Journey With the Comet

by Dana Wayne Haley

  “Yuck. How can they eat those rotten apples?” Leona asked her father when he came back into the room to check on her.

  “Those frozen apples are like delicacies to the deer, dear. They taste as good to them as your mother’s baked apples or her homemade bread does to us. Well, I’d better be getting downstairs to help your mother with the dishes. Don’t stay up too much longer, honey,” Murdock said as he headed to the door.

  “I won’t, Papa. But I’m not tired anymore, so I think I’ll read a little before I hop into bed.”

  Murdock left the room, leaving his little girl sitting by the window. When Leona turned to look out the window one more time, she noticed the buck jump, as if startled by something. Then she saw what it was. Something had landed in the tall pine tree the large buck was standing under. The Moon was partly hidden behind a cloud, so at first she couldn’t tell what it was, but when the cloud had passed she could clearly see it silhouetted against the Moon. It was a Bald Eagle and it looked just like the one she saw that day.

  “Hi, Mr. Eagle,” she said softly. “You must be the one that scared Mr. Perkin’s horse this afternoon. I owe you a lot; my grandma said you probably kept me from getting hurt. Oh, stay there; I’ve gotta show you to Mama and Papa.”

  Leona rushed out her bedroom door and got to the top of the stairs in time to see her father still lingering near the bottom.

  “Papa!” she yelled.

  “Yes, Leona?”

  “Never mind,” she said, remembering that she had already decided not to tell her parents about the eagle; thinking, if she did tell them, then she would also have to tell them about the near accident.

  “Besides, they’d never believe me anyway,” she thought.

  “Okay, dear,” Murdock said.

  “Who are you talking to, Murdy?” Margaret yelled from the kitchen.

  “Leona,” he answered.

  “What’s she want now?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Go to bed, Leona,” Margaret yelled.

  —1—

  Now that Leona was wide-awake she decided to sit by the window and read Heidi: the book Hans had given her. She had started to read the novel soon after receiving it, but was only able to get a third of the way through it before being sidetracked by school and the equally time-consuming move to Glenburn. Twenty minutes after opening the book her head began to nod. Being sleepy, yet not wanting to go to sleep until she finished the chapter she was reading, she decided to lie down on the bed to read. However, after a few minutes and with only two more pages to read, she slowly nodded off.

  The exhilaration the little girl felt in seeing the deer and eagle that night must have been enough to trigger a dream, because not long after falling asleep she found herself sitting on the back porch watching the stars. Then she saw a shooting star coming at her and she experienced a feeling of déjà vu. And it really was déjà vu because the same thing that happened to Leona two years ago was happening all over again. The colorful star turned as it neared the Earth, veering off and flying slowly, only a few feet above the ground, towards Margaret’s now snow-covered flower garden. After circling the garden the object flew slowly over the side and back field, as if it were surveying them. Then it made a slow turn at the corner of the back field, where Leona had first noticed the deer, and headed back toward her.

  The next thing Leona knew she was surrounded by the star’s colorful mist and awoke from it on her shiny black comet. She was even more amazed by what was happening to her than she was the first time; maybe because in the back of her mind she wasn’t totally convinced of the reality of the first visit on the comet. After a while she spotted the Earth as it had appeared in her dream the previous time, and she began another journey of exploration, taking in more of the sights that had filled her mind since the first time she was aboard her comet. She saw the Concord Bridge; the Gettysburg battlefield; the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia; the White House, Congress and all the museums in Washington, D.C.; and many more of the historic sites and places she always wanted to visit. When satisfied with exploring those marvelous places, Leona decided it was time to check out the activities at her home in Glenburn. Her family was just sitting down in the living room after they had finished washing the supper dishes. Leona saw herself come down the stairs and walk past Lillian and her father to the window.

  “Are the deer still there, Leona?” he asked.

  “Yes, Papa. They’re still eating apples. The Moon went behind some clouds so it’s hard to see them now though. Do you think they’ll be back again tomorrow night?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. They seem to like our apples—and Maggie’s shrubs—so they’ll be back. I’m sure of that,” he said while glancing at his wife.

  “Are you going after a Christmas tree tomorrow, Murdy?” Margaret asked.

  “Sure am; if the weather holds up. It feels like we might be getting a storm tomorrow.”

  “Who are you taking with you this year?”

  “I’m thinking of taking Arlene again, if she wants to go.”

  “Oh yes! Can I go, Mama?” Arlene asked.

  “If you want to, sweetheart. It’s totally up to you.”

  “Can I go too, Papa?” Leona asked.

  “Not this year, Leona; maybe next. You’re still a little too young right now.”

  “But I’m ten-and-a-half now.”

  “My God! Are you that old already?”

  “So, can I go?”

  “Well, we’ll see, dear. But I promised Arlene she could go first.”

  Leona was disappointed, so she turned around to look at the deer again.

  “Papa, the deer are gone now,” she shouted.

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart. You’ll see ‘em again. Like I said: Most likely they’ll be back tomorrow night.”

