The Secrets of Tree Taylor (2 page)

I breathed in the scent of two horses and a dozen cows from across the road. Our house was the last house in town—not that there was much difference between Hamilton’s town and country.

A block away, the McPherson dogs kept barking like squirrels were teasing them. I would have turned those poor hounds loose myself if I hadn’t been afraid they’d kill chickens and meet a fate worse than being tied up all day and night.

Our Midge liked chickens a little too much for us to let her run free like our other dogs always had. But Midge still had a great life—big backyard, the shade of our tamarack tree, lots of food and water, toys and love. She hardly ever barked except to say hey.

Dad and I kept watch over all the dogs in the neighborhood. Not everybody in Hamilton believed they owed it to their pets to take good care of them. Some of the very same folks who got so upset about the Russians sending dogs and monkeys into space kept their own dogs chained and hungry half the time.

Maybe I could write a hard-hitting investigative report on “The Hamilton Hounds.” Or “The Hounds of Hamilton.” I’d work in alliteration, like “horror” and “hunger.”

But as I sat under a cloudless blue sky, with the cry of a mourning dove underscoring the sweet music of song sparrows, I didn’t feel up to writing about horrible, hungry hound dogs.

I wanted Jack to come back so I could hear John Lennon and Paul McCartney singing “Please Please Me.” I wanted Tolstoy to drop in and explain what he meant about the inner workings of my soul. I wanted Ray Miller, with his sky eyes.…

And that’s exactly what I was thinking when the gun went off.

I knew a rifle when I heard it.

Only this one was too loud. Louder than all the McPherson hounds put together. The shot had come from my right, no more than a block away.

The door to our house flew open. The screen slapped back. Out flew my dad in his plaid robe and leather slippers. He struggled to knot the robe’s long belt around his waist. His eyes were wide, but he didn’t even glance my way.

As he stumbled past me, one of his slippers slipped off. He stepped back and slid his foot in again. His thick, wavy hair stuck out all over like a black Brillo pad.

I scrambled to my feet. “Dad, what—”

He swung around, and the look on his face shut me up fast. He raised his arm, pointed straight at me, and, in a voice he’d never used on me before, said, “Stay put, Tree!”

Then he wheeled around and took off up our road toward the rifle blast.

I stood right where I was, frozen as much by my dad’s gruff voice as by the gunshot. I watched him shuffle to the end of our block, past the crossroad, up to the first house on the left.

When he reached the rundown one-story house, he slowed.

I think I knew from the start where he was headed: the Kinney place.

There was something about that house that always creeped me out. The first time I heard the nursery rhyme about a crooked house, I thought they were talking about the Kinneys: “There was a crooked man, who walked a crooked mile. He had a crooked house and he had a crooked smile.” Or something like that.

My stomach did the twisty thing. The problem wasn’t just the crooked house. It was the crooked man. Old Man Kinney.

I always went out of my way to avoid Mr. Kinney and his house. Every time I passed him sitting in that rocker on his front porch, his glare gave me the willies. The guy looked permanently ticked off, like he just knew I would rob him blind if he ever left home. And he was always home.

I edged to the end of our yard so I could see better. The door to the Kinney house cracked open, and a shadowy figure stepped into the light of the doorway. I was pretty sure the woman was Mrs. Kinney. In all the years we’d lived on this same street, I’d only seen her a few times and never exchanged so much as a word. Jack told me once that Mrs. Kinney was the same age as both our moms, but I didn’t believe him. She looked old enough to be our mothers’ mother.

Dad stood at the foot of the Kinneys’ decrepit porch. Its peeling gray planks reminded me of an old fishing dock. He was looking up and saying something to Mrs. Kinney, but I couldn’t imagine what.

I watched him as if he were a stranger on television—John Wayne, or Ben Cartwright from
Bonanza
. Whatever my dad said worked, because the woman stepped all the way out and crossed the porch toward him.

That’s when I saw it. In her arms, tucked against her hip and across her breast like a much-loved baby, lay a rifle.

Before I realized what I was doing, I was running toward them.

Gravel dug into the soles of my bare feet. I kept going.

At the crossroad, I had to hobble to the side and lean against a walnut tree to catch my breath. I brushed the gravel from my callused heels. Then I watched the scene unfolding on the Kinneys’ front porch.

