a lump in my throat, because I was thinking, What if it had been Charlotte Ann who had died?

  “You boys must not act surprised when you find those little freshly dug holes here and there in the woods or along the creek. When she gets one of her sad spells, she imagines her baby is still alive, even though it was buried, and she starts digging holes in the woods or along the creek, looking for it. She thinks it was buried alive when she feels like that. She will dig awhile and then stop to listen to see if she can hear it crying.”

  When Mom said that, I remembered that we had seen her do that very thing in the old cemetery last night.

  “Can’t the doctors make her well?” I asked Mom.

  “Not with just medicine alone. One thing the doctor has prescribed for her is that she attend some church regularly—a church where the minister believes and preaches the Bible and what it teaches about heaven and the wonderful place it is, and how people can meet their loved ones there, alive and well—all through trusting in the Savior. The doctor thinks that if Mrs. Everhard can learn to trust in God and to believe that she will see her baby again, she will be cured.”

  9

  Well, it seemed after that wonderful talk with Mom that I, Bill Collins, was going to be a better boy than I had ever been in my life before—although I didn’t see how I could change all of me so quick. Anyway, now I thought I knew why Mom every now and then sighed even when I couldn’t see a thing to sigh about. Maybe a sad thought came to her that wasn’t caused by the hot weather or from being tired or because I might have been a bad boy, which I sometimes used to be.

  Several weeks went by during which the gang found maybe twenty-five different-sized holes in different places in the woods and along the creek. Also we were not surprised when most anytime we heard a quail call and a turtledove answer it. Sometimes, though, it was the woman who gave the quail call, and the man was the turtledove who answered.

  It began to be almost fun to hear them, because we could tell that they liked each other a lot. They were kind of like a gang themselves, except that there were only two of them. And their whistling to each other was like a game of some kind, just as we ourselves played different kinds of games. It was like having a secret code. They wanted us all to stop at their green tent every day, and nearly always Mrs. Everhard had something for us to eat, which made it easy to remember to stop. Of course, I had to go anyway to carry water from our iron pitcher pump to them.

  Each Sunday the Everhards came to our church to hear our minister, who in nearly every sermon mentioned something about heaven and how to get there—such as if you know that you are an honest-to-goodness sinner and that you can’t save yourself, which nobody can, and if you trust the Savior Himself to forgive all your sins, you will be sure to go there. He said that all the babies that ever died are already there, because the blood of Jesus Christ shed upon the cross took care of all of them—and things like that.

  I had to watch myself to keep from looking across the church all the time to watch Mrs. Everhard and see if she was believing the sermon. The only thing was, instead of looking at the minister, she kept looking at Mom or Dad or me, whichever one of us was holding Charlotte Ann, as if she wondered if we were taking care of her right.

  One Sunday, right in the middle of the sermon, she quickly stood and walked down the aisle in a hurry to the outside door, her husband after her. A little later I heard through the open window the station wagon engine start, and I knew he was taking her back to the tent. Maybe she left so that she wouldn’t cry in church.

  That afternoon when Dad was helping our minister and some other men hold a jail meeting and Mom and I were alone, Mr. Everhard came over to our house to borrow Charlotte Ann a while.

  “Borrow her!” Mom said with an astonished voice and face.

  He answered, “Yes, Charlotte Ann looks so very much like our own little Elsa used to look that I thought if Frances could hold her a while, and listen to her as sh
e pretends to talk, it might make her feel better. She’s very much down today.”

  Well, I had heard of people borrowing nearly everything else. Around Sugar Creek the gang’s different mothers borrowed different kinds of kitchen things, which they sometimes ran out of and had to have in a hurry—as fast as a boy could run to the neighbor’s and get it. Sometimes Dragonfly’s dad borrowed our brace and bit or hand drill or keyhole saw, and Dad would sometimes borrow them back again if he needed them in a hurry—I getting to run to Dragonfly’s house to get them but not getting to stay and play with Dragonfly, which made it a very hard errand to be sent on. Also different members of the gang would borrow knives or fishhooks or bobbers or other things from each other.

  But whoever heard of anybody borrowing a baby?

