by Lynn Austin
Mack told us more stories about his travels as we ate leftover corn bread and eggs scrambled with bacon. Lillie listened to the rest of the letter, spellbound, as it told about Buster and his family. The way she gazed at Mack reminded me of my dried-up garden soaking in the rain. She barely ate, barely breathed, as if afraid this was a dream and she didn’t want to wake up.
“How did you find Buster’s family so quickly?” I asked at the end of the meal. I had gotten up from the table to heat water to wash the dishes.
“My friend Catherine Anson in Washington did the research before I got there. She really worked hard at it and turned out to be quite a detective.” I felt an emotion I couldn’t quite place as he talked about Miss Anson, and I was surprised to realize it was jealousy.
“What’s been happening here while I was gone?” Mack asked after a while.
“Opal Coots passed away,” I told him. “The funeral is tomorrow. Do you think you might attend? You can let the town know you’re alive now, right? And come out of hiding?”
“No, not yet. I will soon, I promise. But not tomorrow. I don’t want to disturb Maggie and her family by showing up and reminding them of Hank. Is the funeral up at Maggie’s cabin?”
“No, Miss Opal wanted to be buried in the churchyard. Which reminds me—where is Acorn’s old church? I’ve never seen it, you know.”
“It’s across the road from the post office and back in a hollow. It isn’t very far.”
I couldn’t help smiling. “Nothing around here is very far. I’ll never forget my first glimpse of Acorn. Uncle Cecil drove straight through town and out the other side before we even knew it.”
“I’ll never forget the look on your face,” Mack said, “when I told you Acorn didn’t have a hotel or a restaurant.” We both laughed, but at the same time I felt a sense of loss. I would be going home now, and I would probably never see Mack or Miss Lillie again. I had grown to love them both, and I would miss them. It was impossible not to grow fond of the man whose life I had helped save, a man who had stood alongside me facing danger and death. I turned away to hide my tears.
“Maybe I’ll walk over to the church after I finish washing these dishes,” I said. “It’s a nice warm evening.” I needed time alone to sort through my feelings. I had waited so long to go home to Blue Island, and now the time of my departure had come too soon. I realized that in the beginning I had wanted to leave Acorn because of all the hard work I’d been forced to do, the inconveniences of rural mountain life. But ties of friendship and love now exerted a much stronger pull than my own selfishness.
I finished the dishes and followed Mack’s directions, walking up the road toward the post office, then turning down a dirt road I’d never explored before, across the main road. I passed several houses wedged into the side of the hill before finally arriving at the church, nestled in a hollow. It looked as though it had once been a nice little building, but it had fallen into extreme disrepair over the years, the white paint peeling, the roof sagging, the exposed wood weathering. Most of the window glass was missing. I wondered if people had “borrowed” little pieces of the church whenever they’d needed a spare board or a new window to patch up their own homes, just as they had “borrowed” from the mining camp. But the main reason the church had deteriorated was because of the feud. “What a shame,” I murmured.
The front door was boarded up, yet I didn’t care to go inside, knowing that snakes and bats and other creeping things liked to inhabit deserted buildings. Instead, I walked around to the back to explore the graveyard. The cemetery wasn’t very large, with graves crammed into every available space. Some of the plots had been tended over the years while others were unkempt. I walked up and down the rows, pushing vines and weeds aside and idly reading the names on the tombstones.
The gravediggers had been at work, and I found the large, gaping hole where Miss Opal would be buried tomorrow. A dozen other Cootses were buried in this section of the cemetery, including one whose name I recognized: Abraham Coots. He was the man who had died in the Civil War, the close friend of Isaac Larkin and Wilbur Arnett, the two men who had stolen from the bank robbers and inadvertently started Acorn’s long, bitter feud. I bent to read the epitaph on the weather-beaten stone:
Abraham C. Coots
October 2, 1838—November 24, 1863
“There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.”
I stared at it in amazement, suddenly breathless. Could this be where the treasure was buried? The clues in the two embroidered samplers and in Isaac Larkin’s letter finally made sense. Of course! Isaac and Wilbur had buried the treasure in their friend’s grave!
