The Door in the Forest (24 page)

“
No
!”

People glanced around to see who had spoken. A few looked up. “There!” cried a woman, shielding her eyes.

Daniel was standing at the edge of the roof. The late afternoon sun was just behind his head, making it hard to look at him directly. From the ground, he must have appeared like an avenging angel. “No!” he shouted again. “Don’t believe him!”

Captain Sloper twisted his neck around and squinted at the boy above him.

“It’s the Crowley kid!” one man called out.

“He’s the one been spying on us,” said the man’s wife. She spat on the ground.

Daniel raised his arms for quiet—making him look even more the avenging angel. “The captain
is
planning to leave tomorrow,” he called out, “after he’s burned your fields and barns and slaughtered your livestock! We passed one burning field on our way here!”

“Ridiculous!” shouted Sloper through the bullhorn. “Why would we do such a thing?”

The people looked from the captain to the figure atop the building and back again. It was confusing. Many thought the boy had been spying for the captain, but here he was confronting him.

Daniel looked out over the town. “
Why
would he do that?” he yelled. “Because he has this idea we’re helping the rebels. He thinks we’re supplying them with food, hiding weapons, who knows what?”

“Nonsense!” Sloper barked. “I love this town!” He looked around at his men. “Would someone please help that boy down before he hurts himself?”

Three soldiers set off at a run. Two others, who’d been
guarding the back entrance, were already inside Crowley’s racing up the staircase. They soon raced down again, because the grocery store had no door to the roof.

“And if you resist him, the captain will kill you!”

The voice was not Daniel’s. From the ground, it was hard to see who was standing beside him in the blaze of haloing light.

It was Emily Byrdsong. “I know,” she shouted, “because he tried to kill
me
!”

Min Fish squinted to see. “I thought she couldn’t speak.”

Sloper looked as if he’d seen an apparition. “Is that Miss Byrdsong up there?” His shout tried to sound kindly. “Come down, dear. It’s dangerous up there for a girl.”

“You know what’s dangerous for a girl?” she shouted right back. “Poisonous snakes and creeks full of quicksand!”

A woman audibly gasped.

“The bullets fired at me were pretty dangerous, too. For a
girl,
” she added with a twist.

“Why are you
saying
these things?” said Sloper. He looked to the townspeople for help. “Why is she saying these things?” He tilted his head back. “Come down from there, Emily, right now!”

“I don’t think so. I don’t want to give you another chance.”

Daniel spoke again: “Listen, everybody. This is real. He’s planning to destroy Everwood.”

“Why should we believe you?” It was old Dave Tainter, who ran the hardware store.

Wesley spoke up now, his voice thin but carrying. “You have to believe my brother! Don’t you know anything?
He can’t lie
!”

The crowd fell silent.

“He’s got a point there,” said Adelaide Fench, adjusting her snood.

“Everybody knows that,” Wesley went on. “It’s got him in trouble often enough.”

The children, with their vantage point, were the first to see the rider galloping toward town. It was the farmhand from Wayne Eccles’s place, and he was yelling something. He rode headlong down the main street, his horse at the last moment swerving in a half circle as he reined it in. “Fire! They’re burning the fields! Wayne’s barn is already gone!”

“Let’s go!” a young carpenter named Errol called out. “We’ll start a bucket brigade!”

“Too late for that, I’m afraid,” Sloper countered, his voice booming through the bullhorn.

At his signal, the soldiers around him lifted their rifles and pointed them at the crowd. From doorways and alleyways, other soldiers stepped out into the street, their guns cocked.

The people glanced around, amazed. A young child started crying.

“Sorry you had to learn it this way,” Sloper shouted through the bullhorn. “I was hoping you’d go home and find out about my little surprise firsthand. But the children are right. Even as we speak, the fields are burning.” He looked around at the horrified faces. “Soon your barns and houses. Oh, don’t look surprised! Just think. You’ll be famous! An example to traitors around the country. They’ll hear the word ‘Everwood’ and think twice about rising up against their government.”

