Wanderville

by Wendy McClure

  She knew how to be the big sister, Jack thought. It was a lot like how Daniel had always known what to do. Why couldn’t he be more like that?

  “Fine, and then we’ll look for more food.”

  “If that’s a plan, it’s not much better than the one we had for Sheltonburg, Missouri,” Frances said.

  “It is better,” Jack shot back. “Because at least we’re off the train now.”

  Frances folded her arms. Jack knew what she was thinking—that he hadn’t a plan at all, only some chicken-headed notion that things were about to get worse. But hadn’t he saved them all? Didn’t that count for something?

  He leaned across to look at Frances. If she’d meant to give him the silent treatment, she’d fallen asleep doing it.

  Morning dew sounded pretty when you read about it in poems, but it was wretched to wake up in it, Frances thought. She tried to shake off the clammy feeling on her arms and legs. The sky was so overcast and dim that the damp grass was practically the only way she could tell it was morning.

  “Cold,” Harold mumbled. He was awake and huddled inside his big coat.

  “That’s for sure,” Jack said, over from his side of the tree where he still lay on his side. Slowly he sat up and wiped the dirt from his face.

  Frances fished out the cheese sandwich she’d saved and gave it to Harold, hoping that he’d quit shivering if he had some food in him. For once, she found herself craving a bite of the stuff.

  Finally Harold let go of his coat and sat up straight, gobbling the sandwich down.

  They all looked at one another for a moment.

  “Okay,” said Jack slowly. “Let’s . . . find something else to eat?” He stood up and pulled Harold to his feet.

  Frances stood up, too. “There’s something that needs to be done first,” she replied solemnly.

  “Uh . . . what?” Jack asked.

  “This!” Frances yelled, seizing the hateful lace bow at her dress collar. She yanked at it, hard; and with a few more tugs and a most satisfying ripping noise, she’d pulled it free.

  “There,” she said, tucking the lace into her coat pocket with a grin. “Let’s go.”

  “Can you believe this place?” Frances exclaimed after nearly a half hour of walking. “I feel like we’re lost at sea, except it’s land.”

  Jack knew what she meant. Just days ago he’d felt small in the big train shed at Grand Central, but this tent of sky was immense in comparison. He found himself wishing that Daniel could see it.

  Just then, Jack lurched forward, just barely catching himself. He felt the ground carefully with his feet, noticing that it sloped down suddenly to a grove of trees. It seemed to Jack as if the earth had a mouth, a big, jagged grin.

  “A ravine,” Frances murmured after Jack had found his footing. She’d read about them in one of her books. As she braced her knees to descend, she realized, in her eleven years of city living, she had never walked down a true hill before. Neither had Harold, who began stumbling forward.

  “Whooaaaa!” he called out as he gained momentum. Just as he reached the foot of the slope, he tripped over a log.

  “Harold!” Jack called.

  Harold fell right over, making an oof! sound when he landed on his side.

  Frances squinted.

  Was it the log that had made the sound?

  The log stood up. No, the log was a kid—a boy. “Intruders!” the boy yelled. “Be off!” And he was holding something, waving it—a hatchet!

  9.

  A Boy Named Alexander

  Jack kept an eye on the hatchet as he stepped forward and faced the stranger. The boy matched Jack’s steps, and soon both were circling each other warily, one with a weapon in his hands and the other with a fist poised to strike.

  Jack nodded toward Frances and Harold. “Leave them alone,” he said to the strange boy, who seemed to be close to his own age.

  The boy turned to look at Frances, who stood by with a rock in her hand, and Harold, who was wiping his nose on his sleeve. Then the kid looked back at Jack. He took a step back and slowly lowered his hatchet.

  Suddenly, his face burst into a grin. “You’re kids!” he exclaimed. “I’ve been waiting for you!”

  Jack and Frances traded a look.

  “Us?” Frances mumbled.

  “Yes, you,” the boy said. “I mean, children like you and”—he suddenly lowered his voice—“you’re on your own, right? No adults with you?”

