The Snow Pony

by Anne Eliot Crompton

  I once made a cake from a mix. But this cake is no mix, of course. This is a Marigold Stass cake, made from scratch.

  Cute Irene asks, “What did you give him?”

  “This.” The picture shows Sophie Stass holding out a blue necktie with red hearts all over it. “I painted the hearts. Freehand.”

  The Court sighs admiringly.

  “Cliff mentioned it matched our Friendship Ring, which of course I couldn’t put it on because Tunie stole it.”

  We all stamp our feet and blow on our fingers. I stamp and blow hardest of all, because Marigold’s dumb Ring is heavy in my coat pocket.

  I want to get rid of this thing! Why did I ever take it? How could I do such a dumb thing? How do I get rid of it? I’ve thought of ways—drop it in the snow, leave it in the girls’ room—but there are eyes everywhere.

  I wish I could write to Maria! Maria is smart. She would surely know some way to give the dratted thing back.

  I have to figure this out alone, just me. As usual.

  While Marigold scowls we hear Tunie’s voice, over by the fence. “So she took the diet pills, see, and she got thin all right. ’Cause those pills had tapeworms in them, see.”

  Several girls crane their necks, interested. Quickly, Marigold announces, “Here’s Cliff! This is Cliff!”

  Aha! At last we get to see the mysterious Cliff.

  Tough Jessie gets the photograph first. She looks at it eagerly. Then her long face droops, puzzled. She shrugs, and passes the picture to Cute Irene. I lean over Irene’s shoulder.

  “Cute!” Cute Irene purrs. “He’s so cute.…” Her purr fades.

  The picture shows Frankie Stass smiling up at a plaid work shirt and a hand, which holds the painted necktie. We see Cliff’s shirt apparently from the back, neck to waist. Frankie is cute, but Cliff’s shirt is not especially exciting.

  Jessie growls softly, “Might as well be your brother Andy, far as I can see.”

  Marigold snatches back the picture. “That’s a candid shot, you know. Not posed or anything. Now here’s the whole party. Look.”

  And there they are, a bunch of Stasses grinning greedily at the chocolate cake, with streamers dangling over their heads. But no Cliff.

  “That’s the best cake I ever made,” Marigold proclaims. “The baby thought so, too.” She hands out a portrait of Baby Stass all over crushed, smeared cake. “Yech!” says Irene. “Ick!” She has a point.

  Turning, I see that several girls have drifted away to hear about Tunie’s tapeworms.

  I’ve never really baked a cake or painted a necktie freehand. But I can do something else, something Queen Marigold can’t do … I don’t think.

  Deep in my pocket, my fingers grip Marigold’s Ring. I wander off toward Tunie, remembering, smiling into the sunshine.

  What would the Court say if I said out loud, right now, “Marigold Stass, I can milk a goat. Can you?”

  I milk Rosy often, breathing her sweet rowan hay scent, pressing her warm teats till milk foams in the pan. She doesn’t raise a hoof, even after the feed is gone. And afterward she nuzzles me. What would the Court say if I boasted that Rosy Goat liked me?

  Yech! They would say. Ick! With their noses in the air.

  17

  The bare sponged walls of my room look dismal in lamplight. I imagine them papered with daffodils. Jackie got white wallpaper with daffodils and violets all over. That will be pretty.

  I sit up in bed and hear the wind sigh and think about Mr. Flower as a baby being born in this room. The bed must have stood right here—there’s no place else for it. Maybe other people were born here, too. I reach for my pad and pencil.

  I doodle a daffodil. I doodle trotting hoofs. A pony is trotting past, neck arched, stepping high. He’s a circus pony, so I wreathe his neck with flowers and braid more flowers into his mane and tail. Daffodils … violets. He is Pearl.

  And here I am, poised on tiptoe on his back.

  No jeans for me! My short skirt stands straight out. My hair streams and flows. In my raised hands I hold … no sponge, mop, or currycomb. Daffodils.

  Pearl is snow white. I use dark colors around him, to make him shine.

  Now, my spunky little dress. Green, I think, with sugar spangles.

  I’ve lost some weight in this picture, and dyed my hair yellow.

