“turtledove” and the “bobwhite” until quite a while later. It took
us almost an hour to get Dragonfly’s pop’s cows out of the bayou, we
_having_ to drive them out on account of the cornfield being on the
other side, and you can’t trust a cow with a cornfield any more than
you can trust a boy or a girl with an open cookie jar.
If one of Dragonfly’s pop’s red heifers hadn’t gotten a stubborn streak
and decided she wanted to go on a wild run all through the woods,
we might not have found the tent for a long time, but while we were
chasing her all around through the bushes and up and down the creek,
she accidentally took us right to it.
“It was swell of that old red heifer to show us where the tent is,
wasn’t it?” Dragonfly said, after we had finally gotten her and the
other cows back in Dragonfly’s pop’s dark cattle-shed away from the
flies, and we were back again not more than a hundred yards from the
tent itself.
“Maybe the heifer smelled the calf-skin in the folded billfold in
Bill’s hip pocket, and it scared her. Maybe she thought Bill wanted to
make a lot of billfolds out of her hide,” Little Tom Till said, trying
to be funny, and Circus said, “I don’t think heifers think.”
One of the first things we noticed about the camp when we got close to
it, was that they had picked one of the very worst camp sites in the
whole woods. It was up in the middle of the woods, halfway between our
house and the spring, away back off the barefoot boys’ path so that I
couldn’t have seen it when I had gone galloping to the spring a couple
of hours ago. It was under one of the biggest, widest-spreading oak
trees around there anywhere and would have shade all day, which would
mean it wouldn’t get a chance to dry out after a damp night, which
nights often are in any territory where there is a river or a creek or
a lake. It wouldn’t have any morning sun on it, at all, like tents are
supposed to have.
Any boy scout knows that nobody should ever pitch a tent under an
oak tree on account of the droppings from an oak tree will make the
canvas rot quicker and before you know it, you will have little holes
scattered all over your roof, which will make it leak like everything
when it rains. Also, I noticed, they had pitched the tent so the flap
would be open toward the west and anybody who lives at Sugar Creek
knows that you shouldn’t have the tent flap on the west side because
that is the direction most of our rains come from.
Besides, they would have to go too far to get their drinking and
cooking water--clear down to the spring or else in the opposite
direction to the Collins family’s iron, pitcher-pump.
“They certainly don’t know very much about camp life,” Big Jim said,
he having been a boy scout once and had taught us all these different
things about the best kind of camp site to pick.
“It’s a good thing they got a shovel,” Little Tom Till said, seeing one
standing against an ironwood tree by their station wagon.
“Why?” Dragonfly said and Little Tom Till answered, like a schoolboy
who had studied his lesson and knew it by heart, “Because, where the
tent’s pitched now, if it rains, the water will run in from all sides
and make a lake out of the floor.”
Well, we brought it to a vote to see which one of us had to go up and
knock on the tent pole and ask if anybody had lost a billfold.
It took only a jiffy for me to win the election by a six to one
vote-six for me and one against me, my vote being the one that was
against. So while the rest of the gang kept itself hidden behind some
pawpaw bushes, I stepped out into the open and mosied along like I was
only interested in seeing different things in the woods, such as a
red squirrel in a tree or some kind of new beetle. Also I was walking
carefully so as not to awaken them if they were asleep, especially the
one who was supposed to take an afternoon nap.
Say, I forgot to tell you that tent wasn’t any ordinary brown canvas
tent, but was green and was a sorta three-way tent, shaped like some of
the ranch houses that people were building in our town. I could tell
just by looking at the tent that it would be wonderful for a gang of
boys to go camping in. One of the wings of the tent was only a canvas
roof with the sides made out of some kind of netting to keep out
different kinds of flies such as houseflies, deer flies and blowflies.
It could even keep out a horse-fly or a warble fly if one wanted to get
in, which one probably would if somebody’s cow accidentally strayed
into the tent. It would also keep out June beetles at night.
Right away I saw somebody was resting on a cot inside one of the wings
and as quick as that I was too bashful to go any closer because I could
tell it was the woman herself lying there and she was maybe asleep, and
it isn’t polite to wake anybody out of a nap if you know he is taking
one.
