The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs

by Betty G. Birney

  “You still following me?” she asked.

  This girl was plain annoying.

  “I thought you had to get something for your ma.”

  Rae Ellen reached in her pocket and pulled out a spool of white thread. “So I did. What are you here for?”

  “Trying to stay out of trouble, Hubbell.”

  She frowned and stalked off. I entered the store, leaving Sal napping in the shade of the bench.

  As usual I wandered through the aisles, looking at all the things I wished I could buy. I fingered striped suspenders and stiff new overalls, peeked in the pickle barrel, and examined jars of peppermint sticks and jawbreakers.

  Standing at the counter, talking to Hiram Yount, was Violet Rowan. She handed over a huge basket brimming with fresh-picked herbs.

  “You come by late tomorrow or the next day and I’ll have your money,” Mr. Yount told her.

  Violet was the tallest and smartest girl in Sassafras Springs. Ever since her pa died, she was also the poorest. Mr. Rowan had been struck by lightning in his field a few years back. Word is, the lightning blew his boots right off his feet. They found them fifty yards from where he was lying.

  Now Violet and her ma, Eulie, took in washing and sewing. Most folks couldn’t afford to pay them to do their chores, so they also picked wild herbs from the hills. Goldenseal, horsetail, nettle, and red clover. A man from the city came into the store every few weeks and bought them to use in medicines.

  In the winter the two of them made brooms to sell.

  When Violet was fixing to leave, she spotted me over by the pickle barrel.

  “Eben! Rae Ellen just told me you were looking for something wonderful!”

  There were fireworks in Violet’s bright blue eyes. “We’ve got just the thing you want!”

  I pulled back because I thought she was going to grab me. I knew her from school, but us boys didn’t spend much time around the older girls.

  “Walk home with me and I’ll show you,” she said.

  I was in a spot. Whatever Rae Ellen told her, it was probably wrong. And I didn’t want to be seen walking with a girl, even a nice one like Violet. But her farm was right behind ours, so I couldn’t pretend I had to go in another direction. Like I said, I was in a spot.

  “Pa expects me home for the milking.” I wasn’t lying … entirely. “Maybe I could come tomorrow.”

  Some of the fire went out of Violet’s eyes. “All right,” she said. “But you will come tomorrow? Promise?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Cross my heart.”

  Once Violet was gone, Hiram’s big voice boomed out across the store. “Well, Eben, what’s this claptrap I hear about the Seven Wonders of the World?”

  “Pa said he’d buy me a ticket to Colorado if I could find Seven Wonders here,” I explained.

  The storekeeper chuckled heartily. “I think your pa is pulling your leg. He knows you can’t find seven folks to agree in Sassafras Springs, much less seven wonderful sights to see.”

  I must have looked disappointed, because Hiram leaned across the counter, as far as his big belly would allow him, and in a low voice said, “But your pa did send off a letter to Colorado yesterday. Just in case, I guess.”

  So Pa really believed I’d find Seven Wonders or he wouldn’t have written Cousin Molly!

  “Still, he’s pretty safe making that offer.” Hiram chuckled. “Now, what can I do for you?”

  “Sugar,” I told him. “And two packages of clothes-pins, please.”

  Ten pounds of sugar and two dozen clothespins felt like quite a load in that late afternoon heat, so I decided to travel cross-lots, which meant cutting across neighbors’ farms. It kept me in the shade and out of the view of people going back and forth on the road. Especially Rae Ellen.

  Sal thought it was a fine idea.

  As I was passing the Community Church, the calm shade of the graveyard was mighty inviting. I knew the friends and neighbors residing there wouldn’t pester me about Wonders—or anything else.

  The summer air was so still and heavy you could practically grab it and hold it in your hand. It must have been ten degrees cooler in the churchyard, though. I set down the heavy sack, settled down under an old oak tree, and closed my eyes to think.

  Finding Seven Wonders had sounded fine sitting on the porch. But now that Rae Ellen, Orville, and Hiram were involved, it seemed plain foolish. Still, there was the promise of a train, of a mountain, of an adventure that I couldn’t get out of my head. My mind was drifting toward Colorado when suddenly Sal jumped up, whining.

