The Door in the Forest Read Free Page B

realized with some alarm, was to catch Grandma Byrdsong in case she lost her grip on the banister and fell backward.
    “Here we are!” she gasped, reaching the landing. “The Four Seasons room.”
    “The what?”
    “It was Miranda’s. She loved that music.
The Four Seasons
? She used to play it on the Victrola all the time. So I made her a special bedroom.”
    “I see.”
    He didn’t see, of course, nor did he notice anything special when they went in. It was just a small, stuffy room under the eaves. Grandma Byrdsong asked him to let in a little air while she rummaged through the bureau. He went to one of the four windows and stood, trying to figure it out. It was the kind that opened outward, like spreading wings, when you turned a crank. But this window had two handles. He shrugged and turned the one on the left. As soon as the panes parted, he cried out to see snowflakes dash in, chased by a freezing wind.
    “Not that one! Not that one!” shouted Bridey.
    He quickly cranked the window shut.
    “That’s the winter window. I should have warned you.”
    “The winter …”
    “Try the autumn one. Over there.”
    Daniel crossed the room and stood uncertainly. Everything looked normal outside—hot high summer. The handyman was by the side of the house hoeing the vegetable garden. He was shirtless and his back gleamed with sweat.
    “Come on, Danny,” said Bridey, pulling out a groaning bureau drawer. “What are you waiting for? I can’t breathe.”
    Again, two handles. He turned the one on the right. The panes parted and the handyman disappeared. Dry leavesgusted past on a fresh breeze. He stared out, amazed to see the trees divesting themselves and the whole west lawn covered in red and yellow.
    “But it’s barely August!”
    “Not out that window it isn’t. Ah,” she said, “here we go!” She was examining a small oblong box she’d pulled from the second-to-bottom drawer. “Danny, really! Stop playing with the windows.”
    Going down proved easier than climbing up. This time he was required to walk in front of Bridey, again in case she fell. She was very afraid of falling, but not as afraid as he was that she’d fall on
him
.
    Daniel felt a little dazed as they reached the parlor floor. He was still trying to understand those windows.
    Grandma Byrdsong paused in front of the backwards mirror in the hall and put on her hat. “Well,” she said, marshaling her forces, “shall we go?”
    “Right.” He held open the door, and she turned her body to get through it, then gripped his hand as they crossed the porch and descended three creaking steps to the yard. The garage, which also served as a hotel for wasps, was farther away than she liked to walk, but she didn’t trust anyone, certainly not a boy, to fetch her Ford sedan and drive up to the door. Grandma Byrdsong owned one of the few cars in Everwood. It had been old and cranky when she’d bought it, and it was older and crankier now.
    She wasn’t in such a good mood herself. She let out little gasps as she toiled ahead, as much side to side as forward, leaning alternately on the boy and on her cane.
    “Wait,” she commanded as they passed the vegetablegarden, a wild profusion of colors and tendrils climbing the chicken-wire fence. “Go pick a couple of tomatoes to bring your mother.”
    “Sure!” He ran and opened the rickety gate just as the handyman was coming out, wiping his face with his shirt. They exchanged nods and Daniel went in. The garden was not large, but it was talked about throughout the town and beyond. Daniel could understand why, kneeling to pick an oversized tomato in exactly the shape of a Bartlett pear, and another in the shape of a zucchini. You never knew what you’d find in Bridey Byrdsong’s garden. Sometimes you had to bite into one of her fantastic vegetables to be sure what it was.
    “Come on, Danny. I can’t stand up much longer,” she called.
    He rejoined her, and they went on. Ahead he could see the snub