He went on eating the apple, and Thomas moved closer to the new boy, Jonezy, as if to secretly whisper to him. Jonezy was smaller than the rest, too frail to be working on a hill of garbage all day without food or water. He had been quiet and seemed to be afraid of the other boys, though no one had bothered him.
Thomas reached down into one of his own mismatched shoes, a shoe of brown leather found on the hill. He dug around the edge of the shoe, which was easy for him to do, because the shoe was several sizes too big and there was lots of room to get his fingers in along the sides. When his hand emerged there was an old silver coin between his fingers.
"Have you got anything good yet?" asked Thomas. The boy dug nervously into his bag and pulled out a twisted piece of metal, the spine of a
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book with no pages inside, and a ring with prongs bent wildly where some sort of stone used to be. He held the objects out for Thomas to see, and Thomas nodded as though he was impressed. The boy smiled and began putting the things back in the bag. It was then that Thomas did the kind of thing that made me very proud to be his brother, the kind of thing he did all his life. While Jonezy was turned away, Thomas flicked the coin into the dirt where the boy had been working and then he walked the three steps back to where I was picking at my own little place in the trash. I wasn't the only boy who saw the scene unfold, nor was I the only one who smiled when the new boy held up the treasure, unable to contain his excitement. "I've found a coin!"
It was the first time he'd made so much as a sound barely above a whisper, and we found that when he wanted to, he had quite a good set of lungs on him.
Finch looked up with a mouth full of gooey cheese and waved the boy over. He put out his grimy palm, and the boy handed over the coin. Finch rubbed the coin with his thumb and asked, "What's your name?"
"My name is Jonezy. I found that coin, just there in the dirt." Jonezy pointed to the place he'd been working.
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Finch took what was left of the apple in his hand and tossed it over Jonezy's head, where it skidded in the dirt, turning the beautiful white of the bites that remained brown and dirty. The dogs were both in a panic to get at the treat, but Finch held them back this time.
"There you are, Jonezy. Best pick it up quickly or I'll let the dogs at it."
Jonezy raced back to the apple, wiped it three or four times on his shirt, and chomped every part of it down in two big bites.
When Finch was finished with his lunch, he followed his mother's instructions and gave the jug to us. Then he sat down with the dogs and examined the coin. With afternoon approaching, there was still no sound from the bell. Madame Vickers was making us wait in order to heighten our anxiety. A shame for her, since it allowed us the time we needed to devise plans of our own, time that Thomas and I used to our advantage as we secretly plotted amongst ourselves.
As late afternoon turned to the dinner hour, we began the long walk up the hill with our burlap bags thrown over our shoulders. Finch took up the rear, using the dogs to herd us like cattle up the side of the mountain of garbage. The bell still had not rung, but upon seeing the lot of us making our way up to the House on the Hill for whatever food we could
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hope for, the shadowy figure of Madame Vickers appeared at the thrashing post with a mallet in her bony hand. She banged the bell that hung on the porch, the start of what felt like a funeral march of children up the gloomy hill. We were still a long way off when the bell had rung twenty times. No one had ever endured more than twenty lashes, and there was no telling how high the number would go.
"You picked the right time to get away from here," came a voice from one of the young girls ahead in the line. "I wish we could come with you."
Thomas surprised me then, for he made her an offer we hadn't discussed.
"If we find a better place than this -- a safer place -- we'll come back for you."
All of the dirty little faces in the line ahead of us turned and looked at Thomas. He'd given them hope, and this seemed to me like a reckless act. I turned away from the small faces before me, knowing the odds of our heroic return to rescue a group of boys and girls from a hopeless future were slim.
I looked up, and the bell kept ringing. Madame Vickers just stood there and banged it over and over again. Could she really mean to thrash us so many times?
As we approached the last turn on the path of
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smashed debris leading up to the House on the Hill, Thomas set our plan in motion. He was at the very back of the line with only Finch and the dogs trailing a ways behind. Finch was absentmindedly kicking at the garbage at his feet when Thomas tapped me twice on the shoulder. I shuddered to think what would come next. I tapped the girl in front of me twice, and on it went up the line to the very front, until the very last boy - Jonezy -- was tapped, and he ran screaming off the path into a sea of trash before him.
"Get back here!" yelled Finch from somewhere behind us, suddenly aware that one of the children in his charge had bolted from the line. The bell finally stopped at thirty-eight (I had counted every one) as Madame Vickers watched the boy race off yelling and pointing.
"Sic the dogs on him!" shouted Madame Vickers from the porch. She was still far off, but the boom of her voice carried over us to Finch and he let loose Max and the Mooch. He followed after them, and the rest of the boys and girls pulled back in a group, providing just enough cover for me and Thomas to duck down low and crawl back down the hill. We didn't go very far -- only back around the one corner - until we came to a place that had been there for a long time, a secret place hidden in the debris. Around the corner and in a crevice of junk
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sat the stump of a tree, its twisted roots exposed and shooting out like a blanket of thick snakes. We had long before dug out a big hole next to the stump, then moved the stump to cover the hole. It was our secret place, where we hid certain things we found but did not give to Madame Vickers.
