Sea Star: Orphan of Chincoteague Read online

  “It’s this week!” Paul blurted out.

  Mr. Van Meter nodded as if he knew all about it. “Finally I got as excited as my children, so excited that I talked it all over with Mr. Jacobs. We want to make a movie of it.”

  Paul and Maureen just stared. They could scarcely believe their ears. A movie made about the wild ponies of Assateague! Then Maureen became thoughtful. “Would Misty be in it?” she asked. “She was born on Assateague, but she’s not wild any more.”

  “That’s why we are here. We’d like to use the real Misty in the picture, the little colt that was in the book.”

  Now Maureen clapped her hands for joy and Paul leaped to his feet, letting out his shrill whistle. Misty came flying in, asking questions with her ears. He whispered the good news to her, laughing to see her ears swivel this way and that, as if to catch every word he was saying. Then she was off again, circling the plane and browsing all around it as if she were afraid it might eat her grass.

  “We knew you’d like it,” said Mr. Van Meter. “That’s what we came to see your Grandpa about. We want to buy Misty.”

  “Buy her!” Two heads jerked up as if they were on puppet strings.

  “Yes, we’d like to take her back to New York in that plane—on Friday after Pony Penning. You see,” he explained, “the roundup scenes over on Assateague and the swim of the ponies across the channel we want to make down here. But all the close-up scenes could be done better in our studio in New York. It will take months, because colts can’t work long at a stretch.”

  “But why,” Paul cried, “why would you have to buy her?”

  “Because,” Mr. Van Meter said soberly, “we’d want to keep her a while after the screen play is made. We’d want to take her to schools and libraries where boys and girls could meet her. We’d want to fix a stall for her in the theaters where her picture was showing so that they could see the real Misty. It might be a long time before she could come back.”

  “Yes,” added Mr. Jacobs, “and you are grownup enough to know that we would have to buy her to carry out our plans. We would have to be responsible for her.”

  The two men were like jugglers. But instead of balls, they were using words, tossing them back and forth over Maureen’s and Paul’s heads. Always the words seemed out of reach.

  Mr. Van Meter said, “We had a feeling you might want to share Misty with boys and girls everywhere.”

  “Boys and girls who have never seen a real pony,” Mr. Jacobs continued.

  It was Mr. Van Meter’s turn now. “Sometimes when I hear children in New York talk about Misty, it seems she no longer belongs to a boy and a girl on an island, but to boys and girls everywhere.”

  The words kept flying, back and forth, higher and higher. “Misty has grown bigger than you know,” Mr. Jacobs said. “She isn’t just a pony. She’s a heroine in a book!”

  Paul pounded his fists against the rough hard bark of a pine tree. Maureen turned her back on the men, digging her bare toes in a bed of moss.

  “There, now,” comforted Mr. Van Meter, “if you do not want to sell her, we will think no less of you.”

  A silence came over them all. It grew deeper and deeper. Even the hens and chickens stopped scratching, and far down the marshland Misty lay down to sleep.

  The sound of a chugging truck was welcome relief.

  “That’ll be Grandpa,” Paul said.

  Grandpa Beebe brought the truck to a stop. He got out and squinted down meadow at the silver plane. He took off his battered hat and scratched his head in puzzlement.

  “Grandpa! Oh, Grandpa! Come!” Paul and Maureen shouted, panic in their voices.

  Grandpa came swinging toward them. “What you two bellerin’ about?” he yelled right back at them. “Ye sound like a couple bull calves caught in a bob-wire fence.”

  “Oh, Grandpa,” cried Maureen, throwing herself on him, “they want to make a movie of Misty, and they want to buy her and take her away. Oh, Grandpa!” The words lost themselves in great heaving sobs.

  Grandpa put Maureen away from him. He strode over to the two men and faced them eye to eye. “If I was a younger fella,” he exploded, shaking a gnarled forefinger at them, “I’d give ye more’n a battle of words. Ye should be downright ashamed o’ yerselves. Grown men come to hoss trade with childern! Oncet when I was a mere little boy in my nine I went out to Hog Island and I come upon some nestes, fish hawks’ nestes they was, and I stole some eggs outen ’em. That night I woke up in the dark and I felt mean and shriveled inside. And that’s how you two should feel now.”

