by Diane Munier
So I look at my granma, and what do I really know about this woman who seems pretty innocent as it goes, but could she have made a phone call to someone to take those kittens away?
She looks at me and I cut another triangle really quick.
“Better get busy,” she says.
But I am busy. I am very busy.
Darnay Road 19
“The Edge of Night,” the dramatic voice says long about this time every afternoon as the creepy dark shadow covers the city on the TV screen.
I don’t know what Granma would do without the perils of Constance. Granma swears if I love mysteries like I say I do, I should watch this show. Then she ups and says it’s not for children, but truth is I can’t put up with that show for long it’s just so boring.
We’ve already been to Joe’s for the cherries to put on my birthday cake. We’ve already gotten Dad’s phone call how he meant to get here but he has to work. And I’ve been paying more attention and I did hear something I might wish I wouldn’t have, but then again I have to be prepared to hear things sometimes if I’m going to do spy work.
Granma thought I went upstairs, and I did, but I came back down and she was still on the phone with him and normally it’s hurry up, hurry up because we can’t run up the charges for long distance from Chicago. And I hear her say, “You’re missing everything.”
And then she’s listening and then she says, “Out of sight, out of mind.”
And then she listens, and then she says, “She needs to know she has a father.”
And then she listens, and then she says, “You can’t just put her away until you’re ready. She’ll be all grown up. And she’s special. You don’t even know it.”
And much as I wish to be like Nancy…Drew, it’s just too hard to be me at that moment and I run back upstairs.
I don’t know if he really loves me. I haven’t thought about it because all the times I hoped he’d come and see me, Granma says he loves me, so I figured he did. But now hearing her upset, I just don’t know. It’s like there’s something to be mad about and I didn’t know I should be mad. I mean…Abigail May might ask me if he’s ever coming, but still I don’t feel mad. Her mom doesn’t come around either, but we have Granma and Aunt May. Really…I don’t want him coming around. Not if he’s going to try and take me away. I think we should just leave him alone before I’m in trouble like Abigail and Ricky.
I wish I could tell Granma this. “Just leave him alone,” I’d say. I wish he wouldn’t come by. I don’t even miss him.
But I can’t say that to Granma at all. When she comes upstairs we don’t even talk about it. She just says real jittery how she doesn’t think Daddy can get off for my birthday or Fourth of July, them being the very same thing, and I say okay. I don’t want her sad about it.
The worse thing is Abigail’s mother is coming to talk Abigail and Ricky into being good about Florida. I know Abigail misses her mother. Not terribly, but some. More than I miss Stanley. He’s my dad—Stanley Green. But I don’t even miss him. Abigail May does miss her mom. But not so much she wants to leave big gray.
If she went to Florida for good, I don’t know what I’d do. Aunt May says she could come here in the summertime. But that’s not enough. Here’s the truth, if I had to give up Daddy so I could keep Abigail, I would say, “Bye-Bye Stanley Green.”
“I’m not being nice to her,” Abigail May tells me, biting off a long string of red licorice then tipping back her head and slowly dropping that long string into her mouth like she’s eating a big worm. We’re holding bags of penny candy and walking slow because it’s hot as a boiling kettle of missionary soup. Made with real missionaries.
I blow a big pink bubble and it’s as big as my face and I hit her arm to show her and she tries to pop it and we fight a little and she doesn’t pop it but it pops on its own from all the fighting and it’s all over my face now. “Abigail May!” I yell.
I pull what I can off my face, my eyes at least, and Abigail is telling me shhh.
We’re in front of Miss Little’s. We forgot to cross the street. That house up close is scarier than The House on Haunted Hill with Vincent Price. Normally Vincent Price does not scare me or Abigail or Granma either. We think he is cheesy doodle. But that movie does scare me some. Just some. But Miss Little’s house is the worst on our street. It’s so shabby it’s like the old crone amongst the beautiful sisters.
But today it’s all shut up so tight. I am chewing my gum and still trying to peel off that big bubble.
