Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 19-24

by Paul Hutchens

  It didn’t feel good to see the two of them chumming around together along the creek and the bayou, playing they were pirates, building their campfires, and cooking their dinner over the open fire the same as we did. After we’d given each other a licking in the Battle of Bumblebee Hill, Tom had been one of my best friends and had been coming to Sunday school with us once in a while. It hurt me to realize that he was being a pal with a boy who was as ornery to the gang as he could be.

  Many a time that early summer, we’d stand on the bridge and look downstream to the khaki tent under the cottonwood and see the smoke rising from their campfire, hear their laughing, and feel hurt in our hearts that we’d lost Tom. He was avoiding us now, even when he was by himself and Shorty Long was nowhere around.

  I never will forget the time Mom sent me over to the Tills’ house to take a cake she had baked for Tom’s mother’s birthday and to invite Tom to go to Sunday school with our family the next morning. That was the day I got insulted. Also it was a very important day for another reason.

  Tom stood on their back porch and looked at me as if I was just so much dirt. With a sneer in his voice he said, “Sissies go to Sunday school!”

  Well, that fired me up. If his mother hadn’t been just inside the kitchen door talking to my mom on the phone to thank her for the cake, I’d have let my two hard-knuckled fists and my muscled arms prove to him that there was one boy who went to Sunday school who wasn’t a sissy.

  I didn’t sock him with my fists, though. But I did with my thoughts and also with several words from my mind, a piece of which I hurled at him as hard as I did a fastball when I was pitching in a baseball game. Maybe I’d better tell you what I said, though I shouldn’t have, because it was like a boomerang that the native people of Australia use, which comes back when they throw it and sometimes hits them on the head if they don’t dodge.

  What I yelled to Little Tom Till that day, as he stood on the porch of his house glaring sullenly at me, was, “The very next time I catch you alone somewhere without Shorty or your brother along, I’m going to whale the living daylights out of you!”

  Just saying it stirred my temper up that much worse, and I was almost blind with anger. I could even see the place on his jaw where I wished I could land a fierce fast fist.

  Instead, though, I gritted my teeth, felt the muscles of my jaw tighten, and just glared back at him.

  To make me madder, he swung around to the long-handled, wooden pump behind him and said, “Maybe a little water will cool you off!” With that he took several fast strokes, pumped a tin full, and slammed it into my face.

  Now what do you do at a time like that?

  You probably feel just like I did. First, you feel the shock of the cold water striking you in your hot face, because you are already extra-hot from having pedaled all the way over on your bicycle. Then you feel a surge of temper racing in your veins. Everything sort of whirls in your mind like a windmill in a storm. Then you go blind with rage, and you’re not a sissy anymore but a mad bull ready to charge headfirst into the cause of your trouble.

  That was what I felt like, and what I’d started to do, when from behind me I heard somebody’s gruff voice saying grimly, “I wouldn’t do it, Bill. You are all wet, you know. He was just trying to help you realize it.”

  I whirled—and it was Shorty Long himself, standing just outside the Tills’ picket gate, his jaw set, his squinting eyes focused on me, his lips pursed, and in his hands a baseball bat.

  Then I knew why Tom had been so brave and so ornery with me. Shorty Long, with whom he’d been palling around and for whom he was like Robinson Crusoe’s man Friday, had poisoned his mind against us and against any boy who was trying to live up to what he learned in Sunday school and church.

  I stood and stared—maybe glared—at Shorty a minute, trying to hold myself back from charging headfirst into a baseball bat.

  The sermon I’d heard several weeks before seemed to be standing between me and a bashed nose. Even as I stood with my back to Tom Till, wiping the water off my face and facing my enemy, the Bible verse that had been our minister’s text went galloping around in my mind. It was as if Somebody with a very kind, strong voice was saying, “He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit, than he who captures a city.”

  That had been one of the best sermons I’d ever heard. I had been sitting by the open east window in our church at the time, listening to the sermon and also to the birds outside in the trees. It seemed maybe our minister had picked out that special Bible verse because it fit me like a new pair of jeans.

