The Door in the Forest (23 page)

“Well,” he fairly crooned, “little Emily!”

His words seemed to waken her, and she took off a shoe and scaled it at his head. As a weapon, it didn’t amount to anything, but the surprise of having it bounce off his forehead made Stecher lurch instinctively away.

The old trellis was never meant to sustain a full-grown man pitching backward. It began pulling free of the building.

He glared at the wall as it moved away from him, as if force of will would stop what was happening. Emily stared, fascinated. It was a slow-motion ballet, the way the trellis arched, and arched further, and then, with a loud crack, snapped. And suddenly Uncle Arthur was on his back in the yard, his body festooned with ivy while his hand still gripped a white wooden cross.

Emily ran to the door leading from the widow’s walk to the upper corridor of the house. Her idea of hiding in another season wasn’t going to work, she realized, not with the trellis broken and the boys stranded downstairs. Out of breath, she darted down the staircase till she came out in the hallway.

She found the boys in the kitchen. Wesley looked scared.

“Did you kill him?”

“Don’t know. Takes a lot to kill a snake.”

Daniel held her shoulders and gave her a serious look. “And you’re really okay?”

She was breathing hard, but she nodded.

“No sign of soldiers,” he said. “They’re all heading to town. Do you still have that key?”

“Right here.” She patted her pocket.

“Then let’s get out of here.”

The three of them hurried out the kitchen door and across the yard. Passing the broken trellis, Emily noticed her shoe in the grass and snatched it up. She reached the car and slid behind the wheel. “Where does the key go?”

Wesley climbed in the passenger side, and his brother jumped in the back, looking over the front seat.

Wesley squinted. “By the steering wheel, I think.”

“Right.” She put it in. “Now what?”

“Turn it.”

Cheh, cheh, cheh, cheh, cheh, cheh
.

“Now what?”

“I have no idea.”

They both turned to Daniel. “Don’t look at me,” he said.

She stared at the three pedals at her feet. “What are those for?”

“Um,” said Wesley, tapping her shoulder. “I think our friend is coming.”

She looked up. Arthur Stecher had just staggered into view. He was leaning against the corner of the house.

“Damn! Which of these do I push?” Her eyes were on her uncle, who had started across the yard.

“Try one of them,” said Wesley. His voice was shaky.

She jammed her foot down and turned the key.

Cheh, cheh, cheh, cheh, cheh, cheh, cheh
.

“Try another pedal.”

“Another pedal. Right.”

“Stop looking at him. Concentrate!”

“Right.”

Arthur Stecher had picked up a heavy stick. He felt its heft in his hands. He looked up and grinned that grin.

“Em, you gotta stop looking at him!”

She shook her head, trying to think. “Pedal,” she said. She tromped on another pedal and turned the key.

Cheh, cheh, cheh, ChurrurChurrur, cheh, cheh
.

Emily looked desperately at Wesley.

“You almost got it,” he said. “Try again.”

A tremendous whack sent spidery cracks across the windshield.

“Holy …!” Emily cried.

Stecher hauled back for another blow with the stick.

“The pedal, Em!” cried Daniel from the backseat. “Try it again!”

With a tremendous crash, the windshield broke entirely, sending shards of glass flying.

“Em! Do it!”

Cheh, cheh, ChurrurChurrur-rur BarRUR-Rur-Rur
.

“You got it! Now go!” Wes cried.

“Go how?”

“I don’t know. Maybe that lever.”

Stecher had come around and had hold of the door handle.

“Lever, lever.” She grabbed the gear shift and yanked it toward her. The car gave a tremendous lurch backward and
banged into the back wall of the garage, scaring into flight an extended family of wasps. One of them found Stecher’s cheekbone.

He let out an oath and waved his arms wildly.

The engine quit.

Emily stared through the shattered windshield.

“Start it again!” Daniel yelled. “Push the lever the other way!”

