Otherwise Known as Possum Read online

  I climbed into the Y of our tree to think and kicked our muskrat box to the ground. “Stupid Tully! Stupid Teacher! Stupid world!”

  I grabbed my stubbed toes and was rubbing them right when my stinging eyes caught sight of something on the ground beside the battered muskrat trap, something I didn’t recognize, wrapped in fabric and about the size of …

  I knew it!

  I jumped down from the tree right next to the bundle, narrowly avoiding crushing the trap. Soon as I picked up the flour-sack bundle I could tell it was book-shaped and hefty. Sure enough, unwrapped, it was the book prize itself!

  “That thief Mary Grace!”

  I felt my fingertips numb and my face heat as I realized what she had done. Though I had blamed her in my mind, I hadn’t really thought she could go earthworm low. Yet here was as much proof as pudding. I couldn’t wait to take back the book to Miss Arthington and reveal Mary Grace for the fink she was.

  I imagined Mary Grace being led away by the sheriff while everyone in town jeered and hooted, except of course for her crazy momma, who’d still be in her parlor waiting for Mrs. Roosevelt to not ever come to tea.

  I pictured Teacher wrapping me in her arms, weeping with gratitude. “Oh, Possum, Possum. I’m so sorry I ever took Mary Grace’s part over you. How could I have not seen through her character? Can you ever forgive me? Please, what can I do? Ask anything, and it’s yours.”

  “Well, Miss Arthington,” I’d say, spitting into the dust and raising my voice a little so all the folks of the holler could hear me, “I reckon there is one thing.”

  “Anything, anything at all, just say it, and it’s yours.”

  “I reckon you could leave my daddy alone, is all.”

  A murmur goes up from the crowd, but it changes quickly to shouts and jeers. Miss Arthington nods once, then creeps away, her head hung low. Meanwhile, Miss Nagy leads the crowd in “Three cheers for Possum Porter, who saved our town from book thieves and man hunters!”

  “Hip, hip, hooray! Hip, hip, hooray! Hip, hip—”

  “I knew it. I KNEW IT WAS YOU!”

  What the—? My head snapped out of myself.

  There stood Mary Grace, hands on hips, like she just rode the Wells Fargo wagon into town. She looked sweaty and run hard, once-lacy once-white socks half-eaten by her shoes, but definitely triumphant.

  “YOU SQUIRRELY GIRL! You knew you couldn’t win the book fair and square so you just took it!”

  “Me?” I ran at her, a whole life’s worth of resentment steaming up inside me. “YOU stole it to make Teacher hate me and to make her shine on YOU! You’re a stupid, fluffy bit of stinkweed! Crazy stinkweed,” I added, knowing the word would right throw her like a flip.

  We fought, kicking and scratching like tomcats, though she didn’t even seem to know how to fight fair, or even fight, the priss. I pulled her curls, but still she wouldn’t admit it. She kept saying I should admit it.

  Mary Grace said, “Winning that dumb ol’ competition over you was more important than any stupid book. I just want Tully to think I’m smarter than YOU. You and your big messy head.”

  Some notion about Tully started to sink into my head, and I let go of her stinking curl. Knowing how spiteful Mary Grace could be, well, it almost seemed truth possible beating me would be more important than winning the book.

  I admitted that beating her was important, but that I also really wanted that book—but only if I won it fair and square. “Obviously, I had no good reason to steal it, which should be plain as pudding to anyone, even you, Mary Grace,” I said.

  The fight had run out of us, pulling our shoulders down as it ran out our dusty toes. Finally, I said, “If you didn’t take it … ”

  “I didn’t!”

  “And I didn’t take it … ”

  “So you say.”

  “Well, then, who did? ’N’ how did it get here?”

  Mary Grace and I both come to realize the truth in one struck moment eye to eye. We knew it weren’t either of us for sure, and we knew exactly who it was. She near to fainted with this revelation. At the same time, we both managed, “Tully!”

  Stunned, we sat hard and stared at each other again.

  “But why would Tully take Teacher’s book?” I wondered out loud.

