Miracles on Maple Hill (Harcourt Young Classics) (15 page)

If there was anybody who didn't know what month it was, the school windows would tell him. After the colored leaves were taken down, there were pumpkin faces. Then huge turkey cutouts were hung up, colored with crayons, brown and black and bright red. When Thanksgiving was over, here came Santa Claus!

"I wish we could just keep Santa Claus in the windows the whole year around," Margie said.

Marly agreed. Besides vacation and presents and everything, it was as if she had three Christmas trees because she helped with three—their own, the school tree, and the Chrises' tree. Mother sent for their old decorations, and it was fun to unpack them. Besides all the baubles and tinsel, there were special decorations to make. One simply went outside and picked sycamore balls and picked up pinecones of every size and then came in and gilded them and hung them on the tree with Christmas string.

Mother said shopping had never been so wonderful, because she simply went into town and took what was there without searching through store after store. She went with Mrs. Chris all one day, and Marly heard her say to Daddy when she came home after supper, "No crowded elevators! No artificial bells! No organs thundering
Silent Night
out over the buses and streetcars!"

Daddy laughed. "Lee, you were the city girl," he said.

Mother ran to him and sat on his lap and laughed. Marly felt so happy that it was almost as if it was Christmas already. She knew there wasn't any danger, this year, that Daddy wouldn't light the Christmas tree.

"Where's Joe?" Mother asked. "He can help me get the things out of the car if he won't pinch all the packages."

But Joe wasn't around. He wasn't in the house or in the barn or in the chicken coop or anywhere. Daddy remembered hearing him get his boots out after supper. Mother said, "Why didn't you ask him where he was going? It's starting to snow again."

"At Christmastime," Daddy said, "people are entitled to their secrets. For at least two weeks before Christmas, nobody should ever ask anybody where he is going."

That was true. But when it got very dark and snowed faster and faster and faster, Mother kept looking out of the window toward the road. "Did he take a flashlight?" she asked. "He shouldn't go off in weather like this. You never know. Do you suppose he was at Chris's when I came by and I didn't see him?"

She telephoned. But Joe wasn't there. Nobody had seen him at all.

It got later and later and later, and Marly was supposed to go to bed but nobody mentioned it. Daddy said, "Marly, doesn't he go with Margie's brothers sometimes? Could he be there?"

So she telephoned Margie's. But Joe hadn't been there at all.

"I'd better go out and look around again," Daddy said.

"Where will you look? Up and down the road?" Mother asked.

"Whatever possessed him to do such a thing without saying a word?" Daddy asked. "In winter, up here, people just don't wander around; he knows that." His voice sounded cross as he put on his gloves and boots and wound a scarf around his neck.

"Especially when it's started to snow," Mother said. She leaned toward the window, but there was no use because it was pitch-dark outside. Flakes pricked at the panes and made little whispers together.

Marly felt her heart beating hard when she looked out, pressing her face against the cold pane. Joe knows his way on all those roads, she thought, but they looked different all covered with snow. Sometimes the snow got so deep here, Mr. Chris said, that the fences disappeared entirely, and there weren't any roads at all. The pane misted over, and she couldn't see anything but herself reflected as if she sat outside in a little snowy room.

"Dale, it's after nine already," Mother said.

"I thought Joe knew better. Why, I never dreamed—I thought he'd just be going out for a minute, maybe to see about the goats or something." Daddy acted as if Mother blamed him for something he'd done and hadn't meant to do. "I'll fix Joe good for doing a thing like this," he said.

For days and days it had seemed as if Christmas was in the house already—all the good happy feelings, warmth and good smells, and the shining tree. Now all the goodness was suddenly gone from everything.

"It's good we've got the chains on," Daddy said. "I'll go by Chris's first, and on the way I'll honk, see, and if Joe hears me, he'll answer. Maybe he got off the road or something."

He was at the car, starting it, when the telephone rang. Mother ran to answer, saying on the way, "Marly, tell Daddy to wait a minute—"

Marly ran for the car without waiting for boots or anything, and Daddy waited and then sat still with the engine running and the lights shining through the white moving air. Mother was on the porch already, calling, as Marly ran back again.

"Dale, it was Chris. He and Fritz are getting the truck out. They'll be by for you. They don't think the car could make it anywhere tonight."

