Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 1-6

by Paul Hutchens

  Charlotte Ann’s two teeth came through just in time for Thanksgiving dinner—only, of course, she couldn’t have any turkey because babies don’t eat anything but milk and maybe some ground-up, cooked spinach or fruit or whatever a doctor says to feed them.

  That was one of the best dinners I ever had in my life, and I liked it especially well that we’d invited Old Man Paddler to eat with us. My red-haired, freckled-faced city cousin was there too. His dad was my dad’s brother. They brought with them their brown-and-tan Airedale dog, Fritz. He was medium sized and had thick, rough hair, which looked like it had never been combed, and short ears.

  I could see right away that Fritz and Mixy didn’t like each other, and I knew there’d be trouble before the visit was over. Fritz didn’t like any cats very well, which most dogs don’t.

  The day before Thanksgiving, my red-haired, freckled-faced city cousin and I went out to the pen where our big old turkey was locked up, getting fatter and lazier all the time. Fritz was with us. His tail was standing straight up like the tail of the little blue Scottish terrier on Charlotte Ann’s bassinet.

  Dogs, you know, have at least eight different kinds of tails. There was a book in my library that told about them. You see, my parents had a corner of their library filled with books especially for boys, and I called it my library. There was a book on wild animals of America, birds of America, wild flowers and trees, and a large, beautiful Bible storybook, which was easy to read and understand, and many other good storybooks. I guess my parents thought my mind was as important as the rest of me, and they wanted to give it something to eat. They knew it was especially good for a boy to read good books.

  Well, one of those books had a short chapter telling all about the different kinds of dogs’ tails. The “ring” tail, for example, starts straight up, then curves around over the dog’s back, making a complete circle. The “sickle” tail is shaped like the sharp sickle Dad uses to cut weeds. The “whip” tail hangs straight back like the tail of Circus’s English setter dog. The “crank” tail hangs like the crank on an old-fashioned car. The “gay” tail stands straight up like Fritz’s did and like the tails of Scottish terriers do.

  When it rained, our turkey’s tail hung down so the rain would run off his back. When he felt proud and liked to show off, he would spread his feathers like a big fan. He could make himself look almost twice as big as he was.

  Well, Walford, which is my city cousin’s name, and Fritz and I stood looking through the wire fence at Caesar, the turkey. We said different things about him and tried to get him to pay attention to us, which he wouldn’t. But once in awhile he’d lift his naked reddish head and let out a hideous “Gobble-gobble-obble-obble-obble!” that made Fritz whimper and try to get through the fence so he could play with him.

  I was feeling a little sad, knowing that by this time tomorrow old Caesar would be naked all over and without any head or feet and would be lying upside down all full of stuffing in Mom’s big oven, getting nice and brown for our dinner. I liked old Caesar, and I think he liked me. Sometimes he would let me pet him.

  Everything would have been all right if Walford hadn’t been so proud of the different tricks Fritz could do. Pretty soon Walford got tired of just looking at old Caesar so he decided he wanted to tie a rope around the turkey’s scrawny neck and teach Fritz to lead him. I knew right away that it wasn’t a good idea, but Walford didn’t know it and neither did Fritz. I argued against it for a while and then finally gave in and went and got a rope just to show Walford he was wrong.

  Then we went into the pen. I fastened one end of the rope to Caesar’s neck, while he kept shaking his head at me, not liking it very well. Walford fastened the other end of the rope to Fritz’s collar.

  It turned out that Walford was right—with a little coaxing and Walford leading him, Fritz marched around and around inside the fence, leading old Caesar. Fritz was as proud as anything. I even wished I could get on Caesar’s back and ride.

  Walford laughed and laughed and shouted, “See there! What did I tell you!”

  Yes, he was right—for about five minutes—until Fritz spied Mixy on the other side of the gate, which was shut but wasn’t hooked. Something inside of me went first cold and then hot. I seemed to know something was going to happen. In fact, it was already happening right before my scared eyes.

