“You’re going too fast to look for my wallet.”
“No, I’m looking real good. Aren’t you Ginny?”
“Yeah, real good!”
“Wait for me,” he said.
We went on deeper into the forest, kept turning, and shouting for him to follow. We dodged and dipped around for about fifteen minutes. We kept a good ways ahead of him, which was easy, slow and klutzy as he was. He stumbled and rooted around like a hog.
“This way,” said Ginny, and she looped around the patch of stinging nettle we’d fallen prey to ourselves a couple of weeks before. She stood in the middle of the path on the other side, waving back at our companion. He headed right for the nettle.
“Goddamn it! Goddamn it!”
We took off fast, ducked down through the old barbed wire fence, and kept going, farther into the cool dark, where all the fallen fir needles were soft sponge on the forest floor. The clean scent of pine and cedar made our noses tingle but when our feet landed hard the smell of mushrooms and rot rose from the ground. Behind us, we heard him say words we weren’t allowed to say.
He slipped and almost fell to his knees.
“That’s it. I’m heading back,” he called and turned.
“Not that way, Mister. That’s the wrong way. You’ll get lost for sure,” I said. “You want to go back, we’ll take you.”
He turned around in circles, trying to get his bearings, but it was no good.
“Damn it! All right then. Just get me out of here.”
“What about your wallet?” I said.
“To hell with my wallet!”
“Okay, then.”
“You’re crazy,” said Ginny. Her face was all shiny and her hair damp on her forehead, but she was laughing.
We crossed a stand of birches, climbed over another stone fence and hopped across a small stream. Then we stood waiting for him. He was breathing hard and his face was red as a beet.
“Don’t need to cross that, Mister. You’re back.”
He looked around and put his hands up to his head. He groaned.
“This is where we started. You took me around in a circle.”
He was panting. Big dark wet patches stained the underarms of his shirt. He bent over, hands on his knees. A bead of sweat fell from the end of his nose.
“Sorry, Mister. Guess you lost you wallet for good,” I said.
“We gotta go,” said Ginny.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” the man puffed. “Look at this.”
“What?” I said, not getting any closer.
“My wallet, right here. Must have dropped it when I was sitting here.”
“Must have.”
“You sure are lucky,” said Ginny. “I thought it was a goner.”
He bent down and picked it up. Brushed it off and went to put it in his back pocket.
“Hey,” I said, “You said you’d give us a dollar if we found it.”
“But I found it.”
“We helped. You wouldn’t have come back here if it wasn’t for us.”
The man looked at me a minute, his eyes clouding over with something filmy and mean. Then all at once, he threw back his head and laughed a big rough craggle of sound. Ginny jumped.
“I’ll be pissed,” he said, “I’ll be pissed.”
He wiped his eyes and put his wallet in his back pocket.
“I seem to be out of silver dollars.”
“That’s okay, we’ll take paper.”
“You’re a tough little kid, you know that?”
“I guess.”
“I don’t think I like tough little girls.” He reached in his pocket and dug out a handful of change. “This do?”
“It will if it’s two dollars.”
He held out his hand. “Take it.”
“I’d prefer if you put it on that rock, Mister.”
He grinned his muley grin and put the change on the rock.
Then he turned, quick as a cat, his arms wide flung and yelled: “RAAAAAGH!”
I thought my heart was going to jump out of my throat and Ginny grabbed my arm. Even with the stream between us, we turned tail and ran a few paces. Then I glanced back.
The man was laughing, and walking away. Waving his hand like he knew we’d look.
Ginny was crying. “I want to go home, Kathy, I want to go home.”
“Okay. But first I’m going to get that money.”
I waited till he’d moved off a good long way, then I ran fast as I could, grabbed the coins and headed off at a run, Ginny beside me, snuffling away. When we got back to the stone wall that separated the fields from our backyards, we stopped to count it.
“There’s almost three dollars here!” I said. It was a sweaty little pile of treasure in my palm.
“Wow.” Ginny touched it with the tip of her finger and then quickly pulled her hand away and put it behind her back. “What are we going to do with it?”
“You keep it.”
“Really? Me?”
“Yeah. Don’t spend it.” I held out the money and dropped it into her hand, one coin at a time. “We’ll make a pact.” We twisted our pinkie fingers together. “We’ll do something real great with it. We’ll buy stuff and build a tree house in the orchard, maybe. Or what else? What do you want to do with it?”
“I was thinking about a hamster,” she said.
“Well, sure. We’ll have enough for that too.”
We walked along, planning out our purchases, until, longing for the cool sweet taste of cherry Kool-Aid, I headed back to my house. Since my mom wasn’t a whole lot of help with the pervert in the car, I didn’t figure I’d tell her about this guy, especially since I knew the way she felt about me hanging around in the woods.
“Where’s Aunt Shirley?” I said.
“In her room.”
“She sick?”
“Sick, eh?” Mom looked at me with a funny expression. Then she went back to the dishes she was washing. “Yeah, sure, she’s sick.”
“Can I go up and see her?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I said so. Now get out of my hair! There must be something in the air,” she muttered. “Everybody’s gone crazy. Skedaddle!” She waved a soapy brush at me.
I was lying in bed that night, trying not to think too much about Aunt Shirley. It was obvious something was really wrong and wasn’t going to get any better any time soon. All through dinner the adults had been quiet as coffins, not talking to each other and not talking to me much either. It made it hard to swallow, even the soft stuff like mashed potatoes and creamed corn. Aunt Shirley smiled at me a time or two, but I could tell she was real upset. She gave me a hug and went up to bed right after dinner.
I watched the North Star through the branches of the oak in the backyard and tried to keep my mind off things by figuring out what I was going