On Track for Treasure

by Wendy McClure

  The Reverend’s face was getting redder. “Will no one answer?” He took a deep breath and clenched his fists so hard the bough in his hand began to bend. “Who took it?”

  “It was me,” declared a voice.

  The voice belonged to a boy, but not Harold or Alexander.

  Eli stepped out from a stall where he’d been hiding. “It was me,” he said again. “I took the fiddle.”

  19

  A FIDDLE AND A FIGHT

  Frances watched as Eli went over to the corner of the barn where the children slept and pulled the fiddle out from under a blanket. Then he handed it to Mrs. Carey without a word. He simply stood there, quiet and still in a way that seemed almost defiant.

  “Have you anything to say for yourself?” the Reverend demanded. He was still clutching the bough.

  The boy stayed silent.

  “Nothing at all?”

  Eli shook his head.

  At that, the Reverend took hold of Eli’s collar with his free hand. He looked over at the other four children. “Consider this a lesson to you, too,” he told them. “For every misdeed there is a punishment.”

  “We are not running a boardinghouse for thieves,” Mrs. Carey added.

  She grabbed Eli’s arm for good measure, though he showed no sign of resistance. Then the couple marched him out of the barn, through the yard, and up the back steps into the house. The children didn’t dare speak until the door slammed shut.

  “What happened?” Frances cried. She turned and looked at her little brother. She’d had a terrible feeling about the way he’d been shifting nervously a minute ago, just before Eli spoke up. And now he was acting the same way again.

  “Do you have something to tell us, Harold?” Alexander asked.

  “Yes,” Harold said softly. “It was really me who took the fiddle. I mean . . . I liberated it. For Wanderville.”

  Frances wanted to shake him. “Didn’t we tell you not to do that? Not to steal things this time?” She’d never really approved of the second law of Wanderville, which declared that they could take things they needed, even when it meant stealing them.

  “I thought you said not to steal food, that’s all,” Harold said. “Not other things we needed.”

  “Maybe I should have made that clearer,” Alexander said, looking a little guilty himself.

  “Yeah, you should have,” Jack muttered. Alexander glared at him.

  Here we go again, Frances thought. But she had to ignore their brewing quarrel to turn back to Harold. “But why on earth did you think we needed the fiddle?”

  “Because we needed to have music in Wanderville, so . . .” Harold’s eyes began to fill up and his voice broke. “So that George and the other kids would want to be there again.”

  Even in her anger Frances could sense how left out her brother felt. “Well, what’s done is done,” she said, wiping Harold’s tears with her sleeve.

  “Why did Eli say he stole it?” Harold wondered, still sniffling.

  “I don’t know,” Alexander said. “I was going to step forward and take the blame so Harold wouldn’t get thrashed.”

  “No, I was,” Jack replied.

  “Oh, so you’re the leader of us now?” Alexander shot back.

  “Is that all you care about?” Jack retorted.

  The two faced each other, fists at their sides.

  “Stop it!” Frances shouted. “Neither of you stepped forward! Eli did! And if you two would stop quarreling for one minute, you would remember why!”

  The boys stopped glaring at each other and turned to look at Frances.

  “To save Harold, and to save us!” Frances cried. “Not just from a thrashing, but from being branded as the criminals Miss DeHaven says we are! The Careys didn’t believe her, but if it had been Harold who’d been caught stealing today . . .”

  She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence, but she knew Jack and Alexander were thinking the same thing: We would have been sent away with Miss DeHaven.

  “Eli must have known,” Jack said. “He must have known we had more to lose from being caught.”

  Frances squeezed her brother’s shoulder. “It was a brave thing that he did.”

  “He’s my friend,” Harold said quietly. “I think maybe he’s our friend, all of us.”

  “I think so, too,” Frances said. She looked across the yard to the house, to the door where Eli had been taken. She suddenly got an awful, shivery sensation from staring at that closed door.

  No one said anything for a moment until Alexander spoke up, his voice hushed.

