Scared Stiff

  “Not at all,” Uncle Henry agreed. “Well, blamed if I can see anything that would make the police or the FBI go looking for her any sooner.”

  I could tell by his voice that he didn’t expect them to do much, and I waited for Uncle Henry to take charge himself.

  Instead, he sighed and put the things back on the desk. “Well, I guess there’s nothing to do but wait for Sophie to show up. I’ll check with the hospitals, make sure she didn’t get hurt and have amnesia, something like that. The police are used to dealing with this kind of thing. Maybe they’re right. Maybe your ma will show up on her own. No reason for anybody to kidnap her that I can think of, and not likely in broad daylight. They couldn’t expect any rich relatives to pay a ransom, because she doesn’t have any rich relatives.”

  Was he giving up, just like that? He couldn’t, I thought. He just couldn’t! What if he did, and we never got Ma back?

  “What are we going to do, then?” I asked.

  Uncle Henry looked around. “I guess you boys better pack some more clothes and bring them on back to my place. While you’re doing that I’ll check with the manager and see how long the rent’s paid for.”

  He was back before we’d put our stuff into the old suitcases. “Got two weeks left,” he announced. “Looks like there’s enough money in her bank account to pay it for another month, but we can’t get it without her signature, and I can’t afford to pay it. Let’s think positive. She’ll likely turn up by then.”

  My eyes were kind of blurry. “This is the last day of school,” I said, “and we’ve already missed the morning. There’s supposed to be a party this afternoon.”

  “You want to go to the party?” Uncle Henry asked, and I shook my head.

  “No.” Up until Ma disappeared, it had sounded like fun, but no more. “I guess we’ve got to pick up our report cards, though.”

  “I’ll call the school and explain the circumstances,” Uncle Henry said, sounding gruff. “I should think they could mail them.”

  So we went back to the Wonderland RV Park. “I need to sleep a few more hours before I go to work again,” Uncle Henry said when we reentered the purple bus. “You kids help yourself to what you want to eat. I’ll get some more stuff later, but there’s plenty of peanut butter and jelly. You need anything, that’s the manager’s trailer over there, with the sign. Mrs. Biggers.”

  He disappeared into the back bedroom, and Kenny and I looked at each other.

  “Isn’t anybody going to find Ma?” he asked.

  It didn’t look like it, I thought. Not very fast, anyway, and what was happening to her in the meantime?

  When I didn’t answer him, Kenny said, “Pa would find her, if he knew she was missing. Wouldn’t he, Rick?”

  Would he? He and Ma had had a fight before he left, but I couldn’t believe he’d let anybody get away with kidnapping her.

  And he was one person who wouldn’t believe she’d walked away on her own, just abandoning us.

  Pa had.

  The thought hurt as bad as when I’d accidentally pounded a nail through my hand the time I was trying to build a birdhouse.

  But when Pa left, he knew we still had Ma. Mothers usually got to have the kids when parents split up, didn’t they? And Pa couldn’t have taken us on the truck with him. Not for more than a single trip.

  “Couldn’t we call Pa?” Kenny asked hopefully.

  “Where are we going to call him?” I asked, and hoped I didn’t sound as if I was going to cry, even if I felt like I might. “We don’t know where he is.”

  “Doesn’t he still work for E & F?” Kenny asked.

  I stared at him. “I don’t know. Ma never said.” Excitement began to grow inside me. “We can call E & F and find out if they can contact him.”

  “Uncle Henry doesn’t have a phone,” Kenny pointed out. From the bedroom Uncle Henry began to snore.

  “Maybe there’s a pay phone.” I grimaced. “Well, we don’t have any money. Let’s get something to eat, and then we’ll ask Uncle Henry when he gets up about calling.”

  After we’d eaten two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches apiece, though, and Uncle Henry was still asleep, we decided to go outdoors. There wasn’t much to do inside except watch TV, and we were afraid it would be too loud. Besides, there was nothing on but soap operas.

  In the afternoon sunshine, the Wonderland RV Park looked empty and boring. In a tiny trailer across from the purple bus an old lady was watering some red flowers in a box on her tiny deck, but there was nobody else around.

  Kenny blinked against the sun and looked around. “There’s no place to play,” he pointed out. “No swings or merry-go-rounds or anything like that.”

  “It’s right next to an amusement park,” I said. “I suppose they expected the kids to go there and pay for rides.”

  We looked at the high gray wooden wall, and I tried to imagine what it was like on the other side. We’d been to an amusement park once when Ma and Kenny and I all went with Pa on a run to Fort Worth. The park was called Six Flags Over Texas, and I guess it was one of the most exciting places I’d ever been.

  Kenny was only three then, and he didn’t remember as much as I did, but he’d liked getting to drive an old-fashioned car. It was on a track, so it didn’t really matter how he steered. We had a lot of fun, except Kenny ate too many hot dogs and threw up in the sleeper of the truck afterward. Pa swore and said he’d never take us to an amusement park again, at least not if we had to ride in his truck later.

