Wolf Hollow Chapter 5

please listen along and click to go to the next

stage is Chapter five.

Toby appeared in layers as I walked up the steeply

first, his hat ahead.

Then more and more of him down to his boots.

As I reached the flat ground at the top of

the lane, he was a scarecrow, but for the guns

on his back and his arms hanging loose at his

sides. If he saw me coming, he made no sign

of it.

Toby never came to meet a person.

Hey, Toby, I said.

Mother sent me with a little supper.

I didn't know what I would say until I did.

We had too much for just us.

Toby Space in the shadow of his hat broom was

as quiet and mild as an old dogs.

I noticed the camera hanging from his neck.

Do you have any film descendant?

We mailed it for him when he did.

It gave the film to my Aunt Lily's that she

was the postmistress.

I went into the office every week.

Death on.

I usually carried around the prince when they came back,

until Toby and I crossed paths we had never once

opened to the package, though I was sometimes tempted when

Toby wanted us to see what he had done.

Good offer.

One time he showed me a batch that featured a

red tailed fall with a rabbit in its beak.

Ahh. Thunder had glazed with evening like a Deere napping

in a patch of my apples.

I had never known anyone quiet enough to approach a

sleeping dear.

Nor had I known any hungry man who would shoot

one with a camera instead of a gun.

He took a little school out of his pocket and

handed it to me.

I gave him the bundle of food.

Do you still have some film?

He nodded.

Every time the photographs came back to us.

There were two fresh holes in the package.

Kodak keeping its word.

You shifted the guns on his back a little.

Didn't turn to leave right away, as he usually did.

I waited.

He reached into his pocket.

This is yours, he said, handing me a penny.

It was warm when I took it.

Have you called Betty searching through the I V along

the trail of school.

Toby must have been watching from the trees.

I put the penny in my own pocket.

Toby waited some more and an almost hopeful with if

he knew it was my penny than he had seen,

but he hit me.

Perhaps he had heard her threats, but he had not

intervened. If he was waiting for me to tell him

about it, toe ask for his help.

I couldn't.

I just wasn't sure how I felt about all that.

With the last little nod, Toby turned and walked away,

his guns and boots, making their simple music how he's

still that was able to surprise me.

Sorry, happy.

Still been at will was beyond May.

I had never yet been able to surprise so much

as a milk cow, let alone Joe.

I stayed for a bit and watch to make his

way back across the turned ground between the strawberry patch

and the woods, dipping and rising a little as he

walked against the grain of the furrows, like a boat

crossing a small C.

On my way back down the lane, I paused at

the sight of my house in the growing darkness, lit

from within, and wondered if Toby ever stood Where I

did, I saw what I saw fingering the penny in

my pocket.

I thought that perhaps he did.

I found my father sitting on the back step.

He always seemed to be there when I returned from

taking Toby some supper on how it was Toby tonight?

He asked as he followed me into the house.

Same as ever.

I said, Quiet.

I do like that about him, my father said.

But you should tell me if you ever worries you,

Annabelle, which startled me like how I said my father's

truck. Anything at all.

Like if he seems sacrifice hurt.

You mean he answered by putting his hand on the

top of my head and smiling Little Go on under

your homework now, he said.

But first I went in search of my Aunt Lily,

who would send in the film that Toby had given

me. Neither of us knowing that on that small school,

another piece of trouble was waiting for someone to find

it. Has I got ready for bed that night I

examined my aching hip and the bruise that Betty had

given me.

It looked like a red cucumber, not yet going black,

sort of the touch, and I made up my mind

right then that she would not have Aunt Lily sweater

frog. And it wasn't possible that even a girl like

that he would hurt my brothers for me, beyond a

bruise shaped like a cucumber, that sort of thing didn't

happen. And knowing that Toby might be nearby gave me

some reassurance.

I was certain that he wouldn't let anything happen that

happened to me or my brothers if he was nearby

at the time, if he saw it happening and if

I did get another bruise in the bargain, I would

tell my mother she would know what to do.

When my brothers ran off ahead of me the next

morning, I ran to and kept him close to me

and me close to them up the lane and down

the other side of the hill across the fields towards

Wolf Hollow.

