True Colors (3 page)

Whatever kind of house he lived in, Raleigh did catch fish out of the river and raise a few vegetables, but folks looked out for him, too, sending casseroles and baked goods home with him and giving him runt pigs to raise, or orphaned lambs. Just last week, Mrs. Wells had given him one of her chickens that had stopped laying.

“You can turn her into soup,” she’d told Raleigh.

Folks in town found odd jobs for Raleigh. He rode with Mr. Hazelton early every morning, picking up the milk cans and taking them to the creamery. Mr. Gilpin let Raleigh
work at the
Monitor
as a “printer’s devil,” which meant helping to print up the paper, setting type, sweeping up, and doing any odd job that needed doing. I wished I could be a printer’s devil, too. It sounded like a lot more fun than farming.

But I didn’t envy what Raleigh had to endure from the Wright brothers. They picked on him something awful, throwing stones and snowballs at him, knocking him down in the mud, and calling him the worst names. Raleigh could have whipped those brothers with one hand tied behind him, but he never fought back. Hannah called Raleigh “a gentle soul.” Dennis and Wesley called him “yellow.” The only thing that saved Raleigh was that he could run faster than both of them.

“Run, ya big chicken,” they’d holler after him. “You’re nothin’ but a big yellow chicken.”

Yellow or not, when it came to the Wright brothers, all I saw was
red
. They were meaner than hornets.

I’m sure Miss Paisley hadn’t meant to, but she’d given them even more ammunition to use against Raleigh when she taught us fire safety. Dennis and Wesley were way more interested in
starting
fires than in
preventing
them, but at least Miss Paisley had their attention, especially when she told us how asbestos and gypsum board are two examples of fire retardants.

That sent Dennis and Wesley into peals of laughter.

“Retardants!” they’d hooted. “Must be talking about
Raleigh’s family. I bet he has retard-aunts and retard-uncles both!”

Miss Paisley had kept the two of them after school, but that hadn’t made a bit of difference, and I knew it was going to be a bad summer for Raleigh with Dennis and Wesley pestering him even worse than usual. With other kids who caused trouble, all that had to be done was to say something to their parents, but it didn’t do any good to complain to Mr. Wright—he was meaner than Dennis and Wesley put together.

I should have run out and yelled at those Wright brothers, but I was afraid of what they’d do to
me
, so I hid in the bushes.

“Well, if it ain’t the retardant,” Dennis said.

The river was so shallow, Raleigh could have run across it. But he just stood there with the heron in his arms.

Dennis and Wesley advanced on Raleigh, and my knees felt wobbly. I wished this was a movie and Gary Cooper or Audie Murphy would ride in and rescue Raleigh. In the movies, you could always tell the good guys from the bad guys, and you knew the good guys would win. That wasn’t true in real life.

“Put it down so we can finish it off,” Dennis said. “That’ll teach it not to steal our fish.”

If anyone knew about stealing, it was Dennis and Wesley. They were practically experts.

Raleigh shook his head.

“Let it go, Retardant, or you’ll be sorry,” Dennis said.

“Yeah,” said Wesley, “you’ll be sorry.”

Raleigh took a step toward the Wright brothers.

“Watch out,” Wesley warned.

“Ah, he ain’t gonna do anything,” Dennis said. “He’s too yellow.”

“Yeah,” said Wesley. “A yellow-bellied retard.”

I clenched my fists and wished I could trounce them both. Our Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Hazelton, was always telling us that we were supposed to love thy neighbor, and to turn the other cheek. Well, I
didn’t
love the Wright brothers, and I wished I could beat them up and see how
they
liked it. Even though they were bigger than me, and going into seventh grade, I think I could have beaten them up one at a time, in a fair fight, but if there was one thing you could count on with the Wright brothers, it was that they wouldn’t play fair. While I was beating up one of them, the other would be hitting me over the head with a club.

Dennis shoved his nose in Raleigh’s face.

“My dad says you ought to be locked up in a home for retards,” Dennis said.

Last week’s Sunday school story flashed through my head: David and Goliath.

