Wolf Hollow: Chapters 5–8

If he knew that it was my penny, then he had seen Betty hit me. Perhaps he had heard her threats. But he had not intervened.

By now, Andy looked so baffled that I concluded no girl had ever spoken to him this way.

Then he stood looming over Benjamin, the small boy in the desk next to hers, until he gathered up his things with a sigh and shoved in next to someone else.

Andy sat down and stretched out his legs. His pant cuffs and boot laces bristled with sticktights.

The rest of the morning went pretty well, though Andy fell asleep at one point and punctuated the lessons with his snoring.

Andy’s was a sporadic education at best, however, and I soon learned that even Betty could not compete with an Indian summer day.

The ground was soft and fragrant, the birds talkative, and the sun somewhat hazy, as if it wore a silk stocking.

“Well, maybe you can,” Betty said. “Maybe you can start a quail farm.”
To which Henry said, “Naw, it’s a wild bird. It’s not a chicken.” But he said it softly, almost wistfully, and he never took his eyes off the sweet, brown darling in Betty’s lap.

The boys backed away slowly so as not to startle the bird and then scampered off down the hill, hissing nonsense at each other as they jockeyed for the lead.

Betty held the quail out by its neck, its plump little body swinging as it fought the noose she’d made with her fingers, its talons curling and stretching, its stubby wings frantically beating the air.

One minute, I was lying on the path, struggling to regain my wits, and the next he was between us, his back to me, snarling like a farm dog.

I left her there, musing in that patch of poison, and prayed that she would wake tomorrow with scarlet boils and hard scabs.

The translucent seedpods that had grown from its orange blossoms had long since burst, scattering their cargo, but enough of the leaves remained.

“Mr. Glengarry went to Ohio to help his sister move house, and Mrs. Glengarry has sciatica. She isn’t about to go traipsing around the woods when we have plenty right here.”

And I learned about a thing called onomatopoeia, which I could not yet spell but practiced under my breath throughout the afternoon.

Betty’s face and hands still looked tender, a little scalded, but so much improved that I could hardly believe she’d been so recently poisoned.

Betty’s face and hands still looked tender, a little scalded, but so much improved that I could hardly believe she’d been so recently poisoned.

But if all I could have was a little respite from her attention, I would take it, and gladly.

His horses stamped a little, eager to get going, but I leaned my forehead for a moment against the nearest haunch and patted it with my open hands.

I knew when Ruth came out of her stupor and began to scream.

His horses, already upset, lurched into a trot.

I was waiting on the schoolhouse steps when my parents trundled down the road in our old truck and pulled up alongside the gully by the schoolhouse.

Breakfast was a quiet meal. Even my brothers were subdued. I didn’t give a thought to anything but Ruth and what school would be like without her that day.

At which Aunt Lily said, somewhat peevishly, “Well, if that’s the root of it I suppose I misjudged the bloom.”

But my father drank his coffee slowly, his face grim, somewhere else.

But the boys, too, surprised me, waiting until we reached the fields on the downslope above Wolf Hollow before breaking away at a run to spook a grouse at the edge of the woods and then disappearing down the path into the trees without me.

When the path turned and I saw Betty sitting on a stump ahead, I was filled with regret that the reprieve I’d had was over and I was again to be her target.

I suppose I should have been both afraid and angry, but Ruth had lost her eye the day before, and what I felt now, looking at Betty’s empty face, was more like indifference.

I noticed a long red thread of fresh scab across Betty’s cheek, as if she’d been in brambles, and her socks were stuck all over with sticktights.

Andy didn’t come to school that morning, so Benjamin reclaimed his customary seat; no one sat with me as Ruth usually did, and we all passed the morning quietly.

Andy didn’t come to school that morning, so Benjamin reclaimed his customary seat; no one sat with me as Ruth usually did, and we all passed the morning quietly.

I took him by the hand and he let me, still blubbering.

At one point, as we crossed the fallow field on the brow of the hill, he turned and then stopped short.

How Andy and Betty had become friends so quickly and how furtive they had been for days now.

I ran out of things to say and realized, to my dismay, that none of it sounded nearly as bad as it had felt at the time, though the memory of that quail’s neck breaking would stay with me for the rest of my days.