Night Gate (2 page)

“What a child needs is a strong parent. You can hardly call Mary Winnoway that. Look at the way she ran off when she was just fifteen and came crawling back with a child.”

“Hardly crawling. She came back to nurse her sick father, which is a credit to her, given what he was like. If you ask me, Mary ran away as much to find her brother as to escape her father.”

“Well, she found
someone,
” Mrs. Somersby said nastily. “A girl has no business running away like that. It’s different for boys. And what did she have to run away from, anyway? A bit of discipline never hurt anyone. It wasn’t as though her father hit her.”

“He did worse than hit. He crushed her and everyone around him, though I don’t like to speak ill of the dead. I knew Mary’s mother when she was a girl, and she was like a bright little bird. Adam Winnoway married her, and she lived in his shadow for the rest of her short life. I always feel as though she faded rather than died. After I married my Henry I came to live here, and I just watched her get paler and quieter every year.”

Rage shivered. She had no memory of Grandmother Reny, who had died before she was born, but it was a cold thing to imagine a person fading like a blot of disappearing ink.

“Fanciful rubbish!” Mrs. Somersby snapped. “Reny Winnoway was weak-minded, and so were her children. Rage is the same. She has no idea how to fit in with people. Do you know that she has no friends at school? Not a single one!”

I do have friends,
Rage thought.
I have old Bear and Elle and Mr. Walker. I have Billy Thunder. It’s not friends I want. It’s Mam.
Her eyes filled with tears.

“She’s right, Rose.” Mr. Johnson’s crackly voice broke in. “All she has are those damn dogs. Four of them, for heaven’s sake. It’s ridiculous. It was mad, bringing home abandoned strays the way she did. They could turn on you at any time.”

“Now Henry, you know those dogs are as sweet as pie with Rage.”

“That mean old dog of her granddaddy’s growls at me every time I walk in my own yard!”

“I don’t suppose the poor thing had much kindness in its life, with him keeping it chained from daylight till dark. Besides, Bear’s old, and that makes some folk mighty cranky,” Mrs. Johnson said pointedly. “There’s no harm in the dog except for someone who would hurt Rage. All of them are devoted to her, especially that pup of Bear’s. That Billy Thunder.”

When Mrs. Somersby spoke again, her voice was sulky. “All I’m saying is that the child might just as well be told that her mother is unlikely to wake up and come home. Knowing a hard truth is better than bearing false hope.”

“Where there is life, there is hope,” Mrs. Johnson said firmly.

“My sister’s a nurse at the hospital. She said Mary Winnoway will die if she doesn’t snap out of this state and exert some will to heal.”

Snap,
Rage thought, turning the word around in her mind and feeling sick with dreaminess.
Snap, crackle, and pop.

“We’ve done our neighborly best,” Mr. Johnson said piously.

Rage looked down the yard to where Elle and Billy Thunder were playing. They were barking, but the wind was carrying the noise away from the house now. It was like watching the television with the sound turned down.

“They’ll have to go, of course,” Mrs. Somersby said.

“It will break her heart,” Mrs. Johnson sighed.

“If you ask me, we might as well get rid of them right now and be done with it,” Mr. Johnson said briskly.

“Maybe we could advertise them in the paper, but I don’t know what good it will do. Someone might take the little dog, and maybe even Billy. For all his size, he’s not much more than a pup, and I never saw a sweeter-natured animal in all my born days. But I don’t know about Bear or Elle. Bear’s too bad-tempered for anyone to want, and Elle is so strong and so aggressively friendly.”

“If the police find that brother of Mary’s, he can take them,” Mr. Johnson said.

Rage took a deep, shaking breath. What she had overheard told her what she had already sensed. If they were talking about getting rid of the dogs, time must be running out for her mother. Rage was sure Mam would get better, if only she could find a way to see her. But when she had asked, her words had been brushed aside as if they were a bit of spilled flour.

Don’t ask
, whispered an urgent little voice into Rage’s ear.
Just go
.

