by Lauren Wolk
“Go on now, and redd up your room, Annabelle,” my mother said.
Which I did in a trice, making my bed and putting away the clothes I’d shed. On second thought, I pulled the case from my pillow and spread the quilt over it again. Then I went hunting.
From the room where my brothers slept, I took Treasure Island, which my grandmother had just read to them for the third time and wouldn’t be wanting again for a long while. I put it in the pillowcase.
From my parents’ room I took an old pair of my father’s pants, a soft flannel shirt much like every other one he owned, some thick socks, and a pair of skivvies. In the past, my mother had given identical ones to Toby, so these were perfect. From my mother’s sewing kit, I borrowed her sharpest scissors.
All of this went into the pillowcase, along with a bar of Lava soap and a clean towel from the washroom.
At every turn, I was but steps from my mother or grandmother, but they were busy, and I was soft-footed as I took the pillowcase down to the cellar and left it just outside the door, behind a bush.
When I returned to the kitchen, I found my mother making pies.
“I want to search, too,” I said.
She turned from her work, hands white with flour. “Oh, Annabelle, I don’t think that’s a good idea. But when your father comes back with the boys you can ask him. I expect your brothers will be happy to stay home after a morning tramping through wet woods. Maybe you can take their place.”
All I’d really wanted was a reason to take a jar of soup and some rolls and head back out again, and now here I might have talked myself into an afternoon searching for a girl who had made a mess of things for everyone.
“All right,” I said slowly. “But no one’s looking right around here. Why don’t I go on a little walk through the woods back of the barn? I could take my lunch with me. I won’t go far.”
My mother considered me for a long moment. “Do you know more about this than you’re telling me, Annabelle?”
I forced myself to hold her gaze. “More about what?”
“About Betty gone missing.” By now she had turned fully toward me, her floury hands poised in the air as if she were about to lead a choir.
The truth suited, though it was a lie, too, and once again I knew that I would not be able to keep my secret for much longer.
“Nope,” I said. “I have no idea where she is. But I’d like to help find her.”
My mother nodded thoughtfully. “All right. Take what you want and go on out, but not off our hill, do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
I chose a coat with deep pockets. In one I put a Mason jar filled with hot soup, wrapped in a dishcloth, and a spoon. In the other, a hot roll with a coin of butter tucked inside, the hole pinched shut, wrapped in a sheet of waxed paper.
“You look like you’ve got jodhpurs on,” my mother said as I stood by the door, ready to go.
“What are jodhpurs?” I said.
“Never mind. Just watch yourself, Annabelle, and don’t go too far. When you hear the dinner bell, you’ll know your father’s back.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said again.
“And take that egg basket back out to the coop,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Which was one “Yes, ma’am” too many.
My mother bent a little to look straight into my face. “What are you not telling me?” she said, not angry but plenty serious.
I looked steadily back at her. “I’m afraid,” I said.
I didn’t know where that came from. It just came. And it was the truth.
She straightened up. “Of what?”
I shrugged. “Everything. Betty. Betty missing. Toby missing. What Aunt Lily said about Toby taking Betty prisoner. The police coming here. I’ve never even seen a policeman.”
And then I was crying.
I was crying, and I was more surprised about it than my mother, who bent down again and put her arms around me and made soft noises in my ear.
“It’s all right, Annabelle. It’s all right. Everything will be all right.”
Which was what I had said to Toby, whether I believed it or not.
I hoped my mother believed it.
But I had learned, over the past weeks, that believing in something doesn’t always make it so.
I wiped my eyes and put on my cap. “I don’t know what that was all about,” I said. “I’m not really very scared. I just wish they would find Betty so things could get back to normal.”
My mother smiled at me. “Me, too. Now go on and have a look around, but remember what I said about staying close by.”
When she turned back to her work, I said, “What would you say if I asked you to make a hickory nut pie?”
We had a few hickory trees and harvested enough for our own use, but the nuts were dear and generally meant for holidays.
She picked up her rolling pin. “I would say that you might expect something of the kind before long.”
“Don’t forget to ring the bell when they get back,” I said.
I went out the door, down and around the back of the house, fetched the pillowcase, and swung it over one shoulder. Feeling a little like a hobo, I headed down farther into the trees and across the side of the wooded hill below the barn until I had worked my way around the back of it and could enter, again, unseen from the house or the lane.
The horses watched me cross the pasture, ready for an apple if I had one, but I paid them no mind, and after a moment they returned to their grazing.
“Me, again,” I called as I climbed the ladder to the hayloft.
This time, Toby had come out of his hiding place to meet me. “I didn’t expect you back so soon,” he said.
“I brought some more food. When everybody comes in from searching I’ll have to go back, and I may not be out here again for a while.” I emptied my pockets of the soup and bread. Handed Toby the spoon. “Lunch,” I said.
