13 Hangmen

by Art Corriveau

  “Worth a try.” Angelo grinned.

  “Don’t just stand there,” Tony said, ducking through the hearth. “Help me drag Ian into the main room.”

  The thirteen-year-olds all sprang into action. They grabbed Ian’s inert body and half carried, half dragged him through the hearth to flop him onto the brass bed. Angelo, who could now see him, promised to stand guard and shout if Ian started to wake up. The rest of them returned to the secret room, where Tony recited the riddle aloud:

  “When after his Midnight Ride

  Paul’s treasure I was taskt to hide

  Pluckt I the 9th of 13 stars

  From a 4th of heav’nly bars

  To keep freedom yet ringing inside.”

  The boys all turned to Tony, expectantly.

  Tony shrugged. He was stumped. And tired. Really, really tired. He gazed around the room. Nothing but kegs. No point in prying any more of them open with the poker. They were just full of moldy old tea.

  “The first two lines and the last tell you that Tobias has hidden the handbell Revere used to rouse the Minutemen,” Solly prompted.

  “The third and fourth lines must tell you where,” Finn said.

  Tony shrugged again. He sat on the lid of the nearest keg. He yawned. He could barely think straight. He stared up at the rafters. What had those two guys from Health & Safety joked? That the roof was now so sketchy, you could probably see stars through the gaps in the rafters at night.

  Stars.

  “Stars and stripes,” Tony said, suddenly. “That’s what they called the first American flag in 1777. Mildred Pickles has one of the originals, hanging in her shop. Thirteen stars and thirteen stripes, one each for the first thirteen states.”

  “So?” Solly said.

  “Look at the slope of the roof. Thirteen wide planks, just like the flag. The planks are knotty pine, and most of the knots are in the upper left-hand corner—where the stars of a flag would be.”

  Tony was right! Not only that, but there were exactly thirteen of them.

  “Sarah Pickles told me the ninth star is Massachusetts,” Tony continued. “And the ninth pine knot up there is definitely in the fourth roof plank.”

  “Which has been cut crosswise in two places,” Finn pointed out.

  He and Solly rolled a cask over. Tony climbed onto its lid for a closer look at the sawn plank. The patch at the ninth knot pulled out fairly easily. Tucked up in the eaves beneath the roof shingling was a small metal chest. Tony handed it down to the others. “Bring it out to the main room,” he said.

  They all ducked back through the hearth passage. “You found it!” Angelo cried.

  “Grab the key from around Ian’s neck,” Tony said.

  Angelo reached into Ian’s shirt. He pulled out the chain. No key. Just that odd triple spiral that some Hagmann ancestor or other brought over from England. Ian must have gotten it just today. The rest of the boys pounced on the spy. They searched every single pocket and seam of his clothes. They pulled his shoes off and checked inside.

  “He didn’t bring it with him,” Angelo sighed.

  “Why risk having Tobias end up with both the key and the chest?” Solly said. “The Hagmanns may be evil, but they’re not stupid.”

  “Ideas?” Angelo asked Tony.

  Tony broke into a huge grin. He retrieved his wallet from the fireplace mantel. Out of the credit-card slot he pulled the little key. He explained how it had fallen off Benedict Hagmann’s chain while he was supposedly looking after Zio Angelo. Tony had found it in the parlor before Zio Angelo’s brass bed had been moved back up to the attic. No wonder Hagmann was so desperate to get it back. It had been handed down from Hagmann to Hagmann—along with the secret of the chest it opened—for generations.

  “Wait—where did Ian go?” Finn said, alarmed.

  All the boys looked over to the bed. It was empty. Ian had vanished.

  “Stay calm—I bet he’s still there,” Tony said. He took the key back to the mantel and placed it on the spiral. Ian reappeared. “The key obviously has nine-ish energy,” Tony said. “I must have conjured Ian with it while it was still in my wallet.” He held it up.

  The little loop in its handle did make it look like a nine.

  “So it really was a two-for-one,” Angelo said.

  Tony took the key off the spiral, causing Ian to vanish again. He ambled over to the chest and inserted it into the lock. It was a perfect fit. He raised the lid. He pulled out a silk handkerchief. He unwrapped it.

