Who Won the War? Read online

  The girls went straight up to their room after breakfast while Mrs. Malloy straightened the kitchen and read over Mrs. Hatford's notes about what there was for lunch and what they might prepare for dinner. The problem with being a grown-up, Caroline decided, was that you always had to think about food if you were the cook. No sooner was breakfast over than you had to start planning lunch. No sooner was lunch over than you had to think about dinner. She hoped that when she became an actress on Broadway, she would be rich enough to eat in hotels for the rest of her life.

  “They tricked us, all right,” said Eddie. “I'll bet that after we went down to breakfast, Wally put our underwear back.”

  “Obviously,” said Beth.

  The sun was shining through the windows, and it was getting warmer by the minute. The girls didn't want to stay up in the bedroom all day.

  “Ring!” Eddie commanded the downstairs phone. “Please ring and say we can go home.”

  But the phone did not ring, and as the day grew hotter still, the sounds of traffic increased. More and more cars were coming to Buckman for the college anniversary.

  “They're even parking way back here!” said Beth, watching the steady stream. “I'll bet you can't get near the college!”

  “Hey,” said Eddie. “Look what the Stupids are doing!”

  Caroline went over and looked out the window at the Hatford boys on the sidewalk. She couldn't tell what they were doing, but they didn't look stupid. “Why do you have to call them that?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Beth. “It's boring, Eddie, the way you're always tearing them down.”

  Eddie stared at them. “I can't believe you two! The Hatfords are our mortal enemies. Why are you sticking up for them?”

  “We're going to miss them and you know it,” said Beth. “Couldn't we just for one day—one hour—one minute—act like we're friends?”

  “With Jake? Are you kidding?” said Eddie.

  “Anyway,” said Beth, “what are they doing?”

  The girls watched some more. Josh was unfolding the legs of a card table, and Peter was setting out paper cups.

  “They must be setting up a lemonade stand,” said Caroline. “That's got to be it.”

  But Wally and Jake appeared to be getting ready to do something else, and the only thing for the girls to do was go outside and find out what.

  Fourteen

  Eggs-actly!

  Wally felt on top of the world. After breakfast, when the boys went back to his room, he pointed to their underwear, piled in the corner.

  “Good show, Wally!” Jake said, slapping him on the back.

  “Nice going!” said Josh. “ That's using your head!”

  “But where did you find it?” asked Jake.

  “The closet,” said Wally. “They'd just thrown them there on the floor.”

  “What dorks!” said Jake, even though the underwear in question was now in a heap on Wally's floor. “Man, will I ever be glad when they're gone.”

  “Oh, you will not,” said Josh. “When did we ever have this much fun with the Bensons?”

  “Plenty of times,” said Jake. “When the Bensons come back, I'll forget the Malloys even existed.”

  “Boy, it's hot today!” said Wally, staggering about the bedroom a bit. “It's so hot, I'm going to try to fry an egg on the sidewalk.”

  He could not believe he had said that. Most of the time, when Wally said his ideas out loud, it only made his brothers tease him. But this time he had said it with such conviction that he had made it sound like a really good idea. But what else was there to do on a day when the temperature was supposed to reach a hundred and four?

  Jake called the hardware store and talked to their mother. She said they could use the bag of lemons in the fridge if there was enough sugar in the pantry to make lemonade. There was, so Jake and Wally set to work squeezing lemons, and Josh made two signs. One read:

  The other read:

  Even Peter knew the risk in that.

  “What if a dozen people want to see us fry an egg on the sidewalk and we use up a dozen eggs and it still doesn't work?” he asked.

  “I don't know,” said Wally. “I'll think of something.” He was beginning to sound like his brothers! So what's the worst that can happen? he asked himself. Answer: he'd have to use his own money to buy his mom a dozen eggs. He could live with that.

  They were putting up the signs when the girls came out on the porch.

  “What's up?” called Beth.

  “Going into business,” said Wally.

  “Lemonade, I'll bet,” said Caroline.

