Wolf Hollow (9 page)

“I don't blame Betty one little bit for being afraid of Toby,” Mrs. Glengarry said. She was a quiet woman and I was surprised to hear the grit in her voice, but here was a chance to believe that Betty was nothing but a pigtailed girl in a blue jumper afraid of a bad man who carried guns wherever he went.

“Perhaps not.” My mother rose to her feet. “But if anyone threatens Annabelle again, there won't be any more talking about it.”

I wasn't sure what she meant by that, but when my father took me by the hand and we stood next to her, I felt like a giant. Like when I stood on our hilltop looking down into Wolf Hollow. Or when I held a bird's egg in my hand.

After we got home, my parents spent some time in the yard, talking. I went inside and straight up to my room.

My steady world was spinning, and with each turn of the pinwheel, I became more confused.

I didn't believe that Toby was crazy. Sad, maybe. Quiet. Odd, even, to choose a life alone, sleeping in a smokehouse, walking the hills day after day. But not crazy. Not dangerous-crazy.

And besides, why would Toby throw a rock from a hillside when two girls and two horses stood below? If Toby wanted to hurt Mr. Ansel, he had chances every day, all over the place, when there wouldn't be any girls or horses standing by.

Toby was a man who wouldn't even shoot a sleeping deer. Who took pictures of mayapples. And gave me back a penny when he didn't need to. And had never hurt anyone, anyone, since coming back from that terrible war. Not that I knew of.

I didn't believe Toby was crazy. Not even a little bit. And I didn't believe he would hurt Mr. Ansel, German or not.

But if Betty and Andy had been in the belfry, they couldn't have been on that hillside. They couldn't have thrown that rock.

I lay on my bed and thought my thoughts until I heard my mother calling me down to help get supper started. And a little beyond that.

“You must have enough wool by now to knit a sweater,” my grandmother said as we washed and peeled potatoes together at the sink.

“What wool?” I sloshed a potato in the wash water until it came away white.

“You've been gathering wool this whole time, Annabelle. Not a word out of you.”

I shrugged. “Just thinking about Ruth.”

“A terrible thing to happen to anyone, let alone a sweet girl like her.”

“But you don't think Toby did it, even by accident, do you?”

By now everyone in the house knew about the conversation at the Glengarrys' that afternoon.

Aunt Lily had sniffed and said, “That Toby has always smelled like brimstone to me.”

Henry had said, “Naw, Toby's not like that.”

James had said, “Avast, there, matey.” Which we took to mean no.

My grandfather had shaken his head and mumbled something about a sheep in wolf's clothing.

I already knew how my mother felt. My father . . . I wasn't sure. He hadn't said a word on our way home from the Glengarrys' house. And, once home, he'd spoken only to my mother and then gone straightaway to his chores.

“Oh, I don't know what I think,” my grandma said, cutting a potato so thin I could see light through the slice. Hers were the best scalloped potatoes in the county. “Toby is odd, I have to say. And those guns of his give me pause. But I've never seen him act rough with anyone. And I've never heard of him speaking ill of the Germans, including Mr. Ansel.”

“Well, Toby doesn't speak much about anything,” I had to admit.

“No, he does not. But I've always wanted people to judge me by my actions, and I hope I can do the same for him, who has never done me wrong. Or my family, neither.”

My father came in to supper that night pink with evening but smelling like soot.

“I spent some time with Toby this afternoon,” he said in the middle of eating my mother's ham, my grand-mother's potatoes, and my cauliflower, which James referred to as “little white trees” and rarely ate.

We all looked at my father and waited. I, especially, wondered what Toby had had to say about the goings-on of the past week.

“I did most of the talking,” he said. “Knocked on the door, Toby answered, asked me in. There was no place to sit but on the one chair and I would not sit if he couldn't, so we both stood there looking at each other like a couple of goats.”

My father didn't admire goats very much. I, if lazy, was a little goat. If stupid, a goat. If dirty, a goat. And the rest of us, too.

We waited. He would not have mentioned the visit at all if there were not more to tell.