  Holy trout! There I sway, tiptoe on Pearl’s snowy back, flower-filled hands high. And from one hand red and blue rays shoot off into the dark. I’m disguised as Queen Marigold Stass, complete with Friendship Ring!

  I drop the picture. I look suspiciously around my empty room, and draw the Ring from under my pillow.

  Held to the light it shines, sparkles, dazzles.

  Who can I talk to? Jackie would never understand. I can just see her brown eyes harden! “You stole a ring? Take it right back!”

  Maria would understand. I imagine her sitting up in bed with me now. (Imaginary people take up very little room.) I ask her, “Maria, what can I do?”

  She laughs. “Why, you know, make a big deal? Look the way that girl treats you! She, you know, deserved to lose the thing!”

  “I think so too, Maria.” (I nod strongly. I wrap my arms around my knees and squeeze them. They think so too. My whole self thinks Marigold deserves to lose this Ring.)

  Maria is warming up here. Her black eyes flash and her hair seems to crackle. She growls, “That girl don’t know you live in this world with her! She don’t know your name is Janet Stone! Time she know, girl, time she know!”

  “Wait a sec, Maria—”

  “If I was here with you I’d let her know! I’d straighten her hair for her! I’d—”

  “Look, Maria. Listen.”

  The real Maria, back in Holyoke or wherever she is, would not look or listen. She would just go on getting fiercer by the minute. There’s no stopping Maria when she gets going.

  But I have to handle this my way.

  I pick up the pad I had dropped and turn the page. I start drawing.

  I draw a girl with straight brown hair in a ponytail, like me. Plump, like me. Her jeans are blue, her shirt is … yellow.

  It’s springtime. She’s walking with a friend, shoulders close, almost holding hands.

  I draw the friend’s hand and arm, and then I wait. I’m not sure what I’m doing.

  The friend should have a cloud of black hair and black eyes. She should be plumper than I am. Her name should be Maria.

  But now my hand is drawing almost by itself. It draws a tall figure with yellow curls that bounce on slim shoulders. These springy light lines I’m adding here make the curls bounce. A brown shoulder bag bounces on her hip. She wears a white blouse and a flouncy yellow skirt. These two friends smile sideways at each other.

  Since it’s spring, I put daffodils around their feet. I looked up that poem Mr. Flower didn’t recite. The poet, Wordsworth, saw a host of golden daffodils. And after that, any time he liked, he could shut his eyes and see them again. That’s just what I do. These drawings I make are like that. I remember things I’ve seen and sort of think them over again, on paper.

  I’ve seen daffodils, and soft green grass like what I’m drawing now. I’ve seen friends walking, holding hands and smiling, but I haven’t seen these two particular girls. Or have I?

  I set the pad up against the headboard of my bed and look closely at the friends. And I see what I’ve done.

  This is what I’ve gone and done. I’ve gone and drawn me and snooty Marigold Stass like friends!

  I grab the pad and rip off the sheet. I commence to crumple it up. I want to rip it up, to throw it in the waste can in a hundred pieces.

  I stop. What with all those fancy daffodils, and the curls that really bounce, it’s too good to throw out. Sometime I might want to copy parts of it for some other picture.

  I smooth out the paper and tuck it back in the pad, toward the end, where I won’t have to see it.

  I still don’t know what to do about the Ring.

  18
/>   When crows call in the woods, Mr. Flower’s eyes gleam. He calls, “Come on, Janet Stone! Sugaring time!”

  He carries a pile of pails. I carry a sack of jingly things. We leave Pearl and Rosy looking over the fence and go into the woods. Posy squeezes through the fence and follows us, tail twitching high.

  Here the snow is still deep, soft, and sticky. We stop at the first old maple tree, and Mr. Flower sets the pails down.

  “You hand me the tools,” he says, “I’ll do the job. First, the bit.”

  Bit? In the sack of jingly things I find a bunch of small, silvery troughs, a hammer, and a sort of screwdriver with a turning handle. I hand him that.

  Mr. Flower sets the point into the rough bark and turns the handle. The point sinks in. A clear liquid bleeds around the point and spills down the bark.

  “Perfect timing!” he says happily. “Crows always tell you right.”

  “Mr. Flower, what is that stuff?”

  “That stuff is your maple sap, Janet. It makes pancake syrup, and sugar for Arthur. Give me a trough and the hammer.”

