THOMAS’S EYES SPRANG OPEN. He was lying on his back as straight as a board. His room was bright with morning. Saturday. He got up and hurried to get dressed in his weekend outfit of corduroys, sweater, jacket, and hiking boots. No telling what he and Pesty would do today, but he had a good idea. That is, if she came over today. She ran off from me, day before yesterday, he thought. She had to know Macky was there in the woods, and she didn’t tell me.
Still, he expected her today.
By seven-thirty Thomas was downstairs. His mother was up and about; he had heard her in the parlor and in the dining room. Now, she was in the kitchen. Much earlier he’d heard her leave and a car going down the drive.
Must’ve been Papa going. Mama driving him to work.
His papa had only two classes to teach on Saturdays. After that he would have time for lunch at home; his mama would pick him up in the car.
When he looked out the front door, Thomas saw Pesty just stepping up onto the veranda. He poked his head out, whispering, “Shhhh. Be a minute,” and closed the door again.
Pesty stood there with her hands pressed against her mouth. Her alert eyes watched the closed front door. Thomas pulled on his gloves and went quietly out. He walked around her and down the steps. “Wait!” she said.
“Shhhh!”
She caught up with him. “Didn’t your grandmom come visit?”
“I told you, she’s not—she’s my great-grandmother Rhetty Laleete Jeffers, and she’s here. And this is where she’ll live with us forever, too,” Thomas said.
“When can I meet her?” Pesty asked.
“Not yet, she’s not even up,” Thomas said. He was heading toward the shed where the twins had played and painted. They went around behind where they were hidden from view. They leaned against the side. Pesty peered anxiously at Thomas.
“It snowed,” he said by way of greeting.
“It blizzard, too,” she said. “I heard it.” She smiled brightly at him. But Thomas didn’t feel much like smiling back. She could tell then that he was not happy with her.
“Escort service!” she said suddenly, mischief in her eyes.
“Shhh!” he said. “Girl, what’s on your mind!”
She covered her mouth again a moment. She’d forgotten that the house was still half asleep. “I mean, I’ll escort your great-grandmother to Mr. Pluto’s.”
“You mean, we,” he said, but changed his mind. “Don’t you think someone who lives hereabout should come to meet the new neighbor first?” Thomas didn’t wait for an answer. “We’ll go over and get him and bring him back here to meet Great-grandmother Jeffers,” he said. “That’s what we’ll do. That’s proper.”
At once he set off, going around the hillside toward old Pluto’s. Pesty followed, upset that she hadn’t known what was proper. They would be the escort service for Mr. Pluto.
Snow packed beneath their feet. She had an idea of her own. “Mr. Thomas! You-all can come over to my house, too. Your grandmama can meet my mama!”
The idea stunned Thomas for a moment before he said, “Pesty, please don’t call me mister.” Maybe it would be all right to visit Mrs. Darrow.
“See, it’s okay for my great-grandmother to come visit your mother,” Thomas said. “See, because she, your mother, is—is an invalid.”
Pesty looked down at her hands.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me that?’” Thomas said. He stopped to face Pesty. “You let Macky tell me when it’s you and me together every Saturday, and then some. Macky says that your mother won’t get up out of bed for months at a time.”
Thomas left off when he saw how uncomfortable talk of her mother made Pesty. She had turned sadly away, and somewhat guiltily, too, it seemed to him.
“You could’ve told me your brother was out there the other day,” he said, changing the subject. “You didn’t have to run off like that.”
Pesty clutched one hand in another and seemed about to cry.
They were friends, and he was quick to soothe her. “Do you feel okay? Did you have some breakfast?” he asked her.
She nodded. She was missing buttons from her coat, he noticed. She had no hat on, and her neck was bare. “Pesty, where are your mittens?”
“Somewhere, I don’t know.”
“Well. Here, take mine.”
“No!” she said. “I don’t care nothing about it. I’ll put my hands in my pockets.”
“Oh, girl! Well, come on then!” He sprang ahead of her to lead.
Cutting across the hill and around was not difficult. Most of the snow had been swept away by the blizzard. Snowdrifts were like white ocean waves among a stand of shade trees just above them. The white waves bulged, about to break over them.
“Look at them over there!” he said over his shoulder again.
“The drifts look deep,” she answered.
“Maybe later we’ll jump in them,” he told her.
“They’ll be over my head,” she said.
“You won’t drown,” he told her.
“But how do you breathe under the snow?”
“There’s air, you’ll see,” he said.
“You’ll have ta go first,” she said.
“Of course, I will,” Thomas answered.
There was a clearing just before Mr. Pluto’s cave. They never cut across the clearing. Thomas felt like a target when he was in the midst of it. He skirted the clearing to come upon the cave at the side.
The heavy doors of the cave entrance were closed tight. Gently Pesty knocked. There was no answer, so she knocked a little louder. Still no response. She placed the flat of her hand on each door. She pushed and pushed again. But the doors did not spring open as they usually did.
“He must got them barred from inside,” Pesty said.
“Darn! I’d better call to him,” Thomas said.
“Unh-unh, don’t call him,” Pesty said. “He must be sleeping; only it’s too late for that.” She looked puzzled.
“He might be in the great you-know of the you-know-what.”
The way Thomas avoided saying the secret made her smile. “He always will wait for me,” she said.
Thomas had an anxious moment at the same time Pesty did. They stared at each other. “He ain’t ready to die,” she said finally.
“What do you mean by ‘ready’?” he said, astonished.
“They know things like that—old folks,” she said.
That could be true, he thought, but he said no more about it. “We have to get in there, see if he’s all right. Maybe I’d better go home, call my papa,” Thomas said. “Papa could break in the doors.”
“Nobody’s gone break them old doors, not unless they got an ax,” she said.
“Well, there’s an ax at the house. Papa got it not long ago,” Thomas said.
“Don’t need an ax,” she said, walking away from him.
“Hey!” Thomas watched her go a second before he followed. “Where are you going to, Pesty? You intend to disappear the way you did the other day?”
Pesty lowered her head, looking ashamed. Then she went on around to the right, away from the cave doors.
The ground angled down in front where the doors were, for here was a fault to the land. Long ago the ground had faulted on the outside top of the cave, above the doors. That was the reason anyone coming up to the cave doors stood before them on lower ground.
On the right and to the rear fault the top of the cave slanted down, like a thatch-covered roof. Pesty stood there at the downward slant. She reached for a clump of frozen thatch and held it tightly in both hands.
“Pesty, what do you think you are doing?” Thomas asked, coming up to her.
“Pulling,” she said. She looked all around; then she gave the thatch a hard yank. A chunk of it came off like the lid to a barrel. Not only did the thatch come off, but a jagged, crooked circle of ground came with it.
Thomas gaped. For there was a black hole in the slanted ground. Pesty quickly climbed up toward the hole.
“Pesty!”
“Shut up, Mr. Thomas,” Pesty said. “You want somebody …” But the rest of her warning was lost as she slithered into the black opening.