The Boys Start the War Read online

  “Very,” agreed Eddie.

  At school that morning Caroline did not cross the auditorium to get to the rest room as she had been doing once a day since she had discovered the new route. The sixth-graders were in the auditorium watching a film, so it was not till lunchtime that, when Caroline peeked, it was dark and empty once again.

  She did not have any trouble finding opportunities to step up on the stage. She could count on being excused from class at least once a day to go to the rest room. Sometimes she came in the building at recess to get a drink, and made an auditorium detour going back out again. If all else failed, she hurriedly ate her lunch and then—when she took her milk carton to the trash—silently walked on out the door into the hall, slipped into the auditorium, and, when she was finished, out the other side and onto the playground.

  She’d gotten into the habit of taking a book in with her, any book at all, so she could practice reading a few paragraphs, with expression, from the stage. She could not talk nearly as loud as she would have liked, of course, because someone outside might hear, so she stage-whispered the paragraphs, always choosing a selection where at least two different people were speaking, to give her practice reading several parts.

  The day before, she had read a selection from Charlotte’s Web, where the spider confessed to eating other insects:

  “… I have to live, don’t I?”

  “Why, yes, of course.” said Wilbur. “Do they taste good?”

  “Delicious. Of course, I don’t really eat them. I drink them—drink their blood. I love blood,” said Charlotte, and her pleasant, thin voice grew even thinner and more pleasant.

  Caroline had loved playing the part of Charlotte, and had practiced hard to make her voice “thin and pleasant.” Pleasant was easy enough to do, but she’d had to work some to make it sound thin. The day before that she had read from Alice in Wonderland:

  “But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.

  “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat, “we’re all mad here, I’m mad. You’re mad.”

  “How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.

  “You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

  When she had found that passage in the book, she had thought all morning about how she should read the part of the Cheshire Cat. But today she had chosen a page from The Wind in the Willows, because it said that Mole spoke “in anguish of heart.” All during arithmetic that morning she had wondered what sort of an expression “anguish of heart” would be. Something very dramatic, she was sure—a mixture of fear and sorrow, perhaps.

  So when she went to throw out her milk carton in the trash after eating, she sneaked across the hall to the auditorium and, with the book tucked under her shirt, slipped up onstage, out from behind the thick velvet curtain, and directly to the center of the platform.

  This was a conversation between Ratty and Mole, Caroline decided that she would look to the left when she was reading the part of Mole, and to the right when she was reading Ratty. She cleared her throat and began:

  The call was clear, the summons was plain. He must obey it instantly, and go. “Ratty!” he called, full of joyful excitement, “hold on! Come back! I want you quick!”

  “Oh, come along, Mole, do!” replied the Rat cheerfully, still plodding along.

  “Please stop, Ratty!” pleaded the poor Mole, in anguish of heart. “You don’t understand! It’s my home, my old home! I’ve just come across the smell of it, and it’s close by here, really quite close. And I must go to it, I must, I must! Oh, come back, Ratty! Please, please come back!”

  Caroline stiffled a sob.

  There was a titter in the audience.

  The audience?

  Caroline’s hand dropped, the book in it, and she stared hard into the darkness of the auditorium.

  The laughter came again, louder this time, and quickly became a loud guffaw.

  The next thing Caroline knew, Wally and some of the other fourth-grade boys were charging down the aisle and out the side door, yelling:

  “Oh, please come back!”

  “I must go, I must!”

  And suddenly there was Miss Applebaum in the doorway, peering into the auditorium.

  “Caroline?” she said.

  Caroline walked stiffly offstage.

  “What’s going on in here?” the teacher asked. “You’re supposed to be out on the playground.”

  “I was just leaving,” Caroline said, and without looking in a mirror, she knew that her cheeks—her whole face, in fact—was flaming.

  Out on the grass Wally and the other boys were doubled over. They reeled in laughter, fell against each other, and one boy lay on his back, screaming, “The smell of it! You don’t understand! Oh, come back, Ratty! Please, please do!”

