Part 5

She was so quiet for about three minutes, while all we could hear was the lazy ticking of the old clock on the mantle and the sound of the plates and cups and saucers and silverware. Pretty soon Mom said, still sadly, “I feel so sorry for her. Poor thing. If only she could believe and trust in God!”

I heard myself sigh the same kind of sigh Mom had sighed and felt sorry for the woman myself--knowing whom Mom meant. Then I guess Mom had decided that I ought to know more about Mrs. Everhard--I already knowing a lot. First, though, she told me some things I never knew about the Collins family itself, still using a kind of sad voice and saying, “I want you to know before you get any older. It will help you to understand your mother and father better, and all other people who have had to bury a little baby.”

“What?” I thought, without saying a word. Mom’s voice sounded different than I had ever heard it as she went on. “Just two years before you were born, Bill, your father and I had to give back to God a very beautiful, little three-week-old, baby girl. She was so very lovely and sweet and it broke our hearts, but we have tried to thank Him that He let us have her to love even for such a little while--” Mom stopped and again all we could hear was the lonely clock that was ticking so sadly it seemed like it must have felt sorry for Mom too.

Mom, still being very serious, went on, saying, “Then God gave us you to take her place and you have been a great joy to us--” and again she stopped.

I knew that if all her thoughts had come out in words, she could have added, “and also a lot of trouble,” but Mom didn’t and I liked her even better, taking a sidewise glance up at her out of the corner of my eye.

I guess maybe I had seen my mother’s face a million times--and while it’s nearly always the same, I have never gotten tired of looking at it. She always looks just like my Mom even when she’s all tired out or sad and hasn’t had time to powder her nose from the hard work she is doing in the kitchen or out in the garden or orchard or somewhere.

“She’s a pretty wonderful mom,” I thought and swallowed something in my throat which stopped a couple of tears from getting into my eyes. Then I began working a little harder and faster on the dishes, which I had decided to help dry.

A little later Mom told me something else about the strange woman and her husband, who were camping down in the Sugar Creek woods--something Little Jim’s mom had just told her over the phone and it was that something had happened to the woman’s mind, which the doctors called by some kind of fancy name, which meant she was mentally ill and maybe would be for a while until she had time to get well again.

“Thousands of people get well from being mentally ill,” Mom explained, “just like children do from such things as chicken pox and whooping cough. Sometimes though they have to have a very special treatment in a special hospital.”

“I can understand how she feels,” Mom went on, “because for a long time after we had buried Little Nancy it seemed like she couldn’t possibly be dead. She _had_ to be alive, I kept thinking, and I kept imagining I could hear her crying in the other room--”

“In there where Charlotte Ann is now?” I asked.

Mom didn’t answer for a minute. She only nodded and sighed again. Then she said, “I never actually heard her voice, of course.

“And that,” Mom finished, “is what is wrong with the dear little mother who is camping down there in the woods. You boys be very careful to be very kind and--”

“Is she an honest-to-goodness crazy woman?” I asked and shouldn’t have, not knowing I wasn’t supposed to say it, and Mom replied, “Thoughtful people never say that any more about a person who is ill in the way Mrs. Everhard is. They always say that they are not well _emotionally_. We try to understand them and to find out what made them that way, and sometimes when they themselves come to understand what caused their illness they begin to get well right away--in fact, some of them get well almost at once. Doctors try to give them something to hope for. It was only the grace of God and my believing in Him that spared me from going to pieces, myself,” Mom said. “He gave your father and me strength to stand the loss of your baby sister, Nancy.”

Say, when Mom said, “your _sister_,” I did get a lump in my throat because I was thinking what if it had been Charlotte Ann who had died.

“You boys must not act surprised when you find those little, freshly-dug holes here and there in the woods or along the creek because when she gets one of her sad spells she imagines her baby is still alive, even though it was buried, and she starts digging a hole in the woods or along the creek, looking for it. She thinks it was buried alive when she feels like that. She will dig a while and then stop to listen to see if she can hear it crying.”

