Donut laced her boots up tight and headed out the door. Sam’s old house sat at the edge of a thirty-acre hayfield bordered by a twenty-acre woodlot. In good weather he’d cart his canvas fold-up chair out into the milkweed and canary grass and sit with his binoculars spying on bobolinks and finches, writing up bird habits in his notebook with a sharp pencil.
She understood how much he loved his birds, and he should have understood what the Rand McNally World Atlas, third edition, meant to her and kept his mouth shut.
The ground was muddy and the grass still short, what with the cold nights. Sam was nowhere in sight. Donut followed the trail into the woods. Tiny and the Barclay boys had built him a tree stand—a platform fifteen feet off the ground, with slats for climbing nailed into the trunk of the old beech tree. She caught sight of his boots hanging off the edge.
“Sam.”
“Donut? Climb up, but quiet, please.”
She climbed up the slats and pulled herself onto the platform. Sam had his notebook in his lap and a pencil stuck over his ear. She sat down next to him, her legs hanging.
“Sam,” she said.
“Shhhh,” he said, staring off into the thick woods surrounding the clearing.
“No. I’m not gonna ‘shhh.’ You told Aunt Agnes about the Rand McNally World Atlas, third edition.”
Donut sniffled. Her nose was running. She held on tight to the rough edge of the platform. Being angry at Sam, who she’d known her whole life, meant she was all alone, fifteen feet up, sitting right next to him.
He set his notebook and pencil down on the cedar planking. “She only wanted to get you a gift, something special. I knew your heart was set on getting the third edition.”
“But it’s my heart, Sam, my secret. And you told her. I was saving up. My poker winnings. It was private, none of their business, and she and Aunt Jo went and bought it. They ruined it. I can’t ever look inside now because they stole it from me.”
Sam gazed at her, his eyebrows twitching. Donut mopped at her runny nose with her coat sleeve. They both stared down into the clearing.
“I’m sorry,” said Sam. “It was a mistake.”
“It’s way bigger than a mistake.”
“Hmmm.”
Donut turned and glared at him. “Why do adults make that sound? ‘Hmmm.’ It’s like a long lecture about how to be a proper child all squashed into one little squeak.”
Sam smiled. “It is, isn’t it? I’ll try to avoid squeaking at you. Not very respectful.”
“My geography’s like your birds, Sam,” said Donut.
He patted her on the knee. “And it’s grand, isn’t it?”
Donut shoved her hands into her pockets.
Sam gently got hold of her chin and swung her face around to look at him. “I will try my best not to betray your trust again. Promise.”
“Okay,” she said, just to get him to stop looking at her because the tears were close again.
He picked up his notebook. A pair of black-capped chickadees hopped from branch to branch a few feet away, farther off a downy woodpecker started in hammering at a dead limb of a maple tree.
They watched a crow land on the lower branch of a poplar; another crow joined it, and then another. Sam perked up, tipped his head.
In most cases the job of godfather didn’t mean much except a nickel for penny candy and a pat on the head. But Sam had been a special case. She’d grown up in his parlor with his birds, sat in his kitchen with her pops eating stewed apples, watched them play loud games of cribbage.
When she’d turned up an orphan, Sam’s job of being her godfather had gotten real serious. He’d come to get her at school, sat her down on the bench in the schoolyard, told her Pops had died. It hadn’t made any sense. Her pops, dead. The tire had blown out. The old green Franklin swerved, hit a tree. Her pops had flown up and out into the air, hit his head. And he was gone.
She hadn’t cried. Even when Sam had put his arm around her. Because it just didn’t make any sense. Sam had walked her home. Held her hand all the way up Slapp Hill Road. For the whole four days before the funeral he stayed with her. Each day she believed her pops was going to walk in the front door, hang up his coat, and give her a hug. He’d be so happy to be back, he’d pick her up in the air and swing her around.
Beryl and Mrs. Lamphere and Mrs. Patoine and all of them brought food and sat in the parlor holding handkerchiefs. Sam kept them away while she worked on the pearls of the Nile, hour after hour, learning the towns and cities, waiting for it all to be a mistake and her pops to come home.
