Cat didn’t remember the noise from last year, at least not when she was running—as if the running had shut her away in a silent world of speed and strain. But now she put her hands over her ears and winced. Winced, blinked—and then blinked again and shook her head, refusing for a moment to believe what her eyes were telling her. Refusing to believe that, out in front of the thudding, flailing pack—way out in front and widening the distance with every stride—was the Okie boy. His bowl haircut flopping wildly, his skinny face taut and shiny with sweat, the Okie boy was winning the sixth-grade boys’ race—in his bare feet. And half an hour later he won the Winners’ Grand Finale—beating the tall Elwood boy by several yards.
Watching the Okie kid flying down the track in his tattered shirt and bare feet, Cat hated him. She had never hated anyone so much in her whole life.
ELEVEN
BROWNWOOD SCHOOL CHEERED SOME for the Okie kid, but not right off. Not during the sixth-grade race, anyway. In that race there was, at first, only a kind of gasp. A shocked, breathy gasp that seemed to come from everywhere, followed by a stunned silence. And even when the cheers began there wasn’t a great roar. Just a few scattered “Yahoos” from Brownwood kids when they realized that, to their surprise, their school had just won five points—and maybe even stood a good chance to win the ten points that would go to the school that took first place in the Winners’ Grand Finale. And therefore, a good chance at all that Lions Club money.
There was more cheering for the Grand Finale. By then, half an hour later, a great deal of talk had happened. All over the Brownwood playground people had asked, “Who is he?” and “Where did he come from?” And “Does he really go to Brownwood School?” There had been answers from the few people who knew, and before long the answers were everywhere. “Yeah, he goes here. He lives in the Otis ranch Okietown down the old Brownwood Road. Calls himself Zane, or something like that. Yeah, that’s it, Zane Perkins. Yeah. Hurrah for Zane!”
And by the time the winners from all the races were lining up for the Grand Finale a lot of people, at least a lot of Brownwood people, were shouting, “Atta boy, Zane. Go it!” And “Show ’em your heels, Zane.” But right then, louder than all the other voices, some Elwood kid yelled, “Yeah, Okie. Your bare heels!” And a lot of people laughed.
But the new boy didn’t seem to hear any of it, not the cheering, or the insults and laughter either. Running like before, as if he were blind and deaf to everything outside himself, he beat out the Elwood champion by several strides and everyone else by yards and yards.
Cat waited only until he crossed the finish line before she pushed her way through the excited crowd and hurried to the sixth-grade room. In the cloakroom she got her sweater off its hook and was reaching up for her lunch pail when she suddenly stopped and stood perfectly still, biting her lower lip and breathing deeply.
All alone in the privacy of the cloakroom—breathing in the familiar atmosphere of library paste, sweaty clothing, and stale sandwiches—she tried desperately to shut out the sound of cheering from the playground. Shut out the cheering and the anger too. To swallow and smother the wild, aching rage she’d felt when the Okie kid won the Grand Finale. But it wouldn’t go away. Grabbing her lunch pail off the shelf she ran down the empty hall, out the front door, and down the street.
Later she remembered heading for home, but she found she couldn’t even be sure which route she’d taken. She couldn’t clearly recall if she went the way she was supposed to, the long way, the half mile on School Street and then along Burks Lane to the old Brownwood Road. Or if she’d taken the forbidden shortcut over Three Sisters’ Ridge—which she sometimes did when she was in a hurry. She didn’t think she’d run much of the way either—but she wasn’t even sure of that. But whichever route she’d gone, she eventually got home and went directly to the kitchen, as always, to wash out her lunch pail and put it away in the pantry. She was getting out a clean dish towel when Mama came into the room.
“Cathy. I didn’t know you were home already,” she said. She put her hand under Cat’s chin. “Your face is all flushed. And you look exhausted.”
When Cat turned her face away Mama hurried to the sink to fill a water glass and then to the icebox to chip a thick chunk off the block of ice. But then, as she handed Cat the cold glass, it began, just as Cat knew it would. The questions about Play Day.
