John leaped over the back fence at Piya's house and considerably startled four of the gang who were sprawled around under the shady tree.
They all spoke at once.
"You nearly jumped on my head," said Ingrid who had been sitting against the fence.
"Idiot numbskull - don't scare us like that," shouted Sam who often scared his brothers and this is what they said to him.
"Yikes!" said Piya and held her hand against her heart.
"Cool it, cool it," said Joshua who had been playing with his glasses and dropped them when John suddenly appeared over the fence. They did not break so he gave a huge sigh of relief and put them back on his head.
"The Hermit is out and says we can visit," John burst out in a loud whisper. Some of their parents weren't sure if the Hermit was a suitable companion for the gang - they didn't say the kids couldn't visit him, they just put on their concerned look when his name was mentioned. So, of course, the gang had learned to never mention him - just in case.
The gang all scrambled to their feet.
"Where are the twins," asked John.
"Visiting their aunt and uncle in the country," Joshua told him. "Where's Bill?"
"I told him," John said. "He was going to the fort or the woods or the used car lot to look for you. I said I'd check here. I was right. He'll meet us there."
All five climbed back over the fence and crouched down in a run along the line of bushes at the back of Old Man McTaggart's property until they got to the Jenkin's yard. They squeezed through a hole in the fence and raced across the Jenkin's, Baxter's, Wilson's and the Abernathy's backyards. Then they zoomed through the empty lot and out onto the sidewalk.
The Hermit liked you to come in by his front gate.
Bill was waiting for them on the sidewalk. He was out of breath from running. "Oh good, you found them." he said. "Lucy and Ellen are away."
"Yeah, we know," said Sam with his hand over his mouth so his words wouldn't come out in a shout.
The Hermit lived in a witch's hat house. This was what Ingrid called it because it came to a point in the middle of the roof.
Of course the Hermit had a real name. It was Raymond Earle. He had told the gang they could call him Raymond if they wanted. Bill sometime did. But mostly they all called him Mr. Earle.
He liked people but not all the time. Some time he just wanted to be left to himself. So if he was sitting out on his front veranda but did not call out a hello or wave back at the gang they did not bother him. He had asked them not to. They would pass by his house with a mournful, shifty-eyed look, ever hopeful.
When he felt like being sociable he would give a wave or call out. As he had done today to John and Bill. Then the gang couldn't get there quickly enough.
"Boy, Lucy and Ellen are going to be MAD," said Sam against his hand as they marched up the path to the Hermit's house. He had lots of bushes and trees around. And the front walk was made of flat rocks that he said were called flagstones so it felt like a path and not a walk. Mr. Earle was on his veranda.
"Want to sit out back?" he asked when they were at the steps. "It's sunnier. But a nice breeze, right?"
The Hermit was very fond of sun and they grouped around to the back of house by going around it. Sometimes they went into his house but only when invited and then it was special. It had occurred to Ingrid and Lucy and Joshua that eight kids in a two-roomed house were a bit much for anyone to take not to mention a man who erratically liked his fellow human beings.
When they got out back Piya opened her eyes and mouth wide. She looked at Ingrid and nodded toward the forsythia bush in the corner by the back door. It had a blue shirt draped over it.
Ingrid raised her eyebrows and shrugged.
John and Sam realized what Ingrid and Piya were silently motioning about and then Bill and Joshua did too.
"Where will we sit ourselves today?" Old Ray asked. That was what he called himself. Old Ray.
It was a very small backyard but there were many areas.
Bill sort of wanted to sit in the tree house - it was only a few boards nailed on very low branches of a sprawly beech tree but Old Ray said it suited him fine and made up for his never having had a tree house as a child. It only fit one person and it was finally Bill's turn to sit in the tree house - but he agreed happily enough when Sam said, "The whittling stumps," in a loud whisper. The Hermit could not stand to have Sam shout and had actually once sent him home when Sam forgot and yelled and made Old Ray drop his part of a delicious peach down a crack in the veranda. So Sam was very careful not to shout.
"Yeah, the stumps," the gang agreed and got themselves arranged and seated.
These were a dozen or so pieces of logs dug partly into the dirt in the corner of the yard where nothing would grow because it was "too shady, too dry, too ornery," Old Ray had told them.
Once the gang sat down Old Ray dug a tin can out from under one of the logs and passed it around. It had an assortment of knives in it. Everybody chose one.
"I wanted that one," John told Joshua.
Joshua said, "Tough."
John chose another.
Piya was seated near the forsythia bush with the blue shirt on it.
"Did you just wash your shirt, Mr. Earle?" she asked.
"Goodness sakes, no," he told her, testing the sharpness of his knife on his thumb. He always got the same one because he got first pick. "You can have first pick at your homes. I get first pick at mine," he had told the gang the first time he gave out the knives. Lucy had been about to tell him this was not polite since they were the guests but Ellen had realized what she was about to say and had shushed her with her eyes. And anyone who had nearly a dozen old knives just for whittling, well, he could pretty well do as he wished, was the gang's general feeling.
"I washed that shirt ages ago - it's nearly dry," Old Ray said.
"It's going to rain," Piya said decisively with a significant look at the rest of the gang. "Any time."
