Tuck Everlasting

by Natalie Babbitt

  Winnie clutched her pole, sitting sidewise in the stern, and watched the baited hook sink slowly down. A dragonfly, a brilliant blue jewel, darted up and paused over the lily pads, then swung up and away. From the nearest bank, a bullfrog spoke.

  “There certainly are a lot of frogs around here,” Winnie observed.

  “That’s so,” said Miles. “They’ll keep coming, too, long as the turtles stay away. Snappers, now, they’ll eat a frog soon as look at him.”

  Winnie thought about this peril to the frogs, and sighed. “It’d be nice,” she said, “if nothing ever had to die.”

  “Well, now, I don’t know,” said Miles. “If you think on it, you come to see there’d be so many creatures, including people, we’d all be squeezed in right up next to each other before long.”

  Winnie squinted at her fishing line and tried to picture a teeming world. “Mmm,” she said, “yes, I guess you’re right.”

  Suddenly the cane pole jerked in her hands and bent into an arch, its tip dragged down nearly to the water’s surface. Winnie held on tight to the handle, her eyes wide.

  “Hey!” cried Miles. “Look there! You got a bite. Fresh trout for breakfast, Winnie.”

  But just as suddenly the pole whipped straight again and the line went slack. “Shucks,” said Miles. “It got away.”

  “I’m kind of glad,” Winnie admitted, easing her rigid grip on the butt of the pole. “You fish, Miles. I’m not so sure I want to.”

  And so they drifted for a little longer. The sky was blue and hard now, the last of the mist dissolved, and the sun, stepping higher above the trees, was hot on Winnie’s back. The first week of August was reasserting itself after a good night’s sleep. It would be another searing day.

  A mosquito appeared and sat down on Winnie’s knee. She slapped at it absently, thinking about what Miles had said. If all the mosquitoes lived forever—and if they kept on having babies!—it would be terrible. The Tucks were right. It was best if no one knew about the spring, including the mosquitoes. She would keep the secret. She looked at Miles, and then she asked him, “What will you do, if you’ve got so much time?”

  “Someday,” said Miles, “I’ll find a way to do something important.”

  Winnie nodded. That was what she wanted.

  “The way I see it,” Miles went on, “it’s no good hiding yourself away, like Pa and lots of other people. And it’s no good just thinking of your own pleasure, either. People got to do something useful if they’re going to take up space in the world.”

  “But what will you do?” Winnie persisted.

  “I don’t know yet,” said Miles. “I ain’t had no schooling or nothing, and that makes it harder.” Then he set his jaw and added, “I’ll find a way, though. I’ll locate something.”

  Winnie nodded. She reached out and ran her fingers across a lily pad that lay on the water beside the boat. It was warm and very dry, like a blotter, but near its center was a single drop of water, round and perfect. She touched the drop and brought her fingertip back wet; but the drop of water, though it rolled a little, remained as round and perfect as before.

  And then Miles caught a fish. There it flopped, in the bottom of the boat, its jaw working, its gills fanning rapidly. Winnie drew up her knees and stared at it. It was beautiful, and horrible too, with gleaming, rainbow-colored scales, and an eye like a marble beginning to dim even as she watched it. The hook was caught in its upper lip, and suddenly Winnie wanted to weep. “Put it back, Miles,” she said, her voice dry and harsh. “Put it back right away.”

  Miles started to protest, and then, looking at her face, he picked up the trout and gently worked the barbed hook free. “All right, Winnie,” he said. He dropped the fish over the edge of the boat. It flipped its tail and disappeared under the lily pads.

  “Will it be all right?” asked Winnie, feeling foolish and happy both at once.

  “It’ll be all right,” Miles assured her. And then he said, “People got to be meat-eaters sometimes, though. It’s the natural way. And that means killing things.”

  “I know,” said Winnie weakly. “But still.”

  “Yes,” said Miles. “I know.”

  18

  And so there were flapjacks again for breakfast, but no one seemed to mind. “Didn’t get a bite, eh?” said Mae.

