Going Where It's Dark

  “Indeed it was,” Mom said patiently. “It was out of our very own vegetable garden.”

  “Well, it was picked too soon,” said the woman.

  “Oh, spare me!” murmured Pearl, who was wiping off a table next to the counter, and Buck and Nat ducked their heads to hide their laughter.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” Mom said to the woman. She made her getaway while she could, and turned her attention to the boys. “Thanks, Buck. Your dad and Mel out in the field?”

  “Yeah. He asked mmmme to ride over.”

  “Well, I thought maybe I could get through the day without them, but when it got to the point where I couldn’t read my own handwriting, I knew I had to have them. How you doing, Nat?”

  “Okay,” he said. “First carnival truck’s here.”

  “That’s good news for Holly’s,” Mom said.

  When the straw-hat woman realized Mom wasn’t coming back, she gave a loud sigh and climbed down off the stool, taking her check to the cash register.

  Pearl sidled up to Mom behind the counter. “That woman!” she declared. “She’d blame sugar for being sweet.”

  Buck and Nat laughed out loud.

  Holly came out of the kitchen then with a tray of apple and blueberry pie slices to put in the pie safe. “You boys want some ice cream?” she said. “First dip’s on the house. Second dip’s on you. Sprinkles are free.”

  The first dips of Holly’s ice cream, however, were always huge, and with sprinkles, they were enough.

  “Nat says a carnival truck is here,” Mom told her.

  “Ah!” Holly wiped her hands on her apron. “Let’s hope the carnival workers get tired of eating carnival food and want some honest-to-goodness home-style cooking.”

  “They usually do,” said Mom.

  •••

  On their way home, Nat said, “Let’s go back to the river. We went almost as far as the bend last time, so let’s start hiking from there.”

  “For a while, maybe,” said Buck. “I should probably help Dad a little more before dinner.”

  It was cool in the woods—perhaps ten degrees cooler—and just looking at the water seemed to help dry the skin. That and a breeze blowing in from the north. Buck figured the sawmill couldn’t be more than a half mile off. The woods was a real tangle the farther they went, the trees so close together it was hard to find a way through them. Walking along the riverbank itself was impossible at points, forcing them back into the underbrush.

  “What’s that?” Nat said, stopping and wiping one arm across his face. His hair was a mess, with leaves and twigs stuck every which way.

  “Whhhhere?” Buck asked, almost bumping into him from behind.

  “There.” Nat pointed. “That…shack.”

  Buck moved up beside him and looked in the direction he was pointing. “S…somebody’s house? A homeless person?”

  “Could be. Should we look?”

  In answer, Buck began making his way through the trees and vines, each step breaking a net of leaves and branches.

  It was a strange put-together structure about eight feet square, with a flat roof half-covered with tarp.

  “Hello?” Buck called, and waited, listening.

  “Anyone there?” yelled Nat.

  They moved closer.

  There was no sound from inside. No scuttling or scraping.

  “Hello!” Buck yelled again, and reached out to rap on the side of the plywood frame.

  Suddenly his hand froze motionless in the air, and he stepped a little closer. Along one edge of the plywood sheet was a number, scribbled in Gramps’s shaky handwriting.

  Buck stared at the sheet of plywood in front of him, then at Nat. He started to say something, then stopped. Dad had told him to keep the robberies quiet—better chance of finding the thief if he didn’t know they were looking for him. So he simply knocked on the side of the shack.

  Still no answer. No sound of movement from inside.

  “There’s got to be a door,” said Nat, moving in closer.

  They tramped around a huge bush on one side and found a narrow doorway facing the river.

  Buck leaned down and looked in. It was too dark to make out much. The little light from the doorway showed the corner of a rumpled sleeping bag, a plastic milk crate turned upside down with some magazines on it, some empty beer bottles on the plywood floor.

  “W…wish we had a flashlight,” Buck said.

  “You going to crawl in?” asked Nat.

  “Are you?”

