The Pike River Phantom

by Betty Ren Wright

  “I went into Mrs. Fisher’s house to see if she was okay, and she pushed me into a closet and called the police. I landed on the candy bars—they’re smashed.” He said it fast, trying to get it over with. “I thought a guy was stealing her TV set, and she thought I was a burglar. The guy turned out to be her nephew.”

  Rachel snorted, and Grandma frowned at her. “It’s not one bit funny,” she scolded. “How anybody could think our Charlie was a burglar …”

  “But Mrs. Fisher didn’t know her burglar was our Charlie.” Rachel chuckled. “You have to admit, Grandma, it’s pretty funny to think of Charlie flying headfirst into that closet. And getting all doused with furniture polish.”

  “I don’t have to admit anything of the kind!” Now Grandma sounded furious. “Instead of laughing, miss, you pack some ice in a plastic bag and put it on that poor forehead. Marie should be ashamed of herself, treating Charlie that way when he was trying to help. I’m going to call her this minute and tell her—”

  “No!” Charlie exclaimed in alarm. “You’ll make it worse, Grandma. She’s already mad because the cops didn’t arrest me.”

  Rachel handed Charlie a plastic bag filled with ice and, in one of her quick changes of mood, set out to calm their grandmother. “Why don’t you finish that cake, Grandma? Charlie loves cake. But no lemon frosting, right, Charlie?”

  “Right,” Charlie said grumpily. Rachel, teasing, was hard to take, but at least she wasn’t making a fuss about the crushed candy bars. That was a surprise.

  At first the ice made his head hurt more than ever. Later, though, lying in the den, he had to admit that the numbing cold helped. He’d taken a shower to get rid of the furniture polish, and Grandma had laid out fresh clothes for him to put on, just the way she did for Grandpa every morning. She’d told Rachel to bring extra pillows from the other bedrooms, and then they had both tiptoed away, leaving him to rest. The delicious smell of cake-in-the-oven drifted down the hall to the den.

  After a while Charlie heard Grandpa’s car turn into the driveway. There was an excited murmur of voices in the kitchen, and almost at once Grandpa peered into the den.

  “You okay?” His kindly face was anxious.

  “Fine. Honest.”

  “I think I’ll just give the police station a call,” Grandpa said. “I’d like to make sure they know this whole ridiculous affair was a mistake.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Charlie protested. “I told them how it happened. They believed me.”

  “Well, they’d better!” Charlie was glad his grandfather hadn’t been there to hear Mrs. Fisher. Lou and Will Hocking are good people, but everyone knows that son of theirs went bad. And now here’s the new generation headed the same way! The words stung more than the bump on his head.

  He closed his eyes, and after a moment his grandfather tiptoed away. It was nice, Charlie thought, that his grandparents hadn’t doubted his story even for a minute. Unexpected, too. They hadn’t believed him when he told about meeting the old woman in the woods, but they were sure he was telling the truth about why he’d gone into Mrs. Fisher’s house. Was it because they knew he wasn’t a thief—or was it because they couldn’t bear to believe anything that bad? He’d expected questions, but they had simply taken his word. At this very moment, Mrs. Fisher might be telling all her friends about Charlie Hocking the burglar, but there were at least two people in Pike River who believed she was wrong. Three, counting Rachel.

  The only person who remained to be told about the day’s adventure was his father. Charlie dreaded it. There would be an explosion, for sure. Charlie had talked Grandma out of calling Mrs. Fisher, and he’d convinced Grandpa there was no need to talk to the police, but he doubted that he’d be able to stop his father from getting involved. He’d probably call Mrs. Fisher, call the police, maybe even call Mrs. Schwanke to tell her she had a lot of nerve sending his son to a crazy woman’s house. Charlie pulled a pillow over his sore head and tried not to think.

  “What’s the matter, kid? You have something against fresh air?”

  The pillow slid to the floor and Charlie sat up. His father stood next to the couch, grinning down at him. The grin faded as he saw the bump on Charlie’s forehead.

  “What happened to you? And what does the other guy look like?”

