The Silent Boy Read Online Free PDF Page A

1910
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    Mother wasn't feeling well and so most mornings Peggy helped me get ready for school.
    "If Jacob can't go to school," I asked her one morning as she brushed my hair, "then why can he roam all around the way he does? If I have the sniffles and can't go to school, Mother makes me stay in bed all day and drink hot water with lemon and sugar in it. And I had to stay in the house
forever
when I had chicken pox. But not Jacob. Father says he sees him often, very far from home. And I think he has even been here, behind our house. Levi saw him. That's four miles!"
    "Jacob's been here? Are you certain? Hand me that ribbon," Peggy said, and I gave her the brown ribbon that matched the plaid of my school dress.
    "Ow, don't pull so tight."
    Peggy was good at braiding my hair, but sometimes she went too hard at it, trying to make it neat.
    "The stable boy, Levi. He told Father."
    "He told your father what? Now hold still, don't wiggle."
    "He told Father that a boy comes sometimes and slips in and stands by the horses. He strokes their noses, the boy does. Levi called him a deaf-mute. But Father said no. Father said it must be Jacob, because Jacob loves the horses, but that Jacob is not a deaf-mute at all. He can hear. And Father says that though he doesn't talk like you and me, there is meaning to the sounds he makes."
    Peggy nodded. "That's true."
    "Why do I have to go to school, but Jacob doesn't? I would like to roam around all day in the country. I would climb trees and feed cows and and—" I thought, but nothing else came to my mind. I really didn't know what country children did. "I would play all day, the way Jacob does," I said, finally.
    Peggy finished tying the ribbon at the end of the braid she had made in my hair. She straightened the sides of the bow. "There. Done," she said.
    "And I would never wear a hair ribbon, either."
    "You look pretty. Most girls like to look pretty." Peggy was laughing as she put the brush away and began to smooth my bedcovers.
    "Anyway," she added, "Jacob don't have the sniffles or chicken pox. He's just different from most, and can't learn from books. But he don't play all day. Yes, he roams a bit. But he gets his chores done. He helps with the animals. Jacob's better than anyone with animals. It don't surprise me that he visits your horses."
    "Does he comb and brush your horses at home? Levi brushes ours." I had been thinking that I might try to talk the stable boy into letting me braid Jed and Dahlia's manes, the way Peggy had just done mine.
    "I suppose. And feeds them. And he watches out for the calves and lambs when they come. Sometimes they need extra care."
    "Kittens, too," I said. "They probably need care."
    "Come on, Naomi has your breakfast ready. Be quiet going past your mama's door. She's sleeping." Peggy started for the stairs and I followed her, tiptoeing past my parents bedroom.
    "I wish I had a kitten."
    "Well, our barn is full of them. That old tomcat chases the females around the barn and every time we turn around, it seems there's a new batch of kittens."
    "What's a tomcat?"
    Peggy chuckled. "He's a big old fella all full of himself who takes advantage of the females and next thing they know, they have kittens. Think old Tomcat stays around to help out? Not a chance. He's off looking for a new lady friend by then."
    I chuckled too, not because I understood, but because Peggy made a funny gesture with her arms, imitating a stealthy cat on the prowl. "I do love kittens, though," I told her.
    "Sometimes when a new litter comes and there are just too many, Jacob has to drown them."
    I stopped at the foot of the stairs. "Drown?" I asked.
    Peggy looked back at me. "It's what they do on farms, Katy. It's the kindest thing when there are too many. They don't know. It don't hurt them any. Jacob takes them down to the creek and it only takes a minute."
    I stared at her in horror.
Kittens?
    "He's a gentle boy, Jacob is," she explained. "He wouldn't hurt nothing, ever."
    I