Well, we knew that we were not far from the cemetery, and I guessed that Dragonfly had been up there and had thought he had seen a ghost in the daytime even.
We rolled over in the grass into his way. He stumbled over us, and we had a scramble for a while. It turned out that Dragonfly wasn’t scared at all. He was only excited and very happy.
“It’s a cave!” he half screamed. “I s-saw it myself with my own eyes!” which, of course, I thought, didn’t make it so.
He unscrambled himself from us, jumped to his feet, and started to run, yelling back at us, “Hurry up! Follow me, and I’ll show you.”
That little spindle-legged guy was so excited that we came to life quick, left our bikes where they were leaning up against the fence, and streaked down the lane after him.
Lickety-sizzle, leap, dodge, whoopee, zip-zip-zip, swish—we followed Dragonfly’s flying feet, past the tumbledown old cemetery and over another rail fence. We went sailing down Bumblebee Hill and on toward the spring and to the sycamore tree, which grew on the side of the hill right above Sugar Creek itself.
There Dragonfly stopped and yelled, “Look! See it?”
We looked and panted and couldn’t believe what we saw. And yet we had to, because right there it was, a big hole in the side of the hill at the base of the sycamore tree. That old sycamore had been struck by lightning, and there was a great, long, fierce-looking gash running right down the trunk into the ground.
And right there before our eyes we saw that the lightning had opened up an honest-to-goodness cave. As far back inside as we could see, it was still cave and very dark and black, although the entrance was small, just about the size of a boy like Poetry, who, of course, wasn’t small.
Just that minute I saw somebody’s red head push its way out of the cave, and it was Little Tom Till. Then out came Circus’s curly brown head and his monkey face; then Big Jim’s brown hair and square jaw, followed by Little Jim’s blue eyes and mouselike face and mischievous grin—and we were all there.
We found out afterward that Dragonfly had found the cave himself, when he and the rest of the gang had been walking around that afternoon, and they had sent him to hunt up Poetry and me.
Of course Poetry and I wanted to go inside, which we did, and pretty soon all of us were in.
It really wasn’t much of a cave, only about ten feet across each way and about seven feet high. But it had a rock wall all around and a rock roof, so we knew it would be a safe place for us to play and wouldn’t cave in on us, as a dirt roof might. Our parents wouldn’t need to worry about us when we played there.
We all knew it wasn’t safe to play in a cave with a dirt or a sand roof, because sometimes they caved in and buried boys alive, smothering them to death.
Big Jim had already been home for some candles. He’d set one on each side up on a little ledge of rock and lit them. We looked funny to each other, sitting there in a sort of half circle with the candles flickering and our faces covered with moving shadows.
We were sitting around telling stories and imagining we were pirates when all of a sudden, Poetry squawked, “Listen! I hear something!”
We all stopped chattering and listened, and we did hear something, I thought. And then I didn’t think it, because everything was quiet again.
Then Big Jim whispered in a spooky voice and with a hideous grin on his face, “It might be a ghost!” His voice was half whisper and half growl.
Dragonfly, who was sitting with his back propped against my shoulder, jumped as though he had heard a shot. You know he was the only one of us who believed in ghosts.
Well, it was too nice an afternoon to stay in a dark cave. We had decided to go outside a while and do something else, when Poetry caught my shirt and whispered, “Wait a minute!”
I waited a minute, and he pulled me back inside a little farther, saying, “Ssh! Listen right here against this side of the cave!”
I laid my head against the rock wall, and what I heard was as plain as day. It sounded kind of spooky at first, and—of course, there just wasn’t any sense to it—it sounded like somebody pounding with something very far away.
We looked at each other’s face in the candlelight—his big round face and my freckled one—and we knew we had discovered something. The noise was like somebody pounding and not with a hammer, either. It was like somebody with a pickax trying to dig his way out of somewhere.
As you maybe know, Poetry was always imagining himself to be a detective, so he whispered to me, “This is a secret, Bill Collins. Promise me you won’t tell a soul.”