My heart was beating pretty fast on account of I was a little scared to
do what I had been voted to do, but the man must have seen me or else
heard all of us because right then he opened the flap of the main part
of the tent and came out with the forefinger of one hand up to his lips
and the other hand making the kind of motions a person’s hand makes
when he wants you to keep still and not say a word.
I noticed that the brownish haired man was about as old as my
reddish-haired pop and that he had a magazine in his hand like he had
been reading. He also motioned for me to stop where I was, which I
did and he kept on coming toward me with his finger still up to his
lips and shaking a warning finger with his other hand, which meant,
“Sh-h-h--don’t say a word.”
I walked back with him to where the rest of the gang was behind the
pawpaw bushes and I noticed that he had a very nice face. Also he
looked like an important city person, who might be extra smart and
maybe had charge of a big office or maybe a store or something.
“Is there anything I can do for you boys?” he said in a very
deep-sounding voice.
Even though he had a half-sad look in his eyes, I could tell he was a
kind person and probably liked boys.
I looked at Big Jim and he looked at me and we all looked at different
ones of us. Finally the rest of the gang’s twelve eyes focused on my
freckled face and red hair so I looked up at the man and said, “Ye-s-s,
sir, Mr. Bobwhite--I mean. Yes, sir. We found a billfold up along the
creek--”
Little Tom Till cut in then and shouldn’t have, saying, “Little Jim
here found it and it’s brown and has some dollar bills in it and three
fives and one ten--”
“Sh--!” Big Jim shushed Little Tom Till and the man grinned with
a twinkle in his eyes and I saw that the edge of one of his upper
incisors had gold on it.
“That’s all right. I can describe it for you,” he said, which he did,
giving all the details. “It has a tooled flying horse on the leather
on the back and the initials F. E., and the name Frances Everhard in
the inside on the identification card. The license number of our car is
7-34567. I was just ready to start looking for it.”
There was something about the man that I liked although there was an
expression in his eyes that made it seem like he was a little bit
worried. I could tell he was the kind of man that would be kind to
his wife or his children’s mother--as Pop is to Mom. He might even be
willing to do the dishes for her without being asked if she was extra
tired. I noticed he kept looking at Little Jim like he thought he was a
very wonderful person.
“So you found it, did you, young man?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” Little Jim piped up in his mouse-like voice.
“Well, I want to thank you. I have a reward for you. If you boys come
back later, say in about an hour, my wife will wish to thank you in
person. She has some cookies that she bought on purpose for you--just
in case you happened to call to see us. She is having her nap
now--doctor’s orders are for her to sleep an hour every afternoon, you
know.”
We let the man have the billfold, which he took, and without opening
it, shoved it into his hip pocket. “Frances will be so thankful. I
think she doesn’t know she lost it yet--and maybe we won’t tell her,
eh?”
We promised we wouldn’t and he started to walk backwards a little,
which meant he was through visiting and we could go on home or
somewhere.
“Wait,” Mr. Everhard said and stopped as also did we because we had
also started to start in our own direction. “How would one of you boys
like to earn a quarter every day by bringing our drinking water from
the spring--or from up there at the Collins family house? One of you
the Collins boy?”
I could feel myself blushing all over my freckled face, clear up to the
roots of my red hair and I started to say, “Yes,” but Dragonfly beat me
to it by saying, “_He_ is,”--jerking his thumb in my direction.
The man went on to explain, “This isn’t the best place to pitch a
tent--so far from a water supply--but somebody told us the spring
was your gang’s meeting place so we decided to let you have your own
privacy.”
Big Jim was pretty smart, I thought, when he spoke up politely, saying,
“That was very thoughtful of you.” Then he added with a Big Jim grin,
“You’ll probably have more privacy yourself up here away from the noisy
spring,”--meaning us. Then he added, “Sure, we will be glad to bring
your drinking water every day, won’t we, Bill?”
“Sure,” I said to Big Jim. “I’ll even help you carry it.”
He was almost halfway back to his tent when he stopped and hurried back
to us again. “Mr. Paddler has given us permission to dig a few holes
around here in the woods,” he said, “so don’t be too surprised if you
find a new one every now and then.”
I started to say, “What are you digging them for,” but didn’t ’cause
Big Jim scowled and shook his head at me.
A little later at the spring itself we stopped for a drink and Circus
said, “Old Man Paddler doesn’t own the _cemetery_. Who would give them
permission to dig out there in the cemetery at night--and why would
they want to do it?”
