Stepping on the Cracks

by Mary Downing Hahn

  We ran down the alley and paused on the railroad bank to see if anyone was in sight. All we saw was Mr. Zimmerman walking his dog. As he vanished around the corner without giving us a second look, we dashed across the train tracks.

  In the field, the goldenrod was in full bloom, and the leaves of the sumac were edged with crimson. The woods flamed red and gold and green under the blue sky. Just looking at the silent trees filled me with dread.

  "Pretend we're soldiers on patrol," Elizabeth whispered as she climbed over the fence. "The hut is a Nazi outpost."

  Fearfully, I crept through the bushes behind Elizabeth. Like a jungle, the foliage closed in around us, so dense the crazy man could be a few feet away, watching us, biding his time, his knife ready. Here and there, wild grape vines hung like tangled ropes, and things rustled and shook and whispered in the leaves.

  "We're close now," Elizabeth said. "I remember that tree."

  She pointed at a huge oak with a hole in its trunk, and, a few seconds later, we saw the hut. Like soldiers, we watched it silently for a while, but we heard nothing. It seemed empty, an old shack abandoned by its owners and listing slightly to one side.

  Elizabeth reached into the pocket of her overalls and pulled out a handful of broken crayons, Gordy's handiwork. "What we'll do is write stuff on the walls," she whispered, "like 'Kilroy was here' and cuss words."

  "I thought we were going to tear it down."

  Elizabeth bit her lip and frowned. "I don't think we can," she said. "It's built too good. We'll just mess it up. Steal their stuff and all."

  "Couldn't we just write on the outside?" I was following her across the clearing now, wincing every time a twig snapped under my feet.

  Elizabeth gave me one of her most scornful looks. "You are such a coward," she said.

  "But if we're inside we might not hear them coming," I said. "We'll be trapped."

  "That's true," Elizabeth said. "You stay outside and stand guard. If you see anybody, yell, and we'll run."

  She thrust a black crayon at me. "Start writing," she said and then pushed the door open slowly.

  I watched her go inside, and then I scrawled "Kilroy was here" in big letters on the wall. It took me a while because I kept looking over my shoulder, fearful of every noise. At any moment I expected the crazy man to lunge out of the trees, his knife raised.

  "Margaret," Elizabeth called, "come in here. You've got to see this!"

  Scanning the woods first and seeing nothing, I slipped through the doorway. Despite two windows, the hut was dark inside. It smelled of moldy leaves and damp earth, and I shivered.

  "There's blankets and a railroad lantern and food, books, all kinds of stuff," Elizabeth said. "You'd think somebody lived here."

  As my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, I saw what Elizabeth meant. A bookcase made from an orange crate held magazines and a few tattered books. Another orange crate was full of canned food. The lantern sat on the dirt floor by a pile of blankets. Pinup girls plastered the walls. Every one of them had been given a beard and a mustache and a few blackened teeth.

  There was also a knife. A big one. Just like the knife Gordy said the crazy man carried.

  "Let's get out of here," I whispered. "Fast."

  But Elizabeth was shoving things, tossing books around, tearing pages out of magazines, wrecking the place. "Wa-hoo!" she yelled as she grabbed a can of Campbell's Soup and hurled it through the window. "Yi-yi-yi!"

  The sound of the breaking glass and the sight of Elizabeth's flushed face excited me. Forgetting my fears, I snatched up the knife and slashed at the pinups. Then I gathered the cans of food and threw them. As the glass broke, I shrieked like an Indian on the warpath.

  When there was nothing left to destroy, we ran outside, still whooping and hollering.

  "We did it, we did it," Elizabeth cried. "After this, they won't ever think we're just dumb girls! Not us!"

  We ran through the woods toward home, and a gust of wind came after us, pummeling us, pushing us, making me feel as giddy as the branches swaying over my head.

  "Wa-hoo!" Elizabeth screamed again. "Yi-yi-yi!"

  "Wa-hoo!" I echoed. With a burst of energy, I raced past her. I was running faster than she was, faster than I'd ever run, faster than the wind itself. At any moment, I would fly up into the air and soar away. Now, like Elizabeth, I was Wonder Woman, Superwoman, Mary Marvel, powerful, invincible, undefeatable.

