What Happened to Margalo - Part 5

When Margalo woke, the dripping had stopped and bits of early morning sunlight were winking through the spruce boughs.  She noticed that the spruce tree was also very noisy. Many birds had taken refuge in the tree during the long, wet night and this morning they were all going on at once - singing, chirping, chattering and whistling. One of them was chattering rather more loudly than the others. It was a blue jay.

“Yes siree, I tell you,” he was saying, “I wasn’t a bit afraid of that fella, though he was twice my size. Were the wife and I about to let that hawk have a look at our nest and young’uns? No, sirree! We went a flying at him like all get-out, and he was mighty surprised. Yes siree, I tell you, mighty surprised. He turned that red tail right around and went back from a-whence he came!”

“And the crow,” mentioned a similar, but softer voice - the jay’s wife.

“Oh, yes, the crow,” the jay continued. “Well, he did help a little - not being our friend you know, but common enemies with the hawk - he came along and made a con-tree-bution to our chasing the hawk.”

“We couldn’t have done it without him, I think,” said the jay’s wife.

“Couldn’t have done it!” the jay exclaimed. “I won’t argue he was useful, but really now...”

Margalo shuddered. They were talking about that hawk again. She hoped she might never meet him - being less than half the size of even a blue-jay, and having no mate to help protect her. But there was nothing to do about that now - except to take care of this disgracefully matted plumage! Margolo fluffed her light brown feathers and began to preen herself discreetly, keeping near the trunk so as not to be noticed. When her feathers were once more sleek and tidy, she decided to have a look around and hopped a few inches out on the limb, turning her head and tiny bright black eyes this way and that. The birds were still chattering away.

Then, from high up in the spruce, there was a loud sound of feathers being shaken - loud, because they were LARGE, rough, rustling feathers. Margalo froze. The other birds froze. The chattering stopped. A dozen feathered heads tilted upward, and a dozen sets of small shining eyes gazed warily into the topmost boughs of the spruce.  Most of them had forgotten the fact that little birds were not the only kind of birds to hide from storms in giant trees. In the stillness, they all sensed a trembling in the treetop and felt the branches quiver lightly as two large clawed feet sprang from the spruce’s height, and two great brown wings flapped crisply upward into the morning air.

Another small brown finch besides Margalo had slept in the tree that stormy night. His name was Benedict. Benedict slept in the spruce tree every night – not just when there were storms. He had not seen Margalo, because he was perched several branches higher, but he did notice when the hawk had first landed in the tree late in the rainy evening.  The hawk seemed more interested in resting at the moment than in looking for small birds to attack, for which Benedict was grateful. Besides, Benedict (who was sensible as well as courageous) knew there was no use in getting away on such a night, so he remained where he was and went promptly back to sleep. But he was relieved when the hawk flew off in the morning, taking his sharp eyes and sharp talons with him.  

After the hawk had gone, Benedict ventured out from the dim, damp inside of the tree to the wet and prickly outside which glistened gently in the morning sun. The clouds, having spent themselves on the land, were floating loose and lacy in the blue sky. Everything was fresh and delicious and bright again. Benedict decided to have a good hearty sing. So he did.

“Swee-e-et is the morn!
A new day is born!

Swee-e-et is the air!

The sunshine is fair!”

Then Benedict saw Margalo on a branch below him. She too, had hopped out into the sunshine and was refreshing herself by drinking beads of rain from the dripping spruce needles, pausing now and then to delicately shake the moisture from her brown feathers. Benedict thought she was very beautiful, and was sure he hadn’t seen her before. “Perhaps she is lost” he thought, “and will need my help.” So he flew down to Margalo’s branch. “Good morning,” he said.

        “Good morning,” Margalo replied.

        “Have you spent a pleasant night?” asked Benedict.

        “Pleasant enough,” Margalo answered. “I would much rather have spent the night in Mr. Grove’s barn, but I lost my way in the storm, so I was glad for the shelter of this tree.”

“I am familiar with Mr. Grove’s barn,” said Benedict. “Would you like me to show you the way back?”

        “Oh, yes, please – and thank you very much” said Margalo, which Benedict thought was quite proper, and he said “You are welcome” then turned toward the sun. “Follow me,” he said and with a flutter of wings rose into the air. Margalo with a flutter of her own was not far behind.

