The Buried Book (15 page)

CHAPTER 27

Were there any adults you trusted?

Jasper stuffed the necklace back under his shirt and hurried across the yard after Cecil, with his suitcase thumping behind him. Glancing back, he could see Cecil’s mom standing at the doorstep, watching after them. The smug, knowing look on her face haunted Jasper the entire two-and-a-half-mile hike to school.

He’d been right in that the paved street he had planned to follow did indeed meet up with St. Clair Road. The pavement turned to dirt as it headed north past Burtchville. When they crossed Harris Road, it occurred to him that Wayne might be heading right for them. Jasper stopped and squinted toward his uncle’s farm. It had turned into a warm autumn day, and he was sweating under his two layers of clothes.

“You see ’im?” Cecil asked from over his shoulder.

“Nope. He must’ve took the shortcut through the field. Give me a sec.” Jasper walked over to the huge tree and laid his suitcase down in the tall grass. He didn’t want to have to explain it to the whole school.

“Good idea,” Cecil said as Jasper came back to the road. “Walking around with that looks sorta funny.”

Jasper nodded, and the two boys headed up St. Clair to Jeddo Road.

“That bus really break down like you said?” Cecil asked.

“Yep,” Jasper answered without missing a beat. “Blew a gasket. Driver said it’d have to be towed.”

“Can you tow a bus?” Cecil seemed skeptical.

“I didn’t stick around to see.” Jasper tried to hide his consternation. He had no idea if buses could be towed and decided to eliminate that part from his story.

As they turned down Jeddo Road, Jasper could make out a tiny figure out in front of the schoolhouse that was probably Miss Babcock sweeping the front porch. A few kids had gathered in the yard. It hit him as they approached that he’d been assigned homework over the weekend, homework that he hadn’t been able to complete. Miss Babcock would be furious.

“Jasper!” a voice called from the yard as they drew near. Wayne came running up and clapped his cousin on the back. “Hey, kid! I didn’t expect to see you here today.”

Jasper smiled weakly. Before he could open his mouth, Cecil was blabbering the whole story. “His bus broke down this morning. Me and Pa almost shot him walkin’ through the fields. Thought he was a fox.”

“A fox?” Wayne repeated with raised eyebrows, then studied Jasper’s face. “He sure is, ain’t he? Nice shiner!”

Before Cecil could blab Jasper’s lie about the hayloft, Miss Babcock rang the big bronze bell hanging over the door. All the kids poured into the schoolhouse and sat by age in the rows of desks.

“Pass your assignments to the aisle,” Miss Babcock instructed.

Jasper kept his head down, avoiding her attention until he felt a light tap on his head.

“Don’t you have anything to turn in, Mr. Leary?”

He shook his head.

Miss Babcock lifted his chin up to her impatient eyes. They softened a bit at the sight of his bruised face, but she didn’t let on. “See me at recess,” she commanded, and then raised her voice to the room, “Class, please remember rule number one. If you want to learn, you have to work. Knowledge does not come free. Now, if you would all get out your composition books . . .”

Two hours later, Miss Babcock snapped her book closed. “Twenty-minute recess. Everyone out!”

All the kids stood at once and clomped outside in a rumble of chairs and feet. Everyone but Jasper. Once the others had left the room, Miss Babcock shut the door.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” She pointed to her eye, and he realized she was talking about the purple bruise around his.

Jasper shook his head. He didn’t want to lie to her if he could help it.

She walked over to him and brushed the hair from his forehead to take a better look. “Everything alright?”

“Yeah. I just fell roller-skating.”

“Is that why you didn’t finish your assignment? You were roller-skating?” she asked, a little spark of irritation flared in her eyes.

Jasper couldn’t bear the idea of her being mad at him too. “No. I had to go with my dad back home to Detroit and . . . ,” his voice trailed off. Now he’d really stepped in it. He couldn’t possibly tell her everything that had happened. An image of Not Lucy in her lacy underpants danced in his head. And then there was the bus ride.

Miss Babcock nodded expectantly, waiting for more.

“And I’m sorry. We forgot it.”

Expectation deflated to disappointment as she studied him. “Well then. I’m going to need you to write the words ‘I will not forget my homework’ one hundred times.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She handed him a stack of papers. He began writing, and Miss Babcock opened the door to watch the children running around the school yard for a moment. She sighed under her breath and walked back to her desk. Perched on the edge of her chair, she began to shuffle through the pages of returned homework, making a few marks here and there.

Jasper was on his sixty-fifth line when he stopped to stretch his cramped hand. He glanced around the room at the letters and numbers Miss Babcock had hung over the blackboard and the shelf of books on the far wall. He was squinting, trying to read the titles when her voice startled him.

