A Trail of Crumbs

by Finkbeiner, Susie;

“You talk funny,” she told me. “Are you a hillbilly?”

  “There aren’t any hillbillies in Oklahoma.”

  “Can you read?” another girl asked, saying her words slow so I could understand them.

  “There’re schools there,” I answered, talking fast as I could.

  Their questions went on like that for a good ten minutes. Much as I wanted to walk away from them, I obeyed the manners Mama’d taught me all my life and tried being polite enough not to tell them they sounded ignorant.

  I did as Mama told me and tried to make a friend.

  “I’m tired of this,” Hazel said after a while. “Let’s go watch the boys play ball.”

  I’d never been one for watching boys do anything. Back home in Red River I’d joined along in their play just so long as Mama wasn’t nearby. But I did follow those girls that day.

  The boys played in a field right beside the woods. We girls sat in a line and I yawned more than once I was so bored. Izzy or Maggie, I couldn’t remember which, went on and on to me about her brother who was the biggest boy in the school. I repeated my ohs and reallys and uh-huhs, hoping she’d think I was listening.

  After a while the boys noticed us and strutted over like they were some kind of big stuff. Not Ray, though. He wouldn’t have known what to do with so many girls all in one place. After giving me a nod, he went back to get more food to eat.

  I gave him a look like he best not leave me by myself with those kids, but he’d already put his back to me.

  The other boys dropped to the ground, right there on the grass. They all had eyes for nobody but Hazel. It figured, I reckoned.

  “Who’s this?” the biggest boy asked, nodding at me. I figured he was Izzy or Maggie’s brother.

  “Her name is Pearl,” Hazel told him.

  “Well, hey there, Pearl,” the big boy said. “Have you been in the woods yet?”

  “Bob,” the girl who’d claimed him as her brother said, her voice a whine. “What about the g-h-o-s-t?”

  “What about it, Ethel?” Hazel asked. “You aren’t scared of ghosts, are you?”

  “It’s just a story,” another of the girls said. “Ghost stories aren’t real, Ethel. They’re just supposed to scare kids.”

  By how big Ethel’s eyes were I figured that old story did the trick.

  “Tell me,” I said, sitting up straighter. “I wanna know the story.”

  “Are you sure?” The big boy smirked at me. “You won’t get scared, will you?”

  “Nothing scares me.” It was a lie, but those kids didn’t have to know that.

  “Long ago, before the Civil War even, a whole bunch of slaves ran away from their owners down south,” the big boy said.

  “Did you have slaves back home in Oklahoma?” one of the girls asked.

  I rolled my eyes and reminded her that slavery was against the law. I had half a mind to believe the school there in Bliss wasn’t so good as I’d expected.

  “Don’t interrupt, Maggie,” Hazel snapped.

  “Well, some of those runaway slaves came all the way to Bliss,” the big boy went on. “They hid out in those woods there until it was clear for them to keep going.”

  “Where’d they go next?” I asked.

  “Up to Detroit, then they crossed over to Canada.” The big boy shrugged. “If they made it that far, at least.”

  “Oh, Bob,” another of the girls said. “Please don’t. This story gives me the shivers.”

  “There was a woman who stayed out in these woods though, refusing to move along. She said she was waiting for her son to come, that he was going to meet her in the woods so they could go to freedom together.” Big Boy Bob leaned forward and whispered. “But he never made it. He’d stolen a loaf of bread in Ottawa Lake and the store owner had him lynched.”

  One of the girls—Izzy, I thought—covered her mouth with a trembling hand.

  “The woman still wouldn’t leave the woods,” Bob went on. “Her wails could be heard all over Bliss. When her crying finally stopped, someone went into the woods to see if she’d left. They found her in the hiding cabin deep in the forest where the runaways would stay the night sometimes. That cabin’s right under the biggest tree in the forest. They found the woman there, dead. She didn’t leave even then, though. Her ghost stayed behind, haunting the forest even all these years later. And still, on a quiet night you can hear her crying out for her son. They say that when she died the tree twisted in fright from her ghost screaming and wailing.”

