With my large midnight blue mug, the one with cream and brown glaze dripping down the sides, filled with fresh coffee, I sat down to translate the page. When I was finished I had the following two lists: Important, Fun. In the Important list the following words were crossed out with dates beside them: notebook, paper, backpack, jeans, jacket, angel, new tire. Below that, not crossed out, were: washing machine, sisters.
The list headed Fun contained three items, none of which were struck through: skateboard, baseball glove, X-Box.
My first reaction was that this must be a very determined young person to be saving money for such a long list, and secondly I thought it sad that he hadn't bought anything from the fun list. Except for the angel, it seemed like a list a boy would make. I finished my coffee and headed for the living room. My plans were to spend the day attaching board-and-bead wainscoting around the walls, which I'd painted a light Wedgewood blue, with one end wall a slightly deeper shade. The wainscoting was going to be white. I'm handy with tools, and except for big projects, I was trying to do as much of the work on my house as I could without help.
As the day wore on, thoughts of the boy with the bank in the hollow tree kept crowding into my mind. The dates beside the entries led me to believe he'd been keeping money here since last fall when he'd bought school supplies and clothes. I wondered why he'd bought a tire-for the family car? The angel had me completely stumped, as did "sisters."
I thought school was still in session, and I called a friend, Adele, to confirm it. Adele owns a store in Cherry Hill, the seat of Forest County. Her family business is Volger's Grocery. She's a kindhearted and generous widow, but she loves to know everyone's business. I didn't want to tell her what I had found, but I knew she would have the information I needed. I punched in the number of the store.
"Volger's Grocery. How may I help you?"
"Hi Adele, this is Ana Raven."
"Ana! What are you up to?"
"Working on my house. Say, do you know what date school lets out? It must be soon."
"The last day is the 20th, the end of this week. Why?"
I had to think fast. "Oh, I might want to hire a boy to help me haul some trash out of the woods," I temporized.
"You remember Bella Hanford?" Adele asked.
"Sure," I said. I had gotten to know Bella just a couple of weeks previously. "But she's too small for what I have in mind." I didn't really have anything in mind, but there was that old manure spreader I wasn't sure how to get rid of…
"Not her. Her older brother, Thad, does odd jobs sometimes. Do you want me to talk to him?"
"No, no! I'm… um… just working on a list. I can call when I'm ready. But thanks for the tip."
"No trouble. Would you like to come to church on Sunday? The coffee and singing are good, and the sermon usually is too."
"I haven't been to church in years, Adele!"
"No better time to start."
"I'll think about it."
"OK, take care."
A little before three, I cleaned up the mess in the living room, took a plastic garbage bag and my binoculars and walked back to the old deer blind. The bag was to sit on. I knew I'd need to stay low to the ground to be hidden well enough from a human. By three-thirty, I was in place. By four-thirty, I was stiff as a board. No one had come to the tree. I was just thinking about taking a chance on standing up to stretch when an old bicycle with only one gear rolled down the mostly forgotten lane. I lifted the binoculars to my eyes so I could see more details. The bike had two plastic milk crates fastened to it, one on the handlebars, and the other on a rack over the back wheel. In the front crate I could see a number of shiny tin cans.
Peddling the bike was a thin boy with fair skin and black straight hair that fell into his dark eyes. He looked to be about ten years old. He glanced around, but didn't see me; then he pulled the bag from the tree. It looked like he put some money into the envelope, but I didn't see him add any marks to the paper. He quickly flung the bag back through the hole and pedaled off. My suspicions were confirmed, but I had no idea what to do about it. It wasn't any of my business, but I thought if I'd found the money that easily, someone else might, too. And, someone else might be perfectly willing to steal what was now more than $57.00. This boy was clearly worried about having the money taken by someone. Why else would he hide it so far away from where he lived? There were no houses within several miles of mine.
Giving the boy plenty of time to get away, I waited another twenty minutes before rising stiffly and returning home. I wanted to sleep on this puzzle.
