Zebra Forest Read online

  Somehow, they’d know. Just by looking at me, they’d figure it out. And then they’d go back to the house, and no matter what Rew said, it would be the police and maybe even the SWAT team, and they’d barge right in. They’d break the door down, and they’d shoot Andrew Snow, and maybe Gran and Rew, just by accident. I shuddered, standing there, imagining it. And I caught myself trying to picture what Andrew Snow would do, what he’d think when they came. She told. That’s what he’d think. And he’d be mad. He’d be so mad. And then they’d shoot him.

  But when the bus pulled up ten minutes later and I got on and paid my fare, no one even looked my way. I knew the bus driver on that route, and he gave me his usual little smile when I passed. I didn’t say anything, and he didn’t, either. Sometimes I’d know someone on the bus, one of the people riding. But not this day. And no one said a thing to me, and I got off in town like I would have on any regular day.

  The nearest mailbox was just by the bus stop, and I couldn’t help but pass it when I got off at my stop. Rew’s letter was in my pocket, all right, and it kind of amazed me that I still had it. If Andrew Snow had really been like Rew, he’d have searched me before I left. He’d have thought of something like this. But maybe that kind of thinking came from our mother. I didn’t know.

  A couple of people had gotten off the bus with me, and I wasn’t planning on taking the letter out in front of any of them, so I stood there, looking up at the sky, pretending I’d forgotten something on my grocery list and just generally looking kind of blank, until they’d wandered off. Then I pulled the letter from my pocket.

  Rew’s big, careful writing and that red EMERGENCY made my heart jump. I didn’t like to look at it. I thought of shoving it fast, into the box, and walking off quick the other way. When did they pick up the mail, anyway? When would they get it? Probably not until the afternoon. And then it would take a day or so in the mail. Which meant that the police chief wouldn’t get it and come running until at least Thursday or so. Andrew Snow would be there all that time, watching me. And he’d probably figure out what I’d done. He’d know it for sure when they came.

  I looked again at the letter. Maybe he would just go away on his own. Maybe he would go tomorrow. He’d go to Mexico or Canada or wherever, and we wouldn’t see him anymore. And no police would come to our house, either.

  Rew was smart, but he was impatient, too. We could wait a while longer. It wouldn’t hurt us too much. So I put the letter back in my pocket. I’d have time to mail it later if I needed to.

  Since my first time with Rew at the big grocery store, I didn’t go to that one anymore. Instead I’d found a little market downtown, near the post office and the bank, and I went there. It stood on the corner, next to the drugstore, with those dark, painted windows that reflect back at you on the outside and the words SUNSHINE GROCERY in half-lit letters across the top.

  Sunshine Grocery looked shabby, but I had picked it out of the several smaller area markets for two reasons, both of which had to do with Molly, the young woman who sat behind the counter. First, Molly was a fanatic TV watcher, and she kept a little set behind the counter going full-time. So I’d go in there to shop and get to hear on Phil Donahue why Farrah Fawcett left Charlie’s Angels after just one season.

  The other thing I loved about Molly was her talent at gum chewing. When I first found Sunshine Grocery, it was the gum popping that brought me back. Molly must have been about twenty years old, and she worked the counter alone for most of the day. I took an interest in everything about her. So did Beth, who sometimes came with me when I went shopping on school days.

  For someone who worked in a food store all day, Molly didn’t seem like she ate much. She had a narrow, pointy face, made pointier by the way she wore her hair. It was twice as wide as her face, blown back in soft brown wings and separated by the most perfect part anyone had ever seen. It was the kind you make with the end of a comb when your hair’s still wet, or at least that’s what Beth had figured out once she tried it. Just before Molly would pop a bubble, shed flip her head to make her hair whip back, out of the way. And then she’d blow a huge one, let it hang for a second, and snap it right back. She never got any on her face, either.

