The Red House Read online

  “Why, Nath,” she exclaimed, “don’t you want any breakfast?”

  “Don’t worry,” he said; “I’ll be back.”

  She watched him go slithering down the ramp and heard him turn to the right. Where was he going and what for? What if he was heading for home? The day stretched long and empty before her; she couldn’t stand to have him leave her alone. She followed carefully, not wanting him to hear her coming, but she needn’t have troubled, for already he was way out of sight. In the depths of the ravine, the bushes were still wet with dew and slapped her hands clammily. She thrust her fists into her pockets and hurried along, her sneakers making no sound. She had gone quite a way when she felt someone behind her, and turned. It was Teller, wearing nothing but a frayed pair of pants. The gash of his mouth was smiling, but his reddish eyes were dead as marbles.

  “Didn’t I warn ye to stay west of your boundary?” he asked softly.

  “You don’t own Oxhead Woods,” said Meg boldly; “nobody knows who does.”

  “I’ll show ye who owns ’em and you too,” said Teller, taking a step forward.

  He expected her to make a dash to get by, but instead she whirled and ran the other way. That pleased him fine and he didn’t hurry; the farther she got from Yocum Farm, the better it would suit him. Never had Meg run faster, paying no heed to the alders that slashed her cheeks. Where was Nath? Could she hold out until she met him? She made a turn, and there he was, walking slowly toward her dangling a twig. If anything, she increased her speed and hurled herself against him, almost knocking him over.

  “Nath!” she gasped. “Nath!”

  That was all she could say in spite of the bewildered hang-jaw look on his face. He held her up with only one arm, because his other hand was guarding the twig, more than a foot long, from getting broken.

  “For Pete’s sake!” he grunted. “Say, what’s the matter with you? Your heart’s pounding fit to bust.”

  Waking to how close she was to him, she drew away, ashamed. “It’s Teller Truman,” she said. “He’s chasing me.”

  “What of it?” said Nath. “You afraid of Teller?”

  She didn’t answer at once, only looking at him gravely. “If it wasn’t for you being here,” she said slowly, “I’d be a lot worse than scared. I wouldn’t have a chance.”

  Nath flushed. “Come along,” he said; “I’ll tend to him.”

  “What’s the twig for?” she asked as she followed him.

  “Never mind,” said Nath. They heard a plunge and saw the V a muskrat makes when he crosses still water, only this was larger. “There he goes, low-tailing it for cover.”

  “But he was chasing me, Nath!” cried Meg. “Really he was! Don’t you believe me?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” said Nath. Presently he stopped. “So he was barefoot.”

  Nath knelt and measured one of Teller’s footprints against a nick on the twig. “Short by an inch,” he muttered.

  Though the water was cold, Teller swam without effort, showing only half his rolling head. On the far side he seized the roots of a sour gum, but his feet couldn’t find bottom. There are no stones in all that region, only pebbles, but originally the tarn had been a marl pit and along its edges there were chunks of clay as hard as rocks. He tore out a couple and climbed on the ridge of the abandoned raceway that paralleled the pond for a mile. Bracing himself, he left fly. The lump of marl, whizzing past Meg’s ear, crashed against the bank behind her.

  “Say,” yelled Nath, “you crazy? You want to kill somebody?”

  “Here’s yours!” shouted Teller.

  Nath saw what was coming, caught it like a baseball, took his time and threw. Teller was trapped; he couldn’t dodge without losing his foothold. The jagged lump tore his shoulder and sent him over backward into the empty raceway, choked with brambles. Nath and Meg started on, followed by a stream of sputtering curses.

  “Oh, Nath, it’s all my fault!”

  “Forget it,” he muttered, looking down thoughtfully at the stick he still carried.

  “Now won’t you tell me what that’s for?”

  He told her the truth about getting knocked off the path the night before. “Of course it wasn’t any boulder,” he finished. “It had to be a man. This stick shows the measure of his foot, and it was bigger than Teller’s.”

  “Then of course it couldn’t be Pete’s,” said Meg.