“Maybe they’re studying different kinds of soil. Maybe they have a lot
of glass jars full of different kinds of dirt in the tent or in the
station wagon,” Poetry suggested.
“They wouldn’t need to dig such deep holes just to get soil samples,”
Big Jim said and I noticed he had a little bit of a worried look on his
face.
Poetry had another idea and it was, “How are we going to spend our
quarter every day--the one Bill is going to earn for us?”--which wasn’t
funny.
Our mystery wasn’t any nearer solved than it had been. One reason why I
felt quite disappointed was because I was sorta hoping that whoever had
been digging in the cemetery the night before was what the police and
detectives call a _ghoul_, which is a person who robs graves, and I was
hoping that if it was such a person, maybe the gang could have a chance
to help capture him or her.
Well, we had done all we could that afternoon although I was still
wondering about the bobwhite whistle and the turtledove call. We talked
that over while we were still at the spring and decided that maybe it
was the way the man and his wife had of calling to each other--a sort
of code or something--like we ourselves had. Whenever he wanted to call
her, he could use the quail call and she could answer it by cooing like
a turtledove. If that was the meaning of it, it was kinda nice and it
showed that even married people could have fun together like my own mom
and pop do a lot of times, in fact almost every day.
8
At the supper table at our house that night I think I had never heard
Mom and Pop laugh so hard as they did. I was still thinking about the
warble flies that had scared the living daylights out of Dragonfly’s
pop’s cows, I having told them all about it, crowding my words out
between bites, and I was sorta crowding the bites in too fast and
shouldn’t have, when Pop said, “The heel flies are pretty bad this
year. Nearly every farmer in Sugar Creek has been complaining about
them. They have been tormenting Old Brindle something fierce today. I
don’t dare turn her out into the pasture without leaving the gate into
the barnyard open so she can come rushing back in for the protection of
the shade anytime she wants to.”
“Speaking of cows,” Mom said, and her voice sorta lit up like her face
does when she has thought of something very interesting or funny. “I
read something in a farm magazine today that was about the funniest
thing I ever read in my life.”
“What was it?” Pop said.
“Yes, what was it?” I said.
Pop and Mom were always reading things in magazines and telling them
to each other and I didn’t always get in on their jokes. Sometimes I
had to ask them what they were laughing about and it didn’t always seem
as funny to me as it did to them. They also talk to each other about
things that are not funny--things they have just that day learned about
something in the Bible or something they have studied for next Sunday’s
Sunday School lesson.
“I’ll get it and read it for you,” Mom said. She excused herself,
left the table, went into the other room and came back with a small
magazine. “It’s a ten-year-old school girl’s essay on a cow,” Mom said.
Even before she started reading it I wasn’t sure I was going to like it
because I am kinda close to being a ten-year-old boy myself and I could
imagine what a ten-year-old girl would write on a cow.
Pop cleared his throat like he was going to read himself or else so he
would be ready to laugh when the time came, and Mom started reading
while Charlotte Ann wiggled and twisted on her highchair, she not
being interested in anybody’s essay on a cow. All Charlotte Ann was
interested in about cows was the milk she had to drink three times a
day and didn’t always want to, so a story about a cow wouldn’t be funny
to her.
Even as I looked at Charlotte Ann I was remembering that there were
plenty of unsolved things about our mystery. There was the picture of
Charlotte Ann in the billfold; the strange-acting woman who had dug
holes in a graveyard at night and had permission to dig them all over
the Sugar Creek territory, who had to rest every afternoon, and who
went barefoot and waded in the riffles all by herself--stuff like that.
Why had she had the picture of Charlotte Ann in her lost and found
billfold? I knew that the very second Mom got through reading and she
and Pop got through laughing that I would ask her about the picture of
Charlotte Ann.
Well, this is what Mom read, she not getting to read more than a few
lines before Pop interrupted her and the two of them started laughing.
Pop stopped her maybe a half-dozen times before she finished and they
laughed and laughed and kept on laughing and Mom wiped her tears and
held her kinda half-fat sides and Pop held his ordinary ones and I
grinned and scowled. This is it:
“The cow is a mammal. It has six sides--right, left, up and
below, inside and outside. At the back is a tail on which hangs a
brush. With this it sends the flies away so they don’t fall into
the milk. The head is for the purpose of growing horns and so the
mouth can be somewhere. The horns are to butt with and the mouth
is to moo with. Under the cow, hangs the milk. It is arranged for
milking. When people milk, the milk comes and there is never an
end to the supply. How the cow does it I have never realized,
but it makes more and more. The cow has a fine sense of smell,
one can smell it far away. This is the reason for the fresh air
in the country.”
