The Mystery of the Canebrake Read online

  “Mr. Bill, Mr. Bill, it’s Richard and John Clayton.”

  We listened and finally we heard a weak voice calling out, “Come on in.”

  We slipped through the cane down the little trail that Mr. Bill had cut until we reached his lean-to.

  “Gosh, Mr. Bill, you look terrible. How do you feel?” I said.

  Mr. Bill was huddled under all the quilts we’d taken to him, but he was still cold and could hardly talk. He was holding his chest and coughing something terrible.

  “Boys, I feel bad, really bad. I don’t know if I can make another night like last night. I coughed almost all night, and I’m nearly frozen to death.”

  Mr. Bill, you gotta come outta this dang swamp, get warm, and see a doctor.” I said.

  “Richard, I don’t know what to do. They’ll put me away for sure, and I’ll spend the rest of my life locked up in some institution.”

  “Yeah, Mr. Bill, you may be right, but that’s better than freezing to death,” said John Clayton.

  Then I thought of something.

  “Say, Mr. Bill, why don’t we stay here until it gets nearly dark, and then we can take you up to our barn, and you can stay in the hay loft. Shoot, there’s about 50 more of Grandmother’s quilts in there, and we can make you real warm with them.”

  Well, Mr. Bill wasn’t sure about staying in my barn, but since he was so cold and nothing else seemed to be available, he agreed. Me and John Clayton got a bunch of wood and made a big fire and Mr. Bill thawed out and felt a little better, but he was still coughing and holding his chest. It was about 5:30 and almost dark when we started back to the barn. In about 40 minutes we’d made it to the barnyard, slipped into the barn, and taken Mr. Bill up to the hayloft where we made him a bed of hay and covered him with a whole stack of Grandmother’s quilts.

  “Thanks, boys, this is so much better than freezing down there in Flat Creek Swamp.”

  “Mr. Bill, we still gotta do something ’bout your cough. It sounds so bad, and you’re holding your chest every time you cough,” I said.

  “Yeah, Richard, I’m worried about it. I can’t seem to get rid of it, and my chest hurts every time I cough.”

  “Well, Momma keeps some cough medicine in the medicine cabinet. I’ll bring you some after supper.”

  We left Mr. Bill huddled under a half dozen of Grandmother’s quilts, and I went in the house for supper. John Clayton left saying he’d be back tomorrow with some groceries for Mr. Bill.

  That night we had a sliced ham, biscuits, and home-canned green beans. I finished quickly, and, as I did most nights, I helped Momma clear the table. She was used to me helping so when I took a plate of biscuits and a big slice of ham out the back door she just thought I was gonna feed Sniffer the scraps.

  “Momma, I’m gonna feed Sniffer, and while I’m outside I’ll check the chicken house to be sure that bobcat hasn’t come back.”

  Momma nodded and I headed for the barn with a plate of food for Mr. Bill.

  “Mr. Bill, Mr. Bill,” I whispered, “I got you some supper.”

  Mr. Bill stuck his head out from under the quilts, took the plate from me, and thanked me.

  “I’m going back in the house and get some cough medicine out of the medicine chest. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “Thanks, Richard, I’ll be right here,” he said, hacking again.

  I left the barn shaking my head. Something had to be done about that cough, or Mr. Bill wasn’t gonna make it.

  I went in the closet were Momma keeps all the medicine and, sure enough, right on the top shelf was a big bottle of homemade cough medicine. I’d taken that stuff a bunch of times and it really works. Well, I’m not sure how good it is for a cough, but with all the whiskey Momma puts in it you really don’t notice the cough after you’ve had a few spoonfuls. I’ve seen Daddy take a drink out of the bottle when he didn’t even have a cough.

  “Gosh,” I mumbled, as I looked at the cabinet full of various medicines. “Momma never throws nothin’ away.” There were more old half-bottles of medicine, tablets, and capsules than you could believe.

  “Hummm,” I mumbled, “I wonder if any of this stuff could help Mr. Bill?” I started going through the entire batch of little pill bottles and half-full bottles of medicine, and then I came to a full container of capsules that Grandmother had gotten when she had visited us last year.