“You like books, Jasper?” she asked.

He nodded and turned his head back down to his sheet of paper. His sore hand began again.
I will not forget . . .

“Were you looking for anything in particular?” Miss Babcock pressed him.

“No, ma’am,” he said, keeping his head down.

“It’s all right, Jasper. Books are the most precious things we have in this world. Anything you might want to know, you can find in a book. What do you want to know?”

He scowled up at her. It was crazy talk. He needed to know so many things, and there was no way any of them were in one of those books.

“You don’t believe me.” She smirked. “Give it a try.”

“Um . . .” He thought for a moment. “I want to know what a still is.”

She dropped her pen. “A what?”

Jasper instantly regretted asking. “N—nothing.”

“It is not nothing. Where did you hear that word, Jasper?”

Now he’d done it. He couldn’t have her sending another note home to Uncle Leo. It would be the death of him. “I . . . um . . . overheard it. Some grown-ups were talking about a place in town a long time ago called Steamboat’s.”

Miss Babcock studied him carefully, and for a second, Jasper was certain she’d send a note home anyway.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, it’s fine. There are no bad questions, Jasper.” She gave him a slow smile. “Still is a slang term for distillery. Do you know what a distillery is?”

“No, ma’am.”

“A distillery makes liquor. Making liquor used to be against the law, and in my opinion, it should have stayed that way.”

Jasper bit his lip.

She took it as confusion. “You’ll learn more when you study Prohibition in high school. Unfortunately, this part of American history is not in our curriculum, and I only have a small collection of books here in the classroom. You can find many volumes on the subject at the public library in Port Huron. I suggest searching the card catalog for the key words
Prohibition
,
rum-running
, and
organized crime
.”

“Organized crime?”

“Who do you think ran the stills when making liquor was against the law?” She leaned across her desk, pleased she’d piqued his interest, and whispered, “Gangsters, killers, and thieves.”

Jasper just gaped at her.

“It’s good to study your history, Jasper. If you don’t understand the mistakes of the past, you’re bound to repeat them. Remember that.”

Miss Babcock went back to grading the homework assignments. Jasper’s hand continued writing his assignment over and over as his mind repeated the words.

Gangsters, killers, and thieves.

Several hours later, school was dismissed. His classmates gathered their assignments and books and poured out the door. Jasper didn’t move.

“Are you alright, Jasper?” Miss Babcock raised her eyebrows at him, surprised to see him still sitting there.

“I had another question.”

Her eyes lit up. “Shoot.”

“Do you have any books about the Black River Reservation?”

She blinked at him for a moment. “What would you like to know about it?”

Jasper unconsciously pressed his mother’s necklace against his belly. “I don’t know. I want to know about the people who live there, I guess.”

“We do have a few books about the Indians. Let me see.” She got to her feet and crouched down in front of the bookcase, thumbing through the volumes until she came up with one. “Here.”

She set a children’s book titled
The First Book of Indians
onto his desk. His eyes widened as he looked at the fierce hunters on the cover chasing down a buffalo. He flipped the book open, almost forgetting she was there. Arrows and tomahawks were flung across page after page. The red-skinned warriors looked mad with rage, and Jasper swallowed hard.
Killers.

“You be careful, Jasper.”

“Ma’am?”

“Books are like people. Sometimes they lie.”

CHAPTER 28

We understand you tried to reconcile with your family. Is that right?

Jasper left the schoolhouse that afternoon with the book in his hand. Wayne met him in the yard.

“Takin’ the shortcut today? I think Nicodemus is back in the barn.”

“No. I’ll take the long way.” At the moment, Old Hoyt’s bull was the least of Jasper’s worries. He wasn’t eager to explain where he’d been to his aunt and uncle.

“Whatcha got there?” Wayne asked, pointing at the book pressed to his chest.

“Nothin’. Just a book Miss Babcock lent me.”

“Can I see?”

Jasper handed it to Wayne, and they tromped down Jeddo Road, kicking up a trail of dust behind them. Wayne whistled at the cover of
The First Book of Indians
. “Since when are you interested in Injuns?”

“I don’t know. I always liked Tonto on the
Lone Ranger
.”

“Yeah, but he’s not like a real Indian, you know. He just talks funny. ‘Me no like where train go.’ They don’t talk like that.”

Jasper stopped walking. “How do you know? You ever met a real Indian?”

“Sure. The reservation’s not far. Sometimes Pop needs an extra hand in the fields. Indians work for real cheap. Nobody likes to hire ’em.”

“Why not?”

“You know, people think they’re wild and crazy and call ’em savages. Pop says the only thing savage about ’em’s the way they’ve been treated. Says it ain’t Christian, but people do it ’cause they can get away with it.”

