Wildwood Creek (19 page)

And then . . . I recognized him. That wasn’t a security guy. Holy cow! That was the
mystery cowboy
—Blake Fulton. So it
was
him I’d seen when I passed by the Waterbird yesterday.

Now here he was, skulking around behind the schoolhouse and carrying a black nylon duffel bag that definitely wasn’t standard mid-nineteenth-century issue. He looked like he did
not
want to be seen. He wasn’t in costume either—no surprise there. Once again, he was wearing camo pants, hiking boots, and a khaki-colored T-shirt that, I had to admit, fit rather nicely across his chest and strained just a bit, circling his upper arms. The black baseball cap was pulled low, and he looked . . . like he was definitely up to something. He stuffed his duffel bag under the edge of the porch, then stood up and glanced directly toward my window.

I ducked away from the glass.

Who
was
this guy, really? Did he know there was someone in here, or did he think he could come and go undetected?

Fat chance, mister.
I peeked out just in time to see him forgo the steps and ascend the porch with one quick, athletic jump, then walk through the door into the room . . . right next to mine?

In two shakes of a lamb’s tail (as Grandma Rita would’ve said), I was on my bed and crawling across the mattress, skirts bunched everywhere as I leaned close to the wall. He was in there, all right. The divider between the apartments was nothing more than studs and whitewashed tongue-and-groove boards. No insulation to muffle the sound. He was moving around the room and . . . whistling to himself?

Then shuffling again . . .

A grunt or two . . .

The
stomp, stomp
of boots on the floor . . .

More shuffling, a little walking around . . .

Something metal fell on the floor and clattered. Maybe one of the tinware cups like the set on the shelf above my cabinet? He stopped whistling.

There was an electronic beep. Then another. What was he
doing
in there? Bugging the place? Maybe he really was up to no good . . . perhaps a reporter of some sort. Or a disgruntled cowboy who’d tried to get a cast position and hadn’t made the cut. Maybe he was here to . . . commit some sort of sabotage. It was a wild idea, but as usual my mind grabbed it and ran, inventing a scenario in which I, Allie Kirkland, saved the day and earned major brownie points by exposing a nefarious invader to the village.

Tucking my hair out of the way, I pressed my ear closer to the wood. The room had gone silent. No sign of movement, no electronic noises, no dishes being knocked off shelves.

Was he still in there, or had he left?

Or was he . . .

Crossing the porch and passing my window!

I scrambled away from the wall, tangled my knee in the quilt, and landed on the floor in an ungraceful heap of fabric. The boning in my corset temporarily incapacitated me, and by the time I made it to my feet, Blake Fulton was already headed down the path to the creek again.

The change in him caused me to blink and look again, and the scenarios in my mind morphed in a different direction. Suddenly, he was in full costume. He looked like any other cast member on this last day of dress rehearsal and pre-production photo shoots. He was wearing an unbleached muslin shirt—I recognized the seven-button, shield-front style as a pattern that Phyllis had ordered in a variety of fabrics from a reenactment store. He’d paired the shirt with civilian-style trousers with mule-ear pockets, and tall brown stovepipe boots worn
outside his pants. He was carrying something in front of himself—the duffel bag maybe—but I couldn’t tell for sure.

I had to follow him and find out, that was all there was to it. Whatever this guy’s game was, I wanted to know it
now
, but if I took the time to go out the front way and circle around the building, I’d lose him. . . .

With a complete lack of forethought (the usual mode of operation when my mind was on a wild tear), I popped the cheesecloth screen from the window and prepared to exit. The opening was large enough and low to the ground, in keeping with authentic mid-century construction. Slipping through wouldn’t be that hard. . . .

Halfway out, I suddenly understood why female operatives of the Civil War era weren’t all that common. Yards and yards of fabric can be more than problematic, and a hoop has a mind of its own. I was quickly marooned over the sill . . . which, it turned out, wasn’t very well sanded. I’d be picking splinters out of my skin all night, and given the lack of tweezers in the ladies’ dressing kit I’d been given, that could be an interesting challenge. My hair blew over my face, and I couldn’t see anything but a wall of red frizz, nicely highlighted by the morning light.

And then there was a sound . . . whistling . . . and it was coming . . . closer.

Panic set in, and I reversed course, struggling like a fish in a net and calling the window ugly names. I heard a small tearing sound and thought,
Randy is going to kill me, and when he’s done, Phyllis and Michelle will kill me.
They were already so busy making adjustments to garments that didn’t fit, didn’t work, or had been damaged, that the entire costuming department was on the verge of a combined mental breakdown.

