She almost laughed thinking about the surprise those kids were in for. She figured they’d be scared off the minute the buzzing began, and she hoped they’d never come back. Mendy wasn’t worried that setting the trap was wrong, either. If the trespassers got stung, it would just serve them right for messing up the Taj Mahal.
Mendy was just taking off her work gloves when she felt a thump on her backside. She swung around, swatting her hand at her back. Then she saw Mr. Hare, sitting still, watching, nose twitching. “Hello, Mr. Hare. What you doing, jumping on my back like that?” She knelt down so he could hop into her lap. Mendy held him with both hands. “You’ve grown too big to sit in the palm of one hand, my little friend,” she said, smiling. She cuddled him and then set him back down. “I’ve got to go now. You be good.”
Mendy started out of the clearing. From the corner of her eye, she spotted Mr. Hare hopping over to the trap. Mendy stopped to see what he was going to do. She hoped he wouldn’t start messing with the trap. He didn’t. She watched as Mr. Hare lay down near the trap, his nose twitching in the air. Mendy wished she hadn’t set the trap so close to his purple flowers. But it was too late now. She waved good-bye, glad that he didn’t try to follow her.
She found Aunt Sis asleep on the porch, sitting straight up in the wooden rocker. Mendy woke her up and helped her inside. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Mendy said. “To help you with your …” What? Mendy needed an excuse to come back, but she couldn’t think of a thing.
“To help me with my watermelon patch,” Aunt Sis said. “You gotta help me with my patch. Tell your mama that.”
Mendy looked at Aunt Sis. Did the old woman understand that she was coming in part to go into the forest? Mendy shook her head. No. Probably not, but the watermelon excuse would be great. Mendy got her blackberries and headed home.
That night Mendy realized how quiet the house was without her brothers and sisters. She even missed Morris correcting everyone’s English. And Daddy—she missed Daddy most of all.
Mendy fell asleep thinking about her trap in the forest but woke up sweating from a dream. In her dream, piano notes were chasing her through the woods.
The next day Mendy got up early and did her chores. Then she asked if she could go help Aunt Sis with her watermelon patch.
When Mendy got to the cabin, Aunt Sis was outside making soap in a black kettle. It was one of her bad days. “You old coot. Get on away from here. Ma—Ma, come and get Bo. He’s messing with me while I make the soap.”
“Aunt Sis, it’s me, Mendy. Your mama ain’t here no more,” Mendy said gently.
“Bo, get on away I’m gonna hit you with this stick. Get. I will kill you if you don’t get away from them chickens,” Aunt Sis said, snatching up her walking stick. She raised it to strike at Mendy.
“I’ll be back later,” Mendy said, backing up. She hated it when Aunt Sis acted mean. It seemed like if you weren’t mean when you were in your right mind, you wouldn’t be mean out of it. “I’ll help you when I get back,” Mendy said. Then, trying to sound like a grown woman, she added, “Now don’t get burned messing with that fire.” Mendy hoped the warning would help Aunt Sis be careful, even if she wasn’t in her right mind.
Mendy headed for the woods. When she neared the clearing, she slowed down and approached quietly, peeping around the trees until she was sure no one else was around. She ran to check the honey trap. Even from a ways away, she could see the hilt of the bowie knife sticking up, just the way she’d left it. It seemed the trespassers hadn’t come back.
Then Mendy stopped short. A few feet from the hole lay fragments of honeycomb. Someone had torn the trap apart. Mr. Hare couldn’t have done this, Mendy thought. Could it have been a bear looking for honey? Mendy stood up and looked for tracks. Bear tracks looked like little fat baby feet. But there weren’t any bear tracks. In fact, there were no tracks, none at all. Someone had deliberately swept them away.
Where was Mr. Hare? “Mr. Hare,” she called, making a purring sound so he’d come to her. He didn’t hop out.
Mendy squatted down, eyeing the remnants. She saw no sign of dead bees. That meant that whoever had disturbed the trap knew about bees and had removed the honeycomb without getting stung.
Mendy sat down on the tree stump. She shook her leg while she thought. Why had the trespassers put the bowie knife back in the same exact spot and covered the trap with grass and sticks again? Her stomach did a little flip. Maybe they were reversing the trap.
