Sammy Keyes and the Skeleton Man

  “I’m thinking that a good place to start would be to crash Heather’s little Halloween party tonight.”

  SIX

  Marissa practically chokes on her hamburger. She looks back and forth over her shoulders. “Crash her party! Are you crazy? She’ll throw you out the door in a hot second and spend the rest of the night laughing about you! That’s all you need.”

  I let her think I’ve lost my marbles for a second, then I lean forward and whisper, “I’m not planning to go as me. I could dress up as something I’d never be—like a ballerina or a bunny or something—and then go as, say, Dot’s cousin from out of town.”

  Of course, I don’t have a clue what kind of costume I should wear, or even how to get one—there are no tutus hanging in Grams’ closet, if you know what I mean. All I know is that it’s a great idea if I can only pull it off. So I’m sitting there, looking back and forth from Marissa to Dot, wracking my brains about what I can be, when all of a sudden Dot jumps off the bench and says, “I know! I know!”

  Marissa and I say, “What? What?” and pretty soon our noses are all about three inches apart and Dot’s whispering, “Last year for Halloween I went as a princess! My mom made me this terrific costume with layers and layers of skirts, and a lavender mask with sequins and stars and stuff all over it. You could put on some lipstick and earrings and curl your hair.… Heather would never recognize you!”

  Marissa and I look at each other and say, “Perfect!”

  The rest of the afternoon I didn’t listen much to my teachers or even care that people were still whispering about me. I just sat in class, looking forward, thinking about Heather’s party and what I should do once I got in the door.

  When school was finally over, Marissa and I headed home together—me walking and Marissa riding her bike as slow as she can. And to tell you the truth, I think Marissa forgot all about going over to the Bush House because when we get to the mall she says, “You want to go to the arcade?”

  I just say, “Nah. I’ve got to go by Bargain Books. I promised Grams I’d check on a book she ordered.” And really I do. I promised. Then I ask, “Want to come?” even though I know Bargain Books is about the last place Marissa would want to go. Well, the Heavenly Hotel is about the last place, but that’s another story.

  She says, “I think I’ll just go over to the mall. Why don’t you come by when you’re done?”

  I almost said, Why don’t you come with me to the Bush House when I’m done? but instead I say, “I’ll probably just see you at Dot’s around seven, okay?”

  She waves and calls, “If we can pull this off tonight, it’s going to go down in history!” Then she goes to play video games and I go up Broadway, past Maynard’s Market and the Heavenly Hotel, to Mr. Bell’s bookstore.

  Bargain Books isn’t like the bookstores you see in the mall. It’s old. What gives this away is not the coffee stains on the platform where Mr. Bell has his register and computer and stuff, and it’s not the creaky steps that go up to the loft—they’re covered with brand-new carpet. And it’s not the miles and miles of used books, because there are pretty new-looking ones, too. No, what gives away the fact that Bargain Books has been around a long, long time is the smell. It’s not a bad smell—kind of like wet wood mixed with dry grass. It’s just an old smell.

  Anyway, I walk in and give my eyes a minute to adjust because it’s always dark inside Bargain Books. Dark and cool. When I can see, I notice Mr. Bell with a big box chock-full of books saying to a woman, “Did you have more than this in mind?”

  The woman’s wearing red high heels and really tight blue jeans, which is bad enough, but on her powdered little nose is perched a pair of big, boxy sunglasses that cover up half her face. Sunglasses. In Bargain Books. She says, “A few more, and that should do it.”

  Mr. Bell pulls a few more books off a shelf and piles them into the box. He rings her up and says to me, “I’m sorry, Sammy. I’ll be right back,” and then off he goes, squinting at the sunlight, carrying this mountain of books out to the woman’s car.

  When Mr. Bell comes back, he’s looking pretty frazzled. Not that he ever looks tidy. He’s always got a shirttail sticking out or a sleeve half rolled up, but I think that it’s his hair that makes him look a mess, even when the rest of him is trying to be tidy. It looks like wads of dirty cotton glued to the sides of his skull. There’s not much left of it, but what there is is really fighting to be noticed. Anyhow, while he’s standing there blinking, I say, “Who was that? Is she really going to read all of those books?”

