Paul Hutchens

“ Poetry, catching on to my idea, joined in with a series of sounds like a young rooster learning to crow, and a guinea hen’s scrawny-necked squawking, screaming song, which made me decide to bark like a dog and also to let out a half-dozen long-toned, high-pitched wailing bawls like Circus’s Pop’s hound, Old Bawler, makes when she’s on a red-hot coon trail. ”

“ Just then the June beetle unscrambled himself—or herself,16 whichever it was—spread its shell-like front wings and its reddish-colored back wings and took off again, straight in the direction of my face, but I snapped off the flashlight quick, ducked my head and he missed me and disappeared into the night—on his way, maybe, to the lighted window of somebody’s house. If he should happen to see one somewhere, and if there should be a window open without a screen, some woman or girl would soon be screaming bloody murder for a man or boy to come and save her life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For a minute, while our two boats plowed along through the water, which, with the sunlight shining on the moving waves, looked like a great big lakeful of live silver, my thoughts took a hop, skip and a jump out across the lake to the shore, leaped over the Chippewa forest, and high up over a lot of other lakes, like I was Paul Bunyan himself; and all of a sudden I landed right inside our kitchen at Sugar Creek, where I knew I’d be in just a few days. ”

“ 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;18 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. ”

“ I think that little guy does more honest-to-goodness thinking than any of the rest of the gang, certainly more than Dragonfly, the pop-eyed member of our gang, who is spindle-legged and slim and whose nose turns south at the end; or Poetry, the barrel-shaped member who reads all the books he can get his hands on and who knows one hundred poems by heart and is always quoting poems; and also more than Big Jim, the leader of our gang who is the oldest and who has maybe seventeen smallish strands of fuzz on his upper lip which one day will be a mustache. ”

“ Because the Swallow Tail is one of the largest kinds of butterflies in our whole territory, I knew Pop would be especially tickled if I could catch one for our collection, so I quick circled the house to the tool shed, swished in, swooped up Pop’s butterfly net—and in a jiffy later was out by the orchard fence where the most beautiful butterfly I had ever seen was acting like the nectar of that big Bull Thistle blossom was about the sweetest thing in the world to eat. ”

“ We didn’t have time to decide, ’cause right that second there was a sound of running steps at the top of the incline and two shadowy figures with flashlights came flying down that leaf-strewn path, and somebody’s voice that was as plain as day a girl’s voice cried, “We’ve got you, you little rascal!”
Those two girls swooped down upon Dragonfly, seized him by the collar and started dunking him in the pool of very cold water, dunking and splashing water over him, and saying, “Take that—and that—and that! We knew if we waited here, you’d be back!” ”

“ I was trembling inside like any fisherman trembles when a fierce fast-fighting fish gets away after it’s been hooked—only this one hadn’t been hooked with a real hook. He had probably come swimming along down there under the water, looking for an early supper, like a robin hops around in our lawn at Sugar Creek looking for night crawlers, and, seeing Wally swimming lazily around, had decided to eat him, which is what some big fish do to little other fish when they’re hungry. ”

“ I looked at Poetry and he winked at me, and said to Mr. Black, "It'll get dark pretty soon and if there's going to be a cold wave tonight, we'd better help you carry in plenty of wood. We'll help you bank the fire good."
But it was Little Jim who saved us from trouble, when he said what he said, and it was, "That was a good sermon this morning, wasn't it, Mr. Black? All of us are going to try not to be mad at you any more, and if we've done anything wrong, we're sorry. We hope you won't give us a licking, but if you do, we won't even get mad." ”

“ I heard Poetry’s zipper on his sleeping bag zip a long zip. All of a sudden my heart began to beat faster, and I knew he and I were going to get up and go down to that boathouse and investigate. There wouldn’t be any real danger, but if there was any little girl in there, we could probably hear her, and we could wake up Santa, or Barry and the whole gang. And if there wasn’t anything to our idea, then we still wouldn’t seem ridiculous to anyone except ourselves. ”

“ Poetry and poor little pop-eyed Dragonfly acted like they were scared even worse than I was.
When you’re all of a sudden scared like that, you don’t know what to say or think. Things sort of swim in your head and your heart beats fiercely for a minute. Maybe we wouldn’t have been quite so frightened if we hadn’t had so many important things happen to us already on our camping trip, such as finding a little kidnapped girl in this very spot the very first night we’d been up here, and then the next night catching the kidnapper himself in a spooky Indian cemetery. ”

“ Charlotte Ann wasn’t in the barn and neither was Mr. Everhard’s pretty wife.
My conscience was screaming at me for being such a careless baby sitter as to leave a two-year-old baby girl alone in the house and also for not locking the doors when I did leave the house.
Being a boy who believes in God, and also knowing that “Heaven helps them that help themselves” as Pop had told me, some of the stormy thoughts that were whirligigging in my mind were all mixed up with worried prayers and wondering what my parents would think with their baby lost in the storm. ”

“ Well, I had just said in my deepest, most dignified voice, “... that this nation under God may have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” and was still standing listening to my imaginary audience clap their hands, and thinking about the part of my speech which said, “all men are created equal,” and was also thinking of the Till family—old hook-nosed John Till himself; his oldest boy Bob, and Little Tom, his other son, who wanted to be a good boy and was, part of the time. ”

“ So in another six or seven jiffies we were all scrambling as fast as we could out of that icehouse and out into the open, carrying Little Jim’s gunny sack full of fish. We made a dive across an open space to a clump of bushes, where we wouldn’t be seen by anybody on the lake.
Circus, the acrobatic member of our gang, was with us, too, and he being the strongest one of us, grabbed up the sack, swung it over his shoulder and loped on ahead of us. “Hurry!” we panted to each other, and didn’t stop running until we reached the top of a hill, which we did just as we heard the outboard motor stop. ”

“ While everything was quiet for a jiffy, with only the sound of the crackling fire, and Little Jim’s irregular breathing beside me, I noticed that Little Tom Till over there had both of his smallish kinda dirty fists doubled up tight like he was terribly mad at something or somebody.
Then Eagle Eye talked again and said, “The Evil Spirit, the Devil, paints all sin pretty, boys, but sin is bad. All sin is bad, and only Jesus can save from sin. You boys pray for my people. Too many of them are learning to drink the white man’s whiskey.” ”