Who Won the War? (6 page)

“So,” said Eddie. “I want to go see this place.”

Wally glanced at his brothers. It was another hot day—too hot, really, to go climbing. But that wasn't what he was worried about. As long as the sun was shining, one of their shadows was bound to fall on someone else's.

Fifteen minutes later, they were all walking across a pasture toward the high round hill, Peter taking big steps to keep up, the stubble of grass and weeds pricking his short legs. Everyone seemed to be spreading out as they started up the hill, keeping their shadows definitely separate from each other.

It took longer than they'd thought it would to get to the top. They grew hotter with every step, but at last, when they reached the crest, there was a bit more breeze, which helped dry the perspiration that dripped down their faces.

“So this is it, huh?” Eddie said, her voice hushed and reverent. “Where the Shanatee are buried? Doesn't it sort of spook you out that we might be standing on the very grave of one of their warriors?” She moved a step closer to Jake, and instantly Jake took a step closer to Josh. Their shadows almost touched, and Josh jumped.

They fanned out some more, studying the ground, stepping on large rocks strewn here and there. Suddenly Jake knelt down and said, “Hey! Look what I found!”

Caroline hurried over, getting just close enough to see him holding an almost perfect arrowhead. “It was just lying there? You found it just like that?” she asked.

“I kicked it,” said Jake. “There are supposed to be a lot up here.”

Instantly the girls began kicking at the ground with the toes of their sneakers. Beth even got down on her knees and began digging around the rocks. Eddie seemed especially intent on finding another arrowhead.

Jake and Josh and Wally and Peter worked to stay off each other's shadows. The girls didn't seem that concerned, Wally thought, but he didn't believe in taking chances.

At last Eddie said, “Hey, Jake, can I see that arrowhead a second? I want to know what to look for.”

“Sure,” Jake said.

Eddie turned it over and over in her hand. “You're a big fat liar, Jake,” she said.

“What d'you mean?” asked Jake. “That's a real Indian arrowhead, and I can prove it.”

“Yeah, but you didn't just find it this morning,” said Eddie. “It doesn't have a speck of dirt on it. Not even dust! It even looks like it's been polished! You brought this along this morning, just as a joke.”

Jake laughed. “Well, it worked, didn't it? You and Beth down on your hands and knees, digging away …” He and Josh hooted.

But Wally was sitting on a rock, reading the folded-up paper that Beth had read to them that morning. Somehow she had dropped it while she was searching for arrowheads.

“You know what else is fake?” he said. “The Shanatee Indians.”

Beth jumped up and tried to grab the paper, but Wally held it away from her.

“It is not fake!” said Beth. “I printed it right off the encyclopedia on the computer.”

“Some encyclopedia!” said Wally. “It misspelled
possession
and
epidemic.”

Beth's face began to color. Everyone knew that the
one thing Wally Hatford could do well was spell. “And the Shanatee Indians, if there
were
Indians,” Wally continued, “wouldn't have called it Knob Hill. What kind of an Indian name is that?”

There was nothing for Beth and Eddie and Caroline to do but laugh.

“So, okay, we're even. You fell for it, didn't you—the shadows and everything? We had you scared half out of your shorts,” Eddie said.

“That's part of the story Beth submitted to the short story contest at the library,” Caroline told the boys. “She's good, isn't she? If she wins, she'll get it published in the newspaper.”

“So you just made the whole thing up?” Wally asked.

“Totally,” said Beth.

“There weren't any Shanatee Indians?” asked Peter.

“Nope.”

“And all that stuff about shadows is nonsense?” asked Josh.

“Completely,” said Eddie. “We had you guys hornswoggled, but good!”

Seven
Center Stage

F
or many days, the Hatfords and the Malloys didn't see much of each other. It was almost too hot to go outside. Eddie's baseball games, which were keeping the girls there till the end of summer, almost fizzled because the players were so exhausted by the heat.

People stayed in their air-conditioned houses or went to the movies or the pool. Beth spent her days at the library, working on her short fantasy story about the make-believe Shanatee Indians and helping to shelve books in her spare time. Whenever the girls were home, there was packing to do, and slowly the drawers and closets were emptying as more and more boxes piled up in the living room, ready for the movers. It was depressing, Caroline thought.

Twice she had crept into the elementary school when only the custodian was around and had gone
into the empty auditorium and up onstage, where she recited, very softly but with the most dramatic gestures she could think of, the scene for a play or a story of her own.

