Miracles on Maple Hill (Harcourt Young Classics) (19 page)

"Well, then, how many do you want?" Miss Annie asked briskly. "If you'll find out from your husband, there's no reason why the bus couldn't bring all the boys you need right to the spot in the morning."

"Why, that's wonderful!" Mother said. "I'll go right on over and ask him and Fritz."

Miss Annie told her where to call back, and Mother wrote it down with her fingers trembling. She hung up before Miss Annie had entirely finished with her fourth good-bye. Then she just stood there for a minute, looking amazed. "Well, imagine that," she said.

In an hour she called Miss Annie back again. If a dozen boys could come the first day, later they'd see what happened to the weather. It looked to Fritz as if it might freeze any day now, and keeping the sap gathered would be a wonderful help. Then there might be a rest for a while if the cold snap held. Then, of course, in another thaw, there'd be another run.

"We've decided the boys can take turns at it," Miss Annie said. "No one boy is going to suffer much loss of school if those runs last a solid month or more."

Marly stood by the telephone, poking Mother with her elbow. "Mother—ask her why the
girls
can't come. Why, I can carry as many buckets as Joe can!"

"You can't either!" said Joe.

"I can!"

"Ssssh!" Mother said.

There was a little silence on the other end of the phone. Then Miss Annie's voice came again. "I heard that," she said. "I didn't even think about the girls. I don't know why I didn't. Actually..." Another little silence. "I'll talk to them about it. If there are any girls who want to come and work, I don't see why they shouldn't."

"Maybe they won't want to, really," Mother said. "I'm afraid Marly's different. She's rather a tomboy—"

"Mother, I'm not!"

"You are too," said Joe.

"Just wait and see then!" Marly said.

Miss Annie was laughing over the phone. She had a good big laugh, and Mother had to put the telephone twelve inches from her ear or it would've popped her eardrums. "Tell that girl of yours I learned about those Indians today," she said. "I looked it up in a book in the library. The librarian told me where to find it. The story goes that an Indian squaw was cooking for her husband, see, some sort of porridge Indians ate. I guess we'd call it mush now. Anyway, she didn't want to go clear to the spring for the water and happened to have set a pot near a maple tree where her husband had stuck his spear up, and his bow. So she used the 'tree water' that had dripped into this pot, and her husband said he'd never tasted his mush so good and sweet. So she showed him what she'd cooked it in. And after that they boiled mush in 'sweet tree water' every spring."

"What a nice story," Mother said.

"And that superintendent—honestly, I thought I'd never get out of that office, he was so interested. He used to live on a farm himself. Said he remembered when his grandfather used to drive a team of oxen to pull the flatboat in the bush. It was so deep with mud even horses couldn't make it, he said. He rode on top of the sap tank—"

She went on and on. Everybody in that school seemed to have told Miss Annie a story.

Mother had barely hung up when the phone rang again. And it was Chrissie! She said that Chris was a lot better, and that he was so happy about the sugar crop going right along in spite of everything that it was helping him to get better. To have the children come and help would relieve him even more, she said. "The only thing that worried him was you folks having to work so hard—especially Marly," Chrissie said.

About Annie-Get-Your-Gun she laughed and laughed. She said she could hardly wait to go back and tell Mr. Chris all about it.

The next day the school bus went by as usual. But pretty soon it came back again. Boys
and girls
simply swarmed up the hill! Fritz got them organized, so many to go out with him each time. It seemed like magic how quickly the buckets were emptied and into the storage tanks. Long before noon everybody was back in school again—even Joe and Marly.

"Why didn't you tell me so I could come, too?" Margie wailed when Marly told her the story of Annie and the children and the Indians and everything.

Next day the teacher let her come. It was getting colder and colder, and the wind changed and blew from the north. When it froze that night, only a little bit of sap was in each bucket, so nothing was hurt at all. Little round islands of frozen sap simply waited in the buckets for the next thaw.