Well, that simply doubled up my Mom and Pop in laughter and even
Charlotte Ann pounded with her spoon on her ordinary wooden food tray,
which I used to pound on years and years ago--the same spoon I had
probably pounded with--and she acted like she was having the time of
her life.
“What’s the matter, Bill? Isn’t it funny?”
“Not very,” I said. “Anybody who is ten years old ought to know more
about cows than that.”
Right away Pop was ready to defend the girl, saying, “She was probably
a city girl, who didn’t have any _brothers_,” which also wasn’t very
funny.
“Say, Mom,” I said to Mom, “have you had any new pictures taken of
Charlotte Ann lately?”
“Why, no. Why do you ask?”
“You sure you haven’t had one taken of her sitting in that fancy
highchair in the Sugar Creek Furniture Store?”
“Why, no. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, I just wondered,”--I having made up my mind not to tell her any
more.
As soon as supper was over, I started to do the dishes without being
asked to, for a change, almost enjoying it on account of I was learning
to enjoy doing things for Mom when she was tired. In fact, it makes me
feel fine inside--almost as good as I feel when I am eating a piece of
ripe watermelon--to do the dishes while she rests, on account of she is
a pretty swell mom.
Pop was in the other room with Mom, talking to her while she
rested--Mom actually lying down while she was doing it, she being that
tired.
“The most friendly couple is camping down in the woods,” I heard
Mom say. “They were here this afternoon a little while. She’s the
prettiest thing I think I ever saw--kinda fancy though, and was wearing
high-heeled shoes--not at all the kind an experienced camper or hiker
would wear. They wanted a pail of well-water and I sold them a pound of
Old Brindle’s butter, which they are going to keep cool in the spring.”
Hearing Mom say that, I sidled over to the kitchen door with her apron
on and with the drying towel in my hands and listened to what else she
was saying. I got there too late to get all of it, but part of it was,
“She’s just out of the hospital, he told me. She doesn’t look like
there’s a thing in the world wrong with her, but her husband--their
name is Everhard--says she is under special treatment and she has been
released to him. She’s not at all dangerous, but she gets depressed at
times, and sometimes right in the middle of the night she gets one of
her spells.”
I heard Pop sigh and say, “Being out here in the country with plenty of
fresh air and good country food with an understanding husband like that
will be good for her. I wonder how long she has been that way.”
And Mom said, “He told me confidentially when she was out in the car
that it started about a year ago. She’s all right when she’s all right,
but these spells come on and she cries--but she never does anything
desperate--only wants to go around digging holes in the ground....”
That was as much as I got to hear right then ’cause the phone rang and
when Pop answered, it was Little Jim’s mom, the pianist at the Sugar
Creek Church, wanting to talk to Mom about something or other.
Mom was always tickled when it was Little Jim’s mom calling ’cause
Little Jim’s mom was her almost best friend and sometimes they talked
and talked until one of them had to quit ’cause she smelled something
burning on the stove.
Well, I, the maid of the Collins family, went back to the kitchen to
slosh my hands around a little longer in the hot sudsy water. Seeing
our battery radio on the utility table and wondering what program was
on, I wrung the water out of my right hand and turned on the radio,
dialing to a station that sometimes had on a story for boys at that
time of day. I tuned in just in time to hear the deep-voiced announcer
in a terribly excited hurry say something about “those red, dish-pan
hands” and then he galloped on to tell all the women listeners to be
sure to use a certain kind of fancy-named soap or something that would
make their hands soft and pretty almost right away. The soap was also
good for washing dishes.
Pop had to come through the kitchen on his way to the barn, so he
stopped and listened a jiffy with me. Then he said, “You using the
right kind of soap, Son?” and I answered, “I don’t know. I hope so, but
I’m afraid I _am_ getting ‘dish-pan hands.’ Look at ’em!” I held my
hands out for him to look at and he said with a mischievous grin in his
voice, “Looks like you got dish-pan hair too.” Then he turned the radio
down a little saying, “Your mother is resting so keep it low.”
