as much as i hated to leave the red boat and the green tent and the brown burlap bags with the waterjugs in them, and the blue-dressed woman, i was perfectly willing to go on to big bob till’s house—and of course dragonfly was, for some reason, extraordinarily willing to get as far as possible from anybody who was a woman or a girl. i was all set in my mind for whatever would happen when big bob and big jim saw each other. what would happen? i wondered.
i certainly was surprised when, just before we reached the tills’ wooden gate which led to their barnyard, i looked down at my hands and saw that somewhere on the way—i had picked up a three-foot-long stick and was carrying it, clasping it so tight my knuckles were white. my eyebrows were down, my lips were pressed tightly together, and my jaw muscles were tense.
we looked around the barn first and called “hello,” a few times, with nobody answering. then we went inside and out again, and through their orchard to the back door of their house. big jim and circus went on to the small roofless porch and knocked—and again nobody answered. “hello,” big jim called, and there wasn’t any answer or any sound from inside the house.
“hello there,” big jim called again, and knocked again. still nobody answered.
while big jim was doing that, i noticed little jim had his pencil out and was writing something on the manila envelope. my parents had taught me that it isn’t polite to read over anybody’s shoulder unless he invites you to, so i had a hard time seeing what he was writing, having to stand in front of him and crane my neck to read upside-down. and—would you believe it?—that little guy had written:
77
dear bob,
here’s the sunday school lesson quarterly mother promised your mother. be sure to study all the questions so in case our teacher asks you any of them you will know the answers. we will stop for you at nine o’clock in the morning.
your friend,
little jim foote.
i couldn’t have read another line without getting a crick in my neck, but i remembered all of a sudden that it was to little jim’s father, the township trustee, that bob had been paroled.
i saw little jim slip the envelope between the screen door and the unpainted white-knobbed wooden door, just as we were leaving.
they had probably gone to town or somewhere, i thought.
in a little while we were back at the bridge again and across it and, because it was saturday and we were all supposed to get the chores done early so our parents could go to town, which most of them did on saturday night, we separated, each one going to his own house. even though poetry was going to spend the night with me in the tent, he said he had to go home for a while so i was all by myself when i got to the north road and turned left toward the collins’ farm.
i moseyed lazily along, thinking and worrying and trying to figure out things. it just didn’t seem possible that the gunny sack under the elder bushes last night had had a water jug in it instead of a watermelon. even if it was possible, i didn’t want to believe it. of course, the woman or several women or girls who lived in the forest-green tent would have to have drinking and cooking water—even if they could have used the water from the creek to do their washing. sugar creek water wasn’t supposed to be good for drinking, even when it wasn’t dog days.
a lot of ideas were piled up in my mind, but it seemed like one of them was on top, and it was: “if whoever had filled his or her water jugs at the spring, or at the collins’ other iron pitcher pump, had done it at night, then whoever lived in the tent must be afraid to go to anybody’s house in the daytime and ask for water. and if they were afraid to, why were they afraid?”
one other thing made me set my feet down a little harder as78 they went plop-plop in the dusty road i was walking in, and that was: “was the oldish car i had seen and heard in the lane last night the same as the gun-metal gray pickup truck which right this minute was parked beside the green tent?”
my mind was so busy with my thoughts that i was frightened when i heard a car coming behind me, the driver giving what pop would call “a courteous honk,” like you are supposed to give when you want somebody to know you are behind them and don’t want to scare the living daylights out of them.
a jiffy later the car had pulled up alongside and stopped, and i saw, sitting behind the steering wheel and wearing a watermelon-colored dress and sparkling glasses, a smiling-faced, dark-haired lady about twenty years old. “hello there!” she called in a friendly, musical voice. “i’ve been looking all over for you. where have you been?”
before i could answer she had gone on to say, “you forgot to leave the map in the watermelon. the girls told me there was nothing in it.”
“map?” i asked, with an exclamatory voice.
interrogative sentences were galloping round and round in my mind. then my thoughts made a dive for my left hip pocket. my face must have had a question-mark on it, ’cause she said, “don’t you remember? you were going to make us a copy of the one you showed me. we wanted each of our girls to make her own map, using yours as a model, so that if any of them should get lost while they were here, they could easily find their way back to camp.”
before i could answer—not knowing what to say anyway—she said with a laugh that was like the water in the sugar creek riffle above the spring, “i hardly recognized you, at first, with your hair cut, and i see you’ve washed your face since yesterday, too. you certainly remind me of my little brother. his first name was tom, too.”
say, you could have knocked me over with a haircut, i was so surprised. all of a brain-whirling sudden, i knew who the watermelon thief was, and my mystery was practically solved. little tom till and i had red hair and freckles, and each of us wore a striped shirt and blue denim western-style jeans! the lady thought i was little tom till!
