by L. L. Samson
“Why?” she shot back as she braided her hair for church.
At first they started attending All Souls to be nice to Father Lou. But combine the fact that a former tough-guy priest seasoned his sermons with humor and exciting stories of catching criminals with the fact that ninety percent of the members were over seventy and passed them candies throughout the service, who wouldn’t go back?
Ophelia turned from the bathroom mirror to face her brother, her arms now crossed in front of her and her brown eyes glittering with a challenge. “Are you questioning my teaching methods?”
Tom flushed the toilet again.
“You’re not a teacher!” Linus said.
Tom looked up from that fascinating swirl of water. “You ain’t?”
“Aren’t.”
Linus groaned. “Come on! Just knock it off, already!” He blew a great gust of air between his lips. “Tom. Aren’t you getting sick of being corrected all the time?”
“Aww … Ophelia don’t mean nothing by it, I suspect.”
Ophelia opened her mouth, then closed it.
“Thanks,” said Linus.
“How can you stand listening to him, Linus?” she asked.
“Hey! That ain’t nice!” said Tom.
“Look, Ophelia. Use your head! He’s going to say it regardless. But we won’t have to listen to you anymore. Give the kid a break, why don’t you?”
Tears welled in Ophelia’s eyes. “I like you a whole lot better when you keep your own mouth shut, Linus.” She pushed past him, beat a path to her room, and slammed the door.
Tom let out a low whistle. “She’s worse than Sid, I tell you.”
“Who’s Sid?”
“My little brother. We live with our Aunt Polly. He’s a snitch and a sissy, and I don’t like having him around.”
Well, at least Ophelia isn’t as bad as all that, thought Linus.
“What about it, Tom?” he asked. “Can you clean up your grammar a little? You don’t use ain’t when you’re composing sentences in school, do you?”
Tom shook his head. “‘Course not.”
“Start there. That should take care of half of the problems at least.”
“I’ll try. I reckon I can do that if I think hard enough.”
“Thanks. You ready for church?”
Tom’s face bloomed with a mild freak-out (it’s in the dictionary, folks). “Where’s my coat? I got to find them tickets! I got to win me that Bible!”
“What are you talking about?” asked Linus. Nobody at All Souls had ever won a Bible that he’d ever seen. Maybe Tom knew something about church matters that he didn’t. Linus shrugged. “Your coat is up in the attic. I’ll get it for you.”
Linus, drawing all over the handout they’d received on their way into the sanctuary, gave Tom permission to do the same. While Linus sketched out his ideas for a more aerodynamic wing for what he now realized could be a flying machine for the masses, Tom wrote “Becky” over and over. Ophelia jotted down notes on the sermon. (Yes, my dears, she is that person.) And Walter tried not to fall asleep. Everyone enjoyed the candy.
After the final prayer, Tom leaned over to Walter. “When can we show our tickets?”
“What tickets, mate?”
Tom dug down into his coat pocket and pulled out a handful of blue, yellow, and red tickets. “They’re for memorizing Bible verses.”
“You’ve memorized that many? Brilliant!” Walter whispered. As competitive as most boys his age, he was intrigued. “Any of the others come close to having that many tickets?”
“Not a one.” Tom grinned like the Cheshire Cat. (From Alice in Wonderland, another allusion.)
Ophelia heard the entire conversation. Walter, not having read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, couldn’t have known that Tom had traded other valuable objects, such as licorice, fish hooks, and marbles, for tickets earned by the other children. She couldn’t wait to see what Father Lou was going to do with this one!
She waited until the priest bade a pleasant good-bye to the last parishioner in the queue (it means “line,” and it’s pronounced cue) that always formed immediately after the service ended.
“Father Lou, this is Tom Sawyer.”
“Is it now?” He smiled, unperturbed (not surprised). He’d become aware of the enchanted circle back when Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame, had journeyed from medieval France to the attic on Rickshaw Street. And he’d lent a hand on all of the adventures that had taken place since. “How are you, Tom? How was the journey?”
