Ruby Holler

  “I was asleep until you woke me up,” Tiller said.

  “But you’re awake now?”

  “Do I have a choice in this matter?”

  “Of course you have a choice,” Sairy said. “I’m not going to force you to stay awake.”

  Tiller yawned. “Did you want something?”

  “Remember when Dallas and Florida first came here and you asked them how old they were and when their birthday was? You remember that?”

  “Yep.”

  “You remember when their birthday is?”

  “The twenty-ninth day of July,” Tiller said. “That’s why you woke me up?”

  Sairy whispered, “You remember Mr. Trepid said he’d take care of Dallas’s passport application and getting his birth certificate and all that?”

  “I remember. I haven’t completely lost my brains.”

  Sairy tapped his forehead. “I know that. I was looking at that passport today. The thing is, their birthday isn’t the twenty-ninth of July. It’s the third of March.”

  “Kind of a big difference,” Tiller said. “March to July—”

  “Why do you think they don’t know when their real birthday is?” Sairy said.

  “Sairy, at this hour of the night, I don’t think much of anything. My brains are shut down. The motor’s off. The engine’s—”

  “Okay, okay, okay. I get the picture,” Sairy said, blowing out their candle.

  Tiller was snoring within minutes, but Sairy lay there, listening to the night sounds.

  In the loft, Dallas closed his eyes. Immediately, a long-ago trio appeared, as if they were sneaking out from behind a curtain and taking their turn on stage. Floating across his mind’s stage were Mr. and Mrs. Cranbep and their daughter, Gigi, with her curly yellow hair.

  Dallas and Florida were seven when they went to live with the Cranbeps. “You’re so lucky,” Mrs. Cranbep had told them. “To be with us now and to have a new sister like Gigi.”

  At night, Gigi would come into Dallas and Florida’s room and spit on them. One night, after Gigi spit on him, Dallas punched her in the stomach.

  “You stupid brute,” Mrs. Cranbep said to him. “Beating on a little girl! If you ever touch her again, you’ll be out of here so fast your head will spin.”

  The next night, Gigi came into their room and skipped over to Florida’s bed. “Your hair is stupid,” she told Florida as she tugged it.

  “Quit it, you little cockroach,” Florida said. “That hurts.”

  Gigi pulled so hard that pieces of Florida’s hair came away in her hands. Later that night, Florida snuck into Gigi’s room and gathered up all of Gigi’s dolls.

  “Wake up, Dallas,” she said. “You and me have got some hair-pulling to do.”

  When the Cranbeps returned Florida and Dallas to the Boxton Creek Home, Mrs. Cranbep emptied a bag of bald dolls onto the Trepids’ desk. “These twins are demented,” Mrs. Cranbep said.

  “Dallas?” Florida whispered. “You think we should go now? You think they’re asleep?”

  “Shh,” Dallas said. He sat up and reached for his boots. “I guess they’re asleep by now. I guess they won’t hear us.” But he stayed where he was, as if he were stuck to the bed.

  Florida sat on the bed opposite, facing him. “I wonder what they’ll think when they see that we’ve hit the grit.”

  “Shh—don’t talk like that. They probably won’t think anything.”

  Florida smoothed the quilt on the bed, licked her finger, and rubbed at a spot on the quilt. “You don’t think they’ll have giganza heart attacks or something, do you? You don’t think the shock will scare them to death, do you?”

  “Aww, shoot,” Dallas said. “What’d you go and say that for? That idea wasn’t even in my head till you said it.”

  “Forget it,” Florida said. “They’ll probably be relieved. They’ll probably be glad they don’t have to cook for us anymore. They’ll be glad they don’t have to cart us along with them on their trips. They’ll probably have a celebration. They’ll probably—”

  “Enough already,” Dallas said. “If we’re going, we better get moving.”

  “What? Now?”

  “Now.”

  CHAPTER 24

  TILLER AND SAIRY

  Tiller’s eyes were tightly closed, but he wasn’t yet asleep. He was willing himself to dream about his trip to the Rutabago River. He could do that sometimes, make himself dream about a certain thing. Usually he tried to do it when he had a problem, in hopes that the dream would help him sort it out.

