"Whoa!" he said, jumping out to help her with a grocery bag, while his eyes drank in the Model T from fender to fender. "That's a Model T Fordor Sedan! This could be one beautiful car if - " He stopped abruptly and his brown skin burned with a sunset glow.
"Oh, my, don't be embarrassed about the Yellow Carriage!" Mrs. Flowers said, allowing Matt to take another bag of groceries back through the kitchen garden and into the kitchen of the house. "She's served this family for nearly a hundred years, and she's accumulated some rust and damage. But she goes almost thirty miles an hour on paved roads!" Mrs. Flowers added, speaking not only proudly, but with the somewhat awed respect owed to high-speed travel.
Matt's eyes met Tyrone's and Matt knew there was only one shared thought hanging in the air between them.
To restore to perfection the dilapidated, worn, but still beautiful car that spent most of its time in a converted stable.
"We could do it," Matt said, feeling that, as Mrs. Flowers's representative, he should make the offer first.
"We sure could," Tyrone said dreamily. "She's already in a double garage - no problems about room."
"We wouldn't have to strip her down to the frame...she really rides like a dream."
"You're kidding! We could clean the engine, though: have a look at the plugs and belts and hoses and stuff. And" - dark eyes gleaming suddenly - "my dad has a power sander. We could strip the paint and repaint it the exact same yellow!"
Mrs. Flowers suddenly beamed. "That was what dear Mama was waiting for you to say, young man," she said, and Matt remembered his manners long enough to introduce Tyrone.
"Now, if you had said, 'We'll paint her burgundy' or 'blue' or any other color, I'm sure she would have objected," Mrs. Flowers said as she began to make ham sandwiches, potato salad, and a large kettle of baked beans. Matt watched Tyrone's reaction to the mention of "Mama" and was pleased: there was an instant of surprise, followed by an expression like calm water. His mother had said Mrs. Flowers wasn't a batty old lady: therefore she wasn't a batty old lady. A huge weight seemed to roll off Matt's shoulders. He wasn't alone with a fragile elderly woman to protect. He had a friend who was actually a little bigger than he was to rely on.
"Now both of you, have a ham sandwich, and I'll make the potato salad while you're eating. I know that young men" - Mrs. Flowers always spoke of men as if they were a special kind of flower - "need lots of good hearty meat before going into battle, but there's no reason to be formal. Let's just dig right in as things are done."
They had happily obeyed. Now they were preparing for battle, feeling ready to fight tigers, since Mrs. Flowers's idea of dessert was a pecan pie split between the boys, along with huge cups of coffee that cleared the brain like a power sander.
Tyrone and Matt drove Matt's junker to the cemetery, followed by Mrs. Flowers in the Model T. Matt had seen what the trees could do to cars and he wasn't going to subject Tyrone's whistle-clean Camry to the prospect. They walked down the hill to Matt and Sergeant Mossberg's hide, each of the boys giving a hand to help the frail Mrs. Flowers over rough bits. Once, she tripped and would have fallen, but Tyrone dug the toes of his DC shoes into the hill and stood like a mountain as she tumbled against him.
"Oh, my - thank you, Tyrone dear," she murmured and Matt knew that "Tyrone dear" had been accepted into the fold.
The sky was dark except for one streak of scarlet as they reached the hide. Mrs. Flowers took out the sheriff's badge, rather clumsily, due to the gardening gloves she was wearing. First she held it to her forehead, then she slowly drew it away, still holding it in front of her at eye-level. "He stood here and then he bent down and squatted here," she said, getting down in what was - in fact - the correct side of the hide. Matt nodded, hardly knowing what he was doing, and Mrs. Flowers said without opening her eyes, "No coaching, Matt dear. He heard someone behind him - and whirled, drawing his gun. But it was only Matt, and they spoke in whispers for a while.
"Then he suddenly stood up." Mrs. Flowers stood suddenly and Matt heard all sorts of alarming little pops and crackles in her delicate old body. "He went walking - striding - down into that thicket. That evil thicket."
She set off for the thicket as Sheriff Rich Mossberg had when Matt had watched him. Matt and Tyrone went hurrying after her, ready to stop her if she showed any signs of entering the remnant of Old Wood that still lived.
Instead, she walked around it, with the badge held to eye height. Tyrone and Matt nodded at each other and without speaking, each took one of her arms. This way they skirted the edge of the thicket, all the way around, with Matt going first, Mrs. Flowers next, and Tyrone last. At some point Matt realized that tears were making their way down Mrs. Flowers's withered cheeks.
At last, the fragile old woman stopped, took out a lacy handkerchief - after one or two tries - and wiped her eyes with a gasp.
"Did you find him?" Matt asked, unable to hold in his curiosity any longer.
"Well - we'll have to see. Kitsune seem to be very, very good at illusions. Everything I saw could have been an illusion. But" - she heaved a sigh - "one of us is going to have to step into the Wood."
Matt gulped. "That'll be me, then - "
He was interrupted. "Hey, no way, man. You know their ops, whatever they are. You've got to get Mrs. Flowers out of this - "
"No, I can't risk just asking you to come over here and get hurt - "
"Well, what am I doing out here, then?" Tyrone demanded.