She couldn’t think, but she did what he said. Suddenly Bridey’s old rattletrap let out a roar and leapt insanely forward, the front headlight catching Stecher’s hip and spinning him against the wall of the garage.

The car rocketed across the lawn.

“Slow it down! Slow it down!” Daniel yelled.

“I can’t!”

“
The other pedal
!” Wesley screamed.

She found it, swerving just in time to avoid the big sugar maple by the garden fence. She did not avoid the fence, however.

Sputtering and popping, the disastrous vehicle bumped onto the dirt road that led away down the hill.

On their way into town, they were dismayed to see a wheat field on fire, flames twisting in a rising breeze. A half-dozen men were pumping water into buckets and racing to the field, but anyone could see it was hopeless.

The children continued on, silent. Several sheep, clearly lost, wandered across the road, and a number of soldiers trudged by on foot. There was no way to hide Bridey’s battered car as it sputtered along. Some odd looks were thrown their way, but no one stopped them. The men had other things on their minds.

“Okay,” said Daniel, looking at Emily’s face in the rearview mirror. “You gotta tell us what happened at the creek.”

Emily was concentrating on driving, gripping the wheel as though it might attack her. “Just let me get the hang of this.” She tested several levers as well as the brake pedal, trying to get comfortable with them. “Okay,” she said, slowing a little. “The creek.”

As soon as she hit the water, she said, she’d fought her
way to the surface, terrified about the quicksand, but also about the snakes. There weren’t any at first; the big splash had spooked them, but they’d be coming.

“I remembered what my mom did when she was in front of the firing squad. She looked at something beautiful. So I decided to look up. The sky was perfectly blue—not a cloud anywhere.”

“And the quicksand didn’t get you?” said Wesley.

“I was careful. I didn’t put my feet down. I just kept back-floating the whole time. Floating and looking up. It was like a picture, with leafy branches around the edges and vines crossing it.”

The boys looked at her wonderingly. Soldiers, quicksand, snakes, and she could still look at the sky.

“But then I did look around, and I began to see them. First one snake, then several more, coming toward me. There was no way I could get away. I thought of you guys, and I thought of Mama—”

She broke off. Daniel reached over from the backseat and rubbed her shoulder.

“But they never reached me. It seemed that the water around my body was getting clearer, and the snakes wouldn’t go there. They came right up to me, but then they veered away. I couldn’t figure it out. Then I heard this fizzing sound, quiet, but very close. It was coming from
me
, or rather from under my collar, and I realized it was the pearls! And I remembered how Grandma sometimes used the necklace to clear cloudy water.”

“Wow,” said Wesley quietly.

“Grandma told me once that the snakes’ poison makes
the water acidic, and that’s what they’re used to. They wanted to avoid the clear water.”

“But the men,” said Daniel. “Didn’t they have guns?”

“They did, but they missed me. That’s another thing. They couldn’t miss, but they did.”

“Sounds like magic,” said Wesley.

She shook her head. “More like conscience.” She paused a moment, remembering. “I wasn’t all that clear what was happening,” she said, “but I think one of them was shooting at the snakes!” She looked from Wesley to Daniel to ask if that was possible. “Anyway, I didn’t see the snakes so much after that.”

“So the soldiers let you go?” Daniel said.

“They watched me. Then the big one, you know, the one with the face, he just walked away. The other one didn’t seem to know what to do. After a while, he left, too.”

“I’ve gotta see those pearls!” said Wesley.

“Sure.” Emily slowed some more and took one hand off the wheel to reach down for the necklace. Her expression changed. “Oh no!” She pulled out the strand, to find many of the pearls missing and the remaining ones more than half–eaten away, the nacre cracked and brown. “No!” she cried.

She veered to the side of the road and stepped on the brakes till the car stuttered to a stop.

She held the strand as she might a dead child. The boys didn’t know what to say.

Wesley cleared his throat. “I’ve heard,” he said, “that acid will eat away at pearls.”

