Watermelon Mystery at Sugar Creek by Paul Hutchens (graded readers .TXT) đź“•
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- Author: Paul Hutchens
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Poetry’s fat face was close to mine. I decided I could whisper into his ear and only he would hear me, so I said, “Look! He’s got a knife! He’s going to plug the melon. He—”
Poetry jammed his fat elbow into my ribs so hard it made me grunt outloud.
Dragonfly jumped like he was shot, dropped his knife into the spring, started to straighten up, lost his balance, staggered in several moonlit directions, then ker-whammety-swish-splash—into the water he went just like I myself had done an hour or so ago.
And there he was, like I myself had been—a very wet boy in some very wet, very cold water, struggling to get onto his feet and out of the pool, and sneezing and spluttering because he had probably gotten some of the water into his mouth, or nose, and maybe even into his lungs.
And now what should we do?
We didn’t have time to decide, ’cause right that second there was a sound of running steps at the top of the incline and two shadowy figures with flashlights came flying down that leaf-strewn path, and somebody’s voice that was as plain as day a girl’s voice cried, “We’ve got you, you little rascal!”
Those two girls swooped down upon Dragonfly, seized him by the collar and started dunking him in the pool of very cold water, dunking and splashing water over him, and saying, “Take that—and that—and that! We knew if we waited here, you’d be back!”
Then all of a sudden, there was a hullabaloo of other girls’ voices at the top of the incline and a shower of flashlights and excited words came tumbling down with them. It seemed like there must have been a dozen girls, only there probably weren’t. Like a herd of stampeding calves, all of them swarmed around our little half-scared-half-to-death Dragonfly who was shivering and probably wondering what on earth. They were pulling him this way and that, as if they would tear him to pieces.
Things like those I was seeing and hearing that minute just don’t happen. Yet they were happening, and to one of the grandest little guys that ever sneezed in hayfever season—our very own Dragonfly himself.
I didn’t know what he had done, nor why, but it seemed like anybody with that many people swarming all over him like a colony of angry bumblebees, ought to have somebody to stand up for him. If it had been a gang of boys beating up on that innocent little spindle-legged guy, I probably would have made a headfirst dive, football style, into the thick of them and bowled half a dozen of them over into the cement pool. Then I’d have turned loose my two double-up experienced fists on them, windmill fashion, and Poetry would have come tumbling after.
But what do you do when your pal is being torn to pieces by a pack of helpless girls? As I have maybe told you before, my parents had taught me to respect all girls, kind of like they were angels—which most of them aren’t—and only one I ever saw in the whole Sugar Creek territory is anywhere near like one, and she is one of Circus’s many sisters, whose name is Lucille. Also I wouldn’t have the heart to fight a weak-muscled helpless creature which men and boys are supposed to defend from all harm and danger. Right that minute, though, while they were dunking Dragonfly in the spring and shoving him around and calling him names, it didn’t seem like girls were such helpless creatures. Certainly it was Dragonfly who needed the protection from harm and danger!
I decided to use my mind and my voice, instead of my muscles. I remembered that when I myself had been the striped cowboy riding a watermelon, I had scattered the girls in every direction there is, by letting loose a series of wild loon calls which sounded like a woman screaming or a wildcat with a trembling voice trying to scare the wits out of its prey. So, while I was still crouched in the shadows beside and behind Poetry, I lifted my face to the sky and let loose six or seven blood-curdling long-toned, high-voiced, trembling cries, making the loon call, the screech-owl’s screech, and a wolf’s howl, over and over again, and at about the same time.
Poetry, catching on to my idea, joined in with a series of sounds like a young rooster learning to crow, and a guinea hen’s scrawny-necked squawking, screaming song, which made me decide to bark like a dog and also to let out a half-dozen long-toned, high-pitched wailing bawls like Circus’s Pop’s hound, Old Bawler, makes when she’s on a red-hot coon trail.
We probably sounded like the midway of a county fair gone crazy, especially when all of a sudden Poetry, who could imitate almost every farm noise there is, started in bawling like a calf, and I went back to the loon call and the screech-owl’s screech. Then we began shaking the elm saplings we were under, making them sway like a windstorm was blowing and a cyclone would be there any minute.
Things happened pretty fast after that, and the noise got even worse ’cause, all mixed up with Dragonfly’s sneezing and Poetry’s and my eardrum-splitting noises, were the different-pitched screams of the girls. All of a sudden there was a flurry of skirts and slacks and running feet, and in a flash of several jiffies the girls were tumbling over each other on their way up the incline, past the base of the leaning linden tree, and were gone! In my mind’s eye I was watching them making a helter-skelter dash for the pawpaw bushes and their tents.
And that is how we practically saved Dragonfly’s life that very first night of this story, which is only the beginning—and which made the mystery we were trying to solve seem more mysterious than ever.