But he didn’t. Aunt Agnes arrived the day of the funeral. Sam went back to his parlor and his birds. That was when she knew her pops wasn’t coming back.
Donut swung her legs and dug her thumbnail into the cedar board under her hand.
The crows erupted off the poplar tree, squawking and circling. Sam scribbled something in his notebook, set it aside, and lit up his pipe. Donut sat kind of stiff and her stomach started to ache.
“Sam, can you come to supper, tomorrow at six? Maybe you could get Aunt Agnes to see that I have to stay put, that I’d never survive in Boston.”
Sam chewed on the end of his pipe. “Of course I’ll come to supper. And I’ll think long and hard about what might persuade her to change her mind.”
“She wouldn’t even think about taking a job at the Metal Works. I tried.”
He chuckled. “No, I just guess she wouldn’t. Not her cup of tea.”
“But she’d listen to you, being Pops’ best friend, and you knowing me forever and being my godfather and all.”
Sam shook his head. “Don’t get your hopes up.”
“I just can’t go,” said Donut, her voice all wobbly.
He looked at her hard, reached over, and squeezed her hand. “I miss him, too, Donut. I’ll do my best.”
Donut managed to mumble some kind of thanks and a goodbye while she scrambled to her feet. She had to leave, and quick. Sitting there with Sam brought on a wave of missing her pops so powerful she could hardly make her legs work to climb down the slats. She stood for a minute on solid ground and pushed the ache back down into a hidden, deep place so she could keep breathing and walking and being in the world.
10
Donut hiked back across Sam’s field. Aunt Agnes was probably sitting at the kitchen table sipping at her tea, all hurt and angry that the Rand McNally World Atlas, third edition, hadn’t gotten her a big thank-you and a kiss on the cheek.
Donut kicked at a clump of burdock. Aunt Agnes had been brave and heroic, even gone to jail for what she believed in. Donut didn’t like her auntie one bit, but the longer she sat in the parlor knitting those ugly socks, the more complicated the not liking her got. Why couldn’t she have an auntie who was a battle-ax, a witch with a raggedy, old-fashioned broomstick leaning against the wall in the mudroom? With an aunt like that, Donut could heave her over a cliff, put arsenic in her tea, cast her own spell and turn her into a frog or a spider, and do a dance out of pure happiness afterward.
Donut studied her house across the road. All she could do with the auntie she had was stand aside and hope Sam could work a miracle.
In the mudroom she pulled on her slippers and stood in the doorway to the kitchen. Aunt Agnes must have heard her come in, but she didn’t turn away from the stove.
“I’d like the parlor dusted,” she said, giving Donut a good view of her behind and the neat bow of her blue apron strings tied up tight. “And you have schoolwork to attend to.”
Donut’s “Yes, Auntie” barely made it into the open air. She had to soften Aunt Agnes up for the big dinner, so she pinched herself on the arm and managed a friendly voice. “And I’m sorry about the atlas. It’s beautiful.”
Aunt Agnes turned and put her hands on her hips. “Your sorrys are getting tiresome.”
The both of them being angry sucked the air right out of the room. Donut rummaged in the hall closet and gathered up a rag and feather duster.
In th
e parlor, she lifted the little statues and knickknacks, wiped down the shelves with her cloth, dusted the picture frames and lamps. This had been her mother’s special room. All of it came from the house in Boston where Rose had grown up with Aunt Agnes and Aunt Jo. Donut and her pops had hardly ever used the parlor. He’d kept the door closed and only went in to tidy up and set traps since the quiet encouraged mice to nest in the cushions.
Now Aunt Agnes was in here every day, perched on the dainty chair at the skinny-legged desk writing all her letters to Aunt Jo, or sitting in the wingback chair with her books and knitting. This room wasn’t supposed to have Aunt Agnes in it. It wasn’t supposed to have anyone in it. Just her pops’ memories of her mother, Rose.
She stood in the center of the room on her mother’s carpet filled with tiny woven animals—camels, birds, snakes, and lizards, all in reds and blues and yellows. Her pops said he’d carted her in here special to learn to crawl on this carpet, safe from splinters, her little fingers getting some traction on the soft bumpiness of the wool.