Tom jerked his eyes to Walter who nodded. “It’s all right, mate. Father Lou knows what’s what. We can trust him not to blather about it.”
The older lads excused themselves and went outside. Not so Ophelia.
“I reckon it was just fine,” answered Tom.
“He was asleep,” Ophelia said. “Have you read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Father Lou?”
“It was one of my favorites as a boy. I read my copy until it fell apart.”
“Tom’s got something to show you.”
Tom’s face reddened. “It don’t matter.”
“No. Go on.” Ophelia hoped to teach Tom a lesson about cheating, honesty, and general deception.
“It’s just these stupid old things.” Tom slowly pulled a handful of tickets from his pocket and held them out to the priest.
Father Lou’s eyes met Ophelia’s then returned to Tom’s face. “How many verses do these count for?”
“At least a hundred, I reckon.” Tom’s feet suddenly seemed very interesting to him.
“Do you want the Bible or just to be the winner?”
“The winner,” said Tom.
Father Lou knelt in front of Tom. “You took a lot of trouble to be the winner.”
“I reckon so.”
“Do you feel like a winner, Tom?”
“No, sir. I sure don’t.” He cocked his head. “You’re a heap nicer ‘n the preacher back home, you know that?”
Father Lou laughed and stood up. “In any case—” he reached behind him to a table covered with Bibles and hymn-books. He slid a Bible off the stack and placed it in Tom’s hands “—some things should just be free. Take it and keep your tickets. Now let’s go eat. Do you like roast beef?”
“Yes indeed, sir.”
“Then follow me.”
Ophelia plodded several steps behind the rest of them to the manse (a house provided by the church for their clergy). She felt ashamed of herself. Intent on teaching Tom a lesson, she’d forgotten what it meant to be kind.
nine
Some People Still Set Foot in Libraries
or You Can’t Find Everything on the Internet, Though Some Might Beg to Differ
I love a good library, don’t you? There’s nothing quite like stacks and stacks of shelves surrounding you while everyone else keeps quiet. With a bottle of hand sanitizer handy, it’s possible to while away an entire day without a frenzy of horrible scenarios of pestilence and plague infiltrating one’s every thought.
Not only that, but everyone’s welcome in the library, one of the few places left that a person can visit voluntarily and feel comfortable. Those coffee shops near the university could learn a thing or two from their public librarian. But then, couldn’t we all?
So Ophelia felt contented on that Sunday afternoon while perusing (looking through) volumes she’d located in the Local History section of the old stone building on Cooper Street. She wondered if the tunnels were built for the Underground Railroad, the people in the connected houses providing safe harbor until the escaped slaves, now free men and women, could be conducted further inland to work on farms, or further north for jobs in the mills and factories, and be paid for their services.
But would such a labyrinth of tunnels be necessary? she wondered, flipping through old books with titles such as Kingscross, a Local History and The Founding of Kingscross and Kingscross, a Pictorial Retrospective.
Ophelia lingered with that last one, leafing slowly through th
e pages as Kingscross, via portraits, drawings, woodcuts, and photographs, transformed from a country village into a thriving university township.
She spotted portraits of Madrigal Pierce’s family, noting the strong resemblance that Madrigal still bore to her ancestors. The two pages dedicated to the family spoke volumes. They arrived from England in the early 1700s having been given a land grant by the King of England. (A royal land grant is a big deal and normally includes more acreage than even the wealthiest of people own nowadays.)
So all that’s left is the school? Ophelia asked herself. How does a family descend from such vast wealth to Madge desperately trying to maintain the family townhome and keep the school afloat?
One portrait among all the others trapped her gaze. An Aloysius Pierce looked out from the page and across a hundred years, right into Ophelia’s eyes. Something about him disquieted her soul. In other words, he made her feel funny inside, like when you know something isn’t as it should be, but you can’t ascertain (figure out) why. Or you do know why, you just don’t understand, nor do you wish to.