  “What is it, girl?” Sals ears stood straight up. Then I heard a sound I’ll never forget. It was like nothing I’d ever heard on this Earth before.

  As I jumped up, I glimpsed the somber tombstones all around me. But the sound wasn’t coming from the graveyard. It was coming from the church, and it wasn’t organ music either. The old organ had collapsed a few years back, so Mrs. Milton had to pound out hymns on an out-of-tune piano. But this wasn’t piano music either.

  What in creation could make such a sound? I whistled Sal over and headed for the church.

  It was cool and dark inside, and the strange music grew louder. I could make out the tune, but as many times as I’ve heard and sung the hymn, it never sounded like that before. The haunting notes didn’t resemble an organ, a piano, a fiddle, or any instrument of this world. I half expected to find myself face-to-face with an angel playing a heavenly harp.

  Somebody was sitting up near the pulpit. Even before my eyes got used to the darkness, I could see it was no angel. Angels never wore overalls and plaid shirts in the pictures I’d seen in Sunday school.

  When I could see better, I recognized alvin Smiley. I hadn’t gotten to his place yet. He lived just outside Sassafras Springs in a cluster of small hardscrabble farms everybody called Bent Fork, because it was tucked in next to the bend of the creek. Pa told me once that folks down at Bent Fork didn’t have much to work with, but they had high hopes. Though each farm there was no more than a shack and a square of land, Calvin’s parcel mysteriously yielded more food per square inch than any other farm in the area.

  Calvin’s head was bent low over the instrument that was making that strange music. It wasn’t a guitar or a fiddle, either, but he did have a bow in his hand.

  Calvin looked up, startled. “Who’s that?” he asked.

  “It’s me, Mr. Smiley. Eben McAllister. Cole McAllister’s boy,” I answered.

  “Howdy, Eben. I was caught up in my practicing and didn’t hear you come in,” Mr. Smiley said. “Good to see you.”

  I finally made out what Calvin Smiley’s instrument was, and I could hardly believe my eyes. In one of his coffee-brown hands was an ordinary handsaw, the kind used for cutting wood. In the other hand was a regular fiddler’s bow.

  “Were you playing that?” I asked.

  “Heavenly days, young fellow. I’ve been playing this old saw since I was younger than you. Mrs. Milton had to go visit her sister in Leesville, so the preacher asked me to play my saw this Sunday,” Mr. Smiley explained. “Thought I’d practice here in the church for a while. Would you like to give a listen?”

  I slid into a pew as Calvin clamped the handle of the saw between his knees, with the saw teeth pointing toward him. With one hand, he held the flat tip of the saw and bent the blade off to the side, so it had a curve to it. Then he began to run the bow up and down across the dull edge of the saw, bending the blade back and forth as the sweet, sweet music started up again.

  Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,

  That saved a wretch like me.

  I had sung that tune a million times in church, but it had never sounded like this before. The music drifted across the pews, sweet and sad and hopeful all at once.

  I once was lost, but now am found,

  Was blind, but now I see.

  The music hung in the air even after Mr. Smiley stopped playing. He put down his bow and stood up. “I think that’ll satisfy the preacher, don�
�t you, Eben?”

  “Yes, sir,” I answered. “I never heard anything like it. How’d you learn how to do that?”

  “I saw a peddler play a saw once when I was just a pup, so I taught myself to play. Pop thought I was a fool at first,” Calvin said. “Then came a day that changed his mind. Young man, no one ever laughed at my saw after that day. Pop thought this old saw was a positive marvel.”

  I perked up at the word “marvel.” A marvel was like a Wonder. Could Mr. Smiley’s musical saw be a genuine Wonder of Sassafras Springs?

  “Like a Wonder of the World?” I asked eagerly.

  “Eben, you’ll have to decide that for yourself,” said Calvin. “I don’t know about the world. To me, what happened with this saw wasn’t merely amazing. It was a miracle.”

  And if I got another Wonder when I wasn’t even looking for one, that was a miracle of a kind too.