Mendy got up slowly. She sniffed the air. It stank pretty badly. It wasn’t the smell of a skunk, though. Mendy knew their smell well. She and Grandma used to trap skunks to get the healing oils from them.
She sniffed again. What was that awful smell? Mendy walked over to the trap and kicked the grass and sticks away. Honey stuck to her shoe. She could see something dark and crusted on the hilt of the bowie knife now as it stuck up out of the earth. Mendy knelt down. It looked like dried blood.
Someone was messing with her—trying to scare her. Those teenagers had probably mixed molasses with catsup, she told herself. She and Jeffrey had done the same thing to pretend they were wounded in battle. Had Jeffrey found the trap and left her a surprise inside? They often played tricks on each other—but he wouldn’t play like this when he knew she was mad. No, she was sure it wasn’t Jeffrey.
Mendy didn’t want to get the mess on her hands. She spotted a ripped piece of white cloth that the trespassers must have left behind. Mendy palmed the cloth and grasped the handle of the bowie knife. Her muscles bulged as she pulled, but the knife didn’t come up. Had they left the knife inside the chunk of wood? She pulled again, harder this time. Dirt and leaves fell away as the bundle lifted. The knife pulled free, and the bundle fell back to the ground. A soft tuft of fur escaped and floated away. In that split second, Mendy knew what the bundle was. Mr. Hare had been killed.
Mendy snatched her hand away, and the knife clumped back down on top of the bundle. Mendy’s tears spilled down her cheeks, past her lips and her chin, and dropped silently to the ground while she rocked on her knees. No responsible hunter would kill a tame animal. Never. Anyone could tell this rabbit was tame.
Mendy pivoted quickly, gazing around the Taj Mahal. Were the trespassers still here, watching her? No, she would have known if anyone was around.
Even if they were, Mendy didn’t care. She would bury Mr. Hare before she left, no matter who was here. Mendy wiped her eyes dry. Now she was more mad than sad. She got a blanket from her and Jeffrey’s cave—no, her cave—and came back. Mr. Hare was wrapped in a dingy white cloth with some strange reddish symbol painted on it. Whoever did this was sending her a message—they wanted her to be afraid. Well, too bad. She wouldn’t let them scare her off.
Mendy closed her eyes and took a deep breath to stop her trembling. With a stick, she gently nudged the soiled cloth from Mr. Hare’s small, stiff body. She shoved the cloth around so that she could see what was on it. It was a red circle with a cross inside it. She’d never seen that mark before, but now it was stamped in her mind.
Salty tears dropped from Mendy’s eyes as she wrapped Mr. Hare securely inside the blanket. Mendy found her makeshift shovel and dug a hole, hidden a few feet away in the low-lying brush. She knew people got buried six feet under the ground, but she couldn’t dig that far by herself. If Jeffrey was here … She didn’t want to think about that traitor. But as she dug she realized she needed help. Whoever was coming on her land was really evil. Her body was shaking badly. Evil. Until this happened, Mendy hadn’t really known what evil was.
She had to do something. Maybe she could tell Daddy and Mama. Sure, and get a whipping for being out here in the first place. What about Aunt Sis? But what could Aunt Sis do to help? No, Mendy was on her own. Whoever had killed Mr. Hare needed to be taught a lesson, and Mendy vowed to do just that.
Mendy picked a few wildflowers, the purple ones that were Mr. Hare’s favorite, and placed them on top of the blanket. She put him in the eart
h and covered him up as best she could. Then she stood over him and recited what she thought she’d heard preachers say: “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, I’m so glad you came to live with us.”
She found a few large rocks and placed them over Mr. Hare’s grave to protect it. She made a cross of two sticks tied together with long leaves. Then Mendy lay down beside Mr. Hare’s grave and cried until she fell into an exhausted sleep.
When she woke up it was almost dark. Mama would give her a whipping for sure. Mendy stopped only a second to stare at her bowie knife lying near the grave. No, it was no longer hers. The knife belonged to evil now. She didn’t want it.
