Tuck Everlasting

Taking turns, the Tucks explain how they came to the area 87 years ago in search of a place to settle. Back then, the wood was a great forest, and after traveling through it for a while, they found the clearing and camped there. Everyone took a drink from the spring, except their cat, and the next day, Tuck carved a “T” on the tree over the spring before they left.

Soon after, they found a place to build a house. While up in a tree cutting branches, Jesse fell and landed on his head, but he was uninjured. Soon after, some hunters shot their horse by mistake, but the animal wasn’t hurt. They tell story after story of things that should have killed them but didn’t and how, over the next 20 years, they realized they weren’t aging.

When their neighbors started talking of witchcraft, the Tucks left their home and traveled back toward the forest, which had been cut to the wood Winnie knows now. In the clearing, the tree was exactly as it was twenty years ago, and the “T” Tuck carved was “as fresh as if it'd just been put there” (42).

They recall how the cat didn’t drink and died 10 years ago. Needing to be sure about their situation, Tuck shot himself, which didn’t harm him at all. For the last 87 years, the Tucks moved around to hide their condition and keep the spring’s secret. Jesse ends the chapter by telling Winnie he wasn’t lying about being 104 years old. He stopped at 17 and, as far as he knows, will “stay seventeen till the end of the world” (43).

Though Winnie doesn’t believe in fairy tales, she decides the story must be true because the Tucks seem so nice and earnest. They ask her to come home with them so Tuck can explain more and help her understand why it’s so important to keep the spring a secret. Winnie agrees, and the group sets off, Winnie and Jesse running and laughing. None of them notice the man in the yellow suit, who hid and overheard the entire story. He follows them home with the corners of his mouth “turned ever so slightly toward a smile” (47).

After all her running in the August heat, Winnie exhausts herself and spends part of the journey asleep while Miles carries her. Finally, they reach the Tuck’s home, a quaint cottage by a lake within a stand of pine trees. Tuck comes out to greet them and is gladdest to see Winnie, looking at her as if she’s “an unexpected present, wrapped in pretty paper and tied with ribbons” (51).