Watching Toby eat that soup and bread was a little like watching somebody pray. He made it last, dipping the spoon slowly into the Mason jar and then, toward the end, tipping the dregs into his mouth. When he bit into the roll and found the surprise of soft butter inside, he laughed. Just one quick burst.
He seemed as startled by that as I was. I’d not heard him laugh before. Nor seen him smile.
He finished the roll, capped the jar, and set it aside. “Thank you,” he said.
“You’re welcome.”
He gestured at the pillowcase. “What have you got there?”
I knelt and opened it, pulling out the book. “Well, this is Treasure Island.” I held it out.
The book was soft from handling, its corners stubbed, but Toby wiped his hands carefully on his pant legs before he reached for it.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You’re welcome,” I replied. “There’s a big hatch behind those bales, for lowering them out to the pasture. You can open one of the shutters and get some light to read by.”
Toby nodded.
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
He raised his eyebrows. “You just did.”
I smiled and popped a fist against my forehead. “Okay.” And here I paused, suddenly afraid. “I like your hair and all. I like it very much. It’s very nice hair.”
“Thank you,” he said again, puzzled. “Is that a question?”
“I used to have long hair like that, but I hated when I got rats in it and my mother would about snap my neck trying to comb it out.”
He waited.
“And then my aunt Lily cut it short one morning when I came in from chores with chicken feathers in my braids. My mother about had a seizure, but in the end she liked it better. Said I looked like Amelia Earhart.”
Toby nodded. “You do, a little.”
; “And I wondered if you might let me give you a trim? I brought some scissors, just in case. But I like your hair very much, Toby. It’s nice hair.” I felt like an idiot.
Toby pulled a hank around and looked at how long it was. “Keeps me warm in winter,” he said.
I nodded. “I’ll knit you a scarf instead.”
I would have to learn to knit first, but he didn’t know that.
“Why?”
“Why should you cut your hair?”
He nodded.
“Same reason I think you should trim your beard,” I said. “So you’ll feel tidy. I like to feel tidy. I like how light I feel.” I shook my head. “Nothing to get in my eyes. Tidy.”
Which was the truth. What I didn’t say was that his hair and his beard hid him too much, as if he were peeking out from somewhere inside himself.
“And then,” I added, before I lost my nerve, “you can have a good wash under the pump and put on some fresh things.” I pulled the soap and towel and clothes out of the pillowcase and set them on a bale of hay.
I stood back and waited.
“Am I too dirty?” he asked. He held out his hands in front of him. It hurt me to look at the scarred one, how it was puckered and gnarled.
“No, not at all. Aw, I’m sorry, Toby,” I said. “I don’t mean that at all. Just that it will feel good to be, well . . .”
“Tidy,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “Tidy.”
I thought that if I said the word tidy one more time he would pick me up and pitch me out of the loft.
But after a bit he nodded and said, “If you think so.”
We started with the hair. First, I cut off most of it in big hunks and put them in a pile to bury in the woods later. With the worst of it gone, I set to making it even. Tidy. Which I was ill equipped to do. But I’d watched my mother trim up my brothers and knew essentially how it should be done. I was glad, though, that I hadn’t brought a mirror.
When I was finished, Toby looked astonishingly unlike Toby.
“You look like your own brother,” I said, meaning a version of himself.
Toby looked at me quite seriously. “I don’t have a brother.”
“Sister?”
He shook his head.
I paused. Bit back my curiosity.
“Now the beard,” I said.
Toby jerked his head back. “Not too short,” he said.
I nodded. “Don’t worry.”
But before I could begin, I heard the dinner bell ringing hard back at the house.
“Uh-oh,” I said, handing him the scissors. “My father’s home. You’ll have to do the beard yourself.”
He stood up suddenly. “Will you let me know if they found her?”
“I will,” I said. “But be careful now.” I returned the soup jar and spoon to my pocket. “I don’t know who might come out here next. Hide all the rest of this behind the bales, okay? I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
This time, when I looked back up from the threshing floor, Toby was peering over the loft rail.
If I hadn’t known it was him, I wouldn’t have recognized Toby looking down at me. He was that different, shorn.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I expected to find my grandfather and my father and my brothers, maybe some hungry neighbors come home for soup.
These I got, but much more, too.
The yard around the mudroom door was littered with dogs of all colors and sizes, empty feed bowls, water bowls ringed by tongue-splash.
Inside, the mudroom had earned its name, hemmed with pairs of clotted boots, the floor patterned with sloppy prints.
In the kitchen, wet and weary men crowded around the kitchen table, many standing, muddy to the knees, all but one in their stocking feet.
Here, in our very own kitchen, was a trooper from the state barracks, the only one in the room with his boots still on. They reached to his knees and were mostly clean, so I knew he hadn’t been in the woods all morning like the others. He creaked with leather: belt, boots, holster, chin strap. There was a row of long, sharp bullets tucked into loops in his belt. The handle of his gun was a smooth wood—almost pretty—his uniform stiff and sharp from hem to hat, except for some goofy pouches that stuck out from the sides of his trousers. Aha, I thought. Jodhpurs.
