The Pike River Phantom (2 page)

Grandpa strode on toward the birdbaths. “Your grandmother would kill me,” he called over his shoulder.

Charlie shook his head. Grown-ups were strange. After all, a person could make a birdbath by setting an old dishpan on top of a stool, but the ducks were really unusual. Someday, when he had a house and a yard of his own, he'd buy a whole family of yellow ducks and a couple of gnomes. Maybe a deer, too.

He bent to get a better look at one of the gnomes, then straightened quickly. The creased brown face reminded him of the old woman in the woods. The gnome's mouth was twisted in the same mocking grin.
I'll bet she's gobbling that candy bar right now
, he thought furiously. It was easier to be angry with the woman than to remember how she'd scared him.

“What do you think of this one?” Grandpa paused in front of the plainest, most ordinary birdbath of the lot. It didn't have a single flower carved on the base, and it was painted a dull gray.

Charlie shrugged. “The blue ones are nice.”

Grandpa glanced at the bright blue plastic birdbaths. “Your grandma would kill me,” he repeated.

Together they carried the gray birdbath to the checkout window, then loaded it into the trunk of the car.

“What in the world did I do for help before you came to Pike River?” Grandpa demanded. He sounded as if he really didn't know.

Charlie began to feel better. “We can set up the birdbath when we get home,” he suggested. “It won't be dark for a long time.”

“Can't do it tonight.” Grandpa Will swung the car into traffic and switched on the radio to get the five o'clock news. “The birds will have to wait one more day for their baths. This is Saturday, remember?”

Saturday. Cookout night. That's why Grandma Lou hadn't been home; she'd been doing some last-minute grocery shopping. Charlie's mood plummeted, but he tried not to let it show.

“We'll do it tomorrow, then,” he said, and was silent the rest of the way home.

He and his father had arrived in Pike River on a Saturday, so they'd had to meet all the neighbors that very first night. Charlie had hated it. He was sure everyone gathered in his grandparents' backyard knew where John Hocking had been for the last five years. They must know, too, that Grandpa Will had arranged a job for his son as a maintenance man in the Pike River schools when he couldn't find work himself in Milwaukee.

Charlie's father hadn't seemed to worry about what other people knew. He'd moved easily from one group to another, shaking hands with the men and smiling at the ladies.
As if we belong here
, Charlie had thought bitterly.

Now, two cookouts later, Charlie knew the routine, but he wasn't any more comfortable. Saturday morning Mrs. Koch and Mrs. Michalski and Mrs. Drury and Mrs. Gessert would call to tell Grandma whether they would be coming to the cookout or not. Each family brought wieners or bratwurst for themselves and one dish for the group—baked beans or coleslaw or carrot-and-pineapple salad. Dessert was always the same—a big ring of fruit-filled pastry called kringle that Grandpa Will brought home from the Danish bakery. The food was terrific. If Charlie could have filled his plate and taken it indoors to the den-bedroom to eat by himself, he would have looked forward to Saturday night. But he had to stay in the backyard, watching his father and watching other people watch his father. He could hardly wait until nine-thirty when the neighbors packed up their baskets, folded their patio chairs, and went home.

His father wasn't like the other men, and that was the trouble. He bragged about how strong he was, and he talked about how hard he worked at the high school. The neighbors listened and nodded, but Charlie could tell they were bored. Mr. Gessert and Mr. Michalski were teachers, like Grandpa Will. Mr. Drury sold insurance, and Mr. Koch did something at the glove factory. They probably would have liked a chance to talk about their jobs, too.

His father called all the ladies by their first names, even though they were much older than he was and he hadn't seen them for years. Once he mentioned “my five years in the school of hard knocks.” That was the worst time of all. Grandma Lou had turned away quickly when he said it, and. Charlie had felt his own face grow hot. Even Grandpa Will had looked dismayed. His father hadn't noticed a thing.

Grandma and Rachel were preparing for the cookout when Charlie and Grandpa got home. His grandmother had cooked a kettle of chili—“for a change,” she said—and the kitchen smelled marvelous.

“You don't have to set up chairs or carry stuff outside or anything,” Rachel said as soon as Charlie came in. “I'm going to do it all.” He knew she was apologizing for what she'd said earlier.

