Josh let out his breath. “Somebody must have told them we were going camping. What are we going to do, Jake?”
“Do?” his twin replied. “We are going to make them sorry they tagged along.”
“Can I turn around yet?” asked Peter.
“No!” Jake said. “Don’t even move your head.” And then to Wally, “Think¡ What would be the worst thing that could happen to them?”
Wally tried to think of the worst thing that had ever happened to him in the woods. “Get lost,” he said.
Jake’s face lit up. “That’s iti It’ll be almost dark in an hour or so. We’ll lead the girls every which way until they don’t know which end is up. Then we’ll sneak down to Smuggler’s Cove and have it all to ourselves.”
“Wow!” said Peter, his head never moving an inch.
•
It was when they were crossing the creek for the third time that Wally realized they could have been at camp long ago, enjoying their ham sandwiches, if they hadn’t felt obliged to lose the girls.
Every so often he or his brothers would slip off into the bushes and wait just long enough to see the girls trailing far behind, and then the boys were off again, hoping to get them royally lost before dark closed in completely.
It was chilly now that the sun was down, and Wally began to wish he had brought his ski cap, as Mom had suggested. Fires were forbidden in the woods in the fall, but once they put up the tent and crawled inside their sleeping bags, they’d be okay.
Wait a minute, he thought. They’d come all the way out here just so he could go to bed at seven o’clock? If he was home he could be watching TV until eleven¡
“We’ve lost them good!” Jake whispered, coming through the bushes behind them. “They’re so far back, they’ll never catch up. Let’s go to the cove and set up camp.”
Eager for dinner, the boys hurried through the trees in the direction of the river, and even though Wally’s foot slipped once or twice in the mud along the bank, he didn’t complain. The last quarter mile or so he turned on the flashlight to see where they were going, and at last they reached the rocky inlet circled by pine trees where the Hatford and Benson boys used to camp summer after summer. Here the river lapped gently against the bank, and the crevasses between the rocks looked deep and forbidding in the near darkness.
“I’ll bet old Caroline’s bawling her eyes out right now,” said Josh.
“How are they going to find their way home?” Peter wanted to know. He was holding the flashlight while his brothers set up the tent. Every so often he tired of holding it still and scanned the trees with it instead, and then all three boys yelled together: “Peter!”
“How are they going to get home?” he asked again.
“That’s their problem,” said Jake.
“What are they going to eat?” asked Peter, sounding worried.
“That’s their problem too,” Jake answered. “Did we ask them to follow us out here? Not on your life.”
Inside the tent it wasn’t so bad. Not so cold, at least. Just crowded. Four boys in one pup tent was two boys too many, but at least it was warmer that way.
Wally didn’t think he had ever tasted better ham sandwiches in his life. Thin-sliced ham, with yellow mustard on thick slabs of homemade bread. Big juicy apples. One carton of potato salad with onion and peppers, and a whole box of Oreo cookies to divide among them, not to mention the doughnuts and orange drink for breakfast.
They all felt much better after they had eaten.
“This is the life!” said Jake, stretching out as best he could on his sleeping bag. “Remember the year the Bensons brought their fishing poles and we had fish for dinner?’’
“And the time a mole dug right up into the tent?” said Wally. “And the way Bill Benson used to imitate an owl, and Peter got scared?”
“I did not!” Peter declared. “I knew it was Bill all the time.”
“I wonder if they’ll ever move back,” Wally said, thinking of Bill, Danny, Steve, Tony, and Doug down in Georgia, having a “Georgia peach” for a teacher, and a whole new state to explore. What if their father decided he liked teaching in Atlanta and wanted to stay? What if the Malloys decided they liked being in the Bensons’ old house and bought it from them?
It took a lot of fixing and rearranging to get all the sleeping bags squeezed into the pup tent. Everyone complained when Wally took off the sneaker that had got wet and muddy, so he put it back on again, right over his smelly sock.