  Posy stretches up to lick the dripping sap. I hand Mr. Flower his tools and lick a drop of sap off my finger. It tastes very faintly sweet.

  Mr. Flower sets the point of the trough in the wet hole and hammers it in. He hangs a pail from the trough and adds a roof over the pail. The sap goes ping! ping! in the pail.

  “That’s it. Come on, come on!” Rejoicing, Mr. Flower gallops to the next big tree. “It’ll freeze tonight. Just what you want. Warm day, cold night. Sap will flow out like money!”

  “Doesn’t it hurt the tree?”

  “Not a bit. We just hang one pail per tree. Tree can handle that.”

  “What about when the pail fills up?”

  “We boil the sap.”

  “Where?”

  “Folks who tap a lot of trees have a sugarhouse to boil in. My cabin is Grandma Cook’s old sugarhouse. I do my sap in there. Quick, Janet, the trough!”

  The woods air smells fresh. Crows call and flap. A squirrel lollops over snow. Posy looks after him, but doesn’t follow. Posy’s an old cat—he’s chased enough squirrels. Wading on to the next tree, I step in Mr. Flower’s limping track.

  “You want to look sharp here, Janet, like your pal Marigold Stass. Step lively now, or I’ll hire—”

  “No you won’t, Mr. Flower.” I’m pretty sure.

  “Huh?”

  “You won’t hire Marigold Stass.”

  “Hm. Well, you’re right about that. That kid is too smart for me.” He goes to work on the tree. “This is where my Granda Cook taught me to work.”

  “Right here?”

  “On these very same trees. This was Granda’s sugar bush. He would bring three-four of us grandkids out here, sugar time, and he’d keep us hopping! We learned how to work, let me tell you! The Indians taught the settlers how to sugar, and Granda’s granda taught him, and glory, did he teach us kids!”

  Two trees later Mr. Flower says, “Tell you what happened one time. We came out early, sun just up. And over behind that tree there a gray thing jumped up out of the snow. It said, ‘Whuff whuff,’ and it took off leaping, like flying, with a white tail waving like a flag. Know what that was?”

  “No. What?”

  “Us kids didn’t know. We were scared. Granda said it was the first deer he’d seen in Winterfield. Said the wildlife was commencing to move down from the north. Nothing to what it is now, of course!”

  I think about that. At the next tree I ask, “Is there wildlife here now?”

  “I should say! Now the old farms are mostly gone, the woods are growing back. The new people stay in their new houses—they don’t go out back. So the wildlife has the run of the woods.”

  I’m looking around me now! “What sort of wildlife is out here?”

  Mr. Flower shrugs. “Beaver. Bear. I remember one spring morning when we lived at your house, Stephen brought a newborn fawn into the kitchen. Said, ‘This is our new pet. He can drink goat milk.’ Stephen was always wild for pets.”

  “Did you keep the fawn?”

  “Glory, no! Connie chased Stephen and that fawn right back to where it came from. Mama Doe was running around out there bleating for her baby. You can bet that was one happy reunion!”

  So Stephen was wild for pets. Pearl is my pet. I bet he’s waiting for me now, watching for me over the fence. When he sees me he will nicker, like saying hi. And when I come up to him he will lay his head on my shoulder. He does that now.

  His chin is hard and heavy, but I never push him off.

  Daylight begins to sink into snow. Shadows creep among the trees like the wildlife Mr. Flower tells of. I’m glad when he says, “That’s it. Let’s get back to feed and water before dark. Quick now, Janet, like Marigold Stass.”

  19

  My wallpaper is up! Jackie and I pant and sweat and admire the bright walls covered with little violets and daffodils.

  “Good thing it’s a small room,” Jackie sighs.

  “Looks bigger now.”

  “Aha, yes. The tiny print makes it seem bigger.”

  We glance around, beaming. I’m about to say, “Cocoa break?” when Jackie hauls a new tool out of her apron pocket.

  I cry, “Not more work!”

  “Just a bit more. You roll the seams smooth-smooth with this. Oddly enough, it’s called a seam roller.” It’s a wheel on a handle. “I’ll trim the edges. Surely you didn’t expect to leave them ragged!”

  I don’t need to answer that.