Was he a bad man? Was he just sad? Was he in trouble?
She searched through the computer catalogue for all available references concerning the man, but it only yielded the book she had already viewed in an off-hand passage in Kingscross across the Centuries:
Aloysius Pierce, creating perhaps the greatest mystery of the family and certainly Kingscross at that time, disappeared on January 29, 1911. What happened to him has never been determined.
That was all. She could find nothing else. Apparently a visit to Madge was in order.
Ophelia gathered up her determination and her notes and hurried back to Rickshaw Street to interview Madrigal Pierce. Surely if anybody knew anything about the Pierce family history and its unsolved mystery, it would be the only one who seemed to care.
Linus, in the meantime, returned to the attic hoping that Cato Grubbs had responded to his communiqué. Indeed, he had. Cato is very diligent about that sort of thing.
Dear Cousin,
Why would I take everyday items from Kingscross? Unless, of course, they originally came from Book World. That could be a possibility, could it not? You don’t think the enchanted circle was first discovered by yours truly, do you?
Linus had thought precisely that, actually. Hmm. Poor assumption, he realized.
By the by, young cousin. What possessed your sister to bring Tom Sawyer through? I could go back and filch the treasure, but that seems like stealing candy from a baby. Do me a favor next time and consider my business when you make these decisions. We might arrange a small finder’s fee from the proceeds. It takes money to run a lab like ours, and don’t forget it.
Your cousin,
Cato Grubbs
Cato had created quite a market for the objects he pilfered from Book World. Who was buying them, the trio didn’t know; but the man took his venture seriously. While Linus tried to perfect the formula for bringing over material goods and keeping them from disappearing, Cato Grubbs, in his fancy ruffled shirts and brightly colored vests, traipsed through the pages of literature gathering all manner of valuables.
Linus hit his head with the heel of his hand. “Idiot!”
If Cato Grubbs had to travel into Book World himself to bring back objects, intact and permanent, it was because he’d never discovered the formula that Linus was seeking!
Linus realized he had two choices: continue on as before, realizing that he was breaking new ground, or figure out Cato’s secret for traveling through the acids between the worlds at will.
“What is it?” asked Clarice, working on her geometry homework.
Linus explained his conundrum (puzzle) to her.
“Do you have to choose? Why not do both?” she asked.
Linus grinned. She returned the favor.
My dears, when you find someone who believes in you that much, do your best to hold on to them, for they are rare indeed.
When Walter returned from his run, having left Tom with Kyle over at The Pierce School, Linus filled him in.
“It’s a bit of a disappointment,” said Walter, “that he hasn’t yet brought over someone to make things difficult. That Joe character sounds like he could stir things up a bit.”
“Thanks, Walt. Cato heard that. You know he did,” Linus said.
Walter laughed. “Let’s hope so. I’m ready for things to heat up.”
Upon further thought, Linus agreed.
Madrigal’s dark eyes snapped at Ophelia. “Why do you want to know?”
Oh dear. Poor Ophelia. She hadn’t foreseen this. Her brain flipped through a card file of possible explanations, none of which included the fact that she’d disobeyed school policy and gone down into the tunnel.
She plucked one out. And she would follow through with it, she promised herself, to keep it from being a falsehood. “The essay contest that the Founding Daughters of Kingscross is holding. I thought it would be interesting for a Pierce School student to write about the Pierce family.”
They sat in Madrigal’s private office. While the rest of the rooms of the school were furnished with dark, heavy pieces of furniture (think dark wood carved with fruit, flowers, and curlicues) that had been in her family for much too long, Madrigal’s office was bursting with sunlight. It was furnished with modern, smooth furniture made of blond wood, and it included a comfy window seat and two yellow chairs that resembled swans. The white walls were decorated with abstract artwork, erupting with color. This was the headmistress’s sanctuary, and she allowed only Ophelia to come inside. Evidently Ms. Pierce needed a confidante (a woman to whom secrets are confided), and she’d picked Ophelia.
