The Secrets of Tree Taylor (7 page)

I shifted in my seat and heard a crinkle. I’d forgotten about the note. I reached into the back pocket of my holey, faded blue jeans and pulled out the typed note I’d found taped to the handlebars of my bike when I got home from church. I’d read it right then and there:

I’d known the minute I saw the note that it came from Jack. I wasn’t crazy about the “child” reference. But I figured he was just looking out for me, like always, in case the shooting on our street had freaked me out. I just didn’t know why he’d denied leaving it when I called to thank him.

“Why won’t you admit that you left me a note, Jack?”

“I’m telling you, you’ve got it wrong, Tree. Must be some secret admirer leaving you love notes.”

I admit that I sometimes dreamed about Ray leaving me love notes, but this was not one of them. “Some love note. And some secret,” I muttered. It was like Jack to do something nice but not want anybody to know he did it. A week before my twelfth birthday, Jack left flowers for me every day. I had
myself convinced the flowers came from Ray, and I tried not to let on how disappointed I was when I caught Jack red-handed with a fistful of red carnations.

We’d been waiting for Eileen to pay up for landing on Boardwalk with three houses. As usual, Jack the Risk Taker owned most of the property and Eileen the Conservative had almost all the Monopoly money. As for me, I was simply hanging on, confident I’d come in second as soon as one of them lost. Jack helped by pretending not to notice when
I
landed on his properties.

Jack turned to Eileen and held out his palm. “Anytime now.”

Eileen plunked a fistful of small Monopoly bills into his hand. “There.” Her fingernails were painted the same color as Mom’s, bright red. They matched the dress she still had on from church, a red-striped shirtwaist with a white collar. I’d changed the second we got home.

“Ouch!” Jack dumped the money and examined his palm.

“What’s the matter?” I scooted my chair over for a better look.

A cut ran about two inches across his palm, curving like another lifeline. It separated when he spread his fingers.

“Cut my hand chopping beef yesterday.” He shook his hand, like he could shake off the pain.

I couldn’t stand to think of Jack in pain. Paper cuts are killers. I couldn’t imagine what a cut from a butcher’s knife might feel like.

Eileen-who-wanted-to-be-a-nurse disappeared, then returned with a bottle of sting. The antiseptic probably wasn’t
named Sting, but it should have been. With all the bedside manner of a charging rhinoceros, Eileen shoved me out of the way and dumped half a bottle of that stuff onto Jack’s cut.

“Yeow!” Jack cried.

“Don’t be a baby,” said Eileen the Compassionate Nurse.

“Does it hurt bad?” I asked as Eileen taped up his hand.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, what’s bad to you might not be bad to me.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Eileen said.

She said this at the same time I shouted, “Exactly!”

I went on to explain. “Haven’t you ever wondered what other people’s pain really feels like?” I’d thought a lot about this. “I would love to invent a
feeling machine
that would let people trade pains—just for a minute—so we’d know what the other person was feeling. Like right now, I could press the machine into your hand”—I touched my small hand to Jack’s big one, palm to palm—“and I’d know exactly how you felt. Wouldn’t that be the coolest?”

“Heavy,” Jack said. I could tell he was mulling it over.

“I think that would be a drag,” Eileen objected. “
I
don’t want to feel anybody’s pain.”

“And therein lies the difference between the Taylor sisters.” Jack grinned over at me. “I’d buy your compassion machine in a heartbeat, Tree.”

Then he grinned at my sister. “And I’d buy you a heart in a heartbeat, Eileen.”

She threw her little metal game-piece shoe at him. “Sometimes I hate you, Jack Adams! I quit.”

Jack smiled after her. “I love your sister, Tree. She’d be lost without me.”

With Eileen gone, Jack and I decided we wanted to do something outside. He called a couple of people before phoning the Atkinsons. After he hung up, he said, “Chuck said he’d drive the girls over.”

“I thought you told me Chuck joined the army,” I said.

“The reserves. He’ll be a weekend soldier. But he hasn’t started yet.”

“Capture the Flag?” I suggested, remembering how awful Penny and Karen were at baseball.

We waited outside until Chuck drove up in his old Chevy. He pulled too far onto the lawn. I just hoped he wouldn’t leave tire tracks.

The night smelled like cut grass and the promise of rain. Only a handful of brave stars made it through the night clouds. I pulled back my hair into a ponytail to get ready to play.

