Corner of the Housetop: Buried Secrets (9 page)

"She's doing all right. Dr. Crawford is up there with her now."

"Oh. Does he know what's wrong with her?"

"I don't know, sir. I came down here when he arrived."

He nodded, finding it odd that the person responsible for taking care of the woman was left out of the doctor's visit.

Derek finished his drink and went up the stairs. Just as he was turning down the narrow hall to the side entrance, Mrs. Worthington came around the corner.

Her eyes rounded and her thin lips began to quiver. "What do you think you are doing? Did I not tell you to stay out of this house?"

"I had to bring something down to the kitchen, ma'am."

"None of your excuses!" The woman's voice rang through the house like silvery thunder.

Derek flinched a little, waiting for the roof to cave in.
What happened to being completely quiet?
he wondered, though he didn't dare say anything out loud.

"Sneaking off from your chores!" she continued, pointing an accusing finger at him. "I give you an excellent opportunity—one you don't even deserve, mind you—and you throw my generosity back in my face! Idleness!" she screeched. "It's laziness and I will not have it in my house! Not a moment of it! Out! Out this instant!"

As he left the house at a half-run, Mrs. Worthington's voice followed him, ranting about ingratitude and insolent, worthless, lazy boys. Idle sinners! That was what lazy boys were. The worst torments of hell were reserved for lazy, idle boys.

"I'll show her lazy," he muttered. "Let her do something besides sit on her fat rump and pamper her precious sons all day!"

Without really paying attention to where he was going, Derek pushed his way through the narrow break in the bushes and stormed down the path towards the river. Halfway there, he took a sharp left, marching off the path and through the trees towards his Village.

The empty buildings stood in two rows down either side of a wide, brush-covered lane that use to be a dirt road. There was a hitching post outside a moss-covered building that was once a meeting hall. The glass was missing from most of the windows. Those panes of glass that were still there were cracked, broken, and dirty.

The entire town consisted of no more than seven shops, each in varied states of disrepair. Some of them had stood against the weather well and had little wrong with them outside of needing desperately to be scrubbed and have doors put back on their hinges.

Others were less fortunate. They had large trees branches through their roofs. The holes in the walls gave way to weather, rotting out the floors and the furniture. One building had a tree growing right up through the middle of it.

In the middle of the shops the lane bowed out around a stone well that stood out of the tall grass. There were more hitching posts beside it.

In each of the shops was an array of items. There were pictures and old clothes. Furniture, dishes, books, cards, kitchen tools, and boxes and bags whose contents had rotted out through their bottoms. A building that was the town store was full of riffle shots and empty food wrappers.

It looked like one day everyone just left for no reason, leaving the town trapped in a long-ago moment.

It was this town that Derek had found several years ago when he was hiding from Mrs. Worthington after accidentally killing her water lilies. Positive he was going to get a beating, Derek had fled to the river, looking for some place to go until the woman forgot what he'd done. By the time he had found the river, the idea of leaving all together suddenly didn't strike him as a bad one. All alone, with no food or change of clothes, he'd struck out down the river.

When he'd gotten to the beaver dam he crossed to the other side and followed the water farther and farther from the spot where the river bank opened up. After he'd been walking for what felt like hours, Derek had come to an old wooden bridge with several boards missing from its middle. It arched over the river, ending at a flattened out point resembling a road.

Figuring a road, even one full of grass and small bushes, must lead somewhere, Derek followed it deeper and deeper into the woods until he could no longer hear the rushing river. Just when he had begun to think that maybe he was wrong about roads leading places, he came around a final bend and saw several buildings in the middle of the forest.

Running the rest of the way, he'd come to a stop in the abandoned town center, staring, awe-struck, at what he saw. It seemed like a place right out of a fairy story where some witch had chased all the people away, then made a forest, thick with underbrush and evil enchantments, grow up right from under the town's foundation, destroying and hiding what remained of the village that had mocked her...

He'd spent the day rummaging through the ruins, looking at weathered painting and crawling through every crevasse he could fit in.

It wasn't long before it grew dark. Hiding under the bar in the meeting hall, Derek had curled up, trying to sleep. The night was warm and full of noises. Night sounds of small animals, bats, and much louder things that were probably bears and wolves filled the air. Terrified, Derek had stayed huddled in his spot until dawn broke.

At the first sign of light, Derek had left his hiding place and run back up the road, down the river bank, waded through the water, and up the path to the backyard. When Mrs. Worthington found him back in his room after being gone she did beat him, both for going missing and for killing her flowers.

It was two years later that Derek went back into the woods searching for what he called his Village. It was easy enough to find, and from that time on, it was his haven. He went there when he needed to get away from his life.

During visits he would go through the old things that were lying in the street and the buildings. He even saved a few trinkets and books that he thought were particularly neat to look at.

