The Bell Bandit

Title Page

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Copyright

Dedication

Map

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Thanks go, as always, to the Gang of Four: Carol Peacock, Sarah Lamstein, Tracey Fern, and Mary Atkinson. A special thanks also to Kevin Sullivan of Paul Davis Restoration for providing information on home repair following a fire and to Lucia Gill Case for sharing the tradition of ringing a village bell on New Year's Eve. And thank you to Tracey Adams, the angel on my left shoulder, and Ann Rider, the angel on my right. To all the students in Ms. Amy Cicala's fourth grade class at Hillside Elementary, thank you for helping me with Evan's handwriting, especially Ryle Sammut, who wrote Evan's note for me.

Copyright © 2012 by Jacqueline Davies. Illustrations by
Cara Llewellyn. Bell illustration on
[>]
courtesy of the
Eric Sloane Estate.

All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003. Houghton Mifflin is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

www.hmhbooks.com
. The text of this book is set in Guardi and Child's Play. The illustrations are pen and ink. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file.
ISBN: 978-0-547-56737-2 Manufactured in the United States DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

4500349379

This one is for Ann Rider,
who always sees straight to the heart of
a book—and doesn't flinch.

excerpt from

 

R
ING
O
UT
, W
ILD
B
ELLS
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

 

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

 

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

"How much longer?" Jessie asked from the back seat, tapping the window glass three times. Jessie always tapped the window three times when they passed under a bridge.

"Another hour," said Mrs. Treski. She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. "At least."

They had already been driving for three hours, climbing steadily higher and higher into the mountains, and Jessie could feel herself sinking into a sulk. Everything about this trip to Grandma's house was different.

First of all, Evan was sitting in the front seat.

Jessie could tell he was listening to his iPod. From behind, she could see his head bobbing slightly to the beat of the music as he stared out the window.

Evan had never been allowed to sit up front before. But this time when he'd asked—for the ten thousandth time—Mrs. Treski had given him a long, thoughtful look and said yes. He was ten and tall for his age, so Mrs. Treski said he was old enough to move up front.

Jessie was nine—and stuck in the back.

"Hey," Jessie said, trying to get Evan to turn around and notice her. But he didn't. He couldn't hear her. It was like he wasn't even in the car with her.

Jessie stared out the window at the farmland as it whizzed by them. Usually, she loved this drive. She loved to count things along the way—cows, hawks, Mini Coopers, out-of-state license plates. She kept tally marks in her notebook, and at the end of the trip, she would count them all up to see who had won. It was almost always the cows.

She also tracked their progress by looking for important landmarks along the way—like the pest control building that had a forty-foot fiberglass cockroach creeping over the roof, or the two-story carved wooden totem pole that was really a cell phone tower, or the billboard for a diner that had a big metal teapot with real steam coming out of it.

Evan used to be on the lookout for these landmarks, too, and it was a race to see who could spot each one first. But this year, he didn't seem to care. Even when the giant water storage tank painted like a ladybug came into view and Jessie pointed it out to him, he just shrugged, as if he couldn't be bothered. He was no fun, and suddenly the trip felt long.

They passed under another bridge, and Jessie tapped the window three times. "Why did Grandma set her house on fire?" she asked.

Mrs. Treski's eyes shifted from the road to the rearview mirror, locking on Jessie's reflection for a second before returning to the highway. "She didn't mean to. It was an accident."

"I know," said Jessie. "But why did it happen
this
time?"

Mrs. Treski tipped her head to one side. "Accidents happen. Sometimes there's no reason. She left something on the stove, and it caught on fire. It could happen to anyone."

But it hadn't happened to her grandmother before. Jessie thought about all the times Grandma had cooked noodles for her or made hot chocolate for her or heated up soup for her. Not once had she set the house on fire.

It was because of the fire that they were driving up to Grandma's two days
after
Christmas instead of the day
before,
the way they always did. And it was because of the fire that they weren't even sure if they would be staying at Grandma's for New Year's Eve did every year. And that was the really big thing that was different this time.

