Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 7-12 Read online

  “I certainly hope I don’t get asthma,” Dragonfly said, remembering the other time he had gotten it in the airplane and also probably remembering that had been one of the reasons his parents had been slow to make up their minds to let him come along. They thought there might be too many flowers on the island, and he might be allergic to some of them and not be able to breathe, and then our whole trip would be spoiled. Dragonfly’s parents were always worrying about something, and his mother was especially afraid of black cats running across the road in front of us.

  “Anyway,” he said, grinning, “there won’t be any black cats up here in the sky and running across this sky road.”

  Little Jim piped up from across the aisle. “It’s a pretty road. I wonder how much farther it is up to heaven.”

  Right away my thoughts went flying in an airplane of their own. I was wondering about heaven, up there somewhere or other, and if it wasn’t maybe the prettiest place God had ever made, and if there would be a lot of surprises for everybody who got to go there. Maybe He hadn’t told us very much about heaven in the Bible because it was kind of like the Christmas presents Mom buys for me. She doesn’t tell me what I’m going to get, so that I’ll have something to be surprised about when Christmas comes. I got to thinking, what if the whole Sugar Creek Gang could go to heaven at the same time, the way we were going to Palm Tree Island right that minute, and what if Old Man Paddler had paid for us all so we could go there and could get in free and everything?

  And then I happened to think of something very important, which I would ask Little Jim about the very first time I had a chance. And that was that just as Old Man Paddler had paid for us all to go to Palm Tree Island, so Somebody had already paid all it costs to take anybody to heaven. And He didn’t pay it with money either but with His blood, which He gave for everybody one day when He was hanging on a cross and died there.

  But my thoughts didn’t get to think very far because all of a sudden Dragonfly beside me began to feel very sick. I knew he was going to lose his breakfast and everything else he had eaten since breakfast, such as two candy bars.

  “Quick,” I said, “let’s go into the washroom. You might have too much breakfast for that little paper bag!” Both of us slipped out of our seats and hurried back to the tail of the plane and through a small door into the little room that had a washbasin and running water. The minute Dragonfly and I got in there he swayed as if he was dizzy and held onto me and I onto him.

  Well, right away the stewardess came by to help him. I went out and sat down and waited for Dragonfly to come back, which he did after a while, grinning and feeling fine again, and we were all happy.

  “What if we find Old Man Paddler’s brother?” I said to Poetry, who was sitting in one of the nice, big, soft-cushioned seats right in front of me.

  He said, “We’re going to!”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  He said, “I don’t know how I know, but I know I know.”

  I hoped that what he knew he knew was true.

  Just as we were about to fly past the Florida Keys, Little Jim seemed to notice them for the first time. He said, “What are those big brown things down there in the water?”

  Circus told him, “The Florida Keys. We use them to unlock the Gulf of Mexico.”

  Poetry spoke up and said, “How’d you like to have a piano that big and be a giant and play on it?”

  Little Jim grinned and kept still, but I noticed that his fingers were moving on his knees as though he was playing his mom’s piano back in Sugar Creek.

  Well, in just exactly ninety minutes we began to get close to Palm Tree Island. I looked out and very far down saw the blue ocean. It looked just like some of the pretty blue velvet in my mom’s sewing room. It had a lot of little wrinkles in it, and I knew the “wrinkles” were big waves maybe ten feet high.

  The next thing we knew we had landed. All of us, one at a time, were climbing down the little portable stairway to the ground, and we were on Palm Tree Island. All kinds of people were away up high on a balcony of the terminal, looking down at us and waving to different people coming off the plane, and everybody was talking Spanish, and everybody was smiling and happy. Everybody looked like they thought we were the most wonderful people in the world and that we were their best friends.

  I won’t take time to tell you about going through what they call “customs,” because Barry Boyland, who had come with us and was supposed to be taking care of us, took care of that for us. Pretty soon we were in two taxicabs, which looked like they had been made in America, and out on a pretty, wide road, driving as fast as we could toward Palacia.

  The prettiest big palm trees were all along the roadside, as well as other trees and many flowers of all colors, especially red and pink, and different-looking buildings and houses with children looking out of the windows, which had iron or copper or brass bars instead of glass.

  I looked at Dragonfly, and he was looking worried.

  “Look at the flowers,” I said.

  He shut his eyes and said, “I’ll bet I’m allergic. I won’t look at them.”

  “Goose!” Poetry said beside him. “You don’t get allergic to flowers with your eyes but with your nose!”

  Dragonfly laughed because it was funny. Then he sneezed, which wasn’t funny, and I knew he was going to have trouble.

  Well, if there is anything in the world I would rather do more than anything else, unless it’s swimming and diving in Sugar Creek, it’s going to a circus where there are hundreds and hundreds of people—where everybody is talking and walking up and down, and everywhere people are trying to sell you something you don’t need. Voices are calling, and people are laughing. Everybody is all dressed up and happy, and nobody looks like anybody else. And you have plenty of money in your pocket and can buy what you want to if you want to.

