by Lynn Austin
I began attending both Sunday school and church after kids started calling me “Kathy the Commie.” Everyone knows that real Communists are atheists, so going to church seemed like the best way to prove to everyone in Riverside that I didn’t share my uncle’s beliefs. Mrs. Hayworth had been inviting me to attend with her family all along, but I knew I would feel out of place sitting in a pew with them. I still didn’t have a hat or gloves or patent leather shoes.
On the Sunday after the mock debate was canceled, I was on my way home after Sunday school when I suddenly decided that I couldn’t face returning to our red-splotched house. I turned around. The weather was warm, the church door open, and I heard beautiful organ music coming from inside. I crept through the door and sat down alone, in a pew in the back.
I knew quite a lot about Jesus by that time, enough to know that He would welcome me into His house even if no one else was thrilled to see me. He liked lepers and poor people and outcasts like me whom everybody else avoided. I had learned memory verses like “Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God,” and had sung songs like “Jesus Loves Me.” In fact, our Sunday school lesson that very morning had been the story of the poor widow whom Jesus praised for putting her meager penny into the offering box, giving a larger percent of her income than all the rich people who could well afford it. The story had been memorable, combining two things I knew a lot about: class differences and percentages.
The church service that first Sunday was memorable, too. I loved the music and the serenity and the beauty of everything—and that, in itself, was enough to make me want to come back. Then the minister read the Scripture verse: “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”
He began talking about Jesus’death on the cross—which I had learned about but had never thought of as being for me—and he said that God’s invitation was to everyone, rich or poor. Salvation—which I imagined as a sort-of cosmic fallout shelter, protecting the lucky ones from hell—came from God as a free gift. If I believed in Jesus and told Him about all the things I’d done wrong, then God would hand out salvation for free, just like Halloween candy. It didn’t matter where I lived or who my parents were; Jesus was everyone’s common denominator.
All the money in the world couldn’t buy God’s love. And it had nothing to do with hats and white gloves and patent leather shoes. “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son. …”God loved me.
“He that cometh to me,” Jesus said, “shall never hunger. …” And I was starving for love. I couldn’t work hard and earn it like an A on a test at school or by memorizing my times table or Sunday school verses. All I had to do was tell God I was sorry; sorry for all the rotten things I’d done, like hating my uncle and my mother and my brothers and sister. God’s forgiveness was free. Jesus loved me.
I bowed my head that morning and became a Christian.
When I arrived home I felt different. My sin had been as ugly as the red paint stains on the front of our house, but Jesus had washed them all away. I went to the outhouse and unearthed my hidden packet of Sunday school papers. Then I sat down on the splintered wooden bench and reread every single one of them.
Chapter
9
I discovered Nancy Drew mystery books during the summer between fifth and sixth grade. Nancy was a sleuth who could solve any mystery, even the ones that baffled all the adults. She had “Titian” hair, a best friend named Bess, and drove a convertible. I wanted to be just like her. I could think of a few mysteries that I would have liked to clear up in my own life, such as why Mommy didn’t take care of us the way other mothers did. And why we always seemed to have more money when Daddy was home than when he was away at work. And why Daddy hadn’t figured this out by now and quit going away for months at a time.
I wanted to read every Nancy Drew mystery in the Riverside Public Library so I could become a super-sleuth like her. But my brothers discovered trains that summer. The railroad tracks angled through the vacant lot a block and a half from our house, and we’d grown up with freight trains rumbling though our neighborhood three times a week, whistles shrieking. But this was the first summer that Poke and JT figured out all the creatively dangerous things they could do around trains. Combined with their fascination with fire, their new hobby didn’t leave me much leisure time for reading.
I got May Elizabeth hooked on Nancy Drew when we returned to school in the fall, and we took turns devouring every book that the school library owned. Our sixth-grade teacher that year was Miss Pfister. Her name was hard to pronounce without spitting, especially if you had a lisp like Patty DeMarco. Miss Pfister was new and young and very beautiful.
