by Lynn Hall
It all started so quietly. The awkward silences and smothered giggles whenever he entered a class. The cooler messages he got from Karen. The faint but chilling sense of separation he felt from the other kids. Tom knew something was wrong, but he couldn’t put a name to it. It took the principal to do that.
“Homosexual” was what Mr. McNamar said. “Homosexual.” The echo of that awful word rang in Tom’s head, churned his stomach. And in the days to come, it shattered his life, forcing him to evaluate himself, his friend Ward, and his own sense of right and wrong.
LYNN HALL has written numerous books for young readers. She lives in a one-hundred-year-old farmhouse near the village of Garnavillo, Iowa. Besides writing, she works as a coordinator and counselor for a local telephone service offering help to troubled young people. Too Near The Sun, another of her books, is also in the Laurel-Leaf line.
THE LAUREL-LEAF LIBRARY brings together under a single imprint outstanding works of fiction and nonfiction particularly suitable for young adult readers, both in and out of the classroom. This series is under the editorship of M. Jerry Weiss, Distinguished Professor of Communications, Jersey City State College, and Charles F. Reasoner, Professor of Elementary Education, New York University.
ALSO AVAILABLE IN THE LAUREL-LEAF LIBRARY:
TOO NEAR THE SUN by Lynn Hall
ROAD TO KATMANDU by Patrick Marnham
THE TROUBLEMAKER by Robert McKay
DURANGO STREET by Frank Bonham
COOL CAT by Frank Bonham
THE NITTY GRITTY by Frank Bonham
IN THE COUNTRY OF OURSELVES by Nat Hentoff
I’LL GET THERE. IT BETTER BE WORTH THE TRIP by John Donovan
Sticks
and
Stones
_____________
Lynn Hall
Published by Dell Publishing Co., Inc.
750 Third Avenue New York,
New York 10017
Copyright © 1972 by Lynn Hall
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from Follett Publishing Company. For information address Follett Publishing Company,
Chicago, Illinois 60607.
Laurel-Leaf Library ® TM 766734, Dell Publishing Co., Inc
Reprinted by arrangement with Follett Publishing Company
Printed in the United States of America
First Laurel printing—November 1972
The characters, places, and events in this novel are
creations of the author’s imagination.
Whatever likeness they may bear to persons, living or dead,
or to places and events, past or present,
is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Preamble
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
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17
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19
20
21
The village of Buck Creek, Iowa, is an anachronism. The towering limestone bluffs that compress the town into its T-shape seem also to cut it off from time.
The only access is by a narrow road that follows the creek down between the bluffs and ends at the Mississippi River. The valley floor is barely wide enough for the road, the creek, and a few angular stone houses, each with its own shaky footbridge and its screen of willows.
Not counting the few summer families, Buck Creek’s population wavers somewhere below the hundred mark. Natives enjoy telling each other they wouldn’t live anywhere else, and in their open-faced hospitality toward visitors is a totally cordial element of smugness. If the visitors recognize this attitude at all, they counter with an equally warmhearted smugness of their own. Buck Creek is a quaint place to visit, but they couldn’t imagine living there.
Nor could they imagine pain or personal crisis beneath the heat-muffled, vacation atmosphere of Buck Creek. It is a place to go for a weekend of fishing and drinking; it’s a good spot to anchor a houseboat for a few days. But it is not the sort of town where things happen.
1
At the top of the Buck Creek hill a Volkswagen bus slowed and shifted gears in compliance with a bullet-torn warning sign. From this point the descent to the river was two miles long, and full of curves.
On the white flanks of the bus, in ornate Old English lettering, was: The Cottage, Buck Creek, Iowa, Antiques—Gifts—Primitives, Charlotte Naylor.
It was Tom Naylor who drove. He was as tall as a man but narrow, with long bony hands and feet, and the knees, elbows, and wrists of a Don Quixote caricature. His shirt, denim shorts, and rope sandals were faded and frayed to a degree that was acceptable by Buck Creek standards, although they were cleaner and more expensive than any other sixteen-year-old’s in town. But then Buck Creek had only one other sixteen-year-old.
His ears popped as he rounded the first curve. He smiled. The other night in the restaurant he had mentioned to Beulah that the hill made his ears pop. She had given him a look that was both quizzical and friendly-contemptuous, so he assumed that other people’s ears weren’t affected by the drop.
Beulah must have thought I was really a city sissy, he mused, still smiling. On the whole, though, Buck Creek had accepted him much more easily than he had expected, and he was glad. The theater-scenery look of the little town had appealed to him from the first. He got an odd kind of excitement out of coasting down this hill with the bluffs rising, almost near enough to touch, on either side of the pavement; out of the first glimpse of Grampa Severs’s cabin behind its wall of pine trees; out of slowing for the last curve by the Post Office, where the glittering expanse of the river came into view. He enjoyed looking at the solid century-old buildings and imagining the labor that went into shaping the massive limestone blocks and lifting them into place.