When they were settled down at last, Wally turned off the flashlight, and put his hands under his head, staring up into the darkness of the tent. He was wedged between Peter and the left side of the tent, but he was warm at last—and feeling really good with seven Oreo cookies in his stomach.
What did people do who had no brothers? What if he had been born into a family of girls? Three Malloy girls¡ It was a thought too awful to think.
Jake and Josh were trying to make up another verse to “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” once you got down to “one bottle of beer on the wall,” but after a while Jake’s voice faded out, then Josh’s. Peter had long since fallen asleep, one arm slung over Wally’s chest. Finally even Josh stopped singing, and then it was just the sounds of the woods at night—rustling in the bushes, the shrill call of a night bird, the wind blowing through the branches overhead, a deep snore from Josh….
Wally played around with the flashlight awhile, making circles of light on the ceiling of the tent; practiced making distress signals, dots and dashes, with the light. But his eyes began to close, his fingers lost their grip, and finally he tucked the flashlight behind his head and settled down to sleep.
He didn’t know when he awakened whether he had been asleep only a few minutes or an hour, but he felt something moving along his side.
He lay still as a stone. A snake? A poisonous snake? Should he move? Should he very, very slowly sit up and wake the others?
Maybe it was another mole. A mouse, perhaps. A harmless little field mouse.
Carefully, carefully, trying not to move his body at all, Wally reached back behind his head for the flashlight. Slowly raising his head so that he could see, he aimed the flashlight toward the moving creature by his side and turned it on.
A hand. A human hand. Wally yelled bloody murder.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Three
•
The Bargain
Caroline was half convinced they would all three die in the woods, and their bodies would not be found until spring. Beth was so tired of going up and down hills and jumping across creeks and climbing over fallen trees that she seemed to be listing to one side rather dangerously. It was also growing dark sooner than they’d thought.
“I think we should all just lie down beside each other with our arms folded over our chests and die peacefully,” Caroline said in a hoarse whisper, ever the actress.
“I think you’ve got rhubarb where your brains should be,” Eddie scolded. “Quit whining, you two, and turn on the flashlight.”
Beth got out the flashlight. It shone on the path ahead, but the trees still loomed up dark on either side.
“We could all write a farewell note to Mom and Dad, and tell them to give our possessions to the orphans,” said Caroline, her voice trembling dramatically.
Eddie wheeled around. “Caroline, will you just shut up? You’re not helping things a bit.”
“Well, I don’t see any point in going any farther when we don’t know where we are,” Beth said. “We lost the boys a half hour ago, so we might just as well camp here. It’s almost dark, and we’re starved.”
“Listen!” Eddie said suddenly, and the girls stood still.
Caroline listened so hard, she felt her ears were growing, but all she could hear was her own pulse throbbing in her head. And then, far, far away, she thought she heard noises.
“Voices!” Beth confirmed. They listened some more.
“Are
you sure they’re human voices?” Caroline asked. “It could be animal voices. What do raccoons sound like?”
They remained very still and listened again, ears to the wind.
“It almost … sounds like singing,” Beth said.
They waited.
“It is singing,” Eddie declared. “It’s—”
“ ‘Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall, ’ ” Caroline finished.
“The boys!” the three girls said together.
It took almost fifteen minutes more to get to the place where they could see the tent. First the singing seemed to be coming from one direction. Then the wind changed, and it came from another. Beth got her foot caught in a vine and they had to take her shoe off to get her foot loose. Then it took several more minutes to find the shoe.
By that time the singing had stopped altogether, but Caroline caught sight of a light, a little circle of light, and finally they could hear the river and make out the beam of a flashlight from inside a small tent.
“Bingo!” said Eddie softly. “Okay, let’s make camp.”
•
Lying on a bed of leaves in the daytime was a lot more pleasant than lying on a bed of leaves in the dark was going to be, with no tent over them, Caroline decided.
As the girls spread out their sleeping bags beneath the trees, Caroline wondered about wild animals.
