Текст книги "The Mystery of Drear House"

Автор книги: Virginia Hamilton

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 11 страниц)

“Oh well …” he said, but said no more.

Just by looking, Martha Small could tell how he felt. “Did you-all find a place in town?”

“Senior citizens,” Pluto murmured. “I guess I’m old now.”

“Father, it doesn’t mean you’re old to move into the senior citizens.”

“Yes, it does,” Pesty said.

“Little Miss Bee knows,” Pluto said. “Senior can’t take care of hisself.”

“All right now,” Mr. Small said. “We can’t have this. Look, Mayhew, Henry.” Walter Small knelt beside Pluto’s chair. “There really is no need for this. I don’t know why I didn’t say something before. It’s been vague in the back of my mind. And you know, we wouldn’t want to interfere. I’ve been so busy. Henry, listen to me. There’s no reason at all that you have to go into town. What about our house? I mean, what about living with us?”

There was a moment’s silence. Mr. Pluto lifted his head. “Oh, I couldn’t do a thing like that, no, no. I won’t be a burden to anyone.”

“Who says you’d be a burden?” Martha Small said. “Why, it’s a wonderful idea. Great-grandmother is here. And you two really do get along! And the twins, why, they adore you.”

“Well I’ll be …” Thomas said. Things change before your very eyes! “It’s really a big place. You’ll just love it,” he said eagerly to Pluto. “It’s the best ol’ house for sleeping! You can take the twins and Great-grandmother for buggy rides.” He grinned from ear to ear.

22

THANKSGIVING CAME AND WENT. It had been foggy and rainy the whole day. Mr. Pluto and Mayhew were at the Smalls’ Thanksgiving, dinner, and Pesty, too. Afterward Thomas’s mama sent turkey and stuffing and pie home with Pesty. Thomas helped Pesty carry everything. It was all right that he hadn’t been asked to come into Pesty’s house. He wasn’t sure he would want to go in. He had left what he carried at the Darrow front door, he told his mama.

There should have been snow on Thanksgiving, too, and sleigh bells in his head, as there were today. Sure glad today is all right, he thought. It snowed every day now. And this, another Sunday, was a snowy Sunday.

Everybody’s at my house, he thought. He couldn’t quite believe it. He felt weak, having spent his energy on not acting dumb. Right and wrong were so close together in the same house, for the first time. My house!

Smalls and Darrows, Pluto. Mayhew had left town to go back to his work after Thanksgiving, after settling Pluto in. Thomas didn’t know whose idea it had been to invite Darrows over for this Sunday dinner. Probably his mama’s. Both his mama and his papa had agreed on it.

Love thy neighbor! Thomas thought scornfully.

Darrows dared accept the invitation and had driven up in cars.

Thomas could hardly believe it. I mean, River Lewis Darrow and his boys and Macky, and Pesty, of course, and Mrs. Darrow, Thomas thought. And Mama and Papa, Billy and Buster and Great-grandmother. Plus Mr. Pluto. In the kitchen. In the parlor. All fourteen of us.

And Mr. Pluto living with us and settled in, Thomas went on. Well, it had taken awhile to convince him. But it’s something to hear him on the stairs in the morning! He and Great-grandmother Jeffers talking all the time, busy at things. The twins get a buggy ride each day. And I bet Pesty will just move in one day. She sleeps over some of the time already.

Look at it snow! Thomas sat there in the parlor in a straight chair next to the fireplace, facing Darrows. He had been looking out the long windows to calm himself. He thought about the only one who was missing: Mayhew Skinner. Mayhew had refused to come back to eat with Darrows. He’d be civil to them from a distance, he’d said over the phone, but he wasn’t going out of his way. Thank you anyhow.

Glad he hasn’t changed, Thomas thought. Maybe it’s good that somebody remembers what Darrows were once and might still be.

“About ten da-grees above,” he heard River Lewis Darrows tell Great-grandmother Jeffers, concerning the weather. Her voice tinkled back at him.

River Lewis Darrow’s tone was deep and bold, like formal bell rings, talking to his sons or Great-grandmother or Mattie. His was a cold sound to match his pearl gray Sunday suit. He was formal and stiff, just barely on the decent side of unfriendly the whole time he was in the house. Gruff out of habit. He couldn’t sit down but stood, a barrier to all concerned.

Mattie Darrow had refused sitting at the table that had been set. She had become agitated when anybody else tried to sit down. “She wants that set-up table to stay like a picture right where it is,” River Lewis said. He did not apologize for Mattie. He reached out with one hand and let his fingers touch her hair. “Miz Small, Mistah Small,” he said, looking down at the floor. “Mattie, glad ta be here. All us, too.”

