Wolf Hollow (10 page)

Monday came.

There was no sign of Toby as the boys and I walked to school. It was raining lightly, threatening more, and blowing cold, but I had still hoped to see him on a hilltop, just to know he hadn't left.

Perhaps I would go down to his shack after school. Not to bother him, just to see if I could spy him sheltering there, out of the rain. Though he walked in all weathers and seasons and would likely do so today, too.

First, though, I would go to school. My parents always told me that school was my most important job. I knew, with two brothers, that I would never farm this land, and I wanted and had to grow up an educated woman.

Today, I would learn some arithmetic, no doubt, and a few state capitals, why we fought the wars we fought, what Anne of Green Gables would get up to next, and why I shouldn't mix bleach with ammonia. But first on my list was what Andy had to say.

My parents had told me to stay away from Betty, but they had not told me to avoid Andy. He was a bully, for sure, but I meant to ask him about the belfry and the taut-wire across the path.

Toby had said, “They made scratches on the Turtle Stone,” and I wondered if he meant Betty and Andy . . . if that was where they'd sharpened the wire that had cut James. I pictured one of them on each side of the Turtle Stone, the ends of the wire wrapped around stick handles so they could pull it to and fro, like a two-man saw, honing it sharp.

What I couldn't fathom was how they had thought to do that. Or why they'd actually done the thing. Even a wolf has reasons for what it does. Even a snake makes sense when it eats a robin's egg.

By the time we got to the schoolhouse, it was raining in earnest. We three had worn oilcloth ponchos, hoods up, and boots, so we were plenty dry and warm, but many of the other children came in soaked and shivering. For the first time that season, Mrs. Taylor lit a fire in the stove at the front of the room and gave the wettest of her students a chance to dry out before lessons began.

“Goodness, what happened to you?” she asked James, bending low to look at the bandage on his forehead.

When James glanced my way, I shook my head. “Pirates,” he said.

Mrs. Taylor nodded. “I thought so.” She returned to the front of the room.

“Those of you who aren't too wet, come on up here,” she called, and so my brothers and I went forward, a few others, too, and I wondered what she had in mind for such a mixed bunch.

Not state capitals, as it turned out.

“I want to talk to you about what happened to Ruth,” she said, glancing at the door. I turned to look, but it was shut and no one had come in. I realized, then, that both Andy and Betty were absent again.

I wasn't surprised about Andy. On such a rainy day he would be forgiven many of his chores at home, so why bother with school? Betty, I thought, might be at this moment leading the charge against Toby. I pictured her practicing both prim and proper, aiming for innocent, and probably succeeding with those who didn't know her.

“Annabelle?” I turned back to Mrs. Taylor. The other children were looking at me. “I asked you how you were doing. I'm sure it wasn't easy to see Ruth get hurt like that.”

“It wasn't,” I said. “But I'm okay.”

She talked for a little while about the importance of trusting people, telling them about the things that bothered us.

“If any of you saw Toby on that hillside, or anyone else for that matter, or anything odd that day, you should tell someone. Me, your parents, Reverend Kinnell. Someone who can help you do the right thing.”

I raised my hand. “Who told you that Toby was on the hillside?”

“I heard about it at church yesterday,” she said. “From the Glengarrys.”

I thought about that for a moment. “So you know that Betty is the one saying Toby threw that rock?”

Mrs. Taylor nodded. “Yes, I heard that.”

“Then can I please go up to the belfry so I can see what there is to see out that window?”

To which Mrs. Taylor, clearly baffled, said, “Why would you want to do that?”

“Because Betty said she was in the belfry with Andy at recess when she saw Toby through the window, on the hillside.”

Mrs. Taylor said, very slowly, “Betty claims they were up there the day Ruth got hurt?”

I nodded. The other children listened to all this more attentively than they ever listened during lessons.

Mrs. Taylor stood up, went to a door at the back of the room. It didn't open when she tried it. She came back to us then, deep in thought.

“All right,” she said. “Go on back to your seats and read the assignments I've written on the chalkboard.”

She joined the children drying out around the stove. From my desk I could hear her telling them to trust people. To tell the truth.

While I read about the Spanish-American War, I listened for the door to open. For Betty to walk in. But she didn't.

