Who Won the War? (15 page)

It was about nine-thirty when Tom Hatford came back, his clothes dusty.

“Well,” he said. “All we can tell is that some person—or persons—set a charge at the entrance to the old mine and sealed it up. What we
won't
know until we get a crew out there tomorrow to haul some rock away is whether there was anybody in there.”

Wally hadn't even thought of that.

“You mean, it might be
murder?”
he asked.

“All I'm saying is that somebody had a reason to close up the entrance to that tunnel. And we won't know the reason till we find out who did it. We're checking with every explosives place around here to see who they've sold to in the last week or month. We asked the residents out near the mine if they'd noticed anything out of the ordinary. People go back there from time to time to fish the river or climb the rocks. They dump some old tires, maybe, or a broken stove.” He stopped suddenly, facing the row of kids sitting on the sofa.

“You know,” he said, “you guys don't look so good. A little green around the gills, if you ask me. Do
you
know anything that might give us a clue?”

Peter came out of the kitchen holding his second bowl of peach cobbler, licking the back of the spoon. Jake gave him a warning look, and Peter said softly, “I won't tell!”

Wally's heart sank.

“Tell what, Peter?” asked his father.

“What I'm not supposed to,” said Peter.

Nineteen
Tippy

“W
ell, whatever you're not supposed to tell me is exactly what I want to hear, so let's hear it,” Mr. Hatford said firmly.

Peter stared down at his bowl.

“Who was up there? Somebody we know?” his father asked.

“A man,” Peter said, his lips scarcely moving.

“Who?”

“I don't know. A man in a truck.”

“When did you see him?”

“A couple days ago.”

Caroline closed her eyes momentarily. They were all going to prison; she was sure of it. They had all been up to a place they weren't supposed to be. She imagined herself in jail wearing a black and white striped suit. Or maybe it was orange.

“What was the man doing?” Mr. Hatford asked Peter.

“Chasing.”

The two mothers were in the doorway now, and Mr. Hatford remained standing, hands on his hips, facing the row of six kids squeezed together on the couch.

“Who was the man chasing, Peter?” asked his mother.

“I can't tell,” said Peter. “I promised.”

“If you don't tell, Peter, the wrong person may be blamed for that explosion. If you want to help the police do their work, you'd better tell me,” said his father. “In fact, if you want to eat at the table for the next week, you'd better tell me
now!
Who was he chasing?”

Peter looked helplessly at Jake, then back down at his peach cobbler. “Us,” he said in a tiny voice. “Well, not all of us, exactly. He was chasing Eddie and Jake.”

“Why?”

“Because … because they climbed through the fence.”

There were two or three seconds of silence, and then came another explosion, this time right there in the room as Mr. Hatford's voice filled every centimeter of space.

“Don't you two know better than to do that?” he bellowed. “You're the oldest of the bunch and you go set an example like that?” He turned on Jake. “How many times have I told you boys never, ever to go near that mine? Are you numskulls?”

And now Mrs. Malloy's voice was loud. “Eddie,
what were you
doing
up there? How
could
you do something so dangerous?”

“We … we just wanted to see what was in the tunnel. We weren't going to go down a shaft or anything,” Eddie said meekly.

“It was a dare,” Jake explained uncomfortably. “I dared Eddie to do it and she dared me.”

“That's the stupidest reason I can think of!” Mr. Hatford continued yelling. “Dumb, dumb, dumb! I thought you two were smarter than that.”

“I'm sorry,” mumbled Jake, staring down at his hands.

“So who
was
this man?” asked his father.

“I don't know,” Jake answered. “All of a sudden, there he was, going all crazy, and we tore out of there.”

“He didn't have on a uniform or anything,” said Eddie. “I don't think he was a guard.”

“We just went tearing down the hill as fast as we could with him yelling at us never to come back,” said Jake.

“Do you realize what a dangerous thing you kids have done?” Mr. Hatford boomed. “If he was the one who set off that charge, do you realize he might have been going to set the explosives off that very day you were up there?” He stared at them some more and shook his head in disgust. “You kids sit right there and don't move while I call the sheriff. I'm going to let him question you.”

The adults were talking in the kitchen. The seven kids sat in the living room, Peter looking most miserable of all.

“Man oh man, are we in for it!” said Josh. “I've never seen Dad so mad.”

“I have!” said Peter brightly, wanting to redeem himself. “Remember the time Jake called the termite inspector to go to the house next door and—”

“Shut up,” said Jake.

The more Caroline thought about it, the more relieved she was that her own father wasn't there. With both of the dads yelling, it would have been like thunder in the house.

There was the sound of a car pulling into the driveway, then footsteps and voices on the porch. Mrs. Hatford answered the door, and both the sheriff and the chief of police walked in. Mr. Hatford pointed out Jake and Eddie. The sheriff sat down.

Caroline listened while Jake had to explain all over again how he and Eddie had sort of dared each other to go into the old coal mine—how they hadn't intended to go down a shaft; they'd just wanted to peek, to say that they'd gone in. And the way he told it, it sounded as though he and Eddie were longtime friends.

“Your dad says a man at the mine chased you,” the police chief said. “Where did he come from?”

“We don't know!” said Jake. “He seemed to pop up out of nowhere.”

“Was he in the tunnel or outside it?”

“Outside,” said Caroline. “I think he was in the bushes.”

“As soon as we heard him shouting, we ran,” said Eddie. “We'd only just stepped inside the entrance when we heard him.”

“How tall was he?” asked the sheriff. “Tall as I am?”

“Shorter, maybe,” said Jake.

“Taller!” said Wally. “I saw him chasing you and he looked like a giant to me!”

“He was not!” said Beth.

The sheriff rolled his eyes. “Okay, what did he look like? Did he have a beard? A mustache?”

“Yes,” said Caroline. “A beard. I think.”

“He didn't have a beard!” said Josh. “I'd remember if he had a beard.”

“He had a mustache, but he didn't have a beard,” said Beth.

“What color was his hair?” asked the chief of police.

“Gray,” said Josh.

“Yellow,” said Jake. “A yellowish color.”

“Brown,” said Caroline.

“We don't even know what color his hair was. He was wearing a cap,” said Wally.

“Can't you kids agree on
anything?”
asked the police chief.

“He was driving a truck!” said Peter. “We all saw that. An old rusty truck.”

“Yes!” said Caroline. “An old rusty brown truck.”

“Did anyone get the license number?” asked the sheriff.

The kids hung their heads.

“Was it a West Virginia license plate, at least? Can you tell us that?” asked the sheriff.

“I think so,” said Josh.

“But you're not sure. Did anyone actually
see
the license plate?”

Nobody had.

“And that was the last you saw of him and his truck?” asked the police chief.

“No, he was outside our house on the road,” said Caroline.

“Here?”
cried Mrs. Hatford.

“Did you get a good look at him?” asked the sheriff.

Josh shook his head. “We were underwater,” he said. “I mean, when we saw him stop his truck, we ducked down under the water.”

“We didn't want him to know who we were,” said Caroline.

“Did he say anything to you?”

“No,” she said. “Just looked at us, then drove away. It was creepy.”

The sheriff was writing things down on a notepad, and for a while Caroline figured he had asked every question there was to ask. Surely by now he knew that she and her sisters and the Hatford boys had nothing to do with that explosion.

The sheriff closed his notebook. He put his pen back in his pocket. And then, just when Caroline thought the worst was over, he leaned forward, looked from one kid to the next until his eyes had traveled down the whole row, and said, “Who's Tippy?”

Twenty
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