Mitch and Amy (9 page)

When Mitchell's turn came he was handed
a gold pan by a fake pioneer, a bearded student from the University, dressed in jeans, a plaid sport shirt, and a straw cowboy hat, who showed Mitchell how to scoop up some of the gravel from the bottom of the pool and swirl it around in the pan so that the water and gravel gradually spilled out, leaving the gold, which was heavy, at the bottom of the pan. Mitchell dipped and swirled and sloshed, and, sure enough, there were some glints of gold in the sand left at the bottom.

“Hey! I struck it rich!” said Mitchell, as the student picked out the flakes of gold and dropped them into a tiny glass vial of water for Mitchell to take home.

Mitchell held up his vial to the light and counted seven flakes of gold, minute but real. Someone poked him in the ribs and said, “Stick ‘em up!” It was Bill, who had only five flakes of gold. One of them, however, was quite large, almost as big around
as the head of a pin.

“How many did you get, Mitch?” asked Bernadette. “I got fifteen.”

“Just because you pushed past everyone else and got there first,” said Mitchell rudely.

“Ha-ha. Don't you wish you had?” said Bernadette, getting the last word as the class filed out through the glass doors.

Not until Thursday after school, when Mitchell was searching for a ballpoint pen that worked, did he happen to run across the box of toothpicks on his desk and remember that he was supposed to take a model of Sutter's sawmill to school the next day. Somehow the project no longer seemed as interesting as it had the day Miss Colby assigned it to him.

With his arm Mitchell cleared a space on his desk and dumped out the toothpicks. He was not sure what an old-fashioned sawmill
looked like. He had seen modern mills in Northern California, but all he could remember about them were the piles of lumber and great metal cones that poured out smoke smelling of wood. He thought of the sugar-cube mission, complete with bell tower and stables, that Little Miss Perfect had built and looked at his miserable heap of toothpicks. He tried to think how a house was built, and there arose in his mind an impossible picture of concrete, studding, siding, Sheetrock, plywood, tar, and gravel, none of which had been used in the construction of Sutter's sawmill.

“Drat!” said Mitchell.

“What's the matter, Mitch?” called Mrs. Huff from another room.

“Aw, nothing.”

“That means something is wrong,” said Amy from her room, where Mitchell knew she was making furniture for a doll's house.

“You keep out of this,” said Mitchell. He
remembered watching the construction of the new savings-and-loan building where he had panned gold. Its walls were made of slabs of concrete that had been lifted into place, a type of construction known as “tilt-up.” Very well, Mitchell would tilt up the walls of Sutter's sawmill.

He found a roll of Scotch tape and tore off two short strips, which he managed to lay on his desk after considerable difficulty in removing them from his fingers. Then he carefully laid toothpicks across the Scotch tape to form one wall. Placing toothpicks on sticky Scotch tape and getting them straight was difficult, but Mitchell persisted, tearing off more Scotch tape, unsticking it from his fingers, and laying rows of toothpicks on it. All the time he was thinking of the sugar-cube mission built by Little Miss Perfect, and the harder he worked the more beautiful and elaborate that mission seemed.

“Mom, do you have an old jar lid I can use?” Amy asked from the next room. “I want to put it on top of a spool to make a little round table.”

Girls! thought Mitchell. They were always good at making things, especially little things. And what could he make? A skateboard that Alan Hibbler wrecked.

Mitchell tried setting up the two walls of his sawmill and holding them in place while he tore off a piece of Scotch tape, which immediately twisted and stuck to itself. “Drat!” said Mitchell, louder this time. If that old Bernadette Stumpf hadn't gone and pointed to him, he probably wouldn't be all stuck up with Scotch tape.

“Mitchell, what
are
you doing?” his mother asked a second time.

“Homework,” said Mitchell glumly, trying the Scotch tape once more. What kind of a sawmill was it going to be anyway, all
stuck together with Scotch tape? John Sutter didn't have any Scotch tape. Mitchell managed to fasten the two walls together, only to find that one of them was crooked. He blamed Bernadette.