Rage shook her head automatically. She couldn’t just sneak away without telling anyone and make her way alone through the hills to the hospital in Hopeton. It would take days, and she’d certainly be caught before she got there. She would get into terrible strife. Mam always said to make sure she didn’t cause anyone any trouble.

But she can’t say anything
, the little voice urged.
She needs you.

The thought that her mother could need her scared Rage—that was not how it was supposed to be. But she could not get the urgent voice out of her mind.
She needs you
. A picture of Mam smiling flashed into her mind, and something in Rage’s chest twisted hard and seemed to tear free.

She gave a gasp and suddenly felt half suffocated by the shrub, the dogs, the voices inside and outside of her. She pushed Mr. Walker to make him get up and crawled out from under the branches.

Rage found herself heading for the gate in the fence that led to Winnoway Farm. Mr. Walker ran down the yard to join the other dogs, but Bear followed Rage as she went into her own front yard and up the back step. Fortunately, the homesteads on both properties were close to the fence line that divided them, so it was a short walk. Her hands shook as she used the spare key under the mat to get inside, and they shook harder as she opened the hall cupboard to get her good long coat and her hiking shoes with the rippled soles. She dared not think about what she was doing. It was too frightening. Who would have thought that being bad would feel so dangerous?

Once she had changed, she went to her bedroom and took her mother’s pink-gold locket out of her jewelry box. She hardly knew why, except Mam cherished it above everything they owned. It had been the last present given to her by her own mother.

Opening the locket, Rage gazed at the photographs inside. There was one of Grandmother Reny looking sweet and vague, and one of Uncle Samuel, taken not long before he had run away. He had been only a few years older than Rage was now. He had dark, unruly hair like Mam’s and a wild, hurt look on his unsmiling face. Had he been thinking of leaving when the picture was taken? Everyone always said it was different for boys. Perhaps that was why Mam had come back to Winnoway, while Uncle Samuel had never returned. He had written a single letter to Mam, which she kept in her handbag.

Rage wondered if the precious letter had been burned up in the car crash or if it had been rescued along with the locket. Pushing the locket deep into her coat pocket for safety, she went out the front door and closed it quietly behind her.

“Maybe they’ll let her keep one of the dogs, though how she’ll choose which, I don’t know.” Mrs. Johnson’s voice floated on the air as Rage and Bear walked down to where the other dogs were playing.

The dogs stopped when they saw her, wagging their tails and crowding at her, making themselves into a warm, furry barrier. She bit her lip hard. “I have to go and see Mam,” she told them, but saying the words out loud made her feel as if she were too close to a high cliff edge.

She hesitated and thought about putting the locket back. Billy licked her hand and whined a little. Rage looked into his warm brown eyes and felt like crying. Worry for the dogs was mixed up with fear for Mam. If only there were someone to tell her what to do.

At that moment the goat stopped eating the fruit tree and jumped down from the brick wall and into Mr. Johnson’s backyard. Seeing the poor, bedraggled thing climb so easily over the barrier seemed like a sign to Rage. After all, she wouldn’t be running away. She was just going to visit her mother in the hospital, and no one had actually forbidden it.

She pushed through the dogs to the gate, shooing them away. But when she slipped through, they surged past her as if they had been waiting for the chance to escape. Rage stared after them, horrified.

Opening her mouth to cry out, she realized that she couldn’t, because then Mr. Johnson would come out and the moment for going would be lost. She closed her mouth and the gate, heart beating fast. The dogs would have to come with her. She did not know what she would do with them once they reached Hopeton, but the fact that she would not be making the journey alone lightened her heart.

They cut across the property alongside Winnoway Farm and kept away from the roads, because that was where the police would go when Mr. Johnson rang them. He would not call the police until he was certain she was gone, and it would take time for him to be certain. Maybe he would even wait until morning.

“We have to get as far as we can before that,” Rage told the dogs.

She could see the water glimmering ahead and wondered if the reservoir behind the dam really was bottomless, the way some of the boys at school said. It was important to keep in sight of the shoreline, because it would bring her to the little gorge leading into the next valley. It would save hours of climbing, and it led to a track that cross-country skiers used in winter. That would take her all the way to the outskirts of Hopeton, and there were huts along the way where she could sleep.

