Miracles on Maple Hill
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MIRACLES ON MAPLE HILL VIRGINIA SORENSEN WINNER OF THE NEWBERY MEDAL 1 THERE'S ALL OUTDOORS "Mother, say the scoot-thing again," Marly said. She slid forward in the car seat, talking right against her mother's neck, over her coat collar. "Say it just the way your grandma said it." "Marly-again'" Mother asked. "And please don't breathe down my neck, dear!" She was driving, and the road was narrow and snowy and worrisome. "Just say it once more. The way she said it." Marly noticed the look Mother gave Daddy who sat beside her in the front seat. She could tell that Mother was afraid Daddy would object to hearing the same thing over and over. He was more tired than usual, even. When he asked Mother to drive, he was always as tired as he could be. Now he sat with his eyes closed and his chin buried in the collar of his jacket. But it was for him, really, that Marly wanted Mother to say the scoot-thing again. Maybe they didn't think she knew why they were going to Maple Hill. But she did. "Just once. I promise never to ask again. I promise," Marly said. Her brother Joe turned from the window for a change. The whole way up from Pittsburgh he'd kept his face glued to it like an old By. "Why don't you just say it to yourself?" he asked. "Mother's said it ten hundred times. "I want her to say it--just once." If Joe asked her why she wanted Mother to say it, Marly couldn't have told him. The truth was that when Mother said those certain words all the good feelings came back. Grandma's whole house and yard and her whole Maple Hill were in those words, just the way Mother had de scribed them ever since Marly could remember. Grandma was in them, too, with the way Mother said her voice was, like a bird's voice if it pretended to be cross but really wasn't Mother was in them, too, but in a special way. Not the way she was now, but the way she had been when she was Marly's age. Every summer she had come to visit her Grandma at Maple Hg right here in Pennsylvania's corner. How so many things could be in a few words was something else Marly didn't know. But it was the same way the whole feel of school can be in the sound of a bell ringing. Or the way the whole feeling of spring can be in one robin on a fence post. Daddy opened his eyes. "You might as well say it, Lee, and get it over with,'' he said. He did not look at Mother or at Marly or at anybody. He liked to do the driving him- self, especially when a road was as bad as this. But he was too tired. Soon after he had come home, while people were still marveling that he had come back at all after being a soldier and a prisoner and everything, Marly had heard him say to Mother, "I think I'm going to be tired forever." But Mother had answered, "Of course you won't. You know Dale, I've been thinking-- we could go up to that old place of Grandma's^ Maple Hill. 'What you need is all out- doors for a while." "Honestly, Marly, I don't see--" Mother began. But she sighed, and then she said it. For a long time when Marly was little, she had corrected Mother every time any one of the words was the least bit different, so now Mother always said it exactly right. Every syllable. Every other word had to come strong, as in a nursery rhyme: "Now scoot, you two, for goodness' sakes! Up here, there's all outdoors!" There! Marly sat back again. If there was all outdoors, there couldn't be very much indoors where all the trouble was. She could see the little old woman in a blue dress and a white apron, with her broom in her hand. She was pre- tending to sweep the children out, as Mother said, because they kept hanging around the house after they arrived. The first time Mother told about it, a long time ago, Marly had asked, "Why did you hang around? Why didn't you go outside and play?" Mother laughed and said, "Grandma thought it was because we were too used to being penned up in town. We were so used to having walls around us and ceilings over us that the sky and the country scared us to death. Grandma hated cities. We could hardly ever get her to come for a visit. She insisted that my brother and I come every summer, out to Maple Hill. She told us, 'The only place worth a grain of salt is where a child can go out and run as he pleases.' " All outdoors! Marly stared out of the window on her side as Joe did on his. Maybe, she thought, it wasn't just because of the city. She could remember times that had been nice there, and happy, before Daddy ever went away. And even while he was gone, sometimes. Mother paid a lot of attention, and they went to the museum on Sunday afternoons and to hear the Pittsburgh Symphony and for picnics in the park Everybody felt sorry for Mother because Daddy was missing, and nobody expected he would ever come back But then he came. She wouldn’t even think it was better before Daddy came back. Nobody must think such a terrible thing. But it was a worry. If a door slammed behind you, for instance, he'd shout, "Who slammed that door?" You'd start to tell him the wind made it slam, but there wasn't time. Mother always hurried in, saying, "Ssssssh! Ssssssh! Ssssssh!" Everything would be better in all outdoors. Mother expected it would be and it would. Already things looked better. For two hours the most wonderful outdoors, all hills and snow and big tall trees and farmhouses, had been going past the windows. Once in a while it was interrupted by a pretty little town, and then it began again. "Marly," Mother said anxiously, half turning her head but watching the road at the same time, "you mustn't expect it to be exactly the way I said. Grandma's been gone from Maple Hill for nearly twenty years. Uncle John's lived here off and on, but ... Well, it's an old run-down place. Not like these lovely farms on the road at all." "I know that," Marly said. "But we're going to fix it up." Those were the words Mother used when Marly first heard them talking about it. Daddy had jumped the way he did sometimes and said, "You mean it's going to fix me up!" "Dale, I didn't say that," "You meant it." "Well, all right then," Mother had said, going red in the face. "Why shouldn't we say it right out? I'm hoping it will." That had been just a little while ago, during the Christmas holidays. You expected everything to be wonderful at Christmas time, and the town was wonderful, with colored lights and decorated trees in every direction. Marvelous things were piled in every window along the streets downtown, and big organ music made the sidewalks sort of tremble. But this year something had gone wrong with everything. Daddy didn't even come from his room Christmas morning to see the presents. Mother had explained, trying to smile. He was tired and hurt and not really cross. He was sick and discouraged, not angry at them or at anybody. There was a lot of difference, Mother said. Of course it was true. But the house felt ugly and tight. Joe went off with his crowd right after breakfast. During the holidays he found someplace to go every day. Once when they began to talk about coming to Maple Hill, Daddy had said, "I don't know whether I can do it, Lee. All that wood to cut and everything. Do you think I can swing an ax any more?" "Why, of course," Mother said. "And Joe can help. He's twelve, isn't he? That's just the age Grandma used to say kids stopped being a nuisance and started being useful." In two years I’ll be twelve, too! Marly had thought. She was so interested in imagining the piles and piles of kindlings she would cut that she forgot to listen to what Mother and Daddy said next. She was reaching up in her mind to put a piece of wood on a pile higher than her head. But then Mother said something so interesting and wonderful she couldn't help hearing it. "When I was a little girl up at Grandma's," Mother said, "I was certain that Maple Hill was the place where all the miracles had happened." Daddy didn't laugh. For a minute it was as if the two of them were holding their breath together. Then Daddy said, "I'm afraid miracles don't happen any more--even at Maple Hill." "We'll go find out," Mother said. That was soon after Christmas. Now it was March, and here they were, going to find out. "It's not very far from here," Mother said. Now all outdoors seemed to be mostly trees close along the road.