by David DeVowe
“So what did I miss in class when I was gone?” I asked, trying to find something to say before I confronted her about her dad.
“Not much,” she said, kicking the snow with her toe. Then after some thought she looked up at me. “Mrs. LeMarche got a new necklace.” MaryAnne grinned big enough to imprint both dimples on her cheeks. “But I’m sure you saw that already.” She got quiet again, then added, “It’s not as fun when you’re not there, Shoesth.”
The conversation was becoming difficult. I just wanted to know what her dad was messing with at the mill but MaryAnne was too gentle, too soft for me to get the right words. It would have been much better if she were mad at me for what I did to her in class. Then I could just blurt it out and she would have to give me an answer.
“No one ever told me that before.” I stepped backward as I said it. Where did that come from? I thought. I found myself in a place that was too new. My best friend, Oscar, never talked back, it was true, but then he never could tell me how much he missed me either. Words seemed to hit differently than the whack of my dog’s tail. I felt as if this girl was still messing with me; that if I stayed around her, things would be more different than they already had become. Still, I had to find out what MaryAnne knew about her father’s trouble.
“How come your dad is going to the mill?” I asked abruptly.
“What do you mean? You thsaw my dad at the mill?” MaryAnne asked.
“Well, no, I didn’t see him. It’s just that some guys were talking about him being there and they didn’t seem too happy about it,” I explained. “You said your dad worked for insurance or something—what’s he doing messing around at the mill?”
“I don’t know,” MaryAnne said. “Sometimes he goes places for work but I’m not sure why. It’s just his job I think.”
I had no reason to doubt MaryAnne. She seemed to be as honest as any kid I had ever known. And yet she was spunky enough to take it from Buffalo Alice. “Well,” I said, “maybe you and I should find out.”
MaryAnne grinned, squinting her eyes just like the day she named me Shoes. “Maybe we should,” she said.
***
I didn’t tease MaryAnne anymore after that. At least not in class. She had agreed with me to find out why her dad had made trouble at the mill, so at least for a time we would be friends.
I pressed her to ask her dad about it but she didn’t come up with anything. “I asked him if he ever visited the mill,” MaryAnne said. “And he told me, ‘Oh, that’s not important, honey. You know that I don’t like to talk about work. It takes time away from you and from Mama.’ So I didn’t ask him anymore.”
***
March winds had melted most of the snow. I took Oscar with me when I pulled my traps. Weasels would be changing to brown soon and folks only wanted white weasels. Oscar always wagged hard if I got a weasel. He liked trapping as much as me. Dad said I could get $1.50 for each pelt this year. That would make $4.50 for the three I skinned. I planned on buying more traps and trying for muskrats come fall. I told Dad that when I was bigger I wanted to trap beaver. I would set a trap line so long it would take me a whole day to check them all.
MaryAnne and I didn’t make any progress solving the mystery of her dad, but we stayed friends anyway. Instead of avoiding her in the morning, I tried to be there when she walked to school. Sometimes we played follow-the-leader on top of the banks, seeing who would fall off first. Other times we broke ice in the spring puddles, not saying much. If we were talking, it was mostly me listening and MaryAnne doing the talking.
“Shoesth, do you like it here in Stoney Creek? I mean, do you ever wish you lived in a different town?”
“No.”
“Why not?” she asked. “There are so many different towns and so many different places. I don’t mean like Red Town—that’s not really a town. What about going to other places, a bigger town, a city, even a different state?”
I gaped at her.
MaryAnne went on, “I lived in Traverse City once. There were a lot of interesting people there. But we didn’t have much room. Daddy wanted me in the house after dark all the time. I’m just saying, there’s so many different places than Stoney Creek.”
That’s how our conversations were. I started to like my new friend ‘cause MaryAnne didn’t mind if I had nothing to say.
The leaves were popping fast on the Saturday me and Oscar showed MaryAnne my tree fort down at the creek. Two steps on my ladder were broke so I locked my hands together under MaryAnne’s shoe, then pushed her high enough to reach the good ones.
