Who Won the War? Read online

  Beth stopped and looked around. “Well! What do you think of that?”

  The Hatford boys sat speechless. They had never bothered to look up Knob Hill on the Internet. They hadn't known about the shadows.

  “So,” said Eddie. “I want to go see this place.”

  Wally glanced at his brothers. It was another hot day—too hot, really, to go climbing. But that wasn't what he was worried about. As long as the sun was shining, one of their shadows was bound to fall on someone else's.

  Fifteen minutes later, they were all walking across a pasture toward the high round hill, Peter taking big steps to keep up, the stubble of grass and weeds pricking his short legs. Everyone seemed to be spreading out as they started up the hill, keeping their shadows definitely separate from each other.

  It took longer than they'd thought it would to get to the top. They grew hotter with every step, but at last, when they reached the crest, there was a bit more breeze, which helped dry the perspiration that dripped down their faces.

  “So this is it, huh?” Eddie said, her voice hushed and reverent. “Where the Shanatee are buried? Doesn't it sort of spook you out that we might be standing on the very grave of one of their warriors?” She moved a step closer to Jake, and instantly Jake took a step closer to Josh. Their shadows almost touched, and Josh jumped.

  They fanned out some more, studying the ground, stepping on large rocks strewn here and there. Suddenly Jake knelt down and said, “Hey! Look what I found!”

  Caroline hurried over, getting just close enough to see him holding an almost perfect arrowhead. “It was just lying there? You found it just like that?” she asked.

  “I kicked it,” said Jake. “There are supposed to be a lot up here.”

  Instantly the girls began kicking at the ground with the toes of their sneakers. Beth even got down on her knees and began digging around the rocks. Eddie seemed especially intent on finding another arrowhead.

  Jake and Josh and Wally and Peter worked to stay off each other's shadows. The girls didn't seem that concerned, Wally thought, but he didn't believe in taking chances.

  At last Eddie said, “Hey, Jake, can I see that arrowhead a second? I want to know what to look for.”

  “Sure,” Jake said.

  Eddie turned it over and over in her hand. “You're a big fat liar, Jake,” she said.

  “What d'you mean?” asked Jake. “That's a real Indian arrowhead, and I can prove it.”

  “Yeah, but you didn't just find it this morning,” said Eddie. “It doesn't have a speck of dirt on it. Not even dust! It even looks like it's been polished! You brought this along this morning, just as a joke.”

  Jake laughed. “Well, it worked, didn't it? You and Beth down on your hands and knees, digging away …” He and Josh hooted.

  But Wally was sitting on a rock, reading the folded-up paper that Beth had read to them that morning. Somehow she had dropped it while she was searching for arrowheads.

  “You know what else is fake?” he said. “The Shanatee Indians.”

  Beth jumped up and tried to grab the paper, but Wally held it away from her.

  “It is not fake!” said Beth. “I printed it right off the encyclopedia on the computer.”

  “Some encyclopedia!” said Wally. “It misspelled possession and epidemic.”

  Beth's face began to color. Everyone knew that the one thing Wally Hatford could do well was spell. “And the Shanatee Indians, if there were Indians,” Wally continued, “wouldn't have called it Knob Hill. What kind of an Indian name is that?”

  There was nothing for Beth and Eddie and Caroline to do but laugh.

  “So, okay, we're even. You fell for it, didn't you—the shadows and everything? We had you scared half out of your shorts,” Eddie said.

  “That's part of the story Beth submitted to the short story contest at the library,” Caroline told the boys. “She's good, isn't she? If she wins, she'll get it published in the newspaper.”

  “So you just made the whole thing up?” Wally asked.

  “Totally,” said Beth.

  “There weren't any Shanatee Indians?” asked Peter.

  “Nope.”

  “And all that stuff about shadows is nonsense?” asked Josh.

  “Completely,” said Eddie. “We had you guys hornswoggled, but good!”

