“Ugh.” Caroline clutched her throat.
“I know, I know, but we’ve got to win first prize, Caroline. Do you want to be the Hatfords’ slaves? Think what will happen if we lose¡ Do we really want to wash their socks and clean their bathtub and take out their trash every week?”
It was a distressing thought.
“What does the principal like?” asked Caroline.
“Trees,” said Beth. “He really likes trees. Somebody told me that every spring, he plants a tree at the end of the school yard.”
“And did you ever read the poem he has framed above his bookcase? I think that I shall never see, a poem lovely as a tree …’ “ said Caroline dramatically.
“Okay,” said Eddie. “We’ll go as a shrub, with sticks taped to our arms for branches. Each of us will be a limb—a large limb. We’ll be bound together at the waist and knees, so our legs form a thick trunk, but we’ll each sort of spread our arms and wave them slowly in the wind. The principal will love it.”
•
When Caroline woke the next morning, she had no idea that this would be one of the most wonderful days of her life, and it had nothing to do with a shrub.
“And now, class,” the teacher said after she took the roll, “for those of you who are new at Buckman this year, we have a tradition you may not know about. Every spring the sixth grade puts on a play for the rest of the school” —Carolyn’s heart sank. Only the sixth grade?—” but every October the fourth grade puts on a Halloween play for the lower grades.”
Joy in the morning¡
“It’s not a very long play, because small children can’t sit still very long, so there won’t be a lot to memorize, but I think you’ll find it fun.”
Caroline felt as though she were floating above the desks.
“This year I have selected The Goblin Queen for our play. As I read each part, if you think you would be interested, please raise your hand. First, the queen herself—”
Caroline’s hand was in the air before the words had even left the teacher’s mouth.
“Caroline?” said the teacher. “Is that all?”
Two more hands went up.
“Caroline, Nancy, and Kim,” the teacher said. “You’ll try out at lunchtime, girls, and we’ll see who reads it best.”
Caroline was floating. She could read it best. She knew she could.
“Three witches …” the teacher went on.
More hands went up, and the teacher wrote more names on the board.
“A grandfatherly ghost … a black cat … two skeletons …” The list went on and on, and more names were added. Wally didn’t volunteer for a thing, Caroline noticed, but she didn’t care.
After lunch she sat in a little circle by the teacher’s desk, and one by one she and Nancy and Kim read the lines that the Goblin Queen would say. Caroline wonderfully, gloriously, deliriously outdid the other girls. Even Nancy and Kim had to admit it. “Caroline did it best,” they said.
“Well, you two girls will be her goblins-in-waiting, then,” Miss Applebaum said, “and those are good parts too. You are all good readers.”
“Will the play be in the auditorium?” Caroline asked breathlessly. “Up on stage … with the velvet curtain and everything?”
The teacher looked amused. “Yes, Caroline, at long last, it will be up on stage in the auditorium with the velvet curtain and everything. The seats won’t be filled, of course, only the first few rows, but it will be an appreciative audience. Everyone looks forward to the Halloween play.”
•
When Caroline walked out of school that day, she came down the steps slowly, her back straight, head high, as a queen would walk as she stepped off the throne to greet her subjects.
“What’s the matter, Caroline, a crick in your neck?” asked Eddie.
“You,” said Caroline, “are looking at the actress with the leading role in the fourth-grade play, The Goblin Queen.”
“Gobble the Queen?” teased Beth.
Caroline gave her a haughty glance.
“I was the very best one in tryouts, and I will perform onstage !” And then she couldn’t contain herself. She grabbed her sisters by the arms and dissolved in happy giggles. ‘Oh, Eddie¡ Beth¡ I’m so excited. We really get to be onstage, with the curtain and everything!”
“Well, just don’t let it go to your head, Caroline,” Eddie told her. “We’ve still got our costume to be working on, because if we don’t win that contest, Wally 5 going to be king and you’re going to be his loyal subject. And if that’s not enough to make you throw up, I don’t know what is.”
