"_The Hoosier Schoolmaster!_" his mom called up. "It's on the second
shelf in your library--it's a red book with gold lettering on it;"
then Mrs. Thompson said to me, "Having a new gentleman teacher in the
community has made everybody interested in that very interesting book,
so Mrs. Mansfield is going to review it for the Literary Society next
Wednesday night."
Then Poetry's mom called up to him and asked, "Find it, Leslie?" which
of course he hadn't and couldn't, anyway, not upstairs, 'cause right
that minute it was lying open on two sticks stuck into Mr. Black's
stomach at the bottom of Bumblebee hill. For some reason it didn't
seem as if we wanted to tell Mrs. Thompson where it was, but it looked
like we were in for it.
We couldn't come right out and tell her where the book was, 'cause she
was like most of the other parents in Sugar Creek territory--she
thought Mr. Black, who rode a fine horse and wore a brown leather
jacket and riding boots and who could smile politely and tip his hat
whenever he saw a Sugar Creek Gang mother, was a very fine gentleman,
and certainly didn't know what a hard time the gang had been having
with him.
Just that second Poetry called down and said, "Bill and I'll take it
to her."
The gang didn't know Mrs. Mansfield very well, on account of she was a
new person in the Sugar Creek territory and didn't have any boys, and
was more interested in society than any of the gang's moms and was
always reading important books on account of it maybe made her seem
more important if she knew the names of all the important books and
who wrote them.
Poetry came downstairs with his camera, coming down in a big hurry and
saying to me in a business-like voice, "Let's get going, Bill," and
made a dive for the door so his mom wouldn't see he didn't have _The
Hoosier Schoolmaster_, not wanting her to ask where it was, so he
wouldn't have to tell her.
Both Poetry and I were out of doors in a jiffy and the door was half
shut behind us when Poetry's mother said, "Hadn't we better wrap it
up, Leslie,--just in case you might accidentally drop it?"
"I promise you, I won't drop it," Poetry said, "besides we want to
hurry. I want to take a picture of something before the sun gets too
far down. Come on, Bill, hurry up!" Poetry squawked to me, and I
hurried after him, both of us running fast out through their back yard
in the direction of Bumblebee hill.
But Poetry's mother called to us from the back door and said, "Where
are you going? Mrs. Mansfield doesn't live in _that_ direction."
Poetry and I stopped and looked at each other.
All of a sudden we knew we were caught, so Poetry said to me, "What'll
we tell her?"
And remembering something my pop had taught me to do when I was caught
in a trap, I said all of a sudden, quoting my pop, "Tell her the
truth."
Poetry scowled, "You tell her," he said, which I did, saying "Mrs.
Thompson, the gang had _The Hoosier Schoolmaster_ this afternoon, and
we left him--I mean _it_--down on Bumblebee hill. We have to go there
first to get it," and all of a sudden I felt fine inside, and know
that Pop was right. Poetry's mom might not like to hear _exactly_
where the book was, right that very minute, and it didn't seem exactly
right to tell her, so when she didn't ask me, I didn't tell her.
Poetry's mother must have understood her very mischievous boy, though,
and didn't want to get him into a corner, for she said, "Thank you for
telling me. Now I can phone Mrs. Mansfield it will take a little
longer for you to get there with the book--and, by the way, if you see
Mr. Black tell him about next Wednesday night--you probably will see
him. I told him you boys were over on Bumblebee hill, and how to get
there. He seemed to want to see you."
Poetry and I both yelled back to her, saying, "You told him WHAT!" and
without another word or waiting to hear what she said, we started like
lightning as fast as we could go, straight for Sugar Creek and
Bumblebee hill, wondering if by taking a short cut we could get there
before Mr. Black did; and in my mind's eye, I could see Poetry, IF we
got there first, making a dive for _The Hoosier Schoolmaster_ on the
snow man; and I could see myself, making a leap for the man's head,
and knocking it completely off, I could see it go rolling the rest of
the way down the hill with its cornsilk hair getting covered with
snow--also I could see Mr. Black in his brown riding jacket and
boots, on his great big saddle horse, riding up right about the same
minute.
