Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 31-36 Page 3

  Dragonfly’s face got a mussed-up expression. He looked toward the sun to make it easier for him to finish the sneeze he felt coming. Then he sneezed twice and answered, “That house is on my father’s bottomland!”

  We had some hot words back and forth for a while, and finally, with his eyes blazing, Big Jim brought it to a vote. “All in favor of letting Mr. Robinson stay a week in our house free, raise your right hand.”

  All our kind-of-dirty right hands went up, except Dragonfly’s. That stubborn-minded little guy spoke up saucily, saying, “We don’t want any black people living in a white man’s house!”

  I’d hardly ever seen Little Jim fired up, but when Dragonfly said that, our quiet little gang member answered in a way that made me really proud of him. His short, sharp words came out like a lot of blazing arrows. “You can’t judge a book by its cover.”

  Dragonfly’s eyebrows dropped, his forehead wrinkled into a frown, and I knew Little Jim’s words had shut him up.

  The vote being five to one in favor of letting the old man stay in our house meant that he was going to stay.

  Before our meeting broke up, though, we voted on one other thing. It was that if the old man wouldn’t stay without paying us, we’d take whatever he gave us and use it to buy books for our Sunday school library. That vote was five to one, also. Dragonfly wanted to divide the money between us and wanted the old man to pay him one extra dollar a night, because the house was on his father’s land.

  It was an interesting experience, having our house rented—for that’s what was finally decided. The old man was so determined we should accept something that we finally agreed on ten dollars for the week he was going to stay.

  That meant he’d have to have what is called “service,” so all of us except Dragonfly got busy. We carried firewood for a little outdoor fireplace, which we built for him not far from the house. We carried springwater in a pail Poetry brought from his house. We got him a can opener for the canned food he had and made the place as nice for him as we would have for any paying guest.

  Late that afternoon, when I was in our haymow throwing down hay for the stock, I climbed way up over the hay to my secret place near the crack in the log. There I knelt down for a while and talked to the heavenly Father about what we had done.

  While I was on my knees in the sweet-smelling alfalfa, I began to feel wonderful inside, as though God was talking to me, telling me we were right. I didn’t actually hear any words, but a very cheerful thought was in my mind: I’m proud of you boys. I haven’t anyone to represent Me on earth except people who love Me and who do what is right.

  I went to bed that night thinking about something Dad had said to Mom at the supper table. Then I began to worry about it while I was lying there with the moon streaming in on my pillow, and it was hard to get to sleep. Over and over and over again his words went tumbling through my mind.

  “The Gilberts have leased the Green Corn Motel up at Pike’s Corners. They want to try the motel business to see how they like it. They had all the units taken last night except two.”

  The Green Corn Motel. The Green Corn Motel. Dragonfly’s folks had leased the Green Corn Motel at Pike’s Corners! But the old man had tried to get a room there last night, and there hadn’t been any vacancies. Mr. Robinson would have had to sleep out in the open if he hadn’t stumbled onto our empty sociable weaverbird tree house and had crept in there out of the rainy weather and the cold night air.

  There had been two vacant units at the Green Corn. Two! But the old man couldn’t rent even one. And Dragonfly’s folks had told him they were filled up, when they weren’t.

  I lay there between Mom’s nice clean sheets, listening to the different night sounds, such as the cheeping of the crickets outside, the whirring of the katydids saying over and over, “Katy did; Katy, she did; Katy did; Katy, she did,” and hearing the five-leafed ivy’s hundreds of leaves whispering in the breeze at the window.

  I tried to count sheep as they say you should do when you are having trouble falling asleep. I imagined I was seeing a lot of snow-white lambs in single file, leaping over the rail fence just across the road from “Theodore Collins” on our mailbox and gamboling in a long line down the path toward the spring.

  But always the lambs made a beeline for our tree house, and then I’d be more wide awake than ever, hearing with my mind’s ears Dad’s words at the supper table.

