The Angry Intruder Read online

  He stepped back. The bench fell, crashing to the floor. Wraight pushed his way through the crowd and out the door. He could feel Lizette’s eyes on him. He wanted to hurt something again. And he wanted to run.

  For now, he would run. Later—tonight, maybe—there would be plenty of time for the hurting.

  1

  Christy lay in bed, tossing and turning. It was two in the morning, but she couldn’t seem to get to sleep.

  Maybe it was the excitement of the open house. It had lasted into the wee hours, and everyone had agreed it was a huge success. To her relief, no windows had been broken, nothing had caught on fire, no fights had started. And there’d been no pranks, thank goodness—just lots of joking and laughing and dancing.

  Christy had even danced a couple dances with Dr. MacNeill. Surprisingly, he was a good dancer. And she had to admit he’d looked very dashing this evening in his fancy coat and tie. His hair was even neatly combed—for once.

  After they were done dancing, Fairlight had whispered that she’d seen David watching Christy and the doctor very carefully. “If I didn’t know better, Miz Christy,” she’d said, “I’d swear to you that grumpy look on the preacher’s face was pure green envy!”

  Christy wondered if Fairlight could be right. Probably not. Christy and David were just friends—weren’t they? And as for the doctor . . . He couldn’t possibly be interested in Christy romantically. At least, she didn’t think so.

  Well, she could worry about that another day. The impor­tant thing was that the party had been a success. Everyone had danced and sang and told tall tales and just generally seemed to enjoy the company of their neighbors. She had even played a few tunes—badly—on the piano, along with Jeb and David and some of the others.

  The thought of the piano made her sigh out loud. Why hadn’t she handled things better with Wraight this evening? She hadn’t meant to embarrass him about getting the piano dirty, but clearly she had.

  Lizette, who was spending the night here at the mission house with Ruby Mae and Bessie, had told Christy not to worry. She’d said that lately, Wraight seemed to have a temper that could flare up like a bonfire. “It isn’t your fault, Miz Christy,” she’d said sadly. “Near as I can figure, it’s nobody’s fault.”

  Well, maybe so. But Christy was the teacher, and she should have known better than to humiliate Wraight when he’d already been embarrassed in front of everyone once that night. Monday, she’d be sure to apologize to him. Not that her apology would probably change anything. But she had to try.

  She rolled over onto her side and tried to count sheep. She was on number eighteen when she heard a loud thump. She sat up in bed, waiting to see if she heard anything else.

  No, nothing. It was probably Ruby Mae and her two friends, creeping around and making mischief.

  Christy closed her eyes and started counting again. This time she made it to sheep number twenty-one before she heard another thud.

  She threw back her covers. Those girls were going to keep her up all night unless she put a stop to this. Ruby Mae had promised she and the others would be on their best behavior. Christy smiled as she donned her robe. Come to think of it, this probably was their best behavior.

  Christy opened her door. She didn’t have a lamp with her, but the moonlight through the hall window was bright. She heard a creak coming from downstairs, the sound of a footstep on wood. The girls were probably in the kitchen, searching for the last of Miss Ida’s oatmeal cookies.

  Christy eased open the door to Ruby Mae’s bedroom. To her shock, all three girls were sleeping peacefully. Ruby Mae was snoring away.

  Her hand trembling slightly, Christy closed the door. Across the hall, Miss Ida’s door was closed, which probably meant she was sound asleep too. She’d said she was exhausted after all the frantic preparations for the open house.

  From somewhere downstairs came another thump. Christy’s heart raced. If it wasn’t Miss Ida, and it wasn’t the girls, who could be downstairs at this hour?

  Slowly, as quietly as she could, Christy crept down the stairs. Each step brought her a little closer to her fear.

  She heard a creak. “Miss Ida?” she called in a hoarse whisper.

  No one answered. Christy tried to swallow, but her throat was tight and dry.

  At last she reached the bottom of the stairs. Moonlight filled the parlor with a milky glow. Nothing moved. No one seemed to be there.