One of the books had a green cover with a drawing of a man in a tall hat, wearing a suit with the longest coattails he'd ever seen. Thinking it looked interesting, Derek brought it home and tucked it away in the secret box he'd made in the wall. He'd taken several books from the rubble of the Village, but that was the only one without any pictures for him to look at. All it had were words.

Someday,
he'd promised himself as he flipped through the pages,
I'll read this.
He just knew it had to say something wonderful and important for a man who looked and dressed like that to be on the cover.

After stomping through the underbrush for nearly an hour, Derek finally came to a stop at the well. Sitting on the stone edge, he took a deep breath and looked around.

In his Village, he felt a little better about the past few days. It had been a while since he was there and the soothing chortling of a catbird in the trees put his raw nerves at ease. It was a break he'd needed for weeks.

When he calmed down and caught his breath, he stood up and started strolling down the street. He glanced at the buildings, noticing a few more branches had fallen in the last storm.

The front window of the corner store was broken out now and one of the remaining posts that held up the porch roof on the meeting house was leaning dangerously. It looked like one good gust of wind could knock it down completely.

Sitting on the step by what Derek named The Courthouse, he plucked a blade of grass and twirled it between his fingers. Everything was so simple in his Village. Why couldn't he just live here forever? All by himself? There would be no one to yell at him, or tell him he was doing it wrong. He'd never be wrong because everything in the Village ran on his time, in his way.

He sat there for an hour. And then another hour. And another. Finally, the cries of the osprey floated down through the woods from the marshes, reminding him what time it was.

Sighing, Derek stood back up and started towards home as the sun began to set.

The walk back was slower and a little cooler. When he got to the swimming hole, he stopped for a few minutes before wading up the river and to the sandy ground beyond the blackberry bushes. By the time he got back to the stables it was completely dark. Dinner had long-since passed and Devon's heavy snores could be heard from his bed in the small apartment at the end of the building.

Climbing up into his loft, Derek got ready for bed. He set the broken lamp on the floor by his chest and took out his night shirt.

He was asleep almost as soon as he laid his head on the hay.

In the morning Derek was woken up not by Devon's raspy voice inquiring to the horses' night, but by heavy steps thumping their way up his ladder. Opening his eyes, he saw light streaming in through the cracks around the little door at the far end of the loft.

What time is it?
he wondered, sitting up.

Just then, Jonathan's head appeared where the ladder leaned on the loft. "You are awake," he said indifferently, climbing the rest of the way up.

Feeling oddly self-conscious in his tattered night shirt next to Jonathan in his tailored vest and trousers, Derek sat up and asked, "What do you want?" He also became suddenly aware of the fact that the sheet he'd stolen for his bed was from one of Mrs. Worthington's best sets.

The man looked down at him with a closed expression on his face. After glancing around the loft with its piles of burlap sacks and twine, and at the little chest with its broken lamp, he looked back at Derek. "I'm supposed to whip you."

A mixture of humiliation and anger swelled in Derek's gut.

"I'm not going to," Jonathan continued in the same cool voice.

"Well, just as long as
Mother
thinks you did," Derek sneered.

He would almost have preferred a beating to any amount of pity from the man. Did he look like that much of a wreck that Jonathan couldn't bring himself to hit him? Remembering all the times Jonathan the Deacon had hit him with the wooden rod during Sunday school, Derek was struck with how funny it was that his compassion, unlike his public cruelty, should be found when there was no audience.

Jonathan just studied him, a slow smirk forming on his lips as he shook his head. His eyes were just as hard and impossible to read as they always were. For a moment he seemed like he wanted to say something, but turned and started down the ladder instead.

"Make sure you tell her I hollered real loud," Derek called nastily. "She'll like that."

When the sound of Jonathan's footsteps faded, Derek stood up and dressed in silence. He balled up his night shirt and threw it across the loft as hard as he could. It hit the wall and slumped quietly into a pile under the swing arm.

"Boy!"

"I'm up!" he yelled angrily.

"Well git down here then!" Devon yelled back.

Stomping down the ladder carelessly, Derek glared at Lady Sarah Mary-Ruth before she started in on him, too. The mare's ears went back and she shook her head from side to side complacently, completely ignoring him.

"Stupid horse."

"Don' bother with them horses. I fed them already. Your breakfast is over there," Devon added, not looking up from the paper he was writing on.

Feeling another surge of annoyance mixed with jealousy, he watched the man scratching across the page. "What's that?"

"Order sheet. Need feed and beddin'. And a couple others things."

Derek's spirits lifted at the possible chance to get away from the plantation for the day. "Are you going into town today?"

"Yeah. And you ain't going."

"Devon, come on. I swear I'll get all my work done today. What do you have for me to do?"