The Secrets of Tree Taylor

by Dandi Daley Mackall

  “Stupid game,” Karen muttered. She’d proved to be more worthless than ever, since she didn’t want to get her dress dirty. “I quit!”

  “You can’t quit!” Chuck shouted. The boys had lost the last game, and Chuck had kicked the flag and sworn a blue streak. “We have to play a tiebreaker!” He turned on Penny. “Get over there, you dumbhead. You heard me!” When she didn’t, he stiff-armed her, and she stumbled out of his way. “What—are you girls chicken?”

  “I’m chicken.” Jack waved his flag in surrender. “It’s getting too dark to play. Besides, you girls are too tough.”

  Karen ran up and hugged Jack. “You’re the best, Jack!”

  Penny hadn’t said two words during the last game. But she’d surprised all of us by running fast and grabbing the flag to give us the victory.

  “No, Karen.” I grinned at Penny. “Penny is the best. She could have beat the guys single-handed.”

  “Very true.” Jack wrenched free from Karen’s clutches and handed Penny the flag, a white handkerchief. “Congratulations.”

  Penny grinned and took the flag from him. “I accept.”

  Music still blared from our house. The quartet would be at it another hour or more. “So now what do you want to do?” I asked.

  After a few seconds of silence, Chuck jumped up and dashed to the road. “I know!” He glanced down the street toward the Kinney place. “Let’s go see where that guy shot himself.”

  12

  Far-Out!

  Chuck mimicked putting a gun to his head and firing. “So, Tree, what’s your dad say about Old Man Kinney trying to kill himself?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “I thought it was an accident.” Somehow, Karen had ended up next to Jack again.

  “Maybe … maybe not.” Chuck walked backward up the street a couple of feet. “Let’s see for ourselves!”

  I didn’t want to agree with Chuck, but I liked the idea of checking out the house. Maybe we’d find a clue.

  “So, what’s the plan, Chuck?” Jack asked. “You going to waltz up to the door and ask Mrs. Kinney if you can search her house?”

  “I’m not going to ask her anything. I’ll see what I can see.” Chuck turned to Penny and me. “Who’s in?”

  Penny shook her head. “I’ll stay here.”

  “Big surprise,” Chuck muttered.

  “Me too,” Karen said. “We could talk about what we’re doing for the steam engine show. I’m making my own costume.” She batted her eyelashes at Jack. “Maybe we could dress up as a famous couple, Jack. Like Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Boone?”

  Jack ignored her. His gaze hadn’t left Chuck.

  I wouldn’t go unless Jack did. But I really hoped he’d go. “Chuck’s going to do this with or without us, Jack.”

  “She’s right. Better come keep an eye on me.”

  Jack shook his head, then glanced at me. “Okay. But nobody bothers that woman. Got it?”

  Chuck whooped. The rest of us, except Penny, fell in. Karen had changed her mind and now wormed her way next to Jack, which left me beside Chuck.

  I was glad to finally be going to the Kinney place to investigate, but I wished it was just Jack and me. Not Chuck. I wished Chuck were already in the army. Soon as I thought it, I felt guilty. What if Chuck ended up going to Vietnam, and I’d wished it on him? “Chuck, do you think the army will send you to Vietnam?”

  “No way!” He elbowed me, hard. “Reserves and National Guard. That’s the way to go. It’s poor schmucks like D.J.—guys who aren’t signing up and aren’t going to college—who are going to end up getting drafted and shipped off to Vietnam. Not me. I’m not waiting around to be drafted.”

  “D.J.’s no schmuck!” I said.

  Jack stopped his conversation with Karen and turned to Chuck. “There are no schmucks in Vietnam—at least no American schmucks. Soldiers there are fighting your fight, Chuck. You ought to show more respect.”

  I wanted to ask Jack what he meant, but Karen had glued herself to his side. And anyway, we’d reached the Kinneys’ house.

  Now that we stood facing it, our mission seemed pretty lame.

  “Where did he do it?” Chuck asked. “I heard it was on the porch.” He walked closer, while the rest of us stayed back, near my old hiding place, the cottonwood.

  “This is a bad idea,” Jack muttered. “Chuck, come back, man. You’re going to scare the woman to death.”