  I could see Mom wasn’t going to like the idea. And if she didn’t, I wasn’t going to, either. But I guess that because she felt so sorry for the lady, and wanted her to get well fast, she quickly thought up a way to say yes and not hurt Mr. Everhard’s feelings or her own.

  “If you will borrow me too, that will be fine,” she said cheerfully, and he answered, “Certainly. It will soon be time for afternoon tea anyway.”

  “What about me?” I said, all of a sudden trying to be funny and probably not being very. “Anybody want to borrow a good-looking, red-haired, homely faced boy?” I didn’t really want to go, though, because some of the gang might come over to play.

  But Mom said quickly, “Certainly, son, come right along.”

  And so it turned out that I went with Mom and Charlotte Ann and Mr. Everhard, carrying a gallon thermos jug of cold water to earn my twenty-five cents for that day.

  The first thing I noticed when we came to within a few yards of the green ranch-style tent was that the wing with the mosquito netting sidewalls had in it a baby’s playpen. In the pen were a lot of things for a baby girl to enjoy—a doll, a pink teddy bear, a very small broom like the one Charlotte Ann helps Mom sweep with, and a little tea set for playing house. Beside the tent, hanging by a rope and a spring, was a jumper swing like the one that used to hang from the limb under the plum tree in our yard, where Charlotte Ann used to sit and bounce herself up and down and laugh and gurgle and have the time of her life. Now it’s too little for her.

  “The poor, dear girl,” Mom said under her breath with a sigh and in my direction. Mr. Everhard had gone on into the tent to tell his wife she had company, and Mom was looking at the baby things with a sort of faraway expression in her eyes.

  I could hear voices inside the tent, and it sounded for a minute as if there was a half-argument. Then the canvas flap of the tent opened, and Mrs. Everhard came out.

  Mom gasped when she saw her, because of the way she was dressed and what she had in her hand.

  “Such a pretty dress,” Mom said, half to me and half to nobody.

  I hardly ever paid any attention to what anybody was wearing, especially a woman or a girl, because it didn’t seem important. But I guess any woman or maybe even a boy would gasp at the green and brown and yellow and red summery-looking dress Mrs. Everhard had on. It had a lot of milkweed flowers on it and pretty swallowtail butterflies with spread wings on each flower. Her yellowish hair was the same color as the sulfur butterflies that fly around our cabbage plants with the white ones, and I noticed it was still combed the way it had been in church, with some kind of sparkling pin in it. She was wearing a pair of dark glasses and green and yellow shoes.

  To my tangled-up surprise, she had in her hands a shovel like the one she had been using to dig in the cemetery. She looked all around in a sort of dazed circle, not seeing us at first, then she started off in a hurry in the direction of Strawberry Hill.

  Quick as anything and without knowing I was going to do it, I whistled a sharp bobwhite whistle that flew as straight as an arrow right toward her. It made her stop stock-still and turn and stare. Then her eyes fell on Charlotte Ann, whom Mom had dressed especially for the visit in a little blue organdy playsuit that made her look as cute as a bug’s ear and even cuter.

  Mrs. Everhard dropped her shovel as if it had a hot handle and gasped an excited gasp the way women who like babies do when they see a pretty one. She said, “You darling baby!” She started to make a beeline for her, as though she was going to pick her up, then she whirled around fast and disappeared into the tent.

  For just a second I had a queer fluttering feeling in my heart. It was kind of as if fifty pretty black-and-yellow swallowtail butterflies had been fluttering in front of my eyes in the bright sunlight and then all of a sudden had flown toward the green tent and disappeared all at once. It was the same kind of happy feeling I get when I hear a wood thrush singing but can’t see it and wish I could.

  A minute later she was back outside again with a camera. For a while she acted as if nobody was around except Charlotte Ann. Her extra-pretty face was all lit up, and she seemed very happy.

  “She looks enough like my own Elsa to be a twin,” she told Mom. “In fact, almost enough to be her.” Then she sighed a heavy sigh, and so did Mom.

  Well, we had a very interesting visit that afternoon at the ranch-house tent. As soon as Charlotte Ann got over being bashful, she let Mrs. Everhard hold her and take all kinds of pictures of her: in the playpen, in the jumper swing, lying on a blanket, and doing different other things. She had her bobwhite husband take a picture of the two of them while she held Charlotte Ann on her lap.

