1. The Discovery ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

This novel is dedicated to my dear friend Eleanor Yeager Stewart, who helped me realize that the worlds of our childhood were never somewhere else but always right within us. Here is part of my childhood world—almost exactly the way it was!

The tall foxtail of July waved like ornamental grasses above him. Across the road to the northeast stood the school with the grades and the high school all in one building made mostly of metal. Two long, angling sidewalks approached the two sets of doors spaced along the south front of the red-roofed one-story school. The white paint on the exterior walls made dusty spots on the fingertips when it was touched, and the scrubby evergreens along the foundation gave off a pleasant mid-summer scent. Straight to the north, dappled shadows played across the porch of Beulah Jones’ house surrounded by old maples. The drive to the parking lot between the school and the gymnasium curved past sawed-off poles spaced to deter traffic from entering the playground. Behind the gym was a fringe of trees bordering Pine Creek. Had he been taller, he might have seen Beulah in the vegetable garden tucked behind her home. She wore a straw hat and pretty gloves made for gardening. Her white hair curled stylishly beneath the hat’s broad brim. She seemed perfectly at ease bending over her tomatoes and hunkering down to pull the weeds among her onions.

The sky was the pale blue shade of a hazy summer. Rows of cumulus clouds floated slowly toward the east—so slowly that their motion was almost undetectable. Now and then, the rasping crescendo of a cicada in the nearby catalpa tree caught his attention before the sound trailed away. His mother, Ida, was hoeing industriously in her large garden. Plenty of hoeing was needed in July, for the ground had hardened under the baking sunshine and firmly gripped the roots of the weeds that were shooting upward and outward at an alarming rate each day. Unlike Beulah, his mother wore no hat. The tight curls of her “perm” glistened black while she threw her sun-reddened shoulders into the work of hacking away at the pigweed and the lamb’s quarters.

He couldn’t see his mother, either, even though she was only thirty feet away. He couldn’t see the houses of Pine Village in an arc from the north to the west. His mother’s garden on the south side of State Route 26 and the playground on the north side defined the east edge of the town. The cozy homes nestled securely among the shade trees. Robins sailed down from the low branches to pull worms from the lawns, and katydids droned pleasantly in the foliage. Occasionally, pickups with curving fenders and livestock panels around the beds ambled along the highway. Horses in the narrow meadow behind Jim Eberle’s house whinnied happily.

He saw only the nodding brushes of the foxtail all around him and a spot of blue sky and white cloud above. Ida had stamped her sandaled feet in the thick growth of foxtail until she had hollowed out a “playpen” for little Robert, who had just turned two. The weeds were impenetrable there in shade of the lone catalpa on the south edge of the garden, and she knew that Robert could go nowhere. He sat with his feet almost together and his dimpled knees to either side. He indolently played with the long stems that his mother had trod.

Suddenly, the weeds parted and eyes stared at Robert. His blue eyes must have registered just as much surprise as he saw in the blue eyes that looked back at him. To get his mother’s attention, Robert shouted. She dropped her hoe and came running as fast as she could between the rows of potatoes. Soon, her face with the glasses almost slipping off her nose peered down from the circle of sky above Robert.

“It’s a kitty!” she exclaimed, reaching downward and scooping up the ivory-colored kitten, which mewed, much to Robert’s delight. The fur was scarcely any lighter than Robert’s hair, for he was a towhead. Ida set down the kitten only long enough to lift Robert in one arm while she reached for the kitten again with her free hand. Taking long strides so that Robert wouldn’t get too heavy, Ida rushed toward the house. When she reached the gate that leaned from the corner of the old smokehouse, her steps were easier in the mowed grass on the other side. She swung open the screened door of the breezeway between the smokehouse, now a storage room, and the kitchen. She was glad to set Robert down while she kept a firm hold on the kitten.

“We’ll feed him some cream,” she said, disappearing into the kitchen and soon reappearing with a saucer in hand. There in the breezeway, she placed the saucer before the wobbly kitten and poured a little cream that she had drawn from the separator just that morning. It was a Marvel Gravity Dilution Cream Separator made by Superior Sheet Metal Works Company of Indianapolis, as a silvery plate on the dark blue three-legged can proclaimed. Even though Robert’s feet hurt, as they did whenever he stood, he hardly noticed the ache because he was so entranced with the kitten, which overcame its fear and flicked its little pink tongue into the fresh cream. “After he has drunk all he wants, you can pet him a little,” said Ida.

Silently, she and little Robert watched the kitten contentedly lapping the surface of the liquid. It drank almost every drop. Then Ida showed Robert how to pet the creature lightly so as not to hurt it.

“What shall we call him?” Ida asked Robert. Because the kitten was so soft, Robert said, “Fuzz.” Ida laughed. “That’s a good name for him!” she agreed.

At that moment, Robert’s father came to the porch on the opposite side of the kitchen from the breezeway. “Joe, come here,” Ida called to her husband. “Look what Robert found!”

In his dark blue overalls and short-sleeved shirt, bleached almost white, Joe hurried through the kitchen and out to the breezeway. He took off his seed corn cap and ran his hand over his balding head. His eyes twinkled and his face broke into a smile. “Well, where did you find a kitten?” he asked his wife.

“Robert found him,” Ida explained. “I heard Robert yell, and here was the kitten standing by Robert in the weeds. His name is Fuzz. Robert named him.”

“We’re going to keep him, are we?” Joe wanted to know.

“He’s Robert’s kitten,” Ida answered.

Robert looked up at his father’s merry eyes and his mother’s big smile. He could hardly believe his luck in getting to have such a miraculous thing as a soft, warm kitten, which had begun to purr under his careful touch. Robert would remember that day for the rest of his life.