Wonderland Creek

by Lynn Austin

  I cooked oatmeal for breakfast for us and helped Maggie feed some to Miss Opal. Maggie gathered the eggs and took care of her animals, and the normal morning routine seemed to help her compose herself. Before long, she appeared as calm and gracious as she usually did whenever I visited her. I found it impossible to believe that this gentle, loving woman had tried to kill Mack—twice. Neither of us mentioned him.

  I realized that two other people besides Lillie and me now knew that Mack was alive. But Maggie wasn’t likely to tell anyone since she was the person who’d shot him. And poor, lonely June Ann had no one to tell.

  “You probably should go,” Maggie said when I’d finished my tea. “You have a very long walk back to the library, don’t you?”

  She was right, but I was reluctant to leave her. “Are you going to be all right?”

  “Yes, Alice. I’ll be fine. I have Opal and Feather to take care of, and you have Miss Lillie.”

  I hugged her good-bye and walked down the trail that had become so familiar to me, stopping at Mack’s cabin. He wasn’t there. The compartment beneath the cabin floor was open and the documents he’d hidden there were gone.

  I reached the library around noon, and when I emerged from the woods alongside the creek, there was Belle grazing peacefully in her pasture by the shed, safe and sound. I would have to lead her up to Mack’s old cabin to fetch her saddle and bridle, but not today. I was much too tired today. I simply wanted to sleep.

  “Mack told me the whole story,” Lillie said when I walked into the kitchen.

  “He made it back home?”

  “Yep, he got here just after dawn.” Lillie had a fire going and had made potato soup. The house felt warm and cozy. I slumped onto a kitchen chair. “You okay, honey?”

  “Yes, but I’m exhausted.” Lillie ladled soup into two bowls for us and sat down to eat it with me. I had worked up an appetite on the long walk home. “Well, Lillie, you said that baby Feather would save Maggie’s life, and you were right. But it didn’t happen the way we thought it would. The baby saved Mack’s life, too—indirectly.”

  “He told me how brave you was, stepping in front a him so Maggie couldn’t shoot him.”

  “Where is Mack? Upstairs sleeping?”

  “No, honey. He’s gone.”

  “Gone? Where?”

  “He left to take his book to the publisher and to deliver them other papers to the mining people in Washington. He’ll be back just as soon as he can. He said he hoped you’d stay a little longer.”

  “But . . . How did he get into town to a train station? I saw Belle out back.”

  “Mack knows a trail over the mountain and through the woods. Shouldn’t take him long.”

  I breathed a weary sigh. “I don’t know how he’ll manage it. I don’t think I could walk another step.”

  We finished our lunch, and I went upstairs and climbed into bed. I slept like a dead woman. When I finally woke again, I spent the remainder of the day staring into space like a mannequin in Marshall Field’s store window. I had used up a year’s worth of emotions in a single night—fear, sorrow, love, grief—and my heart needed time to replenish the supply. Lillie took care of me for a change, hovering over me, patting my shoulder or my hand. It took all weekend for my mind to stop replaying the image of the wildcat padding toward me, head lowered, ready to spring. Or the sight of Maggie’s gun barrel aimed at me. And Mack.

  On Monday morning I decided to calm my nerves by typing more of Miss Lillie’s recipes. It was one of the few tasks I could do that didn’t require any thinking on my part. I was on the very last notebook and making good progress when I found an envelope tucked between two pages. Someone had printed Miss Lillie on the front, but the envelope had never been opened. I brought it into her bedroom to show her.

  “What is this, Lillie? The seal has never been broken.”

  She took it from me and studied it for a moment before handing it back. “It’s a letter that tells where the treasure is hidden.”

  “What? Are you joking? Is it the same treasure that the Larkins and Arnetts have been fighting over all these years?”

  “Mmm hmm. Old Granddaddy Larkin gave me that letter when he was dying.”

  “Mack’s grandfather?”

