by Debbie Dadey
“Let me go!” I screamed.
Paul threw me over his shoulder as if I were a sack of potatoes and started off through the woods. I pounded on his back and screamed, “Let me go!”
We weren’t going in the direction I’d come from. At least, the direction I thought I’d come from. Of course, hanging upside down over Paul’s shoulder made it hard to tell where I was going.
Paul didn’t stop until he came to a small shack. He opened the door and threw me on the floor. I saw stars when my head hit the ground, but Paul ignored me. He went over to the fireplace and soon a tiny blaze glowed.
“What are you going to do?” I asked, rubbing the back of my head.
With his back still to me he said, “I’m going to warm up, then take you back to Whistler’s Hollow.”
For a few minutes the only sound was the rain hitting the tin roof and the fire sizzling. “Why?” I asked suspiciously.
Paul turned around. He was a shadow with the firelight behind him. “Dallas asked me to find you,” he said simply. “Dallas can always count on me.”
“Why don’t you leave me alone?” I yelled at him. “I don’t need you. I don’t need anybody!”
Paul stood by the fire without saying a word. I hugged the wet blanket around me and tried to get warm. I inched closer to the fire. My hands were so cold they hurt. The heat from the fire melted the ache away. “Why do you hate me so?” I finally asked.
Paul looked down at his feet. “I don’t really hate you.”
“You sure are good at pretending,” I said.
Paul took off his hat and rain dripped off the brim onto the floor. “I just wanted you to leave Miss Esther and Dallas alone. I tried to scare you away with that ghost story. I was afraid you would hurt them.”
I hung my head in shame. I had hurt them. Dancing with Aunt Esther had probably made her sicker.
Paul squatted down and looked at me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Miss Esther and Dallas mean a lot to me. After Daddy got killed, Mama had a hard time. Miss Esther cooked and cleaned for us for over a month. She wasn’t sick then. Dallas never let us want for anything. Before you came, I had them all to myself.”
I stared at Paul’s blue eyes. He wasn’t an evil monster. He actually cared about Aunt Esther and Uncle Dallas. “I was afraid you’d turn them in to the revenuer,” he said.
“I wouldn’t do that,” I snapped at him.
“Well, I didn’t know that,” he snapped back. “I thought if I was mean enough, you’d leave.”
“I didn’t have anywhere to go,” I said miserably.
“I didn’t know that either,” Paul said.
Paul stared at me and I stared back. I felt a special kinship with him now that I knew how much he cared for Uncle Dallas and Aunt Esther. “We have to find another way to help them besides the moonshine,” I told Paul. “That revenuer scares me.”
Paul nodded. “He scares me too.” Paul seemed so strong—after all he’d whipped me good. How could he be afraid?
I looked at the telegram wadded in my hand. “When your father was killed, did you get a telegram?” I asked him.
Paul looked at the envelope in my hands and his face softened. “Yes, we got a telegram.”
I took a deep breath and slid my finger under the envelope flap. I pulled the yellow paper out and laid it before me on the wooden floor. I smoothed out the wrinkles and squinted in the firelight to read.
Patty,
Not coming home. In love with French woman. Lillie Mae better off without me.
Sorry, Bob
I scooted closer to the fire in disbelief. I read it again and again. I couldn’t believe it. Daddy was not dead. I’m sure Mama had thought he was dead when she’d gotten the telegram, but he was alive. He was alive!
My heart soared and I jumped up off the floor. I felt like dancing. My daddy was alive! He could come home. He could take me away from Whistler’s Hollow and Paul and the revenuer. Daddy could come.
I read the paper again and sank to the floor. My daddy could come get me, but now I knew he wouldn’t. How could I be better off without him?
The more I stared at the soggy paper, the gladder I was that Mama hadn’t opened the envelope. She didn’t know the truth and maybe that was better. The truth was more horrible than death. Daddy didn’t want Mama and he didn’t want me. How could he just leave us?
I read the letter again with tears rolling down my cheeks. I should have been happy my daddy was alive, but I hated him. Right then I hated my own daddy. I wished he was dead. He didn’t even know Mama was dead. He didn’t want me. He didn’t care. If he knew Mama was dead, would he come back for me? Somehow I didn’t think he would. I didn’t think I would ever see him again. He would never hear me play the violin.
The crumpled telegram fell out of my hand and onto the wooden floor. I stared at the fire, not even caring that Paul picked up the paper.