  Nat shook his head. “Like invading someone’s house, man. But next time we come, we’ll bring a flashlight.”

  Buck straightened up. “Listen. I nnnnneed to get home. Dad didn’t say I could have the whole afternoon off.”

  “Okay,” Nat conceded. “Let’s remember where this is, though—that we’ve hiked this far, about a hundred yards beyond the bend in the river.”

  “Yeah,” said Buck, but as Nat started back with his big stick, whacking at weeds as he went, Buck examined a second panel of plywood. And yes, along its edge, another of Gramps’s shaky scrawls. Wow!

  “Hey, Nat!” he said, unable to hold back a grin. “Here’s some plywood for your cousin’s basement.”

  Nat laughed. “Yeah, right. And when whoever lives here comes back, he’ll know somebody’s been around.” He pointed to the trampled weeds making a path to the door. “Do we care?”

  “He might. Whoever lives here.”

  •••

  At the crossroads, they separated, and Buck pedaled furiously on home. He dropped his bike at the porch and raced through the house, out the back door to the vegetable field.

  Breathless, he ran over to Dad and Mel, who were dumping buckets of beans into a bushel.

  “Wondered where you’d gone off to,” Dad said.

  “We found it! The ppppplywood!” Buck cried. “In the woods.”

  Dad lowered the bushel basket and stared at him. “What woods? All we’ve got around here is woods.”

  “That runs in bbbbback of the sawmill, down by the river.”

  “How do you know it’s ours?” asked Mel.

  “It’s g…g…got Gramps’s writing on the edge. The numbers.”

  “How many panels?” asked Dad.

  “I don’t know. Somebody built a shack.”

  Uncle Mel turned to Dad. “I’ll go, Don. You’ve got enough on your plate.”

  “Could be it’s legitimate, Mel. That it’s bought lumber. Dad numbered them all, remember, so even the paid-for plywood has numbers.”

  Buck hadn’t considered that.

  “Then Gramps should know, him and his ledger book.” Mel set the bucket down and started for the house.

  “Go with him, Buck,” Dad said.

  As though he wouldn’t! Mel wouldn’t be able to find the shack without him.

  Buck ran upstairs to use the bathroom and get a long drink of water, and when he came down and went outside, Mel was throwing a hammer and shovel and a large canvas tarp into the trunk of his car.

  As they started down the driveway, Buck asked, “What are you g…going to do?”

  Mel’s big, muscular arms swung the steering wheel around when they reached the dirt road. The tattoo of a ship beneath his sleeve tipped sideways and righted itself again.

  “First we’re going to the sawmill to get a list of the plywood sheets that are missing, not sold. Then, I want you to take me to that shack,” Mel said.

  “And then what? What if someone’s in there?”

  “Well…I guess we’ll have a conversation.”

  •••

  Buck could hear the whine of the saw blade even before he saw the mill itself—the high whine, which changed note and volume depending on the thickness of the wood and the knots it encountered.

  They got out and walked around to the side portico where Joel was holding on to one end of an eight-foot tree trunk, while Gramps, at the blade, guided the smooth plank that was slowly appearing at the other end.

/>   Mel waved one big arm, and Gramps looked up, nodded to show he’d seen him, then waited until the log was all the way through and the plank fell sideways before he turned the switch.

  “What you doing, loafin’ around down here?” Gramps said, grinning.

  “Need to borrow Joel’s pickup,” Mel said. “Could be we’ve found that stolen plywood, so might have to do some hauling.”

  Gramps pushed his safety goggles up on his forehead. “Who took it?” he asked.

  “Don’t know yet. Buck found a shack off in the woods made out of plywood with some dates on the side, but we’ve got to be sure these weren’t bought fair and square. I need to see your sales ledger.”

  Joel gave a little whistle. “Hey, Buck! Nice going!”

  And Mel added, “Good thing you numbered all the plywood, Art!”

  Gramps walked with his head high as he led them all inside the shop. “You darn betcha!” he said.

