when i knocked at mrs. till’s back screen door, she was in the kitchen ironing something with an old fashioned iron iron with an all-iron handle. i could see it was a pair of little tom till’s old, many times-patched jeans.
as soon as i’d given her the oranges and she had thanked me, she said, “you have such a nice mother, bill. such a nice mother.”
i shifted from one bare foot to the other, swallowed something in my throat which hadn’t been there a second before, and wished i could think of something polite to say, and couldn’t at first, then managed to think of:
“tom has a nice mother, too.” i noticed little jim’s brown envelope with his awkward handwriting on it, lying on the other end of the ironing board. she’d probably read it, i thought, and then i got a little mixed up in my mind as i said, and was sorry for it afterward:
“bob’s got a nice mother, too,”—and i knew she knew i was thinking how come such a nice mother could have two boys, one of which was a good boy and the other was a juvenile delinquent?
there were tears in her eyes when she looked at me with a sad smile and answered: “but i love them both—and some day god will answer my prayers for them.”
i forgot for a minute that i had actually been thinking tom was just as bad as his very bad big brother, bob, because he had stolen my watermelon.
“where’s tom now?” i asked, and she said, “i think he’s down along the creek, somewhere. if you see him or bob on your way home, tell them it’s chore time.”
she thanked me again for the oranges, and i swung onto my bike, pedalled through their barnyard and out their open gate and on toward the creek.
at the bridge i stopped, looked downstream again at the green tent, and without even straining my eyes, i caught a fleeting glimpse85 of a boy just my size, wearing blue western-style jeans and a gray and maroon striped t-shirt. he was at the edge of the cornfield behind the green tent not more than ten feet from the clothesline which had on it different colored different kinds of women’s clothes.
“right now, bill collins,” i heard my harsh voice saying to me through my grit teeth, “right now, you’re going to find out what is what, and why ... right now!”
i was down the embankment and under the bridge in a jiffy, and out in the cornfield scooting along in a hurry, like one of circus’s pop’s hounds trailing a cottontail—only my voice was quiet.
closer and closer i came to the place where i had last seen tom, shading my eyes to see what i could see.
right then i heard a whirlwind of flying feet coming in my direction straight down the corn row i was stooped over in. in only a few fast-flying jiffies whoever was coming would be storming right into the middle of where i was, and if they didn’t happen to see me and i didn’t get out of the way, they’d bowl me over like a quarterback getting tackled in a football game.
there were other sounds than flying feet and the husky rusty rustle of the cornblades. there was an angry mannish-sounding voice, shouting exclamatory sentences and saying, “stop you little rascal! come back here with that! do you hear me! i’ll whip the daylights out of you if i ever catch you!”
there was also a smallish, half-scared-half-to-death voice yelling “help! help! help!”
my muddled mind told me the small frightened voice was little tom till’s and the angry voice was his big brother bob’s—’cause it sounded just like his—and that bob was chasing his brother and if he caught up to him he would give him a licking within an inch of his life.
even as i glimpsed little tom flying ahead of whoever was behind him, i noticed again that he was dressed the same way i was. being dressed like that made us look like twins, although, of course, he looked more like me than i did him, which means he was a better-looking boy than i would have been if i had looked like him.
86 for some reason when i realized that tom was crying and running to get away from having to take a licking, in spite of the fact that i thought he was a watermelon thief, it seemed like i ought to do something to save him.
closer and closer, and faster and faster, those flying feet came storming toward me. then without warning tom swerved to the left and dashed down a corn row and at the same time part of abraham lincoln’s gettysburg address came to life in my mind and i knew i was really going to do something quick to help save tom.
the thought was lightning fast in my mind: i was dressed exactly like tom; my hair was red like his, and we were the same height, and would look so much alike from behind that whoever was chasing him wouldn’t know the difference. so i waited only a second until i felt sure bob had seen me, then like a young deer i started on a fast gallop down the same corn row. i was sure i could run faster than tom ’cause i had beaten him in a few races, and it would be quite a while before bob could catch up with me. when he did catch up, he’d stop stock-still and stare, and tom would be safe—for awhile anyway.
a second later the chase was on, and i was scooting down the row like a cottontail, running and panting and grinning to myself to think what a clever trick i was playing.
but say, that big lummox of a boy whom i hadn’t seen yet but had only heard, seemed to be gaining on me. within a few minutes he would have me, if i didn’t run faster.