When Mom said that I was remembering that we had seen her do that very thing in the old cemetery last night.

“Couldn’t the doctors make her well?” I asked Mom, and she said, “Not with just medicine alone. One thing the doctor has prescribed for her is that she attend some church regularly--a church where the minister believes and preaches the Bible and what it teaches about Heaven and the wonderful place it is, and how people can meet their loved ones there, alive and well--all through trusting in the Saviour. The doctor thinks that if Mrs. Everhard can learn to trust in God and to believe that she will see her baby again, she will be cured.”

9

Well, it seemed after that wonderful talk with Mom that I, Bill Collins, was going to be a better boy than I had ever been in my life before--although I didn’t see how I could change all of me so quick. Anyway I thought I knew why Mom every now and then sighed even when I couldn’t see a thing to sigh about. Maybe a sad thought came to her that wasn’t caused by the hot weather or from being all tired out or because I might have been a bad boy, which I sometimes used to be.

Several weeks went by during which the gang found maybe twenty-five different-sized holes in different places in the woods and along the creek. Also we were not surprised when most anytime we heard a quail call and a turtledove answer it. Sometimes though it was the woman who gave the quail call and the man was the turtledove who answered.

It began to be almost fun to hear them because we could tell that they liked each other a lot. They were kinda like a gang themselves only there were only two of them and their whistling to each other was like a game of some kind--just like we ourselves played different kinds of games. It was like having a secret code. They wanted us all to stop at their green tent every day and nearly always Mrs. Everhard had something for us to eat, which made it easy to remember to stop. Of course, I had to go anyway to carry water from our iron pitcher-pump to them.

Each Sunday the Everhards came to our church to hear our minister, who in nearly every sermon mentioned something about Heaven and how to get there--such as when you know in your heart that you are an honest-to-goodness sinner and that you can’t save yourself--which nobody can--and if you trust the Saviour Himself to forgive all your sins, you will be sure to go there; and all the babies that ever died are already there on account of the Blood of Jesus Christ shed upon the Cross took care of all of them--things like that.

I had to watch myself to keep from looking across the church all the time to watch Mrs. Everhard to see if she was believing the sermon. The only thing was--instead of looking at the minister, she kept looking at Mom or Pop or me, whichever one of us was holding Charlotte Ann, like she wondered if we were taking care of her right.

One Sunday right in the middle of the sermon she quick stood up and walked down the aisle in a hurry to the outside door, and her husband after her. A little later I heard through the open window the station wagon motor start and I knew he was taking her back to the tent quick, she having left so maybe she wouldn’t cry in church.

That afternoon when Pop was helping our minister and some other men hold a jail meeting and Mom and I were alone, Mr. Everhard came over to our house to borrow Charlotte Ann a while.

“_Borrow_ her!” Mom said with an astonished voice and face, and he answered, “Yes, Charlotte Ann looks so very much like our own Little Elsa used to look that I thought if Frances could hold her a while and listen to her as she pretends to talk it might make her feel better. She’s very much down today.”

Well, I had heard of people borrowing nearly everything else. Around Sugar Creek the gang’s different mothers borrowed different kinds of kitchen things, which they sometimes ran out of and had to have in a hurry--as fast as a boy could run to the neighbors and get it. Sometimes Dragonfly’s pop borrowed our brace and bit or Pop’s hand drill or keyhole saw and Pop would sometimes borrow them back again if he needed them in a hurry--I getting to run to Dragonfly’s house to get them--and not getting to stay and play with Dragonfly, which made it a very hard errand to be sent on. Also different members of the gang would borrow knives or fishhooks or bobbers or other things from each other.

_But whoever heard of anybody borrowing a baby!_

I could see Mom wasn’t going to like the idea and if she didn’t I wasn’t going to either, but because she felt so sorry for the lady and wanted her to get well fast, she quick thought up a way to say, “Yes,” without hurting Mr. Everhard’s feelings or her own.