What if we didn't get there first? I thought. What if we didn't? It
would be awful! Absolutely _terrible_! And Poetry must have been
thinking the same thing, 'cause for once in his life, in spite of his
being barrel-shaped and very heavy, and never could run very fast, I
had a hard time keeping up with him....
5
All the time while Poetry and I were running through the snowy woods,
squishety-sizzle, zip-zip-zip, crunch, crunch, crunch, I could see in
my mind's eye our new teacher's big beautiful brown saddle horse,
prancing along in the snow toward Bumblebee hill, carrying his heavy
load just as easy as if it wasn't anything. Right that very minute,
maybe, the horse would be standing and pawing the ground and in a
hurry to get started somewhere, while maybe its rider was standing
with _The Hoosier Schoolmaster_ in his hand, looking at the picture of
the schoolhouse, and then maybe looking at the ridiculous-looking snow
man we'd made of him....
In a few minutes Poetry and I were so out of wind that we had to stop
and walk awhile, especially because I had a pain in my right side
which I sometimes got when I ran too fast too long. "My side hurts," I
said to Poetry, and he said, "Better stop and stoop down and unbuckle
your boot, and buckle it again, and it'll quit hurting."
"It'll WHAT?" I said, thinking his idea was crazy.
"It'll quit hurting, if you stop and stoop down and unbuckle your boot
and then buckle it again."
Well, I couldn't run anymore with the sharp pain in my side, so even
though I thought Poetry's idea was crazy, I stopped and stooped over,
biting off my mittens with my teeth, and laying them down on the snow
for a jiffy and unbuckling one of my boots and buckling it again while
I was still stooped over; then I straightened up, and would you
believe it? That crazy ache in my side was actually gone! There wasn't
even a sign of it.
I panted a minute longer to get my wind, then we started on the run
again. "It's crazy," I said, "but it worked. How come?"
"Poetry Thompson's father told me," he said, puffing along ahead of
me, "only it won't work in the summer-time. In the summer-time you
have to stop running, and stop and stoop down and pick up a rock, and
spit on it and turn it over and lay it down again very carefully
upside down, and your side will quit hurting."
Right then, I stumbled over a log and fell down on my face, and
scrambled to my feet and we hurried on, and I said to Poetry, "What do
you do when you get a sore toe from stumping it on a log--stoop over
and scrape the snow off the log and kiss it, and turn it over, and
then--?"
It wasn't any time to be funny, only worried, but Poetry explained to
me that it was the _stooping_ that was what did it. "It's getting your
body bent double, that does it.--Hey! Look! There he is now!"
I looked in the direction of our house, since we were getting pretty
close to Bumblebee hill, and sure enough, there was our teacher
sitting on his great big beautiful brown horse which was standing and
prancing right beside the old iron pitcher pump not more than twenty
feet from our back door. Mom was standing there with her sweater on
and a scarf on her head talking to him or maybe listening to him, then
I saw Mr. Black tip his hat like an honest-to-goodness gentleman, and
bow, and his pretty horse whirled about and went in a horse hurry to
our front gate which was open, and being held open by my pop, and he
went on, galloping up the road, his horse galloping in the shadow
which they made on the snowy road ahead of them.
Well, that was that, I thought, and Poetry and I who were at the top
of Bumblebee hill hurried down to where he and I had left our sleds,
the rest of the gang having taken theirs with them when we'd gone to
the cave. At the bottom of the hill, we saw the great big tall snow
man. The sun was still shining right straight on it, but wouldn't be,
pretty soon, but would go down. So Poetry and I stopped close to it,
and he got his camera ready.
"You get _The Hoosier Schoolmaster_, Bill, and turn it around and
stand it up against the Hoosier schoolmaster's stomach." Poetry
ordered, "so I can get a good picture of it," which I started to do,
and then gasped.... _There wasn't any Hoosier Schoolmaster!_ The book
was gone. "It's gone!" I said to Poetry, and it was, and there was a
page of yellow writing paper, instead.