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” I said, keeping my voice steady even though it threatened to quake.

  “So, you aren’t scared?” Hazel moved her head so her hair flipped around her shoulders, for the big boy’s benefit, I was sure. “Not even a little?”

  “Nope.”

  I put both of my hands behind my back, hoping Hazel wouldn’t see how the skin on my arms had turned to goose pimples.

  “Then why don’t you go have a look,” she said. “If you really aren’t scared, that is.”

  I turned toward the woods. I didn’t give myself time to change my mind. Standing, I straightened my skirt and checked to be sure Mama didn’t have her eyes on me just then.

  “Where’s that old twisted tree?” I asked.

  “Right in the middle of the forest,” Big Bob answered. “There’s a trail that goes right up to it. See those two pine trees?”

  My eyes followed where he pointed. “Yeah.”

  “That’s where the trail begins.”

  Without another word I took off, running for the first time since the day of the big duster. My lungs ached and seized up, making me cough. I slowed, but I didn’t stop until I got to the two pine trees and saw the opening into the woods.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Sunbeams pierced through gaps in the leaves. Green above me, in front of me, below me. The trees weren’t one on top of the other like they’d seemed to be from far off. There was space between them full of fallen trunks that crumbled in rot and leftover leaves from years before.

  The trail the big boy’d told me about wasn’t so smooth and straight as I’d imagined it would be. It was more worn into a line that snaked between trees and around logs. Seemed to me it’d been there for years, maybe even before the white man came to claim the land from the Indians.

  I imagined them, their moccasined feet barely touching the ground as they moved swiftly, bow and arrow in hand. Their only worry was stalking the deer or squirrel that would be their meal.

  I pictured them coming upon me there in the woods and forcing me to go along with them to wherever their camp was. They didn’t understand me on account I couldn’t speak Indian and they didn’t know so much as a word of English.

  I’d be scared, not knowing what they meant to do with me. But I wouldn’t struggle. Not too much, at least. There wouldn’t be any use in fighting them. One thing I knew for sure about Indians was that they were strong.

  Once they got me to their camp, I’d realize they weren’t the scalping kind and they’d learn that I wasn’t there to take anything away from them. They’d untie my hands and show me their wigwams or mud huts or whatever it was Indians in Michigan called home.

  I’d only have time to teach them one word before I needed to get back for supper. I’d teach them “friend.” They would smile like they understood and say the word over and over a hundred times before letting me loose to go back to Mama.

  But they wouldn’t let me go without an armload of gifts like beads and feathers and a squaw dress just for me made out of the softest leather they could find.

  I sure would’ve made that Hazel’s jaw drop then.

  A cluster of flowers caught my eye. Right in the middle of a sunspot, they blazed up bright from the brown rotting wood around them. Purple and yellow and white and delicate, I stepped around a fallen-down branch, stooping low to smell them.

  When I was smaller I’d have Meemaw tell me about when God created the heavens and the earth. He’d put sky and sea in place bef
ore He got busy putting in land and trees and grass and flowers. Then He made it all full up of birds and fish, animals, and people even.

  He looked at all of it, every last bit, and called it good.

  From where I stood, looking at those tall trees covered by moss and wrapped round with vines and hearing the chattering of the squirrels, I had to agree that He’d done a good work right there in Bliss.

  It would have been a shame to pick those flowers. To take them from that quiet place might have been a sin even. Some things were best left where they’d been planted.

  Standing, I meant to get back on the trail. But I couldn’t see it. It was like it had disappeared while my back was turned. Had I wandered off farther than I’d meant to? Turning and turning and turning I tried to see something, anything, that looked familiar. Nothing did. Just trees and branches and leaves and crumbled stumps.

  It was like the woods had grown thicker. Like all the terror I’d read about in my books had come to life. I was sure I’d worked myself into some kind of trap with no way out.

  I’d been tricked.

  “Dang fool,” I whispered between quickening breaths. I cursed myself for being so stupid as to get myself into a mess like that.

