The Boys Start the War (7 page)

Hoo boy!
thought Wally as he went upstairs.

This
evening sure hadn’t turned out the way he’d wanted. He and his brothers had had a laughing fit watching Caroline out there in the river, trying to find that plate. He never thought she would, and the boys would have waited around if they hadn’t remembered that dinner was on the table.

Wally lay on his stomach on his ted and stared down at the braided rug. Ordinarily he would have tried to figure out just how the little loops of orange got hooked onto the loops of green—where it all began, and which piece you’d have to pull first if you wanted the whole thing to come unraveled, but now he was too mad at the Malloys to give it much thought.

He’d like to pull a loop on the Malloy sisters, that’s what, and watch them come apart for once. He’d like to see them pack their bags and take off out of town at seventy miles an hour.

It just wasn’t like it was when the Bensons lived in Buckman. Back then they always signed each other’s notebooks on the first day of school—the Hatfords and the Bensons. They’d give each other new nicknames for the year, and once they’d all taken the names of football players. That was the year Wally had been Joe Montana. Things were sure different now. Caroline and her black-and-blue nose! Eddie and that dumb cap! Beth and those stupid books she read.

She’d left one on the steps a few minutes at recess,
Josh had reported, and he’d seen the cover:
Fang, King of the Vampires
. What kind of a girl would read a book like that? Weirdo was right.

When the Hatford boys were ready for school the next day, they watched until the Malloys were across the bridge and well up the sidewalk before they set out themselves.

“You see what’s happening, don’t you?” Jake grumbled. “They’re running our lives! They’ve only been here a week, and already we can’t even leave for school when we want; we make sure they’ve got there first.”

“And Mom thinks they’re nice! They’re poison!” said Josh.

Wally did not turn around in his seat once to look at Caroline, and she didn’t bother him—no blowing on the back of his neck or whispering in his ear. At lunchtime he sat as far away from her table as he could get, and when he left at the end of the day, Miss Applebaum said, “Thank you, Wally, for being a good listener.” He could have puked.

Jake and Josh and Peter were waiting for him when he came out. Josh had a smile on his face.

“What have
you
got to grin about?” Wally asked.

“At recess this afternoon,” Josh told him, “I went inside for a drink of water, and when I came out again, there’s Beth, on the bottom step, reading her stupid book.”

“Fang, King of the Vampires?”
Wally asked.

Josh nodded and grinned even wider. “I had my jacket tied around my shoulders, and when I spread out my arms, I looked like a giant bat. All I did was come slowly down the steps behind her, and she screamed her head off. I didn’t even touch her.”

Jake and Wally and Peter all laughed.

“You get caught?” asked Wally.

“No, but boy, was she mad! She said this was exactly the kind of thing that gives her nightmares, and I said, well, why did she read books like that if they gave her nightmares? Stupid thing!”

“Ha!” said Jake.

Home again, Wally had just poured himself a glass of Hi-C, and the boys were making peanut-butter-and-cracker sandwiches, when the phone rang. Wally answered.

“Listen,” came his mother’s voice, and she was beginning to sound like Miss Applebaum. “Your father was talking with Mrs. Malloy this morning on his route, and she wondered who she could hire to wash their windows. Dad told her you boys have more time on your hands than is good for you, and that you’d come over after school and help. Now, I don’t want you to expect payment.”

Wally yelped.

“Wally?” said his mother.

“It’s not fair!” he shouted. “They’ve got three girls who could wash windows. Eddie can climb up
a ladder as well as any of us, and she’s even taller than Josh. Besides, I’ve got plenty of things to do!”

“Name one.” said his mother.

Wally stood speechless. He didn’t have any homework to do; he didn’t play on any team. He didn’t even need a haircut. He did, of course, still want to see how long it took a waffle box to go around the river, but …

“Wallace Hatford, you and your brothers have yourselves a snack and get on over to the Malloys’. With the four of you working, you could have their windows done in no time, and it’s the least we can do for new neighbors. Why, when we moved in, the Bensons came over and helped us wallpaper the dining room. I’ll never forget it. And I don’t want to hear any arguments.”

The receiver clicked, and Wally stood staring at the phone in his hand. He didn’t have to tell the others; they’d already heard.

“We’ve got to wash their windows, right?” said Josh.

“Right,” said Wally. “I’ll bet Caroline put her mother up to this! Went right home and told her how much we wanted to help! And Dad probably said we’d do it for nothing.”

“I’ll wash their windows, all right,” muttered Jake. “I’ll put out their lights, curl their hair, and knock them into the middle of next week.”

“Gosh!” said Peter.

“They’re getting too cocky!” Jake went on.

“Those girls think they can get away with anything. They need a good scare, that’s what. Then maybe they’ll leave us alone.”

“But how?” asked Peter.

Everyone turned to Wally.

“I’ll think of something,” Wally told them.