  “No,” said Miles, “nothing we wanted to keep.”

  That was true, anyway. And though Winnie blushed as he said it, she was grateful that he didn’t explain.

  “Never mind,” said Mae. “You’re likely out of practice. Tomorrow, maybe.”

  “Sure,” said Miles. “Tomorrow.”

  But it was the thought of seeing Jesse again that kept Winnie’s stomach fluttering. And at last he came down from the loft, yawning and rosy, rubbing his curls, just as Mae was piling the plates with flapjacks. “Well, slug-a-bed,” she said to him fondly. “You come near to missing breakfast. Miles and Winnie been up for hours, out fishing and back already.”

  “Oh?” said Jesse, his eyes on Miles. “Where’s the fish, then? How come we got nothing but flapjacks?”

  “No luck,” said Mae. “They wasn’t biting, for some reason.”

  “Reason is, Miles don’t know how to fish,” said Jesse. He grinned at Winnie and she lowered her eyes, her heart thumping.

  “It don’t matter,” said Mae. “We got plenty without. Come and get your plates, everybody.”

  They sat about in the parlor, as they had the night before. The ceiling swam with bright reflections, and sunlight streamed across the dusty, chip-strewn floor. Mae surveyed it all and sighed contentedly. “Now, this is real nice,” she said, her fork poised above her plate. “Everyone sitting down together. And having Winnie here—why, it’s just like a party.”

  “That’s the truth,” said Jesse and Miles both together, and Winnie felt a rush of happiness.

  “Still, we got things to discuss,” Tuck reminded them. “There’s the business of the horse getting stole. And we got to get Winnie home where she belongs. How we going to do that without the horse?”

  “After breakfast, Tuck,” said Mae firmly. “Don’t spoil a good meal with a lot of talk. We’ll get to it soon enough.”

  So they were silent, eating, and this time Winnie licked the syrup from her fingers without pausing to think about it first. Her fears at last night’s supper seemed silly to her now. Perhaps they were crazy, but they weren’t criminals. She loved them. They belonged to her.

  Tuck said, “How’d you sleep, child?”

  And she answered, “Just fine,” and wished, for a fleeting moment, that she could stay with them forever in that sunny, untidy little house by the pond. Grow up with them and perhaps, if it was true about the spring—then perhaps, when she was seventeen…She glanced at Jesse, where he sat on the floor, his curly head bent over his plate. Then she looked at Miles. And then her eyes went to Tuck and lingered on his sad, creased face. It occurred to her that he was the dearest of them all, though she couldn’t have explained why she felt that way.

  However, there wasn’t time to wonder, for at that moment someone knocked at the door.

  It was such an alien sound, so sudden and surprising, that Mae dropped her fork, and everyone looked up, startled. “Who’s that?” said Tuck.

  “I can’t imagine,” whispered Mae. “We ain’t never had callers in all the years we been here.”

  The knock came again.

  “I’ll go, Ma,” said Miles.

  “No, stay where you are,” she said. “I’ll go.” She put her plate down carefully on the floor and stood up, straightening her skirts. Then she went to the kitchen and opened the door.

  Winnie recognized the voice at once. It was a rich and pleasant voice. The man in the yellow suit. And he was saying, “Good morning, Mrs. Tuck. It is Mrs. Tuck, isn’t it. May I come in?”

  19

  The man in the yellow suit came into the sunlit parlor. He stood for a moment, looking around at them all, Mae and Miles and Jesse and
Tuck, and Winnie, too. His face was without expression, but there was something unpleasant behind it that Winnie sensed at once, something that made her instantly suspicious. And yet his voice was mild when he said, “You’re safe now, Winifred. I’ve come to take you home.”

  “We was going to bring her back directly, ourself,” said Tuck, standing up slowly. “She ain’t been in no danger.”

  “You’re Mr. Tuck, I suppose,” said the man in the yellow suit.