  “Every Christian has two natures,” he said and explained that it was up to us to decide which nature was the boss—the good or the bad.

  It seemed that Dragonfly wasn’t the only one who had a playmate. I, too, had one, and he wasn’t imaginary, either. And mine certainly wasn’t dead and buried in a hole in the ground beside the sycamore tree but was alive and lived inside me.

  One other thing our minister had said, and which I would probably never forget, was, “If you’re having trouble ruling your spirit, try praying about it.”

  Those words came back to me right that minute while I was standing inside Tom Till’s picket fence, frowning at Shorty Long and his savage-looking baseball bat.

  Shorty kept on scowling at me. His brows were down and his lips pursed, his hands gripping the bat handle.

  I kept on standing, fighting the Snatzerpazooka that was inside me, which was trying to make me make a fighting fool out of myself.

  Shorty Long’s sarcastic voice broke into my stormy thoughts right then, saying, “Your bike is right here, if you’re scared and want to run away.” He stepped back and swung the gate open for me to get through.

  Tom’s mother came out then with the empty cake pan, and, because it seemed there wasn’t anything else that I ought to do, I thanked her for the pan. I told her I hoped she had a happy birthday and a little later, with gritted teeth, was on my bike pedaling down the narrow, dusty footpath through their orchard to their other gate by the barn.

  I certainly felt strange inside. I hadn’t gotten into any actual fight, but I hadn’t ruled my spirit, either. Shorty Long’s baseball bat had ruled it for me.

  I was still boiling inside as I pedaled furiously along the gravel road toward the bridge on my way home. The faster I pumped, the worse I felt and the more angry I was at Shorty Long for doing what he was doing to Tom Till.

  When I reached the bridge, I slowed down, then stopped and looked downstream toward the tall cottonwood and caught a glimpse of the roof of the brown tent.

  That is when my spirit started to rule me.

  It told me to leave my bike leaning against the bridge railing, run back, pick up some stones from the gravel road, and see if I could throw as straight and as far with them as I could with a baseball; see if, maybe, I could hit the slanting canvas roof of Shorty Long’s tent.

  It took only a few minutes to get back to my bike with several stones.

  I decided to look first toward Tom Till’s house to see if a big boy with a baseball bat in his hands was looking this way. Of course, I knew Shorty Long couldn’t run fast enough to get to me for at least five minutes, but … well, what I was about to do … if I did it … which it seemed like I shouldn’t … ought to be kept secret.

  Just that second I heard a red-winged blackbird let loose with his very juicy-noted melody, which is one of the most cheerful songs a boy ever hears. In fact, it seemed there were two or three scarlet-shouldered singers singing several songs the same second, making it seem a wonderful world to live in. If there was anybody who was feeling disgusted with life, he ought to cheer up.

  My arm was back, ready for the toss. I took a quick glance to the right where there was a marshy place with willows bordering it, and saw old Redwing himself perched on one of the top branches, swaying and letting out his whistling “Oucher-la-ree-e!” followed a few seconds later with another. Then, from the other si
de of the narrow, marshy place, another redwing whistled the same thing.

  That’s when I heard the frogs piping, too-one of the other almost-most-beautiful sounds a boy ever hears.

  That’s also when I took my stubborn, angry spirit by the scruff of its neck and shook it the way one of Circus’s dad’s hounds shakes a rat. Then, with a whirl around in the opposite direction, I threw the stone as far upstream as I could, where it landed with a big splash right in the center of the creek.

  I let out a heavy sigh and started to swing onto my bike to pedal across the bridge toward home, then took another look downstream toward the tent.

  That is when I noticed a curl of smoke rising not far from the cottonwood.

  Their campfire, I thought. They’ll maybe cook supper there and stay all night.

  It wasn’t much of a fire, judging by the amount of smoke. Still, a boy ought not to go away and leave an open fire burning—ever. Our camp director, Barry Boyland, who had taken us on a few trips, had always made us put out our fires before we left camp. Always.