Caroline sighed. “Ugh. What should we be doing?
“We should be finding sticks to tape to our arms. Not too heavy, though, or our arms will get tired.”
When the girls got across the swinging bridge, they went down the bank on the other side, where there were low-hanging branches, and looked for sticks that had fallen on the ground.
“I’ve got two, with lots of twigs on them,” said Caroline, holding them up in the air. “How do these look, Eddie?”
Beth held hers up, too, to see if they would be too heavy.
“Do we look like a tree?” she asked.
“A good-sized shrub, maybe,” said Eddie. She stood on tiptoe to break off a long branch that was already dangling and added it to the others. “I think this will do it,” she said at last.
“What are we going to call our costume in the contest?” asked Caroline. “Just ‘shrub’?”
“Something that will appeal to the principal,” Eddie said. She thoughtfully chewed her lip. “I’ve got it. A natural habitat’¡ That’s what we’ll call ourselves.”
By the time they had put the sticks in the garage, Mother was standing at the door waiting for them: “I’ve made a pie for the Hatfords, and I want you girls to take it over,” she said. “Just give it to whoever answers the door. Tell them it’s in appreciation for the boys washing our windows. I’ve put it in this old hatbox and stuck a note inside.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Eddie.
“Why would I be kidding?” Mother looked at her curiously. “You know, there are times I think I haven’t raised you girls right. Maybe people just aren’t as neighborly in Ohio, but here in West Virginia you show people you’re grateful when they do something for you. It’s the least we can do.”
“I’ll bet they throw it in the river,” murmured Caroline.
“Throw it in the river¡ Why in the world would they do that?”
Caroline didn’t even get a chance to tell Mother she was to be Goblin Queen in the fourth-grade play, because moments later she was crossing the swinging bridge, her sisters beside her, carrying the old hatbox with Mother’s pumpkin chiffon pie inside it.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Eight
•
Pumpkin Chiffon
“Look!” said Josh.
Wally looked where his brother was pointing. On the bank, across the river, Caroline and her sisters were down by the water gathering sticks.
The boys moved behind some wild rhododendron and watched.
“What do you suppose they’re up to?” asked Jake.
Josh turned to Wally. “Your class isn’t doing a project with sticks, is it?”
Wally shook his head.
“Maybe they’re going to have a fire in their fireplace,” suggested Peter.
“The Bensons left them stacks and stacks of wood,” Jake told him. “This has got to be something else. What do you think, Wally?”
Wally watched the girls without answering. He watched them holding the sticks up in the air, sort of like poles for a tepee.
“A tepee/’ he said.
“That’s it!” cried Jake. “Wally, you’re a genius¡ They’re going to come to the Halloween parade as a tepee and Indians¡ Eddie will probably be the tepee and Beth and Caroline will be the chief and squaw.”
“Wow!” said Peter admiringly.
Wally felt sick. The Malloys would win for sure. Nobody had ever entered the parade before as a tepee and Indians. How could they ever top that?
“How can we top that?” asked Josh.
“We don’t have to top it!” Jake answered. “All we have to do is stop it. All we have to do is dress up like something that would naturally knock down a tepee. Think, everybody!”
“A train?” said Peter.
“Not a train, dum-dum.” A car?
“Peter, we’re talking Old West here, way back before there were any cars. C’mon, Wally. What could it be?”
Wally tried to remember pictures he’d seen in his history book, in the chapter called “Westward, Ho!”
“Buffalo,” he said.
“That’s it!” cried Jake. “We’re buffalo. We don’t have to be vultures after all. Josh, you’ve got to design some new costumes.”
The boys went on home and made milk shakes in the kitchen to celebrate.
“I didn’t think they’d be a centipede,” Josh said. “I’ll bet they whispered that just loud enough for Peter to hear so it would throw us off. They probably knew already they were going to be a tepee and Indians.”
“All this time they’ve probably been working on their costumes—the chief’s headdress and everything—while we were trying to find something that looked like vultures’ claws,” said Josh.
