The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs

by Betty G. Birney

  It seems that they were wrong.

  If you ever want to learn about your neighbors, just go asking them for Wonders. You’ll learn more than any census or government survey will ever tell you. Here’s what I found out that day:

  —On the whole, folks don’t like to open their doors to barefoot boys in dusty overalls (which makes Lily Saylor a Wonder in herself, because she not only let us in her fancy house and showed us her valuables, she gave us chocolate).

  —On the whole, rich or poor, most folks believe they are in possession of a Wonder, whether it’s their grandfather’s glass eye, a silver spoon from the Palace of Electricity at the 1904 World’s Fair, or a pumpkin that’s a dead ringer for Abe Lincoln. (And I’ll say, that long, skinny pumpkin was every bit as awesome as a little pearl that comes from an oyster aggravated by a grain of sand.)

  —On the whole, folks have a hard time saying that they don’t own anything special, so you can fritter away a considerable amount of time looking at knives with broken blades, faded lace doilies, or recipes for moonshine. And on that last subject, my lips are sealed.

  So what started out like a lark (at least in Coogie’s mind) ended up being a job. It seems before we knew it, it was afternoon and we hadn’t found a Wonder … or had a bite to eat. Coogie’s idea of skipping lunch was not working out.

  “Why don’t you go on home?” I told Jeb, who was holding his stomach and moaning with hunger.

  “Because I promised I wouldn’t quit until we had two Wonders,” he said.

  “You didn’t promise me,” I told him.

  “I know, but I promised myself.”

  “I’m not quitting,” said Coogie. “But if somebody had a Wonder that included fried chicken, I wouldn’t be sorry,” he admitted.

  I was too grateful for his help to suggest he eat a June bug. Those days were over for both of us.

  “What’s left?” Coogie rubbed his belly with both hands.

  I looked at my list. “I did the town and the hollow, you and Jeb covered the Peeveys and the Cuthberts. Oh, we haven’t seen Uncle Alf Dee.”

  “I can’t make it all the way down to Rooster Hollow! I’ll faint from hunger,” said Jeb.

  Coogie glanced up the hill. “How about a watermelon to tide us over?”

  “Watermelon!” Jeb moaned. “Don’t torture me.”

  One watermelon can fill up three boys in a hurry. And Coogie had just spotted a mess of ripe watermelons on the hillside.

  “Stealing’s no good,” I told them. I was quite sure those watermelons weren’t growing wild.

  “How’re we going to cut it?” Jeb asked, as if he hadn’t heard me.

  “With a rock. I know how,” said Coogie. I guess he hadn’t heard me either.

  I gave in, figuring nobody would miss one watermelon out of so many. “Be quick about it.”

  Coogie thumped two or three of the biggest melons, then made his selection. Jeb found a rock.

  “Not out here in the open,” I said.

  The two of them picked up the watermelon and carried it toward a stand of trees, while I scanned the hillside for witnesses. I didn’t see a soul, so I almost fainted when I felt a firm hand on my shoulder.

  A deep bass voice spoke. “Boy, I want to talk to you.”

  I slowly turned to face Marvin Peevey, the elected and respected mayor of Sassafras Springs.

  “Come with me.”

  Sal wagged her tail but I didn’t. I knew I was caught red-handed. There was no arguing with the mayor, who counted the county sheriff as a close friend. As Sal and I followed him up the hill, moving toward his farm, I looked around but saw no sign of Coogie, Jeb, or the missing watermelon.

  Since Sassafras Springs is small, being in charge of it doesn’t pay much, so Mayor Peevey continued to farm full-time. Still, Pa always told me that the mayor was a man to be respected. “He’s as upright as the preacher,” said Pa. “Maybe even more so.”

  Mayor Peevey never looked back at me, but there was no point in me running away. He and Pa were pretty close, and I’d get found out sooner or later if I ran.

  Once we got to his farm, the mayor spun around and looked me in the eye.

  “Now I want to know the truth.”

  The truth was, I didn’t steal the watermelon, but a judge would call me an “accessory to the crime.” Which means I was guilty anyway.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Why on God’s green earth did you ask everybody in Sassafras Springs for a Wonder except me?”

