Text Leveling System

Steal Away Home

RDQ:	2428	Max Word/Sent	43	Total Words	4452		Diff Words	1334
Lex	960	Ave Word/.Sent	10	Hi Freq occurs	3321	74.6%	Hi freq	566	42.4%
AR	5.7	Long Sentences	13.2	Low Freq occurs	345	7.7%	Low freq	276	20.7%

Tear Down the Wall
If you'd asked that morning what Dana's chances were of
finding a dead body before the day was out she'd have
said "Well it's never happened once in twelve and a half
years but you can always hope."
The hot wind was blowing cottonwood puffs through
the open window. As Dana peeled red-and-white flock
off the wall she sucked a cotton puff into her nose and
sneezed all over the wallpaper. Ripping away a damp
strip she found more of those awful orange roosters.
"Ohhhh" she groaned sinking back on her heels. How
many more layers of ugly paper were there under this
wall? Inches' worth no doubt for the 135 years the
house had sat here on Tennessee Street.
The job was definitely worth more than seventy-five
cents and hour even if that's the best she could expect to
make on a Saturday afternoon. Well she'd go on strike.]]
She'd demand a raise or a cushier job. But first she'd 
positively throw up at the sight of one more room full of 
roosters.
"Dana?" It was her mom's voice in that frantic way she 
had of calling as though Dana had suddenly fallen into a 
well or a robber were standing in the kitchen with panty 
hose over his head. "Dana! Where are you?"
"Here Mom." She heard her mother's Birkenstock 
sandals flapping up the stairs.
More roosters. No chickens were pretty but Dana 
hated these specimens most of all because of their color. 
Rusty orange like her own hair like her freckles. Everyone 
made fun of redheads except for grandmothers of 
course who said the hair was gorgeous who said the 
freckles were adorable. Well there was nothing gorgeous 
or adorable about them and nothing gorgeous or 
adorable about roosters either.
And under the roosters she'd probably turn up snapdragons 
brown and gray of course because no one 
who'd lived in the nineteenth century had any eye for 
color.
"Dana Shannon where in this huge barn are you?"
"Second floor Mom in the ugliest room in the house." 
It had a bristly maroon carpet and odd angles that gave 
the room a Seven Dwarfs sort of look and dim lights that 
made it seem like a murky puddle.
Her mom filled the door her thin piano legs supporting 
her round body. She was like a bowling pin turned 
upside down. A floppy shirt came to her knees and 
sticking out of her sandals were padded feet with bright]] 
red nails. "Aren't we having fun? Or do blonds have more 
fun?"
"Redheads sure don't. Look at the wall."
"Oh Dana tell me it's not more of them." She pulled 
away a swatch of red and white. "Oh no roosters. I call 
fowl play." It's true they'd found roosters behind nearly 
every wall's top layer all over the house. There must have 
been a huge closeout on rooster paper back when most 
people just had unfinished wood walls and wallpaper 
was a rich man's luxury
"Why did we ever buy this place Mom really?"
"Oh your father's a romantic. He says it has historical 
importance one of the first houses here in Lawrence and 
all that. It's going to turn into the most terrific bed-and-
breakfast in Kansas. Someday" she added with a sigh. 
She ripped a strip of paper clear down the wall. It started 
out fat then thinned like a stream of syrup. "I suppose 
I'll have to break down and rent a steamer."
Well yes because it would take two lifetimes to get 
this paper off and what for? Just for redheaded male 
chickens.
So Dana was devising a scheme to cut down on the 
work even with a steamer or else the spring and summer 
would fly by like a flock of hummingbirds and she'd be 
left with the droppings. It was already about ninety 
degrees with two more weeks till school let out. "I've got 
an idea Mom. Why can't I take some sharp pointy thing and 
stab through eighty layers of this stuff? Then we can 
yank it off in chunks."
"Has its merits." Mom was on her hands and knees]] 
ripping up a corner of the carpet that looked like one big wine stain. "Look at this gorgeous hardwood floor. Why would they cover it up? Oh it's going to be a horrendously awful job refinishing this floor." Mom blew hair off her forehead. "First thing in the morning I'm going to Bermuda."
"It's hot there too."
"Anchorage then."
Dana chipped away at a circle of the wallpaper with a carpet cutter until the wall grew less spongy. The knife clunked against something hard. She turned the knife like a screwdriver and bored a little hole through the layers of paper. She worked it around and around making the circle even wider until she'd ground out a peephole the size of a walnut.
There behind the flock the roosters the snapdragons and probably a few layers of zinnias and fleur-de-lis was a wall of hard wood that absorbed the stab of her knife. And behind that darkness.
