The Boys Start the War (5 page)

P
eter, Josh, and Jake were waiting in the bushes when Wally came around the bend.

“What happened?” asked Jake. “The Malloys just stomped by, mad as anything.”

Wally was miserable. “I just declared war,” he said, and told them what had happened.

“Hoo boy!” Josh whistled.

“Wow!” said Peter.

For the rest of the way home Jake and Josh talked about what they would do if the Malloys tried to get even with Wally for bumping Caroline’s nose. They were in the same class with Eddie.

“That Eddie would try anything,” said Jake. “If she’d dump her tray on me in front of teachers and everybody, you can imagine what she’d do when no one was looking.”

“Did you watch her pitch at recess? Whomp!
The ball comes at you before you can look at it cross-eyed,” Josh went on.

“Who’s the other sister?” Peter asked, walking fast to keep up.

“Beth,” Josh told him. “She’s weird. Sits on the steps at recess and reads a book.”

“A Whomper, a Weirdo, and a Crazie,” said Jake, and sighed. “I wonder how the Benson guys are doing down in Georgia. I’ll bet they miss us like anything.”

When they reached the house, Wally took a box of crackers up to his room and sat on the floor to eat them, his back against his bed. He still couldn’t believe that he was the one who had officially declared war on the Malloys. How had it happened? Only a week before he was lying on his back in the grass, and how here he was: Number One on their Most-Wanted list. He was on bad terms already with his teacher, had almost broken Caroline’s nose, and had made everything worse by calling her sisters stupid.

Well, they were stupid. And deep down, seven layers beneath his skin, Wally knew he was glad that he had thrust his head back and bumped Caroline. He’d just wanted her to stop bugging him, that’s all. But her nose sure looked peculiar by the end of the day—a lot redder and fatter than it had looked that morning.

Then he had another thought: What if it really was broken, she had to have an operation, and he
had to pay for it? His hands began to sweat, and he swallowed the piece of cracker in his mouth without chewing. Was there such a thing as just a sprained nose? A bruised nose? A slightly but not completely fractured nose? A bent nose, maybe?

Peter came into Wally’s room and sat down beside him on the rug.

“What are we going to do next?” he asked excitedly, helping himself to a cracker. He rested one hand on Wally’s leg, looking up at his older brother.

What Wally wanted to do, in fact, was sit on this rug for the rest of his natural life and never have to face the Malloys again.

“You’re the general,” said Peter.

“Huh?”

“That’s what Josh said. He said you’re the one who declared the war, so you’ve got to call the shots. That’s what he said, all right.”

Wally gave a low moan.

“What I think we should do,” said Peter, “is dig a large hole and cover it with leaves and sticks, and when Caroline and her sisters walk across it, they’ll fall in and we’ll keep them trapped forever.”

“Go out and play, Peter,” Wally told him.

The boys were strangely quiet when their father came home from his mail route about four. Jake was planning strategies in a notebook, Josh was drawing a picture of Eddie dropping her tray on Jake, just for the record, and Peter was building a
pit out of toothpicks, then running a Matchbox car over it and watching the car tumble in. Wally was looking out the window, wondering how for away he could get if he climbed on the first Greyhound through town.

Mr. Hatford took off his cap and went out to the kitchen for a Mountain Dew. Then he leaned against the doorway and looked at the boys. “You’ll be interested to know that the Malloy girls are Eddie, Beth, and Caroline.”

“
Tell
me about it,” Jake mumbled.

“The way their mother described them, they sound like three live wires to me.”

“Crossed wires is more like it,” said Josh.

“Short circuits,” said Wally.

“A Whomper, a Weirdo, and a Crazie,” Peter repeated.

Mr. Hatford frowned. “You boys can either make yourselves miserable by wishing the Bensons were back, which they’re not, or you can enjoy a great September day, which it is. And I, for one, aim to enjoy the day.” He took his soft drink out onto the side porch along with the paper.

Jake looked at Josh. “I’ll bet they’ll spread it all over town how they tricked us. Everyone will be laughing.”

“You know what we could do, don’t you?” said Josh. “Totally ignore them. Freeze them out. Not even give them the time of day.”

“If we see them coming, we could just turn and walk the other way,” said Peter.

“We can’t,” said Jake. “Wally declared war.”

“Oh, yeah. Right,” said Josh.

Hoo boy!
thought Wally.

The hardware store was open till nine most evenings, and this was Mrs, Hatford’s night to work. When she popped in about six to make dinner, she said, “Boys, I’ve got a job for you. I baked a cake this morning before work, frosted it at noon, and I want you to take it over to the Malloys right now so they can have some with their supper.”

Wally stared at his mother as though she had just grown another head.

“Well, don’t look so astonished,” she said, coming out of the kitchen with a large square box. “It’s the traditional way to greet a new family in the neighborhood, you know. The Bensons did it for us the first week we moved in, and I’ll never forget how good that cake tasted after unpacking all day.”

“But—” Wally began.