  I was struck dumb by that question, since I thought this conversation was going to be about watermelons, not Wonders, but somehow I found my voice.

  “I believe Jeb Austin asked Mrs. Peevey this morning.”

  Mayor Peevey glanced toward the farmyard where Mrs. Peevey, the First Lady of Sassafras Springs, was carrying slops to the hogs. The Peeveys raised hogs fine enough to give the Bowies competition.

  “Sometimes you can have a Wonder right under your nose,” he said. “But if you don’t know the meaning of it, its worthless.”

  Without a word of explanation, he walked toward his house.

  A voice rang out. “Mind your manners now!”

  I jumped, but it was just Mrs. Peevey talking to her rambunctious hogs.

  A minute later the mayor came back outside carrying something under his arm. “A boy like you might benefit from seeing this,” he said.

  He unrolled a huge piece of blue-and-gray fabric and held it up. Big red letters woven into the cloth spelled out BUDDY across the center.

  “Who’s Buddy?” I asked.

  “You’ll find out in good time. Now, this may seem like an ordinary old piece of cloth with a name on it. But when you hear how it was made … Eben, you’d better sit while I tell you.”

  The mayor and I settled down on a couple of old log ends set up like stools. Sal picked out a patch of shade and lay down for a nap. I guess she sensed another story coming on.

  Mayor Peevey’s Story

  Song of the Loom

  Back when I was growing up, there were a few ornery youngsters around Sassafras Springs who gave folks a terrible time, but the worst of those children was a boy named Buddy. Now, there may have been reasons why Buddy acted up. He had no mother and his father drank. And when he drank, he got mean. Still, the boy had been to Sunday school, and he knew right from wrong. Most folks do.

  Late one night those boys and girls, led by Buddy, crawled in the schoolteacher’s window, stole his trousers, and sewed the legs together. They sneaked back in and laid those trousers back over his chair, neatly folded. In the morning you could hear the teacher yelling for miles around. He’d put on his trousers, tried to take a step and toppled over. He hit his head on the bedpost and got a dandy black eye. There was no school for a week. No one minded missing a week of school, I’ve got to say. Still, that was a pretty mean trick. Even though the schoolteacher blamed Buddy, nobody had any proof, so Buddy went unpunished. That just encouraged him to keep up his reputation as the number one scalawag in Sassafras Springs.

  One night Buddy talked a few friends into tying Old Man Munson’s brand-new buggy up in the branches of a tree. Mr. Munson was so proud of that thing, he washed and polished it every day till it glowed in the dark. When he saw his expensive beauty dangling from the tree, the old man flew into a rage. He grabbed his scythe and cut the thing down, which is exactly what Buddy hoped he’d do. He watched from the woods, laughing like a lunatic, as that fancy new buggy crashed to the ground and broke into a hundred pieces. Old Man Munson had some kind of fit and ran off into the woods, screaming. He was never quite sure who’d played that dirty trick on him in the first place. Though, of course, everyone suspected Buddy.

  Anyway, you can see how Buddy got to be known as the worst boy in Sassafras Springs, even though no one ever caught him in the act, not once. Until he tried to play a trick on Old Emma.

  Everybody in Sassafras Springs called her Old Emma, and she was definitely old. She was also blind, completely
blind. She lived with her daughter, Lulu, and Lulu’s family, and all day long Old Emma sat at her loom, weaving cloth. Now, that might sound like a funny thing for a blind person to do, but Old Emma hadn’t always been blind. She said her fingers still remembered what to do.

  How she’d thread that loom, her not seeing a thing, no one ever knew. She’d thread it and throw the shuttle and start working the foot treadles. Weaving’s like playing the organ, the way you move your feet on those pedals. And once Old Emma got the loom going, it practically sang a song for her.

  “Warp and woof, warp and woof. Shoot the shuttle back and forth. Warp and woof, warp and woof. Lock it, roll it, start again.” That’s how it went, I recall.

  Her weaving looked good, too. She still remembered what colors and patterns looked like. And she always said the loom told her what colors to put where. It may not make sense, but if you’d seen her weaving, you’d believe it.