“Abigail May,” I say, “there’s just too many mysteries around here.”
“There’s only six,” she says. We solved number one about where the boys went at night. But then we got a new one about Aunt May and you know who, dominus, dominus.
We haven’t seen the Hardy Boys around for nearly a week. Ricky made up with them, we know because we saw them playing at the ball fields, but Ricky played for Darnay and Cap and Easy were playing for Scutter. Ricky used to cross over and play with the Hardy’s, but he’s not doing that now and good thing because he’s the best player Darnay has. But he’s hanging at the Quick Shop. I know because Aunt May came to the fence and talked to Granma about it. She said he fought with her about going there and Aunt May said she didn’t know what to do with him. My Granma said to speak to Father Anthony about it, and Aunt May just got quiet.
I know priests can’t have girlfriends. Me and Abigail talked about that. Being spies we say things sometimes that spies have to say to think of evidence. They can’t be like…in love. That would be right off of The Edge of Night. Worse than Constance even. I don’t know that such a thing has ever happened.
Abigail May says I’m a dummy to even say such a thing.
‘But May never did marry.” Ain’t that what Granma said? It surely is. And he came out of the house at night. And it wasn’t the first time as Abigail May said.
But back to the new mystery—not the Aunt May one, the Hardy Boys one. Where would those boys be? I mean, I plan to save a big piece of my birthday cake for a certain Easy Caghan. I am going to do that for sure cause I don’t think he knows it’s my birthday and I don’t think he gets a lot of cake and never a cherry one. But I can’t give him cake if I can’t find him.
Also Abigail May and I have decided to sneak in our school and go to the top floor and see if it’s haunted once and for all. You can’t do real sleuthing around while eighth graders are chasing you and screaming like at the school picnic. Abigail May and I have decided to ask the Hardy’s to go with us so we won’t be so scared. One thing I know about those boys they are very very brave.
“We need to go by their houses,” I say. “They could be in terrible trouble.”
Allice looks at me like I got two heads, or plenty of bubble gum on the head I’ve got.
“I will,” she says.
“It would be the worst thing we’ve done,” I say. Worse than looking in the altar and sneaking out at night to ride on the handlebars of boys that aren’t Catholic or even very clean. I am under punishment and possibly Abigail too. So this is almost like thumbing our noses at our Lord though I don’t mean it and I hope he’s kind enough to know. I wonder if my guardian angel is still around or if he’s just given up.
I always believed my guardian angel is Michael the Archangel and Abigail thinks hers is Gabriel. Of course Gabriel talks to her and I say, “You sure that’s not your Granma Nettie?”
It makes her so mad. “My Granma Nettie does not have big gold wings!” she says and I might try not to laugh or be terrified cause she will never take it back.
But my dad doesn’t love me, and Abigail May’s mother is kidnapping her, so why should we try to be so good all the time? And anyway, when two boys just disappear shouldn’t the Darnay Spies pay attention?
I said I wanted to see where those boys live, didn’t I? “If your mama takes you away from big gray, don’t you want to at least know where Cap lived all this time?”
“Yes,” Abigail May says f
eeding another mile of licorice in her mouth.
I wish I was really brave, but I’m not. But if I was I would march right past Miss Little’s house and up her yard and all the way through her property to the tracks. Then I’d cross those and go through Easy’s yard and knock on his back door and say, “Easy, where in the devil have you been?”
But I am a good little Catholic saint. And I’m so so tired of it. You just can’t solve mysteries being a saint.
I face Miss Little’s house very squarely. It’s just a house, just boards and nails and a crazy lady. I’ve seen her before haven’t I? I’ve been all the way to her porch once to rescue a dog! And wouldn’t Easy do it for me? Wasn’t he the first one over me when I nearly died in the street? And didn’t he ride me to the trestle and face Disbro on that bridge and save those kittens? Didn’t he put that heart around his name on my cast…just for me? And I won’t do this for him?