“Are there bears in West Virginia?” she whispered.
“Cut it out, Caroline, ” said Eddie.
But Beth gave a little gasp. “Are there?’’
“If there are bears in West Virginia, they’re way up in the mountains,” Eddie said.
Caroline knew that Eddie didn’t know what she was talking about any more than Beth knew about bears, but she didn’t ask any other questions because she didn’t really want to know the answers. She unzipped her sleeping bag, took off her shoes, and crawled in.
“Who’s going to steal their clothes?” Beth whispered.
“I am, as soon as I’m sure they’re asleep,” said Eddie.
Caroline scrunched down as far as she could into her sleeping bag, feeling secure with Eddie on one side of her and Beth on the other. Within minutes Beth began her noisy sleep that sounded like a motorcycle revving up. And then, Caroline could tell from Eddie’s slow measured breathing next to her that she had fallen asleep as well.
How could this be? Caroline lay with her eyes wide open. They had come all this way to steal the boys’ clothes, and Eddie was asleep? She was just about to poke her and remind her of her obligations, when she remembered the poncho she’d brought along, and Agent XOX. Wasn’t it she herself who should be the spy, the scout, the secret agent—creeping through the trees, slithering along the ground, and stealing the boys’ clothes?
“Caroline did it again!” her sisters would say in awe.
Wriggling back out of the sleeping bag, she put on her sneakers and picked up the flashlight. Caroline pulled the rubberized poncho over her and then, like a small tepee moving along the ground, set out softly for the boys’ tent.
The boys, she figured, would have taken off their clothes and thrown them at the foot of their sleeping bags or perhaps wadded them down between their sleeping bags and the sides of the tent. If she could just slip her hand underneath, perhaps she could pull the clothes out from under the edge without having to open the tent flap at all. Unless, of course, the tent had a canvas floor.
She turned off the flashlight when she reached the tent. Like fingers searching out the keys on a piano, Caroline’s fingers inched their way beneath one side. She was in luck. No floor. She lay down on her stomach and extended her arm, her fingers exploring inside the tent.
There was something there, all right. A down jacket? Or was it a sleeping bag she was feeling? She couldn’t see a thing, of course, because the poncho had slipped down over her face. Now her hand touched something else and her fingers ran along the edge. Something warm. Somebody’s pajamas?
“Yipes!” There was a yell from inside the tent.
She tried to pull her hand back, but someone had grabbed it.
Another yell. A bleat. A bellow. “A hand¡ Josh¡ Jake!”
Caroline rolled over, struggling hard to pull her arm loose, but someone was pressing it to the ground.
Pushing the poncho off her face, Caroline could see the beam of a flashlight inside the tent, see the jiggling of the canvas as the boys tumbled around, and then the tent flap opened and out they spilled.
“It’s Caroline!” yelled Josh. “They found us!”
They found us? They knew? Whoever was inside the tent holding her arm let loose to come outside, and as soon as she was free, Caroline struggled to her feet but tripped on the long poncho and fell on her face again. The boys laughed and yelled.
More footsteps. Running footsteps. Caroline could hear Eddie’s voice, trailed by Beth’s. Somebody had hold of her feet and was pulling her toward the river. Was Agent XOX to die a drowning death?
“You let go of her!” came Eddie’s voice, and suddenly Eddie had one arm, Beth the other, and they were pulling her the other way. Back and forth, back and forth. Secret Agent XOX was going to die a stretching death instead. Torn limb from limb.
“Keep hanging on, and we’ll throw you all in!” Jake yelled to Caroline’s sisters.
And then Peter’s voice wailed sleepily from the door of the tent: “Wally, come back in¡ It’s freezing¡
In that instant Eddie and Beth yanked Caroline free, and finally Caroline was on her feet again, half running, half stumbling back into the underbrush beside her sisters.
•
They sat on top of their sleeping bags while the boys whooped some more and shone the flashlight on them.
