All I could do was hope the talk would die off when people saw that I wasn't hanging around with Greg. I
kept my head down, ignoring the talk around me, trying to pretend that my sandwich was the most fascinating thing in the world. And then it got worse.
“Hey, there. Want some company?”
I looked up to see Greg standing with his lunch in his hand. Before I could open my mouth to tell him I'd rather be alone at the moment, he plopped down in the seat across from me and spread his food on the table.
I was embarrassed to tell him what everyone was saying about us. Mainly, I was afraid that he'd say or do something that would give everyone more ammunition to add to the gossip. I concentrated on eating my lunch and not looking at him.
“I wanted to thank you for last week,” he said all of a sudden.
“What do you mean?” I'd meant to pretty much ignore him, but curiosity got the better of me.
“You know, at the soda shop, when your friend was trying to get the goods on me and you talked and talked so she didn't have a chance to ask a whole lot of questions.”
I hadn't realized he'd known what Betts was up to or that I'd been talking so much to save him from her prying. But I wasn't about to sell my best friend out by admitting that to him. Even though she was being pretty unfair to me at the moment, I wasn't going to turn on her! Especially not for him.
“I don't know what you mean,” I said shortly.
He looked at me carefully and then just said, “Okay, my mistake.”
I'd like to say that we ate in silence and then he went away and never bothered me again. That didn't happen.
“If a tree falls in the woods, and there's no living thing around to hear it, does it make a sound?” He popped this out of the clear blue as though it was a perfectly normal question.
“What?” I asked, startled.
“That's a question my dad used to ask his classes at university. He gives me things like that to think about, but he won't tell me what he thinks the answer is. I just thought you might help me figure it out.”
“It's a pretty strange question,” I said and then wondered out loud, “Your dad taught at a university?”
“Until last year,” he told me.
I wanted to ask him why his father had left a good job like that and come to Little River. There had to be a pretty big reason for anyone to make that kind of change in their life. But I didn't want to seem like Betts, digging for information, so I said nothing and hoped he would offer to tell me about it. He didn't. It was starting to look as though Greg and his father had something to hide, the way he kept things to himself.
“So, about that tree, Shelby. What do you think? Is there a sound when it falls if no one is there to hear it?”
“I guess so.” I felt like I'd been trapped into a trick question and he was going to tell me I was wrong.
“Why do you think so?”
“Well, because there is always sound when a tree falls, I guess. How could there be no sound? Just because no one hears it, that doesn't mean it isn't there.” I was warming to the question.
“I think scholars believe there's no sound,” Greg said, looking puzzled at the idea. “It seems that a person is supposed to think their way through to that idea. I have to admit though, I could never see it that way either. What you're saying makes sense to me, and yet I think there's more to it than what seems obvious.”
“In science class one time we did an experiment with an alarm clock and a jar,” I said, trying to remember the details. “If you pump all the air out of the jar, you can't hear the clock ringing because sound can't exist in a vacuum. I guess that's a different thing though, isn't it?”
Before he could answer, Nick passed by the table. When he did, he stopped for a few seconds and said, “Hi, Shelby.”
My stomach did flip-flops all over the place. I tried to sound calm when I answered, “Hi, Nick,” but my voice was trembling.
Greg looked hard at me after Nick had left. I guess he saw something on my face that he didn't like,
because he was silent after that. I was too, because I was angry that he was sitting there when Nick finally spoke to me. He was going to ruin my chances with Nick if he didn't leave me alone.
He finished his lunch and stood, picking up his wrappers and brushing crumbs off the table.
“Well, I'll see you later then.”
“Yeah, see you.” I was thankful he was leaving. Maybe Nick would come back and want to talk to me.
“Enjoy the books,” he added quietly and then left the cafeteria.
I stayed put right until the bell rang, just in case Nick came by again, but he didn't.
The first fire happened during the second week of school, and the talk swung around to take it in. Everyone had a bit of information to share, and there were important comments made all over Little River High.
It was the Brennans' barn that burned, erupting into flames in the middle of the night. The fire marshal decided that it must have been caused by one of the cigars Mr. Brennan was forever smoking. Mr. Brennan hotly denied that he ever smoked in the barn, but he was getting on in years, and the townsfolk figured he'd done it without even realizing it. Stories about Mr. Brennan's forgetfulness got told over and over, as though that proved everything.
Then, only four days later, the shed out behind the Martins' house burned down. People might have started to wonder right then and there if something was
afoot, seeing as how Little River hardly ever has a fire, and two in one week was pretty odd. But Mrs. Martin offered up the culprit.
“If I told Billy once, I told him a thousand times not to leave those rags and paint supplies out there. I knew this was going to happen someday,” she told the fire marshal. It seemed a reasonable explanation, and the two fires coming so close together was soon chalked up to coincidence.
So Mr. Martin took the blame. From what I've heard, that's generally the way things go in the Martin house anyway.
Just as the talk of the fires was dying down, the third fire occurred. This time it was the Fennetys' house, which was completely destroyed. It didn't take much for the fire marshal to discover that it had been set deliberately. An empty gasoline can was found in the lot next door, and other evidence proved arson was the cause.
Betts brought a newspaper clipping about the story to school, and I felt sad reading Mr. Fennety's comments.
“Thank goodness my wife and little boy were visiting at her mother's place for a few days, or this tragedy could have been a lot worse. As it is, we lost everything we had.” The story went on to say that the Fennetys had some insurance but that it was not nearly enough to replace the house. Theirs had been one of the older homes in the town, a huge two-storey building that had
been passed down through several generations. I couldn't help thinking what a shame it was that it had been destroyed and wondering what kind of person would do such a thing.
