What is it about a boy that can make a girl do such silly things? Our little Wilbur sashays around the yard now, too good for the pasture and too curious for the barn. She never took to the bottle and we finally gave up. She prefers her vittles in a dog dish, and prefers to lap up her drink out of the trough beside Pilot. I’ve seen her trying her darndest to wag her little goat tail and yesterday I watched her turn no less than three times before she lay down in the straw. It’s not so much that she believes she is a dog; it’s more that she’s doing her best to impress one.

As for Pilot, near as I can tell he hardly knows he’s got a goat on his tail from sunup to sundown. He goes about his business like usual–waits at the door for breakfast in the morning, hunts up a little rodent snack around mid-day, and barks once or twice to let us know when he’s ready for dinner. Now you just go right on and tell me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that just how boys always are when girls are making themselves silly moonin’ over them?

That’s just why you’ll never catch me making a fool of myself over some boy. Just this morning, in fact, we were leaving church and Aaron McMillan bumped right into my backside.

“Oh, sorry Tevis,” he said, but I could tell by the blush rising up his neck that he wasn’t sorry at all. I’m sure Aunt Kitty was quite pleased with me though when I used my most mature voice and politest manners to say, “No problem at all, Mr. McMillan.” His mouth crooked up on one side then; I think he liked me calling him “Mr.” I just turned my head and strode with utmost grace across the lawn to Ben’s pickup truck. Aaron McMillan with his fair hair may be one of the finest looking boys of my acquaintance, but I see no need to make myself silly over him.

Now it’s unfortunate for my sense of maturity and gracefulness that Ben pulled onto our driveway just as that wicked neighbor boy was retrieving the newspaper from the box at the bottom corner of our property. (Of course he wasn’t at church, the heathen.)

Ben cranked down his window and called out, “Hello there, Ezekiel.”

That boy just nodded his head. Who did he think he was anyway? I swear he might’ve tipped his hat if he’d been wearing one. Thinking he’s some titled lord in regency England.

I stuck my head out the window and said, “You’re supposed to say ‘Hello, Mr. Ben.’”

For that I got an elbow in the ribs from Aunt Kitty and a whispered, “Hush, Tevis,” from Ben.

That boy–Ezekiel–he looked to his feet for just a moment and when he looked back up I saw that he’d been trying to contain a grin. He did not succeed. “Hello, Mr. Ben,” he said, but his eyes were on me all the while. Then he asked, “Been missing any chicken eggs lately?” and turned back up the road.

I fairly flew out of my seat, hollering at that boy. “Why you rotten, stinkin’, no good, snot-snivelin’, lily-livered–!” Aunt Kitty smashed her palm against my mouth at that point and I saw Ben shaking his head, muttering to himself, “Strange question to ask. Guess that boy is a mite disturbed. Best keep to ourselves, I wager.”

When we pulled up to the house Pilot and Wilbur were chasing a stray cat around the yard. The cat finally took refuge in a tree and Pilot sat back on his haunches to wait, tail wagging. Wilbur wobbled on her first try, but soon enough she was sitting on her haunches beside him and when she opened her mouth I swear the sound that came out was closer to a bark than a bleat. And who am I to judge that goat for acting like a dog? It’s all I can do to keep acting like a girl when I get around that boy.

I think it’s time I told you the truth about me. By that I don’t mean that I have plain brown hair and my eyes are the same. I don’t mean that I’m on the puny side for a twelve-year-old, or that my mama’s name is Katy and she’s out there somewhere in this big wide world. It’s about God. I don’t think He likes me much. Seems like every time I took the time to ask Him for something, what I’d end up getting was something else entirely.

My eyes, for instance. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that if he was going to give a girl plain old brown hair, that he’d at least make up for it with some fancy blue eyes. So one Sunday while the preacher was preaching ’bout how good God is at giving us gifts and how all we have to do is ask for something and we’ll get it, well I closed my eyes right then and there and bowed my head and asked the good Lord to give me blue eyes. I tell you it wasn’t five minutes later we were leaving the church and a honeybee flew right up and stung me right under my left eye. I spent the next three days with my eye swollen shut and Pilot looking at me funny every time I went outdoors. I decided right then that preacher must be studying the wrong book.

