Even while I listened to the radio on my fat goat’s lap, I was thinking about Little Tom’s mom and wondering if she had her radio turned on too, back at Sugar Creek, and would hear this announcement, and if it would be like somebody jabbing a knife into her heart and twisting it. But we didn’t have time to think, or talk or anything, ’cause right that second, I heard a noise coming from the direction of the kitchen window, which we had climbed in, and when I took a quick peek through the curtains, I saw the face of a fierce-looking man. It only took me one second’s glance to see the bushy eyebrows that met in the center just above the top of his hooked nose, and even though he had on a battered old felt hat that was dripping wet with the rain, and his clothes were sop soaking wet, I recognized him as Little red-haired Tom’s father. In that quick flash of a jiffy I remembered the first time I had seen him when he had been hired by my pop to shock oats, and he had tried to get Circus’s pop to take a drink of whiskey over by some elderberry bushes that grew along the fence row. It had been a terribly hot day, and Circus and I had been helping shock oats too. Circus’s pop hadn’t been a Christian very long, and because I hated whiskey and didn’t want Circus’s pop to do what is called “backslide,” I had made a terribly fierce fast run across the field with Circus, to try to stop his pop from taking the drink and had run kerwham with both of my fists flying straight into Old hook-nosed John Till’s stomach, and a little later had landed on my back under the elderberry bushes from a terribly fierce wham from one of John Till’s hard fists. After that, the gang had had a lot of other trouble with him, but we’d gotten Little Tom saved, and Tom, being a pretty good Christian for a little guy, had been praying for his pop every day of his life ever since. But up to now it looked like it hadn’t done any good ’cause his pop still was a bad man and caused his family a lot of heartache. Talk about mystery and excitement. I knew Tom’s pop hated us boys and also he was pretty mean to Tom for going to church with us, and on top of that was mad at my folks for taking Tom’s mom to church; and whenever he came into the house when she had a Christian program on the radio, he would either make her turn it off or he would turn it off himself. I’ll have to admit that I was afraid of Old hook-nosed John Till, and right that minute I didn’t feel very much like being the leader of the gang, which for some reason seemed to be made up of only four very small boys, all of a sudden. The only thing I felt like leading in, was a very fast foot race out through the woods and toward camp.