Paul and several other young farmers made a break for it. A few of the soldiers managed to get off a round or two from
their rifles, and a wheat farmer, Samuels, was stung with a bullet in the arm before he disappeared between the houses.

No one else dared move.

Suddenly a man’s voice sailed out over the crowd: “
Now
!”

And immediately, in all the second-floor windows, men and women appeared, armed with rifles pointed at the soldiers below.

Sloper’s men stared in shock.

The voice yelled out again: “Lay down your guns, soldiers!
Right now
!”

“Oh my God,” said Daniel. “It’s Dad!”

There, unbelievably, atop the hardware store across the street, stood John Crowley, his rifle pointed directly at Captain Sloper’s heart.

“By the count of three!” Crowley shouted. “
One
!”

No one breathed.

“
Two
!”

A soldier dropped his rifle onto the cobbles. Another laid his down and stepped away from it.

“What are you
doing
?” cried Sloper, reaching for his pistol. “Are you afraid of a bunch of farmers?”

More rifles clattered to the ground.

Cheers broke out around the square. “They’re doing it!” Emily cried.

“Now move away!” cried Crowley. “Slowly! That’s the way.”

Only Sloper and the half-dozen soldiers surrounding him still held weapons. They began backing toward the building.

“Stop him!” cried Miss Binchey, shaking a bony fist.

Captain Sloper raised his pistol in the air. “Don’t you threaten me, you filthy peasants!” He looked up at the
children on the roof. “As for you …” He took aim at Daniel; but just as he was squeezing the trigger, a shot rang out, whizzing past Sloper’s head. The captain’s own shot went wild as he glanced around, catching the glint of John Crowley’s rifle on the opposite rooftop.

“Get him!” screamed a woman.

Without thinking, the crowd surged forward with a roar. It was pure adrenaline-fueled instinct. A few rifle shots rang out, but that only enraged people further as they stormed up the steps, overpowering the soldiers in front of the captain. Some townspeople, farther back, threw whatever came to hand, a hammer, a shoe, or in most cases, small stones from the street.

One of the stones struck Sloper on the side of his head, drawing blood. A moment later, still brandishing his pistol, he slipped through the entrance to the grocery store, slamming and locking the door. Fists pounded on the glass. The glass shattered, and then the door came off its hinges. By the time John and Gwen Crowley made their way to the store and went inside, Sloper had disappeared.

Gwen hugged her boys tightly, then reached out and brought in Emily as well, like a hen gathering her brood.

Her husband, after seeing everyone was all right, ran to the town hall to release Arnie Fish and the other prisoners held in the basement jail. He came back a few minutes later with Fish and Min.

“Some of the men,” he said, “have gone looking for the captain. They’re afraid he’ll get away.”

“All he needs is a car,” said Gwen.

Crowley nodded. “By now he must be well on his way to the city.”

“But he’s not.” Emily closed her eyes, as if listening. “He knows if he shows up there he’ll be arrested. And to show up without his
soldiers
 …”

Crowley looked at her questioningly.

“So no, he’s not going to the city.” She paused again. “He’s on a horse—couldn’t find a car—and he’s heading to the one place nobody can reach him.”

“You mean …,” said Daniel.

“The island, yes.”

“How—?” Crowley began.

“Dad,” Daniel said, “just believe her. Come on, we’d better hurry.”

They came to the end of the street, where Bridey’s car stood, black and dented, looking like a squashed waterbug. There was no getting it to start.

“We’ll have to take the buckboard,” said Gwen, heading for the shed behind the hardware store.

Soon they were on their way, the kids and Mr. and Mrs. Fish in the back holding on to the sideboards while John and Gwen sat up on the driver’s bench urging old Nate, the family nag, to greater efforts.

