The Pike River Phantom (3 page)

“Sure you do,” Charlie interrupted, and his voice cracked. “You're on her side. You believe her, not me.”

His grandfather looked unhappy. “Rachel is your cousin and your friend,” he said firmly. “We aren't against you, Charlie. But people are going to judge you on how you handle the facts. It's always better to—”

“I
told
you the facts! I went to that house, and I talked to the lady who lives there. She took a candy bar and she didn't pay me for it.” He stomped on the loose dirt on his side of the birdbath. “Nobody would think I was lying if I was anybody else's kid.”

“Now—wait—one—minute!” The words were spoken quietly, but Charlie knew Grandpa Will was furious. “Your father's a good man! Your grandmother and I are proud of him because he's paid for his mistake, and now he's ready to start over. He's enthusiastic, and he isn't afraid to work hard. You ought to be proud of him, too.”

Charlie picked up a stone and pegged it across the yard. “He walked out on me,” he said. “I mean, nobody made him hold up that store. If he hadn't done that, he wouldn't have gone to prison. I wouldn't have had to stay with Aunt Laura all that time.”

“Now listen to me, young man!” Grandpa was struggling to control his anger. “Your dad had a terrible time for a few years. First your mother died. Then he lost his job and couldn't keep up the payments on your house. And then he began drinking.…” Grandpa rubbed his chin. “I'm not making excuses for him, Charlie, I'm just telling you how it was. You hardly know him, I guess. You've been living together for a few months—that's not long enough to really know someone.”

Charlie didn't want to hear
any
of this. He and Grandpa Will had become pals in the last two weeks. Charlie had even pretended, secretly, that Grandpa was his real father, and John Hocking was just someone who was living with them for a while. Now it was all spoiled.

Guitar chords floated from the den's open window, settling into a barely recognizable version of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Grandpa squeezed Charlie's shoulder. “We can talk again later, right?”

“Right,” Charlie said, but he didn't mean it. He'd decided by then what he was going to do. He'd run away. He had money—fifty-seven dollars in his Model T car-bank the last time he'd counted. Fifty-seven dollars would take him a long way.

Where would he go? He'd thought first of returning to Milwaukee, to Aunt Laura, but he didn't really want to do that. Aunt Laura had tried to make him feel welcome, but Charlie had always known he was in the way. Besides, Aunt Laura's apartment was the first place where the family would look for him.

It would be better to go where no one knew him. California, maybe. He could mow lawns, or collect aluminum cans to make money, and if he didn't earn much, it wouldn't matter. He could live on the beach, catch fish to eat, look for rare shells every morning. Some kinds of shells were worth lots of money. He'd do all right in California, because there wouldn't be anyone to remind him that he was John Hocking's son and he'd better be careful how he handled facts.

But there was one piece of unfinished business he had to take care of first. A couple of nights later, with the sounds of his father's guitar as background, Charlie planned a return visit to the house in the woods. He had to go back. He had to prove to his family—especially to Grandpa Will—that he wasn't lying. He'd take the camera Aunt Laura had given him last Christmas, and he'd ask the old woman in the house to let him snap her picture. The memory of his grandfather's sharp words was as painful as a throbbing tooth.

The next morning, as Charlie walked along the edge of the highway, he pretended that this was the day he was leaving Pike River. This was the last time he'd cross the Pike River bridge, the last time he'd see all these pink and yellow and purple wildflowers blazing in the sun. Any minute now, a car would slow down to offer him a ride, and he'd be on his way.

He was thinking so hard that he almost bumped into the mailbox that marked the beginning of the road to the clearing. He looked at the side of the rusted box and made out the letters D E L on the bottom. Well, maybe Delaney was the name of the woman who was living in the house now. Maybe she was a daughter or a cousin of the original owners and had decided she wanted to stay here. Grandpa Will himself had said that the Delaneys might come back someday.

Charlie walked swiftly through the woods to the sunny open space beyond. The path to the front porch was longer than he remembered, and laced with prickly weeds. Empty windows stared at him as he approached. In spite of himself, Charlie thought of Grandpa's comment:
It felt like an empty house, and I believe that's what it is
.

