Blossoms on the Roof (2 page)

“Wait!” called Grandma. “I have to warn you about one thing. Always keep the umbrella turned toward the wind. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” said Ben, although this was only partly true. He understood that the round dome of the umbrella must always face the oncoming wind, but he did not understand why.

Clutching the gift of butter, Polly joined him under the umbrella. They waved goodbye to Grandma and set off.

2

Paddy Lang

W
hile we are on Grandpa's driveway, I must keep the umbrella turned this way,” Ben said. “Then when we go out on the road, I must turn it to face the wind. That's what Grandma said.”

Polly trotted happily alongside her brother, watching the rain streaming off the edges of the umbrella and splashing down into the puddles.

After a while Ben said, “I think I know what would happen if we turned the umbrella so that the wind could get beneath it.”

“Oh? What would happen?”

“Why, it would be like sailing a ship,” Ben crowed. “You know that picture of a sailing ship Grandpa keeps in his desk?”

Polly nodded. “You mean the ship on which his grandpa sailed to America?”

“Right. In 1809.” Ben and Polly had heard the story of their ancestors so often that they could not forget the date. More than eighty years had passed since Grandpa's grandpa had left his home in Europe to come to America.

“Anyway,” Ben went on to say, “a sailing ship works because the wind blows into the sails. So if I let the wind blow into the umbrella—”

“You'd fly away!” cried Polly with eyes wide with wonder.

Ben laughed so hard that he almost lost his grip on the umbrella's handle. “So you think I would go sailing away over Grandpa's field and even over the roof of his barn? No, it wouldn't be like that. All I'd have to do is run very fast to keep up with the umbrella. Wouldn't that be fun?” He glanced up and down the road to make sure there were no buggies coming.

“Don't do it,” begged Polly, placing a hand on her brother's arm. “I couldn't keep up, and then I'd get wet. And besides, Ben, it would be wrong. Grandma told us not to, and you promised.”

Ben shook off her hand. Polly was a good sister, but sometimes he wished she weren't quite so good. He wished she had more adventure in her bones. That was what Grandpa had said one day about Father. “He's got adventure in his bones.” Ben wanted to be like Father, always ready to try something new. But he couldn't if Polly was around.

“You won't do it, Ben, will you?” Polly implored again.

“Aw, no, I guess not,” he replied. “We're almost home anyway. Careful, I have to make a quarter turn with the umbrella as we turn into our lane.”

Now the umbrella was to their left. When they started off at Grandpa's, it had been to their right. “The wind stays the same,” Polly said, “but we have to change directions.”

The wind suddenly turned the umbrella inside out.

Then it happened. Ben peered out from beneath the umbrella, and what he saw excited him so much that he forgot to keep the umbrella turned toward the wind. Poof! The wind gusted beneath the umbrella. How it tugged!

Ben managed to hang on and not sail away over the fields and rooftops. With a sickening
crack
, the umbrella turned inside out!

Polly wrung her hands. “It's ruined! Why did you do it?”

“I didn't do it! At least not on purpose. It just happened!” Sadly Ben inspected the remains of the umbrella. The gleaming spines were crumpled pieces of wire now. The fabric looked like a tattered, burst balloon.

Polly wailed. “Oh, why did you forget?” Neither of them thought about the rain, even though they were getting wet.

Ben pointed toward the hitching post in front of their white clapboard house. “Why did I forget? Because I saw that!”

Polly let out a little gasp. “Oh, it's him again.” Tied to the post was a brown horse hitched to a top buggy that everyone knew very well. It was painted green, and the folding top was bright yellow.

No one else in the district had a buggy like that. If you saw it in your yard, you knew that Paddy Lang had come to pay a visit. And if you were renting one of Paddy's farms, then you were not glad to see him, especially not this year.
It was 1894, the second year of a depression that had left millions of people without jobs and without money.

“Many people,” Mother often said by way of reminding the children, “are without food too. But by the grace of God, we live on a farm and can raise our own food.”

The last time she'd said that, Father had put in, “Providing we can buy seeds. We can't raise food without seeds.”

Mother had then reminded him that they could plant all the potatoes they weren't able to sell last year.

“But what if nobody has money to buy potatoes this year?” Father had asked.

“Why, we'll eat them,” Mother had replied. To Ben that hadn't seemed like a real answer to the very real problem of how to buy seeds. Looking at Paddy Lang's brightly painted buggy, he guessed Father was in the house talking with Paddy. And Ben knew what they were talking about—the rent, the money the Yoders owed Paddy for living on this farm.

Polly said worriedly, “The last time Paddy came, we sold the cow to pay the rent. I wonder what we're going to sell this time.”

“Well, I just hope we never have to sell Jasper and Rob.” Ben looked over to the pasture where their team of dapple-gray horses stood near the gate. The rain had stopped, and the late afternoon sun sent slanting rays across the field, touching the horses' white manes with gold.

“And I hope we don't sell Flip either,” said Polly, stooping to pat the yellow puppy who came bounding to meet them.

“Huh? Nobody would give any money for Flip.” Ben looked to the ruined umbrella again. To think that he had almost planned to disobey Grandma! How terrible that would have been if the umbrella had been destroyed because of his disobedience. Having it happen by accident was bad enough.