  She took two steps across the cold, wooden floor. She held her breath, and then she heard it—someone else’s breathing.

  Christy spun around.

  Near the piano, she saw him. He was tall and menacing, his face hidden in shadow. She could just make out the glimmer of a silver knife, poised high in the air over the open piano. The knife came down, in slow motion, and disappeared deep inside the piano. There was a sharp, metallic noise as it sliced through a wire.

  “No!” Without thinking, Christy dashed toward the figure. Suddenly she realized who it was. She came to an abrupt stop inches away from the intruder.

  “Wraight?” she whispered.

  His eyes shone in the moonlight with a terrible anger, like nothing she’d ever seen before. He lifted the knife again, high over Christy’s head.

  “No, Wraight!” she cried, and as the knife came down, she grabbed for his arm with all her might.

  Christy locked her hands onto Wraight’s strong arm. The knife gleamed in the eerie light.

  “It’s been you all along, Wraight, hasn’t it?” she whispered.

  She felt his arm go limp. His eyes filled with tears.

  “Don’t do it, Wraight!” a boy’s voice cried.

  Christy spun around to see Zach, climbing through a half-open window on the other side of the room. He dashed across the space and threw himself against his big brother, sobbing frantically.

  Wraight let the knife drop to the floor. “I told you not to follow me again,” he said softly.

  Zach clung to Wraight, his arms tight around the older boy’s waist. “He wouldn’t never hurt you, Miz Christy,” Zach said. Tears streamed down his face. “He was just mad, is all. Like the other times.”

  Christy stared into Wraight’s face, hoping to find an explanation there. But all she saw was a confused, unhappy boy.

  “Was it you all those times, Wraight?” she asked. “The ink and the message on the school?”

  He hung his head but didn’t answer.

  “And that time I was walking home from the Spencers’—was that you too?”

  Wraight nodded slightly.

  “But I was sure it was Zach,” Christy said. “I thought Lundy was putting him up to it—”

  Wraight looked up. He had a grim half smile on his face. “Do sound like Lundy, don’t it?”

  Christy touched Zach’s shoulder gently. “But Zach, why were you always there? I saw you at the schoolhouse, the night that message was left. And out in the woods . . .”

  Wraight held his brother close. “It weren’t him. It were me, every time. Zach, he’s like my twin or something. Or my—what is it the preacher calls it?—my conch . . . uh, my . . .”

  “Conscience,” Christy said.

  “He knew I was up to no good, and when I wouldn’t listen to nothing he had to say, he started following me around.” He touched Zach’s red cap. “Followed me tonight, too, even though I told him if’n he did I’d make him do my chores for a month.”

  “Christy?” Miss Ida called from the top of the stairwell. “Do I hear voices down there?”

  “Wait here,” Christy told the boys. She went to the stairs. Ruby Mae, Bessie, and Lizette were sitting on the top steps, yawning and rubbing their eyes.

  “Everything’s under control, Miss Ida. Go back to sleep,” Christy said. “That goes for you girls too.”

  “Can’t sleep,” Ruby Mae said firmly. “You’ve got us all a-wondering what’s goin’ on.”

  “I can sleep just fine, thank you,” said Miss Ida. She turned on her heel and went back to her ro
om.

  “You girls wait there,” Christy instructed.

  She went back to Zach and Wraight. “Zach,” she said, kneeling down, “I need to talk to your brother for a few minutes, all right? You go on up to the top of the stairs and wait. Some of your school friends are up there.”

  “Is they . . . girls?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Zach moaned. “See what you got me into?” he said to Wraight. He turned to Christy. “He ain’t in big trouble, is he, Teacher?”

  “Well, he’s in trouble,” Christy said. “But I wouldn’t worry, if I were you.”

  “If you whop him with a birch switch, he won’t cry a lick,” Zach said proudly.

  “I don’t think that will be necessary, Zach,” Christy said with a smile. “Now, you go on up.”

  Zach headed upstairs, and Christy motioned for Wraight to join her on the piano bench. He gazed at her doubtfully.

  “Come on, Wraight,” Christy said. “We need to talk.”

