Zebra Forest (7 page)

The more I thought about it, the less I liked it.

“He’ll go away soon enough,” I told him. “I don’t think this is such a good idea. What if they come and see Gran and think she’s too sick to be with us anymore? Then what’s going to happen? We’ll have more than Adele Parks coming here then!”

But Rew wouldn’t have it. He moved around the room, so jumpy, I was put in mind of Mrs. Roberts telling the boys to settle down ’cause they had “ants in their pants.”

“That won’t happen,” he said, real fast. “They’ll see that
he
did that. She’ll get better once they take him, anyway. You’ll see.”

I didn’t think so, but I could tell when there was no talking to Rew. He didn’t act angry anymore, exactly, but I had a feeling that his chess mind wasn’t working just then. “Promise me,” he said, pushing the letter into my hands. “Promise me you’ll do it.”

“But, Rew —” I began, and then he did get mad, a flash of fury reddening his face.

“Whose side are you on, anyway?” he asked me, in a whisper that sounded more like a shout. “Are you on
his
now?”

I shook my head. “No, but —” But there was no but, and so I reluctantly took the letter.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it.” And I slipped it into my pocket.

“Promise?” he asked again.

I didn’t want to promise, but there was nothing else to say.

“Yeah,” I said at last. “I promise.”

A
fter my promise, Rew’s appetite returned. He ate the sandwich I had brought him and drank the juice. Then he pulled
Treasure
Island
back into his lap and rubbed his hand over the old pages.

“They don’t get him in the end because he’s too smart,” he said, grinning suddenly, and I knew he meant Long John Silver. “No one can keep hold of him.”

He was back to our old argument about whether the double-crossing pirate was the best or worst person in the story.

We both liked Jim, because after all, he was good. “
And
he keeps the treasure” was how I’d always argue it. But that was where our agreement ended.

From there, I’d take up for my particular favorite — Dr. Livesey — who helps Jim right from the start. The doctor isn’t afraid of anybody, ever. I had a list of the doctor’s strengths, which I’d tick off for Rew when he told me that Dr. Livesey was okay but boring.

For one, the doctor never yelled at anyone, like that old squire or the captain. He only fought when he had to, and he stuck it out the whole trip, never ran off, and even took care of the pirates some.

It was a secret of mine that even though we agreed on liking Jim, it practically killed me that our hero ran off out of the stockade, leaving all his friends and never telling Dr. Livesey a thing about it. When we talked about it, Rew said that was okay, because didn’t Jim get the ship for them afterward? Didn’t it end up saving them? I knew it did, but somehow, it just didn’t seem right. And then, I’d always argue, it was the doctor who saved Jim and old Long John in the end. “Long John Silver himself said it,” I would tell him, quoting the pirate in the raspy voice I imagined would have been the sound of Long John Silver: “‘Thank ye kindly, doctor. . . . You came in in about the nick, I guess, for me and Hawkins.’”

“Sure,” Rew would say. “But he
had
to say that. If you want to look at it that way, then it was Ben Gunn who saved them, really.” We both always laughed at that, because Ben Gunn, the crazy man who’d been marooned on the island, wasn’t anybody’s favorite.

We’d spend at least an hour a week on this topic in the Zebra, and it was a kind of joke we had, going back over it, deciding whether we were happy or not that Long John Silver got his one measly bag of coins and escaped at the end.

It seemed to me that after writing his letter, Rew felt we were almost as good as free. Maybe that’s why he’d started our game up again. So I said what I always said when we talked about Long John Silver: “Well, he only got that one bag of coins, anyway. And only ’cause Ben Gunn let him. He couldn’t have lived long on that.”

Rew lay back on his bed and glanced out the window. It was getting dark now, the sky going purple over the Zebra. I guess he realized then that even if Andrew Snow did send me out and I mailed his letter, we wouldn’t be free for a while. Rew’s realistic that way. He frowned, lying there, and pulled his book up near his face, breathing in the smell of it. It was an old book, and beat up, but it had the good, sweet aroma of old paper. Books have that, I’ve noticed. If they don’t get moldy, they’re nice. We had our share of moldy books down in the cellar. But
Treasure Island
still had that nice old library smell to it. He kept his face in there so long, I got nervous he might cry again. But he didn’t. After a while, he closed the book and rested his head on it, looking tired.

“If there were a tree outside my window, we wouldn’t need to send the letter,” he said quietly. “I’d just climb down it and run to the police, and he’d never even know it. I’d do it in the night.”

“You wouldn’t,” I said. “You’d never find the way in the dark, so far from town. You’d get hit by a car or something first.”

“I wouldn’t,” he said. “I could do it. I’d do it in the day, even, if I didn’t think he’d hurt you and Gran.”

In a funny way, I felt happy all of a sudden, hearing him include Gran. Rew could get really mad, but he never stayed angry at me or Gran too long.

I looked down at the faded pattern of his quilt, a mishmash of cowboys and spaceships and any boy thing Gran could find. She’d made it for him when he was just born, she told him once, as a birthday gift. According to Gran, I’d had one, too, once upon a time, with princesses and ribbons on it. But in a fit of temper when I was two, my mother had thrown it in the trash.