"Hey!" I said, "There's something printed on it!" Sure enough, there
was. The piece of yellow writing tablet was standing up on the two
sticks, leaning against the snow man's stomach, and was fastened so
the wind wouldn't blow it away, by another stick stuck through the
paper and into the snow man's stomach.
"It's your poem, Poetry," I said, remembering the poem which Poetry
had written about our teacher. "How'd it get here?" Right away I was
reading the poem again, which was almost funny, only I didn't feel
like laughing on account of wondering who had stolen the book and had
put the poem here in its place. The poem was written exactly right:
"_The Sugar Creek Gang had the worst of teachers,
And 'Black' his named was called,
His round red face had the homeliest of features,
He was fat and forty and bald._"
It had been funny the first time I had read it, which was not more
than a week ago, but for some reason right that minute it was anything
in the world else. I was gritting my teeth and wondering who had done
it, and who had stolen _The Hoosier Schoolmaster_. There wasn't a one
of the gang that _could_ have done it, 'cause we had all been together
all afternoon; and at the cave all the rest of the gang had gone to
their different homes.
"Who in the world wrote it and put it there?" I said, noticing that
the printing was very large and had been put on with black crayola,
the kind we used in school.
"There's only one other person in the world who knows I wrote that
poem," Poetry said, "and that's Shorty Long."
"Shorty Long!" I said, remembering the newest boy who had moved into
our neighborhood and was almost as fat as Poetry and who had been the
cause of most of our trouble with our new teacher and had had two or
three fights with me and had licked the stuffins out of me once, and I
had licked the stuffins out of him once also, even worse than he had
me, almost.
"How'd he find it out?" I said.
"Dragonfly told him," and also I remembered right that minute that
Dragonfly and Shorty Long had been kinda chummy last week and we had
all worried for fear there was maybe going to be trouble in our own
gang which there'd never been before, and all on account of the new
fat guy who had moved into our neighborhood and had started coming to
our school.
"Are you going to take a picture of it?" I said to Poetry, and he
said, "I certainly am; I'm going to have the evidence and then I can
prove to anybody that doesn't believe it, that somebody actually put
it here."
"Yeah," I said, "but everybody knows _you_ wrote the poem."
Poetry lowered his camera, and just that minute I saw something else
that made me stare and in fact startled me so that for a jiffy I was
almost as much excited as I had been when the fierce old mad old
mother bear had been trying to kill Little Jim right at that very
place where we were about a year and a half ago.
"Hey! Look!" I said, "Mr. Black's been here himself!"
"Mr. _Black_!" Poetry said in almost a half scream.... And right away
both of us were looking down in the snow around the beech tree, and
around the snow man, and sure enough there were horse's tracks, the
kind of tracks that showed that the horse had shoes on. And even while
I was scared and wondering "What on earth!" there popped into my red
head the crazy superstition that if you found a horseshoe and put it
up over the door of your house or one of the rooms of your house, you
would have good luck....
"I'll bet Mr. Black took the book, and wrote the poem and put it
here."
"He wouldn't," I said, but was afraid he might have.
"I'm going to take a picture anyway," Poetry said, and stepped back
and took one, and then real quick, took another, and then he took the
yellow sheet of paper with the poem on it and folded it up and put it
in his coat pocket, and with our faces and minds worried we started in
fiercely knocking the living daylights out of that snow man. The first
thing we did was to pull off the red nose, and pull out the corn-cob
pipe, and knock the round head off and watch it go ker-swish onto the
ground and break in pieces, then we pulled the sticks out of his
stomach, kicked him in the same place, and in a jiffy had him looking
like nothing.
We felt pretty mixed up in our minds, I can tell you.
"Do you suppose Mr. Black did that?" I said.
