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_WATERMELON MYSTERY
AT SUGAR CREEK_
by
PAUL HUTCHENS
_Published by_
Scripture Press
BOOK DIVISION
WHEATON, ILLINOIS
_Watermelon Mystery at Sugar Creek_
Copyright © 1955, by
Paul Hutchens
_Third Printing_
All rights in this book are reserved. No part may be reproduced in
any manner without the permission in writing from the author, except
brief quotations used in connection with a review in a magazine or
newspaper.
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Chapter Page
1 5
2 15
3 27
4 37
5 45
6 52
7 65
8 76
9 84
10 97
1
If I hadn’t been so proud of the prize watermelon I had grown from
the packet of special seed Pop had ordered from the State Experiment
Station, maybe I wouldn’t have been so fighting mad when somebody
sneaked into our truck patch that summer night and stole it.
I was not only proud of that beautiful, oblong, dark green melon, but
I was going to save the seed for planting next year. I was, in fact,
planning to go into the watermelon-raising business.
Pop and I had had the soil of our truck patch tested, and it was just
right for melons, which means it was well-drained, well-ventilated,
with plenty of natural plant food. We would never have to worry about
moisture in case there would ever be a dry summer, on account of we
could carry water from the iron pitcher pump which was just inside the
south fence. As you maybe know, our family had another pitcher pump
not more than fifteen feet from the back door of our house--both pumps
getting mixed up in the mystery of the stolen watermelon, which I’m
going to tell you about right now.
Mom and I were down in the truck patch one hot day that summer, looking
around a little, admiring my melon and guessing how many seeds she
might have buried in her nice red inside. “Let’s give her a name,” I
said to Mom--the Collins family, which is ours, giving names to nearly
every living thing around our farm anyway--and Mom answered, “All
right, let’s call her _Ida_.”
Mom caught hold of the iron pitcher pump handle and pumped it up and
down quite a few fast, squeaking times to fill the pail I was holding
under the spout.
“Why _Ida?_” I asked with a grunt, the pail getting heavier with every
stroke of the pump handle.
Mom’s answer sounded sensible: “Ida means _thirsty_. I noticed it
yesterday when I was looking through a book of names for babies.”
I had never seen such a thirsty melon in all my half-long life. Again
and again, day after day, I had carried water to her, pouring it into
the circular trough I had made in the ground around the roots of the
vine she was growing on, and always the next morning the water would be
gone. Knowing a watermelon is over ninety-two per cent water anyway, I
knew if she kept on taking water like that, she’d get to be one of the
fattest melons in the whole Sugar Creek territory.
Mom and I threaded our way through the open spaces between the vines,
dodging a lot of smaller other melons grown from ordinary seed, till
we came to the little trough that circled Ida’s vine, and while I was
emptying my pail of water into it, I said, “Okay, Ida, my girl. That’s
your name: _Ida Watermelon Collins_. How do you like it?”
I stooped, snapped my third finger several times against her fat green
side and called her by name again, saying, “By this time next year
you’ll be the mother of a hundred other melons. And year after next,
you’ll be the _grand_mother of more melons than you can shake a stick
at.”
I sighed a long noisy happy sigh, thinking about what a wonderful
summer day it was and how good it felt to be alive, to be a boy and
to live in a boy’s world. I carried another pail of water, poured it
into Ida’s trough, then stopped to rest in the shade of the elderberry
bushes near the fence. Pop and I had put up a brand new woven-wire
fence there early in the spring, and at the top of it had stretched two
strands of barbed wire, making it dangerous for anybody to climb over
the fence in a hurry. In fact, the only place anybody would be able
to get over _real_ fast would be at the stile we were going to build
near the iron pitcher pump half way between the pump and the elderberry
bushes. We would _have_ to get the stile built pretty soon, I thought,
’cause in another few weeks school would start, and I would want to do
like I’d always done--go through or over the fence there to get to the
lane, which was a short cut to school.
I didn’t have the slightest idea then that somebody would try to
steal my melon, nor that the stealing of it would plunge me into the
exciting middle of one of the most dangerous mysteries there had ever
been in the Sugar Creek territory. Most certainly I never dreamed that
Ida Watermelon Collins would have a share in helping the gang capture
a fugitive from justice, an actual runaway thief the police had been
looking for for quite a while.
We found out about the thief one hot summer night about a week later
when Poetry, the barrel-shaped member of our gang, stayed all night
with me in his green sportsman’s tent which my parents had let us pitch
under the spreading branches of the plum tree in our yard.
* * * * *
The way it looks now it will take me almost a whole book to write it
all for you. Boy oh boy, will it ever be fun remembering everything!
Of course everything didn’t happen that very first night but one
of the most exciting and confusing things did. It _wouldn’t_ have
happened though, if we hadn’t gotten out of our cots and started on
a pajama-clad hike in the moonlight down through the woods to the
spring--Poetry in his green striped pajamas and I in my red-striped
ones, and Dragonfly in----!
But say! I hadn’t planned to tell you just yet that Dragonfly was with
us that night--which he wasn’t at first. Dragonfly, as you probably
know, is the spindle-legged, pop-eyed member of our gang, who is always
showing up when we don’t need him or want him and when we least expect
him and is always getting us into trouble--or else we have to help get
him _out_ of trouble.
Now that I’ve mentioned Dragonfly and hinted that he was the cause of
some of our trouble--mine especially--I’d better tell you that he and I
had the same kind of red-striped pajamas--our different mothers having
seen the same ad in the Sugar Creek Times and had gone shopping the
same afternoon in the same Sugar Creek Dry Goods Store and had seen the
same bargains in boys’ night clothes--two pairs of red-striped pajamas
being the only kind left when they got there.