I walked home in a daze, wondering if I should come back with a shovel and dig up Abe Coots’s grave to see if I was right. But night had fallen by the time I reached the library, and I lacked the courage to skulk around the cemetery at night, much less disturb the dead with my digging.
“What’s wrong, Alice?” Mack asked when I walked through the door. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I couldn’t tell him. The treasure should be unearthed by an outsider, not a Larkin or an Arnett. And Mack was a Larkin. “It’s nothing,” I mumbled.
Mack and Lillie sat in the non-fiction room talking, but I barely heard their conversation as my mind spun with plans. Lillie had once told me that the feuding families would lay aside their differences and get together when someone died—and Opal’s funeral was tomorrow. All of Acorn’s families would be there, and June Ann might attend the funeral, too, because of her friendship with Maggie. I could ask June Ann and Wayne to help me do the digging, and the entire town could witness it. I imagined it all as if watching the climax of a dramatic, epic film. The feud would end and Acorn, Kentucky, would experience healing at last.
I hardly slept that night and did my chores in record time the next morning before dressing for the funeral. Hank Coots’s brothers brought the casket down into town on the back of their wagon, but Maggie was kind enough to stop by the library and give Miss Lillie and me a ride in her car. Mack stayed hidden, unwilling to upset Maggie or the rest of the townspeople, who still thought he was dead.
It was a lovely funeral, very similar to the one we’d held for Mack, with harmonicas and fiddles and banjos. The entire town had already gathered behind the church when I arrived, including people who lived way up in the hills, like Clint and Gladys, and the Howard family. Miss Lillie gave a short sermon, and one of Hank’s brothers gave a eulogy for Opal. I hated to spoil the solemnity as Hank’s brothers lowered the coffin into the grave and shoveled clods of dirt on top of it, but the time had come for my stunning announcement. I pushed my way to the front of the crowd.
“Wait, everyone. Don’t go home yet. I have something to tell you.” Everyone stared at me, some unkindly. “I know I’m an outsider and a flatlander and I have no right to interfere in your business. But I’ll be going home in a few days. Maggie has offered to give me a ride to the train station, and I’m going to accept it. As you may know, she’s leaving, too.” My eyes met Maggie’s, and she nodded slightly.
“Anyway,” I continued, “I’ve been as curious as all of you folks are about the legend of Acorn’s buried treasure, so I’ve been playing detective and following some clues. It turns out that Isaac Larkin gave Miss Lillie a letter before he died, offering a hint about where the treasure is buried, but she has kept the letter sealed all these years. Well, I opened the letter, and it helped me figure out where Isaac and his friend Wilbur Arnett buried their treasure—”
Everyone began talking at once, drowning out my words. The excitement reached such a pitch that no one seemed to remember that we were at a funeral. The crowd eyed me with curiosity and more than a little suspicion as if wondering what this crazy flatlander was up to. Faye’s boys wove through the crowd and planted themselves directly in front of me, staring up at me in anticipation the way they had when I’d read stories to them.
“You gonna tell us where?” someone fin
ally shouted above the noise. I held up my hands, waiting until the rumble of excited voices died down before speaking again.
“Now, I’m not entirely certain the treasure is there because I didn’t dig it up. I wanted all of you to be witnesses so that if it is there, you can see for yourselves that neither family stole it. And I think that Wayne and June Ann should do the digging since they represent both families.”
The crowd murmured some more as Wayne and June Ann walked forward with their baby. Then it grew so quiet that I could hear the rushing waters of Wonderland Creek a few blocks away. I was suddenly petrified.
What if I was wrong about the treasure and I ended up looking like a fool? What if someone had dug it up already—or if it had never been buried there at all?
“What are we waiting for?” someone shouted. I was pretty sure it was Clint.
“I’m waiting because I want all of you to swear to me first that if we find the treasure, the feud between the Larkins and Arnetts will end. You’ve been arguing about this money for years, each family accusing the other of stealing it. Shame on you! Wilbur Arnett and Isaac Larkin were friends. They survived the war together and looked out for each other. They’d be horrified to see how their families have been treating one another all these years.”