  The men started to speak, but Grandpa waved for silence.

  “Why, Paul and Maureen here has raised Misty from a teensy baby. I reckon Misty figgers they’re her pappy and mammy.” He clapped his hat on his head and looked from one to the other. “Why, Paul here saved Misty from drownding and oncet he stayed a hull night in a truck with her, and him and his sister bought her with their own earned money. You city fellas maybe wouldn’t understand, but livin’ out here on this lonely marshland, why, Misty’s the nighest to a friend these childern got.”

  “But, Mr. Beebe, we do understand—” Mr. Jacobs started to say more, but Grandpa turned his back and talked to the boy and girl.

  “Mind the time Misty got in the chicken swill and et all them green apple peels and got the colic? Mind how we three had to stay up walkin’ her and walkin’ her all the night long?”

  Maureen blew her nose.

  “I do, Grandpa,” Paul said. “And I recomember last Christmas when we fixed cardboard antlers to Misty’s ears and slung two gunny sacks with toys pokin’ out of ’em over her back. Recomember?”

  “I do!” Maureen spoke up. “And she had holly berries tucked in her mane and jingle bells tinklin’ from her halter.”

  Grandpa Beebe’s voice gentled like a thunderstorm turned into a spring rain. He included the two strangers in the circle now. “Yep,” he chuckled. “We took her right smack into the church for the childern’s Christmas party. You should of heard the childern laugh to see a pony in church. But one o’ ’em spoke up mighty cute. No bigger than a turnip that kid weren’t, and his voice was jest a mouse-squeak, but he come up to Misty an’ he said, ‘The little Lord Jesus was borned in a stable, and He’d like as not let a pony come to His house.’ Then Misty passed the presents around from her packs.”

  “Stop!” cried Mr. Van Meter. “Can’t you see the more you tell us about Misty the more we want her?”

  But Paul and Maureen and Grandpa went on as if they had not heard. “Mind the time we brought her into the kitchen,” Paul asked Maureen, “and Grandpa was washing his face over by the mirror, and when he looked up there was Misty laughing over his shoulder?”

  Grandpa slapped his thigh. “I tell ye, fellas, ’twas the funniest sight I ever see. I looks up at that shaggy face in the mirror and thinks I to myself, ‘Great guns, I’m gettin’ whiskery!’ ”

  Grandpa cut his laughter short. “What in tunket am I laughin’ at? This ain’t funny! Now you two strangers tell yer story and be right smart quick about it. Me and Paul got to go down the peninsula today.”

  Mr. Van Meter looked to Mr. Jacobs and Mr. Jacobs sent the look back. “You tell it, Van. You have children of your own.”

  Patiently, Mr. Van Meter told the whole story from start to finish. He explained, too, that his company was young and struggling and could afford to pay only two hundred and fifty dollars for Misty. “But,” he added quickly, “if the children do not wish to sell her, we shall think no less of them.”

  “Thar’s yer answer, then. We’ll help ye all we kin with yer picture-making, but Misty’s next to the Bible with us. Why, she’s got the map of the United States on her withers, just like her wild mommy, the Phantom.”

  “And,” added Mr. Jacobs very quietly, “the marking on her side is in the shape of a plow, like the state of Virginia.”

  Grandpa looked surprised. “Call her in, Paul.”

  Paul let out his shrill summons. It
roused Misty from her sleep. She listened for the whistle again. This time it came louder. She thrust her forefeet in front of her, got up sleepily and came lazing in.

  Grandpa took hold of her forelock. He turned her around “By smoke!” he exclaimed. “She has got the marking of Virginia on her. The shape of a plow it is.” He grew tongue-tied for a moment. Then he smiled. “I’m sorry I was snappish and made such a big to-do. But,” he added sternly, “the answer is still no.”

  “Grandpa,” suggested Paul, “don’t you figure they could find a good colt to buy at the Pony Penning sale after the roundup?”

  “ ’Course you could,” Grandpa told the men. “And Paul and Maureen’ll help ye all ye want during Pony Penning time. They’ll be glad to run yer errands and tell ye where the ponies will be druv, and where they’ll be swum acrost the channel. Now we got lots of work to do. Maureen’s got to do the cookin’ for her Grandma, and me and Paul have got big business down to Cape Charles.” He started to walk off. “You two goin’ up in that air buggy or could we drop ye. off uptown?”

