* * *
In Cookie Camp, Cookie and Robert, tucked up in their beds, had heard nothing of the end of Bill. But they did have God-sent missions of their own to draw them out into the chill of the night. First was to start the Afghanistan Helping Out medal on its way back to its owner. Their father had not stolen it, they’d assured one another; only picked it up for safe keeping and then inadvertently forgotten to return it. How could they be wrong for helping to return a Helping Out medal?
The second mission was to get rid of the gun. Father would certainly have no intention of returning that! But taking something bad, to get it put away where it couldn’t be used - must surely equate to doing something good!
“Steali’g for the Lord,” Robert had argued, “could dever be a bad thi’g.” And taking that logic to its limit, they decided that if they put the gun even further away, where no one, not even Dad, would ever find it, that would probably make the Lord a pretty happy guy!
They stepped through the open door into the back yard. A kind of whispery murmur reached them from somewhere over toward Home Country as did an ever-so-quick flash of light. When their eyes finished adjusting, they thought they could see a mum-ish shadow, standing on the Over-step at the fence corner. Cookie’s nerve immediately failed him and he did his best to pull Robert back into the house. Robert was having none of it. He’d read about missionaries being boiled up for dinner by Indians and, instead of asking to be let go, they’d asked for more vegetables to be put in with them, so they’d at least part of a really good quality stew. They’d known, and Robert knew too, that the Lord was not fussed on ‘fraidy cats and he’d long ago determined never to be one.
He took three tiptoe steps and, with all his little strength, launched the medal high over the fence into Boogerville. There was no doubt that Beau the Bum would find it. Nothing touched the ground anywhere in Boogerville without Beau noticing and investigating.
So that was mission one completed. Mission two would be much, much harder, especially considering that Cookie was back in bed practically before that medal touched the ground. Cookie had also read about missionaries being boiled up for dinner and the lesson he’d taken was that the Lord did not seem to be the one in the pot. And his determination was to be more like the Lord and less like the missionaries.
“I’b goi’g!” Robert said to him through the blanket. “Whether you cub or dot!”
“You can’t, stupid. They’re up. What if they check on us? I’m not lying for you!”
Robert snatched back the blanket and grabbed the gun by its stubby little barrel.
“So do’t lie thed! A’d do’t cub!” And at the door he turned back for a last parting blast. “I thought you said you were a kite before. But I thi’g you bust’ve be’t a chicked!”
So they were two at the front gate when Afsoon came creeping, heart aflutter, into their realm.
“What’re you doing?” she demanded. “Are you running away?”
And they told her. The gun was going out across the old golf course and down into the trees, to Pig Creek. To a deep, deep hole where no one would ever find it. It was the only way. Trouble was . . . the darkness. And the curlews were out there, crying their mournful, “Nooooo! Nooooo! Noooo!” And there could be snakes. And they’d be alright going, because they had the gun. But what about coming back? What then? Even Robert was having last minute wobblies about that prospect.
“Give it to me,” ‘Soon said. “Then it’ll be gone and you won’t have to worry.”
“What’ll you do with it?” Robert asked, wishing it could be so simple. “It has to be go’d forever, you doe! So doe-one cad ever fi’d it!”
“I’ll sink it in the mud at the bottom of our pond. No one will ever think to look there.”
Which made perfect sense to everyone! And so the gun changed hands again, leaving both boys feeling that, at the very least, the cannibal’s pot had been removed from their immediate futures.
“Okay good then,” Cookie finished. “Now we can go back to bed. C’mon Robert - before we get caught.”
But Robert still had his walking-across-the-golf-course energy left to burn.
“Where’re you goi’g, ‘Sood?” he asked. “Should’t you be id bed too?”
They had to follow her to hear as she pushed on around the side of the house, back toward their back yard. They sneaked and huddled near the wall as she whispered the story of the cry in Neville the Less’s Home Country and the frightened gathering-up-the-animals response from Riff and Raff. No such dilly-dallying for her, she said. She was going to see what help was needed, she said.
“He bight be hurti’g theb!” Robert hissed at her. “Their dad! Our bub says Deville’s dot safe over there! It bight dot be safe for you either, ‘Sood!”
“I don’t care. I promised I wouldn’t leave him on his own and I’m not!”
Long story short, they stopped at the back corner of the house where they all peeped around into the yard. They couldn’t actually see Mister and Missus but not even the hiss of an urgent, whispered conversation was about to stop ‘Soon. With barely a pause, she crept away to the north fence, as far from the adults as was possible, and felt her way along it to the Boogerville boundary. When she finally did stop and turn, Robert was there, making a cup of his hands to help her over, just as Neville the Less had done to lift her into the Lightning Bug. Without a word she stepped up, dropped the gun over into the darkness and tumbled after it. By the time she’d found it again, a keen Robert and a terrified Cookie were both rising to their feet beside her.
Neville the Less Page 49