Ghost Soldier (2 page)

“And you're Alex,” she told me, like I was an idiot or something. She fiddled with the ends of her short blond hair. “We've seen the photos, you know.”

“It's Alexander,” I said. I knew about the photos. Mrs. Hambrick had taken pictures while we went sightseeing in Indianapolis last fall, when she came for a computer conference. Dad met her that summer at some computer exposition.

Dad invited me to the Indianapolis conference but didn't give me any grief when I said I didn't want to go. He dragged me along to dinner on Saturday night, though, to meet Mrs. Hambrick. Then he made plans for all of us to spend Sunday together in the city before she flew back home. He'd actually worn a sports jacket and a tie to dinner, even though he pulled the tie loose before we got to the restaurant and had it practically off before the food came. She'd shown us pictures of her kids, but I hadn't paid attention. I never thought I'd meet them.

“Okay, Al-ex-an-der,” Nicole said, dragging out the syllables. “So—is Carleton right about our parents? Mom's been hogging the phone lines Instant Messaging your father just about every night.”

I stared back at her, not letting her see my surprise. Now and then Dad had mentioned something Mrs. Hambrick had told him, but I figured they just e-mailed once in a while. “What do you think?”

Nicole shrugged. “I don't care what they do. A couple more years of high school, then I'm out of here—and you can bet I won't be going to college at Duke! I'm going someplace far away, where nobody's ever heard of my mother or her probability research. If she marries your father, so what?”

Yeah, right. She wouldn't go so far away if it didn't matter to her. But she obviously didn't want to admit it. I steered clear of some poison ivy and climbed up the wooden steps to the porch. “You really should cut back some of those trees,” I said, sitting on the top step. I thought I could smell sweet honeysuckle in the air, and I liked it. And since there weren't any clanging wind chimes back here, it was kind of peaceful. “I mean—shade is okay for some plants, but most flowers won't grow without sunlight.”

“What's it to you?” Nicole said. She was playing with her hair again. “Gardening is for girls, anyway.”

“Yeah?” I snapped. “Well, the best gardeners—the ones who plan out mazes and stuff like that—are men. And you
girls
have sure done a rotten job with
this
garden!”

A glass door slid open behind us. “I see you two have met,” said Mrs. Hambrick. She sounded kind of nervous.

Nicole jumped off the swing, setting the chains jangling as loudly as the wind chimes. “Moth-errr!” she snarled.

She made the word sound like an insult, but my eyes suddenly blurred. It had been such a long time since I'd called anyone that.

Nicole slipped past her mother into the house.

Mrs. Hambrick stood there as if she wanted to say something. I just stared at the yard and tried not to think about her. I thought I saw some blackberry brambles in the tangle of vines. If they were cut back, they might actually grow some berries.

Finally Mrs. Hambrick said, “I've fixed a welcome supper for you and your father, Alexander. Not so fancy as the meal at that restaurant y'all took me out to, of course, but I hope you'll like it. Would you like to put your things in Carleton's room and clean up, then come back down? It's upstairs, the second door on the left—the one with all the dinosaurs.”

I could think of plenty of reasons why I didn't want to leave my stuff in Carleton's room and come down to supper. But I just said thanks and crossed the living room to the stairs. Every flat surface in the room was crowded with crystal sculptures—stars and mountains and leaping animals—all cut like jewels. I felt like I was walking through the broken heart of a geode. I grabbed my duffel by the foyer and hurried up the stairs. From the music blaring behind a closed door, I guessed Nicole's room was at the far end of the hall.

I had no trouble recognizing Carleton's room. The kid hadn't just given me his dinosaur sheets—he'd put a weird green stuffed dragon on top of the bed. I guess it was supposed to be a stegosaurus. A zooful of animals sat on the other bed, some of them threadbare and squashed out of shape. The stegosaurus looked pretty good in comparison. Both beds were covered with quilts decorated with brightly colored dancing dinosaurs. There was even a dinosaur wind chime. I couldn't help smiling a little as I washed up for supper.

