“We've brought a picnic basket,” said Caroline. “Chicken salad sandwiches and grapes.”
“And chocolate chunk cookies!” crowed Peter, wriggling his toes.
“Great!” said Jake, rubbing his eyes. “Let's make it Smuggler's Cove.”
“Did you guys just get up?” asked Eddie.
“Of course not,” said Jake. “You have to wait a minute, though, 'cause we've got to let Mom know where we're going.” The rule was that they had to call their mother at the hardware store if they were going to be gone for more than an hour. Wally followed his brother inside.
“I don't like it!” Jake said. “This is a setup!”
Wally didn't know what to think. With Jake on the phone in the kitchen, though, and Josh and Peter out on the porch with the girls, he had a mad impulse to make a run for the stairs, dive into bed, and pull the covers over himself for the rest of the day. But maybe Mom would say they couldn't go and that would solve it. Maybe she'd say they hadn't finished their chores.
Jake came back from the kitchen.
“What'd she say?” asked Wally.
“To take Peter,” said Jake morosely.
“Is that all?”
“Take Peter and have a good time.”
And so, with a blanket tucked under his arm, Jake led the group down the porch steps. Wally carried a jug of water, and Josh took a bag of trail mix.
If they crossed the road in front of the house, they could go down the bank to the footbridge that led to Island Avenue and the house where the girls were staying. But this time they stayed on their side of the river and started down the road. After a mile or two, they would cut through a field and then the woods, and finally they would reach a rocky inlet circled by pine trees. Here the river lapped gently against the bank, and the crevasses between the rocks looked deep and forbidding. Smuggler's Cove was called that because according to legend, thieves used to smuggle knives and whiskey and furs down the river and hide them in the cove till they could find buyers in town. True or not, it was a good place to camp or have a picnic.
Well, okay, we're going on a picnic, Wally told himself. That's all. Nothing to worry about.
As they headed into the woods, Josh said, “Peter says you guys are really going to move back to Ohio. Is it for sure?”
“It's for sure,” said Beth. “Dad's taken his old job back at the college, and he'll have our house ready for us when we get there. The Bensons will be here on the thirty-first. In fact, Mr. Benson's already back to start training the football team. He's staying at a hotel till the whole family arrives with their furniture.”
Peter chugged along, still wearing his Donald Duck pj's, but he had put on his sneakers, too. “I'd rather have you than the Bensons,” he said.
“Peter!” Jake exclaimed. “You're nuts!”
“Oh, you'll be glad to see them come back,” Eddie told Peter. “You and the Benson guys have been friends for a long time. You won't even miss us once we're gone.”
This was too easy, Wally thought. The Malloys were being too polite. There was probably poison on the grapes or something. And then he realized that he was sounding more and more like his brother Jake.
Three
Picnic, Sort Of
Whoever would have thought, Caroline wondered, that the Hatfords and the Malloys would be having a normal—no, even pleasant—picnic together without their parents? What she meant was that when parents were around, you more or less had to be polite, but here they were, not a mom or dad in sight, and they were acting like friends. They chose a mossy spot to spread the blanket.
“I thought maybe your dad was going to stick around and coach the high school football team,” said Josh.
“He was thinking about it but decided to go back,” said Beth.
“Are you sad?” Peter asked, his eyes on the cookie container.
“A little,” said Beth.
“I'm going to miss the school,” said Caroline.
All four Hatfords turned and stared at her.
“School?” said Wally.
“The auditorium. The stage,” said Caroline. “We don't have a stage like that back home.”
“Is that all you ever think about?” Josh asked her. “New York? Broadway?”
“Someday you'll see my name in lights,” said Caroline. “You'll be visiting New York and you'll be walking along the street and you'll look up to see Caroline Lenore Malloy in lights. And you'll say to each other, ‘She really meant it! She's an actress now!’ ”
“Oh, brother!” said Eddie.
“Well, we're going to have a great time when the Bensons come back,” said Jake. “Man, we've known them our whole lives, practically. We're like brothers, almost.”
“And you're like sisters!” said Peter, his face breaking into an angelic smile.
Jake groaned softly.
“You didn't treat us like sisters the last time we were here,” said Eddie. “You tried to throw Caroline in the river.”
“We treated you exactly as though you were sisters!” said Josh. “You followed us on a campout and tried to spy on us.”
“Yeah,” said Wally. “I woke up and found Caroline's hand creeping under the side of my tent. She was trying to throw my clothes in the river.”
“Well, that's all water over the dam,” said Eddie, unwrapping the chicken salad. “We're only going to be here a few more weeks, so it would be nice if we all got along for a change.”
Caroline stared at her sister. Had Eddie actually said that ?
“This is all so polite, it's disgusting,” said Jake. “We need some kind of excitement while we eat. Caroline, why don't you recite something creepy?”
Caroline did not think she had heard correctly. Someone was actually asking her to perform? One of the Hatfords? Jake?The truth was, Caroline was ready to perform at the drop of a hat. She had a very good memory for poems and stories.
“Um … I could do ‘Little Orphant Annie,’ ” she said.