As far as I knew, though, no one had yet been stupid enough to end up stuck in a window. I pushed, pulled, and wiggled
harder. Above my head, the window rattled in its sashes and slid downward as if someone had given it a good swift push. Fortunately, my neck and shoulders were there to stop it from crashing and breaking the glass. Unfortunately, it hurt, and I let out a yelp without meaning to. I’d just identified mistake number two in my plan. The trainer had told us to
always
put the brace bar in the window upon opening it. Frontier housing was most often not equipped with fancy window weights. Fingers and other body parts were not uncommonly lost in the windows of 1861.

Hair, too, apparently, because mine had been sucked into the frame as it came down. The window inched lower, and the hair pulled tighter. “Oww, oww, oww!”

Pressing upward with my shoulders didn’t help. The window went cockeyed, pulled the captured hair tighter, and my head wedged against one side of the frame.

Good job, Allie. This’ll make your record book of stupid human tricks.

Okay. Think, think, think.

There had to be a way to extricate myself from this situation before it got any worse.

Inside the room, I heard a telltale
beep, beep, beep.

Too late. Things were already worse.

That was the sound of a camera about to do a go-live test, exactly ten minutes from now. Throughout the day today, production would be randomly taping for a behind-the-scenes reel to accompany
Wildwood Creek
. They were also testing the remote camera system and helping the cast members get accustomed to the cameras going on and off.

I was about to end up on film, inexplicably trapped in my own window.

Over my dead body.
If I had to yank the hair out by the roots, I was . . .

“I must’ve missed this part of the pioneer manual.” Blake Fulton’s voice was easily recognizable, even from knee level. And yes, those were his boots, standing just a few feet away. “What page was it on?”

“The one . . . about . . . fire escapes,” I ground out. “Didn’t . . . you read it? I want to . . . ouch . . . be sure I’m . . . prepared, just in case.” When all else fails, make fun of yourself. Stupidity does have a certain pathetic charm to it.

He squatted down, and I could see his face through the curtain of hair. “How’s it working for you?”

“Well . . . other than the fact that my . . . scalp is slowly being sucked off my head . . . Not so bad. I made it halfway out.”

He chuckled then. I caught a wide white smile through the wall of red frizz. “You realize there’s a door on the other end of the room, right?”

“What if . . . the fire was in the . . . school? Ever . . . think of . . . that?” I wound my fingers into the trapped strands, tried to wrestle them free. Some hair, I could stand to lose—I had more than enough. But the skin covering my skull, I felt fondly attached to, and so did about a bazillion nerve endings, apparently. “I like to be . . . thorough.”

“Next time you’d better get the kids out first. Save some innocent lives,” he advised matter-of-factly. Funny guy.

“I’ll remember that. I’m new to this . . . teaching thing.”

The window slid a little lower and pretty little white fireflies danced around my eyes. “Owww. Help me out of here, okay? They just sent a ten minute go-live on my cameras.”

There comes a time when picking the lesser of two evils is necessary. Right now, Blake Fulton, whatever his big secret deal was, seemed by far the lesser of two evils. I could already picture everyone up in the control center laughing their heads off, and me going viral on YouTube.

“Hang on a minute.” Blake stood up and grasped the window frame. It lifted a fraction, taking my hair along with it, and I screamed like a banshee. The corners of my vision narrowed, twinkling with tiny stars. A whole galaxy of them.

“Hold on and let me get some tools. That window facing is just tacked on. I think I can pop it loose and . . .” All of a sudden, Blake was walking away.

“No! Oh no . . . wait . . .” But he was already crossing the porch. He came back with the duffel bag he’d stashed not long before. By then, I was making a last desperate attempt to free myself before the camera came on.

“This’ll go better if you’ll stop wedging yourself in there, tiger.” At first, I thought he called me
tiger
. A weird little tingle went through me, and then I realized the word was
tighter
.
Stop wedging yourself in there tighter.

“Just . . . trying to . . . make it as much of a . . . challenge as possible.”

“You’re doing a fine job of it.”

“This is
not
funny.”

“Darlin’ . . .” He leaned close to my ear now, his long legs folding so that he was squatted beside the window, working his way up the facing. “Sometimes you can either laugh or cry, and you might as well laugh.”