Cat pulled out a chair and sat down. She swirled the glass slowly and carefully and then sipped the icy water before she answered, “Fine. Everything went fine.”
“Oh, I’m so glad.” Mama took the colander off the sinkboard and went to the pantry for potatoes. Cat waited, pressing the cold glass to her cheeks and forehead. Mama had washed the potatoes and started to peel the first one before she asked. “And—and did you race?”
“No, I wasn’t in any races.” Cat paused to take another sip of water. “I meant it when I said I wasn’t going to run.”
“Oh, I see.” Mama was on the second potato before she went on. “And the prize money? Who won the Lions Club prize money?”
Cat shrugged—as if it hardly mattered, at least to her. “Brownwood, I think.”
“Didn’t they announce the winner and give out the ribbons, like last year?”
“I guess so. I didn’t stay to find out for sure. But this kid from Okietown—the one I told you about who’s in my room? Well, he won the sixth-grade boys’ and then the Winners’ Grand Finale. So we probably got the prize money.”
Telling about the Okie boy made the anger come burning back, and the sound of it must have been in her voice, because Mama put down the potato she was peeling, turned around quickly, and stared at Cat with a puzzled frown.
“No, I’m not angry about it,” she said when Mama asked. “Why should I be angry about it?” Then she slammed down the empty glass and left the room. Halfway down the back steps she came back to say, “I’m going for a walk. Okay?” She didn’t wait to hear the answer.
She ran most of the way. So hard and fast that the anger, as so often happened when she ran, was soothed or perhaps smothered from lack of air. But she knew it was still there. She felt it seeping back the moment she reached the grotto. Hurrying to the cottage, she went in and slammed the door behind her. Sitting on the padded stone ledge, hugging her knees against her chest, she could feel it oozing like liquid fire behind her eyes and beneath the skin of her face. But after a while it began to fade and other thoughts and questions began to seep through—questions she didn’t want to ask and thoughts she didn’t want to deal with.
She wanted it back now, the burning hatred that she’d felt before. Wanted it back to burn away the troublesome questions that were turning the pure, clean anger into something ugly and spiteful. Squeezing her eyes tightly shut, she reminded herself of all the things she’d been thinking on the way home from school. Thoughts that fed the angry flames like kerosene on a burning log.
What right had he to run in the Brownwood race, anyway? To run in the school race and win the prize money for Brownwood, as if he were really a part of the school and town, instead of just a dust-bowl beggar kid who lived in a dirty shack in that terrible shantytown? What right had he and his whole family to even be here in California, living on land that didn’t belong to them and probably stealing things every chance they got, just like Ellen always said? And how could he possibly have the nerve to run—out there in front of everybody—IN HIS BARE FEET!
That was the worst part. That, she suddenly knew, was what made her angriest of all. The fact that he’d had the nerve to ... But she didn’t want to think about that. Her mind was just starting to pick at the idea the way you pick at a half-healed scab, to skirt around the edges of why it made her so furious that even though he had no shoes and must have known that everyone would laugh at him, the way people always laughed about anyone who didn’t wear the right kind of clothes—only worse, much worse. Bare feet was certainly worse than ...
It was right then, at that very moment, that she began to be awa
re of a strange scraping noise. A noise that was coming from just outside the door of the cottage. Something seemed to be pulling on the door, trying to open it. Trying and then trying again, while the door squeaked and scraped and refused to budge.
The slightly crooked door had always been hard to open, and when you slammed it hard, as Cat certainly had when she came in, it took a good strong yank to get it started. Cat sat still as death, hugging her knees harder and harder, as the unseen hands tugged and pulled and tugged again. But then it began to give, scraping out slowly over the rough, rocky floor.
It scraped once more and suddenly it was open and there, standing in the doorway, was a very little boy. A ragged, filthy little boy no more than four or five years old was standing right there in her own secret, private grotto, staring at her with wide, frightened eyes.
