The Cats of Tanglewood Forest (10 page)

“I’ve been doing my lessons with Aunt,” Lillian said.

“I know, hon. But Fran’s not here anymore, and I’m no teacher.”

Lillian didn’t know what to say. It was bad enough that the snake had taken Aunt from her. Was it taking away her whole life now?

Tears brimmed in her eyes but she refused to cry.

“Harlene, go easy on the child. School’s still the whole summer away,” Earl said. “I don’t see any harm in showing her a thing or two about looking after a farm until then.”

Harlene frowned.

“Well, I don’t,” Earl said.

Lillian looked from one to the other. She knew something was happening, but she didn’t know what. It seemed to lie under the words that the Welches were actually saying to each other—as though they were having two conversations at the same time.

“Fine,” Harlene said after a moment. “But come the fall, she’s going to school.”

Don’t I get any say in it? Lillian wondered, but she kept it to herself.

“Of course she’ll go to school,” Earl said, “but that doesn’t mean she can’t learn a few useful things in the meanwise.”

Harlene gave a reluctant nod, and then turned to Lillian with a smile.

“Don’t you worry,” she said. “We’ll raise you like you’re our own daughter—just like your Aunt Fran would have wanted.”

Lillian expected Harlene had that wrong. Aunt would never try to change Lillian into someone she wasn’t.

But Harlene was right about one thing: Aunt wasn’t here anymore. Harlene and Earl might be trying to look out for her, but they had their own notions as to who Lillian was and what she was supposed to become. And it wasn’t going to matter one lick what Lillian herself thought about anything.

Now she guessed she understood a little better this business of two conversations going on at the same time. That was when you thought one thing, but you said something different.

Well, she could do that, too.

“I know you’re looking out for me,” she told Harlene, “and I appreciate it, I really do.”

Harlene’s smiled brightened. “I know you do, hon. You’ll turn out to be the smartest young lady in the county. Just you wait and see.”

True to his word, Earl taught Lillian to look for weaknesses in structures and fences, and how to mend them. As the summer wound on, she became adept with a hammer and saw and learned all the basic skills needed to keep Aunt’s farm running and in good repair.

She took pride in what she was learning, but she couldn’t exactly say she was happy. She didn’t talk about it, but she supposed they could see it on her face.

“A body can’t depend on anybody else for their happiness,” Earl told her one day while they were repairing the roof of the house. “The only way you can ever find any peace is to find it in
yourself
—in what you do and what you stand for.”

Lillian wasn’t sure what she stood for, but it didn’t include getting prissied up and going to school.
Only when she was away from the Welches’ farm did she breathe easier. The woods seemed to open up and her footsteps were lighter. Even missing Aunt as much as she did couldn’t stop the lift in her spirit.

Like the cats who watched and waited, she was waiting, too, only she wasn’t quite sure for what.

Eventually, the days got shorter, dusk fell a little earlier every day, and that first day of attending classes was no longer a distant prospect.

Harlene remained fixed on the notion that there’d be some magical transformation when Lillian stepped across the threshold of the one-room school down the road. That Lillian would enter as a tomboy, but the moment she took her seat she’d be a proper young lady.

Lillian thought she might be able to stand wearing shoes all day, but she wasn’t sure she could sit still for all that time. She liked learning. She enjoyed reading, knowing how to write was a good thing, and math was sort of interesting. She wouldn’t mind being better at all of them.

But if she was in school all day, who would look after
Aunt’s farm? No one. It would only become one more abandoned homestead. And if it fell to ruin there’d be nothing of Aunt or the Kindred farm left in the world. No one would remember. No one would care.

Lillian couldn’t let that happen. And that’s when she understood what she had been waiting to do all this time.

The night before Harlene was to take her into town to buy a new dress, shoes, and school supplies, Lillian packed up her few belongings, left a note for Harlene and Earl, and walked back up into the hills. When she got to Aunt’s farm, she stowed her bundle under the porch and then kept on going. The path she took now led east, deeper into the Tanglewood Forest.

F
orty minutes later she reached her destination. From the tree line she could see the scattering of cabins in the hollow below. There were no lights on. Everybody was asleep, just as she should be.

She stepped off the path and found herself a nook in some tree roots. She planned to wait there until dawn, when the Creeks would be awake. But no sooner had she settled down than a voice called softly from the branches above.

“Hey, Lillian. What are you doing here?”

She started. For a moment she thought she was
back in her dream, where birds and animals talked to her from out of the trees. But then she recognized the voice. She peered up into the branches and could make out the dark shape of John Creek sitting on a bough.

“Hello hello,” she said. “I could ask you the same thing.”

John swung down from the branch and dropped lightly onto the ground.

“I’m just fooling around with Davy,” he said. “We’re having a contest to see who can—”

He broke off when a stick hit his shoulder.

“Gotcha!” Davy cried.

He stepped out from the underbrush on the other side of the path, tall and dark-haired like all the Creek boys.

