not knowing I wasn’t supposed to say it, and Mom replied, “Thoughtful
people never say that any more about a person who is ill in the way
Mrs. Everhard is. They always say that they are not well _emotionally_.
We try to understand them and to find out what made them that way, and
sometimes when they themselves come to understand what caused their
illness they begin to get well right away--in fact, some of them get
well almost at once. Doctors try to give them something to hope for.
It was only the grace of God and my believing in Him that spared me
from going to pieces, myself,” Mom said. “He gave your father and me
strength to stand the loss of your baby sister, Nancy.”
Say, when Mom said, “your _sister_,” I did get a lump in my throat
because I was thinking what if it had been Charlotte Ann who had died.
“You boys must not act surprised when you find those little,
freshly-dug holes here and there in the woods or along the creek
because when she gets one of her sad spells she imagines her baby is
still alive, even though it was buried, and she starts digging a hole
in the woods or along the creek, looking for it. She thinks it was
buried alive when she feels like that. She will dig a while and then
stop to listen to see if she can hear it crying.”
When Mom said that I was remembering that we had seen her do that very
thing in the old cemetery last night.
“Couldn’t the doctors make her well?” I asked Mom, and she said, “Not
with just medicine alone. One thing the doctor has prescribed for her
is that she attend some church regularly--a church where the minister
believes and preaches the Bible and what it teaches about Heaven and
the wonderful place it is, and how people can meet their loved ones
there, alive and well--all through trusting in the Saviour. The doctor
thinks that if Mrs. Everhard can learn to trust in God and to believe
that she will see her baby again, she will be cured.”
9
Well, it seemed after that wonderful talk with Mom that I, Bill
Collins, was going to be a better boy than I had ever been in my life
before--although I didn’t see how I could change all of me so quick.
Anyway I thought I knew why Mom every now and then sighed even when I
couldn’t see a thing to sigh about. Maybe a sad thought came to her
that wasn’t caused by the hot weather or from being all tired out or
because I might have been a bad boy, which I sometimes used to be.
Several weeks went by during which the gang found maybe twenty-five
different-sized holes in different places in the woods and along the
creek. Also we were not surprised when most anytime we heard a quail
call and a turtledove answer it. Sometimes though it was the woman who
gave the quail call and the man was the turtledove who answered.
It began to be almost fun to hear them because we could tell that they
liked each other a lot. They were kinda like a gang themselves only
there were only two of them and their whistling to each other was like
a game of some kind--just like we ourselves played different kinds of
games. It was like having a secret code. They wanted us all to stop
at their green tent every day and nearly always Mrs. Everhard had
something for us to eat, which made it easy to remember to stop. Of
course, I had to go anyway to carry water from our iron pitcher-pump to
them.
Each Sunday the Everhards came to our church to hear our minister,
who in nearly every sermon mentioned something about Heaven and how
to get there--such as when you know in your heart that you are an
honest-to-goodness sinner and that you can’t save yourself--which
nobody can--and if you trust the Saviour Himself to forgive all your
sins, you will be sure to go there; and all the babies that ever died
are already there on account of the Blood of Jesus Christ shed upon the
Cross took care of all of them--things like that.
I had to watch myself to keep from looking across the church all the
time to watch Mrs. Everhard to see if she was believing the sermon. The
only thing was--instead of looking at the minister, she kept looking at
Mom or Pop or me, whichever one of us was holding Charlotte Ann, like
she wondered if we were taking care of her right.
One Sunday right in the middle of the sermon she quick stood up and
walked down the aisle in a hurry to the outside door, and her husband
after her. A little later I heard through the open window the station
wagon motor start and I knew he was taking her back to the tent quick,
she having left so maybe she wouldn’t cry in church.
That afternoon when Pop was helping our minister and some other men
hold a jail meeting and Mom and I were alone, Mr. Everhard came over to
our house to borrow Charlotte Ann a while.
“_Borrow_ her!” Mom said with an astonished voice and face, and he
answered, “Yes, Charlotte Ann looks so very much like our own Little
Elsa used to look that I thought if Frances could hold her a while and
listen to her as she pretends to talk it might make her feel better.
She’s very much down today.”
