Thimble Summer (8 page)

“Garnet!” she cried. “Do you know what day it is? Saturday! That means we'll be here till day after tomorrow. We'll starve!”

Garnet's excitement went flat. It would be awful to stay in here as long as that.

“Let's bang on the windows,” she suggested. “Maybe someone will come.”

They banged on the glass and shouted at the tops of their lungs. But the library was some distance from the street, and the thick maples deadened the noise they made. Blaiseville people were peacefully eating their suppers and never heard a sound.

Slowly the dusk sifted into the room. The bookcases looked tall and solemn, and the pictures on the wall were solemn too: steel engravings of Napoleon at Elba, and Washington Crossing the Delaware.

There was no telephone in the library and no electric light. There were gas fixtures but Garnet and Citronella could not find any matches. They rummaged through Miss Pentland's desk but it was full of useless things like filing cards, rubber stamps, elastic bands and neat little rolls of string.

Citronella pounced upon a chocolate bar in a pigeonhole.

“We won't starve right away anyhow,” she said, brightening a little. “I don't think Miss Pentland would mind if we ate it, do you?”

“We'll buy her another when we get out,” said Garnet; so they divided it and stood, sadly munching, at the window nearest the street.

The twilight deepened.

“Who is that!”
cried Garnet suddenly. They saw a dim, small figure slowly approaching on the cement walk that led to the library door. The person seemed to be bowing.

Citronella began thumping on the window joyously. “It's Opal Clyde, bouncing her ball,” she said. “Yell, Garnet. Yell and bang.”

They both yelled and banged; and Opal after a scared glance at the dark window scurried down the path as fast as she could go, without coming nearer to see what was making the noise.

“Do you think she'll tell someone?” asked Citronella anxiously.

“Oh, she thought it was a spook,” said Garnet in disgust. “Probably no one will believe her if she does.”

They watched hopefully. All over Blaiseville the street lamps blossomed suddenly with light, but only a faint gleam penetrated the maple leaves. The two girls heard cars coming and going and faint shouts of children playing in back yards. They pounded and called till they were hoarse and their knuckles ached. But nobody came.

After a while they gave it up as a bad job and returned to the window seat.

The room was very dark now; strange, unknown and filled with shadows. It was as though it wakened at nightfall; as though it breathed and wakened and began to wait. There were tiny creaking sounds and rustlings, and airy scamperings of mouse feet.

“I don't like it,” whispered Citronella. “I don't like it all: My own voice scares me. I don't dare talk out loud.”

“Neither do I,” murmured Garnet. “I feel as if all those books were alive and listening.”

“I wonder why our folks don't come after us,” said Citronella.

“They don't know where we are, that's why!” answered Garnet. “They don't even know we came to town: and we didn't tell Mr. Freebody that we were going to the library.”

“I wish I'd never learned to read,” sighed Citronella. “I wish I was some kind of animal and didn't have to be educated.”

“It might be fun to be a panther,” agreed Garnet, “or a kangaroo, or a monkey.”

“Or a pig, even,” said Citronella. “A safe, happy pig asleep in its own pen with its own family!”

“One that had never seen a library and couldn't even spell pork,” added Garnet, and giggled. Citronella giggled too, and they both felt much better.

Outside the night wind stirred among the trees, and a maple scratched at the window glass with a thin finger; but inside it was close and still except for the small mysterious sounds that can be heard in all old houses after dark.

Garnet and Citronella huddled together and whispered. They heard the court-house clock strike eight, then nine; but when it struck ten they were both sound asleep.

At a little before midnight they were wakened by a tremendous pounding and shouting.

“Who? What's that? Where am I?” shrieked Citronella in a panic, and Garnet, her heart thumping, said, “In the library, remember? Someone's at the door.”

She ran forward in the dark, barking her shins and whacking her elbows on unfamiliar surfaces.

“Who's there?” she called.

“That you, Garnet? Thank the Lord we've found you at last,” said a voice that was unmistakably Mr. Freebody's. “Is Citronella with you? Fine! Both your dads are scouring the town for you. Open the door!”

“But we're locked
in,
Mr. Freebody,” called Garnet. “Miss Pentland has the key.”

“I'll get it. I'll get it,” shouted Mr. Freebody excitedly. “You wait there.”

“We can't do anything
but
wait,” said Citronella crossly. She was always cross when she first woke up.

In a little while they heard rapid footsteps on the front walk, and voices, and then the lovely sound of a key turning in the lock. Miss Pentland, with her hat on sideways, rushed in and embraced them.

“You poor little things!” she cried. “Such a thing has
never
happened before; I always make sure everyone's gone before I lock up. I can't understand how I missed you!”

“That's all right, Miss Pentland,” said Garnet. “It was an adventure. And we ate your chocolate!”

Garnet's father and Mr. Freebody and Mr. Hauser came in too, all talking and exclaiming.