  “Hummm…For bladder infection. Take one after each meal until capsules are gone.” I remembered that Grandmother took a couple of those capsules and Momma said they made her sick at her stomach and she quit. Well, that was the only medicine in that whole medicine cabinet that was for an infection, and I figured that, heck, if it would work on one infection it might work on another one.

  I stuck the bottle in my pocket, picked up a fruit jar full of water, and went back to the barn. Mr. Bill had cleaned the plate of ham and biscuits, and he was just about asleep when I shined the flashlight on him.

  “Mr. Bill, Mr. Bill,” I whispered. “I’ve got you some medicine for your cough. Here, take four of these pills now and four in the morning, three times a day till their gone, and after you take the pills drink a big swig of this cough medicine.”

  “What? Oh, Richard. Are you sure this medicine is for a cough?”

  “Heck, yes, Mr. Bill, it cured my grandmother after just a couple of doses.”

  “Well, okay,” he said. He swallowed the pills, took a big swig of the cough medicine, and kinda grabbed his throat.

  “Wow, that cough medicine’s strong.”

  “Yeah, and it’ll make you sleep. I’ll see you in the morning after my paper route.”

  “Okay, Richard, I’m going to sleep. This is the first night in a long time that I haven’t gone to sleep cold.”

  I left Mr. Bill, who, had stopped coughing.

  The next morning I finished my paper route and carried Mr. Bill another plate of food. Later that morning, John Clayton came by with Mr. Bill’s groceries, and Mr. Bill ate some Vienna Sausages for dinner. He took four more capsules of Grandmother’s medicine and another swig of cough medicine, and went back to sleep.

  Monday night the wind changed and started blowing out of the south and by the time I delivered the papers that south wind had warmed things up.

  After school, I stopped by the barn to check on Mr. Bill, who was sitting up feeling a whole lot better. In fact his cough was almost gone. He’d taken almost all of Grandmother’s medicine, and had drunk the entire bottle of cough medicine.

  “Richard, I can’t hide out up here in this hayloft anymore.. When it gets ’bout dark, we need to get my things together and head back down to Flat Creek Swamp. If you don’t mind, I’ll take a few more of these quilts along. I have sure slept well under them, especially after that cough medicine.”

  “Yeah, Mr. Bill. When John Clayton comes over later with your groceries, we’ll slip out of the barn and go down to the Swamp.”

  Sure enough a little after 5, John Clayton yelled at me from the front yard.

  I ran out and whispered to him, “Let’s go to the barn. Mr. Bill’s feeling pretty good after all that cough medicine and Grandmother’s bladder infection medicine.”

  “You gave him bladder medicine for a cough?”

  “Heck, yes. I figured that medicine wouldn’t know the difference in killing germs in Mr. Bill’s chest or his bladder, and I thought that if three capsules a day was good, then 12 would be a bunch better. Shoot, he’s a bunch better, so I guess it worked.”

  John Clayton shook his head at my attempt at doctoring, and we walked down to the barn where Mr. Bill was waiting.

  “Come on, Mr. Bill, we’ll slip out the back of the barn and across the peach orchard to the Swamp.”

  “Here, Sniffer, here,” I hollered walking by our house. Sniffer slowly crawled out from under the house where he’d been curled up sleeping.

  “Dang, Richard, old Sniffer is really stove up. Maybe we should leave him here.”

  “Naw, he’s just old an
d stiff. It’ll do him good to move ’round a little bit.”

  Sniffer whined and limped along as we started for the Swamp. We left the barn in the dim light of a late winter afternoon, and soon we were at Mr. Bill lean-to.

  “Dang, Richard, I’m just glad you’ve got a flashlight. Walking around in the dark in this Swamp scares the devil outta me.”

  “Mr. Bill, we’ll be back on Saturday, and I’m gonna bring a couple of axes and a hatchet. We’re gonna build you a better lean-to. The next time it turns cold you can get in out of the weather a little better.”

  We left Mr. Bill with a roaring fire and a bunch more of Grandmother’s quilts wrapped around him, and walked back through the Swamp to my house.