  Nath gave her a quick look that turned into one of his crinkly smiles. “Well, well,” he murmured, “seems you and me sort of think alike.” The smile faded into a frown. “Say, Meg, what goes on here at Yocum Farm anyways?”

  She had been looking for him to ask just that, yet now she had no answer. “I don’t know,” she breathed.

  The strangeness of her half whisper caught his ear. “So there is something.”

  Her eyes opened on him gratefully. “Yes, oh, yes! It’s been here ever since I came.”

  “Why, weren’t you born here?”

  “No. I don’t remember my mother and I was five when my father died. That’s how long ago it began.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t name it; it’s just here! Oh, Nath, don’t think I’m crazy, please don’t!”

  “If you’re crazy, I’m crazier,” said Nath. “Look at last night and the night before. If I couldn’t take it for just two nights, what about you—a girl, and a kid at that?”

  “Kid, yourself!” said Meg hotly. “Huh, look who’s calling who a kid!”

  “Oh, oh, my! Where’s the gray hairs?”

  “I’m sixteen, only a year under Tibby Rinton.”

  Instantly she wished she hadn’t mentioned Tibby, for she could see a change come over Nath. He frowned, thinking perhaps he was a fool to be getting tangled with Yocum Farm when a simple straightforward life was waiting for him elsewhere. Folks getting married as young as he and Tibby was nothing out of the way in that section; you could almost call it average; and when would times be better than now? With crops bringing fantastic prices and old man Rinton howling for help, he and his wife would do no picking and choosing when it came to grabbing a husky son-in-law.

  “I’d ought to see Tibby today,” he said; “anyways tonight.”

  Meg’s lower lip started to tremble and she caught it between her teeth to make it behave. She felt the color rising into her cheeks. What would Nath think? That she was soft on him or something? Even her eyes were going wet, so how could she blame him? She faced him.

  “Listen, Nath, go see Tibby all you like, if—if you’ll only come back. Don’t think I’m a softie, because it’s nothing like that. Daytimes I’m not afraid of anything, not even Teller Truman, really, because the worst he could do would be to kill me. But there are nights that near shake the teeth out of my head.”

  “You mean that yarning of Pete’s?”

  “No, no!” she cried impatiently. “You were the start of that fool talk. Something else—something you’d have to see and hear to believe.” They had reached the flat space at the base of the ramp and she pointed upward through the branches of a huge silver maple. “See that window? That’s my room, and sometimes I can’t hardly keep from throwing myself into the tree just to get away.”

  Sunk into the hill on which stood the main dwelling and facing them was a small building whose wide doors, long unused, were laced across with vines.

  “You’d be silly to jump,” said Nath; “all you’d need do would be reach out for the nearest limb and climb down to the roof of this old icehouse.”

  “Is that what it is?” said Meg, disappointed and indifferent. “Anyways we don’t use it any more, because I’ve never seen it opened even once.”

  Reaching the kitchen, they ran into a scolding from Ellen. “You’re late,” she said. “Lazy feet, no right to eat.”

  “Vittles don’t figure none,” said Pete; “what counts be the chores.”

  “Done an hour ago,” said Nath.

  He looked at Lottie, wondering if she had told, but her face was a mask. Pete paid him another dollar, and he and Meg sat down to eat. Meg was sad, realizing only now how cleverly Nath had steered clear of promising to stay around. When he rose, she had to hold herself down, trembling inside with wondering what he was going to do. He turned, and what he said to her was like an answer to prayer.

  “I got to give this money to my mother, Meg. Want to come along?” They followed the narrow path in single file, but when they came to the broken bridge, he started looking for some way to get Meg across. Something brushed past him and she landed on the other side. “Say,” he drawled, “that was some jump!”

  She laughed back at him. “I figured if Pete could make it, I could.”

  Nath had to step back for a run to make the leap himself. “Pete,” he scoffed, “him and the cow that jumped over the moon!” Promptly, a vision of Pete’s face rose before him, and the smile it wore had the shape of a horseshoe, slowly straightening. “Well, perhaps—so be that hole’s been there all of fifty years.”