  Old Emma liked to keep her independence, so Lulu fixed up ropes leading from the house out to the shed, where she kept her loom, and another one from the shed out to the privy. Old Emma would grab on to the ropes and feel her way along until she got where she wanted to go. That way, she didn’t have to ask anybody for help.

  One day Buddy got a notion that he thought was funny. Fact is, it was just plain mean. When it was dark, Buddy sneaked over, untied those ropes, and fixed them so they led way out into the woods. Then he added more ropes and built a kind of a maze that looped around all the trees. He meant to confuse her, but he got more than he bargained for.

  At the crack of dawn, as was her habit, Old Emma started out to the shed. She followed those ropes round this tree and that. Instead of working her way back to the house like Buddy had figured, she got all tangled up in the bushes, then twisted her ankle and fell. She screamed till she was hoarse. When her folks finally found her, her teeth were chattering, and she was scared half to death, poor woman.

  Who could have done such a thing? Nobody would own up to it, especially not Buddy. He said he’d been home reading a book the teacher gave him. He told the whole story of that book to prove it, and he was convincing.

  “I’ll find the truth of who did it,” Old Emma told everybody she talked to. “The loom will tell me. I’ll weave a piece of cloth that will tell me exactly who’s guilty.”

  When Buddy heard that, he got a mite nervous. The next night he sneaked into Old Emma’s shed, and he got into her bobbins of thread; they were big rolls of thread in all different colors. She kept them in order so she’d know which color to put on next. Buddy mixed them all up. He figured whatever she wove would be gibberish because the colors wouldn’t be the way she wanted them.

  The next morning Old Emma went out to the shed and started weaving. She wove all day, and when her daughter came out to tell her it was lunchtime, she wouldn’t stop. “The loom is singing to me, Lulu,” she told her. “The loom knows the secret and it will tell me the truth.”

  Later Lulu came out to tell her mother it was time for supper, but Old Emma wouldn’t stop weaving. “I can’t interrupt the song of the loom,” she said. Lulu brought her a basket of food, because she knew once her mother got an idea in her head, nothing would change her mind.

  Old Emma wove all night long. Buddy sneaked by, and he could see her silhouette in the moonlight through the window, sitting in the pitch dark, weaving away.

  That sight gave Buddy the jimjams. And well it should have.

  The next morning, when Lulu and her family got up, Old Emma was sitting in the kitchen with a cloth rolled up on her lap. “I’m finished,” she said. “I’ll see that the guilty one is punished now. You’ll have to read me what it says.”

  She held up the cloth—this cloth I showed you—and Lulu saw the big red letters. They spelled out BUDDY.

  Old Emma insisted that Lulu take her over to Buddy’s house. She banged at the door and woke up his pa. That took quite a while, since he was sleeping off a bottle of moonshine, as usual. She kept banging on the door, and when he opened it, she told Buddy’s pa what had happened. Then she showed him the cloth. Buddy watched from the shadows, sweating.

  “What do you have to say for yourself, young man?” Old Emma asked.

  When Buddy saw his name in big red letters, his knees got all weak. Mixing up the yarn hadn’t done a thing, because the loom knew he did it. And Old Emma had heard the song of the loom.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I fooled with those ropes as a joke. But I’m sorry I did.”

  “You’re no dang good!” his father shrieked as he rolled up his sleeves. “I’ll beat some sense into you.”

  “No!” said Old Emma in a voice so loud, it shut Buddy’s pa right up.

  “Did you say you’re sorry?” she asked the boy.

  “As sorry as a person can be.” Buddy’s voice was shaking.

  “Sorry enough that you’re not ever going to do anything bad to anybody again?” Old Emma asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Buddy. His voice cracked. “I’m only going to help folks from now on. I promise.”

  “He’s no good!” the father argued.

  “No,” said Old Emma. “I believe him. In fact, I believe he could be the most helpful person in Sassafras Springs. The loom told me so.”

