The Lost Boy's Gift

by Kimberly Willis Holt

  Charlie was looking at her too, but he said, “Ehh, it’s just a girl.”

  They made their way down the street to get a closer view of the pond, and they came to a blue cottage with a FOR SALE sign.

  “We should move here,” his mother said.

  Before his father could comment, Dewey blurted, “Yes, we should!”

  And they did.

  Dewey thought everything on While-a-Way Lane was wonderful, especially Tilda Butter.

  Charlie couldn’t wait to leave the valley, and when he grew up, he spun a globe, closed his eyes, put his finger on a spot, and moved there. Have you ever been to Timbuktu? Charlie started an overnight delivery service and lives life at such a fast pace, he’s never made time to return to While-a-Way Lane.

  Dewey never left. He enjoyed the slower pace his job offered, placing letters in the mailbox that he hoped brought good news. He adored reading the backs of postcards.

  What? you ask. How dare he?

  But Dewey didn’t feel a bit guilty about it. He believed a postcard was an invitation to be read. That was how he knew so much about the young boy who moved with his mother into the cottage next to Tilda’s.

  The boy’s father was not living with him and his mother. From what Dewey gathered from the postcard, he wouldn’t be. The postcard came from the other side of the county, but he said he’d be traveling to Tokyo and Paris again soon. The man must live out of his suitcase. Dewey knew he missed the boy and had given him a boat that they were going to sail on the pond when he visited. Soon, the man wrote, “Soon.” Dewey knew all of this, but he didn’t know the boy’s name because his father addressed the postcard to the Champ.

  Dewey wondered what the boy’s real name was and if he’d see him at the pond, sailing his boat.

  * * *

  DANIEL’S FOCUS ON THE MAILMAN was interrupted by a screeching voice behind him.

  “Hi, young man! Are you my new student?”

  Daniel swung around to find a very old lady staring at him. She was standing with her palms out, stretching and wiggling her long fingers toward the sky. He could see the calluses on the tips.

  “Are you my new piano student?” she demanded.

  Piano? He would hate playing the piano. Sometimes Daniel’s buddy from the old neighborhood couldn’t come out to play because his mother made him practice the piano for two hours every day.

  “Well?” The old lady’s beady eyes peered at him from over glasses that rested low on her hook nose.

  She reminded Daniel of a witch.

  She tapped her fingertips together as if she were waiting for his answer.

  The only thing Daniel could think of saying was “Nope.”

  Then he raced off, heading for the pink cottage. And a moment later when he reached the front door and went inside, it was the first time he was happy to be there.

  CHAPTER NINE

  AGATHA BROWN

  IF DANIEL HAD LOOKED CLOSER, he would have realized Agatha Brown was not anything like a witch. He would have seen the wistful longing for a different life. Agatha was a frustrated would-be saxophone player.

  When she was a young girl, her parents had made her take piano lessons and practice hours on end, just like she demanded of her students. They wanted a child prodigy, but she wasn’t a gifted piano player. No doubt, she was good (all that practice!), but she didn’t have the heart for the ivory keys. She could hardly wait until bedtime, when she would hide under the sheets and pretend to play the instrument of her dreams.

  Every year, on her birthday, she wished the same wish before blowing out her candles. Please may I be a saxophone player?

  When the flames disappeared, one of her parents always said, “I’ll bet you wished for a grand piano.”

  How could she tell them her real wish? They’d be so disappointed.

  One day, on the way home from school, she noticed a path through the woods that bordered the backyards of While-a-Way Lane. She’d never seen the trail before. It was beckoning to her. So she left the street and stepped onto the trail. It was not a straight path, but one that wove around tree trunks and under low branches. She followed it obediently, for she was an obedient child. At the edge of the woods, something dropped and landed with a thump at her feet. When she realized what it was, her heart sprinted a few beats. It was a saxophone! She looked up at the opening between the thick branches, but all she saw were clouds drifting. It was as if the sky had opened up and given her a gift. She decided it was a sign. She scooped up the saxophone, hid it under her coat, and took it home.

