Then I heard the rumbling again. It was louder and closer. I looked up toward the sky, and the sound had come from a big black cloud in the southwest over the tops of the pignut trees. And without having to look under the wooden step at our front door, I knew it was going to rain. It was going to rain a real soaker. I could tell by the way a lot of angry-looking clouds were churning around up there that there would be wind too, and that meant every window in the house and every door ought to be shut tight. But with Charlotte Ann on my mind, I didn’t have time to do it.
“Help me look for Charlotte Ann,” I yelled back over my shoulder to Mr. Everhard as I darted across the barnyard toward Old Red Addie’s apartment house, calling Charlotte Ann’s name and looking for a shock of pretty reddish-black curls and an aqua-colored sun-suit.
The word “aqua,” which I knew meant “water,” didn’t help me feel any better. Neither did the word “sunsuit,” because the sun was already hidden by clouds, and the wind, which nearly always rushes ahead of a storm to let you know one is coming, was already making a wild noise in the leaves of the trees in the orchard and the woods.
Just then there was a banging sound on the west side of the house, and Mom’s big washtub, which she always keeps there on a wooden frame to catch the rainwater, went bangety-plop-sizzle across the slanting cellar door and the board walk and out across the yard, where it struck the plum tree, glanced off, and went on, landing ker-wham against the walnut tree.
Clouds of dust, whipped up by the wind, came from the direction of the pignut trees, which were being tossed around wildly.
I knew we were not only in for a real soaker but a lot of dangerous wind. The whole sky was already cloud-covered except for the northeast corner, which is above Strawberry Hill and the cemetery.
Charlotte Ann wasn’t in the barn, and neither was Mr. Everhard’s pretty wife.
My conscience was screaming at me for being such a careless baby-sitter as to leave a two-year-old baby girl alone in the house and also for not locking the doors when I did leave the house.
Being a boy who believes in God, and also knowing that “heaven helps them that help themselves,” as Dad had told me, some of the stormy thoughts that were whirligigging in my mind were all mixed up with worried prayers and wondering what my parents would think with their baby lost in the storm.
Charlotte Ann, being a two-year-old and a “great imitator,” having seen me rushing out our back door and across the lawn, through the gate, and past “Theodore Collins” on our mailbox, probably had done that herself. By this time she could be through the rail fence on the other side of the road and toddling along as fast as a two-year-old can toddle, getting up and falling down and getting up again. She was probably away down in the woods and maybe had already gotten to the spring and the creek—and you know what could have happened to her.
Just then the wind swept off my straw hat and sent it on a high, wild flight out across the yard, straight toward the walnut tree, where it swished between the two ropes of the rope swing, went on and landed in the dusty road, was picked up again by the wind, and was whipped out toward the rail fence itself in the direction of Strawberry Hill and the old cemetery.
I was wishing my parents were there to help me. I was also glad they weren’t there, because it would be time soon enough for Mom to start worrying. And once Mom gets started worrying, it’s hard for her to stop unless she takes a minute to quickly read or remember a Bible verse, and then that verse is just like a new broom—it sweeps the worry clear out of her mind, she says.
The most important thing in the world right then was to find Charlotte Ann and not let her get caught in what I could tell was the beginning of a terrific storm. I was having a hard time to stay on my feet myself, and I knew a wind like that would blow Charlotte Ann over as easily as anything. Of course, when a baby falls down, it generally doesn’t hurt much because a baby doesn’t have as far to fall as a grown-up person. But a wind like this one could not only blow her off her feet but could slam her against a tree or a rail fence or into the briers of a rosebush. Or if she was anywhere near the creek, it might actually blow her into it.
So, scared half to death, I yelled to Mr. Everhard, “Come on! We’ve got to find them!”
And he snapped into the fastest life I had ever seen a dignified man snap into. Both of us right away were hurrying past “Theodore Collins” on our mailbox, and soon we were out in the woods.
