I tried to get control of my voice. Maybe it would not be so bad to have a mother again. “Kate?” I finally said.
“What, sweetie?”
“Thanks a lot for your letter. It was really nice. And I promise to teach you to knit when I get home. I bet I can do it.”
“I bet you can, too.”
“And I’ve got a suggestion for the baby’s name.”
“Oh, good. What?”
“Benjamin Alexander Dumas.”
“You don’t think it’s a little long?”
I giggled.
Kate giggled, too. “I’ll keep it in mind. How do you feel about Ferdinand?”
“Yuck.”
“My sentiments exactly. It was your father’s suggestion. I couldn’t tell if he was kidding.”
“He was kidding,” I said.
“Let me get him back on….Rob? Rob?” I heard her yell.
Dad picked up. “Is the girl talk over?” he asked slyly.
“Oh, Dad.” I laughed.
“Kams, I’d really like to end this conversation right now while we’re all so jolly, but Mrs. Wright did take the trouble to call and I want to hear what you have to say about the things that happened today.”
“Oh, all right. I did miss lunch today. I just didn’t feel like going. And they thought I was lost.”
“In a place like camp or school you can’t do that, though,” said Dad. “Mrs. Wright is responsible for you. Can you imagine how she must have felt when she thought one of her campers was lost?”
I was having an easier time remembering how I felt when I was too scared to serve lunch, but I wasn’t going to bring that up. I’d already brought up the business of not wanting to get undressed. And I didn’t want Dad or Kate thinking I was a baby. Because I wasn’t. I really wasn’t. No matter what Susie said.
“What happened at your swimming lessons?” asked Kate.
“It was just a joke.”
“It didn’t sound very nice,” said Dad thoughtfully. “How do you think the other girl felt?”
“I don’t care.” I knew I sounded whiny. “She was mean to me first. I was just giving her what she deserved. Besides, it was kind of funny.”
“It just doesn’t sound like you,” said my father.
Then maybe you don’t know me anymore, I thought.
“Dad, you weren’t there. You don’t know Susie. You don’t know what it’s like at Camp Arrowhead,” I said.
I heard Dad and Kate sigh. I was making people sigh again.
“Look,” my father said finally, “would you please try to behave yourself? I’m not sure what you’re up to, but just try to shape up a little, O.K.?”
I couldn’t promise because I wasn’t going to shape up. I still had to find ways to get out of serving and swimming lessons and who knew what else. I settled on saying (very contritely), “I’ll try to change.” I hoped that covered all bases—I did not say how I would change.
“Good,” Dad and Kate said together.
“That’s very cute,” I said.
“What is?”
“The way you two have learned to speak in unison.” A month ago I would have been mad about it. Now I thought it was funny. And something about being on the telephone made talking easier.
Dad chuckled. “I guess we’re getting used to each other.”
“Used to each other!” cried Kate. “I hope it hasn’t come to that!”
The conversation ended that way, with the three of us kind of joking and teasing. “See you in eleven days,” I said. I was smiling when I hung up the phone.
In fact, I was feeling so much better that after a little chat with Mrs. W (in which I finally promised to be a better Arrowhead camper), I ran up the hill to where Capture the Flag was still raging. I caught sight of Emily, Jan, and Angela sneaking around in a tight pack.
“Come help us!” hissed Jan. “We’re about to storm the headquarters!”
This time, I didn’t hold back. I joined right in. We were just in sight of the flag. Only two girls were guarding it. Jan threw a stone in the bushes behind them. It landed with a satisfying thud and crackle. When they turned to see who was sneaking up on them, we grabbed the flag and tore back to our side.
“The winners! The winners!” Our team, Upper and Lower Girls alike, was jumping up and down and yelling. Emily and Jan and Angela and I all hugged each other. And when the ice cream came, I found I was starved.
Later my bunkies and I walked back to Misty Mountains together. We were marching along in pairs with our arms around each other, and Angela started singing, “Oh, You Can’t Get to Heaven.” We all joined in. Even me. For once, someone had chosen a decent song.