  Agatha didn’t tell her parents for fear that they might take the instrument from her, but every night when young Agatha went to bed, she took out the saxophone, which she’d hidden in her closet, got under the sheets and blanket, and pretended to play just like she did before. But this time her fingers pushed real keys and her lips pursed over a real mouthpiece, being very careful not to blow.

  Both of her parents’ last words to her had been “Don’t forget to practice the piano every day.” So even though she was a grown-up, after her parents left this world, the most she could bring herself to do was to put on some jazz albums and pretend to play along with the music.

  Agatha Brown’s parents’ dying request hung over her like a dark, brooding cloud. What would happen if she accidentally blew into the mouthpiece? Agatha Brown planned to never know.

  CHAPTER TEN

  NEIGHBORS

  TIME TO MEET the next-door neighbors, thought Tilda. They had lived on While-a-Way Lane three days now. She pulled out a pan and gathered all the ingredients to make a sugar cream pie. Then she heard a door slam next door.

  She glanced out the front window and saw the new neighbor boy stomp from his home. He marched over to the mulberry tree and gave it a big kick. Perhaps, she thought, this is not a good time to meet them. She would wait another day or two, long enough for their house to get in order.

  Instead she slipped on her orange rubber clogs and went outside to pull weeds from the butterfly garden. Fred plodded behind her to find a place to do his business. Seemed these days that was the only reason Fred wanted to go outside.

  Ever since Snail became a pet, Fred had stopped looking for Tilda’s lap or rolling over, wanting his tummy scratched. From morning on, he watched Snail glide up and down the terrarium. Up, up, up, up and down, down, down, down.

  Tilda almost felt jealous. Almost. At least this way she could do a little weeding without having to stop and scratch.

  Snail was not shy about asking for extra helpings. The first time Tilda dropped a fat lettuce leaf in the terrarium, Snail looked up and said, “More please.”

  While Fred sniffed around for a spot, Tilda scanned her garden. Two of her yellow irises were blooming near the big rock. This made her smile. Irises blooming meant the ice cream man would soon be making his rounds on While-a-Way Lane. It meant the lemonade stand would be open after school every day and the Falling Star Valley Garden Show and Parade were just around the corner.

  Fred whimpered by the back door and Tilda let him in. Then she returned to the garden, knelt, and pulled the sticky-nicky weeds that had popped up in the butterfly garden. In no time at all, she’d filled her bucket. But she decided to squeeze in one last handful. She grabbed hold of some sticky-nicky and yanked.

  Just as she threw it into the bucket, she heard, “Well, excussse me!”

  She stared at the bucket. “Hello?” she whispered to the sticky-nicky weeds.

  Something moved.

  She looked closer.

  Two black eyes under the weeds stared up.

  Tilda scooted back, but lost her balance and landed sprawled out on the grass with her arms and legs pointed in different directions. She felt like a pretzel. She raised her head.

  The snake poked her head out of the bucket.

  “It’sss jussst me, dear lady,” said the smooth silky voice.

  Tilda sighed. “Oh, Isadora! It is you!”

  Isadora was a green grass snake
. Most lived only a dozen years or so, but Isadora was as old as Tilda. This was, after all, While-a-Way Lane. Do you need to be reminded that things are not as ordinary as they first appear?

  Young Tilda had met Isadora when she was digging in her garden. Aunt Sippy had given over a portion of her flower garden for Tilda to plant as she pleased. At first she was ecstatic about having her very own garden, but then she became overwhelmed by the choices. And when she studied Aunt Sippy’s garden of cloud-skimming sunflowers and zinnias big enough to be giant powder puffs, her hopes sank as low as shells on an ocean floor. She pulled her hand rake through the dirt until it met the grass. Over and over again, as if the answer would pop out of nowhere.

  “How about daisssiesss?” a voice from below her asked.

