Boys Against Girls

  This always happened. No matter how much Wally tried to stay out of trouble, he didn't.

  “Oh, we'll all go,” said Josh. “We were all in on it. We'll just walk up on their porch, ring the doorbell, and ask if Peter's there. Mr. and Mrs. Malloy ought to be home by now. They're not going to lie to us.”

  They started up the slope of the Malloys’ driveway, and there, on the rock, sat Peter in his bunny slippers.

  “Where were you?” asked the three boys together.

  “Here,” said Peter.

  “What do you mean, here!” Jake demanded.

  “Around,” said Peter.

  “You were not, Peter¡ We looked and looked for you, and went all the way home and called the Malloys. Mom's worried to death’ said Wally.

  “I just went in their house for a root-beer float and came right out again’ said Peter.

  His brothers stared. “You just walked in there and asked for a root-beer float?” Wally asked incredulously.

  “No. Eddie came and got me and asked did I want a root-beer float. I said yes.”

  Wally's shoulders slumped. So did Jake's and Josh's.

  “Oh, no!” said Jake. “He spilled everything!”

  “Why didn't you tell us where you were going?” Josh demanded.

  “You weren't around.”

  “Well, you never should have left that rock,” said Wally. “You can't just walk off like that.”

  “You walked off and left me” Peter said.

  “What did you tell the girls, anyway?” Josh demanded.

  “Nothing¡ They already knew. They said you were playing wolf.”

  Jake let out a howl and clutched his head.

  “See?” said Peter smugly.

  “We're dead,” said Wally. “We are cooked¡ Fried¡ All that running around looking scared was just an act. The girls are probably still laughing over it.”

  They walked glumly back toward the house, and met their father on the bridge.

  Mr. Hatford was very relieved to see Peter, and Mother was so glad that she let him go to bed without his bath after all. But to the others she said, “When you lose my trust, boys, you have to start earning it all over again. And right now, I'm deeply disappointed in you.”

  Hoo boy¡ thought Wally.

  Six

  Chiffon

  “You guys must have thought you were so smart, playing that tape of wolves howling and trying to make us think it was the abaguchie,” Caroline said to Wally in school the next morning, poking him in the back with her pencil.

  Wally turned around. “And you must have thought you were so smart to get Peter in your house so we'd have to look for him’ Wally replied.

  “Caroline, are you ready to listen?” Miss Applebaum said.

  “Yes,” Caroline told her, and the history lesson continued.

  The boys didn't say much to the girls all week, nor the girls to the boys, Eddie said that when she went to the all-purpose room after school to shoot baskets, the boys jeered every time she missed, but didn't say anything at all when she made a basket, which was at least half the time.

  Beth said that she and Josh were standing in line at the library to check out books, and Josh wouldn't even speak to her.

  Caroline didn't care whether Wally ever spoke to her or not. Eddie's idea of bringing Peter into their kitchen while his brothers went crazy looking for him was one of the best tricks Eddie had pulled yet.

  •

  Saturday morning, as soon as the girls were up, Mother said, “I've baked another one of my pumpkin chiffon pies, and I want you to get it downtown to the bake sale by nine o'clock. I'll come by later and buy something for our own dinner.”

  “Do we all have to go?” whined Beth. “I'm reading Mystery of the Haunted Shipwreck, and it's so good, I can't put it down.”

  “You don't all have to go, but it might be nice if you asked the women if you could help,” Mother said.

  “Oh, let's all walk down,” said Eddie. “It's for the softball team, after all. Maybe we'll make some points with the teachers.”

  They carried the pie carefully in the heavy cardboard box Mother had handed them. This time they walked to the end of Island Avenue, crossed the road bridge into the business district, and went up the block to City Hall.

  “Look’ said Beth, because there, going up the steps of City Hall, were the four Hatford brothers, carrying an even bigger box.

  Caroline did not ask the boys if they were thinking about the time she threw their mother's chocolate chiffon cake in the river because she thought it was a trick. And the Hatfords certainly did not say anything to the girls about what they had done to Mrs. Malloy's pumpkin chiffon pie that the girls had delivered at their mother's instruction. Both mothers seemed to take to chiffon, that was certain.

