It wasn’t a very satisfactory answer. His running around in the woods in his night clothes didn’t make half as much sense as Poetry and I running around in ours did. It must have seemed absolutely nonsensical to those girl campers who must have thought he and I were the same idiotic boy—which we most certainly weren’t—at least I wasn’t.
Dragonfly was going to explain further when he got stopped as quick as a chicken’s squawking stops when you cut its head off to have it dressed for dinner. His wheezy voice was interrupted by somebody in the direction of Bumblebee Hill calling my name, saying, “Bill! ... Bill Collins! ... WHERE IN THE WORLD ARE YOU!”
“It’s your father!” Poetry stopped stock-still and said.
And it was.
That big, half-worried, half-mad, thundery voice trumpeting down to us from the top of Bumblebee Hill was the well-known voice of Theodore Collins, my reddish-brown-mustached, bushy-eyebrowed father. What on earth was Pop doing out there waving his lantern and calling, “Bill Collins, where in the world are you?”
All of a sudden it seemed like wherever I was, it would be a good place not to be. It would be safer if I could take a fast shortcut through the woods and be fast asleep in the tent—or pretending to be—by the time Pop would give up looking for me and come back to the house. I could tell by the tone of his ear-deafening voice that whatever he was saying, he had already said it for the last time.
“Come on,” I whispered to Poetry and Dragonfly, “let’s get home quick—QUICK!” I repeated the last word with a hiss, and lit out for home—the shortcut that would miss Pop, who was still dodging along with his swinging lantern toward the bayou, still calling my name and stopping every few yards to listen. If only Dragonfly could run faster, it would be easy, I thought.
Right then, to my surprise, Pop swung west and started on the run toward the spring. We quick dodged behind some choke-cherry shrubs so as not to be seen, then we scrambled up the hill and into the path made by barefoot boys’ bare feet, and in a fast jiffy reached the rail fence just across the road from the Collins’ gate and the walnut tree.
In less than almost no time, we were inside the tent, Dragonfly puffing and wheezing on account of his asthma, Poetry puffing on account of his weight, and I, just puffing.
But it wasn’t to any peaceful quiet tent that we had come back. Dragonfly was as wet as a drowned rat from having been dunked in the spring water and was shivering with the cold—on such a hot midsummer night!