by Lauren Wolk
They laid Betty gently on a nest of coats in the flatbed of the constable’s truck. She was conscious, but barely. When her teeth began to chatter, I was startled to find myself thinking again of a wild animal. Groundhogs chattered their teeth like that when the dogs had them cornered.
I pinched myself hard on the soft skin just under my chin.
As Betty’s grandfather covered her with his coat, I noticed that she was wearing her poncho inside out, the dark lining on the outside, the yellow hidden. And I pictured her creeping through Cobb Hollow, into Toby’s smokehouse, tucking the coil of wire under his bedding.
I pinched myself again and turned away.
It was impossible to know just how badly Betty was hurt, but we all knew that she needed to get to a hospital quickly. Where she had been impaled, her flesh was already green and swollen. And while she could wiggle her fingers, she couldn’t seem to move her legs.
“She’s been cold and still for a long time,” my father said. “It may be that she just needs warming.”
Betty’s mother climbed into the front of the constable’s truck while her grandparents and two men from the rope line took up spots in the back to hold Betty still.
When another of the men offered to take Mrs. Glengarry’s place, she waved him off. “Thank you,” she said. “But no.”
If it was possible to hurry slowly, that’s just what the constable did as he started the truck and ferried Betty off and away.
And that left the rest of us to stand in a pool of lantern light and stare at one another, catching our breath and trying to slow ourselves down.
“I’m Jed Hopkins,” one of the men said, holding his hand out until Toby took it. “That was really something, what you did.”
“It was,” said another man, offering his hand and his name, and then each of them, in turn, thanked Toby for what he’d done.
“We’ve all been spared a nightmare or two, Jordan, though I’m afraid you’ll have them for us,” my father said. “I’m John McBride. And this is my daughter, Annabelle.”
“Pleased to meet you both,” Toby said. He was careful not to look straight at me.
We spent a few minutes coiling rope and covering the well with branches until it could be properly capped.
Then, “I guess we can go on home,” my father said.
“I guess,” I replied, looking around for Toby. I saw him standing near his smokehouse, his back to me.
“You all,” my father said to the others, “I’ll give you a ride back to your trucks and you can go on home from there.”
“What about him?” I whispered, nodding toward Toby.
“Jordan?” my father said. “A stranger who asked us to lower him into a well to save a girl he’d never met? He’s coming home with us.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Toby rode in the back of the truck with the dogs and four other men, some from our hills, some from farther afield. At the church, they climbed out and headed for their own trucks. My father yelled our thanks out the window, and they waved and smiled and went back to their lives with a story that their children’s children would tell well into another century.
From there to the farm, Toby rode alone in the back, at his insistence. When I turned and looked through the cab window, I could see him huddled with the dogs just on the other side of the glass, once again buttoned into my grandfather’s old coat, still gloved, but surely bone-chilled by the dark wind and what he’d seen and done inside that well.
When we arrived at the farmhouse, Toby hesitated, but my father and I both stood in the lane and waited for him to join us while the dogs took off for the woodshed. “Come on in and have something to eat,” my father said. “Can’t send you home hungry after what you just did.”
My brothers hurried to the door to greet us. They were freshly bathed, rosy and warm, their hair wet-dark around their faces, and I wanted to hug them to me and cry. But I didn’t. If I had tried, they surely would have wrestled me to the floor and pronounced me a girl.
But I loved them in a way that didn’t need proving.
My father took Toby’s coat and hung it in the closet where it had, just that morning, belonged.
“Your gloves?” my father said, but Toby tucked his hands under his arms and said softly, looking at the floor, “Still pretty cold.” Which made sense. “I’ll keep them on a bit longer, if you don’t mind.”
“Hard to eat with your gloves on, but I do know something about cold hands,” my father said, smiling.
Everyone had gathered in the kitchen at the sound of us coming in. To all of them, my father said, “This is Jordan. Jordan, these are my parents, Daniel and Mary. My sister, Lily.”
Aunt Lily stepped forward and held out her hand, giving him a rare smile. “How do you do?” she said in a soft voice I didn’t know she had.
Toby hesitated for a moment and then took off his glove and shook her hand. “Pleased to meet you,” he said, and put his glove back on.
“James and Henry,” my father said, nodding at the boys. “Jordan, what should they call you, Mr.—”
“Jordan is fine,” he said.
And the boys said, in tandem, “Did you find Betty?” and “Is she dead?”
“Oh, hush,” Aunt Lily said.
“And my wife, Sarah.”
Toby stood with my father and me, in the wide doorway between the mudroom and the kitchen, and actually bowed, as if he were a musketeer.
“Hello,” he said.
My mother had gone still at the sound of Toby’s voice. Now, at this odd behavior, she wiped her hands on her apron and stepped forward. “Your name is Jordan?”
“It is,” he said.
She looked into his face, and I thought that she might know.
“Come. Sit,” she said, leading him to the table.