"Grab hold!" said Thomas.
We each took a large root in our hands and heaved one side of the stump up in the air. I was first to go under, then Thomas pushed the trunk up as hard as he could and dove beneath it. The stump crashed down and caught one of my legs, but we were hidden beneath the roots of the tree where no one could see us.
Whether or not we were safe was a completely different matter.
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***
CHAPTER 6
My Shoe Goes Missing
Tiny shards of light made their way through the tangle of weeds and dead roots so I could see Thomas sitting quietly amongst the junk we'd collected over time. The hole we'd dug out under the stump was like a buried" treasure chest filled with the most useful artifacts we'd found in the mountain of garbage, things we'd been unwilling to hand over so that Madame Vickers could use them to trade in the town that had forgotten us. We stayed very still, watching the dust settle through the soft light, listening for the sound of Finch and the dogs.
I was lying on my back with my leg propped up over my head. I could see only as far as my knee. The lower half of my leg and my foot were wedged between the ground and the twisting knot of roots. There was a sharp rock poking into my shin, and it was beginning to send a sharp pain up my leg.
"Thomas," 1 whispered, "I don't hear anyone. Can you push the trunk up so I can free my leg?"
Thomas put his finger to his lips, cautioning me to remain silent. I heard only the distant sound of boys and girls hollering, so I scowled at my brother
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and tried to free my leg by wiggling it back and forth. This, I realized too late, was a mistake. Dirt clods and rocks poured down my pants, and a poof of dust filled the air, and still my leg remained tangled in the roots of the tree. I was no closer to freeing myself, and the sharp rock was wedged even more painfully into my leg than it had been. To make matters much worse, Thomas had always been prone to sneezing and coughing when the wind had kicked up too much dust on the hill, and I could see in the whites o
f his eyes and his shaking head that he was about to let loose with a tremendous assortment of sounds. First he coughed lightly, trying to hide the sound in his cupped hands, which only served to enlarge the volume into a soft echo through the hole under the stump. He began sniffing, then cleared his throat. Unfortunately, these sounds were the beginning of a much louder measure in the symphony of his reaction to the dirty air in the closed space. Next came the coughing, soft at first but growing louder, then an explosive sneeze. He finished by clearing his throat once more and spitting into the dirt. Then he looked at me.
"Please don't do that again," he whispered, running his arm across his nose and sniffing softly while I did my best to keep completely still.
"It seems to have worked," I offered, trying to make him feel better. The idea had been to send one
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of the boys running off the path until Finch and the dogs caught up. Thomas had provided a very handsome inkwell that could be cleaned up and sold along with a matching pen that was cracked down one side but otherwise perfectly usable. These were to be produced when Finch arrived, as though they had been spotted from far off and had to be snatched right away. The risk for the boy who chose the task was that of being attacked by Max and the Mooch, but Jonezy was the first to volunteer, which seemed actually to make the most sense. He was the only one among them that would reasonably be willing to run off the path in search of some object with Max and the Mooch right behind him. He didn't know the danger of his actions, for he hadn't had the experience of being chased by two large dogs.
"I didn't hear any screaming," I continued. "So the dogs probably didn't attack Jonezy. They just scared him, like they sometimes do."
It was true the dogs were sometimes more bark than bite, but I could see that Thomas was concerned for Jonezy, and we both felt a heavy guilt for having quite literally thrown him to the dogs on his very first day at Madame Vickers's House on the Hill. We hadn't imagined Finch would let the dogs attack the boy.
Our concern over Jonezy's well-being was soon
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overshadowed by the sound of voices nearing the stump.
"I tell you they've heard something." It was Finch, still a ways off but getting closer.
"Take the dogs and find them," came the shrill sound of Madame Vickers. "Don't hesitate to sic the dogs on them if they run. They must be found and punished!"
I could hear Max and the Mooch crying as if they were pulling hard, their collars tightening" around their thick necks as they leaned toward the stump. It was frightening to think of Finch removing the stump and letting the dogs at us there in the hole where we could not escape.
"Go find 'em! Go on now!" Finch had let the dogs off their leashes. They seemed to be darting every which way, but at least one of them was getting closer. I looked at Thomas and saw that he was having trouble holding back a cough or a sneeze, I wasn't sure which. He sniffed quietly, concentrating all of his energy on trying to suppress whatever noise was trying to escape from his throat.
"I'm all right! Wherever you've gone off to, I'm all right!" It was the unmistakable high voice of Jonezy, far away but clear. I glanced over and saw Thomas smiling in the small light, but he only smiled for a moment, for the sound of a dog came nearer. Max and the Mooch had separated, and now
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one of them was growling at the roots near my foot. My breathing shook with fear as I thought of my foot, hoping it wasn't right out in the open where the dog could take hold of it.
I was now sure it was the Mooch by the sound of his growling. It was widely agreed by all the boys and girls at Madame Vickers's house that if you had to be locked in a room with either Max or the Mooch it would be considerably worse if you were stuck with the Mooch. The Mooch was the more aggressive of the two -- the more likely to strike without thinking -- and he was also bigger.