  The very second that Airedale spied Mixy’s black-and-white fur there by the gate, he forgot all about being tied to a turkey’s neck. He whirled and made a dash for the gate, where I was standing. Before I could stop him, he shoved it open and gave chase to Mixy—and here came old Caesar squawking and gobbling and flopping after him.

  Walford and I screamed at the top of our lungs for Fritz to stop.

  But Fritz was like a car going downhill without any brakes.

  I couldn’t think very well, but I thought, What if Fritz catches Mixy? He might even kill her! I made a grab for the rope and missed it.

  Then I quick decided to slam the gate shut, thinking I could catch the rope in the crack between the gate and the post and stop Fritz. I guess I was more worried about saving Mixy than I was Caesar’s neck, so without thinking until afterwards, I threw my whole weight against the gate, which was seventy-two pounds, and slammed it hard.

  Well, that stopped Fritz. In fact he stopped so quick he almost turned a somersault backwards. Mixy went scooting like a scared rabbit straight for the barn, flashed through a hole under it, and was safe.

  But that wasn’t all that happened. The gate had shut ker-squash right on Caesar’s scrawny old neck!

  Anyhow, that’s how I killed our Thanksgiving turkey that fall. Actually, Dad had to finish killing him, which he did with a sharp ax on a big block of wood.

  9

  Poetry came over to our house after dinner that day because he’d heard my city cousin was there and he wanted to see Walford. Nearly all our gang had city cousins, and they didn’t know much about country life. In fact, the first time Walford came to see me, which was when he was little, he was so ignorant he thought milk grew in bottles on trees like bananas.

  As I told you, he had a very freckled face. In fact there wasn’t even one tiny corner of his face that didn’t have freckles on it. He had two upper front teeth that were too big for his small face. But that didn’t matter, because by the time his face quit growing, his teeth would be just the right size. You see, the teeth were already as big as they would ever get. Lots of boys—and even girls—look funny when they’re ten years old, and they can’t help it.

  I could see the minute Poetry came wading through the snow toward us that he was in a mischievous mood. I’d warned Walford ahead of time not to get angry at anything he did or said.

  When Poetry got to within about ten feet of us, he stopped and stared at Walford as if he was seeing a ghost. Then he stooped and stretched his neck this way and that and rubbed his eyes as though he was trying to see better or else couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He walked all the way around us, looking at Walford as if looking at some interesting animal in a zoo.

  Then Poetry stopped, grunted, and looked at Walford’s freckles and big front teeth, which were almost far enough apart to push a feather through, and at his red hair, which showed under his winter cap. Then with his eyes still on Walford, he said to him, “What big ears you have, Grandma!” quoting from the story of Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf.

  Walford’s face turned even redder than it was, but he didn’t get mad. He just grinned and said in a deep voice like the old wolf’s, “All the more to hear you with, my dear.”

  And Poetry said, “What big teeth you have, Grandma!”

  And Walford said, “All the more to eat you up with, my dear!”

  With that remark, Walford looked down at Poetry’s feet, which certainly were extra large for a boy Poetry’s age, and said, “What big feet you have, Little Red Riding Hood!”

  And in a jiffy both boys were in the middle of a good old-fashioned snow fight, neither one of t
hem being angry but each one trying to see which was the stronger, as boys will do.

  Fritz came running through the snow and joined in the scramble, and that reminded me of the turkey.

  After we’d talked about that incident a while, I told Poetry about Old Man Paddler coming to our house for dinner tomorrow. Poetry’s eyes lit up at that because every boy who knew Old Man Paddler liked him. I suppose the reason was because Old Man Paddler just liked kids and was always doing something for them. Kids are sort of like dogs. If you like them and are kind to them, they’ll like you and be kind to you.

  That started us talking about Old Man Paddler, and Poetry and I had a good time for a while telling Walford about the exciting things that had happened to the Sugar Creek Gang that summer. We told him how we’d found a map hidden in a hollow tree and how we had caught a robber at midnight while he was digging for Old Man Paddler’s money in the swamp, and how Little Jim had killed a fierce mother bear—things like that.

