Zebra Forest (15 page)

R
ew had grown almost as still as Gran. He no longer played Fox and Hounds or read, and he didn’t ask me questions, either. He lived in his room and on the stairs, and he hadn’t eaten at the table since the night of the first thunderstorm.

I missed him terribly. So on day twenty-four of our captivity, I decided to try something I hadn’t done since he was small. I took
Treasure Island
out from my closet, where I’d hidden it after Andrew Snow had put it back together, and let myself into Rew’s room.

Before Rew had started school, he’d been what Gran called a terror, maybe because he was bored then, before he could read. He’d have tantrums — fits of temper so bad he’d rip the front room to shreds, and Gran would have to pick him up and just hold him tight while he struggled and screamed and sometimes even tried to bite her. I was all of six or seven then, and I’d just watch her while she held on to Rew for dear life, scared he’d hurt her with all that flailing and screaming. And one day he’d gotten a hand loose while she held him, and he threw it back and caught her right in the face. She wasn’t hurt, I don’t think, but she was stunned, and she let him go. She sort of gave up after that, and Rew went pulling books off shelves and throwing pillows off the couch until he just tired himself out.

Gran told me then just to let him alone. He’d just have to work through it, she said. She couldn’t stop him. But I couldn’t stand all that screaming and mess. So after a while, I got to thinking about bribing Rew, offering him something so he’d calm down. I tried candy and pennies and promising to read to him an extra book at night, but he was so angry, he couldn’t even hear it.

Till one day I stopped trying to talk to him, and just took a book and opened it, right there on the sofa, while he raged all round me, and in a quiet, regular voice, I just started reading. I just sat there pretending he wasn’t screaming and throwing things. I read the way I usually did, turning the pictures around to show him, just as if he’d been sitting calm as anything on the floor in front of me. I didn’t shout over him, didn’t try to get him to hear, but he could see my lips moving, I guess, could see me turning the book to show the pictures, and it must have gotten the better of him, because after a while, he stopped for a second, to hear what I was saying. And then he hushed his crying so he could listen. After a while, he sat down next to me, tantrum forgotten, and let me finish the book. Soon I could get those tantrums to stop nearly as soon as they started, and he’d even help me clean up, just so he could get the next story.

Rew wasn’t screaming anymore, but he was mad. So mad he couldn’t think straight. And so now I settled down on the floor of his room and opened up
Treasure Island,
to one of my favorite parts, the chapter when Ben Gunn scares the pirates as they make their way toward the treasure, with Jim Hawkins as a captive. He sings pirate songs in the woods and then calls out Captain Flint’s last words, “Darby McGraw! Fetch aft the rum, Darby!”

I decided to start right in the middle, from the best part.

I paused, sneaking a quick look at Rew on the bed. He lay there, his back to me, not moving. But he wasn’t asleep. I could tell that by how fast he was breathing. So I started again.

Usually, Rew couldn’t get enough of that part. Long John Silver’s scared to death, but he’ll fight a ghost, even, for that treasure. Of course, it’s Ben Gunn all along, and after a while, the pirates get to recognizing the voice. But they don’t know Gunn’s alive, so they think it’s his ghost that’s singing. And they never thought much of him, I guess, because they’re not even afraid of his spirit. I took up the story again.

I looked up again at Rew, but he still hadn’t moved. This was the part we liked best, where we’d laugh because all the time it’s Gunn who’s got the treasure. The joke is on those pirates.

But Rew wasn’t laughing.

Still, my old trick worked, because as I went on, voice steady, just reading, Rew rolled over. Except he was still mad.

“You could have told Adele Parks,” he hissed at me. “You
should
have.”

I shook my head. “I couldn’t, Rew. Don’t you see it would have been just the same?”

He frowned, getting up on one elbow. “What, you think she’d have hurt him? She’d have known how to do it!”

I didn’t know how to explain it to him. And Rew was glaring at me so hard I knew he’d probably never listen, but I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to make him see.

“It would have been the same in the end. You know it would! She’d have called the police!”

He sat up and stared at me. “You think they’re never going to find him, don’t you? You think he can stay here always.”

“No, I —”

But he didn’t let me finish. “They’re going to get him sometime,” he said, the heat in his voice rising. “And they’ll put him back where he belongs. It’s going to happen. The only question is how.”

I shook my head, but he pressed on.

“She’d have known how to do it,” he said firmly. “You could have made her promise.”

It hurt me to say it, but I had to. “Nobody keeps a promise like that,” I said quietly.

“You should know!” he spat.

I didn’t know what to say to that. I looked down at the book, thinking to change the topic, but he wouldn’t let me. He moved to the edge of the bed and leaned down toward me.

“He’s a
murderer,
Annie. He
killed
a man. Don’t you ever think of that?” he asked me. “Don’t you ever?”

I did. I thought of it a lot, but I couldn’t explain that to Rew. “Maybe he’s sorry,” I said weakly. “Maybe he’s changed.”

Rew laughed, and not in a nice way.

“Sure,” Rew said. “Sure. That’s why he ran out here and took us prisoner. He’s so
nice
now. He’s not bad at all.”

“Gran knows what he did,” I said. “And she doesn’t seem scared of him.”

Rew looked at me like that was too stupid a thing to even answer.

“You know he’s bad, Annie,” he told me, and his voice got stronger as he talked. “You’re just lying to yourself, thinking he isn’t. But you’ll see. You wait. You’ll see how bad he is.”

