The House in Poplar Wood Read online

  also by k. e. ormsbee

  The Water and the Wild

  The Doorway and the Deep

  The Current and the Cure

  to virginia kate carroll—

  keeper of memories,

  lover of autumn,

  friend

  Text copyright © 2018 by Kathryn Ormsbee.

  Illustrations by The Brothers Hilts.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in

  any form without written permission from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.

  ISBN 978-1-4521-4986-8 (Hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-4521-4995-0 (epub)

  Design by Amelia Mack.

  Typeset in Hightower.

  Page vii, “You cannot put a fire out,”

  The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson by

  Emily Dickinson. Boston: Little Brown, 1924.

  Chronicle Books LLC

  680 Second Street

  San Francisco, California 94107

  Chronicle Books—we see things differently.

  Become part of our community at www.chroniclekids.com.

  contents

  prologue

  1 felix

  2 gretchen

  3 lee

  4 felix

  5 gretchen

  6 lee

  7 felix

  8 gretchen

  9 lee

  10 felix

  11 gretchen

  12 lee

  13 felix

  14 gretchen

  15 lee

  16 felix

  17 gretchen

  18 lee

  19 gretchen

  20 felix

  21 gretchen

  22 lee

  23 felix

  24 lee

  25 gretchen

  26 felix

  27 lee

  28 gretchen

  29 felix

  30 lee

  31 felix

  32 gretchen

  33 felix

  34 lee

  35 felix

  36 gretchen

  37 lee

  38 felix

  39 gretchen

  40 felix

  41 gretchen

  42 lee

  epilogue

  rites

  acknowledgments

  about the author

  You cannot put a fire out;

  A thing that can ignite

  Can go, itself, without a fan

  Upon the slowest night.

  You cannot fold a flood

  And put it in a drawer,—

  Because the winds would find it out,

  And tell your cedar floor.

  emily dickinson

  prologue

  It was an ordinary day at Poplar House.

  It began, as most ordinary days do, with breakfast.

  Felix Vickery fixed himself porridge, with neither sugar nor butter to flavor the oats.

  Lee Vickery ate his mother’s fresh-fried country ham, with a mug of hot apple cider on the side.

  Then, as on all ordinary days, the two brothers saw to their morning chores.

  Felix fetched a brass pot from its perch and filled it with water from the tap. He placed it on the stove and switched on the gas flame.

  Lee trudged to the canning room, opening the door with a skeleton key. There were jars there to be labeled and put away.

  The water boiled, and Felix was ready: In went five rosemary sprigs, followed by the juice of two lemons and half a lime. He stirred the broth well with a wooden spoon.

  “Felix!” his father called from down the hall.

  “Five more minutes!” Felix called back.

  Broths took time to brew. It was one thing to prescribe them, but another to bring them to life.

  “Lee!” his mother called from the parlor.

  Lee was finishing his work on the last of the jars—a green ribbon, knotted in a tidy bow.

  “Nearly done,” he said, scribbling a date and category on the label.

  His mother often reminded him that it was easier to write these labels before attaching them to their jars; Lee often forgot.

  Today, the label read Remember.

  There were far fewer Remembers than Forgets.

  Reminding and forgetting. That was Lee’s life at Poplar House. Reminding and forgetting, siphoning and canning.

  Lee placed the jar upon its proper shelf.

  “Sealed tight?” asked his mother, seeing him to the front door.

  “Sealed tight,” Lee replied.

  The alternative was disastrous. Memories were fragile things, and far more priceless than jams or preserves. Should one escape, it would evaporate into nothing at all, or worse yet, find its way into another’s mind.

  “Brewed right?” asked Felix’s father, taking the bowl of broth from his son.

  “Brewed right,” Felix replied.

  It was an everyday question, but an ever-important one.

  The broth meant healing. It meant a tomorrow, instead of a never-again. So Felix brewed well and then carried the broth to the examination room.

  Today’s patient was an old woman with tangled gray hair and half her teeth missing. She drank down the concoction of citrus and rosemary, boiled and stirred to specification. Felix watched as her pale face turned rosier and her dulled eyes filled with life.

  As Felix’s father helped the woman down, Felix thought of the many patients before her who had lain upon that examination table and never gotten back up. Endings, rather than healings—there had been more than Felix could count.

  Healing and ending, brewing and watching. That was Felix’s life at Poplar House.

  Chores completed, Lee left the house for school. He walked slow, aiming his boots at orange, crunchable leaves. There was music in his left ear—a song, hummed soft and low, familiar to him. Memory hummed it often on her ramblings through the wood.

  The song told Lee he was not alone. He belonged somewhere, and to someone, just the way he liked it.

  Chores completed, Felix stood on the back steps of Poplar House. He watched at a distance, taking in a scene by halves: through his left eye he saw his father, and through his right he saw only a gentleman, dressed in black. The two men were shaking hands in the pink morning sun.

  The handshake told Felix he would never be alone. He belonged somewhere, to someone, whether he liked it or not.

  The last day of October was creeping into Poplar House. It came through fissures in the gables and mite-sized holes in the floorboards, bringing with it the scent of burnt oak branches.