“Anyway,” said Daniel, “they saved your life.”

“They did.” She turned and looked at him. “You’re right, they saved my life.”

Daniel looked thoughtful. “You could have kept going, right? If the snakes weren’t bothering you, you could have kept right on going to the island.”

“I thought about it.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I couldn’t leave you two. You’re hopeless without me.”

Daniel halfway smiled. “We may be hopeless anyway.”

Before long, they arrived at the edge of town. The old car, worn out and mortally wounded, managed to reach Doc Blackman’s place, then coughed and quit, expiring in a gasp of steam.

As Daniel had feared, a crowd was milling in front of the grocery store. One voice, then another, rose above the general hubbub. They were not happy sounds.

Wesley looked scared. “Think Mom and Dad are in there?”

“We’ll see,” he said.

The children hurried around to the alleyway behind the buildings.

“Uh-oh,” whispered Daniel.

Up ahead, several soldiers were guarding the grocery’s back entry. The kids ducked into a shadowy recess behind the schoolhouse.

“What now?” whispered Emily.

Daniel glanced up. “Let’s see if we can get inside.”

They slipped around the side of the school building till they reached the door used by the janitor. But the door was bolted and the janitor on vacation. Even the windows were locked.

“Stand back.” Daniel picked up a fair-sized stone and knocked out a pane of window glass just below the latch. With all the noise from the street, nobody heard. He reached in, lifted the window, and hoisted himself inside. Moments later, he unlocked the door.

It felt eerie standing in the empty classroom, but they didn’t linger, heading instead for the staircase to the upper floor. There they pushed open the door to the roof and stepped out on gravel-covered tar paper.

Emily dropped to her hands and knees, and the brothers did as well, crawling to the front of the building. From there they could see the length of the street. Down by Doc Blackman’s office there was no one, but in front of Crowley’s the crowd was thick.

“No use hanging around!” A soldier was standing on the store’s front steps and shouting into a bullhorn. “The store is closed. No food here!” He sounded hoarse from haranguing the crowd, but they weren’t listening. It’s hard to argue against an empty stomach.

“Just a minute, everyone!” The familiar voice was Sloper’s. He climbed to the top step and took the bullhorn from the soldier. “I know it hasn’t been easy, these last couple of weeks.”

“What is he saying?” one voice shot out.

“He says we been having it easy.”

Sloper was unfazed. “I know it’s been tough,” he went on. “You’d just sold your summer crops, and here we come along and eat what you’d saved for yourselves.”

“You got that right!”

“Well, I have good news for you.”

“You got food?” an old man called from the back.

Sloper ignored him.

“Maybe we can get closer,” Daniel whispered.

Keeping toward the back of the building so as not to be seen from the street, he took a running start and jumped the scary four-foot gap to the roof of Crowley’s Grocery, landing in a forward tumble. He looked back. Wesley had a daunted look, but Emily didn’t hesitate. In her light summer dress, she flew like a blue butterfly.

Wesley wasn’t about to be left behind. Breathing hard, he ran madly and leapt across.
Almost
across. Short by a foot, his top half landed on the roof while his legs slammed against the side of the building. Daniel grabbed hold of his brother and hauled him onto the roof. Slowly, with Emily holding his arm, Wesley got to his feet.

Daniel meanwhile crawled to the front of the building and found himself directly above the captain.

“The news,” Sloper was saying, “is that we’re leaving tomorrow.”

A murmur went through the crowd.

“Yes. You’ve been generous and patient, and your country will not forget you. After tomorrow you can go back to the life you know. Food will still be scarce for a while, I’m afraid. There’s nothing we can do about that. But at least you won’t have an army to feed. How does that sound?”

“He’s lying,” Emily whispered.

“I know,” murmured Daniel. “I’ve read his journal.”

“I’ve read his
mind
.”

“So go home now, friends,” Sloper went on. “And go with our thanks!”