The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs Page 3

  Jeb shook his head. “Naw. I’ve never seen anything special, except that three-legged cow my grandpa used to have.”

  “That wasn’t man-made,” I told him.

  “Nope. It was a freak of nature. That’s what Grandpa said.” Jeb stooped to pick up a hedge apple and pitched it across the road.

  “I’m going all along the ridge first.” I told him about Orville Payne.

  “Whoo-ee,” said Jeb. “You’re lucky he didn’t aim his shotgun at you. He’d just as soon shoot you as look at you.”

  I hadn’t thought about firearms before. “At least I got something.”

  “A doll story.” Jeb reached down for another hedge apple. This time he pulled his arm way back and sent it arching high into the air. “Hey, if you’re looking for something special, we should go down to the Saylor house. A rich person is more likely to have a Wonder than a poor one. Maybe two or three.”

  The Saylor place, right in town, was the only house in Sassafras Springs that had curlicues and fancy trim, and a fine porch that curved all around the side, not to mention a big sleeping porch upstairs.

  The Saylors had money, something in short supply everywhere else in town. They owned the feed store, which also dealt in farm equipment. Farmers could do without new clothes, indoor plumbing, and even full bellies, but they couldn’t do without farm equipment. That’s why the Saylors had the biggest house in Sassafras Springs. And a Ford motorcar in the driveway to boot. Some farmers, like Pa, had old pickup trucks, but the Saylors were the only folks who had a car just for riding around in.

  “I don’t know about this,” I told Jeb as we gingerly walked up the front steps. There was a window in the door with colored glass in it, put together to look like a rose. “Mrs. Saylor might not cotton to boys like us calling on her.”

  Before I had time to talk myself out of knocking, the door swung open and there was Mrs. Saylor, dressed all in pink, with a big smile on her face.

  “Hello, young men. I thought I heard footsteps.”

  “Howdy, ma’am,” I mumbled.

  Mrs. Saylor was young—much younger than Mr. Saylor—and her soft brown hair was piled high on her head. “What can I do for you?”

  Jeb just stared at her like the cat got his tongue, but I managed to blurt out something about looking for Wonders.

  “Maybe you’d better come in,” she said.

  The inside of the house was so full of furniture and pictures, rugs and lacy things, that it looked like a store. It wasn’t the place for the likes of Jeb and me.

  “I’m not sure I have what you’re looking for.” Mrs. Saylor furrowed her brow. “But I’ll have a think.”

  She had us sit on a sofa decorated with roses—I guess they were her favorite flowers.

  “You wait here and I’ll be right back.”

  Jeb had yet to say one word. He just sat and stared.

  After a while I heard the rustling of her skirts, and Mrs. Saylor came back carrying a red satin box.

  “I suppose this is our best bet,” she said, sitting in a fuzzy blue chair across from us. She carefully opened it and pulled out a long strand of pinkish-colored pearls.

  “These pearls belonged to Mr. Saylor’s greatgrandmother. Aren’t they lovely?”

  She waited for some kind of reaction so I said, “Yes, ma’am,” while Jeb just nodded.

  She reached in again and pulled out a circle of small green beads. “And this is genuine jade from China, boys. Isn’t that a Wonder?”

  I leaned in to look at the jade and mumbled something about it being nice, though the green glass beads Aunt Pretty won at the county fair last year looked just as pretty and sparkled a whole lot more.

  Next Mrs. Saylor pulled out a brooch, with the outline of a lady in it, all carved in white. “And this is my grandmother’s hand-carved cameo.”

  Jeb and I made admiring noises. “Who did the carving?” I asked.

  “Oh, a jewelry maker in Paris,” she said in a tone that let me know that French jewelry makers were a lot better than the ones in Missouri.

  “Do you think these are Wonders?” she asked, biting her lip. Mrs. Saylor surely aimed to please.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I told her. “The very finest.”

  Mrs. Saylor looked relieved. She picked up another box—a cardboard box in the shape of a heart—off the table next to her. “Have a chocolate, boys. All the way from St. Louis.”