That night we were so keyed up that Nancy let us talk longer than usual. Just after she gave us one more ten-more-minutes signal, Jan called out, “Jumping practice tomorrow, Kammy. Are you going to be there?”
“Sure,” I said. Jumping was one thing I particularly liked.
“And arts and crafts begins tomorrow,” announced Angela. “Who’s going to be there?”
“I am,” Mary and I called out together. I couldn’t wait to get inside of Sunny Skies again.
In a few minutes Nancy gave us the final signal.
I fell asleep barely noticing that Susie had not said a word all evening.
Wednesday was mostly terrific.
It started off when I realized that, as long as I was waking up so early anyway, I could change my clothes in my sleeping bag and no one would know. By the time everyone else woke up, I was sitting on my bunk reading, fully dressed.
The next good thing was my first arts and crafts class. I wallowed in Sunny Skies for over two and a half hours. Mary spent the morning with me. It turned out she liked art as much as I did.
“What are you going to work on?” I asked her.
Janine, the art counselor, had just finished showing us where everything was and explaining how some of the equipment worked.
“I think I’ll do a mosaic,” she answered, smiling. “This cabin is great, isn’t it? I can’t believe all the stuff they’ve got here. What are you going to make?”
I had never heard Mary say so much at once. She positively glowed.
I smiled back at her. “I really wanted to use the pottery wheels, but now I don’t know. I saw all those scraps of fabric. Maybe I’ll make a patchwork quilt.”
“Oh, that’s a good idea! Except a quilt’s so big.”
“I know. That’s why I was thinking I could make a little quilt for Simon. He’s my cat. And then I thought I could even make a quilt for my—my stepbrother. He’s just a baby. I think he’d like a quilt. Except Kate, my stepmother, has bought him all this beautiful stuff from stores. Maybe she wouldn’t want something homemade for him.”
“I bet she would,” cried Mary. “Listen, you could make a really fantastic quilt. Better than anything you’d find in a store.”
“Yeah,” I said softly. “I could appliqué animals on it.”
“And sew on snaps and buttons and zippers so he could learn to dress himself.”
“Yeah!” I’d make the best quilt Kate had ever seen. I could really show her I was special. In fact, I could make something for everyone. Presents for everyone, to say, “I didn’t mean to be such a pill.”
Mary and I spent the rest of the morning searching through piles of tiles and fabric, finding what we needed to start our projects. I could not wait to come back Friday morning.
During Siesta I got two letters—one from Dad and one from Muffin. I opened Dad’s first.
Dear Kammy,
It’s that hour of night you and I always enjoy. The darkness has just fallen and I am sitting on the back porch, with the kerosene lamp burning, listening to the crickets chirp and the birds settle down for a few hours.
A few hours is right. I should know.
I can hear Simon prowling around outside. He has not learned to be quiet yet. He’s got a long way to go before he could sneak up on something. Maybe that’
s just as well for the mice and birds.
Mice, yes. Birds, I would have to think about.
Dad went on a while longer about Simon and the birds and the nighttime. He has a real imagination. Why he is an economics professor and not an English professor or a writer, I’ll never know.
He didn’t mention camp, which was typical. It’s hard for him to bring up unpleasant things. He’d rather ignore them.
I sprawled on my bunk, feeling lazy and enjoying his letter and wanting very much to go home so I could sit on the porch with him. I’d like to curl up on the deck chairs with Simon beside me, kneading his soft paws in my shorts, and talk to Dad about books and people and the news.
Then I got to the last paragraph of the letter.
Saturday is Muffin’s fourth birthday. She’s been asking for a party. Kate feels she can’t manage a big one right after the wedding and the move. So she and Muffin and Mrs. Meade have settled on throwing a smaller party—just ten of Muffin’s closest nursery school pals—in the afternoon. Then Kate and I will take her to dinner at McDonald’s and over to Pennington to see the Hunt Brothers’ Circus.
