Paul Hutchens

“ Even before he had finished saying what he was saying, I was thinking how absolutely silly it is for anybody to think he can commit a crime and not get caught and punished, even though they hadn’t maybe caught the kidnapper yet.
In the next seventeen minutes I saw one of the most interesting things I’d ever seen in my life, and it made me even more sure than I was that anybody—man or boy or even a woman or girl—was just plumb crazy to try to be smarter than the law is and get by with any kind of a crime or sin. ”

“ When I woke up we were still flying along with Barry at the wheel, and most of us sitting in lying-down positions, getting a swell afternoon nap. It was wonderful to ride along that fast, and also wonderful to see all the things we saw, as the road wound itself around and around like the winding barefoot-boy paths through the Sugar Creek woods along Sugar Creek itself. At the town of Pass Lake, most of us got out, stretched ourselves and bought postcards at a drug store and sent them to our folks. ”

“ Dragonfly wanted to know, and right away sneezed at something or other, probably at some of the flowers in Mom’s little flower bed around our mail box.
Dragonfly reached for and pulled out of his hip pocket his pop’s big red bandana handkerchief and grabbed his nose just in time to stop most of the next three sneezes, which came in one-two-three style as fast as a boy pounding a nail with a hammer.
“How’ll we convince our parents that we need a vacation?” Poetry said, and Dragonfly piped up and said, “People take vacations when they’re worn out from too much work.” ”

“ I whispered it to Poetry when I saw what the policemen were doing right that minute, saying, “Anybody can’t get by with any kind of crime,” and Poetry, who is almost as good a Christian as Little Jim is, and who not only has a lot of poems on the tip of his tongue ready to be quoted any second, but also knows many Bible verses, quoted one of them to me right that minute instead of a poem, and it was, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever man soweth, that shall he also reap,” and he added to it another which was, “It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment.” ”

“ I knew it couldn’t be any of our camping party ’cause not a one of us smoked, not even Barry.
Then we heard the boathouse door creaking on its hinges and I knew I was beginning to be scared.
“It’s a man smoking,” Poetry hissed in my ear, but I didn’t want to believe it. “Maybe it was a lightning bug,” I said. There were several of them flashing their spooky little lamps on and off out near Santa’s boat.
“Lightning bugs’ lights are a yellowish green,” Poetry said, “and that was a reddish glow.” ”

“ Right there in front of our eyes not more than fifty feet away, we saw him make a dive for the back left wheel, and heard him mumbling something that sounded like mad swear words, and for a second I was glad that Little Jim wasn’t there, ’cause it always hurts him terribly to hear anybody swear, on account of the One whose Name is used in such a terrible way when a person swears is Little Jim’s best Friend. ”

“ I lay down and squished myself under that gate, and in a hurried jiffy was knocking at the door of the bungalow.
“Quick!” I panted as soon as the door opened. “We’ve found the kidnapped Ostberg girl! She’s out there in the trees wrapped up in an Indian blanket and——” and for some reason, right that second, I remembered about the automobile and its license number. I half yelled the things I wanted to say. The firewarden looked ridiculous in his green-striped pajamas as he stood in the doorway of his kitchen, with a flashlight in his hand. ”

“ Barry said, “and be careful not to get any too near your eyes and lips.” He handed us a couple of bottles of mosquito lotion and we smeared our bare hands and ankles and necks and ears and faces with the sickenishly-sweetish-smelling stuff, and right away it was just like there wasn’t a mosquito in the world.
Santa came over and we all sat around the camp fire, with the pretty sparks and flames playing above the beds of coal and the four large roundish rocks in the middle of it. ”

“ We already had a roaring fire going in a place where it was safe to have one. No boy or anybody ought to start a fire in any forest or woods any time unless it is in a place where there is supposed to be one, and where it can’t spread, or a whole forest might get burned up.
“What on earth?” I thought, as Poetry and I grunted a round rock apiece up as close to the hot fire as we could, and then pushed them the rest of the way with forked sticks so we wouldn’t get burned, ourselves.
“Wait and see,” Barry said, and we did, but kept wondering, “Why on earth?” ”

