Miracles on Maple Hill (Harcourt Young Classics) (13 page)

Joe turned accusingly as Marly came into the kitchen. She said, feeling her face go hot, "I heard you talking about it. I was just coming downstairs and I—"

"Come and sit down, both of you," Daddy said. He looked at Mother. "I told you we'd better settle it, Lee. Well, now's the time."

Poor Joe's face had the struggle on it again. He didn't look at Marly at all. If Daddy was going to say he was well here and sick somewhere else, what would there be to settle?

"Marly was in too big a hurry, as usual," Daddy said. "We haven't decided, because, after all, there are four of us, and this is a mighty big decision."

So during breakfast and for a long time afterward, they talked it over. Daddy got an old score-card and crossed out
Them
and
Us
and wrote "Points for Staying" and "Points for Going." But this wasn't like cards at all, where the same number on each side makes people tied. Some points were more important than others, so that the one point Mother made—"Daddy is better at Maple Hill"—would have canceled out forty points on the other side. Everybody knew that the whole time. When Daddy wrote that one down, he looked as miserable as could be.

"Now, remember, all of you, that's no more important than Schools and Advantages on the other side," he said. But there was so much on the Maple Hill side, it was really ridiculous—like "Live cheaper in the country" and "The Chrises" and "Could live on government pension without Mother working." Marly thought of suggesting "Miracles" for that side, but she was afraid they wouldn't know just what she meant. She wasn't sure, either, that she could explain.

By the time they voted, even Joe could see that the city didn't have a chance in the world. It was as if he could see his trumpet and his fine big school go floating away. But he was a good sport, Joe, as always. He actually voted to stay, even though his throat wobbled in the middle, and he went outside right after and disappeared down the road. She wondered if he'd cry when he was alone; she would have. But she guessed he wouldn't.

Daddy stood in the kitchen door, watching him go. "It's only for this year," he said. "Then I'll be ready to go back to my old job. I know it."

Marly wanted to run after Joe and tell him what Daddy had said. But she decided to wait. If he
should
happen to cry, he wouldn't want anybody barging right into the middle of it.

So she just ran down to the Chrises to tell them what the big decision was. Nobody wanted to cry about it there! Mr. Chris picked her up and tossed her around, laughing. Chrissie said, "Chris, be careful!" but she laughed, too. They began talking about all the marvelous things that happened in winter on Maple Mountain, and how perfect Thanksgiving was, and Christmas, and how Marly and Joe could have a horse to pull that cunning little sleigh. "Joe can paint it red like it used to be," Mr. Chris said, "and I'll get out our old sleigh bells. You folks will think you've walked right into a Christmas card!"

"I'll tell Joe about the sleigh," Marly said. "He feels so bad about that funny school."

They both looked at her, surprised. Mr. Chris's face went redder, even, than it usually looked. "Why, that's a fine school," he said. "We've got as good a school as any in this country, I can tell you. And big, too. Growing all the time."

Marly was puzzled at first, but then it turned out that Joe wouldn't go to the little school by the graveyard at all. He was twelve, so he would go on the bus to town. "Do they have a band?" she asked eagerly.

"A band? I'll tell the world they've got a band! If Joe wants to be in a band, he'll like that one, all right. They march at all the football games in red and gold suits, and last year they went to a state contest and won honorable mention!"

Marly was so eager to tell Joe about the school and the band that she ran all the way home. But Joe wasn't there. He didn't even come back for lunch at noon.

"Do you know, I wouldn't be surprised if he went to see his friend, the hermit?" Daddy said. "Isn't it the oddest thing, the way Joe took to that old man?" Daddy sounded the least bit jealous, Marly thought.

"Joe helps with the bees and the goats, and they're building a wonderful fence," Marly said.

"I wish he'd come home and eat, at least," Mother said, looking out of the window and down the hill at the empty road.

"There are worse things than goat cheese and honey," Daddy said. "Chris says Harry bakes the best rye bread he ever ate."

When the dishes were done, Marly slipped away and walked to Harry's place. Clear from the second turn, she could see that Joe was there. He and Harry were building a little fence of sharp poles clear around the house, weaving it together with willow boughs that crissed and crossed and wound together. Joe had told Marly about that fence. It was just like the kind the Mexican Indians made, he said, only they made theirs out of cactus that went right on blooming with bright red flowers. Harry said his fence would take root in places, maybe, and get green leaves on it in the spring.

Joe saw her coming, and before she could say a word about the school or the band or anything, he was shouting news of his own. "Marly—guess what? I'm going to take two goats home for the winter!"

"Joe! Why, Mother won't—"

"Why won't she let me?" he interrupted angrily. "If we're going to live in the country, we've got to figure how to manage. Harry's showing me how to milk and separate and make butter and cheese and everything. Do you think I'm tramping all the way to Chris's place for milk all winter?"

Harry was sitting on the ground, cutting a neat sharp end on each of a pile of fence sticks. He looked up at Marly, and his gray beard shook when he laughed. "Joe is right," he said. "You must have everything you need, all together, before the winter really begins. For you I have something, too, and Joe will make a fence like this for them to run—but much higher."

It was chickens. Harry said he had too many, and they must take at least eight home now, today. For a present, he had already prepared an old orange crate to carry them in, tied with neat rope handles at either end. "For these you will be caretaker," Harry said to Marly. "Each on a farm should care for something alive and useful."

Marly had never dared look at Harry very closely for very long. But now she looked right straight at his eyes. They were very sharp and blue, but very kind and twinkling.

