| Frozen where she stood, Margaret swallowed and gasped for breath. The boys had already reached the other side and were throwing rocks off the edge of the trestle into the creek. She gripped the side girder. She would have to let go if she were to make it across. She’d have to go down the middle, one long even step after the other, like the boys had done and made it look so easy. They were ignoring her now, but if she didn’t get across soon, they’d start to tease her. Worse, they would leave her behind, the ninny girl, too scared to cross the towering bridge. “Go for it,” she hissed, took a step, brought the other foot forward and swayed back and forth. “Don’t look down. Hold steady.” Far below, water splashed against rock. She looked over at Goose who glanced back across the expanse that might as well have been a hundred miles. He turned away. “If you don’t just go,” she said to herself, teetering precariously, one foot clinging to one railroad tie, the other stretched over to the next, “you’ll be here like this forever.” She lingered in a battle between her fear and her determination. “Dad will find out you’ve been here…just go!” Margaret began to run, leaping from one railroad tie to the next. About halfway across, she thought she heard the mill train. They still used the old trolley tracks to haul who-knew-what from one woolen mill to the other, one down by the Falls, the other way down past Scotch Hill where mill workers lived in rows of dilapidated houses. She held her stride, but a few steps away from the other side, she stopped again, swaying back and forth uncontrollably. The sound of rushing water pounded inside her head, a fine mist filled her mouth, and she wondered which would come first, the fall or the train. The boys turned, urged her on. Goose held out his hand and she made one final leap and grabbed on. Shivering like a field mouse having made a narrow escape, her feet made contact with gravel. The fresh creek air wrapped around her like a blanket of courage. Margaret listened again but heard no sound of a train. The three of them laughed and the little dog barked and jumped up and down at Margaret’s feet. She had won the right to be included in the rest of this adventure. Jimmy shouted above the creek’s din for them to follow him along the tracks, to keep to the edge of the woods. * * * * * Margaret heard the pounding of the waterfall long before they rounded the last sharp bend. She had seen the two-hundred foot drop before, just below the woolen mill where a pair of big white swans circled around a pond where the thunderous splash of the Falls fed Nine Mile Creek. Margaret and Goose and Jimmy scurried along the gully between the old trolley tracks and the woods, their path shaded from the hot sun, the crashing water drowning their words. Jimmy raised his arm, and Margaret followed him up the side of the hill, into the woods. They darted between tree trunks, downed limbs and piles of brush, newly exposed to the spring air after the long winter buried beneath a thick cover of snow and ice. Piles of soggy leaves gave way beneath their footsteps. Margaret’s sneakers, wrapped now with a layer of mud and dirt, felt slick on the bottom as she scampered across the hillside. She tried not to think about crossing back over the trestle. Jimmy, and then Goose and Margaret sat down on the trunk of a newly fallen tree. Margaret looked around. They were deep inside the woods, and the only light—trickling through new leaves atop a thick layering of branches—appeared directly overhead. “Those caves are right around here someplace,” Jimmy cleaned his fingernails with a pocketknife. Margaret had never known anyone who carried a knife and watched with interest. Goose stood up and paced back and forth in front of Margaret and Jimmy. “I think they’re farther down the side of this ridge. See that dead elm tree? We’ll cut up the hill from there by a thicket of blackberry bushes right as you come out into a clearing, way above the cutbank. And I tell you, just above there, you’ll see some boulders and…” “You’re right!” Jimmy snapped the knife shut and took off running. Margaret leaped up and began to sprint through the woods, Goose panting behind her. Hurdling over fallen limbs, sliding in the mud, she remembered the fort, that Francine might be waiting for her. She no longer felt the wounds on her legs. She could outrun these two if she wanted. Instead, she circled around and kept pace just uphill from Jimmy. She would beat them to the boulders. Maybe she would be the one to find the caves. |
| Nine Mile Creek an excerpt |