The little brat! I crumpled the letter in a tight ball and shoved it down behind a box of Kleenex on my shelf. How did she rate a party? No one ever offered me a party on my birthday. Birthdays had always been special days, like Thanksgiving, that Dad and I spent together. But no parties since Mom died. And now Muffin rates a party and dinner and the circus? Incredible. It was disgusting. Dad and Kate lavishing all that attention on her while I got shoved out the door and into Camp Arrowhead.
I curled up in a miserable lump, stuck Muffin’s unopened letter under my pillow, and waited for Siesta to be over. I tried very hard not to cry, but a couple of stray tears escaped anyway.
They did not go unnoticed.
“Baby, baby, baby,” I heard Susie sing softly.
I glanced over at her. It was hard to believe she was breaking the Silence Rule. She must really have it in for me. She’d never call Mary a baby.
She saw me looking at her. “Baby, baby, baby,” she sang again.
“You wait, Susan Benson,” I spat. “Just wait.”
Chapter 10
Three-Fingered Willie
IT WAS A GOOD THING I was going horseback riding that afternoon, since Susie cannot ride worth beans, so she’d be out of my hair for once. Also because being around horses always cheers me up.
Jan and I and four other girls went to the jumping ring and worked out with Karen for a couple of hours before we decided to go galloping in the horse pasture. I bumped along on Mr. Chips with my hair flying in the wind. Jan began yahooing and roping imaginary cows, and soon we were all laughing and pretending to be cowgirls.
Finally we slowed down. I walked Mr. Chips around a quiet end of the pasture, and my mind began to wander. That was when I remembered this really gruesome horror story called “Three-Fingered Willie.” In fourth grade I told it better than anyone else. I would not want to let my reputation slip. I decided I should tell the story here—and then our cabin could find out just who the biggest baby really was, me or Susie.
I would have to wait until the counselors were not around if I was going to do justice to “Three-Fingered Willie.” I got my chance Thursday evening.
After dinner the Upper Girls held this Festival of Owatonna (Omatomma? Owertanna? I never heard it the same way twice) during which we paddled around Lake Oconomowoc in canoes decorated with lighted candles and then got off on this little island and roasted marshmallows. I was never clear who Owentenna was or what we were celebrating. Anyway, the whole thing was only designed to make us all tired enough so we’d go back to our cabins and sleep while the counselors and Mrs. Wright held a meeting in the mess hall.
On the walk back to Misty Mountains I told Em about old Willie. Since she was still feeling pretty chilly toward Susie because of the dishwashing we’d had to do, she was more than ready to help out with the story.
I waited until we were all in bed and Nancy had left for the meeting. I let her get about five steps away before I whispered, “Does anybody want to hear a horror story?”
“Oh, yes!” squealed Jan and Angela and Emily and Mary. Susie was not speaking to me.
“O.K., to make it really scary, put your sleeping bags on the floor and we’ll sit together in the middle of the cabin.”
In two minutes everyone but Susie was settled in a tight knot.
“Come on, Susie,” said Mary. “You have to come, too, or it won’t be any good.”
“It won’t be any good anyway,” Susie said under her breath, but she dragged herself over to the group all the same.
“Everyone, put out your flashlights,” I instructed. “This has to be told in the absolute dark.” The flashlights went off. Our cabin was silent.
“About twenty years ago,” I began, “way out in the woods in Connecticut—”
“In Connecticut?” squeaked Angela. “Is this a true story, Kammy?”
“It’s supposed to be. You can’t be sure about horror stories, but this one was told to me by somebody very reliable who doesn’t make things up.”
“Where in Connecticut?” interrupted Angela again.
“Outside Ridgefield, I think.”
Finally I got a reaction out of Susie.
“Ridgefield! That’s right near here!”
“Yes,” I said. “Anyway, way out in the woods was this dreadful old cabin. It was all dirty and falling apart. There was old dried food all over the stove, and dirty rags on the beds instead of blankets, and just logs for chairs. And it snowed all winter.