My mind did a quick hitch step. That was one of Grandma Rita’s favorite sayings. I remembered it as the antithesis to life at Lloyd’s house, where every misstep or social faux pas was a major tragedy and the impetus for a lengthy parental lecture about the importance of keeping up appearances and making a good impression.

Somehow, the mysterious Blake Fulton was channeling Grandma Rita. That was exactly what she would have said in a moment like this.

And exactly what I needed to hear.

How could he possibly have known?

He stood up again. “Close your eyes down there.” The nails squealed as he manhandled the facing board loose.

Bits of wood drifted downward over my skin. I pictured what I must’ve looked like, high centered in the window, my skirts caught over the sill and my cheek crammed against the frame.

“You laughing down there, or turning hysterical?” Blake was laughing too.

I completely lost it.

Somewhere far, far beyond the laughter, I heard the beep of the camera going live.

It didn’t even matter. When you’re laughing hard enough, nothing does.

A
LLIE
K
IRKLAND
J
UNE
, P
RESENT
D
AY

N
o sooner had I gotten dislodged from the window than Blake Fulton disappeared into the woods and never came back. I probably should’ve reported the whole thing, but I figured enough of it had been caught on camera. Production could report it if they wanted to. From my standpoint, the less said the better. I was hoping the incident would go unnoticed—just another random camera test that no one was really watching.

I should have known I wouldn’t be so lucky, of course. Even though no names were given, I was the talk of a last-minute morning safety lecture.
Someone tried to climb through a window without putting in the brace and got stuck this morning. Always use braces in open windows. Keep hair, fabric, ribbons, bonnet strings, and other dangling items well away from possible sources of entrapment. . . .

I’d only begun to gather my tattered dignity when the set photographer showed up to snap pre-production photos of Wren and me in the schoolhouse. After that, Mallory Everson came to do the interview for
The
Frontier Woman
blog. The whole time all I could think of was the iPhone hiding under
my cabinet and the need to be rid of it. I was relieved when the interview was over, and since I couldn’t just leave Stewart hanging, it seemed that the best course of action would be to sneak off with the phone now, see if he’d sent me anything, and then let him know this was the last he’d be hearing from me until summer was over. I could hand the phone off to Stacy tonight, thereby removing further temptation and the danger of getting caught with it in the future.

Since engaging in illegal communication with the outside world definitely involved a hike, I shed my hoop, corset, and petticoat, then pulled my tennis shoes on under the skirt before leaving the schoolhouse with the iPhone hastily tucked into my skirt pocket. What I needed now was a secluded place—very secluded—and since photo ops were going on at the miners’ camps scattered between Wildwood and the river, it only made sense to head beyond the brush arbor and find my way to the shores of Moses Lake, where no part of the production was set to take place. That was actually closer to civilization, so a cell signal was a good bet. If anyone found me, I could say I’d used the time after my photo ops to go exploring.

Escaping Wildwood unnoticed wasn’t all that that hard, really: head down the path to the spring behind the schoolhouse with a water bucket in hand; ditch the bucket near said springhouse, where I could pick it up again later; follow the spring down to Wildwood Creek. Follow Wildwood Creek down to the lakeshore . . . because, what do small bodies of water do eventually? Flow into larger bodies of water.

I was impressed with my own rugged pioneer ingenuity. For a girl who’d recently gotten herself trapped in a window, I was doing exceptionally well. I even had the forethought to pull the back of my skirt up between my legs and tuck it in at the waist, creating mid-century genie pants. It made the
hiking a little easier, though I decided that it would’ve been smarter to bring my T-shirt and capris along and leave the costume over a tree branch someplace.

Where it flowed downward toward Moses Lake, the waters of Wildwood Creek ran deep and wide through a limestone gorge roughly fifteen feet below. That part of the walk took a while, but it was worth it for the view alone. Along the lakeshore, a shady hidden spot beside a cedar tree provided the perfect frontier phone booth. With email in the palm of my hand and a jet drawing a slowly spreading trail across the sky, the modern world seemed just one comforting step away. A boat motored by on the lake, and I thought about Burt and Nester at the Waterbird store. Were they among the curiosity seekers security had booted out in recent days?

The cell phone found a signal and connected in less than a minute. Magic. Unfortunately, there was nothing significant from Stewart, just a note saying that the materials he was waiting for hadn’t come in today. He was sure they’d show up in another day or two.
I’ll be in touch as soon as I have more for you. I think I’ve found the missing link to Bonnie Rose.
He made it sound like we were spies, working together on some clandestine mission.
I’m on the case.