  Even with Jack there, I felt scared. What if Mrs. Kinney still had that rifle stretched across her lap?

  Chuck bent over, hands on his knees, to inspect the porch. “No blood here.”

  Clouds hid nearly all the stars. The TV from a house across the street gave the only light in flickering shadows. I glanced down the road at the pitch-dark Quiet House and imagined Gary asleep in his bed. The Kinney house couldn’t have been blacker inside if the windows had been painted black.

  An owl hooted.

  “This is spooky,” Karen whined. She clasped Jack’s arm with both hands. “Let’s go back.”

  “ ’Fraid of a little ghost, Karen?” Chuck didn’t bother lowering his voice. “I’ll bet Old Man Kinney’s ghost isn’t waiting for him to kick the bucket. It’s probably already haunting this old shack.” He walked all the way up to the front window.

  “Chuck!” Jack called.

  Chuck pressed his nose to the glass, his hands cupping the sides of his head. “Looks like the lady of the house is out on the town.”

  I thought about what Penny said at the pool, about Mrs. Kinney being able to do whatever she wanted now that her husband was laid up.

  “What’s that?” Karen squealed.

  Inside the house, a single flame-light swept across the room. I gasped. “I see it!”

  Chuck laughed. “Yeah, right.” He was staring at us instead of the window.

  “Chuck!” Jack shouted. “They’re not kidding, man! Something’s in there.”

  Chuck tilted his head like he knew we were kidding. Then he turned and peered in the front window. “What—?” He jumped from the porch so fast, he landed in a bush. Then he stumbled to his feet and took off running back up the road.

  Karen was crying, burying her head in Jack’s side.

  Jack burst out laughing. “It was just a light. A lantern maybe. Chuck probably woke Mrs. Kinney up. I hope she scared him more than he scared her.”

  I knew Jack was right. But as we walked home, I made sure Karen wasn’t the only one next to Jack.

  After the Atkinsons left, Jack and I went back inside and cleaned up our Monopoly game. Jack never divided his money pot into denominations, so we bundled ones, fives, twenties, and everything together, something that would have put my sister over the edge.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Jack said.

  “About what? Karen’s proposal to be Mr. and Mrs. Boone at the steam engine show?”

  “Very funny. No, I was thinking about your compassion machine. That’s a great idea, Tree.”

  “Yeah? Thanks.”

  We picked up Monopoly stuff while strains of “I’ll Be Seeing You in All the Old Familiar Places” came floating in. My mind drifted back to the Kinney house. I felt bad for waking up Mrs. Kinney. “Jack?”

  “Hmm?” He shoved the Monopoly board on top of the piles of money and forced the lid on the box.

  “If we could use a compassion machine on Mrs. Kinney, what do you think she’d be feeling right now, with her husband in the hospital?”

  Jack put both hands on the card table and leaned back, his chair rearing on its hind legs. I knew he was really thinking about this, which was one of the best things about Jack. He took me seriously. Always had. “Relieved,” he said at last.

  “What?”

  “I think Mrs. Kinney’s feeling relieved, at least for now.”

  “Don’t you think she’s sad? They’ve been married a long time.”

  Jack shrugged. “The Kinneys are married, but it’s a bent marriage. Not like your folks, or mine.” He leaned forward,
and his chair thudded on all fours. “Yeah … I vote relieved.”

  13

  Get Real

  After the Adams family took off, I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. Midge curled at my feet and growled every time I flopped over. I couldn’t stop thinking about Mrs. Kinney. Was she lying awake right now too? Was she really feeling relieved that Mr. Kinney wasn’t lying beside her?

  The only person I would have felt relieved to have out of my way—not counting Khrushchev or Castro, of course—was Wanda. She was the biggest obstacle to me fulfilling either of my summer goals. Mrs. Woolsey, who’d been our junior high art teacher, always chose Wanda’s stuff for art shows. They were related somehow—Wanda’s dad was Mrs. Woolsey’s cousin, or something like that.

  And Ray liked Wanda too.

  If it hadn’t been for Wanda standing between Ray and me, I could have imagined Ray and his sky-blue eyes waiting on the other end of a kiss worth writing about.