Mendy didn’t even stop back at Aunt Sis’s. She just walked home, wishing she’d never made friends with Mr. Hare. If she’d left him alone after he was well again, like Daddy had said to, he might still be alive.
Mendy took her whipping for being late and went to bed. That night she dreamed about blood and ghosts. She woke up once, crying out so loud that Mama came to check on her.
Finally, Mendy turned on the lamp, opened her scrap-book, and stared at the picture of the Taj Mahal in India, trying to transport herself there. After a while, she flipped through the scrapbook and searched for a certain page until she found it.
Grandma had written one of Mrs. Roosevelt’s sayings at the bottom of this page:
The more we dwell on our happy memories, the better it will be for us all.
My Day, May 18, 1943
Mendy turned off the light and lay on her back, looking up at the mattress of the top bunk. Tears seeped down her face as she recalled how, shortly after Mr. Hare came to her, she had started counting rabbits instead of sheep in order to fall asleep. But now Mendy couldn’t sleep. It was plain as day that Mr. Hare had been killed because of her. She was the one who had tamed the poor rabbit and taught him to stay in the Taj Mahal. Of course, the people who killed Mr. Hare didn’t know he belonged to Mendy, but maybe they had realized he must belong to whoever set the trap. And they were trying to send a message to that person: Stay away. Yes, she was the reason Mr. Hare was dead. They had killed Mr. Hare just to make a point. What a shame. Mendy squeezed her eyes shut and tried hard to remember Mr. Hare happily nibbling flowers.
As Mendy drifted off to sleep, she had another memory. Once Grandma took her along to a birthing, and she let Mendy see the baby right after it was born. The baby was all yellow-looking, and his eyelids were stuck together. The baby was so still he didn’t even twitch. Mendy didn’t think he was even breathing. Grandma spit on her hands and rubbed the baby’s eyes. Then she took some dust from a pouch around her neck and placed it in her own mouth. When Grandma removed it from her mouth, it was a little lump no bigger than a pea. Grandma gently pushed the pea shape into the baby’s mouth. A few seconds later, Mendy could see his color change back to normal brown. And then, just like that, the baby opened his eyes and started kicking and crying. Everybody said it was a miracle from God. Grandma said, “It weren’t no miracle, just God doing what he do every single day.”
Mendy remembered Grandma talking to the mother a few months later, when the baby died. She had said the same words then: “God just doing what he do every single day. Be grateful your baby come to know you.”
Mendy switched the lamp back on and wrote under Mrs. Roosevelt’s quote: I can be thankful that Mr. Hare came to know me. Then Mendy prayed, “God bless Mama, Daddy, my sisters and brothers, Grandma, Aunt Sis, Mrs. Roosevelt, Mr. Hare, and everybody. Amen.”
CHAPTER 4
DADDY’S NEWS
Mendy woke to the smell and sound of bacon sizzling in the kitchen. Daddy must be home! Whenever Daddy had been off working, Mama cooked him bacon and eggs for breakfast.
Mendy washed up and dressed quickly. Seeing Daddy was probably the only thing that could cheer her up today.
As Mendy walked into the kitchen, Mama was saying to Daddy, “I don’t want you to take Mendy over there. One day there’s gonna be trouble with a capital T over there.”
Mendy wanted to say, Is that the only letter you know, Mama? But instead she said, “Where is it you don’t want Daddy to take me?”
“Nowhere,” Mama said abruptly. “Sit down and eat your breakfast.”
Daddy cleared his throat. “I was going to take you to the Highlander School today, that’s all. I was thinking you could go swimming in the pond while I take care of a plumbing job.”
“Oh, boy!” Mendy shouted.
Mama glared at Daddy. “What did I just tell you ’bout this, Ben?”
“It’ll be okay, Olivia,” Daddy said. “Those people over at the Highlander care about colored folk. They ain’t just talking about it—they are living it.”
Mendy wanted to ask Daddy what he meant by that, but Mama spoke first.
“Mendy, go outside,” she said, biting her top lip.
“Outside? I haven’t eaten my breakfast yet, Mama.”
“Forget it,” Daddy said. “Eat your breakfast, Mendy. You can still go with me. You just don’t have to swim, that’s all. Myles Horton likes for you to visit Highlander.” Mr. Horton was the founder and president of Highlander. “He’s always bragging how you practically spent the summer over there with me last year and explored every last inch of the grounds.”