  As he read off the numbers of the plywood sheets that had not appeared on any sales ticket—twelve in all—Buck wrote them down on a piece of paper. Then he copied down the numbers of the missing pine boards and studs as well.

  “If we bring some back, Art, what can you do with used lumber?” asked Mel.

  “Somebody will always be able to use it at half price,” Gramps told them, which made Buck think of Nat’s cousin and his rec room.

  •••

  Mel transferred the hammer and shovel and canvas into the back of Joel’s pickup, and drove slowly along the old mill road. It was difficult to see the river’s bend from here, but finally Mel backed the pickup into a bare spot along the side of the road. Then, carrying the tools while Buck carried the canvas, they set out through the trees.

  It took about ten minutes to reach something that looked familiar to Buck, and when they came to the berry bush, with one branch broken the way Buck had left it, he knew they were going in the wrong direction. They turned and hiked for fifteen minutes in the other.

  At last they saw traces of the trail he and Nat had made earlier, the tramped-on weeds and underbrush, and finally, the tan color of the plywood through the trees.

  “That it?” Mel asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Whoever lived inside must have used a flashlight, Buck decided, and he could have kicked himself for not bringing one along this second time.

  Mel knocked on the wall, the same as Buck had done, and called out a greeting. But once again there was no answer.

  “Don’t want to stick my head in there and get a shotgun blast in the face,” Mel murmured to Buck. “Okay. I’ll read some dates as I find them, and you see if they’re on the list.” Mel squatted down to read the first of Gramps’s shaky handwriting.

  “June thirtieth…”

  “It’s here,” said Buck.

  Mel went a few steps farther in the underbrush and leaned in close. He gave a whistle. “May twenty-sixth…Guess Gramps was right, all that complaining….”

  “Yeah. That one tttttoo,” said Buck.

  Mel came around the corner and examined an exposed edge of another sheet.

  “July seventh.”

  Buck ran his finger down the page. “Yep.”

  “Well, that’s enough for me. Have to take this thing apart to find the other numbers, but if there’s any here not on the list, I’ll leave ’em.” Mel lifted the hammer and, using the claw end, gently pried up one corner of the plywood roof. Then the other side. And finally, he lifted the sheet of plywood on its side so that daylight streamed in.

  “Nobody here.”

  Buck went around to the low doorway and looked in. A couple of sleeping bags, an old gray and white sneaker, sports magazines, beer bottles, pop bottles, empty pretzel bags, a dirty T-shirt…

  “You recognize any of this stuff?” Mel asked him.

  Buck shook his head. “Could belong to anybody.”

  There were eight plywood sheets altogether, counting the roof and floor—a few more than there were numbers for, but that was because Gramps didn’t start numbering until he’d suspected some were missing. One of the four fence posts at the corners was not on the list, the other three were.

  “And this has got to be the new tarp Gramps put over the pile,” Mel said. “Let’s see if we can make it in one trip. We’ve got to take the posts too—Art said those are missing as well—but I think we’ll leave the floorboards. One has been stepped through, probably rotting beneath.”

  One by one the plywood sheets came loose and were placed on the canvas Buck had spread on the ground. Then the four posts. Mel looked at the four eight-foot pine planks that had supported the roof and decided to leave those. They were undoubtedly stolen too but had no numbers, and whoever had done the nailing had split some of the ends—a pretty messy job.

  “Don’t know where these men got their building know-how, but it sure wasn’t from a carpenter. I’d give this shanty about a year…,” Mel said.

  “What if it’s somebody homeless?” Buck wondered.

  “Somebody this desperate, I’d have built it for him if he’d asked,” Mel said. “But stealing’s not the way to go about it.”

  They placed the last sturdy fence post on top of the pile, and Buck wiped one arm across his face. Mel took out a big blue handkerchief and mopped his own neck and ears. They took one final look at the floor of the shack, littered with the two sleeping bags and other refuse, the four long planks they’d laid neatly in a square around them, and grinned at each other.

  “Hope it dddddoesn’t rain,” Buck said, and they laughed.

