Rear-View Mirrors by Paul Fleischman Read Free Book Online Page B

Leo stepped over the low stone wall. “Something a sluggard like me, with no wife or kids to wake him up, can use.”
    â€œYou must not have slept too late to have driven all the way here from Boston by nine.” I followed him over the wall and we continued our stroll through the woods behind the house.
    â€œI got used to getting up early last semester. Had to teach an eight o’clock class.” He converted a branch to a walking stick. “Italian literature of the Renaissance. A subject that put many students back to sleep.”
    We passed several gnarled apple trees, some bent-backed and dead, some with a few leaves, all looking misplaced among the pines.
    â€œBut tell me, Olivia—how are you finding rural life?” A chipmunk darted past us. “Fresh eggs. Clean air. No bookstores for miles. Mosquito bites. Giant leeches in the lakes. . . .”
    A woodpecker’s drumming rang through the forest.
    â€œIt’s all right,” I replied. “Kind of boring, though.” I searched for something more to say, then noticed Leo had halted and was pointing with his walking stick.
    â€œHaven’t seen that since I was a boy.”
    We both angled left and found ourselves approaching a large, stone-lined pit.
    â€œWhat is it?” I asked.
    The hole was about four feet deep and rectangular. “An old cellar, I suspect.” He squatted at its edge. “Those rocks over there were probably part of the chimney—all that’s left of the house.”
    I crouched. “When do you suppose it was lived in?” I realized I was speaking softly, as if we were intruding on its occupants.
    â€œIf those folks in the graveyard are the ones who built it, it might have been standing two hundred years back.”
    A chill skittered up the length of my spine. I stared ahead blankly. My ears heard no sound. Then I jumped down into the pit, my feet disappearing beneath a foot of dead leaves, and discovered my mind repeating a line that my teacher had paused upon when we’d read King Lear last year: “Ripeness is all.” Walking around the basement, entranced, running my fingers over its stone sides, I knew that some bud inside me had burst. I no longer wanted simply to collect rocks; I wanted to know the lives of the people who shaped them into tools and lined their cellars with them. Buried lives, hidden like stones underground, waiting to be unearthed.
    â€œThey probably got their water from the creek over there.” Leo gestured with his stick.
    The house and its dwellers were becoming more real. The children had walked to the creek to fetch water, and no doubt had grown tired trudging up the hill. Their last name was Pyle. I thought back to the tombstones and tried to recall the first names I’d seen: Sarah, Nathaniel, Obadiah. Suddenly, I remembered something.
    â€œThose apple trees—could that have been their orchard?”
    â€œGood!” shouted Leo. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
    I broke into a smile, then reminded myself that my month of sampling my father and the fabled East would be up in two days. By the time I’d climbed out of the cellar, explored the grounds, and found a rusty key, I wasn’t sure I wanted to accept my option to rush right back to Berkeley.
    â€œSounds like your father’s still splitting wood.”
    We emerged from the pines and could see him in the distance.
    â€œHave you ever had any heart trouble?” I asked.
    â€œNot a bit.” A light breeze combed the long grass and played with Leo’s wispy red hair. “The result, I believe, of a daily dose of Bluebird ale.”
    â€œNever heard of it.”
    â€œGood God!” he burst out in mock amazement. “Since I brought a six-pack, allow me to offer you your first taste—or would I be guilty of contributing to the good health of a minor?”
    â€œWhat’s the drinking age in New Hampshire?”
    â€œNo