  She lifted the lid, uncovering rows of chocolates: round, square, and heart-shaped ones. “The round ones are cream-filled, the square ones are solid chocolate, and the heart-shaped ones have nuts,” she explained.

  It only took a few seconds for my hand to land on a square chocolate while Jeb picked out a creamfilled one. We didn’t know what to do next until Mrs. Saylor said, “I believe I’ll have a heart-shaped one.”

  She popped the chocolate in her mouth. “Go ahead, boys,” she urged us. So we ate ours, chewing in silence, and oh, I’d never tasted chocolate like that before.

  There was nothing left to do but thank Mrs. Saylor, say our farewells, and get out. As we hurried down the steps, Mr. Saylor arrived home, wearing a three-piece suit and a big-city hat.

  “What did those rascals want?” I heard him ask his wife at the door.

  “Oh, they were just looking for something,” she said. “I gave them chocolates”

  “You are too soft-hearted, Lily,” he said. “But that’s what makes you so special.”

  “Did you see those pearls? They must be worth a fortune! And those stones from China too!” Jeb exclaimed once we were down the road apiece.

  “They were fine, but they were no Wonders,” I told him.

  Jeb looked like I’d just told him the sky was red instead of blue. “Why, nothing in Sassafras Springs is worth what that jewelry’s worth,” he said.

  “I know, but those three things together aren’t worth one doll like Mrs. Pritchard’s. All you can do with a string of pearls is hang them around your neck. I think I need to go back to where I left off yesterday.”

  “If you’re going back up the ridge, the next stop after the Pritchards’ is Cully Pone’s. If you go there, you’ll be plenty sorry.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause that Cully is crazy. Everybody knows it,” said Jeb. “You go over there and you won’t live to see your mountain.”

  Cully Pone was a bit odd, I agreed. But he was harmless, according to Pa. Jeb did not agree.

  “Has he got a gun?” I wondered.

  “Who knows? He’s got wild eyes. And he holds up his trousers with a rope.”

  What Jeb said was true. I could skip Cully’s place, but I’d kick myself hard if I ended up missing a Wonder.

  “If that’s the next place on the ridge, then I’m going there. Come with me. There’s safety in numbers,” I told Jeb.

  Jeb stopped in the road and turned to me. “I’ll walk up there with you,” he said. “But I’m not going in that house.”

  “Deal,” I agreed.

  “Who’s that?” Cully shouted as we approached his shack. Jeb and Sal both hung back when he lurched toward us, ax in hand. His eyes lit up as he raised the ax up above his shoulder.

  I closed my eyes so as not to watch my own head being chopped off. When nothing happened, I opened them, just as Cully rested the ax back on his shoulder and showed off his four teeth in a wide grin.

  “Boys, is it? Thought you was the tax collector. Haven’t had a caller in a dog’s age. Happy to have you,” he said in a loud voice. Cully tended to shout. “Don’t know why more folks don’t stop by.”

  Cully Pone was a string bean of a man. That bit of rope couldn’t keep his trousers from drooping dangerously low, and the moths had made quite a meal out of his felt hat.

  My mouth was dry as a bone, but I managed to explain what I was looking for. To my surprise, he didn’t hesitate a tick when I told him what I wanted.

  “Yes, indeedy, I got a Wonder,” he said as if somebody asked him for one every day. “Yess
irree.”

  He left his ax on the stump he’d been hacking away at and motioned for us to follow him into the house. I had never been inside and neither had anybody else I knew. I wasn’t anxious to go in now, because Cully’s place—no more than a shack—leaned considerably to the right.

  Cully made his living by doing handyman work. The trouble was, not many people wanted to hire a handyman whose own house was about to cave in. He might not have noticed, but everyone else in Sassafras Springs did.

  “I’ll give it a year,” I’d heard Pa tell Aunt Pretty once. I quickly tried to remember if a year or more had passed since I’d heard him say it.

  On the other hand a Wonder is a Wonder, and one more Wonder would take me one step closer to that mountain. So I followed him.

  When I glanced back at Jeb, he rolled his eyes as if to say, “When hell freezes over.” I figured if I was going to the Nile or the Amazon, I’d have to take a few chances. Against my better judgment, I forced myself to step inside. Sal trotted along behind me and Cully didn’t object.