  —2—

  Leona observed her family for a few more minutes before turning her attention away from the Earth to her comet. She marveled at the beautiful lights emanating from the shiny black rock, and at the heaven full of stars streaking by her comet like glowing bullets.

  “This comet is pretty, but it isn’t near as pretty as my mother’s beautiful flower garden,” Leona thought.

  All of a sudden she saw that a colorful mist was beginning to form, just fifteen feet from where she was standing. When the mist lifted, there was her mother’s flower garden sprouting toward the heavens. After only a few seconds it was fully-grown and in full bloom. But something about her mother’s garden was different. Then she realized that it was so much more brighter and much more colorful than she remembered it being. But it looked strange to Leona, sitting there all-alone on the black rock she was standing on.

  It didn’t appear strange for long however. In no time at all there was grass growing all around her and it was spreading outward from the garden until there was nothing but a stunning yellowish-green blanket, for as far as the eye could see. Then, off in the distance, trees began to grow out of the ground until the little girl was surrounded by woods and fields identical to those surrounding her house in Glenburn; except, like the flowers, this vegetation was to her eyes more beautiful and possessed a greater spellbinding allure than that on Earth.

  Leona gazed at her mother’s garden for a while and then she caught something out of the corner of her right eye. There under the apple tree near the woods was the herd of deer that she had seen that night. And just like the flowers and the other vegetation that magically appeared, the deer were even more beautiful than she remembered. For one thing, their velvety fur looked much softer and much shinier, and the white under their tails and bellies was as pure as new fallen snow.

  Leona and the little deer’s parents watched in amusement as the younger ones were playfully running around the field and gracefully jumping into the air. A moment later the smallest one ran toward Margaret’s flower garden and began frolickin
g behind it. Then it slowly, almost shyly, walked from behind the garden toward Leona, with its cute little nose held high, curiously sniffing the air. When it got to Leona, the tiny deer gently rubbed its cold nose on her arm.

  “That tickles,” she laughed, causing the startled fawn to jump back.

  “Don’t be afraid, little fella,” she said in a softer voice.

  Once against the small deer worked its way toward Leona and she reached out and rubbed its delicate neck.

  “You like that, don’t you, Goldie?” she said to the deer whose fur appeared as shiny as gold.

  The fawn seemed to nod yes and began rubbing against Leona’s right leg. She went to one knee and tenderly hugged the baby deer. And while doing that, she failed to notice that the other deer were slowly working their way toward her; that is, until she felt something rubbing up against her back. It was the other small deer, also wanting a hug from Leona. In a while the other three deer came closer to her and she began petting them. Soon the deer were frolicking in the fields with Leona. She chased after them as they ran this way and that around the fields. Two minutes later the deer sprinted toward the apple tree where she first saw them. For a while they circled it and then sprinted gracefully back to Margaret’s garden, and then to Leona’s side. Suddenly they took off for the woods, as if being spooked by something.

  “Hey, where are you going?” Leona called out as she began chasing after the beautiful animals.

  All at once the deer stopped running and began walking, albeit briskly along the woods road that her father would likely be taking in the morning to find the Haley Christmas tree.

  “Come back here!” Leona yelled, just before she went into the woods.

  But the deer kept going and, although she wasn’t sure why, she followed them along Haleys Trail to the Stream Road and then northward along it for quite a long ways, even crossing the School Road, a good half-mile west of Ohio Street and her little white schoolhouse. They were apparently headed to the oft-visited Kenduskeag Stream. To Leona the deer seemed determined, if not stubbornly intent on not stopping until they got to where they were going, following one path and then another until they came to a cluster of birch trees: the tallest Leona had ever seen. Then the deer stopped for a moment and slowly walked past those white trees into the woods.

  When Leona came to the trees, she stopped and marveled at the width of the largest birch tree; it was wider than her. She walked up to it and put her arms around it, but it was so huge that she couldn’t get her arms all the way around. Eerily, a chill came over her body as if something spooky lingered in the forest beyond the trees.

  “That’s strange,” she thought, “I’ve never been afraid of the woods before.”

  Just then she heard a noise and sensed something fly past her head, seemingly only a couple of feet above it. Feeling a cold wind on her face, she looked up to see what it was; and then she awoke from her magical dream.

  Chapter 40

  Trouble in the Woods

  It was a snowy fourth day of December in 1920 and Murdock was getting ready for his yearly trek into the woods to find a Christmas tree. If this year had been like the previous two he would have made the trip a week earlier, but things kept coming up that caused him to put off the search until today. When he climbed out of bed on this particular Saturday morning he even considered putting the trip off again because it was starting to snow and the weather looked ominous. Indeed, within minutes the snow was coming down hard, but a half-hour later it abruptly stopped and the Sun was trying hard to peek through the clouds. Reluctantly, he decided to chance it and head into the woods to look for a tree, mainly because the children were visibly disappointed that the Haley Christmas tree wasn’t already standing in the corner of their living room.