  Caroline did not tell her sisters what had happened in the auditorium. It was too embarrassing. They hadn’t even known she was sneaking into the auditorium at all. She could think of nothing else the rest of the day, and wondered how long the boys had been there. It was Wally, she was sure, who had led them all there, but had they been spying on her at other times as well?

  Had he been there the day she’d played tearful Becky Thatcher, lost in the cave with Tom Sawyer, and crying, Tom, Tom, we’re lost! we’re lost!

  What she decided was that she would pay Wally back for this humiliation. This was a hundred times worse than stealing Mr. Hatford’s shorts. Day in, day out, noontime, nighttime, she didn’t care, somehow, someway, she would catch him doing something as embarrassing as being caught onstage had been for her.

  For the next few days Caroline said nothing at all to Wally Hatford, but she scarcely took her eyes off him. She followed him at a distance on the playground at recess. She stared when he went to the front of the room to put a problem on the blackboard. She watched from the next table when he ate his lunch. One false move from Wally Hatford, and she’d never let him forget it.

  Just let her catch him with something yucky between his teeth. Just let her catch him with his pants unzipped. Let her catch him drawing something crazy in his notebook. Wally Hatford, she recited every morning, your time will come.

  Sunday was a clear day, warm and dry, and on days like this, the Hatford boys usually played in their backyard after church, once their clothes were changed. Walking along the river, Caroline and her sisters had often seen them whooping it up, playing kickball or throwing horseshoes.

  Mr. and Mrs. Malloy had left early that morning for the funeral of a friend back in Ohio, and wouldn’t be home until night. Caroline realized that if she could hide herself somewhere near the Hatfords’ house, she could spy on Wally all day without being missed. She told her sisters this much: “Wally embarrassed me awful in school on Friday, and I’m going to get back at him no matter what.”

  Beth was sprawled in a chair on the lawn reading The Shadow of the Werewolf. “Don’t start anything till I finish this book.” she said.

  “Well, I’m taking lunch with me, and I may not be home for a long time,” Caroline said. “I just wanted you to know.”

  “What have you got in the sack?”

  “Marshmallows and cheese crackers.”

  “Toss me a marshmallow?” Beth said, holding out her hands, then popped it in her mouth and returned to her book.

  Caroline set out just before the Hatfords were due home from church. She remembered having seen a shed in the back of their house whan she had snatched Mr. Hatford’s underwear from the line. This, she decided, was where she would hide, and had no trouble getting the door open and closing it after her.

  Once inside, she wished she’d brought a pillow or something, because the shed was dusty, with a bare earth floor, and crammed with hoes and shovels, lawn mower and sprinkler.

  There was, however, a narrow space between the edge of the door where the hinges were and the rest of the shed, and Caroline found that by sitting on an old toolbox and putting her eye to the crack, she could see almost
the entire yard.

  The Hatfords’ Chevy was just pulling into the driveway, and the boys got out and walked single-file to the house. They all looked stiff and weird in their Sunday shirts and ties, and Caroline smiled as she dug into her sack of cheese crackers, and settled herself more comfortably on the toolbox.

  She had expected it would be an hour at least before the boys ate dinner and came out in the yard, but was surprised when Mr. and Mrs. Hatford stepped out instead, dressed in old clothes, and carrying some empty baskets.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come to the orchard with us?” Mother said, turning to Wally and Josh in the doorway.

  “No way!” Josh told her. “You pick the apples and we’ll eat ’em.”

  “We’ll pick the apples, and you boys are going to help peel them.” Mrs. Hatford replied. “Two bushels of apples would take me two days, but with six of us working, I figure we could do it in a couple of hours.”

  “Oh, Mom, not that!” Wally complained.

  “You won’t groan when you see my apple pies,” his mother said, getting in the car. “Don’t forget your sandwiches, now. They’re on the counter.” And the car backed down the drive.