Well, you sure don’t act like it, Thomas thought.

“We are certainly glad you all could come, and welcome!” Mrs. Small said, smiling warmly. “Come on, everybody, let’s all have a good time.”

Mattie then chose by herself where she would sit. “It doesn’t make a bit of difference where we eat,” Mrs. Small murmured.

Who knows the reason why Mattie Darrow is the way she is? Thomas thought.

His mama set the dinner as a buffet. Chicken and stuffing, potatoes, coleslaw, gravy. There were two baked ducks the Darrows had brought, which seemed out of place on an ordinary Sunday.

When was the last time I tasted duck? Thomas thought.

They all served themselves from the kitchen table. River Lewis kept his clumsy sons in line. When they filled their plates to heaping, he gave them a look, and they walked away from the table. When it was time for seconds, he stood by, staring hard at them. Wilbur, Russell, and River Ross Darrow were as meek as little lambs, pouring themselves milk or sparkling cider.

Whenever Thomas’s papa walked into the room to offer River Lewis some extra main course or fill his glass, Darrow backed up a pace or two. Now he was straight against the wall across from the parlor fireplace. Mattie sat on a cushioned footrest next to him. And beside her sat Great-grandmother, with the two little fellows in their rocking chairs right by their knees. Great-grandmother and Mattie were feeding the twins expertly. Billy and Buster didn’t find it odd that River Lewis was guarding the wall. Or that Mattie Darrow sometimes stared fiercely around, cackling.

All of them were in the parlor now. Thomas, Pesty, and Macky had fixed their plates right after the grownups. Pesty, Mrs. Small, and Mr. Pluto shared the parlor couch. Pesty was closest to Thomas. Mr. Small leaned against the wall next to River Lewis. Darrow’s sons moved away to make room for him. Once the sons were over being scared, they looked only halfway uncomfortable. But they ate everything in sight, Thomas noted, amused.

Thomas had a full plate of dinner in one hand and a warm roll in a yellow linen napkin on his knees. A glass of sparkling cider was next to his feet. His polished Sunday shoes weren’t scuffed yet. He had a fork in the other hand. Thomas could eat, chew. But he probably wouldn’t enjoy eating until he could eat the leftovers out of the refrigerator, after everybody strange had gone home.

“Macky, you bagged the ducks?” Mr. Small asked, commenting how good they were.

“Yes.”

“Yes, sir.” River Lewis corrected him, not unkindly, it seemed to Thomas.

“Yes … sir.” Macky looked surprised that his father had spoken to him. And he answered carefully to Mr. Small. “I brought them down as they went over– ducks like to fly from pond to pond around here.”

“He shot ’em clean,” River Lewis said. And Macky looked as if he would go through the ceiling from happiness.

All of us, looking nice, Thomas commented to himself. First time I’ve seen Pesty’s hair combed since the last Sunday at church, he thought. He told her it looked nice.

“Macky combed it. Mama told him how,” she told Thomas.

“Oh, girl!” Macky muttered.

Thomas smiled at him, to show him he understood how his mama’s hands might not always work right.

Macky sat on the other side of the hot fireplace from Thomas. “Looks like a department store in here,” Macky commented, talking about how dressed up they all were. That had broken the ice between him and Thomas. Made Thomas almost choke with the giggles. The two of them, big guys together. He unbuttoned his jacket and vest just the way Macky had. This was some Sunday! All dressed up together and nowhere to go.

Mr. Small made conversation as best he could. Rumors about Darrows were all over town and the college. Not just about the ten thousand dollars River Lewis and Mr. Pluto, too, had gotten. Rumor said that River Lewis had been hired by the foundation to show them the underground, all of it that he knew and his family had known over time.

As if on cue, River Lewis spoke. “Foundation given me a good job.” And partly unwillingly, he added, “I be thanking you for that, Mr. Small.”

Later Thomas and his papa found themselves in the kitchen alone, preparing coffee and coffee cake. Thomas waited for the dessert to warm up in a slow oven. He and his papa talked privately. “When the contents of the great cavern and the underground rooms are removed,” his papa said, “the cavern and the rooms are to be replicated. There is to be a museum for the Drear collections.”

“What does ‘replicated’ mean?” Thomas asked.

“It means to re-create,” his papa said. “The foundation will reproduce the cavern and the rooms on a smaller scale. And it will put back some of the treasure and the other things in the display.”

“Wow!” whispered Thomas.

“Yes, and the whole lot will look like a real underground, like the originals,” his papa said. “They might even have a figure of Drear at the desk, if they want to hoke it up a little. Then the museum will open to the public.”

