Miracles on Maple Hill (Harcourt Young Classics)

by Sorensen, Virginia

  "Like in the summer at our picnics," Mother said.

  "Didn't you tell me Dale sang? When you were first engaged, Lee, I remember you said how beautiful his voice was."

  "Oh, she thought everything about me was beautiful then!" Daddy said, and laughed.

  "Your voice is wonderful, Dale," Mother said, not laughing at all.

  "Was, maybe," he said. And to Chrissie: "I'm afraid I don't sing anymore."

  "Why not?" Mr. Chris asked in his big boomy voice. "Nobody who can sing should ever give it up. Not many folks can sing. I always said if I could so much as carry a tune in a sap bucket, I'd never give folks any rest."

  "One song, Dale? These are old friends," Mother said. Her voice asked him hard, not telling him he had to sing, but just asking in a nice way.

  Marly held her breath. She could remember Daddy singing, but it was a long time ago—before he went away, when she went to bed at night.

  "That old one about the fox, that ballad would be nice," Mother said. "The children used to love that."

  "I don't think I can remember all the verses—"

  "Maybe I can help you out then," Mother said. "And everybody can sing the last lines together, the ones about the town-o."

  For a minute Daddy sat looking tight all over. Then he stood up and put his head back and looked up at the rolling steam. His voice was little at first, but it seemed to get bigger and bigger.

  "Oh, the fox went out one winter's night,

  And he prayed to the moon to give him light..."

  It was a wonderful story-song, the kind Marly thought was best of all. The fox took the fat duck home to his wife and babies, and the farmer was too late to prevent it. Daddy's voice got nicer with every verse, and at the end of every one the sugarhouse was as full of singing as it was of steam. Mr. Chris was a little bit out of tune, but it didn't matter.

  When the song ended, everybody clapped and clapped and Joe said, "Dad, you know another one about a fox. I remember you singing it. About some hunters who asked a boy where the fox went, and he wouldn't tell them—"

  "And the fox was tired and—" Marly began.

  "That one's too fast until I practice. I'll sing it when you come back," Daddy said. "I'll practice every night." He looked at Mother, and she smiled, and everything felt good in a way Marly had almost forgotten.

  "Well, you sure can carry a tune," Fritz said, with admiration.

  Mother jumped up and said it was getting late and Marly looked as if she was going to fall off her perch any minute. So they all walked out to the truck together, Mother and Chrissie and Marly walking last and looking back at the shining door.

  "This is so beautiful, Chrissie," Mother said. "How you must love the sugar season!"

  Marly jumped when Chrissie answered, because the way she spoke didn't sound like Mrs. Chris at all. Her voice was low and tight, a lot like Daddy's when he was cross and tired. "Love it? I hate it!" Chrissie said. Marly could hardly believe her ears. "He works too hard, you should be able to see that, Lee. Two years ago he had a heart attack just before the end of the season. But nothing can stop him—nothing! Do you think he'll take care of himself while there's work to do?" Her voice actually trembled, but they came to the truck where the men were talking and laughing together, and she said no more.

  Marly felt wide awake again.

  "Marly," Mr. Chris said, boosting her onto the truck, "your father says when school's out, you're coming up for the whole summer. You and I'll do some looking around, what do you say? I'll introduce you to every mouse I know. And every bird. And trees and flowers. Why, you haven't seen anything around here yet!"

  "That'll be wonderful," she said. So she could go with him, she thought, and it wouldn't matter whether Joe would take her or not.

  "You know what I'll promise you?" Mr. Chris asked. "Every weekend you come until school's out, I promise you at least one new miracle."

  "All right!" she cried. The engine of the truck began to roar. Good night! Good night! The wide fields blinked under a moon. The woods looked dark and scary on the edges. But then there was a light—and another light—

  "That next light's ours!" Joe said.

  As they went into the house, Daddy began to sing again, without either being asked or told. He just suddenly started to sing that old song that starts, "Be it ever so humble..."

