The Door in the Forest (7 page)

Gwen Crowley had just come in with a platter of meat, and she almost dropped it on the floor.

Sloper glanced from son to mother. “Well, that’s the
truth, anyway. I like this boy. He really is the dog that doesn’t bark. So tell me. What do you think of Bailey here?” He gestured across the table at a lieutenant, one of his closest aides.

“What do I think of him? I don’t know him.”

“True. But from what you observe.”

“His jokes aren’t funny, and it’s embarrassing the way he’s always flattering you.”

Lieutenant Bailey, an expressionless man with calculating eyes, stood up suddenly, his fork gripped in his fist.

“And he scares me,” Daniel added.

Sloper clapped loudly. “Well said, boy. He scares me sometimes, too. Oh, sit down, Bailey, for heaven’s sake.” He shook his head. “Yes, I like this boy.”

The captain proved it the next day and in the days that followed, taking Daniel along on jaunts through the countryside, or through the old part of town, like a tourist relying on a guide. It made Daniel nervous to be singled out this way, but his afternoons were never boring. It was impossible to trust the man, but he was more interesting to talk to than, say, Wayne Eccles or Miss Binchey, the postmistress. There was something conspiratorial about the way he looked at you that drew you in, as if the world were a private joke that only you and he were in on. Of course, he was half-drunk much of the time.

“How come he doesn’t take me?” said Wesley.

“I guess you’re the dog that barks.”

“Whaddya mean? I don’t bark.”

“I’m just saying he can’t be sure you’ll tell him the truth.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Believe me, I’d rather be you.”

One day, the captain let Daniel climb up and take a look inside the tank. The lieutenant who accompanied them gave the captain a warning look.

“What is it, Bailey?”

“Captain,” said the soldier, curving a couple of fingers over his mouth as if to keep the wrong people from hearing, “why would you let the townspeople see how the tank works?”

“Because it
pleases
me, Bailey. Besides,” he said, “I’m not showing the townspeople, I’m showing Daniel.”

Bailey’s eyebrow rose fractionally.

“I trust this boy,” the captain went on. “More than I can say for most of you.”

Daniel looked down and smiled. He descended the metal steps into the machine’s steel belly. It took four men to run it, Sloper explained, and yet, except for the driver’s stool, mounted on top of the motor, there was nowhere to sit. The viewing slits were narrow, restricting the gunner’s vision. But Sloper was proud of his “big pig,” as he called it, although it hadn’t been used yet in the current conflict and still needed work. He was convinced no enemy could stand against it. Daniel, who’d never seen a machine larger than Wayne Eccles’s tractor, was impressed. He also took as many mental notes as he could keep in his head.

The captain was curious about everything. On passing the school, he wanted to know how long the principal had held her position and what the students were taught about the Uncertainties. He took Daniel into the lending library to see what books were on the shelves and was particularly
interested to discover several volumes on the use of explosives, although the books hadn’t been taken out for years.

Daniel wasn’t stupid. He knew he was being pumped for information, the important mixed in with the trivial. But he felt he was learning as much about the captain as the captain was learning about the town.

Anyway, he wasn’t really giving away secrets—he had none to tell. The farmers had better things to do than hatch plots behind the hay bales. There were cattle to bring in, fences to repair, corn and soybeans to harvest. They were disgruntled, but not disloyal. Disgruntlement was a local pastime, one of the few. Surely a man of Sloper’s intelligence could see
that
.

But maybe he didn’t. That would explain his overreaction to an incident involving a piglet.

A man named Hargreave, a reclusive type who didn’t care for people much, eked out a bare living from his stony fields up on the west ridge. His neighbors didn’t like him any more than he liked them. They used to say his personality was like the smell that lingered on his seldom-washed clothes. But there was one thing he had, a really remarkable sow. He treated that pig better than his wife, and last spring the sow had delivered a fine brood of piglets.

Daniel tried to warn Sloper not to expect a friendly welcome when he went to see about the pigs, but that didn’t stop the captain.

“Don’t got no piglets,” said Hargreave tersely.

“That’s not what I heard.”

“Sold ’em all. So if you don’t mind gettin’ off my property …”

Sloper sent a man around to the pigsty. He came back holding a little pink squealer. That’s when Hargreave reached for his shotgun and ordered the soldiers off his land.

Daniel winced when the old man was disarmed and horsewhipped, each stroke raising a stinging welt. Hargreave seemed determined not to cry out, but by the end he couldn’t help it.

“What’s the matter?” the captain said, looking over at Daniel. “Think I’m too hard on him?”

“He’s just trying to protect what’s his.”

Sloper stepped into the backseat of the staff car. “I could put up with that,” he said, “but not his lying. I had enough lying growing up.”

Daniel stepped in after him. “Who lied to you?”

“My old man.” Sloper shook his head, remembering. “It wasn’t just me; he lied to everyone. He had a real talent.” As the car started off, Sloper watched the farmer’s wife lead Hargreave into the house. “That’s what I like about you,” he said. “You can’t help telling the truth.”

“It’s not much fun,” Daniel said.

“I suppose not.” They rode in silence. “Better than lying, though. I could have turned out like my dad. Thank God for the military. Structure. It saved my life.”

Daniel was silent.

“What is it?” said Sloper.

“I don’t want to say.”

“But I want you to. That’s why you’re worth my time.”

Daniel shot him a glance, unsure what the captain’s reaction would be. “What you call structure,” he said, “I’d call cruelty.”

“Would you, now?” Sloper replied calmly. “An interesting thing, cruelty. Sometimes it’s the only way to get people’s attention. That pig farmer will think three times before he lies to me again.”