  “No, his great-grandfather. That was years and years ago now. Way back when I first come to Kentucky, long before Mack was born. Old Isaac Larkin asked me to come take care a him when he was sick and dying. That’s when he gave me that letter.”

  “But why didn’t you ever open it up and see what it says?”

  “He said to keep it safe for him. He said I would know when to open it.”

  “You’ve had it all this time? Why didn’t you use it to dig up the treasure?”

  “That money ain’t mine to dig up.”

  “So the treasure is real? And it’s still buried?”

  “Far as I know. Ain’t none of my business, honey. But I can tell by the way both families have been fighting over it that neither one of them has that treasure.”

  “Do you know the whole story, Lillie? Where the treasure originally came from?”

  “Sure I know it. Isaac told me all about it.”

  “Please tell me. I’ve heard romanticized versions of it, but never the real story.” I sat down on the chair beside her, listening in breathless suspense, just as Faye’s boys and Mamaw had listened to Treasure Island.

  “Wilbur Arnett, Isaac Larkin, and Abe Coots were like brothers,” Lillie began.

  “Wait. Who’s Abe Coots? Is he any relation to Maggie?”

  “Yes, he was Hank Coots’s great-granddaddy. All three men growed up together and all three went off to fight the War Between the States. Wilbur and Isaac lived through all that marching and shooting and fighting and came home again, but their friend Abe Coots was killed in some battle down around Lookout Mountain. His two friends put all their money together and had Abe’s body shipped back home so he could be buried in the cemetery here in Acorn. That’s where Isaac and Wilbur are buried, too.”

  “Is that the same graveyard where Mack . . . where he’s supposed to be buried?”

  “No. There’s an older cemetery over behind the churchyard. When those graves filled up, they started that new cemetery.”

  “Wait. Where is this churchyard? Mack said you used to take him to church, but you told me there wasn’t one here in Acorn.”

  “That’s because nobody uses it no more. Everybody stopped going on account of the feud. That church used to be filled with Arnetts and Larkins every Sunday morning, singing and praying and praising the Lord. Then this feud started up and the families decided they ain’t gonna worship together no more. Pretty soon there ain’t enough people left to keep the church going, so the minister gave up and left town. That poor old building is all falling down now.”

  Lillie and I had wandered down a side trail, talking about the church. I wanted to get back to the treasure hunt. I rose from the chair and sat on the edge of her bed, restless with anticipation. “So where did the treasure originally come from?”

  “A few years after the war, Isaac Larkin and Wilbur Arnett was out hunting turkeys along Wonderland Creek when they seen a plume of smoke back in the trees. They figured it was from a still, and they decided to see who was cooking moonshine. Turned out they was two robbers, sitting by a campfire and talking about how they stole money from a bank in Lexington and made off with the loot. Seems they killed a man while making their getaway, and they needed to hide out for a while. Wilbur and Isaac knew them men was dangerous, so they decided to keep an eye on them and make sure they stayed out of Acorn.

  “Well, the robbers kept on drinking moonshine all afternoon, and by the time night fell, they’d passed out cold. Isaac and Wilbur crept into their camp and stole the loot right out from under them crooks.”

  “They robbed the robbers? Were they crazy?”

  “That’s what greed does to you, honey. It makes you go a little crazy. Isaac and Wilbur had all sorts of plans for w
hat they was gonna do with that money. But come morning, the real robbers was out roaming the hills looking for their loot, and they was madder than a mess a hornets. The two friends was scared to death they’d be shot dead if they spent a cent of it. Weeks went by and the bad men was still out looking for it. In the end, Isaac and Wilbur kept just enough to build two houses, and they give a little to their friend Abe Coots’s wife, then they buried the rest of it until they was sure it was safe.”

  “Is it still there? Did they ever dig it up?”

  “Far as I know, they never did. I told Isaac he should give the money back to the folks at the bank, but he said he was too scared. He thought the sheriff would accuse him and Wilbur of stealing it because the robbers wore masks over their faces. Besides, the whole town wanted revenge on account of the dead bank teller, and Isaac figured there’d be a lynch mob before there’d ever be a fair trial.”