  “We’d like a ride to the inn uptown,” Mr. Van Meter told Grandpa. “Our pilot friend is anxious to be off for Norfolk as soon as he finds out if we are welcome here.”

  “Well, ye’re welcome to go about yer picture taking, all right. Come along. We’ll go down and tell yer friend. Then I’ll drop ye off at the inn.”

  Chapter 3

  A MILL DAY

  MAUREEN WENT into the house. It was hard to settle down to her chores until the plane was gone. She heard its engines warming, heard it roar down the point of land. She ran to the window to see it take off, blowing the grass into ripples behind it.

  Two cameras and a little cluster of luggage were left behind. Paul and Grandpa, Mr. Van Meter and Mr. Jacobs, each picked up a load and carried it to the truck. Now the truck was moving away too, and soon Pony Ranch was bathed in silence.

  Maureen put on Grandma Beebe’s apron, wrapping it twice around her and tying it in front. The breakfast dishes were still on the table, beds unmade, rugs rumpled on the floor. She looked around, wrinkling her sunburnt nose. “I’d rather clean out the pony stable and all the chicken coops than clean house!” she thought to herself.

  But it was seldom Grandma Beebe left Pony Ranch, and Maureen had promised to take her place. She lighted the flame under a big pot of beans. Then she stood in the middle of the floor thinking.

  “I wonder—” she said out loud in the quiet of the house. “No!” she stamped her foot. “No, we couldn’t sell Misty. We just couldn’t.” And she turned briskly to the unmade beds.

  Meanwhile, Paul and Grandpa had left the two men at the little frame inn and were driving across the causeway, leaving Chincoteague Island far behind.

  All the way down the long peninsula to Cape Charles no mention was made of Mr. Van Meter and Mr. Jacobs. It was almost as if they had never dropped out of the sky at all.

  “Mighty nice cabbages in that patch,” Grandpa would say. “And the ’taters’ll soon be ready to dig, I reckon.”

  “Uh-hmm,” Paul would answer. “How many ponies you figure to sell down to Cape Charles, Grandpa?”

  “Oh, a whole flock, likely. Tim Button wants to use ’em to hawk his garden truck through the streets.”

  “Grandpa?”

  “What is it, boy?”

  “Why do the people over on the main say herds of ponies, and we say flocks?”

  “Why!” thundered Grandpa, taking one hand off the wheel to rub the spiky white whiskers in his ears, “it’s ’cause Chincoteague ponies is different, that’s why. They fly on the wind like birds. But,” snorted Grandpa, “the horses over on the main — they be earthbound critters.”

  Pleased with the answer, the boy fell silent.

  A truck cut in ahead of them. It was packed solidly with dark red tomatoes. Paul counted the crates, guessing at the number of tomatoes in each, then at the total tomatoes in the truck.

  The day was slowly raveling itself out. Big Tim Button had changed his mind about wanting to buy the ponies. “Sorry, Beebe,” he twanged through his nose, “but I just signed some papers to buy a couple secondhand trucks.” And he threw out his chest, slapping the papers in his pocket as if he were not sorry at all.

  Tired and discouraged, Grandpa and Paul headed for home. On the way they stopped at the ferry station to pick up Grandma and her friend, Mrs. Tilley, just back from Richmond. Paul had to climb into the body of the truck to make room for them.

  He made believe he was a pony being shipped away. He could poke his nose right into the cab because a colt had already done that and broken the glass in the window. Paul looked between the beards of wheat that decorated Grandma’s hat and giggled to himself. If he were a pony now, he would rip off the wheat and eat it. Then, like as not, he would trample the hat.

  He looked at Grandma to see if she would mind. But her eyes were absently following the fields along the road. He doubted if she would care at all. Mrs. Tilley, however, was lively as a wren, chattering and wagging her head, opening her purse, shutting it again, fussing with her packages. She would fly into a fit if a pony ate her hat. Paul grinned at the thought.

  Then he turned his back and sat down quickly to squelch the idea. He dangled his feet over the tailgate and watched the road unroll like a bolt of white ribbon behind them.

  It was almost sundown when they turned in at Pony Ranch.