And he found unexpected pleasure in knowing every single person in town. He still got some of their names confused, he wasn’t entirely sure in all cases who was married to whom, and several of the smaller children were merely sorted into families in his mind and had not as yet become individuals with names. Still, the faces were all familiar. And all of them knew who he was. They waved when they saw him, or stopped to say “Is it hot enough for you?” or “Well, how do you like our fair city by now?” It gave him a sense of solidarity he had never known before, even after six years in his old suburban Chicago neighborhood.
The bus had picked up speed while Tom’s mind wandered. He slowed as sharply as he could, past Grampa Severs’s’ cabin. In the precise center of the road, in their usual midafternoon sunning spot, were two mallard ducks, their green heads shining with iridescent highlights in the sun. They pointed their bills toward Tom as he maneuvered the bus onto the shoulder of the road to give them a wide berth, but they didn’t open their eyes. They seemed to smile with sunbaked audacity.
“One of these days, you guys,” Tom threatened.
As he passed the dirt yard of the Schleffe house, Tom kept his eyes straight ahead. It wasn’t the way the place looked that bothered him—the clutter of chickens, dirty children, and junk cars, the weeds and the peeling paint and the outhouse that was still in use; what bothered him was that he’d allowed himself to be drawn into the place, and into the family, a couple of times last spring.
Coming around the Post Office curve, Tom was forced to slow down again. Grampa Severs was walking in the road ahead, coasting down the center of th
e street toward the river, his feet moving ahead with mechanical steps that left soft impressions in the blacktop. He was as gaunt with age as Tom was with youth. Although he owned both a hearing aid and glasses, he seldom bothered with either, and so he, like his mallards, depended on the traffic to avoid him. Tom didn’t much mind this afternoon. Home was in sight now, and he was in no particular hurry. He rode the brake and rested his head on his doubled-up arm in the window.
A car approached from the other direction, Mr. Short’s car, with Robert driving. Grampa Severs moved slightly to one side and raised two knobby fingers in greeting to Robert. Robert waved back, leaving his hand up so that the greeting included Tom.
Tom answered, smiling, but after Robert had gunned his way on up the hill, the smile became an expression of dissatisfaction. Robert Short was the one person, out of all those in Tom’s class, who should have developed into a friend. Besides being the only other boy in the then-junior class who lived in Buck Creek, Robert was the only boy whose mind was on a level with Tom’s, quick, clear, and capable of subtlety. Only Robert dressed with care; only Robert said “doesn’t” instead of “don’t”; only Robert came from the kind of home where serious piano might not be ridiculed.
But the friendship that should have been a natural thing never got started. Robert seemed to be focused somewhere else. He seemed in no particular need of a friend. Tom was left with the feeling that Robert had examined him, found nothing immediately useful, and set him aside again.
“So I’ll live without him,” Tom said with a short laugh. It was too hot an afternoon for anything more strenuous than lethargy.
Finally, at the town’s one corner, Grampa Severs turned right, toward the hotel, and Tom was able to speed up as he rounded the corner to the left and parked in front of The Cottage. It was a T intersection, where the main road met the river road. Beyond the river road was a low flood dike, railroad tracks, and a tiny green patch of park with a bait stand, docks, and a boat loading ramp.
Overlooking the park was a block of empty stone warehouses and former button and barrel-hoop factories left over from the time Buck Creek had been a bustling river port. Now the only building still alive in the block was the hotel, which was more of a restaurant-bar-grocery-laundromat than a hotel. It was the social center of Buck Creek.
On the other side of the intersection stood The Cottage, one of the few frame houses in town. It was barn-shaped, with bay windows and fireplace chimneys at both ends. Charlotte Naylor had had it painted chocolate brown this spring, as soon as the weather was warm enough. It sat on a slight rise with its back to the bluff, and it looked out at an angle over the river, facing downstream. Tom loved the place.
As he turned off the ignition and pushed open the bus door, Tom saw an all-too-familiar figure rising from the front steps.
Oh, rats, he thought, I wanted Robert for a friend, and what do I get? Schleffe.
He could think of no way to escape acknowledging Floyd, so he put on a preoccupied expression and started toward The Cottage as though important matters demanded his attention inside. Floyd came jiggling and jogging to meet him.
“Hey, Tom. I’ve been waiting for an hour. I’ll help you unload your stuff, okay? What all did you get?’’
Floyd Schleffe, at sixteen, was well on his way to being a fat man. Even on the few occasions when he tried to look neat, he always seemed mussed and droopy and stained. He had a faintly sour smell about him, and he made more small impolite noises than other people, but the thing that irritated Tom most was Floyd’s dense refusal to take a hint.
“Hi,” Tom said briefly. “No, that’s okay. I haven’t got time to unload it now, thanks anyway.” Floyd had already begun opening the back of the bus. “Listen, Floyd, I’ve got a lot of stuff to do, but I’ll see you later, okay?”
He dodged around Floyd and got into the house, with the door shut between them, before Floyd had time to think of an answer. Feeling a little mean but mostly relieved, he went down the long central hall and into the kitchen.