  Seven

  Center Stage

  For many days, the Hatfords and the Malloys didn't see much of each other. It was almost too hot to go outside. Eddie's baseball games, which were keeping the girls there till the end of summer, almost fizzled because the players were so exhausted by the heat.

  People stayed in their air-conditioned houses or went to the movies or the pool. Beth spent her days at the library, working on her short fantasy story about the make-believe Shanatee Indians and helping to shelve books in her spare time. Whenever the girls were home, there was packing to do, and slowly the drawers and closets were emptying as more and more boxes piled up in the living room, ready for the movers. It was depressing, Caroline thought.

  Twice she had crept into the elementary school when only the custodian was around and had gone into the empty auditorium and up onstage, where she recited, very softly but with the most dramatic gestures she could think of, the scene for a play or a story of her own.

  What she had to do before she left Buckman, she told herself, was recite the poem “The Raven” from the stage. The whole thing. A few weeks earlier, she had done an Internet search for her name, Caroline Lenore Malloy, wondering if anyone, anywhere, might know of her—if a newspaper might have picked up the story of her being carried down the Buckman River, for example, the day she fell in. With trembling fingers she had typed her name, and she had got thirty-four pages of references. The only problem was that none of them said Caroline Lenore Malloy. They only said Caroline or Lenore or Malloy. But one of those hits was “The Raven,” a poem by Edgar Allan Poe with the name Lenore in it: “… sorrow for the lost Lenore. ”

  Lenore was not a common name. In fact, Caroline had never heard of a single other person with that name. It was this that made her decide she simply had to memorize that poem, and once she had memorized it, she had to recite it somewhere onstage.

  When she found the poem at the library, however, she was discouraged by how long it was. So far she had only memorized the first two stanzas, but she was working on it.

  She had to be careful when she slipped into the school. It wasn't allowed, for one thing. None of the students were allowed inside the building until

  September. Once in a while, she knew, the principal came by, but usually only the custodian was there working—tightening door handles, painting a wall, repairing a desk, changing lightbulbs, getting the old school ready for another year of classes in the fall. Classes without Caroline.

  Caroline would sit in a swing or climb on the monkey bars on the playground until she was sure the custodian was working in another part of the building, far from the auditorium. Then she would slip through the unlocked side door, creep down the hall to the auditorium, and enter the cool darkness of that wonderful room.

  Now, on this particular morning so close to moving day, Caroline knew she was going onstage in Buckman for the very last time. She walked down the long sloping aisle to the foot of the stage and climbed the four steps at one side that led behind the curtain.

  She stood looking upward, entranced by the various ropes and pulleys. Everything looked very old and very used, and she could hardly bear the thought that the next time the big velvet curtain was opened and closed, or the backdrop of a meadow was lowered, she would not be here with the spotlight shining on her.

  No matter. This was Caroline's day, and slowly, with style and grace, she moved to center stage. In a soft voice, she addressed the empty seats in front of her:

  “I would like to recite a little bit of ‘The Raven,’ by Edgar Allan Poe,” she said, clasping her hands in front of her, her voice taking on a note of mystery and terror.

  �
�Once upon a midnight dreary,

  while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume

  of forgotten lore …”

  Caroline was good at memorizing. She was precocious, of course, so she could remember a lot, but things like the multiplication table were lowest on her priority list, while poetry (especially dramatic, sad, and tragic poetry—in particular, poems with her name in them) was number one.

  “While I nodded, nearly napping,

  suddenly there came a tapping, As of someone gently rapping, rapping

  at my chamber door.

  ‘ ’Tis some visitor,' I muttered, ‘tapping

  at my chamber door—

  Only this and nothing more.’”

  As Caroline went on, her words echoed in the empty auditorium, and—inspired by her own inflections—she let her voice soar:

  “Ah, distinctly I remember it was in

  the bleak December,

  And each separate dying ember wrought

  its ghost upon the floor. ”

  And now came the part with her name in it—the name of the beautiful girl, Lenore, whom Poe was writing about, who had died young and would be in his heart forever. At that moment, however, Caroline saw the custodian start to pass the auditorium door, then stop.