Little Tom Till’s mother--Tom being the newest member of our gang--had
seen the ad about the sale too, and his mother and mine had each bought
for their two red-haired, freckle-faced sons a pair of blue denim
western-style jeans exactly alike, also two maroon-and-gray-striped
T-shirts exactly alike. When Tom and I were together anywhere, you
could hardly tell us apart. So I looked like Little Tom Till in the
_daytime_ and like Dragonfly _at night_.
Poor Dragonfly! All the gang felt very sorry for him on account of
he not only is very spindle-legged and pop-eyed, but in ragweed
season--which it was at that time of the year--his crooked nose which
turns south at the end, is always sneezing, and he also gets asthma.
Before I get into the middle of the stolen watermelon story, I’d better
explain that my wonderful grayish-brown-haired mother had been having
what is called “insomnia” that summer, so Pop had arranged for her to
sleep upstairs in our guest bedroom--that being the farthest away from
the night noises of our farm, especially the ones that came from the
direction of the barn. Mom simply had to have her rest or she wouldn’t
be able to keep on doing all the things a farm mother has to do every
day all summer.
That guest room was also the farthest away from the tent under the plum
tree--which Poetry and I decided maybe was another reason why Pop had
put Mom upstairs.
Just one other thing I have to explain quick, is that the reason Poetry
was staying at my house for a week was on account of his parents were
on a vacation in Canada, and had left Poetry with us. He and I were
going to have a vacation at the same time by sleeping in his tent which
we pitched in our yard--as I’ve already told you, under the spreading
branches of the plum tree.
Well, here goes, headfirst into our adventure! It was a _very_ hot
late-summer night, the time of year when the cicadas were as much a
part of a Sugar Creek night as sunshine is part of the day. Cicadas,
as you probably know, are broad-headed, protruding-eyed insects which
some people call locusts and others “harvest flies.” In the late summer
evenings, they set the whole country half crazy with their whirring
sounds from the trees where thousands of them are like an orchestra
with that many members, each member playing nothing but a drum.
I was lying on my hot cot just across the tent from Poetry in his own
hot cot, each of us having tried about seven times to go to sleep,
which Pop had ordered us to do about seventy-times-seven times that
very night, barking out his orders from the back door or from the
living room window.
Poetry, being in a mischievous mood, was right in the middle of quoting
one of his favorite poems, “The Village Blacksmith,” quoting aloud to
an imaginary audience out in the barnyard, when Pop called to us again
to keep still. His voice came bellowing out through the drumming of
the cicadas, saying, “Bill Collins, if you boys don’t stop talking
and laughing and go to _sleep_, I’m coming out there and _put_ you to
sleep!”
A few seconds later, Pop added in a still-thundery voice, “I’ve told
you boys for the last time! You’re keeping Charlotte Anne awake--and
you’re liable to wake up your mother, too!” When Pop says anything like
that, like _that_, I know he really means it, especially when he has
already said it _that_ many times.
I knew it was no time of night for my two-year-old cute little
brown-haired sister, Charlotte Ann, to be awake, and certainly my nice
friendly-faced, grayish-brown-haired mother would need a lot of extra
sleep, ’cause tomorrow was Saturday and there would be the house to
clean, pies and cookies to bake for Sunday, and a million chores a farm
woman has to do on Saturday, every Saturday there is.
“Wonderful!” Poetry whispered across to me. “He won’t tell us any more;
he’s told us for the last time. We can laugh and talk now as much as we
want to!”
“You don’t know Pop,” I said. “When he says he has said anything for
the last time he means he won’t say it again with just words--he’ll use
a switch or his old razor strap.”
You see, Poetry didn’t know as well as I did what an expert Pop was in
the way he could handle a switch--beech, willow, cherry or any kind
that happened to be handy--_and_ he could handle a razor strap better
than any father a boy ever felt.
Poetry ignored my warning and tried to be funny by saying, “Does your
father still use an old-fashioned razor that has to be stropped?”
I tried to think of something funny myself which was, “He still has
an old-fashioned boy that has to be--when that boy is too dull to
understand.” But maybe what I said wasn’t very humorous, ’cause Poetry
ignored it.
“I’m thirsty,” he said. “Let’s go get a drink,” his voice coming across
the darkness like the voice of a duck with laryngitis.
Right away there was a squeaking of the springs of his cot as he rolled
himself into a sitting position. He swung his feet out of bed, set
them with a ker-plop on the canvas floor of the tent. I could see him
sitting there like the shadow of a fat grizzly in the light of the
moonlight that filtered in through the plastic-netted window just above
my cot.
A split jiffy later, he was across the three feet of space between us,
sitting on the edge of my cot, making it groan almost loud enough for
Pop to hear.
“Let’s go!” he said, using a businesslike tone.
I certainly didn’t want to get up and go outside with him to get a
drink. Besides, I knew the very minute we would start to pump the
iron pitcher pump at the end of the board walk not more than fifteen
feet from our kitchen door, Pop would hear the pump pumping and the
water splashing into the big iron kettle under the spout and would
come storming out, with or without words, and would start saying again
something he had already said for the last time.
I yawned the laziest longest yawn I could, sighed the longest drawn-out
sigh I could, saying to Poetry, “I’m too sleepy. You go and get a drink
for _both_ of us.”
