Read Online The Man in the Woods by Rosemary Wells - Free Book Online Page B

I’ve always had that locket right up against me, ever since she died, and I look at it, at the picture, every night before I go to sleep. I know it’s just a picture, but it’s the only one of her I really love, and there’s no negative. I don’t want to ... leave her up there all alone in those woods.”
    “Doesn’t sound silly,” said Pinky, and he jammed his hands in his pockets and led the way up the hill.
    The woods were full of calling birds and twanging insects. She retraced her steps through the prickly scrub oaks and pines with their half rotting rough-barked timbers, which scratched like carpenters’ rasps, but no silver locket gleamed from a branch or from the weed-covered ground. They found the stump, and Helen poked through the soft black earth under it. Again no locket. There was a rustling, suddenly, in the bushes near a stream up the hill where she’d lost sight of the whistler.
    They saw a man, and he saw them. Helen jumped. Then she realized this old limping man was nothing like the person she had followed.
    In his hand was a white plastic milk jug. He had apparently been collecting water from the stream. He was quite old, and many inches over six feet tall, with a face as wizened in wrinkles as a walnut shell. He limped a few steps toward them and then stood staring.
    “We didn’t mean to bother you,” said Helen as cheerfully as she could.
    “I heard ja coming,” said the old man. “What are you looking for?”
    “Just a lost silver locket,” said Helen.
    “How’d you lose a silver locket up here?” he asked suspiciously. He set his jug down, knelt on one knee, and clasped the other with enormous brown, veiny hands. “Nothing up here. ’Cept the water.”
    “Water?” asked Pinky.
    “Good for the blood,” said the old man. “Town water’s no good. Full of chemicals. I drink this here for my rheumatism. Bad knee.” He wiped some pine needles off the wet bottom of his milk jug, sniffed, and went on. “So I told you how come I’m here. You tell me how come you lost a piece of jewelry a half mile from the highway.”
    “It’s a long story,” said Helen.
    “Got more time than money,” said the old man.
    So Helen told him—with Pinky adding a few flourishes to her story—of the accident and the chase up the hill.
    “Cops didn’t like your story?” he asked when she’d gotten to the part about the policeman in the house.
    “They wouldn’t even listen,” said Helen.
    “Cops!” The old man laughed gently. “I stay away from ’em. They find me, they’ll nip me off into one of those nursing homes in town.”
    “Not against your will, they couldn’t,” said Helen stoutly.
    The old man laughed again. “I’m an Indian,” he said. “Wampanoag from the islands. Cops don’t like Indians. I live on public land. Against the law. I work a bit. Different jobs. I got a nice little place to live in, but nobody knows where it is. I don’t bother the cops, and the cops don’t bother me. I saw one of the rocks go flying out and hit the fender of a truck. Maybe two months back. Never told the cops. Truck kept right on going. Never made the papers.”
    “But the rock could have killed someone,” said Helen.
    “Lots of things kill people,” said the Indian with a caved-in smile. Helen guessed he had no teeth. “Course, if I’d been up here Tuesday like you and seen the accident and all, that would have been different. Least I’d have put a tourniquet on the lady. You’re brave kids. Good hearts, helping the lady and the kid. Stupid to chase that guy, though.” He shook his head in wonderment. “You never know. You should stay out of these woods, kids. Stay out,” he repeated in a sad voice with a crooked finger raised like a schoolteacher’s.
    “I think we’ll go home now,” said Helen. A north wind had begun rustling through a stand of immense junipers beyond where they stood. Clouds blew over the sun, chilling her further. She wished she’d brought a