Zebra Forest by Andina Rishe Gewirtz

have been the sound of Long John Silver: “‘Thank ye kindly, doctor. . . . You came in in about the nick, I guess, for me and Hawkins.’”
    “Sure,” Rew would say. “But he
had
to say that. If you want to look at it that way, then it was Ben Gunn who saved them, really.” We both always laughed at that, because Ben Gunn, the crazy man who’d been marooned on the island, wasn’t anybody’s favorite.
    We’d spend at least an hour a week on this topic in the Zebra, and it was a kind of joke we had, going back over it, deciding whether we were happy or not that Long John Silver got his one measly bag of coins and escaped at the end.
    It seemed to me that after writing his letter, Rew felt we were almost as good as free. Maybe that’s why he’d started our game up again. So I said what I always said when we talked about Long John Silver: “Well, he only got that one bag of coins, anyway. And only ’cause Ben Gunn let him. He couldn’t have lived long on that.”
    Rew lay back on his bed and glanced out the window. It was getting dark now, the sky going purple over the Zebra. I guess he realized then that even if Andrew Snow did send me out and I mailed his letter, we wouldn’t be free for a while. Rew’s realistic that way. He frowned, lying there, and pulled his book up near his face, breathing in the smell of it. It was an old book, and beat up, but it had the good, sweet aroma of old paper. Books have that, I’ve noticed. If they don’t get moldy, they’re nice. We had our share of moldy books down in the cellar. But
Treasure Island
still had that nice old library smell to it. He kept his face in there so long, I got nervous he might cry again. But he didn’t. After a while, he closed the book and rested his head on it, looking tired.
    “If there were a tree outside my window, we wouldn’t need to send the letter,” he said quietly. “I’d just climb down it and run to the police, and he’d never even know it. I’d do it in the night.”
    “You wouldn’t,” I said. “You’d never find the way in the dark, so far from town. You’d get hit by a car or something first.”
    “I wouldn’t,” he said. “I could do it. I’d do it in the day, even, if I didn’t think he’d hurt you and Gran.”
    In a funny way, I felt happy all of a sudden, hearing him include Gran. Rew could get really mad, but he never stayed angry at me or Gran too long.
    I looked down at the faded pattern of his quilt, a mishmash of cowboys and spaceships and any boy thing Gran could find. She’d made it for him when he was just born, she told him once, as a birthday gift. According to Gran, I’d had one, too, once upon a time, with princesses and ribbons on it. But in a fit of temper when I was two, my mother had thrown it in the trash.
    “You think he’d do that?” I asked him. “Hurt us? Really?”
    “He’s mean enough to,” Rew said. “Didn’t you think so when he pulled us down the stairs that way? He’s crazy, Annie. He’s bad.”
    I thought about it. Andrew Snow was strong — that was certain. He’d held me and Rew each with just the one hand. And when those policemen had come, he hadn’t hesitated a second. But then, he hadn’t exactly hurt us, either. And he’d thanked me for making him a sandwich. Did bad people say thank you? I thought of the letter then, sitting in my pocket. I wished I didn’t have it.
    “He killed someone,” Rew said, reading my thoughts.
    Rew knew things, better than me usually. But it was hard to picture the man who had put his head in his hands doing something like that. In my mind, I tried to make a story about it so I could understand it better. But the story wouldn’t come.
    I sat with Rew until he fell asleep and then made my way downstairs. Andrew Snow was sitting in the chair by the door, looking out at the night. From that window, you could just see the edge of the Zebra.
    I’d been outside in the dark lots of times, and I loved the Zebra in moonlight. We