We shook hands in what we called a solemn pledge not to tell anybody what we’d heard.
Then I moved my freckled face over to one of the candles, and Poetry moved his round face toward the other one, and puff, out went the two candles in two breaths. In another minute we were outside in the bright sunlight, which was playing and dancing everywhere and making the little wavelets on Sugar Creek sparkle as if they were happy, which maybe they were.
I hadn’t been out of the cave more than a moment when I saw Little Jim standing up by the sycamore tree with his ash stick, striking away at some of the loose bark and knocking it off just for fun. I looked at Poetry, and he looked at me, and we sighed at each other.
“You and your great detective ideas!” I said. “My ideas!” he said disgustedly. “Who said it was my idea?”
With that, Poetry grinned at me as if he had known all the time that the pounding was Little Jim with his stick and had been fooling me. Just the same, he put his forefinger up to his pursed lips and quoted from one of his 101 poems:
“Two ears and only one mouth have you,
The reason I think is clear:
It teaches, my child, that it will not do
To talk about all you hear.”
We had fun until it got to be late in the afternoon. When Poetry and I and the rest of the gang couldn’t think of anything else we wanted to do together, we had a meeting by the sycamore tree. We agreed to meet at the cave next time. We would each bring a blanket or sleeping bag from home and all sleep there overnight —maybe the very next Friday night—if our parents would let us. Then we adjourned, and each one went whichever way he wanted to with whomever he wanted to our different homes.
Poetry and I went together because our bikes were up there beyond Bumblebee Hill waiting for us. Neither one of us knew we were going to run right smack into another interesting experience before we got home.
4
We rambled back toward Bumblebee Hill, puffed our way up to the top, climbed over the old vine-covered rail fence, pushed our way through the chokecherry shrubs, picking and eating some of the dark-purple, winy-flavored, shiny-skinned cherries and getting our lips stained at the same time.
We’d just come to Sarah Paddler’s grave, when all of a sudden Poetry gasped and said, “Come here a minute, will you?”
I poked along over to where he was standing and reading something on a very old tombstone. And would you believe it? It said on that stone, which was tall and flat and had a carved picture of the Good Shepherd at the top, leaning out over the edge of a mountain to save a little lonely lamb from falling:
DANIEL, JOHN, AND WILLIAM
THREE SONS OF SENETH AND SARAH PADDLER
There had been more on the stone, which the weather had rubbed out, but I remembered Dad had once told me that Old Man Paddler had had three sons a very long time ago, and that they had all died. That was the reason he liked boys so well and maybe was why he was extra kind to the Sugar Creek Gang.
We were standing there looking at the names and feeling and thinking different things, when Poetry said, “I wonder what they died of?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Smallpox, maybe,” which is a very dangerous contagious disease against which every boy and every girl ought to be vaccinated so they won’t get it. Doctors will even do it free for poor people.
I was looking at the name “William” and wondering how old he had been. Y
ou know my first name is “William.”
Just that minute, we heard somebody coming, so we ran down along the fence, climbed over, and flopped down in the grass of the abandoned lane, not far from our bicycles, and watched.
In a minute, we saw a man hobbling along —an old man with long white whiskers and white hair. He was carrying a yardstick in one hand and a sickle and a potted plant of some kind in the other.
“Ssh!” Poetry shushed me when I started to whisper something.
So I shushed, and we both watched.
We knew right away it was Old Man Paddler himself, who had paid for our airplane trip to Chicago, which we’d had week before last, and who had also paid for our camping trip up north, which you already know about.
I was looking through the bottom rails of the fence and through the flannel-like leaves of a big mullein stalk, of which there were maybe a dozen all around us. In fact, I had a mullein leaf in my hand right that minute, and I thought how nice and soft it was and how white the soft hairs on its very green leaves were. And of course I was wondering what Old Man Paddler was doing there.
