Us and Uncle Fraud

  And now, when we searched in the basement, our shoes got wet. The water had seeped up through the cement floor, in uneven lines where the floor was cracked, and soon it had spread a damp film across the entire surface. Father checked the furnace every day before he went to his office.

  One evening he came home from work dripping, as usual. He spread his wet coat over the staircase railing to dry, peeled off his boots in the kitchen, and poured himself a drink.

  He turned to us and went through his usual routine, though it was wearing thin by now. "Raining cats and dogs, right, pip-squeaks?" he asked.

  "Better than hailing taxicabs," Marcus and I responded as we had now for days, and he ran his hands through our hair and smiled. But his thoughts were obviously elsewhere.

  "I have to go back in to the office after dinner, Hallie," he said to Mother. "The National Guard's coming in tonight with sandbags. The wall's crumbling along the west edge of the cemetery. And up along the River Road, Peter Marek's whole pasture is under water. His cows are all in the barn, but if the water gets higher it'll cut the barn off, too. They're going to try to move his whole herd across the road to Anderson's land later this evening."

  Mother shook her head and began to put dinner on the table.

  "Alexandra Marek's in my class at school," I said. "I bet she gets to stay up and watch. I never get to watch anything interesting."

  Father chuckled. "You and Marcus can watch our furnace," he told us. "If the water comes up around the base of the furnace, I want you to push that red switch that says 'Off' at the top of the basement stairs. Promise?"

  "All right," I said grudgingly. "But I'd rather be out there watching them herd cows through a flood."

  "I'd rather see the wall of the cemetery falling apart," Marcus said. "Then all the dead bodies will start falling into the river." He made a ghoulish face and was about to go into his vampire imitation, but Mother stopped him.

  Tom came from his room and sat down at the table. Mother lifted Stephanie into her high chair and began to serve dinner.

  "Is it true?" Tom asked. "Is the cemetery wall going?"

  Father nodded. "They're going to sandbag it," he said.

  "Can I go? Can I help them?"

  But this time Father said no. "You're too young, Tom, and it's too dangerous. The river hasn't been this bad in my lifetime. Somebody's going to get killed before this ends."

  "You won't be in danger, will you, Matt?" Mother asked with a worried frown.

  He smiled. "I almost wish I could say yes. I wish I could help them. But I'll be in my office, high and dry. You can call me there if you need me."

  "High and dry," Stephie said, grinning. "High and dry." She reached for a drumstick.

  11

  In the morning Father wasn't at the breakfast table. Usually he was there, freshly shaved and checking for errors in the paper; lately, with the weather as an excuse, we had wheedled him each day into driving us to school. But today he was still in bed.

  "He's exhausted," Mother explained. "He didn't get in until three this morning."

  "Did the National Guard come? Did they sandbag the cemetery wall?" Marcus asked.

  "Did they move the Mareks' cows?" I wanted to know. Alexandra Marek was going to be the center of attention in school today, I speculated enviously. Her family's farm was the closest to the river; they were the first real victims. And Alexandra was a show-off, given to drama; I knew she would be telling a tale of danger and terror, embellishing it all day with new details.

  "Take a look," Mother replied, and handed me the paper. There, on the front page, was a picture of frightened cows being herded across a road that itself looked like a river. Then I looked further, and groaned with jealousy; there was another, smaller picture, of Alexandra herself, wrapped in a blanket, being carried by a strange man through knee-deep water.

  "Read the article," Mother said. "They moved the whole Marek family out. The water's up to the first floor of their house."

  "I don't need to read it," I said, sulking, and set the paper aside. "I'll be hearing about it all day in school."

  "What about the cemetery?" Marcus asked, with his mouth full of toast.

  "There's an article about that, too," Mother told him. "They gave up on the cemetery because there are so many houses threatened down in the lower end of town. So they're sandbagging down there—they have been all night, I guess. They had to let the cemetery go. Your father said that the wall caved in entirely, in the middle of the night."