“She’s talking on the phone,” I said.
“It’s the same thing. You will find out she will be all full of pep
when she gets through,”--which I knew might be the truth because Mom
nearly always felt fine when she finished listening and talking to
Little Jim’s mom, who was always cheerful on the telephone.
“She smiles with her voice,” Mom always says about Little Jim’s mom.
Pop went on out to the barn with the milk pail to see if the warble
flies had tormented Old Brindle so much that day that she didn’t have
time to manufacture as much milk as usual and I went on back to my
kinda half-cold dishwater.
I was just finishing washing the last dish and was getting ready to
start wiping them when Mom finished talking and listening to Little
Jim’s mom. But say, when she came in she was still tired. She kinda
sighed as she lifted the steaming tea-kettle and poured water over the
dishes so she could dry them easier.
All of a sudden I got a half-sad, half-glad feeling in my heart, so
I said to her, “You go on back in the other room and rest some more.
I’m getting along swell.” I suppose I was glad because for a change I
actually wanted to help her and maybe I was sad on account of Mom’s
sighs nearly always make me feel that way for some reason.
She sighed again and started in helping me. I decided to let her
because I didn’t want to discourage her from helping a tired-out son
with his work.
She was so quiet for about three minutes, while all we could hear was
the lazy ticking of the old clock on the mantle and the sound of the
plates and cups and saucers and silverware. Pretty soon Mom said, still
sadly, “I feel so sorry for her. Poor thing. If only she could believe
and trust in God!”
I heard myself sigh the same kind of sigh Mom had sighed and felt
sorry for the woman myself--knowing whom Mom meant. Then I guess Mom
had decided that I ought to know more about Mrs. Everhard--I already
knowing a lot. First, though, she told me some things I never knew
about the Collins family itself, still using a kind of sad voice and
saying, “I want you to know before you get any older. It will help you
to understand your mother and father better, and all other people who
have had to bury a little baby.”
“What?” I thought, without saying a word. Mom’s voice sounded different
than I had ever heard it as she went on. “Just two years before you
were born, Bill, your father and I had to give back to God a very
beautiful, little three-week-old, baby girl. She was so very lovely and
sweet and it broke our hearts, but we have tried to thank Him that He
let us have her to love even for such a little while--” Mom stopped and
again all we could hear was the lonely clock that was ticking so sadly
it seemed like it must have felt sorry for Mom too.
Mom, still being very serious, went on, saying, “Then God gave us you
to take her place and you have been a great joy to us--” and again she
stopped.
I knew that if all her thoughts had come out in words, she could have
added, “and also a lot of trouble,” but Mom didn’t and I liked her even
better, taking a sidewise glance up at her out of the corner of my eye.
I guess maybe I had seen my mother’s face a million times--and while
it’s nearly always the same, I have never gotten tired of looking at
it. She always looks just like my Mom even when she’s all tired out or
sad and hasn’t had time to powder her nose from the hard work she is
doing in the kitchen or out in the garden or orchard or somewhere.
“She’s a pretty wonderful mom,” I thought and swallowed something in my
throat which stopped a couple of tears from getting into my eyes. Then
I began working a little harder and faster on the dishes, which I had
decided to help dry.
A little later Mom told me something else about the strange woman and
her husband, who were camping down in the Sugar Creek woods--something
Little Jim’s mom had just told her over the phone and it was that
something had happened to the woman’s mind, which the doctors called
by some kind of fancy name, which meant she was mentally ill and maybe
would be for a while until she had time to get well again.
“Thousands of people get well from being mentally ill,” Mom explained,
“just like children do from such things as chicken pox and whooping
cough. Sometimes though they have to have a very special treatment in a
special hospital.”
“I can understand how she feels,” Mom went on, “because for a long time
after we had buried Little Nancy it seemed like she couldn’t possibly
be dead. She _had_ to be alive, I kept thinking, and I kept imagining I
could hear her crying in the other room--”
“In there where Charlotte Ann is now?” I asked.
Mom didn’t answer for a minute. She only nodded and sighed again. Then
she said, “I never actually heard her voice, of course.
“And that,” Mom finished, “is what is wrong with the dear little mother
who is camping down there in the woods. You boys be very careful to be
very kind and--”