  Near the door sat a huge chair covered with a pile of tattered quilts. There was an old potbellied stove in the corner and a bunch of wooden crates that Cully used for furniture.

  What caught my eye was a bookcase set dead in the middle of the room. It reached all the way to the ceiling. Or I should say, the ceiling sagged down and rested on top of the bookcase. The wood was split and warped and the shelves leaned at crazy angles. Every inch was covered with useless items: bent fishing poles, dusty pop bottles, what might have been an ancient coconut, and a rusty mousetrap with a piece of cheese so old and dry, even the hungriest rat would pass it by.

  Cully walked up to the bookcase and patted it, proudlike.

  “Yep. Here’s a guaranteed Wonder of the county. Even the state. And maybe even a Wonder of the whole doggone world.”

  “You’re talking about the bookcase?”

  “Yessirree, it’s a bookcase,” Cully bellowed. “My prized possession. Had it since I was a boy. Never read me a book, but by jiggers, I have a bookcase. The doggone doggonedest bookcase you ever did hear of, too.”

  Cully dropped into the chair and patted a crate for me to sit on. I didn’t have time to worry about whether the roof would fall in or whether the crate would give way.

  Cully Pone was starting his story.

  Cully Pone’s Story

  The Rainmaker’s Revenge

  This here bookcase once held the secrets of the universe, and it saved a couple of lives to boot. You probably never heard of Henry Upton, but folks up in Garnerville did. That’s in Garner County on the Garner River … about fifty miles north of here. Say, they like the name Garner there, don’t they?

  They had themselves a grand old drought when I was a boy. One year was dry. The second year was drier. The third year, there wasn’t enough rain to wet a postage stamp. The famous Garner County corn was as shriveled as that dead old tree stump out front, and the river had no more water in it than you could squeeze out of a rock. Things looked bad for the farmers, I’ll tell you that.

  Around that time a fellow called Henry Upton moved to town, and nobody’d seen the likes of him before. He wore a genuine top hat, like Honest Abe Lincoln—he was president once, you know. Some said Upton was a professor. Some said he was a traveling magician. Some said he was the son of one of the richest families back East. He moved into a cabin up on Rooster Ridge, the highest point in Garner County. Brought along a wagonload of fancy furniture—crystal lamps, horsehair sofas, and such. And he brought this here bookcase. Might have looked fancier then, but it’s the same one.

  The shelves were crammed with books. And the spaces where there weren’t any books were filled with jars and bottles of smelly crystals and cloudy liquids. He didn’t work the land, just read all day long. “Uppity” Upton, they called him from the start.

  Yessirree, one day this Uppity Upton took himself down to the Garnerville town hall and walked right into the town board meeting like he was invited, which he was not. He stood there with a big smile on his face and made the board an offer: He promised to make it rain on Garner County. If he did, they’d have to pay him five hundred dollars an inch! He guaranteed them ten inches for five thousand dollars.

  Those board members thought he was funny in the head. Even the mayor broke down and laughed. “What are ya gonna do, Uppity? A rain dance?”

  Henry Upton had long gangly arms and legs and a round middle, so the idea of him dancing had the whole town board laughing. Uppity stayed calm and waited until they quieted down, then he said he was going to use sci-en-ti-fic methods.

  That made the board members hoot and holler to beat the band. Uppity raised his arms to quiet them down. “You only pay me if you get results,” he told them. “You can’t lose on the deal.”

  Whoa, Nellie, that got them to thinking. Some of them were ready to sign him right up. The mayor argued that even if it did rain, there was no way Upton could prove it was because of him and not the Lord God Almighty. Uppity got real uppity and said, “Apparently the Lord God Almighty has not seen fit to make it rain around here so far. How much longer are you willing to wait?”

  Yee-haw! That got the Garnerville town-board folks thinking. Some said they couldn’t afford to let their corn crops wither away. Others said that it was wrong to fool with nature. Some said Upton was a crackpot—said it right to his face! The place was in an uproar, and Upton’s face grew purple. “Does this mean you’re turning down my deal?” he asked.