TWELVE
FOR ONLY A MOMENT the dirty little ragamuffin stared at Cat before he caught his breath in a strangled gasp and disappeared. He was there and then, almost in the blink of an eye, he wasn’t. Shocked, stunned, and strangely frightened, Cat sat as if turned to stone for long frozen seconds before she could even begin to think sensibly about what she had just seen.
Her first reaction, the weird feeling of fright, wasn’t sensible at all. There obviously wasn’t anything dangerous about a tiny little kid, even a ragged, dirty one. A little boy only a few years old wasn’t anything to be afraid of, of course. However, there was a lot to fear if he was from Okietown, because now that he’d discovered her grotto he’d probably tell everyone. Tell all the terrible thieving people in that awful place and ...
Suddenly coming to life, Cat came down from the ledge and across the cottage in one flying leap. She shot out the door, glanced quickly around the grotto, and then crawled frantically out through the tunnel. She ran downstream at first, pausing only when a boulder or bush or clump of saplings offered a possible hiding place. As she darted around boulders and pawed her way through bunches of underbrush, she finally calmed down enough to ask herself what she would do if she found him. What would she say and do if, rounding this next clump of saplings, she came face to face with the dirty little Okie trespasser?
At first she didn’t have any idea—but she soon came up with one. She would scare him. She’d grab him—shake him—yell at him—tell him that if he ever came back, if he ever told anybody she’d ...
That was about as far as her plans went, but as it turned out it didn’t matter anyway, because the little boy seemed to have vanished as if by magic. He wasn’t anywhere downstream, or upstream as far as the rapids. Nor was he still hidden somewhere around the grotto thicket, which she explored much more carefully when she finally returned to where the search had started.
It wasn’t until she arrived back inside the grotto, breathless and angry and frustrated, that it occurred to her to check to see what damage the kid might already have done, and how many of her belongings he’d already stolen. Realizing that when she’d arrived that day she’d been so upset that she might very well have failed to notice such things, she began a careful inspection.
The two highest shelves would be beyond his reach, but by standing on one of the folding chairs he probably could reach those as well. But nothing seemed to be missing. The pansy vase, the perfume bottle, and the books were in their proper places. Even the horses and the elephant, things that would probably be the most tempting to a little boy, stood just where they’d been before.
And inside the cottage, too, nothing seemed to have been disturbed. The blankets on the ledge, the rug, as well as the chairs and table and kerosene lamp, were just as they had been. She was beginning to think that perhaps the little boy had just found the grotto—had only stumbled onto it today, and by chance onto Cat herself—and hadn’t had time to steal or destroy anything. She had almost convinced herself that was the answer, when she remembered to look at Marianne.
The doll crib—a cradle, actually, that Cliff had made out of an old golden oak rocking chair—was sitting below the ledge, just where Cat had left it. And Marianne was there, too, under the pink doll blanket. Marianne was there; but not just as she had been before.
As Cat pulled back the blanket she immediately noticed that something was, not missing, but different. The difference was a flower, a wilted Indian paintbrush, lying on Marianne’s chest and, tucked in beside her right hand, a small withered apricot. And Cat knew, beyond any doubt, that she herself had never left a flower in Marianne’s crib, and certainly not a rotten apricot. So the boy had been there before, and would no doubt be back.
Cat went out to the edge of the grotto and threw the flower and apricot as far as she could into the thicket, and then she went back to sit on the ledge in the cottage. She sat there for quite a while feeling terribly worried—and at the same time, in a strange, unexpected way, almost relieved.
She didn’t recognize it as relief right at first. She was almost home before she began to be aware of the faint undercurrent of satisfaction that oozed in and out among her feelings of anger and worry about the grotto trespasser. Satisfaction, she gradually came to realize, because she wouldn’t have time now to even think about Play Day. She would have to forget about all that. About the races and the Okie kid, and why his bare feet had made her so angry. All she would do now, could possibly do, was concentrate her energy on protecting the secret grotto. She would have to spend all her time planning and plotting—as well as standing guard every possible moment—if she was going to save the grotto from the little Okie trespasser.
