The sun had set and the light was leaving us. The river was silver-gray, the color of hard steel. The trees that overhung it were black against the faded blue sky. The air was still, like a held breath.
Albert picked up a stick and flung it at the river, and it was caught immediately in the branches of the fallen cottonwood. “Doesn’t matter that we’re just unknown assailants. Emmy’s picture is going to be slapped all over front pages everywhere. As soon as anyone spots her, we’re dead.”
Emmy said, “I’m sorry,” and started to cry. Mose put his arm around her. I could feel a darkness descending on us that had nothing to do with the night, and a great fire of resistance flared inside me.
“Listen,” I said. “That picture of Emmy in the newspaper was taken before the tornado. Her hair’s long and curly. But with it cut so short now, she’s halfway to looking like a boy. So we keep her dressed in those overalls and try to make sure nobody sees her up close. Heck, she’ll just look like our little brother or something.”
Albert didn’t say anything right away. I could tell Mose was running it through his head. Emmy, though, brightened immediately.
“I don’t mind being a boy,” she said. “I can do anything a boy can do.”
Mose shrugged and signed, Why not?
Albert gave a slow nod. “Might work. Maybe if we get a cap with a big bill to help hide her face.” He looked at me and offered a grudging smile. “Just might work.”
My brother had brought cheese from town and a big hunk of bologna. He sliced them up with his Boy Scout knife and we put them on the leftover bread and that was our supper. After we’d eaten, we laid our blankets on the wild grass of the riverbank and Emmy said, “Will you play something on your harmonica, Odie?”
“No music,” Albert said sharply. When he saw the disappointment on Emmy’s face, he softened and said, “Someone might hear. We can’t risk it.”
“How about a story?” I said.
“Yes, a story,” Emmy said, happy again.
Mose signed, Make it a good one, Odie.
All day, while we’d made our way down the Gilead River, a story had been coming together in my head. I didn’t know where it came from, but letting all the pieces fall into place had helped the time pass. So I told it.
There was once a little orphan girl whose name was Emmy.
“Like me,” Emmy said.
“Just like you,” I said.
She went to live with her aunt and uncle, two very mean people.
“Were they Mr. and Mrs. Brickman?” Emmy said.
“As it so happens, Emmy, that was exactly their name.”
The little girl was terribly unhappy in the home of the mean Brickmans, I went on. One day, as she was exploring the great, dark house, she came to a door in a high tower that had always been locked before, but someone had forgotten to lock it that day. Inside, Emmy found a comfortable little room filled with shelves of books and toys and a nice soft sofa and a little reading lamp. In one corner stood a tall, old mirror in a carved wooden frame. Emmy decided it was the nicest room in the whole house, far from the awful Brickmans. She pulled one of the books from the shelf, a book called Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.
“We had that book,” Emmy said to me. “Mama read it to me.”
“What a coincidence,” I said and continued the story.
Emmy settled down in the sofa to read, but she hadn’t been there long when she heard a small voice call, “Hello.” Which was odd, because Emmy was the only one in the room. “Hello,” the voice called again. Emmy looked at the big mirror in the corner and saw a little girl sitting on the sofa, just as she was. But it was not her reflection. It was a different little girl. Emmy stood up, and the girl in the mirror stood up. Emmy walked to the mirror and the girl walked to the mirror.
“Who are you?” Emmy said.
“Priscilla,” the girl said. “I’m the ghost in the mirror.”
“A ghost? A real ghost?”
“Not exactly,” Priscilla said. “It’s hard to explain.”
“My name is Emmy.”
“I know,” Priscilla said. “I’ve been hoping you would come. It’s been so long since I had a visit from anyone who could see me.”
“Mrs. Brickman can’t see you?” Emmy said.
“Only nice people can see me and hear me.”
“How did you get in there?” Emmy asked.
“Put your hand to the mirror and I’ll tell you,” Priscilla said.
But as soon as she touched the glass, Emmy found herself inside the mirror, and Priscilla outside. Priscilla clapped her hands together and danced with joy.