  After a moment, he sat down awkwardly beside her.

  Christy took a deep breath, trying to clear her thoughts. Moonlight flowed over the piano like liquid silver. Wraight’s sharp knife still lay on the floor. She could hear the soft whispers of Zach and the girls on the stairs.

  She thought of the spilled ink and the erased chalkboard. She thought of the angry message on the schoolhouse. She thought of her fear—that night in the woods—and again tonight.

  She was angry at Wraight. She wanted to tell him that. Part of her even wanted to scare him, the way he’d scared her. But when she looked at the quiet boy sitting beside her, staring at the piano keys as if they were bars of gold, she wondered if getting angry was the answer. She wanted to help Wraight more than she wanted to get angry at him.

  Miss Alice had said that Christy had to understand the mountain people before she would ever be able to help them.

  Why would Wraight have turned on Christy? Why, when he seemed so entranced by the piano, would he try to hurt it?

  “You know, Wraight,” Christy said, “I’ll let you in on a little secret. Ever since I came here to the mission, I keep making mistakes. Sometimes I feel like a real fool.”

  Wraight stared at her, mystified, as if she were speaking in a foreign language. “You?” he said at last. “Make mistakes? Ain’t likely.”

  “It’s true,” Christy insisted. “Like those donations I got for the mission. I thought they were a good idea, but it turned out Miss Alice was pretty unhappy with me. The way I asked for them wasn’t right. And we ended up with things we’re going to have a hard time using, like telephone wire.” She ran her fingers over the keys. “And, of course, this piano.”

  “This piano ain’t no mistake,” Wraight said firmly. “It’s the most amazin’ thing Cutter Gap ever seen. It’s like . . .”

  He threw open his arms, searching for the right word. “Like the biggest dulcimer in the whole, wide world, right here, just a-waitin’ for someone to help it sing.”

  Christy played a soft chord, three notes together that lingered in the air. “Then why did you cut that wire, Wraight? Why did you want to hurt the piano?”

  For a long time Wraight sat silently, staring at the keyboard. “Sometimes,” he said at last, “when you can’t have something . . . it just makes you so mad, you feel like you’re going to bust up inside.”

  “But if you’d wanted lessons on the piano, I would have been glad to teach you, Wraight. Not that I’m much of a piano player, mind you. But all you had to do was ask.”

  Wraight gave a hard laugh. “And make more of a fool of myself than I have already? Not hardly.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Like it ain’t as plain as the nose on my face.”

  Christy touched him on the shoulder. “I don’t understand, Wraight. Really, I don’t. Try to explain it to me.”

  Wraight thought for a while. “I can’t step inside that there schoolhouse,” he said, avoiding her gaze, “without sayin’ or doin’ somethin’ so all-fired stupid that I sound like the biggest fool this side of Coldsprings Mountain. The way you’re always goin’ on about numbers and letters and such, it’s enough to make me—”

  “What? Make you angry?” Christy asked. At last she was beginning to understand.

  “Well, if’n you want the whole truth—” Wraight’s voice was harsh. “—some days it makes me want to burn that whole school right to the ground.”

  Christy nodded. “Sometimes fear makes a person do things he doesn’t want to do,” she said. “Things he knows are wrong.”

  Wraight pushed down a key with his index finger and listened. “I reckon,” he finally said.

  “Lizette tells me you’re quite a dulcimer player,” Christy said.

  “Don’t have no dulcimer no more.”

  “I never could play the piano very well,” Christy said. “I took lessons growing up, but no matter how hard I tried, my fingers just couldn’t keep up with the notes.” She laughed softly. “One year, when I was eight, we had a recital. All the parents came to hear us. It seemed to me like all of Asheville, North Carolina, was there. Well, my teacher wanted me to play something simple. You know, like ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’ You’ve heard that, haven’t you?”

  Christy plunked out the first few notes of the song, and Wraight nodded.

  “But of course, I had other things on my mind. I wanted to impress everyone with my incredible talent. So I decided to play one of my favorite hymns: ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus.’ ”

  This time she played the first notes of the hymn. Wraight watched her fingers, fascinated.