  Inside City Hall there was a large folding table spread with white paper. A big sign in the center said BUCKMAN ELEMENTARY PTA. There were trays of thick brownies, large platters of chocolate-chip cookies, lemon pies, angel food cakes—buttery squares of walnut fudge, and plates of coconut macaroons.

  Evidently the Hatford boys, as well, had been told to see if they could help, because they hung around one end of the long table, the Malloy girls at the other.

  “If you girls want to make yourselves useful, you could cut off squares of waxed paper so we'll have them ready when a customer orders,” said the librarian, who seemed to be in charge.

  And then to the boys, “Some of the customers want to eat their purchases right here. Could you make sure the cup dispenser is full over there by the coffeemaker, with plenty of cream and sugar? The supplies are under the table.”

  The Hatford boys set to work putting out cups and creamers.

  More and more things were added to the table as mothers and fathers stopped in at City Hall. Customers came and went.

  About ten-fifteen Mrs. Malloy walked in the front door and, not ten paces behind her, Mrs. Hatford.

  “Why, hello, Ellen,” Caroline's mother said. “Just look at all this¡ I hardly know what to choose.”

  “Well, the only thing I can vouch for is my chocolate chiffon cake,” said Mrs. Hatford, pointing it out. “The same one I sent once to you.”

  Caroline gulped. She knew what was coming next.

  Mother stared at the chocolate chiffon cake, then at Mrs. Hatford. “You sent us a cake?”

  Now Mrs. Hatford was staring back. “I did indeed¡ The week after you moved in.”

  “Why, Ellen, I never got it!” Mother declared.

  Caroline glanced over at the boys to see them listening in horror.

  “That's impossible!” said Mrs. Hatford. “I sent my boys to deliver it themselves, and your girls returned the plate.”

  Mother looked at the chocolate chiffon cake, and then at Caroline, Beth, and Eddie. There was fire in her eyes, but with Mother, manners always took over temporarily.

  “Well, since I never got it, the least I can do is try it now, Ellen, and I'm sure it's every bit as good as it looks,” said Mother, and asked the librarian to wrap it up for her.

  Mrs. Hatford was looking very puzzled.

  “And if you want another of my pumpkin chiffon pies, I brought one again,” Mother added. “My great-aunt Minna's recipe.”

  Mrs. Hatford gave a little smile and touched Mother's arm. “Jean, dear, you really shouldn't pretend to bake if you don't. Everyone in Buckman knows Ethel's pies. We all use that bakery.”

  “What?” cried Mother. “I never sent you a bakery pie. I baked a pumpkin chiffon pie myself.” And she pointed it out on the table. “Didn't the pie I sent you look like that?”

  Mrs. Hatford leaned down and studied the pie on the table. “No, indeed, it did not¡ The pie that came in your hatbox, Jean, was a pie from Ethel's Bakery.”

  Mother turned toward the girls.

  “Caroline, have you any idea what happened to the chocolate chiffon cake that Mrs. Hatford baked for us?”

  Caroline swallowed. “I—I threw it in t
he river,” she said, her face burning.

  “Threw it … in the … river?” Mrs. Hatford looked as though she were going to have a heart attack. But when she turned to ask her boys about the pumpkin chiffon pie, the boys weren't there. It was as though an abaguchie had swallowed them up.

  Seven

  Confession

  “Wallace, Joseph, Joshua, and Peter!” yelled Mother, and she sounded like a drill sergeant.

  She sounded like a drill sergeant who had just discovered that someone had made off with a pumpkin chiffon pie. A pumpkin chiffon pie made by somebody's own hands from a recipe of someone's great-aunt Minna.

  The boys moved reluctantly into the hall from the living room and stood with feet poised as though ready to run the other way.

  “What,” said Mrs. Hatford slowly, taking off her sweater, “happened to a certain pumpkin chiffon pie baked by Mrs. Malloy and delivered to our very door a month ago?”