POOR Dragonfly! I guess he never had been so frightened before in his sneezing life. Dog days are ragweed days—and nights, too—and he was not only sneezing but wheezing a little, which meant he might get an asthma attack any minute.
“The w-w-w-water ...” he stammered and gestured behind him toward the spring.
Poetry and I were quick out of our hiding on our way to where Dragonfly was. What, I wondered, was he trying to tell us about the watermelon?
“M-m-m-m-my knife!” he spluttered. “I-i-i-it’s in there—in the bottom of the pool!”
When I heard that, I knew he had been planning to plug the melon, which I was sure somebody had left there a few jiffies ago. It didn’t feel very good to have to believe one of our own gang had been mixed up with the stealing of melons from the Collins’ truck patch.
“Hurry!” Dragonfly wheezed. “G-g-g-get it for me! I’ve got to get home quick or I’ll get a licking! My parents don’t know where I am!”
Because all of us were in a hurry to get away from such a dangerous place for boys to be—which it was, with a colony of bumblebee-like girls on a temper spree—I exclaimed to Poetry: “Hold the flashlight for me. I’ll get it!”—which Poetry did, and which I started to do, but got an exclamation point in my mind for sum when I noticed there wasn’t even one watermelon in the pool—neither the one I was sure somebody had just hoisted over the lip of the pool and lowered inside, nor the long beautiful one I had seen there myself, and which had had the oiled paper wadding in it, and on which I had had a fierce, fast ride in the moonlight.
What on earth!
“Come on! Hurry up!” Dragonfly cried. “I’ve got to get home before my father gets back from town. It’s his knife, and I wasn’t supposed to have it!”
I quickly shoved my stripeless pajama sleeve up to my shoulder, and while Poetry held the flashlight for me and Dragonfly shivered and wheezed and watched, I plunged my arm into that icy water, where in a few seconds my fingers clasped the knife and only a few seconds after that all of us were on our way up the incline. At the top, we looked quick to see if the enemy had retreated, and they had—anyway we didn’t see or hear them—then we skirted the rail fence and the evergreens, and started on the run on the way up the bayou, taking the way that most certainly wouldn’t lead anywhere near the pawpaw bushes.
We would have looked very strange to most anybody—Poetry in his green-striped pajamas, I in my yellowish, stripeless ones, and Dragonfly in his red-striped ones—that was the funny thing about it, that crooked-nosed, spindle-legged, short-of-breath little guy being in his night clothes, too. When we asked him, “How come?” he panted back, “I didn’t have time to dress. I had to get here, and get back again before my father got home.”
It wasn’t a very satisfactory answer. His running around in the woods in his night clothes didn’t make half as much sense as Poetry and I running around in ours did. It must have seemed absolutely nonsensical to those girl campers who must have thought he and I were the same idiotic boy—which we most certainly weren’t—at least I wasn’t.
Dragonfly was going to explain further when he got stopped as quick as a chicken’s squawking stops when you cut its head off to have it dressed for dinner. His wheezy voice was interrupted by somebody in the direction of Bumblebee Hill calling my name, saying, “Bill! ... Bill Collins! ... WHERE IN THE WORLD ARE YOU!”
“It’s your father!” Poetry stopped stock-still and said.
And it was.
That big, half-worried, half-mad, thundery voice trumpeting down to us from the top of Bumblebee Hill was the well-known voice of Theodore Collins, my reddish-brown-mustached, bushy-eyebrowed father. What on earth was Pop doing out there waving his lantern and calling, “Bill Collins, where in the world are you?”
All of a sudden it seemed like wherever I was, it would be a good place not to be. It would be safer if I could take a fast shortcut through the woods and be fast asleep in the tent—or pretending to be—by the time Pop would give up looking for me and come back to the house. I could tell by the tone of his ear-deafening voice that whatever he was saying, he had already said it for the last time.
“Come on,” I whispered to Poetry and Dragonfly, “let’s get home quick—QUICK!” I repeated the last word with a hiss, and lit out for home—the shortcut that would miss Pop, who was still dodging along with his swinging lantern toward the bayou, still calling my name and stopping every few yards to listen. If only Dragonfly could run faster, it would be easy, I thought.
Right then, to my surprise, Pop swung west and started on the run toward the spring. We quick dodged behind some choke-cherry shrubs so as not to be seen, then we scrambled up the hill and into the path made by barefoot boys’ bare feet, and in a fast jiffy reached the rail fence just across the road from the Collins’ gate and the walnut tree.
In less than almost no time, we were inside the tent, Dragonfly puffing and wheezing on account of his asthma, Poetry puffing on account of his weight, and I, just puffing.
But it wasn’t to any peaceful quiet tent that we had come back. Dragonfly was as wet as a drowned rat from having been dunked in the spring water and was shivering with the cold—on such a hot midsummer night!
We certainly had a problem on
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