The Secrets of Tree Taylor

by Dandi Daley Mackall

  I squatted behind the twisted tree trunk and waited.

  Without a word, my dad set his foot onto the bottom porch step. He didn’t look down but stayed locked into Mrs. Kinney as he took the next step. In slow motion, he turned and lowered himself onto the top step, sitting with his back to that woman with the rifle.

  I felt like I had to keep my eye on her for the both of us. I stared at her until my eyes watered with the pain of not blinking.

  Just when I was afraid she’d never move again, she did. She let out a sigh that I swore shook the leaves of the cottonwood, raining down puffs of white on my head. Then she shuffled the rest of the way to Dad and sat down next to him. The gun came to rest on her lap, its nose stretching to my dad’s knee.

  “Doc,” she said, like they were in the middle of a conversation. She said something else, but her head was turned. I couldn’t hear her.

  Dad squinted, like he was straining to listen. He stared straight ahead, same as her. It was like they were both watching a picture show. Then he got to his feet and crossed the porch to her front door. He opened the screen and walked inside.

  Mrs. Kinney didn’t so much as shift her eyes to watch him go. I caught a glimpse of her faded cotton apron and her gray shoes, which my mom would call “sensible” but would never wear herself.

  I have no idea how long my dad stayed inside. So long my knees grew stiff from squatting.

  I slipped around the tree, but I couldn’t see inside the house. I wanted to look in the window. I wanted to make sure Dad was okay in there. I wanted to see for myself whatever there was to see.

  But before I could make my move, the front screen opened and Dad came out. His face said nothing about what he’d seen. He walked over and sat back down beside Mrs. Kinney and looked straight ahead again, as if he’d only stepped out for the intermission and was back in time for the rest of the show.

  Then without saying a word, he slid that rifle off Mrs. Kinney’s lap and out of her hands.

  I heard a car coming from the direction of town. When it got closer, I could see it was the sheriff’s car. Both the car and the sheriff were old. I didn’t know much about cars, but this one was black and roundish, like police cars in old crime movies. There was no siren. Maybe the old patrol car didn’t have one. Sheriff Robinson, a one-man police force, had been sheriff when my granddad, instead of my dad, was the only doctor in the county.

  The car eased to a stop in front of the Kinney house as if it had all the time in the world. The motor kicked off with a sputter that shook the cruiser. Sheriff Robinson climbed out like he’d been stuck in the seat. He took a minute to square himself on his scuffed cowboy boots. He tipped his hat back, then glanced at the sky before taking off the hat and tossing it onto the front seat. What hair the sheriff had left was thin and gray. He wasn’t fat or skinny, tall or short, not somebody to stand out in a crowd. With his hand shielding his eyes in a sun salute, he crossed the lawn and stood in front of my dad, the rifle, and Mrs. Kinney.

  I should have felt relieved that the law had arrived, but I didn’t.

  “Neighbor called, Mrs. Kinney,” Sheriff Robinson said, glancing from her to Dad and back. “Said you’d had some trouble.”

  Mrs. Kinney shifted her gaze to squint up at the sheriff, but she didn’t answer him.

  My dad spoke up. “Alfred’s been shot, Sheriff.”

  Sheriff Robinson scratched his head. “That right? You’ve seen to him, have you, Doc?”

  “He’s bandaged. Grazed his shoulder. I used their phone to give Carl a call and get the ambulance out here. Alfred ought to spend a couple of nights in the hospital, to be on the safe side.”

  Sheriff Robinson looked down at Mrs. Kinney, who was staring at her hands in her lap. “Guess I’d best have a chat with Alfred.” He stepped between Dad and Mrs. Kinney and walked on into the house. The screen slapped behind him, and I jumped a little.

  Yelling came from the house, and it wasn’t coming from Sheriff Robinson. The cusswords were loud and clear, but the rest sounded garbled, like radio stations during a storm.

  When the sheriff strode out onto the porch again, his face was red as raspberries. “Need to decide what we’re going to do about this, Doc,” he said, like they were talking about a flooded basement or a burnt cake. Not about whatever must have gone on inside that house.

