Wonderland Creek Part 31

"Let me see . . ." She reached for it with her spindly, wrinkled hand. "Oh, my. This is from my old missus on the plantation. This is the paper she gave me all them years ago, telling me where Charley and Buster was sold to. See here? August the fifth-that's the day they took my Buster away. I remember that awful day like it was yesterday."

My heart skipped with excitement. Could this clue help us find Buster? That's what I had prayed for before falling asleep!

"Is that your last name?" I asked. "Hammond?" I had never heard anyone call Lillie by her last name and realized that I had no idea what it was.

"No, honey. Hammond was Ma.s.sa's name. All the slaves on them plantations had the same last name as their owners. But when we was set free, a lot of folks didn't want that name no more. They took new names for themselves. Some of them chose Lincoln-we thought the world of Mr. Abraham Lincoln. I took Sam's name when we got married."

"You never told me what happened when you and Sam went looking for Buster after the war."

"I didn't? Well, we found the plantation where he was sold, but Buster wasn't there no more. The Drucker family lived in a little town near Fredericksburg, Virginia, called Thornburg. Ma.s.sa Drucker still owned the land, just like it says here. But the house was gone, burned to the ground when the army marched through. Ma.s.sa Drucker mighta known where Buster was, but it didn't matter because he ain't talking to no colored people. Says he'll shoot us dead if we come on his property. Sam and me went to the colored town and asked around, but most of the Druckers' slaves was gone. A lot of them headed out West where they was supposed to get twenty acres and a mule."

"But Buster couldn't have gone out West by himself. He was just a boy, wasn't he? How old would he have been?"

"Twelve years old when the war ended. The colored folks told us that when the Yankees came through, everybody starved. Some tried to follow the army, and boys like Buster mighta worked for some of the soldiers, shining shoes or cooking for them-anything to try and stay alive."

"Did anyone remember Buster?"

"A couple of the old-timers remembered him from plantation days. n.o.body knowed what happened to him, though. We searched and searched, but Buster was long gone."

I didn't let Lillie's news discourage me. I now knew some possible last names for Buster and I knew the name of the town where he had lived after he was sold. How far could a twelve-year-old boy travel on his own?

I was so excited about discovering this information that I couldn't wait to see Mack on Thursday and tell him the good news. I had to ride my usual route first, but when I finally arrived at his cabin, I dismounted and waited on the porch steps for him to appear.

I leaped up in excitement the moment Mack rustled out of the bushes. "Good news! I found out Buster's last name and the name of the town where he went after he was sold. He might have adopted his new master's name, Drucker. Or he might still go by his old name, Hammond. Lillie said he may have changed it to Lincoln after the war, too. But how many people could there possibly be named Buster Hammond or Buster Drucker? I figured it all out, and in the 1900 census he would have been about forty-seven years old. He'd be seventy-seven in the 1930 census, which means he'd be about eight-two or eighty-three today. Goodness, Mack. We'd better hurry!"

I was so excited as I babbled on and on about Lillie's son that I didn't notice how quiet Mack had been. "What's the matter? Is something wrong?" I finally asked.

"I have bad news, Alice."

"Does it have to do with Buster?"

"No. That's good news about him. But I have to go back to the mine."

"You're joking."

"I'm afraid not."

"Weren't the files any help to you?"

"They were an enormous help. I spent all day yesterday and today reading through them. But I've never been inside the mine, and I need a layout of the main shafts and where Hank's accident was in order to make sense of everything. I promised you that I would finish my work in a month's time and come out of hiding so you could go home, and I want to keep my promise."

"I know. But you can't go back there, Mack. It's too dangerous, especially if they've figured out the files are missing. Why not talk to some of the miners who worked there during that time? They should remember the layout, shouldn't they?"

"Yes . . . except that all of those miners think I'm dead."

"Oh. That's right." I sank down on the porch steps to think. "There must be some other way to get that information."

"Maybe you can talk to Ike Arnett. He worked in the mine before it closed. Is he still courting you? Are you close to him?"

My cheeks flushed, betraying me. My love life was none of Mack's business.

When I didn't reply, he added, "Didn't you say Ike suspected that Hank's death wasn't an accident?"

I had to respond. "He's hardly courting me. There's no place to go courting in Acorn, as you well know. Do you expect me to be another Mata Hari, pumping Ike for information between fervent embraces?"

"Who's Mata Hari?"

"Didn't you see that movie a few years ago with Greta Garbo and Lionel Barrymore?" Mack gave me a blank look. "Mata Hari spied for the Germans during the Great War. They made a movie about her life." He was shaking his head. "Never mind. What do you want me to ask Ike-a.s.suming that I decide to do it?"

"I need to know the layout-where the active shafts were in relation to the site of Hank's accident. See if Ike can describe the two areas, how close together they are."

"I'll try. But in the meantime, what about finding Buster? Lillie isn't going to live forever, you know. We shouldn't put this off much longer."

"I'll send the information to my friend in Washington. Do you have time to wait while I write a quick letter?"