“I’m free!” she said. “I’ve been trapped in that mirror for oh so long, but now I’m free!”
“What happened?” Emmy cried.
“It’s the curse of the mirror. I was trapped there by the little girl who was inside before me. And now I’m you and you’re me and you’re trapped in there. I’m sorry, Emmy. I truly am. But I’ve wanted so much to be free again.”
Suddenly Mrs. Brickman stepped into the room. She looked sternly at the girl who’d just traded places with Emmy and said meanly, “What’s all this shouting about? What are you doing here, Emmy?”
“She’s not Emmy,” little Emmy cried from the mirror. “I’m Emmy.”
But Mrs. Brickman couldn’t see her or hear her, because Mrs. Brickman was not at all nice.
“Come along, Emmy,” Mrs. Brickman said. “I’m going to show you just what happens to little girls who go where they’re not supposed to.”
She took Priscilla by the ear and pulled her from the room.
Emmy tried to get out of the mirror, but it was no use. So she settled down with the book she’d been reading on the other side, determined to make the best of things. And you know what? She found that she was really quite happy there all by herself in that comfortable little room on the other side of the mirror.
Then one day not long afterward, Priscilla burst into the tower room and ran to the mirror.
“Oh, Emmy!” she cried. “Please let me back in the mirror. Mrs. Brickman is such a witch. I can’t stand her. Please, please let me back in.”
“I understand,” Emmy told her. “It was awful being me with Mrs. Brickman. But I quite like it here, so I think I’ll stay until a different family moves into this house, a nice family with a nice little girl. Then maybe I’ll come out.”
Priscilla turned sadly away and little Emmy settled down to read from a new book she’d selected from the shelves. It was called Alice Through the Looking Glass.
Albert eyed me and gave a nod of approval. “Alice Through the Looking Glass. Nice touch, Odie.”
The stars seemed especially bright that night, and Emmy slept without needing her hand held. Mose and Albert, who’d paddled most of the day, fell asleep quickly. Me, my head was so full of dreaming I could barely contain it all. Seeing that photograph of the water tower and what I’d painted there, my words big as life on the front page of The Minneapolis Star, made me feel like some kind of celebrity. Not exactly like Babe Ruth, because everybody knew his name. But more than just an orphan nobody. I began to imagine all the wonderful possibilities that might lie ahead of us. Maybe we should change our names, I thought. Just in case. Maybe I’d call myself Buck, after Buck Jones the cowboy star. As I lay listening to the river slip through the branches of the fallen cottonwood, I began to hope, really hope, that, like the Emmy in the story, we were finally on the safe side of the mirror.
* * *
I WAS WAKENED by a small hand on my chest. I opened my eyes, and Emmy stood in the moonlight, staring down at me, looking dazed.
“What is it, Emmy?” I whispered.
She held out her hand, and in it were two five-dollar bills from the stash in the pillowcase. “Put these in your shoe.”
She spoke distantly, as if in a trance, and I figured she was sleepwalking. Some of the kids at Lincoln School had been sleepwalkers, and Volz had always cautioned us not to wake them. S
o I took the bills.
“In your shoe,” she said.
I put them in my shoe.
“Don’t say anything to anyone, not Albert, not Mose.”
“What do I do with them?” I asked.
“When the time comes, you’ll know.”
She returned to her blanket, lay down, and from her steady breathing I understood that she was sleeping soundly once again.
I puzzled over this sleepwalking episode, wondering if I should warn Albert and Mose. But there was something in her manner and such a serious note in her little voice that I decided to keep the whole thing to myself.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“WHAT ARE YOU going to say?”
“What do you mean?”
“You have fifteen dollars in your pocket, Albert. How are you going to explain that?”
“Why do I have to explain it?”
Albert was smart, way smarter than me, but he could be pretty dense sometimes when it came to other people. We were walking into the little town where he’d bought the newspaper the night before, intending to purchase new shoes and some food for the day. We’d left Mose and Emmy to watch the canoe.