  "Are bodies floating out?" Marcus asked, his eyes wide.

  Mother wiped Stephanie's egg-smeared face with a damp cloth. "Of course not," she said matter-of-factly. "That side of the cemetery is almost a hundred years old. Anyone who was buried there that long ago would have decomposed and become part of the earth by now. Don't fill your sister's head with wild nonsensical ideas." She lifted Stephie out of her high chair, and my sister padded away in her pajamas with flannel feet attached.

  Marcus whispered to me in the hall as we pulled on our rubber boots and slickers. "There would still be bones," he said. "I bet anything that leg bones and arm bones are floating out. Wouldn't it be neat to see that?"

  I simply made a face. The macabre specter of old bones sliding out of the earth into the river didn't interest me at all. I was much more concerned about the fact that Alexandra Marek had had her picture on the front page of the paper, and I never had.

  We called good-by to Mother and headed out into the pelting rain.

  To my relief, Alexandra wasn't in school. Many more children were absent today than previously; there were only fourteen kids in my class, and Mrs. Higgins cancelled the spelling test she had planned. Instead, she announced, we would spend the day studying flood-related things. In geography, we would learn about the Nile Delta and how its floods each year enriched the earth (which puzzled me, since our flood was washing our farmlands away) ; for science, we would turn to the chapter about weather; and for current events, we would each stand and tell about how our families were affected by this catastrophic rain.

  Great, I thought, gloomily. Looking around the room, I could see that there were kids present whose homes were in that low, threatened part of town by the river. They would have wild stories to tell, I was quite sure. And I? I made up my report in my head:

  "My sister's sandbox turned into a boat and floated over against the side of our shed. There is about one inch of water in our basement, and if it goes up to a foot deep we have to turn the red furnace switch to 'off.' And my mother's forsythia bush had all its blossoms washed away."

  Well, at least I could tell about my father, and that he didn't get home until three A.M. He had been in charge, there at the newspaper office; it had been he who courageously sent his photographer out in the middle of the night to take pictures of—

  I glowered. Pictures of Alexandra Marek, heroine of the flood. Carried in the arms of a dashing stranger through the swirling water.

  Couldn't she have walked, for heaven's sake? The water was only up to the guy's knees, and Alexandra was tall for a sixth-grader. Her desk was in front of mine, and during filmstrips I always had to lean sideways to see around her because her shoulders and head stuck up so high.

  Gloomily I stared out the window at the rain and half-listened to Mrs. Higgins's voice droning on.

  Then, in the middle of geography, there was an announcement. School was closing. It was only ten in the morning, but we were all to go home. A cheer went up in our classroom, and even Mrs. Higgins looked relieved.

  "Bus people first," she said, and five children rose from their desks and went to the coatroom to struggle back into their raincoats and boots.

  "And no homework tonight," Mrs. Higgins announced. Gleefully we put our books into our desks.

  When the bus people had filed out, the rest of us were released. Leaving the school building, I looked around and realized how much we all looked alike today; we were a uniformed army of bright yellow slickers. With the waterproo
f hats that framed our faces and hid our hair, it was hard to tell who was who.

  I recognized Marcus when he left his group of look-alike fifth-graders and came over to me. The windy rain carried away his voice and I couldn't hear what he was saying. "What?" I shouted; and we both turned so that the wind was at our backs.

  "Mother won't know that school was let out, so we don't have to go home right away," he repeated.

  "Mrs. Higgins said we were all to go right straight home."

  "'Mrs. Higgins said we were all to go right straight home,'" Marcus mimicked in a high voice.

  "Quit it," I said.

  "You want to come with me?"

  "Where?" I asked. "Where are you going?"

  "Just down to the cemetery. I want to see if the bones are floating out."

  "You are not. Father said we were absolutely not to go anywhere near the river. Anyway, who wants to see disgusting bones?"

  "Me. I do. You coming?"

  "No."

  He hesitated. I looked around. All of the other children had straggled off; some of them were jumping in the deep puddles at the corner, but most had walked, hunched over in the rain, directly down the street and toward their homes.

