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Seeing Sky-Blue Pink

CAROLRHODA BOOKS, INC.

Contents

Asking the Cat...............................25Sky-Blue Pink................................40Fooled at the Dump...........................55Buckingham Runs Away.........................74The Tree House...............................90The Last Chinquapin Bush.....................106Sam's Perfect Day

Chapter One

"How about a wheelbarrow ride?" Sam asked. He tamped the earth around the base of the dogwood tree he had just planted.

Maddie looked doubtfully at the dirty wheelbarrow. Is that the way people got around in the country? In Manassas, she and her mother took the bus.

"Where to?" she asked.

"Mrs. Tompkins' house, just down the road," Sam said. "She wants to meet you."

The window in Maddie's bedroom screeched up. Her mother poked her head out. "Sam, the tree is beautiful. Maddie, did you know Sam dug that wild tree from the woods?"

"Mom, I'm riding in the wheelbarrow to Mrs. Tompkins'!"

"Oh, Maddie, I'm afraid it will rain."

Maddie hoped her mother wouldn't say no. "I don't care if I get wet."

Her mother glanced at Sam. "Doesn't it look like rain?"

"Let's ask Abraham. He'll know." Sam bent down to the big black cat that lay stretched in the grass.

Maddie laughed. "Ask a cat the weather!"

Abraham sat up and glared at Maddie with slitted eyes. She stopped laughing.

"Cats know more than people give them credit for," Sam said.

"How do they tell us?"

"They have ways." In a loud voice, Sam said, "Abraham, will it rain this afternoon?"

The cat yawned, then scratched behind his left ear.

"Sunny!" Sam declared.

Maddie's mother laughed. "If Abraham says so. Have fun, you two."

"What if it was going to rain?" Maddie asked Sam. "What would Abraham do?"

"Scratch his right ear," Sam replied.

Maddie looked at the cat with new respect. "I wish Abraham would sleep on my bed. But he doesn't even come when I call him. He doesn't like me."

"He doesn't know you yet. Give him time."

Before they married Sam, Maddie and her mother used to have Perfect Days. On Perfect Days, Maddie shared a maple walnut sundae at Rudy's, visited the library, and rubbed the left hoof of the horse statue in the park, for luck.

Now Maddie had a new father, her own bedroom in a real house, and a cat that could tell the weather. It was a lot to get used to all at once. She wondered if she would have Perfect Days in the country.

Sam tipped the wheelbarrow and brushed out the loose dirt. "Ready?"

"Can Buckingham come too?" Maddie never went anywhere without her stuffed donkey. Patches of gray fur had been worn away. Buckingham's legs hung like old socks. One arm dangled from a few threads.

Maddie worried that Sam would laugh at her about Buckingham, like the kids at school did. "Sissy-baby," they called her.

But Sam said, "Buckingham would probably like a change of scenery." He steadied the wheelbarrow so Maddie could climb in.

"Am I too big?" she asked.

"You're just the right size."

Maddie crawled into the wheelbarrow. "Mom says I'm small for eight. And my feet never grow. Other kids make fun of my feet."

"You just don't have as much turned up on the ground," said Sam.

Was that supposed to be funny? Should she laugh? Maddie bit her lip. She wished she knew what to say.

"Here we go." Sam lifted the handles and rolled the wheelbarrow across the yard.

Maddie tucked Buckingham between her knees. She gripped the sides of the wheelbarrow as she bumped down their driveway and onto the side of the road. The fat front tire bounced over gravel. It was hard keeping her rear end from bouncing, too.

"Okay?" Sam called.

"Ye-es-es-es!" Her voice juddered over each stone. They rolled past two houses and a barn. A pony with a shaggy mane stared at them. Maddie wanted to wave, but couldn't let go.

Sam turned at a battered mailbox. A white clapboard house sat on a tiny lawn. Ruffly pink flowers bloomed along the fence. A battered pickup truck hunkered in front of an old garage.

Sam stopped the wheelbarrow by the back porch. Several red hens flustered around, chuckling at their arrival.

A woman wearing an apron over men's pants stepped out of the house. She drew a handful of corn from her apron pocket and scattered the kernels in a wide arc. The hens waddled over to gobble their lunch.

"You must be Maddie," the woman said, smiling. "I'm Eliza Tompkins."

"Hi." Maddie climbed out of the wheelbarrow with Buckingham.

"Sam, why haven't you brought this child over sooner?"

"Sorry, Miss Eliza," he replied. "Between the garden and my orders and moving Maddie and Sharon's things into the house-"

"You could have come by for ten minutes," she chided. "Well, you're here now, Maddie. Come inside."

Maddie followed Mrs. Tompkins into the kitchen. It smelled like wet wool and woodsmoke, even though it was late summer. She looked around. A heavy wooden rocking chair draped with sweaters was pulled up to the stove. A leather Bible, bristling with bookmarks, rested on the table. Plants with purple flowers and fuzzy green leaves lined the windowsill.

Maddie liked this room. In their apartment in town, the kitchen was dark, with ugly yellow walls that stayed greasy no matter how hard her mother scrubbed them. Maddie touched one of the plants' fuzzy leaves. It was soft as a kitten's ear.

Sam came in and hung the red ballcap he always wore on a nail by the door. "I unloaded that sack of feed from your truck and put it in the chicken house."

"You're an angel." Mrs. Tompkins set a meringue-covered pie on the table. "I dropped a fork this morning, so I baked a pie."

"What?" asked Maddie.

Sam grinned at her as they sat down. "There's an old saying, 'Fork falls, lady calls.' Miss Eliza means she knew a lady was coming to visit."

"Oh." She was worried about the kind of filling under the blanket of meringue. What if it was lemon? She hated lemon.

"Butterscotch?" Sam asked Mrs. Tompkins.

"What else? Butterscotch is Sam's favorite." Mrs. Tompkins' knife sliced through a cloud of meringue. Underneath lay soft, brownish-yellow custard. She gave the first piece to Maddie.

"I've never had this kind before," said Maddie, taking the smallest bite possible. With her tongue, she smooshed the meringue against the roof of her mouth. It was good!

"How do you like living in the country, Maddie?" asked Mrs. Tompkins.

"I've only been here a week," Maddie said. She wasn't sure she liked living in the country, but didn't want to say so.

She did miss drawing with chalk on the sidewalk in front of their apartment building. And riding her bike. But there were no sidewalks in the country. And she couldn't ride her bike on the busy highway.

Mrs. Tompkins nodded at Buckingham, who was sitting quietly in Maddie's lap. "We haven't been properly introduced."

"This is Buckingham. I've had her since I was four." Maddie didn't say her father had given her the small donkey the morning he left Maddie and her mother.

"Her?" asked Mrs. Tompkins. "Isn't Buckingham a boy's name?"

"My Buckingham is a girl," Maddie said patiently. She always had to explain about Buckingham's name.

Mrs. Tompkins took Buckingham's paw, the one that was loose, and...