The Silent Boy Read Online Free

Father's voice to the horses as we started up. I could see Father smile at the sound. "You like those horses, don't you, Jacob?" he said. "And the mill, too.
Remember? You went with me before. You liked the gears and wheels, how they turned."
    "When did you take him?" I asked, pulling at my father's sleeve a little. He had taken me to the mill before. But it surprised me, if he had taken this strange boy, and made me a little jealous, to think of someone else sitting beside Father in the buggy, in my place.
    Father chuckled and gathered me against his side in a kind of hug. "You're in school most days now, Katy, and sometimes I like the company of a quiet boy like this one. Isn't that right, Jacob?"
    I turned my head and looked back at him, but he ducked down so I couldn't see his face under the cap that he wore. Then, as I watched, he moved his hands against his own knees and made a sound—
shoooda, shoooda, shoooda
—and I recognized it as the sound of the great grindstone moving over the grain, crushing it; and with the sound, Jacob's hands were making the slow circles in the same rhythm.
    "
Shoooda, shoooda, shoooda,
" I said with him, hoping, I suppose, to make a game of it, but he took no notice.
    Â 
    Schuyler's Creek, slow-moving and shallow, was the same stream that ran near the Stoltz farm and
was where Peggy and her sister, she had told me, used to drop their shoes and stockings on the bank and wade, holding their skirts and aprons up to keep them dry. But someplace in the miles between the Stoltz farmland and the mill, the creek changed. Father said the land went downhill and so the creek had to fall, dropping down over rocks as it carved its way, and growing faster as it fell.
    I had seen pictures of the big waterfall at Niagara. Mother and Father took their wedding trip to Niagara Falls and had told me of it, the water as high as a mountain, roaring downward, sending spray into the air and collecting rainbows as it did. There was a postcard in our album at home, hand-colored, with Mother's neat penmanship beneath, explaining that it was Niagara Falls, New York, 1898.
    Our little stream, Schuyler's Creek, was nothing like that. But it did rush downhill, and by the time it reached Schuyler's Mill, it was a furious thing, bubbling and racing into the great wooden wheel that took it up and turned it somehow into power.
    The mill itself was a huge stone building three stories high, larger than our Presbyterian church, but with no bells. It had its own noises: the rushing noise of the water, the creaking of the wheel, and the heavy turning of the parts my father said were called the gears. Inside, there was the
shoooda, shoooda, shoooda
of the great grindstone. But there were also the sounds of men's shouts as they filled the wagons, the crunch of gravel under the wagon wheels, the clop of hooves—mules and horses—and the snapping of whips as the creatures strained to pull the heavy loads away.
    The men and mules and horses all paused when we arrived, and the men tipped their hats to my father. "Doctor," some said. "Doctor Thatcher," said others. I sat straight beside him, proud. And I could feel Jacob stop his chanting sounds in the back of the buggy and sit straight, too.
    Someone took the horses reins and held them still. Another man reached into the back and took my father's bag. I waited, biting my lip and hoping Father would not make me wait in the buggy. But he reached for me after he was on the ground, and swung me down and held my hand.
    "The boy can carry my bag,"he said. The man handed it to Jacob.
    I heard one man say something to another. "Imbecile," he said; he nudged the man beside him and pointed to Jacob. I wasn't certain what the word meant, but I could see that it was not meant kindly and hoped that Jacob hadn't heard.
    We went with Father up the steps and entered the mill. It was dark, warm, and noisy, with each different sound playing its part, like the band
concerts I had