I reached down, scooped up a stone, and flung it at Dennis. At least I
thought
I’d aimed it at Dennis.

The stone hit Raleigh right in the middle of his forehead.

“Hey! What’s going on here?” Mr. Gilpin yelled behind me.

The Wright brothers skedaddled like wolves were after them.

Mr. Gilpin charged past me and steered Raleigh over to a rock. “Sit there for a minute and let your head clear,” he said.

Mr. Gilpin looked at me and shook his head. “What were they thinking, throwing
stones
?” he said. “My word, they could have killed him!”

Mr. Gilpin thought the
Wright brothers
had hit Raleigh with the stone!

“Those ruffians,” Mr. Gilpin went on. “They take after that reprobate of a father.”

I didn’t know what
reprobate
meant, but if Mr. Gilpin was using it to describe Mr. Wright, it couldn’t be anything good. Hannah says if you don’t have anything nice to say about a person, then don’t say anything at all—so I won’t say anything about Mr. Wright, except that he looked like the pigs he raised. Short, bristly hair circled his bald pink scalp, and he had a round, flat nose and beady red eyes. Whenever I saw him, I couldn’t help thinking that it was better to have
no
father than a father like that. Hannah said Mr. Wright had “problems with the bottle,” which Nadine said meant he was a drunk.

Mr. Gilpin pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket. He dipped it in the river and wiped the blood off Raleigh’s forehead. Already, a lump was forming.

A lot of good that Sunday school story had done me, I thought.

“You’re going to have a good-sized egg there,” Mr. Gilpin said. “They come after you again, I’ll brain them with my wooden leg.”

Hannah had a painting of one of her Scottish ancestors charging English redcoats with an upraised broadsword (Hannah said it was called a claymore), and I could just picture Mr. Gilpin hopping after the Wright brothers brandishing his leg over his head.

That wooden leg fascinated me. I’d see it on Sunday afternoons when Mr. Gilpin came to the lake to swim. He’d show up in his old-fashioned bathing suit, unstrap his leg and lean it against a cedar tree, then hop to the water’s edge, dive in, and swim all the way across the lake. Every Sunday I wanted to touch that wooden leg, but I didn’t dare to. I was itching to know how Mr. Gilpin had lost his leg, but I didn’t dare ask that, either.

“That was brave of you, Blue, stepping in to help Raleigh,” Mr. Gilpin said. “You’re a true-blue friend.”

My face burned. What would Mr. Gilpin think if he knew
I
was the one who’d hit Raleigh?

“Blue True,” Raleigh said, snuffling a little as he said
it. Raleigh didn’t speak much, and when he did, he mixed up words.

“All right, a blue-true friend, then,” Mr. Gilpin said, smiling at me while I felt my face getting hotter. Some friend I was! I was glad Raleigh couldn’t tell on me.

I thought for sure that heron would be tearing chunks out of Raleigh’s hands, but Raleigh whispered to it, and it stopped struggling.

“You could bring it to Hannah,” I said. I was pretty sure Hannah had never taken care of a heron, but she’d nursed lots of animals back to health.

But Mr. Gilpin shook his head.

“It’s got a broken wing,” he said. “Won’t be able to fly again. Best to put it out of its misery.” He reached for the heron but jumped back as the heron’s huge bill jabbed at him.

“Yikes!” Mr. Gilpin yelped. “I’ve already lost a leg. Don’t care to lose a hand, too.”

Raleigh whispered something to the heron, and it settled back into his arms.

“He might not be able to talk, but he’s sure got a way with wild creatures,” Mr. Gilpin said to me. “I can take care of that heron later. Those chicks, too. She won’t be able to raise them, hurt like that, but right now, I think we need one of Hannah’s doughnuts. How’s that sound to you, Raleigh?”

Raleigh acted like he didn’t even hear Mr. Gilpin and
just kept talking to the heron. Mr. Gilpin looked at me and shrugged. I picked up the bag of doughnuts I’d dropped and followed him into the
Monitor
office.

Mr. Gilpin’s desk was covered with papers. It was always covered with papers—scribbled notes, stories he was working on, letters, ads, that sort of thing—but it seemed even more cluttered than usual.