By the time they finished their snack and headed off toward the Malloys’, the boys had given up any idea of trying to scare the entire family. But they
were
convinced that they could scare Beth half put out of her mind, and the thought of it, the vision of it, the sweet taste of victory in their mouths, made the idea of washing all the Malloys’ windows worth it, every window.

It would have been better, of course, if Caroline, Beth, and Eddie were not smirking at them as they came across the lawn. Were not, in fact, sitting on a blanket out on the grass, sunning themselves, with cookies and soft drinks beside them, ready to enjoy the show.

“I’m so glad to meet you.” said Mrs. Malloy, coming down the stepp. “Your dad said you were the best window washers around, and I think it’s wonderful the way you offered to help.”

Wally didn’t know whether he imagined it or whether he really did hear a snicker from Caroline.

“You do know each other, don’t you?” Mrs. Malloy went on, motioning to the girls on the lawn.

“Eddie, Beth, and Caroline, this is.…” She paused, waiting for the boys to say their own names.

“Josh,” said Jake.

“Jake,” said Josh.

“Peter,” said Wally.

“Wally,” said Peter.

Wally could hardly keep from grinning. Caroline looked at him and then at her mother, but she didn’t say anything and Wally knew why. If the girls squealed, the boys would tell about the cake. Even-Steven.

Mrs. Malloy turned toward the house. “We have these to do,” she said, “as well as the storm windows there in the garage. We might as well do them all.”

Wally stared in dismay. There were twenty windows at least on the house, which meant twenty storm windows more stored in the garage. This time he heard a
definite
snicker from the girls on the grass.

“The girls will help, of course,” said their mother, and Caroline’s smile disappeared in an instant. So did Beth’s and Eddie’s. “What you boys can do is get the ladder from the garage and soap each window. Eddie can turn the hose on them from below to rinse them, and you can dry them after that. Beth and Caroline will change the water whenever you need it, and get clean rags. With all seven of you working together, I doubt it should
take more than a couple of hours. I’ll have doughnuts and cider for you when you’re done.”

When Mrs. Malloy went inside for the bucket and rags, Jake looked over at Eddie: “Nice going.” He smirked.

Eddie tossed her head and looked away.

The old garage leaned a little to one side, but Wally didn’t mind. It was his favorite place on the Bensons’ property, and he and his brothers and the Benson boys used to play in there for hours. For a time they’d turned it into a club house, and other times it had become a hideout. It was dark and musty, with loose boards that creaked in the wind.

He and Jake carried the ladder from the garage and put it up to the first window of the house where Mrs. Malloy was pointing. Eddie glumly got out the hose, and after Mrs. Malloy supervised the cleaning of the first window, she went back inside.

“Which window is yours, Eddie?” Josh called down. “I’ll be sure to leave lots of smudges on it.”

“Har, har,” said Eddie.

The reason the work went so quickly was because no one spoke much after that. Wally had read once about an order of monks who went about their work in silence and never spoke except for one hour on Friday evenings. This must be what it was like to be a monk, he decided as he carried the last of the storm windows out of the garage, except that there wouldn’t be any girl monks around.

Josh did the climbing of the ladder, Beth kept him supplied with clean water and rags, Jake and Wally carried storm windows in and out of the garage, Eddie hosed them off, and Caroline and Peter wiped the storm windows clean. In and out, up and down, back and forth.…

Mrs. Malloy had been right about one thing—the work
did
go faster with so many of them helping. Once, as he passed Caroline, she looked so cheerful, he was about to tell
her
about the monks who never talked except for an hour on Friday evenings, but then he remembered she was the enemy, so he told Jake instead.

“If there were girl monks, you know what they’d be called?” he asked, grinning. “Monk-ees.”

Jake laughed out loud.

It was then that it happened, but no one knew quite how. It might have been Jake’s laugh that made Eddie turn, hose in hand, but as she did, the water made a loop in the air and caught Josh, up on the ladder. His bucket came crashing to the ground with a splash, two inches away from Beth, soaking her to the skin with brown, dirty water.

While Wally stared, Beth pushed a sponge in Jake’s face, Peter rushed to help his brother, Caroline went to help her sisters, and Wally simply tried to get the hose out of Eddie’s hand. It was spewing water in every direction. The next great battle of the war had begun.

“Hey, what’s this?” cried Mrs. Malloy, coming out of the house. “Girls! Stop it!”

Wally, who had the hose now, was holding it upright like a pitchfork, and realized that water was cascading down onto Mrs. Malloy’s flower bed. As he jerked it away, he sent a stream of water across the porch, catching the girls’ mother right in the face.

Wally gasped.

Spluttering, Mrs. Malloy rushed down the steps and turned off the faucet, then stood there shaking water from her clothes.

“Now, what’s this all about?” she demanded.

“They started it, Mom,” said Caroline, wringing out the tail of her shirt.

“We did not!” said Jake hotly. “Eddie turned the hose on Josh.”

“He dropped his bucket on purpose!” cried Beth.

“I did not!” said Josh.