Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 1-6 Page 12

  In two jiffies I was gone with the wind.

  When I got home, Dad and Mom were sitting at the table eating. They hadn’t even waited for me.

  “Hello!” I said cheerfully, having been especially careful not to forget to wash my face and comb my hair. Then, to keep them from being disgusted with me, I began telling them all about Poetry’s new hobby.

  But do you know what? My folks never said a word. Everything was quiet, and I had the strangest feeling inside. When I looked at Dad, he just kept his face straight with his big blackish-red eyebrows half up and half down. And Mom looked sad.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked innocently. “Is little Charlotte Ann sick or something?”

  “Charlotte Ann’s all right!” Dad said.

  It was a rule in our house not to talk about anything unpleasant at the table, so we didn’t. But just the same, I didn’t like the atmosphere.

  It was a good dinner though—pork and beans and bread and butter and blackberry pie.

  “I’m sorry,” Mom said when it came time for dessert, “but we’ve done everything we can to help you not to be forgetful, none of which seems to do any good. Your father and I have decided not to scold you or punish you this time. You are not generally disobedient, but you are very thoughtless. So to help you remember, we’re asking you to leave the table now without eating any dessert.” Her voice was very sad, and so was her face.

  I had had my mouth all set for that blackberry pie, liking it maybe better than anything else. Anyway, I did right that minute. So when she said that, all of a sudden something in me turned as hot as fire, and I started to talk back. I don’t know what made me do it. I knew it was wrong all the time, but I was angry.

  Dad’s eyebrows dropped low, and his jaw set, and he said, “You’re excused, William Jasper Collins,” which was the name I hated.

  I shut up the way a washboard clam down along Sugar Creek shuts up when you start to touch it. Then I said, “I don’t want any old pie anyway!” I didn’t tell them I’d had some at Poetry’s house, or they wouldn’t have thought I was getting good punishment. I left the table.

  “Furthermore,” Dad said, “you’re going to remember to shut the gate from now on, so the pigs won’t get out!”

  “And you’re going to be a little more cheerful about helping me around the house,” Mom said.

  “And you’re not going swimming this afternoon!” Dad’s big voice thundered.

  I went outdoors without saying anything more. I knew they were right. I didn’t obey very well, and I wasn’t always cheerful when I did. I knew it was a sin to talk back to my parents, and it wasn’t right to be so forgetful all the time, because being thoughtless is the same as being selfish, and selfishness is sin. On top of that, I was supposed to be a Christian. In fact, I was, but I certainly didn’t always act like it.

  I was so disgusted with myself that I picked up a rock and threw it at our old red rooster. And would you believe it? That old rooster got in the way, and the rock hit him and broke his leg, and we had to have chicken for dinner the next day.

  That only made matters worse.

  I went out to the barn and climbed up into the haymow. Old Mixy cat was up there, and I yelled “Scat!” at her. She jumped as if she was shot and scooted across the hay and down the ladder. Then I threw myself down on the hay and cried and felt sad and wished I’d run away and never come home again. I even wished I was dead.

  All of a sudden I felt something hard under my hip. It was something in my pocket. I took it out to see what it was, and it was my little black leather New Testament.

  I sat there looking at it, and the next thing I knew, I was terribly sorry, and I got to thinking maybe God still liked me. So I kind of half cried the whole story to Him and asked Him to please do something about Bill Collins being so stubborn and forgetful.

  5

  It was Little Jim who helped me fix things up with my dad. Mom forgave me right away without my even asking her when I went into the house and started helping her. But whenever I looked at Dad, he looked the other way or straight in front of him.

  It hurt terribly not to be able to go swimming with the gang, but it hurt worse not to have my dad like me anymore.

  Along about a quarter after two, when I was out in the garden hoeing, feeling sad and with the dust getting all mixed up with my tears, Little Jim came along. The gang had sent him up from the spring to see why I hadn’t come, or if I was sick, which I wasn’t.