Well, I had heard of people borrowing nearly everything else. Around
Sugar Creek the gang’s different mothers borrowed different kinds
of kitchen things, which they sometimes ran out of and had to have
in a hurry--as fast as a boy could run to the neighbors and get it.
Sometimes Dragonfly’s pop borrowed our brace and bit or Pop’s hand
drill or keyhole saw and Pop would sometimes borrow them back again if
he needed them in a hurry--I getting to run to Dragonfly’s house to get
them--and not getting to stay and play with Dragonfly, which made it
a very hard errand to be sent on. Also different members of the gang
would borrow knives or fishhooks or bobbers or other things from each
other.
_But whoever heard of anybody borrowing a baby!_
I could see Mom wasn’t going to like the idea and if she didn’t I
wasn’t going to either, but because she felt so sorry for the lady and
wanted her to get well fast, she quick thought up a way to say, “Yes,”
without hurting Mr. Everhard’s feelings or her own.
“If you will borrow me too, that will be fine,” she said cheerfully,
and he answered, “Certainly, it will soon be time for afternoon tea
anyway.”
“What about _me?_” I said, all of a sudden trying to be funny and
probably not being very. “Anybody want to borrow a good-looking,
red-haired, homely-faced boy?”
I didn’t much want to go though on account of some of the gang might
come over to play with me, but Mom said quickly, “Certainly, Son, come
right along.”
And so it turned out that I went with Mom and Charlotte Ann and Mr.
Everhard, I carrying a gallon thermos jug of cold, iron-pitcher-pump
water to earn my twenty-five cents for that day.
Say, the first thing I noticed when we came to within a few yards of
the green-canvas, ranch-house-style tent was that one of the tent’s
wings with the green roof and the mosquito netting sidewalls had in it
a baby’s play pen, and in the pen was a lot of things for a baby girl
to enjoy--a doll, a pink teddy bear, a very small broom like the one
Charlotte Ann helps Mom sweep with and a little tea set for playing
house. Beside the tent, hanging by a rope and a spring, was a jumper
swing like the one that used to hang from the limb under the plum tree
in our yard in which Charlotte Ann used to sit and bounce herself up
and down and laugh and gurgle and have the time of her life--but now
it’s too little for her.
“The poor, dear girl,” Mom said with a sigh kinda under her breath and
in my direction--Mr. Everhard having gone on into the tent to tell his
wife she had company. Mom was looking at the baby things with a sort
of faraway expression in her eyes. I could hear voices inside the tent
and it sounded for a minute as if there was a half argument. Then the
canvas flap of the tent opened and Mrs. Everhard came out.
Mom gasped when she saw her, maybe on account of the way she was
dressed and what she had in her hand.
“Such a pretty dress,” Mom said, half to me and half to nobody.
I hardly ever paid any attention to what anybody was wearing,
especially a woman or a girl, on account of it didn’t seem important,
but I guess any woman or maybe even a boy would gasp at the green and
brown and yellow and also red summery-looking dress Mrs. Everhard had
on. It had a lot of milkweed flowers on it with pretty swallow-tail
butterflies with spread wings on each flower. Her yellowish hair was
the same color as the sulphur butterflies that fly around our cabbage
plants with the white ones and I noticed it was still combed like it
had been in church, with some kind of sparkling pin in it. She was
wearing a pair of dark glasses and green and yellow shoes.
To my tangled-up surprise she had in her hands a shovel like the one
she had been using to dig in the ground. She looked all around in a
sort of dazed circle, not seeing us at first, then she started off in a
hurry toward the direction of Strawberry Hill.
Say, quick as anything and without knowing I was going to do it, I
whistled a sharp bobwhite whistle that flew as straight as an arrow
right toward her. It made her stop stock-still and stand and stare.
Then her eyes fell on Charlotte Ann, whom Mom had dressed special for
the visit in a little blue organdy playsuit that made her look as cute
as a bug’s ear and even cuter.
Say, Frances Everhard dropped her shovel like it had had a hot handle
and gasped an excited gasp like women who like babies do when they see
a pretty one and said, “You _darling_ baby!” and started to make a
beeline for her, like she was going to pick her up, then she stopped,
whirled around fast and disappeared into the tent.
