She’d seen the girls coming and going from there through her binoculars. Now (the crowbar!) she understood. Very exciting! They were using her father’s tools, bringing them down to the raft. They were starting to fix it, just as she’d been telling them to do.
It was really marvelous how they’d taken up the burden of this project. “We are in communication,” Henrietta would tell them when she found them in the garage. They were wonderful girls, young and full of independence, as she had been herself at that age. The pond girl with the messy black hair was the leader. She knew what she wanted and how to take it. The other, usually trailing behind, was having an adventure. She looked a little out of her element.
In her excitement Henrietta had trouble with the door into the garage. It wouldn’t open. She used both hands on the knob, put her shoulder against it, and finally got in with a mighty push and a cry. A rush of hot air hit her face. The place was a furnace inside.
The girls weren’t immediately visible. Despite the heat, Henrietta made her way across the garage (what were all these boxes doing here?) to the alcove at the back. She gazed hopefully into her father’s workshop. No girls. But his tools were there, lined up in their familiar places, on their familiar hooks: the wrenches and saws, hammers and screwdrivers, wedges and picks.
She entered, brushing aside cobwebs, and went over to the workbench, a dusty wooden shelf that ran the length of the alcove. She picked up a block plane, examined it, and put it down. She ran her hands over the cast-iron vise secured by screws to the workbench edge. She manipulated its head and spindle with a practiced motion. The vise obediently opened. And closed. Amazing how familiar it felt after all these years.
She must take up woodworking again! She could build things. Time hadn’t changed her a bit. She remembered everything, felt the hammer in her hand even now, and that curious sense of mastery that came with the making of things. She wanted to make things again! She could start over from where she left off as a child, relive her life, follow a different route that would take her . . . where? Holding on to the edge of the workbench, she considered.
And came upon an answer. That would take her home.
Home. A wooziness drifts over her, a shadow on the brain. All at once she is struck by a certainty: My father is nearby!
He is here in the garage. Just out of sight. Moving toward her.
She hears his voice.
“Henny! We’ve got work to do. So much to do and so little time! Your mother expects us for lunch at one o’clock on the dot. We mustn’t lose track of ourselves.”
Henrietta flings herself around to greet him. For an instant she sees him in the workshop door: broad, full-bodied, handsome in a work shirt and tie, sleeves rolled up and ready to start. They are going to retimber the raft! Several planks have become waterlogged over the winter, and he knows what to do. She does too, actually. He’s taught her.
“Oh, Father!” Henrietta cries joyfully. She reaches out. At this moment the room spins, swirls, and collapses around her. She loses sight of him, calls “Father” again, and falls. She slumps to the floor; the workshop dims and fades away.
Minutes later, or was it hours? She’s being helped to her feet. Not by her father. It was the agency girl. How had she come to be here?
“Leave me alone,” Henrietta snapped. “I can get up by myself.”
The girl assisted anyway, putting her hands in the wrong places, nearly tipping her over backward. “You are no help at all!” Henrietta said, pushing her off. The girl stood back in dismay. All this was her fault and she knew it. She should have kept better watch over the old lady.
“Mrs. Cutting, we should go back to the house. You shouldn’t be here. If anyone found out . . .” She trailed off.
“Of course I should be here,” Henrietta announced, suddenly clear of head, back in the present. “I came to get something. Now, what was it?”
She looked around at the cardboard boxes, the old furniture, the fire dragon vase. Everything was faintly familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it.
“It must be here somewhere,” she said, pawing into a box, taking things out, playing for time while she tried to think. She picked up an object wrapped in newspaper and unwrapped it. Part of her mind was still in shock, still looking around for her father. Was he in the corner?
The object turned out to be an ivory-handled mirror from a long-ago dressing table. Had it been hers? She held it up, looked, caught sight of ghastly eyes peering back. Who on earth was that? She tossed the mirror away.
“Oh yes, now I remember! Lumber!”
“Lumber?”
Henrietta’s glance had fallen on several planks of lumber leaning against the wall in the corner.
“Will you please help me move these boards toward the door?” she asked the girl. “They must be left just inside. Someone will be coming soon to get them. That’s it. Thank you so much. We’ve accomplished what we came to do.”
The incompetent said hopefully, “Can I take you back to the house now?”
“Yes, you may.” Henrietta glanced at her. “And there’s no need to say a word about this, is there?”
“About being here, you mean?”
“That’s what I mean. Are we agreed? Not a word.”
“Oh, yes!” the girl said. “Not a word. I promise!”
Never had anybody looked so relieved as she suddenly did.
TWELVE
Six days later, in the field below the Cuttings’ house, Jessie stepped back and surveyed the raft with a critical eye.
“I hope we aren’t making it worse,” she said. “I hope it will still float.”
“It will. I know what I’m doing,” Terri said, hammer in hand. With a strong blow she flattened a protruding nailhead. She was showing off, but that was okay. She deserved to, Jessie thought.
