Thimble Summer (15 page)

“Oh dear —!” began Garnet, and then she saw what he was pointing at. A blue ribbon it was. A
blue
ribbon! Pinned to Timmy's card.

“Oh,” said Garnet, for a moment speechless. Then she began leaping up and down. “Oh wonderful!” she shouted. “Oh, Mr. Freebody, how
wonderful!
” And she climbed right over the railing into Timmy's pen and gave him a good squeeze around the middle.

“Darling Timmy, aren't you proud of yourself?” she said. Timmy let out a stifled grunt.

“He's got his vanity same's the rest of us,” commented Mr. Freebody leaning his arms on the railing. “Don't you go spoiling him now, or you'll have one of them temperamental hogs on your hands. He's had plenty of attention for one day, come on out of that pen and let's all go and celebrate.”

Garnet climbed reluctantly over the railing. Timmy didn't care; he lay down comfortably on his side with his hoofs crossed, sighed deeply, and fell asleep.

Mr. and Mrs. Linden came towards them through the crowd, they had been searching everywhere for Garnet. Behind them came Mrs. Hauser. She had two balloons, one shaped like Mickey Mouse and one shaped like a Zeppelin. She also carried a cut glass bowl and half a dozen wax fruit to put into it which she had won in a bingo game.

“Did you see what happened to Timmy?” cried Garnet hurling herself upon her parents.

“We were there when the judges came, darling,” replied her mother. “We watched him being shown.”

“My goodness,” said Garnet abruptly. “Who did show him?” She hadn't thought of that before.

“Who do you think?” said someone behind her giving one of her pigtails a jerk. Garnet didn't need to turn around to know who it was. Of course it was Mr. Freebody again. Naturally.

“Oh dear,” said Garnet, “Poor Mr. Freebody, always saving my life.”

Mr. Freebody laughed.

“Well you couldn't help it this time,” he comforted her. “I saw you settin' up there in that little basket with Citronella, and I says to myself, we'll just have to do without her. I said so to the little hog too, and he told me ‘Okay.'”

“You've done a fine job with Timmy,” said her father putting his arm around her shoulders, “maybe you'll grow up to be the farmer in this family. Jay doesn't seem to have much taste for it, and I think Donald's going to be a G-man.”

“How about Eric?” asked Garnet.

“Eric may not want to stay with us always,” answered her father. “But I wish he would.”

“I do too,” agreed Garnet. Eric was part of the family now, a brother. It would be awful if he ever left.

“There he is now,” said her father.

Eric had Donald on his shoulders, and Hugo Hauser at his side. Donald had a balloon and a tin horn, and Hugo had a bag of peanuts and a flag. They all looked dirty but pleased.

Garnet told Eric about Timmy and he had to go and see the blue ribbon for himself.

“Do they have prizes for hens?” he enquired. “Next year I think I'll show Brünnhilde!”

“Where's Jay?” asked Garnet. Where was Jay? She did want him to see Timmy in all his glory. She couldn't enjoy her triumph fully without him.

“Well doggone if I didn't almost forget,” said Mr. Freebody suddenly. “Here it is Garnet.” He fished in his pocket, “your prize money. Three brand new dollar bills
and
a fifty cent piece.”

Garnet was dazzled by such wealth. She folded the crisp bills thoughtfully and put them into her pocketbook.

“Whatever will you do with it all?” asked Citronella rather enviously.

“First,” said Garnet, “I will have a party. Tonight I'm going to buy everybody's supper. And after that — well, I haven't decided.”

But she thought to herself: I will just keep it for a while, sometime I'll want it for something really important. Maybe at Christmas time; or maybe the next time I find bills in the mailbox. Or I wonder how much a second-hand accordion would cost?

“I'm going to look for Jay,” Garnet told her family and her friends, and slipped out of the shed into the mellowing sunlight of the late afternoon.