Then I sighed once more, turned over, and began to breathe heavily like
I was sound asleep.
But Poetry couldn’t be stopped by sighs and yawns. He shook me awake
and hissed, “Come on, treat a guest with a little politeness, will
you?”--meaning I had to wake up and get up and go out with him to pump
a noisy pump and run the risk of stirring up Pop’s already stirred-up
temper.
When I kept on breathing like a sleeping baby, Poetry said with a
disgruntled grunt, “Give me one little reason why you won’t help me get
a drink!”
“One little reason?” I yawned up at his shadow. “I’ll give you a _big_
one--five feet, eleven inches tall, one-hundred-seventy-two pounds,
bushy-eyebrowed, reddish-brown mustached, and with a razor strap in his
powerful right hand!”
“You want me to die of thirst?” asked Poetry.
“Thirst, or something; whatever you want to do it of. But hurry up and
do it, and get it over with, ’cause I’m going to sleep.”
I certainly wasn’t going to get up and go out in the moonlight and run
into Pop’s razor strap for anybody.
That must have stirred up Poetry’s temper a little, ’cause he said,
“Okay, Chum, I’ll go by myself!”
Quicker than a firefly’s fleeting flash, he had zipped open the zipper
of the plastic screened door of the tent, whipped the canvas curtain
aside and stepped out into the moonlight.
I was up and out and after him in a nervous hurry. I grabbed him by the
sleeve of his green-striped pajamas, but he wouldn’t stay stopped. He
whispered a half-growl at me, “If you try to stop me, I’ll scream and
you’ll get a licking.”
With that he started off on the run across the moonlit yard--not toward
the pump but in a different direction toward the front gate, saying
over his shoulder, “I’m going down to the _spring_ to get a drink.”
That idea was even crazier, I thought--crazier than pumping the iron
pitcher pump and waking up Pop, who, in turn, would start pumping his
right arm up and down with a razor strap on either Poetry or me, or
both.
But you might as well try to start a balky mule as to stop Leslie
Thompson from doing what he has made up his stubborn mind he is going
to do, so a jiffy later the two of us were hurrying past “Theodore
Collins” on our mailbox--_Theodore Collins_ being Pop’s name. A
second later, we were across the gravel road and over the rail fence,
following the path made by barefoot boys’ bare feet through the woods
to the spring, Poetry using his flashlight every few seconds to light
the way.
And that is where we ran into our mystery!
Zippety-zip-zip, swishety-swish-swish, clomp-clomp-clomp, dodge,
swerve, gallop ... It’s nearly always one of the happiest times of my
life when I am running down that little brown path to the spring, where
the gang has nearly all its meetings and where so many interesting and
exciting things have happened through the years. Generally, my barefoot
gallop through the woods is in the daytime, and I feel like a frisky
young colt turned out to pasture. But I had never run down that path
in red-striped pajamas at night when I was sleepily disgruntled like
I was right that minute for having to follow a dumpish barrel-shaped
boy. So when we had passed the black widow stump and the linden tree
and had dashed down the steep grade to the spring itself and found the
dark green watermelon floating in the cement pool which Pop had built
there as a reservoir for the water, it was as easy as anything for me
to get fighting angry at most anything or anybody. A watermelon there
could mean only one thing--especially when right beside it was a glass
fruit jar with a pound of butter in it. It meant there were campers
somewhere nearby--and campers in the Sugar Creek woods was something
the Sugar Creek Gang would rather have most anything else than. It
meant our peace and quiet would be interrupted; that we would have to
wear bathing suits when we went in swimming, and we couldn’t yell and
scream to each other like we liked to do.
Poetry, who was on his haunches beside the spring, surprised me by
saying, “Look! It’s plugged! Let’s see how ripe it is!”
Before I could have stopped him even if I had thought of trying to do
it, he was working the extra large rectangular plug out of the middle
of the extra large melon’s long fat side.
It was one of the prettiest watermelons I had ever seen--in fact, it
was as pretty as Ida Watermelon Collins, herself.
Poetry had the plug out in a jiffy and was holding it up for me to see.
Somebody had bitten off what red there had been on the end of the plug,
I noticed. Then Poetry said, “Well, what do you know! The melon’s
_green_. See, it’s all _white_ inside!”
That didn’t make sense, ’cause this time of year even a watermelon that
wasn’t more than _half_ ripe would be at least _pink_ inside. My eyes
flashed off the rectangular plug and into the hole in the melon, and
Poetry was right--it _was_ white inside! Then his mind came to life and
he said, “Look, there is something in it! There’s a ball of paper or
something stuffed in it!”
I felt curiosity creeping up and down my spine and was all set for a
mystery. Hardly realizing that I was trespassing on other people’s
property and most certainly didn’t have a right to, even if the melon
was in our spring, I quick stooped and with nervous fingers pulled out
the folded piece of paper, which is what it was--the kind that comes
off a loaf of bakery bread--and which at our house, when the loaf is
all eaten, I nearly always toss into the woodbox or the wastebasket
unless Mom sees me first and stops me. Sometimes Mom wants to save the
paper and use it for wrapping sandwiches for Pop’s or my lunches, mine
especially during the school year.
The melon was ripe, though, I noticed. The inside was a deep dark red.
While my mind was still trying to think up a mystery, something started
to happen. From up in the woods at the top of the incline there was
the sound of running feet and laughing voices, and flashlights, and
flickering shadows, and it sounded like a whole flock of people coming.
