Wanderville

by Wendy McClure

  The bunkhouse was empty and quiet. Jack looked up and down the rough wood bunks, each one with a gray wool blanket folded on top. He glanced over at Alexander, whose eyes met his gravely. One of these beds had been his.

  And now one was Harold’s, Jack realized with a shiver. Harold, who just the other day had been climbing trees in Wanderville.

  “It’s the working day now, so nobody’s here,” Alexander said. “But the farmhands—the grown-up ones—get a dinner break soon, and the kids come back to the bunkhouse yard for ‘recreation.’ Though when you’re out in that beet field all morning, you don’t exactly feel like playing kick-the-can.”

  Jack could only nod. This place was far worse than the factory on Baxter Street.

  Just then, a bell clanged outside, and the boys retreated to a dim corner where they could wait and watch out the bunkhouse’s open door.

  They came straggling into the yard: boys who were Jack’s age, girls who were Frances’s age, others as young as seven or eight. Their shoes were crusted with mud, the knees of the boys’ trousers and the hems of the girls’ skirts were filthy and wet, and their dusty faces were streaked where they’d perspired. Jack recognized Lorenzo, who had taken to walking with hunched shoulders instead of standing at his full height. One boy limped; others shuffled. They lined up to drink from the water pail or else leaned against the side of the bunkhouse or the other sheds.

  Alexander watched them all intently, and when a lanky kid in a chambray shirt passed near the open door, he gave a low whistle. “Nicky!” Alexander called in a whisper.

  The tall kid stopped and turned. “Alex?” he said incredulously. “You’re back!”

  An older girl rushed over just then. “We thought we’d never see you again!” she said. She turned and motioned to two other boys in the yard to come over. “This is the kid we were telling you about,” she said in a low voice. “The one who escaped.”

  “What are you doing here?” Nicky asked Alexander. “Did you get caught?”

  Alexander shook his head. “Nope. . . .”

  Jack cut in. “But our friend did. Have you seen him?” He stepped closer to the doorway of the bunkhouse, where he could see out into the yard. “He’s about seven, with red hair, and his name is Harold,” he said. He spotted a group of younger boys, but Harold wasn’t among them. His mouth was suddenly dry as chalk. What if they’d taken him somewhere else?

  A small crowd of kids had gathered at the door. Jack could hear them whispering. “Who’s Harold?” one of them said.

  Someone grabbed Jack by the arm.

  “You came!” It was Harold. Jack finally breathed again. Harold was all right—grimy and tear-streaked, but all right. He pulled on Jack’s arm and then Alexander’s. “You came to get me!”

  “Good luck with that, Hair-red,” said a voice that Jack had heard before. Quentin. Good old Quentin from the train. His nose was swollen, and with his bad lip he looked like some kind of bulldog. Well, a bulldog that had lost a fight with a bull.

  Harold straightened up and glared at Quentin. “My friends don’t need luck,” he said. He turned to look up at Jack and Alexander. “Right?”

  Jack looked up and saw at least a dozen faces waiting for him to answer. Some he recognized from the train. Others were ones he didn’t know. So many of them were pale and shivering.

  “Right,” he said. “And here’s what we’re going to do. . . .”

  23.

  Remember, Child, Remember

  Frances sat down on the creek bank and took out the bread that Alexander had found in town. The walk back to the ravine had felt like the longest trek in her life, but she was glad to be back in a place that felt familiar, even if it was deserted. She looked around as she ate in silence. The rope swing turned slowly by the big tree, and over in the hotel, the hammocks billowed in the light wind. Could you still call Wanderville a town if there was only one person?

  Then again, Wanderville was the sort of place that you could see half in your mind and half for real. So Frances tried to see through the woods to a vision of New York that she remembered—Essex Street at first daylight on a Sunday, with the awnings folded down over the storefronts. Not an empty place, but one that was just waiting. Maybe Alexander had seen it the same way when he first came here.

