The Ghosts of Stone Hollow (7 page)

The paper bags were Old Ike’s. At least he brought them. He brought one with him every Thursday afternoon when he came to visit Amy’s father while her mother and aunt were away sewing for the missionaries. The paper bag always sat on the floor between Old Ike’s chair and her father’s wheelchair, and Ike always took it away with him when he left, but afterward Amy often had to help her father get out of his chair and onto the bed for a nap. At those times his breath smelled strange, sweet and yet bitter, and he sometimes said strange and unexpected things.

The paper bags and hellfire and eternal damnation were winning out over the Lilliputians, when the preacher happened to say something about heathens, and that was what brought about Amy’s decision. The word “heathens” made Amy think of Jason, and from there she was soon thinking about Stone Hollow.

She had always known, really, that Stone Hollow was one of those things that she would eventually have to learn more about. She had tried, certainly, but only by asking questions. By asking questions she had managed to pick up many bits and pieces of information—information that varied all the way from Old Ike’s curt and angry nod when she asked him if he had really helped to carry the bootleggers’ bodies down from the Hollow, clear to little Bobby Parks’s story about the man-eating cow. But now that it seemed certain she had learned all that was possible by asking questions, she was going to have to think about doing something more drastic—more drastic and more dangerous. And if she did something dangerous, it wouldn’t be the first time.

There was, for example, the time that Alice Harris had told her something about how boys were really different from girls—besides things like having shorter hair and bigger muscles. Amy had known it wasn’t wise, but because she wanted to know so badly, she had risked asking her mother about it. She hadn’t really gotten into trouble that time, at least not trouble of the usual kind like punishment or scolding. But right afterward her mother had added a new part to the prayer she said with Amy every night, a part about keeping a clean mind and a pure spirit. Since then it had been hard to keep her mind on the rest of the prayer because of waiting for that part—and knowing how it would make her feel. It was strange how words like “clean” and “pure” could make you feel just the opposite. It was a feeling Amy hated almost more than a spanking. And what made it especially bad was that it was all for nothing, because she hadn’t found out anything more than what she already knew.

Amy admitted to herself that morning that Stone Hollow would probably turn out to be one of the more dangerous things that she had to find out about. Dangerous, that is, if she did more than just ask questions. But, there seemed to be only one way left to find out about Stone Hollow and that was to go there. Going there had been in the back of her mind before, but going alone had seemed impossible, and she had known that none of her friends would go with her. Alice Harris, who was by far the most daring about things like that, had only been willing to go to the rim of the valley and look down. But now it was different. Now Amy knew someone who would go with her and who, as incredible as it seemed, had actually been there before.

Not that she would have chosen Jason Fitzmaurice to go anywhere with if she’d had a choice. There would be a lot of problems. First there would be making sure, somehow, that he wouldn’t tell anyone about it afterward. Amy could just imagine what the kids at school would say if they found out. Then there would be the problem of making it clear to Jason that agreeing to go to the Hollow with him didn’t mean that they were friends, or that she would be willing to talk to him at school, or anywhere else where there were people around. And last, there was the fact that she would have to go without permission. Not that that was Jason’s fault, or at least not entirely. She knew perfectly well that she could never get permission to go to the Hollow with anyone—but to go with a boy, and a crazy boy at that, was just one more thing to hide—and then feel guilty about.

But none of that seemed to matter, or at least not enough. Amy knew suddenly that she
was
going to go to Stone Hollow, and the thought filled her with an irresistible kind of terror. She was exploring the terror —sitting quietly in the pew next to Aunt Abigail, with her hands folded in her lap, but really caught up in a world of fearfully fascinating possibilities—when two words broke through and brought her back to reality with a terrible shock.

The words were
“STONE HOLLOW,”
and they had been almost shouted from the pulpit by the Reverend Dawson. Amy’s eyes flew open to see the preacher staring sternly in her direction. For a terrible panic-stricken moment Amy was sure that God must have told Reverend Dawson what she was considering—to punish her for what she was thinking, and for not listening to the sermon. But as she sat, stunned and horrified, the preacher’s eyes turned away, and he went on speaking. His voice had sunk now to a tragic whisper, and he was saying something about “those two unfortunate sinners, whose awful deaths were just another sacrifice on the altar of Demon Rum.”