“Is that why you said they set Grandma’s house on fire?” Jasper studied the book again. A screaming brave was throwing a spear across the cover.

Wayne shrugged. “I just wanted to give you a little scare. Besides, Pop always says Indian justice ain’t like regular justice.”

“What do you mean?”

“They can’t put you in jail if you break a deal, but they might make you disappear. So don’t cross ’em.”

“Disappear?” Jasper couldn’t help but think of his mother.

“You hear talk. One rumor went around a few years back that a farmer named Patchett over in Croswell was desperate to get his beans out the ground, but his sons were all grown and left. He was broke too. So he tricked a couple of braves from the reservation to do the work and didn’t pay up, not even when the money came in. Then one day, poof! He was gone. Never heard from again.”

Jasper had stopped walking. All he could think of was the blood on the bedroom wall.
Had his mother crossed them? Big Bill had said she’d gone and got herself mixed up with them wild folks over at the res.
His cousin grabbed him by the arm and pulled him down the road. Jasper managed to find his feet again, but he couldn’t feel them.

“I guess that’s why folk around here don’t trust ’em. Pop says it’s just because they’re different, but I can tell they worry him a bit too.”

“How can you tell?”

“Oh, I don’t know. He tells me not to talk to ’em too much. He never invites ’em to supper in the house. Has ’em eat out in the barn. Stuff like that.” Wayne cracked open the book and looked at the drawings of Indians hurling arrows. He flipped a few pages and snapped it shut. “They don’t really look like that either. Least not the ones I seen.”

Jasper took the book back. “Do you think . . . I could meet one of ’em?”

“Sure. Next time they come round. Maybe they’ll come help with the harvest this year. Pop was just sayin’ he wasn’t sure how he was gonna get the wheat and the corn picked before the rains come. You think you’ll stay that long?”

Jasper didn’t answer. The two boys turned back down St. Clair Road in silence. His uncle’s farm was less than a mile away, and he still didn’t know what he’d tell him.

“So, why’d you come back so soon?” Wayne asked, kicking a rock down the dirt road.

“My dad had to go back to work.” Jasper decided he’d better stick with the same lie he’d told Cecil and the Hardings.
Farmers talked.
God only knows what Mrs. Harding might say. The thought made his stomach go cold.

“Thought he said he was taking you on a camping trip up north. He told Pop he needed to spend some time with you to straighten you out.”

Jasper’s heart sank. He loved camping with his dad more than anything, but the man hadn’t said a word about any of that to him.
And why would he after what I did?
Tears stung the corners of his eyes. “I guess the trip got canceled.”

“He really put you on a bus all by yourself?” Wayne gave Jasper a sideways glance. “Why didn’t he just give you a ride?”

That was a good question, and Jasper didn’t have a good answer. He just shrugged and ran up ahead to the oak tree on the corner. His suitcase was still sitting in the long grass right where he’d left it. He wished he’d been able to walk home alone as he picked it up. He didn’t want to answer any more of Wayne’s questions. He didn’t want to go back. Uncle Leo would know he was lying. But he couldn’t tell the truth. The tangled web was tightening around his neck. Jasper sank to his knees.

“Hey. You okay?” Wayne pushed his way through the grass and knelt down by the boy’s side.

Jasper just shook his head and hid his face so Wayne couldn’t see his tears. He needed to tell someone what had happened—the apartment, the blood, the detective, the bus driver—but he didn’t want anyone to know about any of it. He couldn’t tell Wayne. Jasper pressed his hand into his black eye until the pain was all he could feel.

“I’m fine.” Jasper lurched up and grabbed his bag.

“Hey, don’t forget this!” Wayne came trotting up beside him, holding the book.

“Right. Thanks.”

“So why you so interested in the Indians?” Wayne asked again.

Jasper forced his feet to keep moving. They didn’t even feel like his own. “I think my mother knew them.”

“Who told you that?”

Jasper didn’t want to say anything about his conversation with Cecil’s mother and her horrible smile, but someone else had mentioned Indians. “Big Bill over at the roller rink.”

The beaded necklace was bouncing lightly against Jasper’s chest. He’d have to hide it, he realized. Aunt Velma might find it and start asking questions. He could just tell her that his mother had given it to him, but she wouldn’t believe him. She’d think he’d stolen it, and he sort of had.

“What’d he tell you?” Wayne asked.

“That someone named Motega might know her.” Jasper stopped walking. Big Bill had told him a lot of things.
People get killed messin’ around up there. Heard a bunch of ’em just got run up for murder. That poor girl . . .

The photograph of the girl outside Calbry’s flashed behind his eyes.
Do you know who killed me?