The Great Unexpected

by Sharon Creech

  “I don’t think there are fifty people up there. Not that I’ve seen, anyhow. There might be fifty dogs—”

  “What?” I said, feeling as if I might lose my breakfast right then and there. “Fifty?”

  “I didn’t exactly go around counting them.”

  Now, here is an odd thing. While I was stuck up in that tree with an icy fear of those dogs, I took a sudden liking to that Finn boy. I can’t hardly explain it. He was standing there with the sun coming down on his light brown hair, and his face was rosy gold with splashes of freckles across his cheeks, and he had a smudge of dirt right there under his right eye, and he didn’t look like anyone I’d ever met. He seemed to fit so easily in his body, unlike the other, clumsy boys around. His mouth was curved up a little at the corners so that he always looked as if he were smiling or about to smile.

  Lizzie said, “Finn boy—”

  “Why don’t you call me Finn? That’s my name. Not Finn boy.”

  “Okay. Finn, is there really an evil black dog that stalks this hill and terrorizes trespassers?”

  “I haven’t heard about that yet. I haven’t been here long.”

  “Where’d you come from? When did you get here?” I asked. I couldn’t help it. When I wanted to know something, I wanted to know it now.

  “Naomi!” Lizzie said. “Naomi Deane, that’s a little forward. Maybe the boy doesn’t want to tell us where he came from or when he got here.”

  “Lizzie, maybe the boy can decide for himself.”

  “It’s a long story,” Finn said. “It’s complicated.”

  CHAPTER 10

  ACROSS THE OCEAN: DOGS SLEEP

  MRS. KAVANAGH

  Mrs. Kavanagh was seated in her wheelchair beneath a pear tree. Across her lap lay a blue cashmere shawl and at her feet curled two sleek hound dogs, white with tawny patches. They were foxhounds, sisters from the same litter, distinct with their long, slender legs and gentle, narrow faces.

  Mrs. Kavanagh eased her foot out of its slipper and lightly traced the nearest dog’s foreleg with it. “There, there, Sadie,” she said. “No one will split you and Maddie.”

  Overhead, two young squirrels chased each other through the branches, loosening leaves and pieces of bark. Mrs. Kavanagh watched as these pieces drifted to the ground. She was reminded of another day, long ago, in the small village of Duffayn, when her younger sister had come running across the meadow, calling, “Sybil, Sybil!”

  Now, another figure was crossing the meadow. Mrs. Kavanagh squinted. It was Pilpenny.

  “Sybil, Sybil—”

  Mrs. Kavanagh heard the edge in Pilpenny’s voice.

  “Sybil, you’ve a visitor.”

  CHAPTER 11

  THE CROOKED BRIDGE

  When I asked Finn where he was from, he said, “You know where the Crooked Bridge is?” He was sitting on the ground, Lizzie was standing nearby, and I was still up in the tree.

  “What kind of crooked bridge?” Lizzie said. “You mean an old wobbly bridge? We’ve got lots of those around.”

  “I mean the Crooked Bridge. That’s the name of it: Crooked Bridge.”

  “Never heard of it,” I said.

  So Finn went on to describe the bridge. It was wooden, and it crossed a narrow river. Its shape was zigzag. He drew a diagram in the dirt.

  “Looks like a silly way to build a bridge,” I said.

  Finn said it was built that way so evil spirits chasing you would miss the turns and zing off the ends and into the water.

  “Think of that,” Lizzie said. “I love it to pieces and pieces! What a great idea!”

  “If you believe in evil spirits,” I said, “and if you believe that they’d miss the turns and zing off the ends.”

  “Doesn’t sound like the girl in the tree thinks the Crooked Bridge is real,” Finn said.

  I didn’t like how suddenly I was on the outside of this conversation. “The girl in the tree has a name,” I said. “Naomi. And I didn’t say I didn’t think the Crooked Bridge was real. I just don’t think the evil spirits part is real.”

  “You don’t believe in evil spirits?”

  Lizzie hugged herself as if she were cold. “Oh, I do, I do believe in them. Maybe Naomi doesn’t, but I do.”

  “So is that where you live?” I said. “Near this Crooked Bridge?”

  “No.”