“Hi, Jack!” Karen jumped from the car before Chuck shut off the engine. She dashed up to Jack. “Dibs on being on your side.” Karen hadn’t dressed for baseball or Capture the Flag. She’d dressed for Jack. Her blue polka-dot dress hugged her chubby figure, the wide white patent leather belt straining at her waist.

I met Penny and Chuck as they stepped out of the car. Chuck looked like a giant next to Penny. He might not have been taller than Jack, but he outweighed him. His hair was so long it hung below his ears, and his bangs hovered over his eyebrows. No army haircut—not yet, anyway.

“You said you were dropping us off!” Penny was saying when I walked up.

“Changed my mind. And don’t be so stupid, Mouse.” Chuck glanced at me, then strutted off to Jack. “Where’s
Eileen? Man, don’t tell me she’s not home! I’d go AWOL for that chick.”

I stood with Penny for a few seconds. A woodpecker hammered in the distance. Crows argued on the telephone wire across the road. “So, Penny, up for a little Capture the Flag?”

“Sure.” She walked with me to the side yard, where Jack was setting up the flags and marking off prisons.

“Ladies against gents?” Jack shouted.

Karen groaned.

“You’re on!” I shouted back.

The object of the game was to get the other team’s flag and plant it next to yours. If you got tagged in enemy territory, you went to prison and could only get out if one of your teammates came and tagged you. The guys would have a big advantage when it came to capturing us. But with three of us, we could divide and conquer to get their flag.

After two games, we’d each won one.

“Stupid game,” Karen muttered. She’d proved to be more worthless than ever, since she didn’t want to get her dress dirty. “I quit!”

“You can’t quit!” Chuck shouted. The boys had lost the last game, and Chuck had kicked the flag and sworn a blue streak. “We have to play a tiebreaker!” He turned on Penny. “Get over there, you dumbhead. You heard me!” When she didn’t, he stiff-armed her, and she stumbled out of his way. “What—are you girls chicken?”

“
I’m
chicken.” Jack waved his flag in surrender. “It’s getting too dark to play. Besides, you girls are too tough.”

Karen ran up and hugged Jack. “You’re the best, Jack!”

Penny hadn’t said two words during the last game. But she’d surprised all of us by running fast and grabbing the flag to give us the victory.

“No, Karen.” I grinned at Penny. “
Penny
is the best. She could have beat the guys single-handed.”

“Very true.” Jack wrenched free from Karen’s clutches and handed Penny the flag, a white handkerchief. “Congratulations.”

Penny grinned and took the flag from him. “I accept.”

Music still blared from our house. The quartet would be at it another hour or more. “So now what do you want to do?” I asked.

After a few seconds of silence, Chuck jumped up and dashed to the road. “I know!” He glanced down the street toward the Kinney place. “Let’s go see where that guy shot himself.”

Chuck mimicked putting a gun to his head and firing. “So, Tree, what’s your dad say about Old Man Kinney trying to kill himself?”

I didn’t answer.

“I thought it was an accident.” Somehow, Karen had ended up next to Jack again.

“Maybe … maybe not.” Chuck walked backward up the street a couple of feet. “Let’s see for ourselves!”

I didn’t want to agree with Chuck, but I liked the idea of checking out the house. Maybe we’d find a clue.

“So, what’s the plan, Chuck?” Jack asked. “You going to waltz up to the door and ask Mrs. Kinney if you can search her house?”

“I’m not going to ask her anything. I’ll see what I can see.” Chuck turned to Penny and me. “Who’s in?”

Penny shook her head. “I’ll stay here.”

“Big surprise,” Chuck muttered.

“Me too,” Karen said. “We could talk about what we’re doing for the steam engine show. I’m making my own costume.” She batted her eyelashes at Jack. “Maybe we could dress up as a famous couple, Jack. Like Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Boone?”

Jack ignored her. His gaze hadn’t left Chuck.

I wouldn’t go unless Jack did. But I really hoped he’d go. “Chuck’s going to do this with or without us, Jack.”

“She’s right. Better come keep an eye on me.”

Jack shook his head, then glanced at me. “Okay. But nobody bothers that woman. Got it?”

Chuck whooped. The rest of us, except Penny, fell in. Karen had changed her mind and now wormed her way next to Jack, which left me beside Chuck.