  It had been a pretty dry spring too. There could be a bad brushfire if the blaze should begin to spread.

  Enemy or no enemy, it seemed I ought to race down to the fire and put it out.

  It took only a few minutes for me to get to the end of the bridge and down the embankment on the well-worn path made by barefoot boys’ feet, running along the zigzagging trail that skirted the creek bank on my way to the fire.

  “That’s an awful lot of smoke now for a campfire,” I said to myself as smoke got in my eyes, making it hard to see and making me cough. Even little Tom Till should have known better than to leave a live campfire. Tom had been with us on one of our trips into the wilds of the North, and he’d known all the camp rules for safety.

  As I ran, my mind made up to put out the fire, I was seeing the scowling face of Shorty Long and the baseball bat in his hands. I was hearing him say, “Your bike is right here, if you’re scared and want to run away!”

  My footpath led all of a sudden into the opening where their tent was pitched. I let out a gasp when I saw what I saw—not a small patch of burned ground with a ring of ashes and a little campfire in the center, but a circle of fire about fifteen feet wide with leaping, excited flames all around the outside edges. The nervous, yellow fire-tongues were eating into the dried marsh grass left from last year’s growth, and the fire was within only a few yards of the tent itself.

  How, I asked myself, was I to put out such a fierce, fast flame? What with?

  My eyes took in the whole area around the camp, and there wasn’t a thing a boy could use to smother a fire.

  Faster than a flock of pigeons zooming over our barn, my thoughts flew back to the time the gang had once put out a fire that was running wild through an Indian cemetery in the North woods when we’d been on a camping trip up there. We’d done it by yanking off our shirts, dashing down a steep incline to the lake, getting our shirts soaking wet, and using them to flail the flames. We’d worked like a fire department to save the dozens of little Indian wooden grave markers, which actually were small houses, each one about the size of a Sugar Creek doghouse.

  Maybe there would be a gunnysack inside the tent, I thought. I could use that and save the new plaid shirt I had on—in fact, had put on specially for the trip to take the cake to Tom Till’s mother.

  But the smoke was blowing toward the tent, and I couldn’t see inside.

  A wild idea came to me then. Quick untie the tent ropes and move the whole tent out of the way of the fire. But that’d be too hard a job for so little time.

  There wasn’t even an old shirt or pair of trousers hanging on any tree or bush as there sometimes is around a camp.

  In my excitement, I kept thinking of that fierce, fast fire we’d fought up North and how easily we had put it out with our soaking-wet shirts. The red-and-green plaid I had on was one I liked better than any my folks had ever bought me. My oldish, well-worn blue jeans might be better for fighting fire, I thought.

  But there wasn’t any time to be lost if I wanted to save the tent and also stop what could quickly become a bad brushfire. There hadn’t been any rain around Sugar Creek for quite a while, and everything was as dry as tinder.

  It had to be pants or shirt, one or the other.

  I started on the run for the creek and on the way decided it had to be the shirt. It would come off easier. Quicker than anything, I had it off and in another jiffy was racing with it, soaking wet, to the fire.

  Save the tent, first! my very common sense told me.

  Wham! Wham! Wham! … Squish! Squish! Squish! … Puff! Puff! Puff! … Pant! Pant! Pant! … Cough! Cough! Cough!

  My blood raced in my veins, the wind blew smoke in my face, the heat was smothering.

  In maybe seven minutes, which seemed like an hour, I had the whole fire out. I’d saved Shorty Long’s tent and everything in it.

  I didn’t even take time to look and be proud of my work, because what if Shorty and Tom would all of a sudden come down to see what all the smoke had been about and would find me there? They’d think I had been the cause of the fire. They wouldn’t even bother to wonder who had put it out, and there might be plenty of trouble. More than plenty.

  Up the embankment I went like a shirtless chipmunk. In a few moments I had my sopping-wet, smudged shirt in the wire basket of my bike on top of the empty cake pan and was pedaling home.

  I felt fine. I had ruled my spirit. I was better in the sight of the One who had made me than Julius Caesar when he had captured a city.