The captain may have said the farms were burning, but for the most part, his plan hadn’t been carried out. In many cases, the men sent to do it had taken the opportunity to desert.

There was the burning wheat field the children had passed on the way in, and farther on, Wayne’s blazing barn and cornfield. It was shocking to see waves of tasseled stalks crackling amid the roar of high-reaching flames. The town’s one pump truck, horse-pulled, stood beside the field spurting water along the fire’s edge.

“It’s no use, is it?” said Wes.

“Not much,” said his father. He snapped the reins.

Once the flames were behind them, the road looked dim, late afternoon edging into evening. Daniel contemplated his father, up on the driver’s seat, the sun striking the side of his face. He was sweating, and his blue work shirt was stained.
“Dad,” said Daniel, “all those guns. Where’d they come from?”

His father hesitated. “There are a few things we didn’t tell you, son.”

Daniel felt his face flush with what he feared his father would say.

Then he said it: “We had a good number of weapons stashed away in different parts of town. Still do.”

“Dad!” said Wesley.

Daniel was busy rethinking everything he knew about his gentle-mannered father. Here was a new side of him, and he wasn’t sure he liked it. “So,” he said, “it turns out Sloper was right.”

“Yes, he was right. His mistake was he thought the weapons were stored on the island. A good thing he didn’t look behind the walls in the schoolhouse, or in the bell tower of the church.”

The buckboard passed the Crowley house and continued on.

“So then it was
you,
” Daniel said, “you and the others who brought the Uncertainties to Everwood.”

His father didn’t answer. Daniel found his silence irritating, as if he weren’t owning up to a lie.

“The soldiers would never have
come
here, Dad. Sloper would’ve left us alone. But he knew …”

Gwen laid a hand on her son’s shoulder. “Sometimes you just have to step up and do something.”

Wesley looked at her. “Did you know about this, Mom?”

“Your mother kept track of everything,” said Crowley. “What we had, where it was stored, when to send the next
shipment to our friends in the city.” He glanced back at Emily. “I don’t suppose you know where the captain is now?”

“Not exactly. I just know he’s desperate to get to the island.”

“If you say so,” said Crowley. He turned the horse toward the pathway into the woods. “We’ll take the wagon as far as we can. Arnie, do you and Min want to get out here?”

“And miss this?” said Min.

Crowley nodded. “Okay, then.”

The sky was still blue overhead, but the trees deeply shadowed, as if they knew more about night than the rest of us. The big cottonwood down the hill from Bridey’s was darkest of all. A few feet away stood the tall rose of Sharon, its large pink blooms going gray in the failing light. Nearby, continually whispering, ran the insidious stream.

The way through the woods was easier than expected, since the tank had come this way before, flattening the underbrush. Seeing a glint of water ahead, Crowley tethered the horse and climbed down. He slung a canvas tool bag over one shoulder and led the way on foot. Behind them, unnoticed, trotted the cat Mallow, half-visible among the leaves.

Before long, they came to the edge of the torn-up area where the tank stood, huge and useless, steeped in shadow. Gray in the fading light, Mallow darted ahead, then stopped to sniff about. The scene looked different, even from yesterday, when the makeshift bridge had been lying on the ground, the empty oil drums lashed together and covered with planking. Sloper had managed to push the thing, barrel by gonging barrel, into the stream till one end of it touched the island. He was at the water’s edge now, bent over his work,
making fast the near end while the barrels bobbed gently like a necklace of coal.

Sloper straightened up and saw them. “Hello, traitors,” he said.

“Good evening, Captain,” said Crowley, stepping closer. “Quite a contraption you’ve got there.”

Sloper glanced at his handiwork. “It’ll serve the purpose.”

“I’m afraid we can’t let you use it.” He pulled out a pistol.

“You don’t want to do that, John,” the captain said. “Put it away and I promise I won’t mention it in my report.”

“Your what?”

“You do realize it’s a crime to threaten a member of the armed forces.”