_People_, mind you! Only there weren’t any boys’ or men’s voices,
but _girls’_ voices. GIRLS’! They were giggling and laughing and
coming toward the base of the linden tree just above us. In another
brain-whirling second, they would be where they could see us, and we’d
be caught.
Say! when you are wearing a pair of red-striped pajamas and your
barrel-shaped friend is wearing a pair of green-striped pajamas, and it
is night, and you hear a flock of girls running in your direction and
you are half scared of girls even in the daytime, you all of a sudden
forget about a plugged watermelon floating in the nice fresh cool water
of your spring, and you look for the quickest place you can find to
hide yourself!
We couldn’t make a dash up either side of the incline to the top,
’cause that’s where the girls were, and we couldn’t escape in the
opposite direction ’cause there was a barbed wire fence there
separating us and the creek, but we _had_ to do _something!_ If it had
been a gang of _boys_ coming, we could have stood our ground and fought
if we had to--but not when it was a bevy of girls, which sounded like
a flock of blackbirds getting ready to fly south for the winter, only
they _weren’t_ getting ready to fly south, but _north_, which was in
our direction.
“Quick!” Poetry’s faster-thinking mind cried to me. “Let’s beat it!”
He showed me what he wanted us to do, by scrambling to his awkward
feet and making a dive east toward the place where I knew we could
get through a board fence, on the other side of which was a path that
wound through a forest of giant ragweeds leading to Dragonfly’s Pop’s
cornfield in the direction of the Sugar Creek Gang’s swimming hole.
In another jiffy I would have been following Poetry through the fence
and we would have escaped being seen, but my right bare foot which was
standing on a thin layer of slime on the cement lip of the pool where
the melon was, slipped out from under me, and I felt myself going down.
_Down_, mind you, and I couldn’t stop myself! I struggled to regain
my balance, and couldn’t--couldn’t even fall where my mixed-up mind
told me would be a better place to fall than into the pool, which
was in a mud puddle on the other side. Then thuddety-whammety,
slip-slop-splashety--I was half sitting and half lying in the middle of
the pool of ice cold spring water astride that long green watermelon,
like a boy astride a bucking bronco at a Sugar Creek rodeo!
From above and all around and from every direction, it seemed, there
were the voices of happy-go-lucky girls with flashlights, probably
coming to get the watermelon, or the butter in the glass jar, or maybe
a pail of drinking water for their camp.
2
There wasn’t any sense to what I did then, because of the confusion
in my mixed-up mind--if I had any mind at all--but the very
minute the light of those three or four--or maybe there were
seventeen--flashlights dropped over the edge of the hill and all
of them at the same time splashed down upon me, hitting me in the
face and all over my red-striped pajamas, I let loose with a wild,
trembling-voiced cry like a loon’s eery, half-scared-half-to-death
ghostlike quaver, loud enough to be heard as far away as the Sugar
Creek bridge. I began to wave my arms wildly, to splash around in the
water, and to yell to my watermelon-bronco, “Giddap!... Giddap! You
great big green good-for-nothing bronco!”
I let out a whole series of those wild loon calls, splashed myself off
the watermelon and out of the cement pool and made a fast, wet dash
down the path to the opening in the board fence, through which Poetry
had already gone ahead of me. I quickly shoved myself through, and a
jiffy later was making a wild moonlit run up the winding barefoot boy’s
trail through the forest of giant ragweeds toward the swimming hole,
crying like a loon all the way until I knew I was out of sight of all
those excited girls.
Even as I ran, flopping along in my wet pajamas, I had the memory of
flashlights splashing in my eyes and some of the things I heard while
I was going through the fence. Some of the excited words were, “Help!
Help! There’s a wild animal down there in the spring!” Others of the
girls had simply screamed like girls do when they are scared, but one
of them had shrieked an unearthly shriek, crying, “There’s a _zebra_
down there--_a wild zebra, taking a bath in our drinking water!_”
That, I thought, as I dodged my way along the path, was almost funny.
In fact, sometimes a boy feels fine inside if something he has done
makes a gang of girls let out an unearthly explosion of screams--most
girls screaming not because they’re really scared anyway, but because
they like to make people think they are.
Where, I wondered as I zig-zagged along, was Poetry?
I didn’t have to wonder long. By the time I was through the tall weeds
and at the edge of Dragonfly’s Pop’s cornfield I had caught up to
where he was. His flashlight hit me in the face as he exclaimed in his
duck-like voice, “Help! Help! A zebra! _A wild zebra!_”
I stopped stock-still with my wet pajama sleeve in front of my eyes to
shield them from the blinding glare of his flashlight. “It’s all your
fault!” I half-screamed at him. “If you hadn’t had the silly notion you
had to have a drink!”
His voice in answer was saucy as he said back, “What a mess you made
of things--falling into that water and yelling like a wild Indian! Now
those girl scouts will tell your folks, and your father will _really_
sharpen you up with his razor strap!”
“_Girl_ scouts?” I exclaimed to him with chattering teeth from being so
cold and still all wet with spring water. Also for some reason I didn’t
feel very brave--most certainly not very happy.
“Sure,” he said, “didn’t you know it? A bunch of girl scouts have got
their tents pitched up there by the pawpaw bushes for a week. Old Man
Paddler gave them permission; it’s _his_ woods, you know.”
