A Difficult Boy (31 page)

“What's to be done with him?” Mrs. Lyman asked, her voice cracking anxiously.

“In the morning we'll take him to the constable, once Rufus and Phinney get here. Or have the constable come fetch him.”

Ethan wasn't sure whether to be worried or relieved. Daniel was alive, at least, if Mr. Lyman had to talk about tying him up. If he was locked in the cellar, it shouldn't be too hard to creep downstairs and let him out, should it? He reached into his pocket for the broken fork Daniel had used to pick the lock on Mr. Lyman's desk. He wondered if it would work on a padlock as well.

An orange glow filled the hallway as the Lymans came out of the kitchen. Mr. Lyman took his wife's arm and escorted her up the stairs. “There,” he said, his voice gentle though shaken. “We're all safe now. I'll go back in a bit and teach that wretch a lesson he'll not soon forget. Then—” His eyes narrowed as he saw Ethan sitting on the top step with Ruth. “Stay right there, boy!” he ordered, when Ethan stood up. “What do you know about all of this?”

“N-nothing, sir. I just came down to see what all the noise was.”

“Oh, you're involved in this somehow.”

“In what, sir? What's happened? The girls said there was a burglar. Did you catch him?” Ethan widened his eyes. At least he didn't need to pretend to be scared.

Mr. Lyman grabbed Ethan under the chin and forced him to look up at him. “Don't pretend you don't know who was down there.” He squeezed so hard that Ethan could neither shake his head nor utter more than a squeak. “Where were you while all this was going on?” Mr. Lyman shifted his grip from Ethan's jaw to his hair. He shook him hard. “Well?”

“Up-up-upstairs in bed.”

“None of your lies, boy! You were down there, too, weren't you? Just now sneaking up the back stairs, I'll wager.” He shoved Ethan hard against the wall and pinned him there.

Ethan squeezed his eyes closed tight and covered his face with his hands. “No! I don't know what you're talking about! I swear!”

“He's not lying, Papa,” Ruth said. Ethan opened one eye to see her tugging on the sleeve of Mr. Lyman's dressing gown. “I saw him come down when he heard all the noise. Please, Papa, don't be cross with Ethan. He didn't do anything. He was right here all the time.”

“I d-d-don't even know wha-what's happened,” Ethan said, his voice barely a whimper.

“Paddy tried to rob us.” The lines around Mr. Lyman's mouth and across his forehead hardened. “You can't pretend you didn't notice he was missing, boy.”

“Paddy?” Ethan hoped he sounded surprised. “I th-thought—He said he was g-going to the privy.”

“That's right,” Ruth chimed in. “It can't be Paddy either. He's gone to the privy. That's what Ethan said. Please, Papa, don't punish Ethan. It's not his fault.”

Mr. Lyman pressed his lips together and collected himself. Loosening his grip on Ethan, he stooped and caressed Ruth's hair with his free hand. “All right, sweetheart. Go to bed now. It's late. Everything's fine now.” His voice turned from steel to silk.

Ethan felt trapped inside a nightmare. It seemed as if Mr. Lyman were two completely different people at once: the one who had Ethan cornered and trembling, and the one who bent to accept Ruth's good-night kiss and give her one in return. Ethan almost expected to see the two Mr. Lymans split apart and the kindly father go with Mrs. Lyman to tuck Ruth in while the second Mr. Lyman stayed to torment Ethan.

“All right, boy,” Mr. Lyman said, after his family had disappeared behind their bedchamber doors. With one hand, he captured Ethan's wrists and jerked them down so he couldn't hide his face. “The truth now.” His voice was low, and even more menacing for that.

“I d-don't know. Paddy—he's not—he can't be a thief.”

“I caught him in the act, boy. Rifling through my desk.” His grip tightened, and he forced Ethan to his knees.

Tears welled in Ethan's eyes at the shock of his landing. Pain lanced from his knees all the way to the base of his skull, and it felt as though his wrists were being crushed to jelly in Mr. Lyman's palm. “C-c-c-aught him?” Ethan stammered, hoping his terror sounded like surprise, like innocence. “What—what—where is he now?”

“Locked up in the cellar. Don't tell me he didn't take you into his confidence.” Mr. Lyman shook Ethan like a dog shaking a rat.