  I could blow a bubble, at least a small one, but I could not pop my gum like that. One day after school when I first found the market, I’d taken Beth with me, and the two of us loitered by the fresh-fruit bins, studying Molly a long time, watching her work that gum. Then we’d bought a pack each, taken it out to the sidewalk around the corner from the bank, and spent half an hour trying to get a nice-sounding crack out of our wads. But all we did was spit at each other a lot.

  Standing outside the grocery that morning, I suddenly missed Beth so bad I almost had to sit down. If she were next to me, we could pretend to be talking to each other when we went in, and no one would notice anything different. Nobody would look too close or wonder about why I had a different list today, why I suddenly had an interest in bringing home a newspaper. But then, if Beth were around, what would I have said about Andrew Snow? It was all too confusing. I shook my head and forced myself to push open the door, making the bell ping.

  Glancing down at my hands, I willed them not to shake when the time came to hand Molly the money. Wasn’t I supposed to be a good liar? The TV was on, of course, but Molly had it low. She wasn’t watching it — she was reading the paper, which was a sight in itself. She was still chewing, though, faster than ever, and I could smell Bubblicious just as soon as I came in. Molly looked up, nodded at me, and went back to her paper. It was the local news, and she was shaking her head over it. I went around collecting the things on Andrew Snow’s list, trying to figure out where some of the new ones — like celery and kidney beans — were to be found, when I heard the bell ping again.

  I took longer than usual to get back to the front with my things, and I dragged my feet a little, too, worrying about Molly noticing my list. Molly didn’t know a thing about my fascination with her, but she was friendly and always made a point of saying something to me when I came to the counter. Since she knew practically nothing about me, it usually had to do with what I was buying. If I got us ice cream, for example, she’d say, “Having a party?” or when I got cough syrup, because Rew had a cold, she’d ask me who was sick.

  Turned out I didn’t have to worry today, though, because when I got up toward the front, where I could hear that familiar snap of gum, I found another woman there as well, leaning over the paper on the counter and shaking her head.

  “Art Belmont’s already been put on notice,” the woman was saying. “And John Townson, too. It’s an awful thing.”

  Molly shook her head. “Well, so many escape, you can’t expect them to do nothing, I guess.”

  The other woman snorted. “They could dock their pay, I expect! They don’t have to fire them! People have to make a living! And it wasn’t as if five men at the front could stop a riot. What did they expect them to do, anyway? Scapegoats, that’s what they are. That prison was always understaffed. So what do they do? Give people the boot!”

  I don’t think it occurred to me till then that the Enderfield where everybody worked was the same place Andrew Snow had lived so many years. It was hard to put it together, somehow. But suddenly I did see, listening there in the grocery, that there were people in town — people I might have seen before — who would recognize Andrew Snow. If he ever did come out of our house and tried walking the streets of Sunshine, they’d know him. He couldn’t even walk into town to take the Trailways bus. He’d get caught, if he did that, even in regular clothes. I wondered why I didn’t feel good, thinking that right then. It was certainly something to tell Rew. He’d be happy. And I guess I was, too. But right then I just felt irritated. Maybe because it was hot and I didn’t like buying strange groceries that took too long to find.

  Molly meanwhile was nodding wisely and chewing some more. “Maybe they’ll let it go,” she said. “If they round them all up, maybe they’ll settle down.”<
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  The woman I didn’t know shook her head and tapped the paper. “See here? They’ve gotten about eight of them, that’s all. Eight out of something like forty-eight. No, more of those guys will be fired. I just hope it isn’t Sammy. His wife’s expecting.”

  Molly snapped her gum and shook her head. “Where’d they all go? It does make me awful uneasy — all those murderers and criminals running round the area.”

  “Who knows, by now?” the other woman said. “I heard a couple of them got picked up at the bus station in the next town, and one at a girlfriend’s house. Then there were four idiots who had the bad luck to try to take a van from a couple of off-duty state troopers. But the others, they scattered. They’re probably all in Washington, D.C., by now. Or maybe even halfway to New York. Don’t you worry about seeing them in Sunshine. They’re all a hundred miles up the road. Didn’t the police come to your door the other day, checking?”