The boys all fell in love with her, and they behaved themselves in class, for once, just to impress her. The girls all wanted to be like her, and some of them grew their hair long and began teasing it into a bouffant hairdo like hers. I liked Miss Pfister because she gave a ton of homework every night, and once again, May Elizabeth invited me over to her house after school so we could do it together—which usually meant that I’d do the work and she’d copy mine. Then May and I would sit in her fluffy pink bedroom, sip Pepsi Colas, and read Nancy Drew.
The school year passed quickly and uneventfully, for which I was grateful. With May Elizabeth as my best friend, the other kids seemed to forgive me for having lice and a Communist uncle, and they left me alone for the most part. Both of my brothers attended Riverside Elementary now and were regular guests in the principal’s office. They were rumored to be the culprits who had waxed the playground slide, causing multiple injuries to dozens of little kids who shot off the end of it like bullets out of a gun.
Bobby Peters broke his arm in two places. But my brothers’reputation seemed to inspire more awe than ridicule among the other students. After all, JT—who was in kindergarten—held the school record as the youngest student ever to be suspended.
By April of 1962, May and I had read every Nancy Drew book in both the school and public libraries. “I’m getting real good at solving the mystery before Nancy does,” May bragged one night as we sat in her bedroom.
“I figured out the mystery of the moss-covered mansion while Nancy was still driving around in her roadster having luncheon.”
“How come we have to eat lunch in the cafeteria instead of luncheon?”
I asked thoughtfully. As a mature sixth grader, all of twelve years old, I had become very philosophical. “Why doesn’t anyone eat ‘luncheon’anymore?”
“My mom and her friends go to luncheons all the time,” May replied.
I should have known that it would turn out to be a matter of social class. I don’t think my mother even ate lunch, let alone luncheon.
“Hey! You know what?” May said suddenly. “We should open our own detective agency and solve mysteries. I’ll be Nancy Drew and you can be Bess. I’ll bet we could make a lot of money.”
The ease with which May Elizabeth embraced capitalism amazed me. I felt a rush of gratitude for her friendship and for the free exchange of ideas that she offered me after being brainwashed by my uncle all my life. Even so, I didn’t think Uncle Leonard would object to our starting a business as long as May and I gave away any treasure we found, like Nancy Drew always did—or if we at least split the profits equally.
“I’ll bet there’s a mystery or two we could solve right here in Riverside,” I replied. “Where should we start?”
“Well-ll…” May said, stretching out the word to heighten the suspense, “we could find out the truth about your Uncle Leonard. Everyone in Riverside thinks he’s a Soviet spy.”
“Uncle Leonard? A spy? You’ve got to be kidding! For one thing, I don’t think the Russians would be interested in any secrets that came from this dumpy old town. And for another thing, he’s much too loud to be a spy. He crashes all around with his huge, clunky feet, and he’s always yelling at everything, espec
ially the television.”
“What about his girlfriend? She’s a Communist, too, isn’t she?”
“You mean Connie Miller? She works at the Valley Food Market, for pete’s sake.” I didn’t add that she was as fluffy and dumb as a Pekinese, but I could have.
“Where does your uncle work?” May Elizabeth asked, and I could tell that she was still playing the part of Nancy Drew, ferreting out the truth.
“He works for the Teamster’s Union over in Bensenville. He sits in an office all day hoping the workers go on strike so he can make picket signs and yell out slogans. We can follow him around if you want to, but I don’t think it’ll be much fun.”
May appeared crestfallen—but only for a moment. “I know! We can track down the thieves who broke into our house and stole all our stuff while we were at church that time. The police never did solve that crime.”
My stomach felt as if I’d crested a hill in a car without brakes. “No, that’s too boring,” I said, trying desperately to sound nonchalant. “Nancy and Bess would never take such a boring case. Besides, that was two years ago.”
“How about a missing person, then?” May asked.
