Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books:
Chronicles of Avonlea
A break in the Dean Martin frenzy to go back to my LM Montgomery obsession …
“The Miracle at Carmody” is about two sisters who have adopted a young boy. The sisters, Salome and Judith, are what I would call LM Montgomery archetypes. Their parents are dead. Judith is 10 years older than Salome – and is a tough tough cookie. Salome is kind of submissive, sweet, and lets Judith be the boss. They had a series of tragedies of a family which left them weakened (and yet also very well-off, having inherited a small fortune). Their mother, sweet and religious, had died when Salome was 10 and Judith was 20. Then when Salome was 19, she had a boyfriend – and he was killed. Then their father died – and right around that same time Salome developed some sort of degenerative hip disease which has left her nearly crippled. She cannot walk without a cane. She has not been upstairs in their house for 15 years. At around that time, of all the tragedies, Judith – who had decided when their mother died – that Salome was going to have EVERYTHING that she could not have (Judith was never courted by anyone, never had a beau, she is kind of stern, not attractive, whatever) – and when Salome became a cripple, Judith went to war with the world, in her mind. She stopped going to church (which is the main issue in the story) – she rails at any minister who tries to talk about everything happening for a reason – Judith is HARD on this issue. She stopped believing in God altogether. What good is this all-loving God if all these bad things can happen? Judith has a “SHOW YOURSELF TO BE THE SAVIOR” rage in her. And when God proves to be as useless as she imagined, when he refuess to show himself, she is DONE with him. Her hatred has become a rock-hard thing in her. She won’t let Salome go to church either, even though Salome begs. Salome eventually acquiesces – because she realizes she cannot win an argument with her sister. And so they go along for years – 20 years – in this way. Judith sounds like a tyrant – and she is, kind of – but Lucy Maud also lets us know that she is not a BAD person (she’s not like Emmeline Strong, another bossy older sister, in “The Courting of Prissy Strong” – excerpt here). Judith’s hard-ness comes from being HURT, not from being a shrew. She feels that God has ROBBED them of happiness. She feels that Salome should be married, with children … but no, she hobbles through their house, doing little domestic projects, now in her 40s, and it’s over. Every time Salome picks up her crutches, Judith burns with rage. Okay – so eventually – they adopt this little boy, who was suddenly left orphaned when his parents were killed in a fire. It is all Salome’s idea. She aches for a child. Judith finally caves – and so Lionel Hezekiah, a little 6-year-old hellion. He is a hellion, he gets into all kinds of trouble, he wreaks havoc on their neat lives, and yet – he is lovable. You can’t help but love him. Salome loves him more than Judith does – Judith is more of the fierce disciplinarian of the pair. But you do get the sense that Lionel Hezekiah is in good hands.
Eventually though (and I have to say, I think Lucy Maud is a wee bit obvious here) Lionel Hezekiah confides in Salome and says that he thinks he is just going to KEEP being a bad little boy – because he’s not allowed to go to Sunday school and church like the other little boys. Salome is horrified. Judith will not allow Lionel Hezekiah to be brainwashed by religion, or by God – that mo-fo up in the sky who likes to MESS with us down here. But Lionel Hezekiah has a whole monologue to Salome where he basically says, “My goal in life now, since I can’t go to Sunday school and learn about right and wrong, is to be an old drunken hellraiser like Abel Blair – he lives a great life! He drinks and parties and whores around and I want to be just like him!” (This is a paraphrase. Obviously) Salome is so upset – she literally feels like it is life or death that Lionel Hezekiah get some religion. He is already, at age 6, going down the path of just not caring about ANYthing. Oh, and he also says to Salome something like, “Well, you and Judith don’t go to church – so why should I care?”
She and Judith have a huge argument. Salome does have a backbone in there, beneath the sweet submissiveness, and on this she will not budge. She is GOING to go to church. She is GOING to set a good example to Lionel Hezekiah. Judith is in a rage. Salome stays firm.
So she limps over to the church – after 20 years of staying away.
Here’s the excerpt of what happens next.
Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea
When the people began to come in, Salome felt painfully the curious glances directed at her. Look where she would, she met them, unless she looked out of the window; so out of the window she did look unswervingly, her delicate little face burning crimson with self-consciousness. She could see her home and its back yard plainly, with Lionel Hezekiah making mud-pies joyfully in the corner. Presently, she saw Judith come out of the house and stride away to the pine wood behind it. Judith always betook herself to the pines in times of mental stress and strain.
Salome could see the sunlight on Lionel Hezekiah’s bare head as he mixed his pies. In the pleasure of watching him, she forgot where she was and the curious eyes turned on her.
