Watermelon Mystery at Sugar Creek - Paul Hutchens (the false prince .TXT) 📗

THERE wasn’t any sense to what I did then, because of the confusion in my mixed-up mind—if I had any mind at all—but the very minute the light of those three or four—or maybe there were seventeen—flashlights dropped over the edge of the hill and all of them at the same time splashed down upon me, hitting me in the face and all over my red-striped pajamas, I let loose with a wild, trembling-voiced cry like a loon’s eery, half-scared-half-to-death ghostlike quaver, loud enough to be heard as far away as the Sugar Creek bridge. I began to wave my arms wildly, to splash around in the water, and to yell to my watermelon-bronco, “Giddap!... Giddap! You great big green good-for-nothing bronco!”

I let out a whole series of those wild loon calls, splashed myself off the watermelon and out of the cement pool and made a fast, wet dash down the path to the opening in the board fence, through which Poetry had already gone ahead of me. I quickly shoved myself through, and a jiffy later was making a wild moonlit run up the winding barefoot boy’s trail through the forest of giant ragweeds toward the swimming hole, crying like a loon all the way until I knew I was out of sight of all those excited girls.

Even as I ran, flopping along in my wet pajamas, I had the memory of flashlights splashing in my eyes and some of the things I heard while I was going through the fence. Some of the excited words were, “Help! Help! There’s a wild animal down there in the spring!” Others of the girls had simply screamed like girls do when they are scared, but one of them had shrieked an unearthly shriek, crying, “There’s a zebra down there—a wild zebra, taking a bath in our drinking water!”

That, I thought, as I dodged my way along the path, was almost funny. In fact, sometimes a boy feels fine inside if something he has done makes a gang of girls let out an unearthly explosion of screams—most girls screaming not because they’re really scared anyway, but because they like to make people think they are.

Where, I wondered as I zig-zagged along, was Poetry?

I didn’t have to wonder long. By the time I was through the tall weeds and at the edge of Dragonfly’s Pop’s cornfield I had caught up to where he was. His flashlight hit me in the face as he exclaimed in his duck-like voice, “Help! Help! A zebra! A wild zebra!”

I stopped stock-still with my wet pajama sleeve in front of my eyes to shield them from the blinding glare of his flashlight. “It’s all your fault!” I half-screamed at him. “If you hadn’t had the silly notion you had to have a drink!”

His voice in answer was saucy as he said back, “What a mess you made of things—falling into that water and yelling like a wild Indian! Now those girl scouts will tell your folks, and your father will really sharpen you up with his razor strap!”

“Girl scouts?” I exclaimed to him with chattering teeth from being so cold and still all wet with spring water. Also for some reason I didn’t feel very brave—most certainly not very happy.

“Sure,” he said, “didn’t you know it? A bunch of girl scouts have got their tents pitched up there by the pawpaw bushes for a week. Old Man Paddler gave them permission; it’s his woods, you know.”

And then I was sad. Girl scouts were supposed to be some of the nicest people in the world—even if they were girls, I thought. What would they think of a red-haired freckle-faced creature of some kind that was part loon and part zebra, splashing around in their drinking water, riding like a cowboy on a watermelon and acting absolutely crazy? I would never dare show my face where any of them could see me, or some of them would remember me from having seen me in the light of their flashlights, and they would ask my mother whose boy I was. I knew that one of the very first things some of those girl scouts would do this week would be to come to the Collins’ house to buy eggs and milk and such things as sweet corn and new potatoes. Some of them would be bound to recognize me.

“We had better get back to the tent and into bed quick, before somebody comes running up to use your telephone to call the police, or the marshal, or the sheriff, to tell them some wild boys have been causing a disturbance at the camp!” Poetry said.

It was a good idea even if it was a worried one, so away we went—not the way we had come, but lickety-sizzle straight up through Dragonfly’s Pop’s cornfield, swinging around the east end of the bayou and back down the south side of it until we came to the fence that goes south to Bumblebee Hill. Once we got to Bumblebee Hill we would swing southwest to the place where we always went over the rail fence, which was across the road from our house. Then we would scoot across the road and past “Theodore Collins” on our mailbox, hoping we wouldn’t wake up Theodore Collins himself in the Collins’ west bedroom, and a jiffy after that would be safe in our tent once more!