  The first time he’d done it was when their second child, Lucy, was a toddler. Lucy went through a terrible sick spell, listless and pale for weeks on end. The doctor ran tests, so many tests, so many punctures in the little girl’s arms, so many tubes hooked here and there. When the tests were finished, Tiller and Sairy took Lucy home to await the results. As they were leaving the hospital, Tiller said, “But she won’t eat anything except Popsicles, orange Popsicles. What should we feed her?”

  “Let her eat Popsicles,” the doctor said. “No harm in that.”

  That night, Tiller made himself dream about Lucy so he could figure out what was wrong with her. In his dream, Lucy was lying on a cot, holding a dripping orange Popsicle. The orange drips turned to red, like blood, and made terrible sizzling noises when they touched her skin. “Ow, Daddy, the Popsicle hurts,” Lucy told Tiller in his dream.

  When Tiller awoke the next morning, he threw away all the orange Popsicles. Then he filled a pot with well water, and began tossing in the ingredients for getting-better soup, making up the recipe as he went along. Tiller told Lucy that all the Popsicles had disappeared in the night, but in their place, an angel had brought Lucy Soup, only for Lucy, not for Buddy or Tiller or Sairy. Lucy took a tentative sip. Then another. And another. When she finished the first bowl, she asked for a second helping. By evening, she was chasing Buddy out on the porch. By the next morning, she was racing to the creek, her cheeks pink, her little arms flapping beside her like wings.

  When Tiller returned, alone, to the doctor’s office the following week, the doctor apologized. “The tests were inconclusive,” he said. “We’ll need to do more tests.”

  “No we won’t,” Tiller said. “It was Popsicles. Orange Popsicles. She must be allergic to them.”

  The doctor was scornful. “I don’t think—”

  “Trust me,” Tiller said. “Orange Popsicles.”

  Now, as he lay in bed in the cabin, thinking about his trip to the mighty Rutabago River, he again asked his mind to dream. This time he hoped the dream would tell him whether he should take the trip or not. He was feeling anxious about leaving Sairy, and nervous about being responsible for Florida. Would he have enough patience?

  Beside him, Sairy was also still awake, and she, too, was fretting over her upcoming trip. For so long she had dreamed of taking a trip by herself, without Tiller. She had been with him nearly all of her life, and she wanted to see if she were different when she was alone. Would she think different things? Do different things? Who was she, all by herself?

  She drifted off to sleep, but when Tiller’s snoring woke her, she got up and went into the living room and opened the trunk in the corner. In it were bits and pieces of her past: on top were their grown children’s wedding photos and, beneath those, drawings from when the children were young, and farther down she found a photo of herself when she was nineteen, standing in front of a café, in New York City.

  Sairy peered at her younger self, with her long dark hair and her smooth skin. She had gone to New York to attend college, so excited, so eager for all the sounds and smells of that busy city. She’d been there two weeks when Tiller appeared at her door.

  “I decided to come, too,” he said. “I missed you.”

  “You can’t,” she told him. “Go home.”

  “Home?” he said. “I want to be here with you. I’m going to get a job and—”

  “Not here you aren’t,” Sairy said. “Go home.?
??

  She closed the door on him and stood there, angry at first, and then mortified at what she had done. He had looked so stunned, standing there.

  A week later, a postcard came from Ruby Holler. On it, Tiller had written, “The maples are blazing rubies.”

  The next week, another postcard: “The maples have turned to gold, and willow leaves float along the creek.”

  On Tiller went like that, sending a postcard every week for the next six months, each with a note about what was happening in Ruby Holler: how the first snow sifted down, how an ice storm left millions of diamonds dazzling in the trees, hundreds of little sentences about the place she had left, and nothing about himself.

  By spring, Sairy had grown increasingly agitated by the loud noises of the city, with the screeching trucks and blaring horns and pounding jackhammers. The smells of the city, which had at first delighted her, began to assault her: sausages and doughnuts, tar and urine, gasoline and sewage. When she received Tiller’s postcard about the first purple crocuses springing up beside the creek and new leaves dangling like emeralds, she packed her bags and moved back to Ruby Holler.

