Aim by Joyce Moyer Hostetter

Author:Joyce Moyer Hostetter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boyds Mills Press

24

SURPRISE

February 1942

One morning about two weeks after I played hooky, I decided to slip off again. This time I wanted to find that swinging bridge. I wanted to stand on the bridge and remember. Remember me being scared and Pop helping me across.

Only thing was, I wasn’t far into the woods when I heard some twigs snapping behind me. I stopped and listened. But all I could hear was the sound of a horse and wagon clattering down the hill into Brookford.

I started walking again, quiet as I could. And every so often I’d hear a noise and think I wasn’t alone in the woods. But then I decided it was my imagination, so I stopped paying it any mind and kept going until I found the bridge. It was just a few rows of boards fastened to cables that stretched across the river. And there was a cable on each side for hanging on to and a pitiful row of slats to keep a body from falling off.

That bridge swayed with every step I took, and the water rushing below gave me the heebie-jeebies. It felt as if the whole bridge was moving upstream. My legs wobbled and I gripped the cable, hanging on to Pop’s words. Keep your eye on the other side. For some reason, that put me in mind of Miss Hinkle and that confounded handwriting advice: Keep thinking. Keep moving. Keep gliding.

When I was halfway across, I saw a stranger come onto the far side of the bridge. I didn’t feel like talking to strangers, so I turned and headed back to where I came from. That’s when I realized who had been in the woods with me.

Dudley Walker.

And now Dudley was on the bridge, too. There I was, up in the air on a swinging bridge—trapped between two people I didn’t feel like talking to.

Dudley came straight toward me. Fast. Like he thought he could scare me by making the bridge sway. Or maybe he wanted to knock me off. I hung on to the cables at the sides and did my own share of swaying—just to let him know I wasn’t afraid. We got that bridge rocking worse than Granddaddy’s chair when he was fired up about something.

Behind me, I heard the stranger yelling. “Whoa there. Whoa. Yee-owl.”

Dudley was just about six feet from me now.

“What are you doing here?” I yelled.

“Following you, I reckon. Someone has to keep an eye on you.”

“What I do is none of your business!”

“What if I make it my business? What if Old Lady Hinkle wants to know why her little neighbor boy wasn’t at school? Somebody has to tell her the truth, don’t they?”

I didn’t figure Dudley would be running to tell Miss Hinkle about me coming to Brookford when I was supposed to be in school. But it was hard to tell. He probably wouldn’t mind getting himself in trouble as long as he could drag me along.

The bridge was starting to settle down a little.

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