“And in the cabin lived a very mean man, Old Joe, and a little boy, Willie. When he was just a baby, Willie was left on Old Joe’s doorstep by some gypsies. Old Joe was a crazy hermit, so he didn’t really want a baby, but he thought maybe the boy would be able to help out around the cabin.
“So Old Joe made Willie into his slave. He made him do all the work in the cabin. And all winter he made him stand out in the snow with no coat or gloves and chop firewood.
“Well, the years passed and Willie got to be eighteen years old. He grew very tall and strong—as strong as three men—from all the chopping and work he did. Then one day in February he was standing outside in the snow, chopping wood as usual, when”—I lowered my voice dramatically—“it happened.”
“What happened?” cried Jan.
“Willie lowered his ax and—BANG!”—I clapped my hands together and scared everybody to death—“He chopped off the thumb and first finger on his right hand!”
“Oh, disgusting!” screamed Emily.
“Yeah,” I said. “At first he didn’t even know because his hands were so frozen he couldn’t feel anything, but then he saw red snow at his feet. When he realized what he had done, he started hollering and dancing around. He pounded into the cabin screaming, ‘Joe, my hand, my hand!’ but Joe was asleep and would not wake up.
“So Willie just went berserk. He took his ax and chopped up Old Joe. And then,” I whispered, “he went back out to the chopping block and found his thumb and finger and strung them on a piece of rope. He put that rope around his neck…and he never took it off.”
“Eeeeeeyew!” squealed Susie. I had her full attention.
Meanwhile, Emily, who was sitting nearest the door, kept inching closer to it. Nobody noticed.
“Well, two years went by,” I continued, “and nobody heard from Willie. Except for a couple of farmers who claimed he roamed around the woods completely crazy. He grew fur over his entire body and fangs as sharp as ice picks, and his pupils disappeared! He just had two naked white eyes. When he got hungry he’d—BOOM!”—everyone shrieked again—“reach out and yank a sheep or calf off a farm and eat it without even cooking it.”
“Ooh. Ooh. Gross.”
“And then,” I hissed, “somebody did hear from Willie. Two very unfortunate people. Two high school girls named Becky and Marty. They were camping out in the woods in a big tent. At about two o’c
lock in the morning they were awakened by the sound of leaves crunching nearby.”
I took a candy wrapper out of my sleeping bag and crumpled it loudly. Susie jumped. Mary cried out and, sounding like she was near tears, quavered, “What happened, Kammy?”
In all the confusion, Emily slipped outside. I went on with the story.
“Then the girls heard an odd voice. It was deep and growly—sort of the way you’d expect a…wolf…to sound. And they heard fingernails scratching on their tent. The voice didn’t say many real words. Mostly it rambled on in gibberish. But sometimes it would call out the girls’ names. ‘Beckeeee, Marteeee.’ Finally it just started screaming.
“The girls were scared stiff. They sat in their tent and watched the shadow of Willie outside. They were afraid to leave and they were afraid to stay. They thought maybe if they kept quiet he would run off. But he didn’t. The next thing they knew he came crashing through their tent—and strangled both of them.
“A couple of days later,” I went on sadly, “two forest rangers found the girls. At first they could not figure out how they had died. Then they looked at their necks and saw the marks of three fingers…and knew Three-Fingered Willie had been there.”
“Oooh,” shivered Angela, “that’s sooo scary.”
“I know,” I whispered. “Unfortunately, it’s not the end of the story.”
“It’s not?”
“No. A few days later, at a summer camp called Camp Parsipanee” (somebody drew in her breath sharply and squeaked, “That’s right down the road!”), “five boys and their counselor who had been on an overnight camping trip were found dead in the woods. Each one had the mark of three fingers on his neck.
“After that, Willie would kill about once every month or so. No one ever knew where he would strike next.” I stopped to catch my breath, and a faint scratching sound was heard.
“Kammy, stop it, you’ve scared us to death already,” moaned Susie.