by Jane Langton
As they ran through the gate of the chain-link fence, a crow flapped down from a tree, settled on Frederick Small’s dead face, and began pecking at his wide shining eyes.
Then Gretel gave her a push, so that she fell right in.… Oh! how horribly she howled; but Gretel ran away, and left the ungodly witch to burn to ashes.
The Brothers Grimm, “Hansel and Gretel”
Chapter 58
All the little boys and girls …
Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after
The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.
Robert Browning, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”
It was the last day of school.
“Charlene, dear,” said Mrs. Rutledge, whispering to her in the corridor, “I’m so sorry about the Junior Olympics.”
Charlene’s face was stony. She stared at the coathooks on the wall.
Mrs. Rutledge was all sympathy and understanding. “It was that girl Cindy Foxweiler, she won again, didn’t she?”
Charlene turned to Mrs. Rutledge and burst out, “It wasn’t my fault! It’s my father! It’s his fault I lost!”
“There now, dear, there now.” Mrs. Rutledge put her arm around Charlene and turned her toward the classroom door. “I’m sure you’ll win next time. Now, come on, dear, they’re all waiting. It’s time for our reading.”
The story was the last chapter of The Flying Family. Mary Kelly sighed, and sat down, squeezing herself into one of the small chairs in the last row. Why had the woman chosen this dreary book?
“Charlene,” said Mrs. Rutledge, “will you do the honors?”
Charlene’s customary poise returned. “Is it okay if I share it with Cissie?”
Once again Mrs. Rutledge was surprised at Charlene’s odd choice of a friend. “Well, of course, Charlene.”
Cissie was pink with joy.
Charlene read the first part of the chapter, then handed the book to Cissie, to give her the satisfaction of reading the last page. Blushing, Cissie took over. This time she was a better reader than she had ever been before.
“Let’s have one last flight before we leave this special place,” exclaimed Dad.
“Oh, yes,” shouted Joan and Jim.
“Me too,” cried Bitsy.
“Yes, of course,” chuckled Mother. “You, too, little one.”
“For the last time they walked into the magic forest and climbed the enchanted tree. Then they flew to their hearts’ content, up in the sky, over the clouds, soaring like birds, looking down on the tops of the trees in the magic forest. At last it was time to go home.
“Can we come again next summer?” pleaded Joan.
“Oh, please, Dad,” begged Jim.
“Me too?” squeaked Bitsy.
“Of course we can,” promised Mother and Dad. “Next summer and every summer, forever and ever.”
Smiling broadly, Cissie closed the book and said, “The end.”
Mrs. Rutledge was delighted. “Very good, Cissie! Very good, Charlene! Class, shall we give them a hand?” Everyone clapped.
It was time for morning break. Beaming, Charlene and Cissie led the way to the playground. Charlene had her arm around Cissie. Timidly Cissie put hers around Charlene. She was glowing with happiness.
Mary Kelly was responsible for playground duty. But as she started outdoors, Mrs. Rutledge asked her to wait.
“Oh, Mary, I’ve got to show you. Some of the children have written such darling letters of appreciation. Look, you’ve got to read Charlene’s. And here, Beverly Eckstein wrote one to you.”
Joseph Noakes left the van parked at the chain-link fence and walked away, leaving behind him the body of Frederick Small, who had suffered a tragic accident at his own sand-and-gravel company, who had fallen from a conveyor belt into a collecting bin, where he had been crushed and smothered by a ton and a half of three-quarter-inch stone.
It was a long walk back. Avoiding the highway, Joe cut through the intervening towns, finding shortcuts around discount stores in Needham, threading his way through suburban housing tracts in Wellesley, making his way at last to the Boston Post Road.
Weston Country Day School was on the Post Road. Noakes noticed the school sign with its carved letters and gold leaf as he walked by, swinging along tirelessly, heading for Annie, heading for home. He saw the trim buildings, the classrooms and the big new gym-and-theater complex for which the alumnae had been raising a lot of money. And he saw the group of children heading into the woods.