  She had an audience! Someone was listening to her! Caroline knew that at any moment he would ask what she was doing here, how she had got into the school, and he would demand that she leave at once. So she had to make good use of the time. At her middle name, Lenore, she decided, she would fall into a dead faint there onstage. She would expire right in front of her audience—an audience of one—and would pull the curtain closed at the same time. A finer, more dramatic finish she could not imagine.

  “Eagerly I wished the morrow;

  vainly I had sought to borrow

  From my books surcease of sorrow

  —sorrow for the lost Lenore …”

  Caroline's eyes began to close as her hand grabbed for the rope to pull the curtain.

  “For … the rare … and radiant maiden …

  whom the angels name … Lenore …”

  She touched the rope, then grasped it with both hands and pulled with all her strength as she let her knees collapse….

  “Nameless here for evermore!”

  Wham!

  The curtain didn't budge, but the large painted canvas backdrop of a meadow came crashing down on Caroline. She was pinned to the floor with her legs and one arm caught beneath the backdrop. Ouch!

  She could hear running footsteps coming down the aisle.

  “Hey!” the custodian was calling. “Hey! Are you all right?”

  Caroline closed her eyes.

  The footsteps were coming up the side steps now. Then they were crossing the stage.

  “What the heck?” the custodian was saying. “What are you doing in here?”

  Caroline's lips moved. “Darkness there and nothing more,” she whispered.

  “What?” said the custodian, quickly pulling on the rope that lifted the canvas.

  “ 'Tis the wind and nothing more,” said Caroline.

  “Didn't you go to school here last year?” the custodian asked, studying her closely as the scenery rose in the air.

  And Caroline answered, “Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore.’”

  Eight

  Emergency

  Wally was sitting on the roof of his house when he heard the siren. Josh had taken Peter to Jake and Eddie's summer baseball game, but Wally said that if he was going to be roasted alive, he'd do it where there was a little breeze, thank you.

  Besides, shade from the beech tree fell on the widow's walk—the small fenced-in patch of roof with the trapdoor in the middle that led down to the attic. It was supposedly the place where the wives of sea captains stood, looking out to the ocean for any sight of their long-lost husbands. Except that there was no ocean in Buckman. Only the river, not more than three feet deep in most places.

  Wally had been standing perfectly still, trying to see if he could detect the direction of the wind. Actually, it was so hot and still and humid that he couldn't feel any wind at all. It must be a hundred and ten degrees up here, he thought, and he wondered if he could fry an egg on the shingles.

  Then he heard the ambulance coming down College Avenue, and he saw it turning in, farther on, at the school.

  What could have happened at the school? Wally asked himself. Nobody was there! It was vacation. Maybe the custodian had fallen off a ladder or something. Wally quickly crawled through the trapdoor and climbed down the ladder to the attic floor, then the stairs to the second floor, then the stairs all the way down to the first.

  He jumped onto his bike and was halfway up the street toward the school when he saw the ambulance pulling out of the school driveway and heading for the hospital.

  Wally pedaled as fast as he could, forgetting the heat. At last he would have something exciting to tell the family at dinner. Nobody else seemed interested in Wally's observations on mockingbirds or wind direction, but he knew he could capture the twins' attention, at least, if he could say he had chased an ambulance all the way to the hospital.

  It wasn't far, and when Wally got there, he could see the two attendants wheeling somebody in on a stretcher.

  Wally left his bike by the door and ran inside. The attendants were heading toward a glass door farther on. Wally raced after them and found Caroline

  Malloy on the stretcher with her hands crossed over her chest.

  “Caroline!” Wally gasped.

  “Wally!” she said weakly, sounding as though she might cry.