For just a second I had a queer fluttering feeling in my heart and
it was kinda like about fifty pretty black and yellow, swallow-tail
butterflies had been fluttering in front of my eyes in the bright
sunlight and then all of a sudden had flown toward the green tent and
disappeared all at once. It was the same kind of happy feeling I get
when I hear a wood thrush singing but can’t see it and wish I could.
A jiffy later she was back outside again with a folding camera. For a
while she didn’t act like anybody was around except Charlotte Ann. Her
extra-pretty face was all lit up and she seemed very happy. “She looks
almost enough like my own Elsa to be a twin,” she told Mom. “In fact,
almost enough to be her.” Then she sighed a heavy sigh and so did Mom.
* * * * *
Well, it was a very interesting visit we had that afternoon at the
ranch-house tent. As soon as Charlotte Ann got over being a little bit
bashful, she let Mrs. Everhard hold her and take all kinds of pictures
of her: in the playpen, in the jumper swing, lying on a blanket and
doing different things. She had her bobwhite husband take a picture of
the two of them while she held Charlotte Ann on her lap.
Everybody had a good time except me on account of I like to keep my
mind in a boy’s world, and nobody could do that when there were three
grown-ups and a baby around. So I asked if they would like me to get
some fresh, cold water from the spring and when they said “Yes,” I took
a thermos jug and shot like a red-headed arrow out past the pawpaw
bushes toward the old overhanging linden tree above the spring.
I was thinking as I ran that the mystery of the little holes being dug
all over Sugar Creek territory was all explained and it looked like the
gang would have to scout around for some other problem to set our seven
different kinds of brains to working on. I didn’t know as I ran that
on account of Charlotte Ann and the woman’s dead baby looking so much
alike I was going to have to put my own brain to work in a very special
way before the summer was over.
* * * * *
I guess I never realized before just how wonderful a person I had for a
baby sister until I thought I was going to lose her. As quick as I can,
I will start telling you all about it. First though I have to tell you
something else about her because some of the people who will read this
story don’t know much about her and it will help them understand how
come she got lost.
We always had more fun than you can shake a stick at, taking care
of Charlotte Ann at our house, in spite of the times when she was a
nuisance. Pop especially had a lot of bothersome fun because he nearly
always had to put her to bed at night--that is, after she was a little
bigger than being a little baby. Going to bed was one of the things
Charlotte Ann didn’t like to do even worse than she didn’t like to do
anything else--after she got to be about two years old. Before that we
didn’t have to worry about her getting all the sleep she needed because
she would go to sleep anywhere, any place and nearly any time, but all
of a sudden she was a grown-up two-year-old and seemed to have ideas of
her own about such things as going to bed at night and taking afternoon
naps.
“That is because at two,” Mom said--she having been reading a book on
how to take care of babies at that age--“they are great _imitators_.
Whatever they see you do they want to do too. They like to do grown-up
things before they are old enough or strong enough or have sense enough
to.”
“Or sense enough _not_ to,” Pop said and Mom agreed with him, both of
them seeming to think it was funny, but I couldn’t understand what they
meant.
“Also,” Mom said, “a two-year old has to have twelve hours of sleep at
night and at least one hour in the afternoon of every day.” She was
talking to me at the time. “You had to have it when you were a baby and
we saw to it that you got it whether you wanted it or not--which you
generally didn’t--and see what a wonderfully-fine, strong boy it made
out of you!”
I got a mischievous streak when she said that and answered, “I can see
how maybe I am a wonderful boy and very fine but I feel very _weak_
right now.” She had just a jiffy before ordered me to carry in a couple
of armfuls of wood for the wood-box, which never seemed to have sense
enough to stay full and always managed to get itself empty at the
very time I didn’t want to fill it and generally when I wanted to do
something else.
“See,” I said to Mom, “before you asked me to get that wood I could
swing both arms up over my head and still feel fine--just like
this,”--holding my arms over my head like I was as strong as the
imaginary man named Atlas who used to hold the world on his shoulders.
“But now,” I went on to Mom, “I’m so weak I can’t lift my right arm
more than this high, just about as high as my waist, I am so weak.”
I had heard Little Jim’s pop say and do that to Little Jim’s mom once
and it had sounded cute so I had decided to try it on my parents the
first chance I got.