“Hey, this is pretty neat!” MaryAnne said when I shimmied up to the deck with her. “We can make it our secret meeting place. All we need are some walls and a roof and a couple new steps on the ladder. We could even put a window right here with some cute curtains to brighten it up!” she said, drawing an invisible square in the open space between branches. “What do you think, Shoesth?”
I thought the place was bright already. “Well,” I said, “I planned on finishing it—except for walls. And I didn’t exactly have curtains in mind.”
MaryAnne’s shoulders fell.
“I do have enough nails to make walls though,” I said.
“Good,” MaryAnne replied on her tippy toes. Standing on her toes gave me jitters. I nearly fell off my fort once, and would have, if it hadn’t been for branches to grab onto.
“Are you good at straightening nails?” I asked. I had a bucket of nails in the woodshed. The only trouble was, I’d used all the straight ones.
MaryAnne grinned, shaking her head slightly at me. I didn’t know what that meant. Did she not know how to straighten nails? Or did she wonder why I doubted her?
“Okay,” I said. “You can help. First we need to find enough wood.”
“Let’s go then,” she said.
I went down the ladder first. The last good step to the two broken ones twisted on my way down, nearly coming off the tree trunk as I jumped the rest of the way to the ground. Oscar bounded up from the creek to see I had made it. MaryAnne came down backward to the last good step and stuck there. Both her arms were wrapped around the trunk of the tree.
“Come on,” I said. “Jump!”
“It’s too high,” she replied, “and I can’t see where to jump.”
“Just turn your head around and jump!” I insisted, not knowing how to get a girl unstuck off a tree.
MaryAnne glanced backward only briefly. “I can’t,” she whimpered.
If Mama would have been with me right then, she would have told me to do what is noble. I gave it some thought, and wasn’t comin’ up with much. “Oh, come on, MaryAnne! Don’t be ridiculous!” It was the best chivalry I could muster.
MaryAnne grabbed tighter. Oscar whimpered. By this time I had moved to the side of the tree to see what her problem was. She pressed her nose into the trunk of the maple so tightly I could only see one side of her face. Her eye was closed. I thought she might cry again.
“Hold my hand, Shoesth,” she said, eye still closed.
Weird! I thought. The only girl’s hand I ever held was Mama’s. And that was years ago. I waited. Maybe she would change her mind and jump. MaryAnne didn’t move. It looked like we were going nowhere if I didn’t offer a hand.
“All right,” I said. “Scoot down; then see if you can reach me.” MaryAnne slid down slowly without looking back. The side of her face was redder than I’d seen it since the last Buffalo attack. Finally her hand reached mine. I automatically squeezed. No one told me a girl’s hand was that warm.
“Now jump,” I said, holding my other arm up to slow her down.
“Don’t let me fall,” MaryAnne pleaded. Then she pushed off with both feet. Her shoulder caught me square in the chest, sending both of us down to the mat of last fall’s leaves. I was dazed.
MaryAnne hopped back to her feet, pushing her dress down. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“I think so,” I replied as Oscar licked my face.
&nb
sp; MaryAnne stopped pressing her dress, looked at me still lying on the ground, then she put her hand up to her mouth. I heard a muffled snicker. Suddenly, MaryAnne collapsed to the ground, giggling. Then her giggle turned to laughter.
“What’s so funny?” I said.
She got control of herself long enough to catch her breath. MaryAnne slowly shook her head back and forth with a smile bigger than sunshine and a bright gleam in her eye. I couldn’t help but smile back.
Then we both laughed until our sides ached.
9
The Mystery of MaryAnne
“Let’s go see what wood we can find at the mill,” I said after I caught my breath and could laugh no more. “Nobody will be there to yell at us on a Saturday.”
MaryAnne and I ran all the way to the mill. When we got there I showed her where I worked at the cutting cradle when I was suspended. MaryAnne wasn’t as excited about it as I was. Then I took her by the boiler room where I had to pile slabs. “This is where I was sitting when those two guys were talking about your dad,” I told her.
