After they'd taken time out for an overdue midday meal, the villagers reassembled and Lucius said, "Now Ivy has something to tell you." He held her for a long moment; then they separated, and he sat between Alice and August.
The younger members of the crowd, still abuzz over what they'd already heard, calmed down enough to give her a hearty welcome. Even most of the elders were smiling.
"I know what you're expecting," Ivy began. "That I'm going to talk about the restoration of my sight.
"But I'm not. I had surgery, a common operation Dr. Ashline and my parents had always known was possible." She paused to let that sink in. "I'm grateful for the doctors and everyone else who helped me, and above all, for the man who loved me even when I was blind. There's nothing more to say.
"I need to talk to you now about something else. I believe--I hope--parts of this story will come as a shock even to most of the elders. It's I and not Lucius who should explain this, because it's the responsibility of my family." She gave her parents a long, hard look. "Terrible things have been done with our wealth, in our name.
"I should explain to the young people here that the Walker family was extremely wealthy. Papa and Mama conceived the idea of founding this village, and assured the other elders the details could be left to them.
"There's no way that in late 20th-century Pennsylvania, land as desirable as this would have been uninhabited. It wasn't.
"You've all learned something about American Indians. In modern America many tribes live, by choice, on lands called reservations. That helps them preserve their language and culture.
"The land that became our village, and the forest around it, made up a reservation. A tribe had lived here for hundreds of years. In modern times it was important to them to have this land of their own, but they weren't isolated. There were roads through the forest, and the Indians enjoyed many of the modern conveniences our parents spurned."
Her frown deepened. "The Walker family had sought to claim this land, forest and all, for a long time. A king of England--who had no right to it himself!--had supposedly included it in a grant to a man named Penn, and Penn had promised it to a Walker ancestor in payment of a debt. The claim wasn't well documented, and the courts rejected it. All my grandfather's money couldn't change that.
"My parents did get the land. They couldn't have done it without the money; but in addition to that, they had to lie about the use they had in mind for it. They told the court they planned to create a wildlife preserve--a wild area where animals and birds would be safe, not threatened by hunters or even by human residents. The Walkers couldn't have gotten away with living on a luxury estate here, coming and going in a normal way. But an isolated village would go undetected."
Edward Walker was on his feet. "Ivy, you're making it sound as if I used my friends' need as an excuse to go after land I'd wanted all along. It wasn't like that. I was a professor, I'd never cared about it."
"So it was pure coincidence, Papa, that the land you acquired for the village was the land your family had coveted for years?"
"No, of course not," he admitted. "But--"
Robert Percy said accusingly, "We never knew you had a prior interest in the land!"
"I just knew about it because of the family history!" Walker protested. "Tabitha and I arranged for the land, then lived among you as equals. And you may not have known about the 'wildlife preserve' lie, but you always knew this had been an Indian reservation." Turning back to Ivy, he told her, "The Indians were well compensated, and moved voluntarily to another location that was as good or better."
She shook her head. "It's not that simple, Papa." Addressing the group again, she continued, "Papa and Mama set up an organization called the Walker Foundation to administer the family fortune. It was responsible for relocating the Indians--an unpleasant task they didn't want to be involved with--and later, for running the fake wildlife preserve. Its executives were very well paid; but they knew they could lose their jobs at any time if my parents were dissatisfied. I'm guessing they went to great lengths to keep them from hearing bad news.
"Most of the Indians were relocated against their will. They refused compensation, because accepting it would have implied acceptance of the loss of their land. The tribe kept fighting in the courts for years."
"I-I didn't know that," Walker said weakly. He sat down abruptly, as if his legs had given out.
"And the location to which they were moved was not 'as good or better.' They were forced to share an overcrowded reservation with another tribe, in another state, and there was friction between the two groups. Many left the reservation, and didn't adjust well. By now they've all but lost their tribal identity."
Her father mumbled, "We had no idea..."
August Nicholson turned to look at him. "None?" He shook his head. "You had doubts. You've acted for months as if you were afraid of something coming out, something the other elders didn't know. And it had to be more than the lie you'd told about a wildlife preserve."
Ivy said quietly, "The story gets worse. An agency of the United States government has been investigating. For those of you who've heard of the FBI"--meaning, of course, the elders--"it has an Indian Country unit, which never lost interest in the situation here.
"They learned recently that most of the Indians were relocated, but some were determined not to leave, not to be torn away from their ancestral lands. They took refuge in Covington Wood, hoping to survive by hunting and gathering." A shocked murmur ran through her audience. "I'm not talking about a great many people, but they did outnumber the original settlers of our village. Their numbers may have been close to the hundred we have now.