“If you will borrow me too, that will be fine,” she said cheerfully, and he answered, “Certainly, it will soon be time for afternoon tea anyway.”

“What about _me?_” I said, all of a sudden trying to be funny and probably not being very. “Anybody want to borrow a good-looking, red-haired, homely-faced boy?”

I didn’t much want to go though on account of some of the gang might come over to play with me, but Mom said quickly, “Certainly, Son, come right along.”

And so it turned out that I went with Mom and Charlotte Ann and Mr. Everhard, I carrying a gallon thermos jug of cold, iron-pitcher-pump water to earn my twenty-five cents for that day.

Say, the first thing I noticed when we came to within a few yards of the green-canvas, ranch-house-style tent was that one of the tent’s wings with the green roof and the mosquito netting sidewalls had in it a baby’s play pen, and in the pen was a lot of things for a baby girl to enjoy--a doll, a pink teddy bear, a very small broom like the one Charlotte Ann helps Mom sweep with and a little tea set for playing house. Beside the tent, hanging by a rope and a spring, was a jumper swing like the one that used to hang from the limb under the plum tree in our yard in which Charlotte Ann used to sit and bounce herself up and down and laugh and gurgle and have the time of her life--but now it’s too little for her.

“The poor, dear girl,” Mom said with a sigh kinda under her breath and in my direction--Mr. Everhard having gone on into the tent to tell his wife she had company. Mom was looking at the baby things with a sort of faraway expression in her eyes. I could hear voices inside the tent and it sounded for a minute as if there was a half argument. Then the canvas flap of the tent opened and Mrs. Everhard came out.

Mom gasped when she saw her, maybe on account of the way she was dressed and what she had in her hand.

“Such a pretty dress,” Mom said, half to me and half to nobody.

I hardly ever paid any attention to what anybody was wearing, especially a woman or a girl, on account of it didn’t seem important, but I guess any woman or maybe even a boy would gasp at the green and brown and yellow and also red summery-looking dress Mrs. Everhard had on. It had a lot of milkweed flowers on it with pretty swallow-tail butterflies with spread wings on each flower. Her yellowish hair was the same color as the sulphur butterflies that fly around our cabbage plants with the white ones and I noticed it was still combed like it had been in church, with some kind of sparkling pin in it. She was wearing a pair of dark glasses and green and yellow shoes.

To my tangled-up surprise she had in her hands a shovel like the one she had been using to dig in the ground. She looked all around in a sort of dazed circle, not seeing us at first, then she started off in a hurry toward the direction of Strawberry Hill.

Say, quick as anything and without knowing I was going to do it, I whistled a sharp bobwhite whistle that flew as straight as an arrow right toward her. It made her stop stock-still and stand and stare. Then her eyes fell on Charlotte Ann, whom Mom had dressed special for the visit in a little blue organdy playsuit that made her look as cute as a bug’s ear and even cuter.

Say, Frances Everhard dropped her shovel like it had had a hot handle and gasped an excited gasp like women who like babies do when they see a pretty one and said, “You _darling_ baby!” and started to make a beeline for her, like she was going to pick her up, then she stopped, whirled around fast and disappeared into the tent.

For just a second I had a queer fluttering feeling in my heart and it was kinda like about fifty pretty black and yellow, swallow-tail butterflies had been fluttering in front of my eyes in the bright sunlight and then all of a sudden had flown toward the green tent and disappeared all at once. It was the same kind of happy feeling I get when I hear a wood thrush singing but can’t see it and wish I could.

A jiffy later she was back outside again with a folding camera. For a while she didn’t act like anybody was around except Charlotte Ann. Her extra-pretty face was all lit up and she seemed very happy. “She looks almost enough like my own Elsa to be a twin,” she told Mom. “In fact, almost enough to be her.” Then she sighed a heavy sigh and so did Mom.

