She parked her car near the kennel and walked down the road. A man near a barn pointed, and she took off running in that direction. She soon heard the crooning release of the hounds as they spotted a hare and the cry of “Tallyho!” to her right. They were beyond the woods, past a furrowed field. She adjusted her course to intersect with the dogs, leaping over the small, even rises of dark dirt that were littered with frozen pink and white turnips too small to harvest. She liked the popping sound they made under her sneakers and timed her pace to land on the little bulbs as she made her way to the trees.
Her stamina and agility often placed her at the front of the throng. She was known to plunge fearlessly through a thicket rather than around it, as most of the hunters opted to do. Those scratchy shortcuts won her more than a few rabbits’ feet. As she approached the woods, she realized she would have to skirt this patch of trees. Horse brier vines covered the ground, and even she was no match for their fierce stickers. She passed the woods and looked for a path in the valley beyond. A trail would eventually appear, she was sure. It always did.
She ran lightly, pulling herself up by her shoulders as she sprinted through the green and red grasses of the valley. The past few months had taken a toll on her body and spirit. She desperately wanted to lose the twenty pounds she had gained since her lover had left her. Most evenings, wine seemed a better remedy for her loneliness than exercise.
Running in these fields, though, Margaret once again felt young. She had grown up here, and she had spent many afternoons of her youth riding her horse through these same pastures. She had swum in the nearby ocean and built houses of sticks and leaves in these forests.
She saw a trail of trampled grass and broken sticks and instantly knew it was a path the dogs had made. She followed it up the hill and on the next rise saw one of the whips coaxing a dog back on course with the snap of his whip while at a full run, something she had yet to conquer. She caught up to him as the pack circled a dead hare in the grass. The dogs were particularly excited; they hadn’t hunted for a few days, and it would be hard to pull them back. The master called the dogs down and then reached in to grasp the body of the bunny. He held it high above his head, an indication to the dogs that this prize was no longer theirs. The pack reluctantly obeyed.
It was clear this rabbit was dead before the dogs had found it, shot by a frustrated farmer, no doubt. As the rest of the runners drew close, two gunshots were fired in the distance. Margaret quipped that two more rabbits had just been killed, which drew a round of chuckles from the field. In reality, she always felt sorry for the death of the rabbit, especially if it were one that had escaped before.
Suddenly, there was a stir among the hounds. Then they went still. Their quickening sniffs meant another hare was close by. The master shouted to the field to hold hard, and all the hunters froze, allowing the dogs to pick up the new scent. The dogs flushed a hare from a patch of grass, and once again the hunt was on. The jack bounded across the field, then darted sideways. Margaret knew the poor bunnies often circled back in desperation. Sometimes this tactic worked, but if the rabbit ran straight, the hounds could seldom keep pace. Sooner or later, though, it would run for home or cover, and the attempted escape often sent the bunny straight into people or hounds instead of an open field.
This one, though, burst onto a grassy road and sped away from the dogs and humans. He held his ears high and straight as he bounced out of sight. That, Margaret thought, was a beautiful thing to see.
One
1910–1914
Once upon a summertime
A bug was crawling on a vine
A butterfly lit on a daisy
While a little bee
Buzzed himself crazy in a wild pink rose
And a child ran through the wet green grass
In his bare feet and wiggled his toes
“ONCE UPON A SUMMERTIME”
The Unpublished Works of Margaret Wise Brown
The moon and sky over Brooklyn, New York, was bathed in the golden hue of an aurora borealis in the early morning hours of May 23. Sheet lightning to the south and east illuminated the shifting rays in a staccato dance of light. As the rising sun diminished the auroral lights, panic rose in the house of Bruce and Maude Brown. The baby they had been expecting more than two weeks earlier was now arriving in a rush. But the doctor was nowhere to be found.
Bruce was seriously ill with malaria contracted on a recent business trip and could be of little help. His nurse and Maude’s mother prepared, as best they could, to deliver the baby. Anna, their stern Irish nanny, paced the downstairs entry with the Brown’s two-year-old son, Gratz, waiting for the doctor to arrive. Maude’s screams in the final throes of labor were heard throughout the house and out the open door as the doctor dashed in. He bounded up the stairs, rolling his shirtsleeves as he climbed, reaching the bedside just in time to deliver the baby girl. He held her up for her mother to see, his cuff links still dangling from his sleeves.
That night, the sky was again ablaze with gold, green, and blue of the borealis that illuminated another celestial phenomenon. The earth’s shadow slowly stole the light of the full moon in a total lunar eclipse. It seemed as if the heavens were putting on a show to welcome the little girl Maude named Margaret Wise Brown.
*
Four years later, Maude Brown pressed Bruce for them to move from Brooklyn to Long Island. She found the walls of their neighborhood claustrophobic and believed the abundant nature Long Island offered would be good for their children. Bruce was reluctant to leave their formidable home on a hill. From there he could see the East River, and their house was a short walk to the docks and American Manufacturing Company’s warehouse, where he worked.
It was his job to travel to distant lands to purchase hemp and jute that were loaded onto massive cargo ships like the ones that streamed up and down the East River. Day and night, tiny tugs twirled about in the river, leading those large boats into port or out to sea. The whistles of the ships often drifted up the hill to the open windows of the Browns’ home. Transients from the docks, too, sometimes wandered into their neighborhood. The brick walls and wrought iron fences that lined the yards and streets silently declared that those people weren’t welcome. Even the cathedral at the end of their road appeared hostile instead of hospitable. Its imposing red doors cast a fortresslike air over the neighborhood.