Dana cut a wider hole. Now it was wide enough for a mouse now for a squirrel. Pretty soon a good-sized cocker spaniel could have lodged himself in this cavity like in a tree trunk. Dana peered into the hole. The darkness back there was impenetrable. She stuck her hand into the hole and pushed on the cool wood to get some idea how thick it was.
Suddenly it gave it swung back. She poked her head into the cavern and smelled something old musty. "Mom the flashlight quick!"
Mom scooted across the floor with the flashlight.]] 
Behind the wall was a small room and in the eerie shadows thrown by the thin light of the Eveready was a small crock two cots and on one of them- 
A full skeleton.]] 
No Names
April 1856
If he put his mind to it he'd hear coyotes but who wanted to? James whittled a stick into nothing but a fine thin point the shavings growing into a billowy pile at his feet.
"James pick up thy wood curls and wash up for dinner son." His mother's long skirt swished as she spun around from her cookstove. "it's rabbit stew lots of potatoes and carrots."
"When's Pa due back?" Dinnertime was always jollier when Pa was at the table. James noticed a slight hesitation before Ma spoke.
"Government business as usual James. Thy father's in Topeka with Dr. Robinson. He'll be back just before First Day to be sure."
James went outside to wash his hands in a tub behind]] 
the house. He'd lived the first twelve years of his life in Boston but he'd be having his next birthday cake here in Kansas in this shaky frame house four city blocks distance from the nearest neighbor. There were terrors out here on the prairie. He was afraid of so many things that he wouldn't even tell his father about. Sometimes he told his sister Rebecca about how jittery he got when the wind whistled through the cracks in the roof but then she got scared and cried and he felt like a bully.
The wash water was gray and cold. He wiped his hands on a rag that hung above the washtub. It was as dark as pitch barely a star in view. And where was the moon? Four blocks off he saw the pinpoint of light from a lantern in Macons' house. Jeremy Macon was probably doing his sums by that light. Jeremy Macon always had the right answer. Jeremy Macon was the kind who always got the girl. Not that James was interested in girls. Much.
The coyotes were hungry howling like the wind in the trees. No telling what they'd eat if they got hungry enough. Jeremy and them they hunted coyotes and squirrels too and wild turkeys-anything that ran so fast that it was game enough to shoot. But James's father didn't keep a gun. He'd said "Remember my boy we Quakers don't kill for sport. In fact we don't kill any living things."
Lawrence was so blamed quiet after the hustle and bustle of Boston. You couldn't hear a thing except for the coyotes and the rustling brush. And then James thought he heard the grinding of wagon wheels in the dry dirt over on the other side of the hill. Maybe not. Maybe it was the prairie wind playing tricks on him again.]] 
What if a coyote came close? He balled his fists over his eyes. If only Pa would get back by dark every night.
They didn't kill living things no but they sure ate dead ones and inside there was a tangy hot stew waiting for James and inside there were no coyotes.
Ma and Rebecca were already at the table their heads bowed. He slid onto the bench and tried to pray. Silence filled every crack of the dining room. Rebecca looked up at him and rolled her eyes. He'd burst out laughing! No! Ma would glare at him and there'd be no gooseberry pie on his plate come dessert time.
Finally in some mysterious way Ma knew it was time to stop praying. "James thee dawdled outside. Was there something that caught thy eye?"
"My ear. I think someone's coming."
"Company!" Rebecca shrieked. She was five and loved when people came because they usually brought her some sort of jimcrack or a string toy or at least wild berry muffins for the whole family.
"Did thee see anyone?" Ma asked. She'd stopped eating and had scraped her stew back into the serving bowl.
"Grass is too tall" James said. Well he'd eat his share and hers. And then it was unmistakable the sound of wagon wheels. Ma's face got tight and after a deep breath a sort of peace came over it. "I expect we'll have guests for the night" she said. "Rebecca finish thy meal quickly and go up and take thy pillow and feather quilt into thy brother's room."
"Aw Ma. He stinks so bad."
"Do as I say child."]] 
The clattering of the wagon stopped out back of the house. There was a faint tapping at the window and Ma lifted the corner of the curtain. "James open the door son and be hospitable."
On the porch stood the shabbiest man James had ever seen as if he'd ridden over dusty roads for days and weeks without a wash. His eyes were ringed with black his face leathery. He had a finger missing and James wondered where how? Ma was right behind James now craning to see beyond the driver.