* * * * *

Well, it was a very interesting visit we had that afternoon at the ranch-house tent. As soon as Charlotte Ann got over being a little bit bashful, she let Mrs. Everhard hold her and take all kinds of pictures of her: in the playpen, in the jumper swing, lying on a blanket and doing different things. She had her bobwhite husband take a picture of the two of them while she held Charlotte Ann on her lap.

Everybody had a good time except me on account of I like to keep my mind in a boy’s world, and nobody could do that when there were three grown-ups and a baby around. So I asked if they would like me to get some fresh, cold water from the spring and when they said “Yes,” I took a thermos jug and shot like a red-headed arrow out past the pawpaw bushes toward the old overhanging linden tree above the spring.

I was thinking as I ran that the mystery of the little holes being dug all over Sugar Creek territory was all explained and it looked like the gang would have to scout around for some other problem to set our seven different kinds of brains to working on. I didn’t know as I ran that on account of Charlotte Ann and the woman’s dead baby looking so much alike I was going to have to put my own brain to work in a very special way before the summer was over.

* * * * *

I guess I never realized before just how wonderful a person I had for a baby sister until I thought I was going to lose her. As quick as I can, I will start telling you all about it. First though I have to tell you something else about her because some of the people who will read this story don’t know much about her and it will help them understand how come she got lost.

We always had more fun than you can shake a stick at, taking care of Charlotte Ann at our house, in spite of the times when she was a nuisance. Pop especially had a lot of bothersome fun because he nearly always had to put her to bed at night--that is, after she was a little bigger than being a little baby. Going to bed was one of the things Charlotte Ann didn’t like to do even worse than she didn’t like to do anything else--after she got to be about two years old. Before that we didn’t have to worry about her getting all the sleep she needed because she would go to sleep anywhere, any place and nearly any time, but all of a sudden she was a grown-up two-year-old and seemed to have ideas of her own about such things as going to bed at night and taking afternoon naps.

“That is because at two,” Mom said--she having been reading a book on how to take care of babies at that age--“they are great _imitators_. Whatever they see you do they want to do too. They like to do grown-up things before they are old enough or strong enough or have sense enough to.”

“Or sense enough _not_ to,” Pop said and Mom agreed with him, both of them seeming to think it was funny, but I couldn’t understand what they meant.

“Also,” Mom said, “a two-year old has to have twelve hours of sleep at night and at least one hour in the afternoon of every day.” She was talking to me at the time. “You had to have it when you were a baby and we saw to it that you got it whether you wanted it or not--which you generally didn’t--and see what a wonderfully-fine, strong boy it made out of you!”

I got a mischievous streak when she said that and answered, “I can see how maybe I am a wonderful boy and very fine but I feel very _weak_ right now.” She had just a jiffy before ordered me to carry in a couple of armfuls of wood for the wood-box, which never seemed to have sense enough to stay full and always managed to get itself empty at the very time I didn’t want to fill it and generally when I wanted to do something else.

“See,” I said to Mom, “before you asked me to get that wood I could swing both arms up over my head and still feel fine--just like this,”--holding my arms over my head like I was as strong as the imaginary man named Atlas who used to hold the world on his shoulders. “But now,” I went on to Mom, “I’m so weak I can’t lift my right arm more than this high, just about as high as my waist, I am so weak.”

I had heard Little Jim’s pop say and do that to Little Jim’s mom once and it had sounded cute so I had decided to try it on my parents the first chance I got.

Mom, who was getting dinner at the time, stopped stirring the gravy, turned and looked through the lower part of her bifocals at me and said, “Poor boy. That’s too bad. If you can’t lift your hand any higher than your waist how then can you carry in the wood! I’ll take care of the wood myself. Maybe you’d better go and lie down for an hour while your father and I have dinner because, your mouth being a little higher than your waist, you won’t be able to feed yourself,”--and for some reason I right away went out and carried in several armloads of wood without saying another word, getting it done about the same time Mom had dinner ready.