When Ben rushed inside this morning without first stomping the dust off his boots and asked me real calm-like if I wanted to learn to bottle-feed a goat, something stopped me from jumping out of my chair and racing him to the barn.

“Why won’t its mama feed it?” I asked him. That’s when he looked down and seemed to notice his dusty boots for the first time.

“Forgot to stomp my feet,” he mumbled and shuffled back outside.

Well it’s a sad thing when a baby comes into this world on the same day her mama is taken from it. I spent the better part of the morning trying to get that little she-goat to take the bottle and Aunt Kitty tried for most of the afternoon with no better luck. A goat’s cry isn’t so different from a human baby’s and I don’t mind telling you by the end of the day we were all frazzled, even Pilot, who took to howling like a hound dog and pacing outside the barn door.

This is the part where I get back to God. See, I decided to pray the most backwards prayer I could, thinking maybe I could trick Him. After thinking on it for a while, I finally prayed that God would bring back the goat’s daddy (who lives on some neighbor’s farm, I think), hoping God would instead bring back her mommy. I know that seems unlikely, but I think God could work a miracle sometimes just to spite me.

We none of us ate much of our dinner that night, what with the goat’s crying and Pilot’s howling. It was later, when Ben was out closing up the chicken coop for the night and I was trying to get past the first paragraph of Moby Dick, that I realized the only sound in the night was the “chink, chink” of Aunt Kitty washing dishes. I dropped my book and ran barefoot out to the barn. Ben was standing at the door and turned to hush me as I drew near. There was just enough moonlight pouring through the stall window that I could see them there on the straw, Pilot curled up around that baby goat, the both of them snoring in their sleep. What can you do when you’re looking at a tragedy and a miracle sittin’ side-by-side? Ben shook his head and grinned and I grinned back at him and together we went back to the house.

Aunt Kitty started calling the goat Wilbur before Ben told her it was a she-goat, not a buck, but we’re all pretty used to the name after spending the day saying again and again, “Hush, Wilbur. It’s going to be all right.” Turns out we weren’t lying after all.

MATERIALS:

1/2 yard fabric

1/2 yard vinyl-coated cotton fabric

1 1/2 yard ribbon

coordinating thread

a nice long stick

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Measure a 6 1/2-inch diameter circle on both your regular fabric and the vinyl-coated cotton and cut.

2. Measure and cut two 13 1/2- by 12- inch pieces out of each fabric.

3. Along the top edge of your fabric (the 13 1/2-inch length), mark the center at 6 3/4-inches. Then measure out 2 1/2 inches to each side of the center and mark.

4. Measure 3 inches down from the top edge at the center mark. Draw a curved line connecting the three outer marks and cut through both pieces of fabric. Repeat with the vinyl-coated cotton.

5. With right sides facing, stitch together the 12-inch sides of the bag and press open seams. Repeat with the vinyl-coated cotton. (I skipped the ironing with the vinyl cotton.)

6. Fold the circle piece in half and iron. Fold it in half the other way and iron again.

7. Using the ironed creases as guides, pin the circle piece to the bottom of the bag, right sides together, matching creases and seams. Where there is no seam, place the crease against the center point between seams.

8. Form a double pleat between each of your four pinned points.

9. Sew the circle onto the bottom edge of the bag. Turn right side out.

10. Repeat this process with the vinyl-coated cotton. It’s not easy to work with, so take your time and accept imperfections!

11. With right sides together, stitch bag lining (vinyl-coated cotton) to outer bag along scooped out edges ONLY. Turn bag right side out.

12. Stitch together straight edges along top of bag.

13. Top-stitch scooped out edges along top of bag.

14. Measure and cut a single strip of the outer fabric, 26 inches long by 3 inches wide.

15. Fold strip of fabric in half lengthwise and press. Open it out again, then fold each long end toward the center and press. Fold the whole thing in half lengthwise and press. Mark the center of the length of fabric with fabric pencil or by pressing it again.

16. Fold in one short end of the bias. Aligning the raw edges, with right sides together, pin the bias to the top of the bag so the edge of the bias meets the seamline.