"He wouldn't," Poetry said, "but if he rode his horse down here and
saw it, he'll certainly think we're a bunch of heathen."
"We aren't, though--are we?" I said to Poetry, and for some reason I
was remembering that Little Jim had acted like maybe we ought not make
_fun_ of our teacher just 'cause he had hair only all around his head
and not on top, and couldn't help it. For some reason, it didn't seem
very funny, right that minute, and it seemed like Little Jim was
right.
"What about _The Hoosier Schoolmaster_?" Poetry said to me, as we
dragged our discouraged sleds up Bumblebee hill. "What'll we tell your
mother? And what'll _she_ tell Mrs. Mansfield?"
"I don't know," Poetry said, and his voice sounded more worried than
I'd heard it in a long time.
The first thing Mom said to us when we got to our house was, "Mr.
Black was here twice this afternoon."
"_Twice?_" I said. "What for? What did he want?"
"Oh he was just visiting around, getting acquainted with the parents
of the boys. Such a beautiful brown saddle horse," Mom said. "And he
was so polite."
"The horse?" Poetry said, and maybe shouldn't have, but Mom ignored
his remark and said, "He took a picture of our house and barn and
tried to get one of Mixy cat, but Mixy was scared of the horse, I
guess, and ran like a frightened rabbit."
"Was he actually taking pictures?" Poetry asked with a worried voice.
"Yes, and he wanted to get one of you boys playing on Bumblebee
hill.... But you were all gone, he said, but he found the book you
left there, so he brought it back--you know, the one Mrs. Mansfield
wanted."
"What book?" I said, pretending to be surprised. "Did Mrs. Mansfield
want a book?"
And Mom who was standing at our back door bareheaded, and shouldn't
have been, on account of she might catch cold, said, "Yes, she phoned
here for _The Hoosier Schoolmaster_, while Mr. Black was here, but I
knew _your_ mother had one, Poetry, so I told her to call _there_."
Poetry and I were looking at each other, wondering "What on earth?"
Then Mom said, "Mr. Black thought maybe you boys had been reading it
or something and had forgotten it when you left."
"D-d-d-did he--did he--?" Poetry began, but stuttered so much he had
to stop and start again, and said, "Did he say _where_ he found it? I
mean was it--that is, where did he _find_ it?"
"He didn't say," Mom said, "but he said since he was going on over to
Mrs. Mansfield's anyway, he'd take it over for me, so you won't have
to take it over, Bill," Mom finished.
Well, that was that.... Poetry and I sighed to each other, and he
said, "Did you tell my mother?"
"I've just called her," Mom said, "and you're to come on home right
away to get the chores done early.... It's early to bed for all of us
on Saturday night, you know."
Poetry must have felt pretty bad, just like I did, but he managed to
say to Mom politely, "Thank you, Mrs. Collins. I'll hurry right on
home."
I walked out to the gate with him, and for a jiffy we just stood and
looked at each other, both of us with worried looks on our faces.
"Do you suppose he really took a picture of himself with that poem on
his stomach?" Poetry asked. "And if he did, _who_ on earth put it
there?"
"I don't know," I said, "but what would he want with pictures of all
of us and our parents?"
"I'm sure I don't know--" Poetry said, with a worried voice.
Just that minute Pop called from the barn and said, "BILL, HURRY UP
AND GATHER THE EGGS! IT'LL BE TOO DARK TO SEE IN THE BARN AS SOON AS
THE SUN GOES DOWN! POETRY, BE SURE TO COME AGAIN SOME TIME," which was
Pop's way of telling Poetry to step on the gas and get going home
right now, which Poetry did, and I went back to the house and got the
egg basket to start to gather the eggs, wondering what would happen
next.
6
Just as I started to open our kitchen door and go out to the barn, Mom
came from the other room where she'd been talking on the phone and
said, "Little Jim's mother is coming down with the flu, and won't be
able to go to church tomorrow, so we're to pick up Little Jim and also
stop for Tom Till and take him to church with _us_.... We'll have to
get up a little earlier tomorrow morning, so you get the chores done
quick so we can get supper over and to bed nice and early," which I
thought was a good idea. I was already tired all of a sudden, almost
too tired to gather the eggs.
