JACOB WENT ON INSISTING that Offenbacher and Harding were just biding their time, but a month went by without any real changes. It was almost October before Jacob’s prediction seemed to be coming true when one day, after he’d dismissed the class, Mr. Harding said, “Take your seat, Gibson. I need to talk to you.”
Jacob looked back from the doorway, his face showing a lot of sympathy and more than a little bit of “I told you so.” And Gib’s heart missed a few beats as he returned to his desk. But it turned out to be a false alarm. All Mr. Harding wanted was for Gib to write a letter to the Thorntons saying how great everything was at Lovell House.
“Holy moley,” Jacob said later when Gib told him and Bobby about it. “Did he tell you every word to write?”
Gib shrugged. “Mighty near. Leastways he had me write it first on a slate and let him check it out before he let me put it on paper.” He grinned. “Said he just wanted to check my grammar. But he made me leave out a part where I said I surely did wish they’d write to me.”
“Well, anyway,” Bobby said, “you got to write a letter to somebody. How come the rest of us don’t get to write no letters?”
Jacob snorted. “Because the rest of us don’t know any people who can write big checks to the orphanage. Right, Gib?”
Gib guessed that Jacob was right about that. It looked like he could write the Thorntons anytime he wanted to, if he said the right things. But if any of them, like Mrs. Thornton or Miss Hooper—or anyone else—ever wrote to him, he probably would never get to see it.
It wasn’t until almost a month later, on a bitterly cold November day, that it suddenly became clear that Jacob also was right about Mr. Harding just biding his time. It started in the classroom during a geography test, when Gib dropped his pen and Harding accused him of doing it on purpose so he could lean forward and get a look at Albert’s test. It wasn’t true, of course, but there was no use arguing, and that afternoon Gib got reacquainted with Mr. Paddle.
There were four other rule breakers in the room that day, and afterward they all said that Gib got harder swats and more of them than anyone else. And sure enough, it was the very next day that Miss Offenbacher sent for Gib and, the minute he walked into her office, she told him to go get the saddle.
“My saddle?” Gib asked.
“Yes, bring it here to the office,” Miss Offenbacher said, and returned her attention to the papers on her desk.
Gib was on his way to Senior Hall, wondering what had made Miss Offenbacher change her mind about letting him keep the saddle under his bed and wondering where he would have to keep it now, when he saw Buster on his way down to the laundry room with a big basket of dirty linen. Buster seemed glad of an excuse to put the basket down for a minute and rest his back, and when Gib said he wanted to ask him something Buster immediately guessed what it was about.
“’Bout that there saddle?” he asked.
Surprised, Gib said, “Yes. How’d you know?”
“Because Offenbacher told me I’d be taking it with me when I go to the feed store. Said I was to sell it to Mr. Kelly.”
“Sell it?” Gib felt like a fist had slammed into his middle. “But she said I could keep it. Why’d she change her mind?”
Buster shook his head. “Didn’t say. All she told me was that I should pick it up in the office and take it to Kelly’s Feed and Tack.” He looked hard at Gib and his sharp-boned face twisted with the kind of disgusted anger that Gib remembered from before. Anger mostly at himself when he was about to take a stupid risk by talking too much. Or for worrying about some little kid when he had plenty of worries his own self. “She didn’t tell me anything more, but I heard her and Harding talking about something that was in the paper.”
“In the newspaper?” Gib was astonished. What could something in the newspaper have to do with Miss Offenbacher’s changing her mind about the saddle?
Buster was watching Gib closely. “Seems like maybe they ain’t going to get some money they were counting on.” Leaning over to pick up his basket, he looked up at Gib through narrowed eyes and added, “Mighta had to do with somebody dying?”
It sounded like a question. Like maybe Buster thought Gib would know what he was talking about. Gib shook his head slowly, making his face say that none of it made any sense to him.
Buster’s shrug looked even more depressed and disgusted than usual. After he headed down the stairs Gib went on up to Senior Hall and sat down on his bed. It was almost time for class to begin, and no one else was in the room. He pulled the saddle out from under the bed and sat for a while with it on his lap. Then he put it over his shoulder and went out into the hall. He stood for a moment looking down toward the main staircase before he turned himself around and headed in the other direction.
Up on the fourth floor in the deserted servants’ wing were some secret places he’d discovered back when he and Jacob used to get in a quick game of hide-and-seek between chore time and supper, and he remembered one place that was pretty hard to find. He left the saddle there at the back of a tiny closet. Then he went all the way back down to the ground floor and knocked on the door of Miss Offenbacher’s office.
She was sitting at her desk when he came in, and she looked up sharp and hard as always, but wondering too. Wondering what he was doing there without the saddle.
“Gibson?” she asked, so he told her straight out. “Ma’am, I just can’t do it. I can’t bring my saddle down here and give it away.” He was talking fast, sure she was going to interrupt him and start yelling, but for a minute she didn’t. Just sat there, she did, looking downright astonished, like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
When you came right down to it, Gib couldn’t either. Couldn’t believe he was standing there in front of Miss Offenbacher trying to tell her why he couldn’t give up the saddle when he didn’t rightly know himself. But he did try. “It used to be Mrs. Thornton’s special saddle that she learned to ride on, ma’am, and my own mother rode on it once. And she said it was mine now. Mrs. Thornton did, that is, and I just feel like ...
But Miss Offenbacher had stopped listening. Getting to her feet, she stomped toward Gib so that he flinched and turned his face away. But she went right on past him and out the door, and when she came back Mr. Harding was with her.
That day Mr. Harding beat on Gib until his arm wore out. Not five or ten whacks, as usual, but just on and on, only stopping now and then to ask if Gib was ready to do as he was told. Then he would start up again until finally his face was all red and he was breathing so hard he had to sit down to catch his breath. And then, after his breathing had quieted some, he marched Gib up to the Repentance Room.
As he shoved Gib through the door he said, in between puffs and gasps, that he’d see him again tomorrow and the day after that and the day after.... Then the door slammed and his voice faded away, mingling with the sound of his retreating footsteps. Gib sank down to the floor, coiled himself up into a ball, and buried his face in his arms.