  "Wa-hoo!" I shrieked again and glanced back at Elizabeth.

  That was when I saw him. For a second, I stopped, frozen in flight, my heart pounding like a rabbit's. For a long and terrible moment we stared at each other through a tangle of grapevines and poison ivy.

  "Run!" I screamed at Elizabeth. "It's him, the crazy man, he's coming after us!"

  Elizabeth looked over her shoulder, saw what I saw, and gasped. Expecting to feel the man's knife pierce our hearts, the two of us dashed through the woods, leapt the fence, and tore across the field toward the safety of the train tracks, the back alley, and home.

  9

  By the time we reached my back gate, I thought my heart was going to burst right out of my chest. Safe in the yard, we crawled into the clump of lilac bushes we'd used as our hideout when we were too little to cross the street without an adult. Trembling and gasping for breath, we crouched on the damp earth and stared at each other.

  When Elizabeth could speak, she said, "Gordy wasn't lying, and neither were you. You really did see him." Her voice shook, but she got to her knees and peered through the branches. The alley was empty and silent.

  "He'll wait till dark," I croaked. "Then he'll come and murder us in our beds."

  "Don't say that!" Elizabeth grabbed my shoulders so tightly she made my bones ache. Her face was inches from mine, and her breath was warm on my cheeks. "He doesn't know where we live or who we are."

  "He'll find us. You heard what Gordy said, he'll give him our address," I sobbed. Like the Shadow, the crazy man would creep into our house, invisible to Mother and Daddy. The stairs would creak under his feet, and he would pause outside my closed door and laugh softly before entering.

  "He won't come, Margaret, he won't!" For once, Elizabeth looked as scared as I felt.

  Pushing her away, I sat on the ground and cried. No matter what she said, Elizabeth couldn't convince me we were safe. All my life I had expected something to get me. When I was little, it had been the long-armed witch under the bed, the wolf behind the door, the monster in the closet. Now it was the crazy man. Only Jimmy could save me, but he wasn't here and there was no escape.

  "Elizabeth! Elizabeth!" Mrs. Crawford called from her back porch. "Lunchtime!"

  Giving me a shove, Elizabeth said, "Stop bawling, Margaret, stop it! What will your mother think if she sees you crying like a baby? You can't tell what we did, you can't!"

  "Elizabeth Crawford!" Mrs. Crawford yelled, louder this time. "I'm about to start counting, young lady."

  "Coming!" Elizabeth shouted and made a face her mother couldn't see. "I'm serious, Margaret. Don't tell!"

  "One, two, three," Mrs. Crawford began. If she reached ten before Elizabeth got home, Mrs. Crawford would spank her.

  Elizabeth made another face, worse than the first. Then she stood up and brushed the dirt and leaves off her overalls. "He's not coming," she said before she ran home.

  Just as Mrs. Crawford yelled, "Ten!" Elizabeth charged through her kitchen door. I could hear the whack she got on her fanny as I darted up my back porch steps.

  "You're just in time for soup and a sandwich," Mother said. When she turned around and saw my face, though, she almost dropped the spoon she'd been using to stir the soup.

  "Margaret, what's wrong?" she asked. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

  I slung my arms around her and hugged her hard, pressing my face against her soft bosom, feeling safe in the warm kitchen.

  "Did you have a fight with Elizabeth?" Mother asked. Whenever I came home in tears, she always blamed it on Elizabeth
. Often she was right, but not this time. We hadn't had a bad fight for ages. Our war with Gordy had given Elizabeth a real enemy.

  I shook my head, but Mother wasn't convinced. "Did she say something that hurt your feelings?"

  "No," I said. "No."

  "You've got to stand up for yourself, Margaret," Mother went on as if she were deaf. "You can't let that child push you around. She's not the only girl in the world, you know. Just because she lives next door doesn't mean you have to spend all your time with her. You could play with Julie Ryan or Phyllis Fields—nice girls who don't go around acting like smart alecks all the time."

  "Elizabeth didn't do anything!" I yelled. "She's my best friend! Julie and Phyllis hate me, and I hate them!"

  Mother frowned. "I don't like that tone of voice," she said. "That's Elizabeth I hear, not you."