“Where did you learn how to build things?”
“Oh, I’ve been doing it from way back. Mitch showed me first. We made the henhouses in our yard when I was a kid. Real cute. We gave them little window boxes and shutters. He was a good carpenter at one time.”
“But not anymore?”
“Lost interest, I guess. After my mom died.” Terri walked around to the other side of the raft and whacked at something else.
“Sorry. I didn’t know your mother died. I thought she just kind of . . . left.”
“Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know.”
Terri gave her a sharp glance. “She had a weak heart. It got her in the end. In case you want to spread the word.”
“I don’t.”
“You should watch out for stuff like that,” Terri said. “People make things up when they don’t know. Whoever you’ve been talking to, they’ve got the wrong idea about us. My mom was a great person. She went through some bad stuff in her life, but she never gave up. We really loved her and she really loved us. She wouldn’t ever just leave!”
“Oh, Terri, I’m sorry! That was so stupid!”
“It’s okay. I know you’re basically on my side.”
“I am. You must miss her all the time. How old were you when she . . .”
Terri held up her hand.
“Hey, I don’t want to talk about it, okay? I got over it. We all got over it. Sometimes the only thing you can do is just get over stuff.”
She turned her attention back to the raft. “What do you think? Is this old tub ready to launch?”
It looked ready. Long hours of hard labor had brought them to this point, including so much coming and going from the workshop up the hill that a path had been worn behind the stunted pine trees along the side of the Cuttings’ field. The raft seemed more or less repaired. The waterlogged plank had been pried off, and three new ones nailed in its place. This improvement was not visible now because the raft had been turned over.
“How did we even do that?” Jessie had said afterward.
“Stick with me and anything’s possible,” Terri had boasted. “I’m not the dope some people
think.”
“Who would ever think that?”
“Some people. They judge you. Do I care? Nope.”
Rebuilding the raft had brought out the best in her. All week she’d been in high spirits. The terrible bruise on her face was healing without any special treatment. Just a splash of pond water now and then to cool it down. Jessie had brought a tube of first-aid cream from home, and some sterile pads and tape, but Terri had refused them. When Jessie insisted and warned about infection, Terri blew up.
“Leave me alone! I’m fine! Quit bothering about me,” she yelled straight into Jessie’s face, which might have hurt Jessie’s feelings if she hadn’t known already about the one really raw nerve in her friend, the sore spot that no one was allowed to touch. Terri couldn’t stand anybody feeling sorry for her. She couldn’t stand one ounce of it.
The raft’s underside had revealed a thick growth of green slime. They’d cleaned it off with a big sponge from the garage. Next came Terri’s idea to build low benches on the raft.
“So we don’t need to be standing all the time. And it’ll keep our butts dry if some water slops up.”
This project, even with the help of a larger saw and more lumber from the garage, had turned out to be beyond them. In the end the benches collapsed and had to be torn off. Terri was not ready to give up even on this. She had another plan for building them again, but Jessie persuaded her to hold off. Maybe later, she said. Time was slipping away. They needed to get the raft back out on the pond.
They’d met early in the morning for the grand launch. At first the raft wouldn’t budge from the bank no matter how hard they pulled and pushed. Terri’s long-grass solution, which had worked so well getting the raft out of the pond, was no help. The raft had dried out. It wasn’t slippery enough.
This time it was Jessie who had the brainstorm.
“How about digging a trench and sluicing it down with mud?”
Terri nodded. “There are some shovels in the garage.”
Jessie said she would get them. She’d long ago forgotten to be nervous up there. They’d borrowed quite a number of tools by now, and not always bothered to return them. Hammers, saws, screwdrivers, a hand drill, measures, and nails lay around on the soft ground near the raft, along with discarded ends of wood. They’d take the tools back sometime and hang everything in its proper place. Just not now, when they were so close to finishing. And anyway, they had permission from Miss Cutting, didn’t they? Jessie thought so. The old woman knew what they were doing. She’d even encouraged it.
“I’m counting on you. . . . I will be in touch again soon,” she’d told them. From time to time Jessie looked up at the windows of the great house. Though no sign came back, she thought Miss Cutting must be watching.
Jessie stepped through the garage door to find the place in a shocking state of disorder. Someone had been in there rummaging around. Everything was unwrapped, and newspaper was strewn about. Some of the cardboard boxes had been emptied; some were gone completely. The Chinese vase was missing. The bronze table lamp with the stained-glass shade had been dragged closer to the door. Perhaps Miss Cutting or her nurse had decided to take some of the more valuable things inside, though if this was true, they’d made a terrible mess of it. Jessie located two rusty shovels leaning up against the wall and walked fast down the hill to report the situation.
“Terri, everything’s messed up in the garage!”
“Messed up how?”
“Somebody’s been through it since we were there. It looks like they’re taking things out.”
Terri’s face stiffened. “What are they taking?”
“Some boxes are empty that were full of stuff before. Things have been unwrapped and there’s newspaper all around.”
