Who Won the War? Read online

  “How do you suppose he got inside the fence?” asked Eddie.

  “Probably some back gate we don't know about,” said Jake. “I hope he didn't figure out who we were.”

  Caroline knew that if their mother found out they had gotten into trouble—as though having to stay at the Hatfords' wasn't trouble enough—there would be no end of scolding that night, squeezed as they were in the twins' bedroom.

  From the looks on the boys' faces—Josh's in particular—Caroline could tell that they were thinking the same thing about their father. He would probably say that maybe Eddie didn't know any better than to go into that old mine tunnel, but the boys certainly did, having lived their whole lives in Buckman.

  “What did you see in the tunnel?” Caroline asked finally, as they started back toward the house.

  “It was pretty dark,” said Jake.

  “Yeah. We think there was a pit or something farther on. It looked like maybe it was boarded up, but we could hardly see a foot in front of us,” Eddie told her.

  “And then we heard all that yelling,” said Jake. He looked around. “We're going to keep our mouths shut, right?” He was looking directly at Peter.

  Peter nodded. “If Dad asks me if we were at the old coal mine, I'll say, ‘What old coal mine?’ ”

  Jake rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Right.”

  Sixteen

  Old Rusty Truck

  Everyone was particularly well behaved at dinner that evening. Wally glanced around the table at the others. Jake and Josh, he knew, were hoping that the man at the mine had never seen them near their house and hadn't figured out who they were; hoping that the phone wouldn't ring, and that if it did, it wouldn't be the man telling their parents where they'd been. The girls, though, were probably hoping their dad would call from Ohio and say that they could come back home, that their power was on.

  They gathered on the porch after dinner, and for the first time, Jake didn't dive for the glider and try to keep the Malloys from sitting on it.

  “If nobody's reported us by now, then I don't think they're going to,” he said. “That guy doesn't even know who we are.”

  “Well, I'm not gonna tell that we went to the coal mine,” said Peter.

  “Don't even say coal mine!” Jake warned.

  “Then I won't even say that we went where we're not supposed to go, and besides, Ididn't go in,” said Peter.

  “Don't even say that !” Jake told him. “Talk about ice cream or something.”

  The grown-ups came out on the porch after dinner just to see if it was cooling off any. The Malloy girls got up so that the parents could have the glider and the rocker.

  “Doesn't seem like it's any cooler to me,” Mrs. Hatford said. “I get so tired of being in air-conditioning all the time, but when I think of those poor folks in Ohio …”

  “I sure wish I could carry some air-conditioning around with me on my deliveries,” said Mr. Hatford. “I wouldn't mind that at all.”

  Mrs. Malloy fanned herself with the newspaper. “George called this afternoon and said the power company predicts it will have power restored to everyone by the end of the week.”

  “End of the week!” cried Caroline.

  “He says it's an absolute mess. He had already stocked the refrigerator for our return, and now the milk has soured and everything has to be thrown out.”

  “Dry ice?” said Mr. Hatford.

  “The city was giving it away, but now they've run out. They're busing senior citizens who live in apartments to community centers to keep cool, and all the public pools have issued free passes. Everyone's miserable, he says.”

  “Let's just hope we keep our power down here,” said Mrs. Hatford. “Being in the mountains, West Virginia doesn't get as hot as Ohio generally, but this is as hot as I remember it ever being. How I wish this heat wave would break.”

  The next morning was even worse. When Wally woke, it was as though the sun had not set all night—as though it was just gathering energy to fry the whole state of West Virginia.

  Mrs. Malloy offered to make French toast and bacon, but no one wanted anything hot. The seven kids sat listlessly at the kitchen table, pushing their cereal around in their bowls. Arms stuck to sides, thighs stuck to chairs, bare feet stuck to the floor, and the air conditioner was cooling only half as well as usual, because the power company was having a brownout to save fuel.

