by Karen Wolff
Mr. Hummel said a few more quiet words to her and then turned to us, looking very serious. He said, “Mrs. Carmichael is having trouble with her baby boy’s naps because our noise keeps him awake. Do you think we could quiet down a bit so little McDermott can get his sleep?”
“What did you say his name was?” Alan Klemme asked.
“I believe she said it was McDermott”
This struck me as funniest thing I had ever heard of. A gurgle of laughs came up from inside me and burst right out. Sam was standing next to me, and he started to laugh too. Then the others started. Mr. Hummel tried to be serious, but pretty soon his mouth was twitching, and his shoulders shook. He had to wipe the tears from his face he laughed so hard.
“Okay, boys,” he said when he got control of himself. “Let’s see if we can tone it down some and make Mrs. Carmichael happy.”
We went on with the class, trying not to yell, even doing the counting for our exercises in a half voice. It sure wasn’t quiet, but we did our best. At the end of class Mr. Hummel made us run around the perimeter of the schoolyard four times without saying a word, and then we went inside to eat lunch.
We were abuzz with what had happened. “Why can’t the kid sleep inside the house?” someone asked. “Because McDermott needs fresh air,” another answered. We howled at the silliness. The Baby McDermott tale spread through the school in a flash. The girls would say, “Don’t wake McDermott,” each time we filed outside for class. Every time we started a session, we’d hear McDermott set up a squall. And every time Mrs. Carmichael came running out to yell at us to quiet down.
We made halfway attempts to do it, but when we ran relays or worked on the rings, there was no holding back the cheers and yelling. Mrs. Carmichael never gave up, coming out to the fence to shake her fist at us, but we got so we more or less ignored her.
Frank Halverson was the biggest kid in the class and the meanest. He had a fat pink face with little piggy eyes, and he went out of his way to play nasty tricks on people. One day when Mrs. Carmichael came out, he yelled at her. “Leave us alone, old lady, or I’m gonna sic the KKK on you. My dad’s a member.”
He turned to us and said, “I’m gonna tell my dad about her, and I’ll bet the Klan will come and kick down the door of that mackerel-snapper’s house.”
Mr. Hummel grabbed him by the collar and hauled him to the principal’s office, and we didn’t see Frank for a couple of days. I felt a sour taste in my mouth after that. Frank had made a funny thing mean and threatening. If the Klan went after silly Mrs. Carmichael, there was no telling what else it would do. Nobody would be safe.
Then I had an idea. I skipped lunch the next day and walked down the street to the Methodist Church and studied the building for several minutes. When I got back to the school, I drew a sketch of the church. It sat in the middle of a large churchyard with no houses close to it. A little peaked roof held up by two pillars made of rocks, the same as the church foundation, sheltered the front steps. I judged it to be about twelve feet off the ground. On the main roof of the church was a square, box-like structure, open on the sides, with short columns on each corner, creating a space where the church bell hung. Above the bell, the tall, shingled steeple, topped with a gold cross, rose straight to God.
I NEEDED RUSS. The October weather was nippy, and I was grateful for a short bike ride to River Sioux. Russ worked for Mr. Crill in the off-season, and I found him in the boat shed where he was painting rowboats.
“Hey, Harry. What are you doing here?” he said, wiping his hands on a rag that smelled of turpentine.
“I came to see if you’d like to help me with a little job Friday night. It’s Halloween, you know.”
He laughed. “Well, sure. What do you have in mind?”
I told him my plan.
“That’s about the funniest idea I’ve ever heard of,” he said.
“It is funny, but Frank Halverson is just mean enough to get the KKK involved, and I don’t want that to happen. I figure if we pull this off, we haven’t hurt anybody, and old lady Carmichael will get the point.”
We talked over the details, and Russ agreed to help.
“All we need is a good long rope,” I said.
“Looks like you came to the right place.” He pointed to the shelf on one wall of the shed where coils of rope were stacked up.
“Do you think Mr. Crill would let us borrow a rope?”
