The Spy Catchers of Maple Hill (12 page)

Samuel nodded and wiped some dust off the book that wasn't really there.

“Did you see the window in the restaurant?” she asked.

“The broken one?”

“Right,” she said. “Mrs. Li said it was juvenile delinquents, and maybe it was, but I think they chose the Lis because they're Chinese and people thought they were Communist even though they aren't.” She wished her hunch was wrong, but she was pretty sure she knew why the window had been broken. It was the only thing that explained why Mr. Li was so angry, and why Mrs. Switzer seemed so uncomfortable: someone must have read the news about the Communists in town and instead of doing a thorough investigation like Hazel was, they'd gone after the Lis because they were from China, a Communist country. And if folks were willing to do that to the Lis,
what would they do to her family when it was discovered that there'd been a Communist spy working right beneath their noses? The Comrade had to be exposed, and Hazel needed to be the one to do it.

Samuel said, “People jump to all sorts of conclusions.”

“Precisely. And what's really stupid is that Bobby Li died in Korea, fighting the Communists. That's why this is such an important case. We need to do it right and get the facts before more innocent people are hurt. We know who the real Communist is here.”

“You have a theory,” he told her. “You are gathering evidence, but you still don't have any concrete proof.”

“He saw me earlier. Watching him.”

“You were watching him?”

She swallowed. “Not intentionally. I was up in the tree and he just appeared, and then I swear he was staring right at me. Do you think he knows we're onto him? If The Comrade knows I know …” She shook her head and let out a low whistle.

“Let's deal with the here and now,” Samuel said.

“Well, even though I wasn't spying, I did observe something.” She waited for him to prompt her, but he was busy reading over his notes. “He stole an American flag from Soldier's Field.”

“Soldier's Field?” Samuel asked.

“Yep. Stuck it right into his back pocket.”

“From a soldier's grave?” he asked. “Which soldier?”

“How should I know? But that's pretty bad, don't you think? You can't get more un-American than that.”

Samuel frowned. “Actually,” he said, “I'd like to watch television after all.”

Hazel looked at him for a minute. “Sure,” she agreed. “But
Dragnet
won't be on until Thursday.”

“I think we have enough mystery right here,” he said. “Let's find a variety show.”

Hazel was not a big fan of the variety shows, but she figured Samuel was her guest, and her mother always said you let the guest choose. “Okay,” she said. She stood up and clicked on the television, then turned the dial until she found Milton Berle on the screen.

It was actually pretty funny, she had to admit, and there was something about watching a funny show with someone else: even when the jokes were so-so, they still laughed. It was like their laughter was the Blob, grabbing on to them and growing, growing, growing, until they were clutching their stomachs and her mother came in to see what all the noise was.

“I made up the guest room for Samuel,” she said, once they had control of themselves.

In her own room, Hazel was ready to get into bed, but then she started thinking of staying with her grandparents in Florida. She had to stay in the den, and it was dark and strange, so she didn't know what any of the shapes were. An armchair can look an awful lot like a renegade robot.

She unplugged her night-light and carried it into the
hallway, where she tapped on the guest room door. Samuel didn't answer, so she tapped again. The door opened and there was Samuel in one of her father's T-shirts and pajama bottoms. The pants were too big, and he had to hold them at the waist to keep them from falling. She held out the night-light.

“I'm not afraid of the dark,” he said.

“I know. But it's hard to see, and anyway you might wake up in the middle of the night and need to use the bathroom.”

“Thanks,” he said, reaching out his free hand to take the night-light from her.

“You're welcome.”

Hazel went back to her room and shut off the light and then she shut her eyes so she wouldn't have to see the claw of the tree branch outside her window, just ready to reach inside.

Since Samuel didn't have a bike, Hazel pushed hers while they walked to school. Hazel kicked an orangey-brown rock and it skittered ahead and then Samuel kicked it and soon they were kicking this rock down the street, seeing who could get it the farthest. One of Hazel's kicks made it take a sharp turn and it skipped off the sidewalk and into a puddle. “Ohhh,” they both groaned, and then they laughed.

“Bon voyage, little pebble,” Samuel said.

“Send a postcard!” Hazel called. Then she found another rock, this one smooth and gray, to kick along.

“My mom has this jar of rocks,” Samuel said. “It's one of the only things she's sure to carry with us from place to place. She gets a rock in every town. We've got beach rocks and river rocks and gravel from driveways.”

“Why does she do that?”

“She said it's a way to keep her grounded.”

“Ha, grounded!” Hazel laughed, but Samuel didn't. “I just meant because they were rocks. From the ground.”

“I know,” he said.

“I wonder what kind of rock she took from here,” Hazel said. “I would take a nice shiny hunk of mica.”

“Mica's not a rock,” he said.

“Then what is it?”

“It's a mineral that can be part of a rock.”

“Then I'd find a big rock with a nice hunk of mica stuck in it. What about you?”

“Me? I guess I haven't thought about it.”

“It's not a big decision,” she said.

He bent over and picked up a red maple leaf and twisted it between his fingers. “I still think I need to ponder it a little more.”

“That's your problem, Samuel. Too much pondering, not enough action.”

“Fine. I suppose I'd take some granite from the quarry.”

“There you go. Doesn't that feel good?”

They walked along a bit and then Samuel said, “I was thinking about Memory's Garden and what's going to happen to it. I could take over for you. I could buy it; I think my grandmother would give me the money. Or if you wanted to keep it in the family, you could hire me to run it for you and then you would always have a place to come home to.”

Hazel could see the school up ahead of her, a yellow bus emptying its load of students. She had never given much thought to what would happen to the graveyard when her
parents wanted to retire. “I don't think my parents will be quitting any time soon.”