  It was Halloween, and for Felix Vickery, it was the warmest day of the year.

  All autumn long, Felix had worn gloves to bed and woken to a fringe of frost on his lashes. Even in the summertime, when the wood outside grew drunk on sunshine and the whole of Boone Ridge gasped for lawn sprinklings and fresh popsicles—even then, a dank chill remained in the house. Even in August, Felix wore long pajamas to bed.

  That was the way of it, when you shared a house with Death. Not that most patients believed in Death. Though rumors skittered through Boone Ridge and the mining towns tucked farther toward the mountains—rumors of another presence in the house—visitors believed only what was written on the plaque above Poplar House’s east-end door, which read vince vickery, holistic physician.

  Some revered Vince Vickery as the greatest healer in all of Tennessee. Others dismissed the man as a quack. The facts were these: Over the course of his medical career, Vince had predicted, with complete accuracy, the fate of every one of his patients—whether they would die or live. And for those patients bound to live, Vince had cured them of their ailments with nothing more than
a homemade herbal broth. He had carried on this practice for more than thirteen years.

  The townspeople could wonder and speculate, but Felix knew it was Death who granted his father such powers. His father was contractually bound to Death as an apprentice, and on Felix’s sixteenth birthday, he too would be offered a lifelong apprenticeship.

  No one in town knew Felix Vickery existed. He was forbidden to enter Boone Ridge and instead required to stay in the wood, near Poplar House, where he served as apprentice-in-training every day of the year.

  Every day save this one, Halloween, when Death took a vacation.

  One day out of every year, the Death of Boone Ridge claimed no lives. He packed a carpetbag and left Poplar House at dawn, and he did not return until dawn of the next day. Felix did not ask where it was that Death went—that didn’t matter. What mattered was that everything changed on Halloween. On this one day, the house turned warm, no patients came to visit, and those at death’s door continued to live and breathe. On this day, Felix was permitted to leave Poplar Wood.

  “What’re you doing, still working away?”

  Felix looked up from the stove, where he had been busily bent over a broth of rose petals and nightshade. This was his father’s most popular concoction—a remedy that alleviated bad bouts of the flu.

  “I thought I’d brew some reserve,” said Felix. “It’s the season, after all.”

  Vince smiled at his son. He was not an old man, but he had an old smile, his lips strained from waking too many mornings under hoary frost. Still, to Felix, on this day, that smile was the most welcome sight in all the world. It meant freedom.

  “Leave the broth to cool,” Vince told his son, “and be off with you.”

  Carefully, Felix removed the pot from the stove and placed it on the waiting trivet. Then he obeyed his father’s second command with more relish, grabbing his satchel and bursting out of the house, onto the front porch.

  The day that had been leaking in now dunked Felix in its amber light. At the top of the hill facing Poplar House, the light splashed on something particularly amber. It was a pile of hair, and it belonged to Felix’s twin brother.

  Felix raised a hand to block the sun from his seeing eye—the one not murky white and covered with an eyepatch. At the hill’s crest, backed by the setting sun, Lee Vickery looked like a king.

  “Happy Halloween!” Lee bellowed. He set off down the hill, his lanky legs propelling him toward the house at an alarming speed.

  “Happy Halloween!” Felix called back.

  Lee catapulted onto the porch and slung his brother into his arms, laughing. They teetered, then tottered, and before Felix could extract himself, they crashed to the floor.

  Once they had righted themselves, Lee smacked Felix’s sneaker. “You ready?”

  Felix raised his satchel.

  “Excellent,” said Lee. “I’ll be out in three minutes. Time me.”

  Felix noted the second hand of his wristwatch as Lee clattered into the west end of Poplar House. Above that door was a plaque that read judith vickery, psychiatrist. The door hinges moaned as the wind coaxed out the smell of basil and sharp cheese. The boys’ mother was cooking.

  Felix’s stomach turned over, pleased but agonized. He wondered if his mother hummed while she cooked. He bet she did. He bet it was the most beautiful sound in the world—better even than the cheery lull of crickets.

  Lee toppled out wearing a heavier jacket.

  “I will, I will!” he called into the house.

  Felix checked the second hand. “Two minutes, twenty seconds.”

  Lee grinned, victorious. He handed Felix a warm cheddar biscuit, and the boys set out for town.

  “Mom said to be home at eleven,” Lee pouted.

  “That’s later than last year.”

  “Yeah, but not as long as Dad lets you stay out.”

  “Not as long as I could stay out,” said Felix. “But I’ll walk home with you. Like always.”

  Lee kicked a branch, then looked at Felix, watching him closely with clear brown eyes.

  “I keep thinking that one year you’ll . . . well, you’ll want to stay out on your own. It is your only chance to see town. If I could stay out . . .” He said nothing more, but Felix could guess his brother’s thoughts: curious wonderings of what lay beyond curfew.

  “I don’t like town,” Felix said. “Too much happens there, too quickly.”

  “That’s why I like it.” Lee laughed.

