Miracles on Maple Hill (Harcourt Young Classics) (17 page)

Nobody even thought about the next day being school again.

First they gathered their own hill. There were not quite fifty trees, but by the time each bucket had been tipped off the spile with its lid taken off, the sap poured into a gathering bucket, and the lid put back, Marly was already feeling tired in her arms. Then they went to Mr. Chris's huge bush. Marly didn't know how huge it was. Those trees with their full buckets went marching on and on and
on.
Daddy drove the horses to pull the flatboat with its huge tank because it was too steep and muddy for the tractor in this bush. Marly had never even known there was
another
sugarbush besides the one Fritz had tapped, over the fields beyond Chris's place at the edge of the deep woods. In all there were over fourteen hundred buckets.

Soon her hands were numb. At first she wore gloves, but the sap splashed, and they got wet and cold, so she took them off. At first, too, she hated to splash a single drop of the precious stuff. But soon she knew it didn't matter much if some splashed out. She was wet all down her front, absolutely sopping with spring, as Mother said. But Mother was sopping with spring, too, and Daddy, and Joe. Mother got so tired she offered to watch the fire for a while. At first it was Daddy who kept going back to keep it burning.

Goodness, but it was a relief to see Fritz coming at last.

"How is he?" Mother asked. Marly wanted to ask, but she couldn't for the big lump that settled square in the middle of her throat at the very idea of Mr. Chris being sick at all.

You could tell from Fritz's face before he answered that he felt sad, and Marly felt everything inside of herself turning heavy and cold.

"He's coming along, I guess. Anyway, he's still
here
," Fritz said. He used the words people use all the time; he said Mr. Chris was "as well as could be expected."

At the word "here," Marly hurried back into the trees. It didn't mean that Mr. Chris was here in the sugarbush under the blue sky where he belonged. It only meant he was still in the world. But for now it had to be enough.

They all went back to work. By two o'clock the gathering was finished. Fritz insisted they go home for a while, and he would watch the fire at the sugar camp. But Daddy said, "No, I'd rather stay." He could sleep here this time, he said. Fritz had to have some rest before he'd be worth a grain of salt tomorrow. The sap was still coming. Slowly, steadily, the buckets were filling up again.

Marly had never been more glad to get her supper, never more glad for a warm bath and her warm bed. She scarcely remembered when she fell onto the pillow. Suddenly Mother was waking her up again, and it was morning.

"Time to go," Mother said.

Marly's overalls were stiff down the front, but they were dry at least. The bacon smelled wonderful. She stumbled toward the smell and the warm kitchen. Fritz was already eating; he was going to fetch Daddy, and then they'd all go out again.

"This reminds me of stories I've heard about the old days," Fritz said. "Folks used to help each other more than they do now. If a man's barn burned in my neighborhood, why, everybody turned to and in a week he had another barn—full of hay."

"That's the way it should be," Mother said.

Marly wanted terribly to ask for news of Mr. Chris. But it was like yesterday; she couldn't get the words out of her throat. She knew that Chrissie would come back when there was no more danger, and not until. So that meant, as long as Fritz was eating
here—

Just before he left, though, she had to ask. "Fritz, have you heard—? Did Chrissie call or anything?" She saw how Joe looked up, listening. The room got still because Mother had even stopped washing the dishes to listen.

"Ya. She called," Fritz said. "He's some better than yesterday, they think. But it'll be a day or so before they can really tell for sure." He looked down as he spoke, and the cap in his hand turned around and around. "You know, the thing folks always said about Chris was how bighearted he was—always thinking about other folks. And now—well, his heart really
is
big, see. Sort of swollen or something—"

He turned quickly and went out. Nobody spoke. Mother began scraping mush from the bottom of the kettle, and the scraping sounded loud in the room. Marly suddenly couldn't keep it back anymore. She leaned forward against the table and began to cry. Not loud, just steady, steady, steady, like the sap into the buckets.

"That's not going to help any," Joe said, suddenly as angry as he could be. "If that isn't just like a girl!"

She looked up and saw him glaring at her. "You don't even
care
!" she cried. "You're the
meanest—
"

Mother said, "Now, now—"

But Joe leaned across the table toward Marly as if he wanted to scorch her to a crisp with his eyes. "I'm not going to waste my time crying," he said. "I'm working for Mr. Chris. See? We've got things to do, and there's no use thinking about anything but getting them done. Dad and I talked about it last night. He said there's no use worrying. Is worry going to help Mr. Chris any? All we've got to do is
work
."

It was true. She sat up straight again and reached down into her pockets to find her handkerchief. After a minute she began to eat.

Then Daddy came. He told them how it had been to stay at the camp all night. He'd got to know some of Chris's mice, he said. "And just after dawn, guess who paid me a visit?
Four
deer. They practically knocked on the door." He looked tired, but he didn't look tired in the same way he used to look tired. Not at all. It was a
kind
tiredness, all soft instead of sharp and mean.

So another long day began. They had been working on the hill for two hours already when they saw the bright yellow school bus go by on the road.

"Joe, it's school today!" Marly said.

He laughed. "Not for us, it isn't," he said.