  “What a mess.”

  “Them two friends couldn’t decide what to do, so they left the money buried. They decided it was cursed. Wilbur Arnett died first, and just a short time later, Isaac Larkin lay dying. He told me the whole story and gave me that letter just in case his kin might need the money someday. He said God would show me when it was time to dig it up. And since God never said a word about it to me, I kept the letter sealed up, just like I promised.”

  “That’s incredible . . . unbelievable!” In fact, the story sounded like a work of fiction. Yet why had the two families been feuding all these years if there wasn’t some truth to the tale? “Did you ever show this letter to Mack?” I asked her.

  “What for?”

  “Maybe he would know what to do with the money.”

  “I know exactly what to do with it—leave it in the ground where it belongs.”

  “But the Larkins and Arnetts have been fighting over it for sixty years. This could end the feud.”

  “Honey, if you believe money could end the feud, then you don’t know people very well. You think they gonna share it? Uh uh. Each side’s gonna want all of it. There’ll be shooting and killing around here for sure.”

  I looked down at the yellowing envelope. I was dying to know what the letter said, where the treasure map was, and where the money was buried. I looked up at Lillie. “May I open it?”

  “You ever read the story of Pandora’s box?”

  “Yes, I’ve read it . . . but I’m dying of curiosity, Lillie. Can’t I just see what it says and then seal it up again? I promise I won’t tell anybody. I’m going back to Illinois as soon as Mack comes back, and if I don’t open this it’ll be like reading a good book and discovering the last chapter is missing. I have to find out how it ends.”

  “It’ll end with more fighting if you open that up, I’ll tell you that much.”

  “I really don’t see the harm. Please?”

  “I can warn you not to, but I can’t stop you if your mind is made up. You’ll just do it when my back is turned.”

  “Then I’ll do it in front of you. I’m going to open it.”

  I turned the envelope over and ran my finger around the flap. The glue was so old and brittle that the seal opened easily. I expected to find an elaborate treasure map inside, like something out of a pirate story, with a big red X marking the spot. Instead, I pulled out a single sheet of plain paper, folded in half. I read it out loud to Lillie:

  “To my family,

  Never let money come between family and friends. Keep following the Good Book and always do what it says: ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ And that means stealing money from bank robbers, too. The Bible is right when it says, ‘The love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.’ And always remember, ‘There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.’

  Signed,

  Isaac Larkin”

  Lillie laughed out loud when I finished reading. I dropped the letter to my lap in disappointment. “It doesn’t say where the treasure is buried.”

  “It says exactly what I just told you—don’t dig it up! Believe me, the Bible is right and the love of money does lead to all kinds of evil. I seen it happen again and again in this long life of mine. Why do you think my old massa and his friends fought that awful war? They wanted to keep owning slaves because they can’t make money without us. Money starts all kinds of wars, honey, like this war between the Larkins and Arnetts. Finding that treasure will only start an even bigger war.”

  I didn’t want a sermon. I wanted a map. I read the letter through again, trying to find a message hidden between the lines. I even held it up to the light to see if there was a hidden map. When nothing magical appeared, I read it through a third time. Nothing. Lillie watched me, shaking her head in amusement.

  “What does this verse about a friend mean, Lillie? Is he talking about the friendship between the three men? Were they closer than brothers?”

  “That verse comes from the Bible, and it’s talking about the Lord Jesus. He’ll stick by us when nobody else will. Ever hear that hymn ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus’?”

  “That’s the same verse that’s on your sampler.” I pointed to the picture frame hanging on the wall above her bed. “Did you embroider that?”

  “Nope. It come with the house.”

  My heart began to pound. “Lillie! I saw another sampler just like it in Ike’s house—which used to belong to Wilbur Arnett. Maybe that’s where the map is hidden!”

  “I’m telling you, honey. Leave it alone.”

