The Secrets of Tree Taylor Read online

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2014 by Dandi Daley Mackall

  Jacket photograph copyright © 2014 by Masterfile

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/teens

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mackall, Dandi Daley.

  The secrets of Tree Taylor / Dandi Daley Mackall.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In small-town Missouri in tumultuous 1963, Tree Taylor, thirteen, wants to write an important story to secure a spot on the high school newspaper staff, but when a neighbor is shot, she investigates and learns that some secrets should be kept.

  ISBN 978-0-375-86897-9 (trade) — ISBN 978-0-375-96897-6 (lib. bdg.) —

  ISBN 978-0-375-89982-9 (ebook)

  [1. Secrets—Fiction. 2. Reporters and reporting—Fiction. 3. Community life—Missouri—Fiction. 4. Family life—Missouri—Fiction. 5. Nineteen sixties—Fiction. 6. Missouri—History—20th century—Fiction.] I.Title.

  PZ7.M1905Sf 2014

  [Fic]—dc23

  2013001577

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  To Maureen Daley Pento,

  the world’s best big sister then … and now

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Soul

  Chapter 2: A Bad Scene

  Chapter 3: Accidents Happen, Man

  Chapter 4: Tell It Like It Is

  Chapter 5: Town Gossip

  Chapter 6: Basket Cases

  Chapter 7: Rumors

  Chapter 8: Twistin’ and Turnin’

  Chapter 9: Rain Dancing

  Chapter 10: Deep

  Chapter 11: Game On

  Chapter 12: Far-Out!

  Chapter 13: Get Real

  Chapter 14: Going in Circles

  Chapter 15: Nuclear

  Chapter 16: Progress

  Chapter 17: Tree, Girl Reporter

  Chapter 18: Straight from the Horse’s (Mrs. Kinney’s) Mouth

  Chapter 19: Ain’t Got Jack

  Chapter 20: Cold Wars and Roses

  Chapter 21: Pedal to the Metal

  Chapter 22: Rock-’n’-Roll!

  Chapter 23: Nowheresville

  Chapter 24: Unreal

  Chapter 25: One Cool Cat

  Chapter 26: Hazy Crazy

  Chapter 27: What’s the Tale, Nightingale?

  Chapter 28: Foxes

  Chapter 29: Lay It on Me

  Chapter 30: Heavy

  Chapter 31: Kind-of Friends

  Chapter 32: Time Travel

  Chapter 33: Teed Off

  Chapter 34: Casualties

  Chapter 35: Do Your Own Thing

  Chapter 36: Be That Way

  Chapter 37: Creeps

  Chapter 38: Blows My Mind

  Chapter 39: Out of My Tree

  Chapter 40: Checkmate

  Chapter 41: Get a Grip

  Chapter 42: Steam Engine Secrets

  Chapter 43: S.W.A.K.

  Not the End

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  Soul

  The morning the gun went off, I was thinking about Tolstoy and the Beatles, and maybe, if I’m being honest here, a little about Ray Miller and how his eyes were perfect little pieces of sky.

  The Beatles I thought about all the time, especially Paul. My friend Sarah could have Ringo. Just give me Paul McCartney.

  I wouldn’t have been thinking about Tolstoy if he hadn’t popped up in my writing notebook as my first quote of the summer. All year I had collected quotations from famous writers and had copied one quote onto each page of my otherwise empty social studies notebook. Our school library had biographies of writers, but the public library had whole books of quotations. My primary goal for the summer was to become a great writer—at least, great enough to earn me a spot on the school newspaper my freshman year.

  My first quote happened to be from Tolstoy:

  A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workings of his very soul.—Count Leo Tolstoy

  How on earth was I supposed to reveal the inner workings of my very soul?

  To be fair, I had tried to write something dear and necessary—well, worthy—the day before the shooting. I figured I’d need a worthy article to convince Mrs. Woolsey to give me the only freshman reporting spot at Hamilton High next year. Two seniors would run the paper, but each class got one reporter. I wanted ours to be me.

