touch, Odie.”
The stars seemed especially bright that night, and Emmy slept without needing her hand held. Mose and Albert, who’d paddled most of the day, fell asleep quickly. Me, my head was so full of dreaming I could barely contain it all. Seeing that photograph of the water tower and what I’d painted there, my words big as life on the front page of The Minneapolis Star, made me feel like some kind of celebrity. Not exactly like Babe Ruth, because everybody knew his name. But more than just an orphan nobody. I began to imagine all the wonderful possibilities that might lie ahead of us. Maybe we should change our names, I thought. Just in case. Maybe I’d call myself Buck, after Buck Jones the cowboy star. As I lay listening to the river slip through the branches of the fallen cottonwood, I began to hope, really hope, that, like the Emmy in the story, we were finally on the safe side of the mirror.
* * *
I WAS WAKENED by a small hand on my chest. I opened my eyes, and Emmy stood in the moonlight, staring down at me, looking dazed.
“What is it, Emmy?” I whispered.
She held out her hand, and in it were two five-dollar bills from the stash in the pillowcase. “Put these in your shoe.”
She spoke distantly, as if in a trance, and I figured she was sleepwalking. Some of the kids at Lincoln School had been sleepwalkers, and Volz had always cautioned us not to wake them. So I took the bills.
“In your shoe,” she said.
I put them in my shoe.
“Don’t say anything to anyone, not Albert, not Mose.”
“What do I do with them?” I asked.
“When the time comes, you’ll know.”
She returned to her blanket, lay down, and from her steady breathing I understood that she was sleeping soundly once again.
I puzzled over this sleepwalking episode, wondering if I should warn Albert and Mose. But there was something in her manner and such a serious note in her little voice that I decided to keep the whole thing to myself.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“WHAT ARE YOU going to say?”
“What do you mean?”
“You have fifteen dollars in your pocket, Albert. How are you going to explain that?”
“Why do I have to explain it?”
Albert was smart, way smarter than me, but he could be pretty dense sometimes when it came to other people. We were walking into the little town where he’d bought the newspaper the night before, intending to purchase new shoes and some food for the day. We’d left Mose and Emmy to watch the canoe.
“Fifteen dollars, Albert. That’s a lot of money for a couple of kids like us just to be carrying around. People are going to wonder. They might even ask. What are you going to tell them?”
“I’ll tell them we earned it.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Working.”
“For who?”
“Look, Odie. Let me handle this. We’ll be fine.”
“You get us thrown into jail, I’ll kill you.”
“That won’t happen.”
“Better not.”
The town was called Westerville, and like most of the towns we’d seen, it had several big grain elevators looming at the side of the railroad tracks. I could see four church spires rising up above the trees. There was no sign of a courthouse tower, like the one in Lincoln, so I figured we were still in Fremont County.
It was early enough in the day that not a lot of commerce seemed to be taking place, although the stores were open. There was a bakery, and the smell from it made my mouth water. There was a hardware store, an IGA grocery store, a drugstore, a stationery and book shop. On one side of the street was a little restaurant called the Buttercup Café. Next to it stood the Westerville Police Department, with one police cruiser parked out front, and I felt my stomach tighten. We came at last to a broad display window full of goods. Painted across the glass in fancy lettering were the words KRENN’S MERCANTILE. We stood at the window, staring at the items behind it, which included an assortment of shoes.
“This looks like the place,” Albert said.
I started inside, but Albert hesitated.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing. Just . . .” He let it drop, took a deep breath, and said, “Okay.”
There was a department store in Lincoln, a place called Sorenson’s, which I’d been in only once. It had so many different things for sale—furniture and clothing and appliances—that I’d thought a palace couldn’t have held more kingly treasures. Krenn’s Mercantile, though not as