So, beginning the next day, Saturday, and again on Sunday after church, she spent long hours standing guard over the grotto—and at the same time avoiding any discussion of Play Day with her family. To her surprise nobody mentioned the races, or argued about her being gone so much. It was as if they could see she was feeling bad and they knew—well, Father did anyway—that it was his fault. So for whatever reason, when she said, “I’d like to play down by the creek today, okay?” or “I think I’ll take a long walk this afternoon,” nobody argued. So she waited in the grotto every possible minute. Waited and watched, but no one came. And there was no sign that anyone had been there either. No more flowers or apricots.
But then Monday came and another school day and for a while the whole Play Day topic was impossible to avoid no matter how much she tried to keep her mind on other things. At school everyone was talking about Zane Perkins and what a fast runner he was.
“Hey, Cat,” Hank Belton said the minute he laid eyes on her, “I’ll bet Zane could beat you too.” Of course Hank would be the one to say that. He’d always hated it that a girl could run faster than he could.
“No, he couldn’t,” Janet said. “Cat could beat him any day. Couldn’t you, Cat?”
“Oh, yeah? Why don’t you try it, then? Why don’t you and him race?”
And a lot of other people started saying the same thing. “Yeah! Swell! Why don’t you race him, Cat?”
And when she walked away they said, “What’s the matter, Cat? You afraid to try? Yeah, she’s chicken. Cat Kinsey is chicken to race against the Okie.” And some of them even started saying, “Cat’s afraid to race with Zane.” Calling him by his name as if he were another regular Brownwood kid and maybe even a friend. A friend, just because he was a fast runner.
That sort of thing went on all day but Cat just ignored it. Most of the time it wasn’t too difficult. She just wouldn’t talk about racing or even look at people who were talking about it. She wouldn’t look at Zane Perkins, either, except for once when the teacher called him to come up to the board to do an arithmetic problem.
She had to look at him then, wearing another ragged shirt and a different pair of ragged overalls. Too big for him this time instead of too little, with baggy bottoms and a crotch that hung down to his knees. But then he turned around and she found herself looking at his broad face with its strange, uncivilized eyes, dark and deep-set eyes under pointy eyebrows. He grinned then, right at her, and she had to quickly pretend to
be staring at the problem he’d done on the board. Studying the problem and smiling sarcastically as if she’d caught him making a dumb mistake.
The next few days she hurried home from school and, as soon as she could, on down to the grotto. She didn’t always get there as soon as she’d like to because Mama, who usually didn’t pay much attention to what she did after school, was beginning to ask a lot of questions and make all sorts of suggestions.
“Cathy dear,” she’d say with a worried look on her face, “don’t you want to help me with the darning today? You used to say you thought darning socks was fun. Remember how we used to see who could recite the most poetry while we were darning?” Or other times she’d ask what it was that Cat did every day down by the creek. But after Cat had made up enough long, boring stories about building dams and catching tadpoles, Mama finally gave up and let her go.
Every day that week—Monday through Thursday—she spent at least an hour at the grotto, without seeing any sign of the trespasser. But on Friday there was a teachers’ workshop in the afternoon and classes were dismissed at one o’clock. So Cat crawled in through the tunnel about two hours earlier than usual. Earlier than usual and earlier, obviously, than the trespasser expected her to be—because the moment she crawled out of the tunnel, got to her feet, and looked around, she knew that he was there.
THIRTEEN
IT WAS MOSTLY JUST a feeling that warned Cat that the trespasser was right there in the grotto, a mysterious feeling that something was wrong. Almost as if she had suddenly developed mystical powers, like clairvoyance or second sight. Clairvoyance, most likely.
Of course, the fact that there was a strange object sitting there in plain sight just might have helped too. But she’d definitely started getting the mysterious feeling before she even noticed the pail. A stained and rusted pail made out of an old Shell oilcan with a makeshift baling-wire handle that was sitting just outside the cottage door.
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