More than once, they stopped to look at me, and

at one point Henry said, You're fast for a girl.

And another time James told me to slow down and

get over near him, and I didn't upload part of

this. I apologize.

We're just gonna keep going.

Which is why I didn't tell you yesterday said.

But let's go quietly and maybe we'll see him again.

So is that the tree?

So it was.

The three of us were together on the path, and

Betty stopped, stepped out from behind a tree.

The boys stopped so suddenly that I bumped into them.

Hey, Betty, Henry said.

James just stood still.

I cut around in front of the boys and continue

down the path.

Come on, my side or we'll be late for school.

I didn't look back.

The boys follow close by.

At the first turn of the path, I ushered them

the head and off they ran.

And so did I, all the way down the hill

and into the schoolhouse.

I don't like that, Betty, James said, is we unbuttoned

our jackets and hung up our caps.

She's spooky.

She's just a dumb girl and recess.

But he kept his voice down and looked over his

shoulder when he said it that he arrived in, but

she paid us no attention at all.

She focused instead on her desk in It's at one

of the biggest boys Andy would bear.

I liked the name would bury, but I didn't like

Andy. Nobody did not even the other big boys, though

they did whatever he told them to Dio.

And he had not been in school since before Betty

joined us.

He and his father and uncle's work side by side

farms not too far from ours.

Dairy cows, mostly the corn, too, And hey and potatoes

the kitchen garden.

Enough use for wool and Sunday dinner lamb in the

spring, chicken, some goats pretty much what you'd expect at

a dairy end of October.

And he came to school from time to time, mostly

for a change of scenery, although I don't know why

he paid no attention to his lessons or to Mrs

Taylor. You're in my seat that he said to him,

even sitting down, he was nearly as tall as she

was standing, but she didn't seem the least bit nervous.

The other Children had gone quiet, watching Mrs Taylor writing

a lesson on the chalkboard, hadn't yet noticed.

And he looks Betty up and down.

Who are you?

He said, Bettie Glen.

Gary, Who were you?

Andy would bury?

She considered him his hands on her hips, her hands

on her hips.

Do you live in the woods no.

Are you a berry?

No. He sat up straight on his chair.

Do you live in a Glen?

As a matter of fact, I do, she said, which

gave him pause.

And are you?

Ah ah, at which even Andy seemed to understand that

there was no good way to finish this, that he

was already smiling.

A Gary.

No, I am not a Gary unless that Gary is

a girl who means to sit at that seat you're

in by now.

And he looked so baffled that I concluded no girl

had ever spoken to him this way, not even his

mom. If anyone had asked me, I'd have said that

that he would have, at least at the very least,

have birds in her hair by the end of recess.

But I would have been wrong without another word.

And he stood up and waited while Betty took her

seat, any stud looming over Benjamin, the small boy in

the decks next to hers, until Ben been gathered up

his things with a sigh and shoved in next to

someone else, and he sat down and stretched out his

legs. His pant cuff and boot laces bristled with stick

tights. When Mrs Taylor turned from the chalkboard and saw

him sitting there, her shoulders went up and down slowly

and she slumped a little.

Good morning, Mr Woodberry, she said.

Have you brought your books with?

You don't need books, he said, tapping his head.

Got it all up here I was sitting behind Betty,

but when she turned toward Andy, I could see that

she was smiling.

He can share with me, Mrs Taylor, that he said,

I don't mind.

Well, that's very nice of you, said Mrs Taylor.

It sure is.

And he said, From the way Betty was looking at

Andy, I thought maybe she'd be inclined to pay less

attention to me From now on.

The rest of the morning went pretty well.

Although Andy fell asleep at one point and during the

lessons and punctuated his lessons with his story, Betty to

Wake him laid a hand on his bare arm when

he woke and he gave himself a shape, yawns loudly

and crossed his arms.

Like a Lord, he was not a bad looking boy

and was cleaner than some, but Betty was the first

girl to take to him.

I wondered about that how quickly an attraction had sprung

up between them.

But I had seen such a thing before when a

new dog showed up on the farm.

Sometimes there was a fight before anyone knew the reason

why sometimes quite the reverse.

Wolf Hollow Chapter 5

Audio TranscriptAuto-generated