"Evening ma'am. Saw yer flag down out front. I've got cargo."
"Yes. Thee's welcome. James give the man a hand."
James scrambled onto the wagon wondering what the cargo was. The wonderful smell of smoke-cured ham made him swoon. He picked up the ham wrapped loosely in rags and pulled it to his face. Ohhh! Maybe the man was bringing them a winter's worth of fine Boston foods-meats that weren't like boot leather or stringy as prairie chicken or gamey as jackrabbit. "Smell's mighty good" James said.
"To cut the scent" the man muttered.
"Of what?"
"Negroes."
He'd heard of them but had never seen one right up close. He and the driver pawed through layers of dishes pots and pans tools and straw until they came to a buffalo-hide blanket. The driver pulled that back and James jumped. There on the floor of the wagon lay three of the blackest people on earth: A man a woman and a small boy with huge eyes mostly whites.]]
"Y'all can come out," the driver said. "This here's Weavers' place."
The black man rose stiffly to his knees and pulled the woman up with both hands. The boy clung to his mother's thin dress as she stumbled to her feet. They were stiff as rakes. Lord knows how long they'd been lying on that bed of the wagon, flat as trampled prairie grass.
"Yep, this is Lawrence, Kansas, free soil. Y'all be safe here. Mind if I water my horse before I set out?"
He was already leading the mangy horse to the trough. Looked like it needed a night in a barn. But as soon as the horse lifted its head, the driver pulled it around toward the road again. "Well, I'm on my way." Where? James wondered. Where'd he come from, where was he going?
Now the Negro family huddled together, getting their land legs. They hadn't said a word. And what was James to do? Did they even speak English? He led them around the house to the front door. The wagon was already clattering back toward the hill.
"Ma!" Ma came to the door, Rebecca hiding behind her.
"Come in, friends," Ma said. "Thee's safe here. I've a hot supper for thee, and thee and thy child shall sleep in my daughter's bed tonight. After supper, my son will fetch water in our kettles, and we'll fill a hot tub for thee. Thee looks like a bath might be welcome."
"Thank you, ma'am. I'm Isaac-" "Hush! No names."
"Yes'm."
"Tomorrow night just at dark, we'll send thee on. If I don't know thy names, why, I can't say for sure thee'd
been here, anyone comes asking." She put ladles of stew on the tin plates and dark bread already thick with melted butter. The gooseberry pie would have to go a lot further, James thought mournfully.
But what he didn't know was that these were the first of many runaway slaves that would arrive in the dead of night. Ma would harbor them for a day of rest and hearty food, before she passed the fugitives on along the Underground Railroad-which wasn't a railroad at all.
And Ma told him that when this family of no-names got across the border into Canada, like so many others that went before them and that followed them, they'd sing:
Oh, go an' carry de news, One more soul got safe!
But the runaways would only come to James's house when his pa was away on government business.
"A what?" Dana's mom cried. "Let me have a look." Dana held the flashlight for her. "Oh my God, it is a skeleton. Dana, call 911."
"Me? You're the adult here."
Her mother backed away. "Well, it's not going anywhere, I suppose. I mean, there's time to do this civilly. Come on. We'll go downstairs to the phone. We'll dial 911, and we'll calmly tell them that there's a complete skeleton in a secret compartment of our upstairs parlor. Smiling broadly. Empty eye sockets just staring right at us. Oh Dana, they'll send the men in the white coats for us, with big butterfly nets."
Dana's mom talked too fast when she was nervous, and her fingers flew like buzzing bees. Dana was just the opposite. She clamped shut, like an oyster shell, rolling all the scary things around in her head.
The police came quickly, maybe because Mrs. Shannon's call had been a little different from the usual run of intruders and domestic spats. A skeleton, indeed!
A guy who looked more like an accountant than a policeman introduced himself as Officer Burney. "This is my partner, Officer Wyles," he said, and both flashed IDs. Wyles was the first woman police officer Dana had ever talked to. She seemed so small and delicate. Dana couldn't imagine her pulling a revolver on a thug, or throwing a robber over her shoulder in a swift karate maneuver. But Wyles had intense eyes. Maybe she stopped crooks with her laser vision.
Each of the police officers peered into the secret chamber behind the wall and didn't seem at all startled, as if they found perfect anatomy-class specimens every day. But Officer Burney called down to headquarters for help. Before long, a photographer was there, and fingerprinters, and a work crew to tear down the wall.