To his surprise he recognized the child at the head of the procession. It was young Charlene Gast. She was clutching another child to her side, urging her along, holding her tightly around the waist. Behind them the other children walked quickly, their faces grave. There was no teacher in sight.
Something odd was happening. Noakes did not slow his steps, he merely swerved and headed into the woods.
When Mary ran out on the playground, she was surprised to find it empty. Where was everybody? There were no children swinging on the swings, no kids climbing the jungle gym. No one was tossing a ball at the basket. Where could they be?
Then she heard a sound, a distant murmuring, a faint chattering like a flock of birds. It came from the woods.
Slowly she walked toward the noise, staring into the sunlit spaces between the trees. The chattering stopped. Mary headed for the beech grove, which was everyone’s favorite place. Here the leaves were thicker, the patches of sunlight fewer. Still she saw no children. Had she been mistaken? Then she heard a voice; high and clear, off to one side. And she found a path, barely visible in the undergrowth, carpeted with pale leaves. Mary moved forward quietly, her feet making no sound, and at last she saw the eighteen girls in Mrs. Rutledge’s fifth-grade class.
They were not on the ground, they were high overhead, crowded on the branches of the beech trees. They looked like a gathering of sparrows, all facing one way.
Mary stood still. The voice she had heard was Charlene Gast’s. Charlene and Cissie Aufsesser had climbed higher than all the rest. They stood on one of the topmost branches of the biggest tree in the grove. Charlene had one arm around Cissie. With the other she clung to the trunk of the tree. Cissie had nothing to hold on to, but the look on her face was exalted.
“We just have to believe,” said Charlene. “You heard the way they did it in the book. They conquered their fear, and then they just slid off the magic tree and flew! They flew and flew!”
“No,” said Mary, her voice catching in her throat. “No, Cissie, no.”
No one was listening. It was as though she had not spoken.
“Ready, Cissie?” urged Charlene. “We’ll jump together. Ready?”
“Oh, yes,” squeaked Cissie, in a transport of happiness. “I’m ready, Charlene.”
“No,” croaked Mary, “stop, stop!”
But it was like a spell. Cissie bent her knees, held her arms in front of her and looked ecstatically at Charlene. Dutifully Charlene bent her knees too and held out one arm, hanging on with the other to the tree. The others gazed up at them, waiting for the miracle. They were all under Charlene’s spell, and nothing could break it.
Except another spell. Suddenly there was a piercing whistle, and Flimnap O’Dougherty was there, turning cartwheel after cartwheel. Landing on his feet, he plucked colored balls out of his pocket and tossed them in the air. They were red and blue, silver and gold. Up they rose, higher and higher. Flimnap laughed. Out of his pocket came a cap, and now it was six balls and a cap. Then six balls, a cap, and a billfold. Then six balls, a cap, a billfold, and a pocketknife.
The children in the trees were laughing too. Mary tore her eyes away from Flimnap and gazed up fearfully at Cissie. The child’s rapture had vanished. She was frightened. Very carefully she sat down on the branch and edged away from Charlene, who was screaming, “I’ll tell, I’ll tell!”
But the tables were turned, and in the pandemonium of laughter and clapping Charlene couldn’t make herself heard. She came down from the
tree, slithering too fast, scratching her face, her arms and legs, catching twigs in her hair, tearing holes in her shirt, shrieking, “I’ll tell, I’ll tell!”
Flimnap looked at her mildly as she tumbled to the ground. Then he grasped the lowest branch of the tree and began to climb. In a moment he was high in the leafy crown, reaching out to Cissie. “I’ve got you now,” he said softly. “Just hold on around my neck,” and soon the two of them were safely on the ground, and Cissie was crying, surrounded by all the other kids in the class. Many of them were crying too.