“ I said to Poetry all of a sudden. “Maybe we’re on a wild goose chase, maybe we’re crazy to waste a lot of good sleeping time chasing an imaginary kidnapper. How do we know that was a kidnapper’s car? What if it was just anybody who got stuck in the sand? He wouldn’t appreciate having policemen stop him and ask a lot of questions!”
“It wasn’t just anybody!” Poetry said. “That guy was down there in the boathouse less than a half hour ago, and there was a girl there, too, see?” ”

“ It felt good having Little Jim lying with his head in my lap, he being my almost best friend except Poetry, and also being a really wonderful little guy and was the best Christian in the whole Sugar Creek Gang. He was always thinking and saying important things about the Bible and heaven, and the One who had made the world, and also about His Son who had come here to this pretty world once and died on a cross which was made out of a tree, just to save anybody who would repent of his sins and believe on Him. ”

“ I stopped quick, got bumped into by Poetry, who was behind me, but didn’t fall down myself, whirled around and went back to help Little Jim get up.
Circus and Big Jim were far ahead of us. “Did you get hurt?” Little Tom Till asked, and Little Jim sat up rubbing his elbow and grinning and said, “You shouldn’t call em niggers, ’cause they’re human beings and God made ’em. My mother and dad have adopted a little black boy in Africa for a whole year. You can adopt one for only $52.00 a year.”
Say, that little guy had the most innocent lamb-like look on his face you ever saw. ”

“ I just remembered I forgot to lock the boathouse door.”
Tom Till spoke up and asked, “Do the Indians steal things up here when you leave the doors unlocked?” and Santa answered and said something everybody ought to know, which was: “There are white people up here who do. We have very little trouble with the Indians themselves. They like to be trusted, and if they think you’ve locked the door especially because of them, they resent it. Of course, there are Indians and Indians, as there are white men and white men. ”

“ In another jiffy, the tire had stopped hissing and the guy, still grunting and mumbling to himself, like he was terribly mad, and also maybe a little scared, was down on his knees beside the other back tire and right away there was another hissing noise.
And right that second, the man stood up, and made a dive for the front seat again, zipped in and stepped on the starter, and started to rock the car again, then he backed up, and started forward again, and the wheels started spinning and—
“Hey!” Poetry and I hissed to each other at the same time, “The car is moving! He’s getting away!” ”

“ Well, that was supposed to be funny, and most everybody around the camp fire thought it was and laughed hard, but it wasn’t funny, maybe. For a minute I was almost mad, but decided it would be a waste of good temper to spoil what the others thought funny; besides my pop says any boy who wants to get along with people can’t afford to always be taking offense. I couldn’t think of anything about Paul Bunyan that would help me get even with Dragonfly, so I let Little Jim tell his story, and we didn’t have time for mine, on account of it was time to go to bed. ”

“ A man isn’t a thief because he’s an Indian or of any other race, but because he has a sinful nature, which all men do have. You know a man decides for himself whether he is going to steal or not. It doesn’t matter what the color of his face is, if he has a black heart.”
62 Santa stretched himself and started toward the door.
I was wondering about Little Snow-in-the-face, and when we’d get to see him, and said so, and Santa said, “He’s still in the hospital. He’ll be thrilled to death to see you boys. He’s a great little boy.”
Santa opened his cabin door to go out and lock the boathouse door. ”

“ I remembered the simpish looking owl we’d seen standing in the hole of the hollow tree behind the boathouse and how it had flown away, but this time I just knew it wasn’t any owl or any loon.
“Let’s go see,” Poetry said, and I said, “What if it is the girl? What’ll we do? What’ll—”
“Let’s decide later,” Poetry interrupted me by saying. We flashed our lights out toward the trees and couldn’t see a thing, but we heard that eery cry that was like a loon being choked, and then we started toward it, our lights shoving the dark back as we went along, and we walked in their yellowish bobbing paths. ”

“ On the way we went through a city which advertised itself as the Capital of the Paul Bunyan Playground—Paul Bunyan being what is called a mythical lumberman of the North, and was supposed to have been terribly big like a giant in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, which is a fairy story every boy ought to know—only instead of Paul Bunyan being a bad giant, he was a good one, and was always doing kind things for people. ”

