The Pike River Phantom Read online

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—”

  “Sure you do,” Charlie interrupted, and his voice cracked. “You’re on her side. You believe her, not me.”

  His grandfather looked unhappy. “Rachel is your cousin and your friend,” h
e said firmly. “We aren’t against you, Charlie. But people are going to judge you on how you handle the facts. It’s always better to—”

  “I told you the facts! I went to that house, and I talked to the lady who lives there. She took a candy bar and she didn’t pay me for it.” He stomped on the loose dirt on his side of the birdbath. “Nobody would think I was lying if I was anybody else’s kid.”

  “Now—wait—one—minute!” The words were spoken quietly, but Charlie knew Grandpa Will was furious. “Your father’s a good man! Your grandmother and I are proud of him because he’s paid for his mistake, and now he’s ready to start over. He’s enthusiastic, and he isn’t afraid to work hard. You ought to be proud of him, too.”

  Charlie picked up a stone and pegged it across the yard. “He walked out on me,” he said. “I mean, nobody made him hold up that store. If he hadn’t done that, he wouldn’t have gone to prison. I wouldn’t have had to stay with Aunt Laura all that time.”

  “Now listen to me, young man!” Grandpa was struggling to control his anger. “Your dad had a terrible time for a few years. First your mother died. Then he lost his job and couldn’t keep up the payments on your house. And then he began drinking.…” Grandpa rubbed his chin. “I’m not making excuses for him, Charlie, I’m just telling you how it was. You hardly know him, I guess. You’ve been living together for a few months—that’s not long enough to really know someone.”

  Charlie didn’t want to hear any of this. He and Grandpa Will had become pals in the last two weeks. Charlie had even pretended, secretly, that Grandpa was his real father, and John Hocking was just someone who was living with them for a while. Now it was all spoiled.

  Guitar chords floated from the den’s open window, settling into a barely recognizable version of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Grandpa squeezed Charlie’s shoulder. “We can talk again later, right?”

  “Right,” Charlie said, but he didn’t mean it. He’d decided by then what he was going to do. He’d run away. He had money—fifty-seven dollars in his Model T car-bank the last time he’d counted. Fifty-seven dollars would take him a long way.

  Where would he go? He’d thought first of returning to Milwaukee, to Aunt Laura, but he didn’t really want to do that. Aunt Laura had tried to make him feel welcome, but Charlie had always known he was in the way. Besides, Aunt Laura’s apartment was the first place where the family would look for him.

  It would be better to go where no one knew him. California, maybe. He could mow lawns, or collect aluminum cans to make money, and if he didn’t earn much, it wouldn’t matter. He could live on the beach, catch fish to eat, look for rare shells every morning. Some kinds of shells were worth lots of money. He’d do all right in California, because there wouldn’t be anyone to remind him that he was John Hocking’s son and he’d better be careful how he handled facts.

  But there was one piece of unfinished business he had to take care of first. A couple of nights later, with the sounds of his father’s guitar as background, Charlie planned a return visit to the house in the woods. He had to go back. He had to prove to his family—especially to Grandpa Will—that he wasn’t lying. He’d take the camera Aunt Laura had given him last Christmas, and he’d ask the old woman in the house to let him snap her picture. The memory of his grandfather’s sharp words was as painful as a throbbing tooth.

  The next morning, as Charlie walked along the edge of the highway, he pretended that this was the day he was leaving Pike River. This was the last time he’d cross the Pike River bridge, the last time he’d see all these pink and yellow and purple wildflowers blazing in the sun. Any minute now, a car would slow down to offer him a ride, and he’d be on his way.

  He was thinking so hard that he almost bumped into the mailbox that marked the beginning of the road to the clearing. He looked at the side of the rusted box and made out the letters D E L on the bottom. Well, maybe Delaney was the name of the woman who was living in the house now. Maybe she was a daughter or a cousin of the original owners and had decided she wanted to stay here. Grandpa Will himself had said that the Delaneys might come back someday.

  Charlie walked swiftly through the woods to the sunny open space beyond. The path to the front porch was longer than he remembered, and laced with prickly weeds. Empty windows stared at him as he approached. In spite of himself, Charlie thought of Grandpa’s comment: It felt like an empty house, and I believe that’s what it is.

  He lifted the bulldog knocker, let it thunk against the door. There was no answer. He knocked again, with his fist this time, and then, astonished at his own boldness, he tried the knob. The door swung open, squeaking loudly.

  The front and back doors were locked, Grandpa had said. Well, the front door was open now. Didn’t that prove someone was here?

  “Hello!”