79 just then i heard somebody calling from the direction of our farm and it was pop’s thundery voice saying loud enough to be heard a quarter of a mile away, “bill! hurry up! it’s time to start the chores!”
what little presence of mind i had, told me not to answer because it seemed like i ought to let the smiling-faced lady think i was little tom till—for just a little while anyway—so i said to her, “that’s theodore collins. he’s probably calling his son to come and help him with the chores.”
“you know the collins family?” the voice that was still like the sugar creek riffle, asked.
when i swallowed again and answered “yes,” she surprised me by saying, “i met your mother in town this afternoon. she seemed like a very nice person. you must be very proud of her.”
“uh—my mother? which one?... i mean—you did?”
“she and mrs. collins were together shopping. they invited our troupe to church tomorrow. you go to sunday school, i suppose?”
i swallowed a “yes, ma’am,” which she managed to hear, and before theodore collins called his son again about the undone chores, i said, “if you’ll excuse me, i think i’ll run over and see if i can stop him from having to call again. i think i know where his boy is.”
my hip pocket seemed to have a fire in it which ought to be put out, so just before i started to start toward pop to help put out a temper-fire which probably was ready to burn a hole in his hat, i handed to the lady the map poetry and i had found last night in the watermelon in the spring, saying, “is this what you wanted?”
she unfolded the “eat more eatmore” wrapper, spread out the map and studied it. her face lit up as she said, “why this is good—very good! it’s even better than the one you showed me yesterday.”
i liked her friendly voice and her smile so well, that for a second i wished i was actually little tom till, himself. then she tossed another question at me, and it was “this red x in the circle—does that represent any special location?”
“the red x?” i asked innocently. “why, that’s—that’s—that’s where the green tent is pitched. i—it’s straight across the creek from the mouth of the branch, and just—uh—about fifty yards above where the current divides, and one part goes down the north side of the island and the other the other.”
80 she smiled a spoken thank you and added, “you do have a fine sense of humor, don’t you?”
i wasn’t sure what i had, but there was one thing i wanted to know, and very much. i felt i had to know it. what did the red letter x stand for? of course i knew the tent was there, but who lived in it and why? and why, if tom had drawn this map for the girl scouts, why had he put the red x there?
i must have been frowning my worry and she saw it, ’cause right away she added, “the girls’ll be intrigued by your story that an old witch is camping there, but i’m afraid instead of their wanting to stay away, they’ll be more curious than ever.”
then my whole mind gasped. the lady in the watermelon colored dress not only thought i was little tom till, but that little rascal of a red-haired boy had told her there was an old witch living in the tent, and that the girls ought not to go anywhere near it. what on earth!
just then theodore collins’ thundery voice called again for his son, so i said, “i’d better go now,” which i did. away i went in a galloping hurry to let a reddish-brown-mustached, bushy-eyebrowed father know where his son really was—if he was his son.
i found mr. collins in a better humor than i expected. panting and running fast like a boy who is late for school, i arrived at the barn door just as pop came out with a pail of purina chow for our old brindle cow who was standing at the pasture bars looking at us with question marks on her ears as if wondering why her supper had to come so early—but that it was all right with her.
“why didn’t you answer me when i called?” pop asked, and i remembered an old joke our family had read in a magazine and which we had laughed over, so i said, “i didn’t hear you the first two times.”
“bright boy,” pop answered, and i answered with another old joke, saying, “i’m so bright my parents call me ‘son.’”
pop grinned and when i asked him how come we had to get the chores done so early, he explained, “there’s a special prayer meeting for the men of the church. that’s why your mother’s in town now—she went in to get the shopping done this afternoon—she and mrs. till.”
