The Boys Start the War (11 page)

When they stopped, however, there was no noise from below. No voices, no footstep. Nothing. The girls did it again, a little louder, and waited. Still nothing. Caroline looked over the side of the railing. There were no squares of yellow light on the lawn, meaning that the boys had turned out all the lights. What were they doing?

She and Eddie and Path exchanged glances. “Maybe they left. Maybe they just silently closed up and headed for the school to get their parents,” said Beth.

“Wouldn’t that be a
blast!”
said Eddie.

“We could do this again sometime, when their folks are away,” Beth laughed. “We could drive them
wild.”

“We could drive
them
out of Buckman, and
then we’d have the town to ourselves,” said Caroline.

They waited a few minutes longer. If the boys
had
gone to the school to get their parents, it meant the Hatfords’ car could be turning in at any moment.

“We’d better go,” said Eddie.

Carefully they climbed over the side of the widow’s walk, then made their way down the sloping roof, scooting along on the seat of their pants—slowly, cautiously, grasping the shingles with their fingertips as they came, Caroline in the lead. But when she reached the place they had left the ladder, Caroline saw that the ladder was gone.

“WHOEEEOOO!” came a yell from the yard below, and the four Hatford brothers emerged from the porch, yelling like banshees in the darkness.

For the second time Caroline’s face burned with humiliation. There was nothing left but surrender.

“Okay, okay, put the ladder back up,” she said, but the boys paid no attention.

“WHOEEEOOOO!” they yelped, running about the yard in the rain.

“Put that ladder back up!” Eddie commanded, as though it would do any good.

“You wanted to be up there, you’re up there,” yelled Jake. “Have a good time.”

“Want some pillows? Have a good sleep!” called Josh.

It was beginning to rain harder now. It came
down in huge drops; like water splashing out of a basin.

“Wally!” bellowed Caroline, but the boys only laughed and ducked inside under the porch roof. What had been fun before was scary now. Because of the rain and the dark, it was hard to maneuver.

“Come on,” said Beth, inching her way backup the roof, “I’ve got an idea.”

Caroline and Eddie followed clumsily, strands of wet hair blowing in their faces. Caroline felt wet through and through. They reached the railing around the widow’s walk and crawled under.

“I just have a hunch….” Beth said, bending over the trapdoor again. “Help me lift it, Eddie. See if it’s latched.”

All three girls edged their fingers beneath the rim to the lid to the trapdoor and tugged. Just as Beth suspected, the boys hadn’t latched it again after their last spying episode.

The girls stared down into total darkness.

“Are there stairs?” Eddile asked.

Caroline leaned over and put one arm down as far as it would reach, “No,” she said disappointedly.

“We could jump,” said Eddie.

“We don’t dare. We don’t know what’s under there.”

“What good is this going to do?” Eddie said.

“Just wait.” Beth told her. “We’re going to keep the door open. You’ll see,”

There was hail along with the rain now—smaller stones at first, then larger and larger.

“WHOOOOEEEEOOOO!” yelled the boys delightedly on the porch below.

“Let’s go inside where it’s warm and dry.” came Jake’s voice loudly from the porch.

“Yeah, let’s make some hot chocolate,” said Wally.

“With marshmallows,” added Peter. “Yum, yum!”

There was the sound of a door slamming as the boys went back in.

A minute went by. Then two or three. The rain and hail was hitting the floor beneath the trapdoor. The girls could hear it.

Suddenly a light came on, illuminating the Hatfords’ attic and the stepladder beneath. Hail was pinging against the floor. There was already a large puddle of water.

“Hey!” came Wally’s voice. “Jake! They’ve opened the trap! They’re letting in water!”

Feet pounded on the stairs, and Caroline looked down into Josh’s and Jake’s angry faces.

“Close the trap!” Jake demanded. “You’ll ruin the floor.”

“So?” said Caroline.

A car was pulling in the driveway.

“Your folks are home,” said Eddie.

“Come on down! Get out of here! Hurry up!” Josh yelled.

Caroline slid inside, holding on to the raised edge around the opening of the trap until her feet were securely on top of the stepladder, Eddie came next, and finally Beth, fulling the door closed behind her.

“Hurry!” Josh was saying, pushing them toward the stairs to the second floor, and they thundered down, the boys at their heels.

But it was too late. Just as Caroline reached the front door, it opened, and Mr. and Mrs. Hatford walked in.

“Hello.” said Caroline, and then, as she and her sisters went outside, “Good-bye.”

M
r. Hatford looked at his wife.

“Was it just my imagination, or did I see three girls, in yellow raincoats, walk out our front door?”

“You did.” said Wally’s mother. “Listen, you guys, what in the world is going on?”

“Those girls were up on our roof.” Wally said.

“In
this
rain?”

“They were, Mom,” Josh put in.

“Singing!” added Peter, nodding his head.

Mr. Hatford looked slowly around the room. “Singing in the rain; three girls in yellow raincoats; nine o’clock at night; on the roof.”

“How did they get up there?” asked Mother.

“They brought a ladder,” said Peter.

Wally wished his younger brother hadn’t said that, because he knew what the next question would be. It was his father who asked and answered it both.

“If they got
up
the ladder to get to the roof, why didn’t they go
down
the ladder to get to the ground? Because the boys took the ladder away, why else?”

