Who Won the War? (12 page)

T
he heat made everyone crabby. The next morning, Beth and Eddie both took their showers early, and there was no hot water left when Mr. Hatford rose to shower before work. The girls and their mother heard him grumbling in the hall.

“We are really getting in the way!” Mrs. Malloy said apologetically in the kitchen later.

“Now, Jean, you'd take us in too, and you know it,” Mrs. Hatford assured her.

But afterward, as she was making the beds upstairs, Caroline's mother said, “I'd like to
think
I would be that neighborly if the Hatfords' power went out, but I'm afraid I'd think twice before I took in those four boys.”

Jake and Eddie got into an argument. Mr. and Mrs. Hatford were at work, and Mrs. Malloy had put chicken salad and salami in the fridge for lunch.
However, Eddie took the last of the cheese, and this ticked Jake off.

“Hey, why didn't you take all the salami, too, while you were at it?” he groused.

“There were only two slices left,” Eddie said.

“Yeah, one for you and one for somebody else,” Jake told her. “Not two for you.”

“Oh, shove it!” said Eddie. “You want some cheese?” She lifted the top piece of bread and yanked at a slice with a bite taken out of it. “Here's some cheese!” And she tossed it onto his plate.

“I don't want any cheese you've slobbered on,” said Jake, throwing it back. It landed on the floor.

“Ewwww!” said Caroline.

“Now
no one
will want it!” Eddie snapped.

“Yeah. Serves you right for being a pig in the first place!” said Jake.

“Will you two stop arguing?” said Beth.

“Yeah, why don't you just go off and duke it out?” said Josh.

“Ha! Eddie wouldn't have a chance,” said Jake.

“Go to the old coal mine!” Josh said, taunting. “Give you guys something to do besides fight.” He stopped then. Caroline could tell he wished he'd never said it.

“I'm
up for it!” said Jake. “
I'll
go!”

Caroline closed her eyes.

“Me too,” said Eddie. She flashed a warning look at Beth and Caroline. “And don't tell Mom!” she added.

Caroline and Beth looked at each other. They saw the boys exchange nervous glances.

“So when are we going?” asked Jake.

“How about right now?” said Eddie.

“We shouldn't be
dooo-ing
this!” Peter sang.

“Just keep your mouth shut,” said Jake. “Are we all in this together or what?”

“I'll go up there with you, but I'm not going in,” said Wally.

“Okay by me,” said Jake.

They all pulled on their sneakers.

“We're going out for a while, Mom,” Eddie called up the stairs to her mother, who was making beds.

“Put on sunscreen if you're going to be out for long,” Mrs. Malloy called back. “Will Peter be going with you?”

“Yes, we're taking him,” called Wally.

They stuck to the trees when they could, to escape the broiling sun. Eddie and Jake led the way, their eyes steely, jaws clenched, each eager to show the other that they weren't afraid. Nobody said much as they trudged along.

When the low mountain loomed up at last, all Caroline could see was what appeared to be the entrance to a tunnel in its side.

“Is that it?” she asked Jake.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Was it really a coal mine?” asked Beth.

“I don't know,” said Josh. “Maybe it was a silver mine or lead or something. It's been closed for as long as I can remember.”

“If Dad ever finds out we were up here …,” said Josh.

“So don't tell him! Nobody's going to get hurt. We're not going to do anything stupid,” said Jake.

“Just coming up here was stupid,” said Wally.

“So go home, then!” Jake growled, but nobody turned back.

There was a tall fence with barbed wire at the top surrounding the entrance to the mine, and every twenty feet or so, there was a
NO TRESPASSING
sign. But, as the kids soon discovered, the fence was in poor repair, and it did not take them long to see that if they jiggled and shoved at the gate, they could make the opening just wide enough for a person to slip through, providing that that person was a kid who held his breath and turned sideways.

“Listen, be careful,” Beth warned as Eddie slipped through.

“Heck, nothing to it!” said Jake, going in after her.

The others watched uneasily from outside, holding on to the fence.

At first it appeared that Eddie and Jake were going to walk ten feet apart and not even speak to each other. But as they got closer to the tunnel, Caroline could see that they were at least talking. Now they were four feet apart … still talking. And finally they took a few steps together toward the tunnel entrance.

“Oh, man!” breathed Wally. “We don't even know what's in there.”

“They'd better not fall in!” Peter said worriedly, his voice a little shaky. “We told Dad we wouldn't go in there, not ever, ever, ever.”

“What if they go inside and it caves in on them?” said Caroline.

“That's why we're not supposed to go in,” said Josh.

Jake and Eddie appeared to be thinking the same thing, because even after they reached the tunnel entrance, they both looked up and around, hesitant, it seemed, to go any farther.

Eddie turned to the others, by the fence, and waved.

Was this a final goodbye? Caroline wondered. Would this be the last memory she'd have of her sister? The weak smile, the wave from the entrance to the mountain, which at any moment could come roaring down onto her head?

Jake and Eddie started through the entrance, and then they disappeared.

Suddenly there was a shout. A yell. Popping up from brush at the side of the mountain was a big burly man in a dirty white T-shirt.