“I don’t think he’d care. In fact, I don’t see why he’d even have to know about it. We can bring it back to him afterwards. He’s not going to need it any time soon.”
So the arrangements were made. Russ loaded my bike in his car and gave me a lift home in time for supper.
The next day at school I let Sam and Harold in on my plans. They danced around grinning, excited about the idea and eager to help.
“Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone,” I told them. “Meet us at the church about 10:30 Friday night.”
WHEN FRIDAY CAME, I told Gram that Russ and I were going to town to see a movie.
“You’re going to a movie on Halloween? I wonder about that.” She watched from the door as we walked to the car. “Now listen here, boys. You stay out of trouble, do you hear? Don’t go pulling any crazy pranks.”
“We’re too old for the kid stuff, Gram. Don’t worry about us.”
We drove to downtown Beaverton and parked on one of the side streets off Main. About a quarter to ten we started walking slowly toward the school.
Russ said, “Nervous about this, Harry? Want to change your mind?”
I was plenty scared, but I said, “I want to do it, Russ. It’s gonna be great.”
The town was getting quiet as the little kids wrapped up trick or treat fun. We met no one the last couple of blocks. From the schoolyard, the back porch of the Carmichael house appeared to be in dark shadows. The buggy had been there that afternoon, and I prayed Mrs. Carmichael hadn’t taken it inside. No lights showed in the house and, while I had seen a couple of cats around, I was pretty sure she didn’t have a dog. We were lucky to have a bright moon and enough wind to cover the sound of our footsteps.
“Okay,” I whispered. “We better start.” A little shiver went through me.
I went to the front of the house and stole down the side yard near the school. I could hear Russ breathing on the other side of the fence. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled slowly to the porch. Every little noise spooked me; I was almost afraid to breathe. It felt like I crept along for a mile before I came to the edge of the porch and stood up slowly. The dark shape of the buggy was now just a couple of feet in front of me. I reached for the handle and tried to pull it toward me, expecting it to roll on its quiet rubber wheels. It wouldn’t budge! What did she do? Tie it to the railing?
My mind raced. The porch was about waist high, so I laid down on it with my feet on the ground. The floorboards groaned with my weight and I froze. I waited a long minute, then reached out quietly and felt each of the buggy wheels to see what was holding it there. Finally I found a brake on one of the back wheels. It made a little clicking noise when I released it, and I lay dead still, listening and waiting. Nothing. I stood up and took hold of the handle again and slowly rolled the buggy toward me. As soon as it was free of the porch, I picked it up and carried it to the fence. It was made of wicker and weighed practically nothing. I was able to hand it over the fence to Russ without much trouble. Then I joined him and we hustled down the street toward the Methodist Church, carrying it between us.
When it was safe, Russ whispered, “Man, I thought you’d never get back to me. What happened?”
I told him about finding the brake.
We were nearly to the church when a couple of dogs set up a ruckus. We dove into some bushes with that buggy on top of us, my heart thumping away in my chest.
A man came to the door of his house and called, “Red. Spike. Shut up before you wake the whole neighborhood.”
We heard his wife say, “Must still be some Hal
loweeners out there, Ralph.” He stood on the porch a minute and finally went back inside.
The dogs’ noise died down at last, and we crept out of the bushes and hurried the short distance to the church. Sam and Harold emerged from the tall grass at the side of the building and whispered excitedly, “Where have you been? We’ve been waiting and waiting.”
“It took us a little longer to get the buggy than we thought,” I said, “but now we can go to work.”
I had hidden my school tablet with the plans inside my shirt before we left home so Gram wouldn’t ask any questions. I took it out now and laid it on the church step, groping around in the dark until I found a rock to keep it from blowing away. Then I pulled a candle stub from my pocket. Russ lit it, and we crouched around the drawings to review the plans.
“First, we have to get onto the porch roof. Russ will stand over there next to the pillar. I’ll go up first and, when I get up there, Russ will toss me the rope and I’ll tie it…” A sudden shock rocked my whole body. I stopped whispering and looked at Russ.
