“All right,” I said to Poetry, “but hurry back.” Which he did.
Pretty soon we had our feet washed and dried on the towel, which I noticed when we got through might also have to be washed in the morning. In only a little while we were in our bunks again and sound asleep, and right away I began dreaming a crazy mixed-up dream in which I was running in red-striped pajamas through the woods, leaving the path made by barefoot boys’ bare feet and working my way around to the left along the crest of the hill where the pawpaw bushes were, just to see how many girl campers there were. Then it seemed like I was in the spring again, galloping around on a green no-legged bronco which somebody had stolen and plugged and maybe sold to the girls—or even given to them—or maybe some of the girls had invaded our melon patch that very night and stolen it themselves.
I hated to think that, though, ’cause any girl who is a girl scout is supposed to be like a boy who is a boy scout, which is absolutely honest. Besides as much as I didn’t like girls—not most of them anyway—and was scared of them a little—it seemed like there was a small voice inside of me which all my life had been whispering that girls are kind of special—and anybody couldn’t help it if she happened to be born one. Mom had been a girl for quite a few years herself, and it hadn’t hurt her a bit. She had grown up to become one of the most wonderful people in the world.
But who had stole my watermelon? And how had it gotten down there in the spring? It was my melon, of course!
The idea woke me up. Or else my own voice did, when I heard myself hissing to Poetry:
“Hey, you! Poetry! Come on, wake up!”
He groaned, turned over in his cot, and groaned again. “Let me sleep, will you?”
“No,” I whispered, “wake up! Come on and go with me. I’ve got to go down into our watermelon patch to see—”
“I don’t want any more water,” he mumbled, “and I wouldn’t think you would either.”
“That melon in the spring,” I said. “I just dreamed it was my prize melon! I think somebody stole it. I want to go down to our truck patch to see if it’s gone.”