Miracles on Maple Hill (Harcourt Young Classics) (5 page)

Mr. Chris said, "Kids are too smart nowadays. They don't believe in magic anymore. Except Marly." Everybody smiled, and he reached out and gave her a little hug. She still stood looking at the fallen bubbles and then at the bottle and the stick in Mr. Chris's hands.

"Well, even if it's like Joe said, it's magic all the same, isn't it?" she asked.

They all laughed then, and Joe said, "Do you know what she said today? That a mouse was as important as a buffalo!"

"She did?" Mr. Chris glanced at Marly as he put the cream back into the bucket. "I don't know but what she was right if she was speaking of what's the biggest bother. See this bucket, Marly? I have to keep it hanging on that rope for the cream to be set in. If I don't, every time I turn my back the mice in this place drain the bottle dry."

"I'm surprised you don't let them have it," Mrs. Chris said. "I come out and find him
playing
with those mice. And do you know what he said when squirrels ate all the walnuts from our tree?
'Let 'em have those nuts, and I'll buy 'em another sack for Christmas:
He's the same with those mice. They'd not think that cream was for them if he'd never given them any."

"Well," Mr. Chris said while everybody laughed, "the sugarhouse is a good place for mice to live in the wintertime. They've got to live, haven't they? Same as we do."

Marly was gazing up into Mr. Chris's face. "You never set traps for mice, do you?" she asked. "Or put their little babies in the fire?"

"Now, Marly—" Mother said.

But Marly paid no attention. "You wouldn't, would you?" she asked Mr. Chris.

"Why, no," Mr. Chris said. "They're right friendly little things. There's a deer mouse that comes every day, cute as a button with white feet and huge ears—looks like a donkey, with those ears. He and I are great friends. When I'm here alone hours and hours, lots of things happen." He winked at Marly and glanced at Mrs. Chris. "My wife doesn't know all about my funny friends," he said.

"Have you ever seen a mouse with a
thousand
babies?" Marly asked.

Mr. Chris looked amazed and shook his head. Joe said quickly, his face going pinker and pinker, "That was a meadow mouse, Marly. I read in a book—"

"There were mice all over that place. We've got to get rid of some," Mother said. "But for Marly—every spider, every creature has to live."

There was a little silence. Then Mr. Chris said soberly, "Well, feeling like that won't ever do her any harm."

"Except she'll have to cry more than she needs to," Daddy spoke suddenly, and reached out and took Marly onto his knee. Marly looked at him in surprise—and so did Mother, and so did Joe.

"Well, it's time to test this batch," Mr. Chris said, and took a wooden paddle from a hook on the wall. "Then everybody here gets a taste. Except Marly. She gets
two
tastes for being good to mice." He dipped the paddle into the last pan, and let the syrup run slowly off again.

"Does it spin a web when it's done, like candy?" Mother asked.

"Not quite. It sheets off—like that—" The last syrup hung over the edge of the paddle, and a great double drop came slowly down. "Some folks use a thermometer," Mr. Chris said, "but I like being able to
tell.
If you start using machinery for everything, you get so you don't just
know
anymore, it seems to
me. I've been doing this for forty years, ever since I had to boil in a kettle on a stone fireplace I built out yonder there, in the trees. I figure I should be able to tell without any help, now. Like the trees know when it's time to send up the sap! Now look at that—perfect, eleven pounds to the gallon or I'm a mighty poor judge."

He turned a little spigot at the side of the pan, and the syrup began to run out into a big five-gallon can. It was a golden stream in the lamplight. Over the can a cloth had been tied for the syrup to strain through. "Here, Marly, dip some in this cup and set it out in the snow to cool," Mr. Chris said. "Here, Joe, here's some for you."

Marly carried her tin cup carefully, reverently, and set it in a bank of snow. The syrup was so hot that before she got it set down, the handle hurt her fingers. Joe set his on another bank of snow, and they stood waiting.

"We can boil a little down in the house for a while and then pour it on snow and make sugar-wax," Mrs. Chris said, following them. "I used to think wax was the best treat in the world. Folks around here used to serve it at sugaring-off parties during the season."

She showed them how the hot syrup went suddenly sticky in the snow, and how they could take a stick and make an all-day-sucker by poking it in and twisting it around.

Then the taste ... It was like the smell, but stronger, sweeter, firmer.

"Take some syrup home and have pancakes in the morning," Mr. Chris said. "Did you bring the makings, Lee?"

"Of course," Mother said. "And a can of syrup from a grocery store in Pittsburgh!"

"How
awful!
" Mrs. Chris said.

Everybody laughed. Marly put her finger into the cup, and it was cool enough. She sat on the pile of wood in front of the fire and sipped. The syrup was better than the wax, she thought. The taste came through her nose, too, in a funny way. "Do you like it?" Mr. Chris asked. "Before, you got the
smell
of spring, Marly. Now you've got the
taste.
The sap is the first miracle that happens every spring. After all winter, with everything shut up tight, all of a sudden the trees are alive again."

"That
is
a miracle," Marly said. "Even in the park, down home. Every year."

Joe looked a little embarrassed, the way he might if somebody started to recite a poem.

"The sap running gives me a feeling I can't describe," Mr. Chris said. "Like it's the blood of the earth moving."

Everybody sat still as if they might be in church and Mr. Chris was giving the sermon. But it was different from church, with Mother and Daddy and Chrissie sitting on an old beat-up couch Mr. Chris had in one corner, and Marly and Joe and Mr. Chris perched on the piled-up wood. Fritz sat on a turned-over bucket, his boots stuck out in front of him. The fire spit and the sap boiled, and the drowsy heat and wavery lantern light and steamy smell were wonderful. Little fine drops fell sometimes from the ceiling.

