The Green Tent Mystery at Sugar Creek by Paul Hutchens (red white and royal blue hardcover txt) 📕

AS I told you, it was one of those terribly hot afternoons and the Collins family had been hoping for a week that it would rain on account of our crops needed a real soaker. Just to find out for sure if it was going to, I lifted up a little wooden step at the door on the north side of our house to see if a smooth, round stone that was half-buried there was wet, which it always is when it is going to rain. Pop looks there himself when he wants to find out whether it will rain—and Mom teases him about it.

The minute the daylight streamed into where the dark had been under that step, a lot of different kinds of bugs scrambled for a dark place to hide. I noticed especially that there was a big, black cricket, maybe the very one that sings every night just outside Mom’s and Pop’s bedroom window—which Mom says sings her to sleep, Mom liking to hear crickets but not being interested in looking at them or touching them.

The smooth, round stone was wet, I noticed, which meant that there was a lot of humidity in the air. Then I put the step back down again and went to the corner of the house to look to see if there was a big, yellowish cloud in the southwest and there was, so it might rain before night, I thought.

Just that second I saw a large, tiger-colored Swallow Tail butterfly out by the orchard fence, fluttering around a red thistle blossom. Because the Swallow Tail is one of the largest kinds of butterflies in our whole territory, I knew Pop would be especially tickled if I could catch one for our collection, so I quick circled the house to the tool shed, swished in, swooped up Pop’s butterfly net—and in a jiffy later was out by the orchard fence where the most beautiful butterfly I had ever seen was acting like the nectar of that big Bull Thistle blossom was about the sweetest thing in the world to eat.

Generally, we didn’t allow any Bull Thistles to grow on our farm, but because Pop knew that Swallow Tail butterflies like milkweed and thistle flowers better than any others, we had let this one grow, hoping a Swallow Tail would decide to live around our place because it is one of the prettiest sights a boy ever sees on a farm—a beautiful butterfly drifting around and lighting on the flowers, its different colored wings folding and unfolding and making a boy feel all glad inside.

The Swallow Tail was on the other side of the woven-wire fence, which was very hard to climb over, so I quick hurried to the orchard gate near the cherry tree, which George Washington hadn’t chopped down yet. I got to the thistle just as the gorgeous yellow and black Swallow Tail decided to leave, floating lazily along, like a feather in the wind, with me right after it, swinging my net at it and missing it, and running and getting hot—and still not catching it.

Then all of a sudden I heard a quail’s whistle. I stopped stock-still and looked all around, expecting to see either Mr. Everhard or his wife. A jiffy later I saw which one it was and it was Mr. Everhard. I wanted to give a mournful turtledove call to answer him, but instead I listened for his wife to answer, which she didn’t.

Seeing me, he called to me saying, “Have you seen anything of Mrs. Everhard?”

“No, I haven’t,” I called back, deciding to forget about the Swallow Tail I was after—besides when I had taken my eye off the butterfly I couldn’t get it back on again.

“She was taking her afternoon nap,” Mr. Everhard said, “so I had gone to the creek a while, but when I came back she was gone. You sure she’s not up at your house?”

“I’m sure,” I said and I suddenly remembered that it had been a long time since I was inside our house. Also for some reason I decided I had better go quick to see if Charlotte Ann was still asleep or if she had waked up and maybe had gone herself somewhere.

“Let’s go look,” I said to Mr. Everhard and started to run fast, with him and his worried face right after me.

All the way through the orchard to the big Bull Thistle and the gate, not bothering to wait for Mr. Everhard, I was thinking over and over, “Mrs. Everhard had been taking a nap while her husband was away and when he came back she was gone and he couldn’t find her ... gone and he couldn’t find her and she was crazy—emotionally ill and—and our Charlotte Ann looked enough like her dead baby, Elsa, to be her twin—enough like her to be her.”

I tried to run faster and couldn’t. Instead of flying along like a bird in a hurry, I felt that I was just crawling like a Swallow Tail butterfly’s ugly, reddish-brown larva crawling along a lance-shaped parsnip leaf in our garden—which is the kind of leaf a Swallow Tail’s larva likes to eat best.

Hurry ... hurry ... hurry....

If ever I hurried, I hurried then—or tried to.

I darted past the big, red, two-inch wide thistle blossom, not even stopping to glance at it to see if there might be another Swallow Tail fluttering around it, through the still-open gate and past the front doorstep, around the house, past the grape arbor to the back screen, which I remembered now I hadn’t locked from the outside like I should have.