He went back to the car. He and Grandpa lifted the birdbath out of the trunk, and then they strolled around the yard, trying to decide where it should go.

“Did you and Rachel work out your problem?” Grandpa asked. He put a hand on Charlie's shoulder.

“I guess so. I don't know.” Charlie didn't want to talk about it. He was still angry with Rachel. He'd thought they were pretty good friends until she'd made that remark about stealing. It changed things.

The quiet of the garden was pierced by a whistle. “Hey, look here! Look at what your old man bought, Charlie.” John Hocking came around the side of the house carrying a battered guitar case. “I pawned mine when we were in Milwaukee,” he explained to Grandpa Will. “Made up my mind I'd get a secondhand replacement with my first paycheck.”

He was wide-shouldered, medium-tall, with Grandma Lou's thick dark hair and Grandpa Will's light brown eyes. His face shone with excitement. Charlie felt a wave of resentment and disliked himself for it.
He acts like a kid
, he thought, and then,
So what? What's so terrible about acting like a kid?

It was only terrible if you'd been hoping for another kind of father.

John opened the case, took out the guitar, and struck a pose. “What'll it be, folks? Gotta practice up before the company comes.”

“I didn't know you could play the gee-tar,” Grandpa joked. He sounded uneasy.

“Learned how two, three years ago,” John said. “Believe me, I've had plenty of time to practice.”

Charlie winced. Was his father going to tell the neighbors he'd spent his evenings in prison playing the guitar? “‘Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah,'” he sang as he strummed. “‘Someone's in the kitchen, I know …'”

There was applause from the the kitchen window, and they turned to see Grandma Lou and Rachel smiling at them. “We'll have some community singing tonight,” Grandma called. “Good for you, Johnny.”

John bowed. He even did a couple of soft-shoe steps. Charlie turned away. He'd die if his father did that in front of the neighbors.

As it turned out, the evening was much worse than anything Charlie could have imagined, and it had nothing to do with his father's guitar. Mrs. Koch started the trouble, halfway through supper, when she said, “Rachel, I hope you're going to try out for Sunbonnet Queen this Fourth of July. You'd make a lovely queen! I can just see you up on that float in the parade, and handing out prizes in the park—the way your grandmother did when she was your age. You look like she did then—same long dark hair and beautiful eyes.”

Charlie nearly choked on a bite of bratwurst. The Sunbonnet Queen! He'd forgotten that part of his strange conversation with the old woman in the woods.

“I
am
going to run for queen,” Rachel said calmly. “The winner has to be a good citizen of Pike River, and I've done lots and lots of things—” She blushed. “I mean, Grandma thinks I have a chance.…”

“Of course you do,” Grandma Lou agreed. “You're a good citizen, if ever there was one, dear. All those cookies you baked for the Veterans Hospital, all those committees you work on, all the candy you've sold for the band.”

“Charlie helped with the candy bars,” Rachel said quickly. “He sold some this morning.”

Charlie was still trying to remember what the old woman had said. He forgot for a moment that Rachel didn't believe there
was
an old woman. “You know the lady I told you about—the one who took the candy bar? She said she's the real Sunbonnet Queen. I didn't even know what she was talking about.”

Rachel's blush deepened. “That's stupid,” she snapped. “The Sunbonnet Queen is always a girl—a
young
girl. You're just making up a story—and I know why.”

“I am not.” Charlie was starting to get angry again. First Rachel called him a thief, and now she was telling everyone he was a liar. “You know what she said? She said, ‘Tell Will Hocking hello from the real Sunbonnet Queen.'”

“Why didn't you tell us before?” asked Grandma Lou.

“Because I forgot, that's why.”

Rachel was close to tears. “You're making it all up because I didn't believe an old woman took the bar without paying for it—and I still don't believe it, so there! Now you're making fun of the contest, just to get even.”

The Hockings and their guests looked from Rachel to Charlie, trying to decide what to make of this tempest.

“Now, children,” Grandma Lou murmured.

“What old lady are you talking about, Charlie?” asked Grandpa Will.