“ We gave them the yellow scarf with the paint on it, and went with the firewarden back to our camp to try to get some excited sleep.
Boy oh boy, it had been a great experience! About an hour later, after waking up all the gang and telling them the news, we were in our tents again ready to sleep. The big hot round rock in the pail in the center of the tent certainly had helped keep the tent warm, and when I was in my sleeping bag again, as warm as toast, I felt that I had really done something important in life... ”

“ Right away we were all dashing toward the barbed-wire fence, and all of us got through without tearing our clothes and went zippety-zip-zip dash, swerve, swish-swish-swish,20 toward the spring again, and down the path that led along the top of the hill toward Sugar Creek Bridge, and then across the old north road, and up a steep bank and down the path again toward the old sycamore tree and the swamp, and also toward the entrance to the cave which is a long cave, as you know, and the other end comes out in the basement of Old Man Paddler’s log cabin back up in the hills. ”

“ Santa didn’t have any children of their own, and that last year he had liked Tom so well, and had also been the one who had showed Tom how to become a Christian. I knew that Tom’s pop was an infidel, and was hardly ever kind to him, and Tom was maybe hungry for some53 grown-up person to like him, so I felt happy inside that Tom was going to get a fast boat ride, although I wanted to go along worse than anything.
“You, too, Bill—and Poetry, if you like,” Santa said—“if you can spare them awhile, Barry. I’ll take the rest of the gang tomorrow. This new motor needs breaking in, you know.” ”

“ Little Jim finished getting through without getting his shirt caught and said, “The flower spikes which branch off from the stem of the vervain look like upside down candelabrum,” and I remembered that his mother, besides being the best pianist in all Sugar Creek territory, and taught piano and was maybe the prettiest mom of all the Sugar Creek’s Gang’s moms, also had all kinds of flowers in a special flower garden at their home, and she talked flowers so much that18 Little Jim probably knew all the different kinds of words that people use when they talk flowers. ”

“ Dragonfly told his story, and it was that Paul Bunyan got hay fever so bad and sneezed so hard and so many times in succession that it blew a whole forest over; Poetry said Paul Bunyan ate so many blackberry pies and got so fat that when he went in swimming in Leech Lake and splashed around a lot, so much water splashed out of the lake for hundreds of miles around that it made a thousand new lakes so that the ten thousand lakes that Minnesota had at first were changed to eleven thousand ”

“ Dragonfly said. “I saw it in the newspaper once that a senator or something’s speech was written by a ghost writer and—”
“It’s crazy!” Poetry said. “A ghost writer is somebody nobody knows who writes something for somebody and nobody knows it, but it’s a real person and not a ghost, which isn’t.”
It sounded crazy, but Poetry read an awful lot of the many books his pop and mom were always buying for him, and he was as smart as anything.
Little Tom spoke up then and said, “A ghost wouldn’t know that Bumblebee Hill had had its name changed from Strawberry Hill to Bumblebee Hill, would it?” ”

“ Ho hum, here I am, with all the pages filled up and not even room to tell you about how the kidnapper got away from the police and how the Sugar Creek Gang ran kersmack onto his trail all by themselves the very next day, and what a fierce fight we had and everything. But just as quick as I can, I’ll get going on that exciting story, which was maybe the most exciting experience that ever happened to us. Maybe I’ll get started writing tomorrow.
The End
With the passing of summer many of the Sugar Creek creatures disappear. ”

“ Poetry said to me. “Don’t crowd so close.”
“I’m trying to get warm,” I said. “It’s cold. I’m using you for a windbreak.”
And Circus said to Poetry—“You’re a windbreak when it’s cold, and when it’s hot we lie behind you in45 the shade,”—Poetry, as you know, being fat as a small cow. Most of us giggled, except Poetry.
“It happened like this,” Barry began,—and I noticed Little Jim reach into his vest pocket, and pull out his New Testament to look up the place where Barry was getting the story from. I did the same, and so did most of the gang, except Tom Till who had forgotten to bring his. ”