Feather duster in one hand, rag in the other, Donut sat down on the carpet and lay on her back. The ceiling hung there above her, ivory white, with black cracks in the plaster like bare winter branches.
Her mother was drifting away now, disappearing. Donut could lie here and remember her pops and how he’d laughed and snapped his suspenders, but her pops wasn’t here to hang on to Rose for the both of them. “She’d pull her socks and shoes off any chance she got,” he’d said, smiling at the thought of it. “Sink in the mud with her head back, admiring the sky.”
Aunt Agnes was Rose’s big sister. Aunt Jo, too. But their memories had nothing to do with Donut, nothing to do with her pops. She’d lost her mother for good now. The ache of it was fierce, and she dug her fingers into the carpet.
“What are you doing lying there?” said Aunt Agnes, standing at the door.
Donut sat up, rattled by her auntie’s voice. When a person was miles upriver in their own thoughts, it was only polite to cough before barging in and giving them a shock.
“Looking for cobwebs,” she said, scrambling to her feet.
“Well, looking won’t get the job done,” said Aunt Agnes.
Donut gazed down at the carpet, where a whole army of woolen beasts was ready to leap up and do her bidding. Like a tiny cavalry, the camels and snakes and lizards would swarm up Aunt Agnes’s legs and drive her screaming from the house.
“I’ll get it done,” she said.
Her auntie’s lips went thin and straight at the chokecherry sour in Donut’s voice. “I’m sure you have schoolwork to do, so finish up.”
“Yes, Auntie.”
Aunt Agnes turned and left. Donut put the rag and feather duster back in the hall closet and, without a word, walked through the kitchen and up the stairs to her room.
She crawled into bed under her quilt. When she got rid of Aunt Agnes, she’d have to get herself a dog. The house wouldn’t be peaceful quiet, just empty quiet. A home needed more than one living thing breathing in the air, bumping up the stairs. A yawn wasn’t any good if there wasn’t someone else to pick up on it and yawn, too.
Donut shut her eyes. What with knowing the Rand McNally World Atlas, third edition, was collecting dust on the floor in her closet, worrying about Tiny and his Winnie, and her whole future depending on one chicken supper, she was worn thin.
She fell asleep, a deep middle-of-the-night sleep, curled up, her knees almost touching her chin.
“Dorothy. It’s suppertime.”
Donut sat up, dragged out of a dream. “What?”
Aunt Agnes stood at her door, a wooden spoon in one hand. “It’s suppertime. I’ve been calling you.”
Still fuzzy-headed, she followed her auntie downstairs and set the bread and butter on the table. Aunt Agnes filled up two bowls with soup from the pot on the stove. At the table, Donut was quiet, focused on buttering her bread, trying to wake up properly. Of course, the soup was chock-full of turnips. It was always turnips. Donut stared at them, sunken down at the bottom of her bowl. Woody and tasteless, they sucked the life out of everything they touched.
“You’ve worn yourself out,” said Aunt Agnes, shaking her head. “Running all over the countryside for days. We’ll clean up the kitchen and make an early night of it.”
“I am kind of tired.”
Donut stared down at her almost empty bowl. It wasn’t the running. She could run all the way to Montpelier, say hello to the governor, and skip back home and she wouldn’t get close to this kind of tired. This heavy-headed tired was from juggling worries, like the carnival act in Barton when the man in the blue tights juggled flaming torches, four of them all at the same time, while everyone in the audience held their breath ’til they might just pass out.
“Dorothy?”
“I’m fine, Auntie,” Donut stood up to clear the table. “Really.”
But she wasn’t fine. Not one bit fine, what with flaming torches whistling over her head.
11
Tuesday was a rotten day at school. Tiny’d shown up late and said that Winnie was still doing poorly. He’d wished Donut luck with the dinner, but his sad face didn’t look too lucky.
When Donut got home the smell of roasted chicken filled up every free crack and corner. Aunt Agnes turned away from the stove and wiped her hands on her apron. “How was school?”
“Fine,” said Donut.
“I’m sure you have lessons to do.”
