The Pike River Phantom (4 page)

“She's not the only one who's been doing that,” Charlie muttered under his breath.

An eraser shot across the table and hit him on the forehead. “I knew you'd say that,” Rachel snapped. “There's nothing wrong with getting other people to be good citizens, too, is there, Grandma? I'm just being a good influence.”

“Good influence!” Charlie shook his head. “You get other people to do your work and you call that being a good influence?”

Rachel looked for something else to throw besides Grandpa Will's best ballpoint pen. “I sold one hundred and seven bars before you even came to Pike River, Charlie Hocking! You'd better stop—”

“That's enough. Both of you.” Grandma looked dismayed. “Charlie, there's no reason why you shouldn't help with the candy bars if you want to. This isn't a contest to sell the most—the goal is to support the school band. And, Rachel, it
is
important that everything we list here is something you've done yourself. I wouldn't want you to make the mistake I did.…” She stopped. “Well, never mind that now. Water over the dam.”

“Water over what dam?” Rachel demanded. “What mistake, Grandma?”

Grandma Lou sighed. “Doing this—helping you to fill out the application—makes me remember a very long time ago when I wanted to be the Sunbonnet Queen myself. My father was going to run for mayor of Pike River that year, and his campaign manager decided it would be a good idea if I entered the queen contest. If I won, you see, it would be good advance publicity before the campaign actually got under way that fall. The minute he suggested it, I knew I wanted to win more than anything in my life.”

“And you did win!” Rachel exclaimed. “How did you do it, Grandma?”

“That was the trouble,” Grandma said solemnly. “It was around the time of the Great Depression, and there were lots of people who couldn't find work. The Fourth of July planning committee decided the queen that year would be the girl who collected the most old clothes to send to the poor in Milwaukee and Madison. It was a fine idea, and lots of clothes were collected, but—it just wasn't fair.”

“Why not?” Rachel wanted to know. “Collecting clothes sounds like a great idea.”

Charlie could tell that Grandma Lou would rather not have told this story. “It wasn't fair because my father's campaign manager—that was Mr. Koch's father—went from house to house with me,” she explained reluctantly. “At every stop he mentioned that I was Ira Swenson's daughter, and he implied that it would help my father's campaign if I won the contest. Later I found out that he had collected a lot of things himself and had added them to the stack we had stored in our barn.”

“But that wasn't your fault,” Charlie protested. “You didn't know he was doing it.”

Grandma smiled at him. “That's right, I didn't, dear. Still, I felt terribly guilty when I found out, and it bothers me to this day—more than fifty years later. I enjoyed being the Sunbonnet Queen, but I would have enjoyed it more if I'd been sure I'd won the honor myself. That's why I want you to be careful, Rachel. If you do win, I don't want anything in the world to spoil it.”

Charlie had a feeling there was more to the story than they had heard. He would have asked questions, but just then the front door opened and footsteps pounded through the house. His father appeared in the breezeway, his face an angry red.

“John, what's the matter?” Grandma Lou looked frightened. “You haven't been fighting, have you?”

“No, but I'd like to take a swing at somebody,” John snapped. “That stupid Joe Adams, for starters. The nerve of that guy!”

“Who's Joe Adams?” Charlie asked. He'd never seen his father this angry before.

“My boss. So-called. Which means he should know more than I do, right? So this afternoon the paint is delivered for the high-school gym walls. I've been scraping off the old stuff for days, getting ready. I look at the paint, and it's the cheapest stuff on the market. Won't hold up for a year. And when I tell Joe that, he says it isn't any of our business. We don't do the buying and we don't do the complaining, he says. We just do the painting. What do you think of that?” He looked around the table indignantly.

“Well, now,” Grandma said. She put out a soothing hand, but John jerked his own hand away.

“I told him, if he wasn't going to do anything about it, I would. I'm going to call the president of the school board and tell him somebody's doing a lousy job. Probably letting the hardware store unload stuff on us that they couldn't get rid of any other way.”

“You're going to call Frank Mason?” Grandma was shocked. “Oh, dear, you mustn't do that. Frank has a wicked temper, and if you talk to him when you're all upset—please wait till your father gets home. Talk it over with him.”