Ethan's head thumped hard against the wall. He choked on tears and phlegm, wanted to collapse to the floor and just sob with fear and pain. He thought then that he would just tell everything, if it would make Mr. Lyman leave him alone. But telling would only make things worse. How could Daniel always be so brave, he wondered. He swallowed back the glob of mucus in his throat, grasping for the right lies to tell. “I-I-I-didn't know. I didn't think he'd really turn out to be a thief. I hoped he wasn't so bad as everyone made out. I-I-I-I guess I was wrong.” Ethan let himself go limp and drooped his head. “I guess you were right about him all along.”

Mr. Lyman narrowed his eyes. “If you're lying to me, boy . . . Well, never mind for now. Upstairs with you, and I'll deal with you when I'm finished with the other one. Then we'll see how much you know and how much you're pretending not to know.” He hauled Ethan to his feet and dragged
him toward the attic stairs. He shoved him upstairs then slammed the door behind him and shot the bolt home.

Ethan lay on the stairway for a long time, letting loose the racking sobs he'd held back. Finally, head aching and throat raw, he dragged himself up the stairs. He thrust his shaking hands into the pitcher, dashed the lukewarm water on his face, rubbed it over wrists that felt rope-burned from Mr. Lyman's grip.

Fat and bronze, the moon's round face filled the eastern fan window, spilling silver-blue light across the attic. The moon's shadowy craters seemed to curve into a mocking sneer. Ethan turned his back on it and limped to the western window, where Daniel so often looked out over the spot that had once been his home. The stars were wan and feeble, overpowered by the moonlight. He clutched the sill, his nails digging into the wood. He wanted to ball his hands into fists and slam them through the window. Instead, his fingers brushed against Daniel's tiny horse. He rubbed the toy's wooden neck and sides, wishing it could be magic, that it could tell him the right thing to do, or that it could spring to life, grow to full size, sprout wings, and carry him and Daniel far, far away, beyond the mountains, or even to the moon.

Clutching the horse in one hand, Ethan flopped down on the bed and reached into the mattress, where he'd hidden the paper. The coarse straw and husks scratched his fingers as he groped for the smooth white rectangle. For all its raggedness, it had been important once—he could tell that even in the moonlight. Mr. Lyman had drafted it in his best hand, and the tattered paper had once been heavy and fine.

Ethan took a lucifer from Daniel's little table and lit their last candle stub. He tipped the paper so that the light shone more fully upon it. The document was full of important-sounding
words like
whereas, hereby, wherefore
, and
witnessing thereof
. Four months ago, Ethan wouldn't have been able to make any sense of it. But from his lessons with Mr. Bingham, he knew that familiar words like
presents
and
satisfaction
had entirely different meanings from the ones he'd learned in school. He prayed that he'd remember enough of his lessons to sort it out, prayed, too, that it might hold some clue that would help Daniel.

He followed the letters with his finger.
Know all men by these presents . . 
.

By the time the moon moved out of the eastern window and stood straight overhead, he'd studied the paper so long that he could see it with his eyes closed. It was just what he needed. The document was dated December 1834, the winter of the fire that destroyed Daniel's family and his home—the home that Daniel's father had mortgaged to Mr. Lyman. The home that Matthew Linnehan had redeemed only days before his death, the final payment and satisfaction of mortgage all documented by the paper Ethan held in his hands. But Mr. Lyman had taken everything anyway, taken Mr. Linnehan's money and his property. And his son. Taken them all and used them as if he had a right to.

He rose and returned to the western window, where the silhouettes of the mountains loomed like sleeping dragons. Surely the paper would be enough to prove who the real thief was. And surely Matthew Linnehan's land was worth the price of a horse. But what good would the paper do when it was locked up in the attic with Ethan, while Daniel was trapped in the cellar, maybe even now being thrashed to death by Mr. Lyman? And when Mr. Lyman came for Ethan, he'd find the paper and destroy it, destroy it and Daniel and Ethan all together.

With the moon hovering above the mountains, poised to sink behind them and yield to the sun, Ethan made his decision. He would have to tell more lies than he'd ever told in his entire life. He would have to tell Mr. Lyman he was sorry for not believing him. He would have to disown Daniel entirely and pretend that he was on Mr. Lyman's side, now that he knew Daniel was really a thief and a liar. It was the only way he'd get free. And then, once he was free, he could run home and tell Pa and Ma everything that had happened. Surely they would help Daniel. He frowned, remembering that people used to call Pa
Simple Gideon
, that Pa had relied on Mr. Lyman to sort out his accounts. Would he know if someone had been cheated? And would anyone believe
Simple Gideon
? But Ma—she'd know. She'd know and she'd figure out a way to help.