  “I am,” said Tuck formally, his back straighter than usual.

  “Well, you may as well sit down again. You, too, Mrs. Tuck. I have a great deal to say and very little time for saying it.”

  Mae sat down on the edge of the rocker, and Tuck sat, too, but his eyes were narrowed.

  Jesse said, uneasily, “Who in tarnation do you think you—”

  But Tuck interrupted. “Hush, boy. Let him speak his piece.”

  “That’s wise,” said the man in the yellow suit. “I’ll be as brief as possible.” He took off his hat and laid it on the mantel, and then he stood tapping his foot on the littered hearth, facing them. His face was smooth and empty. “I was born west of here,” he began, “and all the time I was growing up, my grandmother told me stories. They were wild, unbelievable stories, but I believed them. They involved a dear friend of my grandmother’s who married into a very odd family. Married the older of two sons, and they had two children. It was after the children were born that she began to see that the family was odd. This friend of my grandmother’s, she lived with her husband for twenty years, and strange to say, he never got any older. She did, but he didn’t. And neither did his mother or his father or his brother. People began to wonder about that family, and my grandmother’s friend decided at last that they were witches, or worse. She left her husband and came with her children to live at my grandmother’s house for a short while. Then she moved west. I don’t know what became of her. But my mother still remembers playing with the children. They were all about the same age. There was a son, and a daughter.”

  “Anna!” whispered Miles.

  Mae burst out, “You got no call to come and bring us pain!”

  And Tuck added roughly, “You got something to say, you better come to the point and say it.”

  “There, there, now,” said the man in the yellow suit. He spread his long, white fingers in a soothing gesture. “Hear me out. As I’ve told you, I was fascinated by my grandmother’s stories. People who never grew older! It was fantastic. It took possession of me. I decided to devote my life to finding out if it could be true, and if so, how and why. I went to school, I went to a university, I studied philosophy, metaphysics, even a little medicine. None of it did me any good. Oh, there were ancient legends, but nothing more. I nearly gave it up. It began to seem ridiculous, and a waste of time. I went home. My grandmother was very old by then. I took her a present one day, a music box. And when I gave it to her, it reminded her of something: the woman, the mother of the family that didn’t grow old, she had had a music box.”

  Mae’s hand went to the pocket of her skirt. Her mouth opened, and then she shut it again with a snap.

  “That music box played a very particular tune,” the man in the yellow suit went on. “My grandmother’s friend and her children—Anna? Was that the daughter’s name?—they’d heard it so often that they knew it by heart. They’d taught it to my mother during the short time they lived in the house. We talked about it then, all those years afterward, my mother, my grandmother, and I. My mother was able to remember the melody, finally. She taught it to me. That was nearly twenty years ago now, but I kept it in my head. It was a clue.”

  The man in the yellow suit folded his arms and rocked a little. His voice was easy, almost friendly. “During those twenty years,” he said, “I worked at other things. But I couldn’t forget the tune or the family that didn’t grow older. They haunted my dreams. So a few months ago I left my home and I started out to look for them, following the route they were said to have taken when they left their farm. No one I asked along the way knew anything. No one had heard of them, no one recognized their name. But two evenings ago, I heard that music box, I heard that very tune, and it was coming from the Fosters’ wood. And next morning early, I saw the family at last, taking Winifred away. I followed, and I heard their story, every word.”

  Mae’s face drained of color. Her mouth hung open. And Tuck said hoarsely, “What you going to do?”

  The man in the yellow suit smiled. “The Fosters have given me the wood,” he said. “In exchange for bringing Winifred home. I was the only one who knew where she was, you see. So it was a trade. Yes, I followed you, Mrs. Tuck, and then I took your horse and went directly back.”

  The tension in the parlor was immense. Winnie found that she could scarcely breathe. It was true, then! Or was the man who stood there crazy, too?

  “Horse thief!” cried Tuck. “Get to the point! What you going to do?”