Old Ray looked up at the sky. "You could be right," he agreed. "It's hot and heavy enough."
Piya looked knowingly at the others. It had nothing to do with hot or heavy. It had to do with Mr. Earle's shirt being put out to dry on the forsythia bush.
Back in the spring Piya had noticed that Mr. Earle would wash the shirt he wasn't wearing - he had two, both blue - when it got dirty and hang it out to dry on the forsytia bush. It looked lovely then, the light sky blue colour draped over the yellow flowers on the bush.
Then one day, close to summer, Piya said, "Whenever Mr. Earle puts his shirt out to dry, it's sunny. But when the shirt dries, it rains."
The gang had various responses to this. Ingrid laughed. Joshua and John laughed even harder. Sam hooted. Lucy and Bill chuckled. Ellen looked thoughtful.
Piya had started to go home with her bottom lip drooping but Joshua pulled her back - they had been in the lot by the railway tracks that had three wrecked cars in it so they called it the used car lot.
"Sorry, Piya, but it's a bit like a fairytale," Joshua told her.
"Wait a minute," said Ellen. "Remember the day he dripped grape juice on his shirt" (it had been a most special day when the gang had been invited in to see some of Mr. Earle's collections) "and he went and changed it and washed out the stain and it was raining but he put it out on the bush anyway - " She paused.
"And it stopped raining," Sam shouted.
The gang looked around at one another.
"There's got to be a logical explanation," said Bill, nervously, wondering what on earth it could be.
"Of course," the rest agreed but they were not troubled, like Bill, to wonder what it was. Piya shook her head. Ellen still looked thoughtful.
That had been weeks ago.
Now Piya looked at the almost dry shirt and then at the sky. It was hot and hazy. Oh well, she thought, and shrugged and picked up her knife and a stick of wood and started to whittle. She liked to make sticks with points and she took them proudly home and her mother tsk'ed tsk'ed over the sharpness of them and hoped Piya was very careful but she was constantly finding a new use for them. One held up the sagging begonia in the garden. One was jammed under the door to the cold room in the basement to keep it open so it would air over the summer. One was beside the laundry tubs for when Mrs. Singh bleached clothes and needed a stirring stick.
Some of the gang had chosen blocks of soft wood and were carving things in three dimension.
John had taken all the bark off one of the logs and was carefully carving a face in the side. It was a strange face made of a series of patterns. He was doing it quietly on the curve facing him so no one really knew what he was doing. This was the fourth time he had had a chance to work on it - the last two visits to Mr. Earle had been tree house and comics - and now John's carving was beginning to take shape.
They talked a lot as they whittled. Old Ray sometimes talked, sometimes listened. At times he would tell them world stories. He had never traveled far from his home but he had pen pals all over the world and he would tell them their stories like his own. On one or two special occasions he showed them his collection, bits and pieces of interesting things that his pen pals had sent him.
Bill got up to stretch his legs.
"Oh wow!" he said when he saw what John was doing. Everyone got up and crowded around to take a look. Mr. Earle didn't say anything. He just looked and looked. Then he looked at John. John stared back. Anyone else would have wriggled in nervousness or embarrassment. John did not.
Finally Old Ray said, "John, let's move that out here where you'll have more space to work." And he did. And he touched the carving carefully. That was all he said and did but everyone thought a bit differently about John.
He had done something that Old Ray thought was worthwhile.
Suddenly Piya jumped up, shrieking, "It's raining! It's raining!"
Old Ray leaped to his feet as well. "What is the matter with her?" he demanded. “Has she gone mental? It’s just rain, for pete’s sake.”
Everyone talked at once.
"Oh don't be mad, please don't be mad," Ingrid pleaded, "She couldn't help it."
"You're magic! You're magic!" Piya was saying this over and over. "You can make it rain. Or stop raining."
Everyone else was trying to explain.
Old Ray looked from one to the other. And then back again. He had that rare ability of being able to make sense out of confusion.
After a few minutes he realized what had set Piya off. He pushed his lips together. He was trying not to laugh.
"Oh, jiminy cricket," he said. "I wish I could control the weather!" He rubbed his jaw with his index finger. "Maybe I do - it's the same thing, really. I just work along with the weather forecaster on the radio. If he says it's going to rain in the afternoon, I wash in the morning. So my shirt gets dry before it rains. Like now." He got his shirt off the forsythia bush as it started to rain harder.
He looked at Piya's disappointed face, at John's emerging sculpture. The part of him that liked people wanted to give them all a hug.
"Scatter home, gang," he advised as it started to rain even harder. "But come back at two tomorrow and we'll have a party."
The gang whooped. And scattered.
"I'm awful glad he wasn't mad at me for yelling like that," Piya said as they raced back along the front path.
"He sent ME home for yelling," Sam aired this past grievance.
Joshua patted Sam's shoulder. "Buck up, Chuck," he said. He'd heard his dad say that to his mom this morning when she was sad over not losing weight on her new diet.
"Idiot numbskull," Sam shouted cheerfully.
The weather has warmed up so clothing and accessories with other than wool content is suddenly catching attention such as this scarf made from the union of two ties. How could a ladybug tie not team up with a flowered one.