“That's okay. We still have to finish primary school and get through high school and college. And I think I would like to get another degree or two. I'm looking twenty or so years into the future.”

Twenty years into the future. By that time Hazel planned to be well established in her adventure of a life as an international spy catcher and archaeologist. Still, she supposed she might want to come back to visit folks like Miss Lerner and Mr. Wall, and even Samuel himself. “Okay. That sounds like a deal. But you should probably buy it outright. I don't want anything tying me down.”

“Deal,” Samuel agreed.

“And hey,” she said, “when I visit you,
I
can stay in the guest room!”

“If you want. Or I can keep your room for you.”

“I'll have to think on that,” she said.

They were heading up to school now. Hazel dropped her bike by the tree. As they went in the door, they walked by a group of seventh-grade boys. One of them let out a low wolf whistle and another one sang out, “Hazel and Samuel sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.” All Hazel and Samuel could do was laugh, clutching their sides and running down the hall to Mrs. Sinclair's classroom.

They had said the Pledge of Allegiance and were settling into a math lesson when the alarm went off. It
woo-wah woo-wah
ed in and out like some sort of possessed trombone and everyone knew exactly what to do. Under the desks they crawled. Hazel pulled her shoes right up to her bum and made sure her underwear wasn't showing. Once Becky had tucked herself up into a ball and didn't realize the whole first row could see her white underpants and she hadn't heard the end of it for weeks.

Hazel put her hands over the back of her neck, arms over her ears, face right down on the dusty linoleum floor. Mrs. Sinclair must have done a lot of erasing on the board, because it felt like a whole chalk stick worth of dust went right up her nose. She wrinkled her nose and even wiped it against her knees. She squeezed her eyes tight.
Don't sneeze! Don't sneeze!
They had to keep perfectly silent, which was difficult for Hazel under the best of circumstances. Becky Cornflower had once told her you could stop a sneeze if you sucked in really, really hard through your nose, and so Hazel tried this, but all she did was pull the dust farther back and then there was no stopping it. A giant sneeze erupted out of her like a cannon backfiring. It was so big and so old-man-like that she thought maybe no one would realize it was her, and then she heard Maryann laughing. “Hey, Sneezy,” Maryann hissed. “You really are a dwarf, aren't you, Sneezy?”

Hazel couldn't answer because she, unlike Maryann, respected the rules of the duck-and-cover drill, even though she wasn't too sure how much protection a desk would give.
They watched the movie each September, with Bert the Turtle loping along and hiding in his shell whenever he saw a flash. Just thinking of it got the song stuck in her head:
He ducked and covered! Ducked and covered!
The movie explained how big the blast could be and how it could burn you like a sunburn. It said that most attacks would be announced beforehand, like they actually expected the Russians to say: “Watch out, we're going to drop an A-bomb on you!” Hazel didn't think that was a very good battle tactic. The narrator told them that if they ever saw a flash of light, they should assume the worst and find the safest place they could duck and cover just like a turtle.

Now that the sneeze was out of her, Hazel just had to work on staying quiet. Mrs. Sinclair had taught her the trick of touching her thumb to each finger and counting how many times she made it around. She was up to thirty-seven before the siren stopped. A minute later their principal, Mrs. Rushby, knocked on the door to tell them the drill was over.

“Good job, children,” Mrs. Sinclair said. “As I am sure you are well aware, our town is in a heightened state of alert, and we must be ever vigilant. I'm happy to see you all taking these drills seriously.” She gave Hazel a look. “Most of you, anyhow.”

Hazel could not help but try to defend herself. “I am utterly sorry, Mrs. Sinclair, but when I was down there I breathed in a whole bunch of chalk dust and I tried to keep the sneeze in, really I did, but—”

“But Sneezy just couldn't help it,” Maryann said sweetly.

“Poor Sneezy,” Connie chimed in.

“Did you know,” Samuel said without raising his hand and without being called on, “that an atom bomb has the same explosive power as fifteen thousand tons of TNT? On top of that is the radioactivity.”

“So?” Maryann demanded.

Hazel jumped in: “So what he's saying is that ducking down under our desks isn't going to do us any good if the Russians decide to drop a bomb on Maple Hill. The whole school would be blown over and then the radiation would come and burn our skin to a crisp and all our hair will fall out and we'll be walking around here like skeletons, if we can even walk at all.”

Ellen Abbott began to cry.

“Hazel, that is quite enough,” Mrs. Sinclair told her.

For once, Hazel didn't argue, even though she knew she and Samuel were right. She just said, “Yes, Mrs. Sinclair.” Because Samuel's fact meant Hazel's giant sneeze had been forgotten.

At lunch Hazel slid into her usual seat in the back of the cafeteria. When Samuel sat down, she looked with pity at his lunch box, which his grandmother had delivered that morning. She had noticed it on the first day, and thought it was just about the saddest thing she had ever seen. It was an old-fashioned one, green, made of tin and shaped like a Quonset hut. She had the Hopalong Cassidy metal lunch box she'd begged her parents to buy her for over a year. She'd dented it on the first day of school when she'd dropped it getting off her bike. He noticed her staring at his and said, “It was my dad's.”

“So he got a new one and you got stuck with that old thing?” She took a bite of her cream cheese and jelly sandwich.

“He died,” Samuel said.

Her sandwich lodged in her throat. “Oh,” she managed to murmur. She looked at him sideways, trying not to stare. Parents getting a divorce like Becky Cornflower's was rare and
exciting, but a parent dying? That was too much. Maybe that was why everyone was saying to be nice to him.