Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 7-12 Page 5

  Hanging on another wall, just above a battery radio, was a large rectangular map of the whole world. It was spread out and tacked up with thumbtacks to the wooden wall. Old Man Paddler had pins with large heads of different colors stuck into the map in different places. There were yellow pins in China and Japan; red pins in some parts of South America; pins with black heads on parts of Africa; pins with brown heads in places such as Mexico and Brazil and in some of the islands just below Florida. On a little island named Haiti were black pins. On the long caterpillar-shaped map of Palm Tree Island were several light brown pins.

  The minute I saw the name “Palm Tree Island” I remembered what I was supposed to remember to tell Old Man Paddler—I was supposed to say what my dad had told me to say, and that was, “Be sure to tell Old Man Paddler that I’ll come up to see him tomorrow about Palm Tree Island.”

  I was waiting for a chance to say something, not telling him right away because everybody was still talking to everybody else and nobody was listening to the rest of us.

  Maybe I ought to tell you that almost right away Old Man Paddler started pouring the tea for us. It had been steaming on the stove beside the teakettle, a nice red-colored tea that we all liked very much, especially Little Jim. On the table was a big bowl of sugar and cups and cups and cups, enough for the whole Sugar Creek Gang and the men and also for the dogs. I forgot to say that the dogs were lying on the floor, very sleepy, just dozing with their eyes half closed, half open. Maybe they were drowsy because they had been working so hard out in the cold. They were like some of the farmers who come to the Sugar Creek church in the wintertime. After being outdoors all week in the cold, they just go to sleep in church almost as soon as our minister starts preaching. It isn’t his fault, because he always preaches a good sermon, which he has worked hard to prepare.

  Anyway, the dogs were lying there almost asleep in front of the warm, friendly fireplace. A minute later the tea was all poured, the sugar was in, and every one of us was sitting there or half lying down or half sitting up. Some of us were at the table. The rest of us were just holding our cups and saucers on our laps or wherever we wanted to, because it was what is called an informal tea party.

  There were cookies and cakes also. I was pretty sure Old Man Paddler hadn’t baked those cookies. I remembered having seen some exactly like them in our cookie jar back home, and I didn’t get to take any because Mom had seen me starting to and had said, “Bill Collins! Always ask me first whether you can have a cookie, because I might need them for company.”

  As good a boy as I was, I always had to worry about whether there would be enough cookies for company. I always hated to ask, even though I knew that if I didn’t ask too often, I could nearly always have one—or even two.

  It wasn’t very much of a party, but Old Man Paddler’s cabin was certainly a friendly place to be. That white-whiskered man with his twinkling gray-green eyes and his very thick-lensed glasses was the jolliest old man you ever saw. I used to wonder why he was so happy, because I’d seen some old men who were very crabby. I guess something I heard my dad say once was right, and that was “The devil doesn’t have any happy old men.”

  I looked at Old Man Paddler, and I knew the devil certainly didn’t have him and never would, because God had got him first. Old Man Paddler liked being a Christian so well that he’d rather die than not be Jesus’ friend.

  Little Jim was looking at me again. He reached out with the toe of his boot and touched the heel of mine, and I knew that he was getting ready to ask the old man his important question.

  I nodded my head to let him know I was ready and that it was the best time, because right that minute everybody was talking about the coon. In fact, Circus’s dad was just taking the beautiful gray pelt with the seven black furry rings on its tail out of the pocket of his coat, which he’d hung up on a homemade wooden hanger near the door when he came in. He displayed it, showing Old Man Paddler what a beautiful thing it was, and we were looking at it and remembering the chase and the fight at the tree and the shot and everything.

  Mr. Paddler was admiring it with his gray-green eyes. Suddenly he said, “That reminds me of a story about Old Tom the trapper.” And before I knew it he had launched into a story, his bobbing whiskers and his trembling voice making Little Jim smile, because he was very fond of that friendly person. In fact, it looked as if Seneth Paddler had planned from the very first to tell that story and as if Circus’s dad had asked him to tell it so that the Sugar Creek Gang could have a specially happy time on their hunting trip.