“No fair,” John said. “I’m having a time-out talking to Lillian.”

“You didn’t call time-out! Hello, Lillian.”

Lillian nodded to him. “So the two of you are running around in the middle of the night playing tag?”

John shrugged. “It’s more fun at night, when everybody else is asleep.”

“When it’s just us,” Davy added, then switched to a spooky voice, “and…
the spirits
.”

John immediately took up Davy’s teasing.

“And a lot of them,” he whispered, “are not happy to have us out here in the woods with them, disturbing their—you know, whatever it is that spirits do.”

Davy punched him in the shoulder. “Way to mess it up.”

The two boys laughed and Lillian had to smile.

“Do you want to play?” Davy asked.

Lillian shook her head.

“Why are you hiding here?” John asked. “Are you spying on us?”

“No, I’m here to see Aunt Nancy.”

The boys exchanged nervous looks.

“Are you sure you want to do that?” John said.

Davy nodded. “Yeah, nobody just decides to see Aunt Nancy. We only go to her when she sends for us.”

“Especially these days,” John added. “She’s been in a mood.”

“She said something to me at the funeral,” Lillian said, “and I need to ask her what she meant by it.”

“What did she say?”

“ ‘It doesn’t have to be this way.’ What do you suppose she meant by that?”

The boys shook their heads.

“Well,” Lillian said, “don’t you feel like everything just seems a little…
wrong
these days?”

They shook their heads again.

“Maybe,” Davy said, “you’re just feeling that way because of your Aunt Fran having passed and all.”

John nodded. “I remember when Uncle Sammy passed last year. We all missed him something fierce.”

“It’s not just me missing Aunt—I do miss her terrible—but I’ve had this bad feeling all summer. The wild cats are always looking at me and looking at me, watching everything I do like they expect me to sprout a third arm or something. I need to see if Aunt Nancy can help me.”

The boys exchanged concerned looks.

“I’d be careful,” John said. “The spirits start paying more attention to folks who come ’round to see Aunt Nancy.”

“Yeah,” Davy added, “and it’s never a good idea to have the spirits pay attention to you. They’re not like you or me. They’ll as soon drop the world from under your feet as do you a favor. You just never know.”

Lillian smiled. “Here we go again.”

“No,” John told her. “We were fooling with you before. This is different. Aunt Nancy is serious.”

“And like John said, she’s been in a mood.”

Lillian kept up her brave face.

“I still have to talk to her,” she said. “I have to do
something
. I can’t turn into this prim little doll that
Harlene thinks I should be. She wants me to get all prissied up and go to school. That’s just not me.”

Davy cocked his head. “I wonder how you’d look, all cleaned up and girly?”

John gave him a push.

“Knock it off,” he said. “This is serious.” He turned to Lillian. “Maybe Aunt Nancy just meant you could come live here with us.”

“Or maybe,” Davy said, “she wants you to ’prentice with her. She’s never chosen anybody to take her place for when she moves on.”

“That’s because she’s not going anywhere,” John said. “She’s been around forever. She’ll probably be around forever.”

Lillian gave him a puzzled look. “You don’t believe that old story, do you?”

“I know how it sounds,” John said, “but my granddad told me she’s the same today as when he was a boy, and his granddad told him the same.”

“That’s not possible.”

“No,” Davy agreed. “That’s Aunt Nancy.”

“She’s not even a full-blooded Kickaha,” John went on. “Did you know that?”

Lillian shook her head.

“Her daddy came from Africa, I heard—long before the slaves were brought here.”

“Why do you say she’s in a mood?” Lillian asked.

Davy shrugged. “Who knows?”

“You can’t stay out here all night,” John said. “Come back to my place. Annie’s sleeping over at Pieta’s, so you can have her bed.”

“What’s your mama going to say?”

“Nothing. We’ll tell her in the morning and she’ll just set out another plate for breakfast. Then you can go see Aunt Nancy—which I still don’t recommend.”

Lillian nodded. But she saw another problem now. “If the Welches come looking for me,” she said, “you can’t let on I’m here.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Davy said. “We all like Harlene and Earl just fine, but once everybody knows you’ve got business with Aunt Nancy, they’d sooner suck on a rotten egg than talk about it to anybody.”

“Yeah,” John said. “Nobody’s dumb enough to get mixed up in Aunt Nancy’s business unless they don’t have a choice.”

Lillian let the boys lead her down the hill to John’s house.

“You’ve got to feel a little sad for Aunt Nancy,” she said.

John gave her a puzzled look.

“Well, think about it. Everybody’s so scared of her, she’s got no friends.”

John nodded. “I see what you mean. But you know, I think she’s got friends—we just can’t see them. I’ve walked by her cabin and heard her talking away when I know there’s no one else there. Leastwise nobody I ever saw go in.”

Lillian shivered. Maybe going to talk to Aunt Nancy wasn’t such a good idea, but Lillian
had
to find out what she meant. It was her only shred of hope for finding a way to have the life she wanted.