The Mulberry Tree

“Kyle is the golden boy,” the reporter wrote. “Everyone in Virginia and probably several other states knows of Stanley Longacre and his incredible success. They’ve seen the mansion where Kyle lives, the mansion his father built. But then a great many people in Virginia live in houses built by Stanley Longacre. It seems fitting that a man who has produced so much should produce a son like Kyle: handsome, athletic, a straight-A student, on the debating team, the yearbook staff, elected class president by his fellow students every year since the fourth grade.”

“But he abandoned his wife and children!” Bailey muttered in disgust, then began to read again.

On that autumn day in 1953 someone, a man with an “ominous voice,” had called the school and said he’d planted a bomb somewhere and that “they would never get out alive.” Less than a minute later, black smoke began filling the corridors of the school. In the ensuing chaos, it had been the six boys from Calburn who made sure that every student got out safely.

When the reporter arrived, all the students were outside, the fire department and the police were there, and several of the students were crying. She wrote that at first she’d assumed that fear was causing the tears, but a couple of girls said, “We’ve been so mean to them,” so the reporter began to ask questions. She was told that the students of Wells Creek had not wanted the extra students from Calburn, so they’d made them unwelcome. “Dead rats in their lockers,” she wrote. “Hazing, name calling, ostracizing at every opportunity. It must have been horrible for the students from Calburn, but, in the end, they stepped above their treatment and risked their lives to save others.”

Bailey read the account of what happened that day. Taddy told reporters that after they were told to evacuate the school, he’d glanced out the window of his classroom and seen smoke coming out of the gym. He saw a couple of the football players banging on the door, so he thought maybe they were trapped inside. Since the door to his classroom was blocked with students scrambling over each other to get out, Taddy climbed out a window, went down the fire escape, and opened the door for the football players to get out. Some of them were being treated for smoke inhalation, but thanks to Taddy, none had been seriously hurt.

Rodney said he heard screams from the girls’ locker room, so he ran that way. The outside door to the locker room was bolted. He couldn’t get it open, so he went around to the windows. The locker room was in the basement, and the windows were also locked, but shop class was nearby, so Rodney ran in, grabbed a crowbar, and wrenched open the windows. The girls climbed up on the benches and slid out through the windows to safety.

Here the reporter recorded her interview with Rodney verbatim. “Isn’t it true that some of the girls were naked?” she asked Rodney.

“Yes, ma’am, they were.”

“And you gave them your own clothing to cover themselves, is that right?”

“I gave them my jacket, my shirt, T-shirt, and my trousers.”

“And that’s why you’re now wearing only boxer shorts, and your shoes and socks?”

“Yes, ma’am, that’s why.”

Bailey couldn’t help smiling at the interview. She could imagine the beautiful young man standing there wearing little because he’d given his clothing to cover some frightened girls.

The article went on. “But it was Kyle Longacre who was the superhero. There was a gas mask, a souvenir of WWI, in a glass cabinet. Kyle broke the glass, grabbed the mask, put it on, then leaped onto a desk and climbed up into the attic of the old building. He told this reporter that when he saw the smoke coming out of the ceiling, he knew that whoever had planted the bomb had probably put it in the attic. He said that he didn’t think about what he was doing, he just pulled the stairs down and went up them.

“And you got the bomb?” the reporter asked.

“Yes,” Kyle replied, and the reporter said that he seemed reluctant to talk about what he’d done.

The reporter went on to say that while Kyle was being interviewed, a fireman said that what Kyle had done was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard of in his life, and he didn’t know if the kid should be given a medal or locked away for his own good. Then a woman came over, shook Kyle’s hand, and said that he’d saved her daughter’s life. The woman went on to say that she lived in a house built by Kyle’s father in the Golden Sixty development, so called because the land had once been sixty acres of broccoli that had gone to seed and covered the field with yellow flowers.

The reporter concluded the article by saying, “I don’t know about the Golden Sixty, but these boys are sure the Golden Six.”

“And that,” the newspaper editor had added at the end of the article, “is how they got their names.”

Fourteen

Bailey pushed the food about on her plate. Again, she hadn’t had time to cook anything special for dinner, so she’d stopped at Boston Market and picked up a couple of pot pies, hoping that Matt would think she’d made them. But Matt was eating in silence and seemed to be deep in thought about something—as Bailey was.

Her mind was full of what she’d read that afternoon. Those six wonderful boys! They were just high school boys who’d been made to feel miserable by the other kids, yet when there was danger, they’d risked their lives to save the other students. What kind of kids cared that much?

She could imagine what bookish, unsocial Taddy must have been like. She had no doubt that the football players of the school had tormented him mercilessly. Yet the boy had climbed out a window, shimmied down a drainpipe, and rescued them all.

And Kyle had grabbed a gas mask and gone directly toward the bomb. What if it had gone off? He’d had time to get out, so why didn’t he run for his life? What interest did he have in a school where the other kids hazed and ridiculed him?

How could a young man like that later leave his wife and children?

“Why didn’t you tell me your father was one of the Golden Six?” Bailey asked quietly, but she didn’t look up at Matt. When he was silent, she raised her head and saw that he had eaten little and now was moving bits of chicken about on his plate.

“It didn’t seem important,” he said after a while, then put down his fork and leaned back in his chair. “I could have picked these pies up for you,” he said, letting her know that he knew she hadn’t cooked them.

“I was busy,” she said, “and I didn’t have time—” She cut herself off, realizing that he’d changed the subject. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Since when have you been interested in the Golden Six?”

His tone was hostile, and she knew that he was trying to put her off, but Bailey didn’t back down. “If I’m going to live in this town, I think I should know more than I do. Today I offended Janice. I made a crack about the Golden Six, and she was furious with me. Patsy told me that your father and Janice’s were part of them. I guess I thought it had all happened so long ago that it had no connection to today. But it does.” Looking at him, she said softly, “Do you know what made your father leave?”