Gib Rides Home (21 page)

Before he left, Mr. Thornton said, “My wife and I want to stay in touch. Mrs. Thornton will be wanting to hear from the boy on a regular basis. And if all is well there will be ...

Mr. Thornton’s voice dropped then, and there was another long discussion, but at last the check stayed on the desk and Gib was dismissed and told that he should not come down to supper that evening, but starting the next morning he would be expected to follow the regular schedule, which he no doubt remembered. “Breakfast at six o’clock, seniors report to Mr. Harding’s classroom by six-thirty, and again at twelve-thirty for afternoon chore assignments.”

A few minutes later Gib Whittaker walked into Senior Hall carrying a duffel bag and a saddle, and ran into Jacob and Bobby and three new boys as they were washing up for dinner.

W
HEN THE SENIOR BOYS
began to come back into the dormitory that night, Gib was still lying on his bed, not asleep really, but deep in a backward-drifting dream like the ones that always seemed to send Hy off into long-ago times and places. So when he heard a voice, Jacob’s voice, saying, “All right, Gib, tell all. Give us the lowdown,” it took a minute for him to get back to the present. The present, and Senior Hall in the Lovell House Home for Orphaned and Abandoned Boys.

Pushing himself to a sitting position, he shook his head to clear it, stared at Jacob’s familiar but strangely altered face—a wider face, with harder, more watchful eyes—and said, “Okay, okay. What shall I ... What do you want to know first?”

“Well, how about what got into Offenbacher? How come she let you back in?”

So Gib started to tell all of them—there were others who had arrived by then—about the checkbook, and then stopped to ask, “But what did Miss Offenbacher say at supper? Why did she say she let me back in?”

Jacob shrugged. “Not much that made any sense. A bunch of stuff about how you had returned due to ‘unforeseen circumstances’ that were very unusual, and that the rest of us had better not think that we’d be allowed to come back if we ever failed an adoption.”

Gib couldn’t help smiling. “Unforeseen circumstances, huh?” he asked, and when everybody nodded he asked them all to keep it under their hats, but that the “unforeseen circumstance” was a check written on the Longford Consolidated Bank and signed by Henry J. Thornton himself. They all grinned knowingly and Jacob said, “Word is that the money old Mrs. Lovell left has just about run out, and the place is going to have to shut down if they don’t find some more somewhere.” And a minute later he added, “Oh yeah, and she also told us that we weren’t to talk about it. And especially, we were absolutely forbidden to ask you about it.”

Then Bobby asked what it had been like. “Was it real bad, Gibby?” he wanted to know. “Did you get starved and froze and everything?” Bobby hadn’t changed much. He still gave you the feeling that he’d be real disappointed to hear that things don’t always turn out as bad as you expect them to.

“No, not starved,” Gib said, and then to prove the point he got out what was left of Mrs. Perry’s sandwiches and passed them around. That took a while. Everyone had to open them up and admire the thick slabs of real ham and then watch carefully to be sure no one took a bigger bite than the next guy.

It wasn’t until the sandwiches were just a mouthwatering memory that Gib got started telling about the Rocking M. He started in about Hy but hadn’t gotten very far before his throat began to tighten and he couldn’t go on. He had to swallow hard twice before he could say, “Look, guys. I’m dead tired right now. I’ll tell you the rest tomorrow. Okay?” It was just about silence time anyway, so they reluctantly agreed, and Gib was allowed to get into bed and close his eyes.

But it was then that the bad part started. The part about really facing up to the fact that he wasn’t going to see Hy or any of the others again. To his surprise, to not ever see Livy again was one of the most painful thoughts, even though there had certainly been times when he’d figured that he’d seen just about as much of Olivia Thornton as he could take.

For quite a while he didn’t dare even let himself think about Black Silk. To think about walking into her stall and hearing her soft welcoming nicker. To let himself remember the wild excitement of letting her go full out, soaring over the rough ground as if ...

The lump in his throat warned him then that he had better stop it or he was, for sure, going to do something embarrassing. Someday, he promised himself, he would be able to think about her again without it hurting so much. Someday, maybe, when years had gone by and he was an old man. But in the meantime he would put his mind on things about the Rocking M that didn’t hurt as much, like the crabby old milk cow, and the chickens, and Bobby, the cocky little field mouse. But that started him worrying about how Bobby was going to manage now that he’d come to depend on ... And suddenly he was crying. Crying so hard that he had to stuff his fist in his mouth and cover his head with the pillow so that no one would hear.

The next day everything was back to normal. To the kind of day that had been normal for Gibson Whittaker before the third of May in 1908. There was the breakfast of lumpy oatmeal; four hours in the classroom, in Mr. Harding’s classroom trying to listen carefully and keep your eyes wide open for trouble; midday dinner; chores; supper and, soon afterward, silence. It wasn’t easy, and according to Jacob, it was going to get worse, at least for Gib.

“Harding’s got it in for you worse than ever,” Jacob said. “I been watching him and I can tell. He’s just biding his time, but he’ll find something to get you for before long. And Offenbacher too. I’m guessing that they took Thornton’s money to let you stay because they needed it so much. Offenbacher pretty much had to let you bust one of her favorite rules, but they don’t have to like it. Mark my words, Gibby, you better watch your step or they’re going to find a way to take it out on your hide.”

But days passed and nothing very bad happened, at least no Repentance Room assignments for Gib, nor any painful sessions with Mr. Paddle. Still, Gib couldn’t help feeling that Jacob was right when he said that Mr. Harding and Miss Offenbacher were just biding their time and that nothing had really changed.

Miss Mooney hadn’t changed much either. She was still as warm and welcoming as ever, and still as overworked. Gib could tell she was curious about how his time with the Thorntons had been, but she was way too busy taking care of almost thirty juniors to spend much time talking about it. Too busy to talk and too unwilling to say anything much about the situation at Lovell House.

And just as it had always been, the nights were the worst. Days were packed full of work and people, but after the silence bell rang there was always lots of lonely time to think and dream, just as he’d done when he was a little kid. But it wasn’t as easy now to conjure up a comforting hope dream because his mind insisted on picturing only one family and one house. And while a hope dream needs to be a soft, hazy possibility, for Gib the Rocking M was far too sharp and clear, and no longer any kind of possibility.

But there was still the saddle. When nothing else worked and the night dragged on and on, he would pull the saddle out from under his bed and put it across his chest. Somehow the touch and smell of the worn, horse-scented leather made the future seem more like something that might be worth waiting for.

J
ACOB 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.