  Beside the road in Poetry’s dad’s meadow, a meadowlark let loose with his very piercing song, which sounded like “spring of the year!” The meadowlark, I happened to think, was one of Mom’s favorite birds. She liked the cardinal best.

  Thinking of Mom reminded me of my wet, smoke-smudged shirt, and for some reason I slowed down a little in my fast pedaling toward home.

  When I came to the corner where I would turn east, I stopped and read one or two horse posters tacked to the big sugar tree there. I always enjoyed looking at pictures of horses, liking them almost better than any other tame animal.

  Catty-corner across the road in Poetry’s dad’s woods, which were being used for pasture that spring, was another big sugar tree with low-hanging branches. The ground all around its trunk was stomped free of grass. That was where Mr. Thompson’s horses always stood on hot days to be in the shade, and where, when it rained, they went to keep from getting so wet. The overhanging branches reached out as far as fifteen feet all around the trunk.

  I noticed their different-colored horses were scattered through the woods, their heads down, munching grass.

  Quite a ways from the tree, I saw Poetry’s pinto standing by himself, nibbling at the leaves of a red-haw bush. My heart leaped with happiness as I watched him for a minute, wishing I had one like him. He was different from any riding horse I’d ever seen. He was yellow and black and white, and his eyes were like crystal.

  “In Texas,” Poetry had told me, “they call ponies like Thunderball ‘paint ponies.’”

  Thunderball was certainly a fine name for him, because when you were riding him, you felt like wild thunder galloping across the sky. Tomorrow, maybe I’d get to take a ride on him all by myself, as Poetry had been letting me do several times a week ever since his folks bought Thunderball for him.

  “Ho-hum,” I yawned. I was still hot from the hard work of putting out the fire, and the day itself was very sultry for spring.

  The sun was still pretty high, but the southeast sky had big yellowish-white clouds in it. They were piled cloud on cloud like a mountain, making the sky look the way it does sometimes in the middle of the summer before a thunderstorm.

  Maybe I’d better get on home and help get the chores done, I thought.

  There was a happy feeling inside me now as I pedaled up the gravel road between the woods on my left and our orchard on the right. I had ruled my spirit, and I was on my way to give Mo
m or Dad or both a chance to rule theirs when they saw what putting out a dangerous brushfire could do to a boy’s new red and green plaid shirt.

  It seemed, though, that the piles of yellowish-white clouds high in the south and east were talking to me, saying, “There’s going to be a storm. There’s going to be a storm!”

  3

  The nearer I came to Theodore Collins’s mailbox, the more I wondered what Theodore Collins, in the barn doing the chores, would say about my shirt, and what Mrs. Theodore Collins, in the house getting supper, would say and do about it.

  I had my speech all planned. I knew just what I would say when they asked me what had happened and why.

  One or the other of them would find out about it first—or else they’d both notice it at the same time—and one or the other of them would say, “Bill Collins! What on earth happened to your shirt? What kind of an excuse can you give for completely ruining a brand-new shirt?”

  I would rule my spirit and say calmly, as I washed up for supper, “I haven’t any excuse, but if you’d be interested in a very good reason, I’ll be pleased to give you one.”

  One or the other of them would then give me a kind of sharp answer, saying, “It’ll take seven reasons to explain that shirt! Just look at it!” Mom herself would hold it up by the shoulders and exclaim at it with shaking head and crinkled face. “What on earth!”

  I’d keep on ruling my spirit to show them how easily it could be done and say offhandedly, “Oh, there was a little fire down along the creek that was about to grow into a very bad brushfire, and to keep it from burning up Shorty Long’s tent, I decided to put it out.”

  That was the way I’d planned the conversation to go.

  And that was the way it didn’t go.

  I got through the front gate and leaned my bike against the grape arbor post. Then, after wrapping the wet, smoke-smudged shirt in an old newspaper and laying it on the floor of the toolshed, I eased my way into the house without being noticed. I knew exactly where I’d left the well-worn blue shirt I’d taken off before changing to the new one, just before starting over to Tom Till’s house with the cake.