  Frances hesitated, but Jack shook his head. “Nope.”

  The kid grinned again. “What about the sheriff? You seen him?”

  “Sure,” said Jack. “But we got away,” he added proudly.

  “Far away,” Harold chimed in. “He can’t find us.”

  Frances just shrugged. Truthfully she thought Jack and her brother ought to keep their mouths shut around Hatchet Kid. He was tall and thin and looked just slightly older than Jack and her, with light brown scraggly hair that went past his ears. He had smart-dog eyes, Frances thought—pale blue and alert and a little crooked—the kind of eyes you had to be careful around.

  The boy set down the hatchet. “The name’s Alexander,” he said, reaching out to shake Jack’s hand and then Harold’s. Then he tipped an invisible hat to Frances, who half smiled and jabbed out her hand for him to shake.

  “I’m Frances, and this is my brother, Harold,” she said. “And you’ve just met Jack, who’s our . . .” She hesitated. What did you call a person whom you just jumped off a train with?

  “Our friend,” Harold finished.

  “Pleased to meet all of you,” Alexander said. “Let me show you around.”

  “Around where?” Harold asked. Frances and Jack glanced around, wondering the same thing. The place they were in was nothing but a wooded ravine with a tiny creek running through it.

  “Oh, there’s plenty here . . . ,” Alexander began. “But wait—what’s that sound?” He stopped near Harold and listened. “It’s like growling.”

  Harold’s eyes grew wide. “Wolves?”

  “No, it’s coming from you . . . ,” Alexander told him. “From your . . . stomach?”

  Jack laughed. “I think Harold’s so hungry he could eat a wolf,” he explained.

  “We all are,” Frances confessed.

  Jack took the boy in further as the kid nodded in understanding. This Alexander, whoever he was, seemed all right, he thought. Sure, he was a little scruffy, even for a farm kid, but maybe that’s how things were in Kansas. If anything, he reminded Jack of some of the kids back home. “Ever been a newsboy?” Jack asked.

  “Me?” Alexander laughed a short laugh. “A newsboy?”

  Jack shrugged. “Yeah, you just make me think of them.” Daniel used to say they had a rough life but they were their own masters. Alexander had that same way about him somehow, a cleverness.

  “Sheesh! Me, a newsboy?” Alexander chuckled, shaking his head. “What’s a newsboy do, anyway? I’ve no idea!” He gave a big shrug, though somehow he didn’t look very confused.

  Jack decided to change the subject back to their grumbling stomachs. “Maybe . . . there’d be a bite to eat at your house?” he suggested. “Just some bread maybe, and then we’d be on our way.”

  “Of course,” said Alexander, straightening up and motioning with a flourish toward the ravine. “Follow me.”

  Frances figured he was going to lead them out of the ravine and to a farmhouse, where he’d sneak them some food. Instead, they went just a few yards to the edge of a creek, where Alexander suddenly crouched down and pulled aside an old blanket covered with leaves.

  “Let me check the pantry cupboard,” he said. Beneath the blanket was a hole, dug just deep enough to hold a battered valise, which Alexander flipped open.

  “Oh!” Harold exclaimed when he saw the contents.

  Frances trie
d to count it all—the stacked sardine tins, the jars containing peaches and jam, the biscuits. There was a wedge of cheese in wax and a basket of eggs, and something wrapped in butcher paper, sausage or maybe salt pork—she could smell it. They all could.

  “I’m happy to share,” Alexander told them.

  Harold gawked, and Jack looked over at Frances.

  “What are the lot of you staring for?” Alexander said. “It’s time for breakfast!”

  10.

  “I Know Where You Can Find a Home”

  Jack had never seen anyone get a fire going as quickly as this Alexander kid. Just a minute or two between match strike and a crackling little blaze.

  “So where’s all this food from?” Jack asked him.

  “And why do you have it out here in the woods?” Frances added.