  She squinted her eyes at the grass. Was the grass talking to her?

  “Or maybe cosssmosss? They have a lovely airy way about them.”

  When she finally realized it was a snake talking to her, she almost screamed. She opened her mouth to do just that, but the snake said, “I’m nothing to be afraid of. My name isss Isssadora.”

  And that was the beginning of a friendship that had lasted through the years.

  Isadora was not of the poisonous sort, but Tilda had to remind herself of that because she didn’t care for most snakes. She’d avoided them like the dishes that piled up in her sink.

  “I forgot you were afraid of sssnakesss!” Isadora said with a sigh. “That’sss why mossst of my friendsss have other namesss now. The word sssnake hasss become sssuch an insssult.”

  Tilda swallowed and surveyed the grass. “Are your friends here now?”

  “They’re here, there, over yonder,” Isadora said.

  “Oh, dear.” Tilda stood at once. And when she did, she felt a sharp pain travel up her leg to her hip. “Ouch!” Had one of Isadora’s friends bitten her?

  “Oops, sorry! I missed.” It was the boy next door. He was sitting on the fence with his slingshot.

  Now Tilda realized she’d been popped with a pebble.

  “I almost got that snake,” he said, holding up his weapon. “Were you talking to it?”

  Tilda looked to the spot where Isadora had been. Her friend had already slid away.

  The boy jumped and landed facedown into her patch of petunias.

  Tilda started toward him. “Are you all right?”

  The boy bounced up quickly. “I’m fine. Were you talking to that snake?” he asked again.

  “Talking to a snake?”

  “You were talking to someone,” he said. “I heard you.”

  “Young man, you need to stop using that slingshot. I have a mind to tell your mother.” Tilda rubbed her sore spot.

  “My mom doesn’t care.”

  “Surely she does,” Tilda said, but she was afraid the boy could be right. After seeing the china box with the word wedding crossed out, she figured his mother might have a heavy heart these days. And that could keep her mind elsewhere.

  She sized the boy up and down. Though he was not a little boy, he was not a big one either. No matter what, he had no business with a slingshot.

  “Haven’t you met someone nice to play with?” she asked him.

  “Nope.”

  Then Tilda remembered it was spring break. Every young family on the street was away. “A book to read perhaps?”

  “Nope.”

  “A game to play? I wouldn’t mind a quick game of checkers.” When she was a girl, Tilda had loved playing checkers with her aunt Sippy.

  “No one to play with,” he said. “No book to read (except Peter Pan—he loved that book), and I don’t like checkers anyway.”

  “Have you ever played checkers?”

  “Nope.”

  Just as she suspected. Tilda looked at the bucket and then the boy.

  “See that little hill in the corner of my yard?”

  “The garbage?”

  “It’s my compost pile. All of that trash will become rich and dark one day. Then I’ll put it back in the garden.”

  “Yep,” he said. “I see it.”

  “Could you please help me? Please take this bucket and deposit its contents there.”

  The boy shoved his slingshot in his back pocket, picked up the bucket, and headed toward the compost pile. He seemed content to do it. Unfortunately, he decided to dump the bucket of vegetable scraps a few feet away from the spot.

  “Why did you put it there?” Tilda asked when he returned.

  “Two hills are better than one,” the boy said.

  When he gave the bucket back to her, he asked, “Now what do you want me to do? Kill some snakes? I could stomp on them.”

  He stomped his feet.

  “I could pop them in the head with a rock.”

  He snapped his slingshot.

  “No, thank you,” Tilda said. “Let’s leave the snakes alone. If we don’t bother them, they won’t bother us. Besides, some snakes are good. They eat nasty pests.”

  “Like people?” he asked. His eyes grew as big as the brown centers of sunflowers.

  “I don’t know,” Tilda said. “Are you a pest?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then I guess you don’t have anything to worry about.”

  The boy moved in closer and grabbed Tilda’s trowel. “Do you want me to dig up something for you?”

  “No, that’s quite all right.”