  The walk beneath the great trees had the dreamy feel of a trance. Bright young leaves were fighting the old ones on the laurel and here and there a shadbush was still in snowy bloom. In the roadway and folded over the banks on either side lay a blanket of moss that yielded like velvet to their silent feet. Nath was puzzled, because the triangular trench he had noticed had been obliterated and some of the bushes with which he had barred wrong forks had been kicked aside. As for Meg, she was too absorbed in contentment to think about anything very clearly, like sinking into a hot bath after a hard day. The world of trouble seemed far away and a strangeness fell on them, as though they were new to themselves as well as to each other. They walked side by side, companions on a journey, and nothing more.

  When they reached the little store, it was shut tig
ht, but Nath didn’t seem surprised. He went around to the back and found the key and a note under an inverted flowerpot. In the letter his mother told him to look out for himself, because she had caught a ride to Wilmington and might stay on there if she found a good job; he could follow her or not, as he pleased. He gave the note to Meg to read and looked longingly down the pike, wanting to go straight into town in search of Tibby.

  “Would you be scared to go home alone?” he asked.

  “No,” she lied promptly, her eyes steady.

  “Well,” he said, feeling he owed her more than thanks, “I’ll be out later, same as usual.”

  Meg watched him hurry down the pike and around the first curve. She was no coward, yet she had no intention of going back through Oxhead Woods. Why ask for trouble? She dawdled along and presently a car offered her a lift. She refused, knowing that car would pick up Nath, but accepted from the next one. When she could see across open fields to the County Road, she asked to be put down. She was glad Nath had left her the way he had, because it had shamed him into promising to turn up at chore time.

  V

  MRS. RINTON told Nath that Tibby had gone off on her bike in a bathing suit. It was too early in the year for swimming, except where the waters of a shallow lake got warmed by the sun. He knew the spot well and came on a group of girls engaged in starting their summer tan. Only little boys were with them, and his size made him feel awkward. The girls pretended not to see him, particularly Tibby. She was easily the pick of the lot. Her one-piece suit was of a green a tone darker than her eyes, and she sat in the shade because she had the sense to take her sun in driblets. The girls clucked and clacked, silly as pullets at feed time, and Nath was on the point of leaving, when Tibby got up and walked straight by him to her bike.

  He took hold of one handle and helped her wheel it up the incline, waiting for her to speak, but she didn’t. At the top of the rise, she mounted and zigzagged along beside him, her eyes as blank as if he weren’t there. He grew stubborn; he guessed he could take it as long as she could, and they both held out until they reached the Rinton farm. Tibby disappeared to put on a dress, but her mother urged Nath to stay. At the stroke of twelve, Mr. Rinton and his sole remaining helper came in, their eyes sunk in their heads from work. Everybody sat down to eat, and throughout the meal not a word was said. But the silence was louder than speech, a sullen protest against leisure for any able-bodied hand.

  Nath went out with the men; he couldn’t do less. Some of the corn was getting its first tilling, but another field was ready to hill. He stripped to the waist and pitched in, but while he worked he kept thinking of Meg, wishing he hadn’t left her to cross Oxhead Woods alone. If he had taken her home, probably he would have told Pete he was through; then he could have stayed here and worked until darkness brought an end to the day. As it was, he had to knock off at four, and he wouldn’t have stopped at the house if Tibby hadn’t run out. No blank look in her eyes now; they were full of concern.

  “Nath, aren’t you going to stay for supper?”

  “Can’t, Tibby. I promised to be back.”

  “Back where?”

  “Over to Yocum’s.”

  Color flared in her cheeks and her eyes blazed. “You go to Yocum’s and you can stay there forever! Just try it! Stay your whole life!”

  “Aw, Tibby, don’t pull that line again,” he begged. “You know you’re the only one for me, and always will be, but I promised, honest I did.”

  “I guess perhaps something’s happened to you, Nath Storm,” said Tibby more slowly, and the anger in her eyes hardened into a threat as she continued. “Go ahead to Yocum’s if you want, but afterwards just don’t you bother to come snooping around here, handing me what’s left.”

