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.