The Boys Start the War the Boys Start the War

  It was a good thing the Malloys didn’t have any dogs, Wally thought, because a dog would have heard them coming as soon as they crossed the bridge. As it was the boys kept to the shadows, and all strained to see if there was a light on in righthand bedroom above the front porch—Beth’s room. There was. Wally and Jake poked each other and grinned. They crept up the side of the Malloys’ driveway and opened the door of the garage.

  Squeeeak! They froze in their tracks. All faces turned toward the house. But no one appeared at the windows, no one came to the door, and at last, convinced they were undetected, they picked up the long ladder, Wally at one end, Jake at the other, and carried it silently over to the bedroom in the corner.

  Again they watched. Again they waited. Still no one came.

  “Ready?” Jake whispered.

  Josh nodded and slipped on the zombie mask. Wally sucked in his breath.

  Flashlight in hand, Josh started up the rungs.

  He was going as quietly as he could, Wally could tell, but even then the ladder seemed to make a kind of pung, pung sound with each step.

  “Shhhh,” warned Jake below. Josh stopped and waited. Nobody came. He went on.

  Wally and his brothers watched. Josh stopped and adjusted the mask. He went up two more rungs until he was right outside Beth’s window. At that very minute the light inside went out. And a second later, Josh’s flashlight came on. He tapped, then bobbed up and down, this way and that.

  There was a scream from inside—a cross between a train whistle and a fire alarm.

  Whipping off his mask, Josh came down the ladder two rungs at a time.

  They could hear Mr. Malloy yelling, “Beth? What’s wrong?” Footsteps. More yelling. Voices.

  The boys sprinted back down the driveway, watching the house over their shoulders. Wally faced forward again to see a baseball cap coming toward them, but there was no time to prevent a collision.

  Wham! Crunch!

  “Going somewhere?” came Eddie’s voice.

  “Yikes!” hollered Wally as a hand grabbed his shirt. He had never known that a tall, skinny girl could be so strong. She seemed to have Josh by the collar as well, dragging them both back toward the house. Wally wrestled free, but collided again, this time with Jake, and then he tripped over Peter. In the dark it was hard to see which arm belonged to whom.

  “What are you guys up to anyway?” asked Eddie, but the boys got away and ran pell-mell to the bridge.

  “You got the flashlight?” Jake asked Wally breathlessly.

  “Heck, no. You were carrying it.”

  “I thought you grabbed it,” Josh said. “Someone did!”

  But that someone was already inside the house.

  Caroline was standing in the bathroom, practicing expressions in the mirror. She had actually been studying her eyebrows to see what they did when she went from sad to frightened, from scared to angry, and it was then she heard the scream.

  Thinking her sister was being strangled, Caroline rushed into the room across the hall to find Beth on the floor, her chair overturned, eyes huge.

  “What is it?” Caroline cried.

  “Oh, Caroline, the most horrible thing right outside my window!”

  “Girls, what’s going on?” asked their father, hurrying in. Mother followed.

  “Dad, there was something right outside my window!” Beth cried, still shaken.

  “What was it?”

  “A bobbing head. A floating face! It was green with gray eyes, and … oh, it was awful! All decayed, with drool coming out of its mouth, and …”

  Father reached down and picked up the book Beth had been reading: The Creeping Dead.

  “Don’t you think it’s time you read something else for a change?”

  “I only had half a chapter to go, and I just had to know how it ended,” Beth said. “But what I saw wasn’t my imagination; it was real!”

  Caroline and her mother went to the window.

  “Well, I don’t see a thing,” said Mrs. Malloy. “Eddie went next door to take back the eggs I borrowed. I’ll bet it was her.”

  “It wasn’t Eddie!” Beth declared.

  “I’ll go check,” said Father.

  He started down the stairs, the others behind him, just as Eddie came up.

  “What’s happening?” she asked.

  “You missed a floating face,” Caroline told her diyly. “Dad’s going out to check.”