I looked out at their expectant faces, hoping my speech had thawed a few hearts. Instead, I saw the Larkins and Arnetts still trading hostile looks. Had Lillie been right? Would finding the treasure lead to more fighting and shooting and killing? Then I saw Miss Lillie smiling at me, encouraging me, and remembered her joy when Mack had come home.
“Families belong together,” I said. “Life is too short for arguing and feuding. And now that America has fallen on hard times, you need each other more than ever. See that church behind us? Your bitterness and neglect are what destroyed it. But if you end the feud and divide the treasure among those in need, think how rich you all will be. Maybe you can use some of the money to rebuild the church, too. The Bible says we’re supposed to help each other, and that if one of us has a need, everybody should pitch in.”
I surveyed the crowd again, then walked over to June Ann and Wayne. I lifted Feather from June Ann’s arms and held her up. “Look at this beautiful baby. She’s worth more than any treasure. And she belongs to all of you—Larkins and Arnetts alike. You have so much wealth here in Acorn—the mountains and creeks, your families and your children. Don’t squander another day on this ridiculous feud.”
I saw Cora and a few other women wiping their eyes. “Are we in agreement?” I asked. “Should we dig up the treasure and use it for everyone’s good?” The two clans took a moment to talk amongst themselves, then one man stepped forward from each family and met in the middle to shake hands. A cheer went up from the crowd.
“Let’s start digging!” someone shouted.
I turned and led the way, still carrying Feather in my arms, and stopped to point to Abraham Coots’s grave. I prayed I hadn’t made a mistake. “I think it’s right here,” I said, sounding more confident than I felt. “I think Isaac and Wilbur buried the money in their friend’s grave.”
I stood back to watch as Wayne and a few other men grabbed the gravediggers’ shovels and began to dig. As they did, I looked around at the faces of all the people here in Acorn whom I had grown to know and love. For the first time I realized how much I had missed in life by reading books day and night about imaginary people. From now on, I wanted to live with real people and become part of their real stories. And as I saw Miss Lillie gazing at me, smiling her gap-toothed grin, I wanted more than anything else to have a faith that was as real and vibrant as hers.
I was still lost in my thoughts when I heard the dull thunk of a shovel striking wood. The men had only dug down a few feet, not six, so I knew it couldn’t be a casket. My heart raced with excitement as the men brushed off the dirt with their hands, unearthing a small wooden box. Wayne Larkin pried off the lid, and cheers erupted from the crowd as he held up two fistfuls of strange-looking money. I felt shaky with relief and had to sit down on a nearby tombstone to avoid dropping the baby.
“What kind of money is that?” Clint asked, pushing his way forward to see. “Them don’t look like real dollars.”
The crowd parted to let one of the older men from the post office examine them. “They’re greenbacks,” he said. “The government printed these during the War Between the States and for a few years afterward.”
“Are they any good?” Clint asked.
The old man shrugged. “Guess we’ll have to take them to a bank and find out.”
But the odd-looking greenbacks didn’t dim the joyful mood as the townspeople continued to laugh and cheer. I searched for June Ann and saw a woman rush toward her and pull her into her arms. I guessed by the woman’s red hair that she was June Ann’s mother.
The long, bitter feud was finally over. And although I knew that fairy-tale endings only happened in books, I wasn’t at all surprised that my story-like visit to Wonderland Creek would end with “happily-ever-after.”
It seemed very strange to be home in Illinois again. I wandered around Blue Island in a daze, as if I had been shipwrecked like Robinson Crusoe and finally had returned to civilization. Simple things that I’d once taken for granted amazed me. The array of fruit and vegetables on display in the market brought tears to my eyes. The contented swish-swish of the agitator on laundry day sounded like music. Electric lights seemed nothing short of miraculous. It took me weeks to get used to reaching for a light switch when I walked into a darkened room instead of searching for a box of matches. And when I sat on the edge of our porcelain bathtub and turned the knob, I laughed out loud as I watched the hot water pouring in, and the steam rising, and the bubbles frothing. But I didn’t enjoy soaking in our tub half as much as I had enjoyed my first long-awaited bath in Lillie’s copper tub in Kentucky.