“Fifteen dollars, Albert. That’s a lot of money for a couple of kids like us just to be carrying around. People are going to wonder. They might even ask. What are you going to tell them?”
“I’ll tell them we earned it.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Working.”
“For who?”
“Look, Odie. Let me handle this. We’ll be fine.”
“You get us thrown into jail, I’ll kill you.”
“That won’t happen.”
“Better not.”
The town was called Westerville, and like most of the towns we’d seen, it had several big grain elevators looming at the side of the railroad tracks. I could see four church spires rising up above the trees. There was no sign of a courthouse tower, like the one in Lincoln, so I figured we were still in Fremont County.
It was early enough in the day that not a lot of commerce seemed to be taking place, although the stores were open. There was a bakery, and the smell from it made my mouth water. There was a hardware store, an IGA grocery store, a drugstore, a stationery and book shop. On one side of the street was a little restaurant called the Buttercup Café. Next to it stood the Westerville Police Department, with one police cruiser parked out front, and I felt my stomach tighten. We came at last to a broad display window full of goods. Painted across the glass in fancy lettering were the words KRENN’S MERCANTILE. We stood at the window, staring at the items behind it, which included an assortment of shoes.
“This looks like the place,” Albert said.
I started inside, but Albert hesitated.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing. Just . . .” He let it drop, took a deep breath, and said, “Okay.”
There was a department store in Lincoln, a place called Sorenson’s, which I’d been in only once. It had so many different things for sale—furniture and clothing and appliances—that I’d thought a palace couldn’t have held more kingly treasures. Krenn’s Mercantile, though not as large or well appointed, displayed a dazzling array of offerings. Albert and I walked between rows of shelves that held shirts and pants and underthings, fabrics and linens. We passed a counter with cosmetics, where the air was filled with a floral scent.
We turned in to another aisle, one full of hardware, and almost ran smack into a tall, lean man dressed in bib overalls and wearing a seed cap. His back was to us, but I could see that he held an alarm clock in his hands and seemed to be scrutinizing it as carefully as he might a diamond. He turned toward us suddenly. One eye was covered with a black patch, like a pirate, and the look he gave us with his good eye was mean enough to scare off a wild pig.
The store clerk who was attending to him said, “I’ll see to you boys in a minute. Just look around.”
I gladly left the clerk with the one-eyed pig scarer, and we finally came to where the shoes were on display, boxes and boxes of them, with samples sitting atop. Albert walked to a box with BUSTER BROWN printed on the side. As he picked up the sample shoe, a pleasant voice behind us said, “Can I help you?”
The woman smiling at us reminded me a little of Miss Stratton—tall, slender, blond, with a plain face. Her eyes seemed a little odd, one of them not quite tracking along with the other. But they were kind eyes, and her smile was genuine and lovely.
“Uh . . .” Albert said. “We . . . uh . . .”
“Yes?” she encouraged him.
Albert looked at the floor and tried again. “W-we . . . uh . . . w-we . . . uh . . .”
It hit me. Whatever the story Albert had intended to tell her, he couldn’t do it. I didn’t think it was because he lacked courage. Hell, he’d faced down Clyde Brickman. If it wasn’t fear, the only explanation I could think of was that he simply couldn’t bring himself to lie to this nice woman.
“My brother’s got a speech defect, ma’am,” I leapt in. “He stutters. Terrible embarrassing to him. He’s not stupid or anything, he just has trouble talking.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“See, it’s this way,” I said. “Our pa sent us to buy new shoes.”
Her face lit with a desire to help. “Well, we can certainly take care of that. I see you’re looking at our Buster Browns. They’re very good shoes.” She glanced down, saw our cheap, worn footwear, and without losing her smile said, “But maybe you’d rather see something a little less expensive.”
There were some boots on a stack of boxes that had caught my eye. “What about those?”