  “What do you suppose is happening to him now?”

  20

  ELI’S FATE

  The next morning Eli wasn’t working in the oat field the way he usually did. Jack checked the orchard fence, too, but he wasn’t there digging posts, either. Jack felt deeply uneasy as he walked back over to the garden, where his three friends were working.

  “Did you go by his place?” Alexander asked after Jack had told them.

  “He wasn’t there,” Jack reported. The door of the shanty had been wide open, which had made Jack worry that the Pikes had left in the night. But he’d crept up to the doorway to peer inside, into the shanty’s only room. There he’d seen Mr. Pike, asleep in a chair with a bottle on the floor next to him. Eli was nowhere to be found.

  “What if he’s still at the Careys’ house?” Frances wondered. “Could they have kept him there this whole time?”

  “Like a prisoner,” Harold said with a shudder.

  Last night the prayer session had been extra short. Then, when Mrs. Carey brought a basket of food out to the barn, Harold had piped up and asked where Eli was.

  “He’s being punished, of course,” she’d said. “And you will not ask any more questions about him.”

  But they wouldn’t stop wondering: What was he going through?

  All morning, as they worked in the garden, they kept looking up at the house.

  “Maybe Eli’s in the schoolroom,” Frances said.

  Alexander took a deep breath. “Schoolroom?”

  Frances nodded. “It sure looked like the kind of room where punishment happens.”

  “I’ll bet,” Alexander muttered. Alexander had told Jack once that he’d had a teacher at school who’d flogged him with a switch.

  Now Jack couldn’t stop thinking of that tree bough in the Reverend’s hand. The minister was a tall man; his arms looked wiry and strong. He didn’t seem to Jack to be violent, but he clearly had a strict sense of right and wrong, and believed that harsh discipline was sometimes necessary. But how far would he go to punish Eli?

  Ever since they had come here, Jack made sure to remember how different the Careys’ farm was from the ranch in Kansas. But then he saw how O’Reilly liked to shove Eli—and some of the other sharecropper kids, especially the black ones—and he didn’t understand how Reverend Carey could let his employee carry on like that. Jack tried telling himself it wasn’t so bad. But lately he’d gotten to thinking: If you set strict-enough rules and punished enough folks, would it just make you turn mean at some point? Suppose that had happened with O’Reilly, and maybe even the Pratcherds, too. Did that mean—and this was what Jack wondered about, even though he hated to think about it—did that mean it could happen to the Reverend?

  Jack turned so that he couldn’t see the big brick house. But Alexander kept looking. “Which window is the schoolroom?” he asked Frances.

  She stood on her toes and looked. “Well, the kitchen is that first window, and then a parlor on the other end. . . .” She pointed to a small, high first-floor window in the middle. “That one. That must be the schoolroom.”

  “It’s so high.” Jack glanced around. “We’d have to stand on something to see in.”

  “Like that wheelbarrow,” Alexander said, motioning to the one at t
he edge of the garden.

  “Exactly like that wheelbarrow,” Jack replied with a grin.

  They needed to wait until the workday was nearly over so that they wouldn’t look suspicious sneaking over to the house. The Reverend would be going out to lead the prayer session by that time, too.

  So when the afternoon shadows started to grow long, the three of them began to slowly push the wheelbarrow toward the house, taking care to roll only a little at a time so that the noise of the rusty front wheel wouldn’t attract the attention of O’Reilly, who sometimes threatened to “report” the kids “for being a nuisance.”

  Finally, they were close enough to the house that they had to crouch down and hide behind the wheelbarrow when the back door opened.

  “There’s the Reverend now,” Frances whispered. “Let’s go—quick.”

  They pushed the wheelbarrow the rest of the way until it was under the window. Alexander held the handles steady, then Frances and Harold sat on one side of the little wagon bed to balance the weight while Jack stood on the other. Perched on the edge of the wheelbarrow, Jack could get just enough of a grip on the windowsill to lift himself up and see inside.

