Wolf Hollow (16 page)

The horses and cows were all waiting for me when I came through the back of the barn and into the middle aisle.

“You good girls,” I said to the milk cows, opening the gate to their big stall and pulling some fresh hay out of their net and into the manger. The horses waited patiently, Dinah with her big head resting on Bill's back. “Sleepy girl. You come on in and settle down.” I gave her a scoop of oats, tucked Bill into his stall and fed him, too. Made sure their water buckets were full. And left them to their own devices.

Toby was awake when I reached the loft. He was sitting in the shadows, his head in his hands.

I waited for him to look up at me. When he did, I was shocked at his sad white face.

“I don't know why I did that,” he said. “I never meant to do that, Annabelle.”

“Do what?” I said.

“You ought not to have heard those things I said.”

I put my hands on my hips. “Because I'm a girl?”

He shrugged and said, “Yes, Annabelle. Because you're a girl. But I would feel the same if it had been Henry or, even worse, James. If I could unlearn what I know, I would. In the blink of an eye. But I can't. And piling it on your head won't change that.”

“My mother says I have a hard head.” I tried to smile. “Besides, I'd rather know too much than too little.”

I didn't tell him that I'd put his awful stories in boxes and stacked them on a shelf at the back of my mind. I could hear a quieter version of them still, from their dark place, through all the other business that occupied my brain, but I wouldn't unlid those boxes until I was ready to hear Toby's stories again as they wanted to be heard. And I didn't think that would happen for a long time.

2

I handed Toby my grandpap's old coat. “Put this on,” I said.

He took it. “Why?”

“Because I have an idea, and if you don't think it's too stupid, we're going to go right now and try it out.”

I told Toby what Andy had said, about Betty's plan to make mischief at the smokehouse, maybe burn it down so he'd have no home at all.

Toby rubbed his bad hand with his good one. “Why does she hate me so much?” he said.

“I don't think she does, Toby, but you're the perfect person to blame. Betty throws a rock. She blames it on you. Betty sets a taut-wire. Blames it on you.” I told him how the trooper had found the bloody wire in the smokehouse.

“Sounds like hate to me,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “I felt that way, too, but I don't think it's hate. I think it's more like she just does stuff.”

And then I told him where I thought Betty might be and what we should do about it.

“I maybe haven't been all that careful so far,” I said, “jumping around like a blind frog. But I think you have to be the one to save her.”

He asked me some questions. Considered the idea in silence. Asked me some more questions.

“It's not stupid,” he said. “But finding her isn't going to solve everything. She'll just tell more lies.”

“You're right,” I said. “They might blame you on her say-so. They might arrest you. Or you might have to just keep on walking, straight out of here, and start over somewhere else. But even if saving her doesn't clear your name, it will still be a good thing, Toby.”

He nodded.

In my grandfather's plaid hunting coat, Toby looked even less like himself. His black oilcloth coat lay draped over a bale of hay like a giant bat. His old hat, full of the hair I'd cut, looked fit for nothing but the fire. Without them, he would be known only by what he did that night.

But then he reached for his guns.

“What are you doing?” I said. “You can't go around with those on your back. That'll ruin everything. Even one gun across your back will seem pretty strange, but three and you're Toby again.”

He clenched his hands together so tightly that his scars went as white as milk.

“Are you afraid of bears?” I asked. That, at least, I could understand.

“No,” he said.

“Then why carry those guns everywhere? Don't they get awfully heavy?”

He unclenched his hands and rubbed them together as if they were cold. “They do,” he said.

“Then why do you carry them?”

I waited.

“Because I do,” he said.

“You sound like James.”

He didn't seem to mind the comparison. And it didn't prompt a better explanation.

I knew there was one in Toby's awful stories, waiting in their boxes. Someday, I'd listen harder.

For now, I headed down the ladder.

When Toby followed, without even pausing at the top, he had no guns across his back.

The men were just leaving the house when I returned.

“Annabelle, where have you been?” my father said. “Your mother needs you inside.”

“I went to let the animals into their stalls.”