“That’s much better.” I felt like I could breathe again. But to be honest, I figured that if anyone had been lucky enough to disappear from boring old Riverside, they probably wouldn’t be too happy if we found them again.
I didn’t say so out loud, though, for fear that May Elizabeth would go back to the unsolved break-in. “Now, who do we know that’s missing?” I prompted, stroking my chin.
“My dad.”
“Your dad isn’t missing. I saw him in church yesterday. My dad is the one who goes away for months at a time. He hasn’t been home since the end of January.”
“No, my dad is never home, either,” May insisted. “We eat supper without him almost every night. And when he does come home for supper, he always has to run off again.”
“Where does he go?”
“That’s the mystery!” she said, spreading her palms. “Maybe he’s the spy instead of your uncle! Wouldn’t that be cool?”
I had my doubts, but we decided to start with May’s dad since he was only “missing” here in Riverside. We could work on finding my dad once we gained a little more experience—and maybe learned to drive a car.
I was home watching TV two nights later when Charlie Grout knocked on our door and said I had a phone call over at his house. It was May Elizabeth. At first I thought we had a bad connection since I could hardly understand her; then I realized she was whispering.
“Now’s our chance, Bess,” she said, using my code name. “My dad just left. He said he had to go back to the office, but I’ll bet he’s picking up secret documents from a Russian defector.”
I felt a wonderful shiver of excitement. “What’s your plan, Nancy?”
She didn’t reply. As the silence lengthened I realized that it was going to be up to me to devise a plan, just like it was up to me to do all the homework. “We have to follow him,” I decided.
“Should I ask my mom to drive us?”
I rolled my eyes. “No, she might be in on the spy ring. We’ll have to ride bikes.”
“But you don’t have a bike—”
“I know, I know. I was hoping I could borrow your brother’s.” I glanced at Charlie Grout. I could tell by the way he was eyeing me that he was eavesdropping. I cupped my hand over the receiver. “Sneak the bicycles out of your garage, okay? I’ll be right over.”
“Should I dress all in black?” May asked.
“If you want to—but I don’t think Nancy Drew ever does.”
“Yes, she did in The Clue in the Old Stagecoach, remember?”
I suppressed a sigh of impatience. Mr. Hayworth could have driven all the way to Bensenville, exchanged his secret documents, and driven home again in the time it was taking us to get organized. “You can wear black if you want to,” I said. “I don’t think I have any black clothes.”
“Isn’t this fun?” she asked with a giggle.
Half an hour later, May and I rode our bicycles to the top of the rise overlooking the gravel parking lot at Hayworth Industries. Her father’s car was sitting in his reserved parking spot close to the main door of the sprawling brick building. I felt terribly disappointed that we had found him so easily.
“Now what?” I asked. “Should we go down and sneak inside and see what he’s doing?”
“We can’t!” she said, clutching my arm. “They have a security guard!” My skin prickled at the idea of encountering a real-live gunman. I felt like a genuine detective.
“What would Nancy and Bess do?” I whispered. May didn’t reply. We stood looking down at the peaceful scene, pondering our next move, when the main door suddenly opened and Mr. Hayworth strode through it. He walked straight to his car and climbed in.
“Let’s follow him!” May said. She hopped onto her bike, ready to give chase. I had a harder time leaping into action on a boy’s bicycle, but I eventually caught up with her.
Chasing a car on a bicycle was not as impossible as it sounds— especially in Riverside. The village speed limit was twenty-five miles per hour, and stop signs sprouted at nearly every intersection to slow things down further. County highway officials had decided that our town was too small and insignificant to merit a real stoplight, so the village trustees had retaliated by erecting a multitude of stop signs—mostly to annoy the county snowplow drivers. Those signs would make them stop and take notice of Riverside.
Mr. Hayworth was an excellent driver. He never broke the speed limit, and he stopped at every sign. I was disappointed. I would have expected a spy on an important mission to drive more recklessly. But when he reached the edge of town, May’s father suddenly did a very spy-like thing: He pulled into the cemetery without using his turn signal and doused his headlights. My heart began to speed up. The cemetery was the perfect place for spies to exchange secret documents!