17. Align the center of the bias with the other seam.

18. Pin remainder of bias to bag top and stitch along seamline (use the crease in the bias as a guide).

19. Fold bias over raw edges and stitch close to edge to finish.

20. Attach a safety pin to one end of ribbon. Feed the ribbon through the bias.

21. Tie a knot in each end of the ribbon and when you’re ready to go wandering, just fill up your sack and feed the stick through the scooped out ends.

Please remember that this tutorial is offered for your personal enjoyment. Please do not sell any products made or inspired by this tutorial.

It’s funny how a body can think she knows herself and suddenly one day some little thing happens and all at once she finds herself a stranger. All in all, I would say that moment–when I was so high up in that Digger pine and already upset over my part in the murder of that innocent hawk baby–was a poor time to learn that I was scared of high places. Ben told me once, when I asked him how come he’s still afraid of snakes and thunderstorms even though he’s all grown up, that there’s some fears we leave behind when we get older, but there’s enough things we learn to be afraid of to keep us from gettin’ too full of ourselves.

Apparently God above must’ve decided at that unfortunate time that I was a little too full of myself and at that very moment he smote me with a fear of heights. Of all things. And then He sent the devil himself to rescue me.

It was that boy from across the creek, the one who ran away when I said hello. I recognized him by his lily-livered scent–well, that and the weird black hair that hung long and straight to his shoulders. He came walking up to the bottom of the tree, looked up, and didn’t even try to hide his lousy grin when he saw me holding on for dear life.

“Hi there,” he said.

“Harumph,” I said.

“What are you crying for?” he said, and pushed his hair out of his face, probably so I could see that lousy grin a little better. I looked away, but then my eyes fell on that cracked egg and I felt those stupid tears welling up in my eyes all over again.

He followed my eyes to the broken shell on the ground. “It’s just an egg.”

How could he be so cold-hearted? “There’s a hawk baby in that egg, you meanie!”

“How would a hawk baby get inside a chicken egg?”

I looked down and sure enough it did look an awful lot like an ordinary chicken egg, but “What’s a chicken egg doin’ way out here?”

He shrugged. Not that I was looking at him, but I saw it out of the corner of my eye while I studied that egg.

“Probably that dog of yours snagged it out of the coop,” he said. “Or maybe a coyote.”

And I looked and I couldn’t deny it. That surely was a chicken egg and no baby hawk in it at all.

“Come on down now,” he said, and I just shook my head.

“Can’t,” I told him.

“Sure you can,” he said. “Just let go and I’ll catch you.”

Now it may seem, seeing as how I’m the one stuck in a tree crying about a cracked chicken egg, that I’m the dumb one, but I’m tellin’ you that boy must be dumb to think I was gonna jump out of that tree with nothin’ but his hands to catch me. I shook my head a little harder, in case he missed it the first time.

“C’mon,” he said. “Just take my hand.”

Maybe at this point, so as you’re not thinking that boy was 15 feet tall, I should admit that I hadn’t quite made it to the top of that tree. But it felt like it, it really did.

That’s when I remembered what had been said about this boy.

“What’s disturbin’ you anyway?” I asked him, and I watched his eyes glass over and his shoulders square up.

“Come down,” he said in a new voice, and it might have been Ben talking for the way my body just up and obeyed. Well, that boy did catch me, but whether he was any softer than the ground would’ve been I just can’t say. I rolled off of him and I ran all the way home without once looking back.

As Ben likes to say, it’s been hotter than Grandma Jean’s final resting place around here. When I asked Aunt Kitty what that means, she just said Ben wasn’t too fond of his Grandma Jean, ‘specially after she sneaked a whoopie cushion onto his dinner chair the night he finally convinced Lily Hawkins to come for dinner. Apparently Lily Hawkins had hair fine and yellow as cornsilk, and as such could not be expected to tolerate a boy with poor table manners.

On account of the heat though, Aunt Kitty cut short my lessons this morning. Doing math is fine, she said, and sweating is fine too, but doin’ them both together is just plain torture. She packed up my wanderin’ sack and shooed me out the door.

“Keep an eye out for rattlers,” she said, and I was on my own.

