It was two happy, red-haired, freckle-faced boys that pulled my little red wagon full of luggage and apples back to the lane we had left and on toward our house.
One thing Wally asked me just before we got to the lane was about his initiation last night. He said, “Is that the way to become a Christian—what they did to me last night?”
“No, no,” I said. “That was just making you a member of the gang. Anybody who promises to go to Sunday school and church every Sunday and to read the Bible and pray every day can be a member.”
“How do you get to be a Christian, then?”
Wally hadn’t been to church very much in his life. I’d hardly realized that he might not even know how to become a Christian. So I told him what I had heard Sylvia’s dad say many times in church. “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.”
Then I had to explain it to Wally so he could understand. “It’s just like riding on this wagon. Sylvia’s dad would say, ‘You just get in and ride and trust whatever is pulling you.’ You believe in the Lord in your heart the same way.”
“Who’s Sylvia’s dad?” Wally wanted to know, and I told him.
As we rambled along, neither one of us saying anything for a while, I could tell he was thinking about what I had told him. I decided that even if he wasn’t a Christian yet, he would probably be one before long. Because if a boy read his Bible and prayed every day, the Lord Himself would turn on the light in his heart.
There was a shortcut to our house if we went through the edge of Big Jim’s woods, so we decided to take it. Just as soon as we got to maybe within an eighth of a mile from home, I spotted a little black and white animal nosing around an old stump not far from a big rail pile. It was a skunk all by itself. It wasn’t big enough to be the mother skunk that used to live under Poetry’s toolshed. It was a smaller one, probably one of her kittens.
Boy oh boy, I hoped Wally, and especially Alexander, wouldn’t see it—or that Alexander wouldn’t smell it. He’d make a dive for it, and it wouldn’t get away. Then we’d have the tail end of Wally’s visit ruined completely!
But it was already too late. Alexander had noticed it, and he stopped and sniffed and started a gruff growl in his throat. He wasn’t more than ten feet from me at the time, and our only hope to save us from a perfume shower bath would be to stop him quick, which I managed to do by saying, “Here, Alexander!”
I quickly picked up a stick and waved it, and he started toward me as he nearly always does until I’ve thrown the stick. Then he gallops after it.
Of course, I didn’t throw it. Instead, when he got to within a few feet of me, I dove for his collar, caught it, and hung onto him for dear life.
Just then Wally saw the kitty. Well, that was just as bad. He wanted it, too, and the next thing I knew, he had swooped down onto our wagon, grabbed the utility can, dumped out the apples into the wagon and all over the ground, and grabbed the can’s lid. Away he ran like a crazy boy, straight for that black and white woods kitty.
“Come back!” I yelled to him. “This is your last day! And your folks will be as mad as a hornet! You can’t take a skunk home with you in your car, and you can’t even go home yourself!”
My words on Wally’s mind were like pouring water on an umbrella. He kept on running straight for the old stump the polecat was digging around. The kitty saw him and heard him at the same time, and I knew—knew what would happen. It had to happen.
Wally wouldn’t know what to do when the kitty’s tail shot up like the plume on Little Jim’s mom’s hat. I was holding on for dear life to Alexander’s collar and also to his neck and trying to quiet him, and I knew he would have to break his collar to get away from me.
Then I got a surprise. Wally seemed to remember exactly how Circus had told him he had caught the skunk we had seen him catch quite a while ago. The very second the little woods cat saw Wally that close to him, he swished his tail straight up in the air and began dancing with his front feet, as much as to say, “I hate red-haired people! One move out of you and your name is mud.”
And Wally didn’t move a muscle. He just stood there with the utility can in one hand and both eyes glued to the skunk.
I crouched beside Alexander and cringed.
Alexander strained and growled, probably thinking, What on earth? Just give me one chance to do what I’ve been wanting to do all week, and I’ll go back to my city life a happy dog.
Then the kitty decided he had been quiet long enough and that maybe Wally wasn’t going to hurt him after all, so he lowered his flag and started off on a trot toward the rail pile, where I supposed his mother and the rest of her family had moved after they left Poetry’s dad’s toolshed.
Wally trotted beside that kitty—about eight feet from it—when all of a sudden, just as I had seen another kitty do when Circus had been trotting beside it, it stopped again and swished its flag straight up.
Wally went into action, except that he didn’t do as well as Circus. He started toward it like a shot, but one of his feet stumbled over the other, and he landed in a sprawl beside the skunk. Reaching out, he made a grab for its tail and missed, and I knew it was too late. Too absolutely late. The last day of his week was ruined.
But Wally was no dumbbell. He grabbed again while he was still on the ground, and there was some lightninglike action that I couldn’t see, and the kitty disappeared inside the utility can. The lid was clamped on, and Wally was up and sitting on the can and grinning and yelling, “Come on! I’ve got him. I’ve got a skunk!”
And he had!
It was good news, but it was bad news too, I thought. Alexander the Coppersmith and I left the wagon and started over to where Wally was.
“He doesn’t smell a bit!” Wally cried. “He didn’t even get a chance to shoot!”
Well, I knew better than that. That skunk had had time to shoot at least three times before his back feet were whisked off the ground, and he probably had used the rest of his six shots after he got into the utility can, which we were supposed to use to put apples back in and take them home.
But then I did get a surprise. There wasn’t any smell. There actually wasn’t. What on earth? I thought.
Just then I heard somebody coming toward us. Looking up, I saw Circus himself coming on an excited run as fast as he could, yelling, “Hey, you guys! You seen anything of a skunk around here? My pet skunk got away, and I can’t find it anywhere!”
And I remembered that Poetry had told me that the reason the mother skunk had moved her family was because Circus had caught another one of her kitties. And, of course, he had already had it “de-skunked” so it wouldn’t smell.
It had been a wonderful week—simply wonderful. Boy oh boy. Wally had caught a skunk as he had wanted to, even if Circus had caught it first. Then I found out Circus had planned to give it to Wally as a pet, anyway. Also, Alexander had had his fight with the bull as he wanted to. And something else even more important than all that had happened to Wally’s heart.
Later in the afternoon, when Uncle Amos and my red aunt and Wally drove away with Wally and Alexander the Coppersmith and his cedar-treated mattress in the back of the car and the black and white woods cat in the front in a dogproof cage, I watched the car going up the road.
And as the white dust moved out across Dad’s cornfield, a little whirlwind started up in our barnyard. It was such a lively and friendly one that I left “Theodore Collins” on the mailbox near where I had been standing and started on the run across the barnyard after it, to toss myself into it as I liked to do.
As I ran, feeling sad and wonderful at the same time, a flock of old hens that had been dusting themselves not far from the iron pitcher pump came to life and scattered in every direction. Mixy, who had been nosing around the grape arbor, must have thought my fast-flying feet were Alexander the Coppersmith’s, because she whirled around quick and started off like a black and white streak toward the barn.
I followed along in the spiraling little windstorm until it reached the edge of the cornfield and went whirling out into it, making the happy little noise I had read about once in a poem in Poetry’s book:
The husky, rusty rustle
Of the tassels of the corn …
Even though I had to stop at the edge of the cornfield, my thoughts went sailing round and round in a little whirlwind of their own, flying higher and higher into one of the prettiest skies I ever saw.