  Of course we both, in our own ways, cared about Tully, so our hearts were softened toward him.

  We had to talk long and hard before we came up with what we figured might move Tully to pull such a dang fool stunt.

  “It doesn’t make any sense he’d want it for himself,” I said. “He doesn’t even like to read.”

  “And he’s no thief,” said Mary Grace, not that I think she’d know a thing about it, but she was right: He was no thief.

  “But,” I added, thinking out loud, “he knew I wanted that book bad.”

  Mary Grace looked at me for a full minute without saying a word. Probably some kind of record. “And he certainly knew that I was fixin’ to git it for myself.” She said this real slow and significant-like. “And maybe just so as you wouldn’t have it.”

  “So he’s my best friend … ” I felt like I was doing sums in my head.

  “And he’s my sweetheart … ” Again Mary Grace used that voice like what she was saying was so meaningful.

  “And he for sure knew you and I were fightin’ over it.”

  Mary Grace snapped her chubby pink fingers, making a pathetic sort of sound. “What if he, that is, Tully, what if Tully thought that by taking the book, we’d have—”

  “We’d have nothing to fight over!” I saw it clear as baptism water.

  Mary Grace nodded her curls into a dance. “He’s so sweet; he probably thought if there was no contest ’n’ no book to fight over, he could maybe get us to be’n … friends?”

  “That sounds about right.” I spit. “Ha! Shows how far off his rocker he’s gone. Still, it’s as good a reason as any I could come up with. It’s so crazy, it might just be right. So what do we do now?”

  A rustle from the bushes made us both jump higher than the cottontail that jumped out glaring at us like he was a squirrel and we were the nutty ones.

  “If Tully’s to blame, then we’re both just as guilty for driving him to it,” Mary Grace said, and I could see it cost her. I doubt that girl had ever felt guilty a day in her life. She grabbed the book and tucked it into the front of her pinafore.

  “We’ve got to fix this for him,” I said, having no idea how.

  Mary Grace looked real serious in thought.

  We were both of us realizing we’d have to work together if we wanted to save Tully from being misunderstood by everyone (especially Teacher). Tully’s spirit flies true—maybe too fast for his sense to keep up sometimes—but there’s no criminal-type dishonesty in his flesh or bones or the air he breathes.

  Plus, though I didn’t say so to Mary Grace, I needed that contest going again so I could win my book fair and square and get my plan back to chugging straight down the tracks to home and Daddy, once and for all.

  I squinted in the direction of the schoolyard. “We’ve got to get out of here before he comes back. He’ll come looking for me at the home place.” I tasted how true that was as it came out of my mouth, but that didn’t keep me from hearing the meaningful pause before Mary Grace said, “We can go to my house.” She looked pained, but this was no time for her fragile constitution.

  “Come on; I know a way no one’s likely to see us.”

  Mary Grace grabbed at her skirt like that could keep a thousand stickers from burrowing in.

  I felt a new-moon kind of faint smile tugging at my lips, but at the same time, I felt some sorry for her having so little notion of the world outside of walls. She could read every word in every book from now till Judgment Day and still not know half what Momma and Daddy taught me. Or what I would have taught Baby.

  And just like that it came to me.

  “We could write our own essay.”

  Mary Grace’s face changed faster than a twi
ster tightening. “If we explain what he’s done, and why”—she grabbed my arm and stopped both of us—“maybe he won’t get into trouble.”

  I peeled her hand off my arm. “Maybe, maybe he won’t get into more trouble,” I sneered. “Can’t you walk and think at the same time?” Behind me, I heard her huff, but in a moment, she was crashing through the underbrush like a wild pig.

  Mary Grace’s voice switched to her I-know-the-answer-and-I-don’t-know-why-I’m-bothering-to-tell-you voice. “If I can explain that—that things are—are not always what they seem—”

  Of course if she could do any two things at once, one of them was bound to be talking and the other was likely to be boasting. “If we can,” I said over my shoulder.

  “What?” She sounded cross, and I could hear her panting like Trav after a good chase.

