The Riddle of Penncroft Farm (5 page)

I glanced guiltily at Dad and saw the meaningful look he exchanged with my mother.

“Guess I'll start on my study,” he said, backing out again.

Mom sat down on my bed. “By the way, Lars, I want to talk with you about something.” She cleared her throat. “I thought you'd outgrown imaginary friends.”

“But Mom, there really
was
a kid on the fence!” I protested. “I met him on the road.”

“Then he disappeared into thin air, like the guy at the window and the mysterious superhero on the wagon,” she said with a skeptical smile. “Now look, honey, I know you've been through a lot and really miss your old friends, but you'll make new friends sooner than you think. So please give up this imaginary stuff and don't pester Aunt Cass with such nonsense, okay?”

I grunted. Luckily, she took that for a sign of agreement. As she got up to leave, her glance fell on the space next to old George's portrait. “Think I'll fill that empty spot with a map of Pennsylvania,” she said. “But what a shame to break up the Peale paintings. From what Aunt Cass says, George's wife was quite a fascinating woman. You wouldn't believe what she did during the Revolution!”

I yawned and pulled the covers over my head. Mom pulled them right off again. “I'm not leaving this room until you're vertical!” she said sternly, planting her hands on her hips.

“I'm vertical, I'm vertical!” I retorted, climbing reluctantly out of bed.

After Mom left, I pulled on my jeans and rummaged through cartons looking for my Minnesota Twins sweatshirt. It was easy for Mom to say I'd have new friends soon—she didn't know what a disaster my first day had been. I'd only given her the usual string of
fines
when she'd asked how things had gone.

At least I had a whole weekend before I had to face those kids again. Even raking out the barn was better than that.

Aunt Cass was in the kitchen when I got there. She placed a bowl of oatmeal and a small blue pitcher of thick cream on the table and asked me if I'd slept well.

“Yup. My bed wasn't too short, wasn't too long,” I joked. “In fact, it was ju-u-u-st right!”

“Funny how that happens sometimes,” she replied, her face perfectly straight. She sat down next to me.

I shook my spoon at her. “Not all
that
funny!” I said. For the next few minutes I wolfed down oatmeal, Aunt Cass watching with a look of satisfaction. I decided to ignore Mom's instructions about pestering my great-aunt.

“You know, my bed's not the only funny thing around here,” I began tentatively. “There was that guy I saw in the window, and then yesterday I met someone who did an incredible disappearing act. One second he was there; the next, he wasn't!”

Aunt Cass gazed at me. “What'd he look like?” she asked in a low voice.

“It's a little hard to say. He was all dressed up for Halloween in a George Washington costume. And there was something else funny about him: he knew my name. He said he heard Mom call me that, so he must live really close by. Do you know who he could be?”

She nodded slowly. “Ye-e-s, perhaps I do, but I wouldn't exactly say he
lives
around here.”

“Oh,” I said, disappointed. “I was hoping he might be somebody to hang out with.”

“What about Pat Hargreaves?” she said, her mouth quirking up at the corners. “Didn't you meet her at school yesterday? Come on, George—don't tell me you don't like Pat just because she's a girl!”

“She's all right, Aunt Cass, but . . .”

“Good, because she'll be here later this morning. Her folks are coming over to do me a favor, and I expect you to be hospitable.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said. I cleared my dishes and headed outside to the barn.

The wooden sides of the barn—or what was left of it—were weathered to a gray that matched the foundation stones. There was a full top story, but because the barn was set into the hill, the ground floor was only about the size of our Minneapolis garage, much to my relief.

A wide door ran across the lower level. I gave it a shove, and the door creaked open on ancient iron hinges. I entered the dark inside, groping for a light switch as I went. I couldn't find one.

“Swell. How can I clean this place if I can't see what I'm doing?” I asked, wasting good sarcasm on an empty barn. Moving gingerly along the wall, I touched a large, round, metallic object that felt nothing like a light switch. It clattered to the floor. I slid my foot around until I found it, then carried it across to the door for a closer look. It was a flat metal sieve, covered with cobwebs, red with rust, and bigger than any sieve I'd ever seen.