For as long as Jessie could remember, New Year's Eve meant staying at Grandma's house and the long, slow climb to the top of Lovell's Hill, where the trees parted and the sky opened and there stood the old iron bell hanging on its heavy wooden crossbeam.

Just before midnight they would gather, walking through the snow-covered woods, coming from all sides of the hill—neighbors and friends, family and sometimes even strangers—to sing the old songs and talk about the year gone by.

And then, just before midnight, the youngest one in the crowd and the oldest one, too, would step forward and both take hold of the rope that hung from the clapper of the dark and heavy bell, and at precisely the right moment, they would ring in the New Year, as loudly and joyously and for as long as they wanted.

Jessie remembered the year when
she
had been the youngest one on the hill, and what it felt like when Mrs. Lewis, who was eighty-four that year, had closed her soft, papery hand over hers. They had swung the rope back and forth, over and over, until the noise of the bell filled the snow-covered valley below and the echoes of each peal bounced off of Black Bear Mountain and came racing back to them, like an old faithful dog that always comes home.

But this year, everything was upside down. They might not even spend New Year's Eve at Grandma's house. It all depended, Mrs. Treski said. On what? Jessie wondered. She tapped her right knee twice. Not spend New Year's Eve at Grandma's? Who would ring the bell?

Jessie jiggled her legs up and down. Her left foot was feeling prickly because she'd had it tucked up under her for the last half-hour. "How much longer to the Crossroads Store?" she asked.

"Oh, Jessie..." said her mother, looking in the rearview mirror again. "Do you need to stop?"

"What do you mean?" asked Jessie. It wasn't a question of whether she
needed
to—although now that she thought of it, a trip to the bathroom sounded like a good idea. "We always stop at the Crossroads Store," she said, with a hint of a whine in her voice.

"It's just that I thought this time we could drive straight through," said Mrs. Treski. "We're making such good time, and you know how the weather is in the mountains. You never know what might blow in."

"Mo-o-om," said Jessie. Everything was messed up on this trip. "Evan, you want to stop at the Crossroads, don't you?"

Evan just kept looking out the window, nodding his head in time to the music on his iPod.

"Evan!" Jessie didn't mean to hit him quite so hard on the shoulder.

"Quit it!" he said, turning around to glare at her.

"I'm asking you a question!" she shouted. Evan took out one of the ear buds and let it dangle from his ear like a dead worm on a hook. "Do you want to stop at the Crossroads?" Jessie couldn't help thinking the question sounded dumb. Of course he would want to stop.

But Evan just shrugged and put the ear bud back in his ear. "I don't care."

Jessie threw herself against the seat and folded her arms over her chest.

"Relax, Jessie," said Mrs. Treski. "We'll stop. I could use a break to stretch my legs, anyway. But we can't stay too long. I don't want to get to Grandma's after dark."

***

The Crossroads Store was a ten-minute detour off the main highway. It was on the corner of two roads that were so dinky, Mrs. Treski called it the intersection of Nowhere and Oblivion. But the store itself was miraculous. It was a combination gas station, deli, bakery, gift shop, bookshop, hunting/fishing/clothing store, and post office. They sold kayaks, guns, taxidermied animals, hunting knives, Get Well cards, umbrellas, joke books, night crawlers, candy, and decorative wall calendars. Jessie could wander the store for hours, wishing she had the money to buy just about everything.

She had only five dollars in her pocket, though. That was all the money she'd allowed herself to bring on this trip. Back home in her lock box, she had almost thirty dollars. Most of that was from the money she'd made during the lemonade war, or at least what was left over after she made that $104 contribution to the Animal Rescue League. ("You don't have to give as much as I did," Megan had said, but Jessie had insisted. "I said I was going to, and I'm going to," she said, even though it almost killed her to give all that money away—and to animals!)