Now, I like to think of myself as pretty intelligent–smarter than the average 12-year-old girl, I mean. Least-wise Aunt Kitty’s always telling me I talk like a foreigner or someone twice my age on account of all the books I’m always reading, and sometimes she threatens to pack the books away for a while. I’m afraid no one will think I’m smart when I come to the end of this tale though. I can hardly explain to myself how I wound up at the top of that old Digger pine, bawling my eyes out over a broken egg.

First thing I did when Aunt Kitty shut the door behind me was whistle for Pilot. He came running quick enough, but when he saw that wanderin’ sack over my shoulder he knew we were going for a ramble and just like that he was off. I tried to keep up with him, but pretty soon I had to stop and pull the foxtails out of my shoes and when I looked up again, he was long gone.

That’s about when the hawk cried out, and it’s also about when I saw the egg laying on the ground at the base of that big Digger pine. I looked at that egg, and I looked at that hawk and I put two and two together. Or I guess I put one and one together. Well if I wanted to be doing math, I’da been back in the kitchen with Aunt Kitty. In any case, I searched the branches of that tree and sure enough, away up at the top, there was a big nest. That hawk let out another cry and there was just no help for it. I knew what I had to do. I put aside my stick, tucked that egg into my pocket, hitched up my pants and started climbing.

I got real high real fast. I’m a pretty good climber, on account of all the times Pilot’s chased neighbor cats up into trees and I had to rescue them to keep Pilot out of trouble. So I was real close to getting that egg back in the nest when I felt something shift in my pants and I looked down just in time to see that egg fall down, down, down until it landed with a thud and a crunch right back in that spot I first found it.

So that’s how I wound up near the top of that Digger pine, bawling my eyes out over a baby hawk that would never see the light of day. Now if you’re a tree climber you might know that getting up a tree is a darn sight easier than getting back down.

Most of the time, Pilot is a good dog. He has his moments of weakness, like anyone does, his mostly relating to critters smaller than himself. He can pounce on a mouse quicker than any cat you ever saw, and he’ll dig up a maze of gopher trails till his nose is caked clay-red and his eyes nearly crossed. Those aren’t the bad things, though.

Pilot’s taste for small creatures isn’t limited to mice and gophers. I once saw him swipe a bird right out of the air. Honest! Me and him were just sitting on the hillside one evening watching the sun go down (and pretending we didn’t hear Aunt Kitty hollering at us to wash up for dinner) when all of a sudden Pilot leaps straight up in the air. When I come to my senses–for a minute I thought he must’ve spotted a cougar–there’s a little bird caught between his teeth. Tell the truth, I think Pilot was surprised too. It was hardly a moment before he loosed his mouth and that bird went flying away. The two of us, we just watched it go, neither one of us quite believing what had happened, I think.

But what I’m trying to say is sometimes Pilot has caused us some trouble. Me and Ben and Aunt Kitty, I mean. There was the one time Pilot came home with a real working man’s tool belt and the hammer still dragging off one end. A truck come flying up the driveway that afternoon sending up a cloud of dust thicker than the tule fog. The driver didn’t even get out, just pointed at Pilot and hollered at Ben, “That dog stole my tool belt!”

We don’t have cats and you can see why. The chickens mostly stay in the coop. No bunnies. No guinea pigs. (Why anyone would want a guinea pig I can’t imagine.)

So you can see how it probably would have been a good idea for our neighbors across the creek to let us know when they decided to raise Jersey Giants. They may be big for chickens, but they’re still just chickens after all. I’m sure you can guess–when I tell you that our neighbors came outside this evening and found all but two of their Jersey Giant chickens dead in the yard and a certain dog stuck half in, half out of the chicken coop–I’m sure you can guess who that certain dog was.

Maybe there’s some people couldn’t love a dog after he committed a massacre like that. Maybe there’s some would gladly trade in that dog for half a dozen cats and chickens roaming free. I wish I could explain how it is that I love Pilot more every time he makes a mess of things, even a really big mess like this.

I brought him into my bed this evening and left the door cracked just a hair so I could better listen to what our cross-creek neighbors had to say to Ben and Aunt Kitty. I’ll admit I was afraid they’d demand we shoot Pilot or some other awful thing. I’ve read Old Yeller. I pulled the covers over us both and pretty soon Pilot was dreaming about chasing gophers and mice. I suppose he might’ve been dreaming about those chickens.