Perplexed, I murmured, “I'd hate to have to eat any macaroni that was strained in this . . . this . . .
whatever
it is!”

“'Tis a riddle,” said a voice in my ear.

I whirled around. It was the kid I'd met at the bridge.

“Why, you're still dressed up as Washington!” I exclaimed.

The boy's bright blue eyes crinkled with amusement. “'Tis my only costume. My mother had little time to make me fancy duds.”

“I know what you mean. My mom's never been much for sewing, either,” I said, relieved to have some common ground with this guy. “She'd rather spend her spare time reading.”

“Aye, Sandra always did have her nose in a book. Me, I never cottoned much to anything but ciphering—doing sums and such—when I was your age. I did learn reading properly enough later on,” he said proudly.

He doesn't look all that much older than me
, I thought indignantly. Then what he'd said about ciphering sank in and I perked up. Maybe I'd found somebody who liked secret codes as much as I did, though I'd never heard of using addition to break one. Eagerly, I turned to him and asked if he went to my school.

“Nay, nor any other. My mother learned me with a hornbook.”

“You lucky dog! Wish I didn't have to, especially here in
Pennsylvania
.” I started to make a face, but remembered this kid was as Pennsylvanian as the ones at school. “Ah, you left so . . . so suddenly yesterday that I didn't get a chance to ask what your name is,” I said, feeling awkward.

“My name's Geordie,” he said, looking amused.

“How do you do, Gordie.”

“No, Lars, not
Gordie
—my name's
Geordie
.”

“Geordie. How do you do?” I reached out to shake hands.

But instead of shaking hands, Geordie went all stiff and bent over in a bow like the ones my piano teacher made us do in recitals. I went still, too—from amazement. Then, feeling self-conscious, I bowed back. As I bent over, I noticed I was still holding the rusty old sieve in my left hand. “Now, about this . . . riddle, Geordie, I guess I just don't get what you mean.”

Geordie took the sieve and turned it over thoughtfully. I noticed that his fingernails were bitten to the quick.

“'Tis a riddle—leastwise, that's what we always called it,” he explained. “It's for cleaning all the dirt and dust out of wheat. Aye, I spent many a winter evening shaking this riddle. Actually, I much preferred my outdoor tasks, like making perry in the fall when the picking was done.”

“Making what?”

“The perry—cider made from pears instead of apples. A hard cider, fermented into alcohol,” Geordie said. “And there were plenty of other chores to do—picking apples and pruning trees and all the other farm and orchard tasks. Then, after my brother, Will, left home, I also had to deliver the perry and cider and fruit to the inns and take it into Philadelphia on market days. 'Twas difficult, but Father insisted I was grown enough to shoulder my brother's work as well as my own.”

I nodded emphatically. “I know what you mean. I got the same routine after Peter moved out. ‘You're the chief helper, now, Lars.' Besides, lucky Peter gets to stay in Minnesota.” The realization hit me that if I'd stayed in Minnesota, I wouldn't have met Geordie. Maybe Peter wasn't so lucky after all.

“Where did your brother go, Geordie? Off to college, like Peter?” I asked.

“Nay, college was too dear for the likes of us,” he replied.

I wondered briefly if
dear
was some Pennsylvania way of saying
neat
, like we used to say
sweet
back in Minnesota. But that didn't make any sense, either. “What do you mean by
dear
, Geordie?”

“'Twas too costly, too expensive,” he said softly.

“Didn't your brother apply for a scholarship?”

“Nay, Will went off to be a soldier, in '77. My father nearly had apoplexy when he heard tell of it—he was that furious. But Will was set on fighting in the war, and there was no stopping him—not our Will. We always used to say, ‘Where there's a Will, there's a way.'”

“B-but Uncle George was killed at the
end
of Vietnam, and that was
way
before 1977,” I said, bewildered.

“'Twas the War of Independency, Lars,” Geordie said quietly. “And the year Will went away was 1777,” he added, giving me an almost sympathetic look.