Charlene Gast wasn’t crying. Charlene was telling. She told and told—getting back at Cindy Foxweiler, who had beaten her in the backstroke by only one second, and at Cissie Aufsesser, whose father had looked down at her from a great height and scolded and shamed her, and at all the girls in Mrs. Rutledge’s fifth-grade class who had forgotten that Charlene Gast was the prettiest and smartest girl in the whole school, everybody’s favorite, the brightest star at Weston Country Day—Charlene Gast, who would have been the youngest Junior Olympic swimmer in the whole entire world, if it hadn’t been for her father.
It all spilled out of Charlene, the precious stories she had hugged to herself for so long, the secrets about Alice Mooney and the stolen math paper, and Cissie Aufsesser with Mrs. Rut-ledge’s pocketbook, and Beverly Eckstein’s dirty magazine. And there were other secrets, terrible secrets. Do you know what Carrie Maxwell did? And Becca Smith?
It was an orgy of revengeful telling. “Oh, stop it, Charlene,” said Mary Kelly. “No one’s listening.”
Charlene stopped. And then she did something very strange. She took something out of her pocket and held it out like a gift.
“What’s this?” said Mary, taking it.
“You’ll see,” said Charlene, looking at her darkly. Then Charlene turned and trailed after her classmates, as they followed Flimnap back to the playground.
He was tootling on a penny whistle, leading the way like the Pied Piper. The fifth-grade girls trotted after him like the children of Hamelin town.
Chapter 59
… When he came to the hedge of thorns it had turned into flowers, which drew apart and let him through …
The Brothers Grimm, “Little Brier Rose”
“But where is he?” said Annie.
“Oh, you know Flimnap,” said Mary. “I offered to drive him home, but he said he wanted to walk.” Mary looked at Annie’s anxious face and took her arm. “Come on, Annie dear, why don’t you spend the night at our house? Homer will stay here and stand guard.”
“I will?” said Homer. “Oh, right, okay, I’ll stay.” He smiled at his niece with pitying affection. “I’ll mind the store while you go home with Mary.”
Annie glanced up at her wall, which was shadowy and dark under the clotted shreds of the remaining ceiling. “No, no, I can’t leave. All those media people will be back in the morning, waiting around for the wrecking machine. I’ve got to stay. I’ll be all right. Good night, Aunt Mary, good night, Uncle Homer.”
Alone, she sat gloomily beside the mound of broken clapboards and fractured windows and chunks of plaster. Bits of glass glinted in the wreckage like splinters of sky. Fireflies glittered over the field. Bats darted overhead, and a throng of mosquitoes floated around Annie, whining, landing delicately on her arms. She told herself to take refuge in Flimnap’s shelter, because Aunt Mary had nailed up a mosquito net around the door, an old curtain from the farmhouse on Barrett’s Mill Road. Instead, Annie tore the curtain off its nails.
It was a hot summer night. She undressed in the open air, lay down on top of her sleeping bag, and pulled the curtain over her naked self from head to toe. Through the torn gauze she could see the pink brightness of Boston to the east, and one or two stars high in the blue-black sky. There was no moon.
Then a light appeared, and flared up in the darkness in front of her wall, illuminating the Owl and the Pussy-cat and the wooden leg of Long John Silver.
It was a camping lantern with a glowing mantle. A dim face bent over it. Long fingers adjusted the knob at the side. The light increased. A stepladder appeared out of nowhere. The fingers lifted the lantern and set it on the top step. Then face and Hands vanished. There was only Flimnap’s dark silhouette between Annie and the lamp. He was climbing the ladder and setting a box down on the folding shelf.
Annie watched as he passed his hand over the bare place on the wall where he had painted out one mysterious face after another. Now, with a piece of chalk, he began to draw. His strokes were solid and sure.
So it had been Flimnap, all along. Of course it was Flimnap. He could draw after all. He could draw very well.
Annie sat up, wrapping the curtain around her, and watched as he laid in the structure of the small round skull, then added the slightly tilted eyes, the flat snub nose, the too-large mouth, the too-small ears.
