All this time Mom was using a soothing voice on Roy Gilbert’s mother while also all the time I was trying to quiet Charlotte Ann’s half-scared-half-to-death voice.
And that was the way Pop’s understanding of things began—and the way the next thirty minutes started.
What a night!
6
AN excitement like the one we were splashing around in—squawky-voiced, barrel-shaped Poetry; red-striped pajama-clad Dragonfly; night-gown-dressed Mom; crying Charlotte Ann; my confused father, and his actual son—couldn’t last forever, and this one didn’t!
In not too long a while, Pop began to get things clear in his usually bright mind, as Poetry and I managed to squeeze in a few words of explanation, keeping some of the mystery to ourselves to talk over with the Gang tomorrow, when we would have our meeting at the Little-Jim tree at the bottom of Bumblebee Hill. The Little-Jim tree, as you know, is the name we had given the tree under which Little Jim had killed the fierce old mad old mother bear, which you know about if you’ve read the book, “We Killed a Bear.”
It seemed we ought to tell Pop and Mom why Poetry and I had been running around in a beautiful moonlit dog days night in our night clothes, so as soon as we could, we explained about the watermelon in the burlap bag and the noisy old car racing down the lane and coming back a little later.
Pop really fired up when I mentioned how the thief had managed to get the watermelon through the fence. “You mean somebody cut a hole in my new woven-wire fence!” he half shouted. “We’ll go down there right now and have a look at it!” He was more angry, it seemed, that his fence had been cut than that one of our watermelons had been stolen.
Dragonfly broke in then saying, “I’ve got to get home,” and the way he said it made me wonder if he knew all about the whole thing and wanted to get away from us.