  “Well, needless to say, I got up there to play, and I froze. I played about three notes, looked out at all those faces in the audience, and the fear just took over.”

  “What happened then?” Wraight asked.

  “I’m very embarrassed to report that I threw up all over my piano teacher’s favorite rug.”

  Wraight burst out laughing. “Miz Christy, that is the saddest tale I ever did hear! You wouldn’t tell me a whopper, now, would you?”

  “Cross my heart. It’s the truth. And the really sad thing is that I stopped taking lessons after that. I was so afraid of failing that I just gave up. I’ve always regretted it.” She sighed. “Now it seems like I can hardly get a note out of this piano.”

  “Try,” Wraight said softly. His voice was almost pleading.

  Christy cleared her throat. “Well, here goes nothing.”

  Slowly and painfully, she began to play “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” All too often, she hit a wrong note that made her wince, but she kept going because Wraight seemed to want her to. He was watching her fingers as if he were in a trance.

  Halfway through, she struggled again and again with the same chord, but she simply couldn’t find the right note.

  “Maybe that’s enough. I don’t want to ruin your hearing,” she said. “I’m sorry. I just can’t seem to get it right.”

  “Could I . . . could I give it a whirl?” Wraight whispered.

  Christy slid off the bench. “Be my guest.”

  Wraight stared at the keys, deep in concentration. He arranged his fingers carefully, then pressed them all down at once.

  The first chord of the old gospel hymn rang out. Wraight closed his eyes as if he’d witnessed a miracle. Then, slowly and with great care, he began to play the same piece Christy had struggled through. He only missed a few notes. Christy watched in amazement. She felt the way she had when she was teaching Fairlight Spencer to read—as if all she’d had to do was open a door and send Wraight on his way.

  She thought of all the times she’d been frustrated with Wraight, and with the other slow learners in her class. How wrong she’d been about him. Perhaps different students learned in different ways. It was her job to find the door that would allow each one into the place where Wraight had just ventured.

  When he was done, she applauded. “That was amazing, Wraight. Absolutely am
azing.”

  “Ain’t nothin’. You just sound ’em out, one at a time. Low notes are down at that end. High ones up yonder.” He shrugged. “It’s easy enough.”

  “Tell that to my old piano teacher.” Christy laughed. “You have a real gift, Wraight. I was wondering—if I could locate some piano instruction books, how would you like to come over to the mission house after school and practice? I could teach you what I know, which isn’t much. But then you’d be pretty much on your own.”

  To her shock, Wraight shook his head firmly. “Can’t,” was all he said.

  “But I thought you’d . . .”

  Once again, Miss Alice’s words about the donations came back to her: “There’s a strong mountain code, you see. No one wants to owe anyone for anything. These people don’t respect anyone who can’t earn his own way.”

  “Wraight,” Christy said, “suppose you did odd jobs around the mission to pay for your lessons? It would be a way to pay us back for the damage to the piano too. We’ll need to replace that wire. I know David’s got a lot of work around here left to do. He wants to build a better barn for Goldie and Prince and Old Theo, to start with. And one of these days, he may have a telephone he needs help hooking up.”

  Wraight scratched his chin. “So it’d be fair and square-like? I’d be working for the time I spent on the piano?”

  “Fair and square.”

  “I s’pose I could manage that,” he said casually, but Christy could see the excitement in his eyes.

  “Good. It’s a deal, then. And Wraight?”

  “Yes’m?”

  “If you feel angry like that again, will you come to me and talk about it?”

  “No’m.”

  Christy sighed. “But why not?”

  “Don’t need to talk with you, if’n I got this here piano to talk to.” He looked up at her hopefully. “You reckon I could play real quiet-like for another minute or two? I was hopin’ maybe I could practice up to play for Lizette.”

  “I have an even better idea,” Christy said. “Wait here.”

  She went upstairs. Zach was asleep on the landing. Ruby Mae and Bessie had gone back to bed. But Lizette was sitting on the top step, wide awake.