  Calvin Smiley’s Story

  Amazing Grace

  We always called it the grasshopper summer. I was all of ten years old and it was one of the finest growing seasons Bent Fork had ever seen. The corn was tall and golden, and for once even poor folks like us felt like they might have cash in their pockets come fall.

  One morning my cousin Elroy came riding up like he’d seen his own ghost. He lived ten miles away and he’d worn his poor horse down. He was shouting so, it took us a spell to untangle what he was saying. We finally realized that a plague of locusts had eaten all his crops in two days flat, and they were headed toward our farm. Like it says in the Good Book, “they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees.…”

  Those grasshoppers—that’s what they were, in fact—had eaten everything green on Elroy’s farm, including his wife’s green dress that was hanging on the line!

  We went right to work. Pop built fires all around the edges of our field, hoping the clouds of smoke would scare the grasshoppers away. Mama was afraid he’d burn up the good crops, but Pop said he’d burn ’em before he’d let the grasshoppers eat ’em.

  It wasn’t long till we heard ’em coming. To my dying day—which I hope is still some ways off—I will hear the buzzing of those millions of tiny wings. That sound made my skin crawl—still does, just to think of it.

  The sky quickly took on that greenish color like it gets before a cyclone hits. A fast-moving cloud was sailing right toward us. Lord have mercy—this cloud was alive! A cloud of grasshoppers a mile across. The fires my pop set only seemed to attract ’em to us. Pop and Mama and my brothers and sisters and me all grabbed brooms and shovels and took to the fields and started swinging, vowing to beat ’em off if we had to.

  Well, I swung and swung till my arm nearly fell off. After an hour those critters were still hungry. They could strip a cornstalk bare quick as you can snap your fingers. Pop tended the fires and Mama and us swung our brooms, but it was a losing battle. The noise of their buzzing got so loud, I could barely hear Mama and Pop yelling at us. I mostly saw their lips moving. Even after I covered my ears, I could still hear ’em. I thought I would lose my mind. I had to stop that sound.

  Like a crazy person, I dropped my broom and ran for the barn. I could hear Pop yelling at me to come back there—the others yelled too. I didn’t care. I grabbed my bow and started playing my old saw.

  ’Twas grace, that taught my heart to fear,

  And grace my fears relieved.

  It didn’t bother me that Pop was furious. I’d have done anything to get that sound out of my ears. After a while, he was still yelling, but I couldn’t believe what he was saying. “Bring that saw out here, boy—now. And keep on playing!”

  I raced outside, sat on the rain barrel, and kept on playing. I closed my ears to those grasshoppers and I closed my eyes, too, and I played and played and played.

  How precious did that grace appear,

  The hour I first believed.

  I felt my brother Ben shaking my shoulder. I opened my eyes and my ears, ’cause Ben was jumping up and down.

  “Look, Cal, look! The grasshoppers are leaving!” he shouted. I could actually hear him again!

  Sure enough, the waves of grasshoppers were retreating. Hallelujah! Although I’d never seen an ocean, I thought it looked like the tide going out. I heard my mama and pop shouting, “Keep playing, Cal! Keep playing!” So I played that old saw for all it was worth. And Mama and Pop and Ben and my sisters, Dolly and Dora, they all sang along.

  Through many dangers, toils, and snares,

  I have already come.

  ’Tis grace hath brought me safe, thus far,

  And grace will lead me home.

  They sang and I played until long after the cloud disappeared. Most all our crops were saved that summer. I didn’t mind that the grasshoppers hated my music. All that mattered was that they left.

  I was merely a humble instrument of the Lord that day. And the saw was my humble instrument. If you want to call anything a Wonder—glory be—this saw is a Wonder for certain.

  “I will sing unto the Lord, because he hath dealt bountifully with me.” Amen.

  Calvin Smiley stared at his saw for a minute. “Amen,” he repeated softly, sitting there with his head bowed.

  “Mr. Smiley, do you still play that saw sitting out in your fields?” I was thinking of his rows of thriving crops. “Because maybe, the way things grow there …” I started to tell him my idea, but Calvin didn’t let me finish.

  “You’re a smart boy, Eben,” he said. “Yessir, a real smart boy.”