Even then, it took a few moments for Amy to realize that the preacher had not been talking just to her, but had simply come to the part in his sermon where he mentioned the two bootleggers as a good example of what happened to people who drank. When she was finally sure, she felt terribly relieved and grateful. Grateful enough to force herself to put everything else out of her mind and to concentrate on what the Reverend Dawson was saying.

The last part of the sermon was about a sinner burning in hell and reaching up and begging the angels for a drop of water. Reverend Dawson always lingered over that part of the sermon, describing the sinner and what was happening to him in great detail so that you could almost see what he looked like, even if you tried not to. Amy tried not to because she was afraid he might look familiar—that he might have a thin dark face, a handsome face, except for the purple shadows that came from pain and too little sunshine.

When the sermon was finally over, Amy hoped that God had noticed that she had listened carefully to the last part of the sermon, even though it hadn’t been easy. She hoped that that would do some good. She tried not to notice, so that God wouldn’t, that at the very back of her mind her resolution to visit Stone Hollow with the crazy boy was still there, although she was trying to pretend that it wasn’t.

H
AVING MADE A DECISION
, Amy liked to act on it as soon as possible. She hated waiting, and besides Sunday afternoon was almost the only time she could get away unobserved. So she decided to find Jason and get him to go with her to Stone Hollow that very afternoon. The only difficulty was that she did not know where he would be.

She had to wait until after Sunday dinner, of course, which in Taylor Springs was eaten in the middle of the day. Then she would ask permission to take Caesar for a walk, and she would start looking for Jason. After that she would just see what happened.

“Caesar really needs a walk,” she told her mother when dinner was almost over. “Old Ike doesn’t take him walking very often anymore. Could I take him for a nice long walk this afternoon?”

Amy’s mother sighed, and the crease deepened between her eyes. “Aunt Abigail and I were planning to visit the Gerhardt sisters this afternoon. I planned on your staying home with your father.”

“Let her go,” Amy’s father said. “I don’t need a keeper.” He pushed his chair back from the table and wheeled it out of the room.

Holding back another sigh with her fingers, Amy’s mother watched him go. “Well, all right, dear,” she said. “You may as well go. But don’t be gone long, and be careful.”

Amy never went anywhere without her mother’s warning about being careful. She knew all the things she was supposed to be careful of by heart. When they lived in the city, the warnings had been mostly about traffic and people, but in Taylor Springs there were many other things to keep in mind. In the country, one had to be careful about such things as rattlesnakes and black widow spiders and rabid skunks and flash floods and heatstroke and poison oak—and of course people, too, even in Taylor Springs, but not as much, because there were not nearly so many strangers.

“I’ll be careful,” Amy promised. She jumped up from the table and began to clear off so fast that Aunt Abigail had to warn her twice about the good china. The moment the last dish was off the table, she was out the back door and running toward the barn.

She found Caesar where she thought she would, sleeping just inside the door of the hay barn. There he was, spread out on his side, flat and dead-looking, his shaggy gray hide draped saggily over his bony ribs. When he heard Amy’s running feet, he lifted his head and grinned, letting his tongue escape and flop from the side of his mouth. His tail thumped twice, weakly, before he collapsed, as flat and dead as before.

“You lazy thing,” Amy said. “The vultures are going to find you someday and eat you half up before they notice you’re alive.” She began to walk slowly around the motionless form. “Poor dead dog,” she said. “Poor old dead dog. I am the fairy princess, and I am going to take pity on the poor dead dog and say the magic word. I am going to say—walk! You want to go for a
walk,
Caesar?”

As soon as he heard “walk,” Caesar sprang to his feet, shedding dust and hay and, judging by appearances, about a dozen years, too. He pranced around Amy, head high, tail waving, panting in anticipation.

“Okay,” Amy laughed, as he bounced against her. “Just a minute ‘til we ask Old Ike if you can go.”