"The Indians who left never realized their reservation wasn't being turned into a wildlife preserve. But by the time the Foundation realized some were still living in the woods, they'd seen the village. The Foundation wasn't willing to let them stay, or let the elders even become aware of them, lest the inconvenience cost Foundation bosses their jobs. But driving them out, if it could have been done, wasn't a good solution either. They knew too much."
Alice said suddenly, "Oh my God."
Ivy paused. "Mrs. Hunt--I mean, Mrs. Nicholson?"
"Th-the first year we were here," Alice stammered. "W-we used to hear gunshots, deep in the forest! Edward said...he said the people who worked for him were just getting rid of large animals like bears, that might pose a threat to the village!"
Amid gasps of horror from the crowd, Walker leapt to his feet and yelled, "That was all they were doing!"
Ivy said firmly, "No, it wasn't. I'm sorry, Papa, but whether you knew it or not, your men weren't shooting at bears. They were shooting at other men--and women and children. Not letting them escape from the forest, no matter in what direction they tried to flee."
"Ivy, how can you claim to know all this?" Tabitha was in tears. "You've heard wild stories out there! Are you repeating them to punish us for the lie about the forest creatures? Or to punish us for--"
"No! I'm not 'repeating wild stories,' Mama, not for any reason! The top executives of the Foundation are under arrest, and they've admitted everything."
Tabitha collapsed, moaning.
Ivy took a deep breath to steady herself. "The Indians were at home in the forest. Those who tried to escape couldn't do it, but most of them managed to hide and avoid being shot.
"So the Foundation decided on another way of killing them. They poisoned the vegetation. All the animals fled or died." She swallowed hard, then continued grimly, "And all the humans died, with no exceptions. Probably either from eating plants that had become poisonous, or from eating the flesh of poisoned animals. But if anyone realized there was no food safe to eat, they had the choice of starving."
The silence that followed was broken by scattered sobs--and by several villagers' making a pell-mell dash for the door. Once outside, they could be heard retching.
At last August Nicholson said, "Years later, we realized something had gone wrong in that forest. When children were old enough that we wanted to frighten them with our 'forest creature' nonsense, we began going a little ways in, let them hear howls coming from beyond the border." He shook his head in disgust. "Edward admitted the plants must have been poisoned, but he still claimed his people had been clearing the forest of dangerous animals. Said the poisoning had been allowed to go too far."
Walker had been comforting his wife, but now he let go of her and struggled to his feet again. "I'm sorry." He paused as if realizing the inadequacy of those words. "I didn't know humans were being killed--but I should have. I believed what I wanted to believe, didn't ask questions. When people I'd hired were using my money to relocate hundreds of Indians, and they had a motive for not telling me if they encountered problems, I should have insisted on being kept informed."
August said bitterly, "You shouldn't have been relocating those Indians in the first place! Not when they didn't want to go." He sighed. "We were all at fault," he admitted. "We took Edward's word that he'd offered the Indians so much money that they'd jumped at it. We should have checked the facts ourselves."
"How did the truth come out, Ivy?" Alice asked. "Why now, after all these years?"
"Lucius found skeletons," Ivy explained. She was fighting to keep a tremor out of her voice. "We were so concerned that we felt we had to mention it to a friend in the outside world. And he believed the right thing to do was to call the police."
Edward Walker looked up at her, with tears streaming down his face. "It was the right thing to do, Ivy. Don't ever doubt that."
A puzzled August asked, "Why hadn't the Foundation disposed of those remains years ago? They couldn't be sure of keeping everyone out of the forest, forever."
Lucius spoke up for the first time. "They thought they had recovered them all. But when they were searching, there was still so much vegetation that they missed some. They never bothered to check again, and by now there were so few shrubs that the skeletons could be seen easily."
After a brief silence, Walker said quietly and with dignity, "The men who ran the Foundation are under arrest. So I suppose the FBI will be coming here next? To arrest Tabitha and me?" Tabitha let out a muffled shriek.
Ivy nodded. "I'm afraid so, Papa. At the very least, you'll be questioned. And you may be found to bear some legal responsibility. As you said, you should have kept track of what the people you hired were doing."
Ada Clark, known as one of the most compassionate elders, was the next to speak. "I assume we'll have to leave this land. But I think we should decide on that now, voluntarily, and commit ourselves to do everything we can to help the surviving Indians resettle here."
Expressions of assent and good will toward the Indians came from all sides. But Ivy gave a sad shake of her head. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Clark. The Indians cultivated crops, just as we have. And it won't be possible for anyone to farm here for many years to come. The environmental damage caused by the poison hasn't affected the village yet, but it will. The loss of so many nearby trees is a disaster in itself."
A stunned Alice Nicholson whispered, "So we not only stole their land, we ruined it as well?"
Lucius said quietly, "The village experiment ruined more here than the land..."