Wonderland Creek (27 page)

M
y family still hasn’t come?” I asked Lillie when I reached the library. I found her sitting at the kitchen table, peeling potatoes.

“No sign of them today, honey.”

I paced in front of the sink, feeling desperate. “I need to get to a telephone. Do you know where I can find one?”

“Now, what do you need a telephone for?”

“I need to call home and find out if my parents have heard from my aunt and uncle. They were supposed to return for me a week ago. I’m worried sick about them.”

“Worrying don’t do no good. You just get yourself all worked up for nothing.”

I continued to pace and to worry, watching Lillie remove a potato peel in one long, thin spiral. “What about the post office?” I asked. “Do they have a telephone up at the post office?”

“Why would they be needing a telephone to deliver the mail?”

“I just thought . . . since it was a government office . . .”

“You could always send your folks a letter.”

“Letters take too long. I’m very worried, Lillie. My parents must be worried, too.”

“Now, why would they be worried? They know where you are, don’t they?” She laid down the knife and pushed the little pile of potatoes across the table toward me. “Chop these up for me, would you, honey? We’re gonna make us some soup for dinner.”

“In a minute. I’m trying to think . . .” I paced some more. “How do I get to the sheriff’s office? He must have a telephone.”

“Maybe he does and maybe he doesn’t. I ain’t never had a reason to go there and find out.”

“Is it far? Could I ride there on Belle?”

“Sit down, honey. You’re gonna wear out my floorboards.”

“I can’t sit. I need to find a telephone!”

“No, you need to sit down.”

There was something about the way she said it that made the hair on my arms stand up. I’d had the same sensation once before when I accidentally touched a live wire on a frayed plug. “Why do I need to sit?”

“Something I got to tell you, honey.” I pulled out a chair and sat, afraid to breathe. “Those relations of yours that you been waiting for? They come by when you was out delivering books last week.”

“Last
week
? But you promised you would make them wait! You swore to me!”

“No, by the time I swore to you, they’d already come and gone. Seems they arrived a day earlier than you was expecting. The day June Ann had her baby, in fact. No, by the time I made all them promises to you, honey, they’d already been here and gone again.”

“But . . . but . . . where did they go?”

“Home. They decided to go on home when they heard you was busy helping out here.”

I leaped to my feet.
“What?”

“I told them all about the tragic accident that our librarian had, and how you was kind enough to step forward and take his place. I told them the library needs you—which is the gospel truth, honey. The gospel truth.”

“But . . . I know my uncle. He would have waited until I came back. He would have talked to me and made certain—”

“I explained to him that I’m one hundred years old, and that I’m all alone here with no one to help me and no one to take care of all these books except you. I told him that you’ve been making new friends, and that these friends are counting on you, too. It’s the truth, honey, ain’t it? So, once your kinfolk saw how much we needed you, they agreed that it was very sweet and kind of you to stay a little longer.”

I sank onto the chair again and lowered my face in my hands. “No . . . no . . .” My moans sounded like June Ann’s when she’d been in labor. Lillie got up and came around the table to pat my shoulder.

“Your aunt asked if you’d met any nice young men, so I told her that a fiddle-player named Ike Arnett was sweet on you. She’s the one who decided they should go on home without you. She told your uncle, ‘Let poor Alice have an adventure for once. She doesn’t have a job or a beau back home.’ I promised that city uncle of yours that we would make sure you got home safe and sound, just as soon as we got somebody else to help out.”

I couldn’t stop my tears. “You kidnapped me! You’re forcing me to stay here when you knew I wanted to go home!”

Lillie stopped patting and put her arm around my shoulders. “We won’t make you stay if you don’t want to. But the truth is, we do need your help, honey. Mack and me, we need your help real bad. I can’t cook and clean and take care of this library all by myself. And who’s gonna keep feeding Mack?”

“How long are you going to hold me captive?”

“Just till things get straightened out.”

Did I want to know what things needed straightening? Or how long that might take? I wiped my tears, angry for losing control, and looked Lillie in the eye. “I know I’m not supposed to ask nosy questions, but since I’ve ended up in the middle of these ‘things,’ I think I deserve to know what’s going on.”

