Wonderland Creek Part 10

"It's not a him, Miss Ripley. Belle's a mare." We stood still for a long moment, and I could hear Mack sniffing the air. "Smell that?" he asked. "There's a cat around here somewhere. Belle smells it, too."

"A cat? Doesn't she like cats?"

"We're not talking about your grandma's tabby cat. We have big cats in these woods. Lynx. Wildcats."

This news was too much for me. I leaned my forehead against Mack's back and cried like a little girl. My nerves were so jumbled from everything I had endured that I would need a month at Aunt Lydia's spa to straighten them out.

"Hey, hey," he soothed. "Don't cry." He made a clicking sound and urged the horse forward again. "We'll be fine. I didn't mean to scare you."

"No? What did you mean to do? You've already forced me to get on this stupid horse at gunpoint, and now you're telling me there are wildcats stalking us? That's my choice? Get shot or get eaten by wildcats? Who wouldn't be scared?"

"Don't worry, cats usually go for smaller game. They'd have to be plenty hungry to go after Belle."

"Wonderful. What about going after me?"

He laughed, and it made me so angry I wanted to push him off the horse and let the wildcat eat him. "Stop laughing! It's not funny!"

"I'm sorry. But if you ever got into a tussle with a wildcat, Miss Ripley, I'd put my money on you."

I decided not to say another word to this horrible man and seethed in silence the rest of the way. Ten minutes later-although it seemed like ten years-Mack veered away from the creek and urged the horse straight up a steep incline on our right. "Hang on tight," he said.

"Wait! I'm going to slide off the back!"

"You'll be fine. Lift your bottom a little and lean forward."

The nerve of the man, telling me what to do with my bottom! But I closed my eyes and hung on to Mack for dear life. I didn't open them again until we halted. In the gloom among the trees, I could barely make out the bones of a tiny cabin, perched on an impossibly small square of flat land. A jumbled tangle of vines and tree branches engulfed it as if the cabin were having a wrestling match with Mother Nature. The cabin was clearly losing. The tumbledown structure not only looked uninhabited, it looked uninhabitable. I didn't care. I was so furious that all I wanted to do was climb down off this horse and go home. I would take my chances with the wildcats just to be rid of Mack.

He steered Belle as close to the cabin as he could get without going inside and slid off with a grunt onto the tiny porch. I extended my hand to him. "Help me down, please." I would have jumped off, but the horse had legs like a giraffe's and the ground looked very far away.

"Hand me the saddlebags first," Mack said. I complied. "Thanks. Can you untie the bedroll . . . and that burlap sack? Good. Now slide forward into the saddle."

I did what he said, sliding onto the hard leather seat. "Will you please help me down now?" I asked politely.

Mack shook his head. "The trip will go faster on the way back. It's downhill most of the way. Belle will be eager to get home. Don't let her gallop, though, or you might fall off."

"How am I supposed to stop her?"

"Hang on with your legs. Keep the reins tight. But don't pull too hard or she'll buck and throw you off."

"Throw me off! Wait-!"

"Just keep following Wonderland Creek down the hill."

"Wonderland? Is that the name of this creek?"

"Yeah."

"You're kidding."

"No, that's what it's called. Why?"

"Never mind. Please, Mack. Help me down. I want to walk home."

"You can't walk. It's too dark. How will you see where you're going? Listen, Belle knows the way home and she's very sure-footed. She'll have you there in twenty minutes. She moves faster downhill."

"No, wait! That's what I'm afraid of! I don't want her to run!"

"Lean back on the way down. Hang on with your legs. And don't forget to take her saddle and bridle off when you get home."

"Please don't leave me out here in these woods all alone!"

"You're not alone. You have Belle. Good night, Miss Ripley. Thanks for your help." Mack gave the horse a gentle slap on her rear end and off we went.

