Who Won the War? (14 page)

So she continued reading the poem about a lonely man grieving for his lost love, Lenore, and when he went to the door to see who was tapping, he found “Darkness there and nothing more.” But the tapping continued, and just as Caroline read the line “ Tis the wind and nothing more,” there actually did come a
tap, tap, tap
ping at the back door of the Hatford house. Everyone jumped.

“A ghost!” said Peter.

“I think maybe we imagined it, Caroline is reading so well,” said Mrs. Hatford.

But no, it came again, and—taking the lantern— Mr. Hatford went to answer. It was the next-door neighbor, asking if she could borrow a flashlight until the power came back on.

“Only that and nothing more,” Mr. Hatford said, grinning, when he came back to join the circle.

Caroline went on. She felt she had never read so well, with such expression, in her entire life. When she came to the part where the man opened the shutter to the tapping, and in flew a raven, which “Perched, and sat, and nothing more,” Peter listened with open
mouth. And no matter how much the man tried to get the bird to tell him what it had come for or when it would leave, all the raven would say was “Nevermore.”

“Quoth the Raven,”
Caroline said, and the others joined in the refrain:
“Nevermore.”

When she had finished at last, for the poem was several pages long, everyone clapped, and Caroline gave a little bow. And just as though she had performed in a theater, the power came back on. Lights blazed in every room, and the refrigerator began to hum.

“Oh, I'm so glad to see those lights,” said Mrs. Hatford. “It wouldn't be easy getting this whole crew to bed in the dark.”

“With that, I think
I'll
head for bed,” said Mrs. Malloy. “I'm hoping that perhaps they'll have some power back on in Ohio tomorrow too. Maybe the storm broke the heat wave there.” She went upstairs and into the bathroom.

Caroline wanted to linger, for an actress always liked people to come up after a performance and tell her how well she'd done. Indeed, both Mr. and Mrs. Hatford congratulated her on her expressiveness and interpretation of the poem.

Beth went on upstairs too, and it was only a few seconds later that Caroline saw the light come on in the girls' bedroom and heard her sister scream.

Eighteen
Ka-boom!

W
ally had started up the stairs when the second scream came, this time from Caroline. He couldn't imagine what the girls could be screaming about, unless someone had been found murdered on the floor.

The next voice he heard was Mrs. Malloy's. “Girls, now stop!”

Wally reached the doorway first, his family close at his heels. The girls and their mother were staring at the ceiling, so Wally looked up too. There were dozens and dozens of ladybugs. The ceiling looked like it had measles.

“Now
what?” said Mr. Hatford.

“Oh, no!” said Wally's mother. “I've seen a few in the last couple of days, but
this
is an invasion!”

“What else?” said Jake, grinning at Josh.
“Ladybugs
, girls. Get it?”

A ladybug dropped from the ceiling and landed on
Caroline's arm. She screamed again, and when another landed on the back of her neck, she shrieked and jumped up and down.

Jake and Josh started to laugh, but Wally was fascinated by the ladybugs.

“The weather must have done it,” said Mr. Hatford. “But how they're coming in, I don't know. Through the attic, maybe.”

“Get the flyswatter,” said Mrs. Hatford.

“Never mind the swatter,” said her husband. “Get the vacuum cleaner.”

With the Hatford boys and the Malloy girls watching from below, Mr. Hatford climbed up on a step stool, and holding the wand of the vacuum in one hand, he ran it over the ceiling.

Zing, zing, zing
went the vacuum as one ladybug after another—sometimes three or four at a time—was sucked into the machine.

“I'm so sorry all this is happening while we're here,” Mrs. Malloy said. “As though you needed one more thing!”

“The ladybugs would have come whether you were here or not, Jean,” Mrs. Hatford said. “But they can really be a pain.”

“Tell you what, Peter,” his father said. “I'll give you a nickel for every dozen ladybugs you can catch. Take them out in the woods and let them go—whatever. But keep them away from the house.”

Peter immediately started cupping his hands over the ones he found on the wall.

Caroline was sobbing. “I don't want to sleep in here,
Mother,” she wailed. “They'll get in my hair and crawl in my pajamas.”

Wally laughed out loud. He couldn't help it.

“Never mind her,” Mrs. Malloy said quickly. “Caroline, we are lucky to have a roof over our heads, the fix we're in. Ladybugs aren't going to hurt you one bit.” But Caroline went on weeping, and the vacuum went on sucking up bugs, and Peter kept trying to catch some and put them in a jar. Wally thought this was one of the best evenings he'd ever seen.

Mr. Malloy called from Ohio later, and after Mrs. Malloy had talked with him, she told the others that the electricity still had not come on in their house, but that the power company expected to have power restored to everyone in two more days.