“Mack’s got himself in a lot of trouble, honey. He came back here to try and fix things and ended up making them a whole lot worse. He meant well, but some folks don’t see it that way.”

“Has he broken any laws? Because if he’s in trouble with the law, he needs to know that I have no intention of going to jail with him. I refuse to become another Bonnie and Clyde.”

“Who are they, honey?”

“Never mind. But tell me the truth. Is Mack breaking the law?”

“Not that I know of.”

I huffed in frustration. “Why should I believe a word you say? You lied to this entire town when you told them Mack was dead.”

“That had to be done, honey. Otherwise, he really would be dead by now. Listen, I can see that you’re peeved with me again, and I’m real sorry about it.”

“Oh, I’m more than peeved. I’m furious! Did you ever think to ask me if I wanted to stay and help you?”

“Of course not. I knew you was itching to go home. You woulda told me no.”

She was right, of course. But that was beside the point. I knew I’d never get a straight answer out of Lillie. I needed to talk to Mack. But where was he?

“Where did Mack go?” I asked. “I stopped by his cabin today and he wasn’t there. There was no sign of him.”

“I’m sure he’s there. Dead men don’t leave any signs—and Mack is supposed to be a dead man, remember?”

“So he was hiding somewhere? He deliberately avoided me?”

“If you was as riled up as you are right now, I don’t blame him for hiding. Do you?”

I slammed out of the back door and walked down to the creek to think. What options did I have? I could write a letter to my parents, begging them to come and rescue me or send me train fare, but that would take time—and the postmaster was Lillie’s friend. Who knew if he would even send my letter to them? I could walk to the sheriff’s office—if someone would tell me where it was and how to get there. But could I trust the sheriff? Lillie had called him a snake and I hadn’t liked him, either. I would have confided in Maggie Coots, a flatlander like myself, except that Lillie had warned me to be careful of Maggie. Then again, Lillie certainly couldn’t be trusted. I didn’t know whom to trust or what to do.

Eventually, when my temper had a chance to cool, I went inside and helped Lillie finish making supper. I was hungry, and if I didn’t watch her carefully, I might be eating squirrels again.

“How much longer might you and Mack need my help?” I asked as we finished making the soup together.

“You have to ask Mack that question, not me.”

I rode Belle up to the cabin after supper to do just that. Mack wasn’t there, so I tied the horse to the railing, sat down on the porch, and waited. I had a lot of time to think of all the questions I wanted to ask Mack before he finally slithered out of the woods wearing a sheepish grin. “Are you looking for me?”

“Good guess. You’re pretty smart, aren’t you?”

“So I’ve been told.” He gave Belle a good petting, murmuring affectionate nonsense to her, then sat down on the step beside me, looking as innocent as June Ann’s baby.

“Did you know about this plan of Lillie’s to keep me trapped here? Did you know she was going to convince my aunt and uncle to go home?”

“To be perfectly honest . . . she might have mentioned it in that letter she wrote to me. She said she had a feeling they would come early, and she asked me to keep you here as long as possible.”

“I hate you!” And I did. But then he smiled, and I couldn’t help noticing the boyish dimple in his cheek again.

“Hey now. I’m sorry to hear that you hate me,” he said. “But you came down to Kentucky because you wanted to help out, right? And you’re doing that. You’re helping in more ways than you can ever imagine. Besides, who else could I get to run the library while I’m up here playing dead? You’re a very good librarian, you know.”

“But you didn’t give me a choice! You never asked me if I would like to ride a book route or if I wanted to stay here and work. You and Lillie have schemed and connived to keep me here like . . . like a captive.”

“I suppose you could look at it that way . . . but remember those pirates in
Treasure Island
? They took that young boy on an adventure against his will and look how good that story turned out.”

“That’s a novel. This is real life—” I stopped, shocked by my own confession. It was what Gordon had said to me. Countless times.

Mack picked up a stick and idly drew patterns in the dirt in front of us. “Would you have stayed to help or taken on a library route if we had asked you nicely?”