  They all marveled at America’s first liberty bell, the bell that had rung in a new era of freedom from British tyranny.

  “Three cheers for Tony!” Angelo cried.

  “Not so fast,” said Tobias, standing in the doorway. He was pointing Ian’s pistol directly at Tony’s head. “It wasn’t Benedict Hagmann at the door after all,” he said. “It was my cousin Abigail. Revere is sending her to Aunt Polly in Martha’s Vineyard while he’s away in Maine. She came back to the house to pack up a few things. She wanted to give me the flag she designed, to use as a bed quilt. She said she just needed to mend it first. I told her about Ian. She promised to tell Benedict Hagmann, as soon as he gets here, that Ian ran straight home to Garden Court Street with a small chest.”

  “Tony found the treasure!” Angelo crowed. Obviously.

  “You’re not with Revere, are you?” Tobias said. “You really are from the future.”

  They all nodded.

  Tobias cocked the trigger of the pistol.

  “But Tony solved the riddle, fair and square,” Angelo said.

  “That only proves it was a bad riddle,” Tobias said. “I can’t let you take Revere’s bell to the future any more than I can let Ian have it. So I’ll need Tony to put it back in the chest, please. Now.”

  Tony tried to reason with Tobias. Technically speaking, Tobias wasn’t breaking his promise in the time anomaly. He owned this house—they all did—and everything in it. Plus Revere would obviously give the bell to Tobias outright at some point. Because in 1839, Tobias would tell Jack it was still hidden in the house. In fact, Tobias would virtually give Jack permission to try and find it.

  “That may well be the case in 1839,” Tobias said. “But for me, it’s still 1779 and the bell is still Revere’s. I promised Revere I would protect the nation’s first liberty bell with my life. And that’s what I aim to do.”

  “I totally understand,” Tony said—to everyone’s surprise. “That’s what I would do too, if I were in your shoes.”

  “No!” Angelo said. “Tony is going to take the bell downstairs and hand it over to his parents so they can hire a builder to stop the back wall from collapsing on top of the back porch that already did collapse, not to mention keep the bookcase in the library, and whatever else, from crashing down around their ears. Tobias is going to show Ian the empty chest when he wakes up, then turn him in as a Tory spy. The Patriots will hang both Ian and his father as dirty double-crossing traitors to the Revolution—an excellent tweak of history if ever there was one—and the rest of us will head back to our own times, happy as clams.”

  “Except Ian, of course,” Tobias said.

  “So?” Angelo said. “He deserves it.”

  Tobias disagreed. As much as he disliked Ian personally, and as much as he hated the Loyalists, he was not sure anyone deserved to go to the gallows merely because their beliefs were different from his own. Ian actually believed he was doing the right thing by stealing the bell back for the Crown. That was just war. When you really thought about it, the Colonists were fighting a Revolution so everyone would have the right to believe what they wanted and grow up to be what they wanted. Which was why Tony was going to put the bell back in the chest, why they were all going to disappear, and why Tobias was going to rehide the chest in the secret room, then set Ian free—without returning his pistol, of course—as soon as he came to.

  “Don’t do it,” Angelo said to Tony. “We can take him. It’s four against one.”

  “No
, Tobias is right,” Tony said.

  “Are you crazy?” Angelo said. “Think about what will happen to all of us because of a Hagmann. Jack will slip into a coma. Finn will disappear during the Molasses Flood. Solly will get booted off the Red Sox. And I’ll get murdered! We’ve been able to turn back time with the pawcorance, just like you said. Now we’ve got to finish the job and tweak history—just like you said—to prevent all that from happening. Too bad if Ian ends up dangling from that old oak out front.”

  “Yeah but, think of what won’t happen if we do,” Tony said, quietly. “There’s a huge problem with my whole tweaking-history hypothesis. Something I never thought of till just now.”

  “What?” Angelo said, exasperated. “I don’t see a problem!”