So Daddy came in again, standing near the door as he waited with his boots making puddles under him.

"Daddy, can't I go?" Marly asked. "Mother—

"No!" It came from both of them at the same second, so she knew there wasn't a bit of use to ask again. "Why, look at your shoes; they're wet as sop," Mother said. "Marly, take those wet shoes off this instant."

At times like this a person obeyed everything in a hurry. Marly knew that. The truck came while she took off her shoes and socks, and she ran to the window to watch Daddy go out and the truck turn around and go away. They could hear it honking every little while as it went down the hill. Then they couldn't hear a thing except the flakes on the windows.

Mother said suddenly, "I'll make hot cocoa. Joe'll be cold when he gets back, and he loves hot cocoa. Marly, get your slippers on."

Thank goodness, she didn't say "Go to bed." Instead she made the best cocoa Marly ever tasted. She even went out to the car and brought in a package of marshmallows she'd meant to roll in nuts and chocolate for Christmas candy. Marly had a huge cup of cocoa with two fat marshmallows melting away on top. Mother even made toast and cut the pieces into little triangles and put on lots of butter. Enough for Joe and Daddy and Chris and Fritz. She kept making more and more, as if the longer they were gone the hungier they were sure to be.

"It's simply silly to keep looking out of the windows," Mother said. "Shall we read something?" But she looked out of the window once more. "Why on earth Joe would do such a thing! Marly, isn't there
somewhere
you can think of—"

Then suddenly, thinking of Joe out in the cold while she sat in her warm robe and slippers drinking from her big foamy cup, Marly
knew.
It was the strangest thing. Suddenly she simply knew what Joe had done. That morning as they walked down to the road together on the way to the school bus stop, Joe had said something. "The only one not having any Christmas around here is Harry," he had said. "I'm going up and see him..."

Why on earth hadn't she remembered before?

"Mother, I think maybe he went to Harry's," she said.

"To Harry's? Marly, why on earth would he go to Harry's on a night like this?"

Marly told her what Joe had said. He had been so busy with school and Christmas coming and all that he hadn't been thinking about Harry lately at all. But at school one of his teachers had said, "Christmas is the time to think about people who are lonely. For somebody living all alone, Christmas can be the saddest time of the year."

"Well, then, of course that's where he went," Mother said.

She looked relieved, even though she went to look out of the window again. Now she was watching for the truck to come back. "It's probably nice and warm in Harry's little house," she said. "But why didn't Joe come back before it got dark? With it snowing so, he might have known how we'd worry."

"There must be a reason," Marly said, and stirred the island of marshmallow around and around in her cup.

"Here they come now!" Mother said from the window.

The truck came struggling and roaring up the hill. Before it stopped outside, Mother was on the porch, calling. "Is Joe with you?"

He was not. They came stamping in, and Mother let them talk and tell what they'd done already. They had gone up and down all the roads in every direction. There wasn't any use going any farther than Joe could possibly have walked. They had asked at every farm.

Then Mother asked, "Did you think of going to Harry's?"

"Why, no," Mr. Chris said, looking surprised. "Joe knows Harry's not there now, doesn't he? About now, when winter sets in good, he always goes to the Old Folks Home out by Erie. Chadwick, up his road, always keeps his goats till spring. Harry drove his goats over there a day or so ago."

"Did you even go by there, then?" Mother asked. And she told them what Joe had said.

So out to the truck again they went. They looked relieved and sounded relieved, too. Mr. Chris said Harry never seemed to lock his house, and Joe could have gone in and built a fire. That old lamp of Harry's couldn't even be seen from the road on a night like this. The roar of the truck drowned his voice before he finished, and the truck was gone again through the falling
snow.

I hope it's so, I hope he's there. Please, please help Joe to be at Harry's house
... Marly whispered to herself, not loud enough for Mother to hear. But Mother seemed to be whispering to herself, too. Everything was still except the fire cracking once in a while and that whispering of snow on the windowpanes.

After a while Mother said, "I keep wondering why he didn't come right back when he found Harry wasn't there. Why shouldn't he try coming back? But if he'd been on the road, on his way, surely they'd have found him..."

The worry settled over again like a fog.