“faster!” my excited mind ordered me. but i quickly realized i couldn’t save myself by just being fast. i’d have to be smart too, like a cottontail outsmarting a hound.
remembering how cottontails disappear in a thicket if they can, then circle and go right back to where they were before, i turned left like little tom had done and raced madly back toward the tent and the creek and the plastic clothesline.
but it wasn’t a good idea. the big bully of a boy heard, or saw me, or something. i hadn’t any sooner shot out into the open and dashed between a pair of brown slacks and a pink lady’s dress of something hanging on the line than i heard panting and flying feet87 behind me and knew i would have to be even smarter than a cottontail.
“you dumb bunny!” a savage voice yelled at me. “i’ll make short work of you. stop, you little thief! stop!”
right then was when my world turned upside down for a while. that fierce, very angry voice yelling at me was not the voice of big bob till, but of somebody else! i realized that it was somebody who, if he caught up with me, might not know that i wasn’t tom till and i would get one of the worst thrashings a boy ever got. “what,” i asked myself, as i panted and dodged and sweat and grunted and hurried and worried—“what will happen to me?”
i made a dive around the wall-type tent, planning to dart into the path that went through the forest of giant ragweeds to the bridge. at the bridge i would rush up the incline on the other side and gallop across.
as soon as i would get across the bridge, i’d leap over the rail fence, hurry through the woods to the spring, swing into the path made by barefoot boys’ bare feet, and in only a little while after that i’d be across the road from “theodore collins” on our mailbox and would be safe.
i took a fleeting glance over my shoulder to see who was chasing me, and say! my pursuer was not only not bob till but wasn’t a boy at all—instead he was a woman wearing brown slacks and a woman’s hat!
boy oh boy, was i ever in the middle of a situation! in that quick over-the-shoulder glance i noticed that her hat was straw-colored and looked a lot like the kind little jim’s mom wears to church. even in that quarter of a jiffy while i was seeing her over my shoulder, i noticed that the hat was the same color as the ripe wheat on big jim’s pop’s farm and that there were several heads of wheat slanted across its left side instead of a feather like lots of women’s hats have on them.
what on earth! why was i, bill collins, a husky hard-working farm boy with muscles like those of the village blacksmith—“as strong as iron bands”—running from just one helpless woman—just one!
but i hardly had time even to wonder “what on earth?” because88 in that fleeting glance over my shoulder my eyes had seen something else—i’d seen little tom till come storming out of the cornfield behind the forest-green tent, shoot like a blue-jeaned arrow toward the opening, and disappear inside.
glancing over my shoulder like that, was one of the worst things i could have done. i had seen one red-haired boy dashing into a tent, and i knew where he was right that very second, but i didn’t know where i, myself, was. when my eyes got back to the path i was supposed to be running in, i wasn’t running in it at all. i had swerved aside, stumbled over a log and was making a head-over-heels tumble in the direction of the creek. if the red boat hadn’t been there, i’d have landed in the water. instead i fell sprawling into the boat itself—that is, that’s where i finally landed when i came to a stop after rolling down the incline.
looking up from my upside-down position, i saw the woman’s face was hard and had an angry scowl on it. i realized with a gasp that in another jiffy she would be down the incline herself and i would be caught in what i could see were very large, very strong hands. even though i was saving tom till from getting the daylights whaled out of him, i probably would get the double-daylights thrashed out of me.
if it had been winter and sugar creek frozen over, i could have leaped out of the boat and raced across the ice to the other side, but there isn’t a boy in the world who can run or walk on the water in the summertime. there was only one way for me to escape that fierce-faced woman, who in another few jiffies would be down that incline herself and into the boat and have me in her clutches.
quick as a flash i was up and in the prow of the boat unfastening the guy rope. a second later, with one foot in the boat and the other against the bank, i gave the boat a hard shove, and out i shot into the stream.
“you come back here, you—you little red-haired rascal!” the woman’s gruff, angry voice demanded.
for the moment i had forgotten little tom till—i was in such a worried hurry to save myself. then what to my wondering ears should come sailing out over the water but tom’s own excited voice, calling, “hey! wait for me! wait!”
