"Horrible habit. I suppose they'll have a wreath with it that says, 'Sleeping in the arms of the Lord.' "
"It'll be all the woman has."
Dorothy could stand it no longer. She could very finely gauge what would annoy Aunty Em, what was safe and what was not. She could sense from the fine fierceness in Aunty Em's voice that almost anything would be all right.
"What's happened to Wilbur!" she said, walking out from behind the blanket.
"Oh, darling, did you hear?" Aunty Em sounded worried for her, instead of angry. Dorothy had been right.
"Wilbur's dead, Dorothy," said Uncle Henry.
Aunty Em tried to hug Dorothy. She somehow always missed, all angles and elbows. "We just have to hope that he's happy in the arms of the Lord," she told Dorothy.
Dorothy did not need to be told what dead meant.
"Was it the Dip?" she asked very quietly.
"Oh honey, now, it wasn't. Wasn't your fault at all." Aunty Em tried to kiss her. "No."
They weren't going to tell her why her friend had died.
"What does hanged mean?"
"Dorothy. That's something you must never mention. If you talk about it, it will only make it worse for everybody. I'll tell you, but you must promise not to talk about it. Say yes."
"Yes, Ma'am."
"It means he killed himself, Dorothy. I'm not going to tell you how because it'll just give you nightmares. But he killed himself."
Dorothy didn't ask why. She knew. It was a way of leaving. She nodded and went back to bed.
"Dorothy?" asked Aunty Em, her voice trailing after the child. It was Aunty Em who needed to talk. Dorothy didn't. Dorothy threw herself on the tick mattress and pretended to be asleep. She heard Aunty Em pull back the blanket to look in.
"She's asleep."
"That's a blessing. Leave her be."
Dorothy listened again.
"I knew there was something wrong with that boy."
"He was all right, Em."
"There's something wrong, Henry, with a boy that age who prefers to play with little children."
A few days before, Dorothy and Wilbur had made angels in the snow on the top of the hill. They had lain down on their backs and waved their arms up and down. That made a shape like wings. The trick was to stand up from the snow and then jump away, so that there were no footprints leading from the image. Then you could say that it was a place where an angel had gone to sleep. Will would lean out and lift Dorothy out of hers. So hers were the best.
Then Dorothy and Wilbur and his little brother, Max, had made three snowmen. Dorothy loved the way the snowballs got bigger and bigger, in layers like a cake, and the crunching noises they made on the snow underneath. Will helped them roll the biggest snowball and lift the smaller snowballs up on top. He would make snow castles.
Wilbur made an ice road. He carried buckets of water up to the top of the hill and poured them out on the ground to freeze. You didn't have to walk on an ice road. You would run at it and stop walking. And then you'd slide. It was like flying. They made an ice road all the way down the hill. They could ride down that inside hessian sacks, spinning and giggling and landing in a heap at the bottom. It almost never hurt. When it did, Wilbur would get worried and rub Dorothy's ankles until they were better. He never hit her, like Max did. He would stop Max from hitting her. "You don't hit girls," Wilbur said.
"Why not?" said Max.
"Because they're smaller than you. If you hit her, then I'll hit you, just so you know what it's like."
"And I'll tell Mama."
"And I'll tell Mama that you were hitting on Dorothy, which is why I hit you."
Max thrust out his jaw with hatred of his bigger, stronger, wiser brother and walked away, back down the hill, leaving his snowman behind.
Max was all right most of the time. You needed Max for most of the games. But it was nicer when it was just Dorothy and Will. After Max had gone, Will and Dorothy talked together about how much they hated Kansas.
"Just a big pile of dirt," said Wilbur.
"Just a big pile of dirt and nothing to do," said Dorothy.
"Nothing to do but work."
"You just got to wait and wait."
"And do your chores or go to school." The way Will said it made it sound like something disgusting.
"Sk-ew-ew-l," said Dorothy, imitating him. She admired Will because he had been to school and then quit and never went back.
"Stuff your head until it hurts and then tell you you're stupid." Will glowered and kicked at the snow. Dorothy kicked at the snow too.
"One day, I'll get out of here," he said. "One day, I'll just get on the train, and go West." West was the approved direction. Nobody ever went Back East, that was giving up. Everybody talked about going West.
"I want to see an Indian," Dorothy said.
"I seen loads of 'em," said Wilbur. "Till about three years ago, there used to be a whole reservation of the Kansa, out at Council Grove. Most of 'em dressed like poor white people and were drunk a lot. I saw one once kept waving a letter and my papa read it and it was from a judge and the judge said that this was a good Indian."
"He didn't wear feathers?" Dorothy was disappointed.
"Well, that was before all the Kansa left and went down the Nation. I expect they dress like Indians now."
"Aunty Em talks about the Indians a lot."
"She don't know nothing about it," said Wilbur.
Dorothy wanted to believe that, except that Aunty Em really did have a lot to say about the Indians: how they spoke, what they wore.
"Down the Nation, the Indians wear feathers," Dorothy said, reassuring herself, "and they're bright red, and they ride horses without a saddle and don't have to do anything they don't want to do."
"They live in tents, not houses," said Will. "And when they want to move, they just get up and go."
"And they hide in the grass, and nobody can see them," whispered Dorothy. "They're invisible."
Will was smiling, crookedly. "Well, we can't see 'em. Maybe they're all around us all the time, only we don't see them."
"Maybe they live underground," said Dorothy. It was a game of pretend. Will still smiled. "Maybe you can hear 'em sing at night, under the ground."
"I wish I was an Indian," said Dorothy.
"There's some kinds of Indian I'd want to be," said Will, leaning back and looking terribly adult. "And some I wouldn't. I wouldn't want to be one of them tame Indians that try to be farmers. I'd want to be out in the Territory."
"Let's pretend we're going to run away and join the Indians," said Dorothy.
Will smiled again and shook his head. "Nope. I don't want to pretend that. No point doing that unless you're going to do it for real."
He was right, of course. It would have been fun to pretend, but pretend was for things that could never happen. But there were Indians, and they did have a land of their own, the Territory, and you really could go there. You don't pretend something like that. You plan it. Dorothy was suddenly sure that she knew Wilbur's secret. Will was planning to go there. It was a secret she would lock in her heart and keep safe away.
Will was almost a man. He was calm and kindly like an adult, but he talked to kids. Dorothy knew that that was somehow wrong, talking to her as if she were anyone else, but she liked it.