  Anyway, it was a story that I won’t have time to tell now, but it was about a trapper who was shot with an Indian arrow one morning when he was running his trapline. Old Tom had lived along Sugar Creek away back yonder in the days when Seneth Paddler and his twin brother were little boys. Sometime I’m going to have Old Man Paddler tell that story all over again to the Sugar Creek Gang, and I’ll write it down in a book for you, maybe.

  As soon as the thrilling story was finished, Little Jim’s boot touched mine again. He was just ready to ask his question when Circus’s dad looked at his heavy watch and then at the gray-blue hound and said, “Well, Bawler, let’s go get ’em!”

  Talk about a dog waking up in a hurry. I wish I’d get wide awake that quick when my dad calls me to get up in the morning—unless it’s Saturday morning and there is a tooth to be filled. Old Bawler didn’t even take time to stretch and yawn and make a weird little noise in her throat, the way most dogs do when they wake up. Bawler was up on four feet quicker than Circus can climb a sapling and was over at the front door of the cabin whimpering and scratching and looking back at Dan Browne. In very good dog language she seemed to be saying, “Well, what on earth are we waiting for? Why don’t we go now?”

  Then Dan Browne said, “Sol! Wake up!”

  Old rusty-red Sol, whose voice out in the woods is deep and gruff and hollow, let out a kind of low whimper and slowly opened his red-brown eyes. He looked lazily up at Circus’s dad, wagged his long tail in a slow, lazy wag, and shut his eyes again. I suddenly was reminded of a boy who had a rusty-red head of hair who sometimes did that same thing, and I decided I liked Old Sol better than I did Old Bawler.

  The men and Circus and Big Jim got up noisily, took their coats and the lanterns and mittens or gloves, whichever they’d had, and we watched them go down the path from Old Man Paddler’s door, the one that leads past his spring and his woodshed. It wasn’t too cold to leave the door open a minute, so the four of us younger boys stood there watching the swinging lanterns and the shadows bouncing around in every direction. Jeep was begging to go too, trembling with excitement and sitting on his haunches beside the doorstep, looking up at Dragonfly for permission.

  It didn’t feel very good to know we couldn’t go along, but then I reckon one boy can’t have all the fun there is in all the world, and he ought to be glad he gets as much as he does. But I tell you, a red-haired, ruddy-complexioned, seventy-five-pound boy can certainly take a lot and still be hungry for more.

  I felt a strange lump in my throat, knowing that I couldn’t go. For a half minute I was mad at my dad for letting the dentist make that date for me at eight o’clock in the morning. I was also angry at the dentist.

  Just before we shut the door and went back into the cabin to wait for Little Jim’s dad, I heard from away out in the woods and far up the hill a long, high-pitched dog howl that sounded like a loon and a trembly-voiced hoot owl at the same time, and it was Old Bawler striking a new trail. “Whooo!”

  Then as if she had called across the valley to Old Sol, we heard him answer in his long, sad, gruff baritone, “WHOOO!” and we knew another chase was on.

  We listened a while, then went inside, shut the door, and began what we supposed would be a very sad half hour of waiting for Little Jim’s dad to come and get him and the rest of us.

  Anyway, I thought, when we were inside and sitting or lying down on the friendly floor beside the fire in the fireplace, Little
Jim can ask about Adam and Eve. I was getting curious to know the answer myself, mainly, I suppose, because Little Jim was so anxious to know.

  Maybe we could turn on the radio, I thought, and listen to a program. I suggested it to Old Man Paddler.

  He went over to the radio and was just going to turn it on when we heard steps, and I knew they were coming from the cave entrance to the cabin. Only they were running steps instead of walking steps, as I knew Little Jim’s dad’s would be, and there wasn’t any knock at the wooden door down there in the cellar. Instead, there was something else.

  There came a banging and a banging and a man’s excited voice calling, “Let me in! Open up and let me in! Quick!”

  6

  Open up and let me in! Quick!”

  Those rough, scared words sounded like—who did they sound like they belonged to?