  Still no answer. Charlie wondered what to do next. He didn’t have any right to be in the house—but what if the old lady was sick or had fallen and needed help? She was mean, and she said strange things, but he couldn’t just walk away. Besides, if she were gone, he still wanted to find some proof that she’d been here a couple of days ago.

  He moved into the shadowy living room. A couch with cushions that sagged almost to the floor stood against one wall, and next to it was a lamp without a shade or light bulb. Beyond the living room was a dining room, empty except for built-in cupboards. He found himself walking on tiptoe, calling hello every few steps and holding his breath while he waited for an answer. The only sound he heard was the buzzing of a fly. It was terribly loud in the silent house.

  A huge woodburning stove took up one wall of the kitchen. There were no pots or pans on the stove, and the scarred porcelain sink was empty. A cupboard door stood open a crack, and Charlie peeked inside, hoping to see a cereal box or a can of soup—anything that would suggest a person had lived in the house recently. But there was no food in any of the cupboards. In the last one there was a pile of newspapers, carelessly stacked. Something rustled behind them, and he closed the cupboard quickly.

  The kitchen opened into a back hall with two closed doors. One of them led to another stairway to the second floor. Charlie opened the second door just a crack and blinked into a flood of sunshine. He was facing a glassed-in porch, its windows cracked and dirty, the bare pine floor streaked with grime. He pushed the door a little farther.

  “GO AWAY!”

  Charlie leaped backward, almost crashing into the opposite wall.

  “I said, get out, boy! I haven’t time for visitors!”

  Heart thudding, Charlie reached again for the doorknob. She was there! She was living in the house. He was right, and everyone else was wrong.

  Recklessly he pushed the door open and stepped out on the porch. The woman sat in a rocking chair at the far end, her dark head bent over folds of brown material. One hand moved rhythmically, making stitches in a hem.

  Charlie cleared his throat. “I’m the boy with the candy bars,” he said. “I was here last Saturday.”

  “I know who you are. Will Hocking’s little brother.” She didn’t look up. Why wouldn’t she look up? What was it about her that was different from the last time he’d come?

  The woman moved her foot, and Charlie saw the candy bar lying on the floor.

  “I came about the money,” he said. “It’s for the Middle School band. Remember?”

  A blue jay flashed past the dusty windows. A floorboard creaked. Charlie wondered if she was just going to ignore him. Then she looked up, and he forgot all about the candy bar.

  “I thought you’d be back,” she said with a mocking smile. “Did you give Will my message, boy?”

  Charlie stared unbelievingly. The woman’s face was thinner than he remembered it. Her dark skin looked almost smooth, and now that she faced him he saw that most of the gray was gone from her hair. Loose dark waves hung about her face. Only her eyes were the same—and the mocking smile. She still seemed to look at him and through him at the same time.

  “I said
, did you give Will my message, boy?”

  “He didn’t believe me,” Charlie said shakily. “He came out here to look around. He thinks I was lying because he didn’t see you himself.”

  “He didn’t come.” The woman brushed her hair away from her face with an impatient gesture. “Some old man came looking around, but I don’t want to see strangers.” She scowled. “I told you to get out, too, didn’t I? I’m busy. I have to get ready for the parade.”

  She didn’t move from her chair, but there was a threat in her voice, a warning of danger. Charlie took a step backward. Then he remembered the camera in his shirt pocket. Aunt Laura had told him he must always ask permission before taking someone’s picture, but the woman had returned to her sewing, as if she’d forgotten he was there. He aimed the camera hastily, snapped the shutter, and retreated into the hall.

  The back door was on his right, down a short flight of stairs. Charlie hesitated, then decided he’d better leave the way he had come. If the back door proved to be locked, and the woman came after him, he’d have no place to run except to the basement.

  He tiptoed through the house, looking over his shoulder at every other step. This time the front door stuck, and he almost panicked. But a second hard pull opened it, and he catapulted out onto the porch. Sounds of summer—buzzes and hums and chirpings—rose around him. Nice, ordinary sounds. He leaped down the steps and ran all the way back to the highway.

  Walking toward town, he tried to figure out what it was about the woman that had been so frightening. She had looked different, much younger than the last time, but that was more puzzling than scary. And she had just sat there in her rocking chair, hardly moving. It must have been the crazy, mixed-up things she said, and the way she said them. Especially, he decided, the way she said them. She was like—like a quiet mountain that could turn into a raging volcano at any minute.

  And there was something else. Grandpa Will had said the house felt empty, and that was true. It had felt empty to Charlie, too, even while he and the woman were talking.