The flatboat dragged along the little deep-rutted roads that wound through the bush. Marly knew their pattern now. Over the years the roads had been worked out so the gathering was as easy as possible. Fritz would drive along and stop, and then he and she and Joe took their big buckets and separated, each having certain trees. She could carry three small bucketsful in her bucket, but it was so heavy she couldn't lift it to dump it into the high tank on the flatboat. Each time she had to wait for Fritz or Joe to come and empty it. But she got so she could fill her bucket as fast as they did and get it back with them almost every time so they didn't have to wait for her. One arm got so tired she had to carry with the other; she got so she could even switch the full bucket from side to side without spilling much. She got handy with the little lids, too, so she could
slide one off and put it under her left arm while she dumped the sap into her bucket. Then she could slip it back on with one hand without having to set her bucket down. There was a right way to do everything. Her arms were lame from the day before, but after a while she forgot to notice. It was as if her tiredness put her arms to sleep. Yet she worked. She stayed right along with Joe until the last bucket was emptied and Fritz called, "That's the last one!"

She had never heard more beautiful words in all her life. Never, either, had the sugar camp looked so good. She went in and sank down on the old couch, and Daddy smiled at her.

"Good work," he said. "Fritz says you're the eighth wonder of the world."

She was too tired to be very pleased, even. She was limp inside and outside. But after a while Fritz brought some eggs and boiled them in the syrup. They tasted wonderful, with some of the sweetness in them as if it had gone right through the shells. Mother came with sandwiches and hot coffee and cold milk. As wonderful as that little brown house had been before, it had never seemed as wonderful as now. Just to sit down was wonderful. To eat was a joy. Even to feel the wet cold of her overalls drying by the fire was a goodness. This was why Mr. Chris loved sugaring time. Now she knew it. He loved not only spring coming and the warm fire and the good tastes and lovely smells, but cutting wood and hanging buckets and gathering sap and watching the slow change from plain watery sap to the deep amber of the finished syrup. And he loved the work itself.

After she ate, she almost felt as if she could start all over and not mind at all.

But to think about Mr. Chris made all the goodness in her change and seem to go thick, like milk curdling on a hot day. It was as it had been in the morning. When Fritz went to the house and came back again, she was afraid to ask him what he had found out.

He told them, as before, without being asked. The same old empty words—"as well as can be expected."

So another day ended. With evening it was colder, and Fritz looked at the sky and said, "I hope it doesn't freeze. If it froze tonight with all that sap in the buckets, we'd lose every bucket on the whole place."

"What do you mean—lose every bucket?" Joe asked.

"You're the scientist around here, Joe," Fritz said. "What happens when water freezes? Swells, doesn't it? Well, if sap freezes in full buckets, sometimes all the seams split, and there we are. A leaky bucket's no good for man or beast."

"Sure it isn't," Joe said. Then he added quickly, "That means we've got to keep 'em emptied, doesn't it?"

"That's just it." Fritz sighed, and Marly understood why. The idea of starting a whole new gathering made her ache from her head to her toes.

"There's just no breathing spell while the run's on," Fritz said. "There's so much to be careful about in this business. Outside, we have to see that the buckets don't burst. In here, if the syrup boils down too far, you can burn out a pan and cost yourself a few hundred dollars in ten minutes. It's not only a batch of sap you lose but the whole thing."

They were all very still for a while. Then Daddy said, "Fritz, I just drew some more syrup off. I'd like you to look at it."

Marly held her breath while Fritz looked and tasted. Daddy had finished off gallons and gallons now, but he was anxious over every one.

"I was thinking, Fritz," he said, "we can keep this syrup in another place from the batch Chris finished before he left. See? Maybe it's not as good. How could it be? So I thought maybe he wouldn't want his good old customers to get some of ours. He told me about all the folks that have bought his syrup year after year."

Fritz stood tasting from the cup. "It tastes mighty good to me, Dale," he said, and smacked his lips.

It tasted mighty good to Marly, too. Mother took some of it home and actually fried pancakes for supper. You wouldn't have thought anybody'd want syrup for supper, but everybody did. Daddy said, "Well—our syrup!" He and Joe ate stacks of pancakes big enough, as Mother said, to sink a ship.

After Daddy went back to the sugar camp, Marly expected she'd fall asleep the way she had the night before. But she didn't. She was all clean and warm and tired, yet she couldn't go to sleep at all.

She just kept thinking about Mr. Chris. If there was only something she could do besides work and say her prayers! But there wasn't anything—not anything at all. She had written a note for Fritz to take, but it had been hard to think of anything to say, and she knew it wasn't really anything Mr. Chris wouldn't know already. As she lay in bed, she kept thinking about Mr. Chris lying still in a high white bed, up in the hospital. She had never seen him lying down, and the idea of him lying sick was like a wave of blackness over her mind. It was like thinking of bloodroot and witches, or of mushrooms called "destroying angels" and "death cups." In the woods there were so many old dead things—all those logs covered with fungus, and horrible little bugs running under stones, and worms spoiling the maple leaves so sometimes the sound of their chewing sounded like rain.

She lay with her eyes closed tight, so tight the lids began to ache. But poison things and ugly things and cruel things kept crawling through her mind. She even began to feel, after a while, as if there was something crawling over her skin. She turned on the light once to see, searching through the sheets. But no! Of course there wasn't a bug anywhere.