Mom, who was getting dinner at the time, stopped stirring the gravy,
turned and looked through the lower part of her bifocals at me and
said, “Poor boy. That’s too bad. If you can’t lift your hand any higher
than your waist how then can you carry in the wood! I’ll take care of
the wood myself. Maybe you’d better go and lie down for an hour while
your father and I have dinner because, your mouth being a little higher
than your waist, you won’t be able to feed yourself,”--and for some
reason I right away went out and carried in several armloads of wood
without saying another word, getting it done about the same time Mom
had dinner ready.
But let me get back to telling you about Charlotte Ann and how she
got mixed up in our mystery. The worst trouble we had with her was
that when we finally got her into bed at night or in the afternoon
when it was her nap time she didn’t want to go to sleep. Sometimes she
would call for a drink of water or something to eat and sometimes she
would come toddling out in her bare feet to wherever Mom and Pop and I
were, interrupt our reading or our talking or Pop’s evening nap on the
davenport. She nearly always came out wide awake acting very friendly
and like she felt more at home when she was up than when she was down.
“What on earth makes her want to do that?” I said one day. “Doesn’t she
have sense enough to stay in bed?”
“She’s lonesome,” Mom answered. “She’s awful lonesome and she has to
have lots of attention. You were that way when you were little.”
“Oh, quit telling me about when I was little years and years ago,” I
said, not wanting to even be reminded that I ever had been, years and
years ago.
As I started to say, getting Charlotte Ann to bed was a hard problem.
It got to be my job to help Mom make her go, when Pop had to be away.
But when Mom and Pop were both away, then I had to do it all by
myself--being what Pop called a _baby sitter_, which is a person who
takes care of a baby while the parents are absent.
One very hot afternoon Mom and Pop both had to be gone to town for two
or three hours and so they let me stay home to take care of Charlotte
Ann, giving me orders to see to it that she took her afternoon nap
between 1:30 and 2:30, or as near to that as I could get her to, and if
it rained, to close all the windows--things like that.
“Take good care of her,” Mom said, as, all dressed up in her Sunday
dress, she looked out the closed car door window.
“I will,” I promised and she and Pop went spinning out through
the front gate, past Theodore Collins on the mailbox and onto the
highway--their car stirring up a big cloud of white dust, that moved
slowly off in the direction of Bumblebee Hill and the old cemetery.
10
I shut the gate after Mom and Pop, and Charlotte Ann and I went hand
in hand toward the house to take her nap. That is, her hand was in
mine--she not wanting it to be there on account of she knew it was nap
time and she didn’t want to take one.
“It’s not hard to take a nap,” I said to her. “You just lie down and
shut your eyes and that’s all there is to it. I’m the baby sitter and
you are the baby-lying-downer. My first job is to get you to bed, so
here we go.”
I was using a very cheerful voice, but she seemed to be suspicious of
such a voice coming from me, besides she was still a little tearful
from Mom and Pop having gone and left her at home with me.
I realized that I was going to have to use one of Pop’s tricks to get
her to want to go to bed--one he used sometimes at night. I had seen
him put her to bed maybe a hundred times so I looked down at her and
said cheerfully, “O. K., kid. Let’s get going.”
I was surprised at how easy it was at first. It didn’t take long to get
her ready ’cause Mom had said she could rest in her play suit, which
Mom called her “sunset.” Just like Pop does, I pretended to be a poor,
crippled, old grandfather, saying to her with a trembling voice like
I was suffering terribly, “I’ve got to get into that other room and I
need somebody to help me walk.”
I started limping terribly bad toward the room where she was supposed
to sleep, going very slowly like a very crippled old man, staggering
and limping and whining and complaining.
If there is anybody she likes better than anybody else, it is Old
Man Paddler. She must have imagined that I was him because quick
as anything she made a dive in my direction, clasped her small hand
around my right knee and held on tight while I limped the best I could
with one leg and walked the best I could with the other. We struggled
toward the room where her small bed was. All the way there I kept on
complaining with a trembling old voice saying, “Poor old man. How can I
walk without a nice little girl to help me?”