  “It isn’t like that at all,” said Nath sadly.

  “Then stay here and prove it.”

  “I can’t,” he repeated. “I promised.”

  He went down the lane, not even looking back to where she stood, fixed as a post with her doubled fists held close to her sides. For the minute he turned his back on her a strange thing happened to him; though Yocum Farm was miles away, it became more vivid than things near by. He walked with long strides, caught a ride along the County Road and arrived sooner than he had hoped. Meg had brought in the herd and Pete was seated on his stool beside the barn door. Though neither of them said a word, Nath was as conscious of their relief as if they had greeted him with cries of joy. Meg, still in levis, turned herself into a helper, and it gave Nath a start to see how expertly she could match her hidden strength against a heavy can. Pete waddled off to check up on Lot.

  “I’m sorry I left you to come home alone,” said Nath as he and Meg started toward the house.

  “Oh, I didn’t mind,” she said airily.

  She meant it—now. Her feet were light, and so was her heart; it floated around inside her, robbing her body of weight. Her happiness was greater, all the purer, because she didn’t know why she was happy. It wasn’t because it happened to be Johannath Storm who had come back. It was subtler than any individual, the nameless warm glow of not being alone. Always she had stood on one side of a wall, with everybody else on the other. Now Nath had joined her, and it was as if light had destroyed darkness.

  “Say,” said Nath, “I’m itching all over. Think it would kill me if I took a dip in the pond?”

  “It didn’t kill Teller,” said Meg, “so why would it us?”

  “You’re out of it,” said Nath promptly; “I haven’t got my trunks.”

  “Keep on those pants,” said Meg. “It would do them good.”

  Nath looked down. “Gee, they’re awful, ain’t they? But I wouldn’t have anything else to put on.”

  “You’d think you’d bring over some of your things,” said Meg impulsively, and regretted it when again she saw a change come over Nath.

  “Yeah,” he said slowly, “yeah.”

  He was being pulled three ways—Tibby, his mother in Wilmington, and Yocum Farm. Each opened a road, and it wasn’t as if you could jump from one to another—once you’d made your choice, you’d have to say good-by to the other two. Only what was the rush? Did he have to choose this minute? He got Meg to fetch him a towel and a cake of soap. Behind the shelter of the icehouse, he plunged, scrambled out, soaped himself and plunged again. He hated to put on his grimy clothes, but there was no help for it; anyway, his jacket was clean and warm.

  As soon as supper was over, he faced Pete frankly. “I guess I’ll go home before it gets dark.”

  “Why, Nath,” cried Meg, “with your mother gone?”

  “Eh? How’s that?” asked Pete. “Gone where?”

  “To Wilmington,” said Meg, “and perhaps she won’t come back for weeks.”

  “Where’d you sleep last night, Nath?” asked Pete blandly.

  “In the room over the wagon shed.”

  “Good,” said Pete. “You can have that for yourn whenever it pleases you. Meg’s right. Why go all the ways home to bunk by your lonesome? Ease yourself down and rest.”

  All was as it had been the night before, except that Lottie hung around in the shadows and showed no intention of leaving. The day had been long and hard, and Nath was tired. What harm if he stayed a little longer? Nought but the way people were placed—Ellen, Meg and himself grouped around the fire and Pete off at the side—reminded him of last night. Already that strange hour seemed far away, and he could scarcely believe that only two days had passed since he had first come to Yocum Farm. Somehow, this room had him by the throat. Or was it the room? He glanced at Pete, and promptly wished he hadn’t. Sometimes people look through you and sometimes beyond, but Pete’s eyes weren’t like that. They nailed you down.

  “Say, Nath,” droned Pete, “you and Meg so young and all, fair carries me back to the day when Ellen and me was trapped by a falling window sash whilst stealing jam. Pinned belly down for the old man’s strap, we was. Grunt and whang, grunt and whang, turn about on our two behinds.”

  “Pete!” protested Ellen, but a fleeting smile brightened her weathered face.