Don't Let the Wind Catch You

by Aaron Paul Lazar

  Penni.

  I snorted a laugh. "Thanks, Penni."

  Oscar's bright blue eyes widened.

  She must have swept directly over our heads, for I felt a blast of air go through my hair and watched Oscar's hat lift and settle. He reached up to hold it down, but quickly recovered and reacted as if he'd seen ghosts his entire life. For all I knew, maybe he had. Being the town historian might have put him in some old haunted places in his past. I'd have to remember to ask him about it.

  He untied his hat and set it on the table beside him. "My. She's playful, isn't she?"

  The hat lifted from the table and twirled around the room, spinning to the ceiling and back to the floor in grand arcs. Oscar's mouth twitched and I couldn't control myself. I doubled over, spilling tears and nearly choking from laughing so hard. Tully finished his toast with a knowing smile. The hat finally settled—directly on Oscar's head—but backwards. He reached up to spin it around. "Well. It's nice to meet you, too, Miss Penni."

  The outside door whooshed open.

  Tully wiped his mouth on a flannel sleeve and reached for his red woolen jacket. "Guess she wants us to git up and go," he laughed. "We'd best do as she says."

  Oscar kept his cool, I chuckled, and we made our way along the trail toward the Tully homestead through the fog that refused to lift. Pancho whinnied, upset that we had left him behind. His cry echoed through the quiet woods, chasing goose bumps along my forearms. I slid my hood up and walked faster.

  Chapter Forty-three

  Tully slowed down when we'd almost reached the homestead. He stopped and leaned against a tree, wiping perspiration from a face that now matched the gray fog.

  I hurried to his side with Oscar close behind. "Mr. Tully? What's wrong?"

  Tully waved a hand to dismiss me. "I'm fine, boy. Just need a bit of a rest. Getting over a bug."

  Oscar leaned closer. "Zak. You don't look well at all. Why don't we rest for a while?"

  "No." The old man straightened, took a deep breath, and wobbled toward the house. "I'm fine."

  I took his arm and draped it over my shoulder. "Here. Let me help you."

  I'd been afraid he'd shake me off, but he relented. "Fine. If you insist."

  Oscar ran to his other side and took an arm as well. "We're almost there. Just a few more steps."

  We reached the house and helped Tully inside, where he collapsed on the horsehair sofa in the living room. His breathing seemed to even out, and he looked better in a few minutes.

  "Are you okay now?" I asked, touching his arm and peering into his face.

  "I'm fine. Now stop making a fuss over me. Why don't you start upstairs? My mother might have hidden the papers up there. Try her blanket chest and maybe inside the backs of the larger framed photographs."

  Oscar and I accepted the assignment and headed up to Tully's parents' room.

  I held Oscar back and slid in front of him. "Watch out! That part of the floor is really weak. See? That's where Mr. Tully fell through."

  "My Lord." Oscar stopped and stared. "Gus? You got him out of there?"

  I nodded. "Yup. With that rope."

  Oscar analyzed the situation quickly and stepped over the rope that was still tied to the bed in the parents' room. "Very ingenious, my boy. Now which way is it?"

  "This way. Over there are the kids' rooms." I stopped in the doorway of the bedroom, holding my hands out for Oscar to wait behind me. "Penni, are you here?" She'd been quiet for the past fifteen minutes, but reminded me of her presence by billowing the window curtains. I hoped to see her face again, but it seemed she didn't do that particular trick for anyone but me. "Where should we look?"

  Everything moved at once. The rotting bedspread lifted and swayed. Mrs. Tully's hairbrush danced on the vanity. The prisms on the girandole on the fireplace mantle tinkled. And my hair stood on end.

  "Whoa. She's really excited." I entered the room cautiously, waiting for her to show me more. "But how do we know where to look, Penni?"

  Silence.

  Oscar knelt before the pine chest at the foot of the bed. "Let's start here." He lifted the cover, revealing quilts, photo albums, a box of beautiful jewelry, and linens. "Hmm. My grandmother used to tape cash and other valuable papers to the bottom side of her dresser drawers. Maybe you should start over there, Gus. I'll sift through this stuff."