  Caroline watched as Jake, Josh, Wally, and Peter came out the back door and sat on the steps to eat their sandwiches. They talked about how far you could shoot with a BB gun, and which decayed first after you died, your teeth or your bones.

  They were too far away for Caroline to catch every word, but she wished the boys would tell a story Wally—something embarrassing he had done. She’d tell it around at school, and Wally would wonder how she knew.

  When the boys had finished eating, Josh brought out a sketchbook of some kind, and seemed to be drawing funny pictures in it, because the boys were all laughing.

  “That’s her, all right!” she heard Wally hoot. “That’s just how she looked up there onstage, holding her book out in front of her like that. Yeah, make the corners of her mouth turn down, Josh, like she’s about to bawl.”

  Caroline’s cheeks flamed a second time. Josh was drawing a picture of her! Wally must have told them all about listening to her up onstage.

  “Write what she’s saying, Josh,” Wally continued. “‘Oh, come back, Ratty! Please, please do!’” He mimicked her in a high voice, and the boys howled, Peter loudest of all.

  It was all Caroline could do to keep from bursting out of the toolshed right that minute and pounding Wally on the head. She wouldn’t be surprised if he had told it at the dinner table in front of his parents. Now the boys were looking at other pictures in the sketchbook, and from their hoots and laughter, Caroline could tell that Josh had sketched other pictures of her and her sisters as well.

  When the laughter died away at last, Wally came out into the yard with a small rubber ball and practiced catching by bouncing it against the shed.

  Blang! Blang! Blang! Caroline’s head began to pound. Each time the ball hit the metal shed it sounded like an explosion in a tin-can factory. On and on it went—at least twenty minutes. Caroline felt as though her head would split.

  Finally Wally stopped, and all four boys lay down on their backs in the grass.

  “What do you want to do?” Wally asked Josh.

  “I don’t know,” said Josh. “What do you want to do?”

  “Go to the school and shoot some baskets?” asked Jake.

  “Naw,” said Wally.

  “Bug the girls?” asked Josh.

  “Yeah!” said Peter, Jake, and Wally.

  Ha! thought Caroline.

  “We’d better wait awhile, they’re probably having Sunday dinner,” Josh told them.

  “Man!” said Jake. “I’ve thought of all kinds of stuff we could do to them at Halloween!”

  “Yeah?” Caroline heard Josh say. “Wait till it snows! Boy, will we ever get them then.”

  “You remember how we used to sneak out on New Year’s Eve with the Bensons, and Bill would blow his comet right under someone’s window at midnight? Wouldn’t old Caroline flip?” said Wally.

  “What about firecrackers?” said Peter. “We could put firecrackers in tin cans and set them on the Malloys’ porch.”

  “They haven’t even seen Smuggler’s Cove yet.”

  “We could throw Eddie’s dumb cap down the old coal mine, see if she’d crawl in after it. Bet she would too,” Jake said. “Remember when Tony Benson crawled in there and the rescue squad had to get him out?”

  “Wait till we get to junior high school. There are about a hundred things you can do to a girl’s locker. We could wait until Beth put her coat in some mortiing, and then fix it so she couldn’t get the lock open.” Josh’s voice.

  “Ha! Put Caroline in a locker and keep her there all weekend!”

  More laughter.

  Back in the toolshed Caroline smiled to herself. This was even better than she’d thought. Here she was, hearing all their plans! Wait till she told her sisters. They’d know everything the boys were going to do before they did it. No matter what the boys tried, the girls would be ready. This was far more fun than Ohio!

  “Wait till the town picnic next summer. Man, we’ll beat the girls at everything,” said Jake. “The relay race, the sack race, the three-legged race …”

  “… the skateboard contest …”

  “… the pie-eating contest …”

  “… volleyball.”

  There was a long silence then, and for a moment Caroline thought the boys might have gone inside. She put her eye to the crack again. They were still on the grass.