She almost bumped into him a few minutes later; he had a box under his arm and was hurrying.

“Jay!” said Garnet. “Timmy got first prize!”

“I know,” said Jay. “I saw him get it. Look, I won something for you. A present, because of Timmy.”

Oh Jay was wonderful, Garnet thought, ripping the string and paper from the box with eager fingers. She decided definitely to find out about accordions as soon as possible. She opened the box.

There, resting elegantly on a watermelon-pink rayon lining were a comb, brush and looking glass all made of pearly lavender stuff. Garnet was overwhelmed by their beauty.

“Oh Jay!” she said. It was all she could say.

“Okay, forget it,” said Jay in embarrassment. “I just thought you could use 'em. Come on, let's go into some of these tents and see what they've got.”

They went into one tent after another. They saw Aurora, the Mystic Mind Reader, but didn't think much of her. “That's an old trick” scoffed Jay. “I could do that when I was nine years old.” They saw Hercules Junior who was a chubby weight-lifter in a leopard skin and knee-high sandals. They saw Dagmar, the Sword Swallower, and she was wonderful and she
was
the same woman whom Garnet and Citronella had seen darning socks earlier in the day. They saw the Jewel Girls and Bruno, who were also perfect, and they listened to the orchestra of Hank Hazzard and his Hayseeds. “My eardrums feel black and blue,” Jay said afterwards.

By that time it was getting dark and they went to gather their party together for supper. They had some difficulty in locating Mrs. Hauser, but finally found her at the shooting gallery taking aim at a teacup with one eye closed. They watched her demolish a whole row of teacups and some small statues, and receive with dignity the prize, which was an oil painting of an Indian girl in a canoe. It had a frame made of real birchbark.

“Grandma Eberhardt will love this,” said Mrs. Hauser. “She remembers Indians in Esau's Valley, and she's real fond of pictures anyway.”

They all had supper together at a counter. It was Garnet's own party, and everyone had a good time. As they ate, the Great Zorander walked along his tightrope above the fair ground; a spotlight followed him and made his spangles glitter. He seemed a radiant and enchanted being as he moved with accurate grace so far above their heads.

Afterwards Garnet went to say good-bye to Timmy. The shed was full of flickering light and shadow cast by the oil lamps hung from the ceiling. Timmy staggered to his feet and sniffed at the palm of her hand. But there was nothing in it for him so he lay down again.

“Good night, Timmy,” said Garnet. “In three days I will come and take you home.”

Driving away in Mr. Freebody's truck Garnet turned and looked out of the window. The Ferris wheel was a ring of light, and all the tents were lanterns full of light. Among the dark, surrounding fields, the whole magical and temporary world of the fair glowed like phosphorus on a dark sea.

Citronella yawned.

“I don't think I'm going to want an ice-cream cone for a long, long time,” she said.

X. The Silver Thimble

IT WAS a good thing that Eric had taught her to do handsprings and flip-ups, Garnet decided. It was very handy to know how to do one or two when you felt happy. Better than jumping. Better than yelling.

She went out of doors and did a few; then she remembered something that she had forgotten and went back in the house and up to her room. She rummaged first in a bureau drawer and then in her pocketbook, and took out the silver thimble. She rubbed it up and down, up and down, on the front of her Jersey till it had a good shine. Then she put it in the pocket of her sailor pants and went downstairs again.

Eric and Jay were nailing shingles on the roof of the barn. Except for the painting it was all finished, and very fine it looked.

There was a ladder leaning against it and Garnet scampered up and climbed onto the roof. Her bare soles clung to the shingles as she crawled up to the ridgepole where Jay and Eric were balanced like two crows.

“Hello,” she said.

“You can help us nail shingles,” said Jay handing her an extra hammer. She squatted down beside them, but she didn't do much work; she kept lifting her head to look about. Below was their own barnyard, with Madam Queen and her family in one pen, and Timmy in another. There was Brünnhilde, the black hen, scratching in her own little patch of ground; and nearby the other chickens, Leghorns, were behaving in the half-witted way that chickens do: scratching, pausing on one foot and shooting startled glances at nothing in particular, scratching again, and pausing, and clucking dreamily all the while.