  It was slow going, trying to maneuver a path through the trees wide enough to take their load, and they’d only gone about fifteen feet when they heard voices coming from the trees along the river. Laughter. A yelp, and more laughter.

  Buck froze, and almost dropped his corner of the canvas.

  Mel glanced over, then turned to look behind them.

  There was another yell—this time a loud one. Then another, and a string of curses as Pete Ketterman, Isaac, Ethan, and Rod came into view.

  The four boys stopped about twenty yards from Mel and Buck and simply stared, first at them, then at the sight of their demolished hideaway.

  “Hey!” yelled Pete.

  Mel looked over at them. “Hello.”

  “What the heck…?”

  “I could ask you the same thing,” Mel said.

  “You friggin’ out of your mind?” Pete bellowed. “You took down our duck blind!”

  “Oh, is that what this was?” said Mel.

  “Well, what do you think you’re doing?” demanded Isaac, moving closer, looking menacingly first at Mel, then Buck.

  “Just returning some stolen property, that’s all,” said Mel. “You have something to say about that?”

  “How do you know it was stolen?” said Ethan.

  “You show your receipt from the sawmill and I’ll be glad to build it back up for you. Better than how you built it, that’s for sure,” Mel said. “We left the two sheets for the floor, though, so you still owe Mr. Anderson for those.” And then, to Buck, “Let’s move.”

  Buck lifted up his corner again and started to pull, but Pete came forward and stepped on the end of the canvas, jerking them to a stop.

  “You’ve got no proof, and you better put our stuff back.”

  Mel turned around. “Mr. Anderson has all the proof he needs in his record book, and you can see the numbers on the ends of that plywood yourself. You want the sheriff in on this, we’ll be glad to get him. You boys have better things to do, and you ought to have more sense than to go doing something like this. Now get the heck off this canvas.” And giving it a mighty jerk, he threw Pete momentarily off balance so that the canvas was free again, and, with his hammer in his other big hand, he motioned to Buck. “Come on, let’s go.”

  With the four boys gaping after them, Buck and Mel continued pulling their cargo until they were back to the old mill road and the waiting pickup.

  •••


  It was the main topic of conversation at dinner that night.

  “I don’t know,” said Mom. “Do you think that was the best way to handle it? Maybe you should have gone to Pete’s dad instead and let him deal with it.”

  “And let him beat the stuffing out of his kid? I’ve seen enough of Ed Ketterman to know the kind of discipline he’d use.”

  “But maybe Pete will tell him you tore down his duck blind, and his dad will come after you,” said Katie.

  Mel chuckled. “If that was a duck blind, I’m a fried doughnut. Nope. Won’t happen. Pete would have to explain how he got the plywood in the first place. I don’t think one of those boys is about to tell his parents.”

  Buck thought he was right, but wished that Mel had not told Pukeman he could build the duck blind better than Pete had. Just stuck to the facts.

  “I suppose you could have let it stand and made the boys pay for it,” said Dad, helping himself to the turnips and onions.

  Mel was getting a little tired of defending himself. “We didn’t know who it belonged to, Don, and I wasn’t about to sit around there waiting for the owner to come back. I’m on another truck run tomorrow, so what’s done is done. Art wanted that lumber back and he’s got it. Wanted to know who was doing the thieving, and now he does.”

  Gramps nodded. “Topic closed.”

  Buck sure hoped so.

  They could hear the calliope music pumping out each bright note into the night air even before they reached the crossroads at Bealls’ Junction.

  “Look at the way it lights up the sky!” Katie said, her cheek pressed against the passenger window in the backseat of their dad’s car, Buck crammed in beside her, and Nat at the far window. Joel was driving, his friend Kyle beside him. “They’ve got one of those searchlights or something to show people the way.”

  As though folks the whole county over didn’t know where to find it. Mr. Beall said that what he got for renting out the land to be mowed and the wire fencing dismantled and put back up again was almost as much as he’d get if he tried to farm the “dad-gum place.”