  The mayor stood up and looked at Upton eyeball to eyeball. “You’re dadburned right we’re turning you and your harebrained scheme down!” And with that, Upton left, mad enough to bust his fancy gold buttons.

  The next morning he built a platform on Rooster Ridge. He built a brick fireplace with a huge chimney pointing straight up at the cloudless sky. And over the platform, he built a roof to protect the fire from rain. Which there was none, of course. It was like a house without walls.

  Next he built a fire and started pouring strange, smelly powders onto the flames. Smoke the colors of the rainbow rose up out of that fire and kept on rising all the way up to the sky! Yes indeedy, rose halfway to heaven.

  The folks around Garnerville were watching every move he made. They saw him take a cot out on the platform and some blankets and, by Jehoshaphat, he slept there all night, getting up to add his secret potion every few hours. That fire never went out, morning to night, night to morning.

  Exactly forty-eight hours after the fires began, the clouds rolled in over Garner County. Those clouds opened up and poured down rain. It didn’t rain cats and dogs; it rained cows and horses … lions and tigers … boy, it rained elephants and giraffes!

  The Garner River began to rise. The seed corn began to sprout. They were celebrating in the kitchen of every farmhouse for fifty miles.

  Uppity gave the town board a bill for the first five inches. And did they pay Uppity? Oh, they talked about it. While the rain gushed down, they chatted. While the Brownstown Bridge washed out, they discussed. While the sprouted seed corn washed away, they argued. While two farmhouses slid into the Garner River, they debated. Meanwhile, Henry Upton kept that fire a-burning night and day, and the rain kept pouring down.

  Finally, one day he stopped long enough to trot down to the board meeting—which had been going on for the better part of a week—and demanded his payment in full!

  The mayor said, “We never made a deal with you, Upton. Maybe it was going to rain anyway, without your hocus-pocus. We’re not paying you a penny.”

  This time old Uppity didn’t argue. He went back to Rooster Ridge and piled on more logs and added more concoctions to that old fire. Purple and blue smoke billowed up from the chimney all day and all evening. When the lightning bolts lit up the sky, people could see Uppity tending that fire like a mother tending her newborn babe.

  Five more inches drenched the town that night. Five more inches the next day. Five more by the morning after that.

/>   That night the dam broke and the mayor’s house was flooded up to the third floor. He and his family floated their way to the town hall in their bathtub. Half the town board was there already, yowling like a bunch of soggy cats.

  For once everybody agreed on one thing: They had to get Uppity to stop his rainmaking. They floated their way to high ground, then slid their way through the mud up to the ridge.

  “Stop right there, Upton!” the mayor shouted when they got to Uppity’s place. “Have you no mercy?”

  Uppity smiled at the mayor, nice as you please. “I’m glad to see you admit that this weather is due to my rainmaking abilities,” he told the mayor. “I take it you’ve brought my payment of five thousand dollars along.”

  Well, sir, this time the mayor’s face turned purple. “I’m not paying you a penny, Upton. Now stop what you’re doing, or well have to stop you.”

  “I’ll stop,” Uppity told them. The mayor and the board members and the sheriff all looked relieved until Upton added, “Pay me ten thousand dollars and I’ll stop right now!” Uppity held a jar of crystals over the fire, ready to pour some more on. There was dead silence until—boom!—a huge thunderbolt clattered overhead and the whole kit and caboodle made a beeline out of there.

  Uppity kept on mixing and pouring, not stopping to eat or sleep. He was an angry man, ready to get his revenge on Garner County. But he wasn’t the only angry man. Down the hill, the mayor gathered together the sheriff and the board and the farmers whose houses had washed away. They all slogged back up to the ridge, mad as wet hens … or maybe drenched roosters. Hee-haw!

  They carried pitchforks and shovels and any mean-looking thing they could find, and they made a circle around Uppity and his fireplace.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” Uppity asked.

  “You’ve got five minutes to pack up and get out of here. We want you across that county line tonight,” the mayor growled at him.

  Uppity argued until the mayor pointed the sharp prongs of his pitchfork at him. “Here’s your payment, Upton, if you don’t git NOW!”