“They’ll probably hire Pesty to play an orphan child,” Thomas said, half joking and half angry.

“Thomas, that isn’t nice.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s fair,” Thomas said. “They gave River Lewis a job. They gave him money. And even a couple of the gold triangles. That’s what everybody is saying anyway.”

“It’s up to the foundation to decide what it wants to give River Lewis,” Mr. Small said. “Who knows the countryside better than he? But they have asked him not to farm the land until they’ve emptied the underground.”

“Darrows have a brand-new pickup truck,” Thomas said. “And River Lewis has a new car. And his big old sons have a new jeep!”

“Keep your voice down,” Mr. Small told him. “Thomas, how can you resent their coming up in the world when they had nothing?”

“But it isn’t fair! What did you get?” he said.

“Oh, I see,” his papa said. “Well, I’m still cataloging everything, Thomas. And before there can be a museum, I’ll have to record the history of those rooms down there and all about the orphan children and the heroine, the Indian maiden. The foundation will pay me for my work, too.”

“I bet not as much as River Lewis gets,” Thomas said.

“Thomas, Thomas!” Mr. Small sighed and put his arm around Thomas. “Son, I’m a historian. I’m happy to save a great discovery from its worst enemies—time and greed. I’ve held the ‘villain’ in check. I’ve shown him I care about his welfare, and treat him like a friend. I’ve managed to help give him the possibility of a better lifetime. At least, to give him an even chance. Do you understand? And what River Lewis does with the rest of his days is up to him. And what you do with yours, Thomas, and Macky with his, is up to the both of you.”

Friend. Caring. Friend or foe? he wondered about himself and Macky.

Back in the parlor he had a piece of the cake and more cider. He felt Macky looking at him. Macky reached over and poked him in his arm. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, just slightly above the sound of the strained talking around them.

“Okay,” Thomas said as coolly as he could.

“Me, too?” Pesty leaned toward them, smiling at her brother.

“Yeah,” Macky murmured, “you, too, I guess.”

The three of them got up, hands full of plates, glasses, napkins. Macky went over to stand before River Lewis. “Daddy,” Macky said politely, “we wanting to go outside now.”

“Oh, that’s a good idea,” Great-grandmother said, smiling. “You-all walk around in the fresh air a few minutes, you’ll feel like my pumpkin pie!” She smiled at Macky and his father. “That coffee cake was just the appetizer!”

“Macs,” Mattie Darrow said, smacking her lips, “get more glass.” She held up her empty cider glass.

“I’ll get it for you,” River Lewis said. He nodded at Macky. “Find Pesty’s coat for her then. She don’t never want to wear a coat.” He lifted his voice, saying that. Looking around, including everybody in what he’d said. Thomas realized River Lewis wanted them to know that he had bought Pesty a new coat. “She grows so fast,” he added as Thomas and Macky came back in with just scarves and gloves on. Pesty had on her new velvet-looking coat. It was awfully pretty, Thomas thought, with gold buttons and a velvet hat to match. She certainly had needed a new coat. She stood in front of River Lewis as Mattie raised her hands to her.

“She wants you to button the top button,” River Lewis said, speaking for Mattie. Mattie touched Pesty’s gloved hands. “Says, ‘Don’t get too cold, don’t stay out too long,’” he added.

“I won’t,” Pesty said, her eyes shining. She took a deep breath of happiness, gave her mama a big hug, and buttoned her top coat button. She gave River Lewis a loving look. And this time he bowed to her just slightly. That small touch of respect spoke through his gruffness. Not only “things” were different. He does care, Thomas couldn’t help thinking.

“You look so pretty, Pesty,” Mrs. Small said. “That’s a beautiful coat,”

“Thank you,” she said.

River Lewis looked stern but proud.

Outside, it was cold. But it was better than the oppressive, uncomfortable scene inside. “I hope I don’t have to go through that again soon,” Martha Small was to say later.

“They were trying very hard,” Great-grandmother said, and Walter Small had agreed.

Thomas and Macky and Pesty walked around the house on the veranda. Thomas shivered. It still snowed. They leaned against the outside wall of the veranda between the long window and the front door. Pesty was in the middle. For a time they didn’t speak. Then, suddenly, Macky said, “Everybody talking to me, talking about how we rich. Shoot. We ain’t rich.” He laughed contemptuously. “We just now gettin’ what everybody else been having.”

“I … guess that’s true,” Thomas said. “What—what did the foundation give you all? I mean, there are such rumors.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said resentfully. “Everybody lying so.”

“Because he don’t know what they give Daddy besides a job. Daddy don’t tell nobody,” Pesty said.   ,

“Did they give him some triangles?” Thomas said.