Upstairs in her room, Donut did her best not to think about the supper despite the smell of roasting chicken. She was worried about Tiny, too, and Winnie. Sitting at her desk, she did the page of arithmetic problems that she’d copied from the blackboard. She didn’t need to bother with the geography lesson. She’d learned all the states and capitals two years ago, when her pops had given her the Rand McNally World Atlas, second edition.
The oddest state capital was Pierre, South Dakota. Just plain old Pierre—French for Peter. It was like naming the capital of Vermont Charlie or Jack. Who had this Pierre been? Had he known Teddy Roosevelt? She’d read up on Teddy in one of Sam’s books. T.R. had run off and become a cowboy in the Dakota Territory, living on a ranch, hunting buffalo, and going to saloons. He could skin a mouse in minutes, stuffed and mounted birds he’d shot, rode bareback, and survived in the wilderness.
Donut pulled the P–Q volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica off her shelf and began shuffling through the pages, looking for Pierre, South Dakota.
“Dorothy,” called Aunt Agnes. “Time to set the table.”
Donut set the P–Q volume aside, brushed her hair, and pulled on a dress and clean socks. She’d show Aunt Agnes that she didn’t need any civilizing in the big city. And Sam might just pull off a miracle between bites of chicken and gravy.
Aunt Agnes fussed at the stove while Donut set the table with her mother’s good china. She hoped Sam wasn’t still at work on Ichabod, up to his elbows in papier-mâché. Being Sam, he might very well show up late with straw in his hair, or forget altogether about the supper invitation.
She set the salt and pepper shakers down on the table with two clunks. They were echoed by knocks on the door, and she raced into the mudroom. There he stood, a work of art—slicked-down hair, a wool suit, bow tie, and city shoes.
“Wowie,” said Donut.
“Needed to make the proper impression,” he whispered.
In the kitchen Aunt Agnes yanked off her apron, letting loose the flowers on her dress.
“Agnes, this house smells like heaven.” He was greasing the wheels real good.
“Can’t go wrong with roasted chicken, Sam.”
Aunt Agnes and Donut set the chicken and potatoes and peas out on the table and they all sat down.
“Sam, would you like to carve the bird?” said Aunt Agnes.
“I’d be glad to.”
Donut figured Sam would be expert at slicing up a chicken, considering his line of work, but she kept it to herself, as Aunt Agnes thought t
axidermy a ghoulish profession. He did indeed carve up that bird with absolute confidence.
They were quiet for a while, concentrating on passing the peas, buttering bread, pouring gravy, and trying out the first bites.
“So, Sam,” said Aunt Agnes. “How did you meet Dorothy’s father?”
Sam glanced up from his plate, looking a bit startled. “Well, Jake came to New York back around 1910 to consult at the Museum of Natural History, where I worked. He was brilliant at designing armatures, the metal and wooden inner workings needed for the larger animals—wildebeests, rhinos, elephants. As a self-taught engineer, he was a big help.”
“Wildebeests, my word,” said Aunt Agnes, setting down her knife and fork. “And how did you end up being neighbors?”
“I moved up here in 1912. When Mr. Daniels started the Metal Works and was looking for an innovative designer, I contacted Jake. He got the job, and as you know, he and Rose arrived in 1915.”
“Dear Rose,” said Aunt Agnes in a faraway voice that Donut had never heard before. The room went still for just a moment. All her auntie’s sadness and her missing of her sister Rose was packed so tight into those two words it about knocked Donut over. But then Aunt Agnes sat up straight, pushed her shoulders back, and swept it all away. “But that was years ago.”
Donut swallowed hard and concentrated on loading up her fork with peas, relieved that her hard-edged auntie had returned.
Sam buttered a slice of bread. “And how did you and your sister get involved with teaching?”
“We’re both committed to advancing the education of and prospects for young girls. I’ve been an administrator at the academy for many years, and Jo taught Latin and Greek. She was named headmistress three years ago. The school is very progressive.”
“How interesting,” said Sam.
They moved on into a long stretch of small talk, and Donut had to curl her toes and hunch her shoulders to keep quiet and hold out for the only topic she was interested in. After more chewing and passing of the gravy and the peas, Sam finally got down to business.
“So, I hear from Donut that you plan on returning to Boston.”
A Stitch in Time Page 5