He set the umbrella down near the front steps. “No use taking it inside if Paddy Lang's here,” he said to his sister.

“I don't even want to go in. I don't like the way he talks to Mother and Father,” Polly said unhappily.

Ben paused with one foot on the bottom step. “Well, I guess we could go to the barn.”

Polly shrugged. “I don't like going to the barn either.”

Ben knew why she said that. These days the barn was just too empty. First they sold two calves. Then they sold the ten sheep. Then—worst of all—they sold Lilac, the cow.

Before Ben and Polly could decide where they wanted to go, the door opened and Paddy Lang stepped out.

Mother had once said that Paddy's last name should be Long, not Lang. He certainly was a long man. He stood over six feet tall, and he had long legs, long arms, a long face, and a long nose. Even his hair was long. His gray locks bounced on the collar of his green and black coat as he walked.

Paddy looked at the children with piercing black eyes. “Where have you been?”

“Uh—at Grandpa's,” Ben stammered.

“Oh. Well, goodbye.” He walked out to his shiny buggy, untied the horse, and drove away.

Polly ran into the kitchen. “Oh, Mother, was he mean?” She looked from Mother's face to Father's face.

Mother sat in the rocking chair holding baby Lisbet. “No, Polly, Paddy wasn't mean. He has never been mean.”

“But he…he made us sell all our animals!”

“No, he did not, Polly,” Father said kindly. “We ourselves decided to sell our things because we needed to pay our rent if we wanted to keep on living on Paddy's farm. We owed it to him. We want to be honest.”

Now Ben had a question. “But why does he make us pay the rent when he knows we can't make any money with his farm these days?”

Father turned to look at him. “Well, you might say that Paddy Lang is a good businessman. And today he was very good to us. We offered to sell the team—”

Ben held his breath and thought,
Not Jasper and Rob!

“—in order to pay the rent, but Paddy told us no and that we couldn't farm without the team, and so he will give us more time.”

“Shall I get the dishes, Mother?” Polly asked. There was no supper on the table, yet it was supper time.

“Yes, please. The soup is ready.”

Polly didn't need to ask what kind of soup. It was potato and turnip soup, of course, because those were the only two vegetables they had left in their root cellar. As long as they had onions and cabbage and carrots, Mother would make other kinds of soup, but this spring it was always potato and turnip soup, sometimes with a few lumps of dried beef or salt pork added.

“Father, I ruined Grandpa's umbrella,” Ben said unhappily. “I happened to turn the wrong way, and the wind caught it.”

“Oh, that's too bad,” said Father, getting to his feet. “Where is the umbrella?”

Ben led him out to the front steps. “I never knew an umbrella could turn inside out.”

“I guess you had no reason to know much about umbrellas,” Father said kindly. “As far as I know, Grandpa is the only one in church who owns an umbrella.”

He took the poor crumpled thing in his hands and turned it over several times. “I think we might be able to fix this.”

“Really?” Ben said hopefully.

“Yes. I will use a pair of pliers to straighten these spines. I will pull the fabric back in place and mend this tear. It won't be as good as new, but it will work.”

Polly came to the door in time to hear that. “Oh, I'm so glad you can make it right again. And Mother says to come in. Supper's ready.”

3

Abraham's Obedience

O
n Sunday morning Mrs. Mouse woke up Polly. Mrs. Mouse lived in a cranny beneath the rafters of Polly's loft room. The rafters were the ceiling, and they sloped right down to the floor. The only place to stand up straight in Polly's room was in the middle, where the roof peaked.

Polly lay on her straw mattress for a few minutes, listening to Mrs. Mouse at work.
Scratch-stritch-scratch.
Polly wasn't sure what mice worked at, but they always seemed to be doing something. And they made a lot of noise doing it too, considering how small they were.

Dawn was just creeping in through the one tiny window under the gable.
Perhaps if I lay still for a while longer
, Polly thought,
there would be enough light to see Mrs. Mouse when she skitters out of her hole.

Sure enough, there she was—a soft gray form hurtling along the inside of the eaves.
Where's she going in such a
hurry, anyway? Does she have a family hidden away somewhere? Maybe she has six children.
Polly began thinking up names for six tiny balls of gray fur.
Fuzzball, Sooty, Softy…

“Polly! Ben! It's time to wake up. We're walking to church this morning, you know.” Mother's voice cut urgently into Polly's list of names.

Polly popped out of bed. Mouse names could wait for another morning. Today was Sunday, the best day of the week. It was when all the families of the west district would meet at Abram Miller's house for church.

Brrr! As chilly as it was here under the rafters in early March, it wasn't nearly as cold as it was in January and February when the icy drafts had seeped through the cracks of the loft. In minutes Polly had buttoned her homespun dress.

Between the two loft rooms was a tiny hall with a trapdoor. Polly pulled it open, thinking smugly that she'd been quicker than Ben this morning. All winter they had been trying to see who could be first down the ladder in the morning.

Even before she touched the bottom rung, Ben's feet appeared above her. She had to scramble to get out of the way!

“I wasn't far behind you,” he huffed, grabbing his hat and coat. Though the Yoders' chores had dwindled to almost nothing, Ben still went outside before breakfast. He liked to be the one to bring Jasper and Rob their oats out by the gate.