Benedict guided Margalo safely to Mr. Grove’s barn, where a cluster of worried pigeons greeted her with much relief and chortles of pleasure. Margalo thanked him again very cordially, and Benedict replied, “I am glad to be of service.” Then, having accomplished his mission, he flew back into the morning air and headed south towards the rye fields.

What Happened to Margalo - Part 4

[You may recall from the last chapter that the Summer family was watching a fierce storm. The story continues.]

A small brown sparrow, caught in the wet gusts of wind found herself being blown hopelessly farther from her shelter in the eaves of Mr. Groves barn. Her name was Margalo, and she had come from New York city to the countryside several months before, where she had befriended Mr. Grove’s pigeons who invited her to stay with them. This morning Margalo had gone out before the storm to visit her friend Cosette the mourning dove, who lived in a snug little clump of white pines near the river. Cosette was nesting and had sat comfortably on her single egg in its sparse nest of twigs while she and Margalo conversed. They had exchanged bits of poetry (they were both proficient poets) and Margalo had brought a tidy bunch of grass seed stalks as a gift for her friend. Cosette was very grateful for these, as she  had been sitting on her egg and was able to go out less and less in recent days.

“I do believe - though of course not meaning to alarm you” Cosette had said in her meek, cooing voice, “that there is a hawk in our – our vicinity. I espied him swooping low above the tops of the pines yesterday afternoon, as the sun sank below the western horizon,

‘cov’ring the land,

with bountiful hand,

in tinctures of amber from regions sublime’.

Cosette paused, savouring this new poetic utterance and continued. “And I do believe, not discounting the ‘tinctures of amber’  in the air, that it was a red-tailed hawk. Oh dear!”

“Oh dear,” echoed Margalo. Then she had looked at the sky and said, “Oh dear!” again, for dark clouds had begun to roll the light out of the sky. “I really must return to Mr. Grove’s barn without delay!”

“Do be careful, my cherished friend!” Cosette had said mournfully, as Margalo fluttered her wings with a final “Goodbye” and rose through the whispering pine branches into the damp, darkening air. The wind had begun to blow in fierce gusts before Margalo had gotten very far, driving her from her course, and then the rain had begun, making her way even more obscure. Now, Margalo did not know where she was. The Grove’s farm was nowhere in sight. She could see, however, the wide gray river in the distance, hazy and tossing in the rain, and knew that she must get her bearings and a proper command of her now soggy wings before she got too close to it. Rivers were nice to follow when flying north or south, or to perch in twiggy tree branches above the water where it flowed quietly. But the river was not quiet now, and if Margalo could not find a landing place, her weary, wet wings would give out - and she must not be above the rushing, deep river if that happened.

Margalo realized that she was rapidly approaching a large spruce tree. It was waving its shaggy wet branches in the wind and looked like a formidable giant, but Margalo knew that inside the spruce tree there would be shelter and some degree of dryness, so she made a desperate effort to fly toward it. Fortunately, the tree was in the general direction of the wind, so the desperate effort was not very desperate after all, and soon Margalo was resting safely within the prickly gray green boughs where only a few drops of rain plopped through now and then.  She fluffed out her sodden feathers and huddled close to the trunk, where, lulled by the darkness and gentle swaying of the spruce tree, she fell asleep.

What Happened to Margalo - Part 3

On Sunday morning the Summer’s awoke to an odd goldy-gray half light glowing at the windows. Mr. Summer pulled up the blinds and declared that there was a storm brewing if he’d ever seen one. Leona who loved thunderstorms, had climbed up the leg of Mr. Summer’s trousers to sit on the window sill and was gazing intently at the sky. “A storm is a beautiful thing, a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful thing!” she chanted while turning cartwheels along the windowsill.

Mother turned from the stove where she presided over two sizzling pans of eggs and sausages. “Oh, Leona, dear - don’t! You’ll fall!”she exclaimed. Leona landed her final cartwheel, scampered to her father’s hand on the windowsill and ascended to his shoulder by way of his his shirt sleeve for a better view out the window.

“A storm,” said Mr. Summer, “is a beautiful thing when you are looking out on it from a safe place.  It is not always beautiful when you are caught in it.” He pointed out the window. “That sparrow up there, hurrying across the sky, might not think the storm so beautiful unless he finds a suitable shelter.”

