Well, it was a cute idea, and I wished I could think of something good, but couldn’t, so we broke up our campfire circle, with Santa standing and yawning his fat self into a straightened up posture. He looked straight at Tom Till and said, “How about a spin on the lake, with my new outboard motor, Tom?”
I remembered that Santa and Mrs. Santa didn’t have any children of their own, and that last year he had liked Tom so well, and had also been the one who had showed Tom how to become a Christian. I knew that Tom’s pop was an infidel, and was hardly ever kind to him, and Tom was maybe hungry for some grown-up person to like him, so I felt happy inside that Tom was going to get a fast boat ride, although I wanted to go along worse than anything.
“You, too, Bill—and Poetry, if you like,” Santa said—“if you can spare them awhile, Barry. I’ll take the rest of the gang tomorrow. This new motor needs breaking in, you know.”
Well, it was all right with Barry, and it certainly was all right with me, so away we four went toward the sandy shore to where Santa’s big white boat was beached, each one of us taking our life preserver vests, and putting them on before getting into the boat... Boy oh boy, that lake looked wonderful, having as many colors as the sky itself, which meant that a lake got its color from the sky, I thought, and said to Poetry, “Looks like Old Babe, the Ox, must have changed his colors like a chameleon and taken a swim out here, while we were telling stories.”
And Poetry surprised me by yelling, “SWELL, BILL, that’s wonderful! Hey, you guys back there! Bill’s got a good story!”
Well, it made me feel half proud of myself to have Poetry yell that to the gang like that, and I liked Poetry a lot for a minute, that being one of the reasons why I liked him anyway—he was always making a person feel like he was worth something.
It certainly felt fine to sit in the prow of Santa’s big boat, with Tom Till and Poetry in the middle and Santa himself in the stern, and go roaring out across the lake. Boy oh boy, in the afterglow of the sunset, the lake was pretty, and without much wind was as smooth as Mom’s mirror in our front room at home. I was wishing Pop and Mom were there, to see things, but wouldn’t want them to stay on account of I wanted to have some real exciting adventures to tell them about when we got home...
Pretty soon, our boat cut a wide circle around the end of a neck of land, and we went roaring down the other side about fifty or maybe a hundred feet from shore. It was still a little light on the lake, but the pine trees on the shore looked darkish and it was getting dark fast. All the time I was wondering if we could run into any exciting adventures up here in the North when Poetry said, “Look Bill! right there’s where our boat upset last year and tossed us out, and right there’s where I hooked that big Northern Pike.”
I remembered and yelled back to him and said so, and went on thinking—wishing we’d have some kinda scary excitement as well as a lot of fun camping.
I watched the widening waves that spread out behind us like a great V, and felt fine and happy, and for some reason I liked everybody. Also I was remembering the Bible story Barry had told, and how Peter was afraid to have the Lord anywhere near him, because he was a sinner, and I began to feel that God was real close to all of us and I wasn’t a bit scared of Him ’cause I knew that He had washed all my sins away, which our Sugar Creek minister and Little Jim say is what He does to a boy or anybody who will really let Him—washing them away in His own blood.