“Great,” said Jake, passing around the grapes. “Let's hear it.”
Caroline was not always sure she had every word in a poem correct when she recited it, but she figured that if the rhythm was right and the words made sense, it was good enough. She definitely remembered to say orphant instead of orphan.
“Should I stand up?” she asked.
“No, Caroline, just do it,” said Eddie, rolling her eyes.
Caroline did, however, sit up on her knees to make herself a little taller. She swallowed and cleared her throat, waiting until the grapes had gone around the circle before she began in her most dramatic voice:
“Little Orphant Annie's come to our
house to stay,
And wash the cups and saucers up, and
brush the crumbs away,
And shoo the chickens off the porch,
and dust the hearth, and sweep,
And make the fire, and bake the bread,
and earn her board-and-keep …”
“Her what?” asked Peter.
“Her allowance,” said Wally. “Shhh.”
Caroline continued:
“And all us other children, when the
supper-things is done,
We set around the kitchen fire and has
the mostest fun
A-listenin to the witch-tales that Annie
tells about,
And the Goblins that'll git you
If you don't watch out!”
Peter's eyes were wide open at this point. Jake and Josh were smirking, as usual, but people always enjoyed this poem when Caroline recited it, especially the goblin part. She went on:
“Once there was a little boy who wouldn't
say his prayers,
And when he went to bed at night,
away upstairs …”
At that moment Caroline felt a tickle down her spine and was thrilled to think she could recite something so expressively that it affected even her!
“His Mammy heard him holler, and his
>
Daddy heard him bawl …”
A creeping, crawling sensation replaced the tickle. She gave a little shudder.
“And when they turned the covers down,
he wasn't there at all!”
Now the crawling sensation was moving sideways, not up and down. Suddenly Caroline began grabbing frantically at her back and sides. “There's a bug on me!” she shrieked. “There's a bug down my shirt!”
“And I think I know who put it there,” said Eddie, glancing at Jake, who had moved just a little too close to Caroline and was scooting away as fast as he could.
“Get it out!” Caroline screamed, scrambling to her feet and jumping up and down. She had never been fond of bugs, but she had also never had one dropped down her shirt before, and now she was half crazy. “Get it out!” she kept screaming. “Aaaah! Help! Eddie! Oh, it's crawling all over me!”
Jake rolled on the ground laughing as Caroline jiggled and danced and swatted and clawed, until finally a black beetle dropped onto the blanket from beneath her T-shirt.
“Man, I wish I had a camera!” said Josh, holding his sides. “Caroline, you could go onstage for comedy night with that act!”
Even Peter was laughing, but Caroline was still screaming.
“You can stop now, Caroline!” Jake hooted. “It's dead, after all your bashing.”
“Okay, that's enough entertainment,” said Eddie. “Let's eat. I'll make the sandwiches. Chicken salad for everybody.” She opened the loaf of bread and began, passing along a sandwich for each of them.
Caroline was mortified and angry. It was rude to interrupt an actress like that. If that had happened in a theater in New York, the stage manager would have rushed out from behind the curtain to help; the ushers would have taken the person who had done it straight up the aisle and out the door.
“Okay, go ahead, Caroline. No more bugs,” Jake promised.
But Caroline said, “I think you were mean and rotten to do that, and if you want to know what happens next in the poem, you'll have to read it yourself.”
“No, thanks,” said Jake.
“Well, Iwant to hear the rest!” said Peter.
“Tell that to your brothers,” Caroline muttered. Was nobody going to come to her aid? Eddie and Beth just went on passing around food; Jake and Josh and Wally took turns digging their hands into the sack of chips. Nobody besides Peter really wanted to hear the rest of the poem, and she hadn't even got to the part about the girl who was snatched through the ceiling!
Caroline kept her head down as she nibbled around the crust of her sandwich and tried to pretend she had forgotten the incident. But actresses never forgot. Now she knew how it felt when a play bombed and there was no encore. How it felt when people left at intermission. Sometimes, she knew, audiences even hooted and booed.
That's okay, Caroline told herself. She would learn how to take humiliation. She would learn to accept defeat. She would use this sad performance as a stepping-stone of courage and perseverance, and even if there was only one member of the audience left in a theater, Caroline would perform for that person alone, for always … always … the show must go on.
“Hey!” came Jake's voice.
Caroline looked up. Jake had his chicken sandwich in one hand and was fishing around inside his mouth with the other.
“What is this?” he said, spitting something out.
It was small. It was black. It was mangled. But Caroline could make out what it was—or what it had been: the black beetle that had been dropped down her shirt.
“We're just returning the favor, Jake!” Eddie laughed. “Give your sandwich a little spice.”
“Yuck!” said Jake, spitting out even more.
“It's dead, after all,” Eddie taunted. “You're not afraid of a dead bug, are you?”
“Three more weeks and you'll be back in Ohio,” said Jake. “Then you can torment somebody back there. I'll bet your neighbors can't wait.”
“You started it,” said Eddie. “We invited you to a picnic, and look what happened.”
“Okay, we're sorry,” said Josh. “Where did you want to go next?”