“Drat!” said Mitchell, and dropped a book on the floor with a satisfying bang for emphasis. If it weren't for Bernadette he could be outside riding his bicycle. Because of her he was shut up in the house with a lot of slippery little toothpicks.

Then Amy came barging into his room to see what he was doing. “Beat it,” ordered Mitchell, trying too late to hide his work with his hands.

“What are you making?” his sister asked.

“Nothing that is any of your business,” said Mitchell rudely.

“Come on, Mitch,” pleaded Amy. “Let me help you.”

“You aren't supposed to help me with
my homework,” he informed her. That rule was one of the most important in the Huff household. Mitchell and Amy did their own homework.

“Just tell me what you're making,” begged Amy.

“Yes, Mitch,” said his mother, who had joined Amy to see what was going on. “Tell us what you're making.”

Mitchell glowered. “All right,” he said, and raised his voice to a yell.
“I am building a stupid old Sutter's sawmill out of stupid old toothpicks!”

“All right, all right,” said Amy, backing away. “We just asked, is all. Is there any harm in asking?”

“My goodness, Mitchell,” his mother said mildly. “It can't be as bad as all that.”

“Did
you
ever try to build a stupid old Sutter's sawmill out of stupid old toothpicks?” he asked ferociously.

“Well—no,” admitted Mrs. Huff, “but
I'm sure it can't be as difficult as you're making it seem.”

“It can, too,” contradicted Mitchell. Then he added darkly, thinking of all the girls who were so good at making things, “You just don't know.”

“Perhaps I don't,” agreed Mrs. Huff. “Do you mean this is a homework assignment?”

“Miss Colby asked me to make it and gave me the toothpicks, and I'm supposed to bring it in tomorrow,” Mitchell explained. “And all because of that old Bernadette Stumpf. When Miss Colby asked who would like to build a sawmill, old Bernadette sat there pointing at me, and of course Miss Colby had to go pick on me.”

“You probably had your hand raised anyway,” said Amy.

Now how did she know, Mitchell wondered. Sometimes Amy seemed to understand him altogether too well, which made
matters worse. Girls! They read better than he read. They were better at making things, especially little things. Old Bernadette had pointed at him, derailed his sneakers, and panned more gold. A fellow didn't have a chance.

“Anyway, Bernadette likes you,” continued Amy. “That's why she picks on you.”

“Oh sure,” said Mitchell bitterly. “Handsome, dashing me.”

“Never mind all that,” said Mrs. Huff. “Let's think about Sutter's sawmill. It must have been a small wooden building, a sort of log cabin.”

“Hey, that's right,” said Mitchell brightening. “They had to build it out of logs, because until they built it there wasn't any mill to saw lumber.”

Amy, who had edged around her brother's desk for a glimpse of his work, said, “You can't build it that way. Not with Scotch tape.”

“You keep out of this,” ordered Mitchell.

Amy assumed a wounded look. “I was only trying to help, is all. But if you don't want me to help, it's perfectly all right with me.”

There was the trouble. Mitchell did want her to help, but he was too proud to say so.

“But Mitchell,” protested Mrs. Huff, “this isn't really homework. It isn't the same as studying your spelling or working arithmetic problems. You aren't learning anything from this.”

“I'm learning how hard it is to stick toothpicks together with Scotch tape,” Mitchell pointed out.

“That is hardly part of the curriculum,” said Mrs. Huff. “I don't see why it wouldn't be all right to let Amy help you.”

“What you need is white glue,” said Amy briskly, and left the room to get the plastic glue bottle.

“Go on, Mitch, let her help,” whispered Mrs. Huff.

“Okay,” agreed Mitchell at last. “But I
have a feeling it's going to be a crummy little sawmill.”

“You know, I think you're right,” said Mrs. Huff with a smile.