While my mother warmed up food left over from supper, my father told the story.
I helped a little.
Toby said nothing at all. Even when my father explained how they’d lowered him into the well, and Aunt Lily said, “That was very brave of you, Jordan,” again in that soft, almost-musical voice . . . and the boys launched a barrage of questions about what it was like and were there snakes and centipedes and did the well go all the way to China.
They stopped when my father got to the part about Betty.
No one said a word as he described the situation, but when he had finished, my grandmother excused herself quietly and went off to bed.
“I’ll say my good nights now, too,” my grandfather said. He turned to Toby. “I hope you’ll take a peck of apples when you go.”
“Thank you,” Toby said. “I will.”
My mother poured more coffee for him and my father.
“Can I have some, too?” I asked, but she ignored me.
“Is Betty going to be all right?” she said.
“I can’t say. But the constable took her to the hospital, so I’m sure he’ll have some news before long.”
“And what about that Toby,” Aunt Lily asked. “Have they found him yet?”
I glanced at Toby and away. Caught my mother’s eyes on me.
“Not that I know of,” my father said. “But it seems clear that Betty went down to Toby’s place to make mischief and simply fell into the old Cobb well.”
“Then where is he?” Aunt Lily said.
“That’s enough about that,” my mother said, setting places for my father and Toby and me. “Let’s just be glad that Betty’s found.” She put a platter of beef and potatoes and carrots on the table. “Please,” she said to Toby. “Help yourself.”
When, as before, he hesitated, she took his plate and served him. “Now eat up while it’s hot,” she said.
I held my breath, but Toby simply pulled the glove off his right hand and began to eat. I hoped no one else noticed when he retur
ned his left hand, still gloved, to his lap, cutting his meat one-handed with the edge of his fork.
Aunt Lily got up from the table and said, “Well, if you’ll all excuse me, I have work early in the morning.” She turned to Toby and smiled again. “It was so very nice to meet you, Jordan. I hope we’ll see you again sometime.”
Toby rose partway out of his seat. “Likewise.”
“Oh,” she said, caught by an afterthought. “John, you didn’t tell us how you came to discover that Betty was in the well. Was it the bloodhounds?”
My father pointed a fork at me and said, “It was that bloodhound. Our very own Sherlock Holmes figured it out.”
Aunt Lily was the only person I knew who could raise just one eyebrow, which had the effect of making her look both skeptical and wise. “And how did you do that, Annabelle?”
I shrugged. “I just spent the day thinking about what Andy said, that’s all.” I looked straight at her. “And I knew Toby didn’t do anything wrong, which made it easier to sort out what really happened.”
Aunt Lily pursed her lips and lifted her chin. “Your faith in that man is a mystery to me, Annabelle. He’s hurt two little girls—Ruth and Betty both—and maybe others.”
“Time for bed, boys,” my father said, which triggered the usual protests and the equally customary reaction from Aunt Lily.
“Right now,” she barked, shepherding them from the table. They fled as she advanced. Like the rest of us, they knew that Aunt Lily wasn’t afraid to bite.
Now it was just us four. My mother poured herself a cup of coffee and sat at the table, watching us eat.
“Where are you from, Jordan?” she asked Toby.
He glanced at me, then turned to her. “Maryland, originally. But I live in Hopewell now.”
“And you heard that Betty was missing?”
Toby nodded slowly. “Word about something like that travels fast.”
“And what do you do for a living?” my mother asked. I heard a growing thread of challenge in her voice, though I may have been sewing it there myself. Toby was so clearly Toby to me that I didn’t see how the others could miss it.
“I’m a carpenter,” he said.
Like “Jordan” and “Maryland,” this had a ring of truth to it.
“Your wife must be worried about you by now,” my mother said, her elbows on the table, both hands around her coffee cup. She looked at him steadily through a drift of rising steam.
I knew she could not have seen his left hand—and therefore could not have seen a wedding band.
“You can call her if you like,” my father said.
“I’m not married,” Toby said softly. He looked so uncomfortable when he said it that my mother stopped her questioning, but she kept her eyes on him for another long moment.
“Save some room for dessert,” she said. “I made a hickory nut pie.”
When the telephone rang a moment later, we weren’t as surprised as we might have been.
“That’s the constable,” my father said. “He promised to call when there was news.”
He went into the sitting room, and we could hear him talking, though not what he said.
My mother sighed. “I hope she’s all right. Nobody deserves what she got.”
“Not for what she did,” Toby said.
I looked up sharply.
My mother tipped her head and regarded him curiously. “And just what did she do?”
What she was asking, without asking, was clear: How does a stranger from Hopewell know what Betty did or didn’t do?
My father saved Toby from answering. “Well,” he said, sitting heavily at the table again and running a hand through his hair, “they’ve only just begun to discover all the things that might be wrong with Betty, but they know a few already. Her shoulder is all torn up from that pipe, and they’re going to start treating her for tetanus and a pretty bad infection. Still warming her up. Giving her blood.”