She’s got to be there, I thought. Why, she could have toddled out that door and gone to the barn or even out to and through the front gate and across the dusty road and through the woods to the spring and the creek and she didn’t know how to swim!

She doesn’t know how to swim!

Then I thought what if Mrs. Everhard had gotten one of her spells and decided that Charlotte Ann really was her baby and had come to get her and had run away with her—kidnapped her! She’s got to be there in her crib asleep—got to be!

I made a barefoot dash through the kitchen and the living room and into the dark bedroom not being able to see in the almost dark on account of I had been out in the bright sunlight and my eyes were not adjusted yet. I swished to her bed. “Charlotte Ann,” I exclaimed, “are you here?” and I thrust my hands down into her crib to see if she was.

Then I got the most terrible feeling I’d had in my life. I just felt terrible—awful! A million worried droughts were whirligigging around in my mind, for Charlotte Ann wasn’t there. She was gone!

Gone! Gone away somewhere and nobody knew where.

Just then I heard a heavy rumbling noise outside the house like a wagon makes going across the Sugar Creek bridge. It also sounded a little bit like a powerful automobile motor starting—but, of course, it couldn’t be that because any car outside wouldn’t be just starting, but would be stopping instead.

The second I knew Charlotte Ann wasn’t in her crib I hurried out of the room, calling her name and looking in every other room in the house—upstairs and down—calling and looking frantically. She had to be in the house. Had to be!

But she wasn’t. I came dashing back down stairs and out through the back screen door just as Mr. Everhard got there. He didn’t act as worried as I felt, but the fleeting glimpse I got of his face when I told him, “There’s nobody here,” didn’t make me feel any better.

Just then I heard the rumbling noise again, only it was louder and closer. I looked up toward the sky and the sound had come from a big, black cloud in the southwest, over the tops of the pignut trees and I knew it was going to rain without having to look under the wooden step at our front door. It was going to rain a real soaker. I could tell by the way a lot of angry-looking clouds were churning around up there that there would be wind too—and that meant every window in the house and every door ought to be shut tight, but with Charlotte Ann on my mind I didn’t have time to do it.

“Help me look for Charlotte Ann,” I yelled back over my shoulder to Mr. Everhard as I darted out across the barnyard toward Old Red Addie’s apartment house, calling Charlotte Ann’s name and looking for a shock of pretty, reddish-black curls and an aqua-colored “sunset.”

The word aqua, which I knew meant water didn’t help me feel any better and neither did the word sunset on account of the sun in the sky was already hidden by clouds, and the wind, which nearly always rushes ahead of a storm to let you know one is coming, was already making a wild noise in the leaves of the trees in the orchard and the woods.

Just then there was a banging sound on the west side of the house and Mom’s big washtub, which she always keeps there on a wooden frame on the southwest corner to catch the rain water when it rains, went bangety-plop-sizzle across the slanting cellar door and the boardwalk and out across the yard where it struck the plum tree, glanced off and went on, landing with a kerwham against the walnut tree.

Clouds of dust, whipped up by the wind, came from the direction of the pignut trees, which were being tossed around wildly, and I knew we were not only in for a real soaker, but a lot of dangerous wind. The whole sky was already all covered with clouds except the northeast corner, which is above Strawberry Hill and the cemetery.

Charlotte Ann wasn’t in the barn and neither was Mr. Everhard’s pretty wife.

My conscience was screaming at me for being such a careless baby sitter as to leave a two-year-old baby girl alone in the house and also for not locking the doors when I did leave the house.

Being a boy who believes in God, and also knowing that “Heaven helps them that help themselves” as Pop had told me, some of the stormy thoughts that were whirligigging in my mind were all mixed up with worried prayers and wondering what my parents would think with their baby lost in the storm.

Charlotte Ann, being a two-year-old and a “great imitator,” having seen me go rushing out our back door and across the lawn, through the gate and past Theodore Collins on our mail box, probably had done that thing herself. By this time she could be through the rail fence on the other side of the road and toddling along as fast as a two-year-old can toddle—getting up and falling down and getting up again—she was probably away down in the woods and maybe had already gotten to the spring and the creek—and you know what could have happened to her.

Just then the wind swept off my straw hat and sent it on a high, wild flight out across the yard, straight toward the walnut tree where it swished between the two ropes of the rope swing, went on and landed in the dusty road, was picked up again by the wind and whipped out toward the rail fence itself in the direction of Strawberry Hill and the old cemetery.

I was wishing my parents were there to help me. I was also glad they weren’t there on account of it would be time soon enough for Mom