Wally wanted to sneak off to the living room with his brothers, but Father was in the doorway.

Mother sighed “I used to think the Benson boys were more than I could take, but those girls are going to drive the wild. I wonder if the Malloys give any thought at all to how they are raising their children.”

“Now, Ellen, we saw George and Jean Malloy at the school tonight, and they seemed warm and friendly to me,” Father told her.

“Not friendly enough to tell me they liked my cake,” Mother said huffily. “I gave them every opportunity, and all they talked about was how nice it was for the boys to wash their windows.” She took off her jacket and hung it up. “Even sent the plate back without anything on it, a crack in it too. That’s just not the way we do things in Buckman.”

Wally ducked sheepishly under his father’s arm and made his escape.

A letter arrived the following day from the Benson boys addressed to J.J.W. and P. Hatford:

Hi, Guys!

It’s raining down here, so we figured it was time to write you all a letter. How ya doing?

We’re doing okay, I guess. You know what Georgia’s full of? Red ants. Red ants and roaches and lots of peach and pecan trees, and, of course, sun.

We’ve got this big old house—really, really old near the University, and so far Dad likes it here. Mom too. She likes this house. It’s got this enormous attic you wouldn’t believe. If you guys were down here we’d be up in the attic all the time, I’ll bet. Stuffs hidden in the walls—old newspapers and things, I mean. One of them dates back to 1887. Mom said the house used to belong to a Confederate soldier. We’ve been looking for bullets and stuff at the back of the yard, but so far we haven’t found any.

Did Wally get Applebaum this year? You should see the teacher Danny got. A Georgia P-E-A-C-H. Every guy who gets her this year is one lucky stiff. School’s not too bad. Lots of boys here, right in our neighborhood, too, so that’s good. Wish you were here, though.

The first thing we’d do if you ever come down to Georgia is go up to the attic, because it’s probably the first thing you’d want to see.

The second thing would be to ride around town on the tour bus. Boy, there’s so much to do you could probably live here twenty years and not do it all.

Anyway, write to us sometime and tell us about the people who moved into our house. Mom wants to know if they’re taking good care of it. I asked her the other day if we were going back to Buckman after the year is up, and she said she didn’t know, it was up to Dad. So I asked him, and he said, “Who knows?”

Take care, you guys,

Bill

(and Danny and Steve and Tony and Doug)

Dear Bill (and Danny and Steve and Tony and Doug):

We got your letter and I can’t say we’re glad you like Georgia, because we hoped you wouldn’t. You want to know who rents your house? A Whomper, a Weirdo, and a Crazie, that’s who. So far here is what these girls have done:

1. Outpitched the boys at recess (even Jake).
   

2. Pretended one of their sisters (the Crazie) was dead and dumped her in the river.
   

3. Threw a cake in the river.
   

4. Stole a flashlight.
   

5. Stole Dad’s underwear.
   

6. Crawled up on our roof in a rainstorm and hollered through our trapdoor.
   

If you were here, and we were in Georgia, would you be glad? I don’t care if you guys have a Georgia P-E-A-C-H for a teacher or not I don’t care if you have Miss America. If you don’t come back and send these dweebs back to Ohio, I’ll tell everyone in Buckman how you wet your pants once on the playground.

Wally

(and Jake and Josh and Peter)

P.S. I don’t know if the Malloys are taking good care of your house or not.
We
had to go over and wash their windows for them. That should tell you something.

“I’ll bet they’re never coming back,” Wally said as he sealed his letter.

“They sure didn’t sound very sad about being in Georgia,” said Josh.

“You know what?” said Jake after a minute. “If one of the Malloy girls ever comes over here again, let’s kidnap her. Lock her up. We’ll make her sisters pay plenty to get her back.”

“Wow!” said Peter.

“T
om and Ellen Hatford seem like such nice people,” Mother said at breakfast as she put some melon on the table. “Did I tell you girls that we talked with them a little while at the school the other night? I told them I appreciated the boys helping wash our windows.”

“Yeah, great job,” Eddie said dryly.

“Mrs. Hatford, though, is … well, a bit on the odd side. I was standing with her over by the refreshment tables and as I reached for a cookie, she said she was glad my family enjoyed desserts so much, that we all had such hearty appetites. One little cookie, and she made it sound as though the five of us could finish off a whole cake in one meal!

“Very,” agreed Eddie.

At school that morning Caroline did not cross the auditorium to get to the rest room as she had been doing once a day since she had discovered the new route. The sixth-graders were in the auditorium watching a film, so it was not till lunchtime that, when Caroline peeked, it was dark and empty once again.

She did not have any trouble finding opportunities to step up on the stage. She could count on being excused from class at least once a day to go to the rest room. Sometimes she came in the building at recess to get a drink, and made an auditorium detour going back out again. If all else failed, she hurriedly ate her lunch and then—when she took her milk carton to the trash—silently walked on out the door into the hall, slipped into the auditorium, and, when she was finished, out the other side and onto the playground.

She’d gotten into the habit of taking a book in with her, any book at all, so she could practice reading a few paragraphs, with expression, from the stage. She could not talk nearly as loud as she would have liked, of course, because someone outside might hear, so she stage-whispered the paragraphs, always choosing a selection where at least two different people were speaking, to give her practice reading several parts.