  Peter looked at Wally, Wally at Josh, Josh at Jake, and Jake looked down at his knees. “We ate it,” he said.

  “Ate it? All of it? The four of you?”

  The boys nodded, all four of them.

  “Why? Why didn't you save any for dinner? Why did you go out and buy a pie from Ethel's Bakery, and try to make me think that was the pie Mrs. Malloy sent? I even thanked her for a bakery pie¡ I've never been so embarrassed in my life.” She looked sternly at the boys. “Jake? … Josh? … Wally … ?”

  Wally couldn't stand it any longer. “We destroyed it’ he said.

  Mother continued to stare. “I can't believe this.”

  “We were looking for dog doo’ added Peter.

  “What?” cried Mother. “Have you boys gone stark raving mad?”

  “We thought the girls might have baked the pie and put something awful in it’ muttered Josh.

  “Why would those three sweet girls do something like that?”

  “Easy’ cried Jake. “Very easy. I could see the Malloy girls doing about anything you could think of.”

  “Sweet? Ha!” said Josh.

  “Remember’ Wally reminded her, “they threw your cake in the river.”

  Mrs. Hatford shook her head. “That I don't understand at all. Something must have happened to make them do that. What did they think was possibly inside that box?”

  “Dead birds’ said Peter.

  “What?”

  “Ellen, quit while you're ahead’ Mr. Hatford said from the dining room, gobbling down his lunch before he delivered the afternoon mail. “The more you ask, the more they'll tell you, and the more you find out, the more upset you're going to be.”

  So Wally and his brothers escaped upstairs. Mrs. Hatford went out on the back porch to cool off, and Mr. Hatford finished his Saturday-afternoon rounds.

  When the paper came out that evening, however, the chocolate chiffon cake and the pumpkin chiffon pie were forgotten temporarily, because there was something on page two of the front section that interested them all:

  ABAGUCHIE AGAIN?

  Another sighting of the elusive abaguchie was reported yesterday by a man in the Stonecoal area of Upshur County.

  Clyde M. Downs and his wife, Marlene, were sitting down to dinner when a low growling by their springer spaniel sent them outside to investigate.

  Marlene Downs saw a large animal run out of the yard with a chicken in its mouth. At first glance, she recounted, it seemed to her a cougar, but in other ways it resembled a wolf. Clyde Downs thought it to be a member of the cat family, but like no cat he had seen before.

  Police report that the paw prints and bits of fur recovered from the scene were inconclusive….

  “What do you think this means?” Mrs. Hatford asked her husband at dinner.

  “I think somebody's large dog is loose, and an awful lot of folks are letting their imaginations run away with them,” said Mr. Hatford.

  “If there is a creature like that running around, Tom, we ought to be awfully careful about leaving our doors and windows unlocked,” said Mother.

  “Ellen, if there is a creature like that around Buckman, it's a creature, not a human,” said her husband. “It's not as though it's going around opening windows.”

  Wally lay in bed that night and wondered what he would do if he were to see the abaguchie. Write the Bensons down in Georgia, he decided. Maybe that would bring them back.

  Eight

  Eddie's Thumb

  Eddie found the story when she was looking up football scores the next day. Caroline had only half believed Wally Hatford's story about the abaguchie, but if a newspaper printed a story like that, it was true, wasn't it?

  They talked about it at breakfast.

  “Did you see this?” Eddie asked, showing the story to her father.

  “Clyde Downs and his wife wouldn't lie, would they?” asked Beth.

  “Remember that when you're frightened, you can think you saw things that weren't really there,” Mother said.

  Father agreed. “You might see a mountain lion up in the hills, but around here it would be pretty unusual.”

  Caroline looked about her warily. “I thought it was just some animal people saw out in the woods. I didn't know it actually came in people's yards.”