My grandfather started up our truck while the others piled into the flatbed, a company of mutts with them.

“Well, good,” my father said, turning away. “Now go on inside and help your mother.”

“Wait,” I said, following him across the lane. “Daddy, wait a minute.”

“Annabelle, we've got to get going,” he said as he opened the cab door. “The light's almost gone and the bloodhounds are out at the church, ready to go.”

“Daddy, I think I know where Betty is.”

Which stopped him cold. He closed the truck door.

“You know where she is?” He sounded, looked askance, and I couldn't blame him. “Just like that?”

“I was filling the horse buckets, at the cistern, and I remembered something.” The lie seemed so small compared to everything else. “Andy told the trooper that Betty meant to go down to Toby's place and cause some trouble. So I figured maybe she
did
go down there when Andy didn't show up at the Turtle Stone.”

My father shook his head impatiently.

“Annabelle, Constable Oleska went down there looking for Toby. Betty wasn't there. And the trooper went down there himself and had a good look around. She wasn't there. She isn't there, Annabelle.”

“But they were looking for Toby. They weren't really looking for Betty because that was before they knew she might have gone down there. To cause trouble for him.”

My father opened the door to the truck again. “I don't understand what you're getting at, Annabelle. That shack is one room. There's no cellar. There's no attic. There's no closet. And there was no sign that she'd been there.”

“Except that wire.”

“Annabelle—”

“She didn't see anything from the belfry, Daddy. Toby didn't do anything wrong.”

My father climbed into the truck. “Annabelle, I have to go.”

“Daddy, she's in the well,” I said.

He shook his head. “Toby doesn't have a well.” He began to shut the door.

“Yes, he does,” I said, grabbing his arm. “There's one back in the woods at the old Cobb place.”

“Annabelle,” my mother called from the doorway.

“It's just a hole in the ground,” I said. “You could walk right past it.”

My father went still. “I'm sure someone has searched every square inch around there.”

“Betty said she was afraid of Toby,” I reminded him. “Nobody thought she'd be anywhere near the smokehouse. Andy was the only one who knew she wanted to go down there that day.”

I couldn't tell him about the odd sounds I'd heard in the dark. Like a frightened animal.

“Annabelle!” my mother called again.

“I'm going with Daddy,” I called back.

“Go on inside,” he said. “We'll have a look in the well.”

“Please, let me come along,” I begged. “I won't get in the way. I promise.”

He considered me for a moment and then waved an okay to my mother.

I climbed into the truck and sat between him and my grandfather, who was, thankfully, a slow and careful driver.

By the time we got to the church, Toby would be getting close to Cobb Hollow.

By the time my father told the handlers to keep the dogs leashed for the time being, Toby would be headed down the slope toward his smokehouse.

By the time my father had told the constable to follow us down to Cobb Hollow, Toby would be waiting for us in the woods with night coming quickly on.

And by the time we found the well, Toby would be ready to join us, just one more stranger come to help, blending in like a chameleon.

As we drove down the lane into Cobb Hollow, I recalled once more the sound I'd heard. A porcupine, I'd thought.

I pictured Betty trapped deep in that cold well for two days, the rain pouring in on top of her, and I wasn't sure she'd need more punishing for all she'd done. But I knew that Ruth might disagree.

My grandfather pulled the truck down the Cobb lane and parked by Toby's smokehouse. Another truck pulled in behind him, the constable at the wheel, five more men with him.

We all piled out and gathered in the clearing.

“There's a well in those woods,” my father called out, “back down the lane some and off to the left. Watch where you step.”

He grabbed my sleeve. “You stay right with me, Annabelle, you understand?”

I did. I
wanted
to be with him. If Betty wasn't in that well, if I was wrong about that, I didn't know what I'd do. And somewhere nearby, Toby was waiting to see what happened. I had to be close. I had to be the one to help him, if it came to that. And I wanted my father with me.

The men fanned out and started through the trees. It was dark enough so one by one the flashlights came on, bobbing and shifting, guiding us forward.