It was still raining at recess, so we stayed inside and played marbles and cat's cradle. Before calling us back to our lessons, Mrs. Taylor had us do a long series of jumping jacks. “To make you strong,” she said, though I knew what the afternoon would be like if the boys, especially, didn't wear themselves out a little first.

As we were returning to our desks, the door finally opened, but it was Andy who came in, not Betty.

He tipped off his hood and shook all over like a dog as he looked around the schoolhouse. “Where's Betty?” he said. When no one answered him, he said, more loudly, “Mrs. Taylor. Where's Betty?”

She turned from the chalkboard. “I have no idea, Andy. She didn't come to school this morning. I wonder if she might be sick.”

Andy pulled his hood back up over his head. Left without another word.

Mrs. Taylor stood where she was, looking long at where he'd been.

“Settle down everyone,” she finally said. “Time for lessons.”

At the end of the day, as my brothers were putting on their rain boots, Mrs. Taylor took me aside and said, “I'd like to come see your parents after suppertime, Annabelle. Do you think that would be all right?”

I was startled by the very idea of it. “Did I do something wrong? Or my brothers?”

“Oh no, Annabelle. Nothing like that. I just want to talk with your parents for a few minutes.”

“Well, then, sure,” I said.

I didn't want to be rude, but I was curious: “Do you have a telephone at your house, Mrs. Taylor?”

“I do. Why?”

“Because we do, too.” I hoped I didn't sound fresh. “You could just call them up, if you want.”

Mrs. Taylor gave me a little smile. “I could. But . . .” She paused to choose her words. “Well, I'm sure you know that Mrs. Gribble is, sometimes, a little . . . curious . . . when she puts a call through.”

Ah.

Annie Gribble lived in a small house that we passed on our way to market. I'd only been there once, to drop off a bushel of peaches at canning time, but she'd invited us in for a glass of lemonade, my father and me, and I'd been fascinated by the switchboard that dominated her front room like a loom strung with thin black snakes.

She sat there all day long and made connections between the families in our hills that had acquired telephones. To use ours, we had to ring up Annie and tell her where to place the call. And she had a habit of listening in to hear news that she thought other people really ought to know.

We were used to the idea by now. Nobody dared tell a secret over the telephone, for fear that Annie was eavesdropping. But Annie made hay out of even small things, so we'd learned to start a conversation with the most boring of our news, hoping that she'd be more easily distracted by another customer calling in for a connection.

Whatever Mrs. Taylor wanted to talk about, it wasn't meant for Annie's ears.

“Do you want me to tell them you're coming by?” I said.

“I would appreciate it,” Mrs. Taylor said.

I pulled on my boots and tried to tie the laces of James's hood under his chin, but he tossed his head like a young horse and galloped out of the school into the rain before I could do a proper job. Henry followed him, and they both did a mud dance across the sloppy schoolyard before gaining drier ground in the woods.

I was not in the mood to walk home alone, in the cold and wet, but I saw no alternative until Mrs. Taylor called me back. “Annabelle, I could come for a visit now if you think that would be all right, and you could ride with me.”

I rarely had a chance to ride in a car as nice as hers. More importantly, it would be warm and dry.

“I imagine my father will be at the house or close by on a day like this,” I said. “And I'm sure my mother will be there. So now would be okay, I guess.”

I followed her to the car and climbed into the backseat, feeling a little like a queen, until I realized that I was sitting where Ruth had been.

It was a slow and careful ride to the farm, the roads awash in some places, but we got there without mishap.

“You go on in and make sure it's a good time for a visit,” Mrs. Taylor said. “I'll wait here.”

So I did that, and my mother hurried past me to open the door and beckon Mrs. Taylor inside.

“Mrs. Taylor, come in, please,” my mother said, in her Sunday voice. She called most people by their Christian names, but not the minister, the doctor, the constable, or the teacher.

“Thank you,” Mrs. Taylor said, trying to shed as much rainwater from her bonnet as she could before she stepped inside.

“Oh, don't fuss about that,” my mother said. “You'd be the only one who did. Annabelle,” she said to me before I could take off my poncho, “run to the barn and fetch your father.”

So back outside I went. And laughed out loud when I saw my brothers pull up short at the sight of me as they slithered down the muddy lane. “Mrs. Taylor gave me a ride in her car!” I yelled to them and, laughing still, headed for the barn.

Our old barn taught me one of the most important lessons I was ever to learn: that the extraordinary can live in the simplest things.