I would have screamed, but fear had driven all of the air from my lungs. I closed my eyes, then remembered I needed to watch for low-hanging branches. The slope was so steep that I felt like I was going to tumble right over the horse's head. She was grunting and snorting as she negotiated the rocky slope. Maybe she was as scared as I was. What if she really didn't know the way home and we wandered around in these creepy woods all night? But Belle quickly reached the stream and turned downhill, following the creek bed. Wonderland Creek indeed.

It might have taken only twenty minutes to get home, but it seemed like an eternity as Belle and I bounced and jostled downhill through the ink-black forest. I clung to the reins and the little horn on the front of the saddle, whimpering like an abandoned kitten. I didn't stop whimpering until I felt the ground start to level off and I knew we were almost there. My vision blurred with tears of joy and relief when I saw the dark outline of the library in the distance. Lillie had left a lantern glowing in the kitchen window.

The horse went straight into the shed, and if I hadn't remembered to duck in time, I would have been knocked to the ground. I gratefully slid off her back when she stopped. My legs were so weak from fear and exhaustion that they crumpled beneath me and I landed in a heap in the hay and manure. I figured as long as I was down there, I may as well reach beneath her belly to unbuckle the saddle.

"Nice horsey, good horsey . . ." I murmured as my fingers fumbled in the dark. "Please don't kick me."

I scrambled to my feet when she started stomping hers and I quickly slid the saddle off her back. Then I pulled the bridle off her head and hung it on a hook. I was done. Finished. I latched the shed door behind me and staggered up to the house.

Everything was quiet. There was no sign of Lillie or her rifle. I took the lantern from the kitchen window and carried it upstairs to Mack's bedroom. At least I had a bed to sleep in again. I looked in the mirror above the dresser and saw a crazed woman with straw sticking out of her hair and eyes as wide and gla.s.sy as Aunt Lydia's stuffed moose. It's okay, I told the girl in the mirror. You're home now where it's safe. Everything's going to be okay.

No sooner were the words out of my mouth than the bat whizzed past my head. This was too much. It was all too much!

I dove into Mack's bed and pulled the covers over my head, crying myself to sleep as the bat swooped around the room, diving and darting as if having the time of its life.

An odd sound outside below my bedroom window awakened me the next morning. Whack, thwap! Whack, thwap! I parted the curtains and looked down to see Ike Arnett, the fiddle player, splitting wood with an axe and stacking it in our woodpile. I had been growing worried as I'd watched the pile diminishing day after day, fearing that I soon would have to chop wood, too. Mack had stacked a large pile of logs down by Belle's shed, but they needed to be split before they'd fit into the cookstove.

I dressed quickly and hurried down to the backyard. "Good morning, Ike."

"Hey, Alice. How you doing?" He paused to rest, wiping his brow with the back of his hand.

"I'm doing fine, thank you. How are you?"

"Great. Working up a sweat." He propped his axe against the stump and unb.u.t.toned his flannel shirt. As he shrugged it off, he seemed to ch.o.r.eograph every move in order to display his impressive set of muscles. Ike resembled every hero in every romance novel I had ever read-not that I read those kinds of books on a regular basis, of course.

He caught me watching him and grinned. I had to say something. "It's so nice of you to do this for us . . . to help out this way."

"That's what neighbors are for. I saw that your woodpile was getting low."

"Yes. Thank you."

"How's Miss Lillie doing? I guess she took Mack's death pretty hard, huh?"

"I guess." I couldn't say more without sounding sarcastic, so I thanked Ike again and went inside, carrying an armful of freshly split wood.

Miss Lillie was already awake and sitting up in bed when I brought in her breakfast tray. She looked small and frail and helpless as she leaned against the pillows, but I knew better. She greeted me with a shy smile. "Didn't mean to scare you with the gun last night, honey."

"No? What did you mean to do?"

She thought for a long moment, then said, "Get you moving."

I laid the breakfast tray on her lap. "Do you need anything else?" I backed toward the door.

"Yes, honey-girl. I need you to sit down and talk to me while I eat." She patted the edge of the bed and beckoned to me. "Come on, I won't bite."

