I couldn’t believe the words coming out of Aunt Pretty’s mouth.
“I haven’t seen Lottie in years. Not since … the funeral,” said Pa, lowering his voice at the thought of my mother’s passing.
I remembered Cousin Lottie, big and friendly, with braids that wound around her head like friendly snakes.
“St. Louis,” I half whispered. “Can I go, Pa?”
“Well, if your aunt went to all the trouble of making a phone call, I should say so. I can hire Buck Fielding to work for a couple of days. He’s always happy to earn a little extra.”
So there it was: St. Louis, Missouri! There had to be some Wonders of the World there. Why, they’d already had a World’s Fair … and there were tall buildings and a zoo, museums and cathedrals and even the mighty, muddy Mississippi River, with a famous bridge across it. A fellow who’d been to St. Louis would never be the same again!
The next morning I woke up to the smell of apples and cinnamon drifting through my window. By the time I got downstairs for breakfast, Aunt Pretty was covering an apple pie with a towel. I saw that she was wearing her blue dress, freshly washed and ironed. And there was a brand-new band of crocheted lace around the collar.
“Thought I’d mosey on down to Alfred’s early,” she explained. “He could have some pie for breakfast.”
“Maybe you ought to take along your clothespin people,” Pa suggested.
“Not this time. Not yet,” she said mysteriously. Then Pa did something else shocking: He offered her a ride in the pickup.
“No, thanks. I’ll enjoy the walk,” Aunt Pretty told him.
“Say howdy for me,” Pa said. “You look mighty nice.”
My stars, hard as it was to believe, as my aunt traveled down the road, she did look real nice. And if my aunt was actually pretty, well, that might be another Wonder of Sassafras Springs.
“Looks like Alf Dees going to get your aunts apple pie at last,” said Pa, as he watched her walk away.
You could have knocked me over with a feather. “You mean, he was one of the ones who lost out to Holt?”
Pa just winked his answer.
Maybe Uncle Alf was carving up a wedding scene right now. After all, like Pa said, Aunt Pretty was still in her prime. Maybe Uncle Alf was going to be somebody’s uncle after all. And that somebody could be me.
I hayed with Pa most all of the morning.
“That’s a happy tune,” Pa said as he tossed a pitchfork of hay up on the wagon, where I was waiting to spread it out.
I hadn’t noticed I was whistling.
Later I laughed out loud when I gazed up at old Redhead Hill. From up there on the wagon, if you looked a certain way, the two houses on the hill appeared to be a pair of eyes staring out from under a mop of red hair.
“I never noticed that before,” I told Pa.
He chuckled. “Depends on your point of view.”
While Pa ate his lunch, I grabbed my sandwich and gobbled it down on the way to Jeb’s house.
I couldn’t wait a second longer to tell him the news. He was out in the cornfield, eating lunch with his brothers and sisters and his pa. He ran up to meet me.
“I heard you’re going to St. Louis,” he greeted me. “Lucky you!”
I wanted to know how on Earth he could know that before I’d told a soul.
“Aw, everybody knows it. Your pa told Buck Fielding, and it spread from there. Say, Hiram Yount went to St. Louis once and said they’ve got streetcars going down the middle of the street that run on an electrical wire. Set off sparks everywhere—like red-hot snowflakes!”
Red-hot snowflakes! Now that’s a Wonder I didn’t want to miss.
I worked extra hard the next week, maybe because I was hoping Pa would miss me when I was gone.
I already knew I’d miss him.
On the afternoon before I left, Sal stretched her legs and looked up at me hopeful-like. I could see she was itching to go searching for more Wonders. “We’re finished with all that now,” I told her, but she just wagged her tail.
“Aw, I guess it won’t hurt to keep looking,” I said as she led me out to Yellow Dog Road and to more Wonders of Sassafras Springs.
The Beginning
It was sunny the Saturday morning I left. My new clothes felt stiff and strange after a summer spent in overalls, but they looked fine, thanks to Aunt Pretty.