  He was almost afraid to look, though. Sometimes it didn’t matter that folks like the Careys weren’t as cruel as the Pratcherds. When grown-ups were mad enough at you, it could all be the same in the end. But Jack had come this far, so he took a deep breath and pulled himself up to the window, which was partway open. Jack tried to open it wider, but it was locked in place, with only a few inches of space to let in air. Not even Harold could climb in there.

  He saw a row of desks in the schoolroom, just as Frances had described. Eli was sitting in the very front one, looking uncomfortable, as if the desk were an iron trap that had somehow captured him. He was all by himself in the room, with a pen in his hand and a sheaf of smudged pages in front of him. He looked up at Jack, stunned. Then he got up from his desk and came closer to the window.

  “Are you all right?” Jack whispered. “Did they give you a hiding?”

  Eli shook his head. Jack was glad to see he didn’t have any bruises or shiners. Still, he looked very tired, though there appeared to be a cot for sleeping in the corner. In front of his desk was a big table with a few crumbs left. At least they’re feeding him, Jack thought. But then he noticed the tree bough that also sat on the table, and his eyes widened.

  Eli saw Jack’s reaction. “Preacher Carey sat me down here yesterday and gave a lecture,” Eli said. He nodded at the bough. “It was all about that tree branch and how it needs the tree and stuff.”

  Relief flooded through Jack. The Reverend hadn’t hit Eli with the branch—he’d used it to talk about salvation. “But why are you still here?” he asked.

  Eli held up a small book. Jack could see the title: Sermons for Children, On Subjects Suited to Their Tender Age. “Reverend says there’s a sermon about stealing in this book, and I have to copy it fifty times. Trouble is”—Eli turned to make sure the door to the room was still closed—“I ain’t been to school since my mama died. So I’m not so good at writing.”

  Jack saw that the handwriting on Eli’s pages was crooked and strange, the letters misshapen. It was taking him a long time just to scribble out one line. “Doesn’t Reverend Carey know that you can’t write?” Jack asked.

  “I ain’t telling him.”

  “Why not?”

  “’Cause then I’ll be in trouble for missing school,” Eli said. “I started skipping to go help in my pa’s field on days when he was drinking. ’Cause we’d have no place to live if our crop didn’t come in.”

  Jack was beginning to realize that even though Eli wasn’t being hurt, he was in a tough spot. It could be days before his punishment was over.

  “That little Harold kid better thank me for saving his hide,” Eli added.

  “He will,” Jack said. “But . . . why did you say you took the fiddle?”

  “Because if they sent you away,” Eli said, “I wouldn’t be able to visit Wanderville with you.”

  Just then, he felt a tug on the back of his shirt. “Jack! Someone’s going to see us out here!” Frances whispered loudly. “You’d better get down.”

  Jack realized it was almost time for the prayer session. He waved to Eli and lowered himself back down to the ground. Alexander, Frances, and Harold looked to him expectantly.

  “Eli’s all right,” he told them.

  “Thank goodness!” Frances exclaimed, while Harold nodded excitedly.

  “And he wants to come to Wanderville.”

  Alexander’s face lit up. “He does?”

  “Yep,” Jack said. But in his head he added: If he ever gets out of that schoolroom.

  21

  ANOTHER PUNISHMENT

  For some reason the evening prayers were canceled.

  “Reverend Carey has some business to attend to,” Mrs. Carey told Frances and the other three children. She handed them a basket for supper.

  Frances peered inside the basket—there was fried chicken and bread and a whole apple pie. “Thank you.”

  “Just bring the basket back tomorrow as usual,” Mrs. Carey said. “You all worked so hard today I bet you’ll go straight to bed after supper.”

  Frances couldn’t help but notice that this remark sounded almost like a command. Mrs. Carey seemed anxious somehow, too. But Frances kept these thoughts to herself as they returned to the barn.

  “I’m glad Eli didn’t get a licking,” Alexander said as they ate their meal.