Another voice boomed in, “Pershing boots, son, made by Red Wing. For my money, the best boot ever made. Helped our doughboys win the Great War.”
The man who’d been waiting on the one-eyed wild pig scarer joined us.
“Manufactured right here in Minnesota. Fine workmanship. Last you forever.”
“Lloyd,” the woman said, “I don’t think the boys would be interested in those boots.”
Her eyes went again to the paper-thin leather on our feet, and the man caught her drift.
“But we also have a fine assortment of other shoes to choose from,” he said heartily. “What did you boys have in mind?”
“How much are the Red Wings?” I asked.
“Five dollars and seventy cents a pair. Sounds expensive, I know, but worth every penny.”
“We got fifteen dollars,” I said. “But we also got to buy groceries for the week.”
“Fifteen dollars?” The man’s surprise was obvious, but I’d anticipated that. “Where’d you boys get fifteen dollars?”
“Their father gave it to them, Lloyd. Like the young man says, to buy shoes and groceries for the week.”
“You’re brothers?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“How come you don’t look nothing alike?”
“Lloyd, you look nothing like your brother. Aren’t you always saying you’re the handsome one?”
The man looked us over good. “Are those uniforms of some kind you’re wearing?”
“No, sir,” I said. “Some church ladies in Worthington gave us these clothes. Maybe they got them from a school or something, I don’t know. But they’re lots better than what we had before.”
“Who’s your father?”
“Clyde Stratton,” I said, grabbing at the first two names that came together in my mind.
“Don’t know him,” the man said.
“We just got to town. Pa’s got him some work over at the grain elevators.”
“They’re hiring? This time of year?”
“They hired him for repairs. Pa, he’s good with his hands.”
“If he got a job these days, he’s one of the lucky ones.”
“It’s good,” I said, then put a dejected look on my face. “But we don’t know how long it’ll last.”
“What about your mother?” the woman asked.
&n
bsp; “Don’t got a ma no more, ma’am. She died.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, son.”
“Been on the move since. And these old shoes of ours, they’re plumb wore through.” I took one off—not the shoe in which I’d put the five-dollar bills the night before—and showed her the hole.
She looked at the man. “Hoover shoes,” she said. She pulled out the piece of cardboard I’d put inside to cover the holes. “Hoover leather, Lloyd.” She looked at me with wonderful compassion.
“Your brother’s just a kid, but he does all the talking,” the man said to Albert. “What’s wrong? You don’t have a tongue?”
“Lloyd,” the woman snapped. “The boy stutters.”
I took my shoe back and looked at it like it was something dead. “Pa emptied his wallet and told us to buy new ones, best we could with what we got. And we only got fifteen dollars.”
“And w-w-we still got to b-b-buy groceries.” The words stumbled painfully out of Albert’s mouth.
“For the whole week,” I added.
“The Buster Browns are two seventy-five a pair,” the man said. “You’ll have plenty left for groceries and then some.”
“I’d rather have the Red Wings,” I said with such longing that even I felt sorry for me.
Albert shot me a killing look, and I knew he was afraid I was pushing it too far.
“Lloyd,” the woman said sharply.
The man rolled his eyes. “Tell you what, boys. I’ll give you the Red Wings for five dollars even. I make no profit on them.”
Albert opened his mouth, and I knew he was about to accept, but I cut him off. “If you could see your way clear to give us three pairs for fifteen dollars, we could take Pa some new boots, too.”
“You wouldn’t have anything left for food,” the woman said.
“We’re pretty good at scrounging, ma’am. My brother here, he’s real good at catching fish in that river outside of town. Me, I got a slingshot and can put out a squirrel’s eye at thirty feet. And there’s lots of wild greens to gather, if you know what you’re looking for. But shoes? That we can’t do for ourselves. And one more thing. I know it don’t mean much to you folks, but today’s our pa’s birthday. We ain’t never had the wherewithal to buy him nothing, but if we could bring him a new pair of those Pershing boots, I expect it’d be the best present we could ever give him.”
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