“I don't need to talk to Dad,” John exclaimed. “I know what to do.” He slammed out of the breezeway and down the hall to the den.

For a minute no one spoke. Then, “Nobody's going to believe
him
,” Charlie muttered. “He ought to know that.”

Rachel gasped. “That's an awful thing to say, Charlie Hocking. I think Uncle John is brave.”

“Since when?” Charlie retorted. “You never sounded like such a big fan of his before.”

Grandma Lou pressed her hands together, almost as if she were praying. “The point is, he can't afford to take chances with his job,” she said. “Oh, I wish your grandfather were here.”

Charlie wished he were, too. Rachel had made him feel like a traitor, but he couldn't help it. His father was a person who let his feelings get him into trouble; Aunt Laura had said so often enough. Now he was going to prove she was right again.

The voice in the den, fairly soft at first, was growing louder. Grandma Lou started to get up, then sank back in her chair. Rachel bent her head over her notes. Charlie stared out the window and wished he were already in California. He'd like to be walking on a white beach, splashing barefoot through waves that flattened themselves on the sand. He'd like to be anyplace but where he was, listening to the sharp click of the telephone being hung up. Listening to his father's steps, slower now, coming back down the hall.

“Is everything all right, John?” Grandma Lou asked uncertainly.

Charlie was shocked at the change in his father's face. All the angry color had faded, and he looked grayish, haggard.

“Not exactly all right,” he said with a sick smile. “Mason told me I was wrong. He said the schools buy only top-quality materials. Can you believe that? I said I knew cheap paint when I saw it, and then—then I guess I got sort of excited and—”

White sand
. Charlie concentrated hard.
Surfboards. Shells. A treasure map in a bottle
.

“So Mason said to forget the job. He said—this is an exact quote—‘We don't need a hothead who blows his top every time he thinks he has a gripe.'”

“Oh, John.” Grandma sounded ready to cry. “What will your father say? He worked so hard to get that job for you.”

Charlie winced, and his father looked sicker.

“Mr. Mason is mean!” Rachel exclaimed. “Uncle John was trying to help. He was being a good citizen!”

John looked at Charlie, but Charlie turned away. He felt sorry for his father, but what good would it do to say so? After all, he'd brought this trouble on himself, by losing his temper at Mr. Mason.

“I think I'll take a little nap,” Grandma Lou quavered. “I really am very tired.”

She patted John's shoulder reassuringly as she left the breezeway, but her quick passage down the hall, and the way she shut her bedroom door behind her with a little slam, said she'd had enough of their troubles for a while.

CHAPTER 5

“Nobody's talking to anybody,” Rachel complained. “Are you talking to me?” She stood in the den doorway, a clutch of papers in one hand.

Charlie shrugged, his eyes on the television screen. “Why not?” She was friendly one minute, rude and bossy the next, but it didn't matter. A week from now he probably wouldn't even remember what she looked like. “What's going on?”

“Uncle John's outside doing something to his guitar. Grandma's lying down again. Grandpa went out—I don't know where.” She came in and sat primly at the other end of the sofa bed. “I just wanted to let you know that I didn't tell any lies on this application for the Sunbonnet Queen contest. Here's what I'm going to say: ‘Her cousin Charlie Hocking helped to sell the candy bars.' Does that sound okay to you?”

“Why not?” Charlie repeated. She was a funny kid.

“So, will you help again tomorrow? Mr. Carly—he's the band director—says we all have to sell a lot more than we have so far.”

Charlie considered asking why she'd want a liar and a thief working for her, but he just didn't feel like starting the argument all over again. “I don't know if I'll have time,” he said. “I've got a lot of stuff to take care of.”

“Like what?”

Like packing. Like looking up a road map, so I can pick the quickest route to California
. He wished she would leave, but she didn't.

“Just stuff,” he said gruffly.

“I'm sorry Uncle John lost his job.”

Charlie nodded, still refusing to look at her. “I don't want to talk about it.”

“Well, you needn't bite my head off.” Suddenly she was her snappy self again. “
Nobody
wants to talk about it. That was the longest, quietest dinner I ever sat through.”