  "Okay." I trotted to the bureau and opened the drawers, glad to find they didn't hold the dead people's clothes. Tully and Mrs. Brown must have moved out their parents' apparel after they died. Or maybe they'd had to burn them because of the fever? Either way, the dressers and closet were empty, and nothing was taped to the bottom of the drawers.

  "I'll check the photographs," Oscar said. "You look under the mattress."

  While Oscar gently pried open the backs of the frames, I slid the heavy mattress off the bed, worried about mice. There were plenty of holes where they'd lived in the past, but thankfully today I didn't disturb any nests. "Nothing," I said, starting to feel disappointed.

  "Nothing here, either."

  We searched the rest of the room with no results.

  "What about the kids' rooms?" I asked.

  Oscar's hat was still tied around his neck, but it rested on his back. His disheveled hair held a few wisps of closet cobwebs, but his eyes still burned with the excitement of discovery. "Didn't Penni originally lead you to the living room?"

  "Yeah. She practically dragged us down there, but we already took the stuff from the music cabinet, remember?"

  "Let's take another quick look."

  "Okay." I had kind of wanted to search Tully's room again to see if there were any more treasures hidden away, but followed him anyway.

  Penni came alive again, whirling dusty cyclones down the stairs ahead of us. Once again, the music cabinet door rapped back and forth. Tully chuckled as Oscar approached it. "Guess she wants you to open that one again, eh?"

  Oscar ran a hand over the curved wooden door. "This is a very nice piece." He knelt down before it and reached inside. "Mahogany, I think. Definitely Victorian vintage, made to store sheet music." He slid out one of the thin shelves. "See? These are removable. They're all like that, so you can adjust the height of the storage space."

  "That cabinet came from my mother's family," Tully said. The color had come back to his face, but I still worried about the way he hunched over the armrest. "All the way from Vermont."

  Oscar bit his lower lip. "It looks like you children got everything from it, but maybe if we remove the shelves…" One by one, he slid each dusty shelve out of its grooves and examined the underside. After he'd made it halfway through the twenty or more slots, I got bored and sat beside Tully.

  "You sure you're okay? You still don't look so good."

  "I'm—"

  "Eureka!" Oscar brandished the last of the shelves and flipped it over to reveal a large brown envelope taped to the underside. "Look what we have here." Still on his knees, he half-crawled to the coffee table and laid the package on it. "Anyone have a pocket knife?"

  "I do!" I pulled out the knife my father gave me for my birthday. "Careful. It's sharp."

  Oscar carefully opened the small blade and slit open the package. A thin sheaf of papers encased in parchment paper slid out. Oscar's pulse throbbed hard in his neck. Tully leaned forward. I held my breath.

  "I think this is it, gentlemen." His eyes greedily scanned the pages. I realized after a while that the paper wasn't normal paper, but some kind of pressed fibers that made a rough surface. It looked old, very old.

  Oscar started to read. "It's in a very old dialect, but I'll try to translate it to modern words. Here we go. 'It is with a heavy heart that I take quill in hand to document what I know to be the truth. I have been cowardly, and when I am finished with this epistle, I shall no longer be of the earth.'"

  I scooched closer to him. "What's that mean?"

  Oscar and Tully exchanged a glance. Oscar answered. "It means he's ashamed of what he's about to tell us, and he
is probably either going to kill himself, or be put to death by the authorities."

  My heart pounded. "Holy mackerel."

  Oscar's eyebrow rose, but his hands still trembled with excitement. "Indeed. Well, let me continue. 'Thirty years ago, I took part in a deception which haunts me to this day. I am fully to blame, and take all responsibility. The death of many soldiers and Indians lays heavy on my soul.'"

  Penni raced around the room, seeming agitated now. Furniture shook, and the floor heaved beneath us.

  A loud wailing sound made it difficult to hear. Penni sounded as if she were mourning the dead. With a start, I realized she probably was. "Go on!" I shouted.

  "'I am a traitor to my country. The British made me an offer too tempting to refuse, and over time, I fed them strategic information about our regiment's campaign. I used the local Oneida Indians to help me, and as God is my witness, caused the death of a young Indian brother and sister that will never ever leave my conscious brain.'"

  Tully clutched my sleeve. Penni flew around me in a whirling cyclone. Tully's eyes floated to the ceiling and he moaned, then dropped to the floor, his hand pressed to his chest. "I can't breathe."