  Before I knew what I was going to do, I was sitting up in bed in the moonlight, with my fists doubled up. I must have said something really loud, for Dad called up the stairs, saying, “Having trouble up there? Any reason why you can’t keep quiet so your mother can go to sleep?”

  Hearing that, I felt sad for a minute, because Mom had been having such a hard time getting enough sleep the past few weeks. I certainly didn’t want to keep her awake. I sighed and lay down again.

  But the Green Corn Motel’s vacant units kept flying around in the sky of my mind. All the units were black with white windows, and they had false teeth.

  And then, all of a sudden, it was morning, clear and cool and cheerful. As I looked at Aunt Miriam’s innocent, open face across from me and then out the window at the pasture, seeing the dewdrops glistening on the clover, I began to feel good inside again.

  But when I looked back at Miriam, her pages still open to the picture of the sociable weaverbird nest, I didn’t feel so happy. With our one homemade, one-room unit, we had gone into the motel business, and we had ten dollars in advance, which Big Jim was taking care of for us. But our unit had been built on Dragonfly’s parents’ property, and for some reason his parents didn’t seem to like black people.

  Just then Mom called up the stairs in her usual before-breakfast voice, which is nearly always a singing voice, saying, “Breakfast’s ready!”

  At the table, Mom said to Dad, “Remember our rule about anything we don’t like. We try to sing our complaints until after we’ve had coffee.”

  Of course, Charlotte Ann and I didn’t drink coffee—just milk or juice of some kind.

  Dad had been frowning at the five shriveled pieces of bacon on his plate beside the two poached eggs. “I didn’t say a word,” he answered Mom.

  “But your forehead was growling,” she answered.

  Dad began to sing then to the tune of the “Doxology” in our church hymnal, “Sing gaily while the bacon burns. Sing gaily while—”

  Mom interrupted his song with words that didn’t have any tune at all. “I’d like some roasting ears pulled for dinner, if one of you men would be interested.”

  The words “roasting ears” reminded me of Green Corn, so I spoke up without any tune in my voice: “You say Dragonfly’s folks have leased the Green Corn Motel at Pike’s Corners?”

  “Yes, they have,” Mom answered, “and I’m afraid it’s a mistake. The last couple who leased it lost hundreds of dollars.”

  Dad’s answer was, “That’s because they leased it in the fall after the tourist season was over. They couldn’t make the rent. The Gilberts are good managers, and they’ll probably make a go of it.”

  “I still don’t think it was wise,” Mom answered, and there was a scolding tone in her voice.

  “What happened to the music?” Dad asked.

  And she quick answered, “I guess I’m a little low today. Don’t pay any attention to how I say things. I’m sorry.”

  I was proud of the way Dad answered Mom. “That’s all right, Mother,” he said. “I don’t feel so cheerful myself.” He finished just as Charlotte Ann in the bedroom decided it was time for her to start her day without singing.

  And the day was off to a kind of nervous start. Mom tried hard to be cheerful—and wasn’t—and a lot of things went wrong around the house, such as Charlotte Ann’s deciding it was the right day for her to be cross and wanting to be baby-sat almost half the morning.

  Dad, however, was as chipper as anything, singing and whistling around the farm and barn. Every now and then, when he came to the house for s
ome reason, he’d go upstairs to see Aunt Miriam. He was studying something special about animal husbandry. There were so many new words in the book he was reading and carrying around in his hip pocket, snatching thoughts out of it every now and then, that he had to have Miriam’s help to understand it.

  I guess I haven’t told you yet that Dad was a little like Poetry—he was always memorizing what he called a “quotable quote.” One he had quoted to us quite a few times that summer was “He who never made a failure probably never made a discovery.”

  He and I were standing by the pitcher pump at the end of the board walk, not far from the kitchen door, when he quoted it to me that very morning. It seemed from the tone of his voice that he was going to mention some failure of mine, something I had done that day and shouldn’t have. Or should have done and hadn’t.

  To change the subject, I quickly asked, “You suppose Dragonfly’s folks will make a failure?”