  Mr. Bell laughs, “No, Sammy, she’s not going to read them. She’s going to decorate with them.”

  “Decorate with them? What do you mean?”

  He steps up to his desk area and takes a gulp of his coffee. “Some people think it’s posh to have old books on their bookshelves—they think it gives them an aura of intelligence. To them one old book looks like another. They haven’t any idea what’s valuable and what’s junk; they just want to buy up enough books to give them a facade of sophistication.” He takes a bite of a half-eaten English muffin. “The only use I have for people like that is they help keep my electricity flowing.” He holds out his paper plate and says, “Muffin?”—as if charcoal peeking up through raspberry jam is my idea of a taste sensation.

  I just shake my head and say, “No, thanks. I’m here to pick up a book my grandmother ordered. Has it come in?”

  He takes another gulp of coffee. “Oh, I meant to check on why that’s taking so long. I expected it days ago. Tell you what I’ll do—I’ll make a few phone calls and get back to you.” He shuffles through some papers and says, “Or you can stop by tomorrow, if you’d like. I’ll be here all weekend.”

  So I say, “Fine,” and off I go, back into the sunshine. And, really, I wanted to forget all about Marissa’s mom’s sweater and the Bush House, but I couldn’t. Five hundred dollars is more money than I’ve ever seen, and the thought that I’d used something that cost so much to put out a fire was making my stomach do the Twist.

  So I take a deep breath and head over to Orange Street. As I’m walking I notice that a lot of the houses are for sale or for rent. And I start daydreaming about my mom coming back from trying to make it as a movie star and maybe getting a real job and renting all three of us a house. I mean, do you know how nice it would be to come home to a house? No Mrs. Graybill, no fire escape … maybe even my own room? It’d be great!

  And I was so busy daydreaming about my own room and how I’d decorate it that I didn’t notice that the sun was disappearing. I was smack-dab in the middle of the bush tunnel before I realized it, and what’s funny is I wasn’t even spooked. When I turned up the Bush House walkway, all those bushes and thorns and branches didn’t seem scary; they were just bushes and thorns and branches. And when I passed the part where the Skeleton Man had almost plowed us over, well, okay, I did think about him, but only for a second. My heart was still doing a nice steady thub-dub, thub-dub, thub-dub.

  That is, until I got to the front door. I don’t know why the front door got my heart slapping around. It’s just a door. Sure it’s green and splintery and has a rusty old mail slot, but that’s the kind of door you’d expect to see on a house that’s smothered in bushes.

  But my heart was thumping, and I knew if I stood there much longer my knees would start bumping, so I raised my fist and knocked on the door.

  Then I stood there, looking at those splinters, and waited. And when no one answered, I pounded on the door. Then I pounded some more. And all that pounding seemed to make my heart happy, because I could feel it slow down a little.

  Still no one answered. But I couldn’t exactly leave—there was a five-hundred-dollar sweater inside. And even though it was probably roasted beyond recognition, I still had to see for myself. Chances were one in a million that it could be repaired, but the chances of my coming up with five hundred bucks to replace it were nil. Zippo. I stood there a minute, thinking, and finally I knocked on the door with
one knuckle—three fast knocks, three slow knocks, and three more fast knocks. Then I did it again.

  After the third try, I put my ear up to the door, trying to hear if there was any movement inside, wondering if for all the books he had, the Bush Man didn’t know a simple SOS when he heard one, when I hear this gurgle-growl right behind me.

  I jumped, spun, and practically fell down. And there’s Chauncy, almost smiling.

  I take a deep breath. “You scared me!”

  He gurgles, “Sorry,” then motions for me to follow him. “You’re … in … trouble?”

  I follow him around the side of the house, through a maze of bushes to the back. And the whole time I’m getting scratched up, thinking there’s no way we can go any farther, he’s ducking in and out of bushes without snapping a twig, moving like a fish through coral.