The world back home seemed loud and angry and aggressive. I couldn’t get used to the constant blare of the radio. Halfway through a film at the movie theater, I got up and walked out, finding the show too noisy and fast-moving after the slow pace of life in Acorn. To be honest, the plot of the film seemed too contrived and coincidental to be believable. But then again, if they made a movie about my adventures in Acorn, it might seem unbelievable, too, with murders and feuds, stolen loot and buried treasure, and a happily-ever-after ending. And who would believe there could be a one-hundred-year-old former slave who could cook up a love potion?
I missed the trees and the hills. It was too flat in Illinois, and the trees looked scrawny and lonely. I couldn’t get used to the rush of traffic in the streets or the rumbling freight trains blasting their whistles. Everything moved too fast. I wanted to tell everyone to slow down and take time to enjoy life and each other.
I missed waking up to the sound of the creek every morning. And the birds singing. And fresh eggs, still warm from the hen house. I missed Belle and our leisurely journeys up Wonderland Creek. Freddy didn’t believe me when I described how I had learned to scrape out Belle’s hooves.
I went next door to see Freddy before I’d even unpacked my suitcase. She gave me a huge hug and invited me inside. “I want to hear all about your trip, Allie. Come on out in the kitchen.” But I knelt in front of her mother’s chair and greeted her first. “Hello, Mrs. Fiore. How are you? I’ve thought about you so often while I was away.”
She looked at me in surprise. “I’m fine, Alice. Well, as good as can be expected under the circumstances. Welcome home. Freddy missed you.”
I stood and turned to Freddy. “Before I talk about my trip, I want to hear all about what you’ve been doing while I was away. Don’t leave out a single thing.” She looked stunned. I was the one who usually dominated the conversation. She led me out to her kitchen, and we sat down at the table.
“Well, there’s not much to tell,” she began. “I’ve been teaching school, taking care of Mom . . . you know, the usual.”
“She’s seeing Gordon Walters,” her m
other called from the next room. “The young man from the funeral home.”
“Really, Freddy? I’m so happy for you!” I wanted to jump up and hug her, but she held up her hands, holding me back.
“Gordon and I are just friends.”
“Friends? But why, Freddy? Why not be more than friends?”
“You tell her, Alice,” Mrs. Fiore called from the living room again. “Tell her to stop giving that nice young man such a hard time and marry him already.”
“Why are you giving Gordon a hard time, Freddy?”
She shrugged and started picking at the hem of the tablecloth. “I didn’t want to go out with him at all, at first. It felt as though I had won second place . . . as though you gave him to me and I was getting leftovers, a consolation prize.”
“But Gordon broke up with me, not the other way around.”
“He’s in love with her,” Mrs. Fiore shouted.
Freddy smiled. “Gordon has won Mother’s heart, as you can see. And he insists that he won’t give up until he wins mine. He’s been very persistent. Some nights he comes over just to listen to the radio with my mother and me, and he sits there and watches me grade papers. Can you imagine?”
I could imagine. I remembered how Ike had stood in the library doorway watching me work. “It must be love,” I told her. “Gordon never came over to sit and watch me.”
“That’s because you always had your nose in a book,” she said, laughing. “Who wants to watch that?”
I recognized the truth in what she said. And though books would always hold an important place in my life, I silently vowed not to let them dominate it. “Give Gordon a chance, Freddy.”
“We’ll see. I’m making him take things slowly.”
I grabbed her arm and gave her a shake. “No! Don’t do that, Freddy. If I’ve learned anything at all from my time away, it’s that you’ve got to take chances in life. Jump in with both feet and do things you never dreamed of doing. We only get one life, and we’ve got to live it to the full. Most of all, we’ve got to love others to the full.”