“If they are anywhere near the tent or the station wagon, they will probably go there to get out of the rain,” he said. “Let’s go back to camp first.”
Before he finished gasping out the last word of what he had started to say, we were already on the way.
We both hoped that they were not in the tent, though, because the wind might blow the tent over. If they had gotten into the station wagon, it would be a lot better. Mr. Everhard was yelling that to me above the roar of the storm as we raced along, dodging the trees and bushes and leaping over fallen logs. It seemed we’d never get there.
In fact, it seemed it had never taken me so long in my whole life to get to that part of the woods. Then I felt a splatter of rain on my hand and another on my face, and in seconds it was just like a whole skyful of water was falling. The rain was coming down the way it does when Mom says it’s coming down in sheets. In fact, it started coming down so hard that I couldn’t see where I was going. The rain in my face and eyes and on my bare red head kept me straining to see anything.
It must have taken us almost fifteen minutes—which seemed an hour—to get to the tent. It was still standing, but not all of it. The wing that had had the netting sidewalls was all squashed in. A big dead branch from the oak tree under which the tent had been pitched—and shouldn’t have been—had fallen on it, smashing the playpen and other things in that little room. The rest of the tent was only half standing.
For a minute, I imagined Charlotte Ann and Mrs. Everhard in there somewhere, the big branch having fallen on them. They might be terribly hurt or even worse. They might not even be alive.
Beside me I could hear Mr. Everhard saying something, and it sounded like a prayer. I couldn’t hear him very well, but I caught just enough of the words: “O dear God, please spare her life. Spare her, and I’ll be a better man. I’ll do right. I’ll—I’ll give my heart to You and be a Christian.”
Even as I stumbled blindly along with him the last few yards to the twisted-up tent, I couldn’t help but think what I had heard our minister say lots of times—that even a kind man could still not be an honest-to-goodness Christian. Mr. Everhard might never have given his heart to the Lord Jesus and had his sins forgiven, I thought.
I also couldn’t help but think how neat it would be if Mr. and Mrs. Everhard would honest-to-goodness for sure give their hearts to God and be saved and say so some Sunday morning in the Sugar Creek church as other people did almost every month.
Well, it took us about half a minute to get the rest of the way there in that blinding rainstorm. We looked inside the part of the tent that was still standing and saw that neither Charlotte Ann nor Frances Everhard was there.
As glad as I was that the dead branch hadn’t fallen on them, I still didn’t feel much relieved. I knew that they were somewhere else; and if they weren’t in the station wagon, they were still out in the dangerous storm, and nobody knew where. I also thought that if the dead branch of this old oak tree could break off in a storm like this, the branches of other trees could do the same thing, and if anybody happened to be under the tree at the time …
We both kept calling and yelling.
Then we made a dive outside the tent to the station wagon, but there wasn’t anybody there. So we hurried back to the tent again, calling and yelling, trying to make ourselves heard above the roar of the wind and the rain and the thunder, which kept crashing all around us all the time. But we didn’t hear any answer.
12
While we were still looking into that part of the tent that was still standing, i
t seemed good not to have rain beating down on my face and bare head.
In a quick look around, I noticed, even in the dim light, the interesting camp equipment—a three-burner camp stove, a metal roll-away bed, and a roll-away table on which was a pad of writing paper and a flashlight. Also on the table was a kerosene lantern, which was probably the one Mrs. Everhard had been using the night we had seen her digging in the old cemetery beside Sarah Paddler’s tombstone. Hanging from one of the leaning tent poles was a religious calendar with a picture of the Good Samaritan on it, showing the man who had gone down from Jerusalem to Jericho and had fallen among thieves, who had robbed him and left him half dead. The man was getting his wounds bound up by the Good Samaritan.
For just a second it seemed I myself was trying to be a Good Samaritan and couldn’t be because the person I was trying to be a Good Samaritan to was lost and I couldn’t find her.
I hoped that when we did find Charlotte Ann and Mrs. Everhard they wouldn’t be half dead, as the man in the Bible story was.