  “It wasn’t a fight,” Charlie said. “Didn’t Grandpa and Grandma tell you?”

  “Tell me what? Everybody’s out in the backyard, I guess.” His father sank into an armchair and stretched his legs. “You tell me,” he suggested. “You sure it wasn’t a fight?” He sounded sort of disappointed.

  Charlie didn’t know why, but suddenly he wanted to make his story as bad as possible. He wanted to get his father excited. “I went into somebody’s house,” he said. “The lady who lives there—her name is Mrs. Fisher—called the police. She thought I was going to rob her. Or maybe kill her.” He waited. Get it over with. Start yelling.

  “What were you doing in her house?” John asked. “Make sense, Charlie.”

  “I thought this man was stealing her TV set,” he explained reluctantly, because he didn’t want to sound as if he’d been trying to be a hero. “I thought he might have done something to her—it sounds crazy now, but that’s what I thought.”

  “And she called the police?”

  “After she sneaked up behind me and pushed me into a closet.”

  His father sat very still, looking at him. It wasn’t the reaction Charlie had expected.

  “Did she know who you were?”

  “Not at first,” Charlie said. “But when the police came, she found out.” He took a deep breath. “They know about you. Mrs. Fisher said I was another generation going bad.”

  They know about you. Charlie realized it was the first time he’d ever referred directly to his father’s past.

  As far back as he could remember, Aunt Laura had warned him not to tell people his father was in prison. At first, when his friends asked, Charlie just said his dad was “away.” Later he saw a television documentary about life on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, and after that he’d told them that his father worked on a rig and didn’t get back to the mainland for months at a time.

  He’d been glad his father didn’t want him to come to prison on visiting days. That made it easier to tell the oil-rig story—almost to believe it. He would imagine his father, very tall, tanned, big-muscled, and quiet, stopping work occasionally to stare out over the water and think about his boy up north in Milwaukee. It was a satisfying daydream that had disappeared abruptly the day John Hocking was released. The strong, tender father had vanished forever, and in his place there was a stocky, wisecracking stranger who gave Charlie a hug at the same time he was asking Aunt Laura if she still made the best lasagna in town. He’d filled the apartment with his boisterous laughter, had even made Aunt Laura giggle. Charlie had been miserable. He supposed he was angry with his father, for being gone for five years and for returning in this lighthearted way, as if five years in prison didn’t matter. His father seemed to have forgotten the past. He didn’t notice Charlie’s anger.

  Now six—no, seven months later—the truth opened up between them. They know about you. It was the same as saying You’re a bad person.

  His father stood up.

  “Don’t call anybody,” Charlie said. “Please.”

  “I wasn’t going to,” his father replied. “It burns me though, that woman saying what she did. She had no reason.” He grinned at Charlie, a tired grin. “You know,” he said, “I never thought much about it, but I can see it isn’t easy being John Hocking’s kid.” He hesitated. The grin vanished, then reappeared briefly. “Well, I’ll tell you something else, Charlie. It ain’t so easy being John Hocking either.”

  At five o’clock Charlie remembered the film that might or might not be waiting at the drugstore. He’d dozed for a while, and when he awoke the headache was almost gone. If he hurried, he could still get to the store before it closed.

  He took h
is allowance—five dollars—from the top dresser drawer and went out to the kitchen.

  “You shouldn’t be up,” Grandma said as soon as she saw him. But she watched approvingly while he ate a big piece of cake and drank a glass of milk. “I guess you’ll do,” she said, then started fretting all over again when he told her he had an errand he must take care of.

  “Let Grandpa drive you in the car. He’ll be glad to.”

  Charlie said he felt like walking.

  “Rachel will go with you, then.”

  No, Charlie said, he’d rather go by himself. He finished his cake and hurried out of the house before Grandma could come up with more suggestions.

  As he neared the drugstore, his excitement grew. For the last few hours he’d almost forgotten the woman in the old house, but now he could hardly wait to have proof that she really existed.