  “Oh, I liberated a few things from Whitmore,” Alexander said matter-of-factly. “That’s the town nearest here.”

  Jack and Frances exchanged another look. They still couldn’t make sense of all this.

  “But where do you live?” Harold asked.

  Alexander’s grin got wider. “I’ll explain after we eat. How’ll some eggs taste?”

  The campfire was suddenly Harold’s new favorite thing. He kept circling it, tossing leaves on it, poking at the kindling with sticks. “We’re like vagabonds! Tramps of the road!” he cried.

  We are vagabonds, Frances thought. But if Harold figured being homeless out in the countryside was more fun than being a little wanderer back in the slums, who was she to tell him otherwise?

  “Take care you don’t poke that fire out. We want to make sure the bacon and eggs cook,” she told Harold. Alexander had balanced a shallow tin milk pan on a ring of rocks in the fire pit, and the fresh eggs were bubbling away slowly in the bacon fat.

  “Oh, believe me, Jack and I are watching them very carefully,” said Alexander.

  Alexander set the pan on a short plank to keep their laps cool, and then they passed it around, tucking away hot mouthfuls of scrambled-eggs-and-bacon with a big spoon they all shared. Despite the odd arrangement, Frances thought it was one of the best breakfasts she’d ever had . . . even if she wasn’t willing to admit it.

  “I don’t know how I was going to go through a whole rasher of bacon by myself,” Alexander said. “Good thing you folks decided to hop off that orphan train and come visit for a spell.”

  Frances paused, holding the spoon in midair. Harold sucked in his breath.

  Jack cleared his throat. “Who said anything about an orphan train?”

  “As a matter of fact, we were traveling with our families in a wagon,” Frances declared. “A covered wagon! And we were tragically set upon by bandits and have been walking ever since.”

  “Bandits, my eye,” Alexander said. “I can tell by the way you talk. You’re Lower East Side scrappers. Straight from my old neighborhood.”

  Frances and Jack looked at each other. There was no fooling this kid.

  “And judging from where I’ve been and what I’ve seen,” Alexander continued, “you were right to escape from that train.”

  “You mean, the rumors . . . ,” Jack started. “About the work farm . . . the hundred kids . . .”

  “It’s all true.”

  “It’s called the Pratcherd Ranch, and I was there,” Alexander told them as he washed the pan and spoon in the creek. The color in his face had seemed to drain as soon as he started talking about the work farm, and even now he was still a little pale. “Though it’s not really a ranch, as there aren’t cattle there. Or at least not any real cattle. The only herd they’ve got there are the farmhands—kids like us. You sleep in a bunkhouse, where the rain comes through the roof and the wind cuts through. Then they make you get up before dawn, and you work until dark. Digging up sugar beets.”

  “They keep you there at the ranch?” Jack asked. “Like a pack of mules?” He’d broken his poor neck running bundles for the shirt factory on Baxter Street, but at the end of the day, he’d had supper and his own bed and coins to spend. “How can they do that?”

  “They claim the work is for our own good. That we’re all low-life kids who ran in city gangs and that we need reforming. But all the Pratcherd family is doing is making themselves rich on our backs.”

  “They’re a family?” Harold asked. “You mean they have children of their own?”

  “Just a son,” Alexander said. “Rutherford. He’s about fourteen.”

  “Rutherford Pratcherd? That’s an awful name,” Frances said.

  “Well, he’s awful,” Alexander muttered. He finished drying the spoon with his shirttail and tossed it into the pan with a forceful clang. “And mean. If he thinks you’re slacking off, he’ll beat you to jelly.”

  “So you ran away?” Jack asked. “How did you do it?”

  “I stowed away on Mr. Pratcherd’s buckboard wagon on a trip into town. I hid out in a load of potatoes and then crept out when he wasn’t looking. Then I stayed in a livery barn in Whitmore for the night.”

  “When did this happen?” Frances asked. “I mean, how . . . how long have you been out here all alone?”

