Last in a Long Line of Rebels (6 page)

“The letter I found was signed WLM,” I had whispered to Benzer as we walked to the car. “Walter Mayhew. The
L
must stand for
loser
.”

“Maybe the gold was what he was saying to be cautious about,” he whispered back.

If Bertie noticed I was quiet after dropping off Benzer, she didn't comment. Of all the things I'd expected to hear about my family, having a gold-stealing ancestor wasn't one of them. For twelve years,
twelve years
, my family had hidden this from me. They hardly told me anything—not about the past, not about the house, and certainly not about the future. It was so frustrating!

I stared out the window. What else weren't they telling me? Mr. Norman, our social studies teacher, had a phrase written on the board that he made us memorize:
TRUST BUT VERIFY.
He said that we should examine everything we heard, or else we'd be at the mercy of those who wrote the books. But what about what you didn't hear? You couldn't verify what you didn't know.

A small spiral notebook lay on the floorboard of the backseat. I picked it up and flipped through it; the pages were blank. “Hey, Bertie, can I have this?”

She looked up in the rearview mirror. “Sure, they were giving them away for free at the bank. There's probably a pen down there somewhere.”

I dug around under the seat until I found it. In big, broad strokes, I wrote across the top,
THE VERIFIED
TRUTH ABOUT THE MAY
HEWS
. Mrs. Hall had said I had ancestors of steel, so I wrote that down. I chewed on the end of the pen. But ancestors of steel and gold thieves didn't go together. There had to be more to the story, and I was going to do everything I could to find out.

From the diary of Louise Duncan Mayhew
July 1861

I received a letter from Walter that concerns me greatly.—“Dear Louise, I trust that you have heard of the battle at Manassas. Recalling it in detail is more than I care to bare, but I hardly see how it will ever be forgotten. I will not burden you with it, exsept to say that to call it a victory for the Rebels seems blasphemous. Jeb Bilbrey was killed and Tom Brian wounded. There were many more deaths, and while their names would mean nothing to you, they have made a lasting impression on me. This battle has affected me deeply, and I fear that if this conflict is not resolved soon, the man you agreed to marry will no longer exist.”

B
ertie had barely stopped the car before I jumped out. “I'm getting out of these clothes,” I yelled over my shoulder. Upstairs, I took off my dress and hung it back in the closet. I pulled on a faded pair of denim shorts and dug a dirty T-shirt out of the hamper. Some people like comfort foods; I like comfort clothes. I could already feel the anger from before being replaced with something more like sadness.

The wavy glass distorted the scene below, but I could see Daddy and Isaac piling up scraps of cast-off machinery. I rested my forehead against the glass pane and tried to imagine living somewhere else. I pictured Benzer's brick house with its two-car garage, and the rental cottage Patty had moved into after her parents' divorce, complete with its beige carpeting and white walls. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't see myself in any of those rooms. Sure, our front porch sagged, but when the sun shone through the gingerbread trim, it made a cool pattern against the wall. And I loved that I could sit on our roof, the part above the porch, just by opening my bedroom window and stepping outside. Sitting on the shingles, under the shade of the big oak tree, and watching as teenagers drove up and down the street on their way to the ball field was one of my favorite pastimes. How could it all be torn down? My eyes filled with tears, and I wiped them away with my sleeve.

I looked down again and saw Isaac, sweat soaking through his T-shirt as he worked his shovel into the hard ground. Daddy was still going through the scrap metal pile, piece by piece, with a determined look on his face. He hadn't told me about the house, but I could see he was trying hard to get the twenty-five thousand dollars to save it. I let out a long breath, letting the last of the anger out with it.

I picked the notebook off the bed, where I'd tossed it, and hid it deep in my sock drawer. Tonight I'd write down everything I'd learned so far. Dad and Isaac weren't quitting, and neither was I. We'd find a way out of this mess. We just had to.

I walked through the junkyard's gate in time to see Isaac freeing a rusty piece of metal from the dirt. His Green Day T-shirt was stained, and his jeans were dirty, but I thought he looked like those models on posters at the mall. Coach Peeler might not like his skin color, but I sure did. It was way nicer than my pasty-white color. I waved, and he took off the headphones he was wearing and placed them around his neck.

“Hey! What are you doing working on a Sunday?” I asked.

Isaac leaned on the handle of his shovel. “Hi, Lou! Your daddy wants to organize the junkyard. We're going to take this load of scrap metal to Cookeville, and he's got some refrigerators to sell at the Crossville flea market. I'm happy to help, since I need all the money I can get.”

“Daddy told me about the scholarship,” I said. “That's just wrong.”

“Thanks,” Isaac said.

“I overheard some people at church complaining about it. For a bunch of church folks, they were saying some ugly things.”

“They were saying some pretty ugly things at my church too,” Isaac said. “I guess I shouldn't have expected much from Coach Peeler, anyway.”

“Can you do anything about it? I don't know, appeal it or something?”

“Nah, it doesn't work that way.”

“But you've already been accepted at UT. You've got to go there—you're their biggest fan ever, next to me.”

“Hey,” he said, grabbing me in a hug. “Don't look like that, Lou. I've got a bunch of options. Please let me worry about it.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” I said. I pointed to the headphones. “What are you listening to?”

“I made a new heavy metal playlist.” He grinned. “It goes with my moving-heavy-metal job.”

“Sounds good, but I prefer
junk
-rock.”

He groaned. “That was seriously awful.”

“Seriously funny you mean.” I looked around. “Need some help?”

“You want to help me dig the rest of these out?”