Ding dong.
Jake had just turned off the blender and was pouring the thick shake into glasses when the doorbell rang.
“Don’t anybody take a drink of mine,” Wally warned as he went to the door and opened it.
There stood Caroline and her sisters holding a hatbox.
“Mom sent this over,” Caroline said, holding out the box. “It’s a pumpkin pie.”
Wally could not believe this was happening. The girls didn’t look as though they liked this any more than he did, but Wally couldn’t be sure.
“Who is it, Wally?” called Jake.
“A pie,” said Wally.
“Who?”
Peter came running to the doorway and stared down through the cellophane top of the hatbox. “It’s a pumpkin pie!” he said.
“Enjoy,” said Eddie, and the girls turned and walked away.
“Don’t forget to return the plate,” Beth called over her shoulder.
All four boys were standing at the door now.
“I don’t think their mom baked this at all,” said Josh. “I’ll bet there’s a trick to it.”
“That’s what they thought when they threw our cake in the river,” Wally reminded him.
“Just the same, I’ll bet it’s made of dog doo or something. I’ll bet the girls are ticked off because of what I drew on the back of my math paper.” Josh stared hard at the pie.
Wally opened the lid and took a cautious sniff. “Sure doesn’t smell like dog doo.”
“I still think there’s something gross in it. Like centipedes. Bugs of some kind.”
They took the pie to the kitchen and Wally lifted it out of the box. He accidentally let go of one side too soon, and it fell to the table with a plop. A large crack appeared on the top of the pie.
“Hoo boy!” said Wally.
“It’s okay. That will give us a chance to see if there’s anything in the middle of it,” said Jake. He got out Mother’s magnifying glass and held it over the crack in the pie.
“See anything?” asked Wally.
“Not yet. Give me a butter knife.”
Wally handed him a knife, and Jake probed gently down into the crack, then pulled the knife out and looked at the pumpkin coating it. “Looks okay, but I wouldn’t be too sure.”
“They probably wouldn’t have stuck anything right in the middle of it,” Josh said. “If I were going to put something gross in a pie, I’d stick it along the edge of the crust where you wouldn’t think to look.”
Jake took the knife and probed every few inches near the edge of the pie. With a spoon he lifted out a little bit of pumpkin chiffon here and a little there, examining it closely. It appeared to be only pumpkin.
“We still ought to taste it,” he said. “It still could be made with pee. Who wants the first taste?”
“Not me!” said Wally.
“Don’t look at me,” said Josh.
Everyone turned to Peter.
“You always make me do everything!” Peter wailed.
“Oh, I’ll take the first bite,” said Jake. He lifted the spoon to his lips and touched it first with his tongue. Then he actually put some in his mouth and rolled it around a moment, swallowing. “I’ll be darned,” he said. “It’s good.”
“Let me see,” said Josh. Another bite. “You’re right. It’s great!”
“Give me some,” said Peter, jabbing a spoon down right in the middle and lifting out a large bite.
And then Wally saw the note stuck to the bottom of the box. “Oh, no!” he said.
Dear Ellen—
Just wanted you to know how much we appreciated your boys washing our windows. There is such a wonderful sense of community here. Thank you so much for helping us to feel at home. Hope you enjoy my pumpkin chiffon pie—it’s my great-aunt’s recipe, and sort of a tradition at our house in October.
Cordially,
Jean Malloy
“Oh, brother!” said Josh.
“We,” added Jake, “are in big trouble.”
They stared down at the pie, which looked as though squirrels had been walking through it in golf shoes. Bites had been taken out of it here and there.
“Mom will kill us if she sees this!” said Wally. Mother always said that a gift of food should be enjoyed three ways: first with the eyes, then with the nose, and finally, with the mouth. If someone went to all the work to bake something for you, you should admire it first as an artistic creation, and not just gobble it down.
“What are we going to tell her?” Josh murmured.