I also noticed that some of the numbers of the calendar had circles around them, which somebody had made with a red pencil or red ink. Without thinking, I said, “That’s a pretty picture on that calendar.”
Mr. Everhard must not have heard me, because he looked all around and said above the roar of the storm, “The shovel’s gone! She’s gone out to dig again. Let’s go find her, quick!”
As much as I wanted to help find Mrs. Ever-hard, I was worrying most about Charlotte Ann. So I said, “What about my little sister?”
“Look,” he said then, “she’s left a note!” He picked up the pad of paper, shone the flashlight on his wife’s handwriting, and started in reading, with me looking over his elbow. I know it wasn’t polite to do it, but I did it anyway, because the note might have had something in it about Charlotte Ann. This is what it said:
Dearest,
I had another one of my spells, and when I came to myself I was digging over near the rail fence across from the Collins house. I was still very depressed. But when I looked up, I saw dear little Charlotte Ann toddling out across the road all by herself. The minute I saw her, all the clouds in my mind cleared away, and I felt immediately happy.
The little darling was all alone. I took her back across the road to the house, but there was no one at home. I couldn’t understand why they would go away and leave her all alone, but it was her nap time, and I thought maybe Bill might have gone to bring us a jug of water, so I brought her back with me to camp.
I think we will go across the north road today because I want to see if I can hear the wood thrush again down by the swamp. If we don’t get back soon, and you want to follow us, you will know where to look. I have mastered the wood thrush song at last, so I will have a new whistle from now on. Besides, the turtledove is a little mournful for one who is beginning to be happy.
All my love,
Fran
It was a very nice letter for a woman to write to her husband, I thought. When I’d finished, I liked both of them better. In fact, for a minute I had a kind of homesick feeling in my heart as if I wished there was somebody in the world, besides the gang and my parents, who liked me.
But I didn’t have time to wish anything for long. An even worse worry startled me into some fast action, for I remembered that the path on the other side of the north road, if you followed it far enough, not only led to the swamp but went on through it. It is the path the gang always takes to go to Old Man Paddler’s cabin in the hills, and about twenty feet to the left of the path, as it goes through the swamp, is some quicksand.
Maybe you remember the dark night when Little Tom Till’s dad got lost in the swamp and sank down into the mire all the way up to his chin. When our flashlights found him out there, all we could see was his scared face and head, and it looked like a man’s head lying in the swamp.
“We’ve really got to hurry now,” I said to Mr. Everhard and told him why. “They probably got as far as the swamp before the storm struck. But it’s so dark down there in that part of the woods that they couldn’t see the path, and maybe they will get out into the swamp. Quick!” I exclaimed. “Let’s go!”
I didn’t wait for him to decide to follow me but swung around and flung open the flopping tent flap. The two of us dashed out into the storm.
To get to the swamp as quickly as possible was the most important thing in the world.
We stumbled our excited, rain-blinded way toward the Sugar Creek bridge, where our path crossed the north road. I led the way, being careful to keep out in the open so we wouldn’t run the risk of getting struck by falling trees or branches. I also stayed away from the tallest trees and especially the tall oak trees, which are the kind of tree lightning strikes more than any other kind.
I won’t even take time to tell you more about that wild, worried race. All the way, though, I was hoping that we would get there in time to save Charlotte Ann and Mrs. Ever-hard from getting out into the swamp itself. I was remembering something Dad had taught me and was also trying to teach Mom. “It’s better for your mind to hope something bad won’t happen than it is to worry about how terrible it would be if it did.” So I kept one part of my mind saying to the other part, Why don’t you quit worrying and just hope everything will be all right like I do?
And do you know what? That crazy part of my mind just kept right on worrying anyway.
Over the north road fence, across the road, up the incline, around the end post of another fence, and along the creek we ran. I didn’t even notice the different kinds of bushes and wild-flowers that bordered the path as I generally do, such as the purple vervain and skullcap and the red-flowered bee comb.