They found the old man in the tack room mending a harness. Amy approached him quietly and waited for him to notice her and speak first. Nobody rushed Old Ike, particularly children. Amy had found that out a long time ago. He turned slowly and looked at Amy and the prancing dog, his frown deepening. Old Ike always frowned, but for special occasions, like having to talk to people, he made the frown even more impressive, by making his eyebrows come clear together over the bridge of his long, hooked nose.

“All right,” he said. “Take him. Take the devil dog. He don’t belong to me nohow. Don’t even pretend to since my knee give out and I can’t walk much no more.”

He turned his back, still muttering to himself, and as Amy backed away she heard him saying “—not my dog and never was.” A few steps outside the door, she turned and ran.

Passing the windows of the house, she dropped to a running walk, but once she was safely out on the Old Road, she shifted back to top speed, with Caesar running and leaping beside her. She didn’t slow down again until her side began to ache and her lungs felt stretched and burny. When she neared the turnoff to Bradley Lane, she began to whistle and talk loudly to Caesar so that Jason would be sure to hear her if he were somewhere in the area.

“Come here, Caesar,” she called. “Stop that. Come back here and walk with me.”

Caesar, who was busy with his version of a walk, coursing back and forth across the road, investigating interesting smells, seemed to know she was only talking to make a noise. Acknowledging her commands with a wave of his tail, he went right on with his explorations. And Amy went on calling and whistling.

Of course, the obvious thing to do would be to go to the Bradley house and knock on the door and ask for Jason, but there were a lot of reasons why that wasn’t possible. For one thing, one of Jason’s parents might answer the door. Amy had never met heathens before, or people who wrote books, and she felt sure she wouldn’t know how to talk to them. It would be almost like trying to talk to Grandpa Simmons, who was always saying something that made so little sense there was absolutely no way to answer sensibly. The most important reason, though, was simply that girls didn’t go calling on boys—it just wasn’t one of the things you did in Taylor Springs.

There was no sign of Jason near the clump of eucalyptus, so she went on up the lane until she came to the first good climbing tree. She shinnied up the trunk to the first branch and then scrambled higher, stopping now and then to look around. She was about as high as she dared go when, looking down, she saw a figure coming around the bend in the lane. It was Jason all right, and he was walking fast and looking around, as if he were hunting for something or someone in particular. As Amy watched unseen in her treetop perch, Jason and Caesar saw each other at the same moment. Jason walked toward Caesar, holding out his hand. Amy couldn’t hear what he was saying, but she could see that Caesar was behaving in a very unusual manner.

As a rule Caesar, who was only sedately enthusiastic even with old friends—except, of course when a walk was mentioned—was shy and sometimes even threatening with strangers. But now, as Jason approached, he cocked his head and bounded forward. Sinking down onto his belly at Jason’s feet, he wagged his tail frantically and licked eagerly at the boy’s hand. Jason bent over the dog, petting and talking to him for a long time before he stood up and looked around.

“Amy,” he called. “Where are you?”

Amy climbed down from the tree. Still shinnying down the trunk, she yelled at Jason accusingly, “Have you been hanging around my house?”

She didn’t hear any answer, and when she reached the ground and had finished brushing the tree ants and itchy pieces of bark off her arms and legs, she faced him, jutting her jaw.

“Have you?” she demanded.

“Why do you think I’ve been hanging around your house?” Jason asked.

“Because you knew Caesar was our dog. How’d you know I was here because Caesar was?”

Jason looked at the dog. “Caesar?” he said. “Who named him that?”

Amy shrugged. “I don’t know. Old Ike, I guess. He really belongs to Old Ike, this hired man who works for my aunt. Ike used to take long walks a lot before his leg got bad. Years ago he came back from a walk in the Hills, and he had Caesar with him, and he’s had him ever since. Only he always says that Caesar isn’t his.”

Jason nodded. “Did you want to go now?” he asked. “To the Hollow?”

Amy stared. She had been trying to think of an unembarrassing way to bring up the subject, since the last time they’d talked about it she’d said that she would never, ever go there. But now all she had to do was agree, and it would all be settled. “Yes,” she said, trying to sound casual. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I think I would like to go there, for just a little while. Just to kind of look around.”