Dad moved closer to the steps. Mrs. Kinney, still clutching her rifle, loomed over him, only a couple of feet away now.

I wanted to charge the porch, to knock that gun out of her arms.

But I didn’t. I kept watching, not sure if I was more afraid of startling her and making her shoot … or of having my dad see that I wasn’t staying put.

I had to get closer. I tiptoed toward them. It wasn’t that hard to stay out of sight, ducking between the maples, oaks, and elms that lined every piece of the road. I aimed for the fattest tree on the Kinneys’ property, a cottonwood that would have taken four grown men to circle it, hand to hand. From there, I’d at least be able to see what was going on.

The last stretch to the big tree opened wide in front of me. I darted across the grass.

My dad’s gaze stayed fixed on Mrs. Kinney’s face. It wasn’t much of a face—wrinkled in a way I wondered if you could blame on age. Her cheeks and forehead were the color of lemon-lime Squirt, with patches of yellow and splotches of blue and purple. Her nose bent to the side, hinting at the letter L.

But it was her eyes that set her apart from every other human. I could not stop staring at her tiny eyes, colorless and flat, as if all the seeing had drained out of them. I had never seen that kind of empty.

I squatted behind the twisted tree trunk and waited.

Without a word, my dad set his foot onto the bottom porch step. He didn’t look down but stayed locked into Mrs. Kinney as he took the next step. In slow motion, he turned and lowered himself onto the top step, sitting with his back to that woman with the rifle.

I felt like I had to keep my eye on her for the both of us. I stared at her until my eyes watered with the pain of not blinking.

Just when I was afraid she’d never move again, she did. She let out a sigh that I swore shook the leaves of the cottonwood, raining down puffs of white on my head. Then she shuffled the rest of the way to Dad and sat down next to him. The gun came to rest on her lap, its nose stretching to my dad’s knee.

“Doc,” she said, like they were in the middle of a conversation. She said something else, but her head was turned. I couldn’t hear her.

Dad squinted, like he was straining to listen. He stared straight ahead, same as her. It was like they were both watching a picture show. Then he got to his feet and crossed the porch to her front door. He opened the screen and walked inside.

Mrs. Kinney didn’t so much as shift her eyes to watch him go. I caught a glimpse of her faded cotton apron and her gray shoes, which my mom would call “sensible” but would never wear herself.

I have no idea how long my dad stayed inside. So long my knees grew stiff from squatting.

I slipped around the tree, but I couldn’t see inside the house. I wanted to look in the window. I wanted to make sure Dad was okay in there. I wanted to see for myself whatever there was to see.

But before I could make my move, the front screen opened and Dad came out. His face said nothing about what he’d seen. He walked over and sat back down beside Mrs. Kinney and looked straight ahead again, as if he’d only stepped out for the intermission and was back in time for the rest of the show.

Then without saying a word, he slid that rifle off Mrs. Kinney’s lap and out of her hands.

I heard a car coming from the direction of town. When it got closer, I could see it was the sheriff’s car. Both the car and the sheriff were old. I didn’t know much about cars, but this one was black and roundish, like police cars in old crime movies. There was no siren. Maybe the old patrol car didn’t have one. Sheriff Robinson, a one-man police force, had been
sheriff when my granddad, instead of my dad, was the only doctor in the county.

The car eased to a stop in front of the Kinney house as if it had all the time in the world. The motor kicked off with a sputter that shook the cruiser. Sheriff Robinson climbed out like he’d been stuck in the seat. He took a minute to square himself on his scuffed cowboy boots. He tipped his hat back, then glanced at the sky before taking off the hat and tossing it onto the front seat. What hair the sheriff had left was thin and gray. He wasn’t fat or skinny, tall or short, not somebody to stand out in a crowd. With his hand shielding his eyes in a sun salute, he crossed the lawn and stood in front of my dad, the rifle, and Mrs. Kinney.

I should have felt relieved that the law had arrived, but I didn’t.

“Neighbor called, Mrs. Kinney,” Sheriff Robinson said, glancing from her to Dad and back. “Said you’d had some trouble.”

Mrs. Kinney shifted her gaze to squint up at the sheriff, but she didn’t answer him.

My dad spoke up. “Alfred’s been shot, Sheriff.”

Sheriff Robinson scratched his head. “That right? You’ve seen to him, have you, Doc?”