Constable Oleska was talking.
“. . . and every county bordering ours, but nobody’s seen him. Of course, he’s bound to be in the woods somewhere, more likely to be spotted by some hunter or a farmer. The word is out and it will spread. Someone will see him eventually and we’ll get a chance to talk to him. But Officer Coleman is here to help us find Betty, not Toby.”
I sidled around to stand by my grandmother, who was ladling out soup while my mother carried the hot bowls, one by one, to the men. I caught a glimpse of my brothers through the trooper’s planted legs, huddled under the table, wide-eyed.
Officer Coleman had a deep voice, of course. It went well with his square chin and broad shoulders. He was a man straight out of a book.
“The constable is right,” he said. “But we can’t look for Betty properly unless we know why she’s missing. Shouldn’t be looking for her at all, around here, if Toby’s taken her.”
And there it was again. That horrible suggestion. I wanted to yell, He didn’t! He’s in the barn reading Treasure Island! That would teach them a thing or two.
“Until we find him, and we will, we have to assume that Betty’s just hurt and can’t call for help. You could walk right past her in the leaves and mud and not see her at all.”
“She was wearing a yellow poncho when she left her house yesterday,” the constable said.
“Well, that’s a blessing,” the trooper said. “But you wouldn’t see that if she were in an oil shack or down a well.”
Inside, I went still.
I felt like someone had reached out and tapped me on the shoulder. Somewhere from my memory, a whisper.
“There are old pits in Wolf Hollow,” my grandfather said. “Pretty much filled in, but maybe she stepped into a pocket and went down.”
“We looked all around the hollow,” Andy’s father said.
I wondered where Andy was. Perhaps out searching, still.
“Keep looking,” the trooper said. “If he took her, you won’t find her. If he hurt her, though, you might find . . . something.” He glanced at my mother over his shoulder. At me.
“You might find something,” he repeated. “If she’s still around here and just hurt, she might be unconscious. In one of those pits and can’t answer your calls. Keep calling, though. Even if she can’t answer, she might hear you and take heart.”
“Wouldn’t the dogs find her then?” This time it was Mr. Ansel asking the question. His accent, in this company, sounded stronger than ever.
The trooper shook his head. “Not your dogs, I’m afraid. And our hounds won’t be here until later today if we’re lucky. Maybe tomorrow. They’re working a job in Waynesburg. But we’ll be getting some help soon. People come from all over when there’s a search on. In the meantime, we keep looking. And I want to talk to your son,” he said to Andy’s father.
Mr. Woodberry got a look on his face and said, “He didn’t do nothin’.”
“Well, nobody said he did, but I’m told he was close to the girl. With her before she disappeared. And he might know more than he thinks he knows.”
The men were all eating their soup and rolls, settling down into the quiet business of food and rest, while the trooper talked some more. “Constable Oleska told me about the other troubles you’ve been having. The girl who lost an eye”—at which Mr. Ansel paused, his spoon halfway to his mouth. “Your son cut on a taut-wire.” This addressed to my father. I saw James, under the table, reach up to finger the scab on his forehead.
“I found a coil of s
harp wire in Toby’s smokehouse, tucked under his bedding,” Officer Coleman continued. “And there was blood on it.”
My mother went still. She was standing next to me and I felt her change. Stiffen.
Again, I wanted to yell out, Betty took it. Toby didn’t hurt anybody.
But I didn’t. I needed time to think about all this. To listen to the whisper in the back of my mind.
I filled a mug with soup and ate it standing up, slowly as Toby had, listening to the men talk about where they’d been and what they’d seen. And for the first time I began to wonder in earnest where Betty had gone.
Until now, I had spent all my time fighting the suggestion that Toby had done her harm. I’d assumed that Betty was playing another of her stupid games, or that she had run off somewhere. But now I began to wonder where she really was and why no one had found her.
When the men had their fill, they went back out to continue the search, and this time I really did want to go with them. But I stayed behind to help with the dishes, a chore that always helped my thoughts settle, and hoped I’d hear that whisper again more clearly.
“Annabelle, if that plate gets any drier it’s going to turn to dust,” my grandmother said.
I looked down, surprised to see the same plate I’d been drying for quite some time.
“Sorry, Grandma. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Not to that plate, anyway.” She nodded at the rack of steaming dishes waiting their turn. “How about you get on with those.” She still had a sink full of dishes meant for that rack.
I picked up a mug, dried it, picked up another, dried it. And so on, my hands with a mind of their own as I thought and thought and thought about the wire and the trooper and the rest of the mess.
When we were done with the dishes, I helped sweep up the dried mud in the kitchen from where the men had been, though the worse of it was in the mudroom. “Do what you can,” my mother said. “But don’t scrub anything. It will just get mucked up again at suppertime when they come back.”
It was so unlike my mother to leave a mess that I realized, suddenly, how tired she was, too. And how worried.