My knees buckled and I sank down onto the dirt floor. “You don't . . . you can't mean the American Revolution?” My voice rose into a squeak.

“Aye—against the English king, George III. Father was a loyalist and railed against what he called ragtag traitors' who demanded Independency. He said the king only wanted us to pay our fair share for the British troops he'd sent to defend us from the Indians and the French. As a lad, Father himself had taken up his musket to fight the French for the king. But Will said taxing us without our say was tyranny.”

I sat on the floor, gasping like a beached whale.

Geordie quickly went on. “You see, up until then, Americans had always raised their own money. That way, even though the royal governors were officially in charge, they couldn't carry out anything the Americans didn't want to pay for. But if Parliament could tax Americans directly, the royal governors would control the purse strings and could do whatever they liked. That's what Will called tyranny.” Geordie sighed. “How Father hated to hear him say that. From way up at the house, Mother and I could hear them arguing in the orchard. We joked that it would sour the fruit, but no jokes could help heal the wounds in our family. That's why Will finally ran away to join George Washington.”

“To join George Washington,” I echoed, dazed.

“Aye. As for my mother, it was like to tear her apart, her being raised a Friend and all. Though she was disowned by the meeting for marrying Father, she was still a Quaker at heart. Quakers believe all killing wrong, even in war. They're pacifists.”

“I knew that,” I chimed in, glad that something he said sounded familiar.

“Anyway, in Mother's eyes, it was bad enough for Will to take up arms against another human being. For him to fly in the face of Pa's loyalty to England as well nearly split our family like a piece of kindling wood.”

A wild thought flitted through my head: maybe this was a trick that someone at school, like the Owens kid, had put this boy up to to make a fool of me. But there was something about Geordie that made what he said almost believable.

Suddenly the implications of his words struck me, if not dumb, at least into a whisper. “B-but if you were alive during the Revolution, you must be the oldest person in the world!”

It was Geordie's turn to look taken aback. He actually blushed a little as he tried to explain. “Well, that's not exactly accurate, Lars. I'm actually a phantasm.”

“A phantasm?” I repeated, mystified. “What's that?”

“Some would say an apparition,” Geordie said. “Do you know what that is?”

I shook my head.

Geordie sighed. “I had this same problem with your uncle George when he was your age. He insisted on calling me a ghost, which I thought was dreadful. The word
ghost
makes people think of rattling chains and cobwebs and such.” He indicated the cobwebs on the riddle with a shudder. “If it's all the same to you, I'd rather be called a shade. That means the same thing as ghost but sounds a mite more amiable, don't you think?” he asked rather wistfully.

I didn't have an opinion on the subject, but since it seemed to matter to him, I nodded. “Now, let me get this straight,” I said, determined to be calm. “You're a ghost—pardon me, I mean a shade—and you haunt our house. Is that right?”

Geordie picked at the cobwebs on the riddle for a moment before he looked up. “I haunt your
barn
, actually, with the odd trip into the house now and again, like the night you arrived.”

That roused me from my stupor. “Was that
you
up there?” Seeing Geordie's nod, I jumped to my feet. “So it
was
a shade I saw in the window—but not the kind Mom thought it was!” I laughed. “And what Uncle George told Mom wasn't a tall tale. Penncroft Farm
is
haunted, just like Uncle George said. Even the
wagon's
haunted!”

Geordie bashfully dug the toe of his buckled shoe into the straw-littered dirt of the floor. “I'd be gratified, Lars, if you wouldn't say
haunt
. I prefer to think of it as hanging out.”

I looked at him in surprise. “Really? Hanging out?”

“Aye, and the barn always was my favorite place to hang out, ever since the raising,” he said enthusiastically.

“The raising?” Curious as I was how Geordie had risen from the dead or whatever and had come to haunt Penncroft Farm, I didn't really want to hear the gory details. I told him firmly that he didn't have to tell me about the raising if it was too painful.

“I mean the
barn
raising, you sapskull!” Geordie said with a lopsided grin. “Nothing the least bit painful about it. People came from miles around to help raise the ridgepole and put up the walls. 'Twas a great deal of fun!”