Tom had put his back to me. Both of his hands were clasped around the flag pole at the end of the dock, and he was just weaving his body backward and forward and sidewise like he was nervous. “Don’t worry, Tom,” I said, “you’ve got a lot of friends, and my mother thinks your mother is swell.” Right then I got the surprise of my life, when he said what he said. I hadn’t realized that this little guy liked his wicked daddy a lot, too. This is what he said, “There are a lot of crosses all over the country like the one Eagle Eye told us about—just like the one they put up for his Indian daddy—” Then Little Tom stopped talking and I heard him sniffle and I knew it wasn’t on account of the breeze from the lake or because he was allergic to anything. He liked his daddy and didn’t want him to get drunk and have a car accident and get killed.
I felt terribly saddish, and at the same time a sort of wonderful, feeling came bubbling up inside of me. Say, I liked that little guy so much it actually hurt inside my heart. I reached out like my pop does to me sometimes, and put my arm halfway around him, and before I knew I was going to do it I’d given him the same kind of a half a hug Pop gives me and said, “Listen, Tom. I think God’s going to answer Eagle Eye’s prayer for you.”
Then I left bashful as anything, and just stood there beside him while he kept weaving back and forth with his hands still on the flag pole, neither one of us saying a word; and the waves of the lake made a friendly sound, lapping against the dock posts and washing against the sandy shore.
Well, the gang was yelling from the tents for us to hurry and come on and go to bed, so Tom and I started to walk back to shore and toward the Indian fire. The fire was still alive although the flames were kinda lazy, and the big blue cloud of smoke that had been hanging above our camp was mixed up with the night sky seemed to be gone. Tom and I stopped beside the fire a minute and looked down into it. Then just like he’d done before, he picked up a stick and shoved it into the coals, and a whole lot of sparks came out and shot in different directions of up, toward the sky.
“Hey you—Bill,” Big Jim called to me from his tent, “it’s your turn to put out the fire—the water pail is here in Barry’s tent—” which is what we had to do every night with our camp fires, pour water on them, so there wouldn’t be any danger of them suddenly coming to life in a wind and starting a forest fire.
It didn’t take me long to get the water pail, dip up some water from the lake and pour it on that fire till there wasn’t even one tiny spark visible.
Little Jim came out and went along with me as I made two or three trips from the fire to the lake and back carrying water. As you know, Little Jim had been sleeping in Big Jim’s tent, with Tom Till, and also Barry Boyland. The rest of us—in fact, our whole Robinson Crusoe gang—slept in the other tent—my two goats and my Man Friday and me.
“There’s something I want to ask you,” Little Jim said to me just as I was about to leave him at his tent.
“What?” I said.
“Can I play Robinson Crusoe with you tomorrow?”