Suddenly Lionel Hezekiah ceased concocting pies, and betook himself to the corner of the summer kitchen, where he proceeded to climb up to the top of the storm-fence and from there to mount the sloping kitchen roof. Salome clasped her hands in agony. What if the child should fall? Oh! why had Judith gone away and left him alone? What if — what if — and then, while her brain with lightning-like rapidity pictured forth a dozen possible catastrophes, something really did happen. Lionel Hezekiah slipped, sprawled wildly, slid down, and fell off the roof, in a bewildering whirl of arms and legs, plump into the big rain-water hogshead under the spout, which was generally full to the brim with rain-water, a hogshead big and deep enough to swallow up half a dozen small boys who went climbing kitchen roofs on a Sunday.
Then something took place that is talked of in Carmody to this day, and even fiercely wrangled over, so many and conflicting are the opinions on the subject. Salome Marsh, who had not walked a step without assistance for fiteen years, suddenly sprang to her feet with a shriek, ran down the aisle, and out of the door!
Every man, woman, and child in the Carmody church followed her, even the minister, who had just announced his text. When they got out, Salome was already halfway up her lane, running wildly. In her heart was room but for one agonized thought. Would Lionel Hezekiah be drowned before she reached him?
She opened the gate of the yard, and panted across it just as a tall, grim-faced woman came around the corner of the house and stood rooted to the ground in astonishment at the sight that met her eyes.
But Salome saw nobody. She flung herself against the hogshead and looked in, sick with terror at what she might see. What she did see was Lionel Hezekiah sitting on the bottom of the hogshead in water that came only to his waist. He was looking rather dazed and bewildered, but was apparently quite uninjured.
The yard was full of people, but nobody had as yet said a word; awe and wonder held everybody in spellbound silence. Judith was the first to speak. She pushed through the crowd to Salome. Her face was blanched to a deadly whiteness; and her eyes, as Mrs. William Blair afterwards decalred, were enough to give a body the creeps.
“Salome,” she said in a high, shrill, unnatural voice, “where is your crutch?”
Salome came to herself at the question. For the first time, she realized that she had walked, nay, run, all that distance from the church alone and unaided. She turned pale, swayed, and would have fallen if Judith had not caught her.
Old. Dr. Blair came forward briskly.
“Carry her in,” he said, “and don’t all of you come crowding in, either. She wants quiet and rest for a spell.”
Most of the people obediently returned to the church, their suddenly loosened tongues chattering in voluble excitement. A few women assisted Judith to carry Salome in and lay her on the kitchen loungge, followed by the doctor and the dripping Lionel Hezekiah, whom the minister had lifted out of the hogshead and to whom nobody now paid the slightest attention.
Salome faltered out her story, and her hearers listened with varying emotions.
“It’s a miracle,” said Sam Lawson in an awed voice.
Dr. Blair shrugged his shoulders.
“There is no miracle about it,” he said bluntly. “It’s all perfectly natural. The disease in the hip has evidently been quite well for a long time. Nature does sometimes work cures like that when she is let alone. The trouble was that the muscles were paralyzed by long disuse. That paralysis was overcome by the force of a strong and instinctive effort. Salome, get up and walk across the kitchen.”
Salome obeyed. She walked across the kitchen and back, slowly, stiffly, falteringly, now that the stimulus of frantic fear was spent; but still she walked. The doctor nodded his satisfaction.
“Keep that up every day. Walk as much as you can without tiring yourself, and you’ll soon be as spry as ever. No more need of crutches for you, but there’s no miracle in the case.”
Judith Marsh turned to him. She had not spoken a word since her question concerning Salome’s crutch Now she said passionately,
“It was a miracle. God has worked it to prove His existence to me, and I accept the proof.”
The old doctor shrugged his shoulders again. BNeing a wise man, he knew when to hold his tongue.
Y’know, I don’t recall that the boyos have ever made mud pies. They play outside all the time, but no mud pies. Might have to do something about that….
Mud pies are very freeing. It’s like finger painting. :)
It’s what they do with them after they are made that separates boys from girls. Girls pretend to serve them to their pets and dolls, boys fling them at each other…
John – Wrong. I rolled around in my own mud pies, flinging them about like a little poo-flinging chimp.
Or you may be right in GENERAL – but since I rarely fit into the nice little gender stereotypes, I always balk against them. Always.
Yeah, in general, among the suburban folk. My mom has a hilarious story of when she and her sisters got in a flinging contest, but it wasn’t a batch of mud pies, it was meadow muffins that had gone crusty on the outside, but still had that gooey goodness going on inside. They were using them as frizbees, but someone caught one with their head and then it hit the fan. They came back up to the farmhouse and my gandmother said something on the order of “What on Earth? You’re dipped in shit!”. She washed them off down at the barn with the cow hose.
I tended to break that particular sterotype, too. I never threw them at anyone, but I did blow them up. You know – budding chemist or future pyromaniac, in the early years it’s hard to tell the difference.
hahahahahaha you “did blow them up” Genius.