  “You got it,” said Josh. “With all these people coming into Buckman on the hottest week in history and parking all the way down here, we could make a mint!”

  But Eddie was looking at the other sign taped to a telephone pole near the sidewalk.

  “You're actually going to try this?” she asked. “You're sure going to waste a lot of eggs.”

  “We'll see,” said Wally.

  When everything was ready, the seven kids sat on the front steps in the shade and hoped for the temperature to climb. Hot as it was, with the noon sun beating down heavily on the cement sidewalk, they wanted it hotter still. By one o'clock, Wally either saw or imagined he saw shimmering waves rise up from the hot concrete.

  The morning events at the college must have been over, and people began streaming back toward their cars, ready to go somewhere for lunch.

  A few bought lemonade, but almost everyone wanted to see Wally fry an egg on the sidewalk. The question was, should he charge every person who stopped to look, or only the person who did the asking first and paid the dollar? There was a lot to think about when you went into business for yourself.

  Jake dashed inside the house and came out with his baseball cap, using it as a collection plate for dollar bills.

  “Who wants to see?” he asked, passing the cap around. “Who wants to pay a dollar to see us fry an egg on the sidewalk?”

  “I'll pay,” a man said, smiling, “but make it snappy, because I'm about ready to fry here myself.”

  Jake managed to collect four dollars. The others just stood back, waiting, and Wally knew he had to act fast.

  He opened the egg carton. He took out one big egg. Then he went to the hottest spot he could find on the sidewalk—a place where the sun had been beaming down all morning without shade. Squatting down with a flourish, Wally cracked the egg gently on the edge of the sidewalk, then held it up a few inches, broke the shell open, and let the yolk and the white fall out. Splat!

  At first it appeared that nothing was happening. There certainly was no sizzle of fat or scent of bacon, the way there was when their mother cooked breakfast. Jake and Josh and Peter watched uneasily. The girls were grinning.

  Then, slowly, the edges of the egg white began turning whiter. People began to smile. More people gathered to see what everyone was looking at. A couple more put dollar bills into the baseball cap.

  “Hey! Look at that! Some kid's frying an egg on the sidewalk!” someone called out behind Wally.

  “Well, I wouldn't call it fried, exactly, but I might call it poached,” said a woman in a sundress.

  A photographer who had been taking pictures at the college walked over. He edged his way through the crowd, saw the egg on the concrete, and immediately took a picture of Wally squatting over the cooking egg.

  “Hey, I'll take mine sunny-side up,” said a man, laughing.

  “How about over easy?” said another.

  “Do it, Wally!” said Peter. “Let's take orders and serve breakfast!”

  People laughed. Some began turning away to find their cars, while still others came over to see what was going on. Cars were not only parked on the Hatfords' side of the street but all along the riverbank as well.

  Wally took the kitchen spatula and tried to slip it under the egg. Part of the egg came up, but the rest didn't, and it slipped back onto the hot sidewalk, the yolk breaking.

  “Here, let
me do it!” said Jake, grabbing the spatula out of Wally's hand. “Who wants to try one? Who wants one over easy?” he called out. But Josh had the egg carton, and Jake tried to get it out of his hand. Suddenly splat, splat, splat!

  The carton tipped over, out of their hands, and one after another the eggs fell on the hot cement.

  “Scrambled eggs!” yelled Peter, and everyone laughed some more.

  “Oh, boy, what a mess,” one woman said as she turned to leave. “Good luck, guys.”

  “Look what you've done!” Jake yelled at Josh.

  “You did it, not me!” said Josh.

  Peter chortled, “Scrambled eggs! Come and get your hot scrambled eggs!”

  “Shut up, Peter,” said Jake.

  Wally stood staring at the mess on the sidewalk. All the yolks had lost their shiny look and were beginning to turn dry. All the transparent whites of the eggs were turning opaque.

  Now it was the girls, sitting on the steps, their mouths as straight as rulers, who were laughing with their eyes.