And then I _was_ sad. Girl scouts were supposed to be some of the
nicest people in the world--even if they were girls, I thought. What
would they think of a red-haired freckle-faced creature of some kind
that was part loon and part zebra, splashing around in their drinking
water, riding like a cowboy on a watermelon and acting absolutely
crazy? I would never dare show my face where any of them could see me,
or some of them would remember me from having seen me in the light of
their flashlights, and they would ask my mother whose boy I was. I knew
that one of the very first things some of those girl scouts would do
this week would be to come to the Collins’ house to buy eggs and milk
and such things as sweet corn and new potatoes. Some of them would be
bound to recognize me.
“We had better get back to the tent and into bed quick, before
somebody comes running up to use your telephone to call the police,
or the marshal, or the sheriff, to tell them some wild boys have been
causing a disturbance at the camp!” Poetry said.
* * * * *
It was a good idea even if it was a worried one, so away we went--not
the way we had come, but lickety-sizzle straight up through Dragonfly’s
Pop’s cornfield, swinging around the east end of the bayou and back
down the south side of it until we came to the fence that goes south to
Bumblebee Hill. Once we got to Bumblebee Hill we would swing southwest
to the place where we always went over the rail fence, which was across
the road from our house. Then we would scoot across the road and past
“Theodore Collins” on our mailbox, hoping we wouldn’t wake up Theodore
Collins himself in the Collins’ west bedroom, and a jiffy after that
would be safe in our tent once more!
The very thought of safety and the security of Poetry’s nice green tent
under the spreading plum tree gave me a spurt of hope, and put wings on
my feet, as I followed my lumbering barrel-shaped friend, not realizing
there would be more trouble when I got home on account of my very wet
red-striped night clothes.
We didn’t even bother to stop at Bumblebee Hill where the fiercest
fastest fist-fight that ever was had taken place--and which you already
know about if you’ve read the story called _We Killed a Bear_. At the
_bottom_ of the hill, you know, is the Little-Jim tree near which
Little Jim, the littlest member of our Gang, killed the fierce old mad
old mother bear; and at the top of the hill is the abandoned cemetery
where the Gang has so many of its meetings. The wind I was making as I
ran was blowing against my very wet 89-pounds of red-haired boy, making
me feel chilly all over in spite of it being such a hot night.
It was a shame not to be able to enjoy such a pretty Sugar Creek
summer night--the almost most-wonderful thing in the world. I guess
there isn’t anything in the whole wide world that _sounds_ better
than a Sugar Creek night when you are down along the creek fishing
and you hear the bullfrogs bellowing in the riffles, the katydids
rasping voices calling to one another: “Katy-did, Katy-she-did;
Katy-did, Katy-she-did!” the crickets singing away, vibrating their
forewings together, making one of the friendliest lonesome sounds a
boy ever hears. Every now and then, you can hear a screech owl crying
“Shay-a-a-a-a!” like a baby loon learning to loon.
Oh, there are a lot of sounds that make a boy feel good all over, such
as Old Topsy, our favorite horse, in her stall crunching corn, the
queer sound the chickens make in their sleep, the wind sighing through
the pine trees along the bayou, with every now and then somebody’s
rooster turning loose with a “Cocka-doodle-do!” like he is so proud of
himself he can’t wait until morning to let all the sleeping hens know
about it--like it was a waste of good time to sleep when you could
listen to such nice noisy music. From across the fields you sometimes
hear the sound of a nervous dog barking, and somebody else’s dog
answering from across the creek. You even like to listen to the corn
blades whispering to each other as the wind blows through them.
Summer nights on our farm _smell_ good, too--nearly always there being
the smell of new-mown hay or fresh pine-tree fragrance which is always
sweeter at night. If you are near the creek you can smell the fish
that don’t want to bite, the wild peppermint, the sweet clover and a
thousand other half friendly, half lonely smells that make you feel sad
and glad at the same time.
Things you think at night are wonderful, too. You can lie on the grass
in the yard and, in the summertime, look up at the purplish blue sky
that is like a big upside-down sieve with a million yellow holes in it
and in your mind go sailing out across the Milky Way like a boy skating
on the bayou pond, dodging this way and that so you won’t run into any
of the stars....
But this wasn’t the right time to hear or see or smell how wonderful a
night it was. It was, instead, a time for two worried boys, including a
red-haired freckle-faced one to get inside the tent and into bed and to
sleep.
Pretty soon Poetry and I were at the rail fence across from “Theodore
Collins” on our mailbox. There we stopped stock-still and stood
and studied the situation, keeping ourselves in the shadow of the
elderberry bush that grew there. It seemed like the moonlight was never
brighter and we couldn’t afford to let ourselves be seen or heard by
anybody who hadn’t used a razor strap for a long time but who perhaps
hadn’t forgotten how--and not on his razor, either.
I was shivering with the cold, and just that second I sneezed. Just
that second also, Poetry shushed me with a shush that was almost louder
than my sneeze, as he whispered, “Hey, don’t wake anybody up! Do you
want your guest to get a licking? Your father has told us for the last
time to--”
“Shush, yourself!” I ordered him.
We decided to go back up the fence, cross the road by the hickory nut
trees, climb over into our cornfield and sneak down between the rows to
arrive at the tent from the opposite side so nobody could see us from
the house, which we did.
We had to pass Old Red Addie’s apartment hog house on the way, which is
the kind of place on a farm that _doesn’t_ have a nice, clean, sweet
farm smell. Pretty soon, still shivering and wishing I had dry night
clothes to sleep in, we were behind the tent waiting and listening to
see if we could get in without being seen or heard.