Thanks to Pa, I had some folding money in my pocket.
With tears welling up in her eyes, my aunt gave me a lunch bucket to take on the train. “I never thought you’d grow up so fast,” she said, wiping her eyes with her apron. She tucked one of her crocheted scarves in my pocket. “Something for Cousin Lottie.”
“Don’t worry, Aunt Pretty. I’ll be back. I’ll always come back to see you.”
Pa climbed into the front seat of the pickup and Aunt Pretty slid in next to him. Sal and I jumped in the open back with my new suitcase, a gift from Uncle Alf.
“I believe you’ll give it quite a bit of use,” he’d told me.
As the truck coasted down Yellow Dog Road, I was surprised to see so many people out. Violet and Eulie Rowan, carrying their baskets of herbs, paused to wave to me. As we passed the Austins’, I didn’t see Jeb, but his brothers and sisters were all sitting on the fence, waving. Pa honked the horn.
Farther down the road, I saw Cully Pone shaking his moth-eaten hat in our direction. Up on the hill, Mayor Peevey stopped plowing in his field to wave his big straw hat.
And there were others, just waiting by the side of the road. The Bowie brothers and Piggy Ellis, Buck Fielding and Lessie Mull.
When we reached town, Lily Saylor stood on her porch, waving a white handkerchief at me. She had roses pinned in her hair.
It was like I was riding in a big parade, but I was the only attraction that day.
Pa stopped to fill up at the gas pumps in front of the general store, and Hiram Yount was panting a bit as he rushed outside to help.
“So you’re going after all,” he said. “Always knew you’d find those Wonders. Yep, always believed in you.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a jaw-breaker. “On the house, boy. It’ll last you all the way to St. Louis. A gift from Yount’s General.”
A second later, Rae Ellen Hubbell’s head popped up over the side of the truck. “Will you tell them about my Wonderful in St. Louis?” she asked.
“Maybe so,” I said, which seemed to please her.
Pa started the pickup and we turned onto the County Road, waving to the small crowd that had gathered at the crossroads.
Right about then, Coogie Jackson shimmied up the County Road signpost to shout his good-bye.
“Watch out for cyclones!” I heard him call.
My heart thumped hard in my chest. “I’m leaving Sassafras Springs now,” I told Sal. “I’m going to St. Louis.”
All of a sudden, there was Jeb running along the side of the truck. With those long legs of his, he could almost keep up. “Send me a postcard!” he yelled.
“I will!”
“I hope you go to a baseball game.” He tossed something to me. “Here—catch!”
What I caught was a dried-up hedge apple. Jeb was pretty sly. He knew I couldn’t look at a hedge apple without thinking of him. I tucked it in my pocket, near that folding money. Maybe there was enough to bring back a real baseball for Jeb.
“See you soon!” I told him.
The truck picked up speed, and Jeb was left in the dust, still waving.
Sassafras Springs seemed as tiny as the town on Uncle Alf’s dining-room table.
“See you soon,” I said aloud, even though Sal was the only one listening. I guess Columbus and Balboa told their friends the same thing when they started out on their big journeys.
“See you soon.”
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020
www.
SimonandSchuster.com
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2005 by Betty G. Birney
Illustrations copyright © 2005 by Matt Phelan
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
The text for this book is set in Lomba.
The illustrations for this book are rendered in pencil and ink.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Birney, Betty G.
The seven wonders of Sassafras Springs / Betty G. Birney.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Eben McAllister searches his small town to see if he can find anything comparable to the real Seven Wonders of the World.
ISBN 0-689-87136-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-6898-7136-8
eISBN-13: 978-1-4391-3203-6
[1. Wonder—Fiction.
2. Country life—Fiction.
3. Family life—Fiction.
4. Neighbors—Fiction.]
I. Title.
PZ7.B52285Se 2005
[Fic]—dc22
2004011399
The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs Page 11