“What? What’s the matter, Harry?”
I managed to squeak out, “The rope. We forgot the rope.”
He looked at me for a second while he took this in, then clapped his hand to his forehead.
“Oh my God, Harry. You’re right. We left the rope in the car. We’re skunked without it. What’ll we do?”
I sat right down on the ground. There was no way we could do this without the rope. We’d have to give it up because of my stupidity. But as I sat there, I thought, no. We’d come too far for that. I was all for running back to the car myself, but Russ said, “I think I should be the one to go. People might see you and think it’s odd you’re getting into my car.” I saw the sense to that.
“Okay,” I said, “you go.”
He took off running quietly. The three of us went back into the tall grass at the side of the church, taking the buggy with us, and we settled down to wait.
Harold said, “My folks are going to skin me alive when they find out I snuck out the window.”
“Mine probably will too,” Sam said. “I hope this is worth it.”
The waiting got on our nerves, and I could tell they were losing some of their enthusiasm. “It won’t take him long to get back,” I reassured them. “And finishing up won’t take long either. We’ll be out of here in about twenty minutes, I bet.” I didn’t feel all that sure of it myself, but I wanted to keep them bucked up. “It’ll be worth it. Just think what everybody will say when they see what we’ve done. What’ll old lady Carmichael think?” They chuckled, and I prayed Russ would get back soon.
I was about to give up the whole thing myself when I heard the loping footsteps of someone running down the middle of the road. I rose up from the grass, and relief washed over me. There was Russ panting from the run.
“There are still a few folks walking around downtown,” he said gulping for air. “I moved the car so they didn’t see me getting the rope out of it.”
“Good,” I said. “Let’s go to work.”
As I had shown them on my drawing, Russ, the tallest and strongest of us, stood at the side of one the stone pillars with his legs spread apart and his arms braced against the stones. Harold, as the next largest, climbed onto Russ’s shoulders and wrapped his arms around the pillar. When they felt secure, I climbed on Harold’s shoulders and managed to pull myself onto the porch roof, scraping my belly in the process. I inched over to the peak, got my knees astraddle it, and whispered, “Toss me the rope.” It came up from behind me, but I caught it. I scooted forward until I was smack up against the box-like structure that held the bell. I got a handhold on the box and pulled myself up to a standing position. From there I was able to wrap the rope around one of the columns and knot it tight. Then I threw it down to the ground for Sam who came up next using the rope to help pull himself up. Next it was Harold’s turn. Sam and I pulled the rope taut to take some of the weight off Russ, and Harold came grunting all the way onto the roof.
The three of us clung to the belfry while Russ tied the rope to the back axle of the buggy. Then the hoarse whisper came, “Okay, pull it up.”
The three of us began to pull the rope hand over hand with Russ on the ground. The wind had come up and wanted to catch the buggy, so Russ had a job to keep it from twisting and banging into the church. We got it to the edge of the porch roof where it got hung up, and we couldn’t move it. The angle of our rope was too flat to get the wheels over the edge.
“We gotta get the rope higher,” Sam said.
I saw what I would have to do. The sill around the belfry box where the columns were mounted was about eight inches wide. If I stood on that, it would raise the angle of the rope. I told the others what I was going to do.
Sam said, “You better be careful, Harry.”
I said, “Harold, wrap your left arm around that column and your right arm around my leg when I get up there. Sam, you do the same thing on the other side. Hang on tight.”
I felt no fear as I climbed up there, but oh did my stomach buck when I looked down. The rising wind dried the sweat on my body making me suddenly very cold. I stood for a few seconds to calm myself.
“All right,” I whispered. “Hand me the rope.”
I looked straight ahead and felt for the rope with my hands. When I got hold of it, I began to pull. My first tries were poor weak things that didn’t accomplish anything. I thought for a moment. If I were going to make anything happen, I’d have to raise my arms, hold the rope over my head, and pull from that position. I wondered if I could keep my balance. Did I have the guts? I had to try.