  By noon, the heat outside had become almost unbearable. There was no breeze at all, and leaves hung lifelessly from the trees.

  “I'm so hot, I could ignite,” said Josh from the rocker.

  Wally lay on his stomach on the porch floor and thought about that. He wondered if all the food he had eaten the night before could ever get so hot inside him that there would be spontaneous combustion. If he would just go poof and flare up from inside.

  “I'm so hot, I could jump in the river with all my clothes on,” said Beth.

  “I dare you!” said Eddie.

  “Me too!” said Caroline, standing up and kicking off her sandals.

  And suddenly everyone was untying sneakers and leaving them in a pile on the porch. Jake jumped off the steps and led the way, and the seven kids swarmed down the bank below the swinging footbridge and sprawled belly first into the water.

  It was the only place to be on a day like this. Wally felt his T-shirt cling to his chest, his shorts grow heavy over his hips. He flopped onto his back and let the slow current carry him a little downstream before he swam back.

  Mrs. Malloy appeared at the top of the bank. “Who's watching Peter?” she called.

  “I am,” Josh answered. The rule was that nobody ever, ever went swimming without deciding first which twin—Jake or Josh—was lifeguarding Peter. Even though the water was scarcely waist deep in most places, except in the spring, that was the rule.

  “I hope you girls realize you have only one set of clothes left. We didn't think we would be staying here,” Mrs. Malloy said, laughing at the way they had jumped into the river wearing all but their shoes.

  “We're too hot to care, Mom,” Eddie called back.

  “I know what you mean,” Mrs. Malloy said. “I almost feel like jumping in myself.”

  When she went back into the house, Peter said, “I don't need anyone to watch me. I'll be in third grade this fall.”

  “Yeah? I'll be going to middle school and I'll hardly know anyone,” said Eddie, swimming alongside him.

  “Too bad you're not going into middle school here,” Jake said. “We'd keep you company.”

  “Sure, you and your bag of tricks!” said Eddie.

  “Hey!” said Wally, grabbing Josh's shoulder. “Look up there.”

  Going slowly along the road above was a rusty old pickup truck. The driver was looking down at the Hatfords and the Malloys splashing in the water.

  “It's him!” breathed Eddie. “The man at the mine!”

  “It's … it's like he's been looking for us!” said Wally.

  The truck moved more and more slowly, until finally it came to a complete stop. The door opened. The driver got out. Six heads, all but Peter's, dived beneath the water.

  Wally stayed under until he had no breath left. Gasping, he popped up to the surface, only to see the man standing up on the road beside his truck, arms folded across his chest. Under the water Wally went again.

  The second time he and his brothers emerged, along with the Malloy girls, the man was getting back into his truck. He drove slowly away. But his face was turned toward the river.

  “It was him!” said Caroline.

  “And now he can guess where we live!” said Wally.

  “Did he say anything to you, Peter, just now?” asked Jake.

  “Huh-uh,” said Peter.

  “Did you say anything?” asked Josh.

  Peter shook his head.

  “You just stared at each other?” asked Eddie.

  “We waved,” said Peter. “Then he got back in his truck.”

  They didn't feel much like
swimming anymore after that. They climbed back up the bank and stood wringing out their sopping wet clothes, then slogged their way across the road and up onto the Hatfords' porch.

  Mrs. Malloy was reading the morning paper in the living room.

  “Go change your clothes, and I'll wash the ones you were wearing,” she told them. “And when you come back down, there's something in the paper you ought to see.”

  Jake stared at Eddie. Josh stared at Beth. Wally stared at Caroline.

  But Peter trotted blissfully on upstairs, leaving wet footprints behind him.

  “We're in for it now,” Jake said when the boys were in Wally's room changing clothes, dropping their wet shorts and T-shirts on a towel on the floor. “I'll bet that guy reported us the other day—said he saw some kids at the mine. And now that he knows who we are, he's probably at the police station telling them where we live.”