“I’m sorry,” Paul said softly. “But now you do have somewhere to go. I have to take you back to Whistler’s Hollow. Miss Esther and Dallas are worried sick about you.”
“They are?” I asked, feeling guilty and wiping the tears from my cheeks.
Paul nodded and handed me the telegram. “It would kill Miss Esther if anything happened to you.”
“Then I guess we’d better get going,” I said softly, crumpling the telegram in my hand. I squeezed it tightly before tossing it into the fire.
Paul and I watched the paper burn before he banked the fire. We didn’t say a word as he reached out his hand and pulled me up. He opened the door and we went out into the storm.
15
Home
The icy rain came down in sheets. Paul held tight to my hand and pulled me along in the dark. The only light came from the occasional blast of lightning across the sky. Sometimes the thunder boomed so that I thought we were going to die, but Paul kept moving. He never faltered, although I slipped twice on the wet leaves.
When we finally got to Whistler’s Hollow, I must have looked like a drowned polecat. What in the world would Aunt Esther and Uncle Dallas think about me running off like a crazy person? What had I been thinking? How could I run all the way to Louisville? There wasn’t even anyone there for me anymore. Aunt Helen sure didn’t want me. My own father didn’t want me.
When Paul opened the kitchen door, the warmth of the house spilled out on us. Aunt Esther was downstairs in the kitchen with Uncle Dallas. She hugged me tight, not even minding my wet clothes. “We were so worried,” she said. “What would we do if something happened to you?”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, trying not to cry. “I’ve been so much trouble.”
“It’s all right, honey,” she said softly. “Some things a body shouldn’t have to bear, like losing both your parents, and you so young. It’s just not right.”
I listened to her like I was in a dream. Nothing was real, everything was in a fog. I wanted the fog to lift, but it didn’t. I didn’t tell her the truth about Daddy. Maybe someday I could.
After that night, Paul changed toward me. He walked me to school and talked to me like a friend. Alberta started eating lunch with me again and school wasn’t so bad. But still I stayed in my fog. I just couldn’t believe that Daddy had left Mama and me. With Mama dead I had no family at all.
One night all that changed, too. Paul came for supper and afterward Uncle Dallas got out his fiddle. He put the fiddle to his chin, but stopped. “How’s that whistling coming?” he asked me.
I shrugged, not really caring about anything—especially whistling. But I tried. I squeezed my lips together and out came the best whistle I had ever done. For a moment, my head cleared and I felt happy.
Aunt Esther clapped her hands. “Oh, honey, that’s a right fine whistle you have there.”
“This calls for a celebration,” Uncle Dallas said. He looked at Aunt Esther, who seemed much better now. “No dancing for you, woman.”
He let loose with a ripping version of “Old Dan Tucker.” Paul surpris
ed me by grabbing my hand and swinging me around the parlor. It was fun for a minute, but then the memory of Daddy whistling the tune got too much for me. The fog came smashing down around me.
I stopped dancing and started crying. Aunt Esther pulled me to her chest and stroked my hair. I knew I was too old for that sort of thing, but I didn’t pull away. I stayed there, surrounded by Aunt Esther’s arms. She smelled of medicine and sweet powder. I would have cried forever if she hadn’t started singing to me. She sang “Amazing Grace” soft and low. She sang it very badly, God may have given Aunt Esther a kind personality, but God certainly did not give her a good singing voice. Her song broke through to me, though, and I looked up to see Uncle Dallas and Paul standing by us.
Uncle Dallas came and put his arms around both Aunt Esther and me. I knew that they cared for me. They were all I had in the world. They were my family. I vowed to do all I could to help them. I knew Paul felt the same way. I was home.
Copyright © 2002 by Debbie Dadey
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First published in the United States of America in 2013
by Bloomsbury USA Children’s books
www.bloomsbury.com
E-book edition published in 2013
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dadey, Debbie. Whistlers Hollow / Debbie Dadey. p. cm. Summary: In 1920,
eleven-year-old Lillie Mae, recently orphaned, goes to live with her loving great-aunt
and great-uncle in their Kentucky farm house, where she learns the truth
about several secrets.
[1. Orphans—Fiction. 2. Great-uncles—Fiction. 3. Great-aunts—Fiction. 4.
Secrets—Fiction. 5. Kentucky—Fiction.] I. Title
PZ7.D128 Wh 2002 [Fic]—dc21 2001052578
eISBN: 978-1-6196-3038-3
First U.S. Edition 2002