  “I’m not as pessimistic about it as your mother,” Dad said. Then he lowered his voice, put his arm across my shoulder, and added, “Mother’s not feeling well today, Bill. Let’s be especially thoughtful, helping her all we can, and not paying any attention if she says anything sharp or cross. We know what a wonderful person she is, don’t we?”

  I certainly did know, and I told him so.

  He explained, “She didn’t sleep well last night; and when a person gets only a few hours’ rest, it’s hard to be sweet the next day.”

  “I didn’t sleep well last night myself,” I answered Dad, “so if I’m not a good boy today, I hope you won’t think anything of it.”

  I could feel him grinning behind my back before he answered, quoting another quote, “The rest of your days depends upon the rest of your nights.”

  I decided to tell Dad about renting our sociable weaverbird tree house to Ben Robinson and why.

  Well, that fired up his temper in a way that made me proud of him. “You mean he’d have had to stay out in the chilly weather all night because the Gilberts wouldn’t rent him one of their vacant units?”

  Dad’s jaw was set, I noticed when I looked up at him. I thought he was going to sing something in what is called a minor refrain. Instead, he went on, “The Gilberts do have a problem. Unfortunately, there are still a few prejudiced tourists in America who’d rather not stay at a motel that is integrated, which the Green Corn is supposed to be. It’s a social problem that can’t be solved in a day.”

  “You want to hear one of the best quotable quotes there ever was?” I asked.

  “Surely, let’s have it,” Dad said, and I gave him Little Jim’s quote, “You can’t tell a book by its cover.”

  Dad didn’t say a word for a few seconds. He took a sip of water out of the tin cup we always had hanging there on a wire hook. Then he tossed the last half of the water into the puddle on the other side of the iron kettle, around which a lot of yellow and white butterflies were drinking. That scattered them in seventeen different directions.

  Then Dad pumped a drink for me. While I was drinking, I looked over the top of my cup and noticed the butterflies settling down around the water puddle again. It was a pretty sight. Their yellow and white wings were opening and closing, opening and closing while they drank.

  “Those butterflies used to be caterpillars, Son. It must feel fine to be able to fly after having spent a whole winter in a cocoon,” Dad said in a lazy voice. Then he added, “They shouldn’t have any difficulty being cheerful after all that sleep.”

  He gave me a half hug then, and I was glad I had him for a dad. We kept on standing there till nearly all the butterflies came back and were making a yellow-and-white border around the rim of the puddle, like a big wheel without any spokes. He must have known that I was worried about the old man and especially about Dragonfly’s feeling the way he did.

  “I don’t like Dragonfly’s folks very well,” I said, “and I’m still mad at Roy.” Roy was Dragonfly’s real name, and I only called him that when I didn’t like him very well.

  “Look, Son,” Dad said in the tone of voice he always uses when he is teaching me something. “We won’t judge the Gilberts until we know what they are thinking. Besides, we don’t actually know they turned the old man away. Also I’m not sure they could do it even if they wanted to. Motel managers don’t have that choice in our country anymore. But let me ask you a question. What if by allowing a black person to stay at the Green Corn, they would offend some of the white tourists and they would move out? The Gilberts might lose a lot of money, which they need very much right now. They’ve been having a hard time financially, and they’re getting ready to spend a lot of money on their son for special allergy treatments-money they don’t have.”

  My jaw was tight. I did like Dragonfly in spite of not liking him. I knew how Mom would answer a question like that, so I looked Dad straight in the eye and answered, “I think maybe God would take care of their money problems some other way.”

  And all of a sudden there was a glad feeling in my heart, like the feeling there had been yesterday when I was up in the haymow. And it seemed I was hearing again, I’m proud of you boys. I haven’t anyone to represent Me on earth except people who love Me and who do what is right.

  It seemed that maybe God and I had a secret, and that He and I were special friends.

  I was interrupted in my thoughts right then by my father’s putting a hand on my shoulder and saying, “Thank you, Son, thank you very much. You put the will of God first in your life all your life, and He will never let you down.”