Temptation nibbled, inconveniently compelling. It wasn’t all that difficult to sneak off to the lake. I could probably manage it again after go-live started. Just . . . just one more time.
I think I’ve found the missing link to Bonnie Rose.
Had he? The possibility was too much to resist. All I had to do was keep the phone a couple more days. Just until I could see what Stewart came up with . . .

Maybe while I was here, I’d send off a quick email to Mom and Lloyd, let them know that my summer plans had morphed into something completely unexpected.

A little fantasy spun in my head—one in which they were
excited by the news, impressed that I was trying to do this thing. For a minute or two, the altered reality felt good. Then I scanned through my in-box and realized there wasn’t a thing from home—just as there hadn’t been since I’d made my decision about working here. Same silent treatment. Same message. Play by the family rules or you’re not part of the family.

It hurt to think about it, so I just turned off the phone and sat by the lake until I knew I’d probably been away far longer than I should’ve. I still had a long hike back, and I wanted to follow the little trail that ran alongside Wildwood Creek in the canyon, which would take longer. Tonight there would be a big celebratory hog roast in the village. I couldn’t be late for that.

With the afternoon beginning to dim, it was time to abandon the real world and head back. Tomorrow, the Bonnie Rose life would hit me full-force. Suddenly, even as worried as I’d been about whether I could hack it, a part of me was relieved. The real world came with issues I couldn’t just fix. No doubt Bonnie Rose’s world did too, only hers were matters of survival, of life and death. Had Stewart really found the keys to her secrets? Would I ever know why she chose to come here and why she disappeared along with the others who’d lived in this place?

Beside me as I moved along, Wildwood Creek seemed to be keeping its secrets as well, its surface more of a long, narrow pool than a stream with intentions of going anywhere. Lines of debris along the rock walls testified to the fact that at some time this had been a waterway to be reckoned with, but right now the drought had choked the life out of it. If things got any drier, the little stream that had given our town its name wouldn’t be flowing at all.

The soles of my sneakers crunched dully on the caliche
ground as I walked, and in the water fish surfaced, their scales catching the last beams of soft sunlight. A tiny fawn lay hidden in a nest of grass and mustang grapevine. The two of us startled each other. I could’ve picked the baby up and carried it home, but thanks to Grandma Rita, I knew better.
Never touch a wild creature that looks healthy enough.
Her voice was in my ear now, her Texas drawl seeming right at home in these woods.
There’s a mama nearby somewhere, and she’ll come back for it, hon.

A wishing-ache pierced me without warning. If only it could’ve been Grandma Rita stepping into one of those dowager lives in the Delevan house this summer. She’d fit right in there on the hill with Genie and Netta, taking her place among the grandmoms of Wildwood. We could be pioneers together, just like my ancestors on the Kirkland side. Who could say? Perhaps some of them had walked these very hills along with Bonnie Rose.

For a moment I slipped fully into the illusion of it, felt myself sinking into the past, into Bonnie’s life. It happened at the strangest times now—when I was bent over a cooking fire, focused on corn pone cakes slowly frying in a pan, or learning to store milk and eggs in the springhouse along the bluff, or balanced on a stool trying my luck at milking a cow, or helping the school kids chase chickens into a coop. There were those odd moments when I felt as if Bonnie Rose may have been exactly in that same place, working at the same task, long ago. As if I she and I were in some way, one and the same.

When I finally climbed the narrow trail out of the creek bed, I almost expected to find 1861 waiting for me. There was nothing to say that it wasn’t.

Overhead the jet trails were gone. Nothing but rustling leaves and sky. No power lines, no engine noises, no swoosh
of passing cars, no faint hum of fluorescent streetlights. Not one sound made by machines. Just the deepening blue-gray of evening and a single first star insisting its way into the void, giving a warning that I’d dallied long enough.

Darkness would descend again, and another night in Chinquapin Peaks would take hold. The riot of coyote voices would start in the hills, echoing here and there, their raucous songs seeming to come from all directions. I’d gotten more accustomed to them in the past three weeks—all of us had—but when they ran through the woods near the town site, stirring up the dogs and causing the horses to pace their corrals, something primal still ruffled my skin. Hearing their calls now made me want to hurry home.