"One way to get the work done quick," Dana said. "Maybe we can get them to rip up the carpet, too."
Then, here came Dr. Baxi, who was the county coroner.
"Oh Punir, I'm so glad to see you!" Dana's mom nearly crushed the little man in her enthusiasm. "This is a B grade movie. Unbelievable. Something out of the annals of Scotland Yard."
Dr. Baxi gave her his shy smile, but was all business. "Don't move the remains," he said, in his clipped Indian way, as two policemen were trying to figure out how to haul the body away. He showed the photographer which angles to shoot from, had him standing up on the cot,
straddling the skeletal feet. As he jiggled the cot, Dana noticed that the bones were where they should be, but not all of them were attached, as though someone had found them and arranged them just so.
"How come he's not connected, Dr. Baxi?" asked Dana. He pointed here, and here. "See, some ligaments still connect the bones."
"This is sick," her mother said, and she sank into a rocking chair. Officer Wyles had to step back and forth over her feet.
With rubber gloves, Dr. Baxi picked up scraps of faded fabric and dropped them tenderly into plastic bags, each one with a note describing where he'd found it. "Cotton," he said. "Very old."
"Val? Dana?" Her dad was running up the stairs. "Is everybody okay?" He paused at the door of the parlor. "Geez, it looks like a tornado hit." He elbowed his way through the crowd in the parlor and flung his arms around Dana and her mom, while he stared at the gaping hole in the wall. "Thank God you're okay. Now would somebody tell me what's going on here?"
"You won't believe this, Dad."
He stepped over the foot-high chunk of wall into the secret chamber. "Punir, what are you doing here? Oh," he said, backing out. His face was ashy white.
"Somebody's been dead a long, long time behind that wall, Dad."
"More than a hundred years," Dr. Baxi said. "That's an educated guess. Bones are clean, teeth are intact, there's still a tuft of hair on the back of the scalp." Dana leaned
in for a closer look. Sure enough, there were a few wisps of black hair standing stiffly up from the skull.
Her father could barely get the words out. "Who is it? Was it?"
"We don't know yet," Dr. Baxi said, as he directed two men to slide a thin plank under the skeleton. He carefully held each bone just so. The men wrapped a tight canvas over the skeleton and tied it under the stretcher. "Hold it steady," Dr. Baxi directed them, as they stepped over the rubble in the room and took the very thin corpse out of the house. Dr. Baxi followed. "I will phone you later," he said somberly, and then as though cheered by this new thought, he motioned for the bearers to stop, and he said, "Dana, my wife tells me you are quite a biology buff." Mrs. Baxi was her Life Sciences teacher at Thoreau. "Maybe you would like to be present for the autopsy?"
"Would I!" Ever since her mother would let her hold a sharp knife, she'd dissected worms, fish, fish eyes, slabs of liver from the kitchen. Once, a bird had fallen out of a tree and been abandoned by its mother, and it came under Dana's knife. The red, stringy, spongy insides of a dead thing always seemed so much more, well, alive. "I'll be a big help, I promise."
"I don't mean present in the actual autopsy theater, but you could be just outside in my office."
"I won't faint, Dr. Baxi, honestly."
His smile made his small eyes vanish. "But there are laws, my dear. You shall be the first to get word when we complete our examination."
"All right," she said, disappointed. But it was better than nothing, and maybe when the door swung open, she could steal peeks of something gory to describe to her friends.
"I'll call you in the morning," Dr. Baxi promised. "I'll need this evening to get records prepared. Jeffrey, you know Simon Fleicher, the forensic anthropologist at the university. Do you know if he's in town? I'll call him in on the case also. Very intriguing," he said, snapping off his rubber gloves as he followed the stretcher down the stairs.
"We have a few questions, Dr. Shannon," Officer Wyles said, nailing him with her eyes. "A few preliminary questions before Homicide gets here."
"Homicide?" Dana's mother was having trouble processing all this. "Jeffrey? Is this in my contract?"
But Dr. Shannon wasn't doing much better. History was his field at the university, not criminology or anthropology. What did he know about murder investigations and identifying bones, especially bones that were a century old? Dana seemed to be the only one staying calm. Good thing they won't be at the autopsy, she thought.
She climbed back into the room for a last look, because the police would be sealing it off soon for their investigation. Everybody was talking at once, firing questions, answers, orders, theories. This was not the typical case. No one was in charge, and everyone was the boss. People passed back and forth from the secret chamber, carrying equipment in, carrying equipment out. Officer Wyles pulled out the cot so one of Dr. Baxi's men could lift fingerprints from the wall, and Dana thought she saw something drop down to the floor.