"Of course."

He disappeared into the cabin and came out a minute later with a small notepad. He sat down on the porch step, and when he reached inside his jacket to pull out a pencil, I saw him wince. I noticed the same dark stain on his shirt that I had seen the other night.

"Mack, is your wound bleeding again?"

"Just a little. I may have overdone it a little on Tuesday night."

He looked pale to me, and I reached out to feel his forehead. "You're running a fever!"

"I'll be fine." He pushed away my hand and continued to scribble his letter. "What were those names again?"

"Buster's first master was named Hammond. His new one was Drucker. And tell your friend to try looking for Buster Lincoln, just in case. He would have been born around 1853."

"And the town?"

"It's called Thornburg. Lillie said it was near Fredericksburg, Virginia."

I waited while he wrote some more. "I don't have an envelope," he said after signing his name. "If I give you the address, can you find an envelope and mail it for me?"

"Sure. And I'm going to ask Lillie to fix you something for your fever, too. In the meantime, you need to get some rest and take it easy."

He folded the letter and went back inside the cabin to rummage around for his friend's address. I didn't know where he was hiding all of these things, because every time I had peeked into the cabin, it had appeared to be abandoned.

"Here," he said when he emerged again. "And please try to get some information from Ike soon, okay?"

I looked at the address when I got back to the library and saw that it was a woman's name, Miss Catherine Anson. I felt a little p.r.i.c.k of something that might have been jealousy. Who would have believed it? Mack had a sweetheart? The only affectionate female I'd seen him with was Belle.

The next morning I went to the post office to mail Mack's letter. I didn't tell Lillie what the letter contained, afraid of disappointing her if we couldn't find her son. I used my return address in Illinois to alleviate any suspicion in the post office that Mack had written the letter. This time, the elderly gentlemen of Acorn were playing chess instead of cards. I bought a stamp, affixed it to the envelope and asked the postmaster to mail it, and once again my entire transaction took place without anyone speaking a word to me. How long did an outsider have to live in Acorn before people got over their suspicion?

Instead of walking back to the library, I continued up the road and took the turnoff to Ike's house. A few minutes later I reached the orchard. The blossoms were gone and the orchard looked perfectly ordinary, not at all like the possible burial ground for a hidden treasure.

Where was the treasure? Was it real? Like the pirates in Treasure Island, I had become obsessed with finding it. Everyone else in Acorn, Kentucky, wanted to find it and get rich, but I wanted to end the long-standing feud between the Arnetts and Larkins, for June Ann's sake.

I studied the grove from every angle, searching for a defining landmark. A huge, ancient tree? There were dozens of them in the woods beyond the clearing. An oddly shaped rock? There were plenty of rocks, too. At last I decided it was hopeless. If the Arnetts and Larkins hadn't been able to find this treasure after sixty years of searching, how could I?

I returned home, taking the path through the woods and along the creek, and came in through the library's back door. I had just stepped into the foyer when Ike walked in through the front door. I jumped, startled to see him-and felt a little guilty for searching for the treasure without him. Ike was the one who had figured out that the orchard was the halfway point between the two houses.

He gripped my arms to steady me. "You okay? I didn't mean to scare you."

"I'm fine. My mind was a million miles away, that's all. Are you here for a book?" I hoped he wasn't going to sit down and watch me work again or try to coax me into the kitchen to smooch.

"You promised to go for a walk with me, remember? And there's something I want to ask you."

"Okay. But it will have to be a short walk. I have work to do." We went out through the back door, and Ike paused as we pa.s.sed the garden we had worked on together.

"It looks pretty dry," he said. "You been watering it?"

"No . . . Am I supposed to?"

"Well, yeah, if you want anything to grow."

My shoulders sagged. Here was another wearying job I would have to undertake. "Any chance it might rain?"

He laughed and patted my arm. "If it doesn't, I'll come over and help you haul water."

He reached for my hand and led me back to the orchard the way I had just come. We had forgotten to bring a blanket this time, but Ike cleared a spot beneath one of the trees and pulled me down beside him. He sat with his back against the trunk and I leaned against him, comfortable in his arms. A romance novel would describe Ike's arms as "brawny." The thought made me smile. All of the words that writers used to describe their heroes-broad-shouldered, manly, ruggedly handsome, brawny-had seemed like cliches to me when I had read them in books. But Ike truly was all of those things. How much longer could we spend time together before we ended up falling in love? I remembered his sister's veiled threats about toying with him. Was I leading Ike on?

"I want to ask you something, Alice." He twirled a strand of my curly hair around his finger as he talked. "My band is playing at a dance over in the next county this weekend. Will you come with me?"

"Is it just for one day, like before?"

"No, it's far. We would have to stay there overnight."

"Ike, I can't. Even if we weren't . . . together, it wouldn't look right."

He turned my shoulders so I was facing him. "But I want to be with you all the time. I can't stand even one day apart. I . . . I think I'm falling in love with you."

