"Teacher says you been tellin' lies in school again." Granny's sharp eyes fixed on the little girl.

Eva's thumb, clean and crinkled, popped out of her mouth.  Her glance darted here and there on all the pretty things she liked - on Granny's patchwork cushion for her rocker, on the bouquet of goldenrod in the copper teakettle, on the Afican Violent that Mumma brought from Portland and, at last, it flicked as light as a butterfly over to Granny's wrinkled face.

"I didn't tell any lies.  All them things I said - they happened, only inside my head, like.  Besides, it don't count if nobody b'lieved it."

As she talked, Eva's skinny scratched legs hopped her from rag rug to rag rug all over the kitchen.

Granny sighed and settled herself carefully into the rocker.

"What'd you tell 'em this time?"

Eva stopped hopping and looked out the kitchen window. There was a view of blue September sky above the pines - and Blackie Crow was raiding the garden patch again.

"Welll, I said my Daddy come home and brought me all kinda presents - a doll and a blue dress and presents to you and Mumma, too.  An' then he hugged me and said we was going to be a fambly now."

Land sakes!" said Granny.

"And then I said that he's been doing important work for the Pres'int of the United States and could'nt come home 'cause the Pres'int wanted him to stay there."

"Mercy!" said Granny.

"And then I told them my Daddy was going to take me to Disneyland."

 "Come here," said Granny.  She straightened the child's limp brown hair with her gentle crookedy hand as Eva leaned against her knee.

"Your Daddy's gone.  I already told you that.  You was just a baby when he left and we aint heard word one from him since then.  Could be dead for all we know.  It's a plumb waste of time and dreamin' to expect him home any time at all.  He's nothing but a no-good drifter.  He don't love you...not even a post card in all these years...so you'd best forget him."

Eva pulled away, blue eyes filling with tears, pink mouth drawn thin and tight into the corners.

"You shouldn't talk that way about my Daddy.  He's not a driffer.  And he ain't dead.  He'll come back just like I said.  You'll see."  The screen door slammed angrily behind her.

Eva blinked back the tears.  Blackie Crow was still in the garden.  He came when she whistled and lit on her arm with an uneven flap of his black wings to balance before he folded them neatly at his sides.  She smoothed his shining blue-black head with a gentle forefinger.

"He is coming home.  And then we can be a fambly.  You can be in the fambly, too, Blackie.

The thumb returned to the mouth - defiantly.

Granny's frayed straw hat bulged over the knot of hair on the back of her head.  There was a hole in the elbow of her baggy red sweater.  She came out the kitchen door carrying two baskets.

Apples should be ready up to Eliot's hill," she called, "Come and get your basket, child."

Blackie Crow took off from Eva's arm with a bounce and thundered his wings in her face.  She heard him caw a minute later from the tall pine tree.

Granny grew short of breath as they climbed the rutted overgrown road to the hill.  "Apples that come from real old trees are sweeter - make better jelly, seem'sif," she puffed, "We'll have a nice surprise for your Mumma when she gets home this week end  - a new batch of apple jelly."

The old orchard was warm and fragrant in the September sunshine.  It smelled of fallen apples and sun warmed pine needles.  Goldenrod grew along the edge of the woods.  The grass was tall and noisy with insects.  Far to the east, gleamed a blue flat sliver of ocean, and to the west, the White Mountains looked like purple blue cut outs pasted against the sky.

"You pick up the good ones on the ground and I'll get the ones still on the branches.  Watch them hornets, now."

By the time both baskets were filled, Eva had disappeared.  She lay on her back, hidden in the tall grasses, watching the clouds make pictures in the sky.

Granny wrinkled her nose, squinting against the brightness.

"Eva, where are you, child?  Time to go, now."

But Eva stayed as still as a baby rabbit in the nest.

"All right, then.  I know you're there.  You kin come home when you've a mind to, but don't forget the apple basket."

It was quiet.  The old trees stood in pools of noonday shade.  Blackie Crow cawed from the dead branch of an apple tree.  Eva thought she could feel the world turning slowly under her back.

And then she heard the whistling.  It started soft and far away, a funny little tune to make you smile.  Gradually, it got louder.  Eva peeked out from the grass tops to watch a man stride out from the green shadow of the woods road.  He swung a blue jacket by the collar and carried a back pack. His nose was sunburned.  He had a bristly looking beard. There were speckles of grey in his thick brown hair and it was cut short so it didn't even cover the tops of his sunburned ears.  His eyes were as blue as the ocean you could see from the top of the hill.  He was here, at last!