I nodded. It would take a whole lot of scrap metal and rusty rebar to raise twenty-five thousand dollars, but if they wanted to try, I was game. “I'm ready when you are.”

Isaac handed me his headphones and MP3 player. “If you're going to help, you'll need a little Metallica to get you going.”

“Better or worse than Foo Fighters?”

“Totally different—heavy metal versus grunge rock. You'll see.” He held out the shovel. “Start digging.”

We'd just thrown the last piece of metal on the truck when I heard Mama's car in the driveway. A few minutes later, she came into the backyard carrying a bag with the words
JACKSON
ARTS AND CRAFTS
printed across the front.

“Tucker, things look better already,” she told my dad. “I'm impressed.”

Daddy gave her a quick peck on the cheek. “Did you find what you needed?”

She rubbed her belly. “I think so. I'm going to get started before this one wakes up and starts moving around. It's hard to concentrate while you're being kicked.”

“Don't overdo it, Lily.”

She smiled. “I won't. How was church, Lou? No lightning or earthquakes, I hope.”

“No, just singing and preaching. Oh, and it was Homecoming, so we got to eat.”

Daddy winked. “And you didn't call me? I might have gone if I'd known that.”

“I had to fight Benzer and Franklin for a deviled egg as it was.”

“Ha.” He hitched up his jeans. “I better get back to work.”

Mama went down the path to the studio, while Daddy and Isaac started loading the back of the truck.

“Lou,” Daddy called, “can you get my gloves off the coffee table?”

“Sure.”

I stopped on the front porch and watched everyone go about their business. I was glad to see that so far my parents seemed okay. Bertie says stress over money is the biggest cause of divorce. Maybe that explained what happened to Patty's mama and daddy. After he lost his job, Uncle Henry started sleeping all day and going out at night. Aunt Sophie kicked him out of the house before you could say “boo.” Now he's the manager of the movie theater over in Sparta, with a new wife and baby boy. But Patty and I get to see all the first-run movies for free, so that's something.

Daddy's work gloves were lying on the table on top of some magazines. I bent to pick them up, accidentally knocking one of the magazines to the floor. The bright red masthead caught my eye.
Middle Tennessee Farm and Land
. I slowly turned the pages. There were homes for sale in Grey County, where we lived, but even more in neighboring towns like Crossville and Cookeville. If Daddy was looking for places to live, he must not be sure that he could raise the money for the attorney fees.

None of the homes looked like ours. I folded the magazine up as small as I could, then walked with it to the kitchen. I stuffed it in the trash can, deep in the bottom, rearranging the garbage around it so that none of it was visible. We might have to move, but it wasn't going to be because I didn't do everything I could to stop it.

Benzer and I sat on my front steps waiting for Franklin.

“When did you say he'd be here?” Benzer asked for the third time.

“Any minute, I hope!” We were as eager as Franklin to get started on his American Heritage badge, and we'd made plans to go to the new Grey County Museum. I pulled my notebook out of my back pocket and reread the list I'd written last night. It was short.

The Verified Truth about the Mayhews

1. Ancestors of steel, according to Mrs. Hall.
   
2. Family has lived in the same house for 175 years.
   
3. Relatives sold off most everything at an auction.
   
4. WM may have been a thief.
   
5. WM wrote a letter to Louise telling her to be careful. (Maybe
   she
   was a thief too?)
   
6. The house will be demolished unless I figure out a way to stop it.
   

I stuffed it back in my jeans. Hopefully, we'd learn more at the museum.

Franklin, wearing his Boy Scout uniform and a camera over his shoulder, finally rode into the driveway and carefully parked his bike under the oak. “Are you two ready to depart?”

“You could just say, ‘leave,' Franklin. What's with the uniform? I thought Scouts were over for the summer.”

Franklin straightened his neckerchief. “Since it's Scout business, I wanted to look professional.”

“Gotcha. Let's go.”

We were going to see Bertie at the Grey Motel before heading to the museum. Her usual morning routine included holding court at their restaurant and catching up on the town gossip. If we played our cards right, we'd score another breakfast and a personal tour of the museum. Bertie can't resist showing it off.

“Lou,” Franklin said, “I do have some information for you.”

“What?”

“There was a vote last Friday. We were right. The county wants to build new offices on your property. They offered to buy it from your dad, but he said no. So they voted to condemn it.” He frowned. “I'm sorry.”

I looked back at our house as we walked. It looked sadder. “If we move, I'll just die,” I said.

“You're not moving,” Benzer said. “That would not be exciting—it would be tragic. We prayed for exciting, remember?”

I frowned. “Yeah, yeah, I remember.”

“Well, technically speaking, exciting does mean to ‘stir up emotion,' so loss of any kind could be labeled ‘exciting.'”

“Franklin,” I said, walking faster, “has anyone ever told you how annoying your brain can be?”

“Yes,” he said, sighing. “Frequently.”

“Hey, check it out.” Benzer said. He pointed to where a red flyer hung on a telephone pole. “Zollicoffer Minority Scholarship Fund-Raiser. I bet this is for Isaac.”

I looked down the sidewalk. Red flyers lined both sides of the street as far as I could see.

“That's great. Especially since the chances of winning the Pride of Zollicoffer scholarship are slim to none unless you're white, at least while Coach Peeler is in charge.” I shook my head. “It's so unfair how people like Coach Peeler and Pete Winningham get to mess with people's futures.”

“That's why being governor is on my list,” Franklin said. “If you want to change things, you need to be a person of significance and take action.”

I dropped my head. “We can't wait that long, Franklin. We have to figure something out now, significant or not, and take action.”