  She put my soup and sandwich on the kitchen table and stood back, her arms folded. "Go wash your hands and face," she said. "Then sit down and eat your lunch."

  ***

  After dinner that evening, Elizabeth came over and we sat on the front steps, sharing a cherry Popsicle. Inside, Daddy and Mother were listening to the war news. Except for the radio, the only sound was the cheep, cheep, cheep of crickets under the porch. Even though it was October, the night was as warm as summer. A full moon hovered over the roof of the Bedfords' house, silvering the shingles, but somewhere in the darkness a maniac lurked, waiting for an opportunity to seize me.

  "Where do you think he is right now?" I asked Elizabeth.

  "Who?" In the light pouring out of the living room windows behind her, her hair glowed but her face was a dim oval as she leaned toward me.

  "The crazy man."

  We both looked down the street. The row of holly trees near our house hid the train tracks and the dark woods beyond them, but a person could be crouching there, in my yard, watching us at this very moment. Nervously, I sucked the last bit of Popsicle from the stick and chewed on the wood.

  Elizabeth pushed her hair out of her eyes. "I've been thinking about him," she said. "Maybe we just saw some old hobo who jumped off a freight train. My father says plenty of them still come through here, and he should know. He's had to go down in the woods and arrest them lots of times."

  "You told your father where we were today?"

  "Are you nuts?" Elizabeth stared at me. "Would I be sitting here if he knew I crossed the train tracks? I'd be locked in my room for the rest of my life."

  She snapped her Popsicle stick in half and tossed the pieces into the ivy beside the steps. "I just asked him if he'd ever heard of any dangerous escaped crazy men loose in the woods."

  "What did he say?"

  "He laughed, Margaret. I felt like a real dumbo."

  "I asked Mother about it the first time I saw him, and she laughed too," I admitted. "She said Gordy was just pulling my leg."

  "What did I tell you? He made him up to keep us away from his hut, that's all. Whoever we saw in the woods wasn't any crazy man. He was just some old bum."

  I chewed harder on my Popsicle stick and stared at the dark row of holly trees. Part of me knew Elizabeth was right, but another part of me was sure the crazy man was hiding in the shadows. I could imagine the moonlight shining on his knife and the sly smile on his face as he listened to Elizabeth prattle about harmless hoboes. Oh, he'd show us, he was thinking, yes indeed he would.

  ***

  That night I lay in bed with the cover pulled up to my chin, hugging my teddy bear, scared to close my eyes. Why had I gone into the woods with Elizabeth? Why had I helped her wreck the hut? With shame, I remembered the wild excitement of smashing things. I saw Elizabeth's flushed face, I heard her whooping as she tore up a magazine and broke the window. If only I'd stayed home and listened to "Let's Pretend."

  Unable to sleep, I turned on my light. I didn't care if Mother saw it or not. I wasn't going to lie alone in the dark, waiting for the crazy man to come and kill me.

  Downstairs I heard my parents getting ready for bed. On Saturday nights they always listened to "Your Hit Parade" and then sat around talking or reading for a while. Now it was past eleven. In a little while they would be asleep, and the crazy man would know it was safe to crawl through a window and sneak upstairs to my room.

  "Margaret," Mother called up the steps, "is your light still on?"

  When I didn't say anything, she came to see why. Her footsteps were brisk and determined. Poking her head into my room, she stared at me. "Why aren't you asleep? Did you have a nightmare?"

  She sat down on the edge of my bed, and I threw my arms around her. I wanted to beg her to lie down and sleep beside me all night, but I was afraid a request like that would make her angry. What a baby she would think I was.

  "There, there," Mother said, stroking my hair as if I were still a little girl, "it was just a dream. Don't be so silly."

  "Can't I keep my light on?" I sobbed. "Just tonight?"

  She shook her head. "Do you know what my mother used to do when I was scared to go to sleep?" Mother picked up my oxfords. She held them toward me so that one shoe pointed ahead, the other behind. "She'd put them by my bed like this." She set them on the floor. "Now no evil spirit can come near you."

  "Why not? What stops it?"

  "It gets confused, I guess, and doesn't know which way to go." Mother shrugged and gave me a little hug. "Anyway, that's what my mother told me and what her mother told her. It must be true because I'm sitting here telling you about it. What more proof do you need?"