89 little tom’s high-pitched voice coming from behind her, must have astonished the scowling-faced woman. she turned her head quick in the direction of the tent and her eyes landed on tom who was waving at me and yelling and running toward the creek, looking exactly like me in his western-style blue jeans and maroon-and-gray-striped t-shirt. she must have thought she was seeing double, or that there were two of me: i was out in the nervous water in her red rowboat floating downstream toward the sugar creek island; i was also on dry land running like a deer toward the creek, waving my arms and yelling to me in the boat to “wait for me!”
the situation certainly couldn’t have made sense to her. for a minute she stayed stopped stock-still and stared while tom scurried down the shore to a place about thirty feet ahead of me where there was a little open space, half climbed and half skid down the embankment, plunged into the water and came splashety-sizzle toward the boat.
it was then that i noticed he was carrying something with him, which was making it hard for him to make fast progress. if my mind had had a voice i think i could have heard it screaming an exclamatory sentence: “he’s got another water jug with a burlap bag wrapped around it. what on earth!”
that woman in the straw hat with the little bundle of imitation wheat straw across its right side, came to life and started on a fast run toward the place where tom had plunged in, like she was going to splash in after him and try to get to the boat first, or else to stop him.
in almost less than no time tom had hoisted his waterjug over the gunwhale and set it down into the boat at my feet, then he swung himself alongside and climbed in over the stern—which is the way to climb into a boat without upsetting it.
“hurry!” little tom till panted to me. “let’s get across to the other side!”
i didn’t know what he was worried about nor what he wanted but i figured he would tell me as soon as he could—that is, if he wanted to. besides i was in a hurry to get across myself.
i reached for the oars—and that’s when i got one of the most startling surprises of my life. there weren’t any oars in the boat—not90 even one! not even a board to use for a paddle! all there was in the boat was a water jug with burlap bags wrapped around it, one very wet, red-haired, blue-jeaned, maroon-and-gray-t-shirted boy, and one dry one. and all the time our boat was drifting farther downstream toward the island.
in fact, right that very minute, the boat, which i had discovered was an aluminum boat painted red and was very light, was caught in the swift current where the creek divides and half of its current goes down one side of the island and the other half down the other. there wasn’t a thing we could do to stop ourselves from going one way or the other.
swooshety-swirlety—swishety! also hissety! those half-angry waters took hold of our boat and away we went down the north channel, between the island and the shore.
we weren’t in any actual danger as far as the water was concerned, though, ’cause it was a safe boat. after awhile, we’d probably drift close enough to an overhanging willow or other tree and we could catch hold, swing ourselves out and climb to safety—or to the shore anyway.
but—say! we were in danger for another reason.
that woman wasn’t going to let us get away as easily as that. she leaped into fast life and began racing down the shore after us, yelling for us to stop, which we couldn’t.
“what’s she so mad about, anyway?” i asked little tom till.
his answer astonished me so much i almost lost my balance and fell out of the boat: “there’s hundreds and hundreds of dollars in this water jug. it’s the stolen money from the super market!”
boy oh boy! no wonder there was a cyclone in that woman’s mind! and no wonder she didn’t want two red-haired boys in blue jeans and gray-and-maroon-striped shirts in a rowboat to get away!
“she’s as mad as a hornet!” i said to tom when, like a volley of rifle and shotgun shots a splattering of very angry, very filthy words91 fell thick and fast all around on us and on our ears from the woman’s very angry, very harsh mannish-sounding voice.
“she’s not a she,” little tom till answered. “she’s a he. he’s been hiding out in the tent pretending to be a woman, wearing women’s clothes and earrings and hats and using fancy perfumes and stuff.”
every second the fast current was swirling us downstream closer and closer to an overhanging elm, one that had fallen into the water from the last sugar creek storm, and its top extended almost all the way across the channel from the north shore to the island. i could see our boat was going to crash into the leafy branches and we’d be stopped.
i knew if we could manage to steer around the tree’s top, we’d be safe for quite awhile on account of there was a thicket that came clear down to the water’s edge there and if the fierce-faced man wanted to follow us any further, he would have to leave the shore and run along the edge of the cornfield for maybe fifty yards before he could get back to the creek again.
if only we had even one oar, we could steer the boat near the island where there was open water. we could miss the fallen elm’s bushy top and——!
and then, all of a helpless sudden, we went crashing into the branches and there we stopped!
that was when little tom till came to life and proved that he had been created as equal as i had, and maybe even more so. the very second we struck, he scrambled to his feet, grabbing up the jug and the coil of clothesline which was fastened to it and yelling to me, “come on! let’s get onto the island!”
it certainly was a bright idea, ’cause the very second our boat hit the tree, the current had whirled it around and one end struck and stuck against the sandy bank of the island, and all we had to do was to use the boat for an aluminum-floored bridge the rest of the way, which in an awkward hurry, we did. in only a few jiffies we were across and out and clambering up the rugged shore of the island into its thicket of willows and tall weeds and wild shrubbery.