What she had to do before she left Buckman, she told herself, was recite the poem “The Raven” from the stage. The whole thing. A few weeks earlier, she had done an Internet search for her name, Caroline Lenore Malloy, wondering if anyone, anywhere, might know of her—if a newspaper might have picked up the story of her being carried down the Buckman River, for example, the day she fell in. With trembling fingers she had typed her name, and she had got thirty-four pages of references. The only problem was that none of them said
Caroline Lenore Malloy.
They only said
Caroline
or
Lenore
or
Malloy.
But one of those hits was “The Raven,” a poem by Edgar Allan Poe with the name
Lenore
in it:
“… sorrow for the lost Lenore. ”

Lenore
was not a common name. In fact, Caroline had never heard of a single other person with that name. It was this that made her decide she simply had to memorize that poem, and once she had memorized it, she had to recite it somewhere onstage.

When she found the poem at the library, however, she was discouraged by how long it was. So far she had only memorized the first two stanzas, but she was working on it.

She had to be careful when she slipped into the school. It wasn't allowed, for one thing. None of the students were allowed inside the building until

September. Once in a while, she knew, the principal came by, but usually only the custodian was there working—tightening door handles, painting a wall, repairing a desk, changing lightbulbs, getting the old school ready for another year of classes in the fall. Classes without Caroline.

Caroline would sit in a swing or climb on the monkey bars on the playground until she was sure the custodian was working in another part of the building, far from the auditorium. Then she would slip through the unlocked side door, creep down the hall to the auditorium, and enter the cool darkness of that wonderful room.

Now, on this particular morning so close to moving day, Caroline knew she was going onstage in Buckman for the very last time. She walked down the long sloping aisle to the foot of the stage and climbed the four steps at one side that led behind the curtain.

She stood looking upward, entranced by the various ropes and pulleys. Everything looked very old and very used, and she could hardly bear the thought that the next time the big velvet curtain was opened and closed, or the backdrop of a meadow was lowered, she would not be here with the spotlight shining on her.

No matter. This was Caroline's day, and slowly, with style and grace, she moved to center stage. In a soft voice, she addressed the empty seats in front of her:

“I would like to recite a little bit of ‘The Raven,’ by Edgar Allan Poe,” she said, clasping her hands in front
of her, her voice taking on a note of mystery and terror.

“Once upon a midnight dreary,
while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume
of forgotten lore …”

Caroline was good at memorizing. She was precocious, of course, so she could remember a lot, but things like the multiplication table were lowest on her priority list, while poetry (especially dramatic, sad, and tragic poetry—in particular, poems with her name in them) was number one.

“While I nodded, nearly napping,
suddenly there came a tapping, As of someone gently rapping, rapping
at my chamber door.
‘ ’Tis some visitor,' I muttered, ‘tapping
at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.’”

As Caroline went on, her words echoed in the empty auditorium, and—inspired by her own inflections—she let her voice soar:

“Ah, distinctly I remember it was in
the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought
its ghost upon the floor. ”

And now came the part with
her
name in it—the name of the beautiful girl, Lenore, whom Poe was writing about, who had died young and would be in his heart forever. At that moment, however, Caroline saw the custodian start to pass the auditorium door, then stop.

She had an audience! Someone was listening to her! Caroline knew that at any moment he would ask what she was doing here, how she had got into the school, and he would demand that she leave at once. So she had to make good use of the time. At her middle name, Lenore, she decided, she would fall into a dead faint there onstage. She would expire right in front of her audience—an audience of one—and would pull the curtain closed at the same time. A finer, more dramatic finish she could not imagine.

“Eagerly I wished the morrow;
vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow
—sorrow for the lost Lenore …”

Caroline's eyes began to close as her hand grabbed for the rope to pull the curtain.

“For … the rare … and radiant maiden …
whom the angels name … Lenore …”

She touched the rope, then grasped it with both hands and pulled with all her strength as she let her knees collapse….

“Nameless here for evermore!”

Wham!

The curtain didn't budge, but the large painted canvas backdrop of a meadow came crashing down on Caroline. She was pinned to the floor with her legs and one arm caught beneath the backdrop.
Ouch!

She could hear running footsteps coming down the aisle.

“Hey!” the custodian was calling. “Hey! Are you all right?”

Caroline closed her eyes.

The footsteps were coming up the side steps now. Then they were crossing the stage.

“What the heck?” the custodian was saying. “What are you doing in here?”