  He picked up his saw and went back to playing. The conversation was over.

  I listened for a while, then quietly tiptoed back outside with Sal at my heels. I leaned up against the oak, took out my tablet, and began to write about one more Wonder of Sassafras Springs as Calvin and his saw burst into the liveliest version of “Turkey in the Straw” ever heard in the graveyard of the Community Church.

  Day Four Smells and Spells

  “Some folks in the city get Saturday afternoons off,” Pa announced at breakfast without warning. “Maybe we ought to try that around Sassafras Springs.”

  “Are you sure you won’t need me?” I was remembering what Jeb said about Pa selling the farm some day.

  “What our corn needs isn’t any more raking or weeding. It just needs time and a good soaking rain,” said Pa.

  I promised to work extra hard all morning. The next day was Sunday, and there would be no field work done.

  The sun was blistering and there didn’t seem to be enough water in the world to quench my thirst. Pa rested with a bandanna over his face. For a second I thought he was shrinking in the blazing sun. Or maybe I was getting taller.

  We raked till my arms ached. Pa told me aching arms were a good sign; they meant your muscles were growing. At the rate I was going, I’d be a match for the circus muscle man by evening.

  Pa was true to his word that afternoon. But Sal and I had barely got started when I saw a skinny figure coming down the road.

  “Hubbell Trouble,” I whispered. “Lets get out of here.”

  We backtracked through the Austins’ orchard toward the house. It was unusually quiet, and I wondered if the whole family had gone to visit Jeb’s cousins. Jeb had irritated me some over the last few days, but I was disappointed to find the place was deserted. Even Dusty was gone.

  I figured I’d head the back way down to Liberty Creek to cool off. On our way, Sal suddenly stopped and her ears perked up. I stopped too.

  “Psst!”

  As far as I could see, we were alone on the footpath that ran from the Austins’ orchard to the meadow.

  “Up here,” a voice whispered. I looked up and saw a familiar face peering at me through the branches of a tree.

  “What are you doing up there, Junior?” I asked. “Stealing peaches?”

  “Who, me?” Junior Watkins dropped down from the branch so we were face-to-face. Or nose-to-forehead, as Junior was shorter and squa
rer than me.

  Junior was the same age as Jeb and me. We weren’t exactly bosom buddies, but since we were always lumped together in school and recess, we were friends of a sort.

  “I heard you’re looking for something.” Junior was still whispering.

  “Who said?”

  “Everybody said.” He acted like he was scared somebody was listening, even though there wasn’t a soul around. “Well, I got something special.”

  “What is it?” I asked, full of doubt.

  “If I tell you, will you keep it a secret?”

  I was in a pickle. Whatever Wonders I found, I’d have to share with Pa or they wouldn’t count. But I didn’t want to pass up a possible Wonder either.

  “Just tell me,” I insisted.

  “You won’t tell my ma?”

  “Promise.” I could be truthful about that. Junior’s ma was a powerful-looking woman, and I wasn’t about to cross her.

  “Come on!” Junior took off running across the meadow, and I tore off behind him with Sal at my heels. That dog never misses a thing.

  I had no idea that Junior’s stubby legs could move him so fast. We ran through more pastures and fields of beans until we got to his place. The Watkins family had a huge old gray barn and behind it, a tumbledown storage shack. Junior ran straight into the shed and I followed him.

  When my eyes got used to the dark, I saw Junior reach into a jumble of junk and pull out an old wooden bucket covered with straw.

  “You got to put them where it’s hot, and this shed gets like a boiler,” Junior explained as he plunged his hand into the bucket and ever so gently pulled out an egg.

  “An egg? What kind of a Wonder is that?” I asked. “Everybody has eggs.”

  “Not like this.” Junior looked so proud, I’d have thought he laid that egg himself. “I’ve got three of them.”

  “Well, eggs sure as shootin’ aren’t man-made, as any chicken would be happy to point out to you.”

  “It’s not the eggs that are special. It’s what I’ve done to them,” Junior explained. “You know how we sometimes get an egg good and rotten so it makes a big stink?”