  That made her feel a little better. After all, she was waiting—Jack and Alexander would just be arriving at the ranch now, and if all went well, they’d be coming back with Harold tomorrow. Or perhaps the next day. Whatever happened, she would be here.

  “And so will Wanderville,” she said out loud. It felt good to say it, even if nobody was listening.

  In the afternoon, she curled up in one of the hammocks, reading pages from her Third Eclectic Reader and watching the clouds cross overhead. She looked up at how the sky was outlined by the tree branches and noticed how it all sort of resembled a map, with patches of sky in jagged shapes like states or countries, and the boughs crisscrossing like rivers. It made her think about how far she and Harold had traveled in just a few days.

  The tree-branch map began to blur, and Frances wiped her eyes. There were so many things she hadn’t told her little brother yet. He’d remembered the aunt who had taken care of them until he was five, until she’d gone out on a November night and never returned. A neighboring family had taken them in for a while afterward, and after that, the uncle who drank gin. Frances had never told Harold that Aunt Mare was gone for good. And she had never told him that Aunt Mare was their mother.

  You must call me your aunt, her mother had insisted years ago, when Harold was just a baby. And I’ll tell the landlord that you’re orphaned kin. That way he’ll take pity. He wouldn’t be so kind if he knew the truth.

  It was a lie that served Frances well after she and Harold were abandoned. The simplest thing was to let her little brother—and the world—believe they were orphans. Better to have a dead mother you never knew than a mother who’d just disappeared.

  Now she wasn’t so sure.

  She turned a page in her reader and came to a poem that she read to Harold sometimes:

  Remember, child, remember,

  That God is in the sky;

  That he looks down on all we do

  With an ever-wakeful eye.

  Truthfully the verse used to frighten Harold a little, what with the talk of a big eye. But the meaning rang especially true to Frances now. That first day, after she and Jack and Harold had escaped from the train, the sky had been so huge, and all they could do was try to walk to wherever it ended, so it made sense that God was in the sky. It was near sunset now, and in the last light she read the whole poem aloud as a kind of prayer—a prayer that Jack and Alexander and Harold would be safe and return to Wanderville soon.

  She lay awake in the dark after that for a long time. What if they don’t come back by tomorrow? she wondered. Or the next day?

  Just before she dropped off to sleep, her eyes flew back open and she took a deep breath. If they didn’t come back, she realized, she knew what she had to do.

  24.

  Tater Thursday

  Rutherford Pratcherd was up before dawn, lugging a steaming pail of boiled potatoes across the bunkhouse yard. When he reached the orphans’ quarters, he didn’t stop to knock. Instead, he planted his foot against the door (admiring, once again, the shiny new leather on his boots) and shoved it open.

  “Time for feed!” he bellowed as he clomped into the bunkhouse. “Get in your places!” It was Tater Thursday, when the farmhand orphans received a meal before their morning jobs. Other days they worked first before they were given their victuals. “Keeps them from getting shiftless,” Mr. Pratcherd liked to say.

  Thus on Thursday mornings the children would form two lines along the row of bunks. Rutherford treated the occasion like a cursory inspection, and any kid who was found wanting—for wearing a dirty shirt, for instance,
or for failing to clean under their fingernails—would get his potato last, when it was cold. Never mind that everyone’s shirts and nails were dirty; the inspection was all up to Rutherford.

  Now he walked the length of the bunkhouse. Lately the little grubs had taken to scrubbing their faces and hands with extra vigor on Thursdays, and it was getting harder to single one of them out. So Rutherford hadn’t expected to see a kid standing right out in the middle of the floor, just waiting to be made an example. It was the new kid, a short grub with red hair, and he stood there blinking at Rutherford.

  Rutherford grinned. “Clearly you ain’t familiar with the way things are done around here,” he barked. “You’re to be washed up and in line! Now get in place! Get!”

  Harold just shrugged and wiped his nose on his sleeve.