“Are you both sure you're all right?” asked Mr. Hauser anxiously, his fat, kind face looking pale for the first time in years.

“We're all right, Papa,” said Citronella. “But we're awfully hungry.”

“I'll go telephone the folks at home,” volunteered Mr. Freebody. “So's they won't have to worry no longer. You better take the little girls down to the lunch wagon for a bite. Only place that's open at this hour.”

The lunch wagon was down by the railroad tracks; neither Garnet nor Citronella had ever been there before. It was full of bright yellow light, and cigar smoke, and powerful food smells. It was wonderful to go there so late at night and eat fried egg sandwiches and apple pie and tell everybody what had happened to them.

“Yes sir!” said Mr. Freebody coming in the door. “Don't you be fooled! Those ain't two little girls you see settin' up there; those are two genuwine bookworms, couldn't stop reading long enough to come home. Planning to take up permanent residence in the liberry from now on, ain'tcha?”

Everyone laughed.

“Just the same,” whispered Garnet to Citronella. “I sort of wish they hadn't found us until morning. Then we could have told our grandchildren that once we stayed in the public library all night long!”

VI. Journey

THE LONG days of August were filled with activity. The barn took shape rapidly and it was going to be a fine one. Every now and then Mr. Freebody would pause before it and shake his head.

“My, that sure is a pretty barn,” he would say dreamily. “That sure is pretty as a peach.”

The warm air rang with the sound of saw and hammer. While the men worked on the barn Garnet and her mother had their hands full with the house and garden; for now the garden was yielding in all its abundance. It was hard to keep up with it. When you had finished picking all the beans it was time to pick the yellow squashes, shaped like hunting horns. And when you got through with the squash it was time for the beans again. And then you had to hurry, hurry and gather the bursting ripe tomatoes from the heavy vines, for canning. Then there were beets and carrots to be attended to, and after that it was time for the beans again.

“Beans never know when to stop!” said Garnet's mother in annoyance.

Corn was picked every day; and that was pleasant, walking in the rustling good-smelling aisles between the stalks. And the watermelons! Big solid green ones that Garnet thumped with a finger to see if they sounded ripe. And every now and then she dropped one on purpose and it would burst open, cold as a glacier and rosy red. Then she would walk homeward dripping and drooling, spitting out black seeds and feeling fine.

And canning! Oh those weeks of harvesting and peeling and preparing apples, peaches, tomatoes, cucumbers, plums and beans. All day the kitchen smelled like heaven and was filled with steam. The stove was covered with kettles and vats, and upside down on the windowsill stood processions of mason jars full of bright color and hot to the touch.

Then in the middle of it all came the time for threshing.

Several weeks before, Mr. Linden had mowed his oat fields, and Garnet had helped Jay and Eric stack the tied yellow bundles in shocks: six yellow bundles with their heads bowed together and a seventh on top, like a hat. When they were finished the field was dotted with oat shocks like other fields all up and down the valley; it looked nice. But now the oats were dry, and ready for threshing.

Every year Mr. Linden rented the Hausers' threshing machine for one day. That meant that Mr. Hauser and Cicero and Merle came with it and helped. Mr. Freebody was always on hand and Jasper Cardiff and his two sons always came down from Big Hollow. Some of the men would bring their wives with them to visit and help Mrs. Linden with the cooking; threshers eat a lot. Already there were cakes in the pantry, and five different kinds of pie nestled under clean dish towels. There were new loaves of bread too, and at dinner time there would be pork and beans, and mountains of mashed potato, and oceans of gravy. The big agate coffeepot would be simmering on the stove, and by half past twelve every single thing would be gone! Garnet remembered other threshings.

Early in the morning she heard the grumble of a tractor and the toot of a whistle on a threshing machine and looked out of the window to see the pair of them lumbering across the fields toward the new barn. The thresher had a long neck like a dinosaur, with a sort of fringed mustache on the end of it to keep the oat straw from blowing too far. It was a huge gangling machine covered with wheels and belts and pipes and bolts; it looked almost too complicated to be efficient.

By the time Garnet finished her housework and got outdoors, the threshing was well under way.

Mr. Hauser sat like an emperor upon the seat of the tractor which was attached to the threshing machine by a long swiftly sliding belt. Men tossed bundles of oats onto a moving ramp which fed them into the wildly gnashing jaws of the thresher. Inside of the monster some mysterious process went on which separated the kernels from the stalks. The kernels were swept in gusts down a long pipe at one side; it had two mouths on which Cicero Hauser was tenderly fastening burlap bags which filled as rapidly as he could replace them. Straw and chaff flew out of the pipe that looked like a dinosaur's neck, and clouds of golden dust filled the air. Men worked hard, pitching the bundles, packing down the straw, and hauling heavy oat sacks to the little granary by the new barn. Mr. Freebody sat high on the front of the machine, steering its long neck with a wheel, helping to build the strawstack tall, firm, and symmetrical.