MaryAnne seemed to be deep in thought. “Hm-m-m,” was all she said.
Red-winged blackbirds chortled from cattails at the edge of the hot pond. The place was eerily quiet compared to a workday. We picked through the pile of scrap wood to find smaller pieces that were about the size we needed for walls and a roof. I carried four. MaryAnne had two. I was glad my arms got bigger last winter doing that kinda work. And I was glad to have a helper with me. We lugged them back toward the creek, stopping here and there to rest our arms. When we got back to our fort, I dropped my boards by the trunk of our tree and put the two that MaryAnne had on top. It made a nice little bench for us to take a break.
“Let’s rest,” I said.
MaryAnne flopped.
“We’re going to have to take a lot of trips to get enough boards,” I remarked, remembering the job it was to haul the wood just for the floor.
“Yeah,” MaryAnne replied. “I don’t mind. We’ll do what we can before dinner, then we can come down here after school next week if my dad says it’s okay.” MaryAnne wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “Before long, school will be out, and we’ll have lots of time to work on it.”
“I’ll be glad when school’s out,” I said.
“Yeah, me too—for a while.” MaryAnne pondered. “But I like school. Mrs. LeMarche has been kind to me. I like when school is let out, but then I look forward to school starting again.”
“Really?” MaryAnne was different all right. I had never talked to anyone who actually wanted to go back to school come fall. Maybe it was ‘cause she was a girl. I had never really talked to a girl before. “How can you like school so much when you get teased more than most of the kids?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” It was as if MaryAnne didn’t know that people made fun of her.
“When people pick on you,” I said. “Like the time we were walking to school and Brady called you ‘Little Redhead.’ ”
“Oh, that. I don’t let it bother me much.”
“You’re kidding!” I said. “What about Buffalo Alice? She is just plain mean!”
MaryAnne’s face broke into a gentle smile. “Thank you. I never thanked you for sticking up for me after church that day.”
“Don’t you just feel like taking her down? I mean, if you were big enough? She’s looking for a fight.”
“Yes, I know, she’s not very nice,” MaryAnne said. “But it helps when I remember that Alice is an image-bearer too.”
“Image-bearer?” I gaped at her again. Now it was me shaking my head slowly from side to side. MaryAnne had become more of a mystery to me than the day she came to class. It was as if she had different eyes than most, saw things in different ways. She’s the only kid I knew who called Buffalo Alice “Alice.” How could MaryAnne not be Buffalo’s enemy the way she’d been treated?
“What color is blue to you?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean when you see blue, is it really blue? Or when you see blue is it another color, like yellow or red?
MaryAnne’s eyebrows reached for the top of her forehead.
“Did you ever wonder that?” I continued. “What if you could see from somebody else’s eyes? Would colors be the same or would blue be yellow?
“You are funny, Shoesth. What made you think of that?” she said.
“‘Cause it’s like you have different eyes than me,” I said.
“I do,” said MaryAnne. “My eyes are brown and yours are blue!” MaryAnne turned at me with one dimple. “We need to get more wood,” she said, then ran back toward the mill.
Oscar and I caught up to her in a flash. No girl was going to out-run me. We ran together and hauled wood, ran some more and brought more wood. On our fourth trip back to the mill we both had to catch our breath and cool off. I found a shady spot between two drying stacks of lumber that was just wide enough for us to scoot in and squat down. I motioned MaryAnne in first. I went next, than Oscar joined us in the shade. The pine smell of the lumberyard had a special draw to me, but in our newfound cave, the aroma filled my entire being.
“This is almost as good as our tree fort,” I said over my shoulder. I couldn’t see MaryAnne behind me, only the back of Oscar’s neck and his curly black and white fur in front of me, jiggling as he panted.
MaryAnne said, “Nice and cool. But too small.”
Bang!
“What was that?” MaryAnne asked.
“Sh-h-h.” I grabbed Oscar’s collar. It was the distinct slam of the screen door on the mill house office. “Don’t move,” I whispered to MaryAnne. I didn’t want trouble, and I didn’t want MaryAnne in trouble for being at the mill.