I quickly surveyed the hills to get my bearings so that I could cut cross-country toward the village. It’d be faster that way. There was an old logging trail the production crew used for transporting men and equipment without making tracks through the set. If I could find it, I could . . .

Something stopped me short. I blinked, squinted, looked again. There were people among the trees, just visible against the shadowy branches. An old man and a little dark-haired girl. Her filmy white dress fell loosely from her shoulders and the hem danced around her calves, seeming to find a life of its own.

They stood on the hillside next to the logging road, looking downward into the village. For an instant, they seemed unreal . . . part of my 1861 fantasy. Ghosts of Wildwood.

A shiver of gooseflesh ran over my skin as I moved closer.

A mule brayed somewhere in the woods, and the man turned to look, and I knew I hadn’t conjured him from my imagination. The stranger snatched off his ball cap and held it in his hands apologetically.

He closed the gap between us, the little girl trotting after.

“We w-w-wasn’t b-botherin’ unn-nothin’,” he stuttered, struggling with each word. “Birdie j-just uww-wanted to see the t-town. She c-caught ’er some fire-fireflies f-f-for Nick.”

The little girl held up a jar, her blue eyes rising with it. “Grampa and me got ’em for Nick,” she repeated in a whisper.

Nick, the little blond-haired son of Mallory Everson, the
Frontier Woman
blogger. Nick was the youngest of the students in our Wildwood school, only five years old, but pretending to be six and a first grader, in terms of village life.

Birdie pressed the jar toward me, and I took it. “I can give it to his mom for him,” I offered. The jar certainly looked old enough to be part of Civil War–era life, though it probably wasn’t. “Everyone’s coming down for dinner in the village tonight. Nick probably won’t be able to have this in Wildwood, but he can take it home with him.” Little Nick was one of the few cast members allowed to come and go from the closed set. The ranch where he lived was providing some livestock for the production, so his parents were in and out anyway. Despite Tova’s “pretty face” theory, that was the reason Mallory had been allowed to begin compiling blogs about the production, which wouldn’t actually be published until after shooting ended in September. She was hoping to do a magazine series or a book as well.

“’Kay.” Smiling, Birdie reached across the space between us to touch my dress. “You’re a princess lady.”

I realized I still had the skirt tucked into my waistband. Some princess. “We start filming tomorrow. This is my costume.” I turned to her grandfather. “No one’s supposed to be around the area without a Razor Point ID, though. How did you get here?” There wasn’t much chance they could’ve missed the plethora of
Private Property
and
No Trespassing, Violators Will Be Prosecuted
signs tacked to trees in all
directions. Their presence here seemed innocent enough, though. I didn’t want to see them get in trouble.

“We urr-rode the umm-mule.” The old man paused, pointing across Wildwood Creek and upward, to where the hills of Chinquapin Peaks grew even steeper. From what I’d seen of this remote territory, life here wasn’t very different from that on our reenactment set. The narrow gravel roads wound through a patchwork of lopsided cabins shored up with tar paper and ancient trailer houses with roofing held down by cement blocks or old tires. Here and there, derelict vehicles appeared to be serving as housing as well. Hungry-looking animals foraged in grass-bare yards and dogs on chains threatened passing cars. Chinquapin Peaks had the feel of a place that didn’t welcome change . . . or strangers.

I wondered how this old-timer felt about our presence here, though he seemed friendly enough. “Over y-yonder we come. Birdie uww-wanted to s-see. My granny u-u-used to t-tell the t-tale about Wildwood t-t-town. Sing to us kids, ‘B-be good, be good. Don’ w-wander the forest udd-deep. Bonnie Rose g-grab you up, and them she g-get she keep. Take you d-down, in the river d-drowned, leave your m-mama to w-weep
.
’”

A wild rush of righteous indignation swept through me, hot and furious and unexpected. “Your grandmother sang you songs about the schoolteacher kidnapping little kids and drowning them in the river? That’s terrible!” I was offended for Bonnie Rose’s sake. The young girl in that grainy photo of the Wildwood school, the girl who looked so much like me . . . what could she possibly have done to deserve to be immortalized in such a way? How could people say things like that about her? She wasn’t much more than a child herself.

What had happened here in Wildwood? Was that rhyme, apparently handed down through generations, merely the hill folks’ way of explaining the mysterious end of the village? Or
was it proof of something awful—the dark, sinister reality that Rav Singh had alluded to as he coaxed me into Bonnie’s life? Was this the Ballad of Wildwood?