The sailboat wind chimes in the bathroom window clinked softly in the breeze. I stared at myself in the streaky mirror and saw my mother's black eyes under my father's russet hair, and my smile disappeared. Why hadn't Dad said anything when Carleton asked him about being his new father? And why wasn't I sharing a room with
him,
instead of with a little kid and a bunch of dinosaurs?

*   *   *

Dad was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs and beckoned me down a hall, past the kitchen into a room near the garage. It must have been Mrs. Hambrick's office, since there was a computer on a desk. Dad's PowerBook laptop was set up beside her monitor. He'd really made himself at home—he'd even brought his little Space Warrior model and set him out on the desk.

Computer programmers put in these secret programs you can find if you hit the right combination of keys. Of all the ones Dad's written, his favorite is this Space Warrior he drew that erases whatever's on the screen. When you hit the right keys, the Space Warrior runs out and fires his ray gun at the place you want to erase until he's made it all disappear—sound effects and everything. Dad calls him the Defender of the Galaxy. He even found a metal gaming figure that looked like his drawing at the hobby store, and fixed him up with a little ray gun and painted him like the Space Warrior.

A sofa folded out into a bed, and Dad's open suitcase took up most of the floor space that was left. I felt a little better about rooming with Carleton. There sure wasn't room for me down here. More wind chimes hung in the window. Their clanging was getting on my nerves.

Dad sat on the bed and looked at me. “Alexander, I need your help this week. We've got to work together—be a team.”

I picked up the Space Warrior and turned it over in my hand. Dad made a big deal out of teamwork. That was okay with me. I knew how important teamwork was from track. I even had ninth graders like Gary Shaw cheering me when I ran. But that was different.

“Look,” Dad said. “I'm sorry you're sharing with Carleton. It's only for spring break. Later—”

“Later I'll be home,” I told him, even though it was only Thursday night and it seemed a long time until the end of spring break. “So it doesn't matter.”

He reached out and touched my arm. “Alexander, we talked about this. I want to marry Paige—I want you to get to know her.”

Clenching the Space Warrior, I thought, We all want things we don't get. When I didn't answer, Dad sighed. “Just be polite and give her a chance. Okay?”

He didn't have to worry. Nicole was rude enough at supper for both of us. She slumped in her seat, gave long, exaggerated sighs when her mother asked her to pass a dish, made faces at the food, and answered in grunts. She'd said more to me on the porch than she said during the entire meal. Carleton wouldn't shut up, though, distracting the grown-ups. So nobody paid any attention to me, which was fine. I just enjoyed the food.

I ate my way through a spinach salad, which tasted a lot better than it sounded, and pork chops glazed with pieces of some sort of tart fruit. They looked weird, but tasted good. Dad wasn't much of a cook, so this was a treat. I just kept my mouth full so I didn't have to talk much, and passed dishes when I was asked. It was easy enough to fade into the background.
Yes, ma'am, it's really good. Sure, a little more, thanks. The corn muffins are good. I'll have a piece of blackberry pie.
That bramble must have some berries on it after all.

Dad smiled at me when we got up from the table. Nicole flounced off to her room, probably to listen to CDs again, and Carleton was yawning, so I went upstairs and dug a T-shirt out of my duffel to sleep in, so that I wouldn't wake him later. Then I took my recorder case and some music books out of my backpack and went down to the porch. Dad and Mrs. Hambrick were talking in low voices in the living room, and I heard Dad laugh, but I didn't want to listen to them. I just wanted to make some music.

Mom plays the recorder. I'd taught myself on a little soprano recorder as soon as I learned how to read the sheet music. It wasn't hard. Other kids played the recorder in music class, but I never played with them. It was just for Mom and me, not for school. Now I had an alto recorder—it was bigger, and it had a mellow tone I liked. Mom would be thrilled I'd taught myself, and we could play duets. I took the pieces out of their case, put the recorder together, and blew a few notes softly. The tangled branches of the overgrown trees clacked like percussion, and my recorder notes blended in with them.