  “Me, too,” Jack said. “And maybe the Reverend will see he’s a good kid and will want to help his father stop drinking.”

  “Then he can come to Wanderville with us,” Harold said. He put down his chicken drumstick and looked up at Frances. “Can we go over there now?”

  “Well . . .” Frances hesitated. Something about Mrs. Carey’s tone had made her wonder if it was better to stay where they were. But after the uncertainty of the past couple of days, Frances longed to go back to her favorite place. “Why not?” she said finally. “We can bring the pie.”

  “That’s a fine idea,” Alexander said.

  The sky was turning a soft pink as they stepped out the back of the barn. Frances looked down at the pie she was carrying. “We should share this with Ora and Clement and their families,” she said. The others agreed, so they turned to walk along the fence over to the sharecroppers’ homes.

  They came to a big shed where they heard voices. “Maybe Clement’s in there,” Jack reasoned. They went in and looked around, but nobody was inside. The late-afternoon light streamed in through the wide spaces between the planks on the wall.

  The voices were coming from outside—from the other side of the shed, near a back gate that led to the woods. Not Clement’s voice, but other men’s voices, and Frances could see silhouettes against the slatted sunlight.

  “Frances?” Harold’s whisper was hoarse with fear. Frances set the pie down and pulled her brother close.

  The sounds of thumps and thuds and shuffling feet weren’t noises from work, but from violence. At first Frances thought it was two men fighting. But the sounds of struggle were coming from only one man, she realized. A man who was being shoved and kicked and hit.

  She looked over at Jack and Alexander, who looked just as scared as she did. Jack put his finger to his lips and crept over to peer through one of the cracks in the side of the shed. Alexander did the same. Frances slipped her hand over Harold’s mouth to make extra sure he’d stay quiet. Then they found a spot in the wall to peer out.

  The man being beaten was Moses Pike—Eli’s father. He clung to one of the gateposts, his face swollen and bloody. The farmhand named O’Reilly stood before him, his sleeves rolled up and his expression cold.

  Frances could feel Harold step back from the wall. She let him bury his face against her side and hugged him closer
. The sight made her sick, too, but she kept watching.

  Mr. Pike tried to stand taller, but he clutched his side in pain. “I . . . don’t . . . understand,” he managed to say.

  “Just following orders, Pike,” O’Reilly said. “Eli needs to mind his elders.”

  “He’s my boy,” Mr. Pike said through ragged breaths. “I’ll . . . handle it myself. . . . Why won’t you let me?”

  O’Reilly didn’t answer, and after a moment, Frances realized he wasn’t the one Mr. Pike was speaking to. Someone else was there, standing off to the side just beyond Frances’s field of vision. Another man.

  “It’s my land,” he said. “And these are my rules.”

  As Reverend Carey spoke, he stepped into view. His coat was off, his shirtsleeves rolled. “I won’t strike Eli,” he continued. “But someone had to take the blows for what he’s done. And when he’s finished with his punishment, you’d better mind that boy and keep him away from my family.”

  Frances felt dizzy and stepped back from the wall. Jack and Alexander did, too. None of them wanted to see any more. But Frances couldn’t blot out the image of the Reverend as he had just appeared—still rubbing his fist from the blows. She couldn’t forget the blood on his shirt.

  Frances hardly needed to pull Harold along as she ran out of the shed. They flew together, the two older boys right behind. Frances heard only the sound of her own panicked breathing, like terrible waves crashing in her head.

  22

  A TALE OF TWO APPLES

  They ran to Wanderville. It was the only place that felt safe.

  The fading daylight filtered through the trees as the four of them sat in the soft grass in the clearing. Jack knew they were all thinking the same thing he was.

  Harold was the first to voice it. “Is Reverend Carey a bad man?” he asked.

  Frances paused a moment before answering. “Remember how we told you the Careys had lots of rules?” she said. “Well . . . I-I guess there are some rules we didn’t know about until now.” Her voice was shaky, and she picked at the grass as she spoke.