The very minute we got to her bed--the green window blind being down
and it being almost dark--she must have decided to do like she does
when it is night when she always says her prayers before getting into
bed. Right away she was down on her knees making me get down beside
her. I bent my poor, old rheumatic knees down to the hard floor; and
without waiting for me to say anything, she started in in her babyish
voice trying to say the prayer Pop had been teaching her which is:
“Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to take,
For Jesus sake. Amen.”
It was the same prayer I had used to say myself years and years ago.
Sometimes even yet when I kneel down to say a good-night prayer to God
and I am very tired and sleepy, before I know it I am saying it myself
even though I am too big to say just a little poem prayer.
As quick as her prayer was finished, I swooped her up and flip-flopped
her into bed, but for some reason or other she was as wide awake as
anything. She didn’t stay lying down, but sat straight up in bed with
a mischievous grin all over her cute face. She was the most wide-awake
baby I ever saw.
“I want my dolly,” she ordered me in her own language, which is what
she always does at night.
“O. K.,” I said, getting it for her from somewhere in the other room
where I found it upside-down lying on its face. I handed it to her.
“I want my rag dolly, too,” she said and I said cheerfully, “O. K.
I’ll get your dirty-faced rag dolly.” I went to the corner of the
room where it was lying on its side with its left foot stuck in its
face. I carried it to her and tossed it into the bed with her where it
socked her in the cheek, but didn’t hurt. Then I said, “O. K. now. Go
to sleep.” I was half way to the door when she called again saying, “I
want my ‘puh’”--meaning her little pink dolly-pillow.
I came back and sighed down hard at her and started looking everywhere
for her pink pillow, wondering what else she would want and why. I
soon found out because next she wanted her “hanky,” which was a pretty
colored handkerchief, which Pop had had to get for her every night all
summer and which she always held up close to her face when she went to
sleep, it being very soft and as Mom said, “_Friendly_.... She likes to
feel secure and all these things help her to feel that way.” Mom also
said, “She imagines the dollies are honest-to-goodness people and she
feels she isn’t alone when they are with her in bed, and they keep her
from being afraid.”
I couldn’t help but think that Poetry, who as you know is always
quoting a poem, if he were there, would probably quote one by Robert
Louis Stevenson, which goes like this:
In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candlelight.
In summer quite the other way
I have to go to bed by day.
For some reason or other as I looked down at her cuddling her dollies,
I think I had never liked her so well in my whole life--even though I
was still half disgusted with her for making me carry so many things
to her. I guess I was a little worried, though, which probably helped
me to like her better. I kept thinking about the woman who had been
digging holes in the earth who thought Charlotte Ann looked enough like
her own dead Elsa to be her twin--in fact, enough like her to be her. I
wished the woman would hurry up and get well but she didn’t seem to be
improving very much because the gang had kept on finding new holes all
around Sugar Creek.
Pretty soon Charlotte Ann’s eyes went shut and stayed shut and her
regular breathing showed that she was asleep.
Realizing that at last she was asleep, I went out through the living
room into the kitchen and through that. Out-of-doors, I closed the
screen door more quietly than it had been closed for a long time and
went on out toward the iron pitcher-pump--being suddenly very thirsty.
Halfway to the pump I stopped on the boardwalk and turned around to
see if anything was wrong, feeling something was, on account of nearly
always by the time I got that far out-of-doors I heard the screen door
slam behind me, but this time it hadn’t done it and it was a little bit
confusing to me not to hear it.
Baby-sitting was hard work, I thought, and it would be silly to do two
long hours of it actually sitting down.
A few tangled-up jiffies later I was up on our grape arbor in a perfect
position for eating a piece of pie upside-down but I didn’t have any
pie so I couldn’t baby-sit that way.
Pretty soon I was tired of being up on that narrow two-by-four
crossbeam, so I wriggled myself down and walked over to the water
tank on the other side of the pump where about twenty-seven yellow
butterflies, seeing me come, made a scramble in about twenty-seven
different fluttering directions of up, then right away the yellow air
was quiet again as most of the twenty-seven settled themselves down all
around the edge of a little water puddle.
Maybe I could get Pop’s insect book and look up a new insect for him.
Maybe I could look up something about yellow butterflies, which laid
their eggs on Mom’s cabbage plants and also the green larvae, which
hatched out and ate the cabbages. But I wasn’t interested in getting
any more education just then.