And outside my door those people weren’t talking about Pilot or the chickens at all.

“He’s a very disturbed boy,” the lady was saying.

“Julia!” the man loud-whispered back. He seemed to be shushing her, the way Aunt Kitty’s always doing to me in church when I try asking her ’bout repentance or sexual relations or other stuff while the preacher’s still preaching.

“Well, he is!” Julia said. “I don’t mean no harm by it. He just is.”

Aunt Kitty said something then so low I couldn’t make out a word and then I got distracted puzzling out who they might be talking about. I had just decided they must be speaking of that boy I saw across the creek a few weeks ago when I heard Ben turn the latch on the front door and realized I missed the whole rest of what was said.

What I want to know is, what’s disturbing that boy so much? And it better not be me, ’cause I done nothing but say hello to him, real friendly-like.

…Mary! I love your suggestion of June 21, the longest day of the year, so Tevis can celebrate her birthday for as long as possible. Mary, send me your mailing address and I will get the gathering apron in the mail to you right away. Enjoy!

And Lily, please send along your mailing address as well. I’m not sure yet what exactly it will be, but I have to send you something for that wonderful, wintry tale!

Thank you everyone for your clever suggestions!

That’s right. I’ve decided to give away the gathering apron featured in my tutorial of a couple weeks ago. Why? Because I need an excuse to make another one, of course!

Here’s how to throw your name in the hat for this drawing: Tevis needs a birthday! Leave a comment here before Monday and let me know what month and day you think Tevis should celebrate her birthday and why.

The reason I don’t call Ben “uncle” is because he’s not my uncle. Well, at least he wasn’t my uncle until he married Aunt Kitty a couple years ago. By then, I was too used to calling him just “Ben.” Besides that, Ben doesn’t really seem uncle-y. He’s taller than the doorway and when he opens his mouth every animal in sight takes cover. Probably that’s why he keeps quiet most of the time.

If I’m going to tell the honest truth though (which on this one and only subject I’m not really supposed to do), Aunt Kitty is not exactly my aunt either. She says my mama was like a sister to her and that’s close enough and then she says for goodness sake if I must keep yapping go yap at the cows ’cause she has more important work to be about.

Once she told me I was an outcast fairy. When I asked her, “Well how come I’m normal sized then and not fairy sized?” she said that’s just what happens when you leave the fairy world. You get bigger. So I said, “Well then, how come I don’t have wings?”

“Bah,” she said. “That’s just a silly myth. Fairies don’t have wings.”

I said, “How do they fly if they haven’t got wings?” and she just laughed.

What I want to know is, what’s so special about being a fairy if you can’t fly? When I asked Ben that very question, he said probably fairies had other magic talents, like talking to animals.

I spent the whole day trying to talk to the chickens. First I tried their language. “BAAAAK!” Then I tried my own, but they just kept cluck-clucking away.

So I thought, well maybe it’s not that I can understand them, but they can understand me. So I fixed my eye on one particularly bright looking chicken and I said, “Come here, chicken.” She didn’t even look at me. So I said, “Fetch me that piece of string, chicken,” and she lifted her neck and cocked her head and I thought, “Aha!” but then she just went right back to pecking at the ground.

Either Ben’s wrong, or chickens are just plain rude.

For the longest time I thought Aunt Kitty wore her apron inside out. I was too embarrassed to say anything–embarrassed for her, I mean. Who wants a 12-year-old girl telling them their clothes are inside out or upside down? Like when a boy walks out of the privvy with his barn door open. Do you say, “Hey, boy, your livestock’s gonna get loose!” or do you just let it alone. Well, for me that just depends on the boy. If it was that boy across the creek, for instance, well I’d have no problem at all seeing him get red in the face.

But here we’re talking about Aunt Kitty and I’ll tell you it was a real dilemma for me, her putting her apron on inside out every day. Then one day, there it was, hanging off a peg in the pantry, strangely weighted to one side, and what do you think I found? Well, I’ll tell you. Pockets full of chocolate and buttered rum candies, that’s what! All this time I was worried about Auntie’s feelings and what do you know but she’s stashing treats in hidden pockets. Hiding them from whom, you might ask? Well, I can guess.