  And there in the trunk in the cabin, beneath the picture of Sairy in New York City, was a photo of Tiller and Sairy on their wedding day. She looked closely at Tiller’s smooth skin, that tall, straight back, that engaging grin. She stared at her younger self. Who are you inside there? she asked Sairy-in-the-photo.

  Sairy closed the trunk. Maybe these trips they were planning were foolish. She crossed the room to the loft ladder, listening. Aside from Tiller’s occasional snores, it was awfully quiet in the cabin tonight.

  CHAPTER 25

  THE HOLLER AT NIGHT

  Ruby Holler at night can be an eerie, dark place, full of shadows and silence, but both the shadows and the silence are deceptive. Out of the shadows dash creatures of all shapes and sizes: swift, diving bats and scurrying raccoons, fluttery moths and cunning bobcats. From the deepest silence erupt groans and howls, snorts and squawks, creaks and croaks. Paths, which in daylight seem clearly trodden ways, twist and turn in the night, looping back on themselves and vanishing into dense thickets. Out of nowhere, boulders loom, and fallen trees barricade the way. Roots and holes and swampy earth snare unsuspecting feet.

  Into this dark, dense maze stumbled Florida and Dallas. Barely ten minutes from the cabin, they were tangled in a thicket.

  “What’s this stupid bush doing here?” Florida grumbled. “It wasn’t here before. What’d you go this way for?”

  “Must’ve gotten turned around,” Dallas said. “Sure is dark out here.”

  “I’ve hardly ever seen anything so dark,” Florida said.

  “What about that cellar at that scary toothless lunatic’s house?” Dallas asked.

  “That trapdoor cellar? With the lizards and the rats? Mighty dark. Mighty, mighty, mighty dark.” Florida thrashed and kicked and tugged her way out of the thicket. She hated thinking about the scary toothless lunatic’s house, but once it was in her mind, it raced around in there, bashing up against every little bulging gray cell.

  When the scary toothless man, Mr. Dreep, and his thin, fidgety wife first came to the Home, Dallas and Florida had instantly feared the man and tried their best to dissuade the couple from any interest in them.

  “We’re loud and messy,” Florida said.

  “And clumsy klutzes,” Dallas offered.

  Mr. Dreep stared at them while his wife’s fingers twirled nervously in her lap. Mr. Trepid sat to one side clucking his tongue.

  “They’re no louder or messier than any other kids,” Mr. Trepid said. “And they’re very strong for their age.”

  Mr. Dreep nodded. “Aye,” he said.

  “We’re stupid,” Florida said. “I can’t even read.”

  “Of course she can read,” Mr. Trepid said.

  “Can’t,” Florida said. “Try me. Give me any old thing, and I’ll bet you I can’t read it.”

  “It’s true,” Dallas said. “She can’t read. And me, heck, I can’t remember hardly anything from one minute to the next. You tell me to do something, and shoot, I’ll forget what you said before you finish saying it.”

  But Dallas and Florida had been forced to go along with Mr. and Mrs. Dreep, and all the way to the Dreeps’ home, no one spoke in the car, and no one spoke until they’ d pulled up in front of a falling-down house with broken windows and a sagging porch and holes in the roof.

  “I’m not staying here,” Florida said.

  Mr. Dreep opened the back door and pulled Florida out. “Yes, you are,” he said. He turned to Mrs. Dreep, whose fingers were playing a little melody on her neck. “Okay,” Mr. Dreep said to his wife. “You wanted kids. You got kids.”

  They’d been inside only a few minutes when Mr. Dreep said, “Got a well that needs digging. That’s your job, tomorrow.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Florida said. “People don’t dig wells. Machines do.”

  “We don’t have any machines,” Mr. Dreep said. “We got you two.”

  “Sorry, sir,” Dallas said, “but we are not able to dig you a well.”

  “Are you sassing me?” Mr. Dreep said. “Here’s the first rule in this house: no sassing. Got that?” Mr. Dreep lifted a trapdoor to the cellar and said, “Go on, have a look. There’s some neat stuff down there.”