But he knew what he was doing. He carefully cut the grass and weeds away from the base of the tombstones—from his wife’s and from the one that had his boys’ names on it—and then he set the potted plant down on his wife’s grave. The next thing we knew he was standing there with his black hat hanging on a bush, looking toward the sky, which had clouds in it as white as his hair, and he began to talk out loud to Someone in a trembling old voice.
This is a part of what he said: “Dear Father in heaven … in my heart I’m getting lonesome for my boys and my Sarah, and I’m getting very old …”
Just then a little whirlwind, which had been coming across the graveyard, rattled and twisted the bushes and blew the old man’s hair across his forehead. It also blew away the sound of his words. He was through praying anyway, I guess, for he put his hat back on his head and started doing the strangest thing.
Poetry reached out and touched my hand to be sure I was watching, and I was.
The old man stood his yardstick up against Sarah Paddler’s tombstone and began to measure how tall it was. He did the same to the width at the bottom and at the top and in the middle. And he wrote down something in a little notebook like the one I used at school.
Then he looked around in different directions, took his yardstick and sickle, and moved away, winding around among the weeds and through the vervain, some of which still had little blue flower rings around them, through the chokecherries to the fence, and climbed through —almost.
He got his white shirt caught on a barbed wire, and there he was, stuck. He couldn’t go backward or forward or sideways, unless he wanted to tear his shirt.
Well, my parents had taught me to be especially kind to all old people, never to make fun of them, and to be very courteous and helpful. So before I thought, I’d called, “Wait a minute, Mr. Paddler. I’ll help you!”
The next thing I knew, I was on my bare feet, running toward him. Poetry got there as quick as I did. In a flash we had his shirt loose, and the old man crawled through.
He certainly was grateful. After he had thanked us, he started to go on toward his home, which I knew was up in the hills. It was an old cabin that looked like the one Abraham Lincoln was born in. It had a clapboard roof and different things that made it look what my mom called “romantic.”
I noticed just that minute that he had torn a jagged hole about three inches in different directions in his shirt. I also noticed that his old hands were kind of gnarled, like the twisted grain in a block of wood, and I knew it would be hard for him to handle a small needle. So I said, “Mr. Paddler, if you’ll come over to our house tomorrow, my mom will be glad to sew up that rip in your shirt.”
He tried to stretch his neck around far enough to see his back and couldn’t, but he smiled. I couldn’t see the smile because of his long beard, but I saw the twinkles in his kind old eyes, and I knew that a man couldn’t have twinkles like that in his eyes and keep a straight face.
“Thank you, Bill,” he said. Then all of a sudden he frowned, and all the twinkles left his eyes as he said in his trembling voice, “I used to have a boy of my own named Bill. He was just about your age.” His voice stopped, and he swallowed something in his throat, then he turned and shuffled away.
We went on toward home ourselves, getting our bikes on the way. Tomorrow, we told each other, we would be having a lot of fun. Tomorrow, Poetry’s innocent lamb, whose fleece was white as snow, would follow him to our red schoolhouse, and all the children would laugh and play to see a lamb at school—because it was, of course, against the rule.
“So long,” Poetry puffed at my gate when I turned in.
I rode into the barnyard where Dad was just going out to the barn with two big milk pails. Our black-and-white Mixy was following along behind him and mewing like everything, already hungry for her supper.
“Hurry up, Bill!” Dad called cheerfully.
My wristwatch told me I was later than I should have been. We always had to do our chores early on Sundays because we went to church every Sunday night. Nearly all the Sugar Creek Gang’s parents did except Dragonfly’s. That is why that little balloon-eyed member of our gang didn’t know much about the Bible-only what he got from us, and especially from Little Jim.
Just that second I heard somebody whistle up the road. I looked, and it was Poetry, waving a final good-bye, meaning, “Don’t forget tomorrow!”
Which I never did—and never will as long as I live.