“Come on Abigail,” I say, and I work Miss Little’s rickety gate open and it drags on the ground, but that don’t stop me. I’m in a mood, maybe on my high horse, I don’t know, but something inside me is waving a fist.
“Oh no,” Abigail says.
“Oh yes,” I say.
Darnay Road 20
I am clutching what’s left of my bag of candy in my bad hand, and holding Abigail May’s hand with the other. Well I’m pulling her along and her candy machine ring with the pretend pink pearl is digging into my palm and she keeps stepping on the backs of my Keds but I don’t even care cause Miss Little might come out and she is so frightful. She looks like Betty Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. I said that when we watched that movie and Granma said I must not ever say it again it is so unkind, she said it’s even unkind that Betty Davis looks like Baby Jane.
But I do think it anyway—about Miss Little I mean.
So I pull Abigail May along and I would rather do this than go up on the trestle bridge, and she did that, and at night. So I give her a yank and we move to the side of the house and I squint my eyes so I don’t see the whole thing at once. There’s a dead bird and I nearly step on it, and something rustles in the overgrowth that keeps the neighbors from being able to see how badly Miss Little keeps her yard.
I wonder if we can even get through the backyard, and the gate is hard to see it’s so covered with thick vines. We are very close to the house now and Abigail May is so quiet, and there’s a window and I make myself look and it’s more horrible than looking under the altar, when Abigail pulled that door wide open, but there sitting in that window for all the world is that yellow kitty. And that’s not all, hanging in the center of the window, from the lock is my pink pom-pom. The kitten is batting at it, first all by his lonesome, then another kitten appears. It’s one of the grays.
The kittens are in Miss Little’s house. Miss Little has kidnapped my kittens and my pom-pom.
I am pointing, but Abigail May already sees.
“It’s them, it’s them,” she says nearly squeezing my good hand with both of hers and her bag of candy. “Holy smokes!”
“Come on,” I say. I pull her to that gate but she’s pulling back.
“We have to go tell your Granma. We need the police I’ll bet!” she says.
But I’m not going to the police. My dad Stanley is a policeman. I don’t want anyone like him on this case. “We’re going through this yard and we’re going across the tracks and we’re going to find Easy. He’ll get those kittens back.”
I sound like Flint McCullough on Wagon Train having just scouted the road ahead and unwilling to take another trail even if there is a war-party of Sioux.
Abigail doesn’t fuss. She already knows Cap and Easy are better than any old policeman who can scold us or take us to jail. So we pick our ways through that back yard that has never ever seen the spinning blades of a lawnmower. Or not for a while. But there is a well-worn path through the weeds that leads to a back gate in the tumbledown fence. I have not been so happy to push a door open since my last confession. It is like a different world when we get out of Miss Little’s yard and onto the tracks. This is what we see from Abigail May’s yard anyway, this bleak and dangerous timber and rail that eventually leads to the trestle bridge and after that it goes clear across the United States of America or at least to the next town.
Our legs itch so we stop to scratch and go on and on about the kitties and my pink pom-pom. Abigail is crying and I am too a little and I didn’t know. Those little kitties are alive, but I still don’t have them back. And crazy Miss Little, all we know she is cooking them one by one and eating them for dinner.
But my neck is stretching as I look at the back fence leading to Easy’s house. He’s that close. Maybe.
So I take off running, holding my cast which itches all the time but doesn’t knock me off balance as much as it used to. Abigail is behind me sniffing while she runs, and she passes me up and reaches the gate and we pull it wide and a big German Shepherd comes running and I pull Abigail back and shut the gate and click the latch and the dog hits the wood and it looks like it’s coming open, but the latch holds.
“Saints and mercy,” I cry, wanting to yell at Abigail, but I can’t, I’m just so glad she’s alive.
Abigail May is really crying now but I know she cries easy but she doesn’t give up, it’s just she’s so small she has to cry to let the steam off so she can go again.
“Neighbors,” she says. Just that. And she takes off running and me too so we can get away from Easy’s fiercesome dog.