Tomorrow, though, would be a fine day. It'd be fun stopping at Little
Jim's and Tom Till's houses and take them to church with us.
Little Jim had something on his mind that was bothering him, though,
and I wondered what it was. Also, I wondered who was coming to our
house for dinner tomorrow. Maybe it would be Little Jim, as _well_ as
somebody else, if his mom was going to have the flu.
Pretty soon I was up in our haymow all by myself carrying the egg
basket around to the different places where different ones of our
old hens laid their eggs. Old Bent-comb still laid her daily egg up
in a corner of the mow so I climbed away up over a big stack of
sweet-smelling hay to where I knew the nest was. I wasn't feeling very
good inside on account of things hadn't gone right during the day, and
yet I couldn't tell what was wrong, except maybe it was just me. When
I got to old Bent-comb's nest, sure enough there were two eggs in
it--one was the pretty white egg Bent-comb herself had laid that day
and the other was an artificial glass egg which we kept in the nest
all the time just to encourage any hen that might see it, to stop and
lay an egg there herself, just as if maybe there had been another hen
who had thought it was a good place to lay an egg. It was easy to fool
old Bent-comb, I thought.
While I was getting ready to go back to the ladder and go down it to
the main floor of the barn, my eyes climbed up Pop's brand new ladder
which goes up to the cupola at the very peak of the roof of our very
high barn. It certainly was a very nice light ladder, and next summer
it would be easy for me to carry it to one cherry tree after another
in our orchard when I helped pick cherries for Mom. It was such a
light ladder, even Little Jim could carry it.... While I was standing
looking up and thinking about wishing spring would hurry up and come,
I all of a sudden wanted to climb up the ladder and look out the
windows of the cupola and see what I could see in the different
directions around the Sugar Creek territory. Also, I wondered if
Snow-white, my favorite pigeon, and her husband had decided to have
their nest in the cupola again this year, and if there were maybe any
eggs or maybe a couple of baby pigeons, although parent pigeons hardly
ever decided to raise any baby pigeons in the winter-time. If there
was anything I liked to look at more than anything else, it was baby
birds in a nest. Their fuzz always reminded me of Big Jim's fuzzy
mustache, he being the only one of the Sugar Creek Gang to begin to
have any.
In a jiffy I was on my way and in another jiffy I was there, standing
on the second from the top rung of the ladder. It was nice and light
up there with the sun still shining in, although pretty soon it would
go down. In one direction I could see Poetry's house, and their big
maple tree right close beside it in the back yard, under which in the
summer-time he always pitched his tent and sometimes he would invite
me to stay all night with him; in another direction, and far away
across our cornfield, was Dragonfly's house which had an orchard right
close by it, where in the fall of the year we could all have all the
apples we wanted, if we wanted them; Big Jim and Circus lived right
across the road from each other, but I couldn't see either one of
their houses, or Little Tom's on account of Little Tom lived across
the bridge on the other side of Sugar Creek.... I could see our red
brick schoolhouse, away on past Dragonfly's house, though. But when I
looked at it, instead of feeling kinda happy inside like I nearly
always did when we had our pretty lady other teacher for a teacher, I
felt kinda saddish. There was the big maple tree which I knew was
right close beside a tall iron pump, near which we had built a snow
fort; and behind that was the woodshed where we'd been locked in by
our new man teacher and which you know about if you've read _One
Stormy Day at Sugar Creek_, and behind the woodshed was the great big
schoolyard where we played baseball and blindman's buff and other
games in the fall and spring, and where we play fox-and-goose in the
winter. For a few minutes I forgot I was supposed to be gathering
eggs, and was doing what Pop is always accusing me of doing, which is
"dreaming." I was thinking about what had happened that afternoon,
such as the trip we'd taken through the cave to Old Man Paddler's
cabin, and the prayer he'd made for all of us, and especially for Old
Hook-nosed John Till, which Little Tom had heard, and it had made him
cry and want to go home. Poor Little Tom, I thought. What if I had had
a pop like his, instead of the kinda wonderful pop I had, who made it
easy for Mom to be happy, which is why maybe Mom was always singing
around our kitchen, even when she was tired, and also why, whenever
Pop came into our house after being gone awhile, Mom would look up
quick from whatever she was doing and give him a nice look, and
sometimes they'd be awful glad to see each other, and Pop would give
her a great big hug like pops are supposed to do to moms. Poor Little
Tom's mom, I thought.