The Mooch was growling and digging around my foot, and then to my horror he seemed to have gotten ahold of the sole of my old shoe. He was yanking hard, pulling back on his haunches in violent jerks.
"Mooooooooch?" Finch's voice cracked through the air like a long whip as he searched for the dog. The Mooch gave one last ferocious pull on the shoe, and it came off in his mouth. Something about the idea of having this murderous dog's teeth wrapped around my bare foot made me fight with everything I had in me to get my foot down inside the hole where it would safe. I felt the sharp rock scrape hard against bone and the gnarly roots grab at my bare skin as my leg came free.
"Mooch!" Finch cried again, this time with more
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anger in his voice, as though he were planning to kick the dog the moment he saw him. I clenched my teeth against the pain in my leg and listened as the Mooch tore off toward his master, my shoe wedged firmly in its mouth.
"You come when I call you and not a second later!" Finch was lecturing the dog as though it could understand him, and to my astonishment it sounded as though he and the Mooch were moving off in the other direction.
"And stop picking up junk! Fm not throwing any shoes for you to fetch until we find those boys."
We could hear the Mooch whimpering as they drifted down a different path toward the bottom of the hill. The dust settled in the hole and our eyes had grown used to the light. For the moment, we were safe.
"Better your shoe than one of your toes," said my brother. "He would have chewed that big one right off without thinking twice."
We both knew this was more fact than fiction, and maybe that was why we laughed so hard at the thought of the Mooch running around the hill with my big toe hanging out of his mouth. It wasn't even funny, when you really thought about it, but the nervous energy in our small space needed to get out, and boys will be boys when it comes to what we think is grounds for a good laugh.
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"How bad does that hurt?" asked Thomas, staring wildly at the gash running down my leg.
"Pretty bad," I offered, rolling down my pant leg to cover the wound so I could begin forgetting about it. "What do we have for shoes down here?"
We sat in the middle of the hole, but we had dug a sort of cave on one side that held our treasure of found objects. Within that treasure were extra shoes of a size that fit one or the other of us. Thomas picked up the best of the bunch.
"Try this one," he said. I did, and found that it was too small. Thomas looked sideways at it, removed his own left shoe, and replaced it with the one he'd offered me.
"How about this one?" He held up a black boot that couldn't have been a worse match to the brown shoe I was already wearing. But it fit perfectly and I wasn't in a position to be picky about color or style in the things I wore on my feet. We were apt to have a long night ahead of us, and good traveling shoes were essential. The black boot would do just fine.
When I looked back, Thomas had his hand back in the hole where all the things we'd kept were hidden. He pulled out a small wooden box of a size that would fit in his pocket, which I'd seen many times before. The box sat atop his most prized possession, a journal he'd stolen from the House on the
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Hill. It had created quite a stir when the new journal - at the time filled with only blank pages - had gone missing from Madame Vickers's study. But Thomas was never caught with it and only showed it to me after the news of its disappearance had died down. He cherished every page, taking great care to use every square inch of space. I often saw him counting the blank pages that remained, so that he would know how many more paintings he could do before the journal was full. Thomas was extraordinarily gifted at painting pictures, and he loved to paint them whenever he could sneak away. He could draw something as big as Madame Vickers's house in great detail within the space of a few inches, such was his desire to paint everything he could while using the least amount of space in the journal.
The little wooden box he held contained the things he needed to make the paintings. He was fond of cutting bits of soft hair from all the children's heads. He found small sticks that fit his hand the w
ay he liked, and made pasty white glue by mixing water with wheat flour and alum he stole from the kitchen. In this way he made crude brushes from the sticks, the glue, and the children's hair. His little wooden box also contained a dozen or more tiny pouches he'd made from old clothes and drawstrings found on the hill. One of the pouches
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was filled with hair, another contained a mix of dry flour and alum, and the rest were filled with colored powders of his own making. His color palette was surprisingly varied, for he had a way with mixing powdery red stone, dried wild flowers of every color, and burned black soot that gave him a rainbow of opportunity within the small cloth bags. He always mixed his powdery colors with his own saliva -- never water -- declaring that it made the images more personal, and he only used brushes made of hair from the children's heads, for he felt it infused his work with the powerful combination of sadness and vibrancy of those he loved.
For now Thomas tucked the small treasures safely away in his pockets, but we'd need more than a little wooden box and a journal to escape the House on the Hill.
"What else have we got in there that we can use?"
Thomas sniffed -- his nose was still running from the dust -- and he responded, "Well, there's no food, but there's some rope, two rusty knives, a flint and steel so we can make a fire when we want, three old candles...." He trailed off as he kept digging into the pile. I stayed quiet and rubbed my leg, wondering how in the world we were going to survive with such meager supplies.
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"There's a bag here we could throw over a shoulder, and I think it'll hold everything. And here's an old jug, but there's nothing in it." He popped the cork on the jug and turned it upside down. Nothing came out.