May Elizabeth’s brakes squealed as she skidded to a stop near the pillared entrance. It was growing dark, and the wooded, unlit cemetery looked spooky. Some of the graves were one hundred and fifty years old, including that of Sarah Hawkins, whose ghost was rumored to haunt the grounds at night. Even spookier, Sarah had been our age when she’d died.
“We’d better go home,” May said. Her voice sounded shaky. “My mom gets mad if I ride my bike after dark, even with a headlight and reflectors.”
“What kind of a detective would be afraid of an old graveyard?” I asked, cutting to what I figured was the heart of the problem. “Nancy Drew wouldn’t be afraid of ghosts. Remember The Haunted Bridge? Come on.”
I pedaled through the entrance and followed the winding dirt road deep into the cemetery, using the dust cloud from Mr. Hayworth’s car as a clue to guide me. I was pretending to be brave, but I was trembling inside. It was a very delicious feeling.
May’s father had pulled his car to a halt way in the back, parking near the edge of the cemetery where the woods began. Another car was parked in front of his—a Volkswagen Beetle. I slowed to a stop a short distance away, half-hidden behind the Moore family’s giant monument. My heart thumped with fear and excitement. I signaled for May to halt, too, and held my fingers to my lips to warn her to be quiet, but her mouth hung so slackly that she looked incapable of speech. I wondered if I looked as wideeyed as she did.
Mr. Hayworth opened his car door and climbed out, nervously glancing around. The spy in the Volkswagen got out, too. I could tell that it was a woman by her shape and her bouffant hairdo—and there was something familiar about her, even at this distance. I figured the pair would quickly exchange documents and hurry away, but instead they did a very surprising thing. They wrapped their arms all around each other just like lovers do at the end of a good movie—and they kissed! Right there in the cemetery! I heard May Elizabeth gasp.
When the kiss ended, Mr. Hayworth glanced all around again, then opened the rear door of his car. He guided the woman spy into the ba
ck seat, then climbed in beside her and closed the door. A moment later their heads sank out of sight.
I tried to make sense of the scene, adding all the clues together just like Nancy Drew would do when solving a mystery. I thought I remembered seeing someone driving a Volkswagen Beetle all around town. Then it came to me: It was my teacher, Miss Pfister. Yes! That’s who the familiar-looking woman had been! But Miss Pfister wasn’t a Russian spy. She was a young, pretty, unmarried, sixth-grade teacher at Riverside Elementary School. What was she doing at the cemetery in the back of a car with May Elizabeth Hayworth’s father?
Then I realized what.
May Elizabeth must have put all the clues together at the same moment that I did, because I heard a crash as her bicycle fell over. I turned in time to see her sink to the ground as if all the strength had gone out of her legs. She covered her face with her hands and wept. I didn’t know what to do.
It seemed like hours passed as May huddled in the road, crying uncontrollably, and I stood beside her, twisting my hands.
“May Elizabeth…? ” I finally whispered. “May? We better go home.”
She drew a deep, shuddering breath, as if preparing to scream—but she didn’t. Instead, she leaped to her feet, grabbed her fallen bicycle and jumped on it, pedaling out of the cemetery as if Sarah Hawkins and all of the other dead people had risen from their graves and were chasing after her. I don’t know how May could see where she was going through her tears.
She didn’t say one word to me all the way home, and when we reached her house she dropped her bicycle on the front lawn and ran inside, slamming the door behind her. I gazed numbly at her house for a long time, wondering if I should go inside and talk to her or not. What on earth would I say?
I finally wheeled Ron’s bike around to the garage and put it away, then went back for May Elizabeth’s bike. I felt like a criminal and didn’t know why. I was slinking down the driveway, heading home, when I heard Mrs. Hayworth calling me.