  I had to tell somebody, so I told Little Jim all about it. He felt very sorry for me. He stood there digging his bare toes into the ground and scooping up little piles of dirt on the back of his foot and kicking them across the garden while I talked. Every now and then he’d stoop and pull a weed to let me know he sympathized with me.

  Then he told me the best story, and it gave me an idea how I could get my dad to like me again. You see, Little Jim’s mom knew all about the famous musicians, and she’d told him interesting stories about different ones.

  “Why don’t you do what Walter Damrosch did once when he wanted his father to forgive him for something wrong he’d done?” Little Jim asked.

  Walter Damrosch, you know, was once the director of the New York Symphony Orchestra. Little Jim’s mom had taught him a lot of things like that.

  Well, one day when Walter was a little boy and had had a spanking for being naughty, he wanted to ask his father to forgive him. But he was afraid to, so he drew a sad picture of himself standing at his father’s door. Underneath the picture he’d printed the words “Seventy Times Seven, Shalt Thou Forgive.” Then he shoved it under the door of the room where his father was and waited. Pretty soon his dad came out, and everything was all right.

  I guess you know the Bible story of how Peter once asked the Lord how many times we ought to forgive anybody who sinned against us. “Seven times?” Peter asked. And Jesus said, “Not seven, but seventy times seven.”

  Well, when Little Jim told me that story it made me feel better, and I decided to try it.

  “What’ll I tell the gang?” Little Jim wanted to know. “They told me to hurry right back.”

  “Tell them I have to work,” I said.

  Little Jim started to run back to the gang. Then he stopped and said, “Circus seems awful happy today. I-I’m glad he’s saved, aren’t you? It just makes me feel all clean inside, kind of like a jackrabbit running through the woods.” Then that little fellow tumbled over the fence, and away he ran, looking like a jackrabbit himself as he galloped back to the gang.

  I sighed a great big sigh and looked out across the green cornfield to where Dad was plowing and wished I was right there beside him.

  “I’ll bet he’s thirsty,” I said to myself. So I went to the house and got a small jug of water and pencil and paper.

  The picture I drew of myself was sad all right, only it looked more like a lonesome cow than it did me. I wrote at the bottom the words “Seventy times seven,” punched a hole through the paper and, with a piece of string, tied it to the handle of the water jug. Then I went through the gate and down to the field where Dad was working and waited for him to get to the end of the row.

  The corn was almost knee-high already, and this was only the first of July. Even the corn looked sad, I thought. We needed a good rain. All the ends of the blades were rolled because of the heat, and there was a big cloud of dust almost hiding my dad and the team of horses and the plow.

  The nearer he came to the end of the row, the faster my heart beat, and it seemed as if it would burst for hurting me so much.

  Pretty soon he stopped the horses, and I ran down between the corn rows and handed him the jug of water with the note tied to it. “Maybe you’re thirsty,” I said, not looking up at him.

  As soon as he had the jug in his hand, I turned and ran as fast as I could toward the barn. When I got inside, I looked back and watched him through a crack in the door, my heart beating and hurting like everything. I even prayed, “Please, make him forgive me
!”

  Then I walked through the barn and out another door and went back to hoeing potatoes just as hard as I could, with my back to the cornfield so I couldn’t see. I was singing:

  “Nearer my God to Thee,

  nearer to Thee …”

  I changed one part of the chorus and sang:

  “Still all my soul should be,

  Nearer my God to Thee …”

  Pretty soon, in about ten minutes maybe, I heard somebody coming. But I didn’t stop to look up. Instead, my heart beat faster and faster, and I didn’t even turn around.

  Then somebody called my name. But it was Mom’s voice, and she told me it was too hot to work so fast and that I ought to rest awhile.

  But I didn’t feel like resting. I looked across the field to where Dad was, and he was plowing away just as if I hadn’t given him the note. Maybe he didn’t even see it, I thought, or maybe he doesn’t care. Maybe he won’t ever like me again.