It was the queerest thing, but Marly actually got so excited about the goats and chickens that she forgot about telling Joe what she had come to tell. She had never really seen part of Harry's place, and now Joe showed her everything. Down the ravine, west of the hill above the springhouse, Harry had built three wonderful little dams. They were made of large flat stones piled close together. They were beautiful, like fine stone walls, with grass and moss growing over them. All around his house were small patches of things enclosed in fences to keep the rabbits out, and_as Harry said_to keep the flowers and vegetables in. In front of the door were patches of zinnias and marigolds and rhubarb.

The place where he chopped wood was nice. It was under the hugest oak tree Marly had even seen in all her life. There was a sawhorse, and there were three different-sized woodpiles, one of big pieces, one of middle-sized pieces, and one of little pieces for kindlings, all ranked perfectly. The strange yoke Harry had worn that first day was lying against the tree. He had carved it out of a smaller tree, he said, and it fitted his shoulders neatly. It was covered with nice designs. Everything possible was carved with designs, even the stanchions where the goats put their heads and the stalls in the little barn. There was an odd little stand where they leaped to be milked. And every single goat had a name out of Shakespeare!

"We're getting Rosalind and Audrey," Joe said.

Wooden chains were everywhere, from a huge one with links as round as Marly's head to a tiny one Harry was using for a bookmark in his Bible.

As the sun went down, Harry took her to the head of the meadow to look through his telescope. He had it trained on the pond below where ducks were swimming. "Any day now the black ducks come," he said, "and the mallards. Then we will have good meat." He could turn the glass on the meadow, too, and watch pheasants coming and going. Marly could hardly tear her eyes away. Looking through that long tube at a pheasant made you feel as if you were taking a walk with him. She could see his white collar and the white tufts of his ears, and the sun shining on him as it went lower and lower showed dozens of colors clear down to the tip of his long pointed tail.

Harry smiled when she drew back at last, sighing. "Sometimes, can you imagine, people ask me if I am lonely here!" he said.

It did seem a very silly question. He had six goats and five hives of bees and a flock of chickens and a herd of geese and a pair of cardinals that stayed near his house the whole year around. He had rabbits that came to eat from his hands and deer that walked down to drink at his dams every morning and never ran off when he talked to them. He had woodchucks and a coon and squirrels and chipmunks. He had an owl in his barn who talked to him at night and a pair of swallows. He had pheasants and grouse and the ducks down on the pond and fishes behind all his dams. And peepers and frogs—not to mention spiders having thousands of babies in his windows. He showed her one spider with four sacks of eggs swinging right over his table where he could watch her while he ate. Then if you considered moths and butterflies and beetles "And lizards and efts," Joe said.

"And the sparrows are always here," Harry said.

"And snakes," said Joe, just because he knew Marly was scared of them. But then he added quickly, "Marly, wait until you know the goats. You'll agree they're the best."

It was true, as he said, that every face of every goat was different—as different as people. Each one was sure to look straight into your eyes, though, so they were alike about being curious. There were three little half-grown goats, and it was nice and comical to see how much they loved Harry. They tried to get close to him for a rubbing when he went into the barn and stretched and bleated for a little touch on the nose. When he let them out, they leaped and ran and climbed onto every bump in the meadow, gazing around from every little height as if they owned the world.

"Do you know, Marly, Harry lived in a city
for fifty years?
" Joe asked. "This morning when I came over, he told me."

Harry heard. "It was because of Mr. Chris I stayed here," he said. "I was tired and sick of the world, and my wife had left me in disgust. I had been fighting in the war and then in the streets at home, and even in my own house. I was as sick of fighting as Joe says your father is. So one day I put my belongings into a sack and started to walk like a tramp. One morning I came along this road. I was thinking hard thoughts about all men, and I was hungry. Then suddenly I saw this man working in a field. Right there, below where the dam is. I stopped and we began to talk together."

Harry gazed down toward the pond and over the green valley with fields of cabbages blue in squares and meadows going brown here and there. "The first thing I thought," Harry said, "was, This man looks like a tree.' He seemed to stand with his legs planted in the ground."

"That's just what I thought!" Marly said in triumph.

"Such things happen in the old stories," Harry said, laughing. "Maybe he really is a tree. I asked whether he needed help with any of his work, for I needed to earn my supper. So I stayed that night. And it turned out that he needed help all winter long. His hired man had gone away. After a year, he gave me this house to live in, and I have bought this little piece of the mountain around it."

Did everything good go back somehow to Mr. Chris? Marly wondered. He had found the first pair of goats for Harry and had provided the first chickens. "He never told us a word about doing that for you," Marly said.

"When you have done a great many good things, you forget to speak of them," Harry said. "It is those who do very little who must talk of it." He still stood gazing down toward the road, toward Mr. Chris's fine big house. "I became too old to be of much help on his place," he said. "But I wanted to stay here and live, so I sent for my books and my knives. Soon it will be twenty years I have lived here on this same hill. It is exactly as the great Thoreau said: 'Why should I explore the world when there is so much to explore between that road and my own doorstep?' "

It was a strange procession that went along the road at sunset. Harry drove the two goats, on whose necks
he had hung garlands of goldenrod and wild aster to make it "a royal procession." Both goats and the hermit himself carried loads of fence sticks for Joe to build his chicken-run. Joe and Marly carried the crate of chickens between them, trying not to jar them too much from one side to another. Even so, they squawked the whole way, poking their heads out of the cracks to complain.