He lifted the bulldog knocker, let it
thunk
against the door. There was no answer. He knocked again, with his fist this time, and then, astonished at his own boldness, he tried the knob. The door swung open, squeaking loudly.

The front and back doors were locked
, Grandpa had said. Well, the front door was open now. Didn't that prove someone was here?

“Hello!”

Still no answer. Charlie wondered what to do next. He didn't have any right to be in the house—but what if the old lady was sick or had fallen and needed help? She was mean, and she said strange things, but he couldn't just walk away. Besides, if she were gone, he still wanted to find some proof that she'd been here a couple of days ago.

He moved into the shadowy living room. A couch with cushions that sagged almost to the floor stood against one wall, and next to it was a lamp without a shade or light bulb. Beyond the living room was a dining room, empty except for built-in cupboards. He found himself walking on tiptoe, calling hello every few steps and holding his breath while he waited for an answer. The only sound he heard was the buzzing of a fly. It was terribly loud in the silent house.

A huge woodburning stove took up one wall of the kitchen. There were no pots or pans on the stove, and the scarred porcelain sink was empty. A cupboard door stood open a crack, and Charlie peeked inside, hoping to see a cereal box or a can of soup—anything that would suggest a person had lived in the house recently. But there was no food in any of the cupboards. In the last one there was a pile of newspapers, carelessly stacked. Something rustled behind them, and he closed the cupboard quickly.

The kitchen opened into a back hall with two closed doors. One of them led to another stairway to the second floor. Charlie opened the second door just a crack and blinked into a flood of sunshine. He was facing a glassed-in porch, its windows cracked and dirty, the bare pine floor streaked with grime. He pushed the door a little farther.

“GO AWAY!”

Charlie leaped backward, almost crashing into the opposite wall.

“I said, get out, boy! I haven't time for visitors!”

Heart thudding, Charlie reached again for the doorknob. She was there! She was living in the house. He was right, and everyone else was wrong.

Recklessly he pushed the door open and stepped out on the porch. The woman sat in a rocking chair at the far end, her dark head bent over folds of brown material. One hand moved rhythmically, making stitches in a hem.

Charlie cleared his throat. “I'm the boy with the candy bars,” he said. “I was here last Saturday.”

“I know who you are. Will Hocking's little brother.” She didn't look up. Why wouldn't she look up? What was it about her that was different from the last time he'd come?

The woman moved her foot, and Charlie saw the candy bar lying on the floor.

“I came about the money,” he said. “It's for the Middle School band. Remember?”

A blue jay flashed past the dusty windows. A floorboard creaked. Charlie wondered if she was just going to ignore him. Then she looked up, and he forgot all about the candy bar.

“I thought you'd be back,” she said with a mocking smile. “Did you give Will my message, boy?”

Charlie stared unbelievingly. The woman's face was thinner than he remembered it. Her dark skin looked almost smooth, and now that she faced him he saw that most of the gray was gone from her hair. Loose dark waves hung about her face. Only her eyes were the same—and the mocking smile. She still seemed to look at him and through him at the same time.

“I said, did you give Will my message, boy?”

“He didn't believe me,” Charlie said shakily. “He came out here to look around. He thinks I was lying because he didn't see you himself.”

“He didn't come.” The woman brushed her hair away from her face with an impatient gesture. “Some old man came looking around, but I don't want to see strangers.” She scowled. “I told you to get out, too, didn't I? I'm busy. I have to get ready for the parade.”

She didn't move from her chair, but there was a threat in her voice, a warning of danger. Charlie took a step backward. Then he remembered the camera in his shirt pocket. Aunt Laura had told him he must always ask permission before taking someone's picture, but the woman had returned to her sewing, as if she'd forgotten he was there. He aimed the camera hastily, snapped the shutter, and retreated into the hall.

The back door was on his right, down a short flight of stairs. Charlie hesitated, then decided he'd better leave the way he had come. If the back door proved to be locked, and the woman came after him, he'd have no place to run except to the basement.