“They don’t even have a tent!” exclaimed Peter.
“Hey, you girls lost?” Jake’s voice.
“You cold? What were you looking for? A blanket?” Wally’s.
“You want any directions, just ask us,” called Josh. “We’ll direct you right into the river.”
“Yeah, who asked you to come on this camping trip?” called Jake.
It seemed just too much for Eddie. “You don’t own these woods¡ You don’t own the river¡ We have as much right to be here as you do!” she screamed.
“Ha¡ You wouldn’t even have found your way out here if you hadn’t followed us!” Josh yelled.
“We saw you sneaking along, hiding behind bushes¡ We knew you were behind us all the time!” called Wally.
Caroline felt her face burning. How embarrassing to know that the boys had known they were back there all the time.
Josh and Jake were laughing again, shining the flashlight right in her eyes. “Old Caroline sneaking over here in that poncho. You look like a witch, Caroline!”
“They’re all witches!” declared Josh. “They don’t even need to dress up for Halloween. Just come as they are and they’ll scare the little kids.”
The boys laughed some more.
“Hey, girls!” came Jake’s voice. “What are you going to be in the Halloween parade?”
“What Halloween parade?” Caroline called back, in spite of herself. If there was any dressing up in costumes to be done, she wanted to know about it.
“The school parade,” yelled Wally. “We and the Bensons won first prize almost every year.”
“Well, whatever we think of, it’ll be a lot better than what you wear,” Beth retorted.
“You wish!” said Josh.
“We’ll win again, won’t we, Wally?” came Peter’s voice.
“Sure we will.”
“Wanna bet?” yelled Eddie. “You must feel you own this town. You must think you’re going to go on winning the prizes and hogging the best camping spots just because you lived here first. Well, I’ll tell you something, wise guys. Maybe you won’t Maybe somebody else will win this year.”
“Keep dreaming!” called Josh.
Caroline was beginning to shiver. The air seemed cooler than it had when she’d started
out for the boys’ tent, and she wished Beth and Eddie would crawl into their sleeping bags and shut up. But Eddie was angry, and when she was angry, she was unstoppable.
“Wanna bet?” she yelled again.
“Sure¡ Bet!” yelled Jake. “Whichever group wins first prize—you or us—will be the masters and the other group will be the slaves.”
Were they crazy? Caroline wondered. No one would agree to—
“You’re on!” Eddie yelled back. “Deal!”
Caroline gasped. “Eddie, are you nuts?”
“They think they’re so smart!” Eddie sputtered. Caroline had never seen her so angry.
“What will the slaves have to do?” Caroline called out.
Josh answered, “Whatever the masters tell them to do.”
There seemed to be a brief discussion going on in the boys’ camp. Then Wally replied, “The slaves have to do all the masters’ work for a whole month.”
“Fine with us!” yelled Eddie.
“Eddie, if they win, they’ll—” Beth began.
“They won’t¡ We will!” Eddie said. And then, more desperately, “We have to!”
Caroline let out her breath. She was too tired to argue anymore. All she wanted was her warm sleeping bag and a soft place to lay her head. She had just started to crawl in when suddenly, Splat.
Caroline looked around. Another splat.
“Rain!” cried Beth and Eddie together.
The girls quickly rolled up their cotton sleeping bags, sat on top of them, and spread out the poncho over their heads, while the boys whooped again and tumbled back into their tent.
The rain came down harder and harder. Fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes. On and on. All around them the ground was getting soggy and spongy. A damp earth smell arose from the floor of the forest. Caroline felt like a mushroom. She smelled like a mushroom. She imagined that she had little bugs crawling up one side of her stalk and down the other.
The food was gone. The water was almost gone. Caroline needed to go to the bathroom, but she didn’t want to get rained on, so she stayed where she was and felt miserable.
It was all such a dumb idea, following the boys out here to steal their clothes. They hadn’t even taken their clothes off, come to think of it, and neither had she or her sisters.