“You think he’d do that?” I asked him. “Hurt us? Really?”

“He’s mean enough to,” Rew said. “Didn’t you think so when he pulled us down the stairs that way? He’s crazy, Annie. He’s bad.”

I thought about it. Andrew Snow was strong — that was certain. He’d held me and Rew each with just the one hand. And when those policemen had come, he hadn’t hesitated a second. But then, he hadn’t exactly hurt us, either. And he’d thanked me for making him a sandwich. Did bad people say thank you? I thought of the letter then, sitting in my pocket. I wished I didn’t have it.

“He killed someone,” Rew said, reading my thoughts.

Rew knew things, better than me usually. But it was hard to picture the man who had put his head in his hands doing something like that. In my mind, I tried to make a story about it so I could understand it better. But the story wouldn’t come.

I sat with Rew until he fell asleep and then made my way downstairs. Andrew Snow was sitting in the chair by the door, looking out at the night. From that window, you could just see the edge of the Zebra.

I’d been outside in the dark lots of times, and I loved the Zebra in moonlight. We never went far into it at night, but sometimes in winter, Rew and I went out all bundled up and just sat at the edge there, watching the clean, star-pricked sky rise up over all those trees. I thought about Andrew Snow wandering through it in the dark. I didn’t think he would have noticed the sky.

He looked a little surprised to see me standing there so long, just looking. Maybe he thought I wanted him to say something. So he did.

“You’re eleven, aren’t you?” he said to me.

I nodded.

“I remember you as a tiny thing,” he said. “Last time I saw you, you were just three. But you talked then. Did your Gran ever tell you?”

I shook my head. “She doesn’t tell about those times,” I said. “She doesn’t like to remember them.”

He stared at me then, as if he expected me to say something more. But I didn’t.

“I thought maybe you’d have asked her,” he said at last. “You might have wanted to know.”

Sometimes lying is so easy, you do it before you even think.

“No,” I said. “I never did.”

B
eing a hostage wasn’t anything like I imagined it would be, having heard about it from the news on ABC. I had never imagined hostages eating, for example. I’d never wondered how they slept at night.

But all those things occurred to me on day two of our captivity. They came up because Andrew Snow went into our kitchen.

Overnight he had found an even better way to chain the front door shut, so we couldn’t get outside. That left him free to explore a little, and the first thing he did was look in our cabinets.

There wasn’t much inside. After our dinner party the night before he came, there were few groceries left, considering we usually weren’t too well stocked anyway. He poked around, then asked me what we usually ate.

I shrugged, mindful of Rew, seething in the front room, listening to me converse with the enemy.

“I mean when your Gran cooks for you,” he prompted.

I tried to come up with an answer that wouldn’t hurt Gran or enrage Rew.

“She doesn’t cook that much,” I said carefully. “But we get by.”

Andrew Snow looked at me. “Who does the shopping?” he asked.

It took a minute for me to answer him, I was so struck by how Rew had known he’d be asking that. My brother was too smart for himself, I thought. In a way, it scared me. Andrew Snow was waiting for an answer, though, so I said, “Sometimes Gran, sometimes me.”

“You?”

“I can do it,” I said, indignant. “If she gives me a list, and money.”

“Well,” he said, looking again at the nearly empty cupboard, “I can give you a list. But what about money? Is there some in the house here?”

“Just a little,” I said, careful, in case he meant to trick me. “Just enough for food and stuff.”

Andrew Snow tilted his head and sighed. It startled me, because Rew does that, too, sometimes, when he gets tired. “I’m not going to take it,” he said, “if that’s what you’re thinking. But we will need to eat.”

He left me then and went through the front room and up the stairs. I didn’t understand what he meant to do until it was too late, when I heard him knocking on Gran’s door.

I dashed after him then.

“Leave her be!” I said, and Rew, who had followed me up, pushed him from behind. But Andrew Snow paid no attention.

“Mom,” he said. The word was so strange, it stopped us both for a moment. Of course, he must have called her that once.

“Open up. I want to talk to you.”

I could hear the bed creak on the other side of the door. Gran didn’t answer.

Andrew Snow looked over his shoulder at us. “Go downstairs,” he said. “I only want to talk to her.”

Neither of us moved. He put his hand on the doorknob. The door opened easily. Gran never locked it. She didn’t have to. We knew when to leave her be.

Gran was lying in her bed, her back to us, her face to the wall. I knew she was awake. When she heard the door open, she shook her head ever so slightly.

Andrew Snow stiffened. “I need to talk to you,” he said again, louder this time.

When Gran didn’t move, he said, “You can’t turn your back forever, Mom. Not anymore. I’ll get an answer. You owe me that. And this time, it will be more than twenty words.”

Gran shook her head again, and one hand came up over her ear.

“Leave her be,” I whispered to Andrew Snow. “Please just let her alone.”

Andrew Snow didn’t answer me, but he stood there, his hand so white on the doorknob that I took a step back, sure he was going to slam it. But he only held it there for another minute. Then he shook his head, sighed, and closed the door.