  Unlike Felix, Lee often laughed. His west-end bedroom was separated from Felix’s east-end room only by a mere two walls. Lee’s laughter would sometimes bleed through the wood, and Felix would wonder what had caused the laugh—perhaps a joke their mother had made. Lee had told Felix that their mother made terrific jokes, but Felix had no way of knowing; he had never met their mother, just as Lee had never met their father. That was part of the Agreement.

  “Tonight,” Lee said, “I’m going to take you to Creek Diner. That’s where everybody at school hangs out now. Then we’ll go to the bonfire. And maybe you’ll even talk to someone this year!”

  Felix humphed and chewed his biscuit. He didn’t go into town to talk to people. He went into town to watch and, most importantly, learn.

  “Why aren’t we dressing up?” Felix asked.

  In the past, Lee had insisted on the two of them donning costumes before they went into Boone Ridge. Felix had always dressed as an explorer, which didn’t require much beyond his father’s wide-brimmed hat. But Lee had told him a few days earlier that this year they would go in normal attire.

  Lee shrugged. “People just don’t dress up anymore.”

  “People?”

  “Guys our age. Dressing up is for kids.”

  “Oh.”

  This was one of many things Felix would’ve known if he’d gone to Boone Ridge Middle School. He ached for the knowledge Lee collected and brought home each day. Perhaps, Felix thought, once he knew what other people did, he would want to talk to them.

  But until then, he was grateful, at least, to not be burdened with all the rules Lee learned and followed at school: no gum-chewing, no playing tag after you turned ten, no acting like you knew all the answers in class. . . . And now, no costumes for Halloween.

  Felix wondered if there was a way to learn all the world’s great lessons—the history of ancient civilizations and the science of the stars—without having to learn all its exhausting rules, as well.

  He wondered if one day he might get the chance to find out.

  “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

  They were pretty words, and the priest recited them like poetry, but Gretchen thought it was a terrible way to say goodbye. Essie Hasting’s mother was crying, as were a dozen other people dressed in black. It had misted earlier that day, and wet grass clung to Gretchen’s dress shoes. She watched Ms. Hasting, Essie’s only family, throw a handful of damp dirt onto the lacquered coffin.

  Essie’s only family was crying, but none of Gretchen’s family was. They were no friends of the Hastings—societal obligation had demanded their presence. Gretchen’s father was the mayor of Boone Ridge, and Essie’s death had been the town’s greatest tragedy in recent years. An unthinkable accident, a terrible loss—that is what the townspeople called it. Essie Hasting, star student and captain of the Boone Ridge High dance team, had taken a walk on Monday night in Hickory Park, and there slipped on loose rocks and fallen into a ravine. The fall was from such a great height, the police reported, that Essie certainly died on impact.

  An unthinkable accident.

  That was all people said. As though there was nothing else to know about Essie’s untimely demise. Gretchen, however, had questions:

  Why had Essie Hasting been walking alone at night?

  How could someone so young as Essie simply die?

  And why had Mayor Whipple insisted on talking to the Boone Ridge sheriff and coroner behind shut office doors?

  Gretchen might ask her questions
aloud, but no one would tell her a thing. Not at home, because she was the baby of the family, and no one takes the baby seriously. And not in town, because she was the mayor’s daughter, and people stitched their lips for fear that Gretchen would go blabbering their secrets to her powerful father.

  So if Gretchen wanted answers, she would have to find them out on her own.

  “Stop that, child.”

  Gram Whipple gripped bony fingers into Gretchen’s shoulder, and Gretchen realized too late that she had been twirling her hair.

  “Show some decorum,” the old woman said, staring ahead at the burial plot.

  Decorum—that was what this day was about. Duty and propriety, the great tenets of the Whipple household, even here, at the funeral of a family enemy. Gretchen clasped her hands behind her back, to keep them out of further trouble. She showed her best decorum as the last of the dirt fell upon Essie’s coffin and the black-clad crowd began to disperse.

  Essie’s mother stood close to the grave, as friends gathered to console her. Two men with shovels were piling earth into the six-foot hole—a careless motion, like how Gretchen’s father scooped sugar into his coffee. Gram and Mayor Whipple had broken away to speak to the priest, making a decorous show of concern for all the townspeople to see. Soon their work here would be done.

  Beside her, Gretchen’s brother, Asa, laughed.

  “Stupid,” he said. “This whole thing is stupid.”

  Asa was wearing a black suit, per Gram Whipple’s orders, but a bright purple flower peeked from its breast pocket—loud and irreverent, decidedly wrong for a solemn occasion. There was a thick gauze bandage wound about his right palm, no doubt the result of some recent fight. Asa was always fighting.

  People often told Gretchen she looked like Asa, and this frightened her. She had the same inky black hair and dark eyes, that much was true. Family friends also noted that both brother and sister had unusually red lips—the kind of red that normal people only achieve with the help of lipstick. But there, Gretchen hoped, the similarities ended, because Asa made the most awful faces. He smiled when there was nothing to be happy about, he sneered when he should’ve cried, and he flattened his mouth in distaste when others around him laughed. It was as though the muscles in Asa’s face had been woven all wrong.