It was cold for nearly a week. Mr. Chris wrote his first letter before the next big run began. "I've never heard of anything so fine in all my life, all those children helping out," he wrote. His writing looked a little bit shaky, but all the way down the page it seemed to get stronger and stronger, until he wrote his name big and firm: CHRIS. Then there was a huge postscript, that said, "Marly, it looks like there's been another miracle on Maple Hill."

The day before Mr. Chris came home from the hospital, Marly found the first spring beauty. The sugaring was over, and she and Joe were helping Fritz pull the buckets. That one flower stood all alone in a patch of sun, one bright pink spot on the brown leaves under a maple tree.

It seemed to be a sign. Carefully she took it up, bringing with it some leaves and soil as Mr. Chris had told her to. She wanted to put it in a flowerpot to stand beside his bed.

Mother and Daddy were waiting when she came home from school on
the day.
The school bus was late, and of course they had to wait for Joe. Marly thought it would never come. But at last they were on the way, Marly carrying her little flowerpot and Mother holding a huge cake on which she had put the words,
Welcome Home, Mr. Chris!

"Chrissie says there's nothing wrong with his appetite," Mother said.

Chrissie came out onto the porch to welcome them, just as she had done that first day. As they all went up the stairs, she said, laughing, "I tell you, I wasn't one bit sure there for a while whether we'd ever see this day..."

Marly stood in the doorway and let the others go in first. Mr. Chris's voice was his own, big and strong from the bed, with his laugh booming out toward her. But he was a huge island of sheets, and his skin looked strangely white.

"Where's my girl?" he asked, and held out his arms. Then she forgot how strange he looked and ran to him. He reached out and took her directly into a hug that didn't smell of Mr. Chris and the earth at all, but of soap and medicine. Yet here he was. But—oh, how awful! She had forgotten all about that little pot. Over the sheets was spilled the earth and leaves and the poor little pink spring beauty.

"Oh, dear!" Mother said. "Marly, you
would
do a thing like that!"

"It's the first spring beauty," she said. "I had it in this pot—"

Mr. Chris sat looking at the brown earth and the tumbled old leaves and picked up the flower by its long thin stem. "It's beautiful, Marly," he said. "I didn't dream you could find one already. I've been wondering how they were coming along this spring."

"There are buds on the hepaticas—just starting," she said. "And there'll be yellow violets by Sunday."

He looked at Chrissie. She was wiping her eyes for some reason and blowing her nose. "I guess I'm home," Mr. Chris said. "I guess it's all starting over, isn't it?"

Then the sheet was taken off and shaken clean and the flower fixed again in its little pot. Everybody talked at once. They were gay with relief and at being together again. Marly stopped being afraid Mr. Chris might break if she touched him or the bed, and sat perched at the foot.

"And now that syrup," Mr. Chris finally said. "Fritz says he thinks it's pretty good. How about letting me have a taste of it?"

Suddenly everybody was quiet. This was the moment, wasn't it, when they would find out for sure how well or how badly they had done? Mr. Chris
knew.
It was one of the things a man learned gradually, but after forty years of springs and runs and carrying buckets and keeping fires, he knew whether the syrup was right or wasn't.

Marly looked at Daddy, and Daddy sat looking at the floor, twiddling his thumbs.

"I'm afraid it's not like yours, Chris," he said. "Even though we used the thermometer—maybe because we did. See—we didn't want to give your good old customers our syrup and spoil your reputation, so—"

Mr. Chris laughed, but nobody else did. Even Chrissie.

"So," Daddy went on, "we decided we'd keep what we did apart from what you finished before you left. We didn't put any of your labels on our cans."

There was a little silence. Then Mr. Chris cleared his throat and said, "Dale, it's
bound
to be—"

"No. No, it isn't, Chris," Mother said quickly. "You know how we feel. Why, all Dale's ever heard from me is how absolutely perfect your syrup is. I always got that gallon from you at Christmas, marked first-run Chris—and signed with your name. He couldn't feel any different about it."