  That's the miracle for this week, Marly thought. It was better than the sugarhouse or the magic trick. She thought about it as she fell asleep in the very old bed where Mother had slept when she was a little girl.

  5. Pancakes

  Mr. Chris kept his promise. He more than kept it, because once spring started one miracle at a time was nothing.

  Actually it was two weeks before Marly even got back to Maple Hill again. The first week Mother had a bad cold and couldn't make the long drive. Daddy telephoned from Chris's house, and everybody got to talk to everybody. Daddy said it had been so warm for two days that week he'd worked outside in the sun. But still Mother was too sniffly to go.

  Marly cried, wondering which miracle she was going to miss. Besides, there wasn't going to be very much more sugaring. But nothing could be done about Mother's nose, after all. "Marly, you make me feel worse than I do already," Mother said, blowing and blowing her red nose.

  So Marly didn't say another word.

  Then there was a big blizzard, and a foot of snow fell in one night. Nearly April! Everybody had been going around with their coats over their arms; people in the streets smiled at each other. The park looked like something bright would be happening any minute; the lilac trees were dried out in the sun, and bumps started swelling out on the brown boughs. But when the cold came back, all in one night, it seemed as if winter was starting over, and everybody was disgusted. People didn't smile at each other, or if they did, you wouldn't know it because their mouths were tucked under their scarves and their collars. Marly loved her new boots and scarves and gloves in the fall. But now they looked dingy and felt heavy when she put them on.

  Daddy wrote a long letter. "You people in cities don't need to think about the weather. Down there it's just a matter of getting yourselves out of one door and into another. But it's different up here! What a storm! Chris says nothing's as important in the country as the weather; he's given me an almanac."

  The snow went away fast this time, though. When they finally got on the way again, the drive was beautiful all the way. Snow still lay in places where there was shade all the time, but it wasn't anywhere else. Some winter wheat fields were already green.

  There was some gravel on the hill where they had stopped before, and the car went right along. But Mother stopped part of the way up the hill and said Marly and Joe could run up to the sugarhouse and see if Mr. Chris was there. But he wasn't. The buckets had been taken down from the trees and lay upside down on the ground. The big pans were turned over, and the fire was out.

  Joe felt as sad as Marly did, she could tell. It was sad to see a place all empty and cold that had been so bright and warm before.

  "Next year we'll see it again," Marly said.

  "Sure. Mr. Chris will tell us the minute the sap's up," Joe said.

  But when they came sadly out of the sugarhouse, a wonderful thing happened. Just a few feet away, looking at them, stood a deer. It stood absolutely still with its ears and its head up. On its face was the most surprised expression Marly ever saw.

  "Look!" she cried.

  The deer leaped and turned and went off through the trees. It made great leaps without half trying, like a dancer in a ballet. Its white tail went up and down, up and down.

  "Why didn't you just shut up?" Joe demanded. "You scared it off. I saw it as soon as you did; why did you say for me to look?"

  "It was so lovely," she said.

  He went marching off ahead as if she should feel ashamed. "Next time I'll just nudge you, Joe," she said. "But I was so excited this time. I'll tell Mr. Chris I saw the first miracle all by myself."

  Then, in a little w
hile, there was Daddy. He heard the car coming and came running down the hill to meet them, laughing and waving his arms.

  "Dale, your own cooking is good for you," Mother said.

  "It's Chrissie's dinners," he said, "and the air." He looked glad to see them, like some of the people you see in railroad stations. He hadn't looked like that at all when he first came home again.

  "Look there," he said, turning around at the door, "look out over that swamp, Lee. See the color? That misty red? Chris says that's spring."

  Before dinner he took them out to see skunk cabbages.

  You'd think something named a skunk cabbage would be ugly and stinky, and Daddy said they sort of were, but they were interesting, too. "Ugly and—" He paused and laughed and said, "Well, you'll see. Ugly and beautiful."

  They were growing out of the ground along a little stream that was flooding down the valley just over Maple Hill behind the house. They had tight, smooth horns thrusting up here and there where the snow had all disappeared. They were green with dark-red designs. "Chris says they're the first real spring, after the sap," Daddy said.

