Shenanigans at Sugar Creek

had to use a very large snowball for its foundation, but it had another even-larger snowball for its stom

of the top, nor in the front, so it looked like an honest-to-goodness bald-headed man.... Then, while different ones of us were putting a row of buttons on his coat, which were black walnuts which we stuck into the snow in his stomach, Circus

to it, like he was thinking something very important which he nearly always is, Little Jim being the best Christian in the gang and always thinking and sometimes saying something he had learned in church or that his parents taught him from the Bible. There were nearly half of the leaves still on the tree in spite of it

and her cub. I, all of a sudden, while I was sitting there on my stack of sleds

essed maybe Little Jim was remembering it also, everything was so quiet, I said

hich he always carried with him

snow statue, and said, "I'll bet you're thinking about the l

nobody ever calls me by the middle name except my pop, who calls me that only when he doesn't like me or when I'm supposed to have done something I shouldn't. Then Little Jim said to Poetry, just as his stick ker-whammed the initi

rents lived in our neighborhood and Tom had joined the gang, and also went to our Sunday School, and was a swell little guy; and as you maybe know, Bo

ng important, "what are you thinking about?" and he said, "I was just thinking about all the leaves, an

beech tree still had nearly every one of its leaves on it. They were very brown, even browner

d his knife in his hand and was just finishing trimming a small branch he had in his hand, Dragonfly had a long fierce-looking switch in one of his hands, and was swinging it around and saying loud and fierce, "All right, B

n our schoolyard that week, which had accidentally hit our n

et, and pulled out an ear of corn, and as quick as anything began to shell it ... shoving handfulls of the big yellow kernels into his pocket at the same

arth?" I thought, and said so, but he said, "All right, everybody, shut your eyes," which we wouldn't, so we watched him finish what he was doing, which was making a pipe for the snow man to smoke.... A jif

in the middle of the top or the front, and a big red nose, and a corn-cob pipe sticking out at an angle, and black walnuts for buttons o

id, in his duck-like voice, standing beside me an

, thinking how

supposed to be. It needs s

ysterious and wasn't interested in an ordinary snow man. I looked toward Dragonfly and he was listening toward a half dozen little cedar trees in the direction of the bayou, like he wa

hing us? What if all of a sudden he should come walking out from behind those cedar trees and see the snow man we've made of him, and

ardly believe my eyes at what I saw, but there it was as plain as day, a red, cloth-bound book with gold letters on it which said, The Hoosier Schoolmaster. I knew right away it was the book he and I had seen in his library one night and had read part of it, that part especially where the tough gang of boys in the story had caused the teac

ticking two sticks in the snow man's stomach side by side and then opening The Hoosier Schoolmaster to the pla

osier Schoolmaster himself." Then Poetry made a bow as low as he co

iled in a few minutes. Besides, Poetry all of a sudden, wanted to take a picture of it, and his camera was at his house which was away down past the sycamore tree and the cave, where

gonfly said. "He'll catch his de

scattered in every direction, one of them hitting me hard right on my freckled face just below my right eye, and stung like everything; then Little Jim started running as fast as he could go in the direction of the sycamore tree, like he had been mad at us for something we'd done wrong. In fact, when he said that, I felt a kind of a sickish feeling inside of me, like maybe I had done something wrong. I grabbed my stick and started off on