The next morning, Wednesday, I awoke with the conviction that I should try to talk to the boy, and decided I'd wait in the woods near South River Road. If I could find a good enough place of concealment, I would see when he rode down the old lane, and then stop him when he came out again. I left the house at two-thirty to give myself plenty of time to find a hiding place. I finally settled on crouching behind some honeysuckle bushes that were already fairly dense with leaves. It wasn't great, but it was the best I could do. This day, I brought a book, which made the wait more tolerable. I hunkered down behind the bushes till five o'clock, but no one at all, not a bicycle, a car, or a stray cat, came down the road. That was the normal amount of traffic on my back road.
I repeated my plan on Thursday, but this time, it worked. I watched the boy bike down the lane at four-thirty-nine-even with a book to read this was boring enough that I was counting the minutes. As soon as he was out of sight, I stepped out on the dirt road to wait for him. I managed to partially hide myself behind a tree. After a bit he came pedaling back, struggling slowly over the uneven ground, and I stepped out directly in front of him, and grabbed the crate fastened to the front of the handlebars. I had to step back hard to stop the bike, but he had been moving so slowly it wasn't really difficult.
"Hey, lady!" he yelled, planting his feet on the ground. "What the f… heck do you think you're doing?"
"I want to know who you are." I said. "I just bought the house down the road."
"I know that. Everybody knows that. Are you going to try to keep people out of the woods?" He put his head down and worked the handlebars from side to side in an effort to shake off my grip.
"No, I can't do that. This isn't my property," I said. "I'll let you go, if you promise not to ride away. I just want to talk to you."
"All right," he said, but he didn't look happy. I released my grip, and he didn't ride off, but he did continue to glare.
"What's your name?" I began, but all I got in response was silence. "OK, how old are you?"
"Thirteen."
I lowered my eyebrows and pulled my lips tight.
"Well, twelve," he said, glancing sideways at something that might have been in the trees. But he did not try to pedal away. He was very small for twelve.
"Won't you tell me your name?" I continued more gently. "I'm Ana Raven. Not Anna, Ana, it rhymes with Mama." A film of tears suddenly sparkled in the boy's eyes. Something there had struck a nerve. "Do you have a mom?" I asked gently.
The boy nodded in the affirmative.
"Please tell me who you are. I'm not going to hurt you at all. If we are neighbors we should get acquainted. I didn't mean to frighten you, but I thought you'd ride away if I only called to you."
"I'm Jimmie Mosher," he admitted, as if it were the name of a criminal.
"Jimmie Moser!" I couldn't keep the surprise from my voice. That's the name of a boy who used to live in my house. "
"That was my grandfather. I'm named for him." For a moment a bit of pride shone in his eyes in contradiction to the hangdog look of a moment ago, but then one of the tears spilled out and ran down his cheek. Jimmie ducked his head again to hide the supposed weakness from me and wiped his cheek against the shoulder of his t-shirt.
"Where do you live?"
"Over on Alder."
I racked my brain to remember houses on Alder. It was only a mile away, another dirt road, but I couldn't picture an
y homes there at all. "Do you want to come to my place for some milk and cookies?" I asked. I thought I had some cheap sandwich cookies in the cupboard. My enthusiasm for shopping is low.
"Uh, no. I gotta go," Jimmie said.
"Jimmie, I have to tell you something."
He looked at me warily and fidgeted. "What?"
"I found your secret."
"Oh, hell! Now I gotta move it. It's hard to find good trees."
"You're pretty young for that kind of language," I said sternly. I was glad he ducked his head so he didn't see me trying to hide a smile. "I won't bother it, but don't you think it would be too easy for anyone to find? I'm sure there are hunters here in the fall."
"Now too," Jimmie said. "Turkeys. But no one found it before you."
"How did you get that much money?"
"I didn't do nothin' wrong!" His head came up and his dark eyes blazed in the pale face.
"I don't think you did. You seem very resourceful to me." I glanced at the basket of cans, and saw there were also chunks of other metal besides aluminum.
"I pick up metal and sell it to the scrap yard," Jimmie admitted.
"That seems like a hard way to earn very much money," I said.
He shrugged. "I'm too young to get a real job."
"I have some things you could do to help me. I even have some old metal trash behind my house that needs to be hauled away. What if you did the hard work and we put the scrap in my Jeep to carry it, but then you could keep the money? I'll pay you something for the time,
The Hollow Tree at Dead Mule Swamp Page 3