My mother took a long breath. “No broken bones?”
My father shook his head. “Amazingly, no, but there’s some gangrene in her right foot. Her leg was wedged up tight under that poncho. When she tried to move it, the poncho started to rip, so she stopped. But they think it will be okay. She may lose a toe. Too soon to tell.”
I felt sick. “So she’s talking about it?”
“Yes. A little.” He looked away. “She’s talking about Toby. She’s saying he pushed her down that well.”
“But—”
“Just hold on, Annabelle. I’m just saying what she said. No point arguing with me about it.”
“But she’s lying!”
“Let your father speak, Annabelle.”
“She’s saying that Toby caught her snooping around Cobb Hollow yesterday morning before the rain got too bad. Grabbed her. Put her in the smokehouse.”
Toby had bowed his head, both hands in his lap. I stared at him, afraid of what he might be thinking. I could see places where I’d been careless with his hair. A small cowlick on his crown. An unevenness.
“She said he was angry that she had ratted on him. About throwing the rock that hit Ruth. About the taut-wire. And that after he packed up his things, he dragged her into the woods and pushed her down the well without a word. Just like that.”
“And took off,” my mother said.
“And took off.”
Here was everything I’d feared. How was Toby supposed to prove something he hadn’t done?
By now, Mrs. Gribble would be spreading the news down every telephone line on her switchboard, tapped like an octopus into houses all over these hills.
Within the hour, Toby would be a murderous monster and Betty a poor dear thing.
In the silence that followed, I watched my mother trace the grain of the tabletop with her finger as if she were reading a map.
“Well, I certainly do want to thank you for your help tonight, Jordan,” my father said. “When you’re ready, I can take you back to wherever you’ve left your car. We have some apples in the—”
“John,” my mother interrupted.
He stopped short. “What?”
My mother looked from Jordan to my father.
“He doesn’t have a car,” she said.
She gave my father a little smile, though it was sad, perhaps because the relief we’d all felt at Betty’s rescue was to be so quickly replaced by more trouble.
“How do you know that?”
She turned to Toby. “Let me see your hands,” she said.
I let out the breath I’d been holding in for two days.
“Sarah?” My father looked so confused that I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.
Toby sat up straight. He lifted his hands from his lap. With his bare right hand, he pulled off his other glove. The scars on his left hand were as irrefutable as a fingerprint.
“Jordan?” my father said, leaning closer.
“That’s not his name,” my mother said.
“It is, though,” Toby said. “My name is Tobias Jordan. I am a carpenter from Maryland. And I did not push Betty down that well.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I could have escaped then.
Toby was the only one who knew that I’d been hiding him. The clothes he was wearing were more or less exactly the same as all the men wore, and it would be a while before my father missed them. I would have more than enough time to deal with the Mason jars, the camera, the scissors, and other things still in the hayloft. And I knew that Toby would never give me up. He’d say he’d taken the clothes from a laundry line, cut his own hair and beard, crept into our barn of his own accord.
“Toby didn’t run off,” I said. “I made him come with me. And he didn’t hide. I hid him. In our barn. And I cut his hair and gave him some of your clothes to wear, Daddy. And he wouldn’t have done any of t
hat if I hadn’t made him.”
Though my mother had found Toby out, she looked shocked at these admissions. My father, too, was speechless.
“She was trying to help me,” Toby said. “You can’t be angry with her.”
“I most certainly can,” my mother said. “But I’m not. Not yet. I’ll get to that soon.”
“I can’t believe you’re Toby,” my father said, staring at him wide-eyed. “You look so . . . different.”
“But he’s really not, Daddy.”
“Well, yes he is,” my father said.
“Yes, I am,” Toby said. “Though that has nothing to do with it. I didn’t do what Betty says I did. None of it.” He stood up and pushed back his chair. “But I had better go before I make things worse for you all.”
As I began to object, my mother said, “Sit down. I for one need a minute or two to sort things out. Good grief. The trooper was right. It is like a circus around here.” She tucked a strand of stray hair behind her ear. “Besides,” she said. “I made a pie and we are going to eat it if it’s the last thing we do.”
She got up from the table and began to dish out the pie, this time with whipped cream on top, as if it were Christmas.
“Wait for the coffee,” she said as she put the pie on the table. Which we did. My mother was using her don’t-argue-with-me voice. The same one I’d used on Toby to get us here, to this table.
She gave me a glass of milk, more coffee for the men. “Well, go on,” she said. “That pie’s not going to eat itself.”
Toby ate his piece slowly. Made it last long after we had finished ours. We sat and watched him as if he were a giraffe or a Martian. Even I had trouble believing that Toby was sitting at our kitchen table, eating pie, after years of avoiding any but brief contact with us, barely speaking, never allowing a soul to see him without his dark trappings.