“Celebration planning,” Mr. Gilpin said.

Besides being owner and editor of the
Monitor
, Mr. Gilpin was also president of the historical society and head of the planning committee for the celebration. He’d been planning this celebration for months, writing skits (he called them pageants) that would show the important people and events in the town’s history. I already knew some of the pageants he’d written because he’d been casting parts and handing out scripts for people to memorize. In one skit, Hannah was playing Woman No. 1.

“Hmph,” Hannah had muttered. “Guess it’d be too much bother for him to give me a real name.”

I didn’t say so, but I felt the same way about Hannah naming me Blue. That was a
color
, not a real name.

Mr. Gilpin sat at his desk. He pushed the papers to one side and opened the bag of doughnuts. Most of them had gotten smashed when I dropped them, but Mr. Gilpin said his work crew would eat them anyway.

“Wouldn’t want to waste Hannah’s good doughnuts,” he said.

Mr. Gilpin lit right into one, but I was still too upset to eat anything. It wasn’t just because I’d hit Raleigh with the stone. It was Dennis saying Mr. Wright thought Raleigh should be locked up. Could Mr. Wright do that? Could he have Raleigh put away? I wanted to ask Mr. Gilpin that, too, but I always felt so tongue-tied around him.

Mr. Gilpin brushed the crumbs from his desk.

“Guess I’m going to have to have a talk with those boys,” he said. “You never know. People
can
change.”

The only way I could see the Wright brothers changing was if they got even
meaner
, but I didn’t say that. And I didn’t want Dennis and Wesley telling Mr. Gilpin that I was the one who’d hit Raleigh with the stone. He might not believe them, but still.

“Why didn’t Raleigh just run across the river to get away from them?” I asked.

“Well, now, he couldn’t have done that,” Mr. Gilpin said. “You see, Raleigh almost drowned when he was a boy. Ever since then, he’s been terrified of water.”

I wanted to know how Raleigh had almost drowned (Hannah says I can ask questions till the cows come home), but Mr. Gilpin spoke first.

“Good thing you happened by when you did,” Mr. Gilpin said. “Your arrival was fortuitous.”

I didn’t know what
fortuitous
meant, but if it had something to do with the Wright brothers, I wanted to get Mr. Gilpin’s mind off having a talk with them.

“How much would it cost to put in an ad about a lost cat?” I asked. I had meant to ask him that. Really, I had.

“I don’t charge for that,” Mr. Gilpin said. He wrote “LOST, CAT” on the notepad on his desk.

“No,” I said, “I mean we’re wondering if someone
lost
a cat. There’s one at the farm.”

“Oh,” Mr. Gilpin said, scribbling out “LOST” and writing “FOUND.” “You should be more precise in your use of language, Blue.”

I sighed. Mr. Gilpin sounded just like our teacher, Miss Paisley.

“Guess I’d better go take care of that heron, poor thing,” Mr. Gilpin said, and I followed him outside, but there was no sign of Raleigh or the heron. The three baby herons in the nest were gone, too.

“Guess Raleigh took care of them himself,” Mr. Gilpin said. “I’m sure it was hard for him, dispatching them. He’s a sensitive person.”

I wasn’t sure what
dispatching
meant, but I figured it meant that heron and its babies were goners. I couldn’t picture Raleigh dispatching them, either, but he’d taken Mrs. Wells’s hen home to eat, and he’d raised runt pigs for bacon and ham, so he must know how.

I wished someone could dispatch the Wright brothers.

With all the excitement, Mr. Gilpin forgot to give me a nickel, so I had to ride home without any penny candy. It was past milking time, and I knew Hannah was waiting for
me, but even so, I hesitated when I came to the fork in the road. To the left, I could see our farm, the lights twinkling in the barn where Hannah had probably already started milking. To the right was the lake.

I turned Dolly toward the lake and headed down the driveway to the Tilton camp. I’d seen a light in their window and knew they’d just arrived for the summer. If I hurried, I could get in a swim with Nadine before chores.

chapter 4