; CHAPTER ONE ?
A Very Special Gift
H
averhill never had much excitement to speak of. Sure, every fall the Harvest Home Festival was celebrated in the nearby town of Leon. (Reverend Landreth earned bragging rights for the rest of the year by growing the heaviest pumpkin, even though some folks accused him of sneaking several bricks inside it at the weigh-in.) The weather’s about the same as anywhere else, plus the odd tornado or two. Years ago a traveling carnival came through, but it never amounted to anything. The local high school football team, the Losing Lions, had a winless streak that brought some publicity, even if it was bad. And the crowning of the Watermelon Queen during Leon’s Summer Jubilee provided interesting gossip for the town matriarchs. But from a child’s point of view, in the sparse community of Haverhill nothing exciting ever really happened…until that one afternoon Benjamin Biggs’s grandfather showed up at the door holding a cardboard box. The four-year-old was playing in his sandbox in the backyard, the sun warming his baby-blonde hair. Benjamin liked living in the country. He had a love for all animals (well, except snakes), and his house was in the perfect spot to see them. Wild animals of every kind popped up all over the place. He once thought he saw a fox and skunk playing on the country road in front of his house. Benjamin was free to roam without the worry of cars zooming along the road. He did, however, miss having friends living close by, as they did when the Biggs family lived in the city. Not a single r 7 r