Amy returned with the white glue and went to work in a businesslike way. She stacked the toothpicks so they crisscrossed at the corners like a log cabin and fastened each one in place with a smidgen of glue. With Mitchell helping, she did not take long to construct a tidy little toothpick building, with a cardboard roof, and doors and windows snipped through the toothpicks with the kitchen shears. She glued it to the lid of a shoe box so it would be easy to carry. “There,” she said, looking at their work. “It's a crummy little sawmill, but I guess it is what your teacher wants.”

“I guess so,” agreed Mitchell, smiling for the first time since he had started working with the toothpicks. His sawmill should
please Miss Colby, even though Little Miss Perfect, who had built the sugar-cube mission, and the rest of the girls would make fun of it. Well, he did not care. If he had made the sawmill alone, he would have been worried, but his sister had helped him so it was all right. Amy was one of the best makers-of-things in the fourth grade. She even got
to write in starched string, the “Thanksgiving” that went over the hall bulletin board, where her class displayed mosaics made out of dried beans and peas.

Mitchell's thoughts returned to girls once more. “Did you mean it, what you said about Bernadette?” he asked his sister. “Do you really think she likes me?”

“Of course,” answered Amy, as if Bernadette's liking Mitchell should be obvious to anyone. “Why else would she point at you?”

Mitchell thought the matter over. “Yeah, I see what you mean,” he finally admitted. He was embarrassed to be liked by a girl like Bernadette Stumpf.

O
ne day in the middle of December Amy came home from school carrying a large paper bag. “Guess what, Mom!” she said, as she entered the back door into the kitchen, where her mother was mincing mushrooms with her French cookbook open beside her on the counter. “Mrs. Martin made me piñata chairman for the class, and I appointed Marla and Bonnie to be on the committee.”

“Good,” said Mrs. Huff, laying down her knife. “And just what does a piñata chairman do?”

“Makes a piñata for the Christmas party. Mrs. Martin gave me all the things to make it with,” answered Amy, and in her mind's eye she could see the piñata her committee would make. It would be in the shape of a bird, and when it was hung from the ceiling of the classroom it would look as if it were really flying. It would be so beautiful that the class would be sorry to break it, even if it did spill out peanuts and candy. “The committee is meeting here Saturday afternoon, and Mom, remember your promise. You promised the next time I had friends over to make something you wouldn't let Mitch hang around and spoil everything.”

“I remember,” said Mrs. Huff with a smile. “He can go ice-skating that afternoon.”

“Boy!” said Mitchell, pretending indignation when he heard the news. “It's tough
when a fellow isn't welcome in his own house. I think I'll write a letter to my congressman.”

Amy, who knew that her brother would rather go skating at the ice rink than almost anything else, looked forward to a peaceful piñata party without any pestering.

Saturday afternoon Amy spread newspapers on the kitchen table and, at her mother's suggestion, on the floor. While Marla and Bonnie took turns blowing up the balloon Mrs. Martin had supplied, Amy dumped the bag of powdered wheat-flour paste into a mixing bowl. Mrs. Huff added water and beat the paste with the wire whip she used in her French cooking until it was as smooth and free from lumps as any of the sauces she made from her French cookbook. When the balloon was larger than a basketball, the girls tied the opening with a string.

“See the balloon.” Bonnie, who was good at imitating her little brothers and sisters,
spoke in the flat, expressionless voice of a first grader reading from a primer. “See the big balloon.”

Her imitation sent the girls off into a gale of giggles. “Look, look, Mother. See the balloon,” said Amy, as if she were reciting in a first-grade reading group. She began to cut old newspapers into strips with the scissors.

“Look, Spot, look,” said Bonnie. “Look at the balloon.”

“Who's Spot?” asked Marla.

“Oh, you know how they always have dogs in readers,” said Bonnie, as she helped Amy shred newspapers.

“Remember Penny in that reader we used to have,” said Amy. “Penny lost her bunny.”

The girls shrieked with laughter at the memory of poor Penny losing her bunny. Amy tried to dip a strip of newspaper into the paste only to find that the paste was now as
thick as pudding. “Mom, help!” she called.