  “Then why were you telling us about it?”

  “Thought it was interesting, that’s all.” He stretched and yawned. “So what’s this place called again?”

  “Which place?” Lizzie said. “This here place where you’re sitting or this here place roundabouts?”

  “Uh—”

  “Blackbird Tree,” I said. “That’s what this here town is called. Don’t you even know where you are?”

  “What’s near here?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Well, shoot, Naomi, of course we are near something. Sure, some people hereabouts call this place Lost Tree—that’s a little joke, see? Do you know they didn’t get electricity here until about a hundred years after everybody else? Okay, maybe not a hundred years, but a lot of years, and still there is only half electricity. Now, the nearest town, why, that’s up to Ravensworth, about thirty miles away—”

  “That’s probably enough information, Lizzie.”

  “So you two live in Blackbird Tree?”

  “That’s right,” Lizzie said. “Naomi has been here forever and a day, but I’ve only been here two years. Two years and one month. I live with the Cupwrights, who are going to adopt me. Are you an adopted boy?”

  If you wanted to keep any secrets, you sure did not want Lizzie Scatterding to know all your business.

  “Where’s the school at in this Blackbird Creek place?”

  “Tree,” I said. “Blackbird Tree.”

  “What’s a blackbird tree anyway?”

  “You don’t know what a blackbird tree is? Everybody knows that.” An ant had crawled up inside my shirt and was itching me. “Tell him, Lizzie.”

  “It’s a tree shaped like a blackbird.”

  “Lizzie, you crawdad. It is not.”

  “Is too.”

  “It’s a tree full of blackbirds. Like the one at the bend. It’s nearly always full of blackbirds. That’s how the town got its name.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Lizzie said.

  “Of course I’m sure. Besides, it sounds a lot better than a town being named after a tree shaped like a blackbird, which there is not one of in this whole town or probably in the whole world.”

  Finn handed Lizzie a stick. “Draw me a map of this here Blackbird Tree town. Show me where we are and where you all live and if there’s some kind of store, like for soda pop and pickles and nails and stuff.”

  And so Lizzie did. Right there in the dirt, she drew a map of Blackbird Tree. She added some things I wouldn’t have bothered with, like Crazy Cora’s house and Witch Wiggins’s place, in addition to my house and hers and Tebop’s General Store. It about killed me to stay up in the tree because I would’ve drawn that map differently. She had things too close to each other and out of proportion, like Tebop’s General Store was a giant square, about ten times as big as any house, when everybody who has a brain knows that Tebop’s is barely a shack. I would’ve drawn it tiny and leaning over, about to fall into the road.

  Finn studied the map for some time. Finally he said, “I think I’ve got it in my head now.” He stood up and headed off. “Best go,” he said. “Ta.”

  Lizzie raised a hand. “Ta.”

  Once Finn was long gone, I said, “‘Ta’? What’s this ta business? Since when did you start saying ta?”

  “Since that Finn boy did,” she said. “Are you going to stay up there all night, Naomi?”

  “No, I am not.” I climbed down, landing right on top of the dirt sketch of Crazy Cora’s house.

  For my sixth birthday, Nula gave me a doll she had made. It had such a friendly face; the body was soft and squishy; her hair wa
s curly and red, silky and fine. She wore a simple white cotton dress and black felt shoes. I named her Sophia and adored her instantly. I remember saying to Nula, “Everything is different with Sophia here now. Everything!” And everything was different because I took her everywhere and told her everything and saw everything new through her eyes.

  That’s how everything felt now that Finn was here, as if everything was different.

  CHAPTER 12

  ANOTHER STRANGER

  Although the chickens behaved well enough with me, Joe, and Nula, they didn’t like too many others and could create a ruckus if approached. They had scratched and pecked a rutty mess in the yard as they roamed and clucked, awk, awk. Miss Johnny, the loner, ran here and there like a crazy person, calling out, ooka, ooka, in a high-pitched sound, unlike any other chicken I’d ever heard. I’d named the chickens, which annoyed Joe, partly because I’d given them all men’s names, so I had to add “Miss” to them: Miss Johnny, Miss Roy, Miss Danny, Miss Franklin—like that.

