Shenanigans at Sugar Creek Part 7

"_Stolen_ it?" Little Jim asked, and he had a puzzled expression on his face, and I knew what he was going to say before he said it, and it was, "Are you sure?" You know, Little Jim always had a hard time believing anybody was bad, or would do anything wrong, on account of he hardly ever did anything wrong himself, and, also, 'cause he liked everybody. So when he said, "Are you sure?" Pop said, "No, we're not sure, till Bill has tried first to remember if maybe he moved it somewhere else."

I looked all around in a quick circle at the haymow, and I thought that if Bob Till and Shorty Long _had_ been there, they might have hidden it under some hay just for meanness, so I got a pitch fork and started to jab it into the hay all around in different places in the haymow, and Pop looked in a tunnel under a long beam, and also we all looked down stairs and all around. Once I looked up into the cupola, and had a half-glad feeling in my heart when I saw Snow-white's white head peeking out over the edge of the beam she had her nest on, like she had just come back, and was wondering "What on earth" anybody wanted with a ladder anyway, she not needing any herself.

Just then we heard Mom calling for dinner, and we had to go, all of us being very hungry. I knew Pop was having a hard time believing me, that I hadn't moved the ladder, on account of many a time Pop had missed something around the farm and later he or I or somebody had found it where I'd been using it or playing with it, in some place I'd forgotten all about.

But there wasn't any use to look for it. It was gone, and not a one of us knew where--only I was absolutely sure that Bob Till and Shorty Long had hidden it somewhere. I told Mom and Pop what I thought had happened, and we all talked it over pretty excitedly at the dinner table.

After dinner we all looked again, looking all around the barn, inside and out, and also jabbing forks and shovels in the biggest piles of snow around the barn, to see if maybe it had been covered up with snow, and still we couldn't find it. Pop was pretty mad, also, on account of about six of our pigeons were missing, and it looked like there had been somebody jumping and running all over the alfalfa hay which we fed to our cows. "How would YOU like to eat a piece of _pie_ that some boy's dirty boots had walked all over?" Pop asked. That tickled Little Jim, and he giggled.

Pretty soon Mom and Pop said Little Jim and I could go over to Poetry's house if we wanted to, and we could play in Poetry's nice new bas.e.m.e.nt.

It was while we were at Poetry's house that we saw the ladder, and you'd never guess in the world where it was, and most certainly you'd never guess in the world all the excitement we were going to get mixed up in before the afternoon was over.

9

We'd been having a wonderful time, playing pingpong and checkers, and Little Jim was playing the organ in Poetry's bas.e.m.e.nt while Poetry and I made a lot of boy noise playing a tie-off game of pingpong, when we heard a door open at the head of the stairway leading down into the bas.e.m.e.nt, and somebody sneezed, and we knew it was Dragonfly who had come over to play with Poetry. Poetry's parents had gone visiting somewhere, calling on some sick people in the Sugar Creek hospital, so we could make more noise and it wouldn't disturb any grown-up people's nerves, and would also be good for ours, it being almost as hard on a boy's nerves to be quiet, as it is on a grown-up person's nerves when a boy is noisy.

Poetry and I stopped our game and yelled up to Dragonfly to come on down and "play the winner," which meant either Poetry or me.

Dragonfly sneezed twice on his way down, he maybe being allergic to something he'd smelled when he came in, or else it was the change from the cold outside air to the warm inside air.

Poetry won that last game, and it meant he was the champion, so he and Dragonfly started in like a house-afire batting that pingpong ball back and forth, back and forth, bang, sock, whizz, sizzle, ping-ping-ping-ping, pong-pong-pong-pong, sock, sock, sock.... Say, that little spindle-legged Dragonfly was _good_. He won the first game right off the bat. He really was a good athlete for such a thin little guy. "Hey, you guys!" he said, pretending to be very proud of himself, "Isn't there a window somewhere we can open? I want to throw out my chest," which was an old joke, but sounded funny for Dragonfly to say it, his chest being very flat.

"Sure," Poetry said, "but we can get air quicker by opening the door at the top of the stairs," and with that he shuffled up the stairs and opened the door, and just as he did so, I heard a horse sneeze and a man's voice saying, "Whoa, there, Prince! Stand still!" and I knew it was our new teacher, Mr. Black. Just that second, Dragonfly sneezed again, and said to Poetry, "I'm allergic to horses. Shut that door!"

"h.e.l.lo!" a voice called. "Anybody at home?"