  “What are you going to tell Dad when he finds out?” asked Wally. “He'll probably ground us for the rest of the summer.”

  “I don't know,” said Jake. “The truth, I guess. Every time we lie, it only makes things worse.”

  They could hear Peter singing to himself in the next room as he changed clothes, then the Malloy girls going downstairs. Finally Jake and Josh and Wally went down to see what was in the newspaper.

  “It's here on page three,” Mrs. Malloy said, smiling.

  And there it was—a picture of Wally Hatford frying an egg on the sidewalk.

  Seventeen

  Once Upon a Midnight Dreary …

  A breeze blew in that afternoon, and by five o'clock, the wind had picked up, and great rolling clouds came rushing from the west.

  As Mrs. Malloy and Mrs. Hatford set to work making dinner, the boys' mother said, “I certainly hope this is a break in the heat and doesn't just pass us by. Sometimes after a rain, things are just stickier than they were before.”

  “Here, Caroline,” Mrs. Malloy called. “You girls take this basket of corn out on the back porch and husk it so we can get it cooked before the power goes off.”

  “The power's going to go out here, too?” Caroline cried, a squeak in her voice.

  “You never can tell,” Mrs. Hatford said, turning over pieces of chicken that she was frying in the skillet.

  “This summer has been a real drain on the power companies, and sometimes we're without power for a while.”

  Caroline could tell by the look on Wally's face that he was almost as horrified by the thought as she was. The Hatfords and the Malloys' sharing a house and a bathroom when the power was on was bad enough. The Hatfords and the Malloys with no power at all was too awful to contemplate.

  Dinner went by without incident, however. The crunchy chicken and the mashed potatoes and gravy were devoured. The green beans and the sliced tomatoes and the steaming ears of yellow corn all disappeared in a hurry. There was even rhubarb pie for dessert, warm from the oven, with large dollops of vanilla ice cream melting on top of the sugary crust. Caroline would never tell her mother this, but she thought that Mrs. Hatford was about the most wonderful cook there was.

  Toward the end of the meal, thunder rolled in like a freight train. Lightning preceded each boom, the crashes closer and closer together. The rain came in sheets, slashing hard against the windowpane.

  About seven-thirty, when the plates had been stacked in the dishwasher, the refrigerator suddenly stopped humming and the lights went out.

  “Oh, no!” came Mrs. Malloys voice from the hall.

  “Don't tell me!” said Mrs. Hatford.

  The lights flickered on again, then went off. Everyone waited. They did not come back on.

  “Better get the candles, Ellen,” Mr. Hatford called. “I'll go light that kerosene lantern for the living room.”

  There was just enough evening light in the sky to maneuver around the house as the Hatford boys set candles here and there, making sure they were secure in their holders.

  “You boys get some flashlights for the girls,” said their dad.

  “What about us?” asked Jake.

  “You know this house better than they do. I think you can find your way around all right,” said his father.

  The boys grumbled a little, but they found small flashlights for all three girls, and soon candles flickered in the rooms downstairs, and moving circles of light traveled from room to room.

  It was sort of exciting at first, but after an hour went by, then two, everything anyone wanted to do seemed to take twice as long—brushing teeth, working a puzzle, reading the comics. Without the air conditioner, the humidity seeped back into the house and the temperature rose.

  “What we need is some entertainment,” Mrs. Hatford said. “Tom, did anything exciting happen on your mail route today that you can tell us about?”

  “Almost ran over a cow. Not much more than that,” Mr. Hatford said from his recliner. “If Mr. Foster doesn't keep those cows penned, he's going to lose one, and somebody's going to have himself a steak dinner.”

  Though the worst of the rain had passed, the lightning continued from time to time, and the thunder was like the low growl of a dog.

  “Well, I think we need a little more to entertain us than a cow,” Mrs. Hatford said. “Does anyone know a poem or something to recite for us?”

  “Caroline knows some of ‘The Raven,’ by Poe,” said Mrs. Malloy.