“Just hand it to whoever answers the door, tell them it’s from the Hatfords, and say, ‘Welcome to Buckman.’ That’s all you have to say. Then come right home because dinner’s almost ready.”

“Could we—could we just leave it on their porch?” Wally asked.

“Wallace Hatford, you certainly may not!” his mother scolded. “A dog could get into it, there
might be a rain … all sorts of things could happen. What’s the matter with saying a few cordial words to a new family? Hurry up, now. Who’s going to take it over?”

Wally looked at Jake, who was looking at Josh, and then they all turned toward Peter.

“Peter is not going over there alone. This is a three-layer chocolate chiffon with whipped cream frosting, and I worked on it a total of two hours and set it on the plate I got from Aunt Ida at Christmas. I want to make sure it gets there in one piece. You can all go. Hold this box steady, now,” she instructed, thrusting it into Wally’s hands. “If the cake slides around, the icing will come off on the sides of the box. Tell them there’s no hurry about returning the plate.”

Wally and his brothers moved down the front steps as though they were headed for a funeral and Wally carried the remains of the deceased in the box.
This can’t be happening,
he said to himself, but it was. After half breaking Caroline’s nose, this would look as though he were saying he was sorry. He was
not
sorry, and now he was mad as anything.

“If Caroline comes to the door, Wally, let her have it,” said Jake. “Swoosh! Right in the schnozz. It’ll be worth the whipping we get when we go home.”

“Uh-uh,” said Josh. “Dad’ll march us back over there and make us apologize, and that would be worse.”

“You
take it,” Wally said, holding the box out toward Jake. “Eddie dropped her tray on you in the cafeteria, and you could drop this on her. We’d just say we were getting even.”

“No way. I’d still have to apologize, and I’m not about to apologize to Eddie Malloy if someone burned my feet with hot irons.”

“Wow!” said Peter, impressed.

They walked down the sidewalk, crossed the road, and started along the bank toward the swinging footbridge.

“I know what we can do,” Wally said at last. “We could creep over to their front porch, set the cake in front of the door, then ring the bell and run. That way we wouldn’t have to say anything at all.”

“If we can get over there without their seeing us,” said Josh.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” Jake told them. “Once we get across the bridge, we’ll stay off Island Avenue and keep to the bushes along the river. When we get opposite their house, well put the cake on the porch when no one’s watching,”

“This isn’t any fun,” grumbled Peter. “I thought this was a war.”

“Just a temporary cease-fire,” Jake assured him.

The boys had just stepped onto the swinging bridge and started across when Wally’s heart almost stopped beating, for coming down the hill on the
other side were the three Malloy sisters, and a moment later they, too, were on the bridge.

For a moment everybody stopped, the Hatfords at one end, the Malloys at the other.

“Now what?” whispered Wally.

“They’re trying to block us,” said Jake. “Just keep going. If they want a fight, they’ll get it.”

The boys started forward again. The girls moved forward too.

The swinging bridge bounced and jiggled as the two groups came toward each other, Wally held on to the cable with one hand, the cake with the other. He’d never fought a girl in his life. None of his brothers had, either, and he knew that for all of Jake’s talk, they wouldn’t begin now. This was a different kind of battle—a war of the wits.

But what if the girls didn’t see it that way? What if the Malloys got out in the middle of the bridge and trashed them? Could they fight back then?

The Hatford brothers had fallen into single file as they approached the middle of the bridge. You always did that when you met someone coming toward you; always said hello and moved over to make room. The Malloy girls, however, came in a row.

“The first one who tries anything gets the cake right in the puss,” Jake whispered in Wally’s ear.

The next thing Wally knew, he was face to face with Caroline Malloy—face to nose, anyway, for her
swollen nose seemed to take up half her face. It had also turned black and blue. He realized suddenly that if he just gave the girls the cake, he wouldn’t have to walk all the way over to their house. He wouldn’t have to ring the doorbell and say nice things to the parents. He wouldn’t have to fight the girls to get on across either.

“Here,” he said, holding the box out in front of him. “It’s a cake.”

Caroline stared at him, then at her sisters.

“It’s a
cake!”
Wally said again. “It’s for you.”

“Yeah?” said Eddie.

“I’ll just bet!” said Beth. “What dead animal did you dream up this time?”

Suddenly Caroline grabbed the box out of Wally’s hands and, in one swift toss, flung it over the side of the bridge.

Wally and his brothers stared in astonishment as Mother’s three-layer chocolate chiffon spilled out into the water, the two top layers heading in different directions. The box—with the bottom layer still in it—bobbed up and down in the current, and the whipped cream frosting, like foam, floated downstream.

C
aroline and her sisters stood with their hands over their mouths, eyes like fried eggs.

“Oh, Lordy!” gasped Caroline. “It really
was
a cake!”

The box below was sailing away.

“Enjoy!” said Wally, grinning. “Don’t forget to return the plate.”

With that the four Hatford brothers turned around and went back toward their side, of the river, though the youngest lingered just long enough for one last look in the water. “Wow!” he said.