“They are trying to restore electricity to nursing homes and hospitals first,” she explained. “Houses, I guess, will be last on the list.”

“We're glad to be able to do this for you, Jean. Stop worrying,” Mrs. Hatford told her.

The heat wave broke the next day in West Virginia. Temperatures dropped from the hundreds to the eighties, and Wally knew that if he tried to fry an egg on the sidewalk now, it would sit there undisturbed all day.

Everyone felt better now that the air was more bearable, and Wally was determined to be as kind as he could to the girls for the last days they were there. When he went to breakfast, however, and saw Caroline
with her hair plastered to her head like an onion skin, he stared, impolite or not.

“She tied a scarf around her head all night,” Beth explained, trying not to laugh. But Wally and Jake and Josh and even Peter giggled in spite of themselves.

With the thought that the Malloys would be leaving soon, everybody seemed more relaxed. Beth made a double batch of chocolate chip cookies for Peter and his brothers. Mrs. Malloy drove to a market for sweet corn, and Caroline and Eddie picked tomatoes and green beans for dinner from Mrs. Hatford's garden.

Everyone seemed to be in a good mood at dinner. Mr. Hatford had finished his rounds early, Mrs. Hatford had been pleased to find dinner cooking when she came home from the hardware store, Peter had been busy collecting more ladybugs, and Jake and Eddie had sat down and played cards without any bickering.

“Now, this is what a summer evening should feel like!” Mr. Hatford said, reaching for another ear of corn, and at that exact moment there was a huge
Ka-boom
that shook the house.

Wally almost leaped out of his skin. Peter dropped his fork, and several voices at once cried, “What was
that
?
”

Because Tom Hatford was a part-time sheriff's deputy, he had a two-way radio, and immediately he leaped to his feet and rushed to turn it on. He stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining
room, listening to the static and the excited voices and confusion coming from the speaker.

“Ray? … Ray?” Mr. Hatford kept saying. “What have we got? What exploded?”

And finally an answer: “I don't know, Tom. Larry says he sees smoke coming from east of town, and we've got a car on the way…. Wait a minute! It's the coal mine, Larry says. Son of a gun, we got a call coming in saying there's been an explosion at the old coal mine!”

Wally stared at his brothers, then at the girls.

“Why would anyone have done
that?”
Mrs. Hatford said. “Why, nobody's used that mine for years!”

“Who
would do it—that's what we want to know,” said Mr. Hatford, grabbing his keys and rushing for the door.

The peach cobbler that Mrs. Malloy had made for dinner sat untouched on the kitchen counter.

“Well, it's not the end of the world,” Mrs. Hatford said, puzzled. “As far as the sheriff and the police can tell, no one was hurt. Come and eat your dessert and we'll know more about the mine when Tom comes back.”

“I'm not very hungry,” said Wally, getting up from the table.

“Me neither,” said Eddie. “Maybe I'll have some later.”

Caroline and Beth and Jake and Josh left the kitchen too, and only Peter stayed in his chair, heaping on the
ice cream and spooning the warm peaches and cream and crust into his mouth.

“Now
what, Ellen?” said Mrs. Malloy. “You'd think
they
were the ones who blew up the mine.”

Out on the porch, Wally said, “The shopping list!”

“Right!” said Jake. “We've got to show it to Dad! Where is it?”

“I don't know!” said Wally. He thrust his hand into his right pocket. Nothing there. He stuck both hands into both pockets and searched around with his fingers. Nothing.

“What were you wearing the day you found it?” asked Jake. “
Think
, Wally!”

“My other pants,” Wally said. “I was wearing shorts, I guess. They were in the hamper, and Mom's washing clothes tomorrow!” Wally made a beeline for the basement stairs, Caroline and her sisters following, Jake and Josh at their heels.

“What's going on?” asked Mrs. Hatford as they crossed the kitchen.

“Nothing,” said Wally.

They thundered down the basement stairs and over to the heaping baskets of dirty clothes by the washing machine. The boys tore through the clothes, sending shirts and towels flying this way and that, until finally Wally held up the wrinkled shorts he'd been wearing for the past week. He dug in the pockets. Success! He held up the worn slip of paper triumphantly and read, “ Eggs, Rope, Tomato sauce, Flashlight, Dynamite.' ”

“First-class evidence!” said Jake.

“Not quite,” said Eddie.

“Why not?” asked Josh.

Eddie pointed. There on the stand next to the washing machine were a bottle of bleach, a bag of clothespins, and a large blue container of detergent. The red and yellow label said,
DYNAMITE! FOR ALL YOUR WASHDAY
NEEDS.