  Pretty soon Mom called, “I’d like to have a pail of cold spring water for making iced tea for the Missionary Circle.”

  I’d forgotten all about the meeting. I looked quick to see if there were any cars out in front of our house, and there weren’t, but I knew they’d be coming soon.

  I took our big gallon thermos jug and went through the woods to the spring, hoping none of the gang would be there, because I didn’t want them to see how sad I felt. But no one was there.

  I filled the jug up to the top and let it stand a while so the jug itself would get cool. In a few minutes I’d pour out the water and fill it again and take it back to Mom.

  While I waited, I went down to the creek and looked at the lazy little bubble clusters of foam that floated on the surface. Sugar Creek looked lazy and very sad. In fact, everything looked sad. The whole world needed rain, I thought.

  Just that minute a rain crow started crying, Kow-kow-kow kuk-kuk. Rain crows nearly always make the most noise when the weather is cloudy or wet, but maybe he felt sad too, as though there were clouds inside of him. He certainly sounded unhappy.

  I picked up a flat rock and skipped it across the creek. It struck the water with a splash, made a big leap, and then actually skidded on top of the water all the rest of the way across. The waves it made looked kind of like a boy’s sad face breaking into a smile. That was the first time I’d ever thought about old Sugar Creek smiling, but he did just the same.

  I started to pick up another rock when I happened to think of the rock I’d thrown at our old red rooster, so I dropped it, disgusted.

  Four cars were parked in front of our house when I came back with the spring water. I didn’t want anybody to see me, so I set down the jug on our kitchen table and hurried out to the garden. I started hoeing potatoes again just as my dad came in from the field.

  Dad went straight to the toolhouse and got a hoe, and in a minute, we were hoeing side by side, neither one of us saying anything.

  Pretty soon Dad said, “Thank you, Bill, for bringing me a drink. That was very thoughtful of you.”

  I kept on hoeing, not saying anything. Then I looked up quick, and there were tears in Dad’s eyes, and the next thing I knew I’d made a dive for him like a football player makes a tackle, only it was around his neck instead.

  Well, I won’t tell you what happened just then, but I’ll bet I felt even better than the prodigal son did in the Bible when his father hugged him and kissed him and everything was all right between them again.

  Then my dad told me something every Christian in the world ought to know, and that is, the very minute you know you’ve done something wrong, you ought to be sorry for it. And if you confess it to God, He’ll forgive you right that minute, and the blood of Jesus’ll wash your heart cleaner than the best soap in the world can wash a boy’s dirty hands. But be sure to confess your sin right away.

  When Dad had gone back to the field again, it seemed the most wonderful thing in the world to be alive, and I actually liked to hoe potatoes.

  The sky was the prettiest blue you ever saw; the heat waves dancing above the corn seemed like a lot of happy boys dancing for joy or else like waves splashing in Sugar Creek when you’re in swimming.

  From away across the field I could hear somebody whistling a cheery tune, and it was my great big dad whistling “Home, Sweet Home.” Even though I knew he couldn’t hear me, I started whistling the same tune with him, and it was the happiest duet I’d ever whistled in my whole life.

  6

  That night we lost another pig, and I knew something would have to be done about it.

  The next afternoon the gang had planned to go up into the hills to see Old Man Paddler, and we decided to go through the swamp instead of going around it as we usually did. We knew about a mulberry tree not far from Old Man Paddler’s cabin where there were luscious, thumb-size mulberries just waiting for a boy to climb the tree and pick them.

  Old Man Paddler, as you know, was a very rich, long-whiskered, kind man who had just come back from a trip around the world. He lived up in the hills alone and got lonesome when we didn’t go up to see him.

  As usual when our gang was together, we sounded like a lot of blackbirds as well as a zoo-ful of monkeys. We trudged along, taking turns walking and running and playing leapfrog and rolling in the grass. I had my binoculars along, fastened to a strap around my neck. Poetry was puffing as he always does. Circus was just the same old Circus except that he seemed to like Little Jim better than ever, and I noticed that in his pocket he had the New Testament that our pastor had given him last night.