  Mother smiled then and switched off the light. "It even worked for Jimmy," she added.

  "Jimmy was scared of the dark?" I stared at her, sure she was kidding me.

  Mother laughed. "When he was little, he was worse than you. Your father said it was just a trick to put off going to sleep. You know, like asking for another drink of water. But he had a real imagination, your brother did. For years he lined his shoes up like that."

  Blowing me a kiss from the doorway, Mother said, "No more nonsense now, Margaret. I don't want to hear another peep out of you."

  I lay still and listened to Mother go downstairs. When the house was quiet, I leaned over the edge of my bed to make sure my shoes still pointed in opposite directions. Feeling safer, I hugged my bear for a little extra protection and snuggled down under the covers.

  Before I fell asleep, I wondered if Jimmy still believed in the shoe trick. In my next letter, I'd try to remember to ask him.

  10

  Although I was still afraid of the crazy man, Elizabeth did her best to convince me that Gordy was our only worry. She was sure he'd guessed we were the ones who vandalized his hut. From the way he scowled at us across the classroom, I think she was right.

  To protect ourselves, we walked to and from school with Polly, Linda, and Judy. We played jump rope and jacks at recess instead of joining the boys' kickball games, and we stayed in our own yards instead of riding Joe's bike or roller skating.

  Eventually, though, we got careless. One afternoon we went to Polly's house. Her older sister had a Victrola and a big stack of records, and we stayed a long time, taking jitterbug lessons from Jean. It was almost five o'clock when we left, and our shadows stretched ahead of us, long and skinny. Elizabeth was singing "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" and practicing some of the fancy steps Jean had taught us.

  "Like this, see?" she said, twirling around. She was worried I was never going to learn to dance. "It's easy, Margaret."

  But, as Mother said, I was born with two left feet and no rhythm at all. In my soul I could feel the beat of the dance music, but I couldn't get the message through to my big old army shoes.

  Elizabeth stopped. With her hands on her hips, she watched me. "You're just not trying," she said.

  Suddenly a third shadow jutted out in front of us. We whirled around, but it was too late. Gordy grabbed Elizabeth and shook her like a rat.

  "Don't you ever go near my hut again," he yelled at her. "I'll kill you, Lizard, I swear I will, if you touch
one thing that belongs to me."

  "I never went near your dumb old hut!" Elizabeth shouted. Her face was red with anger as she struggled to get away. "It was the crazy man. He did it. Margaret and me saw him. He went inside and busted up everything!"

  Gordy started cursing. Grabbing a fistful of her hair, he pulled so hard Elizabeth's head jerked sideways. When she screamed, he let go, but strands of white-blonde hair clung to his hands like spiderwebs.

  "Don't say nothing about the crazy man," he said. "I'll cut your heart out myself if you tell a single living soul about him."

  I don't know what would have happened if Barbara hadn't come around the corner just then. She was pushing Brent's carriage, and when she saw us she smiled and waved.

  Breaking away from Gordy, Elizabeth and I raced toward her. In a moment, we were safe. As Elizabeth bent over the carriage to kiss Brent, I looked back. For a second, Gordy and I stared at each other. Then he spat in the dirt and walked away.

  ***

  For several weeks after that, Gordy didn't bother us. October flowed into November. The weather turned much colder just after Thanksgiving, and at about the same time the war got worse. All the hope we'd had during the summer waned. Butter, sugar, coffee, and gasoline were harder and harder to find. Every day the Evening Star was black with scary headlines, and more gold stars appeared in windows. It seemed like the war was going to last forever.

  One afternoon in December, Elizabeth and I were sitting in our tree. The sky was blue, but the wind took all the warmth from the sunlight. I had on a pair of Jimmy's old corduroy overalls and the wool warm-up jacket he'd worn in high school. The jacket was way too big for me, but it kept me warm, and I loved the Hyattsdale Hawk embroidered on the back.

  "You know what?" Elizabeth asked. "We look like boys." She glanced down at Joe's old pea coat. On her feet were a ragged pair of his black high-top basketball shoes.

  In all honesty, I didn't think anyone would ever mistake Elizabeth for a boy. She was just too pretty. A tall, gangly kid like me was another story. Unobservant strangers had called me "Sonny" more than once.