  It was while I was thinking about the chickens and their voices that I realized what had been puzzling me about Finn. When we first met him, he had sounded different, a little strange. He’d talked in a way not completely odd to my ears but definitely not a Blackbird Tree way of talking, with our drawled-out middles of words. Finn spoke in a more lilting way, so that some words sat up and floated in the air.

  Standing there in the chicken yard, I realized that Finn had sounded a little like Nula. The next time we saw Finn, though, he sounded more Blackbird Tree–like. He’d said, “Where’s the school at?” and where’s sounded like wahrrrz, and everything sounded like everthang, which was the way you said things in Blackbird Tree.

  When I mentioned this to Lizzie later in the day, she said, “He did sound peculiar, but I thought it was because he was injured half to death.”

  “But where’s he from? That’s what I’d like to know. He never did bother to answer that question.”

  “What with school out and all, and with the dim Dimmenses never coming to school anyway, we may never see that Finn boy again, Naomi. Unless you want to try going up Black Dog Night Hill again. I don’t think we ought to, though, do you? What with the dogs and all. I mean the other dogs, not the black dog with the yellow eyes, although that black dog would be reason enough not to go.”

  “I’m not going back up the hill. I don’t care if we never see that Finn boy again anyway.” This was not the truth. I was desperate to see that Finn boy again. It was embarrassing to consider, but that’s the way it was—as if I’d been hypnotized, and Finn boy had infiltrated my brain like a virus.

  “I don’t care either,” Lizzie said. “If you don’t care, I don’t care.”

  As we walked to Tebop’s General Store, we talked about our summer. Lizzie’s foster parents, the Cupwrights, and Nula and Joe were still in shock that we were out of school, and they had not yet pinned us down to chores. Usually we had about a week until they figured out we were on the loose, and that week was running out.

  We would each have home chores, and the Cupwrights always made Lizzie do a volunteer project “to help the community and people less fortunate.” Usually, I joined her because that got me out of more chores at Joe and Nula’s and gave me more time hanging out with Lizzie.

  At Tebop’s store, several women were clustered around Mrs. Tebop at the counter. Buzz, buzz, like busy flies.

  “Glory! Who was he?”

  “What’d you say his name was?”

  “Dangle? Doodle?”

  “I think it was—”

  “Well, what’d he want?”

  “Why would he drop in here, like an alien or something?”

  “I have no—”

  “He said he was interested—”

  “In what? What was he interested in?”

  “Sounds pretty nosy, if you ask me.”

  “—the area. He was interested in ‘the lovely surrounds,’ that’s the way he put it, kind of queerlike. And he talked funny.”

  “Like how?”

  Buzz, buzz.

  What Lizzie and I put together was that a “dapper man” had come into Tebop’s, asking a lot of questions: How many people lived in the town? Were there any boardinghouses? What were some nice places to visit? Was there a river? Did people fish there?

  “Well, I’ll be a nutberry!” Lizzie said as we left the store. “First there’s the Finn boy dropping out of nowhere, and now there’s a Dangle Doodle man. Maybe next we will get a kangaroo hopping down the road. It’s like The Great Unexpected.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That’s on the summer book list. The Great Unexpected. I hear it’s way too long and too hard.”

  The Great Unexpected. It sounded like my life, if you took the great out.

  CHAPTER 13

  ACROSS THE OCEAN: A VISITOR

  MRS. KAVANAGH

  “Sybil, you’ve a visitor—” Pilpenny stopped to catch her breath.

  “I’ve had enough of visitors.”

  “And you won’t like this one. I’m as sure of that as I am of my mother’s grave.”

  “Paddy McCoul, is it?”

  “The very same.”

  “Best hide me in the garden shed then.”

  “He’s already seen you. Look there, don’t stare, see him by the roses?”

  Mrs. Kavanagh peered around Pilpenny. “Ach. Paddy McCoul in the flesh. Best get me the gun.”

  “Oh, Sybil.”

  “The ax?”

  CHAPTER 14

  WITCH WIGGINS

  Lizzie and I were coming down Pork Street on our way home from Tebop’s store, still talking about the stranger Dangle Doodle, when I saw Finn, up ahead, leaving Witch Wiggins’s house. My heart was hopping around like a frog. I couldn’t speak. I pulled on Lizzie’s sleeve.

