The Secret School by Avi

Author:Avi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Eleven

THAT FRIDAY, BECAUSE Herbert had been out of school for three successive days, Ida decided to visit him.

She didn't tell anyone what she was doing, not even Felix. When she drove away from school that afternoon, she simply turned the car to the right instead of the left. The Bixler farm was two miles south down the valley.

"Brake and clutch!" she called to Felix after the short ride. She stopped the car, but kept the motor running. Cranking it up on her own was very hard.

"Why are we stopping?" Felix asked.

Ida untied the door. "We're at the Bixler farm," she announced.

"What we doing here?" Felix wanted to know as he squirmed out from under the dashboard.

"I want to see if Herbert is all right," Ida said as she stepped down.

"Is something the matter with him?"

"I don't know. Thought I'd better find out why he's not been at school. You wait here."

The road where she had parked ran along a slight bluff. The Bixler farm was below her, cradled by a curve in the road. While Ida didn't exactly know how big the place was, she knew a poor farm when she saw it.

There was one small house, its wooden sides gray with weather and the remnants of red paint. Not far from the dilapidated porch was a rusty truck. It had no wheels and seemed to be permanently mired in the ground. There were two other pieces of farm equipment, both quite rusty. The remains of a child's swing hung from a cottonwood tree, its two frayed rope strands dangling.

Some thirty yards from the house was the barn. It was fairly large, but its main doors were lopsided and, from all appearances, permanently open. Over the doorway hung the bleached skull of an elk, its white antlers extended like long fingers of ice.

In the small corral in front of the barn stood a horse. A leggy young colt hovered close by, the only new thing in sight. Herbert was not to be seen nor, for that matter, was any other human.

There was a sense of disorder about the farm. Surely not the way Ida's father ran things. Ida wondered if it was a good idea for her to even be here.

As she hesitated, a man strolled out of the barn. Ida recognized him immediately as Herbert's father, Mr. Bixler. He wore rubber boots, rather dirty clothing, and a straw Western-style hat on his head. His face, what she could see of it, was hidden by a shaggy gray mustache.

"Howdy," he called, looking up to where Ida stood. He touched his hand to the brim of his hat in a gesture of polite greeting even as he poked the pitchfork tines into the earth, then leaned on it. "Can I help you, ma'am?"

"I'm ... Ida Bidson," Ida called down. "I'm Herbert's ... classmate."

"Are you, now?"

"Yes, sir."

"And what's bringing you here?"

"His ... teacher wanted to know if he was all right."

"Did she? I'm sure I told Miss Fletcher it wasn't none of her business where my boy is.

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