  All of us were learning to carry New Testaments so that when we grew up we’d have one in our pocket instead of a package of stinking old cigarettes. Poetry’s dad figured it up one day, and he saved $200 a year by not smoking, so every year he sent $200 to help support a national missionary in Africa. Just think of all the saved people that’ll be in heaven because of that.

  We stopped to rest at the old sycamore tree and to talk about different things. So many important things had happened there.

  About that time Dragonfly started acting mysterious, and all of a sudden he began climbing the tree. He couldn’t climb nearly as fast as Circus, and it was a hard tree to climb, but pretty soon he reached the first limb. Nobody was paying any attention to him except me, but I thought he had the strangest expression on his face.

  All the rest of us talked and chattered and tumbled over each other in the grass.

  Pretty soon I heard Dragonfly grunt, and he came sliding down the tree trunk with that same look on his face. For a minute there was an expression in his eye like Old Man Paddler has sometimes.

  Then he began playing and acting like the rest of us.

  All the way through the swamp I kept thinking about bears and using my binoculars to see if I could see one. When we came to the place where Dragonfly had seen the big black hog wallowing in the mud—if it was a hog—we all stopped and examined the ground carefully to see if there were any bear tracks. But there weren’t, that we could see, and nothing had been there since the other time. Just the same, I sighed when we came out on the other side of the swamp and started to climb the hill toward Old Man Paddler’s cabin.

  In about twenty minutes we were there. It was an old log cabin, looking kind of like the picture of the cabin Abraham Lincoln was born in. We stopped at the spring where the old man gets his drinking water, each one of us taking turns drinking, lying down on our stomachs and drinking like cows.

  Pretty soon we saw the old man himself, standing in the doorway with his white whiskers reaching down almost to his waist. He had so many whiskers you couldn’t tell whether he was smiling. You had to look into his eyes to find that out, but he always had a twinkle in those eyes.

  That kind old man invited us in and made us drink sassafras tea as he always does when we go to see him. While we were sitting around listening to him tell us stories—some of us were sitting on chairs and some on the floor—he surprised us by saying something that made us feel very sad. />
  “Boys,” he said in his trembling old voice, “I’m not going to live very much longer in this world. Last week I went to town and made a will, and in that will I left something for each one of you. I haven’t forgotten that it was you who saved my life a month ago, and my money too.”

  Little Jim looked away quick because he always liked old people so well, and especially Old Man Paddler.

  None of us knew what to say.

  But finally Big Jim cleared his throat and said courteously, “Thank you, Mr. Paddler. We’re glad we had a chance to be your friends. You’ve helped us boys a great deal.”

  Then the old man stood and said, “I must be getting on with my work now. But be sure to come again soon.”

  He didn’t tell us what his work was, and we didn’t ask, but we were all curious. We went outdoors and down to the spring for another drink.

  When Little Jim had had his drink, I noticed tears in his eyes. While we were on our way up to the mulberry tree, he and I walked together, and I asked, “What’s the matter?”

  He took a hard swish at a big bull thistle with his stick before he answered. “I don’t want Old Man Paddler to die!”

  I didn’t either. Of course, I couldn’t help wondering what he’d planned to give us, but I didn’t like to think about it. Talking about it didn’t seem right. There wasn’t a one of our gang that even mentioned it, because we all liked the old man so well we wanted him to keep right on living forever.

  I forgot to tell you that’s what Big Jim said to him back there in the cabin. Can you guess what Old Man Paddler answered? He said, “Live forever?” and he kind of laughed. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do, only I’m going to move out of this dilapidated old house first.”

  And I knew he didn’t mean his weathered old log cabin with its clapboard roof. He meant a wrinkled, white-haired old house with long whiskers and gnarled hands that trembled.