Ralph was still in his room, watching the morning stand-off between the sun and the storm clouds from his window. The storm clouds glowered, dark and threatening in the west. The sun glared back from the east, shooting yellow rays of light over the housetops and treetops and bruising the storm clouds blue and green. The trees and buildings pointed their long black shadows at the clouds and stood very still while the wind waited its turn to begin blowing.  It was a solemn moment. Ralph wondered what the river looked like right now. But then Dad called from the bottom of the stairs, “Breakfast, Ralph!”

At breakfast, Ralph talked about his encounter with Ned and Eric the evening before. “I never know just what to do when things like that happen,” he said. “I’m not a ranger, or a police officer, or their parents, but sometimes it just seems like someone needs to do something or say something and there’s no one else to do it.”

“I’d just like to see them try to throw things at me!” squeaked Leona, waving her toothpick fork above her head.

“There would be no question of what to do then, Leona” said Dad, with a troubled expression on his face. “Ralph, I think you did well. It’s always tricky to know when to talk to people about what they are doing. Pray for wisdom.”

The thunderstorm began during church. Ralph had heard it rumbling outside during the sermon. When church let out, people hurried to their cars as large drops of rain began to go splat on the ground, leaving wet marks as big as nickels. Leona wanted to play her favorite game, Dodge the Raindrops, but Mrs. Summer was afraid someone would step on her in the general hurry to the cars, so Leona contented herself with looking on from the security of Mrs. Summer’s handbag.  (Mrs. Summer had sewn into her handbag a special pocket for Leona that was positioned at the just the right distance from the top so Leona’s head could reach above the top when she stood. It had a pleated bottom with a tiny padded board that she could stand or lie down on, and Leona liked it quite well.)

By the time the Summers got home, the full scale splattering had begun. The storm was on. Rain drops attacked the ground like bullets from a million rain guns, thunder rumbled and lightning flashed.  Ralph hoped the storm would blow over by the afternoon so he could take the Merry Marmot out on the river.  But it did not. The thunder rolled away to the east, frightening all the boats off the river, and leaving the Summer’s home behind, but the rain poured on and on.

What Happened to Margalo, Chapter Two

Here is the next chapter of what happened to Margalo, in which the reader gains no further information about what happened to Margalo.

2.
Ralph and his family lived in a little town by the Susquehanna River. The river was a grand and exciting place and Ralph loved to go down to its banks whenever he had time to spare. Sometimes he would take his boat, the Merry Marmot, tied to a long string, and set her sailing in the swirling gray water of the river. Sometimes he would take Leona, who loved to ride the boat on fresh, breezy days when small brisk waves would send the Merry Marmot hopping along their little crests. Sometimes Ralph would just take himself to the river, and sit on a log or stump near the river bank  and watch the current flowing with broad and stately power, while the clouds looked down sedately from their fluffy height. He liked to look at the islands in the middle of the river when the day was clear and imagine what lived on them. He knew that white egrets, starlings and sparrows sometimes sheltered there. He liked to imagine that pirates did also. The state police patrolling the nearby city would never allow pirates on the river, and he never saw any pirate ships, but that made imagining that they were there all the more interesting.

If there were no pirate boats, there were still plenty of other boats buzzing past on the river, casting up shiny curls of water in their wakes and making the river edges go slap-slap-slap against the mud. Ralph liked to watch the fast ones – and the slow ones too. It was easier to read the names on the slow ones. He kept a list of the boat  names he saw on the river and he knew all of the familiar ones by heart. Every Sunday afternoon in summer, the Watson’s would go out on their Silver Schooner with different groups of friends. One time, Ralph had seen them with a family of six children on board, and all the children had waved at him, floating the Merry Marmot near the bank. He had waved back.

Now the sun was dropping low in the west as Ralph hopped off the edge of the last street at the edge of town and ran down the gravelly dirt slope to the river bank. Sunsets were later in the day now as spring stretched its larger, warmer days across the country, and Ralph enjoyed being able to go down to the river after supper once again. It was a still and quiet Saturday evening with hardly a ripple showing on the river. The gentle swell from a distant speedboat waved the surface momentarily and was gone. A flock of starlings was rising over the mirror-like surface of the water, curling upward, flashing black against hazy gold sky, then swooping downward to scatter themselves over a tree top on one of the river islands. Ralph could hear their squeaking chatter floating over the water. It was beautiful to watch the starlings in flight - sometimes hundreds of them would fly in a group, all pointing in the same direction, turning, dipping, rising and falling in perfect unity as if they were tied together by invisible strings. How did they know?