The burned-out foundation of the Cobb house was easy to find, but it took longer to locate the well itself, which was nothing more than a dark spot on the ground, the flat stones around it long buried in moss and rot.

By rights, the hole, too, should have been covered over with leaves by now. And I knew, without looking in, that it had been. That Betty had stepped on it, unawares, and that her falling body had cleared it for us to find.

I stepped back as the men converged around it. How horrible. How horrible. How horrible that she could be in there. That anyone could be in there.

I hadn't thought about it before. Not really. Or I would have screamed it out and run to find her.

The constable stepped to the edge and shined his flashlight straight down into the hole.

“I can't see anything,” he said. “John.”

My father joined him, two others as well, and they made a circle around the well and pointed their lights together down the hole.

“My Lord, she's down there,” the constable said. “Betty!”

And then it was all confusion as the men scrambled to the trucks for lanterns and rope and shovels.

I stood clear, my back against a tree.

I watched as Toby came out of the darkness and into the fray without a word. Nobody noticed anything but here were two more hands to help pull her out of that well.

He was wearing my grandfather's old gloves.

He looked like a farmer. Like my father. Like Henry or James would look someday.

In the end, it took a while to get Betty free.

It was a dug well, once roomy enough for a man with a shovel, but then narrowed by the laid stone he'd used to line it. Betty was only about twenty feet down, the front of her poncho caught on a rusty old pipe. Cradled in it as if from a stork's beak, she had been saved from falling all the way to the bottom, but her legs hung down out of sight, and we all wondered if they hung in November water.

The men were worried about dislodging her, sending her deeper into the well, hurting her worse or even drowning her. But they knew they had to get her out of there as quickly as possible.

They called to her again and again, but she did not respond when they dangled a rope down to her, and there was no way she could tie it around herself in any event.

On the other side of the well from where I stood with my father, Toby and the others watched. I met his eyes across that dreadful breach. In the lantern light, he looked younger but even more serious than he ever had in his beard and black coat and hat.

“Someone needs to go down there and get her out,” my father said.

“Yes, but we really ought to use a tripod and a winch,” the constable said. “We do this wrong and the man we lower could end up falling in with her.”

“You want to wait while someone goes after a winch?” my father said.

“No,” the constable said. “No, I don't. And I'm sure Betty doesn't want to be down there for one minute longer than she has to be.”

I remembered the hours I'd spent picking milkweed pods, cutting Toby's hair. I remembered chatting with the horses as I gave them their oats. I remembered being glad that my grandfather was a slow and careful driver. And I felt sick.

An oak standing near the well reached out above it with a sturdy limb. We all stepped back as my father tied a heavy knot in one end of the rope and tossed it over the branch to the constable, who pulled it down and looped it into a quick harness.

“I'll go,” my father said, unbuttoning his coat.

But Toby, standing next to the constable, took the rope out of his hands. “Let me,” he said. “I'm skinny, but I'm strong.” He kept his gloves on but shed my grandfather's coat.

“I don't know you,” the constable said, but he sounded nothing more than curious.

“I'm not from around here,” Toby said. “But I came to help, and I'd be obliged if you'd let me.”

I began to breathe again, though I realized that my hands were in fists as my father and the constable fit the harness around Toby, leaving a long tail that he could use to secure Betty.

“You sure about this?” the constable asked him. “She's putting weight on the wall where she's caught. No telling whether the whole thing might not collapse and take you with it.”

The other men had made a ring around the well. I could see between them. Toby, adjusting the harness. Looking at the constable, nodding his response.

“Take my flashlight,” the constable said. “We won't be able to shine any light down past you, but I don't know how you're going to get her tied and hold the flashlight without another hand or two.”

“I'll manage,” Toby said. He reached into his pocket and handed my father his jackknife. “Would you hold this for me? I'll be going in upside down, so . . .”

“You have a wallet? Keys?”

Toby paused for a moment. Then, “In my coat.”

As Toby knelt at the edge of the well, my father said, “I didn't catch your name.”

Toby looked back over his shoulder. “Jordan,” he said. And it felt like the truth.