  That’s what I first thought of when we got out of our taxi on the biggest street in Palacia, which is called the Prado. I think that means “parade.” They were having some kind of a celebration that day, and I never saw so many different kinds of different-looking people. And it was so warm that winter day that it was actually hot!

  For a minute, though, I couldn’t tell which end my head was on because of all the noise of voices calling and the feel of people tugging at my elbows. It seemed that all the people in the world were swarming around me like bees out of one of Dad’s beehives, all trying to light on me. Everybody was trying either to sell us something or get us to decide to go to their hotel to stay or do something—I couldn’t tell what. And nearly everybody was trying to sell us pieces of paper.

  Dragonfly, at my side, exclaimed to me above the roar of the noise all around us, “What in the world are they trying to sell us?”

  And Poetry, who had studied about Palm Tree Island in a library book, said, “Lottery tickets,” which is what they were.

  Pretty soon whatever Barry had had to do at the customs place was done, and we all got back into our taxis and rode to a hotel, which was right across the street from the big, beautiful capitol building. It looked even prettier than pictures of the Capitol of the United States in Washington, D.C.

  Right away Poetry started to quote:

  “My country, ’tis of thee,

  Sweet land of liberty.”

  Circus started to sing it. Then we all went inside the hotel, which had an open front, which means we didn’t have to go through any doors but could just walk straight in.

  Well, I certainly didn’t have any idea that, almost right away after we’d gotten to Palacia, Poetry and I were going to get lost, just as we had on that trip we took up into the north woods in the United States. There really wasn’t any sense in our getting lost either, but what can you do if you are lost except wish you weren’t and try to get unlost again?

  This is the way it happened. We had all gone up to our high-ceilinged hotel rooms and left our luggage and were down again in the street. We were supposed to be going to a cafe somewhere to e
at. Dragonfly was especially hungry because he had not had a chance to digest the last food he had eaten.

  As I told you before, there were so many people that it was almost as crowded as walking through the terribly tall weeds that grow down along the swamp by Sugar Creek.

  Pretty soon all of us were maybe ten or more blocks from the hotel, and Poetry and I stopped to look into a shop window at some pretty tooled-leather billfolds. I was wishing I could buy one for me and another for my dad.

  We were walking on when all of a sudden Poetry grabbed me by the arm and stopped me so quick I was bumped into by maybe three people who were walking close behind me. The rest of the gang was ahead of us, and all kinds of people were between us by now, chattering and making a lot of noise.

  In fact, Poetry and I had stopped again and were looking into a shop window where there were some pretty bookends made out of mahogany wood. There were round mahogany balls the size of croquet balls fastened to the outside of each one, with a little wooden handle on each ball, like the kind people used to beat tom-toms—the drums used by people on Palm Tree Island.

  I thought of my folks and of our living room at home. And I could see my father, who would be sitting beside our heating stove, turn halfway around and reach over to our library table and take out a book from between those very pretty bookends. And then he would say to my grayish-brown-haired mom, who would have Charlotte Ann in her lap sleeping, “These are surely pretty bookends our Bill bought for us while he was down in the West Indies.”

  Right there my thoughts were interrupted by Poetry’s grabbing my arm and whispering, “Hey! Look.” He whirled me around, and I looked. And would you believe it? It was a big brown billy goat wearing a harness just like the harness my dad uses on our horses back along Sugar Creek.

  The goat was hitched to a little vehicle about the size of a wheelchair, only it had four wheels. Somebody was in the chair, driving and riding, and the goat was trotting down the street with all the other traffic. There were cars, which were blowing their horns almost all the time, and also buses, which were doing the same thing, and people walking and carrying things to sell. It was certainly an interesting sight, seeing that brown billy goat being driven along in the middle of all that.

  Then I gasped and almost jumped out of my shoes, which I had to wear because of having to be dressed up. “Look!” I half screamed to Poetry. “It’s Old Man Paddler!”

  Now, I knew it wasn’t. It couldn’t have been, because that kind old man was back in the United States. And yet, sitting up in that little buggy was somebody who looked just like him except that his whiskers were not so long and were gray instead of white.

  Poetry must have thought it was Old Man Paddler, or else he forgot for a minute where we were, for he yelled out to the man in the buggy, “Hi, there, Mr. Paddler!”

  But the old man didn’t even look around. He kept his eyes straight on the street ahead, and his goat trotted right on and turned a corner, and they disappeared.

  All of a sudden I thought of Old Man Paddler’s lost twin brother, and a funny feeling jumped right up from inside me somewhere. The next thing I knew I was off down the street on the run after that goat. I swung around a corner lickety-sizzle, so fast and in such a blind hurry that I bumped into several people. Then I got all mixed up with the crowds swarming everywhere, and I didn’t know where I was.

  Whatever makes a boy do such crazy things and, as my mom says, be so impulsive—which means doing things quick, whenever you want to, without stopping to think first—whatever makes a boy do things like I did right that minute, I don’t know.

  But I had already done it, and when I came to my senses, which I was supposed to have, I looked every which way, and all I could see was people and people and more people and narrow sidewalks. Everybody was still trying to sell something or to ask for something, and everybody was talking Spanish fast to everybody else. Cars were honking and streetcars were going past, and buses were doing the same thing, and I didn’t see anybody I knew.