The sound of boys laughing echoed off of the buildings along the street above the river. It was not the nicest laughter - it sounded as if mischief were underway. Ralph heard the sound of feet running with the laughter nearer.

“Yiy! - almost got that one” shouted one.

“Almost? You missed by ten feet, at least” the other shouted back.

The running stopped and Ralph turned to see the two boys, several yards off, bending in the gravel bank to look for stones. He knew what they were doing - throwing stones at birds and squirrels again. The boys lived on the next block and had recently taken a fancy to testing their throwing abilities on wild animals . It was, perhaps, a good test of aim and skill, but they showed no pity to the few creatures they managed to hit down, leaving them to a crippled life or a slow death and it made Ralph angry to see them at it again. He couldn’t do anything about it just now, so he kept quiet and watched. Another group of starlings was heading out of town toward the river island and the boys began to throw stones, one after another, from their collected arsenals of gravel. The birds rose higher as they saw the stones flying toward them, but one tumbled back in the air, hit by a stone. It tried to fly on, limply, but coasted ever lower and lower until it fell helplessly in the river, flapping its wings and sending sorrowful little splashes outward. Ralph jumped up, wishing he could help the poor creature, but it was too far out in the deep water. He turned to the boys who were hooting and punching each other in the arms, and walked toward them. “What are you doing?” he said, trying to be calm. “You just ruined that bird’s life for no good reason.”

The boys looked at each other and laughed. “Ooh, it’s Mr. Forest Ranger, out to save the little animals.”
“You didn’t answer my question” Ralph replied, starting to feel hot by his ears.
“We’re practicing our aim” said one of them. “Moving targets, you know.”
“Don’t you think you’re going to answer to God for what you did with his animals?” Ralph said, his heart pounding. “I’d call that cruelty. You didn’t need that bird - just killed it for your own fun and made it suffer.”
“Whoa - okay, guy,” said the other boy. “It was just a starling.”
“I know,” said Ralph. “But it’s the principle of the thing. You know, principles are important. By the way, my name is Ralph.” He put out his hand.
“Ned” said the taller one, slowly reaching out to shake hands. The shorter, freckled one, shoved his hands in his pockets, “I’m Eric” he said.
“Glad to meet you,” said Ralph. “I like birds and animals, but I like people too. No hard feelings?”
“Sure” they said, looking rather relieved and turned to leave.
“See ya round” Ralph called after them.
Then they were gone, leaving Ralph to watch the sunset, which had by now dimmed to a dull yellowish gray, with only a hint of gold where the sun sat behind the clouds at the horizon. The starlings had begun to grow quiet and the smooth, shining river glowed like damp silver under the darkening sky. Tomorrow, Ralph thought, there would be rain.

What Happened to Margalo, Chapter One

Several weeks (or has it been months?) ago, I posted about my intention to write a children's book. I had bright aspirations of hiding it away until it came forth as a brilliant children's masterpiece and then publishing it  complete with lovely pencil illustrations. However, my aspirations have narrowed down to the meager goal of   completing a good story that comes to a good end. I might still try to publish it (though I don't know if the business of Stuart Little and others like him being in the story will pose some copyright hindrances), but a work of genius it is not, and therefore need not be secreted away until that time. I am going to begin posting the story on here in semi-regular installments for what I hope will be the enjoyment of my readers. I also welcome constructive criticism.

Without further comment, here is Chapter One of What Happened to Margalo

Tap-tap-tap. Ralph Summer stood at his father’s work table in the cool, dim basement carefully hammering the last nail into his birdhouse. The afternoon sunlight  cast a broad beam through the window well above him, and in the light, bits of stirred-up sawdust danced on their way to the floor. Ralph always wondered, when he saw the dust floating in the light, if the other 1300 cubic feet of air space in the basement (he had calculated it one time) also swirled with specks that you couldn’t see without the sunshine, or if really all the dust pieces flew to rays of sun just so they could dance in it. One could never really be sure about such things. He had tried once surprising the dust in the corner with a flashlight, and there they all were – the little specks twirling about in its beam. But perhaps they all came to it, as to the sunlight, and laid down again when he turned it off.  It would have to be a mystery. He turned back to his work. Tap, tap, tap until the silvery nail head came even with the grainy wood, and running a thumb across, you could scarcely feel the bump to tell you it was there – that was how you knew a nail was in good.