  “We can’t tweak just one tiny part of history, can we?” Tony said. “Not without changing a whole bunch of other stuff. It’s all interconnected, like the Hagmanns’ triple-spiral charm.” Tony went on to explain. Every thirteen-year-old in this attic had had some sort of brush with an important historical figure. And that had been because of a Hagmann. So any change they made to their individual Hagmann stories—even the smallest—might well result in a major historical shift. Jack might not save William Lloyd Garrison’s life or inspire Frederick Douglass to become an orator, for example. Finn might not help Honey Fitzgerald get reelected mayor by catching the Tailboard Thieves, which would mean his grandson, John F. Kennedy, might never get elected president. Solly might not convince Finn to save No. 13 from the Great Molasses Flood with a claddagh. (OK, so Solly might also not inspire Finn to cause the flood to begin with; but that was only if Finn did blow up his own tank. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe it did just burst in the unusually warm weather.) As for Angelo himself, he might not encourage Ted Williams to stick out his rookie season with the Red Sox and become the greatest left fielder of all time. And that was all in totally random years ending in nine. What about zillions of the other important historical events to come? Were they really willing to risk all that?

  A long, quiet moment.

  “Put the bell back in the chest,” Angelo said, sighing. “Lock it up. Tuck it into the rafters. Let Ian go. Let history play out like it should.”

  Tobias lowered the pistol. “What a relief,” he said, crossing the room. “I emptied out all the gunpowder after I tied Ian up.” He shoved the pistol back in its niche behind the fireplace.

  Tony placed his hand on his future great-uncle’s shoulder. “I’m really sorry Benny Hagmann will end up bumping you off after all,” he said. “But at least you’re pretty old when it happens.”

  “I’ll just try and lead a superinteresting life beforehand,” Angelo said.

  “But you do!” Tony said. He set the bell on the lid of the chest. He went to the bookcase and pulled out the dusty old scrapbook he’d found in the basement. He sat next to Angelo on the edge of the bed.

  “I can’t see whatever you’re holding,” Angelo told him.

  “It’s a scrapbook of your life,” Tony said. “You may inherit this house when you turn twenty-one, but you don’t live in it. Your mama does. You set off to have tons of adventures all over the world!” Tony began leafing through the scrapbook, describing the sort of life Angelo would lead as soon as he got those contact lenses: Air Force pilot in France. Pearl diver in the South Pacific. Archaeologist in Egypt. Visitor to the Grand Canyon, the Great Wall of China, the Golden Gate Bridge.

  “All by myself?” Angelo said skeptically.

  “Of course not,” Tony said. He flipped to the front of the album and tapped the photo he’d inserted there. “It’s a picture of your faithful sidekick, Anders Fogelberg,” he said. “The two of you travel the world together, until his untimely death in 1979.”

  “Anders Fogelberg?” Angelo said. “Who’s that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, what happened to him?”

  “I don’t know. But you don’t return to Hangmen Court until a few years later, when your mama dies.”

  “I hope my life turns out to be that exciting when I disappear,” Finn said.

  “Um, lads?” Tobias said. “Better hurry. I think Ian is starting to come round.” They all looked over. He was not on the bed, of course, because the key was still in the lock and not on the spiral. Only Tobias could actually see him.

  Tony closed the scrapbook. He set it on the floor. He turned to address the other boys. “It was really cool meeting all of you, and hearing your stories.”

  “Well, you are one heck of a sleuth, Tony DiMarco,” Angelo said.

  Tony smiled. He was, darn it. He was good at history. So what if he needed to drop twenty-five pounds? He was a rock star, just like Julia had said. “Truth is, we were all totally awesome when we joined forces to find the treasure,” Tony said. “That’s what the real American Dream is about, if you ask me—united we stand, divided we fall—and I’ll never forget that, even if I end up losing Number Thirteen an hour from now.”

  They all agreed.

  “Shouldn’t your brother Angey be getting back soon?” Solly asked.

  “You’re right,” Tony said. “Before he does—and Ian wakes up—we should make the pact: never to mention these past few days to anyone, not even to one another when we’re grown-ups and we meet the kid versions of ourselves on our thirteenth birthdays. It’s the only way to make double sure that history plays out the way it should.”

  Tony went over to the pawcorance. He laid his right hand on the spiral. The others joined him. They all swore a vow of silence.

  “Egads,” Tobias whispered. “Ian’s beginning to thrash around. And his blindfold is about to come loose.”