  Dallas started down the ladder, with Florida after him. The door closed over them, and a lock clicked. It was pitch black, so dark that Dallas and Florida couldn’t see each other although they were barely a foot apart. Something skittered across Dallas’s foot.

  It was terrible in the cellar, all night long, all the cold, damp night long with the rats and lizards and bugs and wretched smells.

  Now, lost in the holler, Florida said to Dallas, “You don’t think there’s any rats out here, do you?”

  Dallas peered into the black gloom. “What’d you go and say that for? Quit talking about rats.”

  “I just don’t want any whiskery disgusting thing gnawing at my legs, is all,” Florida said.

  “Quit talking about it. I’m not listening. Whoa! What was that? You see that?”

  Florida covered her head with her hands. “Some flying rat sort of thing.”

  On they went through the holler, stumbling, tripping, falling, scrambling. Through soggy patches, over rocks and across a stream, sliding down banks and whacking through brush.

  “We don’t have any dang idea where we are, do we?” Florida demanded. “We might be in the lost wilderness—in the lost, lost, lost wilderness where nobody’s ever been and nobody’s going to get out alive.”

  “I don’t get it,” Dallas said. “It’s like somebody came out here and moved everything around, just to mess us up.”

  “You got any idea whatsoever where that train passes by?” Florida said.

  “I got an idea—”

  “But is it a right idea?”

  “I don’t exactly know if it’s a right idea,” Dallas said, “but it’s an idea.”

  “Well, I think we ought to stop,” Florida said. “We might be going in circles. We might be going to the lostest place ever. We might—”

  “Okay. We’ll stop. We’ll camp here. We’ve got sleeping bags, right? We’ll just sleep a couple hours,” Dallas said.

  “Then when it’s starting to get light—just a wee little bit—we’ll know where we are,” Florida said.

  They spread their sleeping bags on the ground and hurried inside them.

  “Dallas? We’re going to miss the train, right?”

  “You got rocks under your sleeping bag? I’ve got rocks under mine,” Dallas said. He stared up into the blackness overhead. “I guess we might miss that train tonight. But that’s okay. We’ll just get the one tomorrow night.”

  “I wish we could zip these things right over our heads,” Florida said. “I wish there wasn’t this hole at the top. Any old rat thing could crawl inside.”

  “Not listening.”

  An hour late
r, Dallas said, “Stupid rocks. I can’t sleep. You asleep, Florida?”

  “No. Things are crawling around my head.”

  “Let’s talk about something,” Dallas said. “Keep our minds off the rocks and crawly things. Tell me about that river journey. What did you and Tiller plan?”

  Florida sat up and pulled her sleeping bag tightly around her. “Well,” she said, “we were going to haul the boat down to where the creek turns into Hidden River—”

  “How were you going to do that?” Dallas asked.

  “Tiller knows some guy with a trailer.”

  “And then what? You put it in the river and off you go—paddling or rowing or what?”

  “Paddling.”

  “What? Paddling like crazy, day and night?”

  “Naw,” Florida said. “The current would mostly take us down the river, and then we got that little motor in case we get tired or in case we run into trouble somewhere.”

  “What kind of trouble?” Dallas asked.

  “I don’t know, that’s just what Tiller said. Maybe some big calm stretch or maybe if we both broke our arms or something.”

  Dallas had climbed out of his sleeping bag and was picking rocks out of the dirt and sailing them into the brush. “So on down the river you go, and then what? How do you know where you’re going?”

  “It’s a river. It just goes. Then it turns into other rivers: the Goochee River and then the Mackalack River, on and on, a bazillion little rivers and creeks. We got maps and all, to see where the little towns are and to find places to tie up and stuff like that. And then we hit the mighty Rutabago.”

  “I bet that’s a sight to see,” Dallas said.

  “Must be,” Florida said, “if Tiller wants to leave this holler so bad to go find it.” Florida scooted out of her sleeping bag and started helping Dallas clear rocks. She felt odd talking about the trip now that she wasn’t going on it. She wanted to stop talking about it.

  “What about that trip to Kangadoon?” she said. “Tell me about that.”

  “First, we were going to get a ride to the airport,” Dallas said, “and get on a plane—a real plane, you know?