  Rutherford’s face changed. “Do you defy me?” He set down the potato pail and reached for the whip on his belt. He raised it slowly, savoring the threat. He moved to snap it. Except the whip caught on something and jerked his arm back. “Hey!”

  Someone behind him yanked the whip from his hand. It was Alexander.

  Then Rutherford doubled over from a blow to the gut. Jack’s punch.

  Jack stood with fists ready. In the plan he’d devised with Alexander’s help, Harold was the bait, and Rutherford had bitten. The scrapping lessons Daniel had given him on Doyers Street had served him well.

  The ranch owner’s son coughed and stumbled. “You orphan trash!” he said between puffs.

  Alexander pulled Harold over to a corner, grabbing the pail as he went. The other children had broken out of their lines. Some had stepped back in caution; others crept forward for a better look.

  “Now’s your chance!” Alexander shouted to them. “Why don’t you show Rutherford what you think of him?” He grabbed a potato and hurled it at Rutherford. Lorenzo strode over, stood up straight and tall, and threw one, too. Then Nicky took up the pail and held it out for the rest of the kids. “Rutherford can have all the taters today!” he called out as the other kids cheered. He reached in the pail with one skinny arm, pulled out a warm potato, then pitched it hard.

  “Quit it!” Rutherford hollered. At first he simply ducked; then he started trying to catch the potatoes and throw them back at the orphans. “My pa’s giving you all extra chores today!”

  Jack didn’t stop to throw a tater; instead he found Harold and nodded over to Alexander. Nearly a dozen of the young farmhands had backed Rutherford into a narrow spot between two bunks. Several were gathered around the pail, eating the last of the potatoes. All this commotion hadn’t changed the fact that the kids were still hungry.

  Alexander handed the whip to Nicky. “Take care of this,” he told him. Then he joined Jack and Harold, and the three of them began to back slowly toward the end of the bunkhouse where the door was.

  Jack went over the plan in his head: Get Harold to a safe spot first. Once they slipped out, the other kids were sure to notice, and maybe they could escape, too. How much time did they have? A few more steps, and they’d be at the door. It was still dark out, dark enough to run—

  Just then the bunkhouse door banged open.

  “Where’s Hair-red going with his friends?” Quentin brayed.

  In the doorway behind him was a massive figure with great big, round shoulders and a wide-brimmed hat. Alexander’s face turned ashen as he recognized him, and Harold’s eyes widened, too.

  It was Mr. Pratcherd.

  “Here they are,” Quentin told Mr. Pratcherd proudly.

  The ranch owner lifted his cane and used it to nudge Quentin aside. “You’re back,” he told Alexander, his voice a resonant growl. “We never forget the ungrateful ones who run away.”

  Jack and Harold shrank back, but Alexander squared his shoulders. “I came back to say thanks for nothing, you greedy snake!” he spat at Mr. Pratcherd.

  Jack felt as if his heart would stop. Even Quentin sucked in his breath. Mr. Pratcherd glared at Alexander and banged his cane against the bunkhouse floor as he lurched toward them.

  “Take Harold!” Alexander whispered. “You know where to go.”

  Jack thought quickly. Where? Suddenly he remembered: the back window of the bunkhouse, the one they’d used to get in. He nodded, then hesitated.

  “Go!” hissed Alexander. “Never mind me!” Then he pitched himself in Mr. Pratcherd’s direction, blocking his way.

  “Move aside, boy!” the ranch owner yelled. He raised his cane again.

  Jack reached for Harold’s arm and pulled him along as he ran past the bunks. By now Rutherford had gotten control of the whip again, and he was snapping it to keep the children back.

  Jack’s mind raced. Where’s the window? Finally, he found it—it would have been easy to miss; it was covered by a thick oilcloth and barely let in any light. “Come on,” he told Harold as he pushed the oilcloth aside. He helped the younger boy climb through the window, then swung his leg over the windowsill to clamber out as well.

  When Jack got outside, Harold was waiting.

  Unfortunately, he wasn’t alone.