  “By all means, let's hear it, Caroline!” Mrs. Hatford said. “It's been years since I've heard that poem.”

  “I remember reading it in high school,” said Mr. Hatford.

  Caroline looked around. This was for real. This was better than the boys asking for a poem. She, Caroline Lenore Malloy, was being called upon to give a presentation.

  The boys started to clap. “Car-o-line! Car-o-line!” they chanted, even though she knew they didn't mean it.

  Caroline stood up and went to stand by the kerosene lamp on the coffee table. She cleared her throat and then began in her best and spookiest voice:

  “Once upon a midnight dreary,

  while I pondered, weak and weary,

  Over many a quaint and curious volume

  of forgotten lore—

  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.’ ”

  Caroline used her hands to gesture toward the front door, and their movements made shadows dance on the walls. She continued:

  “Ah, distinctly I remember it was in

  the bleak December,

  And each separate dying ember wrought

  its ghost upon the floor.

  Eagerly I wished the morrow;

  vainly I had sought to borrow

  From my books surcease of sorrow—

  sorrow for the lost Lenore …”

  Caroline pronounced the name clearly and distinctly, because she felt that Edgar Allan Poe had written this poem just for her. She placed her hand over her heart as she went on.

  “For the rare and radiant maiden

  whom the angels named Lenore—

  Nameless here for evermore….”

  She saw Josh and Jake nudge each other and smirk. She stopped reciting, but not for that reason. “I'm sorry, but that's all I memorized,” she said. “It's a really long poem.”

  “Why, Caroline, we've got that in a book,” said Mrs. Hatford. “It belonged to my grandmother. Let me find it for you.”

  She walked across the room and reached high on a shelf for the book of poetry. Caroline was pleased that none of the boys groaned. They might have been making fun of her because of her name, but down deep, Caroline felt sure they were enjoying her performance.

  So she continued reading the poem about a lonely man grieving for his lost love, Lenore, and when he went to the door to see who was tapping, he found “D
arkness there and nothing more.” But the tapping continued, and just as Caroline read the line “ Tis the wind and nothing more,” there actually did come a tap, tap, tapping at the back door of the Hatford house. Everyone jumped.

  “A ghost!” said Peter.

  “I think maybe we imagined it, Caroline is reading so well,” said Mrs. Hatford.

  But no, it came again, and—taking the lantern— Mr. Hatford went to answer. It was the next-door neighbor, asking if she could borrow a flashlight until the power came back on.

  “Only that and nothing more,” Mr. Hatford said, grinning, when he came back to join the circle.

  Caroline went on. She felt she had never read so well, with such expression, in her entire life. When she came to the part where the man opened the shutter to the tapping, and in flew a raven, which “Perched, and sat, and nothing more,” Peter listened with open mouth. And no matter how much the man tried to get the bird to tell him what it had come for or when it would leave, all the raven would say was “Nevermore.”

  “Quoth the Raven,” Caroline said, and the others joined in the refrain: “Nevermore.”

  When she had finished at last, for the poem was several pages long, everyone clapped, and Caroline gave a little bow. And just as though she had performed in a theater, the power came back on. Lights blazed in every room, and the refrigerator began to hum.

  “Oh, I'm so glad to see those lights,” said Mrs. Hatford. “It wouldn't be easy getting this whole crew to bed in the dark.”

  “With that, I think I'll head for bed,” said Mrs. Malloy. “I'm hoping that perhaps they'll have some power back on in Ohio tomorrow too. Maybe the storm broke the heat wave there.” She went upstairs and into the bathroom.

  Caroline wanted to linger, for an actress always liked people to come up after a performance and tell her how well she'd done. Indeed, both Mr. and Mrs. Hatford congratulated her on her expressiveness and interpretation of the poem.

  Beth went on upstairs too, and it was only a few seconds later that Caroline saw the light come on in the girls' bedroom and heard her sister scream.