"You're not supposed to be in here," the coroner's man said, as he busied himself with his fingerprint kit.
Dana squatted and quickly picked up a small black book, which she slipped into the pocket of her jumper. "And don't touch anything," the man said. "Leave it to the public to gum up every one of our investigations." "I'm out of here," Dana said merrily. The black book slapped her thigh as she stepped over the open gash of the wall.
"Just in time." Officer Burney taped a crisscross of yellow plastic over the gaping hole, stamped with the message: DO NOT BREAK THIS SEAL, UNDER PENALTY OF LAW, BY ORDER OF THE LAWRENCE POLICE DEPARTMENT. Officer Wyles crossed that out and wrote in black marker: BY ORDER OF THE DOUGLAS COUNTY CORONER.
"Let's get out of here," Dana's father said, and the three of them drifted off to a guest bedroom. They sat on the floor with their backs up against the four-poster. Someday this room would rent for $120 a night, but not for a while, since people wouldn't be too excited about staying in a house where skeletons turned up.
"What do you think happened, Dad?"
"I have no idea. I've got the librarian hunting up some documents on the house already, so we'll know what we're doing as we restore it to its nineteenth-century state. They should have the materials by Monday. And I'll go down to the Douglas County Register of Deeds, see what I can find out about the previous owners of the house. But right now, who knows?"
Dana fingered the book in her pocket. It felt like an address book or a pocket calendar, but very heavy for its
size. Should she show it to her parents? "Suppose somebody found something in that little room," she began. "Like what?" Her mother sounded distant and disconnected, like a bad phone line. But her father was looking at her closely.
"Oh, I don't know. A little knickknack or something?" "If I found something," her father said carefully, "I'd give it to the police right away, even though the historian in me would want to keep it and study it."
That's the way her parents were. They never said, "You have to do this, don't you dare do that." They always laid out the choices, let her know what they thought she should do, then made her decide. Her friends thought this was really cool, especially Ahn Thuey, whose Vietnamese family controlled every inch of her life. But Dana's friends didn't understand how hard it was to have the responsibility back on your own shoulders. If you blew it, you had no one to blame but yourself.
So, that settled it. She'd show them the black book but not until she'd had a chance to find out just what was in it.
"I need to fix dinner," her mother said, "if they ever get out of our house. Or do we feed all the civil servants of Lawrence?"
Dana's dad said, "Let's go out and get a pizza. It'll be a long time before anything's settled."
As it turned out, it would be months before anything was settled, and even then, there were unsolved puzzles. Half the police department of Lawrence gathered outside Dr. Baxi's lab. How often did they get a chance to investigate bones that were over a hundred years old? An assistant was issuing everyone masks, and Dana casually took one. "Now, you'll stand free and clear of the table. Don't get in the coroner's way. And keep your mouths shut, because he'll be dictating his findings and you don't want your witticisms to be preserved in the record for all eternity, right? People get in the autopsy room and think they have to make jokes. Believe me, we've heard them all."
Dana tied the paper mask around her head and watched everyone else suck air in and out.
"And if you feel like you're going to faint, get out of the theater on the double. We don't want two stiffs on the table." This was obviously a line he'd delivered a thousand times, but still found hilarious.
They filed into the lab. It was cold, like a morgue. There were two other doctors besides Dr. Baxi, and Dana also recognized Dr. Fleicher, the forensic anthropologist from the university.
Dr. Baxi's eyes were fixed on the arrangement of bones on his table. A sheet covered all but the head and shoulders. "We will observe strict hygienic conditions," he announced. It seemed silly to worry about sanitary conditions, considering how dead the body was, but then Dana wondered if they might be worried about catching something from the skeleton.
Dana had to stand on her tiptoes and peer between the shoulders of the doctors and policemen. Twice she was elbowed in the ribs. The anthropologist reached under the sheet and lifted one bony hand lovingly, as if it were a dozen roses. One of the policemen swooned, stepped back, and tromped on Dana's foot.