Right then I sneezed again, and also again, and I knew I was either
going to catch a cold or I already had one. I quick lifted the tent
flap, swished through the plastic screen door, expecting Poetry to
follow me, but he didn’t and wouldn’t. He stood for a second in the
clear moonlight that came slanting through a branchless place in the
plum tree overhead, then he said, “I’ll be back in a minute.” He
started to start toward the house--_in the moonlight, mind you, where
he could be seen!_
“Wait!” I called to him, in as quiet a whisper as I could. “Where are
you going?”
“I’m _thirsty_,” he whispered back. “I forgot to get a drink at the
spring.”
“You’ll wake up my _father!_” I exclaimed to him. “Don’t you _dare_
pump that pump handle!”
Poetry couldn’t be stopped. I knew that if Pop ever waked up and came
to prove he had meant what he said when he had said what he said,
there’d _really_ be trouble. Pop would hear me sneeze, or see my wet
night clothes and wonder what on earth, and why.
So in a jiffy, like the story in one of our school books about a man
named Mr. McGregor chasing Peter Rabbit who was all wet from having
jumped in a can of water to hide--and Peter Rabbit sneezing--I was
acting out that story backwards: I myself was a very wet, very dumb
bunny chasing Leslie Poetry Thompson to try to stop him from getting us
into even more trouble than we were already in.
We arrived at the iron pitcher pump platform at the same time, where
I hissed to him not to pump the pump, pushing in between him and the
pump, blocking him from doing what his stubborn mind was driving him to
do.
“I’m _thirsty_,” he squawked to me.
“The pump handle squeaks!” I hissed back to him and shoved him off the
pump platform. My left wet pajama sleeve pressed against his face.
What happened after that happened so fast and with so much noise it
would have wakened seventeen fathers, as Poetry, my almost best friend
who had always stood by me when I was in trouble, who was always on my
side, all of a sudden didn’t act like he was my friend at all.
We weren’t any more than three feet from the large iron kettle filled
with innocent water, which up to that moment had been reflecting the
moon as clearly as if it had been a mirror--clearly enough, in fact,
for you to see the man in the moon in it.
The next second Poetry’s powerful arms were around me and he was
dragging me toward that big kettle. The next second after that, he
swooped my 89 pounds up and with me kicking and squirming and trying
to wriggle out of his grasp and not being able to, he sat me down
kerplop-splash, double-splashety-_slump_ right in the center of that
large kettle of water.
“What on _earth!_” I exclaimed, my voice trembling with temper, my
teeth chattering with the cold and my mind whirling.
My words exploded out of my mouth at the very minute Pop came out the
back door. “‘What on _earth!_’ is right,” he exclaimed in his big
father-sounding voice. “What on earth are you doing _in_ the _water?_”
Poetry answered for me, saying politely like he was trying to save
somebody from a razor strap, “It’s all my fault, Mr. Collins. We were
getting a drink and I--I shouldn’t have done it--but I _pushed_ him.
I--.” Then Poetry’s voice took on a mischievous tone, as he said, “The
water was so clear and the man in the moon reflected in it was so
handsome, I wanted to see what a good-looking _boy_ would look like in
it. I couldn’t resist the temptation.”
_Such_ an innocent voice! So polite! I was boiling inside as I splashed
myself out of the kettle and stood dripping on the pump platform.
Then I did get a surprise. Pop’s voice, instead of being like black
thunder, which it sometimes is at a time like that, was a sort of husky
whisper: “Let’s keep quiet--all of us. We wouldn’t want to wake up your
mother, Bill. You boys get back into the tent quick, while I slip into
the house and get Bill a pair of dry pajamas. Hurry up! QUICK, into the
tent!”
Pop turned, tiptoed to the back screen door, opened it quietly, while
Poetry and I scooted to the tent. A second later, we were inside in the
shadowy moonlight which oozed in through the plastic window above my
cot.
Pop was back out of the house almost before I was out of my wet
pajamas. He whispered to us at the tent door, “Here’s a towel. Dry
yourself good. Put these fresh pajamas on--but, BE QUIET!” He whispered
the last two words almost savagely.
“Here, let me have your old wet ones. I’ll hang them on the line behind
the house to dry--and remember, not a word of this to your mother,
Bill. Do you hear me?”
“Don’t worry,” I said. It was easy to hear anything as easy to listen
to as that.
And Pop was gone.
In only a few jiffies I was dry and had on my nice fresh
clean-smelling, Mom-washed stripeless yellow pajamas, and there wasn’t
even a sniffle in my nose to hint that maybe I would catch cold.
Boy oh boy, was it ever quiet in the tent--the only sounds being
those in my mind. Everything had happened so fast, it seemed as if it
had taken only a minute. It also seemed like a year had passed--so
many exciting things had happened--crazy things, too, such as a boy
galloping around in a pool of cold water on a green watermelon, and a
gang of girls screaming like wild hyenas that there was a zebra taking
a bath in the spring.
“Wait,” Poetry ordered, as I sat down on the edge of my cot and started
to crawl in. “We can’t get in between your mother’s nice clean sheets
with feet that have waded through mud and dusty cornfields. I’ll go get
the wash pan from the grape arbor, fill it with water, and bring it
back.”
“You stay _here!_” I ordered. “I don’t trust you outside this tent one
minute! I’ll get the water myself.”
Say, do you know what that dumb bunny of a fat boy answered me? He said
in his very polite voice, “But I’m _thirsty_--I haven’t had a chance to
get a drink--I--”
“Stay _here!_” I ordered. “I’ll _bring_ you a drink.”
“After all I’ve done for you, you won’t even let me go with you?” he
begged.