  Everybody had a good time except me. I like to keep my mind in a boy’s world, and nobody could do that when there were three grown-ups and a baby around. So I asked if they would like me to get some fresh, cold water from the spring. When they said yes, I took a thermos jug and shot like a redheaded arrow out past the pawpaw bushes toward the old overhanging linden tree above the spring.

  I was thinking as I ran that the mystery of the little holes being dug all over Sugar Creek territory was all explained now, and it looked as if the gang would have to scout around for some other problem to set our seven different kinds of brains to working on.

  I didn’t know that because Charlotte Ann and the woman’s dead baby looked so much alike, I was going to have to put my own brain to work in a very special way before the summer was over. And I guess I never realized just how wonderful a person I had for a baby sister until I thought I was going to lose her. As quick as I can, I will start telling you all about it.

  First, though, I have to tell you something else about Charlotte Ann, because some of the people who will read this story don’t know much about her, and it will help them understand how come she got lost.

  At our house, we always had more fun than you can shake a stick at, taking care of Charlotte Ann, in spite of the times when she was a nuisance. Dad especially had a lot of fun because he nearly always had to put her to bed at night after she was a little bigger than a little baby. When she got to be about two years old, going to bed was one of the things Charlotte Ann didn’t like even more than she didn’t like anything else. Before that, we didn’t have to worry about her getting all the sleep she needed, because she would go to sleep anywhere, anyplace, and nearly anytime. But all of a sudden she was a two-year-old and seemed to have ideas of her own about such things as going to bed at night and taking afternoon naps.

  “That is because at two,” Mom said, after reading a book on how to take care of babies at that age, “they are great imitators. Whatever they see you do, they want to do, too. They like to do grown-up things before they are old enough, or strong enough, or have sense enough to.”

  “Or sense enough not to,” Dad said, and Mom agreed with him, both of them seeming to think that was funny. But I couldn’t understand what they meant.

  “Also,” Mom said, “a two-year-old has to have twelve hours of sleep at night and at least one hour in the afternoon every day.” She was talking to me at the time. “You had to have it when you were a baby, and we saw to it that you got it whether you wanted it or not—which you generally didn’t. And see wh
at a wonderfully fine strong boy it made out of you.”

  I got a mischievous streak when she said that and answered, “I can see how maybe I am a wonderful boy and very fine, but I feel very weak right now.” Just a minute before that, she had ordered me to carry in a couple of armfuls of wood for the wood box, which never seemed to have sense enough to stay full and always managed to get itself empty at the very time I didn’t want to fill it and generally when I wanted to do something else.

  “See,” I said to Mom, “before you asked me to get that wood, I could swing both arms up over my head and still feel fine just like this.” I held my arms over my head as if I was as strong as the imaginary man Atlas, who used to hold the world on his shoulders. “But now,” I went on, “I’m so weak I can’t lift my right arm more than this high, just about as high as my waist.”

  I had heard Little Jim’s dad do that with his mom once. It had sounded cute, so I had decided to try it on my parents the first chance I got.

  Mom, who was getting dinner at the time, stopped stirring the gravy, turned, looked through the lower part of her glasses at me, and said, “Poor boy. That’s too bad. If you can’t lift your hand any higher than your waist, then how can you carry in the wood? I’ll take care of the wood myself. Maybe you’d better go and lie down for an hour while your father and I have dinner, because, your mouth being a little higher than your waist, you won’t be able to feed yourself.”

  For some reason I right away went out and carried in several loads of wood without saying another word, getting it done about the same time Mom had dinner ready.

  But let me get back to telling you about Charlotte Ann and how she got mixed up in our mystery. The worst trouble we had with her was that when we finally got her into bed at night or in the afternoon when it was her nap time, she didn’t want to go to sleep. Sometimes she would call for a drink of water or something to eat, and sometimes she would come toddling out in her bare feet to wherever Mom and Dad and I were and interrupt our reading or our talking or Dad’s evening nap on the davenport. She nearly always came out wide awake, acting very friendly and as if she felt more at home when she was up than when she was down.