  Then like thunder out of a blue sky, Walford asked, “What became of Old Man Paddler’s nephew, who got shot when the police thought he was a robber?”

  We had actually forgotten all about him. In fact, after he’d gotten out of the hospital, he had just disappeared, and we hadn’t seen or heard of him since.

  “He’ll get all Old Man Paddler’s money when the old man dies, won’t he?” Walford asked.

  That made me remember that the kind old man had told the Sugar Creek Gang that he’d put something in his will for every one of us. But that was a secret. Nobody else was to know, so I said to Walford, “I guess Barry Boyland”—which is the nephew’s name—“is the only living relative.”

  Poetry winked at me secretly, and we started talking about something else, but not until Walford had said, “I wonder how the old man gets his groceries and things in the winter when the snow is too deep for him to go to town?”

  And that’s what our gang was wondering that day in the middle of December when we packed Poetry’s sled with supplies and went up to see him. But I’ll have to tell you about Thanksgiving dinner first, when Old Man Paddler ate with us.

  Thanksgiving Day came at last, and we were all sitting around the table at our house: Uncle Phil, Aunt Bessie, Mom, Dad, Charlotte Ann, Walford, me—and dear Old Man Paddler, who had the best table manners I ever saw. He had on his new glasses, which had thick lenses, and he always wore them when he was reading or eating and had to see things up close. Most of the time they were off and in a little brown case in his pocket.

  Charlotte Ann was sitting in a high chair, tied in so she wouldn’t fall out, and waiting to be fed a bite whenever Mom decided to give one to her. She had on a cute white dress and a blue-and-white bib tied on with strings around her neck. There was a blue stripe running all the way down the middle of the bib.

  Walford and I were both in a very mischievous mood, which boys sometimes get into at the wrong times, and not on purpose either. Just when I was supposed to be quiet because it was time to ask the blessing, I thought of something funny. I felt a smile coming on my face, and I knew I was going to snicker out loud, and I wasn’t going to be able to help it.

  It was Charlotte Ann’s blue-and-white bib that caused it. I looked at Old Man Paddler’s long beard, which completely covered his chest like a bib and was as clean as Mom’s white tablecloth. Then I thought, What if he’d accidentally spill some of Mom’s blueberry jam on it and it’d run all the way down and make a long blue mark like the blue stripe on Charlotte Ann’s bib?

  It wasn’t even funny, I guess, but I thought it was, and I giggled out loud just as Dad bowed his head. In fact, he had just said, “Will you ask the blessing first, Bill?”

  We nearly always did it that way at our house. I generally prayed a little poem prayer I’d learned. Then Mom or Dad prayed afterward and said something, although we sometimes just bowed our heads and shut our eyes and each one prayed his own prayer quietly without saying any words out loud.

  Well, there we all sat with our heads bowed and with Old Man Paddler’s white whiskers almost touching my blushing cheeks, and I was supposed to pray!

  Things looked bad for me, but I knew I hadn’t done wrong on purpose and that God knew I was a boy and He liked boys as well as anybody. So I pinched myself hard on the leg so I wouldn’t snicker again, and it hurt so much I said “Ouch” instead. I would have snickered again, but I felt Dad’s eyebrows hanging over me, so I quoted my poem prayer:

  “We thank Thee, Father, for our homes.

  For friends who help each day,

  For food we eat and clothes we wear,

  For all the gifts Thy children share.”

  And at that very minute I remembered that I’d planned to surprise my parents by adding some words of my own next time I prayed, so I said, “We thank You also for Jesus, our Savior, who died for us. And help us to always live for Him. Amen.”

  Then Old Man Paddler prayed a beautiful prayer, thanking the Lord for different things such as a country that was free from war and things like that. And then he prayed for all our gang by name, not by our real names either but by the names we had mostly given each other: Big Jim, Little Jim, Circus, Dragonfly, Poetry, and Bill, which was me.