Charlie groaned to himself. Now he'd done it. “Just a woman,” he mumbled. “I was trying to sell her a candy bar, and she—she asked me if I was related to Will Hocking because I look like you. And she said to tell you ‘the
real
Sunbonnet Queen says hello.'”

“He's lying!” Rachel sniffed. “I know he's lying. He ate that candy bar himself.”

“I can't figure who'd say a thing like that, Charlie.” Grandpa was looking at him hard. “Where did you say she lives?”

“Outside town,” Charlie said, wishing he had never started this. “There's that bridge over Pike River, and beyond that there's a woods.” He paused, aware that they were all listening and watching him curiously. “I went back through the woods, and I saw this old house sitting by itself in the middle of a clearing. And I talked to the old woman who lives there. And that's all.”

Mr. Michalski cleared his throat. “Sounds like the Delaney place. Some cousins inherited it from the old folks and rented it out for a while, but it's been abandoned for years. The cousins moved to Detroit, I think—never could sell it.”

“Certainly an old lady wouldn't be living out there in the woods by herself, Charlie,” Mrs. Koch said. “You must be mistaken, dear.”

Charlie looked around the patio. It wasn't too dark to see the doubting expressions on every face. They all believed Rachel when she said he was making up a story. Every last one of them thought he was a liar.

It was Grandma Lou's reaction that hurt most. Her voice trembled when she spoke. “No one has been in the Delaney house for years,” she said. “We all know that. You'd better stop this silly talk right now, Charlie. We don't want to hear any more of it.”

Charlie jumped up and started toward the house.
He's John Hocking's boy, all right
—
making up a crazy story just to get attention
. That's what the neighbors were thinking, but it was much worse knowing his grandmother agreed with them.

“Come on back, Charlie,” Grandpa Will called. “You haven't finished your supper. Let's forget the whole thing.”

“I'm not hungry.”

“Hey, kid, you can't leave now,” John shouted. “You don't want to miss the singing, do you?”

The singing! His father hadn't even heard what was happening. All he cared about was his gee-tar.

“Yeah, I want to miss the singing,” Charlie growled. He let the breezeway door slam, hard, behind him.

CHAPTER 3

Saturday night had been bad enough. Sunday morning was worse, with everyone except Rachel being super-polite to Charlie and not mentioning what had happened the night before. But it wasn't until Sunday afternoon that Charlie decided he had to leave Pike River.

He and Grandpa Will were out in the garden digging a shallow hole for the base of the birdbath. “We'll pick up a few flagstones later to set around it,” Grandpa said. “That'll look spiffy.” Then he changed the subject, so abruptly that Charlie knew he'd been waiting for the chance to say what he wanted to say.

“I took a few minutes to run out to the Delaney place this morning, Charlie. Thought I'd find out whether vagrants had broken in. Not that it's any of my business, I guess, but if it were my house I'd appreciate somebody checking once in a while. You never know when some member of the Delaney family might show up and try to sell it again, or even want to get it in shape to move in. Vagrants can wreck a place in a hurry.” He was talking fast and didn't look up from his digging.

Charlie shifted the birdbath closer to the hole. “Did you see her?”

“No, I didn't. There wasn't anyone there, and frankly I don't think there's been anyone there for years. The front and back doors were locked up tight. I looked through the windows that were low enough, and I didn't see any sign of life.”

“Maybe she was upstairs,” Charlie said stubbornly. “Maybe she was taking a nap. Old ladies take naps.”

“I don't think so.” Grandpa Will picked up the birdbath and set it firmly in the hole. He stamped the earth around the base. “It didn't
feel
like anyone was there, Charlie. It felt like an empty house, and I believe that's what it is.”

“Then you think I made up the old lady,” Charlie said. “You think I ate that darned candy bar, the way Rachel said I did. Why don't you say so right out?”

His grandfather straightened up. “I think you're a fine boy,” he said slowly. “I don't know what you saw, or what you think you saw. Maybe we aren't even talking about the same house, though I don't know what other one it could be. The point is”—he stepped back and looked Charlie squarely in the eye—“you have to be careful with the truth. You're old enough to know what's real and what's make-believe. Now, I don't know what the argument is between you and Rachel—”