  When we get to the back of the house, he motions to a rusty old folding chair that’s half sunk in the dirt. So I sit, and right away I notice that next to me on a rusty wrought-iron end table is a pair of binoculars. Good binoculars. Way better than the ones I borrow from Grams.

  Chauncy goes behind a hedge and pulls out another chair that’s practically welded shut from rust. He stands there pushing and pulling, and finally the thing creaks open. He puts it on the other side of the table and sits down like he’s getting into scalding bathwater, and it hits me: Chauncy LeBard is a gentleman—I got the good chair.

  I guess it was pretty obvious that I was itching to pick up his binoculars because he rearranges his chair, then gurgles, “Go ahead.”

  I picked them up, and wow! It was like looking through a microscope. And I’m scanning his yard, going up and down and side to side on the bushes when Chauncy makes a little clicking sound with his mouth, and points. I look where he’s pointing, but I don’t see anything. Then I try with the binoculars, and there, on the very tip of a branch, is the tiniest bird I’ve ever seen.

  Now I’ve seen birds before—lots of them—crows and pigeons and the pet shop regulars like parrots and parakeets. But I’d never seen a bird like this. It was almost silver—like a real polished gray. And round, as if it were puffing itself up, only it wasn’t. It had a black beak and short little black feet, and it didn’t seem to fly very well. And I would’ve thought it was just a chick, but after I watched it fluttering around the biggest, ugliest bushes on earth I realized that it was going back and forth to a nest.

  I lower the binoculars to say something to Chauncy, but he’s not there. And as I’m turning around to look for him, he comes walking through the back door, flipping through pages of a book. He points to a picture, then hands me the book and starts looking though the binoculars himself.

  Normally a book on birds wouldn’t have done much for me, but there was something about this tiny little fuzzy thing twittering around Chauncy’s bushes that made me want to read all about it. So while Chauncy’s checking out Fuzzball, I read the page he’s opened for me in Rare and Exotic Birds and find out that I’ve never seen a bird like this before because there are hardly any left. Fuzzball’s almost history.

  When I finish reading, I really want to talk to Chauncy. You know, ask him a bunch of questions like, What came first? Fuzzball or the bushes? and How come you have a nearly extinct bird fluttering around your yard? But looking at Chauncy I realize that I’m never going to get half my questions answered.

  So I’m just sitting there, watching him watch Fuzzball, when all of a sudden there’s a sound like a dozen machine guns ripping through the air. I jump right out of that rusty old seat and yell, “What is that?”

  Chauncy rolls his eyes and points over the side fence. He writes on his notepad RUSS WALLER/CHAINSAW, then he motions me inside the house. When the door is closed up tight, he gurgles, “Russ … doesn’t like … my … sanctuary.” Then he says, “You … needed … help?”

  So I tell him about being the Marsh Monster and how the ugliest sweater on earth turned out to be a five-hundred-dollar designer disaster and that I need to at least try to get it cleaned and repaired.

  He looks at me and you can tell—he wants to ask me a million questions, but all he says is “Come … with … me.”

  He still had the sweater, but it wasn’t in the hallway anymore. He’d moved it into Vampire Heaven along with the stack of newspapers, right next to the fireplace. And it didn’t take a genius to figure out that if I’d put off coming back to the Bush House a day, Louis d’Foo-Foo would’ve been a pile of designer ashes.

  The sweater was hopeless. There were holes burned clear through, and bald spots all over it. And it smelled. Like burned hair.

  Chauncy comes over and inspects it with me. He shakes his head and gurgles, “I’m … sorry.”

  I didn’t want him to start thinking he should have to pay for the stupid thing, so I tucked it under my arm and tried to change the subject. “Have the police come up with any suspects?”

  He gives me kind of a blank look.

  “You know—the Skeleton Man …?”

  “Oh,” he mouths, then shakes his head.

  “Did you find anything else missing besides the candlesticks and your wallet? That sack he was carrying sure looked like it had more in it than a couple of candlesticks.”

  He just shakes his head some more.

  “Were they valuable? The candlesticks?”

  “Senti … mental.”

  Sometimes I know when to keep my mouth shut, but not very often. “Were they your mother’s?”