“Absolutely not.”

“See? That’s why we didn’t ask. That’s why we ‘connived,’ as you so eloquently put it. We needed your help and there was no other way to get it.”

“I could have you both arrested for kidnapping, you know.”

“Of course you could. But tell me, if you had gone home with your relatives last week, what would you be doing right now that’s so important?”

The answer was
nothing
. I had nothing important to do back home. Which was why I had reluctantly decided during supper tonight that I might as well resign myself to staying here and helping out. I pulled the stick out of Mack’s hand and tossed it aside.

“I want you to put your hand on a Bible, Mr. Leslie MacDougal, and swear to me that you aren’t doing anything that’s against the law—besides faking your own death, which I’m quite sure is a felony in most states.”

“No jury in the world would convict me once they found out why I did it.”

“Why did you do it?”

“I told you. So the shooter wouldn’t come back and try again. That’s why Lillie’s been telling lies, too—to save my life.”

“I might start taking potshots at you myself if you don’t tell me the truth. Are you breaking any other laws?”

“No. And I’ll swear to it on a Bible or my mama’s grave or anyplace else you want me to swear.” He was trying very hard to keep a straight face and not smile, or worse, laugh out loud. I wanted to kick him in the shins. “Once you get to know me, Alice, you’ll see that I eschew getting into trouble with the law.”

I stared at him in shock. “
What
did you say?”

“I said that I eschew getting into trouble with the law. Eschew means—”

“I know what it means!”

“Then why are you getting all riled up?”

“Because . . .” How could I explain to him that the word
eschew
had been one of the reasons my boyfriend had broken up with me? How could this annoying backwoods librarian casually use the same word in a perfectly innocent sentence? What were the chances of that happening? Did Mack read the same literary journals that I did?

“Never mind,” I mumbled. “I’m just surprised that you know what
eschew
means, that’s all.”

Mack placed his hand over his heart as if I had hurt his feelings. “You cut me to the quick, Miss Ripley. I am a college graduate, you know.”

I closed my eyes and waved my hands, wanting to erase this pointless conversation. “Forget all this
eschewing
. Just tell me who you think tried to kill you. Lillie said there might be more than one suspect.”

“She’s right, there might be.” He stroked his smooth-shaven chin for a moment the way he used to stroke his beard. “Okay, I’ll tell you this much. When I came back here after college and after working up north for a few years, people I’d known all my life didn’t quite trust me anymore. Some of them—Cora’s brother Clint, for instance—have a habit of making moonshine up in these mountains.
There’s a lot of stills up in them there hills
,” he said, mocking a mountain accent. “Some of those moonshiners began to think that I worked for the government. They saw me snooping around, and they may have intercepted a letter or two of mine at the post office, addressed to an official in Washington, and they decided that I was a revenue agent. A
revenuer
, as they like to call them.”

“Are you a government revenue agent?”

“Of course not. But my enemies want the moonshiners to think that I am so they’ll take a few potshots at me and try to run me off.”

“So you think Clint or one of the other moonshiners might have tried to kill you?”

“It’s a possibility. Which is why I can’t let Cora or the other girls know I’m alive.”

“Why are you really snooping around and sending letters to Washington?”

“Sorry. The less you know, the safer you’ll be for now. But I promise I’ll tell you just as soon as I can.”

“Who else might be trying to kill you besides the moonshiners?”

“Remember how I told you about all the union troubles over in Harlan County? Some of us tried to pressure the coal company here in Acorn for better working conditions, too. Then when the mine shut down and all the men lost their jobs, a lot of the miners blamed me. They didn’t believe that the whole nation’s economy is in trouble, not just Kentucky’s. They don’t get newspapers here very often.”

“They would kill you over a misunderstanding?”

“It’s like this: Before I came to town they had jobs. After I came, they were all out of work.”

“But . . . but weren’t you the one who created the packhorse librarian jobs? Lillie says those four women support nearly every family in town.”

“That’s true. But for those who are suspicious of me, getting government jobs for the ladies makes me look like I have clout with the government. So maybe I
am
a revenuer, after all.”