By the time he began painting over his chalk lines, she guessed whose hand was holding the brush. But she waited in silence as Eddy’s head became three-dimensional and round, his cheeks plump, his body a chunky cylinder in overalls. His stubby fingers were miracles of light and shade.
At last, toward morning, Flimnap lowered his brush and stepped slowly down from the ladder.
The missing piece of the puzzle had now been found. Every part of Flimnap was at last hooked firmly into every other part. “Joseph Noakes,” murmured Annie. “I should have guessed.”
He came and stood over her and touched the gauzy veil covering her face. Annie drew the curtain aside. Noakes fell to his knees beside her, whispering, “Annie, oh, Annie.”
She wrapped her arms round him and pressed herself against him and murmured in his ear, “Too bad, Joseph Noakes. Three plates, is that all? I’d set my heart on a four-plate man.”
Chapter 60
It does not matter in the least having been born in a duckyard, if only you come out of a swan’s egg!
Hans Christian Andersen, “The Ugly Duckling”
Next morning, as she was getting dressed, Mary remembered something. She pawed in the pocket of the jacket she had been wearing the day before. “Look, Homer, see what Charlene gave me.”
“Charlene gave you something?” Homer couldn’t believe it. “After what she did? After she almost killed that little girl?”
Mary held it up. “It’s a roll of film.”
“Uh-oh,” said Homer. “Watch out. It’ll be embarrassing. Catching us in the latrine.”
But he took the film and held it in both hands like a jewel. “I’ll take it to that place where they make prints in a hurry. In fact, I’ll take it there right now. I am extraordinarily interested in this roll of film.”
Three hours later, standing at the counter in the photo-finishing shop, he leafed quickly through the twelve pictures that had been taken by Charlene Gast. Eight were images of her frilly dolls.
The ninth was an out-of-focus image of her father, half obscured by a cloud of leaves, inserting a key in the French door on the south side of Annie’s house.
The tenth had been taken through a window, and most of it was blurred by the edge of the window frame. But there he was, Robert Gast, right there on the other side of the glass, inside Annie’s house. He had his hands on the scaffolding in front of her painted wall. His young son Eddy stood above him on the highest platform, still very much alive.
The eleventh was a wild picture of the ceiling, obviously a mistake.
The twelfth was a perfect shot. The lens in the camera that Charlene had conned out of Cissie Aufsesser was not much better than a chunk of bottle glass, but the automatic mechanisms had worked. The electric eye had measured the amount of light, the shutter had opened for the right fraction of a second, and the focusing apparatus had adjusted itself perfectly, creating a sharp image of Eddy Gast lying on the floor while his father towered over him with a sledgehammer.
Homer looked at the twelfth print long and hard, then put it back in the envelope with the rest. He glanced up at the kid behind the counte
r, who was making change for another customer. “Do you people ever look at your prints? I suppose all sorts of shocking things turn up, right?”
“Shocking things?” The kid snickered. “You mean little tots in the bathtub? Dogs and cats? The mother of the bride? Those poor guys in the darkroom, their life is boring enough without looking at every newborn baby in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”
“Oh, right,” said Homer, laughing, slipping into his pocket the picture that would send Robert Gast to prison for the rest of his life.
The wrecked car had not been enough. The copied key had not been enough. The sledgehammer on the workbench had not been enough. This was enough.
Charlene had said, “I’ll tell,” and she had told.
Part Four
It’s over! It’s all over!
And that’s how it is with all stories!
—Hans Christian Andersen, “The Little Fir Tree”
Chapter 61
“A secret is with me as is a house with a lock, whose key is lost, and whose door is sealed.”
The Thousand and One Nights
The siege was over. The pressure from Globe editor Harvey Broadstairs and the rest of the media swelled for a while, then sagged. For a few days it scandalized the nation to learn that Annie’s landlord had been arrested for the murder of his little son, but then other villainies caught the national attention and interest faded.