  Old Emma handed Buddy the cloth and told him to keep it always so he wouldn’t forget. And the Wonder of it all isn’t that the word appeared here or that his pa didn’t beat him. The Wonder is that Buddy never did anything bad to anybody again. He spent every day since then trying to help folks. Now that, my boy, is a Wonder that’s higher than your highest pyramid and deeper than your deep blue seas. That is a Wonder of Sassafras Springs.

  That was one whale of a story all right, but I didn’t know of anybody in Sassafras Springs called Buddy. “How’d you end up with this cloth, Mayor?” I asked.

  “I told you, young man. Old Emma gave it to me and it changed my life,” said the mayor.

  I gasped. “You don’t mean you’re—”

  “I’m Marvin Peevey, son. Growing up, everybody in Sassafras Springs called me Buddy. Ask your pa.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t believe you did such awful things!”

  “Neither can I,” said the mayor. “I didn’t think I was being mean. I thought I was smarter than other folks. I was so smart, I was a smart aleck, I’ll tell you. But on that day, I saw that I could use my brains to do good things too. I saw the light, Eben. I keep this cloth hanging on my wall to remind me that there are some things you can’t hide, so you might as well be honest.”

  “I’d call that a Wonder!” I said.

  By doggies, I could hear the train whistle calling me to Colorado, feel the tug of the wheels pulling the cars up a mountain.

  Still, something was bothering me.

  “Mayor Peevey, I guess I have to tell you, I did something pretty bad today, and I don’t want to hide it.”

  The mayor raised one eyebrow and waited.

  “My friends and I helped ourselves to one of your watermelons over on the hill. We were powerful hungry, but it’s still stealing, isn’t it?”

  The mayor stroked his chin. I waited … and waited some more. “One watermelon? I think we could call it even if you and your friends could give me an hour or two of chopping wood this week.”

  I was plain relieved. “Sounds fair.”

  But something else was still nagging at me. “Mayor Peevey, where’d that loom go, anyway?”

  The mayor shrugged. “Don’t know,” he said. “I guess Uncle Alf Dee has it.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Uncle Alf is Lulu’s son. Old Emma was his grandmother. And if you need another Wonder, I advise you to pay him a visit. If you don’t, you’ll hear about it!”

  Jeb and Coogie were waiting for me down on Yellow Dog Road.

  “We thought you’d be locked up,” said Coogie.

  “We vowed to break you out of jail one way or another,” Jeb added.

  “It wasn’t what you think. While
you two were filling up on watermelon, I got myself the sixth Wonder!”

  I enjoyed seeing the surprised look on their faces. They wanted to hear all about it, but I had no time to talk.

  “I’ve got to get home to dinner.”

  “Can’t it wait?” asked Coogie.

  “No, sir. If I don’t get something in my stomach soon, I’ll fade away to nothing. I’ll tell you the whole story when we’re chopping wood for the mayor.”

  I left them in the middle of the road, looking confused, as Sal and I trotted home. I do believe that dog was at least as hungry as I was.

  Day Eight A Setback and a Surprise

  No one mentioned Wonders during dinner, though Pa did marvel when I put away my third helping of dumplings. After the dishes were washed and put away, Pa and I sat on the porch in silence, until Aunt Pretty bustled out to join us. Her arms were full of clothes. “Here’s your traveling outfit, Eben,” she said with pride. “Just like brand-new. Now stand up, and let’s see if these things will fit.”

  There was a first-rate shirt, a pair of trousers that looked brand-new, knitted socks, and storebought suspenders that must have been bought out of Aunt Pretty’s pin money. The clothes fit fine and Aunt Pretty even said I looked handsome.

  “It’s the seventh day, you know,” I said.

  “I happened to look at the calendar today,” said Pa.

  “I’ve got one more Wonder to find, and I think I can do it”—I took a deep breath—“if you could see clear to giving me one more day.”

  I waited for a big reaction, but Pa just leaned back and closed his eyes.

  “Makes sense to me,” said Aunt Pretty, folding up my new duds. “The Lord may have created the earth in six days with one to spare, but he didn’t have to help his pa in the fields.”

  Pa cleared his throat. I knew that meant he had something more important on his mind. “Eben, I’ve always been honest with you, or tried to be. That’s why I’ve got to show you this letter that came from Cousin Molly today.”