  As for “necessary,” well, that’s what this position was to me. Being on the Blue and Gold staff would be my first step toward becoming a real writer. An investigative journalist. Or maybe a female version of Walter Cronkite, interrupting regularly scheduled television programming with breaking news for the nation.

  Randy Ridings had been editor of the Blue and Gold, and now he ran the town’s only newspaper, the Hamiltonian. And Becky Smith, also an ex-staffer, got a job in the mailroom of the Kansas City Star last year.

  I sure needed that Blue and Gold job a heap more than Wanda Hopkins did. Wanda hadn’t written anything important last year when she was our junior high reporter. Since the junior high occupied the same building as the high school, seventh and eighth graders got one reporter for the Blue and Gold. But Wanda didn’t report. She’d been too caught up reigning as queen over her many friends. And too busy entertaining Ben, then Dennis, then Eric … then Ray.

  Ray, with the eyes like two pieces of sky.

  I tried writing about the Cold War and the Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev banging his boot on a podium and declaring, “We will bury you!” I tried writing about President Kennedy’s promise in front of God and everybody to put a man on the moon by 1970 … and how embarrassing it would be if we didn’t get there before the Russians.

  But I ended up ripping the pages from my notebook and pitching them into the wastebasket.

  What did world events have to do with me, Tree Taylor, age thirteen, living in Hamilton, Missouri, population 1,701? (And that census had been taken before the shoe factory closing that forced dozens of families, including our census taker, to leave town.) We hadn’t even been all that worried about the Cuban missiles aimed at the U.S. What would the Communists want with us farmers anyway?

  Nope. Everything dear and necessary happened far away. And certainly not in my soul, thank you, Count Tolstoy.

  My second day of writing went much better, even before Mr. Kinney got shot right up the road from my house. Ben Franklin had a lot to do with it. (Not with shooting Mr. Kinney. With getting me off to a better writing day.) The quote for the day was:

  Either write something worth reading, or do something worth writing.—Benjamin Franklin

  So even before the whole Kinney shooting business gave me something worth writing about, I’d penned two worthy goals for the summer of ’63:

  1. Write such a fantastic investig
ative report that even Mrs. Woolsey can’t turn me down for the freshman spot on the Blue and Gold staff.

  2. Experience my first real kiss. A kiss delivered by a boy. A boy who is not related to me. A kiss worth writing about.

  Jack, my lifelong buddy, and Sarah, my best-friend-who-was-a-girl, already knew how much I wanted to write for the school paper. But I wouldn’t talk to anybody about my kissing goal. I would keep that a secret.

  Barefoot and still in my fuzzy pj’s, I tiptoed out of the house at dawn. I eased the screen door shut behind me and skipped over the dewy wet front step, where I usually sat. Instead, armed with nothing but a Bic pen and my writing notebook, I plopped cross-legged, Navajo-style, right onto the warm sidewalk.

  I’d barely finished writing the day’s date on my journal page when I heard gravel crunch in the distance. A car going way too fast bounced up over the hill in a cloud of dust. From the backyard, Midge barked.

  “It’s just Jack!” I hollered to our family mutt, a terrier mix that looked kind of like a hairless lamb.

  Jack Adams came flying up our road in Fred, his ’53 Chevy. Brakes screeched, and the car came to a stop. “Hey, Tree!” he called out the driver’s window.

  Jack claimed credit for getting everybody to call me Tree instead of Teresa. Tree is all I ever remember answering to, so I couldn’t say about that.

  “Hey, Jack!” I called back.

  His parents and mine had been friends longer than Jack and I had been alive. He was four years older than me, but it had never mattered. We’d always been close. We talked to each other about everything in a way I never could with my sister, even though Eileen was only three years older than me.