"I wish somebody would sing a song," Mrs. Chris said. "Used to be we'd sit around the sugar fire and sing and sing."

"Like in the summer at our picnics," Mother said.

"Didn't you tell me Dale sang? When you were first engaged, Lee, I remember you said how beautiful his voice was."

"Oh, she thought everything about me was beautiful then!" Daddy said, and laughed.

"Your voice
is
wonderful, Dale," Mother said, not laughing at all.

"Was, maybe," he said. And to Chrissie: "I'm afraid I don't sing anymore."

"Why not?" Mr. Chris asked in his big boomy voice. "Nobody who can sing should ever give it up. Not many folks can sing. I always said if I could so much as carry a tune in a sap bucket, I'd never give folks any rest."

"One song, Dale? These are old friends," Mother said. Her voice asked him hard, not telling him he had to sing, but just asking in a nice way.

Marly held her breath. She could remember Daddy singing, but it was a long time ago—before he went away, when she went to bed at night.

"That old one about the fox, that ballad would be nice," Mother said. "The children used to love that."

"I don't think I can remember all the verses—"

"Maybe I can help you out then," Mother said. "And everybody can sing the last lines together, the ones about the town-o."

For a minute Daddy sat looking tight all over. Then he stood up and put his head back and looked up at the rolling steam. His voice was little at first, but it seemed to get bigger and bigger.

"Oh, the fox went out one winter's night,
And he prayed to the moon to give him light..."

It was a wonderful story-song, the kind Marly thought was best of all. The fox took the fat duck home to his wife and babies, and the farmer was too late to prevent it. Daddy's voice got nicer with every verse, and at the end of every one the sugarhouse was as full of singing as it was of steam. Mr. Chris was a little bit out of tune, but it didn't matter.

When the song ended, everybody clapped and clapped and Joe said, "Dad, you know another one about a fox. I remember you singing it. About some hunters who asked a boy where the fox went, and he wouldn't tell them—"

"And the fox was tired and—" Marly began.

"That one's too fast until I practice. I'll sing it when you come back," Daddy said. "I'll practice every night." He looked at Mother, and she smiled, and everything felt good in a way Marly had almost forgotten.

"Well, you sure can carry a tune," Fritz said, with admiration.

Mother jumped up and said it was getting late and Marly looked as if she was going to fall off her perch any minute. So they all walked out to the truck together, Mother and Chrissie and Marly walking last and looking back at the shining door.

"This is so beautiful, Chrissie," Mother said. "How you must love the sugar season!"

Marly jumped when Chrissie answered, because the way she spoke didn't sound like Mrs. Chris at all. Her voice was low and tight, a lot like Daddy's when he was cross and tired. "Love it?
I hate it!
" Chrissie said. Marly could hardly believe her ears. "He works too hard, you should be able to see that, Lee. Two years ago he had a heart attack just before the end of the season. But nothing can stop him—nothing! Do you think he'll take care of himself while there's work to do?" Her voice actually trembled, but they came to the truck where the men were talking and laughing together, and she said no more.

Marly felt wide awake again.

"Marly," Mr. Chris said, boosting her onto the truck, "your father says when school's out, you're coming up for the whole summer. You and I'll do some looking around, what do you say? I'll introduce you to every mouse I know. And every bird. And trees and flowers. Why, you haven't seen anything around here yet!"

"That'll be wonderful," she said. So she could go with him, she thought, and it wouldn't matter whether Joe would take her or not.

"You know what I'll promise you?" Mr. Chris asked. "Every weekend you come until school's out, I promise you
at least one new miracle.
"

"All right!" she cried. The engine of the truck began to roar. Good night! Good night! The wide fields blinked under a moon. The woods looked dark and scary on the edges. But then there was a light—and another light—

"That next light's ours!" Joe said.

As they went into the house, Daddy began to sing again, without either being asked or told. He just suddenly started to sing that old song that starts, "Be it ever so humble..."

That's the miracle for this week,
Marly thought. It was better than the sugarhouse or the magic trick. She thought about it as she fell asleep in the very old bed where Mother had slept when she was a little girl.

Mr. Chris kept his promise. He more than kept it, because once spring started one miracle at a time was nothing.

Actually it was two weeks before Marly even got back to Maple Hill again. The first week Mother had a bad cold and couldn't make the long drive. Daddy telephoned from Chris's house, and everybody got to talk to everybody. Daddy said it had been so warm for two days that week he'd worked outside in the sun. But still Mother was too sniffly to go.

Marly cried, wondering which miracle she was going to miss. Besides, there wasn't going to be very much more sugaring. But nothing could be done about Mother's nose, after all. "Marly, you make me feel worse than I do already," Mother said, blowing and blowing her red nose.

So Marly didn't say another word.

Then there was a big blizzard, and a foot of snow fell in one night. Nearly April! Everybody had been going around with their coats over their arms; people in the streets smiled at each other. The park looked like something bright would be happening any minute; the lilac trees were dried out in the sun, and bumps started swelling out on the brown boughs. But when the cold came back, all in one night, it seemed as if winter was starting over, and everybody was disgusted. People didn't smile at each other, or if they did, you wouldn't know it because their mouths were tucked under their scarves and their collars. Marly loved her new boots and scarves and gloves in the fall. But now they looked dingy and felt heavy when she put them on.

Daddy wrote a long letter. "You people in cities don't need to think about the weather. Down there it's just a matter of getting yourselves out of one door and into another. But it's different up here! What a storm! Chris says nothing's as important in the country as the weather; he's given me an almanac."

The snow went away fast this time, though. When they finally got on the way again, the drive was beautiful all the way. Snow still lay in places where there was shade all the time, but it wasn't anywhere else. Some winter wheat fields were already green.