But let me get back to telling you about Charlotte Ann and how she got mixed up in our mystery. The worst trouble we had with her was that when we finally got her into bed at night or in the afternoon when it was her nap time she didn’t want to go to sleep. Sometimes she would call for a drink of water or something to eat and sometimes she would come toddling out in her bare feet to wherever Mom and Pop and I were, interrupt our reading or our talking or Pop’s evening nap on the davenport. She nearly always came out wide awake acting very friendly and like she felt more at home when she was up than when she was down.

“What on earth makes her want to do that?” I said one day. “Doesn’t she have sense enough to stay in bed?”

“She’s lonesome,” Mom answered. “She’s awful lonesome and she has to have lots of attention. You were that way when you were little.”

“Oh, quit telling me about when I was little years and years ago,” I said, not wanting to even be reminded that I ever had been, years and years ago.

As I started to say, getting Charlotte Ann to bed was a hard problem. It got to be my job to help Mom make her go, when Pop had to be away.

But when Mom and Pop were both away, then I had to do it all by myself--being what Pop called a _baby sitter_, which is a person who takes care of a baby while the parents are absent.

One very hot afternoon Mom and Pop both had to be gone to town for two or three hours and so they let me stay home to take care of Charlotte Ann, giving me orders to see to it that she took her afternoon nap between 1:30 and 2:30, or as near to that as I could get her to, and if it rained, to close all the windows--things like that.

“Take good care of her,” Mom said, as, all dressed up in her Sunday dress, she looked out the closed car door window.

“I will,” I promised and she and Pop went spinning out through the front gate, past Theodore Collins on the mailbox and onto the highway--their car stirring up a big cloud of white dust, that moved slowly off in the direction of Bumblebee Hill and the old cemetery.

10

I shut the gate after Mom and Pop, and Charlotte Ann and I went hand in hand toward the house to take her nap. That is, her hand was in mine--she not wanting it to be there on account of she knew it was nap time and she didn’t want to take one.

“It’s not hard to take a nap,” I said to her. “You just lie down and shut your eyes and that’s all there is to it. I’m the baby sitter and you are the baby-lying-downer. My first job is to get you to bed, so here we go.”

I was using a very cheerful voice, but she seemed to be suspicious of such a voice coming from me, besides she was still a little tearful from Mom and Pop having gone and left her at home with me.

I realized that I was going to have to use one of Pop’s tricks to get her to want to go to bed--one he used sometimes at night. I had seen him put her to bed maybe a hundred times so I looked down at her and said cheerfully, “O. K., kid. Let’s get going.”

I was surprised at how easy it was at first. It didn’t take long to get her ready ’cause Mom had said she could rest in her play suit, which Mom called her “sunset.” Just like Pop does, I pretended to be a poor, crippled, old grandfather, saying to her with a trembling voice like I was suffering terribly, “I’ve got to get into that other room and I need somebody to help me walk.”

I started limping terribly bad toward the room where she was supposed to sleep, going very slowly like a very crippled old man, staggering and limping and whining and complaining.

If there is anybody she likes better than anybody else, it is Old Man Paddler. She must have imagined that I was him because quick as anything she made a dive in my direction, clasped her small hand around my right knee and held on tight while I limped the best I could with one leg and walked the best I could with the other. We struggled toward the room where her small bed was. All the way there I kept on complaining with a trembling old voice saying, “Poor old man. How can I walk without a nice little girl to help me?”

The very minute we got to her bed--the green window blind being down and it being almost dark--she must have decided to do like she does when it is night when she always says her prayers before getting into bed. Right away she was down on her knees making me get down beside her. I bent my poor, old rheumatic knees down to the hard floor; and without waiting for me to say anything, she started in in her babyish voice trying to say the prayer Pop had been teaching her which is:

“Now I lay me down to sleep I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to take, For Jesus sake. Amen.”

It was the same prayer I had used to say myself years and years ago. Sometimes even yet when I kneel down to say a good-night prayer to God and I am very tired and sleepy, before I know it I am saying it myself even though I am too big to say just a little poem prayer.