The Girls in the Stilt House

Matilda wonders if the man who punched Buddy Jones had anything to do with his death. She fashions a notebook from some old paper sacks and goes off to think about it. Buddy was killed on Monday, the same day she saw Frank stealing liquor from the well-shed, but the two men don’t seem to have any connection. Soon, three local boys enter the woods, and Matilda overhears one saying he observed an interaction between a white man and a Black man a few days prior. The white man’s wagon wheel broke, and the Black man helped him to fix it. The Black man mentioned that he was buying the property soon, and the white man offered him $50 not to buy it. The Black man declined the offer, and the white man got mad, saying that his “family was already using them woods for something else” (186). Matilda realizes she’s the only person who knows that Frank was in the woods and what the little boy saw.

Matilda agonizes over what to do with this information. When she gets home, she finds Teensy in bed. Gertie warns that Teensy shouldn’t work too hard. When Matilda goes to fetch some milk from the springhouse, she finds Frank there; he’s holding Buddy Jones’s pocket watch, the one Matilda pulled from the mud.