“I said …” Macky spoke but didn’t finish. He sounded angry.

“Okay then,” Thomas said. He went tight inside as he said to Macky through his teeth. “It was you in Mr. Pluto’s cave, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, it was.” Pesty piped up.

“I can speak for myself!” Macky said, raising a hand to her.

“Mr. Pluto said you wasn’t to bother me!” she said, cringing toward Thomas.

“I’m not touching you. I’m not studying you!” Macky said. He let his hand drop. “Girl! I just can speak for myself.” He hung his head and was silent a long time. “Don’t tell anybody,” he said finally, looking at Thomas.

“It’s—it’s over now,” Thomas said.

“I was just hoping …”

“I know,” Thomas said.

“But that’s not all,” Macky said. He looked away.

“What then?” Thomas asked.

“Mama,” he said. “Worried about her doing something, didn’t know what. Didn’t want you-all Smalls to see her like she was.” He swallowed hard.

“Lots of people can get sick like her,” Thomas said.

“Well, I didn’t know you would think that,” Macky said softly.

“You and Pesty had the same idea,” Thomas said.

“How’s that?” Macky said.

“Because your mama was sick and your daddy was mad at you, you wanted to hurry and find treasure maybe to make it all better. That’s why you went ... to Mr. Pluto’s. Pesty wanted the same thing, kind of, because your mama was in the tunnels and in our house. She was afraid we’d see your mama or she’d get hurt, what all. But you didn’t know that there is a tunnel from your house to the underground.”

“No, I didn’t know that,” Macky said. “There is?”

“Mama’s closet opens to a tunnel,” Pesty said. “She love the orphan place and to sit in the parlor room down there. You better come see it before they empty it. Once they empty it, maybe we can fix it up for her a little. Mr. Small never did tell the foundation about that closet opening. You can tell Daddy if you want. Just don’t tell him I knew about it.”

Macky looked stunned.

“If you tell your dad about the tunnel from your house to Drear house,” Thomas said, puzzling it out, “well, he can tell the foundation.”

“And that’ll make Daddy real happy, because of you!” Pesty told him. “And he’ll look real good to the foundation. And everybody will know about everything.”

Macky nodded. “Thanks!” he said to both of them. He was silent again, looking at his feet, before he said, “Mama shouldn’ta been in the tunnels. It kept her down in an unreal world. I never want to see the place!” He’d seen the orphans’ room and the parlor room on television, and that was enough.

“Mama likes it down there,” Pesty said.

“Still,” Macky said, “it must’ve kept her too much in the past.”

“We should know about the past,” Thomas said, “but we shouldn’t let the past take us over.”

“You can’t live in it,” Macky said. “We got to try to change Mama’s mind about that.”

“Man, do things turn around fast!” Thomas said.

Macky shook his head with the mystery of it all. He walked to the edge of the veranda, stuck his face out, and looked up at the falling snow. It fell into his eyes. “Feels like I’m rising up,” he said.

Pesty followed and leaned her head out. “Just does feel like I’m uprising, too,” she said.

“It makes you dizzy,” Thomas said, coming over. He looked up, felt himself lifted into the snowflakes at a dizzying speed.

“Now what you think you-all doing?” Mr. Pluto said, coming out on the veranda. Nothing on his shoulders but his shirtsleeves. “Brrrr! Come on, they say it’s time for punkun pie and whip cream.”

“Oh, goody!” Pesty said.

“Look at it snow!” Mr. Pluto said. “Glad I don’t have to go home this night. Ha! Already home. Home with Mr. Drear, in his house! Ain’t that something?”

Thomas laughed, clearly seeing the past linked to the present: the Drear house alive with the living; all past struggles and troubles brought to light in the present. He nudged Macky as Pesty and Mr. Pluto went back inside. “Ghosts!” he murmured. They both laughed.

“You want to hunt tomorrow?” Macky asked him.

“Will the snow stop?”

“Might by then,” Macky said. “We’ll have to go farther out, off Drear land. And our land. The foundation folks want no hunting near or on their grounds.”

“Really?” Thomas said. “We can go as far as you want, after school.”

“Then, on Saturday, we can hunt all day.” Macky said.

Thomas felt his heart leap. “Okay!” he said.

He would follow Macky. Let him find a trail of something. Or let him shoot first, out over a pond somewhere—see how he bagged his birds.

I’ll bring some sandwiches, Thomas thought. And ice skates! Let him lead. For a while. It’ll be a long winter. Somewhere in it I’ll lead.

Friends take turns. He grinned like a kid at Macky’s broad back.

They went inside where it was warm.