  "Are you going to tell on me?" Marcus asked. His eyes were scrunched up and there were raindrops dripping from his chin.

  It was such a familiar question, and there was only one answer to it; we both knew that. Of course I wouldn't tell. I sighed.

  "Tell you what, Marcus," I said, finally. "It's a quarter past ten. I'll go over to the library and wait there for you. But if you're not there in half an hour, I'm going home. And then Mother will know, whether I tell or not."

  "Okay." Marcus turned and was gone—not running, because it was almost impossible to run against the. wind—but walking fast, bent over to keep the rain out of his eyes, heading for the cemetery. I turned in the other direction and sloshed through the puddles half a block to the public library. By the time I reached its steps, I was drenched, despite my slicker. The warmth and light inside were welcoming.

  "My goodness," Mr. Mueller, the librarian, said, looking up from his desk, "Louise Cunningham. You're my only customer today. Why aren't you in school?"

  I lifted my yellow helmet and wiped my wet face with one hand. "They closed the school," I told him. "So I thought I'd just stop by and find a book for a book report, before I go home."

  He reached into a drawer of his desk and handed me a paper towel. "Here," he said. "Wipe your hands and face. Maybe you ought to take off your wet coat, too."

  I did, and hung it on the coatrack in the corner. Then I wandered, my wet shoes squishing inside my boots, into the children's room.

  "Are you looking for anything special, Louise?" Mr. Mueller called. "Do you want some help?"

  "No, thank you," I called back.

  Then I thought of something. I went back to his desk, where he was busily typing something on index cards.

  "Do you have any books about Russia?" I asked.

  "Of course. Do you want Travel, or History, or Political Systems, or Language?"

  "I don't know." It hadn't occurred to me that there would be so many different aspects of Russia and that there would be books for each.

  "Well, what is it you want to know about Russia? Are you studying it in school?" Mr. Mueller looked genuinely interested. I had always liked him; he was chubby and cheerful, but usually there were lots of people in the library, and he never had time for conversation.

  "No. But someone was telling me—well, you may not know anything about this, Mr. Mueller, but someone was telling me that in Russia they used to have these fabulous Easter eggs. Not regular Easter eggs, but ones with real jewels on them, like diamonds and stuff."

  To my surprise, he was nodding. "Oh, yes," he said, "the Faberge eggs."

  So they were real, and not part of an imaginary world dreamed up by Uncle Claude. I hadn't said so to Marcus, but after our days of fruitless searching, and after hearing Mother tell about Claude's tree house kingdom, I had entertained vague doubts about the eggs. But Mr. Mueller—who knew everything there was to know about everything—was nodding vigorously and with interest.

  He stroked his chin. "I wonder," he said, "whether it would be best to look under Jewels, or Art Treasures, or whether maybe there might be a listing under..."

  His voice drifted off, and he went to the card catalogue. I looked at the big clock on the wall. Twenty minutes had passed since I left Marcus.

  The library was silent except for the rustle of Mr. Mueller sorting cards to look at them. He closed one drawer and opened another.

  "I just thought I'd check first to see if there was perhaps a listing under Fabergé," he explained. "He was the man who created the eggs. No one has ever been able to duplicate them.

  "But there's nothing listed under his name. Now, let me think. I believe I'll try Jewels, though I doubt..." He opened another drawer and moved his fingers through the cards.

  I shifted my weight in my wet boots and glanced again at the clock. Twenty-four minutes had gone by.

  "I should know this," Mr. Mueller said apologetically. "After all, I'm the one who catalogues these books. But you know, Louise, I've been here seventeen years. And one does forget things after seventeen years. A few things, anyway." He chuckled. He opened another drawer. "I think I'll look under Art. It's easier, you know, when something is clearly defined. Now if you'd asked me about Rembrandt, of course, I would look under Art. But those eggs: Well, that's an odd category. No question that they were works of art, but..."