81 it was a good thing we did get the chores done early—a very good thing—because there were a lot of important other things that had to happen that day to make this story even more mysterious, and to clear up some of the cloudy questions in my mind. nearly everything had to happen before sundown, only of course i didn’t know it at the time, or i’d have hurried even faster with my part of the chores.
i was up in our haymow alone throwing down alfalfa hay when i looked out the east window and saw our car coming down the road, with mom at the steering wheel and little tom till’s mom with charlotte ann in her lap in the front seat with her. only a few minutes before i had been thinking about mrs. till in a very special way, so when i saw her in the car with mom, i got the queerest feeling.
throwing down hay was something i always liked to do because it is like a man’s job; also there was something nice about being alone in a big wide alfalfa-smelling haymow where a boy could think a boy’s thoughts, talk to himself, and whistle, and even sing, and nobody could hear him.
sometimes when i’m in the haymow, i climb up on the long, axe-hewn beam that stretches across the whole width of the barn from one side to the other, and imagine myself to be abraham lincoln who had split so many logs with an ax. i raise my voice and quote all of his gettysburg address, feeling fine while i am doing it, and important, and glad to be alive. maybe i would be president of the united states, some time, myself.
i always hated to stop when the last word was said, and i would have to be theodore collins’ son again, with years and years of growing yet to do before i would be a man.
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. i was remembering the manila82 envelope which little jim had left at the tills’ back door and was thinking about mrs. till who had such a hard time just to keep from being too discouraged to want to live....
then is when i heard our car coming and saw mom with mrs. till beside her. i quickly threw down another forkful of hay, hurried to the ladder and climbed down, leaving abraham lincoln to look after himself—and to get off the log the best way he could.
it seemed like mom, by being a friend to bob and tom till’s mother, was helping to prove that “all men are created equal.”
“all men are created equal,” was still in my mind when i reached the bottom of the ladder. for some reason, though, it didn’t seem right that little red-haired, fiery-tempered, freckle-faced tim till was as equal as i was. we might look a lot alike to anybody who saw us dressed in the same kind of clothes, but i was not a watermelon thief—and he was, i thought—and the first chance i got i was going to prove to him that even though all men, boys especially, might be created equal, when one boy sneaked out into another boy’s melon patch, stole a melon, and sold it to a girl scout troupe, the other boy was equal to giving him a sound thrashing.
i was wondering whether i ought to tell pop about what the girl scout leader had told me, when i heard mom’s voice calling from up near the walnut tree, “is bill out there somewhere?”
i almost jumped out of my bare feet when i heard pop answer her from just outside the barn door, “he’s helping me with the chores!”
mom called back to say that she wanted me to take care of charlotte ann while she drove mrs. till on home.
it wasn’t easy, taking care of that wriggling, impatient little rascal of a sister. whatever makes a two-year-old baby sister so hard to take care of anyway? and why do they always want to run away from you and get into dangerous situations the very second your back is turned? i hadn’t any sooner sat down in the big rope swing under the walnut tree, and started to pump myself a little, than i heard pop yelling from some direction or other—in fact from away up at the pignut tree—and how in the world did he get that far away so quick?—yelling for me to “run quick and get charlotte ann away from old red addie’s fence.”
83 i swung out of the swing in a scared hurry, ’cause my eyes told me that that cute little reddish-brown-haired baby sister of mine was not only near the hog-lot fence but was actually trying to crawl through it to get inside—charlotte ann not being afraid of a single animal on our farm—not even one.
i scattered our seventy-eight hens in even more directions than that as i flew to charlotte ann’s rescue. mom would have a conniption fit if i let that little sister of mine get her clean dress soiled and her best shoes muddy in red addie’s apartment-house yard—especially if she decided the mud puddle was a good place to walk in, which she probably would.
i got there just in time. honestly! that child! you can hardly do anything else when you are looking after her. mom calls it “baby-sitting” when she asks me to take care of her, but it isn’t! it’s baby-running, and keeping your eyes peeled every second or you won’t even have a baby sister. she’ll be gone in a flash, and you have to look all over for her—like the time she got lost in the woods and a terrible cyclone roared into our territory and trees were uprooted and fell in every direction and—but you know all about that if you’ve read the story, “the green tent mystery at sugar creek.”
well, after what seemed like too long a time, mom got back from driving mrs. till home, and i went to the car to help her carry in the groceries and other things, and that’s when we found the brown paper bag with oranges in it, which mrs. till had accidentally left on the floor in the back, and mom hadn’t seen it.
“yes, that’s hers,” mom said. “i’d better drive right back with it. her doctor wants her to have fresh orange juice three times a day.”
“i—it’s almost time to start supper,” pop said, looking at his watch. he explained to mom about the special prayer meeting for men at the church, then gave me a quick order which was, “bill, you take your bike and ride over to the tills’ with these oranges while your mother starts supper.”
and that’s how come i ran into a situation that gave me a chance to prove in several, very fast hair-raising adventures that little tom till and i were actually created equal.
i got to find out, also, who the old witch who lived in the green tent really was—and also why she lived there.