  “Don’t bother,” Eddie said. “Guess who I just bumped into? Crashed into, actually, they were in such a hurry to get away.”

  “Them?” cried Beth.

  Eddie nodded.

  “Who?” said Mother. “Those Hatford boys?”

  “The very same,” said Eddie. “There’s a ladder up against the house, right under Beth’s window.”

  “What now!” Mother exclaimed. “Those guys must drive their mother nuts.”

  Coach Malloy, however, was grinning. “That’s the kind of thing you get when you have boys, Jean. Now, don’t you go telling on them. They helped wash our windows, didn’t they?”

  Caroline waited as her parents went back downstairs, then she and Eddie went inside Beth’s bedroom and shut the door.

  “Those guys are terrible!” Beth said angrily.

  “It could have been worse,” said Caroline. “You could have been naked.” Frankly, it had been a wonderful trick, Caroline decided, and she only wished that she had thought of it first to play on the boys.

  “We’ve got to get even!” Beth declared, “We’ve just got to, Eddie!”

  Eddie only smiled. “We already have. I’ve got their flashlight. A good flashlight too. I’ll bet it belongs to their dad. They won’t get it back unless they give us something in return.”

  “What?” asked Caroline.

  “I haven’t decided yet,” said Eddie. “But believe me, they’ll have to crawl!”

  It would make such a marvelous story, Caroline thought. Sort of like Cinderella, only with the shoe on the other foot. This time they had the glass slipper, and whoever it belonged to had to come beg for it.

  On their way to school the next day Beth and Eddie showed Caroline the ransom note they had written to the Hatfords:

  To whom it may concern:

  If you ever hope to see your flashlight; again, you will meet us at the swinging bridge at 7:30 this evening, and you will each say aloud, “I am, honestly and truly sorry for the trouble I have caused, and will be a faithful, obedient servant of the realm, now and forever.”

  The Malloy Musketeers

  “Servant of the realm?” Caroline asked. “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know,” said Beth, “but I read it in a book, and it sounded wonderful.”

  “It is wonderful!” said Caroline. “We could go walking down the path tonight single file, dressed like Egyptian princesses or something, and make them kneel down on one knee when they said it.”

  “Not me,” said Eddie. “I’m not going as any princess.”

  “The boys would never do that,” said Beth. “Getting them to say they’re sorry is going to be hard enough.”

  “Who gets the note?” Caroline wanted to know.

  “You’re going to give it to Wally. If we gave it to Jake or Josh, they wouldn’t even read it—probably just make a spitball out of it.” Eddie said.

  Caroline could hardly wait to get to class. When the bell rang and she went in her room, however, Wally wouldn’t even look at her, which told her just how upset the boys were that they had lost their father’s flashlight.

  She decided to wait until Miss Applebaum finished talking before she dropped the note over Wally’s shoulder. But Miss Applebaum wouldn’t shut up. She was talking about the invention of the telegraph or something, which did not interest Caroline in the least. Caroline rested her head on one hand and drew a picture of Miss Applebaum in her notebook.

  The more the teacher droned on, the wilder the drawing became. She gave Miss Applebaum a monstrous mouth, with fire com
ing out of it. She gave her horns and a tail and scales like a dragon. The dragon lady even looked like Miss Applebaum—had the same kind of hair and the same kind of glasses. Clickety, clackety went the teacher’s mouth, like a telegraph of its own.

  Walty raised one hand to go to the bathroom and Miss Applebaum nodded that he could go.

  Now, thought Caroline, while he was out of the room. She waited until Miss Applebaum was looking the other way, then quickly leaned forward and dropped the note onto Wally’s desk.

  When Wally came back, Miss Applebaum was still carrying on, and Caroline was busily drawing claws on the teacher’s hands and feet.

  She saw Wally’s head bend down over the desk as though he were looking at something, saw his arms move slightly as though he were unfolding a piece of paper, and then she watched as his ears turned from pink to red.

  A few minutes later a small piece of paper came flying over Wally’s shoulder and landed on her notebook. Caroline opened it.