  He leaned over and shuffled through the cards in the drawer marked A. I could hear the clock tick in the silence. I willed myself not to look at it again right away.

  The A drawer snapped closed. Mr. Mueller's chubby face was red with frustration. "You know," he mused, stroking his chin again, "I just might try Kremlin. I seem to remember that those eggs are stored in the museum in the Kremlin. In seventeen years you are the first person who has ever asked me this particular question, Louise; isn't that amazing?"

  I broke my vow and looked at the clock. Thirty minutes exactly. I went to the door of the library and listened for the sound of Marcus on the steps, but the only sound was the sound of rain. I took my slicker from the coatrack and put it on. Mr. Mueller was still at the card catalogue, muttering.

  "Mr. Mueller," I said politely, "I have to go." He looked up in dismay. "You do? But—"

  "I'll come back. And in the meantime, maybe you will have figured out where to find it. But I have to go now. I promised somebody."

  "You know what I'll do, Louise? I'll look through the big art books. I'm quite sure that I'll locate it in one of those. And come to think of it, I seem to remember that there was a magazine article once. I'll get out my Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, and—"

  "Thanks, Mr. Mueller." I looked at the clock again. Marcus had been gone now for thirty-five minutes. He had a watch. He would know how much time had passed. I felt, suddenly, very frightened. "I really have to go now."

  I pulled the door open, let myself out, and adjusted my hat in the blinding rain. There was no sign of Marcus. Fighting the wind, I began to run in my heavy, wet boots toward the cemetery.

  12

  I had only four blocks to go to reach the edge of the cemetery. But my feet were heavy, the wind was against me, trying to push me backward, and it was hard to see. The visor of my slicker helmet kept slipping down over my forehead and I pushed it up automatically as I ran. At the corner, the water was so deep across the street that I couldn't see the curb, and I slipped and fell. My boots filled with the ice-cold, muddy water, and I had to stop on the other side of the street and empty them as best I could.

  I ran on, past the deserted school; the playground was covered with brown water and the swings moved in the wind and clanked against their metal supports.

  There were no cars on the streets, no people, no dogs, nothing of the everyday life of our town. But suddenly I became aware of a ne
w sound, a swishing through the water, and a presence nearby. I tilted my visor, looked up, and saw a bicycle with a drenched figure on it. Startled, I realized it was my brother, Tom.

  "Louise!" he yelled angrily. "What the hell are you doing? And where's Marcus? Mother sent me out to find you. They closed all the schools almost an hour ago!"

  I tried to sound casual, though I had a sharp pain in my side from running and was still gripped with a feeling of fear for Marcus. But I shrugged with pretended nonchalance, my shoulders lifting inside my slicker.

  "I went to the library. And stupid Marcus went down to the cemetery to see if any bones were floating out. I'm just going to meet him, and then we'll be right home. Tell Mother we'll be there in a few minutes, okay?"

  He didn't answer, but he looked furious, and I didn't blame him. I would have been furious, too. In fact, suddenly I was terribly angry at Marcus. If it weren't for him, I would have been home drinking hot chocolate at this very minute, instead of being dripping wet and freezing cold.

  Tom sprayed me with more cold water from the wheels of his bike when he rode off toward home without looking back. I realized that it was the first time I had ever heard him swear. Maybe, I thought with satisfaction, I would tell on him when I got home, and he would be in trouble along with Marcus and me.

  Where was Marcus? I was nearing the cemetery now, after struggling along for the remaining blocks, and there was still no sign of him. I hated the cemetery. Mother had tried to point out to me how pretty it was, planted with flowers and bushes everywhere; some people even had picnics there in summer. But to me it was just a place where dead people were. Our old neighbor, Mrs. Bostwick, was in there somewhere, and so was Mrs. Mallory's husband, the one who had died of the mysterious fever long ago. Kenny Stratton's mother was there in the cemetery, too. The place gave me the creeps, and I always crossed the street to the other side when I had to walk past its low stone wall.