Wolf Hollow (17 page)

By now, someone had fetched the Glengarrys, and they arrived in a state of panic, Betty's mother a surprise in city clothes and pin curls. She cried a little as all the men lined up along the rope and slowly lowered Toby headfirst into the well. The oak limb bowed some, but it held, and the rope was thick enough to stand some fraying as his weight dragged it hard against the bark.

They lowered him, hand over hand, until Toby called out a muffled
whoa!
, which the constable echoed, his hand in the air. “He's got to her,” he called. “Stop and hold it steady.”

We waited, the rope shivering. I pictured him tucking the flashlight under his chin, looping the rope around her.

I heard him yell something else.

“He can't get the rope under her arms,” the constable said. “She's swaddled in that poncho. But if he moves it out of the way it might come off that pipe.”

My father had his flashlight trained down the well, a lantern high in his other hand. “He's going to have to grab her and pull her out himself.”

“Can you get your arms around her?” the constable called into the well.

A long pause. The rope shivered some more. The men holding it leaned back against the pull.

That's when we knew how badly Betty was hurt.

From deep in the well, she screamed.

It wasn't like anything I'd ever heard before.

Betty's grandmother turned in tight circles, her head bowed, hands in fists against her mouth.

I said my prayers, found it impossible that I'd waited for even one minute before telling my father what I'd gleaned from that soft whisper:
That was no porcupine you heard.

And I understood, in the tiniest, palest measure, why Toby carried those guns wherever he went.

Above the well, the rope tightened and thrummed. “Hold steady!” the constable called again. He dropped to his knees and leaned into the well. Toby was yelling something, but I couldn't make out a word of it.

“She's stuck,” the constable said, looking up at my father. “When her poncho caught on that pipe, she must have slammed back against the other side of the well. There's a second pipe coming out just there behind her and she's stuck on it.”

My father leaned in closer above the hole. “What do you mean, stuck on it?”

“It impaled her,” the constable said. “It's through her shoulder.”

I closed my eyes. There, in that moment, I thought I would never care about any small nonsense ever again.

And Betty screamed. And screamed.

“He's pulling her off the pipe,” the constable said and, to the men on the rope line, yelled, “Get ready! He's going to be taking her weight.”

But they still flinched, as one, when the rope tried to cope with its new burden, the branch bowed overhead, and the constable yelled, “Now heave but slowly!” standing again and signaling with his arm to heave, heave, heave until up came Toby's feet, his legs, all of him slowly up into the lantern light, and in his arms, tight against his chest and neck, a bundle of wet rags and matted hair, blue lips, blood streaming off the poncho, her legs drenched and limp, her face so white that I did not see how she could be alive.

They laid Betty gently on a nest of coats in the flatbed of the constable's truck. She was conscious, but barely. When her teeth began to chatter, I was startled to find myself thinking again of a wild animal. Groundhogs chattered their teeth like that when the dogs had them cornered.

I pinched myself hard on the soft skin just under my chin.

As Betty's grandfather covered her with his coat, I noticed that she was wearing her poncho inside out, the dark lining on the outside, the yellow hidden. And I pictured her creeping through Cobb Hollow, into Toby's smokehouse, tucking the coil of wire under his bedding.

I pinched myself again and turned away.

It was impossible to know just how badly Betty was hurt, but we all knew that she needed to get to a hospital quickly. Where she had been impaled, her flesh was already green and swollen. And while she could wiggle her fingers, she couldn't seem to move her legs.

“She's been cold and still for a long time,” my father said. “It may be that she just needs warming.”

Betty's mother climbed into the front of the constable's truck while her grandparents and two men from the rope line took up spots in the back to hold Betty still.

When another of the men offered to take Mrs. Glengarry's place, she waved him off. “Thank you,” she said. “But no.”

If it was possible to hurry slowly, that's just what the constable did as he started the truck and ferried Betty off and away.

And that left the rest of us to stand in a pool of lantern light and stare at one another, catching our breath and trying to slow ourselves down.

“I'm Jed Hopkins,” one of the men said, holding his hand out until Toby took it. “That was really something, what you did.”

“It was,” said another man, offering his hand and his name, and then each of them, in turn, thanked Toby for what he'd done.

“We've all been spared a nightmare or two, Jordan, though I'm afraid you'll have them for us,” my father said. “I'm John McBride. And this is my daughter, Annabelle.”

“Pleased to meet you both,” Toby said. He was careful not to look straight at me.

We spent a few minutes coiling rope and covering the well with branches until it could be properly capped.