“Don’t let go of me,” I said. I took a deep breath and slowly raised the rope above my head and began pulling harder and harder. Nothing happened for a long time, but I kept pulling hand over hand until at last the buggy bumped up over the edge and rolled right up to us. The rope went slack, and I wobbled dangerously for a minute, but the boys held on to me. I hung on to the rope so the buggy wouldn’t slide back and then got down from my perch, shaky from the ordeal. I handed the rope to Sam and squatted there for a moment to collect myself. My heart was pounding like a drum. It had been a scary few minutes.
By now Russ had been able to climb the rock pillar and was waiting on the porch roof. We maneuvered the buggy over the belfry and leaned it against the steeple. Then, with each of us positioned at one of the columns, we began winding the rope around and around the buggy and the base of the steeple, passing it from hand to hand until the buggy was secure and there was only enough rope left to knot it around a column. The deed was done.
Harold said, “By golly, we did it!”
All of us took a look. He was right. We had done it! We pounded each other on the back, tickled with the results of our work.
Now we had to get ourselves down from there. Russ being the tallest went down first. It was a scary thing to lie on your belly with your feet dangling over the edge of the roof, searching for a foothold on the pillar. Russ tried to help from below, but mostly we slid down, bumping and banging ourselves on the rocks in our rush to get out of there.
When we were all on the ground, I said, “Good job, everybody.” We were grinning like jack-o-lanterns in the moonlight.
“Can’t wait to see what happens tomorrow,” Sam said.
“My folks are going to wonder how I got so scraped up,” Harold rubbed the rope burns on his arms.
Those two took off for home, and Russ and I ran for the car. We climbed in and collapsed exhausted, breathing hard and not saying anything. Finally, Russ laughed and said, “Dammit, Harry. That was a fine thing.” I looked at him in disbelief, and then I laughed too. It was, indeed, a fine thing.
AT HOME, I got out of my clothes and ready for bed, chuckling to myself. I’d have given anything to see the looks on people’s faces when they spied the buggy up there on the steeple. It was tempting to wake Ty to tell him what we had done, but he was snoring away on our narrow daybed. My legs moved like they were i
n molasses, they were so tired from all the climbing. Buster usually slept at my feet, but he wasn’t around, so I knew Granddad was still at the store with his beer-drinking buddies. I lay down as quietly as I could, still thinking about our fine prank, but my eyes were gritty and soon fell closed.
I don’t know how long I slept before the sound of men’s voices crept into my consciousness. They weren’t talking loud, but they sounded excited. I thought I was dreaming, but Ty woke up, too.
“Who’s out there?” he said.
“Must be Granddad.”
“Yeah, he was drinking again tonight. He’s probably closing up.”
We rolled over and went back to sleep. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes when I roused up again. I heard fierce barking followed by a long wailing sound I’d never heard before from Buster. I sat up and pulled on my pants, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
“C’mon, Ty. We better see what’s going on.”
I went to the kitchen while he got into his clothes. I pulled the curtain aside to look. A light flickered through the window, and my throat closed up. A huge cross burned on the hill in back of our house and the store. I stood frozen, unable to speak.
“Oh my god,” Ty said. “They came after us.”
We watched men in white robes and tall hats disappear around the store. They ran to their cars idling on the road and drove away fast. The noise awakened Gram who came out in her white nightgown, her hair undone, and asked, “What’s going on?”
I opened the door, and smoke smelling of fuel oil filled the room.
“Is Granddad here?”
“No, he hasn’t come home,” she said.
“We’ve got to find him,” I shouted.
With only the light of the burning cross, Ty and I ran to the store, calling for him. The door stood open to the darkened interior. My heart was pounding in my chest, my mouth dry. We felt our way inside, both of us so familiar with every inch of it that it was easy to get around. We didn’t find him. We pushed on through to the windowless bar with its familiar smell of beer and peanuts. Only now it smelled of smoke. Granddad wasn’t there.