Well, I can't tell you all that happened for the next fifteen minutes, on account of I have to hurry with the rest of this story, but Mr.

Black was very kind to us boys. He came down into the bas.e.m.e.nt, and took a flashlight picture of us with our pingpong b.a.l.l.s and paddles and with Little Jim at the organ, and didn't say a word about the snow man we knew he'd seen yesterday, or the book, or anything. He was very nice, and a little later when he rode away on his great big beautiful prancing saddle horse, I thought maybe he was going to be a good teacher after all. The last thing he said to us just before he swung prancing Prince around and jogged up Poetry's lane to the house, was, "Well, I'll see you boys in the morning at school.... I'm going to ride over now and get the fire started. I let it go out over Sat.u.r.day to save fuel.... But the weather report is for a cold wave tonight, so I think I'll get the fire going good, and it'll be cozy as a bug in a rug tomorrow morning when everybody comes."

It certainly was a pretty horse, and he certainly knew how to ride him; and the big beautiful brown saddle and Mr. Black's riding habit made me wish I had a big brown horse and a riding outfit and could go galloping around all over Sugar Creek territory.

Almost right away, we all decided to play outdoors awhile, 'cause if there was going to be a real cold wave tonight, it meant that tomorrow we'd all have to stay inside the school most of the time, 'cause sometimes a cold wave in Sugar Creek territory meant twenty degrees below zero.... Poetry went in the house and got his binoculars and we all climbed up on their chicken house which didn't have any snow on its roof, and started to look around Sugar Creek at different things.

Little Jim grinned when he noticed there wasn't any snow on the roof of the chicken house, and said, "That certainly was a good sermon this morning," then he grunted and sat down astride the chicken house roof, right close to a little tin chimney out of which white smoke was coming, there being a kerosene heater inside the chicken house.

"It sure was," Poetry said, with the binoculars focused in the direction Mr. Black had gone.

"Here, Bill, look at him, will you.... He's stopping at Circus's house. Suppose maybe he's going to take a picture of one of Circus's sisters?"

Dragonfly giggled when Poetry said that, and I felt hot inside, on account of Circus had a lot of sisters, and one of them was a real honest-to-goodness girl who wasn't afraid of mice or spiders, and sometimes I carried her dinner pail to school. I knew Dragonfly was trying to tease me, so I said, "Here, let me see."

A jiffy later I was looking at Mr. Black stopping his big horse at Circus's house. Just that second, Dragonfly shoved his hands against my knees behind me, and both my knees buckled, and I swung around a little, and when I looked again toward Circus's house, the binoculars were focused, not on his house, but on our red brick schoolhouse farther across the field, and all of a sudden I let out a gasp and a yell, and felt a queer feeling inside of me, for right there on the north side of the schoolhouse was a ladder leaning up against the eaves and--yes, I could see it as plain as day, there was something that looked like a flat board lying right across the top of the schoolhouse chimney....

It was even plainer than day what had happened, and that was that Shorty Long and Bob Till had been to our house and barn while we were in church and had stolen Snow-white and some other pigeons and then seeing how nice and light and easy to carry Pop's new ladder was, and remembering the story of _The Hoosier Schoolmaster_, and both of the boys not liking the Sugar Creek Gang, and Shorty Long especially not liking me terribly much, they had borrowed the ladder and had used it to put the board on the chimney, so Mr. Black would be smoked out when he started the fire, and I, Bill Collins, and maybe all the Sugar Creek Gang, would get into even more trouble with Mr. Black, and--

I was thinking all those worried thoughts in less than a jiffy while I was looking through those binoculars, and was still standing on the roof of Poetry's pop's chicken house, with Poetry and Little Jim beside me.

I must have let out a very excited gasp, 'cause Poetry said, "'Smatter, Bill?" and Little Jim said in his mouse-like voice which was also excited for a change, "See anything important?"

Dragonfly was on the ground in front of me and he yelled up and said "What's the matter?" then he sneezed, which is what people sometimes do when all of a sudden they look up and the sun gets into their eyes, which it did in Dragonfly's eyes right that second.

"Quick!" I yelled to the gang. "Come on, we've got to get to the schoolhouse before Mr. Black does or the schoolhouse will catch on fire maybe." The ladder was on the side of the schoolhouse where I knew Mr. Black wouldn't see it when he got there. I whirled around, made a leap for the ground, landed in a snow drift, got out of it in a hurry, and raced as fast as I could down Poetry's lane toward the highway.