It was Saturday, and Ralph loved to spend his Saturdays building things. Several weeks ago, he had completed a boat, and it had taken him six Saturdays to finish. Now he was building a birdhouse from instructions that he had found in a book from the library. He had put in the last nail – there had been twenty-six tiny nails in all – four connecting each side wall to the floor, three connecting each of the roof panels to the walls, four connecting – well, anyway, it had been a good deal of nailing and he was satisfied that it was done. His little sister Leona had helped him count and line up the nails, and was now carrying an extra nail back to the open box of nails on the work table. Now, Leona, it must be explained, was not a normal little sister. She was quite, well -- miniature. Since her birth three years before, Leona had grown only half an inch, and now was two and three-quarters of an inch in height. She looked a bit like a mouse, some thought, but Ralph (whom you would consider a rather normal boy) was sure she was not a mouse, as she hadn’t any tail, except a little furry bit as short as a teddy bear’s tail, which Ralph had seen when she was born. He never saw it now because she kept it modestly concealed under the miniature doll’s dresses she wore. Now Leona was standing on tip-toe on top of the workbench to peer into the bird house opening. “May I go in?” she asked in her clear, tiny voice.

“Sure,” Ralph replied. "The glue isn't quite dry yet, but it's safe." He offered Leona his hand and lifted her to the entrance. Leona neatly dropped into the birdhouse feet first and disappeared. “Sit tight” said Ralph, as he turned the bird house so that the light from the window shone into the hole.

“Oh!” he heard Leona exclaim. “How pretty. I think I will just sit here for a bit”. Ralph began to clean up. He placed the hammer head on its pegs, put the wood glue bottle on the shelf next to the crinkly curled up caulk bottles and crusty, dusty cans of leftover paint, and he put the nail boxes on the shelf below the glue. Then he swept the sawdust from the work table into the trusty orange dustpan that always hung with its accompanying brush on a nail under the work table and brushed the dust into the trash bin.

Leona was coming out of the bird house. He saw her tiny brown forefeet appear once more in the opening, and soon her pink nose and bright eyes followed, and she hopped to the work table before Ralph could offer his hand. “Very nicely done,” she said, briskly wiping the sawdust from her paws. “I wouldn’t mind living in it myself, except that it would be hard to get my bed through the hole.”

“The birds are very clever about their beds” said Ralph. “They bring them into their house piece by piece and build it inside - thick twigs and thin grass, scraps of thread, dry leaves, dog’s fur and lost feathers- all sorts of things they bring to stack and weave together for their nests. Nearly the whole house can be stuffed with the accumulated materials, and the eggs and babies rest in a nice soft bed.”

Ralph walked over the to the old wooden high chair under the window-well. The high chair had been his when he was a baby, and now was kept in the basement to be handy for when the his grown married cousins, or the Hildens from church came for dinner and needed a high chair for their baby. But right now, its patient wood tray was holding the library book, lying open to “How to Build a House for Bluebirds and Sparrows” The birdhouse was ready to be painted, if he followed the instructions in the book from the library, but Ralph didn’t want to paint it. “ Why would a bird want to live in a painted house?” he said.

“It wouldn’t” said Leona. “If I were a bird, I would want to build a nest where no one would notice me, so my eggs would be safe.”

“Well, I’ve never seen a robin with a painted nest, or a woodpecker with a painted hole in an oak tree. A bird house should look natural, so the birds will know it’s a safe place to live.” said Ralph decidedly. 

He looked at his finished bird house, sitting new and empty on the work table and wondered what bird might find it and want to live in it. The world was such a large and beautiful place, full of shady trees and shadowy bushes, and tall grasses, and snug dry eaves and all manner of places for sensible birds to raise a family. Would one of them think his new little bird house a suitable home? He hoped so.