  He dropped the trowel, ran, and hopped onto the big rock in the iris bed. “I can do a lot of things.”

  The boy jumped and landed in the middle of the irises, crushing two sunny blooms.

  “Careful, young man!”

  “Sorry,” he said, trying to straighten the broken stems. “But you have lots of them.”

  “But now I have two less.”

  He turned away from her, and his eyes searched the entire yard, like he was trying to find something else to talk about. “You have a whole bunch of flowers.” He started toward the big oak. “Hey, what is that squatty green thing around the tree?”

  “A hosta,” she said. Please stay away from it, she almost added, but changed her mind. This boy seemed the type who would be tempted to destroy something if it were forbidden.

  It occurred to Tilda that she didn’t know the boy’s name. “If we’re going to talk about snakes and plants, we should at least introduce ourselves. I’m Tilda Butter.”

  “That’s a funny name,” the boy said.

  She waited for the boy to introduce himself, but he just glanced around Tilda’s yard like he was planning his next adventure.

  “What’s your name?” Tilda asked cheerfully.

  “Can’t tell you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Nope, you’re a stranger. I’m not supposed to tell strangers my name or where I live.”

  “That’s very good advice,” Tilda said.

  “How old are you?” he asked, sizing her up and down.

  Tilda frowned. Though she was not an old woman, she was not a young one either. “Didn’t your mom say anything about talking to strangers?”

  “Nope.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Not sure, and I can’t be blamed for things I don’t know about.”

  Tilda studied her two broken irises that now looked like two ladies dressed in yellow who had fainted.

  “Well,” the boy said, “how old are you?”

  “Older than you and younger than that tree.” Tilda was pointing to the ancient oak.

  “How old is that tree?”

  Tilda could see the conversation was going to last a lot longer than she wanted.

  “Excuse me, young man, but I’ve some things to do inside.”

  “What kind of things?” he asked.

  “Oh, a book to read and maybe a game of checkers.”

  “Okay.” He tucked his slingshot into his back pocket. “I’ll come again tomorrow in case you have a bucket for me to empty or some snakes to kill.”

  Tilda left the boy in her garden. Once inside, sh
e watched him from between the curtains. He had not left yet. Instead he was trying to stake the irises with some kind of green string tied to sticks.

  “There is good in everyone,” Tilda said. Then she realized the green was not string at all, but her sweet pea vine that had been due to bloom any day now.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MOONLIGHT RIDE

  DANIEL’S MOTHER had a new job. She would be gone before he left for school and wouldn’t be home until dinnertime. Now Daniel wore a front-door key on a chain around his neck. His shirt would hide the key, but his mom said it would be next to his heart and that he’d know she was thinking of him even when she wasn’t at home. When she said that, Daniel wanted to say he wouldn’t have to wear the stupid key if they were still with his dad.

  To celebrate her new job, Daniel’s mom said they could go out to a restaurant and eat, but when he suggested Macaroni Joe’s, she asked him to pick another place. She said it was too far, but he knew the real reason. She just didn’t want to go anywhere his dad had been with them. They used to go to Macaroni Joe’s anytime they celebrated anything—his dad’s promotion, or Daniel’s good report card, or even the first snow of the year. Nothing would ever be the same.

  He and his mom had lived on While-a-Way Lane five days. This Sunday would be the last day of spring break, and Monday he’d have to go to his new school. He missed his old school, his home, his friends, and his dad. The day after they moved in, his dad called him and said that he’d visit in a couple of days, as soon as he finished his big project.

  But his dad hadn’t visited. Maybe it was because his mom wouldn’t be happy if he did. It didn’t seem too long ago that the three of them had gone on a hike in the forest and fed torn pieces of leftover bread to the birds.

  Whenever his dad finally came for a visit, Daniel had the day all planned. He would show his dad the pond, and they could sail the boat there. He’d introduce him to his new friends—the two squirrels that ate the peanuts he dropped in the yard each morning outside his bedroom window.