My heart sped up. I had waited in vain for Gordon to confess his love for me, but he never had. Now I was glad he hadn't. Was I falling in love with Ike? Being with him felt exciting, and I missed him when he wasn't around, and his kisses made my brain whirl . . . but was that true love? He was waiting for me to return his declaration of love, but I stalled, afraid of getting hurt.

"I thought you had a girl in every town? You said you weren't ready to settle down with one girl."

"You're not like any girl I ever met."

He leaned forward and kissed me. How was I supposed to think straight with his lips on mine, his hands in my hair?

When he finally pulled away again, he looked into my eyes. "I know my future is hopeless right now. I don't have a steady job and no way to support you until the mine opens again, and who knows when that will be."

"You shouldn't go back into the mine, Ike-ever. You could make a living playing your fiddle if you could just catch the right break."

"What if that lucky break never comes? You already said you wouldn't stay here in Acorn unless I bought you all those modern things you want. I don't know what to do, except find the treasure. You gotta help me find it, Alice. It's the only way."

"I want to find it, too, but-" He started kissing me before I had a chance to explain that I wanted to find it so the feud would end. The feuding had gone on much too long and had torn the town of Acorn in two.

Ike was so sweet, so wonderful. I wanted to forget common sense and my home in Illinois and tell him that I loved him, too. I wanted to say that we could live happily-ever-after anywhere in the world as long as we were together. But happy endings only happened in books, not in real life.

Maybe Ike could come home with me to Illinois and we could live there. But where would an uneducated miner from Kentucky find work, especially during the Depression? Ike was talented and smart and he loved to read, but he would be as out of place in Blue Island as I was here in Acorn.

"I should get back to the library," I said when the kiss ended. "Lillie has no idea where I disappeared to."

"Will you come here with me some night and help me dig up the treasure if I figure out where it's buried?"

"But . . . it's against the law. This is someone else's property."

"Please, Alice?"

How could I refuse when Ike looked at me with those sad, dark eyes? I had helped Mack do illegal things in the middle of night. Why not help Ike?

"I'll help you, but first we have to find out where to dig. We can't just start making holes all over the place. Listen, Ike. Go play at the dance this Sat.u.r.day. Have fun. We'll talk more about it when you return."

I was glad to stay home over the weekend and catch up on some of the sleep I had missed. I typed more of Lillie's folk remedies on Sat.u.r.day, read a book on Sunday, and waited all day Monday for Ike to return, but he never did. Mamaw and the boys arrived on Monday afternoon, excited about starting a new story. I had chosen Tom Sawyer, which I had found on the nightstand in Mack's room. The boys were thrilled to read about a character who was as mischievous as they were.

I hoped Ike would return before I had to leave on my route Tuesday morning, but he didn't. As I pa.s.sed Mack's cabin, I realized that a week had pa.s.sed since the night we'd searched the mine office together. I decided to avoid Mack for a while. He had asked me to play Mata Hari with Ike and I hadn't done it.

When I reached June Ann's cabin, she was tearful again, and the baby was wailing. "Go take a little walk," I told her. "I'll rock Feather for a while." Thirty minutes later, the baby finally quieted and June Ann returned.

"Do you want Lillie to fix some more tonic?" I asked. "I see the bottles are nearly empty."

"It won't help."

Once again she rejected my suggestions to come into town or to ask her family for help, so I finally said good-bye and moved on. I rode up to see the Sawyers, then Gladys and Clint. And even though it wasn't my day to visit Maggie, I decided to pay her a visit. I needed to talk to her about my feelings for Ike and I knew she was the only person in Acorn who would understand.

Maggie was outside, hanging bedsheets on her clothesline. Maybe I shouldn't bother her. She'd told me that her mother-in-law was bedridden all the time now. But Maggie waved when she spotted me and looked happy to see me. I dismounted and tied Belle to the hitching post, then walked over to help Maggie hang the rest of her laundry.

"This isn't your day to visit me. What brings you here? Is everything all right?"

"I'm fine. Just confused," I said with a little laugh.

"Ah. It must be a matter of the heart. What else besides love can throw us into confusion?"

"You know my friend Ike, who I told you about?"

"The fiddle player?"

"Yes. He said he thinks he's falling in love with me."

"And are you in love with him?"

"I don't know. I've been holding back deliberately, telling myself not to fall in love with him because he said he had a girl in every town and he wasn't ready to settle down yet. Besides, I can't risk falling for him. I know I won't be staying here in Kentucky forever. I could never live without electricity and telephones and indoor plumbing for the rest of my life. How do you do it?"

"True love changes people, Allie. When you're in love, you want to do things to please the other person and make them happy. It wasn't hard at all to make sacrifices to marry Hank and live here, at first." We had hung the last sheet, and Maggie bent to pick up the laundry basket. "Do you have time to come inside and talk? I baked scones this morning."

"Sure. I'm not in a hurry." I watched her pump water and prepare tea in her rustic kitchen, completely at home with its limitations, as if she had never lived in a city with electricity and hot running water. Could true love really change people that much? Could I live this way for Ike Arnett?