  “It’s very simple,” said the man in the yellow suit. And, as he said this, the smoothness of his face began to loosen a little. A faint flush crept up his neck, and the pitch of his voice lifted, became a fraction higher. “Like all magnificent things, it’s very simple. The wood—and the spring—belong to me now.” He patted his breast pocket. “I have a paper here, all signed and legal, to prove it. I’m going to sell the water, you see.”

  “You can’t do that!” roared Tuck. “You got to be out of your mind!”

  The man in the yellow suit frowned. “But I’m not going to sell it to just anybody,” he protested. “Only to certain people, people who deserve it. And it will be very, very expensive. But who wouldn’t give a fortune to live forever?”

  “I wouldn’t,” said Tuck grimly.

  “Exactly,” said the man in the yellow suit. His eyes glowed. “Ignorant people like you should never have the opportunity. It should be kept for…certain others. And for me. However, since it’s already too late to keep you out, you may as well join me in what I’m going to do. You can show me where the spring is and help me to advertise. We’ll set up demonstrations. You know—things that would be fatal to anybody else, but won’t affect you in the least. I’ll pay for your assistance, of course. It won’t take long for the word to spread. And then you can go your way. Well, what do you say?”

  Jesse said dully, “Freaks. You want us to be freaks. In a patent-medicine show.”

  The man in the yellow suit raised his eyebrows and a nervous petulance came into his voice. “Of course, if the idea doesn’t appeal to you,” he said, blinking rapidly, “you needn’t be in on it. I can find the spring and manage just as well without you. But it seemed the gentlemanly thing to make the offer. After all,” he added, looking round at the cluttered room, “it would mean you could afford to live like people again, instead of pigs.”

  And that was when the tension burst. All four Tucks sprang to their feet at once, while Winnie, very frightened, shrank back in her chair. Tuck cried, “You’re a madman! A loony! You can’t let no one know about that water. Don’t you see what would happen?”

  “I’ve given you your chance,” shrilled the man in the yellow suit, “and you’ve refused it.” He seized Winnie roughly by the arm and dragged her up out of her chair. “I’ll take the child, and be on about my business.”

  Tuck began to rave now, his face stretched with horror. “Madman!” he shouted. And Miles and Jesse began to shout, too. They crowded after as the man in the yellow suit dragged Winnie through the kitchen to the door.

  “No!” she was screaming, for now at last she hated him. “I won’t go with you! I won’t!”

  But he opened the door and pushed her out in front of him. His eyes were like blind firepoints, his face was twisted.

  Then the shouting behind them stopped abruptly, and in the midst of the sudden silence came Mae’s voice, flat and cold. “You leave that child be,” she said.

  Winnie stared. Mae was standing just outside the doorway. She held Tuck’s long-forgotten s
hotgun by the barrel, like a club.

  The man in the yellow suit smiled a ghastly smile. “I can’t think why you’re so upset. Did you really believe you could keep that water for yourselves? Your selfishness is really quite extraordinary, and worse than that, you’re stupid. You could have done what I’m about to do, long ago. Now it’s too late. Once Winifred drinks some of the water, she’ll do just as well for my demonstrations. Even better. Children are much more appealing, anyway. So you may as well relax. There’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

  But he was wrong. Mae lifted the shotgun. Behind her, Miles gasped, “Ma! No!”

  But Mae’s face was dark red. “Not Winnie!” she said between clenched teeth. “You ain’t going to do a thing like that to Winnie. And you ain’t going to give out the secret.” Her strong arms swung the shotgun round her head, like a wheel. The man in the yellow suit jerked away, but it was too late. With a dull cracking sound, the stock of the shotgun smashed into the back of his skull. He dropped like a tree, his face surprised, his eyes wide open. And at that very moment, riding through the pine trees just in time to see it all, came the Treegap constable.

  20

  Winnie was standing with her cheek pressed into Tuck’s chest, her arms flung tight around him. She trembled, and kept her eyes squeezed shut. She could feel Tuck’s breath come and go in little gasps. It was very quiet.