  “Yeah,” Molly said. “You’re right. But it’ll hurt people round here just the same. I wonder how many more will be looking for work by next week.”

  I slipped round the woman and put a copy of the paper in with my groceries, heart beating faster as I did it. Then I took a step back and cleared my throat. Molly looked up. “Oh, here you go, Annie. You want to check out?”

  I nodded. Molly swept aside her paper, and the woman moved on into the store, pushing her cart.

  “At least there’s some news around here, right?” she said to me. Then she noticed my paper. To my relief, she only smiled.

  “Guess everyone’s reading the reports now, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s for my gran.”

  She patted my hand as I laid the vegetables on the counter.

  “Well, you tell her not to get too worked up about it,” she said. “Things’ll settle down quick enough.”

  I tried to nod, afraid to meet her eye. Instead, I motioned toward the bottom half of her paper.

  “I’ve been wondering about those hostages,” I said.

  “Oh, them,” she said. “Yeah, they’re still there. Those awful Iranians. Somebody ought to bomb them.”

  “But what about the Americans? They’d still be in there.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, snapping her gum again. “I meant after they got ’em out.”

  She gave me my change then. “No gum today?” she asked. But I shook my head. I wasn’t in the mood for gum just then.

  When I got back home, I had to wait outside, knocking, until Andrew Snow unchained the door and let me in.

  “What took so long?” I asked Rew after Andrew Snow had rebolted the door and taken the groceries into the kitchen without a word. Rew had been on the stairs with his Treasure Island. He didn’t seem to read it so much now as just hold it. Whenever Andrew Snow passed by, he’d pull the book up to his chest, as if to hide it.

  Rew acted like he hadn’t even heard my question. “Did you do it?” he asked me eagerly.

  I wanted to tell him the truth. I really did. But something in his face, so intense, so set, stopped me. And so I did something I never had before. I lied to Rew.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I did it.”

  His face shone, but I felt like I might throw up. I’d never broken a promise to him before. I didn’t want him to talk about it anymore, so I asked again, “What took him so long to open the door?”

  Rew didn’t even seem to notice how upset I was, he was so keyed up. “He was up there again, trying to get her to talk,” he told me. “Only he didn’t open the door this time.”

  “What does he want from her?” I said. “What does he care, anyway? He wasn’t looking for us. It’s not like he meant to find us.”

  “I can’t wait until he’s gone,” Rew said, bouncing a little in anticipation. “I wish he’d leave right now. But anyway, when they come, they’ll get him. Then they’ll lock him back up forever.”

  Andrew Snow came out of the kitchen before I could answer, the newspaper in his hand. But instead of talking about it, he looked my way.

  “You should take a drink,” he said to me. “It’s hot work, carrying those groceries all this way.”

  “I’m not thirsty,” I said, even though I was.

  “Well,” Andrew Snow said, “it’s up to you. At least we’ll have supper tonight. And lunch tomorrow.”

  I just looked at him. He sat down in his chair by the door and bent over the paper. Rew’s mood soured again the minute Andrew Snow walked into the room, and now he returned to the stairs, turned his back on Andrew Snow, and opened Treasure Island at random. I plopped myself down on the couch.

  When we’d first started reading about Jim Hawkins, we’d sit in the living room and try to get the accents right, reading the story out loud and calling each other “matey” and “lad.” But it turned out to be another of Gran’s peculiarities that she didn’t like to hear us reading Treasure Island out loud. One evening, she’d come downstairs unexpectedly and heard us at it. It was right at the best part, when Long John’s leading Jim by a rope, holding it in his teeth, and he and the other pirates are climbing the hill on Treasure Island, trying to find the tall tree and the other signs that will lead them to the treasure. They don’t know yet that it’s gone because crazy Ben Gunn, who was marooned on the island three years earlier by the awful Captain Flint, already dug it up before they got there and hid it in his cave. While they’re going up there, they start to hear a voice singing the old pirate song:

  Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest —

  Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

  And they all go crazy, scared half to death thinking it’s the spirit of the terrible Captain Flint, who killed his six companions so they wouldn’t get at his treasure.