I did as she said. Reluctantly. And with more than a twinge of fear.

Lillie picked up her fork and poked at her eggs. I wanted to remind her of all the hard work I had done to get those eggs onto her plate-braving the damp morning air and the pecking, flapping chaos of the henhouse, hauling firewood and coaxing the flames to stay lit long enough to scramble the eggs and bake the biscuits. I had to admit that the biscuits hadn't turned out very well, and any leftover ones could be used as cobblestones, but at least I had tried.

"I used to teach school a long, long time ago," Lillie said, "and I learnt that most youngsters can do what you ask them to do-even if they don't think so. They just need a little push sometimes to get them moving, that's all. So over the years I learnt to give a little push in the right direction when I had to."

"Did you point a rifle at your students, too?"

"'Course not," she said, smiling. "But listen now, honey. You shouldn't be holding grudges against people. I did what needed to be done last night, and so did you. And it wasn't so bad, was it? Once I got you moving?"

"It was horrible."

"But you learnt something, right?"

I held my tongue, resisting the urge to say I had learned not to trust a word that she or Mack said. Six more days, I told myself. Five, after today. I had been here for nine days, and with any luck my aunt and uncle would come to my rescue very soon.

"So can we be friends again, honey?"

I sighed. Nodded. Lillie was not someone you'd want for an enemy. I decided to make polite conversation while she nibbled her eggs. "Did you teach school here in town, Miss Lillie?"

"No. I was teaching a long, long time ago down in Virginia, right after the war ended. That's where I met my Sam, the man I come to love more than anyone in the whole world-except for Jesus, of course. Mmm hmm he's a fine man." Her face beamed. That was the only word for it. But whether she was smiling because of Sam or Jesus, I couldn't be sure.

"Was Sam a teacher, too?" I asked.

Lillie laughed. "No, honey-girl, he was one of my students! Before Mr. Lincoln come along, n.o.body's allowed to teach slaves to read and write. So Sam didn't know how to do either one till the war set us free, even though he's a grown man. I already learnt how to read back on the plantation-in secret, of course. That's so I could write down everything Old Granny was teaching me about how to heal folks. Ma.s.sa would've tanned all the skin off my hide if he'd known I could read and write. Had to be real careful, you know."

"How did you become a teacher after the war?" I imagined Lillie attending cla.s.ses at the Normal School like Freddy and I had.

"You know what they say, 'In the land of the blind, the man with one eye is king.' Since I'm the only one who can read, they made me the teacher at the new colored folks' school. My Sam, he was real smart, though. He learnt how to read in no time. And along the way we fell in love."

"Did you marry him?"

"Couldn't marry him, honey, much as I wanted to. I was already married. I jumped the broom with a field hand named Charley when I was still on the plantation. Big handsome fellow with skin like a moonless night. We had us a little baby boy named Buster." Lillie smiled, remembering. "Trouble is, Ma.s.sa sold Charley down South, and I didn't know what become of him."

Her story horrified me. I had read about such atrocities in Frederick Dougla.s.s's slave narrative and in novels like Uncle Tom's Cabin, but I had never met a real live slave before. "Why did your master sell him?"

"Ma.s.sa didn't need no reason. He sold my son, too, right after the war started and Buster was still a boy. So when the war was over, I was hanging around close to Ma.s.sa's old place and teaching school, waiting to find out if I still had a husband and a son. Ain't nothing Sam and me could do but wait."

I was intrigued now by Lillie's tragic story. "What happened?"

Instead of replying, Lillie sat up straight in bed, her head tilted to one side, listening. "Did you unlock the door downstairs, honey? Ain't it about time for the other gals to get here?"

"I'll go unlock it." I hurried downstairs, intending to come right back and hear the rest of Lillie's story, but I saw Marjorie outside, tying her horse to the porch railing. She carried the burlap sacks she used to tote books and also an old, worn-out pair of tall lace-up boots, the kind that all of the women wore on their delivery routes. I held the door open for her.