92 “we’re straight across from the sycamore tree and the cave!” little tom till cried. “if we can get across the channel on the other side of the island, and into the cave and go through it to old man paddler’s cabin, we’ll be safe. bob’s up there helping him cut wood this afternoon—only he’s mad at me about something.”
the trouble was, the boat that had made such a nice bridge for us to cross on, was the same kind of an aluminum-floored bridge for the woman—the man, i mean. he could climb out onto the elm’s horizontal trunk, drop down into the boat and get across as quick as anything.
even as i scrambled up the bank behind my blue-jeaned, red-and-maroon-shirted friend, i glanced back over my shoulder and saw the brown slacks with the woman in them—the man, i mean—on the trunk of the tree working his way along through the branches toward the boat. in another second he would drop down into it, and in another would be across and onto the island racing after us.
the chase was on—a wild-running, scared, barefoot-boy’s race ahead of a short-tempered thief dressed in woman’s slacks, wearing a woman’s straw-colored hat, dodging our way across that island which was a thicket of willow and wild shrubbery, with here and there a larger tree, and dozens of little craters hollowed out by the flood waters which nearly every spring went racing across it. banked against nearly every larger tree trunk were piles of driftwood and cornstalks and stuff the creek had carried from different farmer’s fields farther upstream and deposited there.
i guess i never had realized what a jungle that island was. i had been on it many a time when i was just monkeying around, looking for shells, or with my binoculars studying birds. once in awhile at night in the spring or summer when it was bullfrog season, we would wade in the weed-grown water along the edge of the riffles with lanterns and flashlights looking for the giant-sized brown and dark-green monsters whose eyes in the light were like the headlamps of toy automobiles—bullfrogs, as you probably know, having long hind93 legs with bulging muscles, which when they are skinned, are snow-white, and when mom fries them, they taste even better than fried chicken.
but such a wilderness! and so many rough-edged rocks for a boy’s bare feet to get cut or bruised on, so many briers to scratch him and so many branches to fly back and switch him in the face when another boy has just gone hurrying through ahead of him.
if we had been running from a real woman, or if only he had been wearing a dress instead of slacks, he wouldn’t have been able to take such long steps, and there would have been the chance he might get the skirt caught on a branch or a brier and slow him down while we dodged our way ahead of him in our mad race to the other side.
“we’re almost there!” little tom till cried to me, panting hard from carrying the jug as well as himself.
i could see the other side of the island now and the nervous, excited water in the racing riffle between the island and the shore. i could see the sycamore tree at the top of the bank and the mouth of the cave just beyond.
another few seconds and we would be there—and would be out in the fast current on our way to safety. it had been a terribly exciting race, i tell you, with tom not letting me help carry the jug at all.
“it’s not heavy,” he panted. “it’s made out of plastic, the same as the clothesline, and it’s as light as a feather. the money in it is in little rolls with rubber bands around them. i saw him stuff ’em in myself.”
the bottle’s mouth and neck weren’t more than an inch and a half in diameter, i had noticed.
there were about a million questions i wanted to ask tom, such as, how come he knew the woman was a man? how’d he find out about the money in the first place?—and several other things which my mind was as curious as a cat’s to know.
and then, all of a sudden, we burst out into the open at the water’s edge, with our pursuer only a few rods behind us, panting and cursing and demanding us to stop.
and then i learned something else from that fierce-voiced villain as he yelled at tom, “you little rascal! i’ll catch you and your brother,94 bob, if it’s the last thing i ever do. he’s broken into his last super market!”
that was one of the saddest, most astonishing things i had ever heard. it startled me into feeling a lot of other questions: had bob till himself broken into the sugar creek super market last week? was the man in woman’s clothes maybe a detective or secret agent who had been camping out along the creek, watching bob’s movements—his and tom’s?
things were all mixed up even worse than ever. for a few jiffies, my watermelon mystery wasn’t even important in my mind, as—quick as a firefly’s fleeting flash—tom, holding onto the jug’s handle with one hand, plunged into the fast riffle without even bothering to look or to ask me where the water was the most shallow, and a second later was up to his waist and losing his balance and falling down.