  I looked at Little Jim’s mouselike face, and he was sitting with his fists doubled up. He looked around quick and reached for his stick, which he nearly always carries. It was lying beside him, a striped stick with half the bark on it and half off, making it look like a long piece of dirty stick candy. He grabbed up that stick, and right away he looked and probably felt braver.

  Dragonfly’s dragonfly-like eyes were wide open. His fists were doubled up.

  Poetry just looked puzzled, as if he had been shocked. I wondered if he was trying to think of a poem and couldn’t.

  Jeep, the picayune, was standing straight up on his four legs, with his stub of a tail also straight up. He looked as though he was going to be very brave. His voice had a deep, gruff growl in it, and he barked a low, savage bark, which was half bark and half growl. The rough brown-tan hair on his back was doing most of his talking for him, and it said, “I’m mad! I won’t let anybody tear anybody’s door down without putting up a fight!”

  Again there came that scared pounding on the cave door down in the cellar.

  Old Man Paddler, who had been stirring up the fire, turned around quick and said, “Sh! You boys go upstairs. Sh! Quietly! I’ll handle this. Hurry, but no noise!”

  I certainly didn’t want to go upstairs, not when there was going to be the sort of excitement I knew there was going to be. The kind voice of Old Man Paddler had disappeared, and it sounded as if he meant business—like my dad’s deep voice sounded sometimes when his bushy eyebrows were down.

  As much as I hated to do it, I followed Little Jim and Dragonfly upstairs to the loft. And Poetry followed me, none of us being able to do it very quietly.

  It was dark up there, but we could see a little by the light coming up the stairs from the kerosene lamp on the mantel and also because there was a crack or two in the floor up there.

  I could see a cot and a dresser and some boxes and a writing desk and an old spinning wheel and different things like that.

  I’d forgotten about the Airedale, but we needn’t have worried about him. When he saw us all scrambling up that rough stairway, he must have decided it was a good place to be, because there he was, right next to Dragonfly. Except that he wasn’t keeping quiet.

  I thought maybe I ought to take charge of things up there, so I imagined how Big Jim would have done it, and I said in a harsh whisper, “Everybody keep quiet and don’t move or whisper or anything!” It felt good to give orders like that, and for a second I was a general in an army and everybody was obeying me. Me! I felt important and as if I was more than I am.

  I peeped through the crack in the floor that was right under my eyes. I could see the whole room—the many cups and saucers, not yet washed; the fire crackling in the fireplace; the teakettle on the stove, with steam coming out lazily because it was on the back of the stove; the radio and the map of the world; and Old Man Paddler, with one hand on the iron ring in the floor, pulling the trapdoor up. Then I saw the dark hole that was the cellar, and the wooden steps going down.

  “Just a minute!” his voice called down the cellar stairs, and it was a very businesslike voice, not a bit scared. This was a different Old Man Paddler than I had seen before, and I thought more of him than ever. Just the same, I didn’t want him to be alone with somebody who might be a criminal, or he might get hurt.

  I stayed close to the stairway and took hold of the other end of Little Jim’s stick, just in case the old man might need help. It wouldn’t take me more than seconds to get down those steps.

  I was trembling as badly as Jeep was. I could feel the other end of the stick trembling a little too, and I knew what that meant.

  Just then Dragonfly whispered, “Listen!”

  I listened, and Dragonfly whispered, “That’s old hook-nosed John Till’s voice!”

  First, I heard Seneth Paddler’s question as he called from down in the cellar, “Who’s there?” Then I heard the scared answer, “It’s John Till. Let me in quick. I’m c-cold. I’m nearly frozen.”

  It was a cold night, but not that cold, I knew. But then, he might not have on many clothes.

  Anyway, I wasn’t as scared as I was before, although John Till and I weren’t very good friends. We hadn’t been since I’d had a fight with him once in our oats field when he had given Circus’s dad some whiskey. I had been so angry that day that I’d jumped in to help Circus and had plastered first one and then the other fist all over his crooked nose for almost four seconds before he whammed me on the jaw and ended the short fight. I never did forget that.