  Beth's eyes were as big as fried eggs. “Think what a wonderful book that would make’ she breathed. “The Age of the Abaguchie; The Abaguchie Stalks; The Abaguchie's Revenge …”

  But Caroline was not interested in books about abaguchies. She wondered what it would be like to be an actress in such a movie. Just suppose she was this young girl in this big house all by herself, and it's getting dark outside, and she's forgotten to lock the doors. Maybe she's reading a book, and she hears a noise on the front porch.

  She puts down the book and waits and listens. And finally she realizes she hasn't locked the side door. So she gets up in the darkened room and goes to the side door. She puts both hands up to her eyes and peers through the glass. And there, right on the other side of the glass, only inches away, are two red eyes, staring right back at her.

  Caroline wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. She imagined being given that role in a movie—how she would clutch her throat and scream.

  Or perhaps she realized she hadn't locked the side door, and just as she got to it, it swung wide open, and there was this horrible creature, and …

  Or maybe she would get up and go lock the door, but meanwhile, unknown to her, the abaguchie had crept around and come in the back, so that when she was locking the side door, the abaguchie crept up behind her, grabbed her by the throat, and …

  Caroline made gurgling, choking sounds.

  “Are you all right, Caroline?” asked her father. “Drink a little juice.”

  “I was attacked,” said Caroline, breathing heavy.

  “By what?” asked Mother.

  “An abaguchie came in and grabbed me by the throat.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Caroline!” said Mother.

  “I just wanted to know what it would feel like if one did get in the house, and did creep up behind me, and did put its claws around my neck,” Caroline said.

  “If that happened, my dear, you would not make another sound for the rest of your life,” said her father. “If you would like to practice not making another sound for the rest of the morning, I wouldn't mind at all.”

  •

  The afternoon was overcast and chilly, but Eddie talked Beth and Caroline into going to the field behind the college to practice her batting and pitching. It wasn't Caroline's favorite way to spend a Sunday, and Beth had her nose in a book all the way there, but when one of the sisters needed something, the others usually came through.

  “What I need,” Eddie told them, “is for someone to pitch to me, and the other to stand in the outfield. After that I need to practice my pitching.”

  “Whatever,” said Beth, and almost stepped off the bank of the river. Caroline had to guide her onto the swinging bridge and make sure she got off the other end all right.
r />   There wasn't anyone else at the field, so Caroline took her place in the outfield with Dad's old glove, while Beth pitched.

  Eddie was good, Caroline could tell. She would have been even better if Beth were a better pitcher, but more times than not she cracked the ball so hard that Caroline was convinced it was going right across the river.

  Whap¡

  Whop¡

  And then the ball was soaring high up in the air, while Eddie gave a whoop and made a run around the ball diamond.

  “They've got to let you on the softball team, Eddie!” Caroline told her when they took a break. “You're better than some of the boys we see practicing after school. You're better than Jake Hatford!”

  Eddie herself looked determined. “I'm going to practice my guts out between now and March, just in case’ she said.

  She became pitcher next, and Beth and Caroline took turns batting the ball, just so Eddie could practice getting it over the plate. Pitching a curveball, a fastball, lifting her left foot and drawing her arm far back.

  “All you need to do now is spit,” Beth laughed.

  Whack¡ Beth hit the ball straight out this time toward Eddie, and as Eddie reached up to catch it, it hit her thumb, bending it backward.

  “Ow!” Eddie howled in pain, holding her wrist with the other hand.

  “Oh, Eddie, I'm sorry!” Beth cried, dropping the bat and running over.

  Now Eddie had both hands between her knees. She was bent over with her eyes scrunched up.

  “Oh, my hand!” she said, sucking in her breath.

  “I'm sorry¡ I'm sorry!” Beth said again, looking miserable.

  “It's not your fault,” Eddie said. “I just hope my thumb's not broken”

  “We'd better go home and let Dad look at it,” Caroline said. “Maybe he'll put a splint on it or something.” She picked up the ball and glove, Beth got her book, and they started home.

  They had just reached the bridge when they saw the Hatford boys standing out in the road, throwing walnuts at trees along the river. When the boys saw the girls—specifically Eddie, wincing in pain—they stopped and stared.