  “Naomi, stop that. This is my only cardigan with all its buttons and you are stretching—whoa. Whoa. Look at that. It’s that Finn boy coming out of Witch Wiggins’s house, oh heavens and stars.”

  Finn waved. “Hey, tree girls.”

  Lizzie wagged her finger at Finn. “Finn boy, I know you are new here and all, but you have to be careful where you go. Do you have any idea who lives in that house?”

  “A lady by the name of Hazel.”

  “Hazel?” Lizzie looked at Finn as if he were speaking Turkish. “That is the dwelling of Witch Wiggins, who has been known to eat boys bigger than you, so you are lucky to be alive.”

  “She eats boys? Is that so?”

  “Don’t you know you have to stay clear of witches? What made you go in there in the first place? I am worried about you, Finn boy. Did you eat or drink anything while you were in there?”

  “I had a couple biscuits—tasted kind of strange, I s’pose. And a glass or two of something red-colored.”

  Lizzie put her hand on Finn’s forehead. “How do you feel?”

  “A little odd, I s’pose.”

  “Naomi, he’s feeling odd, and he ate strange biscuits and drank red liquids.”

  “Lizzie, I am standing right here and I’m not deaf.”

  “I’m feeling a little dizzy,” Finn said.

  Lizzie leaped into action. “Here, here, put your arm on my shoulder, that’s right.”

  I felt it necessary to get on the other side of Finn. “Put your other arm here,” I said.

  The three of us made our clumsy way down the street, and I have to say that it was a nice feeling having Finn’s arm on my shoulder. We settled him on a bench at the corner of Pork and Main. Lizzie and I sat on either side of him to prop him up.

  “So, what did you see inside Witch Wiggins’s house, Finn boy?”

  “Lots of things. About a thousand birds—”

  “Dead or alive?” I asked.

  “Alive.”

  “How can there be a thousand alive birds in there?” Lizzie said. “Where do they all fit? Why don’t we hear a ton of birdsong? Is there bird slop every which way?”

  Finn’s left leg
was about one inch from my right one. His left elbow was touching my right elbow. Touching it.

  “I saw five or ten coffins,” Finn said.

  “Open or closed?” I asked.

  “Closed.”

  “People-sized?” Lizzie asked. “Where’d she get all those coffins? Are they empty or inhabited? Oh, Naomi, he saw coffins in there. Coffins. A thousand birds and coffins.”

  “Yes, Lizzie, I believe my ears heard that.”

  Finn abruptly stood up, shook his head around as if he were tossing off flies, and said, “Thanks for the help. Have to go now.”

  I didn’t want him to go. I couldn’t bear for him to leave. I wanted to grab ahold of his shirt and beg him to stay. And then I was embarrassed for being such a drip over a boy. I was glad no one could see into my head.

  Lizzie said, “Wait, Finn boy. Are you sure you’re well enough to be walking around on your own? Where are you going? Do you want help?”

  “I’ll be fine. Going up here a ways, to Miss Cora’s house.”

  I thought the top of Lizzie’s head was going to fly open. “Finn boy! You can’t go there. That’s Crazy Cora. You absolutely should not go there. That’s Crazy Cora. Naomi, Finn boy is going to Crazy Cora’s. Tell him he can’t go there.”

  I looked at Finn. He looked at me.

  “Lizzie,” I said. “I think this here Finn boy is going to go wherever he wants to go.”

  “Well! I certainly do hope that this here Finn boy knows that we will not always be available to come to his rescue.”

  I was thinking, I will. I will always and ever be available to come to his rescue.

  Lizzie and the Cupwrights lived up closer to town, so Lizzie was a town girl and I was almost a country girl. I liked being away from things a bit. I wouldn’t have liked it if every nosy body was strolling past our front porch looking at us and what was hanging on the clothesline.

  In the kitchen, Nula was at the counter, pulling mixing bowls out of the cupboard. “There you are, you lazy girl. Where are my eggs? Out with the chickens, I am supposing. Fetch me those eggs, you hear me? Here I am waiting for you to bring me the gossip, but first you fetch the eggs and then you can start the corn bread while you tell me the news.”