The very thought of safety and the security of Poetry’s nice green tent under the spreading plum tree gave me a spurt of hope, and put wings on my feet, as I followed my lumbering barrel-shaped friend, not realizing there would be more trouble when I got home on account of my very wet red-striped night clothes.

We didn’t even bother to stop at Bumblebee Hill where the fiercest fastest fist-fight that ever was had taken place—and which you already know about if you’ve read the story called We Killed a Bear. At the bottom of the hill, you know, is the Little-Jim tree near which Little Jim, the littlest member of our Gang, killed the fierce old mad old mother bear; and at the top of the hill is the abandoned cemetery where the Gang has so many of its meetings. The wind I was making as I ran was blowing against my very wet 89-pounds of red-haired boy, making me feel chilly all over in spite of it being such a hot night.

It was a shame not to be able to enjoy such a pretty Sugar Creek summer night—the almost most-wonderful thing in the world. 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; 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.

Oh, there are a lot of sounds that make a boy feel good all over, such as Old Topsy, our favorite horse, in her stall crunching corn, the queer sound the chickens make in their sleep, the wind sighing through the pine trees along the bayou, with every now and then somebody’s rooster turning loose with a “Cocka-doodle-do!” like he is so proud of himself he can’t wait until morning to let all the sleeping hens know about it—like it was a waste of good time to sleep when you could listen to such nice noisy music. From across the fields you sometimes hear the sound of a nervous dog barking, and somebody else’s dog answering from across the creek. You even like to listen to the corn blades whispering to each other as the wind blows through them.

Summer nights on our farm smell good, too—nearly always there being the smell of new-mown hay or fresh pine-tree fragrance which is always sweeter at night. If you are near the creek you can smell the fish that don’t want to bite, the wild peppermint, the sweet clover and a thousand other half friendly, half lonely smells that make you feel sad and glad at the same time.

Things you think at night are wonderful, too. You can lie on the grass in the yard and, in the summertime, look up at the purplish blue sky that is like a big upside-down sieve with a million yellow holes in it and in your mind go sailing out across the Milky Way like a boy skating on the bayou pond, dodging this way and that so you won’t run into any of the stars....

But this wasn’t the right time to hear or see or smell how wonderful a night it was. It was, instead, a time for two worried boys, including a red-haired freckle-faced one to get inside the tent and into bed and to sleep.

Pretty soon Poetry and I were at the rail fence across from “Theodore Collins” on our mailbox. There we stopped stock-still and stood and studied the situation, keeping ourselves in the shadow of the elderberry bush that grew there. It seemed like the moonlight was never brighter and we couldn’t afford to let ourselves be seen or heard by anybody who hadn’t used a razor strap for a long time but who perhaps hadn’t forgotten how—and not on his razor, either.

I was shivering with the cold, and just that second I sneezed. Just that second also, Poetry shushed me with a shush that was almost louder than my sneeze, as he whispered, “Hey, don’t wake anybody up! Do you want your guest to get a licking? Your father has told us for the last time to—”

“Shush, yourself!” I ordered him.

We decided to go back up the fence, cross the road by the hickory nut trees, climb over into our cornfield and sneak down between the rows to arrive at the tent from the opposite side so nobody could see us from the house, which we did.

We had to pass Old Red Addie’s apartment hog house on the way, which is the kind of place on a farm that doesn’t have a nice, clean, sweet farm smell. Pretty soon, still shivering and wishing I had dry night clothes to sleep in, we were behind the tent waiting and listening to see if we could get in without being seen or heard.

Right then I sneezed again, and also again, and I knew I was either going to catch a cold or I already had one. I quick lifted the tent flap, swished through the plastic screen door, expecting Poetry to follow me, but he didn’t and wouldn’t. He stood for a second in the clear moonlight that came slanting through a branchless place in the plum tree overhead, then he said, “I’ll be back in a minute.” He started to start toward the house—in the moonlight, mind you, where he could be seen!

“Wait!” I called to him, in as quiet a whisper as I could. “Where are you going?”

“I’m thirsty,” he whispered back. “I forgot to get a drink at the spring.”

“You’ll wake up my father!” I exclaimed to him. “Don’t you dare pump that pump handle!”

Poetry couldn’t be stopped. I knew that if Pop ever waked up and came to prove he had meant what he said when he had said what he said, there’d really