  Last year Ray and I had English together, without Wanda. The first day, Ray walked right in and sat next to me on purpose, even though there were lots of empty seats. Every day, I looked forward to English because I knew I’d be sitting beside Ray. We had fun too, trying not to laugh at Mrs. Erickson’s overly dramatic readings. We discovered we both loved O. Henry short stories and Ray Bradbury, especially Fahrenheit 451. I even helped Ray with some of the reports we had to write for class.

  But whenever Wanda was in a class with us, she made sure Ray didn’t pay attention to anybody but her. I might as well have been going to school in Russia or Red China.

  I would have been relieved to have Wanda out of the way—but because she moved, not because she got shot.

  I hadn’t liked looking for clues at the Kinneys’—not with Chuck, anyway. And I sure didn’t look forward to prying information out of my dad. Maybe, I thought just before I finally drifted off to sleep, maybe I should rethink my big investigation. It sure would be a lot safer writing about steam engines.

  Monday it rained so hard, I figured the pool wouldn’t open. I got up early anyway and sat in the big living room chair, where I could watch the rain through our picture window. Water flowed in crooked lines down the glass. Midge, huddled on the footstool, was snoring away. “You know you still have to go outside,” I told Midge.

  She groaned.

  “Okay, I’ll go too.” I got the leash and grabbed my raincoat and umbrella before heading outside for a rain-walk.

  The gray skies and dripping rain made me feel like earth was having a bad day. But Midge wagged her tail and trotted full speed ahead, leading me up the muddy road like she was on a mission. She stopped in front of the Kinney place and started barking. I tugged on her leash, but she kept it up.

  “Here now,” came a scratchy voice that stopped Midge’s barking and made me look up to the porch. Mrs. Kinney stood in the doorway.

  I stared at her. She wore the same dingy apron as before. Her faded cotton dress wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Old West or on The Beverly Hillbillies. Her dirt-brown hair was carelessly pinned up, gray streaks flanking both ears. In my mind, I’d been picturing her barefoot, her unpainted toe-nails yellow and long. But seeing her sensible shoes again made me realize I’d imagined the part about her bare feet.

  “You’re Tree, ain’t ya?” she asked. “Doc’s youngest?”

  I nodded.

  Midge moved in closer, pulling me with her.

  “The one what wants to be a writer?”

  I was shocked that she knew that much about me. “Yeah?”

  “Your daddy said as much. Your sister, Eileen, wants to be a nurse, I take it. Why don’t you?” She narrowed her eyes, sizing me up as I stood in the drizzling rain.

  I wasn’t sure how I’d ended up on the wrong end of this interview. But she was waiting for my answer. “All I’ve ever wanted to do was write, Mrs. Kinney,” I told her honestly. “Well, I guess I did want to be a horse trainer once. And a dancer. But not anymore. I want to write and get to the truth of things. It’s like writing is something I need to do, whether I want to or not.”

  I stopped talking because I realized she probably didn’t care why I wanted to be a writer. She just wondered why I didn’t want to be a nurse like Eileen and Mom.

  “Best get out of the rain,” she said.

  I didn’t know if she meant I should get out of the rain or she should. But she stepped back and closed the door, shutting herself out of the rain and leaving me in it.

  I walked Midge home. My first interview with Mrs. Kinney, and I’d messed up so bad, it would probably be my last.

  I should have stuck with steam engines.

  Mom, also known as Nurse Helen, came home to fix lunch. Eileen and I ate bologna sandwiches while Mom stuck a plate of leftover lasagna into the oven for Dad. She said half the people in the waiting room were talking about the upcoming Steam and Gas Engine Show, and the other half were speculating on the fate of Mr. Kinney.

  I tried getting back to my journal, but I couldn’t seem to produce anything except a chewed pen. Then I heard Mom and Eileen laughing hard. Their voices floated in from the family room as if traveling from another planet far, far away from mine.

  I sneaked through the kitchen to eavesdrop.

  “Try it over here,” Eileen said.

  They grunted like they were trying to lift the house. Then I heard a chair or a couch scoot across the tiled floor. Staying out of sight, I peeked around the corner and watched as they finished shoving the recliner next to the biggest window.