  Mrs. Malloy came out on the porch to see what all the people were looking at. “What in the world … ?” she said. “Boys, did your mother say you could do that?”

  Sure, thought Wally. She said, “Take the eggs and go make a mess.”

  “It's okay,” said Josh. “We're cleaning it up.”

  “I certainly hope so,” Mrs. Malloy said, and went back inside.

  What Wally discovered was that eggs cooked without any grease stuck to the cement like paste. Digging as hard as he could with the spatula, he only got bits and pieces off. The cement had absorbed egg white like a sponge.

  The twins finally brought out a bucket of soapy water and a brush and scrubbed down the sidewalk on their hands and knees. Wally poured himself a glass of lemonade and went up to drink it in the shade of the porch. Nothing could ruin his day! The big underwear switcheroo was about the best thing he'd done all summer, and the memory of that would last him a long time!

  Fifteen

  Seen!

  The heat made everyone crabby. The next morning, Beth and Eddie both took their showers early, and there was no hot water left when Mr. Hatford rose to shower before work. The girls and their mother heard him grumbling in the hall.

  “We are really getting in the way!” Mrs. Malloy said apologetically in the kitchen later.

  “Now, Jean, you'd take us in too, and you know it,” Mrs. Hatford assured her.

  But afterward, as she was making the beds upstairs, Caroline's mother said, “I'd like to think I would be that neighborly if the Hatfords' power went out, but I'm afraid I'd think twice before I took in those four boys.”

  Jake and Eddie got into an argument. Mr. and Mrs. Hatford were at work, and Mrs. Malloy had put chicken salad and salami in the fridge for lunch. However, Eddie took the last of the cheese, and this ticked Jake off.

  “Hey, why didn't you take all the salami, too, while you were at it?” he groused.

  “There were only two slices left,” Eddie said.

  “Yeah, one for you and one for somebody else,” Jake told her. “Not two for you.”

  “Oh, shove it!” said Eddie. “You want some cheese?” She lifted the top piece of bread and yanked at a slice with a bite taken out of it. “Here's some cheese!” And she tossed it onto his plate.

  “I don't want any cheese you've slobbered on,” said Jake, throwing it back. It landed on the floor.

  “Ewwww!” said Caroline.

  “Now no one will want it!” Eddie snapped.

  “Yeah. Serves you right for being a pig in the first place!” said Jake.

  “Will you two stop arguing?” said Beth.

  “Yeah, why don't you just go off and duke it out?” said Josh.

  “Ha! Eddie wouldn't have a chance,” said Jake.

  “Go to the old coal mine!” Josh said, taunting. “Give you guys something to do besides fight.” He stopped then. Caroline could tell he wished he'd never said it.

  “I'm up for it!” said Jake. “ I'll go!”

  Caroline closed her eyes.

  “Me too,” said Eddie. She flashed a warning look at Beth and Caroline. “And don't tell Mom!” she added.

  Caroline and Beth looked at each other. They saw the boys exchange nervous glances.

  “So when are we going?” asked Jake.

  “How about right now?” said Eddie.

  “We shouldn't be dooo-ing this!” Peter sang.

  “Just keep your mouth shut,” said Jake. “Are we all in this together or what?”

  “I'll go up there with you, but I'm not going in,” said Wally.

  “Okay by me,” said Jake.

  They all pulled on their sneakers.

  “We're going out for a while, Mom,” Eddie called up the stairs to her mother, who was making beds.

  “Put on sunscreen if you're going to be out for long,” Mrs. Malloy called back. “Will Peter be going with you?”

  “Yes, we're taking him,” called Wally.

  They stuck to the trees when they could, to escape the broiling sun. Eddie and Jake led the way, their eyes steely, jaws clenched, each eager to show the other that they weren't afraid. Nobody said much as they trudged along.

  When the low mountain loomed up at last, all Caroline could see was what appeared to be the entrance to a tunnel in its side.

  “Is that it?” she asked Jake.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Was it really a coal mine?” asked Beth.

  “I don't know,” said Josh. “Maybe it was a silver mine or lead or something. It's been closed for as long as I can remember.”