  Mama had told me many times my curiosity would only ever get me into trouble. Once again I’d gone and proved her right.

  I kicked at a fallen tree trunk and screamed out a cuss. The only answer I got was a screeching of birds that flew off to some other place where there wasn’t a silly little girl saying filthy words.

  Slumping, I sat on the fallen tree, feeling the rough bark on the back of my bare legs and thinking it would serve me right if I never found my way back to the house.

  A girl should learn a thing or two about wandering off.

  I let myself have the kind of cry that takes a whole lot of shaking and choking and coughing. I went on until I was all worn-out, until I’d let go of all kinds of hurt. I figured I’d cried more since coming to Bliss than ever before in my life. I was getting real sick of boo-hooing all the time.

  Nobody was around to tell me not to, so I used the skirt of my dress to dry my face and blow my nose. Eyes sore and swollen, I squinted to see what was around me, hoping I might be able to find something that could lead me back.

  All the trees looked the same.

  All the trees but one, that was.

  Standing, I made careful steps to the tallest tree I’d ever seen. It stood beyond a thicket and a low-lying puddle. Once I got to it, I felt of its trunk. Thick and rough, it scratched against my palms. I noticed that the grain of the bark moved like a spiral, like it’d grown out of the ground spinning like a ballerina.

  Then, just beyond it, I saw the cabin. The boy had called it the “hiding cabin.” It looked as if somebody’d plucked it up right out of the sharecropper’s row back in Red River and set it to rest there in the woods of Bliss. The glass was busted out of the one window and the wood was a rotted gray color. It leaned to the right as if it wanted to collapse but was too tired to make the effort.

  A chill teased up my spine and I stood still as I could, waiting to see if the ghost would come.

  I heard no moaning or groaning and I felt no whooshing past my face. All I heard were birds calling out to each other and the rushing-water sound of the leaves in the wind.

  Tipping my head back, I turned my face toward the sky. The tops of the trees swayed, their arms lifted high up, making me think of Mad Mabel waving that dingy old hanky over her head.

  I wondered how those trees didn’t break in the wind.

  If ever I had to hide I thought that would be a nice and peaceful place to do it.

  Seeing as how I’d made it all the way to the cabin, it only made sense for me to take a look inside. I promised myself I wouldn’t step all the way in. All I wanted was a peek.

  The wood of the steps whined and I reminded myself that there was no such thing as ghosts. The door screeched when I pushed it open. Not a ghost, I told myself.

  I did step in. Just one step. The sun leaked through a gash in the roof, showing nothing but empty walls and cobweb-laced corners. Bits of dust hung in the air catching the light and sparkling as if they were made out of precious stuff.

  Then I heard a shifting. Something dragged across the dirty floor and I turned to see what it was. There, in the corner and hidden in shadow, was a shape. Taller than me and a good deal wider. I made for the door, but the shape was quicker, blocking me from going out.

  My first thought was that it wasn’t a runaway slave haunting that cabin. It was Eddie DuPre.

  Before I could have a second thought, I swung back and put my fist into the face then pushed past, rushing fast as I could to get away.

  A bumped-up root caught the toe of my shoe, sending me splayed out on the ground, right at the base of the twisted tree.

  “You’re dead,” I screamed. “You can’t hurt me anymore.”

  Then I heard a very human-sounding voice cry, “What’d you do that for?”

  Turning and sitting on my backside, my heart drumming hard, I saw a boy stumble out the cabin door, holding his nose while his eyes watered.

  “It was just a goof,” he said.

  Panting to get my breath back, I pushed myself up off the ground. “I thought you were a ghost,” I said.

  “You did?” he asked, dabbing at his nostrils with his fingertips to check for blood. There wasn’t any. I hadn’t hit him near hard enough. “Really?”

  “Sure I did.” I put my hands on my hips trying real hard to hide how riled I still felt inside. “You scared me a little.”

  “Just a little?”

  I nodded.

  “You punch good for a girl,” he said.