  Behind him stood Mrs. Pratcherd, wearing a dressing gown trimmed with black fur over a muddy pair of galoshes. Her hair was knotted up in rag curlers, in what seemed to Jack like a thousand scraps of muslin whose ends flicked in the wind like snake tails. She had a firm grip on Harold’s shirt collar.

  “We’d hate to see y’all leave the Pratcherd ranch,” she said, her voice flat. “I think you’d best stay a while longer.”

  25.

  To Tell a Sad Story

  Frances knelt at the creek bank and splashed her face. She winced at the icy cold of the water, but she reached in and doused her face again and again.

  It was the third morning since Jack and Alexander had stowed away in the black wagon, and they hadn’t come back with Harold. When there had been no sign of them at all by the end of the second day, Frances’s thoughts began to run as fast as the creek rapids she listened to for hours at a time. Had the sheriff caught them on their way back from the ranch? If he had, then the law would have probably come looking for her, too. No, the boys must still be at the Pratcherds’.

  It was time for Frances’s plan, the one that had come to mind her first night alone in Wanderville. It was almost as if Aunt Mare herself had told her what to do. Remember how it was on Hester Street?

  She splashed her face once more. The cold water was a ritual she’d performed almost as long as she could wash her own face. It hadn’t been by choice at first, but by the time she got to the Children’s Home, where hot water ran from the taps, she stuck by it. For sure it smarted sometimes, but that was just the lesson she taught herself every day—to do something hard, something that hurt a little, just for practice. And there were days when the practice sure came in handy.

  Frances did one thing different today, though. After the cold water, she picked up a handful of dirt and threw that on her face, too.

  On Front Street in Whitmore, she was careful not to walk past the mercantile lest she be recognized as a thief. Frances crossed to the other side of the street instead, looking all around as she went. It was near noon and the people of Whitmore were setting out on midday errands.

  She studied the storefronts, trying to decide where she’d take her business. Obviously the mercantile was out of the question. The bakery? There were several women inside, but would they just take her for a beggar? She turned to check her reflection in the bank window: Her face was grimy, her hair matted, her skirt hem muddy and damp. Aunt Mare would’ve told her she looked just like Brooklyn Molly, who was famous down on Hester Street for singing the most sorrowful songs to draw a crowd on the sidewalk—a crowd of fellows whose pockets were ripe for picking. Well, Frances wouldn’t be doing that, but she was taking a page from Molly’s book just the same.

  She turned back to scanning the street. She didn’t want to r
isk the post office, because that was where they posted handbills about criminals, and Frances was one, sort of. Then again, it was where the most people were gathered at the moment, probably waiting for the mail delivery that had come on the train to be sorted. She steeled herself. The post office, then; that’s where she would go.

  Frances started to walk, and then her walk turned into a run. She stopped only to open the post office door, and then she hurtled inside. Nearly a dozen faces turned in her direction. Grown-ups, buttoned-up folks with proper hats and coats.

  “Will someone tell me where I can find Sheriff Routh?” she called out. “My brother . . . I think he’s dead!”

  The office went silent, save for a few whispers.

  Frances took a deep breath before she went on. She’d had a bit of a knack getting people to listen to a sad story back in New York, but this was her most captive audience yet.

  “I . . . I worked at the Pratcherd Ranch,” she lied. “With all the other orphans. But I ran away because . . . because it’s a cruel place.”

  A murmur went up among the crowd.

  “Another runaway,” Frances heard a man say.

  “I heard it’s true,” a woman added. “They’re quite unkind there.”

  A stout woman drew out a handkerchief and began twisting it in her hands. “What happened to your brother, girl?”

  “I don’t know,” Frances said. “He was going to escape, too. He was going to meet me at the depot, and he was supposed to be here by now. But I think something’s happened. . . .” Her thoughts raced as she continued to spin her story. “There are dogs guarding the ranch. Mean dogs . . . I think they got him.”

  The woman gasped, as did some of the others in the crowd. “You mean . . .”

  “I fear he’s been killed,” Frances said.