  The same clerk was on duty in the front of the store. She was filing her fingernails and seemed annoyed when she had to stop to hunt through the box of completed prints. She examined every folder with deliberate slowness, until at last, when Charlie had given up hope, she took out one and tossed it on the counter.

  “Guess that’s what you’re looking for.” Her expression told him she didn’t think his pictures would be very interesting.

  Charlie paid her and hurried out into the late-afternoon sun. He tore open the envelope and thumbed through the prints.

  There was a shot of his friend Terry Cutter holding up the baseball he’d caught at a Brewer game. There were three pictures of Pete Sternig’s new Labrador puppy, and two of the automobile race Charlie had gone to with Pete and his father. There were several shots taken on the last day of school. Charlie was glad to have them all. When he lived in California, the pictures would help him remember his old friends.

  He reached the last print and stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. Maybe I do have a concussion after all, he thought, as he looked again at the picture. Something’s wrong with my eyes.

  He went back to the first photo and turned each picture over, counting, until there was only one left—the picture he’d been depending on to prove he wasn’t a liar.

  It was a snapshot of a sunny glassed-in porch with dusty windows, an empty rocking chair, and a candy bar lying on the floor.

  CHAPTER 9

  The lights were on in the kitchen when Charlie reached home. He could see Grandma Lou moving from stove to counter and back again. At the other end of the house, a faint blue glow suggested his father and Grandpa Will were watching the evening news.

  Charlie stood in the backyard and looked at the house. It had never seemed quite so inviting, and he had never felt so much a stranger. When he was gone, life would continue in there, and in Pike River, without him. Oh, they’d talk about him for a while—a boy who didn’t always tell the truth, a boy who got in trouble with the police. His father’s son. Even Grandma and Grandpa would be secretly relieved that they didn’t have to worry about him anymore.

  He walked around the garden looking at flower beds, at the birdbath, trying to memorize details so he could recall them when he was far away.

  “What’s that—pictures?”

  Charlie jumped. He’d been so busy feeling sorry for himself, he hadn’t heard Rachel come outside. She was eyeing the packet of snapshots in his hand.

  “Yeah—pictures.” Charlie shoved the folder into his pocket.

  “Show me?”

  “It’s too dark.”

  “In the house, silly. I like looking at snapshots.”

  Reluctantly Charlie followed her indoors and down the hall to her bedroom. Girls were a puzzle; at least, this one was: teasing, sharp-tongued one minute, warm and friendly the next. He wondered if they tried to be that way, or if it just happened.

  “Come on, let’s see them.” Rachel sat on the edge of the bed and patted the space beside her.

  Charlie hesitated. The biggest mystery of his life was in that folder. He couldn’t show Rachel the shot of the empty rocking chair without explaining why he’d taken the picture, yet he didn’t want to give her, or anyone else, a chance to call him a liar again. Maybe if he was very careful … He took out the folder and removed eleven of the twelve prints, holding the packet high so Rachel couldn’t see what he was doing.

  “They’re mostly guys I used to know,” he said, “in Milwaukee.”

  Rachel went through the pictures, studying each one. She lingered over the pictures of Pete Sternig and his puppy.

  “Cute,” she said softly. “I love dogs.”

  “His name is Rip. For Rip van Winkle. Because he falls asleep wherever he is.”

  “What are these cars?”

  Charlie sat down and peered over her shoulder. “That was at a racetrack north of Milwaukee. There’s Pete again, and there’s his father. His dad is a great guy. He took us places—Brewer games, a Bucks game once. Pete’s my best friend.”

  Rachel started through the pictures again. “These are neat,” she said. “I never had a best friend before I came to Pike River. I have one now,” she added hastily. “Jenny Chase. But she’s in Colorado till August.”

  She paused. Charlie hoped she hadn’t been counting the pictures as she looked at them.

  “Why didn’t you have a best friend before?” he asked hurriedly.

  “We were always moving. We lived in Boston for a while, and then two different towns in Mexico. Then we went to St. Thomas, and for about six months we were in Puerto Rico. It was no use trying to make friends because I knew we wouldn’t be around long. When my dad got his permanent assignment—in Zaire—my folks decided I should go to school in the United States. So I came here. And I’ve been here ever since.”