“We had better thin it out,” Mrs. Huff said, when she had examined the paste. She removed half of the puddinglike stuff to a second bowl, filled both bowls with water, and once more beat out the lumps with her wire whip.

Amy dipped a strip of paper into the paste and slapped it on the dripping balloon. “Ick,” she remarked.

“How gooshy,” said Marla, as she dipped a strip of paper into the paste.

“Yuk,” said Bonnie, going to work. “How do we make the hole so Mrs. Martin can put the candy and peanuts inside?”

“We cover the whole balloon and cut a hole after the paste dries,” said Amy. “Then we break the balloon and pull it out.”

The girls dipped and pasted in silence until the paste had thickened into pudding once more. This time Amy added water to
the bowls, and the girls took turns beating because they wanted to try using Mrs. Huff's wire whip.

The three continued plastering the balloon with pasty strips of paper, rolling it around as they worked so that the strips of soggy newspaper completely covered it.

While the girls worked Marla taught them a new jumping-rope rhyme:

She demonstrated the footwork to go with the last line of the rhyme, and the girls' work grew careless as they pasted and jumped. Heel stitch, toe stitch, cross stitch,
around stitch. They jumped heel down, toe down, ankles crossed, and turning around. Paste splattered. The girls became stickier and stickier as they dipped, dripped, and slapped paper on the balloon.

Once more Bonnie began to speak as if
she were having difficulty reading. “Look at the balloon. It is gooey.” She made it even gooier by slapping on another dripping strip of newspaper.

“Look, look at the gooey balloon,” recited Marla in her first-grade voice. Then she said in her natural voice, “What are some more words with
oo
sounds?”

“Look, look. The balloon is gooey. I am gooey, too,” said Amy and giggled.

Marla thought of another word with an
oo
sound. “Goody. The girl is gooey. Goody, goody. Gooey, gooey girl.”

“Go, gooey girl, go,” was Amy's next contribution to the first-grade reader. “Goody, goody. Look at the gooey girl go.”

At this point Mrs. Huff came into the kitchen. “All right, gooey girls,” she said. “Don't you think you have enough paper pasted to that balloon?”

“I guess you're right,” agreed Amy, as
she stopped dipping and dripping to look at the big ball of soggy newspaper. “How are we going to stick wings and a tail and feathers on it when it's so wet?”

“We can't,” said Marla. “We'll have to let it dry first.”

“But that is going to take ages,” said Bonnie. “It will probably have to dry overnight.”

Amy airily waved her pasty hands. “Oh well. That just means we'll have to have another piñata party when it's dry. We have until Friday to finish it.”

Later, when Mitchell returned from an afternoon at the ice rink, he went straight to the kitchen table. “I thought you said you were going to make a piñata,” he said, examining the gray ball of soggy paper. “This doesn't look like any piñata I ever saw. It looks more like a moldy basketball.”

“Oh, be quiet, Mitch.” Amy was impatient
with her brother. “We just have to let it dry awhile before we finish it. There is plenty of time.”

“It looks pretty wet to me,” said Mitchell, “but you can't blame me. I was away ice-skating all afternoon.”

By Monday the outer layer of newspaper was dry, but when Amy poked a bit she found that beneath the dry outside layer the piñata was still as soggy as it had been on Saturday.

Tuesday Mrs. Huff tried putting the damp ball of paper into an oven set at a low temperature, and soon the house began to smell of wet newspaper.

“Something cooking?” Mitchell asked brightly.

“You shut up,” said Amy.

“Amy, don't be rude,” said Mrs. Huff. “We don't tell people to shut up.”

“Amy does,” said Mitchell.

“Just my pesty little brother,” said Amy.

“I'm one inch taller,” Mitchell reminded his
sister, “so don't call me your little brother.”

“I weigh two pounds more,” Amy pointed out. “Therefore, I contain more molecules than you do.” Mitchell was not the only one who could apply science to argument.