  Dad met the sheriff’s gaze. “Not much we can do about it, Leo,” he said. “Accidents happen.”

  3

  Accidents Happen, Man

  Accidents happen.

  I tried to replay everything I’d seen and heard, starting with the gunshot and ending with my dad’s words to the sheriff. But it was like trying to tune in the television when the vertical control was out of whack. The pieces were there, but they didn’t line up.

  I sure hadn’t been thinking accident. I thought … well, I guess I couldn’t have said what I thought. Not really. Maybe without my knowing it, my brain had been making up a sensational story I could write about.

  Only …

  Mrs. Kinney had the rifle.

  Dad had more information than I did. He’d been inside the Kinney place and I hadn’t. Plus, Doc Frank Taylor, M.D., was the smartest person in Hamilton. Probably in Missouri. Maybe in the whole United States of America. And maybe Mr. Kinney came out and told him it was an accident.

  Sheriff Robinson scratched his head. “Well, Doc, Mr. Kinney has some peculiar notions about the shooting.”

  Dad’s gaze stayed fixed on the sheriff. “Pain can make a man say peculiar things, Sheriff.”

  “You got a point there,” Sheriff Robinson said, not sounding all that sure. “I can’t say I know the man very well. Not like you do, Doc.”

  Like nearly everybody else in town, the Kinneys doctored with my dad. When Mrs. Kinney fell and broke her arm last Christmas Eve, Dad set it for her while we waited for him at church.

  Dad never talked about his patients, but I heard things at school. Or from Jack. Or from Sarah. Sarah’s dad farmed, but he worked as a handyman on the side. He’d been fixing plumbing at the Kinneys’ once when Mrs. Kinney was laid up on crutches. She told him she’d toppled off a ladder.

  Accidents happen. They sure did in that house.

  Even an accident was worth writing about in Hamilton, though. People were always blowing off fingers or getting third-degree burns from Fourth of July fireworks, Dad’s most hated day of the year. Farmers got tangled in hay balers, or crushed in tractor rollovers, or kicked by horses. We got our share of hunting accidents, of course. And all of those things ended up on the front page of the Hamiltonian.

  I had a feeling there was a big story in this shooting. And I wanted to be the one to get it.

  Whatever did happen inside the Kinneys’ house, it was going to be my ticket to the Blue and Gold staff. This would be my first investigative report, and I’d prove to Mrs. Woolsey that she should choose me. Not Wanda.

  I might even end up with a better story than the Hamiltonian. Our weekly paper under old Mr. Ridings didn’t believe in publishing “negative news,” anything that might get people riled. On the other hand, Mr. Ridings had supposedly turned the newspaper over to his son. Jack knew Randy Ridings better than I did, and he said Randy wanted to make the paper more interesting, more modern.

  All at once, the whole town descended on us. A siren wailed on and off, like it couldn’t make up its mind. An ambulance swooped in from the west, probably on loan from Cameron, a bigger town up Highway 36. Behind the dented white ambulance, a parade trailed up our dusty road. Gawkers pulled their cars to the side, shy of ditches, smashing lavender and clover.

  I felt sorry for the Quiet House, only two houses down from the Kinneys’. Eight-year-old Gary Lynch lived in the tiny greenish house with his mother. Gary had leukemia and couldn’t get out of bed. The shades never went up in the Quiet House, and nobody visited. Dad said we couldn’t get sick by visiting Gary but he could get sicker if we gave him our germs. I wondered if Mrs. Lynch would venture
out to see what the fuss was about.

  From all sides, car doors slammed and out climbed a motley crew of Hamiltonians, some in sweatpants, some in shorts, a few in robes and pj’s … like Dad.

  Like me!

  I had to get out of there. Fast.

  I didn’t really care if anybody saw me in pj’s. But I still had to make my getaway. If I didn’t, sooner or later I’d be spotted. Then word would get back to Dad.

  Keeping my head down, I sneaked home, zigzagging from tree to tree. I didn’t stop until I made it to my house. I scooped up my writing notebook from the sidewalk, where I must have dropped it. And I hustled inside.

  There was no sign of my sister. Eileen had slept through the whole thing.

  From the kitchen I heard Mom’s telephone voice and figured she was talking to Donna, Jack’s mom.