Then, “I guess we can go on home,” my father said.

“I guess,” I replied, looking around for Toby. I saw him standing near his smokehouse, his back to me.

“You all,” my father said to the others, “I'll give you a ride back to your trucks and you can go on home from there.”

“What about him?” I whispered, nodding toward Toby.

“Jordan?” my father said. “A stranger who asked us to lower him into a well to save a girl he'd never met? He's coming home with us.”

Toby rode in the back of the truck with the dogs and four other men, some from our hills, some from farther afield. At the church, they climbed out and headed for their own trucks. My father yelled our thanks out the window, and they waved and smiled and went back to their lives with a story that their children's children would tell well into another century.

From there to the farm, Toby rode alone in the back, at his insistence. When I turned and looked through the cab window, I could see him huddled with the dogs just on the other side of the glass, once again buttoned into my grandfather's old coat, still gloved, but surely bone-chilled by the dark wind and what he'd seen and done inside that well.

When we arrived at the farmhouse, Toby hesitated, but my father and I both stood in the lane and waited for him to join us while the dogs took off for the woodshed. “Come on in and have something to eat,” my father said. “Can't send you home hungry after what you just did.”

My brothers hurried to the door to greet us. They were freshly bathed, rosy and warm, their hair wet-dark around their faces, and I wanted to hug them to me and cry. But I didn't. If I had tried, they surely would have wrestled me to the floor and pronounced me a girl.

But I loved them in a way that didn't need proving.

My father took Toby's coat and hung it in the closet where it had, just that morning, belonged.

“Your gloves?” my father said, but Toby tucked his hands under his arms and said softly, looking at the floor, “Still pretty cold.” Which made sense. “I'll keep them on a bit longer, if you don't mind.”

“Hard to eat with your gloves on, but I do know something about cold hands,” my father said, smiling.

Everyone had gathered in the kitchen at the sound of us coming in. To all of them, my father said, “This is Jordan. Jordan, these are my parents, Daniel and Mary. My sister, Lily.”

Aunt Lily stepped forward and held out her hand, giving him a rare smile. “How do you do?” she said in a soft voice I didn't know she had.

Toby hesitated for a moment and then took off his glove and shook her hand. “Pleased to meet you,” he said, and put his glove back on.

“James and Henry,” my father said, nodding at the boys. “Jordan, what should they call you, Mr.—”

“Jordan is fine,” he said.

And the boys said, in tandem, “Did you find Betty?” and “Is she dead?”

“Oh, hush,” Aunt Lily said.

“And my wife, Sarah.”

Toby stood with my father and me, in the wide doorway between the mudroom and the kitchen, and actually bowed, as if he were a musketeer.

“Hello,” he said.

My mother had gone still at the sound of Toby's voice. Now, at this odd behavior, she wiped her hands on her apron and stepped forward. “Your name is Jordan?”

“It is,” he said.

She looked into his face, and I thought that she might know.

“Come. Sit,” she said, leading him to the table.

While my mother warmed up food left over from supper, my father told the story.

I helped a little.

Toby said nothing at all. Even when my father explained how they'd lowered him into the well, and Aunt Lily said, “That was very brave of you, Jordan,” again in that soft, almost-musical voice . . . and the boys launched a barrage of questions about what it was like and were there snakes and centipedes and did the well go all the way to China.

They stopped when my father got to the part about Betty.

No one said a word as he described the situation, but when he had finished, my grandmother excused herself quietly and went off to bed.

“I'll say my good nights now, too,” my grandfather said. He turned to Toby. “I hope you'll take a peck of apples when you go.”

“Thank you,” Toby said. “I will.”

My mother poured more coffee for him and my father.

“Can I have some, too?” I asked, but she ignored me.

“Is Betty going to be all right?” she said.

“I can't say. But the constable took her to the hospital, so I'm sure he'll have some news before long.”

“And what about that Toby,” Aunt Lily asked. “Have they found
him
yet?”

I glanced at Toby and away. Caught my mother's eyes on me.

“Not that I know of,” my father said. “But it seems clear that Betty went down to Toby's place to make mischief and simply fell into the old Cobb well.”

“Then where is he?” Aunt Lily said.

“That's enough about that,” my mother said, setting places for my father and Toby and me. “Let's just be glad that Betty's found.” She put a platter of beef and potatoes and carrots on the table. “Please,” she said to Toby. “Help yourself.”

When, as before, he hesitated, she took his plate and served him. “Now eat up while it's hot,” she said.