  “If Dad ever finds out we were up here …,” said Josh.

  “So don't tell him! Nobody's going to get hurt. We're not going to do anything stupid,” said Jake.

  “Just coming up here was stupid,” said Wally.

  “So go home, then!” Jake growled, but nobody turned back.

  There was a tall fence with barbed wire at the top surrounding the entrance to the mine, and every twenty feet or so, there was a NO TRESPASSING sign. But, as the kids soon discovered, the fence was in poor repair, and it did not take them long to see that if they jiggled and shoved at the gate, they could make the opening just wide enough for a person to slip through, providing that that person was a kid who held his breath and turned sideways.

  “Listen, be careful,” Beth warned as Eddie slipped through.

  “Heck, nothing to it!” said Jake, going in after her.

  The others watched uneasily from outside, holding on to the fence.

  At first it appeared that Eddie and Jake were going to walk ten feet apart and not even speak to each other. But as they got closer to the tunnel, Caroline could see that they were at least talking. Now they were four feet apart … still talking. And finally they took a few steps together toward the tunnel entrance.

  “Oh, man!” breathed Wally. “We don't even know what's in there.”

  “They'd better not fall in!” Peter said worriedly, his voice a little shaky. “We told Dad we wouldn't go in there, not ever, ever, ever.”

  “What if they go inside and it caves in on them?” said Caroline.

  “That's why we're not supposed to go in,” said Josh.

  Jake and Eddie appeared to be thinking the same thing, because even after they reached the tunnel entrance, they both looked up and around, hesitant, it seemed, to go any farther.

  Eddie turned to the others, by the fence, and waved.

  Was this a final goodbye? Caroline wondered. Would this be the last memory she'd have of her sister? The weak smile, the wave from the entrance to the mountain, which at any moment could come roaring down onto her head?

  Jake and Eddie started through the entrance, and then they disappeared.

  Suddenly there was a shout. A yell. Popping up from brush at the side of the mountain was a big burly man in a dirty white T-shirt.

  Jake and Eddie must not have got three feet inside before they came tearing out of the tunn
el and almost collided with him. For a moment the man had Jake by the T-shirt, but Jake broke loose and he and Eddie ran pell-mell back down toward the gate.

  “Get out!” the man yelled hoarsely. “Get out! You stay outta there. You get out of here and don't you never come back!”

  He was twice their size, but Eddie and Jake were faster. On they ran, stumbling and tripping, the man in pursuit, until they reached the gate, white-faced and panting, and slipped through the opening. All the Hatfords and Malloys ran like the wind, the man bellowing at them from the other side of the fence.

  “I'll find you out; don't think I won't!” he shouted.

  Caroline tripped and fell, but Beth yanked her up, and now they were far enough down the mountain that they could stop and catch their breath.

  “Thatwas close!” Eddie panted, holding her sides.

  “Who do you suppose he was?” gasped Jake. “He just came out of nowhere!”

  “He didn't have a uniform or anything,” said Wally. “He didn't look like a guard.”

  “He looked half crazy to me,” said Beth.

  “Old Man of the Mountain!” said Josh. “Maybe he lives in there, like a troll or something.”

  “What do you think he would have done if he'd caught us?” Jake asked Eddie, still breathless.

  “Arrested us, probably,” said Eddie. “He didn't have a gun, did he?”

  “I don't think so,” Wally said.

  “Should we sneak back up and try to figure out who he is?” Eddie asked.

  “No!” all the others yelled. “Don't be crazy! We don't want him to know who we are either.”

  “Oh, man!” Wally said again. “If Dad ever found out …”

  “If Mom knew I went inside …,” said Eddie.

  As they made their way back across the field leading to the woods, an old rusty pickup truck came rolling down the overgrown path from the coal mine, turned away from the kids, who had ducked down in the tall grass, and headed for the road beyond.

  “Was that him?” whispered Josh.

  “I think so,” said Jake. “I didn't get a really good look.”