He tiptoed through the house, looking over his shoulder at every other step. This time the front door stuck, and he almost panicked. But a second hard pull opened it, and he catapulted out onto the porch. Sounds of summer—buzzes and hums and chirpings—rose around him. Nice, ordinary sounds. He leaped down the steps and ran all the way back to the highway.

Walking toward town, he tried to figure out what it was about the woman that had been so frightening. She had looked different, much younger than the last time, but that was more puzzling than scary. And she had just sat there in her rocking chair, hardly moving. It must have been the crazy, mixed-up things she said, and the way she said them. Especially, he decided, the way she said them. She was like—like a quiet mountain that could turn into a raging volcano at any minute.

And there was something else. Grandpa Will had said the house
felt
empty, and that was true. It had felt empty to Charlie, too, even while he and the woman were talking.

CHAPTER 4

FOURTH OF JULY SPECIAL!

RED, WHITE, AND BLUE CREPE PAPER!

GET READY FOR THE BIG PARADE!

The sign filled most of the drugstore window and was framed with shots of decorated bicycles, wagons, and doll carriages. Charlie studied the pictures, thinking the parade looked like fun. Corny, but fun. Too bad he'd be in California when this year's parade rolled down Main Street.

He took the film from his camera and handed it to the clerk. The drugstore was pleasantly dim, nothing like the huge, fluorescent-lit pharmacy near Aunt Laura's apartment in Milwaukee. But the high-school-girl clerk was like the clerks in the city. She acted as if she were doing Charlie a big favor by waiting on a kid.

“Tomorrow afternoon, late,” she drawled when he asked how soon the prints would be ready. “If he gets to 'em tonight.” She glanced toward the rear of the store, where the pharmacist was busy behind a high counter. “He develops 'em himself.”

Charlie wanted the prints fast, so he could be on his way west. He walked home with dragging steps, thinking about the letter he'd leave behind.
Don't bother to look for me. I can take care of myself
. That sounded right. He'd mention the snapshot only casually.
I thought you'd like to see a picture of the woman in the old house in the woods. I went back and talked to her again
.…

Grandpa Will would feel terrible when he saw the picture. So would Grandma Lou and Rachel. They might show it to the neighbors at the next cookout, and then they'd all be sorry they hadn't believed Charlie when he was telling the absolute truth.

What would his father think? Charlie kicked a stone across the sidewalk. His father would be too busy playing his guitar even to read the note.… No, that wasn't fair. Actually, his father would probably be pretty upset. He'd never understand why Charlie had to leave Pike River.

The more he thought about the letter and the snapshot, the better he felt. By the time he reached home he had almost—but not quite—forgiven his family. Maybe someday he'd come back to Pike River for a visit, and they'd all tell him they were sorry they hadn't believed him.

Rachel and Grandma were sitting at the table in the breezeway. Grandma's typewriter was in front of her, and she was humming under her breath. Rachel was making notes on a pad of lined paper.

“Come help us, dear,” Grandma said, as soon as she saw Charlie. “We're getting Rachel's application ready.”

Charlie pulled out a chair and sat down. “Application for what?”

“For the Sunbonnet Queen contest, of course.” Rachel eyed him warily. “The Fourth of July's just ten days off. But Charlie's not interested in this stuff, Grandma.”

“Yes, he is.” Grandma seemed determined to forget the argument at the cookout. “We're all going to be so proud if you're chosen, Rachel. Just listen to this, Charlie.” She rolled a sheet of paper out of her typewriter. “‘Rachel Devon is an outstanding young citizen of Pike River. She is president of her class at Pike River Middle School, and she works as the school librarian's helper one afternoon a week. Last December she made cookies and popcorn balls for the patients at the Veterans Hospital.'”

Charlie yawned, and Rachel stuck out her tongue at him.

“‘Most recently,'” Grandma read on, ignoring them both, ‘“she has been selling candy bars so her school band can travel to Madison for a football game this fall.'”