WHILE TIM WAS PAINTING, John Henry wasn’t always playing baseball. He also did odd jobs for Mr. Cooley Some of these jobs weren’t a lot of fun—like shoveling manure out of the cow barn or cleaning the chicken coop. But Mr. Cooley paid a fair wage, and by the middle of August, John Henry had saved up nearly a hundred dollars.
At dinner a couple of nights before Dr. Tuttle’s birthday, John Henry came up with the novel idea of buying his father’s present with his own money.
“That way it’ll mean something,” he said.
Tim, who hadn’t earned a penny all summer and secretly spent his allowance on sweets, nearly choked on a mouthful of dry chicken.
“I couldn’t let you waste your hard-earned money on me, John Henry,” Dr. Tuttle said, to Tim’s immense relief. “But you know what would be terrific? If you boys would help me put in that split-rail fence along the back of the property. You know how long I’ve been talking about it.”
John Henry wasn’t too disappointed. He figured he was bound to be a better fence builder than Tim. “The Cooleys have a couple of posthole diggers we can borrow,” he said. “You get us everything else, Dad, and we’ll do the work. Right, Tim?”
“Sure,” said Tim.
The next day Dr. Tuttle bought the rails and the treated posts and staked the spots where the postholes had to be dug. On the morning of his birthday—it was a Saturday—John Henry got Tim up right after the Cooleys’ rooster crowed so they would be able to finish the fence that day. As the two boys walked out across the backyard with the Cooleys’ posthole diggers over their shoulders, their boots left dark footprints in the glistening dew, while the sun, just risen over the foothills, lit up the devil’s paintbrush in the Cooleys’ meadow like candles. Tim snapped a mental photograph for a future painting.
There were forty-one stakes along the back of the dewy lawn, which meant they had to dig forty-one holes, each two and a half feet deep, for forty-one posts. John Henry volunteered to dig twenty-one holes, leaving twenty for his older brother.
Great-aunt Winifred said that preparing one decent flower bed in Vermont’s rocky soil was “worse than picking quills out of a dog’s mouth,” and local farmers were known to mutter that the only thing the land was good for was connecting New Hampshire to New York. But the hunks of schist and granite John Henry hit with his digger didn’t faze him a bit. He was in top shape from his farm work and the calisthenics they did before baseball practice, and his hands were well callused from shoveling and pitchforking and batting. By the time Mrs. Tuttle called them in to breakfast, he’d dug seven neat holes. Tim, however, hadn’t finished his fourth. His glasses kept steaming up, and his hands were already developing blisters.
Since it was Dr. Tuttle’s birthday, Mrs. Tuttle had decided to do something unusual: make breakfast. By the time Tim and John Henry washed their hands and sat down at the kitchen table, their poached eggs on toast were ready and waiting. The eggs might have been cooked a bit too long—in fact, they were pretty much hard-boiled—but the boys had worked up such appetites, they ate them anyway.
“I guess I won’t cook yours quite so long, Trev,” Mrs. Tuttle said.
Dr. Tuttle’s eggs ended up so runny, they seeped right into his toast and turned it to mush. He really needed a spoon, but it seemed a little rude to ask for one, and by the time one arrived with his coffee, the mush had hardened and turned cold.
At this point the boys were getting up to head back to work.
“Want some help out there, boys?” Dr. Tuttle asked.
“No way, Dad,” said John Henry. “It’s your birthday.”
By noon John Henry had dug fifteen holes. Tim was stuck on his seventh. This seventh hole kept ending up on a slant, thanks to an insidiously long root sent out by the sugar maple in the middle of their backyard. If only the tree had sent out a long branch, instead, to shade him from the broiling midday sun!
Mrs. Tuttle had driven Dr. Tuttle in to Burlington to buy him a much-needed new blazer for his birthday, so the boys made their own sandwiches for lunch. Afterward, John Henry peeled off his shirt and put on some number-twelve sunscreen before heading back out, but Tim, self-conscious about his doughy gut, just put on a straw hat and some work gloves. His hands were killing him. But the gloves didn’t help. In fact, they caught his sweat, and when one of his blisters popped, the salt in his perspiration made it sting like the dickens.
By three o’clock John Henry had dug all twenty-one of his holes. The rest was a cinch. He stuck in the posts, tramped dirt around the bases, and inserted the split rails. So by the time their parents pulled into the driveway, half the fence was perfectly completed.
Dr. and Mrs. Tuttle strolled over to where John Henry was enjoying a glass of iced tea in the shade of the maple.
“Looks splendid, dear,” said Mrs. Tuttle.
“Stupendous,” said Dr. Tuttle, clapping his younger son on the shoulder.