  Grandma sniffed audibly as soon as the truck door opened. “Paul! Run into the house, quick. The pot of beans is burning!”

  Heavily, she got out and walked up the steps into the house. Maureen met her. “You got the best smellers in the whole world, Grandma! The beans were just fixing to burn, but you saved ’em.”

  With a kiss and a pat, Grandma whisked off Maureen’s apron and tied it around herself. “There!” she sighed, “I’d sooner have bread and molasses and burned beans to home than fine vittles on the main.”

  At supper that night when Grandpa had finished his plate of beans and spooned up every drop of molasses, he turned to Grandma. “How about yer trip, Ida? How does it feel to have a boy in college?”

  “I—don’t—know,” answered Grandma, with a long pause after each word, “I just don’t know.”

  “Well, where’s Clarence Lee, Jr.? Ain’t he got hisself all enrolled in that fine school?”

  Grandma exchanged a glance with Grandpa, then nodded her head toward Paul and Maureen as if she did not want to discuss the matter in front of them.

  “Oh,” chuckled Grandpa, “if it’s the childern ye’re worried about, ye can forget them. They done a heap of growin’ up today.”

  Grandma put down her fork. “I would feel better maybe if I did talk things out,” she said, looking from one to the other. “They were mighty nice to me there at the school.” She paused, then rushed on. “But the tuition money—it’s got to be paid ahead of time. Seems like the school is so overcrowded. There’s more young men want to enroll than there’s places for ’em to sit down.”

  “Why can’t they bring in stools and folding chairs,” interrupted Grandpa, “like we do when the church is full?”

  “I spoke of that, but they just smiled at me.” Grandma let out a big sigh. “I’ve had a mill day, Clarence. Seems like my heart’s been tromped on. I did so want Clarence Lee to go to college and be a preacher.”

  “Where’s the boy at now?”

  “He stayed to Richmond, trying to raise the money. But, Clarence, I’m all worried up. He’s got to take some kind of tests and he’s trying to earn a pile of money at the same time. Some boys can work hard and study too. But they ain’t had the bad pneumonia. Besides, most of them just get the gist of what they’re studying. Clarence Lee, now—well, he’s got to go deep down.”

  “Ye say a pile of money, Ida. How much do ye mean, exactly?”

  “Three hundred dollars.”

  “Three hundred dollars!” echoed Grandpa.

  “I know, Clarence. The grass was late coming this spri
ng, and ten of your best mares died off. I know. . . . But it was a pitiable sight to see him walk out that door, looking lost and lonely, like a colt cut out from a big bunch of his friends.”

  “Dang it all!” raged Grandpa. “Ef only Tim Button had taken them ponies. All I got to my name is fifty dollars.”

  Paul and Maureen had long since stopped eating. They looked up from their plates at the same time and suddenly their glances locked. Then, white-faced, they nodded to each other.

  “Grandma,” Paul spoke very quickly, as if he were afraid he might change his mind, “two movie men were here today. They came to buy Misty.”

  “For two hundred and fifty dollars,” added Maureen.

  Grandma’s coffee cup was half way to her lips. She set it back down again without touching it.

  “You didn’t sell her!” she exclaimed, aghast.

  “Well, practically,” Paul said. “As soon as they give us the money.”

  “You see, Grandma,” Maureen explained very carefully as if she were talking to a little girl, “Misty really doesn’t belong just to us any more. She’s grown bigger than our island. She’s in a book, Grandma. Now she belongs to boys and girls everywhere.”

  “Yes,” Paul’s voice warmed. “They want to take her to schools and libraries for children to meet—children who’ve never seen a real pony.”

  “I should think you’d have wanted to horsewhip the men,” Grandma said to Grandpa.

  “Oh, he did, Grandma, but when they told how much Misty meant to poor little city children, well, what could he do?” asked Maureen.

  Paul sat up very straight, thinking out his words carefully. “We want to give the money to Uncle Clarence Lee,” he said, “and when he gets to be a great big preacher, maybe he’ll want to send Maureen and me away to school.”

  “And if he does,” came Maureen’s high voice, “I’ll study to be a horse doctor.”

  Grandpa seemed to have a choking spell. He pulled out his red bandanna handkerchief; it almost matched his face.