Ophelia sipped her tea. Madrigal followed suit. Her expression softened. “Well, that’s a fine idea, Ophelia.” She laid aside her cup, proving once again that she was a human being like the rest of us. She cleared her throat. “You know, the school is in trouble financially.”
“Yes, ma’am. Everyone does.”
“I figured as much. I’ve been trying to get some of the townspeople on board. It’s been rough going.”
Ophelia couldn’t begin to imagine this proud woman asking for money. It must be killing her.
“Perhaps,” Madrigal continued, lacing her fingers together, “this essay coming before the Daughters will help them to remember us down here.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Oh, of course. I wouldn’t expect any less of you, Ophelia.”
“Are you a Daughter of Kingscross?” she asked.
“Officially, yes. I haven’t had time to get involved for years now. All right, if I tell you the family lore about Aloysius, will you promise not to include him in your paper?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good, then. Another cup of tea?”
“Please.”
ten
Why Is It That the Shadiest of Tales Are Also the Most Interesting?
or Too Bad Birdwistell Wasn’t the One Who Disappeared. (Did I Just Say That?)
I did it again, dear reader! I employ the literary device known as a hook in each book. A hook, if you recall, leaves the reader hanging with the promise of exciting information in the beginning of the next chapter. Writers use this to keep the reader turning pages. Did it work? I dearly hope so. If not, don’t blame me. I gave it my best shot.
The story of Aloysius Pierce as told by Madrigal Pierce to Ophelia, and as Ophelia related it to the three lads, goes like this.
Aloysius came to adulthood at the turn of the century. For us older folks, that means when the 1800s ended and the 1900s began.
He had always been an upstart, falling in with the MacBeth brothers. The MacBeths, a loud, hard-drinking lot from Kentucky, made all of their money in gun manufacturing and moonshine. They liked to gamble, being extremely good at it, and they were unafraid to extract the payment of others’ gambling debts through, let us just say, extraordinary measures. (Ask your parents to explain what that means. I simply don’t possess
the stomach for that sort of thing.)
As fate would have it, Randolph Pierce, Aloysius’s father, passed away leaving his son, and the sole heir, the family fortune. After that, Aloysius’s gambling escalated, providing opportunity for more losses.
Aloysius was now married to Penelope Granville—a beautiful woman from another old family in Kingscross and the daughter of the mayor. And he did all he could to keep up appearances. Bit by bit he sold off the family acreage until only the five acres on which the grand country house rested remained of the royal land grant. The couple moved to town permanently under the auspices (pretense) that Penelope, pregnant with their first child, was lonely out in the country and longed to be near her family.
Still he gambled.
Eventually the country house was sold as well.
And still he gambled.
He sold as many of the family valuables as possible until Penelope, now a mother concerned for her children’s future, threatened to leave him if he didn’t stop.
As you might well guess, Aloysius couldn’t stop. Gambling can be an addiction as strong as any drug, drink, chocolate bar, or video game, for that matter.
One day, Aloysius happened upon the tunnel in the basement of the townhouse. He’d been removing an old wardrobe—to sell, no doubt—thereby exposing the entrance. He told no one and returned the wardrobe to its place.
Soon, he knew those tunnels like he knew his own name. (Nobody knows why they were carved in the first place, but Ophelia is determined to find out!) And he realized that the arms of the tunnels led to various houses around Kingscross. Items of great value began disappearing around town.
Aloysius failed to return home one evening. And the next. And the evening after that. Penelope, who told no one about her husband’s gambling, assumed he had been killed by someone connected to the MacBeths. But she remained silent as to her suspicions. She maintained that silence until Madrigal found Penelope’s diary in an old trunk in the attic.