Enough light came through the living room window for me to read the music easily, and I warmed up with some folk tunes I nearly knew by heart. Then I practiced some harder songs, working on the fingering until I got the notes right. The rustling of the branches faded after a while, and all I heard was the recorder, crystal clear on the cold air. It felt colder at night here than it did in Indiana, which surprised me. The shadows grew darker, and a hazy mist was rising. I stretched my fingers and reached for the recorder's cleaning rod. Then I stopped.

Suddenly the chill air smelled tangy, like those pork chops at supper—almost like someone had cut open a ripe orange and spurted the juice all over the porch. I felt a thrill go through me as time seemed to stand still in the tangled yard. It was happening again, after so long.

I held my breath as I heard faint clopping, and a mixture of creaking and jangling came from the far side of the yard, like someone riding a horse. Then I heard the heavy tramp of marching feet, boots scraping on stones or thudding on the ground. The light from the living room disappeared, and I squinted through the tree trunks choked by mist in the moonlight to make out a group of men wearing broad-brimmed hats.

When one of them turned to say something to another, I couldn't hear the words. But the mist thinned for a moment, and I could see the two of them plainly, down to the lines in the taller man's face, above his beard. He looked dirty, and so tired that he stumbled as he walked. Moonlight glinted gold near his throat—a shiny coat button. The face that looked up to his was younger and just as grubby, though the second soldier didn't have a beard. His eyes were large and black, like deep wells. Then the moonlight shimmered silver beside the two faces, and I saw that each man was holding a gun up to his shoulder. The others carried some sort of rifles, too.

I stood up unsteadily, amazed and delighted, and scared I'd miss something. Then the taller man turned away, and the mist thickened to hide his companion. I gripped the cold porch railing in one hand and my recorder in the other and strained to see past the trees again. But clouds had covered the moon, and the marching men disappeared into shadow. I realized I was sweating—now the night felt warmer again and almost stuffy. The lights had come back on in the living room, and my shadow spilled down the porch steps. When I sniffed the air, I could smell that hint of early honeysuckle, but the tang of oranges had vanished with the soldiers.

I felt breathless and drained—and also a little sad, as if I'd been part of something and then it had gone and left me. But I'd seen them again—ghosts. When Mom came back, I could tell her about the soldiers in the mist.

Chapter Two

W
HO
Y
OUR
F
AMILY
W
AS

The next morning I got up early, pulled on running sweats, and headed out of the house. Dad was right—the quiet streets around the university were perfect for running, with the new leaves uncurling on the bushes and trees around me. But the country roads back home were perfect, too.

Dad should have made that early morning run with me, but he was still asleep when I left Carleton tangled in his sheets. I didn't care—I'd run without Dad plenty of times. Sometimes I liked it better alone. I could zone out, the way I did on cross-country runs for track. My legs kept the pace going, but the world got hot and dark and my mind loosened up, and I remembered the first time I'd seen ghosts.

I was only five. The smell of oranges woke me, and I couldn't go back to sleep because it was so cold. I got up and looked outside and saw Indians—not like the Native American kids I knew from school, but barefoot Indians with threadbare blankets draped over their shoulders.

The next day, Mom told me I'd found a window through time, but that night the scene had seemed like it was happening right then. They were standing in a line. When each Indian got to the front of the line, he gave something to a man. I couldn't see it clearly, but I knew it was a dollar, which must have been a lot of money back then. They got a needle for their dollar—one needle! I could hear the man telling them, “These are the last needles in the world. The man who made them is dead.”

Mom told me that what I had seen had really happened—a white settler cheated some Native Americans in Indiana by selling needles for a dollar. She told me I was special. But then, why had she left me? People who love you don't just walk away from you forever. I remembered her getting mad at me for trying to help her in the garden; I had pulled up some of the tiny seedlings, thinking they were weeds. She had been so disappointed in me. I shut out the thought and ran until the bushes lining the road and the asphalt under my running shoes seemed to disappear, and I saw only the ghosts from the night before.

*   *   *