Poetry and Dragonfly and Little Jim came whizzing along behind me, yelling what was the matter and why was I in such a hurry, and how on earth could the schoolhouse catch on fire, and why did we have to get there first, before Mr. Black did.

I still had Poetry's binoculars in my hand, and was running, panting, dodging drifts, and all the time I could see in my mind's eye Pop's new ladder leaning up against the schoolhouse, and I knew that if Mr.

Black ever saw it and found out whose it was, I'd have a hard time explaining it to him that I hadn't done it.

In between pants, I managed to get it into the heads of the rest of the gang what I'd seen, and why I was in a hurry. "We've got to get there first, and get that board off the chimney or the room will be filled with smoke and maybe there will be an explosion."

I remember that in _The Hoosier Schoolmaster_, there had really been _some_ smoke....

Poetry who was my best friend, almost, was as mad as I was, and he said, behind me between his short breath, "Those dirty b.u.ms! They're the cause of _all_ our trouble with our new teacher!"

And would you believe it? Little Jim heard him say that, yelled to us, and said, "Are you sure?" Imagine him not being sure.

We took a short cut we knew about, and once when we were on the top of a little hill in Dragonfly's pop's woods, we stopped and Poetry and I took a couple of quick looks through his binoculars toward Circus'

house, to see if Mr. Black was still there, and his horse was, so we guessed he was too.

I saw him out in their back yard and a whole flock of girls was lined up against their woodshed and he was taking their picture. I didn't see Circus there anywhere, and I wished he was with us, on account of he could run faster than any of us and also climb better.

"Come on!" I yelled to the rest of the guys with me, "we can make it, I think." Away we went.

"Wait!" Dragonfly yelled from pretty far back. "I'm out of breath.

I--can't--can't run so--fast!" which he couldn't.

All of a sudden, Poetry stopped and said, "We're crazy, Bill, we can't make it. Look! There he goes now, right straight toward the schoolhouse. Quick! Drop down! He's looking this way!"

He ducked behind a rail fence which is where we were at the time, and I dropped down beside him. Dragonfly was still coming along not more than fifty feet behind us, with little Jim staying back with him.

I hated to stop, and I hated to have to realize what was happening, but it was, and that was that Mr. Black was going to get to the schoolhouse first and he'd start the fire in the schoolhouse stove first, on account of he wouldn't see the ladder first, 'cause it was on the opposite side of the school from the woodshed where he kept his kindling wood.

I'd seen Mr. Black start fires in the Poetry-shaped iron stove before, and this is the way he always did it.... He'd go straight to the corner of the schoolhouse under the long shelf where we all kept our dinner pails, and pick up a tin can of kerosene which he kept in the corner, and in which he kept some neat little sticks standing. Those little sticks would be all soaked with kerosene from having stood there all night or longer, and he'd take them to the stove and lay them in carefully, along with other small pieces of wood and a few larger pieces, and then he would very carefully light a match and touch the flame to the kerosene-soaked sticks, and right away there would be a nice fire....

I knew it would take Mr. Black only a little while to lay the fire, and in a few minutes the fire in the stove would be roaring away. But with the board on the chimney, the smoke couldn't get out, and it'd have to come out of the stove somewhere, which it would, and the schoolhouse would be filled with smoke in a jiffy; also I remembered the Christmas tree which we'd left up since Christmas, wasn't more than fifteen feet from the stove, and its needles were dry enough to burn....

Something had to be done in a hurry, and yet there was Mr. Black getting closer and closer to the schoolhouse.... In fact, it was already too late to get there before he went inside, without being seen. I knew that if I got there in time to hurry up that ladder and take off the board, I'd have to do it _after_ Mr. Black got inside, and before he could get the fire laid and started....

The rail fence behind which we were hiding right that minute was on the same side of the school the ladder was, and about as far from the school as our barn is from our house....

All of us were squatted down behind the fence now, and I took charge of the gang and said, "You guys stay here. The very minute he gets in, I'll dive out of here and make a bee-line for the schoolhouse, and zip up the ladder and take the board off. Then I'll climb back down, take the ladder and drag it around behind the schoolhouse quick, and come back here.... Then tonight or sometime after Mr. Black goes home, some of us'll sneak over and bring the ladder home, and everything'll be all right."

It was a good idea if only it would work, which it had to, or I just knew that the gentleman I'd made up my mind I was going to try to be, would get a terrible licking, which any gentleman shouldn't have to have, or he isn't one, which I wasn't, yet, anyway....