“How about Knob Hill?” said Eddie. “In the dark. About midnight, maybe?”
Four
Mystery
It seemed to Wally as though Jake and Eddie just couldn't help themselves. They were going to go on fighting and teasing forever. No matter how much fun the Hatfords and the Malloys might be having together, no matter how little time there was left, Jake and Eddie had to go on competing, tricking, scheming, until it would be almost impossible to stay friends.
Polite as they all had been—up to the bug episode, anyway—Jake and Eddie had argued about the best place to lay the blanket. Eddie had said they were too close to the river, and Jake had said they weren't close enough. They'd argued about who had eaten most of the grapes and who had pitched the most home runs on their ball team.
“You know what we ought to do? We ought to take them to the top of Knob Hill and leave them!” said Josh, putting Wally's feelings into words.
Going to Knob Hill and the old Indian burial ground was delayed, however, because both the girls and the boys knew that their parents would never allow them to go out at midnight, not even if they left Peter behind. In fact, they wouldn't even be allowed to go that far after dark. The neighborhood, yes. The business district, yes. But not out to the country, where there weren't even streetlights to help them see where they were going.
Besides, Mrs. Hatford had given the boys a job before she'd gone to work that morning.
“Mrs. Malloy needs all the boxes she can get for packing,” she had told them. “I think it would be a very neighborly thing for you to go around to some of the stores downtown and see if they have any empties. I can get big boxes from the hardware store, but I'm sure the Malloys could use some smaller sizes too.”
It wasn't a job that appealed to Wally, but their mother had a way of making them feel guilty about saying no. Besides, the guy at the drugstore sometimes gave them jelly beans. So Wally went into the living room, where Peter was putting a puzzle together on the coffee table.
“You wanna go look for empty boxes?” Wally asked.
“What do I get if I do?” asked Peter.
“Jelly beans, maybe,” said Wally.
“What do I get if I don't?”
“A kick in the pants,” Wally joked.
“Oh, all right,” said Peter. “But it's hot out there!”
“Well, Jake's going to his baseball game and Josh is going to the library to help paint a mural. I can't go anywhere if you don't come too,” said Wally, knowing that the boys were never, under any circumstances, to leave Peter at home by himself. Mrs. Hatford clerked six days a week at the hardware store, and Mr. Hatford delivered the mail, so if neither of Wally's brothers was going to be around, that left him in charge.
They went down the sidewalk, toward the business district, Peter lagging a foot or two behind Wally.
“The sidewalk feels hot even with sneakers on,” Peter complained.
“Try walking one inch above the sidewalk,” Wally teased.
“Huh?” said Peter.
“Or you could spit on your feet. That'll keep 'em cool,” Wally added, grinning. And then, when Peter got ready to try it, he said, “Hey, Peter. No!”
They stopped at Oldakers' Bookstore first, and it was like heaven to step inside the air-conditioned room.
“How you doin'?” called Mike, the owner.
“Any empty boxes?” Wally asked. “We're collecting them for the Malloys. They're going back to Ohio.”
“So I heard,” said Mike. “I got some early calendars in this morning. You'll find the boxes in the back.”
“Thanks,” said Wally. He and Peter walked down the rows of mysteries and science fiction novels and through the café at the back, until they came to the stockroom. Three empty boxes sat just inside the door. Wally picked up two, Peter got the other, and they carried them back outside.
“I wouldn't mind!” said Peter.
Wally was never sure about those jelly beans, though, because Mr. Larkin never took them out of the jelly bean jar. He would open a drawer beside the cash register and take the jelly beans from there. Were those the ones that had fallen on the floor, maybe?
“Thanks,” Wally said as the druggist dumped a fistful into the two outstretched hands.
A yellow jelly bean in Wally's hand had dark marks on one side. Had somebody kicked it with a shoe? he wondered. A red jelly bean looked faded. Had someone sucked on it for a second or two and then spit it out? Peter put all his jelly beans in his mouth at once, but Wally ate them one by one, exploring them a bit with his tongue.
With two more boxes added to their load, Wally gave Peter the smallest, and he carried the rest. Ethel's Bakery was next.
“I flattened all my boxes yesterday,” Ethel told them, “but I can give you one that my flour came in this morning.”
Peter put it on his head upside down. There was just enough flour in it to give his hair a fine white coating, so that he looked like a little old man.
“We've got enough,” Wally told him. “We'll tell Jake and Josh to get the rest. Let's go home.”
“It's certainly going to be different around here with the Malloys gone,” said Mrs. Hatford that evening at dinner.
“Maybe,” said her husband. “But with the Bensons coming back, things won't be any quieter, that's for sure. Five boys in place of three girls can never be quieter.”
“I just wish I'd been a better neighbor,” said Wally's mother. “It couldn't have been easy for Jean to move down here with her family for a year, not knowing a living soul, and having to fit in with the faculty wives and do all that university stuff. We should have had them for dinner more often.”
“We had them for Thanksgiving, remember?” said Mr. Hatford. “Besides, you work full-time, Ellen. Jean Malloy didn't expect you to do more.”
Who Won the War? Page 2