  Chris says ... Chris says ... Marly saw Mother smile when he said it over and over. They all went around the house and the yard to see everything Daddy had done. No trace of dust remained—no mouse-leavings. The steps were mended. Mother said, "Dale, what shining windows! We'll see the sunset tonight." Then she took out the nice red and white curtains she had brought.

  Daddy not only had a fire in the kitchen but in the living room too. The stove in there was called a Franklin, after Benjamin Franklin, who invented it with the help of a mouse—which Marly told Joe right away. (Only Joe said that was just a story in a book and wasn't true in the least.) Anyhow, that stove was like a little fireplace with little carved doors on its front and a nice place on it where you could put your feet to dry. "Oh," Marly sighed, "this is the nicest, prettiest, most comfortable house in the whole world. Can we stay up late? Can we? Real late?"

  After supper the Chrises came over. They all sat around. Mr. Chris said he'd "pulled the buckets" in the sugarbush the day before because the buds were coming out on all the trees. "When the sap gets buddy, it's too strong and dark to be good anymore," he said. "Only thing it's good for then is to boil down and sell to factories to put in chewing tobacco. But it's not worth the trouble."

  "This is just like old times when your grandma was here, Lee," Chrissie said. "It's wonderful having your young ones, but I keep looking around for her. I wish we could have the young ones and the old ones, too."

  Mr. Chris shook his head and smiled. "Let the young ones have it now," he said. "If all us old folks stayed around, we'd soon fill the world up, like mice."

  Marly looked at him, quick.

  "Sssh, Chris, don't start the mice again," Mother said.

  But it was for Marly he had said it. She knew what he had meant: There were important things, and then there were things not so important after all.

  When Marly woke up the next morning, there was another miracle right outside her window. The sun was coming up, and it was clear and frosty out. And there were ten million little crystals shining on every single branch of every single tree, down to the littlest twig. The tree right next to her window was a wilderness of shining threads, as if every branch, every twig, was spun from ice. Among the threads hopped the cold little black figures of the birds.

  Marly felt as if she could never in the world look at it long enough.

  She heard the door downstairs open and close again. Was Daddy going out into all that icy cold? When he first came home, he was always having chills, she remembered, and had to stay in bed mornings with the hot pad at his feet. Now there he went, out into a world of solid ice! She could hear the tree at her window clicking its boughs together when she leaned close to look.

  But it wasn't Daddy, after all. It was Joe. He was dressed in his heavy coat and boots and gloves and had his green earmuffs on. Marly tugged at the window, but it wouldn't budge. So she pounded on it and shouted, and Joe turned and looked up at her. From even that distance she could see the disgusted look on his face. His mouth made motions that looked like the words "shut up!" to her. And then he turned and hurried off up the hill, and she watched him disappear.

  Well! Didn't he think he was smart, though, going out on a secret adventure before anybody was up? She felt so jealous for a minute that she felt it go clear to her toes, which were folded up from the cold floor. But who wanted to go out into all that ice, anyhow? The last time Joe disappeared over a hill, he hadn't been such a great hero as he thought he was. When she thought of that, she felt better. If she wanted, she could go, too. Why not? She dressed with her teeth chattering.

  As she slipped along the hall she heard Daddy sleeping. Brrr! Even the kitchen was cold. She opened the door, and a blast of cold air came in. Goodness, she thought, Joe is welcome to all outdoors this morning! Who wanted to go out?

  Then she had an idea. She would surprise everybody. She would build a fine fire and get breakfast all ready. And when Mother and Daddy came down, they'd stand by the door and stare and say, "Well, would you look at who's up and around so early? We thought we smelled something good."

  Plenty of paper and wood and coal. She lifted the first lid on the funny old stove and stuffed in some of each. She would boil water and make coffee and then—then she would just mix up a batch of pancakes!

  It was exciting to build a fire. She had never built a fire all by herself in her whole life. She filled the stove with things to burn and then she struck a match. The paper caught right away and flared out brightly. How lovely fire was, she thought, and remembered Mr. Chris putting logs on the sugarhouse fire. She put the lid back on and waited.