  I love that part because all the time it’s really just Ben Gunn, trying to scare them away. Rew and I used to laugh our heads off when we read it. Sometimes we’d read it over again because the first time through, we laughed so hard, we missed parts.

  But when Gran came down and heard us, she didn’t think it was funny at all. She’d been smiling when she came downstairs, maybe hearing us laughing and wondering why, but when she realized what we were reading, the smile just dropped right off her face.

  “What’s wrong?” Rew asked her. And she looked at us funny but didn’t answer right away. Finally, she said, “Nothing’s wrong. But I don’t know what you like in that book so much. It’s all filled with misery. Barely any of the ones who sail make it home alive.”

  I thought this was the strangest way to look at Treasure Island I ever heard.

  “But, Gran,” I said, “it’s just a story. And all the people you like in it get out. Jim, and the doctor, and the squire and them. Even Long John Silver!”

  But Gran wouldn’t have it. She said, “What about that poor boy Dick, who reads the Bible? They leave him there. And what about Ben Gunn?”

  “Ben Gunn? He gets out, Gran! He even gets treasure!” Rew said.

  But there was no arguing with her, and that was back when we still tried, so we took Treasure Island and went out to the Zebra to read it stretched out with our heads against a moss-padded root or with our backs against the trunks in a spot where the trees crowded so close you thought they were leaning in to hear the next chapter.

  “She sure knows the story, though,” Rew said when we were by ourselves under the trees. “I hardly remember Dick.”

  “But she forgot about Ben Gunn,” I said. “They don’t leave him on the island.”

  “Yeah,” Rew said. “She forgot that part.”

  Sitting on the couch, with Rew curled on the stairs and Andrew Snow standing guard, I wished we could take the book and head outside, far out into the trees where we couldn’t see the house anymore, to the places we knew where you could get so drowsy and relaxed on a summer afternoon, you’d fall asleep without knowing it and wake up only when the sun shifted through the leaves. I guess I was wishing so hard that I opened my mouth without thinking first.

  “Hey, Rew,”
I said, trying to keep my voice low. “Want to go upstairs and read Treasure Island together?”

  Rew didn’t look too sure, but Andrew Snow didn’t give him much chance to answer anyway, because he heard me. In a voice that sounded oddly pleased, he said, “Is that what you two do all day? Read?”

  I didn’t know how he meant that, so I half shrugged and picked up one of Gran’s magazines. It turned out to be the one from May 1949 where they had a picture of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a toddler on the front cover. He was all dolled up, with long curls and even a dress. Gran had told us that’s how they dressed rich little boys in the old days, but that only made it more funny, especially to Rew. I wanted to call him over and show it to him, but not with Andrew Snow there. So I put it back in the pile.

  After a while, Andrew Snow broke the silence again.

  “Because I notice you don’t have a TV,” he said, as if I’d been in a conversation with him, as if the room weren’t dead silent unless he talked.

  “So?” I said, not knowing what he wanted, really.

  “So I guess you read, then,” he said. “And play outside?”

  Andrew Snow was, I was beginning to see, as peculiar as Gran. Did he care that we played outside? I wondered suddenly if he wasn’t bored, too, maybe so bored he’d open the door and let us out. For some reason, I wanted suddenly to tell him about the Zebra, how in early spring, new oak leaves hung like tassels from the edge of each branch, so bright that when Rew had seen them once at dawn, he’d sworn they could glow in the dark. But then I thought better of it. It wasn’t his business, anyway. That’s what Rew would say.

  When I didn’t answer, he shifted his attention to Rew.

  “I read Treasure Island when I was a kid,” he said. “It was one of my favorites. Your gran got it for me.”

  Rew stiffened.

  I thought I might not have heard him right. And it must have been that I had such a habit of talking it over with Rew that before I could stop myself, I asked, “What part did you like best?”