Suddenly shy, she stared as the man slipped off his back pack and, still whistling, took out a red can of Coke and a wrapped up sandwich.  He sat down with his back against a twisted apple tree and snapped the top from his Coke.

Then Eva started to run.  The man looked up smiling at her as she bounced toward him through the tall grass.

"I told Granny you'd come."  She moved closer until she could almost touch him and then, shy again, moved a step backwards.  "Didn't you see Granny?  She went down the road."

"Came up the short cut."  The man's voice was deep and sounded like laughing.

"Short cut?"

"Sure.  Say, there's a path right up through the woods. Leads from the big pine by the stone wall back of the house and comes into the road just over there.  Pretty well grown over, now, but I found it."

"You remembered."

The man hesitated, looking down at his big knuckled hand.

"No.  I just know about short cuts."

Eva narrowed her eyes and tipped her head to take his measure.

"You remembered," she said flatly with a little confirming nod.

"Well, and who are you?"" asked the man.  He took a large bite of his sandwich.

Eva gave a little crow of amusement.  "Oh, you're funny. You know who I am.  I'm Eva.  And I know who you are, too. You're Daddy."

"Daddy, huh?"  The blue eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled.  "Say, that's a mighty interesting thought."

He put a gentle, rough skinned finger under the little girl's chin, and tipped her head to look directly into her eyes, as blue as the ocean you can see from the hill.

"Do you live in the farmhouse down on the road?"

"Ayah.  With Granny.  Where you been?  I been waiting and waiting for you to come home so's we could be a fambly."

"Say, you're making a big mistake.  You mustn't believe I'm your Dad.  I wouldn't make anyone a good Dad."

"Where've you been?" she insisted.

"I've been lots of places - all over.  Went to the Pacific Ocean and the mountains that rise up from it;  I've been across wheat fields as wide as the sky.  I caught fish in the southern waters and drove truck half way to the north pole.  Lately, though, I had to stay put awhile, but now...say I got lots more world I gotta see."

"You aren't going to stay here and be a fambly?"  There was a little shake in her voice that hinted of tears.

"Say, now, little Eva.  You might as well ask a free bird to live in a cage - like that crow over there.."

  "Huh uh, I wouldn't put Blackie in a cage.  He wouldn't like it.  He's used to flying around wherever he wants to go."

"Well?"  he said.  He shrugged a shoulder and smiled a little sidewise smile.

Eva came over to sit next to him pushing aginst him. The thumb was back in the mouth.  After a silence, he said,

"Where's your Ma?  Take care of you all right, does she?"

"Ayah.  She works in a factory down in Portlnd - makes baked beans.  And then she stays with some kids at night. Comes home week ends, usually."

"You love your Ma?  She love you?"

"Ayah."

"You love your Granny?  She love you?"

"Ayah."

"Granny and your Ma, they love each other?"

"Ayah."

"Well, say, you're a family already then.  It isn't whether there's a Daddy that makes a family, it's loving each other that does that.  You got plenty of love to make a family right there.  I can tell that, easy."

He put the sandwich wrappings and the pop can back into the back pack and then dug around in one of the sections.

"Say, I got something for you.  I carried it with me just in case I met somebody special that I liked a lot."

"Me?" squeaked Eva.

Out came the fist.  When he opened it, Eva could see something glitter on the palm.  It was a tiny gold heart on a gold chain as delicate as a spider web.  It was a miracle.

Eva gasped.

"This is for you to remember me by, O.K.?"

The man swung Eva high into the air to make her giggle and then pulled her close to him.  His whiskers prickled against her cheek.  She felt warm and safe, enclosed in his big bear hug.  Eva's arms crept around his neck.  She could feel the little heart necklace held tightly in her hand.

He put her gently on her feet, shrugged on his back pack and, without another word to her, went striding back to the short cut.

"Good-by, good-by, Daddy,"  she called.  But he didn't turn around.  The green shadow of the woods swallowed him up.

Eva put the gold heart carefully in the pocket of her cut offs, picked up the heavy apple basket and started slowly down the road.

The slam of the screen door roused Granny who was nodding in her rocker.  Eva, red faced from effort, thumped the basket of apples on the scrubbed kitchen table.  She stood for a moment of two, hands behind her back, watching Granny rock.  Presently, she clambored into her Granny's lap.

"Well," said Granny, pleased.  They rocked together, gently, gently.

"Daddy won't be back again," said Eva sadly, "He has to see the rest of the world.  It'd be like putting Blackie Crow in a cage.  But we got a fambly, anyhow."

"Now, Eva, I told you about your Daddy over and over.  I don't want to hear another single word about him from you."

Eva felt in her pocket to touch the little heart that stayed hidden there.