“It was a breeze,” said John Henry. “Sharp blazer, Dad.”
“See, Trev, I told you,” said Mrs. Tuttle.
Dr. Tuttle, who felt comfortable only in a saggy white lab coat, gave a shrug. “So, Tim,” he called out. “How’s it going?”
Tim looked up from his half-dug fourteenth hole. His eyes were bloodshot—the constant trickle of sweat was making them burn worse than his blisters—but the steamed-over lenses of his glasses and the shadow cast by the brim of his hat kept his parents from seeing this.
“I’ve hit a lot of rocks,” he said, gasping for breath. “And a killer root.”
“You look a little overheated, sweetie,” said Mrs. Tuttle. “Why don’t you take your shirt off?”
“I don’t want to get sunburned.”
“The sun’s low enough now—it shouldn’t hurt you,” said Dr. Tuttle.
“That’s okay.”
“What do you say I spell you, son?”
“Well …” said Tim, who was about ready to keel over.
“But it’s your birthday!” John Henry cried as his father started to shed his new blazer. John Henry set down his glass and picked up his posthole digger. “I’ll finish the fence.”
“But you’ve done so much already, love,” said Mrs. Tuttle.
“No sweat, Mom.”
Tim didn’t really like bowing out, but one of his blisters had turned bloody, and another five and a half holes were frankly beyond him. So he let John Henry take over and rested in the shade, feeling about the size of a field mouse that was nosing around a cowpat in the Cooleys’ pasture. When a red-tailed hawk dropped out of the sky and carried the mouse off, Tim almost envied him.
But he felt better once all the holes were dug and he could help put in the posts and insert the rails. Just as they were finishing, Great-aunt Winifred’s old Chevy crept up the driveway. It took her forever to get out of the car with two packages, but she finally did, whereupon she made her way slowly over to the boys.
“Hey, Aunt Winnie,” said John Henry.
“Hi, John Henry,” she said. “Why, Timmy, you look like the bottom of a birdcage.”
Tim took off his glasses and wiped his face with his sleeve. “We’ve been working all day,” he said. “Or, at least, John Henry has. I took a break. But I’m still pretty beat.”
“You should have put a pebble under your tongue.”
“Why?”
“That way you can work all day without getting tired and nothing can hurt you.”
John Henry restrained himself from rolling his eyes at this silly old-wives’ tale. “What do you think of the fence, Aunt Winnie?” he asked.
“Why, it’s cute as a bug’s ear,” she said.
Now he did roll his eyes. Cute as a bug’s ear! What a stupid, demeaning thing to call his fence!
But Tim smiled for the first time since he’d seen the morning dew. “It is kind of cute, isn’t it?” he said. “What did you bring, Aunt Winnie?”
“Well, I made a dessert. And this other’s a birthday present for your father.”
“Now I wonder what that could be,” John Henry said, eyeing the painting-sized package.
But Tim’s eyes were on the white box on top of it. “What did you bake?”
“A Black Forest cake.”
This was Dr. Tuttle’s very favorite dessert. His favorite meal was leg of lamb, and Mrs. Tuttle had stuck one of these in the oven. Once the boys washed up from their labors, the family sat down to dinner.
Dr. Tuttle had a bit of trouble carving the roast. Mrs. Tuttle might have left it in the oven just a few minutes too long. But at last everyone was served, and as soon as Dr. Tuttle sat down, Mrs. Tuttle proposed a toast to him.
“Thank you, Alison,” he said. “But we really ought to toast the fence builders. Here’s to you boys!”
“To John Henry, you mean,” Tim murmured.
“And to Winifred, for coming down from her hilltop paradise to join us,” Dr. Tuttle said. “And to Alison, for making this wonderful meal.”
They all clinked glasses—wine glasses for the grown-ups, milk glasses for the boys—and drank.
“You haven’t commented on my new blazer, Winnie,” Dr. Tuttle said after getting down a mouthful of lamb.
“It’s very snazzy, Trev.”
John Henry couldn’t suppress a giggle at the word “snazzy.” Everyone looked at him, so he said he’d just thought of one of Mr. Cooley’s jokes.
“Why don’t you share it with us,” Dr. Tuttle suggested.
“Um, let’s see,” John Henry said, thinking fast. “He asked me how many people were dead in the cemetery on Colchester Avenue, and I guessed three thousand, and he said, ‘Nope, all of ‘em.’’
Everybody laughed except Great-aunt Winifred, who just smiled. She didn’t seem to be talking as much as usual. Or eating much, either.
“Don’t you like the lamb, Winifred?” Mrs. Tuttle asked.
“Oh, no, it couldn’t be better,” Great-aunt Winifred assured her.