  Everywhere I looked, everything and everybody looked like everything and everybody else. I remembered the time last year when Poetry and I had been lost in the north woods and didn’t know where we were. Every tree had looked like every other tree, and every direction had looked like every other direction.

  I was standing right in front of an open-front store that looked like a meat market. Only there weren’t any refrigerators, but the hams and steaks and chickens were hanging right out in the open air. The first thing I thought of without trying to think was that there weren’t any flies swarming around the meat, which there would have been if it had been in the United States. All around me, too, were boys and men carrying boxes and trays of unwrapped candy and cakes and cookies.

  They were trying to sell their goodies to people, and there weren’t any flies on that food either. And without intending to, I thought Palm Tree Island was a nice place.

  But then I remembered that I was lost, and I began to be scared. I was not used to being in big cities, because in the United States I lived in the country. So I felt very bashful and afraid.

  All of a sudden I heard a voice beside me that was like an angel’s voice because it was Poetry’s.

  “Boy, oh, boy!” he puffed, which showed he had been running from somewhere. “Am I glad to see you! I thought I was lost!”

  “You are,” I said. “We both are.”

  “What!” he exclaimed.

  “I ran after the old man in the wheelchair and the goat and got lost,” I said.

  And he said the same thing, and we were both lost. Everywhere we looked, everything and everybody still looked like everything and everybody else.

  Just that minute I heard another voice beside me, saying in English, “Give me one cent. Give me one cent.”

  I looked down, and it was a very pretty little girl with black kinky hair and kind of sad eyes and a thin face and poor clothes. She was holding out one small hand to us and waiting for me or Poetry to give her a penny.

  It’s a weird feeling, having somebody beg for a penny when she looks hungry, and it was also a surprise for me to hear her speak English. So I said, “Sure, I’ll give you something,” and I took out a whole dollar and gave it to her and said, “Can you tell me where I am? Where is the Gran America Hotel?” which was the name of the hotel where we were staying.

  But she just shook her head and started talking Spanish. Right away there were about seven other children around us and also walking merchants, who were begging or trying to sell us something.

  “The only English she knows,” Poetry said, “is ‘Give me one cent,’” and I believed it.

  Then Poetry had a bright idea. He said, “We don’t have to stay lost. All we have to do is to get a taxicab and have the driver take us to Gran America Hotel, and if we wait long enough Barry and the rest of the gang will be there, and we’ll be all right.”

  It was a good idea, and we’d have done that instead of the crazy thing we did do, if we’d had enough money between us to pay for a taxi. But neither one of us did have enough, because we had left most of our money with Barry so we wouldn’t lose it.

  “I’ve got only five cents,” Poetry said.

  I said, “I’ve got a dollar—”

  Of course, I didn’t have a dollar anymore, because I’d wanted to feel big by giving it all to the kind-of-pretty girl and because I had felt sorry for her. I didn’t have more than fifteen cents. We had been in taxis in Chicago, and we knew we couldn’t go very far for twenty cents. So we stood there, going around in circles to get away from everybody who was trying to sell us something.

  Then Poetry said, “I know where the hotel is. Let’s go down this way. That’s south, isn’t it? Remember we came straight north when we left the hotel? Well, now if we go south we’re all right. We’ll come to the capitol, and then we’ll know where we are.”

  “Which way is south?” I asked him, and he grinned, feeling much better, and we both remembered that we’d had
a lot of fun once finding south the way Boy Scouts do, with a watch and a stick.

  We certainly couldn’t tell which way south was by the sun today because it was nearly noon and the sun was almost straight overhead. We were much closer to the equator down there than we were up in northern Minnesota that time, so we had to use the watch.

  Poetry held his watch in the palm of his hand.

  “Here,” I said, “here’s a match,” picking one up off the sidewalk and handing it to him.

  Poetry stood the little stick straight up at the edge of the watch and turned the watch a little so the shadow it made would fall straight along the hour hand of the watch.

  “Now,” he said in a businesslike voice, “straight south will be just halfway between the shadow of the match and the twelve on the dial,” which is the way I remembered was the way to find south.

  South was a long way south of where I thought it was. Anyway, now we knew which way to go if we wanted to get to the capitol building. So we dodged around among the people, not stopping to look anybody in the eye because, every time we did, whoever it was would try to sell us a candy bar or a lottery ticket or a string of beads or something else.

  It’s fun being lost if you don’t think you really are or if you think you won’t be lost very long. But the farther we walked the more every street corner looked like every other corner, and the sun was pouring down hot on us, and we also were beginning to get hungry. Pretty soon we stopped and looked into each other’s worried eyes and said to each other at the same time, “We’re lost again!”

  5

  Lost and broke and hungry are three bad feelings, and we had all three of them.

  “Say,” Poetry said, “let’s ask a policeman where to find the capitol building.” And that’s the first thing a lost boy ought to do anyway if he’s lost in a city—ask a policeman. I had never seen so many policemen in my life as there seemed to be on the streets of Palacia, each one carrying a revolver in a holster at his side.