He slit the seam of his vest pocket and slipped the document in between the vest front and its lining, working the fabric between his fingers until the paper settled by the side seam, where someone searching his pockets wouldn't notice it. Then he braced himself for the thud of Mr. Lyman's footsteps on the attic stairs, practicing over and over what he would say.

Only Mr. Lyman didn't come. The eastern sky faded from black to gray, and the cattle and sheep grew restless for their breakfast. From the attic window, Ethan watched Mr. Pease and Mr. Wheeler and Joshua Ward and Lizzie come to do their chores. He watched Mr. Lyman talk to them in the yard,
telling them all of Daniel's crimes, no doubt. He watched Mr. Lyman walk away after giving the men their instructions. He watched Lizzie go in and out of the barn with her milk buckets, and the Lyman girls go off to school.

As the sun crawled higher in the sky, the August heat filled the attic and stayed like an unwelcome guest. The cicadas hummed a constant vibrato that set his nerves trembling to the same frequency as the sound. The sound stretched and stretched and stretched, then snapped in a moment's silence, then started again.

An hour, maybe more, went by, and a wagon drawn by a piebald horse pulled into the yard. A middle-aged man with the sad eyes and droopy jowls of a hound dog drove. Constable Flagg. Mr. Lyman sat next to him, calling out for Mr. Pease as they drove into the yard. Ethan watched the three men disappear into the house, then return dragging Daniel, bound hand and foot.

If he hadn't known it was Daniel, he wouldn't have recognized him. His face was purple and swollen, striped with tendrils of dried blood. Dark stains splotched his tattered shirt, welts and bruises mottled his forearms. Mr. Lyman talked excitedly to Mr. Flagg and gestured as if recounting a fearsome duel between himself and Daniel. The constable glanced uneasily back and forth from Daniel's battered face to Mr. Lyman's unmarked one. Finally, Mr. Lyman and Mr. Pease tossed Daniel in the back of the constable's wagon like a carcass to be taken to the butcher's. Then all three men got into Mr. Flagg's wagon and drove away.

Ethan's throat clogged and his eyes blurred.

Noontime came and went, and still Mr. Lyman didn't return. Ethan could smell dinner cooking in the kitchen, but Mr. Lyman didn't come home for it, though Mrs. Lyman came out and stared down the road for a long time, as if that would
summon him back. He saw the girls come home from school for their noon meal and leave again. He watched Lizzie throw the dinner scraps to the chickens. Then somewhere in all the watching, he fell asleep.

Ethan heard the bolt rattle at the bottom of the stairs. His head snapped up, and he dashed to the farthest corner of the attic, as if that would protect him. The tread on the attic stairs was lighter than Mr. Lyman's. No doubt it was Mrs. Lyman come to see if she could thrash the truth out of him. He set his jaw and tried to work up his courage to endure whatever she meted out. He began to rehearse his story in his head.

But it was Lizzie's voice that came to him from the stairway. “Ethan? It's only me,” she said softly.

He sobbed with relief as he dashed over to her. “Lizzie! You have to let me out! Please!”

“Shhhhh,” she said. “I brought you some dinner. I made you a plate while Mrs. Lyman had her back turned.” She set a cloth-covered dish on the floor next to him and pulled knife, fork, and spoon from her apron pocket.

“I don't want it,” Ethan said. “I mean, that's kind and all, Lizzie,” he added when he saw her expression go from sympathetic to sharp, “but I have to get out. I have to help Daniel.”

“It's too late for that, dear. Daniel's made more trouble than anyone can help him out of now.”

“It wasn't his fault!”

“Mr. Lyman caught him right there, stealing from his desk. How could it not be his fault?”

“Please, Lizzie—”

Lizzie smoothed a tangle of sweaty hair away from Ethan's forehead. Her hands felt cool, even though they were strong and callused. “This is about Ivy, isn't it?”

Ethan nodded. “We just wanted to figure out how to keep her, that's all.”

She tipped Ethan's chin up to look into his eyes. “Buying her with stolen money was a pretty foolish idea, wasn't it? Whatever made Daniel think he wouldn't get found out?” She shook her head. “I was starting to think he was different from what they all said. Now it turns out he's just a thief after all.”