  “Thanks.” I shook out my hand the way I’d seen Ray do when he’d gotten in fights back in Red River. “I’m Pearl.”

  “I’m Caleb Carter,” he said, putting out the hand he’d been using to wipe at his nose.

  “Good to know you.” Just to prove I wasn’t squeamish, I took his hand.

  I let Caleb lead the way back to the picnic. He was a big boy, just not as big as Bob. I figured he’d agreed to do the scaring to impress the bigger boy. That was the way of men.

  As we neared the pines that stood guard at the tree line, I could hear all the folks still enjoying themselves at the picnic. Voices talking about this or that and a boy hollering, “I got it.” Someone laughed, sounding for all the world like a rooting pig, and someone else let out a beefy burp.

  I imagined Hazel and Big Bob and all the other kids standing at the edge of the woods, waiting for me to step out from between those trees. They’d be in awe, thinking I was the bravest girl in all of Lenawee County. And once they saw how swelled Caleb’s nose already was, not a one of them would dare try and trick me again.

  But it wasn’t a kid at the end of the trail.

  Mama stood with her arms crossed and wearing the angriest, most pinched-up face I’d ever seen on her. She’d never been one to give out a whupping, but she seemed to be fixing to change her ways just then.

  “Mama, I—” I started.

  “Not one word,” she snapped.

  Caleb slipped past us and rushed away. I thought he was more scared of Mama than any spirit that could’ve haunted the woods. He was right to be.

  “The other kids—”

  “I don’t want to hear a single word out of your mouth.” Mama whispered, but I knew if there’d been nobody around it would have been a powerful scream. “What in the world were you thinking?”

  I kept my trap shut because I knew what was good for me.

  “That girl Hazel came to me crying her eyes out over how you ran off into the woods.” She shook her head. “She was scared for you.”

  “She wasn’t, Mama—”

  “Don’t talk.” She put her hand up to stop me. “Don’t.”

  I shut my mouth, biting at the insides of my lips so I’d remember not to say another word. From how red Mama’s face was, I could tell s
he wasn’t in the mood for any kind of back talk.

  “Good Lord, Pearl. How are you ever gonna make friends if you up and run away from them?” She blinked fast like she did when she was trying hard not to cry. “And did you ever think about what kind of maniac you could’ve met in those woods?”

  “It’s real pretty in there,” I whispered.

  “No. Don’t you say anything.” She pointed at the house. “You just go up to your room. I’ll deal with you later.”

  She grabbed my arm and tugged me toward the back porch with her fingers digging into my skin so sharp I knew I’d have round bruises. Nobody seemed to pay us any mind and I didn’t know if that was because they didn’t notice or because they were too polite to stare.

  Nobody, that was, except Hazel who stood next to the house, sipping a glass of lemonade and smiling like a mean old cat.

  Back in Red River we had names for girls like her. Not a one of them was nice to say in mixed company, though, so I just thought them in my head and hoped for the day I might say them to her face without Mama there to hear.

  Hazel wiggled her fingers in the air in a wave that made fun of me somehow and she made her smirk even bigger.

  She looked uglier when she smiled than when she scowled, and I felt sorry for whatever fool would make the mistake of marrying her one day.

  “I’m just so embarrassed,” Mama told me once we were in the kitchen and she’d let go of my arm. “Here Mrs. Seegert put on the nicest picnic for us and you go and ruin it.”

  “But, Mama …”

  “What?” She made her eyes meet mine and behind the green-brown of hers was fire that would burn through me if I looked too long.

  “Nothing, ma’am.”

  Mama got right up close to my face. “If you ever do a thing like that again …”

  She didn’t finish and I half feared she’d say she would send me off. All of me feared she’d decide she didn’t love me anymore. And I tried not to let myself think that maybe she saw too much of the DuPres in me. I wished I could get their blood out of my veins. If only there was a way.

  “I’m sorry …” My voice crackled, threatening sobs.

  “Not another word,” she said, quiet like she’d been defeated. “Go upstairs.”