So we open the tall wooden gate at the next house and look first and no dog, just a yard with not much grass cause this is Scutter and they don’t grow grass over here I guess. So with that dog of Easy’s running the fence and barking we walk quickly through this yard and get out soon as we can and go around the front of Easy’s tired looking house and up on his porch with the creaky steps and we knock on his beat to death door.
Cap opens the door. He’s holding a plate of noodles with no sauce at all, just bare noodles. He has one partway out of his mouth and he sucks it up. He is looking at me and Abigail and it’s probably almost a surprised look but he never seems to be excited, not even when he was looking ready to catch that shirt filled with cats Disbro nearly dropped from the trestle bridge.
He is a tall boy, and wearing blue jeans and one of those shirts him and Easy wear, sleeves torn off. His feet are bare and if you look back up on top his head is shaved and that’s pretty different.
He is skinny so it’s good to see him eating I guess. The house behind him is dark and it smells like Granma’s cellar some.
“Your dog is me-ean,” Abigail says.
“Yeah,” he says and laughs a little, but it’s not the laugh you do when something is really funny, more like ‘what are you doing here?’
I am not expecting Easy to pull Cap back and step in front. He really can’t believe his eyes. Well I can’t either. I haven’t seen him for days and days, no sign of him at all. But it’s the worst. His head is shaved like Cap’s, and it’s all right, just different.
But his eyes, well one is bruised around it. He has no shirt, but tape around his ribs, and his arm is wrapped, and his shoulder is blue and cuts and scrapes, red lines of broken skin.
“Oh,” I say. I put my good hand over my mouth. Cause his hands are the worst, knuckles split and red.
“Why did you come here?” Easy says, and it’s worse than anything. He is not happy to see me at all. Not at all. He is angry. I have not seen him angry before, not even when Disbro took the kittens. Not even when Ricky hit him. I didn’t think he could ever be angry. But he is angry now. At me.
He comes on the porch and pulls the door some, but Cap stops him from closing it, but he’s a little bigger than Cap, a little heavier and bossier, and he pushes Cap back and Cap says no and they stare some, then Easy limps, yes limps like Chester out onto the porch, and all I can do is notice all of this. I don’t care that he’s even more grown looking than last time I looked, or I know there’s the
man-hair under his arms. I don’t care about any of that. He’s hurt. And he doesn’t want me here. He hates me I think.
Abigail tries to tell them about the cats.
“No,” I say to her. “We’re going now.” I have her with my good hand. I’m pulling her toward those rickety stairs.
“Don’t come around no more,” Easy says. “Don’t ever come here. Hear me Georgia? Don’t ever come here again.”
He’s so stern and so mean.
“I…what happened?”
“It ain’t your business. You stay away.”
“I will,” I say, but it sounds shaky, even to my own ears.
Abigail pulls away though, shrugs away and stays on the porch. “But Miss Little has the kittens,” she says, and she’s looking mostly at Cap and he doesn’t give one way or the other. “We saw them in her window. She took the kittens.”
“It don’t matter,” Easy says. “Get on home.”
“What happened to you?” Abigail May says, still not moving. “You used to be a nice boy.”
“I ain’t nice,” he says. “You go on home little girl,” he says.
“We will,” I say, and it’s stronger, but I want to run from here. Run and never stop.
“But she took them,” Abigail says cause she pushes Ricky, but these ain’t Ricky. “It ain’t right.”
“You don’t know anything,” Easy says. “Let her have them.”
Abigail is still going to fight, but I get ahold of her and finally she comes my way.
“You’re the meanest boys ever!” Abigail yells.
But once we get on the ground I pull her along and we go down Scutter in the direction of Abigail May’s house. I don’t know where we’ll cut back, or when, but we have to get away from here. From them. From Easy.
Darnay Road 21
They finish singing and now they are clapping for me and saying, “Hoo-ray.”
And who are they? They are Granma, of course, Abigail May, Ricky, Aunt May and Abigail’s mother Gloria Sue, but I call her Mrs. Brody and she keeps correcting me, it’s Mrs. Figley now.