I didn’t know what Rew meant, and so I left him, taking
Treasure Island
with me. But I couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d said. Maybe Andrew Snow was exactly like Long John Silver, nice one minute, rotten the next. Maybe he was sly like that. Maybe I
was
lying to myself.

But it didn’t
feel
like a lie. Then again, it didn’t feel like Andrew Snow, the son of that smart shoe-store owner, could have killed a man.

On day twenty-six, almost a month after Andrew Snow had come, I finally decided to ask him.

The house had been quiet all day, and hot. Gran didn’t love the air-conditioning too much, and we rarely turned it on. But Rew and I usually spent so much time outside, we barely noticed. We did now, stuck in the house with the doors closed. Upstairs, we’d opened the windows, and a breeze rippled in from the Zebra, but downstairs, we were stifling. Andrew Snow, making spaghetti and some kind of sauce at the stove, dripped with sweat. I came in to find him wiping his red face with a dish towel. He looked out at the sky over the Zebra. Clouds gathered there.

“Another storm,” he said. “It’ll be a big one, too, given the heat.”

Then he did something that made my heart thump. He took the key out of his pocket and opened the kitchen door. Cool air blew in, and it brought the Zebra with it — the smell of leaves and bark and grassy places.

“We need air in here,” he said, by way of explanation. “There’ll be a lot of good wind before the storm.”

Rew was upstairs; so was Gran. I thought if Rew felt the breeze whip up the steps, he’d be down in a minute, running free. But maybe not.

I took a deep breath, and maybe the open door helped me ask him. “Andrew Snow?” I said. “Why did you go to prison? Did you really do what Gran said?”

My father stood very still. Then he dropped his head down to his chest, lifted his hand, and rubbed the back of his neck. I could hear the rusty old glider creaking in the wind and the leaves rustling in the Zebra. After a while, Andrew Snow closed the door and sat down at the kitchen table. I stood there, quiet. I could tell, knowing him a little now, that he wasn’t ignoring me. He was thinking.

At last he said, “Yes. I did.”

I didn’t say anything.

“It was manslaughter. Do you know what that is?”

I shook my head.

“It’s when you do something that you didn’t plan to do.”

I waited.

“I mean . . .” Andrew Snow struggled for words. The steadiness was gone from his voice. “It’s when you’re angry, and you don’t think what you’re doing, and you just — you do something you regret later.”

I looked at him a long time, wondering. Wondering if you could be the angry man once but not always.

He spoke after a while. “Back then, I did things without thinking sometimes. Especially when I got mad. When I was younger, I never really thought before I did things. And when someone pushed me — I guess I just let myself go. I never stopped to consider whether I had a choice about doing something, even if I was angry.”

I watched him, but he didn’t seem like he meant to say any more.

“What were you angry about?” I asked him finally.

He looked at me, then past me, out at the Zebra again. “A lot of things, I guess. I can’t excuse it, really. Back then, I got mad often. And I was mad that night.”

I didn’t move, I was listening so hard.

Andrew Snow sighed. It was a tired, sad sound, like the air going out of him, and he looked pale and worn down. He caught my eye for a minute and then looked away, down at his hands.

“Your mother hated the sound of a fussy baby. I mean, nobody likes it, but for her, it was like fingernails on a blackboard. If you can believe it, I was supposedly the steady one back then.”

He frowned and shook his head. I waited.

“I tried to show her when you were small how to bounce you and calm you down, but she didn’t even want to try. She said the sound grated so much. She wasn’t a person to be patient with that kind of thing. So we made a kind of system. I told her to just give it five minutes. You could stand anything for five minutes, right? And then if she couldn’t stop you crying, I’d take you. It got to be kind of a private joke with us. You could stand anything for five minutes, right? Only it turned out —” He sighed, pressing his lips together as if to stop himself from continuing. I watched him, thinking about Amanda White, trying to picture me, small and red and crying, and how they’d try to rock me. I couldn’t see it. But then Andrew Snow went on, and all I could do was listen.

“That night — well, I could hear the sound of a baby crying all the way down the street when I came home from work. We lived on the third floor — that’s how loud it was.” His voice seemed to drop as he talked.

“Things hadn’t been good for a while. She told me she was leaving, told me more than once, but I always managed to get her to change her mind. My mother took the two of you so she could go out. Give her a break. So when I heard the crying, I ran up to the apartment, thinking I’d take him. The baby.”

Rew,
I thought.

“But Amanda wasn’t there. Your gran had you. Said Amanda had gone out somewhere. It didn’t take me long to find her. There was this bar she liked. They had dancing. I found her there with a stranger. They were the only two dancing, she and this thin guy with dark hair. He was holding her. I could tell they’d been drinking when I got over to her. He was whispering something to her and she was laughing when she saw me. She didn’t even step away. Just turned her back and kept dancing.”

He was staring at his hands so long I think he’d forgotten I was there, but finally he started again. “I pulled him off her. That’s when she got mad. Told me to give it up. To go home and stay there. She asked me, hadn’t she given me enough? Hadn’t I gotten what I wanted?

“No, I said. No. I wanted her.”

He glanced up at me then and jumped a little, as if he’d forgotten I was there, listening. He started to fidget; he got up and went to the sink but didn’t turn the water on. He just stood there, looking out the window. After a while, he started up again.

“Amanda laughed when I said that, about wanting her. If you would have known her — known how she could be — well, you’d know why it made me happy to hear her laugh. I thought for a second she’d come home, like she had before. But then he started laughing, too.

“He asked her how she could have possibly fallen for a guy like me. And I saw her smile and thought we were okay. But she said, ‘Oh, I did. Sure I did. For about five minutes.’”