  “That was almost two months ago,” Alexander replied. “After that, I slept in chicken sheds, storm cellars, and corncribs.” He nodded proudly, but he also sank down into his shoulders a bit, as if he were remembering the cold. “But then I found this place, and I’m not going back.”

  “The only place I’d ever go back to is New York,” Jack said. “Wasn’t easy there, but at least it’s what I know. . . .”

  Alexander looked at Frances and Harold. “What about you?” he asked them.

  “I just want a home,” Harold said in a small voice. “For me and my sister.”

  They were all quiet for a moment, with only the sound of the creek nearby.

  “Well,” said Alexander, “I know where you can find a home.”

  “Really?” Harold asked.

  “It’s a place run by kids. Nobody telling them what to do. Nobody getting in their way. No grown folks,” Alexander continued. “After all, have adults done anything good for you?”

  Harold shook his head.

  “Jack? Frances? Do you trust anyone who isn’t our age?”

  “Not really,” Jack admitted. He thought about working days on the sidewalks in the city, all those grim-faced people in black and gray coats who wouldn’t step aside for anyone, not even for a boy carrying a load on his back. When he’d get home, he wouldn’t even make it up the dim stairwell with his wages sometimes, not if he passed his father on his way out for the night.

  “Not at all,” Frances said. Any time grown people made a decision in her life, all that followed was trouble and turmoil. And half the time they probably didn’t even stop to think when they were deciding something for her and Harold. Or at least Aunt Mare hadn’t when she left.

  “Then it’s settled,” Alexander said. “You’re all joining me in Wanderville!”

  Harold was mystified. “Where?”

  “Wanderville is a town,” Alexander said. “A town most folks can’t get to, and where they can’t get to us. And it’s right here.”

  “Here,” Frances repeated.

  “There’s the fountain,” he said, gesturing over toward the creek. “And over there’s the hotel and the mercantile. The main square is right here, but of course you’ve already seen that. You can see it, right?”

  Jack and Frances and Harold looked all around, confused. There weren’t any buildings at all—not in the wooded ravine, and not in the distance, either. All he was pointing to were trees, a clearing, and an old barrel.

  “If you don’t see it yet,” said Alexander, “just walk around.”

  “Sure thing,” Jack said.

  Frances motioned to him and Harold. “Come on, let’s go see the hotel,” she said. “Now.” She took her l
ittle brother’s arm and hurried over to the farthest trees, while Jack followed. Finally she stopped and brought her voice down to a whisper.

  “I think it’s time for us to get out of here,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” Jack whispered back.

  “I mean, haven’t you noticed this kid is bughouse crazy?” Frances insisted. “There’s nothing here!”

  11.

  The Town You Couldn’t See

  For a moment, all Jack and Harold could do was stare at Frances.

  “Someone had to say it,” Frances said. “Alexander’s out of his mind.”

  “Well,” Jack finally said, a little sheepishly, “this Wanderville business does seem a little peculiar.”

  “Alexander’s seeing things that aren’t there!” Frances shot back. “Clearly he’s touched in the head. Also, he wants to start his own town. He’s about twelve years old, he’s got nothing but a barrel and a suitcase full of eggs, and he wants to start his own town.”

  Jack shrugged. “I don’t know. I think he’s been through a lot. After the hardship he’s seen, anyone would be a little . . . different. But he seems like he’s doing his best to survive.”

  Then Harold spoke up. “I like Alezzander. He’s nice, and I want to stay in Wanderville.”

  “It’s not a real town,” Frances told him.

  “The food’s real,” Harold said.

  “Harold’s got a point,” Jack said. Before meeting Alexander, he hadn’t known how he was going to make sure that Frances and Harold had enough to eat—or really, how they’d find food at all. “Did you see that suitcase? I noticed a sack of flour stowed in that barrel, too. He’s been here for a while, through cold weather, even, and he’s faring pretty well.”

  Frances shook her head. “We should make our way to an actual town and hide out there. I don’t know what we’re doing out here in the middle of the wilderness.”