“What have you done for _me_, I’d like to know? You--with your plunking
me into the middle of that kettle of water?”
Poetry’s strong fat hands grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me.
“Listen, Chum,” he said fiercely; “I saved you from getting a licking,
didn’t I? I heard your father opening the back door, and I knew he’d
be there in a jiffy. If he found you all wet with that _spring_
water, he’d have asked you how come, and you’d really have been in a
pretty kettle. So I pushed you in with my bare hands, don’t you see?
Besides--look at this!” Poetry turned on his flashlight, reached over
to the foot of his cot and picked up a long black something-or-other
with a handle on it, and extended it to me. _AND IT WAS POP’S RAZOR
STRAP!_
“He had it in his hand when he came out the door,” Poetry told me. “He
accidentally left it on the pump platform when he went in for the fresh
pajamas. Now, am I your friend, or not?”
Looking at the eighteen-inch-long blackish-brown leather razor strap in
Poetry’s hand, and remembering the last time Pop had given me a few
interesting strokes with it, I decided maybe Poetry really had been
my friend. Besides, if I let him go to get a pan of water for washing
our feet, and if Pop saw and heard him, Pop would probably not say a
word--he not wanting to wake Mom up.
“All right,” I said to Poetry, “but hurry back.” Which he did.
Pretty soon we had our feet washed and dried on the towel, which
I noticed when we got through might also have to be washed in the
morning. In only a little while we were in our bunks again and sound
asleep, and right away I began dreaming a crazy mixed-up dream in which
I was running in red-striped pajamas through the woods, leaving the
path made by barefoot boys’ bare feet and working my way around to the
left along the crest of the hill where the pawpaw bushes were, just
to see how many girl campers there were. Then it seemed like I was in
the spring again, galloping around on a green no-legged bronco which
somebody had stolen and plugged and maybe sold to the girls--or even
_given_ to them--or maybe some of the girls had invaded our melon patch
that very night and stolen it themselves.
I hated to think that, though, ’cause any girl who is a girl scout
is supposed to be like a boy who is a boy scout, which is absolutely
honest. Besides as much as I didn’t like girls--not most of them
anyway--and was scared of them a little--it seemed like there was a
small voice inside of me which all my life had been whispering that
girls are kind of special--and anybody couldn’t help it if she happened
to be born one. Mom had been a girl for quite a few years herself, and
it hadn’t hurt her a bit. She had grown up to become one of the most
wonderful people in the world.
But who had stole my watermelon? And how had it gotten down there in
the spring? It _was_ my melon, of course!
The idea woke me up. Or else my own voice did, when I heard myself
hissing to Poetry:
“Hey, you! _Poetry!_ Come on, wake up!”
He groaned, turned over in his cot, and groaned again. “Let me sleep,
will you?”
“No,” I whispered, “wake up! Come on and go with me. I’ve got to go
down into our watermelon patch to see--”
“I don’t want any more water,” he mumbled, “and I wouldn’t think you
would either.”
“That melon in the spring,” I said. “I just dreamed it was my prize
melon! I think somebody stole it. I want to go down to our truck patch
to see if it’s gone.”
Poetry showed he hadn’t been asleep at all then, ’cause he rolled over,
sat up, swung his feet out over the edge of his cot and onto the canvas
floor, and I knew we were _both_ going outside once more--_just once
more_.
What we were going to do was one of the most important things we had
ever done--even if it might not seem so to a boy’s father if he should
happen to wake up and see us in the melon patch and think we were two
strange boys out there actually stealing watermelons.
Poetry and I were pretty soon outside the tent again in the wonderful
moonlight where now most of the cicadas had stopped their wild
whirrings and the crickets had begun to take over for the rest of
the night. Fireflies were everywhere, too. It seemed like there were
thousands of fireflies flashing their green lights on and off in every
tree in our orchard and in all the open spaces everywhere. The lights
of those that were flying were like short yellowish green chalk marks
being made on a schoolhouse blackboard.
Poetry, with his flashlight, was leading the way as he and I moved out
across our barnyard. When we were passing Old Red Addie’s apartment hog
house, I was reminded again that all the smells around a farm are not
the kind to write about in a story, so I won’t even mention it but will
let you imagine what it was like.
At the wooden gate near the barn, Poetry said, “Listen, will you?”
I listened, but all I could hear was the sound of pigeons cooing in the
haymow, which is one of the friendliest sounds a boy ever hears--the
low lonesome cooing of pigeons.
There are certainly a lot of different sounds around our farm, nearly
all of which I have learned to imitate so well I actually sound like
a farmyard full of animals sometimes, Pop says. Mom also says that
sometimes I actually _look_ like a red-haired freckle-faced pig--which
I probably don’t.
Say, did you ever stop to think about all the different kinds of sounds
a country boy gets to enjoy?
While you are imagining Poetry and me cutting across the south pasture
to the east side of our melon patch, I’ll mention just a few that we
get to hear a hundred times a year, such as the wind roaring in a
winter blizzard, Dragonfly’s Pop’s bulls bellowing, Circus’s Pop’s
hounds baying or bawling or snarling or growling; Mixy, our black and
white cat, meowing or purring; mice squeaking in the corncrib; Old
Topsy neighing; Poetry’s Pop’s sheep bleating; all the old setting-hens
clucking; the laying hens singing or cackling; Big Jim’s folks’ ducks
quacking; honey and bumblebees droning and buzzing; crows cawing; and
our old red rooster crowing at midnight or just at daybreak; screech
owls screeching; hoot-owls hooting; the cicadas drumming, and the
crickets chirping. Yes, and Dragonfly sneezing, especially in ragweed
season, which it already was in the Sugar Creek territory.
