I began to not just tip the boat but rock it. I didn’t care if we went overboard into the murky depths of the marsh. A normal brother would have gotten furious, would have swiped the oar through the water and drenched his sister. Why was William so nice? That question made me even angrier. Why did he always have to be patient, so patient and kind, too? He made me sick. A sharp awful pain in the head. What was wrong with him? I changed my mind—I didn’t want to be an orchard partner with him. You’d have to be an idiot, you’d have to be impaired to be so good. I’d run away to Mrs. Kraselnik’s.
He managed to guide the boat to our landing place as I continued to do my best to turn us over. He pulled it from the water, parked it, and waited for me to climb out. I dragged behind, refusing to walk with him. On the way home we had to go out of our way to avoid a great many things we did not wish to see. Sherwood and my father possibly back to their argument. The Muellenbach boys dead on stretchers. We did, against our will, see Philip learning chain saw etiquette from May Hill, the two of them in the orchard about to cut up an old Macintosh that had fallen down in winter. I could maybe like William the slightest little bit because he, too, skirted the path so we didn’t have to look.
13.
The Mistake, the Worst Mistake
A few days later in that endless two-week vacation I was wandering around looking for my father when I noticed May Hill and Philip heading into the woods. They were again equipped with chain saws. Philip’s father had left us not long after he’d arrived, depositing his son to befriend May Hill, very amusing that suddenly May Hill could have a young person in her life, someone who could be her child, or maybe he was more like a dog, following her everywhere she went. No one said how long he was staying.
Everyone on that afternoon was otherwise engaged, William off at his friend Bert Plumly’s, Amanda practicing her French horn, my mother working at the library; Gloria was still in Colorado recovering from her love affair, my new best friend, Coral LeClaire, had gone to Disney World with her family, no one at liberty for Mary Frances. For quite some time in the fall I’d had a plan to steal into Mrs. Kraselnik’s house; it was in a dreamscape, that is, my hiding in her bedroom closet and popping out at her. In the sequence she was delighted to see me. Possibly that’s why it occurred to me without much premeditation that I could creep up the basement stairs into Dolly’s kitchen. Amanda’s horn after all was noisy. Adam would probably be in the living room on the computer. As for Dolly, her car was gone, Dolly elsewhere. Sherwood was out by the barn underneath the sprayer, trying to fix a leak. The downstairs was not, however, my final destination. I could get through the kitchen and then run up the back stairs into May Hill’s house, open the gate, and find the room Philip was using. I would discover something, surely—evidence. Information about his intentions, information that would discredit him, some no-good incriminating piece. I was not related to Stephen Lombard for nothing, our shared talent a fact he must have recognized that night we’d stayed up in the kitchen nearly until dawn, discussing spy craft. We were both brave. We were both adventurers.