I was glad to finally be going to the Kinney place to investigate, but I wished it was just Jack and me. Not Chuck. I wished Chuck were already in the army. Soon as I thought it, I felt guilty. What if Chuck ended up going to Vietnam, and I’d wished it on him? “Chuck, do you think the army will send you to Vietnam?”

“No way!” He elbowed me, hard. “Reserves and National Guard. That’s the way to go. It’s poor schmucks like D.J.—guys who aren’t signing up and aren’t going to college—who are going to end up getting drafted and shipped off to Vietnam. Not me. I’m not waiting around to be drafted.”

“D.J.’s no schmuck!” I said.

Jack stopped his conversation with Karen and turned to Chuck. “There are no schmucks in Vietnam—at least no American schmucks. Soldiers there are fighting your fight, Chuck. You ought to show more respect.”

I wanted to ask Jack what he meant, but Karen had glued herself to his side. And anyway, we’d reached the Kinneys’ house.

Now that we stood facing it, our mission seemed pretty lame.

“Where did he do it?” Chuck asked. “I heard it was on the porch.” He walked closer, while the rest of us stayed back, near my old hiding place, the cottonwood.

“This is a bad idea,” Jack muttered. “Chuck, come back, man. You’re going to scare the woman to death.”

Even with Jack there, I felt scared. What if Mrs. Kinney still had that rifle stretched across her lap?

Chuck bent over, hands on his knees, to inspect the porch. “No blood here.”

Clouds hid nearly all the stars. The TV from a house across the street gave the only light in flickering shadows. I glanced down the road at the pitch-dark Quiet House and imagined Gary asleep in his bed. The Kinney house couldn’t have been blacker inside if the windows had been painted black.

An owl hooted.

“This is spooky,” Karen whined. She clasped Jack’s arm with both hands. “Let’s go back.”

“ ’Fraid of a little ghost, Karen?” Chuck didn’t bother lowering his voice. “I’ll bet Old Man Kinney’s ghost isn’t waiting for him to kick the bucket. It’s probably already haunting this old shack.” He walked all the way up to the front window.

“Chuck!” Jack called.

Chuck pressed his nose to the glass, his hands cupping the
sides of his head. “Looks like the lady of the house is out on the town.”

I thought about what Penny said at the pool, about Mrs. Kinney being able to do whatever she wanted now that her husband was laid up.

“What’s that?”
Karen squealed.

Inside the house, a single flame-light swept across the room. I gasped. “I see it!”

Chuck laughed. “Yeah, right.” He was staring at us instead of the window.

“Chuck!” Jack shouted. “They’re not kidding, man! Something’s in there.”

Chuck tilted his head like he knew we were kidding. Then he turned and peered in the front window. “What—?” He jumped from the porch so fast, he landed in a bush. Then he stumbled to his feet and took off running back up the road.

Karen was crying, burying her head in Jack’s side.

Jack burst out laughing. “It was just a light. A lantern maybe. Chuck probably woke Mrs. Kinney up. I hope she scared him more than he scared her.”

I knew Jack was right. But as we walked home, I made sure Karen wasn’t the only one next to Jack.

After the Atkinsons left, Jack and I went back inside and cleaned up our Monopoly game. Jack never divided his money pot into denominations, so we bundled ones, fives, twenties, and everything together, something that would have put my sister over the edge.

“I’ve been thinking,” Jack said.

“About what? Karen’s proposal to be Mr. and Mrs. Boone at the steam engine show?”

“Very funny. No, I was thinking about your compassion machine. That’s a great idea, Tree.”

“Yeah? Thanks.”

We picked up Monopoly stuff while strains of “I’ll Be Seeing You in All the Old Familiar Places” came floating in. My mind drifted back to the Kinney house. I felt bad for waking up Mrs. Kinney. “Jack?”

“Hmm?” He shoved the Monopoly board on top of the piles of money and forced the lid on the box.

“If we could use a compassion machine on Mrs. Kinney, what do you think she’d be feeling right now, with her husband in the hospital?”

Jack put both hands on the card table and leaned back, his chair rearing on its hind legs. I knew he was really thinking about this, which was one of the best things about Jack. He took me seriously. Always had. “Relieved,” he said at last.

“What?”

“I think Mrs. Kinney’s feeling relieved, at least for now.”

“Don’t you think she’s sad? They’ve been married a long time.”

Jack shrugged. “The Kinneys are married, but it’s a bent marriage. Not like your folks, or mine.” He leaned forward, and his chair thudded on all fours. “Yeah … I vote relieved.”