  Music blared from Jack’s radio—“The Loco-Motion” by Little Eva. Jack’s non-steering-wheel hand hung out the window and drummed against the car door in perfect rhythm. Made me want to jump up and dance, but I resisted.

  “You working this afternoon?” he shouted above Little Eva’s invitation to “Come on, come on, do the loco-motion with me.”

  I sighed. “All afternoon. Tonight too. What a drag.” It had seemed pretty neat when I’d gotten the job of basketgirl at the town’s swimming pool. It only paid a quarter an hour, but there weren’t any other jobs for a thirteen-year-old girl. Plus, I’d have the edge on the lifeguard job when I turned sixteen. “You working today, Jack?”

  He smiled, flashing the biggest, whitest teeth in all of Caldwell County. People said I had big brown eyes, but Jack’s eyes made mine look like pennies. He had a classic face, with bones, instead of flesh, shaping his chin and jawline. “Me? Nah, man. I’m up and grooving early for no reason. You know me.”

  I did know Jack. If he was up this early, it had to be work. Jack’s summer job was the pits. Donna, his mother, had pulled strings to get him on at the IGA, Hamilton’s only grocery store. He worked in the meat department, cutting and wrapping gross, raw meat in slick white paper. Jack hated the job. But what he hated even more was his mother’s prying. Donna, who had never met a piece of gossip she didn’t like, called him a couple of times a day at work, always with the same question: “What’s new at work today, Jack, honey?”

  “So, writing anything great?” Jack asked.

  “I wish.”

  “Wishing is great.” He revved his engine as the Beatles launched into “Please Please Me.” “Guess I’ll see you later. I might stop by the pool if I get off in time and haven’t slit my throat from boredom.”

  “Thanks for the warning.” I waved my pen at him.

  He honked goodbye. Then he and Fred the Car disappeared into another cloud of dust as they rounded the curve at the end of our road.

  I couldn’t stand the thought of Jack not being around next year. He’d be off to Northwest Missouri State, where, no doubt, he’d have a dozen dates on weekends and never come home. In the yearbook, his class had voted him “Most Likely to … Everything.” To succeed. To get rich. To find fame. To marry a movie star.

  Every time I thought about school without Jack, I got a pain in my stomach, as if my guts were being twisted like a wet towel.

  I breathed in the scent of two horses and a dozen cows from across the road. Our house was the last house in town—not that there was much difference between Hamilton’s town and country.

  A block away, the McPherson dogs kept barking like squirrels were teasing them. I would have turned those poor hounds loose myself if I hadn’t been afraid they’d kill chickens and meet a fate worse than being tied up all day and night.

  Our Midge liked chickens a little too much for us to let her run free like our other dogs always had. But Midge still had a great life—big backyard, the shade of our tamarack tree, lots of food and water, toys and love. She hardly ever barked except to say hey.

  Dad and I kept watch over all the dogs in the neighborhood. Not everybody in Hamilton believed they owed it to their pets to take good care of them. Some of the very same folks who got so upset about the Russians sending dogs and monkeys into space kept their own dogs chained and hungry half the time.

  Maybe I could write a hard-hitting investigative report on “The Hamilton Hounds.” Or “The Hounds of Hamilton.” I’d work in alliteration, like “horror” and “hunger.”

  But as I sat under a cloudless blue sky, with the cry of a mourning dove underscoring the sweet music of song sparrows, I didn’t feel up to writing about horrible, hungry hound dogs.

  I wanted Jack to come back so I could hear John Lennon and Paul McCartney singing “Please Please Me.” I wanted Tolstoy to drop in and explain what he meant about the inner workings of my soul. I wanted Ray Miller, with his sky eyes.…

  And that’s exactly what I was thinking when the gun went off.

  2

  A Bad Scene

  I knew a rifle when I heard it.

  Only this one was too loud. Louder than all the McPherson hounds put together. The shot had come from my right, no more than a block away.