  She brushed a strand of hair back from her face. “I love Pike River,” she said dreamily. “I wish I’d lived here all my life. There’s a white house on Brooker Street that I call our house. I pretend my father is a minister here in Pike River, and I’m staying with Grandpa and Grandma for a little while because my bedroom in our own house is being redecorated. That’s all make-believe, but I really am going to stay in Pike River the rest of my life. I’m going to know everybody, and everybody’s going to know me—” She looked at Charlie sharply. “Don’t you dare tell anybody what I said about the white house, Charlie Hocking. If you do, I’ll—I’ll push you in a closet and let you soak in lemon oil all night long!”

  Charlie had to laugh. He was glad she’d told him about herself; now he understood why she was always so busy. It must be a full-time job, getting to know, and be known by, everybody in town. And he understood why being chosen the Fourth of July Sunbonnet Queen was so important to her. The Sunbonnet Queen became part of Pike River’s history. She would truly belong.

  “Where’s the last picture?” Rachel demanded abruptly. Sure enough, she’d been counting. “Let me see it, Charlie.”

  Charlie made a quick decision. A few minutes ago he would have refused to take out the twelfth print, but that was before Rachel told him about her make-believe home on Brooker Street. She’d trusted him not to laugh. Maybe he could trust her, too.

  He opened the folder. “Do you remember the cook-out when I told about the old woman in the woods? And everybody said there wasn’t any old woman? They said I was telling a whopper.”

  “No, they didn’t,” Rachel protested, “not exactly. They just said—”

  “You thought I was lying, too,” Charlie continued. “You said so. You said I ate that chocolate bar and made up the old lady. And Grandpa didn’t believe me! He went out to the house the next day and looked around. He told me no one was there, and he was sure no one had been there for a long time.”

  “What’s all that got to do with the other picture?” Rachel demanded. “Come on, Charlie.”

  He handed her the snapshot. “I went back to the house myself. I saw the woman again, and I took a picture of her. I wanted to prove to all of you that I was telling the truth.” He leaned over Rachel’s shoulder and pointed at the rocking chair. “She was
sitting right there when I snapped the picture. I swear it! Her foot was next to the candy bar on the floor.” He waited. “You going to call me a liar again?”

  Rachel looked from the snapshot to Charlie and then back to the picture again, as if they were two parts of a peculiar puzzle. “Is this a joke?” she asked finally. “If it is, I don’t get it.”

  “No joke,” Charlie assured her. “The woman was sitting right there. We talked, and when I was leaving I took her picture. You’re looking at it.”

  “But she isn’t here,” Rachel protested.

  “She was.”

  Rachel’s look of doubt changed to awe. “Then you’re lucky,” she said slowly. “You’re absolutely the luckiest person I know. I’d rather have seen her than—than be chosen Sunbonnet Queen.”

  Charlie blinked. “Why?”

  “Because she’s a ghost, dummy. A phantom! I’ve never seen a phantom in my whole life, and I don’t know anyone else who has. Except you.” Rachel held the picture up to the light. “She really isn’t there. You can’t take a picture of a ghost, you know. Not with an ordinary camera.”

  “Who says so?”

  “I say so. I know so. Oh, Charlie,” the know-it-all tone changed, “let me go out there with you next time. Please!”

  Charlie shook his head. Rachel had just put his own worst suspicions into words. The woman wasn’t real. He had talked to her twice, but she wasn’t real. “I’m not going back to that house, ever,” he said. “Why should I?”

  “But you have to go back,” Rachel insisted. “Don’t you want to prove you were telling the truth about the old woman? I’ll be your witness.”

  Charlie didn’t like her assumption that people would believe her when they wouldn’t believe him. He grabbed the snapshot and stuffed it back in the folder. “I don’t care about that anymore,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Rachel groaned. “Come on!” she exclaimed. “How can you not want to find out the truth, Charlie? Besides, if we prove the house is haunted, everyone in Pike River will know us. We’ll be famous!”