The town rallied, as it always does when something happens to one of its own. A hootenanny was held, clothing and furniture were donated, and the bank set up an account for anyone who wanted to give the unfortunate family money.
The really sad thing about it all was the change in Mrs. Fennety. Before the fire, she'd been a cheerful and talkative person. After the fire, there was such a profound change in her that you'd have thought it was a completely different woman. She became withdrawn and had a worried, pinched look on her face all the time.
It was understandable that she'd be afraid, considering that someone had burned her house to the ground. She must have wondered if they'd thought she was home at the time and had been trying to kill her.
The fourth and last fire of the fall happened two weeks after the Fennety house went. This time it was an abandoned farmhouse out at Parker Point.
The sight of smoke billowing in the air was starting to be frighteningly familiar to the people of Little River. A town meeting was held, and a lot of folks started demanding that the local police department call in some help.
Once again, Betts brought the newspaper account of the story for me to see. It featured a big picture of Police Chief Bob Kendel. Under the picture it said, “We are here to serve and protect, and serve and protect is what we will do.” The story went on to say that the people of Little River could put their confidence in the officers, who were trained and able to handle the situation.
Still, the people of Little River would have kept right on worrying about it if it hadn't been for Officer Lambert's wife. A week into the investigation she swore two of her close friends to secrecy and then told them that there was a suspect in the case. I don't think it took too much prodding before she swore them to secrecy on the rest of the details. And of course, those two friends swore a few of their friends to secrecy and told them. That's the way things happen in Little River.
Before the sun had gone down, almost everyone in town had been sworn to secrecy and the whole town had heard the news. It was just too big to keep, and the people of Little River aren't what you'd call famous for keeping secrets anyway.
It was, you might have guessed, Betts who told me about it. She couldn't wait for school the next day and came bursting in the door of my house around seven o'clock in the evening. I figure she'd heard the news about five minutes before then, since it's a five minute walk from her house to mine.
“Shelby, Shelby, guess what!” she called out, running down the entrance hall into the kitchen where Mom and I were making peanut butter cookies.
“Hello, Betts,” my mom said, looking a little miffed at the way she'd barreled into the house without so much as knocking on the door.
“Hi, Mrs. Belgarden,” she said breathlessly and then turned her attention back to me. “Did you heard about Greg Taylor's father?”
“What about him?” I asked.
“He's the one â the fire starter!” Betts' hazel eyes shone with the news. “I told you there was something strange about him.”
“Now, Betts, how do you know this?” My mother was wiping her hands on her apron, and her face had a set look that I couldn't quite figure out.
“Everyone knows by now,” Betts said, as though that settled it. “I imagine they'll be arresting him any minute. You see...;”
But before she could finish what she was saying, Mom held her hand up in that way she has that looks like a little stop sign. Her face had turned cross. “Betts, this is not a matter to be gossiping about. A man's good name is being ruined on the basis of rumours. I believe that in this country a person is innocent until proven guilty, and I don't recall anything being proven here.”
“Yes, but they have proof,” Betts pouted, looking
like she thought she was about to be cheated out of telling the rest of the story. And she was right.
“In this house,” my mother said firmly, “we do not talk about people like this. If Malcolm has done something wrong, then it can be proven in court. We won't be trying and convicting him under this roof.”
“Mr. Taylor's first name is Malcolm?” I asked, surprised. “How do you know?”
“I met him at the library when they first moved here,” Mom said simply. “He's a very nice man, and I don't think he's done anything wrong. But if he has, that isn't for us to decide.”
Betts and I were both too astonished by that to say anything.
Since she could see she wasn't going to get to say anything more, Betts soon left, anxious to find someone else who hadn't yet heard the story.
After she'd gone, Mom took off her apron, folded it neatly, and then sat down at the table.
“I think we should talk about this, Shelby,” she said quietly. “You're going to hear about it at school, and I think it would be better if you got an accurate account of what's going on, instead of the wild stories the people of this town tell.”
I sat down and waited for her to continue.
“The first thing I want to say, Shelby, is that gossip is an awful thing. You already know how I feel about that.
The fires we've had here in the last month were terrible, but, in a way, the gossip is more damaging than the fires.”
That's something I really admire about my mother. She always sees the whole picture.
“Anyway,” she went on, “I met Malcolm Taylor, as I already told you, when he and Greg first came to town. I was at the library one afternoon, and we struck up a conversation. He and his son came here for two reasons. The first one is the cause of all this talk.
“Malcolm was a professor at a university. He, his wife, and their son were just living a normal life, until something happened that changed everything. Their house caught fire one night. Malcolm and his son got out, but his wife died in the fire.
“It was a horrible thing for them, losing her. Both Malcolm and Greg found it too hard to stay there, so he gave up his job and they moved to Little River.”
“Is that why the police think he had something to do with the fires?” I asked, feeling sorry for Greg. I couldn't imagine what it would be like if anything happened to my mother.
“I suppose he could be considered a suspect because of that, if indeed he's under suspicion. It may be that the police are jumping to conclusions. But they have nothing to base the idea on except this unfortunate coincidence.” Mom looked suddenly very tired, as though the effort of talking about it was too much for her.
“What's the other reason they came here?” I asked, remembering she'd said there were two.
“Part of the healing they need comes from being in a different place,” she explained, “and the other part is finding a way to deal with it effectively. Malcolm is working on a book to help him get through the loss. Writing can be very therapeutic.”
I found it hard to sleep that night. I kept thinking about all of the things that were happening and wondering how they all fit together. I also decided that I was going to make an effort to be nice to Greg, even though I knew the other kids at school would make it hard.