  Tony put his finger to his lips. He returned to the chest. He took up the bell and began to rewrap it in Revere’s silk hanky. A white cloth star fluttered out of the folds.

  “What’s that?” Angelo said.

  “It’s from the flag Abigail designed,” Tobias said. “I noticed the star for Massachusetts was missing when she gave it to me. It’s what she wanted to mend before laying it on my bed. She told me she had plucked the star off the night of Revere’s Midnight Ride and tucked it into his pocket—for good luck—before handing the coat to him as he set off. Revere never mentioned finding the star. She just assumed he’d lost it along the way.”

  While the other boys speculated whether the flag that would soon adorn Tobias’s bed was, in fact, the very first American flag, Tony slipped the star into his pocket—a harmless souvenir, he thought, of these past few days when everything that had happened would start to feel more and more like a dream, one he had made up in a sleep-deprived state. Tobias cut short the debate over the flag. Ian was now trying to call for help through his gag. Tony placed the snugly wrapped bell back inside the chest. He closed the lid, then locked it with Ian’s key. He tucked the key into his wallet, which he shoved into his back pocket. He told the others to wait for him at the pawcorance while he stowed the chest in the knotty-pine compartment in the eaves of the secret room.

  Just as Tony was getting back to the others, there was yet another rumble like an earthquake. A huge crash echoed up from the stairwell. The wrecking ball? Tony checked his cell phone. Couldn’t be. The DiMarcos still had a half hour before Health & Safety booted them out. Probably just more of the house caving in.

  “Better make our good-byes,” Tony said.

  “Thank you for putting the bell back,” Tobias said. “Letting Ian go is the right thing to do. And thanks for your kind words about me, even if I’m still a Jonah. I promise to find some way of repaying you.” Tobias took his riddle away from the pawcorance and stuffed it into his shirt. Though the parchment remained there on the shelf for the rest of the boys, Tobias himself vanished into his own time to deal with Ian.

  It was Jack’s turn next. He stepped up to the pawcorance, pulled the heart hook away from the spiral, and disappeared with a wink and a smile—a free man. Next, Finn stepped up. He contemplated his brother’s ring—a vow of fidelity—then
placed it on his finger. He faded away. Solly’s turn. Solly shook both Angelo’s and Tony’s hands, wishing them the best of luck with their baseball careers. He placed the mezuzah case in his pocket—to carry his faith with him wherever he went—and returned to 1919.

  Just Angelo and Tony left, now. “Thanks for a peek into the future,” Angelo said.

  Tony nodded sadly. He thanked Angelo back for the exercises and dieting tips. Even Angey had noticed he was now officially losing weight. Plus he had finally gotten his own room, even if it had been for only a short time.

  They hugged each other tight.

  “You don’t look anything like an owl,” Tony said. “If Benny Hagmann ever calls you Hootie again, punch him in the face. Your animal totem is definitely an eagle—the noblest of birds.”

  “What are you talking about now?” Angelo asked, laughing.

  Tony explained what Sarah had told him about animal totems and vision quests.

  “Wow, an eagle!” Angelo said, pleased.

  “So which animal do I remind you of?” Tony asked.

  “Lion,” Angelo said without hesitating. “Courageous. Fearless. A born leader.”

  Tony hugged Angelo tighter. “I will avenge your death,” he whispered into his ear. “I will find a way to bring Benedict Hagmann to justice somehow. I promise.”

  “See you in about seventy years,” Angelo whispered back.

  Embarrassed, they parted. Angelo took the ball cap off the spiral and jammed it onto his head. “Anders Fogelberg, huh?” he said. He faded away.

  Tony waved his hand over the objects on the shelf. No static shock. No echo of voices. Just a ball cap, mezuzah case, claddagh ring, heart hook, and riddle written on a piece of crumbling parchment. And a cloth star, in his pocket.

  He raced downstairs to find out what the most recent disaster at 13 Hangmen Court might be.

  ony found the rest of the family in Michael’s study, staring at the remains of the built-in bookcase, now smashed to bits on the floor. Michael pulled a biography about Revere out of the wreckage. Its spine was cracked in half. “Lucky I already packed most of these up,” he said, sighing.