Well, while I was still not thinking about finishing gathering the
eggs, I looked in the last direction I hadn't looked yet, which was
toward our house and over the top of the spreading branches of the
plum tree and over the top of our gate which Dragonfly had had his
ride on, and on down toward Bumblebee hill where we'd coasted and had
fun and made the snow man of Mr. Black, but say! right that second,
I saw something moving--in fact, it was somebody's cap moving along
just below the crest of the hill, but all I could see was the
bobbing-up-and-down cap, and right away I knew whose cap it was--it
was the bright red cap of the new tough guy in our neighborhood whose
name was Shorty Long, and right away I knew who it was that had
written Poetry's poetry and put it on the sticks into Mr. Black's
stomach....
I had a queer, and also an angry feeling inside me, 'cause I just
_knew_ Mr. Black had seen the poem, and since it had been signed "The
Sugar Creek Gang," we would all be in for still more trouble Monday
morning in school.
While I was up there in that cupola, I made up my mind to one thing,
and that was that no matter how much we didn't like our teacher, and
no matter what ideas Poetry and I had once had in our minds to find
out whether a board on the top of the schoolhouse chimney would smoke
out a teacher, I, Bill Collins wasn't going to vote "Yes" if the gang
put it to a vote to decide whether to do it or not.... No sir, not me.
Right that second, I heard my pop calling me from away down on the
main floor of the barn, "Better come on down and finish your chores,
Bill," which I had, and which I started to do, climbing backwards down
the new ladder very carefully to the haymow floor and then down the
other ladder to the main floor of the barn.
Pop had just finished milking our one milk cow, and the big
three-gallon milk pail was full clear to the top and there was
inch-high creamy-yellow foam above the top of the pail. Mixy, our old
black and white cat, was mewing and mewing and walking all around
Pop's legs and looking up and mewing and rubbing her sides against his
boots and also running over toward the little milk pan over by a
corner of the barn floor, as if to say to Pop, "For goodness sake, I
may be a mere cat, but does that give you any right to make me wait
for my supper?"
Anyway I was reminded that I was hungry myself, and pretty soon we'd
all be in our house, sitting around our table eating raw-fried
potatoes and reddish slices of fried ham, and other things....
"I'll take the milk on up to the house, Bill," Pop said, and also
said, "You follow me up to the back porch, Mixy--you can't have
_fresh_ milk tonight--and also, only a little raw meat, because there
are absolutely too many mice around this barn. Any ordinary hungry cat
ought to catch at least one mouse a day, Mixy, and if you _don't_
catch them, we'll have to make you hungry, so you will. Understand?" I
looked at Pop's big reddish-blackish eyebrows and he was frowning at
Mixy, although I knew he liked her a lot, but didn't like mice very
well.
I finished gathering the eggs that were in the barn and then went to
the hen house where I knew there would be some more eggs, and then
took my basket of maybe four dozen eggs toward the house.