  But before they could say any more, the glass door closed in his face. All he could think was that maybe there had been an explosion at the school and that Mad Bomber Bill had got Caroline and it was all Wally's fault for not showing that shopping list with Dynamite on it to the police.

  Wally sat down on a chair in the hallway. He twisted and turned and tried to see through the glass door. He untied both shoelaces and retied them. He pulled his knees up to his chest and stretched his T-shirt over them, then dropped his feet to the floor again. He listened to the names of doctors being called over the hall speaker and wondered if any were hurrying down to take care of Caroline.

  At last a nurse came through the glass door. Wally leaped up.

  “What happened?” he asked the nurse.

  She stopped. “To whom?”

  “Caroline Malloy! I saw them bring her in!” said Wally miserably.

  “Is she a friend of yours?” asked the nurse.

  “Yes,” said Wally. “It … it wasn't dynamite, was it?”

  “Dynamite?” the nurse said. “Of course not! Something fell on her at the school, and we don't get any answer at her house. Could you contact her parents for us?”

  Something fell on her? Wally's feet felt as though they were stuck to the floor. He couldn't move! Caroline was dying and he had to go tell her mother?

  Hi, Mrs. Malloy. I just came to tell you that Caroline is dying.

  Hello, Mrs. Malloy. Your youngest daughter is dead.

  Good afternoon, Mrs. Malloy. Well, it's not a good afternoon for you, anyway. In fact, it's probably the most awful afternoon of your life, because something fell on Caroline at the school and I'm here to deliver the sad news that your youngest daughter is no more. Passed on. Deader than a doornail.

  No, this wouldn't do at all.

  The nurse was looking at him strangely. “Would you possibly know where her parents are?”

  Wally figured that Beth had gone to the baseball game to watch Eddie play, and Mrs. Malloy was probably off doing errands or something.

  “I'll see if I can find her mom,” Wally said.

  “Tell her that Caroline wasn't seriously hurt, but school policy is to call an ambulance if someone has an accident on the premises. We'll probably take her up to X-ray, but we can't let her go home until a parent gets here.”

  So she wasn't dying!

>   Wally got back on his bike and headed for the road bridge leading to Island Avenue.

  As he crossed the bridge, he saw Mrs. Malloy's car ahead of him, just turning into the driveway of the Malloy house. Wally rode up behind her.

  “Hello, Wally,” Mrs. Malloy called, getting out of her car and pulling two empty boxes from the backseat. “How are you?”

  “I'm fine, but Caroline's not,” said Wally. “Something fell on her at the school and she's at the hospital.”

  “What?” cried Mrs. Malloy, dropping the boxes.

  “She's okay, I think. But the nurse said for me to come and get you.”

  “What happened? Why was she at the school?” cried Caroline's mother.

  “I don't know; I'm only the messenger,” said Wally miserably.

  Mrs. Malloy jumped back into the car and turned around so fast that she ran over one of the boxes. Soon the car was out of sight.

  Wally rode down the hill to the swinging bridge and walked his bike across. Two more days and the Malloys would be gone. If he could just lie low for two more days—forty-eight hours—he could stop worrying that some terrible thing would happen and that he would be stuck with the Malloys forever.

  Stranger things had happened. Suppose Mr. Malloy died of heatstroke in Ohio and Mrs. Malloy put the girls in the car to go home for the funeral and she was so upset that the car went off the bridge and the only person who survived was Caroline. And suppose his own mother said, “Poor Caroline! She has no one to take her in. We'll have to adopt her, and she can be your little sister, Wally. She'll be moving into your room and you can bunk with Peter.”

  Wally felt sort of sick. What if Caroline was hurt worse than the nurse thought? What if the X-rays showed that a broken bone had punctured her heart? What if she died here in Buckman and the Hatfords went to the funeral, and, because Wally had been in her class, he had to stand up in the front of the church and say nice things about her? What if he had to lie and say she was a true and loyal friend and her death left a hole in his heart forever?