Ширли Мерфи - The Sand Ponies

A long time later, with arrangements made to meet the school board and the proper papers to sign, coffeed, informed, and quite assured about the Tillmans, Mary takes her leave.

Outside, most of the children who had been at the schoolhouse are gathered around Mary’s jeep, deep in loud argument.

Jana is shouting, her dark eyes angry, “Not either! Didn’t come from Hell, no such thing! You don’t know anything, Billy Greeb.”

“Do, too,” the little boy shouts back, his face close to Jana’s. “Came from Hell. Devil sent ‘em!”

Lisa, until then watching silently, looks hard at Billy, then turns on her sister, shouting, “Came from Hell on a dark, stormy night, all right. I saw ‘em! Came to devil you!”

This is too much for Jana, and she grabs her sister’s hair. There is a moment of turmoil until Karen has them separated. Mary McCamley stands discreetly by, not interfering.

“What on earth’?” she asks Karen when there is a moment’s silence. “Came from Hell on a dark night? What are they talking about?”

“The Sand Ponies,” offers an older boy, stepping up. “Wild ones. They’re just wild ponies. People think they …”

At that moment Jana breaks in, nearly crying with indignation. “Sand Fairies!” she says. “They’re good, not devils! They make my wishes come true—that’s cause I can talk to them!” This is not true, but she feels enough better, having said it, to allow herself to be guided toward the jeep by Karen, and climbs into the back seat next to Abbey’s cage, where she will speak to no one but Abbey all the way home.

By the time they reach home she feels even better, for Lisa has apologized, fearing some dark retribution from the ponies if she does not, and it is understood, grudgingly, that she didn’t mean it. “Fairies,” she says, “I know that. I just felt sorry for Billy!” This is a lie, but it is ignored.

J. L. scramble out of the jeep together, shouting their news of Mary to Sarah Paddyfoot.

One more plate for supper and one more bed in the barn.

CHAPTER 15

Under the willow tree the table is laid with a yellow cloth, and there is a bouquet of day lilies in the center. A clam pie waits on top the oven, bubbling hot, and there is a salad of wild greens. Day-lily bulbs are simmering, and day-lily buds wait to be battered and fried. “My goodness, Sarah, where did you find them? I haven’t seen a one close by!” Karen says. “You’ve been busy while we were away.”

Sarah grins. “Oh, secret spot for day lilies. Take you there one day. I must have a few secrets, child! No, one more plate, places for nine.”

“Well, Miss McCamley, yes. That’s eight,” says Karen, counting.

“Set for nine.”

“Who else?”

“Oh, friend of mine. Met him in the day-lily patch.”

“Why, Sarah! But who?”

“Don’t rightly know. Tramp, maybe. Nice, though.”

Karen is staring at Sarah. “Why, Sarah Paddyfoot, what have you been up to? A tramp, did you say? Did he have a white beard, and very blue eyes?”

“Friend of yours, too?” asks Sarah.

“Well, no, but I saw him in town. He sure did stare at me.” She goes out with the plates, wondering. A tramp. Could he be the man in the cave, walking through the country? What had Sarah done, asking him here? Well, no sense in fussing. They’d find out soon enough. Too soon, maybe.

She can see Miss McCamley looking out the big loft window with Mr. Tillman and the boys. Abbey sits on her shoulder, tail twitching.

Will she stay? Karen wonders. It would be nice, nice to have her here.

When she looks again they have disappeared, but soon she hears pounding start in the barn, and she goes to see. In the stall next to her own Tom and John and Mr. Tillman are putting together a wood frame for Mary’s straw bed. Karen smiles. “You’ll stay, then?” she asks.

“Of course,” says Mary McCamley, “though I could build my own bed.” She is setting orange crates against the wall for shelves, and on these are her globe and her songbook, and next to them, Abbey, sitting very straight, watching it all.

When the bed is finished the boys scramble to get straw for it, startling Abbey into leaping from the box into the bedframe, where a moment later she is covered with straw and comes out mad, switching her tail. “Be careful, John!” Mr. Tillman frowns. Karen looks at him. She has not seen him cross before. But then he smiles. “Abbey, you must be quick in this house! Quick and nimble!”

Mary McCamley laughs at him as he sets Abbey back on the orange crate. “Have you spoiling her, that cat will,” she tells him. “I’ve known her a long time, takes advantage, she does, every chance she gets!”

Mr. Tillman laughs.

In the yard, beneath the tree, Sarah Paddyfoot straightens the day-lily vase. “To look at, these are,” she says, and beside the tree, in a tilted chair, sits the tramp, blue eyes bright and face and clothes very clean for someone who has been walking over the country.

There are introductions all around, and the tramp, whose name is Roland, bows gallantly to the twins, making them giggle. Then, taking Mary’s hand, he says, “Why, it’s the teacher from the village. How nice to see you again!”

Mr. Tillman goes to the kitchen and comes back with a bottle of amber wine, Sarah Paddyfoot rises to bring the pie on, and soon all are seated, the two guests placed where they can see the red sun descending into the ocean. The crow, very interested, comes down onto a branch to look, but Sarah chases him away. Bo wags mournfully, but has his own plate, and Abbey, on a box, has hers.

“I will make a toast, then,” says Roland, raising his glass.

” ‘Shield my soul from its peril, due

For the sins I sinned my lifetime through.’ “

Mary McCamley laughs gently, her glass half raised, then speaks softly: ” ‘My friend, my Roland, God guard thy soul! Never on earth such knight hath been, Fields of battle to fight and win. My pride and glory, alas, are gone!’”

“What is it, Papa? Is it Shakespeare?” The twins pull at their father’s sleeve, staring wide-eyed at Roland and Miss McCamley.

Jack Tillman smiles. “It is ‘The Song of Roland,’ ” he says. “Listen.

And he smote, with passion uncontrolled, On the heathen’s helm, with its jeweled crown Through head, and cuirass, and body down, And the saddle embossed with gold, till sank The griding steel in the charger’s flank; Blame or praise him, the twain he slew. ‘A fearful stroke!’ said the heathen crew. ‘I shall never love you,’ Count Roland cried. ‘With you are falsehood and evil pride.’”

“Is that you?” Lisa cries, looking across at Roland in amazement.

“I’m afraid not; only I like to pretend sometimes”— Roland winks—“that I might have been that Roland in some long past life.”

“Perhaps you were,” says Mary McCamley. “Ah, perhaps you were!”

Much later, leaving the adults, the children make their way to bed, the twins first, complaining, then Tom and John and Karen. The moon has risen full, and Karen looks longingly at the shore, silvered and quiet, and wishes she could walk along it, hut something makes her go on to bed, leaving the night to the grownups. She glances at them through the barn door as she goes to wash; they are dark shapes against the moonlit water. Their voices murmur contentedly, pipe smoke drifts on the breeze, and Mary McCamley laughs softly. Somewhere a night bird cries.

Karen gets into bed, propping the pillows behind her. There is a light on a cord beside her, and she takes up her notebook from the orange crate, where she has put a pot of mustard flowers and some shells from the sea. She feels snug and content, and in her mind words are going around. “The Song of Roland” speaks to her, the night and the sea sing outside her window, and she begins to think in words, in words of her own. Finally she leans forward and begins to write.