  I lay there, glued fast to the upstairs floor, my eyes watching that trapdoor, my ears grabbing every sound they could. I heard the opening of the wooden cave door, the squeaking of the hinges, and John Till’s voice saying, “Thank you.” I was surprised to hear him say that.

  A little later, John came up the stairs first, a big, ugly-looking man with a crooked nose and mussed-up hair that stuck out from under his black felt hat, which was pulled down tight onto his forehead. He had a flashlight in his hand. It was still on. He was wearing boots that were muddy and looked as if he had been in the swamp down by the sycamore tree. He didn’t have on any coat, so I knew he really was cold. He slumped down into a chair just as soon as Old Man Paddler came up and closed the trapdoor, and he stretched his gloveless hands out toward the fire.

  The next thing I saw was Old Man Paddler pouring a cup of sassafras tea—first getting a clean cup from the cupboard—and giving the tea with a sandwich to that hungry, trembling man.

  John Till wasn’t saying a word, but he kept looking around as though afraid of something. I was glad the teakettle was singing a little, because we upstairs certainly weren’t too quiet. I could hear us breathing and feel my heart beating and the other end of the stick shaking. And I could smell the Airedale, who was too close to my nose, and also the sassafras tea from downstairs.

  And then I saw John Till jump as if he had heard something.

  “That was just a dead branch falling from the old pine tree out there,” Seneth Paddler explained. “Have another cup of tea? Here, here’s another sandwich left over from—you’re probably hungry.”

  You should have seen that man eat. He almost grabbed the sandwich off the plate.

  My own lunch was still down there beside the fireplace. I hadn’t eaten it on account of there had been enough other food prepared for us.

  Pretty soon Old Man Paddler, who was sitting beside his table, reached up to the mantelpiece and took down a black book and laid it on the table, close by one of his elbows. I knew what kind of book it was, and so did Little Jim, who must have seen too because he pressed my arm.

  Mr. Paddler’s voice was kind again now, since he knew who it was and saw that John Till wasn’t going to hurt him.

  “Mr. Till,” he said, “your son Bob is turning out to be a very respectable boy. We’re proud of him, and I know you must be too.”

  And do you know what? I heard a kind of half sob in old hook-nosed John Till’s throat as he answered huskily, “Something’s changed him, and I guess maybe it’s you. You—”

  “No, not I,” the old man said, and Seneth Paddler reached
out a hand and put it on John Till’s shoulder. “It’s the power of the—”

  I knew exactly what he was going to say, and so did Little Jim and maybe Poetry, because they both put their hands on my arm at the same time. I knew the old man was going to say it was an almighty power that had changed Bob Till, because that was the way he believed and the way it was.

  “It’s the power of the Lord, John—the same power that will come into your life too, if you will give Him a chance. There isn’t anything too hard for Him.”

  Old Man Paddler hadn’t any sooner said that than John Till’s old black hat came off and he bowed his head. I actually saw several great big tears tumble out and splash down on the rough wooden floor right beside the ring in the trapdoor.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes. It couldn’t be! Not old hook-nosed John Till, I thought. People like him didn’t ever change. They just kept on being wicked and mean, and then they died and—

  And all the time, Seneth Paddler’s gnarled old hand was on his shoulder. “Listen, John”—I could hear tears in Mr. Paddler’s voice, and I knew he not only liked that mean man but even more than that—“listen, John, I wonder if you would be willing to let me pray for you right now. Your two boys ought to have a Christian father, and Mrs. Till has a right to happiness, which she’ll never have unless—”

  John Till shook as if he was still cold.

  That’s what Dragonfly thought was wrong when he whispered into my right ear, “He’s got a chill and will maybe get pneumonia.”

  It wasn’t a chill, though.

  “Look here,” Old Man Paddler said kindly, and there in front of my eyes and right straight in front of John Till’s eyes was the old man’s open Bible. He began reading in a voice that still sounded as if it had tears in it. And this is what we who were upstairs heard—a part of it anyway, because we couldn’t hear very well. It was “Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.”