The clock moved, but never in Marly's remembrance had it moved so slowly. Nine-thirty, nine thirty-five, nine-forty, a quarter to ten, and at last it struck ten. By then Mother was sitting on the very edge of her chair. And before the clock had finished striking, the telephone rang.

Mother leaped up and ran. Instead of saying "Hello" she said, "Yes? Yes?"

It was Daddy. Marly could hear the sound of his voice. She heard him say, "All right," several times. She felt herself begin to breathe and knew she had been holding her breath deep down inside while she waited.

"Thank goodness!" Mother said. "But where are you?"

Marly couldn't hear what he answered. She thought they would talk forever. Mother saying, "Well, for goodness' sakes ... Imagine that ... How awful, Dale! Yes—yes, I see. Yes, I suppose you'd better..."

Marly felt as if she would burst out of her skin. She began to jerk at Mother's arm. "Mother, where is he? Did he find Joe? Did he?"

"Hush, Marly ... Yes, yes, they found Joe all right..." And into the telephone again, "What a relief! An hour? Well, then, I'll get Marly to bed."

And she hung up at last.

"Mother, what did he say?" Marly cried. And Mother leaned down and took her close and hugged her and began to laugh.

"Marly, Joe has done the most wonderful thing," she said. "You were right about where he went. He was meaning to come right back, he said, but when he got to Harry's, nobody was there. But the back door was standing open. He went in but nobody was there, and he called but Harry didn't answer. And then he went out back of the place where the path goes down to the spring and..." Mother reached up and wiped her eyes.

"I know where," Marly said.

"It seems that Harry had gone to get his cheeses up to the house before he left and had slipped on the ice and hurt his leg. Chris says if Joe hadn't happened to go there today, he'd have frozen. Imagine..." Her eyes were full of tears again, but she just let them go on running this time. "Marly, Joe got that old man up the steps and into his bed and built a fire and gave him hot milk!" she said.

Marly lay awake in bed, imagining how it had been. Why couldn't she have gone with Joe this time? She could have helped with everything. She could have helped with the fire and heated the milk while Joe got Harry into bed. Then Mother would have said, "Marly and Joe have done something wonderful..."

But she was only a little bit jealous about Joe being such a hero. She was mostly proud enough to die. When she heard the truck come back and Joe and Daddy came in, she couldn't bear just lying still, so she rushed downstairs. They didn't scold her at all but let her sit by the fire while Joe told it all over again. He sipped at his cocoa and talked and talked. He acted quite smart about it, but then, who wouldn't?

Harry was at Chris's house now, in with Fritz, where there was a couch and a nice stove.

At last they all went upstairs together. Joe stood by his door as if he rather hated it all to end, as tired as he was—the way a person will stand Christmas night or at the end of the Fourth of July when the last of the fireworks is over.

"Joe, what a
Christmas
-thing to do!" Marly said.

It was queer, though, what happened the very next morning. As Marly came downstairs, she heard Mother say, "Oh,
no,
Joe! He's such a dirty old man! That awful smell—"

"I don't care. He can have my room. I'll sleep on the couch," Joe said.

"Joe, surely there's somewhere else he can go-where his leg can be taken care of."

"I want him here," Joe said.

Mother looked at Daddy. Daddy opened the stove door and shoved in some coal, hard. "It's Christmas, Lee," he said. "If Joe thinks that's what people should do at Christmas, I guess maybe he's right."

"I'll wait on him. You won't have to do a thing," Joe said. "I can carry his meals up, and he can come down and see the tree and everything a little while. We can help him up and down, Marly and me."

"
Honestly!
" Mother said in a helpless way. "Dale, he must have bedbugs and everything, living the way he does."

Daddy stood there looking at her. His eyes looked hot in his face, which seemed to be going pale. The air had a big important feeling all around him, the way it has around an actor with all the lights turned on him alone, with everybody waiting to hear him speak. "Lee, we had bugs in that prison camp," Daddy said. "I had them on me when I came out. But we got rid of them before we got home again. Some of the people in camp helped each other all the time. Some others never thought about anything or anybody but themselves. I'd never known before how different people can be. And now Joe—" He turned and looked at Joe with the proudest look Marly ever saw in her life. "Well, I know now that Joe would have been one of the good ones. I just know that now."