  “If we can explain. We. As in us. As in me and you. But I see what you’re getting at.” I was thinking fast to catch up to what she was getting at. “If you look at things one way, he was bad for taking the book.”

  Mary Grace chimed in: “But if you look at why he did it, it’s really quite endearing. Sweet.”

  I stopped cold, and she walked into me. I could smell her mooney face start to mooning. I turned to look at her and spoke the word slow and plain. “D-u-m-b.”

  But I felt bad saying it. Which of us was a bigger heel, what called him dumb or what called him sweet? Plus, Mary Grace’s bottom lip stuck out and started shaking like a leaf in autumn.

  I sighed. “Dumb but sweet.”

  Today the parlor curtains were pulled back and lamps turned on so I could see that Mary Grace’s house was worlds different, worn to a shine with years of respectful using. Each family that had owned the store just passing through, borrowing it for a spell, like one of Miss Arthington’s books. Not my house, built by my granddaddy and my daddy for real livin’, and special just for us with chairs made comfy by lots of sittin’.

  I could see the walls were whitewashed but no better to my eye than Momma’s creek-mud ones, and the sofa was plumped up and covered in lacy bits—fancy dress clothes, as if to hide past scars and bruises, which’re nobody’s business even if a body can’t help but look. Two matching armchairs with curlicued arms stood stiff like they were new off the Wells Fargo wagon, but dust and spider webs told different. I had to wonder the point in having such nice furniture if no one ever sits on it.

  I dragged my pointing finger in a figure eight on the arm of one of the chairs, the cool smooth of it like something too hard to have ever been a living tree. I raised my finger and sniffed it—lemony and talcum-powder sweet lingering smells of fancy city ladies. Maybe Miz Newcomb really had been shellin’ for ghosts. I walked wide around the lamps with actual paintings on their bellies. They looked to be as fragile as Miz Newcomb’s slender china cups, set out for tea, but never used.

  But there were books. Books everywhere. Magazines and catalogs too but mostly stacks and stacks of books. Piled on tables, stacked on the floor, and even taking up space in a chair by the fireplace, across from the rocker where I’d found Miz Newcomb that day I delivered Tully’s rattleskin right into her lap. A lot of books had fancy letters on their covers with titles like The Ancient Roman at Home or Adventure Under the Sea. My fingers ached to touch them, and my eyes itched with wanting to read them. How could Mary Grace have all this treasure and be so blamed dumb? And these books, not like the chairs, had the look of being read and then some—the over-and-over kind of reading. It was a world of yet-to-be learning just asking.

  I was puzzling the worth of furniture too fancy to serve its purpose when Mary Grace pointed to the chair catty-cornered to her at the big table of dark oak and told me to sit. She brought out paper and pencils on account that Miz Newcomb thought we were doing homework. She would flutter into the room every few minutes wearing a different hat. “Well, ladies, what do you think, is it right for tea with Eleanor?”

  I had never seen so many china cups, ’specially without chinks, as were sitting on that table. She could have a dozen Eleanors show up and never run out.

  Mary Grace frowned into her glass of lemonade, her lips cinched up so tight, you’d think the lemonade hadn’t a bit of sugar in it. She slowly inhaled and blew her frown out through her nose. Now she just looked tired, and when she suddenly caught me staring at her, she rolled her eyes to the ceiling and back before turning to see her momma’s newest imagining.

  If only Miz Newcomb wasn’t hanging all about us like mist on a bog. Finally, she exhausted herself and curled up on the parlor chaise like a calico cat and got to purring like one soon after.

  “She won’t wake up even if the house catches fire,” Mary Grace said. “Don’t know how someone can get themselves so tuckered out fussing about something that’s only in her head.”

  “What’s wrong with your momma?”

  I tried to swallow the words, but they’d already hopped out like a bullheaded frog. I thought Mary Grace might start to cry, and I wished she’d just whack me upside the head for my stupid question. Which is what I’d a done to her if she asked about Baby and Momma.

  We talked about the essay, what it should say and how we would sneak it back into school, but we talked about a mess of other things too, all civil-like, except she never did answer me about what had bent her momma.