  Malloy Musketeers, it said. Drop dead.

  The telegraph led to the telephone and the phonograph, and Caroline felt that she could not stand it another minute. This time she raised her hand to be allowed to go to the rest room, and when the teacher nodded, she tiptoed out. Once in the hallway she gave a big sigh of relief.

  The girls’ rest room was on the other side of the auditorium, and Caroline did a risky thing. Instead of going around she opened one of the great doors to the darkened room, took the four steps up on stage, and walked out to the middle, staring up at the rows of seats before her. Goose bumps rose on her arms.

  Someday, she was sure, she would be here, with lights shining down on her, in a gorgeous costume, and she would dazzle the people of Buckman as they’d never been dazzled before. She walked to the very edge of the stage and whispered to the audience, “A faithful and obedient servant of the realm, now and forever.” It sounded wonderfully mysterious and romantic. That done, she crossed over, went down the steps, and out the door on the other side.

  All heads were bent over desks when Caroline came back into the room, and as she went down the aisle to her seat, Miss Applebaum said, “We are all writing a paragraph about what we think is the world’s greatest invention, Caroline.”

  Thank goodness the lecture was over, Caroline thought, and reached for her pencil

  When she looked down at her notebook, however, she realized that the picture of Miss Applebaum was gone. There were little bits of paper around the three metal rings, as though a paper had been quickly snatched away. Her heart leapt. She stared up at the teacher, wondering if Miss Applebaum had come by and taken it.

  But the teacher seemed completely undisturbed. Caroline stared at the back of Wally’s head. He had taken it! He must have. When he came back from the rest room and walked by her desk, he must have seen what she was drawing. And somehow, when she was out of the room herself, he had managed to turn around and take the drawing.

  When the papers were collected fifteen minutes later, Caroline was not even sure what she had written. And on the way out the door to recess, she poked Wally in the back. “You give me my paper or else,” she said angrily.

  Wally just smiled. “Meet me at the swinging bridge at seven-thirty this evening, and crawl down the path on your hands and knees,” he said, and headed for the door.

  Caroline was beside herself. This was blackmail! Beth and Eddie would never forgive her for doing something so stupid.

  It was a horrible day, and as soon as school was out, Caroline charged out the door like a hornet and told Eddie and Beth what had happened. The Hatford boys had already headed for home, and were looking at the girls over their shoulders, laughing and hooting as they went.

  When Caroline and her sisters reached the swinging bridge, Caroline was too angry to go home. Too angry to speak, almost. She stood glaring after the Hatford boys as they went up on the porch of their house and slammed the door. And then she saw something else: clothes drying on the clothesline in back of their house.

  “Wait here,” she told Beth and Eddie.

  She marched right up on the Hatfords’ lawn. Without looking to the right or left she stalked around to the back, grabbed a pair of Jockey shorts off the clothesline, then ran for her life as the boys came out on the porch and stared.

  Waving the Jockey shorts high in the air, she tore across the swinging bridge, Beth and Eddie behind her, and didn’t stop until they were safely in their house and up in Caroline’s room.

  “Wonderful!” said Eddie.

  “I’ll show them all around school!” Caroline declared. “I’ll tell everyone in my class they’re Wally’s. ‘How are your Munsingwears today?’ I’ll ask him. He and his brothers don’t get back their flashlight or shorts until they return my drawing of Miss Applebaum and get down on one knee and apologize.”

  The phone rang.

  “I’ll bet they want to exchange things right now,” Beth said, giggling, as the girls dashed out in the hall. “They can’t even wait until evening.”

  Caroline picked up the phone. “Malloy Musketeers, Caroline speaking.”

  There was a short pause at the other end. And then a man’s voice said, “Caroline, this is Mr. Hatford, across the river. I wonder if you would mind returning my briefs.”

  Wally, Josh, Jake, and Peter stood still as cement as their father made the phone call.

  Mr. Hatford turned around, phone in hand.

  “She says she’ll return my briefs if you return her paper, Wally. Do you know what she’s talking about?”