  But my cheerful feeling exploded all to smithereens when Dad astonished me by saying, “There’s a lot of agitation over in the next county against black folks. There was a cross burning at Sam Ballard’s last night.”

  “What’s a cross burning?” I asked. I’d never heard of one. I was tense in all my muscles and even scared.

  Dad’s answer didn’t help me feel any better. “Some rough, tough, heartless young fellows set up an oil-soaked wooden cross in front of Sam’s house and set fire to it,” he explained. “It was their way of saying, ‘We don’t like you!’”

  4

  All the rest of the morning, I kept thinking about Sam Ballard waking up in the middle of the dark night and seeing a flaming cross just outside his front door. How scared he and his wife and children must have been. I imagined one of their little girl twins running to her mother and crying and asking how come there was a fire.

  Then for a few minutes, while I hoed in our garden, I let my mind swing me back through history all the way to the time when Jesus was here on earth. The people who hadn’t liked Him had nailed Him to a cross, and I almost could see the blood coming from His hands and feet and from around the crown of thorns on His head.

  After thinking that, I didn’t realize I was singing until I heard my voice on the second verse of the chorus Miss Trillium had taught us—“Jesus died for all the children of the world.”

  The sad-glad feeling in my mind changed to a mad one, though, when all of a sudden I thought again about the cross burning at Sam Ballard’s house.

  Then I spied a Canada thistle growing at the edge of the garden. I knew that if it wasn’t cut down or uprooted, it would grow into a three-foot-tall, savage-prickled farmer’s enemy. If enough of them got started, they could take over a whole field. I raced across the garden with my hoe, chopped the thistle down, and dug out its roots.

  While I was slicing away at that Canada thistle, it seemed I was trying to chop out what my parents called prejudice.

  The rest of the morning finally passed, and it was time for lunch. We were all at the table and about to bow our heads for Dad to ask the blessing, when Charlotte Ann, still not feeling very happy, decided she wanted to stand up in her chair. She did, and at almost the same time, her blue mug of milk upset, and the milk spilled out. It flowed across the corner of the table and fell splashing onto the linoleum beneath her chair.

  A whirring second later, Mixy, our black-and-white cat, who was in the
kitchen at the time, made a dive for the milk on the floor and started lapping it up in a hurry to drink as much of it as she could before Mom could mop up the rest.

  “Scat!” I yelled down at Mixy, just as Charlotte Ann let out a baby-style bloodcurdling wail.

  Mom came to some of the fastest life I had ever seen her come to. For maybe six minutes there was the most nervous excitement in our kitchen you ever saw or heard or felt—especially felt!

  “When will that child learn she can’t do that!” Mom exclaimed. “When will she stop trying to do acrobatic stunts at the table! Honestly, Theodore!” She finished with her eyes fixed on Dad at the head of the table.

  Right then Dad quoted again one of his newest quotes, saying in a strong, calm voice, “He who has never made a failure, has probably never made a discovery.”

  “That wasn’t a failure,” Mom said in her very worst voice, making me feel sad inside. “That was just plain disobedience. We’ve taught her not to do it, and she knows better than to stand up in her chair! I don’t care if it does make her feel big to get up so high! She knows better.”

  “She only half knew it up to now,” Dad answered quietly. “She just this minute learned the other half. I was reading this morning, in one of Byron’s poems, one of the finest quotes a family could ever learn. He said, ‘Sorrow is knowledge.’”

  “Byron!” Mom’s voice barked. “He was never married and wouldn’t know how to discipline children! And he probably never expected anybody to quote his poetry in the middle of a family storm!”

  That wasn’t the first time Dad had used that quote, but I would never forget it now. In fact, I would use it myself that same week.

  In a little while, our upset family was right side up again and ready to eat. But I could tell by the way I still felt inside that, even though the worst part of the storm in Mom’s mind was over, there was quite a little thunder and lightning left and that Dad was still feeling like a small tornado himself. It seemed everybody was to blame for everything except maybe Charlotte Ann, who was now tied into her chair and couldn’t have gotten out or up, no matter how hard she might wriggle.