The dead trees looked more and more like claws sticking up out of the flat water as the sun fell toward the horizon, and Rage walked faster, spurred by the thought of what the dam would look like at night, under the moon.

Rage had a sudden vivid memory of Grandfather Adam standing at the fence bordering Winnoway Farm and staring over at the dam with a blank expression that had frightened her with its emptiness. She knew the whole valley had once been Winnoway land. It had been divided between Grandfather Adam and Great-Uncle Peter when their father died.

“What happened to Great-Uncle Peter?” Rage had asked Mam once, imagining another cold, hard man like Grandfather. Mam had shrugged, saying he had left after the government forced him to sell his land for the dam project. Grandfather Adam had pleaded with his brother to use the government money to buy land in the next valley, but he had refused.

“Did Grandfather want him to stay?” Rage asked, surprised.

“I think he wanted him to stay very much,” Mam had answered.

“Why did Great-Uncle Peter go, then?” Rage was old enough now to know that had been a bad question, because it reminded Mam of her brother running away.

“He had to do what was right for him,” Mam had answered in a low, sad voice.

Remembering this, Rage decided that she did not believe people should do what was right for themselves without thinking about what was right for other people as well. No doubt Uncle Samuel had left Winnoway because that was right for him, but his going had not been right for Mam.

Rage realized she must have missed the opening to the gorge because she was still climbing and she had long passed the end of the reservoir. Now she would have to go to the top of the ridge to get her bearings. It would be a hard climb, but she knew she would be able to see the bleary arc of light given off by Hopeton.

It was slow going over the uneven, brambly ground. Every time they came to a rusted barbed-wire fence left from the days when this was farmers’ land, she propped open the strands with the stick she had picked up to smack at the grass and frighten snakes away. The darker it got, the harder it was to walk, and she kept tripping over blackberry runners.

She began to worry about what she was going to do with the dogs when she got to Hopeton. They would stay if she told them to wait just outside the town, but after a while they would come looking for her. It wasn’t disobedience. It was just that their minds weren’t made to hold orders for very long.

She felt like crying again. It was too much, having to worry about the dogs as well as about how she was going to find the hospital and convince the nurses to let her visit Mam. She knew from listening to Mr. and Mrs. Johnson talk that the nurses were very strict about visiting times and about how many people could visit. They were sure to make a fuss about Rage being there without an adult.

You must get in
, Rage told herself fiercely. She found herself remembering the awful night when no one had come to pick her up from school. She had sat in the headmaster’s office and listened to him phoning the police. From the way his shoulders hunched she knew that it was bad news.

She made herself concentrate on watching the dogs. No matter how bad she felt, that always made her feel better. Elle was rushing ahead and coming back every once in a while to walk a few steps beside her. Mr. Walker ran round and round her in circles, covering double the distance of the others. Billy Thunder trotted at her side, behind his mother. Mrs. Johnson was right about him being the sweetest dog that ever lived. Billy was pure honey and sunlight, which was a wonder when you thought how near he’d come to dying almost as soon as he was born.

He was the only one of the dogs born on Winnoway Farm. Mam had been amazed to discover that Bear was pregnant because Bear was so old. When her puppies were born too soon, Grandfather said they were too small to feed and ought to be drowned. He might even have done it if he hadn’t been so ill by then. Mam called the vet, who said he could not come until the following evening and that they must milk Bear and feed the puppies all through the night. Mam only managed to get a small cup of milk from Bear.

“It is not enough for all of them,” she said. “We have to choose one.”

She stood looking at the five puppies for the longest time, until Rage knew that she could not bring herself to choose. But if a choice was not made, then all of the puppies would die. Sometimes Rage thought that was the worst moment in her life: looking at those puppies and knowing that she must choose, and that whichever puppy she chose meant choosing that the others would die. Billy had begun to wriggle then, and she had picked him up because she had thought he might be stronger than the others and have a better chance to survive.