I held my breath, but Toby simply pulled the glove off his right hand and began to eat. I hoped no one else noticed when he returned his left hand, still gloved, to his lap, cutting his meat one-handed with the edge of his fork.

Aunt Lily got up from the table and said, “Well, if you'll all excuse me, I have work early in the morning.” She turned to Toby and smiled again. “It was so very nice to meet you, Jordan. I hope we'll see you again sometime.”

Toby rose partway out of his seat. “Likewise.”

“Oh,” she said, caught by an afterthought. “John, you didn't tell us how you came to discover that Betty was in the well. Was it the bloodhounds?”

My father pointed a fork at me and said, “It was
that
bloodhound. Our very own Sherlock Holmes figured it out.”

Aunt Lily was the only person I knew who could raise just one eyebrow, which had the effect of making her look both skeptical and wise. “And how did you do that, Annabelle?”

I shrugged. “I just spent the day thinking about what Andy said, that's all.” I looked straight at her. “And I knew Toby didn't do anything wrong, which made it easier to sort out what really happened.”

Aunt Lily pursed her lips and lifted her chin. “Your faith in that man is a mystery to me, Annabelle. He's hurt two little girls—Ruth and Betty both—and maybe others.”

“Time for bed, boys,” my father said, which triggered the usual protests and the equally customary reaction from Aunt Lily.

“Right now,” she barked, shepherding them from the table. They fled as she advanced. Like the rest of us, they knew that Aunt Lily wasn't afraid to bite.

Now it was just us four. My mother poured herself a cup of coffee and sat at the table, watching us eat.

“Where are you from, Jordan?” she asked Toby.

He glanced at me, then turned to her. “Maryland, originally. But I live in Hopewell now.”

“And you heard that Betty was missing?”

Toby nodded slowly. “Word about something like that travels fast.”

“And what do you do for a living?” my mother asked. I heard a growing thread of challenge in her voice, though I may have been sewing it there myself. Toby was so clearly Toby to me that I didn't see how the others could miss it.

“I'm a carpenter,” he said.

Like “Jordan” and “Maryland,” this had a ring of truth to it.

“Your wife must be worried about you by now,” my mother said, her elbows on the table, both hands around her coffee cup. She looked at him steadily through a drift of rising steam.

I knew she could not have seen his left hand—and therefore could not have seen a wedding band.

“You can call her if you like,” my father said.

“I'm not married,” Toby said softly. He looked so uncomfortable when he said it that my mother stopped her questioning, but she kept her eyes on him for another long moment.

“Save some room for dessert,” she said. “I made a hickory nut pie.”

When the telephone rang a moment later, we weren't as surprised as we might have been.

“That's the constable,” my father said. “He promised to call when there was news.”

He went into the sitting room, and we could hear him talking, though not what he said.

My mother sighed. “I hope she's all right. Nobody deserves what she got.”

“Not for what she did,” Toby said.

I looked up sharply.

My mother tipped her head and regarded him curiously. “And just what did she do?”

What she was asking, without asking, was clear:
How does a stranger from Hopewell know what Betty did or didn't do?

My father saved Toby from answering. “Well,” he said, sitting heavily at the table again and running a hand through his hair, “they've only just begun to discover all the things that might be wrong with Betty, but they know a few already. Her shoulder is all torn up from that pipe, and they're going to start treating her for tetanus and a pretty bad infection. Still warming her up. Giving her blood.”

My mother took a long breath. “No broken bones?”

My father shook his head. “Amazingly, no, but there's some gangrene in her right foot. Her leg was wedged up tight under that poncho. When she tried to move it, the poncho started to rip, so she stopped. But they think it will be okay. She may lose a toe. Too soon to tell.”

I felt sick. “So she's talking about it?”

“Yes. A little.” He looked away. “She's talking about Toby. She's saying he pushed her down that well.”

“But—”

“Just hold on, Annabelle. I'm just saying what
she
said. No point arguing with me about it.”

“But she's lying!”

“Let your father speak, Annabelle.”

“She's saying that Toby caught her snooping around Cobb Hollow yesterday morning before the rain got too bad. Grabbed her. Put her in the smokehouse.”

Toby had bowed his head, both hands in his lap. I stared at him, afraid of what he might be thinking. I could see places where I'd been careless with his hair. A small cowlick on his crown. An unevenness.

“She said he was angry that she had ratted on him. About throwing the rock that hit Ruth. About the taut-wire. And that after he packed up his things, he dragged her into the woods and pushed her down the well without a word. Just like that.”