  “She what?” Mom asked.

  I peeked into the kitchen and saw Mom seated on the phone stool. She had on a sleeveless flowered dress that made her waist look tiny under the wide belt. But she still had her curlers in. She lifted her hand in a half wave, half plea to wait until she got off the phone.

  “No. He isn’t back yet,” she said into the phone. “He bolted out of bed like we’d been bombed. First thing I thought was: another missile crisis.”

  Mom went wordless for a couple of minutes, which confirmed my guess that Donna occupied the other end of the line.

  I slid into the breakfast booth. Mr. Rose had built it for us in exchange for Dad taking care of Mrs. Rose, who’d died last year of tuberculosis. We ate most meals with Mom and Dad facing Eileen and me across our speckled Formica table. The booth seats, two long cushioned benches, opened to store newspapers and magazines underneath—Mom’s idea, and a pretty neat one, if you asked me.

  Mom laughed at something Donna said. She took a swig of her black coffee and kept listening.

  From habit, I glanced toward the window. I’d grown up watching birds nest in the elms just outside. But last summer Dad stuck a giant air-conditioning unit into the window. Now I couldn’t see anything except a tan box with knobs and vents.

  I tuned in to Mom’s one-syllable end of the conversation and tried to figure out Donna’s stream of consciousness on the other end. Sooner or later, Donna Adams would know things. She would have made a great investigative reporter.

  “So you think this has something to do with that?” The way Mom said this, I knew she was watching her words because of me.

  Fine. Let them guess what was happening at the Kinney place. I knew more than either of them.

  I shoved aside my empty cereal bowl and silverware and opened my notebook. I’m going to tell it like it is. Tree Taylor the Writer is going to write.

  4

  Tell It Like It Is

  I sat at our kitchen table with my notebook in front of me. But I had no clue where to begin my Kinney story. I’d written a lot—stories, school reports, journal stuff. I just hadn’t ever written a real article. And I’d never investigated.

  I flipped through my journal until I found the quote I was looking for:

  I keep six honest serving-men (they taught me all I knew); their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.—Rudyard Kipling

  It was a little dippy, but Kipling’s advice was exactly what I needed. I’d had to memorize the same journalism questions in Miss Jones’s seventh-grade language arts class. We learned them in a different order, but I decided to go with Kipling’s order instead of Miss Jones’s.

  What: An accident. More than likely. Probably.

  Why: Good question. Was the gun loaded, and nobody knew it? Was Mr. Kinney cleaning his rifle? At that hour? Why did Mrs. Kinney have it when Dad and I got there?

  When: About 6:55 a.m., May 25, 1963. But what happened at 6:54? And at 6:56?

  How: A rifle. But how do you shoot yourself in the shoulder? Did he drop the rifle? Did she?

  Where: The Kinneys’ house, East Samuel Street, Hamilton, Missouri. Bedroom? Living room?

  Who: Mr. Kinney. But who is he, really? And what about his wife?

  I stopped writing because my five questions had turned into a dozen. And I had zilch for answers.

  I wished Dad would come home. I needed to know if he was one hundred percent positive the shooting had been an accident.

  I stopped chewing my Bic and tried again. Only this time, I posed my questions to Mrs. Kinney. I imagined her sitting across from me in the breakfast booth, that rifle stretched across her lap.

  Who are you, really?

  I pictured thin, dry lips barely moving as she answered: “You know who I am, Tree.” She let out a sigh like the one on her front porch. “I reckon I’m Alfred Kinney’s wife. That’s all. I’m not like your mother over there, with friends to talk to on the telephone.”

  It was weird. As I wrote, I could almost hear Mrs. Kinney’s flat, twangy voice. True, I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard her speak. But I knew how a lot of Hamilton women spoke. A country accent? A dialect? Ways of saying things that Mom always corrected Eileen and me on. “Warsh” instead of “wash.” “Fanger” instead of “finger.” “Fixin’ to” instead of “going to.”

  I wrote it all down in my notebook and turned the page for more.

  Yet in the time it took me to write my next question, my imagination fizzled on me. The skinny woman across the table began to fade … dissolve … disappear like a lump of sugar in a cup of hot coffee.