Wednesday a family conference was held. The Huffs decided that cutting the hole in the piñata and removing the balloon would hasten the drying. When Amy tried to pierce the layers of paper with the point of the kitchen shears, she could not make a dent, but her father finally succeeded in sawing out a circle of the papier-mâché; with a sharp knife. When he lifted off the circle and pulled out the broken balloon, the kitchen was filled with the smell of mildewed paper.

“Pee-yew,” said Mitchell. Catching Amy's eye, he added, “Don't look at me. I didn't have anything to do with your moldy old basketball.”

“Oh well,” said Amy, as her mother put
the papier-mâché ball into the oven for further drying. “It will probably air out overnight, and tomorrow we will cover it with lots of crepe paper and maybe that will cover up some of the smell.”

On Thursday afternoon after school Bonnie had an appointment with the orthodontist, so Amy had only Marla to help her cover up what the Huff family now referred to as “that moldy basketball.” Mitchell had gone to Bill Collins's house after school.

“Pee-yew,” was the first thing Marla said, when she caught a whiff of the big gray ball. “What happened to it?”

“It just got a little mildewed, is all,” said Amy.

“Well, come on. Let's work fast,” said Marla. “My mother says I have to be home before five o'clock to practice my piano before dinner.”

The girls fashioned wings, a head, and a tail from shirt cardboard and fastened them
in place with many strips of Scotch tape. Hurriedly they cut strips of crepe paper—red, orange, purple, and green—snipping the edges into fringe, which they hoped looked like feathers, and holding them in place with dabs of white glue. Somehow this piñata party was not nearly so much fun as the first one.

“Does it need feet?” asked Marla, while Amy cut a beak from a bit of cardboard and colored it yellow with crayon.

“Birds don't fly around with their feet hanging down,” said Amy.

“That's good. I've got to go now or my mother will just about kill me,” said Marla. “She's already mad at me, because I didn't practice before school this morning.”

“There,” said Amy with finality, when the beak was fastened in place. “It's done.” She stepped back to look at her committee's work.

What a disappointment the gaudy bird roosting on the kitchen table was, not the
least bit like the graceful piñata Amy had pictured in her mind's eye the day Mrs. Martin had appointed her piñata chairman. Its wings were lopsided, and its tail drooped from the weight of too much crepe paper. Its feathers looked unkempt, as if it were suffering from some illness peculiar to poultry. The neck was too long and placed at the wrong angle, so that it looked like the neck of a turkey rather than like that of the exotic tropical bird Amy had imagined.

And I am chairman, was Amy's first thought. Everybody will laugh. Marla began to giggle. “But it isn't supposed to be funny,” said Amy.

“But it is,” said Marla.

“I know,” agreed Amy, and began to giggle, too.

“You can tell Mrs. Martin it's the molting season,” said Marla.

The more the girls looked at the bird, the funnier it seemed. “Our feathered friend,”
said Amy between giggles.

Mrs. Huff came into the kitchen to see what all the laughing was about. “It certainly doesn't look like anything in
Field Guide to Western Birds
,” she observed.

“It's a very rare bird,” Amy told her mother. “It's so rare it's practically extinct.”

“Like the whooping crane,” said Mrs. Huff and laughed.

Marla glanced at the clock on the kitchen stove and snatched up her sweater. “Now my mother really will kill me.”

Soon after Marla left Mitchell arrived. “Here I am, folks. Live and in color,” he announced, and then his eyes rested on Amy's bird. “What is it?” he asked. “A turkey or a buzzard?”

“He is my feathered friend,” said Amy, patting her bird affectionately. “He's funny-looking, but I love him, so don't you make fun of him.”

Mitchell peered inside the piñata, sniffed
it, and thumped its sides experimentally. “Boy!” he exclaimed. “That bird is as hard as concrete, and it still stinks.”

“Oh!” wailed Amy. Everything seemed to go wrong. She had completely forgotten
the piñata was supposed to be broken by a whack of a yardstick. “What am I going to do? I forgot we have to break it to get the candy and peanuts out.” She turned to her mother for help.