  “Unless …” Wally said, and Jake finished for him.

  “… they go back to Ohio.”

  “Yeah.” said Josh. “If the Bensons come back, it’s over.”

  More silence.

  “You know what I wish?” said Wally. “I hope the Bensons stay in Georgia long enough for us to do everything we’ve planned to do to the Malloys, and then come back.”

  “Yeah,” said Jake. “That would be perfect.”

  “A year and a half, maybe,” said Josh.

  “Right,” said Wally.

  “Let’s play horseshoes for a while,” Jake suggested. He got to his feet and started straight toward the shed.

  No! He was coming here! Caroline scrambled off the toolbox, grabbing her lunch sack, and tried to hide behind the lawn mower.

  The footsteps grew louder, then the sound of the hinges creaking as the door to the toolshed opened partway. Caroline saw Jake’s hand reach inside for the horseshoes on one shelf. She flattened herself against the back wall, but it was no use. Jake saw.

  “What …?” His eyes opened wide. “Hey, guys, look what we caught!” Jake grinned as he opened the door wider. The others came running.

  “It’s Caroline!” said Peter.

  “Spying on us!” cried Wally.

  And before Caroline could scramble back over the lawn mower and make her escape, Jake slammed the door shut.

  “Bring me the bicycle padlock, Wally!” he yelled. “We’ve got a hostage, and her sisters aren’t getting her back without a ransom!”

  Kidnapped!

  Wally and his brothers could not believe their good fortune! Caroline Malloy, trapped in the toolshed, and their parents away picking apples.

  “We got her! We got her!” Peter sang, dancing around the yard. And then he stopped. “What’s a hostage, Wally?”

  “A person you keep prisoner until somebody pays to get her back.” Wally told him. But then the enormity of what had happened began to sink in on him. How could this be? Only a few minutes ago he and his brothers were lying on their backs talking about Halloween and New Year’s, and suddenly Caroline Malloy was a prisoner in their toolshed!

  “Man, they aren’t going to believe what we’re going to make them say to get her back, are they, Jake?” Josh was saying. “What was it they wanted us to promise to get our flashlight back?”

  “I am honestly and truly sorry for the trouble I have caused, and … something about an obedient serv
ant of the realm.” said Wally.

  “They are going to crawl!” said Jake. “They are going to creep! They are going to beg! We’re going to rub their noses in the dirt before we give their sister back. You hear that Caroline?” he yelled.

  There was no answer from the toolshed.

  “Probably crying.” said Peter. He looked around a little worriedly.

  “You crying, Caroline?” asked Josh.

  “Hoo boy, can she cry! You ought to see her up there onstage! The tears just pour.” Wally put in.

  “Well, we didn’t make her go in the shed,” said Josh.

  “Right!” said Peter. “She went in there all by herself, didn’t she Wally?”

  “How are we going to get a note to her sisters, though, without her parents finding out?” Wally wondered. “What if her folks start looking for her?”

  “Then we’ve got to reach Beth and Eddie before they do. We’ll say something about how we found her on our property.” Jake decided.

  “Yeah! Trespassing!” said Wally, “That’s a crime, isn’t it?”

  “We could call the police!” Peter whooped.

  “Her sister will come and get her, you’ll see,” said Jake. “Come on. Let’s write the note.”

  The boys went over to the back steps and sat down Wally got a pencil and paper, and Jake dictated: “To whom it may concern ….”

  “‘Namely, Whomper and Weirdo,’” added Josh.

  “‘… Caroline the Crazie was found spying on our property, and is now being held prisoner in our toolshed.’”

  Wally wrote it down.

  “‘If you tell anybody,’” Jake continued, “‘we will tell your folks all the stuff you’ve done so far to us. If you want to see Caroline again, you’ve got to crawl over to our house on your hands and knees…’”

  “‘Lick our shoes …’” said Josh.

  “They’ll never do that.” said Wally, “not even for Caroline.”