There are a lot of interesting sounds, too, down along the creek and
the bayou, such as water singing in the riffles, the big night herons
going “Quoke-quoke,” cardinals whistling, bob-whites calling, squirrels
barking--and when the gang is together, the happiest sounds of all with
everybody talking at once and nobody listening to anybody.
There are also a few sounds that hurt your ears, such as Pop filing a
saw, Old Red Addie’s family of red-haired pigs squealing, the death
squawk of a chicken just before it gets its head chopped off for the
Collins’ family dinner, and the wild screams of a bevy of girls calling
an innocent boy in red-striped pajamas, a _zebra!_
In only a few jiffies we were out in the middle of our truck patch
looking to see if any of the melons were missing. I was just sure that
when I came to Ida’s vine, I’d find a long oval indentation where she
had been--the dream I had had about her being stolen was so real in my
mind.
“All this walk for nothing,” Poetry exclaimed all of a sudden, when
his flashlight landed ker-flash right on the green fat side of Ida
Watermelon Collins, as peaceful and quiet as an old setting hen on her
nest.
I stood looking down at her proudly, then I said in a grumpy voice,
“What do you mean, making me get up out of a comfortable bed and drag
myself all the way out here for nothing! You see to it that you don’t
make me dream such a crazy dream again--do you _hear_ me!”
I felt better after saying that, then Poetry beside me grunted
grouchily, and said, “And don’t ever rob _me_ of _my_ good night’s rest
again either!”
With that, we started to wend our barefoot pajama-clad way back across
the field of vines and other melons in the direction of the barn again.
We hadn’t gone more than fifteen yards when what to my wondering ears
should come but the strange sound of something running--that is, that’s
what I thought it sounded like at first. I stopped stock-still and
looked around in a fast moonlit circle of directions, and saw away
over by the new woven-wire fence not more than twenty feet from the
iron pitcher pump, something dark about the size of a long, low-bodied
extra-large raccoon, moving toward the shadows of the elderberry bushes.
I could feel the red hair on the back of my neck and on the top of my
head beginning to crawl like the bristles on a dog’s or a cat’s or a
hog’s back do when it’s angry--only I wasn’t angry--not yet, anyway.
A little later, I was not only angry but my mind was going in excited
circles. If you had been me and seen what I saw, and found out what I
found out, you’d have felt the way I felt, which was all mixed up in
my thoughts, worried and excited and stormy-minded, and ready for a
headfirst dive into the middle of one of the most thrilling mysteries
that ever started in the middle of a dog day’s night.
3
You don’t have to wait long to decide what to do at a time like that,
when you have mischievous-minded, quick-thinking Poetry along with you,
even when you are in the middle of a muddle in the middle of a melon
patch, watching something the size of a long, very fat raccoon hurrying
in jerky movements toward the shadows of the elderberry bushes.
If things hadn’t been so exciting, it would have been a good time to
let my imagination put on its wings and fly me around in my boy’s
world awhile--what with a million stars all over the sky and fireflies
writing on the blackboard of the night and rubbing out all their
greenish-yellow marks as fast as they made them, and with the crickets
singing and the smell of sweet clover enough to make you dizzy with
just feeling fine.
But it was no time for dreaming. Instead, it was a time for acting--and
_QUICK!_
“Come on!” Poetry hissed to me. “Let’s give chase!” and he started
running and yelling, “Stop, thief! Stop!”
And away we both went, out across that truck patch, dodging melons as
we went, leaping over them or swerving aside like we do when we are
on a coon chase at night with Circus’s Pop’s long-eared, long-nosed,
long-voiced hounds leading the way, trying to catch up with the
dark-brown, long, low, very-fat animal--something I had never seen
around Sugar Creek before in all my life.
* * * * *
Then, all of a disappointing sudden, the brown whatever-it-was
disappeared into the shadow of the elderberry bushes, and I heard an
exciting whirring noise in the lane on the other side of the fence. A
fast jiffy later, an automobile came to noisy-motored life, a pair of
head-lamps went on, and an oldish-sounding car went rattling down the
lane, headed in the direction of the Sugar Creek school, which is at
the end of the lane where it meets the county line road.
Poetry’s long 3-batteried flashlight shot a straight white beam
through the firefly-spattered night. It landed ker-flash right on
that oldish-looking car as it swished past the iron pitcher pump and
disappeared down the hill. A few seconds later, we heard the car
go rattlety-crash across the board floor of the branch bridge, the
head-lamps lighting up the lane as it sped up the hill on the other
side in the direction of the schoolhouse.
_What on earth!_
My mind was still on the car and who might be in it, when I heard
Poetry say, “Look! There is our wild animal! He stopped right at the
fence! Let’s get him!”
My mind came back to the long brown low very-fat something-or-other we
had been chasing a minute before. My eyes got to it at about the same
time Poetry’s flashlight socked it ker-wham-flash right in the middle
of its fat side.
My feet got there almost as quick as my eyes did.
“What _is_ it?” I exclaimed, looking about for a stick or a club to
protect myself, in case I had to.
My imagination had been yelling to me, “It’s some kind of animal,
different from anything you’ve ever seen!” so I was terribly
disappointed when Poetry let out a disgusted grunt with a surprise in
it, saying, “Aw, it’s only an old gunny sack.”