A Biography of Virginia Hamilton

Virginia Hamilton (1934–2002) was the author of forty-one books for young readers and their older allies, including M.C. Higgins, the Great, which won the National Book Award, the Newbery Medal, and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, three of the most prestigious awards in youth literature. Hamilton’s many successful titles earned her numerous other awards, including the international Hans Christian Andersen Award, which honors authors who have made exceptional contributions to children’s literature, the Coretta Scott King Award, and a MacArthur Fellowship, or “Genius Award.”

Virginia Esther Hamilton was born in 1934 outside the college town of Yellow Springs, Ohio. She was the youngest of five children born to Kenneth James and Etta Belle Perry Hamilton. Her grandfather on her mother’s side, a man named Levi Perry, had been brought to the area as an infant probably through the Underground Railroad shortly before the Civil War. Hamilton grew up amid a large extended family in picturesque farmlands and forests. She loved her home and would end up spending much of her adult life in the area.

Hamilton excelled as a student and graduated at the top of her high school class, winning a full scholarship to Antioch College in Yellow Springs. Hamilton transferred to Ohio State University in nearby Columbus, Ohio, in order to study literature and creative writing. In 1958, she moved to New York City in hopes of publishing her fiction. During her early years in New York, she supported herself with jobs as an accountant, a museum receptionist, and even a nightclub singer. She took additional writing courses at the New School for Social Research and continued to meet other writers, including the poet Arnold Adoff, whom she married in 1960. The couple had two children, daughter Leigh in 1963 and son Jaime in 1967. In 1969, the family moved to Yellow Springs and built a new home on the old Perry-Hamilton farm. Here, Virginia and Arnold were able to devote more time to writing books.

Hamilton’s first published novel, Zeely, was published in 1967. Zeely was an instant success, winning a Nancy Bloch Award and earning recognition as an American Library Association Notable Children’s Book. After returning to Yellow Springs with her young family, Hamilton began to write and publish a book nearly every year. Though most of her writing targeted young adults or children, she experimented in a wide range of styles and genres. Her second book, The House of Dies Drear (1968), is a haunting mystery that won the Edgar Allan Poe Award. The Planet of Junior Brown (1971) and Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush (1982) rely on elements of fantasy and science fiction. Many of her titles focus on the importance of family, including M.C. Higgins, the Great (1974) and Cousins (1990). Much of Hamilton’s work explores African American history, such as her fictionalized account Anthony Burns: The Defeat and Triumph of a Fugitive Slave (1988).

Hamilton passed away in 2002 after a long battle with breast cancer. She is survived by her husband Arnold Adoff and their two children.

For further information, please visit Hamilton’s updated and comprehensive website: www.virginiahamilton.com

A twelve-year-old Hamilton in 1948, when she was in the seventh grade.

Hamilton at a New York City club while she was a student at Antioch College in the mid-1950s. She often performed as a folk and jazz vocalist in clubs and larger venues.

Hamilton with her brothers, Buster and Bill, and sisters, Barbara and Nina, around 1954.

Hamilton’s head shots. The first was taken while she was a teenager in the early 1950s. The second was taken in her New York City apartment in the late 1960s, before she and Adoff built their house in Yellow Springs.

Hamilton outside of her first New York City apartment, which she shared with Adoff, around 1960. The couple moved to a below-street-level single room on Jane Street and, Adoff says, “thought we were such hot stuff, living in the Village and taking our places in that wonderful and long line of writers banging their heads against the wall . . . but in style.”

Adoff and Hamilton in Gibraltar in 1960, after a hard day of shopping and climbing the rock seen in the photo. As Adoff recalls, “This was the first time I convinced Virginia to sell everything but the books and leave America forever. It was also our delayed honeymoon. We made our way from Bremen to Paris to Málaga to a residency in Torremolinos, Spain, where we worked on our manuscripts and took side trips. This was one of them.”

Taken in 1965 in Argelès-plage, France, this photo shows the building where Hamilton and Adoff rented an apartment during what Adoff calls their “second time leaving America forever . . .”

Hamilton, Jaime, and Leigh at a reception at the Yellow Springs Public Library in 1975 after she received the Newbery Medal.

Hamilton at the publication party for Jaguarundi. She attended hundreds of conferences and book signings at schools and libraries around the country as each of her books was published.

Hamilton, Adoff, Leigh, and Jaime at Leigh’s wedding in Berlin in 2001.

Hamilton on Thanksgiving in 2001. This photo was taken by her niece, Nina Rios, a professional photographer, after Hamilton’s last round of chemotherapy, only a few months before her death.

All photos © 2011 by the Arnold Adoff Revocable Living Trust. Used by permission. Portrait courtesy of Jimmy Byrge.