I could hear men’s voices comin’ our way. Oscar perked his ears. “Stay.” I pulled back on Oscar’s collar. He dropped his ears for a moment, then perked again to see who was comin’.
“Nice work this week, Malvern; most board feet since this time last year. You really know how to push ‘em,” said the first man.
My view was blocked by the next row of lumber in the yard.
“Ya gotta keep feedin’ the chain,” said the second one. “Kingman will be back on Monday so I won’t be riding logs, but I’ll keep the crew hopping.”
“I don’t like that Kingman,” said the first man. “We barely make quota with him and it’s been setting us back since last fall. If you don’t get Kingman up to speed, he’s gotta go.”
“Then what’ll we do?”
“That’s your problem! You’ve gotta move the crew faster. Why, either one of the Dietrichs could have run circles around that Kingman.”
“We still could have had them here.”
“Don’t talk to me like that!” The first man stepped back from behind the lumber stack. It was Mr. Hawthorne! His jaw gripped tight on the stub of a cigar.
“Who is it?” MaryAnne whispered.
“Sh-h-h!” I said.
“If you would have done it like you were told,” Mr. Hawthorne said, “Gunther would still be rolling logs and we’d be putting out more board feet than you can count with your shoes off!”
Oscar growled tenuously. I leaned back on his collar and peered through the drying layer of lumber. Mr. Hawthorne’s face had changed to a new shade of red.
“You’d better mind your p’s and q’s, Malvern, or you’ll be the next one scraping mud at the bottom of the pond.”
Just then Oscar tore loose from my hand, running full speed toward the men. He let out two loud barks at the shins of Mr. Hawthorne, then kept running toward the cutting cradle and the pond beyond.
“What in the world?!” said Mr. Hawthorne as he spun to see what had passed by. “Wasn’t that the Makinens’ dog?”
“Let’s go!” I whispered over my shoulder, then bolted out of our hiding place as the men were watching Oscar bound toward the pond. We ran the opposite direction, between rows of lumber to the other end of the yard. After we crossed the tr
ain tracks and the main road, we ran behind the school and kept on toward the creek. Neither one of us stopped until we fell down at our tree.
My breath was comin’ fast. “That was close!”
“Yeah. I don’t want to do that again,” said MaryAnne. She breathed hard, her shoulders against the tree. “Alice’s dad was very angry. I wonder if he’s always like that.”
“I’ve never seen him that way before,” I said. “I’ve only seen him at the Co-op a couple times. He ignores me. But he’s happy when he drives his car in the parade every year.” I contemplated for a moment about what we’d just heard. “The other guy, Mr. Malvern, he’s dad’s boss. You know, they sounded like the same two guys that were talking about your dad at the mill when I hauled slabs there.”
MaryAnne offered me a choice of questions. “Really? Why was he so mad? What were they talking about?”
“He said something about working faster, and if they could just have Gunther back at the mill. I don’t know what to make of it.”
MaryAnne stared right through me. “I don’t think we should go there anymore, Shoesth.”
When I saw the look on MaryAnne’s face, I had a strange sense that things at Stoney Creek would never be the same. It was as if I had stepped into a big-people’s world—a mysterious place where I didn’t belong. Stranger yet was a lingering sense that somehow MaryAnne was a part of that mystery.
Truth was, it was the last day of our lives as we knew it.
10
Arrested
A hundred bees buzzed overhead as I passed beneath the apple tree in front of Blankenshine’s yard. The invigorating smell of apple blossoms marked my last day of school. I had a spring in my step ‘cause I was going home to tell Mama that I would be down at the creek. The trout were biting. Mama said we would have fish for dinner if I could catch enough before Dad got home.
Lawrence was smiling on the Blankenshine’s porch when I approached. Lawrence was always smiling. I wondered what really went on in his world. He traced a line down the back of the support post, then ran his hand along the railing toward the next post. It looked like he was writing with something. I paused out of curiosity. In his hand was an old blue feather.