“What's there to say?” Charlie muttered. “He messed up—again. Period.”

Rachel stood up at last. “You're weird, Charlie,” she said. “You always sound mad when you talk about Uncle John. At least he's here now, and you can talk to him when you want to. You don't know when you're well off.”

Charlie was surprised. Rachel had seemed to him to be perfectly contented living with Grandma and Grandpa in Pike River. He couldn't believe she envied
him
. Didn't she realize there was a big difference between having a father who was away being a missionary and a father who had been in prison? You didn't automatically think your father was great just because he was your father.

He opened his mouth to tell her he might have time to sell candy tomorrow, but she was already disappearing into her own room across the hall, her thin shoulders stiff with indignation.

By nine-thirty the troubled house was beginning to weigh on Charlie's nerves. Grandpa Will hadn't returned from wherever he'd gone, and Grandma and Rachel were in their bedrooms, their doors closed. Charlie switched off the television and wandered out to the patio.

His father lay on the lounge, the guitar case close by on the picnic table. He looked sort of small and sad lying there in the moonlight, but there was nothing sad about his greeting.

“Hiya, kid. Anything worth seeing on TV?”

Charlie sat on a picnic-table bench. “Nothing much,” he said. “What are you doing?”

“Thinking.” John sat up and swung his feet over the side of the lounge. “I've been making plans, Charlie—great plans. The more I think about it, the more I know it was a good thing I lost this job. I grabbed it too quickly in the first place. I can do better.”

Charlie wondered if he could be hearing right. Had his father forgotten those painful months of job-hunting in Milwaukee?

“First thing tomorrow, I'm going to make a list of every store and factory in Pike River. Sales—that's where I should be. I think I'm a natural salesman. What do you say?”

“I don't know,” Charlie muttered. “It's up to you, I guess.”

“Of course it's up to me. If Frank Mason is too dumb—or maybe even too dishonest—to want to hear the truth, that's his problem. I'll get a sales job that pays a lot better, and you and I'll rent a place of our own.…” He was watching Charlie closely. “What's on your mind, Charlie-boy? You'd like your own room, wouldn't you? We can probably manage a TV in there, too.”

“I'd rather stay here,” Charlie said. “I'd rather stay with Grandma and Grandpa.”
Or go to California and live on the beach
.

He expected a burst of anger, or else a pep talk about the fun they'd have in their own place, but instead his father leaned back on the lounge. After a minute or two he said, “I see,” in an odd, flat voice. “Anything else you want to tell me?”

Charlie couldn't stop himself. “You shouldn't have yelled at Mr. Mason,” he blurted. “You should have kept quiet. Now you might not be able to get another job. Not ever!”

In one swift movement John stood and picked up the guitar case. Charlie got up, too, ready to duck out of reach if his father tried to hit him. They stared at each other, then John turned away.

“Nice to know my kid has so much confidence in me,” he said over his shoulder. “That really helps.”

Charlie sat on in the moonlight after his father had gone into the house. He didn't like himself very much, and yet he'd only said what he knew Grandpa and Grandma must be thinking. His father didn't think before he acted. He jumped right in, without wondering what might happen. Charlie had spoken the truth.

But telling the truth could be a tricky business. Charlie thought about the woman in the house in the woods, and how no one had believed him when he'd told about their meeting. He tried to imagine her right now, sitting on her back porch looking up at the moon. She couldn't really have grown younger, he told himself. It must have been a trick of the sun, or the different way she'd arranged her hair. What was the truth about
that
?

Grandpa's car turned in the driveway. Charlie considered going to the garage to meet him, but he didn't move. Grandpa's tall silhouette passed through the breezeway and into the kitchen.

“Hi, John.” His voice carried clearly through the open kitchen window. Charlie realized his father must have been sitting in there alone. “Good news, boy. I saw Frank Mason—had a long talk with him. He's willing to take you back. He promised he'd look into what you said about the paint, too. If he finds out you're right, he'll reorder. But if he decides the paint is okay, you'll have to use it and quit complaining. What do you say?”