  I didn’t listen. I stood and reached for the sampler above her head, blowing off the dust. “May I take this down and look at it, please?”

  “There’s a story in the Bible about a great big basket, and inside is a woman named ‘Wickedness.’ God put a big heavy lid on top of her, made out of lead, to keep the wickedness from jumping out. Ever read that story?”

  “No.” I wasn’t interested. I had the frame in my hand and I looked it over carefully. I didn’t see anything on the back that looked like a map. I studied the embroidery to see if the instructions were concealed in the design. Nothing. I would have to take the frame apart. I sat down and turned it over on my lap.

  “May I take this frame apart?”

  “It don’t belong to me, honey. It belongs to Mack.”

  “He won’t mind. He was searching for the treasure map, too.”

  I began to pry off the nails that held down the backing, being very careful not to damage anything. The date on the sampler was 1875, for goodness’ sakes. I expected to find a map concealed behind the backing, but there was nothing there. I looked between the yellowing fabric and the wood—in vain. I had torn the entire sampler apart for nothing.

  “I’m sorry, Lillie . . . I’ll put it back together.”

  “Leave it, honey. I’ll fix it.”

  “I’m really sorry. I should have listened to you.”

  She waved me away, still shaking her head.

  I went back to my typewriter in Lillie’s workroom, but I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t stop thinking about Isaac Larkin’s mysterious letter. Maybe I needed the other sampler from Ike’s house. Maybe if I put the two samplers side by side, I’d see the solution. But who knew when Ike would return home. Besides, if I told him what I had discovered, he’d want to keep all the money for himself, not divide it between the two families. Should I wait for Mack? He was a Larkin, but he didn’t care about the money. He wanted to end the feud, too. In my opinion, Wayne and June Ann should be the ones to dig up the money. The treasure rightfully belonged to Feather.

  The next time I went into Lillie’s room, she had put the sampler back together and hung it on the wall again. But it didn’t look the same. I had damaged it for nothing, and now I was sorry.

  As I waited for Mack to return, time felt suspended. Day after day, nothing happened. It was as if someone had waved a magic wand and the town of Acorn froze in time. My garden continued to grow. The packhorse librarians checked
out piles of books and returned piles more. I finished reading Tom Saywer to Faye’s boys and began reading Huckleberry Finn.

  Meanwhile, I could sense my parents’ growing concern in their letters as they asked about the delay and wondered how much longer until I came home. I couldn’t give them a clear answer. I worried that my father would show up at the library door one day and insist that I return home with him, but I couldn’t leave now! I had grown to love Miss Lillie and I felt responsible for her—and for June Ann and Feather and Maggie, too. And I needed to find out how the story of Acorn, Kentucky, would end when Mack did return and all of the loose ends could be tied up.

  I rode my usual book route twice a week, after retrieving Belle’s saddle from Mack’s abandoned cabin. Each time I stopped at Maggie’s house, I found June Ann there. Maggie had become a second mother to her. June Ann was little more than a teenager, after all. Together, the two women took care of Miss Opal and Feather.

  As time passed, I became more and more annoyed with Mack. I hated waiting. The least he could do was write to us with news about his book, and the investigation into Hank’s death, and the search for Lillie’s son. I hadn’t received a letter from Ike, either—or even a postcard from his travels.

  Then one day, someone waved the magic wand again and broke the spell. Time became unfrozen, and after waiting and waiting for something to happen, everything happened at once. First, Ike Arnett strode into library on a Thursday morning just as I was packing my saddlebags for my trip up the creek.

  “Ike! Welcome home! It’s so good to see you.” I remembered how he had once picked me up and whirled me around in a circle, but he didn’t do it that day. He looked dead tired, and maybe a little hungover as he slumped into Lillie’s chair in the non-fiction room. “When did you get back in town, Ike?”

  “Late last night. I know it’s early in the morning, Alice, but I came to tell you I’m sorry for not writing like I promised. We’ve been doing so much traveling and playing that I’ve barely had time to eat or sleep.”