  You go on and ask your daddy what happened, Mrs. Kinney whispered.

  I looked up from my notebook. And just before the image of Mrs. Kinney disappeared, I thought I saw her grin.

  “Finally! I thought Donna would never get off.” Mom hung up the phone on the wall, where Dad had mounted it because I kept tripping over the cord. He’d refinished the little round table beneath the phone and caned the seat of the phone stool. Mom needed to be comfortable when she talked to Donna. Sometimes she curled her hair or did her nails during those conversations.

  She walked to the sink and ran the water before filling her glass. She took a long drink, then turned to me.

  No way my mother and Mrs. Kinney were the same age. Mom had blue eyes and page-boy blond hair, and strangers sometimes thought she and Eileen were sisters. Before World War II broke out, Mom worked as a nurse in a big Chicago hospital. She signed up for the army because she couldn’t stand the thought of her five brothers on a battlefield with no nurse around.

  Mom and Dad met in boot camp and got married in their army uniforms two months later. For the rest of the war, they were army doctor and army nurse overseas, only in different countries, like France and Germany, or maybe England. After the war, they moved to Hamilton, and Mom started working as Dad’s nurse three days a week. Patients from out of town made passes at her all the time. I’d have bet money that nobody had made a pass at Mrs. Kinney in a hundred years.

  Mom leaned against the sink and wiped her hands on a dish towel. “A very bad thing has happened, Tree.”

  I knew what she was going to say, of course. But I tried to act like I didn’t.

  “You might as well hear it from me.” She drank the rest of her water and set her glass in the sink. “Our neighbor Mr. Kinney had an accident this morning.”

  I looked down so she couldn’t see my face. Jack was always telling me, “It’s written all over your face, Tree.”

  “He … is … well, he’s on his way to the hospital.”

  “Ah,” I said, nodding like the Kit-Cat clock in Eileen’s room.

  Mom’s eyes narrowed. “He suffered a gunshot wound, honey.”

  I was lousy with secrets. And I wasn’t even sure why I’d been turning this into one. “I know, Mom.”

  The wrinkles disappeared from her forehead. Maybe she’d been afraid I’d burst into tears or scream in terror. Maybe I should have.

  Then the wrinkles came back. “Wait—did you hear the gunshot, Tree?”

  I nodded.

  “Were you scared, honey?”

  “I�
��m okay.”

  “Did you see your father?”

  “He ran down to their house. I was sitting outside, writing, when the gun went off.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “You were on the phone.”

  Mom began ripping the pink spongy curlers out of her hair. “Did you talk to Dad? Is he all right?”

  “He’s okay. The sheriff is there.” I should have been there too, where the action was. Randy Ridings was probably there by now, collecting facts, interviewing neighbors. And what if Wanda had the same idea I did about getting a story for the school paper?

  Mom set the fistful of curlers onto the counter and ran her long red fingernails through her hair. She and Eileen had the same hair. I got Dad’s wild and wavy black hair. “Tell me your father didn’t go down there in that raggedy robe and those awful slippers.”

  My mom would never have left the house in a robe and slippers, not even if the house were on fire.

  I shrugged. “Mom, do you know the Kinneys very well?”

  “Not really. Lois—she was Lois Dodge then—went to school with your dad, I think. Maybe she was a year behind him. Your dad skipped two grades.”

  Jack was right as usual. Mrs. Kinney must have been about the same age as our moms. “But she looks so old.”

  Mom came over and sat on the edge of the booth bench opposite me. Her feet stuck out, and I saw that her pink slip-ons matched the big flowers on the full skirt of her dress. “Lois Kinney has had a hard life.”

  Mom was looking right at me, talking to me like I was one of her friends instead of one of her girls, the younger one. I felt like I was on the verge of uncovering something, part of a truth I’d need if I really planned to write about this. “How has her life been hard?”

  “What’s going on?” Eileen, still in her powder-blue babydoll pajamas, shuffled into the kitchen. She and Mom had bought matching pj’s on their last shopping spree to Kansas City. I got the latest issue of Mad magazine, which was exactly what I asked for.