5
In the middle of the night, I woke up. Lightning was playing around in the sky, and thunder growled in the distance, and that’s how there happened to be mud puddles in the lane the next day when I stopped at Poetry’s house to get him on my way to school.
Generally I didn’t stop for him because I had to go early to get there before the teacher, and open the windows, and maybe do a little dusting. Every evening after school, it was my job to sweep the schoolhouse floor and lock up after the teacher had gone, unless for some reason she stayed longer than I did.
Well, when I got to Poetry’s house, there he came, carrying his red lunch box. And right behind him, crowding close and following all around him, was his innocent lamb, with a rope around its neck so it wouldn’t get away from him after he’d fed it, which it sometimes would if he didn’t watch out.
As you know, our plan was to tie the lamb in the woodshed and lock the door. It happened there was only one key to that door, and we kept it in a special place, which nobody knew about except the teacher and me and—well, I thought I had to tell Poetry so that later on, after school should have started, and he went outdoors, he could get the key, unlock the door, and the lamb would do the rest.
I had on my boots, because mud and water were everywhere, and so did Poetry, but the lamb’s mother hadn’t taught him anything like that, and by the time we got to school, the lamb was plenty muddy around the feet and legs.
When I saw the great big brown mud puddle not far from our schoolhouse door, which the township trustee, who was Little Jim’s dad, would have to have filled with gravel soon, I said to Poetry, “See to it that he doesn’t get all splashed up in the puddle, or you’ll have to mop the floor.”
Poetry grinned and said, standing beside the little soft-eyed woolly lamb and with his own eyes looking just as innocent, “Lambs don’t walk in puddles if they can help it. That’s why their mothers never make them wear boots.”
“Just the same,” I said, “I think we ought to make him wipe his feet on the mat here.”
I opened the door and picked up the nice brown mat and set it just outside for the lamb to wipe its feet on.
That lamb acted as though it’d been just waiting to jump up on that step, for the second Poetry stepped up, the lamb was right at his heels, walking around in every direction all over the little six-by-eight porch and getting lamb tracks on it.
“Hey!” I yelled to Poetry. “
Get him out of there!” which Poetry did, getting himself out of there first. As it was, I would have to get the mop and wipe all the mud off.
Well, we got the key, went to the woodshed, and locked the lamb inside. I decided to keep the key in my pocket, so that in case some of the other members of the gang came early to school, they wouldn’t accidentally find the key and go in and look at the lamb and maybe let it out.
As soon as the battered old woodshed door was locked, Poetry and I walked back toward the schoolhouse, stopping on the way at the tall, long-handled iron pump to get a drink out of the drinking cups we had in our lunch boxes.
Poetry and I took off our boots and went inside the schoolhouse. I opened the windows to let fresh air go through, and Poetry went to the blackboard and started working on an arithmetic problem that he had been having trouble with the week before.
Pretty soon, after I had dusted the teacher’s desk and the globe of the world and was getting ready to sweep up some dust over in a corner I’d missed the last time I’d swept the floor, there was a shadow in the open doorway. I looked up quick, and there was pop-eyed Dragonfly walking in.
“Hey!” I yelled indignantly at him, with my eyebrows down the way my dad’s are when he is angry at something or somebody or me.
Dragonfly stood stock-still. “’S’matter?” he called. “Where’s the lamb?”
“Listen, you!” I exclaimed, waving my broom at him and starting toward him on the half run. “You get yourself out of here and wipe your feet on the mat—or out on the grass first and then the mat—and keep still about the lamb!”
Dragonfly obeyed as meekly as an innocent lamb is supposed to. Then he came back in and walked between the rows of seats and around the big Poetry-shaped iron stove in the middle of the room.
Finally he stopped in front of our seven-inch-thick dictionary, which always lies open or shut on a low shelf on the south wall near a window. He started looking up different words, while Poetry kept working away with noisy chalk on the blackboard and I kept on sweeping a little, dusting, and acting important, and feeling the same way.
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 1-6 Page 41
