The Mulberry Tree Read online

  Frank started to walk away from the idiotic turn the conversation had taken, but Kyle’s words held him back.

  “I’m listening,” Kyle said. “What do you have in mind to do?”

  “Nothing,” Harper said. “I don’t plan to do anything. It’s just that I want to be a writer, and I like to play, What if? It’s my favorite game.”

  “You mean besides trying on ladies’ hose?” Burgess said.

  Harper looked Burgess up and down. “Want to try a pair?”

  Kyle interrupted them. “Okay, I’ll bite. What would make us heroes?”

  “It was just something I was thinking about for a story, that’s all. I was thinking what I’d do if the bomber struck here.”

  “Push the lot of them into an elevator shaft then throw a stick of dynamite after them?” Taddy said, and everyone looked at him, surprised at the violence in his voice.

  “Just the opposite,” Harper said. “I’d rescue them. I’d be the calm one while they were running around in terror. I’d direct them toward the exits, and I’d take over while the teachers and students were going crazy. Then later I’d be modest when I was talking to reporters.” At this he demonstrated, with his head down, then looking up shyly. “Shucks, ma’am, ’tweren’t nothin’.”

  They were all laughing at Harper, and Kyle said, “Nice idea. We’ll lead them out the exits and make a stand for Calburn.”

  “And what if the doors of the classrooms are locked?” Taddy asked.

  “And who would rescue the naked girls in the gym?” Rodney asked.

  “What about the little kids downstairs?” Burgess asked. “I’d like to get them out.”

  “And me,” Frank said. “I’d help with the little kids, too.” Then when they all looked at him, he shrugged. “I like kids. Better than adults, anyway.”

  “What about you, Taddy? Who would you like to save?” Kyle asked, and Taddy grinned.

  “I’d save the football players. They’d be . . . ” He thought for a moment. “They’d be locked inside the gym, and smoke would be pouring into the room. They’d be coughing and sure they were going to die, then I’d . . . I’d break open a window and lower a rope down the side of the wall and help them climb up.”

  His story was so vivid that the others laughed, but Harper was serious. “What do you break the window with, and where do you get the rope? And if they get out of the place one at a time, do the others die of smoke inhalation?”

  For a while they were all silent, glancing down the road, waiting for the bus, and the discussion seemed to be over, but Harper wouldn’t let it die. He turned to Kyle. “What would you do?”

  “Catch the bastard that did it,” Kyle said instantly, as though he’d been thinking about it. “I’d put on my cape and fly into the smoke and catch the criminal.”

  “But what if the bad guy was long gone?” Harper asked.

  “I’d walk toward the bomb and take it out even if I had to throw my body over it.”

  When Kyle saw the others staring at him, he gave a half smile and said, “So sue me, I want to be a hero. I’d like to be the opposite of my old man.”

  “And that’s how it started,” Burgess said. “It was just a story we made up to entertain ourselves during the long wait for the bus.”

  “But then it really happened,” Bailey said.

  “Yes. Harper planted the bomb in the school, and between you and me, I think he’d done it before. Several bombs had gone off around the area during that summer, and I think Harper planted them all. In Wells Creek, there were actually a half dozen of them placed around the school, but during the confusion Harper managed to sneak around and remove most of them before the cops found them. They weren’t real anyway, just smoke.

  “Anyway, by the time they went off, our fantasy had been talked about so much among us that we knew exactly what our jobs were. And Harper had done his homework; everything we needed for the rescue was right where it needed to be. And when the reporters came, even our speeches of humility had been rehearsed.

  “But what hadn’t been rehearsed was Kyle’s wrath.

  “That night Kyle went to each house, got us out of bed, and had us sneak away to have a little ‘meeting’ with Harper. Kyle was furious, and he threatened Harper that if he ever did anything like that again, we’d cut him out of our group. We’d shun him and leave him on his own.”

  “But you came out of the bombing as the Golden Six,” Matt said.

  “Yeah, that was something we hadn’t planned.” Burgess paused a moment. “For a while it was great. We were heroes in Wells Creek, and we ruled Calburn. Everyone everywhere loved us.”

  “Until Roddy insulted Theresa Spangler,” Matt said.

  “Right,” Burgess said, then smiled. “By that time we’d pretty much forgiven Harper since everything had worked out so well. In fact, we were doing better than we ever had in our lives thanks to him. Then after Spangler was insulted, horrible things began to happen to us, but Harper saved us.”

  “He wrote the articles,” Matt said. “But Bailey hasn’t read them.” Quickly, he added, “That’s not a criticism, dearest.”

  “I didn’t realize you two were married,” Burgess said.

  “We’re not,” Bailey said.

  “She only started sleeping with me—” Matt began.

  “Would you mind?!” she said to Matt, and both men laughed. “So tell me about the articles.”

  “Harper’s family owned the Calburn newspaper, and his mother stayed home and had Harper wait on her hand and foot, while her deceased brother’s oldest son ran the newspaper. Sort of. Harper’s mother was a tyrant, and she tried to rule anyone who got within twenty miles of her.

  “Right after Roddy made Spangler angry, she started telling people that she believed we’d planted the bomb ourselves. She said that heroes didn’t just appear in one day, that there had to be something leading up to them. But it’s my experience in life that people want heroes, so for the most part the other kids ignored her. So she went to Calburn and pretended she was writing an article about the Golden Six and asked a lot of questions.”

  “Just as she did many years later for her book.”

  “Exactly,” Burgess said. “She got people to confide in her, then spread what she had learned around, and the students began to hate us.

  “Because we weren’t from Wells Creek, we didn’t know where the evil gossip was coming from. It was Roddy who found out. Some girl told him while they were in the backseat of a car.

  “And when Harper heard, he got angry. He said that no cross-eyed, buck-toothed, frizzy-haired Medusa was going to win over him.

  “What Harper did was to tell his mother that if he was going to be a writer, he needed to start young, so he needed to have his work published in their newspaper now.

  “His mother allowed Harper to have anything except freedom, so she agreed, and Harper wrote his first story. But when Harper’s cousin, the editor of the paper, read the first column, he refused to publish it. ‘I can’t publish this,’ he told his aunt. ‘Have you read this thing? It says that Kyle Longacre is a cross between Galahad and Buddha, a “champion of the underdog,” he calls him. I’ve known Kyle all his life, and he never championed anything except a football. He’s a nice kid, but he’s no saint. And your son has portrayed that Thaddeus Overlander as a great mathematician who’s secretly working with the government to save the world from destruction. And Burgess is—’

  “ ‘I think the article shows great imagination,’ Mrs. Kirkland said.

  “ ‘This isn’t imagination, it’s libel. And, besides that, it’s all a great whopping lie.’

  “ ‘My son wrote it, so you will publish it, or you will no longer have a job,’ she said, and that was that.

  “And that’s when everything really began. Harper took all the bad stories that Spangler had used against us and twisted them around so they became good traits. He portrayed Frank as a man with the voice of the angels, and said Frank had worked his way up pas