  Wally nodded and swallowed. “Tell her I’ll return the paper if she returns the flashlight.”

  Mr. Hatford spoke into the phone again. “He says he’ll return the paper if you return the flashlight. Don’t ask me what’s going on around here. I’m only their father.… Okay, five minutes from how on the bridge.… He’ll be there.”

  Wally’s father put down the telephone and looked at the boys. “That wouldn’t be my flashlight she’s talking about, would it?”

  Wally nodded still again.

  “Is this what goes on in the afternoons when I’m not here? People run off with my flashlight and shorts? I get home early for the first time in a couple of months, and what do I see? Some girl leaving our yard at sixty miles an hour waving my underwear in the wind!”

  “She’s the Crazie,” Peter explained soberly.

  “Well, if you’ve got something of hers, Wally, you get on out to the bridge and give it back. I want my briefs and my flashlight back, and anything else that’s missing. What do they want next? Socks? Toothbrush? Keys? They holding a garage sale or something?”

  Wally went to his room for Caroline’s drawing of Miss Applebaum.

  “You guys have to come too,” he murmured to the others, and they all followed him out the door.

  For a minute or so they trudged silently across the yard and over to the other side of the road.

  “Once we get Dad’s stuff back, we’ll be even,” Wally said, thinking that this would be a good time to forget about the Malloys once and for all.

  “But we can’t stop now!” said Jake. “If we’re not bugging the girls, what will we do?”

  That was something Wally hadn’t thought about. “Mom will enroll us in violin lessons,” he said worriedly.

  “She’ll make us get a paper route,” said Josh.

  “She’ll send us to camp next summer,” said Peter.

  Jake grinned, “So we’ve got to stay busy, right?”

  “Right,” said Wally.

  The boys looked at each other and smiled.

  “Tell you what,” said Josh. “We won’t start anything if they don’t.”

  “Yeah,” said Jake. “But they will.”

  Caroline and her sisters were coming across the bridge. Wally knew that his dad was back on the porch watching, and he wasn’t about to do anything dumb like float Caroline’s paper over the edge of the cable railing.

  Caroline’s face was red. He had never seen her e
mbarrassed before, but he was looking at it now.

  “Here’s your paper.” he muttered.

  “Here’s your stuff,” said Caroline, and handed him a sack.

  Eddie and Beth looked daggers at all four boys together.

  “You better check that sack,” whispered Josh as the boys turned and started back again. “They probably took the batteries out of the flashlight.”

  Wally looked in the sack. Everything was there. He checked the flashlight. Two batteries, one bulb. He took out the briefs and turned them over. No writing on the seat of the pants.

  “Thank you,” said their father when they reached the porch. “Now, do you think it’s possible that you boys can stay out of trouble for a couple of days? If you want something to do, you could wash our windows, not to mention my car or the dishes or the kitchen floor.”

  “I’ve got homework.” said Jake.

  “Me too,” said Wally, and all four boys went upstairs.

  There was always a “Back-to-School” night in Buckman the second week of September. No matter what, every parent who had a child in school was supposed to go to his or her classroom that night, meet the teacher, sit in the kid’s seat, and listen to a talk about what the students would be learning that year. Afterward there were cookies and coffee in the gym, and the principal went around shaking hands. You no more missed Back-to-School night in Buckman than you missed your grandmother’s funeral.

  Mr. Hatford was going to spend the evening in Josh and Jake’s classroom, while Mrs. Hatford would divide the evening between Miss Applebaum and Peter’s teacher. The boys, of course, would stay at home.

  Always before, on Back-to-School night, the Hatfords went to the Bensons’, or the Bensons came to the Hatfords’, and the boys wrestled on the rug, made popcorn, ate candy, enjoying the fact that for once they were free and their folks were in school.

  But this time there were no Bensons to come over, and to make matters worse, it rained.

  “We could go through the kitchen and eat all the chocolate chips,” said Wally.

  “There aren’t any, I already looked,” Jake told him.