  Oscar ignored Penni's increased gusts of wind and wailings and dropped beside Tully. An expression of alarm crossed his face. "Gus. Where's the phone?"

  Panic welled in my chest. "There's no phone! There's no power here." Much to my embarrassment, I started to cry. "What's happening? Is he okay?"

  Oscar gripped my shoulders and stared me into submission. "We need an ambulance. Run back to the cabin and call the police."

  "There's no phone there, either." Now the tears slid freely along my cheeks, and I watched Tully's gray complexion turn to alabaster.

  "Listen." He shook me. "Listen! You need to run to the cabin, get on Pancho, and go for help. The nearest house is just beyond the Ambuscade." He shook me again. "Do you understand, boy?"

  I gulped, nodded, and spun toward the door. "I'll be back as fast as I can!"

  Chapter Forty-four

  I burst out the front door. Overhead, the fog had disappeared, but blinding rain took its place. The wind whipped tree branches overhead, shedding leaves in flurries of soggy masses. I skidded across the field to the trail and raced toward Tully's cabin as fast as my P.F. Flyers would take me. William had once told me that real runners tilt their noses up to catch the air better. I tried it, but it didn't seem to make me run faster. I needed to fly, but I only had my feet.

  In the distance, thunder boomed. Water ran down my face—a combination of rain and tears—but I forced myself to focus on the dash for help and not think about Tully and the way he looked laying on the ground. I struggled to breathe; my chest heaved and my lungs burned. After ten minutes, I had to stop. Dizzy and weak, I hung on the smooth, wet bark of a silver birch and caught ragged snatches of breath. My lungs made a weird wheezing sound, and the woods danced in dizzy lines in front of me. When they merged into one clear image, I pushed on.

  The air turned warmer, but the ferocious storm that approached didn't feel friendly. Thunder rumbled closer now, and splintering crashes filled the ozone-laden air. I shrugged out of my soaking sweatshirt and turned the last corner to Tully's cabin.

  Pancho stood with his head down and ears back, definitely unhappy with his fate. I couldn't manage a whistle to alert him, I needed all my air to finish the sprint to his side. When I had almost reached him, he raised his head and softly whinnied, as if he'd warned me of all that was to come and couldn't believe I hadn't taken him with me. As if he'd known we'd find the papers just before Tully collapsed, as if he envisioned me running sobbing and rain-soaked through the woods to vault onto his back.

  I untied the wet, sticky reins with trembling fingers, threw them over his neck, and swung onto his back. Already nervous because of my erratic behavior, he skittered sideways and rapidly backed up.

  I leaned down to pat his shoulder and spoke to him in my trembling voice. "It's okay, boy. Come on, now. This is important. We have to go for help."

  He stopped his shenanigans and moved forward. I wrapped my calves tight around his barrel and squeezed. "Come on, now. Let's go!"

  Pancho hunched his hind legs beneath him and gave a mighty push, launching us into a rollicking canter that quickly smoothed into a gallop. Grateful we'd had him recently shod with new shoes, I held my breath around every slick corner, but he didn't slip and continued on his surefooted way. When we burst into the clearing near the Ambuscade, he didn't slow down. Lightning flashed nearby, and a brief tremor of fear hit me. I'm riding on a wet horse in open ground. Snippets of a filmstrip we'd seen in school flashed before me, and I remembered the advice they'd given about curling up in a rubber tractor tire to stay safe from lightning strikes. I didn't see any discarded tires lying around, and anyway, I couldn't stop now.

  I held on tighter, afraid we'd roll on the steep grassy hill near the monument. Pancho slipped once, nearly dislodging me, but I tightened my grip and grabbed a fistful of his thick black mane to stabilize myself. "Careful, boy."

  We reached the bottom of the hill and headed for the white post and board fence surrounding the picnic tables and display boards. Pancho knew the way by heart, but he didn't expect me to pull him up short when we reached the house nearest the Ambuscade entrance. He fought me for a second, and I knew he was mad he wasn't heading for his dry barn and grain bin. But he relented when I dug my heels into his side and forced him up the lawn right to the front door. I held the reins with one hand and pounded on the door with the other. Lightning cracked nearby, and the roar of thunder rolled right over the sound. The rain drove sideways, blinding me so I almost missed the lighted circle of the doorbell. I pressed it and hung onto it until a welcoming bark finally sounded from within.