  But something began to go wrong with that fire right away. Instead of just blazing and getting warm, the way it should, little curls of smoke began to come up around all of the stove lids. She opened the lid to look. The paper had stopped burning and was just sitting there smoking. She found another match and tried again, coughing.

  But the same thing happened—only more smoke came out this time, simply pouring out around every lid. She opened one and stuffed in a lot more paper quickly, and lighted another match. Now the smoke was simply pouring out, not only out of the paper but out of the kindlings, too.

  Oh, dear! What in the world—? And there was Mother's voice. "Dale! Something's burning!"

  Daddy's feet hit the floor. He was running along the hall and down the stairs, with Mother right behind.

  "Marly! What on earth—" He pushed her aside with a hard big sweep of his arm that almost knocked her down. He opened the stove lid and out came the smoke in another huge cloud, simply billowing. And then he put the lid back and reached around to the side of the stove and pushed something—and suddenly the smoke stopped coming. It was as magical and sudden as Mr. Chris and the cream.

  Marly stood still and felt her heart beating harder and harder. Daddy stood looking at the stove; then he turned and looked at Mother, and then he looked at her. He was going to be madder than she had ever seen him in her whole life, she knew it. And she had seen him angry enough, so angry he couldn't even speak but turned and left the room and the house and didn't come back for hours and hours.

  "What were you trying to do?" he asked. "Burn the house down?"

  "Oh, our nice clean curtains!" Mother said.

  "I just wanted to get it warm—and get breakfast. I was going to make pancakes, for a surprise—" Marly said. "Honest, Daddy, I only—" Her voice, her face, her whole body seemed breathless with fear as she looked up at him and he stood, absolutely huge in his pajamas, looking down. Then he turned back to the stove and opened the lids again and pulled out some of the things she had stuffed in. His hands went jerk, jerk, and his face looked hard. She waited for him to turn around again and say what he was going to say. And he would be right to scold her this time. It was stupid and terrible, what she had done.

  "What a scare!" he said. "You put in too much,
Marly, in the first place. Look—that's plenty for a start. And I should have told you about that damper." He turned. He was smiling! "One of my first mornings up here I did exactly the same thing. Now, you See—when the damper's back—"

  He explained all about that big old stove, while she moved close to see. Relief flooded over her, and she felt light, light, light. There was such a huge gladness in her that it actually made a lump in her throat.

  "You go on back to bed, Lee, until the house warms up," Daddy said. "Marly and I are going to build a fire in the other room, too. She started this breakfast thing, and she's going to finish it." But it wasn't scolding, the way he said it. It was a kind of teasing instead; there's all the difference in the world.

  "Heavens, I'm too weak to get back up the stairs," Mother said. Marly saw how relieved she was, not only because there was no fire but because Daddy didn't seem to mind much about the smoke. "I thought the whole house was on fire. You know what went through my mind, just like that? We haven't got the phone in yet. Everything will burn to the ground." Her laugh was shaky. She turned and disappeared up the stairs.

  Daddy stood rubbing his hands over the fire. "Tell you what," he said, "you and I'll mix up those pancakes and take a plateful right up to her, and she can eat in bed for once, like a lady."

  Suddenly, for no reason on earth that Marly knew, she ran to him and threw her arms around him, hard, and began to cry.

  "Whoa, there!" he said. "No damage done!"

  But it wasn't because of the fire she was crying. It was as if something all wound up in a ball inside of her had let go at the sight of him just that minute. She felt it all go soft inside. Everything! Even the lump in her throat went soft and went down and disappeared entirely.

  "Well, Polly, get the kettle on!" Daddy said.

  So she did. And they made the most wonderful pancakes she ever tasted in all her life. When Joe came in, all cold and red-faced, she was turning some pancakes over in the skillet. Daddy didn't ask Joe where he had been but just said, "Come on in and have some pancakes, a la Marly, Joe, all decorated with first-run Chris!"