Beyond the barnyard were the pastures; the cows were in one with all their heads bent to the grass; and in the other the horses galloped joyously in circles.

Beyond the Hausers' farm the river wound like a path made out of looking glass. All over the valley, as far as the eye could see, the corn had been cut and was stacked in wigwam shapes. The woods, still green on the hillsides were deep and shadowy, but everything else was the color of gold.

“Eric,” said Jay suddenly, “what are you going to do when you grow up?”

“What I do now, just about,” replied Eric promptly. “I have it all planned. I'm going to work hard for your father as long as he'll let me, and save every penny I make. Someday maybe I'll get a farm of my own. In this valley I'd like it to be; near your father's and about the same size and style as his.”

Garnet stole a glance at Jay from the tail of her eye. What would he say now?

“Eric, what do you want to be a farmer for?” he asked disappointedly. “There's no adventure to that; that's no way to see the world.”

“I've seen plenty of the world, thanks” said Eric. “Plenty of adventure too, if you want to call it that. I like this better. I want to stay right here for years and years and years. And you know anyway, I like farming. Someday when I get one of my own, I'm going to have goats on it like my father did, and sheep, too, maybe. But I dunno, maybe not. Anyway I'll have hogs, and cows, and a team, but no hens except Brünnhilde, because she's the only one I ever saw that had some sense. Maybe I'll have just one rooster. A farm isn't a farm without a rooster to let you know when he feels the day coming.”

“Aw, there's always trouble on a farm,” grumbled Jay. “Blight, and stock diseases, and bugs, and drought.”

“Drought!” said Eric scornfully. “That was a puny little drought you had here. You've never had trouble: you're darn lucky and you remember I said it. Why, I've seen rivers dried up and shrunk away to nothing, and the earth all full of cracks, and cattle dead for want of water. Yes, and in Kansas I've watched a wall of dust roll up from off the prairie black as your hat and high as the sky. We had to tie rags over our faces when it hit us, and even then it got into our eyes and mouths. You felt it between your teeth, and down the back of your neck and in your pockets! After a few of those the farms that had been green and fine looked like the Sahara Desert. You don't know what trouble is, Jay.”

There was a chokecherry tree that grew up out of the pigpen, and whose feathery top branches almost swept the roof. Jay leaned over and pulled off a sprig and chewed the bitter fruit reflectively.

“Well, I don't know,” he said after a while. “Maybe you've got the right idea: but I still think I'd like to travel some, and see the world. But maybe when I got that out of my system I'd like to come back and farm with father. If you bought land next to ours we might work it all together and be partners and have a swell place. What do you think?”

Eric smiled with pleasure.

“It sounds okay to me,” he said. “We'll all be partners; Garnet too if she wants.”

Garnet felt pleased. She laid down her hammer and put her hands in her pockets. She found in one of them the silver thimble that she had brought to show Eric. She pulled it out and put it on her finger.

“Look Eric,” she said. “I found this in the river on one of the mud flats that came up during the dry spell. It's solid silver and it's very valuable. You know why, Eric?” she leaned towards him and said defiantly. “Because it's magic, that's why. Jay says there's no such thing but he doesn't know. There
is
something wonderful about this thimble; everything began to happen as soon as I found it, why that very night the rain came and the drought was broken! And right after that we got money to build this barn, and you saw our kiln fire in the woods and came to be in our family. And then Citronella and I got locked in the library, that was exciting, and I went to New Conniston by myself. That was an adventure, too, even if I was mad when I started out. And then of course Timmy won a prize at the fair.
Everything
has happened since I found it, and all nice things! As long as I live I'm always going to call this summer the thimble summer.”