  Footsteps trotted toward the door. A lock clicked over, and the door swung open.

  A thin bald man with a kind expression peered at me. "What in the world—"

  "We need an ambulance! Please, it's Mr. Tully."

  He turned around and shouted. "Marta! It's a boy and he's soaking wet."

  He tried to usher me inside, but I didn't dare let go of Pancho's reins. "I can't come in. Please. We need help!"

  He finally picked up on the urgency and spoke quickly. "Did you say Tully's cabin?"

  "No! It's the old Tully homestead. The abandoned house. I think he had a heart attack!"

  I said aloud what I had feared since Tully collapsed. A heart attack. Just like Mr. Brown, who'd died in our driveway. My own heart fluttered with fear, and I stepped back into the rain. "Will you call an ambulance?"

  "Of course, boy. But come inside. Let me take your horse into the shack out back and you come in and dry off."

  His wife appeared at the doorway. "Come inside, child." She reminded me of my grandmother Odette in Maine, and it was all I could do not to collapse into her open arms and sob. But I backed up, shaking my head. "I have to go back and help them. Please hurry."

  "Let me drive you, then."

  "Thanks, but it's faster through the trails. You'd have to drive way around onto Barber Hill to get to the driveway that comes into the property. I'll meet you there, if you want."

  I didn't stop to listen to his answer, but vaulted onto Pancho's steaming, wet back and kicked him in the direction of Tully's. Something deep inside warned me that I needed to get back. Pancho thudded through the mud and back up the hill, and when we passed the Ambuscade monument I felt the full force of fear that must have hit Penni and her brother when the fighting began almost two hundred years ago. Were the flashes of lightning that burst around me like the explosions from the guns she heard during the battle? I leaned down against Pancho's mane and urged him harder.

  Chapter Forty-five

  Lightning zigzagged across the slate gray sky, and a tall balsam tree ahead on the trail smoked from a recent hit. I'd never seen anything hit by lightning before, but when I smelled the moist acrid smoke and saw curled chunks of blackened bark on the ground around th
e base, something snapped inside. Penni was trying to tell me something, and her insistent voice grew louder as Pancho pounded down the trail, past Tully's cabin, and on toward the homestead. She'd riled up the storm with her agitated energy, or maybe even caused it, and the burning tree trunk was a warning. How I knew escaped me. But I knew as surely as I gripped the warm, wet sides of my horse and felt her soft voice tickle inside my head.

  Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.

  It was Penni, all right. I felt her presence around me, as if she sat astride my horse pressed against me. Thin arms encircled my waist, pumping adrenaline into my body and shooting fear into my heart.

  Hurry. Help him.

  Of course! She needed me to help Tully. But I'd already called the ambulance. What more could I do?

  Arms gently squeezed my chest.

  Please hurry.

  I leaned down to Pancho's neck and shouted against the rain lashing my face and the thunder roaring overhead. "Come on, boy. Let's go!"

  Pancho's heaving sides swelled under my legs and he pushed himself faster along the slick path. His hind legs slid out from under him once, and although I slipped sideways, I pulled myself back up and he recovered in a mad scramble. His ears flattened and his nose extended into the cold rain.

  "Good boy. That's it. Move!"

  My Morgan gelding turned race horse, his legs pumping so fast I felt airborne, as if I zoomed through the woods on the back of a freight train. His hooves pounded in a steady one beat rhythm, faster and faster, until we neared the final corner and I smelled smoke.

  Was another tree on fire?

  Penni leaned her ghostly head against my back, whispering louder this time. Hurry!

  My heart flew from my chest and the empty cavity squeezed so hard I thought I'd die from the constriction. In the clearing ahead, the second story of the Tully homestead burned bright with fire. The crackling of the blaze—previously muffled by the sounds of driving rain and thunder—now swamped all sound and invaded my body with a sickening rhythm thrumming in time to the licking flames. Black smoke poured out of Tully's boyhood window. I stopped at the edge of the woods, afraid to tie Pancho in case the fire spread. I swatted his hindquarters to send him back down the path, and he immediately obliged, trotting away with his head close to the ground.