The next day, Sloper got everybody’s attention. He’d concluded from his experience with Hargreave that farmers in general were not to be trusted with firearms, and he ordered all citizens of Everwood to turn in their guns. They’d be kept safely locked away until the soldiers left town, at which time the weapons would be returned.

Many people chose to hide their firearms rather than give them up. This led to house-to-house searches and more horsewhippings. Being Sloper’s guide and counselor was not a job that would make a boy popular, and Daniel did his best to be less available, pleading the need to do chores at home. He’d been putting them off for days.

Sloper gave him one of his looks. “You’re trying to avoid me, are you not, little man?”

It would have been so easy for most people to deny it. “Yes, sir,” said Daniel.

“Honest to the end.”

Daniel looked down.

“Very well,” said Sloper, “but I reserve the right to call on you again. I get mortally tired of being lied to.”

And so, for the next few days, Daniel was permitted to catch up on chores and even to find some time to himself.

One afternoon ten days after the soldiers had arrived in town, Arnold Fish ambled over to the Crowley place and watched Daniel splitting kindling out back. He stood silently,
his snake tattoo bulging. Daniel pretended not to notice him at first, but finally looked up.

“Do me a favor?” said the big man.

“Sure.” Daniel ran the back of his hand across his forehead.

“Help me build a coop?”

Daniel looked puzzled. Fish was a morose and mostly silent man who never asked for anything. And then to say something so bizarre …

“Don’t you already have a chicken coop?”

“Yeah.” Fish spat on the sawdust-covered ground. “I need one they don’t know about.”

Daniel understood what “they” meant. “I’d think I would be the last person you’d ask.”

“Why’s that?”

“You know.”

“You mean not lyin’? That’s foolishness. Just takes practice, is all. Everybody can lie. Truth is, there’s nobody else I
can
ask. They’re all spooked about the soldiers. Bunch of cowards, you ask me.”

Daniel could understand. Nobody wanted to get on Sloper’s bad side. “When would you need me?”

“Now would be good. While nobody’s around.”

Daniel leaned his ax against the chopping log.

Fish led him on a walk across two fields to a dip in the land that was out of sight from the road. He had poles and chicken wire and a post-hole digger out there already.

“We got to make it tight,” he said. “There’s lots of vermin out here.”

Fish called anything “vermin” that attacked his chickens. Mostly foxes and hawks, although he might include soldiers on the list.

Over the next several hours, Fish didn’t say much, but then he never did. Daniel learned that his neighbor was hoping to hide two dozen hens from the soldiers. More than that would be noticed.

It was hard work, and when they finished, they went back and forth hand carrying cages of squawking birds. By the time they’d set out the feed and water in the new coop, the sun was casting long shadows across the fields.

“Well, son, that’s about it.”

Daniel nodded.

“Another week, the way these soldiers have been eating, I’d have been cleaned out.”

“Glad to help.”

“I won’t forget it.”

If you knew Fish, you’d understand what a compliment this was. It made Daniel smile all the way home.

Earlier that day at the Byrdsong manse, Emily was learning a lesson of her own about soldiers. She’d just caught one of them in her room going through her bureau. Ordinarily, she’d be afraid, even terrified, but on this day she was too angry to think straight. Wordlessly she ran at him, pummeling him with her fists. He was so surprised he backed away, half laughing, half afraid of this silent violence.

“Okay, okay! Hey! Cut it out!”

She pushed at him, as if pushing a car out of a ditch, and kept shoving until he was out of the room. It was only after she’d shut and locked the door that the trembling overtook her and she had to sit down, overcome by the enormity of what she’d done.

Through it all, as out of control as she’d appeared, she had not spoken a word. Somewhere in the back of her brain she’d remembered that advice of her grandmother’s: “It might be just as well if the others didn’t know.”

The map at least was safe. At Grandma Byrdsong’s
urging, she’d hidden it in another season—in last spring, in fact. Emily was amazed at how easily it was done. Just open the spring window, wrap the map in oilcloth against the weather, and set it on the sill. The map then ceased to exist in the present.

Getting it out again could be a little tricky. First you had to remember whether you’d hidden it in last spring or in next spring. There were two cranks, one on each side of the sash, and either would open the window; but one turned clockwise, and the other counterclockwise. Turn the wrong one and there’d be no map, and a whole different set of birds.

During the afternoons when no one was around, Bridey had showed the girl features of the house she’d need to be careful about. Some were “improvements” Bridey had made herself, like the red leather wastebasket that always looked empty, because whatever you put in it would disappear forever. Obviously, you had to be careful what you threw away. They’d lost one of the cats that way. It had scampered across the sofa and jumped in. They kept a book over the top now.

Other features had always been there, like the hidden staircase on the second floor that led only upward, and yet it let you out in the downstairs hall. The architect, Bridey explained, was her great-granduncle Jakob Byrdsong, who’d spent years developing what he called “impossible shapes” and then applied his discoveries to his house designs. It was a good thing he’d been financially independent, because his work was never in demand.

“An amazing man, Uncle Jakob,” said Bridey. “He died before I was born, but I’ve heard the stories.”

“What stories?”

“Oh, many, and they can’t all be true. They say when he was a young boy he had a dog named Bounce. He was very fond of this dog. One morning, the servants found Bounce lifeless on the straw mat where he always slept. They went upstairs to tell young Jakob the terrible news, only to find
him
lifeless as well, not a breath in his body.”

“How awful!”

“His parents were crying and trying to wake him, but they weren’t able to. Just then, the story goes, the dog comes trotting into the room, tail wagging like anything. He goes up to the boy and nuzzles him. And Jakob wakes up! Everybody’s amazed. They ask him what happened, and he says, ‘I was playing all night with Bounce—on the island!’ ”

Emily gave her grandmother a serious look. “Do you believe that story? That he could leave his body like that?”