“Is the pretty china still there?”
“I couldn’t see. There’s such a mess. That big lamp was near the door, like someone meant to drag it out.”
Terri licked her lips. She walked over and took the shovels from Jessie’s hands. She stuck them, one after another, in the ground.
“Well, I guess those folks up there finally came to their senses,” she said. “There was way too much stuff in that garage. Like I told you, it’s a fire hazard to pile things up like that. I’m glad they’re finally doing something about it.”
“I guess they are,” Jessie said, “except it seems like somebody else might’ve been in there. You should come up and see. I even wonder if somebody broke in.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know, but it sure looks like it.”
Terri exhaled sharply. “Hey, Jessie. I wouldn’t worry about it, okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean don’t worry about it. It’s out of our hands.”
“You mean— ”
“It’s not our business. And we shouldn’t go up there again either.”
“But we need to bring the tools back! Especially now, before anyone knows. Otherwise, it will look as if . . .”
Jessie stopped. Terri was shaking her head. She was shaking it so hard that her stringy black hair flew out from the sides.
“Especially now is when we shouldn’t bring them back, okay? We need to wait.”
“Until when?”
“Until whatever is going on up there is done. We don’t want to run into anybody, right? We’re not part of that scene.”
“I guess not.”
“No, we aren’t,” Terri said. She handed Jessie a shovel. “Now let’s launch this raft and get out of here.”
They went to work digging a channel, broad and shallow, from the raft to the pond. The water level in the ground was high enough that the channel turned slick almost at once. They splashed more water from the pond on top to really sluice it down, then dug in their heels and pushed with all their might. Inch by inch the wooden platform moved. Foot by foot they worked it to the edge. From there they gave it one last mighty shove and forced it into the water.
There were five breathless seconds as the raft’s front edge plowed underwater and seemed to wrestle with the pond to rise back up. Then the structure quivered and rose to the surface like an unruly animal coming up for air. Suddenly the whole of it was floating high and light before their eyes.
“Hooray,” Jessie breathed.
“Not yet,” Terri said. “We still have to test if it’ll take us.”
She squelched across the mud channel to the raft and pulled herself up on it.
“Steady as the Rock of Gibraltar!” she called back.
So Jessie waded out, carrying the poling stick over her head. Halfway there she slipped and went down, losing one of Terri’s flip-flops. It shot away, out of reach.
“Forget it!” Terri called, so she went on without it, reached the raft, and hauled herself aboard. The platform wobbled and creaked with the addition of her weight, then nimbly regained its balance. Both girls were so delighted that for a moment they stood grinning at each other while the raft rocked beneath them, sending ripples in all directions.
“Okay, it floats. Let’s get going,” Terri commanded.
With a shove they set off from shore, leaving behind their repair site, its scatter of tools and muddy, trampled grass. Jessie looked back once and quickly turned away.
That morning they kept going and going along the reedy fringe of the pond, keeping out of sight as much as possible and not talking. They went until they were so far away from the Cuttings’ field that it folded into invisibility, and the house fell behind and was hidden too. Finally Terri threw down the poling stick and said, “Okay, we’re safe.”
Jessie didn’t need to ask “From what?” Her heart had been pounding the whole time. Instead she said, “Let’s go swimming.”
They went in in their clothes, which were heavy with mud. When they’d washed off, they climbed aboard the raft and lay in the sun to dry off. Around them the pond became peaceful. The cattails murmured and swished in perfect unconcern, as if to prove they were not only safe but lo
st to the outside world, and that they would keep on being lost until they wanted to be found.
“This is so great,” Terri whispered at last.
“I know.”
“We could bring some pillows and sleep out here.”
“I guess.”
“We could live on this thing!”
“We’d need a ton of bug spray to do that.”
“We could bring food and soda. We could keep the soda cool by storing it underwater in a net. I have a crab net.”
“Are there crabs in this pond?”
“A few. Used to be more. Blue crabs. Used to be more of everything here. Clams, quahogs, eels. Mitch ate out of this pond when he was a little kid. That’s how his family got through. There was trout in here back then. He went fishing all the time.”
Jessie was tempted to say “I know. My dad was out here with him. They worked together and were friends. My dad remembers how your dad used to be.”
In another minute she might have spoken. It seemed they’d reached a place where it was only right to own up to the past, a place where they could show their whole selves and not, as Terri said, be judged for it.
But Terri spoke sooner, and what she said returned the conversation to the world they’d just escaped.
“It’s my fault.”
“What is?”
“The mess in the garage. I told Mitch about the china and the other stuff there. I should’ve known. He can’t keep his mouth shut. Somebody heard about it and they’re in there now.”
“Who is?”
“Not Mitch. I don’t think he’d do that. Might be one of my brothers. I never know with them. Or somebody else. A lot of people are broke around here. We’re not the only ones. Also, there are the druggies. They steal from their own mothers when they have to.”
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