  I liked the recliner in its old spot.

  “Perfect!” Mom exclaimed. “You’ve got a great eye for this.”

  “Maybe I should be an interior decorator instead of a nurse,” Eileen said.

  “You can be anything you want,” Mom assured her. “And that includes nursing.”

  Mom got that right. Eileen was so smart, she really could become anything she wanted to. Unless Einstein moved to town, Eileen would be valedictorian next year.

  But my sister had chosen nursing. When we were little, Eileen dressed up as a nurse every single Halloween. Before settling on what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d changed my mind dozens of times. Not Eileen. Changing her mind would have been like giving up.

  I probably shouldn’t have spied on my mother and sister, but I couldn’t help myself. Maybe I wanted to find out what they did that made them so close. You only had to see them for two seconds to know they loved spending time together. When they walked down the street, people stared, people smiled. In her own way, Eileen was as beautiful as our mother.

  I stepped back so they wouldn’t see me, but I could still hear them.

  “You wouldn’t believe what Elizabeth wore to Curt’s Café yesterday,” Eileen said, after more scooting and grunting.

  “What?” Mom sounded truly interested.

  “I liked her silky blouse. Pastel blue with a tie-neck. But her skirt? It had to be two, maybe three, inches above her knee.”

  There was a thud, like something heavy dropping. “You’re kidding!” Mom exclaimed.

  “I kid you not. It may not have been as short as that red suede skirt we saw, but—”

  “The skirt in Bazaar? Now, that was short.” Mom’s voice changed. “This way a bit. Hmm … no, let’s try the table on the other side.”

  “Good idea,” Eileen agreed.

  No surprise there. My mom and my sister agreed on everything.

  “You know who would look great in a short skirt like that?” said Eileen.

  “Nobody,” Mom said.

  “Tree. I wish I had her knees.”

  I couldn’t believe she’d said that. I stared down at my legs, pushing up my cutoffs for a better view of my skinned-up knees.

  “Both of my girls have great knees.” Something slammed against the wall. “And neither of my girls will be displaying them under short skirts.”

  “I know. But Tree could carry it off,” Eileen insisted. “You know what else Tree would look gr
eat in? A red sweater dress with a wide belt. And kitten heels.”

  “Tree wouldn’t wear kitten heels if you got her a litter of them.”

  “I know. And the only thing she’ll wear to school are shifts and sack dresses,” Eileen said.

  “Because they’re comfortable,” Mom explained.

  “She’d wear jeans to high school if they’d let her,” Eileen complained. “You should get her an A-line skirt. Ooh—I know! Remember those kick-pleat skirts we saw at the Jones Store in Kansas City? They look like straight skirts, but the pleat in front and back makes them comfortable. Remember? The woman said you could do the twist in that skirt.”

  Mom laughed. “I remember! I thought about Tree when she said that. Do you think she’d wear one if we brought it home?”

  I backed out of the kitchen. I wasn’t sure how I felt about what I’d heard. It always made me feel kind of lonely inside when I listened to Mom and Eileen talk. Sometimes I heard them laughing while Mom curled Eileen’s hair behind the closed bathroom door. I never asked what they were laughing about.

  Normally, I hated it when my mother and big sister tried to make me dress like them or act “ladylike.” I had put up a fit when they told me their plans to have Eileen and me wear prairie dresses for the steam engine show.

  But my ears were still ringing with what Eileen said about me. My sister thought I’d look good in a sweater dress. I knew she didn’t want one because she said they showed every extra pound and imperfection.

  Plus, Eileen wished she had my knees?

  Just when I thought I had my sister all figured out, she went and said a nice thing like that.

  And just when I thought I had my dad figured out, he claimed he didn’t want to talk about things.

  Maybe the whole world had flipped upside down.

  14

  Going in Circles

  Before I could get caught eavesdropping, I slipped outside. If it hadn’t been raining so hard, I might have gone for a long walk to clear my head. Instead, I grabbed my Hula-Hoop and my transistor radio and headed for the carport. Rain was pounding the metal roof, and the whole outdoors smelled like evergreens.