I wouldn’t have even noticed the tall mullein stalks with their pretty little yellow, five-petaled flowers if I hadn’t run ker-plop into one and fallen head over heels, getting my right big toe hurt at the same time.
I was trying to keep my eyes peeled for a little aqua-colored sunsuit, which would be sopping wet, and I suppose Mr. Everhard was looking for some color or other of a dress or a pair of slacks his wife might be wearing.
After what seemed like a week but couldn’t have been a half hour, or even a quarter of one, we came to the hollow sycamore tree at the edge of the swamp, where the gang had had so many exciting experiences that you maybe already know about. But there wasn’t any sign of Charlotte Ann or Mrs. Everhard. We were still gasping and panting and calling in every direction, but there wasn’t any answer.
Then I saw something that made me almost lose control of all my thoughts. The big oak tree that grew on the other side of the path from the sycamore, not more than twenty feet away, had a big, ugly, whitish gash running from its roots all the way up to about twenty feet. The rest of the tree had broken off and fallen, and its branches lay sprawled across the path, right where anybody who might have been in the path at the time would have been struck and smashed into the ground.
That could mean only one thing: Charlotte Ann and Mrs. Everhard would be on the other side of the fallen tree, in the swamp itself, or wandering around on this side somewhere, or else they were under the fallen tree.
I hope they’re not under the tree, I made myself think, and I yelled for them some more, without getting any answer.
Right that second there was a lull in the storm, when there was no thunder, and the drenching rain almost stopped, and I knew that if it was like some other Sugar Creek storms, it might soon be over.
And then, right in the middle of my worry, I heard the most beautiful music—a flutelike birdcall that was so exactly like the song of a wood thrush—or a brown thrasher, as some folks call that sweet-singing bird—that I thought for sure it was one. A second later, when I heard it again, I knew it wasn’t, because a thrush wouldn’t be very likely to sing its thrilling song in the middle of a summer storm.
Then I remembered what Mrs. Everhard had written to her husband on the note she had left on the roll-away table in the twisted-up tent.
Mr.
Everhard must have remembered, too, because he cupped his hands to his lips to protect them from the wind and the rain and whistled back a clear, beautiful quail call. “Bob White! Bob White! Poor Bob White!”
And right away there was a cheerful wood thrush answer. It seemed to be saying, “Lottle-lee. Lottle-lee. Charlotte Ann. Charlotte Ann.” It sounded so cheerful that all of a sudden my heart was as light as a feather. I was pretty sure that if Mrs. Everhard felt happy enough to whistle, Charlotte Ann was safe and all right.
Then I heard another sound coming from Mr. Everhard beside me. It was something I probably wasn’t supposed to hear, but it seemed even prettier than a quail or thrush song. Anyway, it must have sounded fine to God. He said, “Thank you, Lord, for sparing her! I’ll try to keep my promise.”
I remembered that the Bible says there is rejoicing in heaven over one sinner that repents, and it seemed Mr. Everhard had just done that. That is how I knew his prayer, coming out of a rainstorm, would sound awfully pretty to God and maybe to a whole flock of angels who had heard it. In fact, they might have been listening for it, hoping to hear it.
The thrush’s song hadn’t come from the direction of the swamp, either, where the fallen oak tree was, but from the other side of the sycamore tree in the direction of the Sugar Creek cave. And my heart leaped with the happiest joy I had felt in a long time, when I realized that the song might have come from the cave itself, which, as you know, is a shortcut to Old Man Paddler’s cabin in the hills.
I was remembering that the cave is about twelve feet across, not quite as big as the sitting room at our house. I also remembered that Old Man Paddler kept a little desk there and a bench and a few candles. The gang sometimes met there when we were in that part of the woods. We had even stayed almost all night there once—both ends of the night, anyway. The middle of it had been interrupted by Poetry’s homemade ghost, which scared the living daylights out of most of the gang.
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 19-24 Page 8