"That order came from Florida the other day," Fritz said. "From that fellow who always sends the special crate for ten first-run gallons. Like Dale said, we could just tell him how it's been this year."

A little frown was on Mr. Chris's forehead. "What's the matter with it? Did you
burn
it or something?" he asked.

"Heavens, no!" Daddy said. "Why, Chris, we watched it like hawks. Actually, as far as watching goes and getting the sap into the pans as soon as it came in, we did all that."

"We sure did," Fritz said. Joe nodded, and Mother nodded. Marly thought of the long, cold hours and felt a sudden pain in her arm muscles, as if they remembered, too.

"Well, then, let me taste it," said Mr. Chris. "I'm starved for a taste of good syrup after that imitation stuff they served at that hospital. Sort of watered-down mixture they had. Had it on pancakes last Sunday."

"Well, then—" Daddy looked at Fritz.

Fritz started for the door.

"Let
me
get it!" Marly cried. "I know where it is."

"I'll get it," Joe said. "Marly, it's too heavy for a girl to lug that whole gallon can clear upstairs."

"Heavy?
One
gallon heavy? Why, I've carried as much as four gallons clear from that big end tree to the flatboat, and you know it!"

Everybody began to laugh. Daddy said, "Well, I guess I'll have to toss up for this one." He took a nickel from his pocket. "Heads or tails, Marly?"

She hesitated. She tried to think of some special sign that would be sure to make it sure. Suddenly she thought about the foxes and said quickly, 'Tails!"

Daddy flipped the nickel up, and it came down and rolled along the floor. It was heads. Joe went with a whoop toward the door.

"Marly, Chris can't taste that syrup out of that gallon tin, can he?" Chrissie asked. "If you'd like to go down to the kitchen and get him a cup and a spoon—"

Marly came back upstairs after Joe, carrying the cup and spoon carefully while he lugged the heavy can. They all stood around while Daddy unscrewed the little lid and poured some syrup carefully into the cup in Marly's hands.

"Now," he said.

"Don't spill
that
on the bed, for goodness' sakes!" Mother said. Marly moved carefully over the floor, holding the cup with both hands.

Mr. Chris reached out and took it from her. They both moved so carefully one would have thought they carried a magic potion like those in the fairy stories—some drink that could make a person grow suddenly tall or suddenly small, like Alice in Wonderland. Maybe some magic liquid that would help Mr. Chris not to be sick anymore, but to live forever and forever.

He lifted it close to his face and took a big taste, holding it in his mouth a while, tasting. Then he swallowed, slowly. And then he smiled.

"Joe," he said, "are you
sure
you got what these fellows made? Sure you didn't make a mistake and pick up some of that first-run stuff I finished off myself?"

"No, sir," Joe said seriously. But everybody else was laughing.

"I swear on the Bible I couldn't tell the difference if I tried for ten years," Mr. Chris said. He looked into the cup deeply as if he gazed into a well. "Color—fragrance—
everything!
" he said.

"I guess you must be a mighty good teacher," Daddy said.

Then everybody was talking at once again. How many gallons—what a wonderful crop!—how perfect the sugaring weather had been for days and weeks. There was an article in a Pittsburgh newspaper that said it was the greatest sugaring year in the whole history of Pennsylvania!

"You see, Marly?" Mr. Chris said, and pulled her onto the bed, beside his pillow. "It's because you came. It must be because you folks came."

Out of the window, over his head, she could see the trees where millions of tiny new buds were beginning. So it would begin over and over, she thought, always and always, the miracles on Maple Hill.

Virginia Sorensen
(1912-1991) was born in Utah. Her great-grandfathers came to Utah in covered wagons on Brigham Young's great trek of 1846, and it was their stories that influenced her early novels of the American West. Ms. Sorensen traveled extensively, and all of her books are set in places where she once lived.