“That shack of his is a hard place,” he said, “though he's nicened it up a bit. Not much of a bed, more like a nest. Pine boughs covered with burlap. No pillow. An old army blanket. The one chair, castoff. A fire pit dug in one corner with just a hole for a vent. Odds and ends on the hooks above. But . . .” And here he stopped. Sat back in his chair. Ran a hand over his jaw. “There were pictures everywhere. On all four walls. Of the orchards. The woods. Sky all by itself in lots of them, at sundown.”

He paused for a moment. “They were beautiful, and I wanted to see them all, but the light was going, and I didn't want to presume. He hadn't invited me, and he seemed a little nervous to have me there. I don't imagine he gets many visitors.”

I couldn't remember my father ever saying so much in one stretch.

“I told him about what the Glengarrys had said. What Betty had said. I asked him if he'd been on that hillside. And he said he had no reason to throw a rock at anyone, German or not.”

My grandfather said, “If anyone had a reason to throw a rock at a German, it might be Toby.”

“Or anyone who lost kin over there,” my mother said sharply. “Of which there are plenty.”

“And then he said something strange,” my father said. “He said, and I think I've got this right, ‘They made scratches on the Turtle Stone.' And he didn't say anything after that, except to ask that you, Annabelle, bring him his pictures as soon as they come in.”

Aunt Lily waggled her fork at me. “Our camera. Our film.
His
pictures. I like that.”

But I was wondering about the Turtle Stone, a big boulder in Wolf Hollow shaped like a turtle's shell and threaded through with quartz in something of a grid, also like a turtle's shell. Everyone knew about the Turtle Stone. It was in a little clearing as if the trees had not dared get too close, and the ground around it was covered with ferns and flowering weeds.

It was a pretty place but serious, too. We always figured that the Indians had used it for ceremonies. If we hadn't had a church for our ceremonies, we probably would have chosen the Turtle Stone, too.

Church the next morning was much as it always was, except that the Glengarrys, in their pew three back from ours, did not greet us as they usually did. I was sorry about that, but not very.

My father had been right when he'd said I'd feel better after speaking my piece, and I didn't mind giving up a Sunday smile from the Glengarrys in the bargain.

Betty, in a gingham shift over a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar, looked as sweet as a snap pea, but her eyes gave her away.

I focused instead on the purple and yellow mums clustered around the altar and the empty cross above it.

The choir warbled out the hymns as usual, Mr. Simmons through his mighty nose, Mrs. Lancaster with a bigger hitch in her voice than our flatbed, and we all sang along in our various ways.

Reverend Kinnell spoke at great length about the changing of the seasons, but I could not for the life of me make much sense of it. I was very grateful for the tiny pencil and offerings envelope stashed next to the hymnal on the pew-back in front of me. I couldn't draw worth a hill of beans, but trying helped me pass the time. My grandfather, sitting next to me, looked envious as I spent much of the sermon drawing a horse.

“That's a fine dog, Annabelle,” he whispered to me.

When my mother took the envelope to add some coins for the collection, she smiled at the dog-horse. “I hope the reverend likes your offering, Annabelle,” she said.

So everything was fine, I thought, and whatever problems we had could wait for us to catch up with them.

But, as it turned out, they caught up with
us
when we left the church and found the constable waiting outside, the Glengarrys with him.

The constable didn't wear a badge or carry a weapon, but the state police barracks were in Pittsburgh and the nearest jail or courthouse was just as far away; so the constable took care of things as he could and called in the troops when they were needed, which was never, as far as I knew.

We all liked him. Constable Oleska. He had a big face, red cheeks, not much hair, and an easy laugh. But one time at the county fair I'd seen him wrap his arms around a farmer who'd had too much hard cider and was acting stupid. Constable Oleska held him in place as if he were nothing but a corn shock, until the farmer calmed down and went home to bed. So people took the constable seriously when he chose to be stern.

He looked stern now.

“Good morning, folks,” he said. “I need a word, John. Sarah.”

My father opened the door to our truck and shepherded my grandparents inside.

To my brothers and me, he made a shooing motion and we obliged him by scrambling up into the back, but we huddled as close to the conversation as we could.

I couldn't hear everything they said, but I caught Toby's name and Ruth's and Mr. Ansel's. Betty did some of the talking, which made me mad, but my parents were there to speak for me, and I resigned myself to that.

My mother's voice was most audible, since she quickly became upset with what the Glengarrys were saying.

“Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?” she said, a fair bit of heat in her voice. “And letting a person live however he likes?” She had her fists on her hips. “Let's not be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”

Which was confusing to me, since there was no baby involved in this as far as I could tell. Nor any bathwater, either.

My father put a hand on her shoulder, but she ignored him. “Toby may be strange, but that's the end of it. You might make him more than strange if you back him into a corner when he hasn't done anything wrong. Besides, you can't lock up a man because a girl says she saw him on a hillside. And a girl who's been up to no good, at that.”

And then everyone was talking too loudly and none of them in turn. My mother had clearly tired of the whole business and climbed into the back of the truck with us. My father got behind the wheel, starting the engine, and calling, “Lily!” out the window.

But my aunt stayed another moment, talking to the constable, nodding her birdlike head to what he replied, before heading for her own car. I did not like the look on her face. Something too close to happy, which was rare enough for Aunt Lily and odder still, given the circumstances.

Sunday dinner was usually a matter of saying grace and eating what we were served. Little conversation. Redding up afterward (while Aunt Lily went to her room to spend the afternoon in prayer and reflection . . . though sometimes a dance tune drifted from under her door).

People occasionally came to call on Sundays. More often, we spent the day slowly, quietly. Glad for a little peace and rest.

But this Sunday was not like that.

“I want you to stay far away from Betty Glengarry at school tomorrow,” my mother said to my brothers and me after dinner as she dished out apple pie and poured cream over it. “Don't go near her. Don't talk to her. And tell Mrs. Taylor if Betty does anything worrisome. Anything at all.”

“And us, too,” my father said, “when you get home. No more secrets.”

“Well, honestly,” Aunt Lily said. “Annabelle, don't you think you might have been exaggerating a bit? Betty seems like a sweet, God-fearing girl to me, and she's brave enough to let us know what Toby's done, even though he's the most frightening thing in this county.”

“She hit me hard enough to leave a black bruise the size of a cucumber,” I said. “No way I could exaggerate black.”

Aunt Lily sat up straighter. “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor,” she said sharply.

But though it had been some time since Betty had swung that stick, I stood up and bared my hip right there in front of everyone and let them see the mark that was still visible. Still ugly enough.

Aunt Lily looked away. She didn't say another word for the rest of the meal.

After dinner was over and the redding-up was done, my mother gathered the fixings for a poultice and made it while I watched. A handful of Russian comfrey leaves from her kitchen garden and boiling water, mashed into a hot paste, spooned into a clean rag, folded up into a neat square. She took me to my room, laid me down on my side, and arranged the poultice on my bruise.

“It doesn't hurt anymore,” I said.

“Well, it hurts me to know it's there,” she said. “This will clear it up altogether.”

What felt best was having my mother sit on the edge of my bed, her hand over the poultice to keep it warm.

“I didn't bear false witness,” I said. “I wouldn't do that.”

“Oh, I know, Annabelle. Aunt Lily thinks she knows more than she does. Enough about that now.”

We sat quietly, and I felt a great distance between us and the sound of my brothers downstairs, their Sunday pitch imperfect, noisy as any weekday.

“What's going to happen to Toby?” I asked.

My mother sighed. “Well, Constable Oleska doesn't have enough information to call the troopers and have Toby arrested, which is what the Glengarrys want him to do. He can't dismiss what Betty said, but he can't arrest Toby on the strength of that alone. Can't arrest him in any event, since that's for the troopers to decide and do. So he said he's going to talk to Andy about Betty's story, about being in the belfry. And he's going down to see Toby, too. And maybe come talk to you a little, about that other business with Betty. And try to figure out who strung that wire across the path. All that, though I don't know in what order. Maybe talk to Toby tonight, even, or early tomorrow. I just don't know, Annabelle. But for now all he wants is to talk to people, find out what's what.”

I tucked my hands under my cheek, tried to picture the constable knocking on the door to Toby's smokehouse, imagined the look on Toby's face when he opened the door and found trouble on the other side.

“I don't believe what they're saying about Toby. He's not like that.”

“Nor do I, Annabelle. But Constable Oleska is a fair man. I don't think he'll do anything but talk for now.”

Which, I feared, might itself be too much. Toby had been a wanderer. I expected he might right now be thinking about leaving our hills for somewhere new.