Mama slammed the frying pan down on the stove. “Ben, I don’t want her going there, period. Somebody’s gonna get hurt over there one day.”
“Well, maybe somebody will get hurt. It’s better to get hurt fighting for what’s right than stay safe doing nothing.”
“Who’s fighting, Daddy?” Mendy asked, looking from her mama to her daddy.
“See?” Mama said, shaking her head. “Don’t go putting that foolishness into her head. I never should have let you take her over there in the first place.”
Daddy said, “Myles Horton is the only white man in Grundy County who’d hire me to do his plumbing. We ought to support his cause. It’s our cause, too.”
Mendy saw Mama take a deep breath and put her palms down on the edge of the stove. Nobody knew grandma’s saying, “You can catch more flies with honey than you can with stink,” better than Mama. Mama said slow and soft, “I want her to practice piano today—honey. So why don’t you take her fishing this evening?”
Mendy sighed. Whenever Mama talked softly and called Daddy “honey,” that was the end of it. He caved in.
“All right, all right. I won’t take her to Highlander. But now, that ‘honey’ sounded awful sweet, baby. Why don’t you give me a little kiss?” Daddy said, pointing to his cheek.
Mama pecked Daddy on the cheek and hugged his head to her.
Then, thankfully, Mendy saw Li’l Ben coming into the kitchen rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand, saying, “I’m hungry, Mama.”
Mama giggled and said, “Okay, baby,” looking straight at Daddy.
Mendy didn’t see what was so funny. She put jelly on her last biscuit, wrapped it in a napkin, and walked outside. Just as the screen door slammed shut, she heard her mama say, “Don’t go disappearing, Mendy. You gotta practice the piano this morning.”
Mendy waited on the step until Daddy came out, heading for his truck.
“Daddy, can I go with you now?” she asked him. “To Highlander?”
He sat down beside her. “You know you can’t go. You heard your mama. I’ll take you fishing this evening instead.”
“Why does Mama not want me at Highlander?” she asked, accepting that he was on Mama’s side now.
“Oh, that. Don’t tell your mama I told you this, okay?”
Mendy nodded.
“The Highlander School fights for the rights of all people, Mendy—white and colored. Do you understand? Some people don’t like that.”
Mendy frowned up. “Is something bad happening at Highlander?”
“Of course it ain’t. But your mama thinks something might go wrong, since some folks ain’t happy with Myles Horton’s beliefs.”
“Who ain’t happy with his beliefs?”
<
br /> “Plenty of people, Wild Trapper.”
“But Mr. Horton is the nicest man, Daddy. And he’s your good friend,” Mendy said, dropping her head. She wanted to tell Daddy right then about the people in the woods. Probably some people are just plain mean, she thought. They ain’t got no reason for disliking Mr. Horton, the same as whoever hurt Mr. Hare ain’t got no reason. But just then, Mama came and stood in the doorway.
“I hear what you saying out there, Ben. Don’t you say another word. She don’t need to know nothing ’bout them hateful white people. Let her be innocent a little longer, for goodness sake.”
Mendy felt confused. What was Mama talking about? What hateful white people? Of course, Mendy knew that whites often treated coloreds different. In stores, white people got waited on before coloreds. Colored folk couldn’t try on clothes or shoes; to get shoes the right size, they had to trace their feet on a paper bag. And when coloreds went to the movies they had to sit in what folk called the “buzzard roost,” up in the balcony. Daddy said if you were nearsighted, you couldn’t see a thing. What bothered Mendy most, though, was that the white kids had a big school with new books, while all the coloreds had was a one-room school and the white kids’ hand-me-down books. She hated that white children had already written the answers in the books and put their names in ink where it says This book belongs to. But that’s just how things were, Mendy thought. Surely Mama didn’t mean hateful the way those people who hurt Mr. Hare were hateful. Did she? A chill raced through Mendy.
“Ben, you’d best get going,” Mama said. “Come on inside, Mendy, I want to teach you a little ditty on the piano.”
Circle of Fire (Mysteries through History) Page 3