  I commence rolling seams smooth-smooth. It’s not hard work. Nothing compared with what we’ve been doing. Jackie climbs on our workbench. She presses her putty knife against the top of the paper and cuts off the overlap with her razor knife. Her long braid swings back and forth as she works.

  After a tired silence Jackie asks, “So how is your friend Pearl doing?”

  “Pearl’s great. Looks great, acts great, eats great.” And I’m beginning to love him.

  “That fat look he had was just hair, wasn’t it?”

  “Winter coat. And dirt. Under that he was just bones. He’s filled out now.”

  “Aha. And how is Mr. Russell Flower?”

  “Jackie, I forgot to tell you!” I quit rolling to look up at her. “Mr. Flower was born here!”

  “In this house?”

  “In this room!”

  “His family owned this place?”

  “His grandma Cook owned it. She planted daffodils by the porch.”

  “Aha. We’ll be seeing them soon.”

  “You think they’re still there?”

  “Daffodils go on forever. Roll, Jannie!”

  I go back to work. “You think anybody else was born in this room, Jackie?”

  “I bet. Bet folks died in it, too.”

  I glance around my room. Drifting clouds throw ghostly shadows. “If I think like that it doesn’t feel like my room.”

  “It’s yours while you’re in it. Keep rolling.”

  I roll. “Jackie, Mr. Flower says we’ve got wildlife out back.”

  “Aha! I love to meet wild animals. They’re like men from Mars.”

  “Huh?”

  “They live in their own world, alongside our world. Gives you a whole new outlook.”

  I’m living in my own world, alongside Jackie’s world. My hand slips into my pocket and fingers the Ring. Could I say right now, “Jackie, I have a friend who stole a Ring. What should she do?”

  I could not. Jackie would know right off. Her eyes would go harder than this dratted Ring burning my fingers.

  Could I maybe just drop the thing in the trash and walk away humming?

  I wish I could! But this Ring is almost like a live thing, a little animal crouched in my pocket. It’s got me wrapped up in it, and Marigold, and Tunie, and this Cliff guy nobody’s ever seen. It’s not worth fifty cents, but it weighs in my pocket like a diamond. I just couldn’t throw it away.

  20

  Most every day I ri
de Pearl. We cross Hungry Hollow Road and take a trail into the woods. It meets a dirt road that leads along behind the Hungry Hollow houses.

  Mr. Flower calls this Old King’s Road. He says the first Winterfield settlers called it the King’s Highway. Massachusetts belonged to England back then. The settlers trudged out here with their oxcarts full of furniture and built houses. All that’s left of those houses now are cellar holes in the woods. “They went on west,” Mr. Flower says. “But first they cleared miles of pasture here. Hundreds of sheep grazed along the King’s Highway.” Now it’s all woods.

  Our Hungry Hollow Road was where the very first settler settled. One winter he went fifteen miles to Northampton for supplies. It snowed so hard he couldn’t come back, and his hungry family ate their dog. Not even Mr. Flower knows for sure where their house stood, but it was somewhere in Hungry Hollow.

  “History or legend,” Jackie says, “fact or fiction, Russ Flower tells a good story!”

  The snow is melting in the woods, and Pearl steps out easily. This is OK. We trot as far as the curve before the Stass house. There I draw rein.

  The big peeling-white Stass house has chicken coops out back that spill clucking hens all over the yard. Rabbits hunch in hutches. Most days diapers blow, sag, and freeze on the line. Indoors, most days, the TV booms and doors slam. Kids may rush out any minute. The big black dog with a growl like thunder guards everything. Going by Stass, Pearl pricks his ears and walks tensely. Going by Stass, I keep a tight hand on the reins.

  ONE tight hand! I ride one-hand now, guiding Pearl with a graceful sway left or right. Most of the time we move like a team.

  But on this bright Saturday morning we walk slowly around the bend into the midst of the Stasses.

  They’re all out here in the woods. There’s Mr. and Mrs., Baby, little Frankie, Sophie, Andy, two older ones I don’t know, Marigold, and a young man with red hair. No Stass has red hair. Red must be hired help.

  They are stringing green hoses from tree to tree. Mr. Flower told me that’s the modern way to tap maple trees. It saves a lot of hauling.

  The black dog, Thunder, explodes out of snow and rushes us.