  When I opened my eyes and looked up, I didn’t feel like snickering anymore. I could feel both Mom and Dad looking at me, and I knew they were wondering if I was all right or maybe just a little off in my mind or something.

  Old Man Paddler was looking at me too with the kindest eyes, as if he liked me very much. I could hardly see his eyes though, unless I looked around the edges of his glasses, on account of the lenses being so thick.

  Late that afternoon I was alone up in our haymow throwing down hay for our horses and cows. I was remembering something important my dad had taught me once: When you know you’ve done something wrong—even if you didn’t do it on purpose—if you confess it to God right away, He’ll forgive you that very minute. So while I was standing on a great big mound of hay, I prayed and told my heavenly Father that I didn’t laugh at prayer time on purpose but I knew it was wrong anyway and that I was sorry.

  There wasn’t any answer out loud, but I knew way down inside of me that everything was all right, and that He still liked me. So I started singing a new chorus Sylvia’s dad had taught us, which goes like this:

  “It’s a grand thing to be a Christian,

  It’s a grand thing, I know.”

  And those are all the important things that happened until we went up to Old Man Paddler’s cabin, which I’m going to tell you about right now.

  10

  One cold day our gang went up to see Old Man Paddler, although it wasn’t very cold when we started.

  Nobody around our neighborhood had seen the old man for a while because the weather had been snowy, so we supposed he had decided to stay in and keep warm. We knew he had plenty of wood to burn because, as I told you, there was a great big high stack right in the main room of his cabin, and there was another little room that was almost full of wood too.

  But even an old man had to eat, so our gang, with our parents saying we could, decided to take Poetry’s big toboggan full of groceries and go up to the log cabin in the hills where the old man lived to pay him a visit. A toboggan, you know, is a sled that generally doesn’t have any runners but is made of long, flat, thin boards curved up at the front end.

  Dad went to town the morning of that day, which was Saturday, and got the old man’s mail. There were a half dozen letters (one from California) and two new magazines that the old man subscribed to. So we took the letters and magazines with us, knowing they’d help to make us welcome.

  The sky was clear and as blue as one of my mom’s summer morning glories when we started. Each one of us wore snowshoes, which look something like tennis rackets. When you have snowshoes on, you don’t have to go around snowdrifts if you don’t want to but can walk right on top of them and not sink in.

  Pretty soon we had Poetry’s toboggan packed and were ready to g
o. Each one of our mothers had given us something to take, such as bread and butter; tin cans of milk, corn, and beans; bacon; and flour. Little Jim’s mother sent some sassafras roots for making sassafras tea, which was Old Man Paddler’s favorite drink—and Little Jim’s too, ever since he’d learned how good it was.

  It was about one o’clock in the afternoon when we started. We decided to follow the old wagon trail that winds around among the hills, getting higher and higher all the time. Years ago, our folks told us, before Old Man Paddler had taken his trip around the world and was gone so long everybody thought he was dead, the road had been pretty good. He had owned a horse and wagon then, which he drove to town and back. The road was still there, but it wasn’t used anymore, and in some places fallen trees lay across it.

  There were a lot of deep snowdrifts in it that day. But we decided to follow it anyway so we’d be sure not to get lost, although Poetry had a compass on one end of his waterproof matchbox.

  The compass looked a little like a watch, only instead of having numbers on its face as watches do, it had letters: N for north; S for south; E for east; and W for west. A lot of letters, which told you exactly which direction was which, were in between. Instead of having two hands as watches do, the compass had just one, and it always pointed straight north, so you could always know which direction you were going.

  On the other end of Poetry’s waterproof matchbox was a magnifying glass called a “burning glass,” which first-class Boy Scouts know how to use to start a fire when they don’t have matches. And between the compass and the magnifying glass was a place for matches. Poetry always carried his matchbox with him whenever we went on important trips, so we’d have a compass and not get lost. And we were always needing matches.