  The door to our house flew open. The screen slapped back. Out flew my dad in his plaid robe and leather slippers. He struggled to knot the robe’s long belt around his waist. His eyes were wide, but he didn’t even glance my way.

  As he stumbled past me, one of his slippers slipped off. He stepped back and slid his foot in again. His thick, wavy hair stuck out all over like a black Brillo pad.

  I scrambled to my feet. “Dad, what—”

  He swung around, and the look on his face shut me up fast. He raised his arm, pointed straight at me, and, in a voice he’d never used on me before, said, “Stay put, Tree!”

  Then he wheeled around and took off up our road toward the rifle blast.

  I stood right where I was, frozen as much by my dad’s gruff voice as by the gunshot. I watched him shuffle to the end of our block, past the crossroad, up to the first house on the left.

  When he reached the rundown one-story house, he slowed.

  I think I knew from the start where he was headed: the Kinney place.

  There was something about that house that always creeped me out. The first time I heard the nursery rhyme about a crooked house, I thought they were talking about the Kinneys: “There was a crooked man, who walked a crooked mile. He had a crooked house and he had a crooked smile.” Or something like that.

  My stomach did the twisty thing. The problem wasn’t just the crooked house. It was the crooked man. Old Man Kinney.

  I always went out of my way to avoid Mr. Kinney and his house. Every time I passed him sitting in that rocker on his front porch, his glare gave me the willies. The guy looked permanently ticked off, like he just knew I would rob him blind if he ever left home. And he was always home.

  I edged to the end of our yard so I could see better. The door to the Kinney house cracked open, and a shadowy figure stepped into the light of the doorway. I was pretty sure the woman was Mrs. Kinney. In all the years we’d lived on this same street, I’d only seen her a few times and never exchanged so much as a word. Jack told me once that Mrs. Kinney was t
he same age as both our moms, but I didn’t believe him. She looked old enough to be our mothers’ mother.

  Dad stood at the foot of the Kinneys’ decrepit porch. Its peeling gray planks reminded me of an old fishing dock. He was looking up and saying something to Mrs. Kinney, but I couldn’t imagine what.

  I watched him as if he were a stranger on television—John Wayne, or Ben Cartwright from Bonanza. Whatever my dad said worked, because the woman stepped all the way out and crossed the porch toward him.

  That’s when I saw it. In her arms, tucked against her hip and across her breast like a much-loved baby, lay a rifle.

  Before I realized what I was doing, I was running toward them.

  Gravel dug into the soles of my bare feet. I kept going.

  At the crossroad, I had to hobble to the side and lean against a walnut tree to catch my breath. I brushed the gravel from my callused heels. Then I watched the scene unfolding on the Kinneys’ front porch.

  Dad moved closer to the steps. Mrs. Kinney, still clutching her rifle, loomed over him, only a couple of feet away now.

  I wanted to charge the porch, to knock that gun out of her arms.

  But I didn’t. I kept watching, not sure if I was more afraid of startling her and making her shoot … or of having my dad see that I wasn’t staying put.

  I had to get closer. I tiptoed toward them. It wasn’t that hard to stay out of sight, ducking between the maples, oaks, and elms that lined every piece of the road. I aimed for the fattest tree on the Kinneys’ property, a cottonwood that would have taken four grown men to circle it, hand to hand. From there, I’d at least be able to see what was going on.

  The last stretch to the big tree opened wide in front of me. I darted across the grass.

  My dad’s gaze stayed fixed on Mrs. Kinney’s face. It wasn’t much of a face—wrinkled in a way I wondered if you could blame on age. Her cheeks and forehead were the color of lemon-lime Squirt, with patches of yellow and splotches of blue and purple. Her nose bent to the side, hinting at the letter L.

  But it was her eyes that set her apart from every other human. I could not stop staring at her tiny eyes, colorless and flat, as if all the seeing had drained out of them. I had never seen that kind of empty.