The Silent Boy by Lois Lowry

"It really frets my ma."
    "Never? But she has her days off, like you! All hired girls do!"
    Peggy shrugged. "She finds other things to do. You know she goes to the pictures."
    "She should go to the library instead," I decided aloud, but Peggy scoffed at the thought.
    "Really," I insisted. "She never does, and she might like it. She could go with us. We could stop afterward at Corcoran ' s and have a ginger beer, with straws."
    I loved drinking straws. And Corcoran's served tea biscuits, too. It was a treat to go there after the library.
    Peggy clucked at the horses to remind them to lift their feet. "Nellie don't like to read," she said. "Even in school, she never did."
    "Your sister Nellie doesn't like to, and your brother, Jacob, can't," I pointed out. "Isn't that strange?"
    Peggy smiled and agreed that it was strange.
    "Will Jacob be home?" I asked her.
    "I expect so." She glanced at the sun, still low against the horizon. "He'll be helping my pa with the milking now. And by the time we get there, the milk will be in, and we'll have it still warm, on oatmeal. And honey with it, from the hives."
    The thought made my cold toast unappetizing, and I threw the crust of it from the buggy to the side of the road, for birds and chipmunks to have.
    "Do they know we ' re coming?"
    "Yes. I telephoned."
    "Do they mind, your bringing me?" I asked.
    "Of course not," Peggy replied. "And when they find what a good girl you are, they may even want to keep you for their own!"
    I glanced at her quickly because the thought made me a little fearful, but I could see she was teasing, and so I laughed as well.
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    I had not been inside the Stoltz farmhouse before. Peggy's mother greeted me warmly and hung my jacket on a wall peg.
    "You're hungry, I expect," she said, and led me to the kitchen, where a wooden table was covered with a flowered cloth. The wood stove was hot, and kettles simmered atop it. The little girl—I remembered her name was Anna—sat in a high wooden chair and banged a spoon on the table. She smiled at me, then lowered her eyes, bashful.
    The back door thumped open suddenly and Mr. Stoltz came in, with Jacob behind him. They smelled of barn, of hay and cows. Peggy's father set a bucket on the shelf beside the stove. Then he nodded at me and said, "Miss." He began to wash his hands, pumping the water with the handle at the sink. "Wash, boy," he said, and Jacob joined him.
    It surprised me that Jacob did not look at me, or nod, or smile. I had thought that we were friends,
in an odd but special way. Again and again I had stood with him in the stable, stroking the horses massive heads side by side. We had never talked. Indeed, I had never heard Jacob speak. But we had made sounds together—I thought of it as our special kind of singing, there in the stable—and sometimes I had walked beside him and his dog for a way, through the alley behind our house, when he left to roam off to other places that I did not know about.
    But Jacob did not look at me.
    We sat around the table on sturdy wooden chairs. "Cap," Mr. Stoltz said, looking at his son meaningfully. Jacob turned his face away and pretended not to hear..
    "
Remove your cap, boy.
" When he repeated it, his tone was stern. Reluctantly Jacob grabbed the cap from his own head, exposing uncombed, curly hair. He held the cap crumpled in his lap.
    Then we bowed our heads while Peggy's father asked the blessing. Even little Anna bowed her head, but I saw her peeking.
    Mrs. Stoltz served us oatmeal and honey, as Peggy had promised. The cream was thick and golden, still warm from the cow.
    "Did you milk the cow, Jacob?" I asked, feeling shy.
    "Sure, Jake milks," Mr. Stoltz said.
    To my surprise, Jacob began to make a rhythmic
sound: not the
shoooda, shoooda
of the millstone, not the song of the horses, but a
psssss, psssss
that he repeated again and again. Anna giggled.
    "Enough, boy," his father said sternly. Then to me he explained, "That d be the sound of the