“Would you like a different piece?” said Mrs. Tuttle. “The end piece, maybe?”
“No, thank you, dear, I have a gracious plenty.”
“Did Timmy tell you about John Henry’s award?”
“My, yes—Most Valuable Player in the Little League.” Great-aunt Winifred beamed. “Congratulations, John Henry.”
“Thanks,” said John Henry, smushing his last overcooked lima bean onto his fork. “I’ll show you the trophy after dinner, if you want.”
“Anyone for seconds?” Dr. Tuttle said doubtfully.
No one piped up.
“Don’t forget your lima beans, Timmy,” Mrs. Tuttle said. “They’re better while they’re still warm.”
“But I thought birthdays were special occasions,” said Tim, who could almost taste the Black Forest cake.
“How do you expect to grow without vegetables, dear?”
Though she didn’t bring it up, Tim had now fallen nearly two inches behind his younger brother in height. But John Henry decided not to rub this in by asking for seconds on lima beans. The fence had been a very satisfying triumph—and the truth was, he hated lima beans as much as Tim did.
No one turned down seconds on the Black Forest cake, not even Mrs. Tuttle. After dessert, she said she’d serve coffee in the living room, and everyone migrated there except John Henry, who headed upstairs to get his trophy. When he walked into the living room with it under his arm, he saw that his father was unwrapping Great-aunt Winifred’s latest boring painting of her View.
“Well, dear, happy birthday,” Great-aunt Winifred said. “What do you think?”
Dr. Tuttle turned the painting toward Mrs. Tuttle, the family expert on beauty. Mrs. Tuttle’s eyes widened.
“Why—it’s good!” she exclaimed.
Great-aunt Winifred laughed, bringing out the crinkly lines around her eyes and mouth. “You needn’t sound quite so surprised, Alison.”
Mrs. Tuttle colored. “No, I meant—”
“You know I’m only teasing. What about you, Trev, dear? Do you like it?”
“Very much indeed,” said Dr. Tuttle. Even if he didn’t have quite as much taste as his wife, he thought he could tell a pretty picture when he saw one. “It’s so much … the style’s so much more …”
“So much richer than usual,” Mrs. Tuttle prompted him. “It really is, Winifred.”
“That’s exactly the word I used myself—richer. The colors just sing, don’t they? Let the boys have a look. What do you think, boys? Don’t the colors sing?”
Dr. Tuttle turned the painting so the boys could see it. John Henry didn’t really look at it. He just thought it was weird for Great-aunt Winifred to get so excited about something—as if she had forgotten she was an old lady. Tim, whose face was already red from all the sun he’d gotten, turned even redder. Although it was now in a fancy frame, the painting was the Summer View he’d done himself.
“Really, Winnie, thanks a million,” said Dr. Tuttle. “I think … sweetheart, what do you say we hang it over the fireplace?”
“Fine,” said Mrs. Tuttle. “I’m tired of that still life anyway. Don’t you think it would look nice there, Winifred?”
Great-aunt Winifred’s plump body began to jiggle. She’d always been amused by the way her past presents disappeared into her nephew’s lab. “A good place for it,” she agreed. “Though you might ask Timmy what he thinks. He painted it.”
Mrs. Tuttle had just picked up her demitasse, and a splash of coffee leaped out of the little cup onto her white summer blouse. But instead of rushing off to the kitchen to get out the stain, she just set the cup in its saucer and stared at Tim. Everyone stared at Tim.
“It’s that beautiful frame,” he said. “The frame does wonders for it.”
But it was the painting, not the frame, that Dr. and Mrs. Tuttle couldn’t get over.
“Here I’ve been grousing about you forgetting your chores,” Dr. Tuttle said.
“For heaven’s sake, Timmy, you might have told us you had artistic talent,” Mrs. Tuttle said, sounding almost resentful. “I know we’re only your parents, but still.”
“Artistic talent?” Tim said, staggered. He’d never been talented before. “I only did what Aunt Winnie told me.”
“And the pupil leaves the teacher in the dust!” Great-aunt Winifred said gleefully. “I’ve half a mind to throw my brushes away.”
Dr. Tuttle took the still life down from over the mantelpiece and hung Tim’s Summer View on the hook. Mrs. Tuttle declared that it was made to go there.
“You must have paint in your blood, Timmy,” she said proudly.
Tim looked down curiously at the dried blood caked on the broken blister on his left hand.
“He’s a natural, all right—a born artist,” said Great-aunt Winifred. “Now, is this that trophy of yours, John Henry? My goodness, what a thing! But you have to remind me—is Little League football or basketball?”
“Baseball,” John Henry muttered.
“Of course, baseball—the summer pastime—peanuts and Cracker Jacks. How marvelous!”