Jake and Eddie must not have got three feet inside before they came tearing out of the tunnel and almost collided with him. For a moment the man had Jake by the T-shirt, but Jake broke loose and he and Eddie ran pell-mell back down toward the gate.

“Get out!” the man yelled hoarsely. “Get out! You stay outta there. You get out of here and don't you never come back!”

He was twice their size, but Eddie and Jake were faster. On they ran, stumbling and tripping, the man in pursuit, until they reached the gate, white-faced and panting, and slipped through the opening. All the
Hatfords and Malloys ran like the wind, the man bellowing at them from the other side of the fence.

“I'll find you out; don't think I won't!” he shouted.

Caroline tripped and fell, but Beth yanked her up, and now they were far enough down the mountain that they could stop and catch their breath.

“That
was close!” Eddie panted, holding her sides.

“Who do you suppose he was?” gasped Jake. “He just came out of nowhere!”

“He didn't have a uniform or anything,” said Wally. “He didn't look like a guard.”

“He looked half crazy to me,” said Beth.

“Old Man of the Mountain!” said Josh. “Maybe he lives in there, like a troll or something.”

“What do you think he would have done if he'd caught us?” Jake asked Eddie, still breathless.

“Arrested us, probably,” said Eddie. “He didn't have a gun, did he?”

“I don't think so,” Wally said.

“Should we sneak back up and try to figure out who he is?” Eddie asked.

“No!” all the others yelled. “Don't be crazy! We don't want him to know who
we
are either.”

“Oh, man!” Wally said again. “If Dad ever found out …”

“If Mom knew I went inside …,” said Eddie.

As they made their way back across the field leading to the woods, an old rusty pickup truck came rolling down the overgrown path from the coal mine, turned away from the kids, who had ducked down in the tall grass, and headed for the road beyond.

“Was that him?” whispered Josh.

“I think so,” said Jake. “I didn't get a really good look.”

“How do you suppose
he
got inside the fence?” asked Eddie.

“Probably some back gate we don't know about,” said Jake. “I hope he didn't figure out who we were.”

Caroline knew that if their mother found out they had gotten into trouble—as though having to stay at the Hatfords' wasn't trouble enough—there would be no end of scolding that night, squeezed as they were in the twins' bedroom.

From the looks on the boys' faces—Josh's in particular—Caroline could tell that they were thinking the same thing about their father. He would probably say that maybe Eddie didn't know any better than to go into that old mine tunnel, but the boys certainly did, having lived their whole lives in Buckman.

“What did you see in the tunnel?” Caroline asked finally, as they started back toward the house.

“It was pretty dark,” said Jake.

“Yeah. We
think
there was a pit or something farther on. It looked like maybe it was boarded up, but we could hardly see a foot in front of us,” Eddie told her.

“And then we heard all that yelling,” said Jake. He looked around. “We're going to keep our mouths shut, right?” He was looking directly at Peter.

Peter nodded. “If Dad asks me if we were at the old coal mine, I'll say,
‘What old
coal mine?’ ”

Jake rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Right.”

Sixteen
Old Rusty Truck

E
veryone was particularly well behaved at dinner that evening. Wally glanced around the table at the others. Jake and Josh, he knew, were hoping that the man at the mine had never seen them near their house and hadn't figured out who they were; hoping that the phone wouldn't ring, and that if it did, it wouldn't be the man telling their parents where they'd been. The girls, though, were probably hoping their dad would call from Ohio and say that they could come back home, that their power was on.

They gathered on the porch after dinner, and for the first time, Jake didn't dive for the glider and try to keep the Malloys from sitting on it.

“If nobody's reported us by now, then I don't think they're going to,” he said. “That guy doesn't even know who we are.”

“Well,
I'm
not gonna tell that we went to the coal mine,” said Peter.

“Don't even
say
coal mine!” Jake warned.

“Then I won't even say that we went where we're not supposed to go, and besides,
I
didn't go in,” said Peter.

“Don't even say
that
!
”
Jake told him. “Talk about ice cream or something.”

The grown-ups came out on the porch after dinner just to see if it was cooling off any. The Malloy girls got up so that the parents could have the glider and the rocker.

“Doesn't seem like it's any cooler to me,” Mrs. Hatford said. “I get so tired of being in air-conditioning all the time, but when I think of those poor folks in Ohio …”

“I sure wish I could carry some air-conditioning around with me on my deliveries,” said Mr. Hatford. “I wouldn't mind that at all.”

Mrs. Malloy fanned herself with the newspaper. “George called this afternoon and said the power company predicts it will have power restored to everyone by the end of the week.”

“End of the
week!”
cried Caroline.

“He says it's an absolute mess. He had already stocked the refrigerator for our return, and now the milk has soured and everything has to be thrown out.”

“Dry ice?” said Mr. Hatford.

“The city was giving it away, but now they've run out. They're busing senior citizens who live in apartments to community centers to keep cool, and all the
public pools have issued free passes. Everyone's miserable, he says.”

“Let's just hope we keep our power down here,” said Mrs. Hatford. “Being in the mountains, West Virginia doesn't get as hot as Ohio generally, but this is as hot as I remember it ever being. How I wish this heat wave would break.”