  For the rest of the winter, we made several trips a week to visit Mr. Bill and deliver him groceries. It took us several Saturdays to help him build a better lean-to, but after cutting about 20 willow poles, which we stacked around and covered the top with cane, Mr. Bill had something that kinda looked like a cabin. But it still had a lot of cracks where the wind could blow through.

  After being in that cabin/lean-to when a cold north wind started blowing, we decided that we just had to stop up those cracks. The next Saturday it had warmed up and after hearing about the pioneers in history class how they used clay and mud to seal the cracks, we spent the entire day on the bank of Flat Creek scraping up red clay that we carried back and stuffed in the cracks of Mr. Bill’s cabin. It took all day, but when it was almost dark we stopped looked at the job. It just looked terrible, but it did keep the wind out, and after we carried an old beat-up tarpaulin down there and put it over the top of the cabin, it didn’t leak.

  Heck, Mr. Bill was really doing pretty good considering the mess he’d been in right after Christmas.

  The winter slowly passed, and when we got into February the days were longer and everybody was getting ready to plant their gardens. Me and John Clayton had a routine going with Mr. Bill. He’d give us the grocery money on Friday and the next Monday we’d bring him the groceries. I gave Mr. Bill some fishing line and he cut a cane pole from the canebrake, and as it got a little warmer, Mr. Bill started catching fish almost every day.

  The paper route was a whole lot better now that the weather was a little warmer. Doc had fussed at me so much about being late that if I was within 30 minutes of 5 he’d just grumble and not say nothing. Naturally, after a few weeks of that, I was hitting almost on 5:30 every morning. Doc finally had a yelling fit and I got back closer to five for a while.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Mystery Valentine

  February 14, 1945

  Gosh, I felt like me and John Clayton were working like a couple of dogs just to keep Mr. Bill from starving or freezing to death during that cold winter. Finally, we made it to early February and the weather started to break, warming up to almost 70 degrees for a day or two and then dropping into the ’40s after a cold front roared through. Mr. Bill had recovered from his bout of whatever coughing lung disease he had, and now, since he was catching fish in Flat Creek almost every day, that helped on the groceries.

  We were sitting on the breadbox one of those warmer afternoons when John Clayton started talking about Valentine’s Day, which was coming up soon.

  “Heck, Richard, since you broke up with Connie and Rosalie ain’t talkin’ to you, Valentine’s is gonna be real easy,” he teased.

  “Yeah, no use wastin’ money on those girls; they’d probably just rip up any valentine that came from me.”

  “Well, what ’bout, Nancy?”

  “Nancy?”

  “Yeah, you know, that blonde girl in the sixth grade that’s always makin’ moon eyes at you.”

  “Well, yeah, she’s really pretty. Do you think she likes me?”

  “Shoot, yes, Richard! She’s always making excuses for you to do something for her.”

  “Huh, well, you may be right. I’ll send her one of those homemade ones out of construction paper.”

  “Yeah, that’s ’bout what I figured, Richard cheap, cheap, cheap.”

  “Heck, John Clayton. Do you know how much a store-bought valentine costs?”

  “Yeah, a whole nickel.”

  “Well, I don’t think none of them three girls are worth buyin’ a valentine for.”

  However, as Valentine’s Day got closer and closer I begin to have second thoughts, and, heck, even though Connie and Rosalie were mad at me right now maybe a little valentine would help get them get back speaking to me. I still couldn’t get Rosalie off my mind, and almost every night I went to asleep thinking about her blue eyes. Nancy, well, she’s kinda pretty, if you like girls with real blonde hair.

  The Saturday before Valentine’s Day, I stopped by Woolworth’s before I went to the picture show and bought three very small valentines that I stuffed in my pocket where the guys at the picture show wouldn’t see them. When I got home, I pulled them out, tried to press out the wrinkles, and printed my name inside each one. I addressed one of them to Rosalie, one to Connie, and one to Nancy.

  The next Monday I put them in my stack of homemade valentines and dropped them in the box at school. Almost everybody sends valentines to their friends in class, and since there were 20 or so kids in class, everybody makes most of them outta construction paper and stick-on letters.