  He cocks his head sideways and squints his eyes a bit. “Yes.”

  “Have you asked Officer Borsch to question your brother?”

  His eyes quit squinting—they pop open and drill into me. “Who … told … you?”

  I shift around a little because he’s not looking too friendly, let me tell you. I tuck that half-bald sweater under my other arm and say, “Hudson Graham.” Then I shuffle around some more and say, “He says you guys used to be friends. He’s worried about you. He didn’t know about your operation, and all he could talk about was how this place used to shake with music—Beethoven and Tchaikovsky … that’s what he said. And he’s worried about how you make your coffee with no electricity—he said he can’t imagine you without your pot of coffee.”

  Chauncy looks down at his feet. And while he’s busy inspecting the missing polish on his oxfords, I say real quietly, “He also told me you and your brother haven’t spoken since your mother died. He says she left everything to you.”

  Both of us are quiet for a minute, and then he looks up. And I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to say, because there I am with the Bush Man, and he has tears in his eyes. “I … tried … to give him … half. He … wouldn’t … take it.” He sits down in the chair I’d found him in on Halloween. “She … did me … no favors.”

  “Does he know about your operation?”

  He shakes his head. “Please … go.”

  His eyes close, and I can tell—our conversation is over. So the next thing you know I’m back where I started, staring at ugly splinters, wondering if Chauncy LeBard will ever open his door for me again.

  I head back down the walkway and turn into the tunnel, and as I’m giving the Marsh Monster sweater one last hopeless look I hear, “You some relation to that LeBard character?”

  I jump, and then I see a man carrying a chainsaw. I take a few steps back. “Ah … no. No, I’m not.”

  He tosses that chainsaw into his other hand. “What’s that you’ve got there?”

  I tuck the sweater back under my arm and say, “It’s just a sweater. Look, I’m late getting home.… Could I get past?”

  He doesn’t turn around or back out of the tunnel. He comes toward me. So what do I do? Well, I don’t know what you would’ve done, but I turned around and ran.

  SEVEN

  I got through the bush tunnel all right, and when I’m safely out the other end I look over my shoulder and what do I see? Nothing. Mr. Chainsaw’s gone. Poof! Disappeared.

  I cros
s the street and head back up past his house. I can’t see him, but I sure can hear him. He’s got that chainsaw revved up so the whole neighborhood’s shaking, and let me tell you, I’m not about to stick around to watch him use it.

  I started running home because I knew I was late. I didn’t know how late until I got to School Street and heard St. Mary’s tower start to gong. And for a second I just stood there, counting, not quite believing what I’m hearing. I mean, if I’m not home by four o’clock Grams is worried. But five o’clock? How did it get to be five o’clock?

  So I started running again—well, as much as you can run with a backpack bouncing around on your kidneys and a two-ton sweater under your arm. Then I decided that the smart thing to do would be to go to Hudson’s and call Grams. So when I got to Cypress I hung a left, and sure enough, there’s Hudson on his porch with his feet propped up, shooing a fly off his boots.

  He sees me coming and says, “Sammy! Glad you dropped by.” Then he notices the sweater. “What’ve you got there?”

  So I hold it up, and while he’s circling it like it’s some kind of diseased animal I say, “Want to buy it? It’s only five hundred bucks.”

  He looks at me like I’m crazy, so I tell him about Mikey and Marissa’s mom and how I used her Louis d’Foo-Foo sweater to put out the Bush Man’s fire.

  At first Hudson just keeps circling, looking at me, then at the sweater. Then he busts up. Completely. And after a minute of his laughing and slapping his leg and shaking his head, tears are coming out of his eyes and he has to sit down to catch his breath.

  So I sit down next to him and look at him real seriously. “Hudson, what I want to know is if you have five hundred dollars I can borrow. I need to replace this.”

  His laughing kind of sputters to a stop, and then his chin drops. And I let him sit there like a man with a toothache for a minute, before I say, “I’m joking. What I really want to know is if I can use your phone to call Grams. I’m late, and she’s probably worried.”