To the right of the central hall was the shop, a huge sunny room that ran the full depth of the house and held displays of gift items, ceramics, cushions made by a local crippled girl, and antiques gleaned from attics, barns, and auction sales throughout northeast Iowa. On the other side of the hall were the private rooms, the kitchen and living room, while the upstairs was divided into two large bedrooms with a bath between. The house’s four fireplaces had been bricked shut sixty years ago when parlor stoves became more fashionable. Tom had wanted to have them unbricked, but his mother had found out what it would cost, and had suggested they wait to see if the shop was going to make any money before they wasted that much on old fireplaces. The child support checks were sufficient for them to live on, but just barely; any extras would have to be paid for out of the shop.
She was in the kitchen peeling potatoes when he came in. Tom hesitated in the kitchen door and craned his neck toward the window.
“Did Floyd go by the window?” he asked.
“You’re supposed to say ‘Hello, Mother dear,’ when you come in like that. I didn’t see him go by—why?”
“I have a horrible feeling he’s lurking outside the front door waiting to pounce on me if I show my face.”
Charlotte chuckled. She was a daisy of a woman. Her salmon and gray hair waved in the general direction of the bun at the back of her head. Her face was round and uncomplicated by troublesome emotions. Strong farmwife fingers held the potato she was paring.
“Oh, come now,” she said. “Floyd’s not as bad as all that, is he?”
“Yes. I think I just made a tactical error. I told him I’d see him later. A guy like Floyd, you don’t ever want to say a thing like that to. He’ll take you seriously.”
“Then you shouldn’t have been so friendly to him when we first moved here, Tom. You led him on.”
He reached into the water-filled saucepan on the counter and fished out a slice of raw potato. It tasted gritty and cool against his teeth.
“Yes, but how was I supposed to know he was going to turn out to be such a leech. Come to think of it, I never was friendly; I just wasn’t openly hostile. I guess that’s all Floyd needs.”
“Did you get anything?”
“Pardon?”
“At the auction. Did you buy anything?”
“Oh. It was mostly a bunch of junk, but I got a hump-topped trunk that looks as if it’s in pretty good shape, and one of those funny little carved-up platform rockers. It needs a lot of work, but it’s native black walnut. I’ll bring them in as soon as I’m sure the coast is clear.”
He took another potato slice and wandered into the living room. He’d intended to look out the window to see if Floyd was still in sight, but the piano caught his attention, and he sat down at it. It was a baby grand, too big for the room, dark and gleaming as a Thoroughbred. One of the chords he struck started a theme going around in his head, so he shifted to a more comfortable position and let it come.
It was Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 2 in C minor. In the perfection of the notes was a poignance that was private to Tom. This was the music that had carried him to the finals of the state music contest last winter and then defeated him there. He hadn’t played it much since then, because the melody still had the power to revive the old stage fright and aching disappointment, along with happier memories—the fun of the two-day trip to Springfield with the other regional winners; the hotel room where they had slept three to a bed and laughed at everything; the flutist from Urbana whose hair bounced when she moved and whose eyes sparked when they met Tom’s. He had gotten her name and address, intending to write to her, but then the divorce had come up, and the move to Buck Creek, and he’d forgotten about her. Almost.
As his hands moved through the melody, he was seeing her again—no, it wasn’t the flutist; it was Karen Obermeier, but she was looking at him in that same meaning-laden way, and he was—
His mother began to sing “Full Moon and Empty Arms”
from the kitchen. Her intrusion annoyed him. He played faster, hurrying toward the point where the pop version of the music veered away from the Rachmaninoff theme, until Charlotte’s voice wavered and was lost in the loudness and correctness of the piano. He ended with chords that crashed more than they needed to. The victory was his, but it was an empty one. It cost more than it was worth.
Suddenly he found himself wishing school would hurry up and start.
2
Floyd Schleffe dragged his right foot all the way home, leaving a jagged trail through the dust and leaves at the edge of the blacktop. Halfway up the hill, at Showalters’ house, he angled across the road toward the house and studied the upstairs windows from the corners of his eyes, on the chance that Amber or Peg might be changing her clothes without pulling down the shades. Peggy was careless that way, deliberately, he hoped. But today the windows were blank. He sighed and continued plowing his foot furrow up the hill.
His disappointment about Tom was beginning to sour into resentment. He had waited for a long time on that front step, and then when Tom did come home, he’d been too busy to talk. As usual. Floyd had hoped Tom might suggest doing something together after supper, like going to a show or driving over to Prairie du Chien for a few beers.
He turned and crossed the Schleffe footbridge, made of railroad ties acquired without the knowledge of the railroad. Mr. Schleffe was an opportunist, although some people in Buck Creek had a different name for it. By the time Floyd had crossed the bridge and the bare-dirt front yard, his resentment toward Tom had evaporated. He thought, with a soft kind of pity, that at least he was luckier than Tom in the father department.
As he came into the house, the phone was ringing. He picked it up, hoping it was Tom calling for him but knowing it would be for somebody else. It was almost never for him.
“Hello.”
“Is this Floyd? … Floyd, this is Mr. McNamar.”
Floyd sucked himself in. Here was the vague dread that had shadowed his day. He sank down into the davenport, thankful that no one seemed to be home except him. Sweat stood out over all the swells and folds of his skin, and he had to let out his belt before he could get enough breath to answer.