"Here's the boots you asked me about, Miss Lillie."

I whirled around and sure enough, there was Lillie, standing at the bottom of the steps, grinning. "Thanks, honey."

Marjorie handed the boots to me, not to Lillie. "Try them on, Alice. See if they fit you."

"Me? . . . Thanks, but I already have shoes."

"Yes you do, honey," Lillie said, "and they're real nice ones, too. Ain't much good for riding horses, though." She took my arm as she spoke and guided me over to the stairs, then motioned for me to sit down. "Go ahead and try them on now, seeing as Marjorie was nice enough to bring them."

I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck as I sat down and did as I was told. I already had one boot on when the front door opened and the other three women came in. They gathered in front of the stairs, watching me pull on the second boot and lace it up as if they'd never seen such a sight before.

"Looks like they're gonna fit her real good," Alma said with a smile. The others nodded. Any minute they might applaud. I didn't know what was going on, but I had a bad feeling about it. After all, Lillie was capable of staging a person's funeral and convincing everyone he was dead.

I gulped as Lillie laid her hands on my shoulders like a queen about to bestow her blessing. "Now, we know you come down here outta the goodness of your heart, honey, to help us out. Right, gals? So we was discussing it at Mack's funeral, and we decided that the best way you can help-and honor Mack's memory-is if we was to give you a library route like all the other gals have."

My heart began to pound. I wondered what they would do if I pushed them aside and ran out the front door. "You mean . . . on a horse?"

"Them books get pretty heavy otherwise, especially when you're walking uphill. And there's an awful lot of hills around here."

"I-I don't know how to ride a horse, Miss Lillie."

"Cora will teach you, won't you, honey?"

"Sure. I'd be glad to."

"We'll all help," Faye added. This was a lynch mob, leading me to the hanging tree.

"Cora says she'll take you out on her route today and show you the way. Hers is the easiest one. She's been wanting to start a new route further up where some folks are living on Potter's Creek. Ain't that right, Cora? Remember how Mack used to talk about that? Them folks on Potter's Creek ain't hardly ever seen a book."

The women were all smiling and nodding. Alma had tears in her eyes. "Mack was always thinking of other people instead of himself," she said.

"We wouldn't even have jobs if it weren't for Mack," Marjorie added. Everyone agreed.

How long had Lillie been plotting this little scheme of hers? Was Mack in on it, too? I wanted to dig in my heels, throw a temper tantrum, and refuse to do a single thing Lillie said. But I still got chills when I remembered how she had stood in the kitchen doorway last night, c.o.c.king Mack's gun. She knew how to make potions, too. She might be a frail little thing, but I was scared to death of her. And she was pairing me up with Cora, the tallest and heftiest of the four women, with shoulders as broad as Mack's. Cora could probably pick me up by the scruff of the neck and plop me onto the horse's back without breaking into a sweat.

"Now, I know you gals want to get on your way," Lillie said. "Go on down and get Belle saddled up for her, would you, Cora? I'll help honey-girl pack her lunch."

After the others left, I confronted Lillie. "Why are you making me do this? I can't deliver books like they do. I don't know anything about horses."

"Oh, that don't matter. You can learn. Little kids ride horses around here all the time. Bareback, no less. Them women are paying you a big honor, honey, accepting you like one a their own and letting you ride with them." Lillie took my arm and started pulling me toward the kitchen as she spoke. I dragged my feet like a condemned woman.

"But . . . but I don't want the honor." Memories of last night's ride were still much too fresh-and so were the bruises on my backside. I had long since given up hope that this was a nightmare and that I might wake up. This was too unbelievable to be a nightmare. I wanted to go home. "Please tell the ladies thank-you for me, but I don't know how to ride-and I don't think I can learn."

"Listen, honey." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "We got to bring food and things up to Mack without people getting suspicious. If you ride a route like all them other gals, you can check on him every day or so."