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: No support

Dialog: Multiple speakers

Dialog: Broken dialogue

Dialog: Unlabeled Speaker

Vocabulary: Many difficult words

Language: Many descriptive words

Sentences: Some Long/Complex

Text structure: Story/Poem

Inferences: Several Implications

Complexity: Several unrelated ideas

Concepts: Abstract/Complex Social

Table of Contents

Chapters

Features

Character traits

Integral Setting - Historical

Parallel plots

Topic

Time

*History

Learning

Hiding

Freedom

African Americans

Slavery

Helping

*Global Issues

Low Frequency Words

abandoned	absorbed	accountant	actual	anatomy
anchorage	angles	annals	announced	anthropologist
anthropology	anything's	ashy	autopsy	billowy
biology	blackest	blonds	bristly	buff
busied	bustle	calendar	calmly	cargo
casually	cavern	cavity	civilly	closeout
clunked	compartment	controlled	cookstove	coroner
coroner's	corpse	cottonwood	coyotes	craning
criminology	cured	curls	curtain	cushier
dana's	dawdled	degrees	delicate	devising
dictating	disappointed	disconnected	dissected	documents
domestic	doubt	douglas	educated	eerie
elbowed	enthusiasm	equipment	eternity	eveready
examination	fabric	fingered	fingerprinters	fleicher
fleur	flung	forensic	fowl	frantic
freckles	fugitives	further	gamey	gaping
gash	geez	glare	gooseberry	gorgeous
gory	government	grinding	harbor	hardwood
headquarters	hearty	hesitation	hilarious	historian
historical	homicide	honestly	horrendously	hospitable
hustle	hygienic	identifying	ids	impenetrable
importance	intact	intense	intriguing	introduced
intruders	investigation	investigations	issuing	jackrabbit
jeremy	jimcrack	jittery	jollier	jumper
karate	knickknack	ladles	lantern	laser
lawrence	leathery	librarian	lifetimes	ligaments
lis	liver	lodged	loosely	lovingly
luxury	ma'am	macon	macons	maneuver
mangy	marker	maroon	materials	meats
merits	merrily	morgue	motioned	mournfully
murder	murky	musty	muttered	mysterious
nailing	negroes	neighbor	nineteenth	observe
opposite	oyster	panty	parlor	partner
paused	pawed	peace	peephole	peer
peered	penalty	photographer	pinpoint	plank
policemen	positively	prairie	preliminary	preserved
previous	processing	public	punir	quakers
recognized	redheaded	redheads	refinishing	register
responsibility	revolver	ridden	ringed	robinson
romantic	rubble	runaway	runaways	rustling
sandals	sanitary	scent	scheme	sciences
scotland	scrambled	sealing	servants	seventy
shabbiest	shavings	skeletal	smell's	snapdragons
sockets	somberly	soul	spaniel	spats
specimens	spongy	squatted	startled	stiffly
stiffs	straddling	stretcher	stringy	swatch
swished	swoon	swooned	syrup	tangy
tenderly	tennessee	terrific	terrors	theater
thee'd	thee's	theories	thoreau	thuey
topeka	tornado	trampled	tromped	trough
tuft	turkeys	typical	ugliest	unbelievable
unfinished	unmistakable	unsolved	vietnamese	vision
wall's	weavers	where'd	whistled	whites
whittled	who'd	wisps	witticisms	worth
wyles	y'all	yank	yer	yes'm
zinnias