Free The Writing on the Wall: A Novel by W. D. Wetherell Page B

mysteriously, as if that was for him to know and me to guess. I asked again and this time he mentioned Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
    “I think it’s time me and my boys went over and paid her a visit,” he said darkly. “Just a little visit by real Americans to show her what’s up, give her a good healthy scare.”
    Mrs. Steen must have worried he had gone too far—she wiggled her eyes back and forth as a warning and he changed the subject with a coarse laugh.
    “I nearly wet my pants laughing today, the sight I saw.”
    Alan knew his cue. “What sight was that, Father?”
    “Francine Toliver climbing over a fence. Why she must weigh three hundred pounds just counting her bottom.”
    It was the worst dinner I ever sat through and when his parents left Alan and I had our first real quarrel.
    “Someone saw you walking out with him,” he said. This was lying in bed with the lights out long after I thought he had fallen asleep.
    “With who?”
    “Your Mr. Sass.”
    “It’s a long way to the train station, Alan. He helps me carry my books just as you do once I get home.”
    “Like Mother says, he’s a bachelor. People will get the wrong impression. I don’t want you seeing him outside class.”
    “Is that your idea or your parents’?”
    He took so long to answer I thought he had fallen asleep again.
    “I have ideas, Beth. They may not come as quick as yours do, but they’re there just the same.”
    Autumn had been rainy and cold but the following week it turned warm again and the sun slanting through the leaves felt like a gift the sky was laying against your face. Indian Summer people said—it will not last long. On Tuesday I was sitting on a bench outside school, alone with my lunch as usual, when someone called down to me from a fourth-floor window.
    “Stay right there, we’re coming down for you!”
    It was Peter and Lawrence who between them had decided it was far too nice to have class indoors. We walked downhill past the match factory which was empty and derelict, then, after passing the abandoned clothespin factory and climbing a fence or two, came at last to the railroad tracks that ran along the river.
    It was breezy, the wind streaked the water, but if anything it felt even warmer than back at school. Lawrence tried catching the maple leaves as they fell but had a hard time, they swerved so at the last second. Peter tried and did much better. In a short time he had a bouquet which he handed me with a courtly flourish. He took my hand, then, acting a bit bashful, as if this were too bold of him, reached for Lawrence’s hand, too, so we walked three abreast on the bed of cinders that flanked the tracks.
    We stopped where the trees opened into a meadow set high above the river’s surface. You could tell from the way the bank was worn that it was a favorite spot for picnickers and fishermen. Someone daring had shimmied up a tree and hung a hempen rope for a swing. It was a tall silver maple leaning from the bank, so the rope dangled a good way out. You could easily picture children playing on it in summer, reaching with a forked branch to tug the rope back to the bank, grabbing hold of it and laughing as they launched themselves over the water to land with a mighty splash. The end of the rope swing, the part that dangled over the river, was tied into two thick knots. Lawrence, pointing, said something strange.
    “It looks like a noose, like a hangman’s noose.”
    It cast a pall and he seemed to know it because right away, jumping up on a stump for a stage, he started in with his impressions of all the teachers. Peter tried not to laugh but in the end it was too much for him, especially his Miss Crabapple, and he applauded even louder than I did.
    When Lawrence finished, Peter tried persuading him to go down the river bank with him to search for pike sunning in the shallows, but Lawrence was timid when it came to things like that so Peter went by himself. It was a steep, perilous climb down and Lawrence