  If you send one to a boy, it’s always real stupid and has nothing to do with love or nothin’. My valentine to worthless Homer Ray had a picture that I drew of a fat, ugly boy. I wrote underneath, “Hey, stupid! If you can read this, you’re smarter than I think. Drop dead! You dummy!”

  Mrs. Smith always waited until the last period of class before she passed out the valentines, and she always had two of her favorite girls help her. Well, everything went about like last year with mostly construction paper valentines and the occasional store-bought ones, which were usually real small. I opened the first batch to me and, sure enough, that sorry Homer Ray’s was right on top. He had drawn a stick person in a hospital bed that he labeled “Richard,” and under it said, “This is where you is going to end up.”

  I looked over and stuck out my tongue at him, and he shook his fist at me as he wadded up my valentine to him.

  I glanced over at Connie, who had just opened my valentine to her. She just peeked to see who gave it to her, and then shoved it under a book. Hummm, looks like I wasted a nickel. In a few minutes I saw one of the girls hand Rosalie my valentine and she looked a little puzzled because she could tell, even though it was wrinkled, it was a store-bought one. On the front it had a boy with black hair and under him it said, “Please be my Valentine.” Inside I’d printed Richard Mason.

  Rosalie opened it and quickly looked inside. I thought I detected a small smile as she glanced my way, but when she saw me looking back at her she looked down and slipped the valentine under her tablet. Well, maybe there’s hope. At least she didn’t wad it up.

  I thumbed through my stack of valentines one more time.

  Huh, a store-bought one. It was a blonde girl on the front and the card said, “I think you’re great! Be my Valentine.” I opened it up and it was signed, Nancy. I smiled as I placed it in my history book. I continued to sort through the others, and as I did, I realized that I didn’t get one from either Rosalie or Connie—not even a construction paper one.

  Mrs. Smith reached in the box and pulled out the last batch, and the girls started to pass them out. I’d gotten one from about everybody but Rosalie and Connie so I figured I’d get one from them in this batch. I was leaning back looking at Ears’s valentine, which was signed with a drawn picture of two great big ears. Mrs. Smith broke into my thoughts as she said, “Oh, here’s one more. It was stuck in the bottom of the box.” She pulled out the last valentine and the class murmured. It was big and I mean really big—so big it almost didn’t go through the slot at the top of the box.

  The girl passing out the valentines took the card from Mrs. Smith, slowly walked over to my desk, and dropped it right in front of me. My name was on
the front spelled out in cutout letters.

  “What?” I said, picking it up—shocked at the size.

  The class got real quiet as I slowly pulled the card out and opened it.

  “Who’s it from?” whispered John Clayton from across the aisle.

  Now, I had it in my hand, and before I opened it I looked at the picture on the front. It was a dark-haired girl with bright blue eyes and the card had hearts all over it. The caption underneath the girl said, “Be my Valentine.” And under that it said, “I Love You!”

  I could feel my face turn red and hear John Clayton snicker as he looked at the front of the card. For some reason I felt too embarrassed to open the card, so I just sat there and held it, reading the front over and over. Since every eye in the class was on me, and by not opening the valentine I was holding up the schoolwork, Mrs. Smith looked at me and said, “Richard, open the valentine, so we can get back to class.”

  “Uh, yes, ma’am,” I managed to say.

  I could feel my heart beating as I slowly started to look inside the valentine. Is it from Rosalie or Connie? Then I opened it.

  Nothing, there was nothing inside. Where you were supposed to sign your name was blank. John Clayton, who couldn’t stand it any longer, stood up to see who signed it, and he blurted out; “Nobody, nobody signed it.”

  Well, that caused a twitter through the class and Mrs. Smith had to rap her ruler to calm everyone down. I was in shock. First the big surprise valentine with “I Love You!” spelled out in big letters, and now to add to that, it wasn’t even signed.

  For the rest of the day I couldn’t think of nothing else. I daydream a lot in class and my momma sends a note to my teacher each school year requesting I be seated on the front row where I’ll pay attention, but today, even sitting on the front row with Mrs. Smith glaring at me, I was lost in thought about the mystery valentine.

  Whack!

  “Ow!”

  “Richard, you’re going to the principal’s office if you don’t pay attention,” said Mrs. Smith, who had just smacked my hand with her ruler.