  Arlene was intending to accompany her father this year, but at the last minute Margaret decided that she needed her two oldest daughters to give her a hand in the kitchen that day. After loading the half-bale of hay that he always carried for the horses to munch on while he worked in the woods, Murdock put the harness on Prince and hitched him to his slagon. Since he was only going to be carrying a Christmas tree out of the woods, there was no need for two pulling horses. He only needed to use both King and Prince when he was carrying a heavy load of wood, or when the Haleys went for a fun-filled hayride, especially when neighbors accompanied them; and when Murdock needed to use just one horse, it was always Prince. The reason? King was an older, weaker horse that Murdock thought had earned the right to rest, while Prince was a younger, much stronger horse that seemed to actually enjoy pulling the wagon through the woods.

  Murdock had finished hitching Prince to the slagon and was about to climb aboard when Leona came running outside, yelling to him:

  “Papa! Papa! Guess what? Arlene can’t go, so can I go with you this year?”

  Without hesitation he said: “Okay, sweetheart, but go inside and tell your mother.”

  A huge smile appeared on Leona’s face and she quickly ran back into the house.

  “Mama!” she shouted while bursting through the door.

  “My heavens, Leona! You nearly scared me right outta my wits. What in Sam Hill’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Papa wants me to go with him to help find a Christmas tree.”

  “He does, does he? Okay, but make sure you hold onto the wagon nice and tight,” Margaret cautioned. “The woods roads get mighty bumpy this time of the year, and sometimes the bumps blend in and are hard to see when there’s snow on the ground.”

  “I’ll be careful, Mama.”

  As her ecstatic daughter turned and rushed out the door, Margaret called to her.

  “And be sure to keep out of your father’s way when he’s cutting down the tree. And don’t slam the…

  BANG

  …door.”

  Leona ran with enthusiasm from the house and jumped onto the back of the wagon while her amused mother watched through the kitchen window. Although always fearful of her children riding on the wagon, Margaret was glad that Leona was accompanying Murdock this year. She hated it when her husband went off into the woods by himself, especially when it was to chop down trees with his sharp double-blade ax. In addition, she was especially glad that Leona was going because she knew how thrilled her little girl was to be helping her father find a special Christmas tree.

  “Let’s go,” Leona yelled to her father as she eagerly climbed into the front seat. Murdock smiled when he saw how happy she was. As the 10-year-old sat down, her heels banged into a wooden utility box stored under the front seat. Her father usually kept his tools and extra clothing there; and anything else that he, or Margaret, felt might be useful in the woods. Murdock’s selections for the various utility box items were meant to make his work easier, and Margaret’s were meant for his protection.

  —1—

  Just as Murdock yelled ‘giddy-yup’ to Prince and they headed for the woods trail at the end of the back field, a light dusting of snow began to fall again. Since he had not yet attached the skis to his slagon, he thought about postponing the search until he could turn the wagon into a sleigh. But he decided that the wagon would be okay if the snow didn’t get too much deeper than the two inches that was now covering the roads, especially if it remained dry and fluffy like the snow that had fallen earlier, or was falling now. Regardless, it didn’t look or feel like the new snow shower was going to last for long. Indeed, it came to an abrupt stop before they had traveled more than a few feet into the woods.

  “How far do we have to go to find a tree, Papa?” Leona asked.

  “All the way up to the stream,” he told her. “What with my cutting Christmas trees for the neighbors too, there aren’t that many good trees left on our land. So we’ll hav’ta look on the Tyler land to find a good one. Thankfully Mr. Tyler gave me permission to do just that.”

  The Tyler land was what Murdock called the ninety or so acre
s of land owned by Henry Tyler, someone he met while fishing near his summer cabin. Tyler’s land bordered the Kenduskeag Stream, from Ohio Street to about a half-mile west of it. Even though taking Ohio Street would have been much faster and much shorter than the twisting Haleys Trail they were now on—not to mention the two-and-a-half mile Stream Road they would soon be on—Murdock rarely traveled on main roads. Leona was curious about that, so she asked him.

  “How come you didn’t take Ohio Street, Papa?”

  “Because riding through the woods is much more pleasurable, dear. You don’t bump into near as many people, and I really enjoy the scenery and the serenity of the forest. From my point of view the natural beauty of the trees and wildflowers here in the woods of Glenburn is unsurpassed anywhere. Why live in the country if you don’t enjoy it to the fullest?” he asked rhetorically.

  “During the autumn there’s nothing more beautiful than the foliage up here in God’s country, and there’s nothing more breathtaking than snow-covered evergreens immediately after a winter storm. And to me there’s nothing quite like being right in the midst of it all.”

  Leona knew exactly what her father meant; although, she still preferred the view from her bedroom window, especially on a bright sunny morning when strong solar rays illuminated the snow-covered trees.

  After pausing, Murdock added: “And another reason I prefer taking the woods road is to avoid passing the Buzzell home.”

  “Why’s that, Papa?”

  “Well, to be honest with you, the last time I drove my wagon on Ohio Street—I think to deliver wood to old man Tyler—Mrs. Buzzell screamed at me because King relieved himself right in front of her home. Normally, I wouldn’t of thought anything of it, but she acted extremely rude, saying things I wouldn’t say to my worst enemy, let alone to a complete stranger. Almost made me want to stop the wagon, right then and there, to let King finish his business.”