“He’s bandaged. Grazed his shoulder. I used their phone to give Carl a call and get the ambulance out here. Alfred ought to spend a couple of nights in the hospital, to be on the safe side.”

Sheriff Robinson looked down at Mrs. Kinney, who was staring at her hands in her lap. “Guess I’d best have a chat with
Alfred.” He stepped between Dad and Mrs. Kinney and walked on into the house. The screen slapped behind him, and I jumped a little.

Yelling came from the house, and it wasn’t coming from Sheriff Robinson. The cusswords were loud and clear, but the rest sounded garbled, like radio stations during a storm.

When the sheriff strode out onto the porch again, his face was red as raspberries. “Need to decide what we’re going to do about this, Doc,” he said, like they were talking about a flooded basement or a burnt cake. Not about whatever must have gone on inside that house.

Dad met the sheriff’s gaze. “Not much we can do about it, Leo,” he said. “Accidents happen.”

Accidents happen
.

I tried to replay everything I’d seen and heard, starting with the gunshot and ending with my dad’s words to the sheriff. But it was like trying to tune in the television when the vertical control was out of whack. The pieces were there, but they didn’t line up.

I sure hadn’t been thinking
accident
. I thought … well, I guess I couldn’t have said what I thought. Not really. Maybe without my knowing it, my brain had been making up a sensational story I could write about.

Only …

Mrs. Kinney had the rifle.

Dad had more information than I did. He’d been inside the Kinney place and I hadn’t. Plus, Doc Frank Taylor, M.D., was the smartest person in Hamilton. Probably in Missouri. Maybe in the whole United States of America. And maybe Mr. Kinney came out and told him it was an accident.

Sheriff Robinson scratched his head. “Well, Doc, Mr. Kinney has some peculiar notions about the shooting.”

Dad’s gaze stayed fixed on the sheriff. “Pain can make a man say peculiar things, Sheriff.”

“You got a point there,” Sheriff Robinson said, not sounding all that sure. “I can’t say I know the man very well. Not like you do, Doc.”

Like nearly everybody else in town, the Kinneys doctored with my dad. When Mrs. Kinney fell and broke her arm last Christmas Eve, Dad set it for her while we waited for him at church.

Dad never talked about his patients, but I heard things at school. Or from Jack. Or from Sarah. Sarah’s dad farmed, but he worked as a handyman on the side. He’d been fixing plumbing at the Kinneys’ once when Mrs. Kinney was laid up on crutches. She told him she’d toppled off a ladder.

Accidents happen
. They sure did in that house.

Even an accident was worth writing about in Hamilton, though. People were always blowing off fingers or getting third-degree burns from Fourth of July fireworks, Dad’s most hated day of the year. Farmers got tangled in hay balers, or crushed in tractor rollovers, or kicked by horses. We got our share of hunting accidents, of course. And all of those things ended up on the front page of the
Hamiltonian
.

I had a feeling there was a big story in this shooting. And I wanted to be the one to get it.

Whatever did happen inside the Kinneys’ house, it was going to be my ticket to the
Blue and Gold
staff. This would be my first investigative report, and I’d prove to Mrs. Woolsey that she should choose me. Not Wanda.

I might even end up with a better story than the
Hamiltonian
. Our weekly paper under old Mr. Ridings didn’t believe in publishing “negative news,” anything that might get people riled. On the other hand, Mr. Ridings had supposedly turned the newspaper over to his son. Jack knew Randy Ridings better than I did, and he said Randy wanted to make the paper more interesting, more modern.

All at once, the whole town descended on us. A siren wailed on and off, like it couldn’t make up its mind. An ambulance swooped in from the west, probably on loan from Cameron, a bigger town up Highway 36. Behind the dented white ambulance, a parade trailed up our dusty road. Gawkers pulled their cars to the side, shy of ditches, smashing lavender and clover.

I felt sorry for the Quiet House, only two houses down from the Kinneys’. Eight-year-old Gary Lynch lived in the tiny greenish house with his mother. Gary had leukemia and couldn’t get out of bed. The shades never went up in the Quiet House, and nobody visited. Dad said we couldn’t get sick by visiting Gary but he could get sicker if we gave him our germs. I wondered if Mrs. Lynch would venture out to see what the fuss was about.