Mixy was there on the back porch, I noticed, lapping away at her milk
like a house afire. I wiped off my boots carefully like I'd been
trained to do whether I was at home or in somebody else's house,
pushed open the door to our kitchen and went in, expecting to see Mom,
or Pop, or both of them there, but there wasn't anybody there, so I
sat the egg basket down on Mom's work table, and started into the
front room, where I thought they'd maybe be. All of a sudden I heard
Mom saying something in a tearful voice, and I stopped cold--wondering
what I'd maybe done and shouldn't have, and if Mom was telling Pop
about it, so I started to listen--and then was half afraid to, so I
started to open the door and go out when I heard Pop say something in
a low voice, and it was, "No, Mother, whatever it is, I know one
thing--our Bill will tell the truth. He'd tell the truth right now if
I asked him, but I'm not going to. I'm going to wait and see what
happens, and see if he'll tell me himself."
I strained my ears hard to hear what Mom would answer, and this is
what she said, "All right, Theodore, I'll be patient; but just the
same, I'm worried."
"Don't you worry one little tiny bit, Mother," Pop said. "A boy's
heart is like a garden. If you plant good seed in it, and cultivate
and plow it and water it with love, he'll come out all right," which
made me like my pop a lot, only I didn't have time to think about it
'cause right that very second almost, I heard Mom say in a worried
voice, "Yes, dear, but _weeds_ grow in a garden without anyone's
planting them," which made me feel all saddish inside, and for some
reason I could see our own garden which every spring and summer had
all kinds of weeds--ragweeds, smartweeds, and big ugly Jimson-weeds,
and lots of other kinds. Right that second, I remembered something my
pop had said to me once last summer which was, "Say, Bill, do you know
how to keep the big weeds out of our garden, without having to pull
up or cut out even one of them?" and when I said, "No, how, Pop?" he
said, "Just kill all of them while they are _little_."
Well, I didn't want Mom or Pop to know I'd heard them talking about
me, so I sneaked out the back door very carefully and started to
talking in a friendly voice to Mixy, saying to her, "Listen, Mixy, do
you know how to keep all the great big mice out of our barn? You just
catch all the mice while they're little--it's as easy as pie."
Mixy looked up from her empty milk pan and mewed and looked down at
her pan again, and looked up at me again and mewed again, and then
walked over to me and rubbed her sides against my boots like she liked
me a lot. For some reason, I thought Mixy was a very nice cat right
that minute, so I said to her, "I'm awful glad you like me, Mixy, even
if nobody else around this place does."
Pretty soon, Pop and I were out doing the rest of the chores while Mom
was getting supper. Almost right away, it began to get dark, and we
went in to supper. "Wash your hands and go get Charlotte Ann," Mom
said to me. "I think she's awake now."
Charlotte Ann, you know, is my baby sister, and even though she is a
girl, is a pretty swell baby; in fact, she's wonderful.
In a few minutes Pop and Mom and Charlotte Ann and I were all sitting
around our kitchen table in the lamp light. We had two kerosene lamps
lit, one of them behind me on the high mantel-shelf above my head, and
the other on another mantel-shelf above the water pail in the corner.
We always bowed our heads at our house before every meal, different
ones of us asking the blessing, whichever one of us Pop called on.
When I was little I'd said a little poem prayer, but didn't do it any
more on account of Pop thought I was too big, and since I was an
actual Christian, in spite of having Jimson-weeds in my heart, I
always prayed whenever Pop told me to, only I hoped that he wouldn't
ask me to tonight. Pop looked around the table at all of us, and Mom
helped Charlotte Ann fold her hands, which she didn't want to do, but
kept wiggling and squirming and reaching for things on the table,
which were too far away, "Well, let's see--whom shall we ask to pray,
tonight? ah--"
Pop's "ah--" was cut short by the telephone ringing our ring, which
meant that one of us had to answer the phone. "I'll get it," I said,
"maybe it's one of the gang--"
"I'll get it," Mom said, "I'm expecting a call--I say, I'LL GET IT!"
Mom raised her voice on account of I was already out of my chair and
half way to the living room door.
When Mom came back a minute later, she was smiling like she'd had some
wonderful news, and it was, "It was Mrs. Long. _Mr._ Long won't be
home tomorrow, so she can go to church with us. Isn't that wonderful?
It's an answer to prayer."