  WE SNUCK OUT OF THE HOUSE quiet as a kitten and headed back to the school.

  “What we gonna do if someone’s there?” Mary Grace asked, shifting the book under her dress, which did not bring ladylike to my mind, but sure made me grin.

  “If we can’t put it back today, then we better be there afore everyone tomorrow,” I said. “Last thing I want is to get caught, especially with you.”

  An owl hooted. Mary Grace jumped out of her skin and right near into my arms.

  “What was that?”

  “A sea serpent,” I said sagely.

  Mary Grace did an about turn. “Let’s take the book in the morning.”

  I scooted around so I was facing her. “But in the morning is when the Indians and bears are out.”

  “Oh, you,” Mary Grace gruffed, turning toward school again. “How’d you get so brave anyway?”

  “How’d you get so scaredy-cat?”

  Mary Grace grew quiet. Too quiet. For her anyway. I figured she was troubled by some other foolish thing she’d done and needed to get it off her chest. “Something wrong, Mary Grace?”

  “No-o-o,” she said slowly. “Something’s right.”

  “You got a funny way a-showin’ it.”

  “I just wanted to say—”

  We’d stopped walking. Her face looked like she was in pain, but her eyes were clear. She blurted, “Thank you!”

  And like the levee bursted, she was her old self, blabbering like no one could stop her or should even try. “I really like it here. I got friends, ’n’ Tully, ’n’ Miss Arthington, ’n’ ”—she kicked the ground—“ ’n’, well, you.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, but she didn’t seem to need encouraging now.

  “I’m getting used to everything, and I don’t wanna move again, and it was so awful last time with all the whispers and doctors and all!”

  Then I was lost. “Mary Grace?” But I might as well not have been there.

  “It wasn’t exactly like I said about how we come. It was dumb luck, gettin’ Mister Scott’s store and all. We really come to get away from the talk about Mother.”

  We walked on a mite farther.

  “I wish you coulda seen Mother before, when she was well,” Mary Grace said. “She was so lovely. I was little, ’bout the size of that June May Justice, and she treated me like a doll. Made my clothes, fixed my hair, and taught me how.” Mary Grace was nearly whispering.

  I had to lean in to hear. “We always practiced on my doll babies. Now I have to do my own hair. Hers too—when she lets me.”

  What could I say to that? “Mary Grace, you got real bouncy hair, that’s for true.” I was thinking as fast as I cou
ld.

  “Thank you, Possum Porter!” She looked pleased, so I guessed I’d said right.

  Then she sighed. “I wish we could trade places.”

  “Why would you say a thing like that?” I asked, alarmed at the idea of those springs popping out of my head. How did she sleep even?

  “Mother thinks I should act like a lady, that I should play in the house. I wouldn’t mind being able to go around like you do.” She took a deep breath and then let the next words rush out like a mountain spring: “I wish my ma was dead like yours.”

  “Mary Grace, that’s horrible. You take that back right now ’fore I smack you.”

  Mary Grace took a step back and put up her hands, palms out, like that could protect her. “Listen. We left the last place because of her. We’ll probably have to leave here because of her. She’s more trouble than she’s worth.” Her voice was cold and flinty, like the back side of a boulder.

  “At least you got a momma,” I replied. “Any momma is better than no momma.”

  “Having a momma like mine is worse than none at all,” she countered.

  “Mary Grace, I’d give anything to have my momma back, even if she was loopier than sweet peas. I would, I swear.”

  “You think,” Mary Grace said sagely. “But it’s a burden. Especially on Father.”

  “Least your daddy can’t run off and marry some teacher thinks you’re a thief.”

  Mary Grace looked shamed for once. “I might of made up that part about your daddy being sweet on Miss Arthington. Fact is, she has a fancy in New York. His letters come to the store, and she writes him near ev’y day.”

  MARY GRACE WAS FINALLY QUIET when we reached the school clearing other than when a spider scurried off the doorstep as I tried to open it quiet-like. We slipped the book and essay onto Miss Arthington’s chair, then tiptoed out and hightailed it again.