up he struggled, and down he went again, sputtering and wallowing along, with me doing the same thing beside him.
and then all of a cringing sudden, tom let out a scared cry, saying: “help! h-h-h-help!” as he lost his balance and went down—really down, i mean. the coil of rope in his hand flew into the air like a lasso straight toward me who, at that minute, was quite a few yards from him. part of the clothesline caught around my upraised hand with which i was trying to balance myself, the line tightened as tom went down, still holding onto the jug’s handle—and then down i went myself, like a steer at a rodeo, the water sweeping me off my feet.
and there we both were, struggling in the racing current—two red-haired boys, one on each end of a brand new plastic clothesline.
even as i went down i saw the willows on the island part and the maddest-faced man i ever saw in my life came rushing toward us. also, i saw a puzzled expression on his face like he was wondering what on earth, which one of us was tom and which was me, and which of us had the water jug with the money in it.
just that second also, his woman’s hat caught on a branch, and off it came and with it a wig of reddish-brown hair, and i noticed the man had a very short haircut.
the woman was an honest-to-goodness man, all right—or boy,95 rather, maybe about as old as bob till himself. he had dirt smudges on his rouged cheeks like he had fallen down a few times in his mad race across the island after us. he was panting and gasping for breath and his woman’s blouse was torn at the neck.
tom and i must have looked queer to her—him, i mean—with me like a calf on the end of a lasso, and tom now fifteen feet from me, with the jug in one hand, struggling to stay on his feet, on account of i was downstream farther than he and being sucked along with the current while my feet fought for the pebbly bottom.
right away, the mean-faced oldish boy seemed to make up his mind who was who and what was what and what he ought to do about it. he made a rushing plunge out into the water and a series of fast lunges straight for tom, who began to make even faster lunges toward the other shore and the sycamore tree.
“run! swim! hurry!” i yelled in a sputtering voice to tom—which he couldn’t on account of right that very fast-fleeting second, his feet shot out from under him and he went down again ker-flopety-splash-splash!
i knew i could never wade back against the swift current to get to him in time to help him. i’d have to get to the other shore quick, race along the bank to a place fifteen or twenty feet above him and plunge in again and hurry out to where he was, which i started to start to do, and got stopped.
the current was stronger near that other shore and the water deeper. my feet were sucked out from under me and again i went down, feeling as i was pulled under, my end of the rope still wrapped around my hand, which, also, without my hardly noticing it, i was holding onto for dear life.
right that second the bully caught up with tom, made a lunge with his right arm for the jug, seized tom with the other, and there was a wild wrestling match with water flying and curses and fast flying arms and it looked like tom was going to get the living daylights licked out of him for sure.
tom was trying to fight back, and couldn’t with only one hand and because of the swift current. he was as helpless as marybelle elizabeth in a chickenyard fight with cleopatra.
right then is when i remembered something important, and it96 was that when a bevy of furious girls had been beating up on dragonfly at the spring, i had screamed bloody murder, given several wild loon calls, bellowed like a bull and made a lot of other terrifying bird and animal noises, and it had saved dragonfly. before i knew i was going to do it, i was yelling and screaming every savage sound i could think of in the direction of the one-sided fight, crying for help at the same time, hoping some of the gang might be somewhere in the neighborhood and hear.
and that’s when i heard big bob till’s voice answer from the sycamore tree side of the channel. a second later i saw him standing in the black mouth of the cave. he held his hand up to his eyes, shading them like he had been in the dark quite awhile and the afternoon sunlight was too bright for them.
then he seemed to see his little red-haired brother, tom, getting a licking within an inch of his life by a butch-haired bully. and that is when bob till, the fiercest fighter in all sugar creek territory—except maybe big jim—came to life. it was like the cave was a bow and bob was a two-legged arrow being shot by a giant as big as the one in the story of jack and the beanstalk. i lost my balance then and went down, the rope in my hand went taut, and the other end was torn from tom’s grasp, and the water jug, like a jug-shaped balloon wrapped in burlap, plopped to the surface, swung away and came on a fast downstream float toward me.
all i could see for a jiffy was tom defending himself like a savage little tiger, and big bob till shooting through the air like a man from a flying trapeze from the high bank out across the ten feet of excited air down and out toward where tom was in the clutches of the thief—and then i was fighting to save myself from drowning because i was in water over my head. my right hand still clung to the rope on the other end of which was the floating, plunging water jug with stolen super market money in it.