“That we were digging for dog doo?” said Peter.
“There’s only one thing to do,” Jake decided. “Eat the pie. Then we’ve got to go to Ethel’s Bakery and buy another. We’ll put it in the box with the note and leave it on the table, and Mom won’t know the difference. We’ll take the plate back to Mrs. Malloy and tell her that Mom said thanks.”
The boys ate the pie, more out of duty than pleasure—not because it wasn’t good, but because they didn’t seem so hungry anymore.
Afterward, Wally went upstairs to shake money out of his bank and wondered how life could get so complicated. Unfortunately, all the money he had was in a clay piggy bank that Aunt Ida had given him last Christmas, and the only way anyone could get money out was to shake it upside down and hope that something would fall out of the slot, though it hardly ever did.
He sat on his bed and shook and shook. How could it be that with so many dimes and nickels and pennies in it, hardly any ever hit the slot in exactly the right way to fall out? If one coin fell out every ten minutes, and there were a hundred and seventy-nine coins, then how long would it take before … ?
“Hurry, Wally¡ We have to be home in a half hour. We need to buy that pie before Mom gets here, and we Ve only got five dollars between us. We’ll need more than that.”
Wally took a hammer, smashed his clay piggy bank to smithereens, scooped up the money, and gave it to Jake.
•
The boys were all in the other room quietly watching TV when their mother walked in the back door and clunked her purse and keys on the kitchen counter.
“What’s this?” Wally heard her say.
There was a silence—a long, long silence. The sound of a box being opened. The squeak of the kitchen floor. Then a long, slow “I declare!”
Wally held his breath.
“I declare!” Mother said again.
Wally couldn’t stand it. Neither could Jake or Josh or Peter. They all went to the door of the kitchen.
“Well, now I’ve seen everything!” Mother said, staring down into the box and holding Mr
s. Malloy’s note in her hand.
“I don’t see anything,” said Wally.
“Did this just come this afternoon?” Mother asked, pointing to the box.
Wally nodded. “Caroline and her sisters brought it over.”
Mother stood shaking her head. “Jean Malloy says in her note that she baked this pumpkin chiffon pie herself from her great-aunt’s recipe, and this pie came from Ethel’s Bakery, or I’ll eat the box.”
Wally almost choked.
“H-how do you know?” asked Jake.
“Because Ethel’s the only one who sprinkles caramel and pecans around the rim of her pumpkin pies. And what’s more, she always leaves a little swirl of filling right in the middle, sort of a trademark, you might say. I saw these pies in her window just this morning, and Jean Malloy’s got the nerve to tell me she made it herself.”
Hoo boy¡ Wally thought, and his legs felt like rubber. Maybe they should tell her. Maybe they should just come right out and tell her that when she sent that chocolate cake over to Mrs. Malloy in August, Caroline thought it was a trick and threw it in the river, so the boys thought maybe this was a trick, and they were just trying to dig around and see if there was any dog doo in it…. But then he thought of how awful Mom would feel if she knew her beautiful cake had gone in the river. She’d want to know why Caroline would suspect such a thing, and then he’d have to tell her all the ways the Hatford boys and the Malloy girls had been tormenting each other since the Malloys arrived. No, he had better keep quiet.
‘‘If the woman doesn’t bake, it’s not a sin,” Mother went on. “Why couldn’t she just have said she’d picked up a pie for our dinner and hoped we’d enjoy it? Why did she have to say she baked it herself? And then, to call it pumpkin chiffon, when pumpkin chiffon pie is at least two inches high. If this is the way they do things in Ohio, I’m glad I don’t live in Ohio. Boys, wash up. We’re having dinner soon.”
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Nine
•
Thank-you Note
It was when Caroline was brushing her teeth the next morning that Wally returned the plate. She had been standing in front of the mirror practicing her lines for the play—” Wait, little elf. Maybe your idea is a good one¡ Maybe it would be more fun to do good tricks this Halloween and surprise the village people!” —when she heard the doorbell.