  Kenny kicked at a rock in the gravel drive. “I wish we could go in there, to the other park. Do you think it has a merry-go-round?”

  “Probably,” I said, remembering the one at Six Flags. That one was in a sort of open-sided house all by itself. It was beautiful and big, and the music made your blood feel sort of bubbly and happy, just to listen to it. “But it’s locked up now and there are Keep Out signs. I saw them on the front gate when we came back here this time.”

  “I know a way in.”

  The voice startled me, and I spun around fast. I hadn’t known there was anyone around.

  The girl was about ten, I guessed. She had short dark hair, cut almost like a boy’s, and she wore old jeans and a pink T-shirt that said “Meaner than a junkyard dog” under a picture of a snarling Doberman. She was wearing tiny little gold earrings.

  I felt awkward around a strange girl, but intrigued by what she’d said. “You mean you know how to get into the Wonderland Amusement Park?”

  She had bare brown feet in scruffy tennis shoes. “Are you the kids that are going to live with Mr. Svoboda?”

  “We’re not going to live with Uncle Henry,” I denied quickly. “Only stay with him until Ma comes home.”

  “Oh. Grandma said your mother had disappeared. Mr. Svoboda told her so.”

  “Well, she did, but she’s going to come back.” I wanted desperately to believe that. “Who are you? Do you live here?”

  She nodded. “I’m Julie Biggers. My grandma’s the manager.”

  “Is there a telephone here?”

  She gestured with a tanned thumb. “Pay phone in the laundry room.”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  She tipped her head slightly to one side, considering. “I was hoping one of you would be a girl. There’s nobody to play with around here. Well.” She sounded resigned. “I suppose you could use the office phone. Grandma has to pay for it, though, so you can’t make a long-distance call.”

  “It’s to a trucking company where our pa works,” I said. “It’s right here in town.”

  “Come on, then,” said Julie Biggers, and led the way to the manager’s trailer.

  It didn’t look like much on the outside, but inside it wasn’t bad except for being shabby. It was neat and clean.

  Mrs. Biggers said okay when Julie asked if we could use the telephone. She was younger than Uncle Henry, but old enough to have a lot of lines in her face. “Phone’s in the kitchen,” she said. Something was cooking on th
e stove, sending out good-smelling steam. “You know the number you want?”

  I shook my head, and she got out a telephone book for me to look it up. I found it all right, E & F Trucking, on Telegraph Avenue. I kept a finger on the number so I could dial it, and then decided to try our apartment first, just in case.

  It rang and rang, and I could see the empty rooms in my imagination. Ma hadn’t come back yet.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat and dialed the number in the phone book.

  The voice that answered was businesslike. “E & F Trucking. Cranston speaking.”

  Cranston was the dispatcher. He had never paid any attention to me the times I was in the office with Pa. Pa said he didn’t like kids. Sometimes I thought he didn’t like anybody. I heard him and Pa yelling at each other once, when Cranston said Pa had to deliver a load in Los Angeles by a certain time. Pa said, “Me and what airplane? No way I can drive that far that fast, not and stay even on the fringe of being legal.” It had made me nervous to hear them sounding so angry with each other, and I’d gone outside and not listened to any more.

  I was nervous now, too, enough so my voice squeaked a little. “This . . . this is Rick Van Huler,” I said. “My pa is Van—Van Van Huler. I mean, that’s his nickname. I need . . . I need to find out where he is, because something’s happened to Ma—”

  “Sophie? She didn’t show up for work this morning,” Cranston said crossly.

  “Yes, sir, I know. She . . . we don’t know where she is, and we need to talk to Pa. . . .”

  “The office is a mess without her,” Cranston said, sounding as if he thought it was my fault she wasn’t there. “Merv’s off on vacation, and Sophie doesn’t show up, and there’s a payroll to figure. Who’s going to do that?”

  He scared me, but I was too scared at the idea of not reaching Pa to give up. “Please, can you get in touch with my pa? Can you tell him Kenny and I are at Uncle Henry’s, and we don’t know where Ma is?”

  “Look, kid, I’m busy. You see your ma, you tell her she’s going to lose her job if she stays off without letting us know what’s going on, okay? We need her to figure the payroll and get out the checks.”

  “But Pa,” I said desperately, “we need him!”

  “Van’s on a run to Miami, Oklahoma,” Cranston said. “Then he picks up a load for Ogallala. Due back here next Thursday. If I can remember it, I’ll tell him you called.”

  I heard another phone ringing in the background, and he hung up on me.

  I swallowed hard. If he could remember? What if he didn’t remember?

  Julie Biggers reached for an apple in a bowl on the table, watching me. “You want one?”

  I shook my head. “No, thanks.” The thought of eating anything made me queasy. Kenny took one, though.

  “Did you get Pa?” he asked.

  So I told him what the dispatcher had said. Mrs. Biggers was working at the counter, shaping loaves of bread. She brushed oil over the tops of the loaves and put them in the oven.

  My voice wavered as I concluded, “So I don’t know if he’ll even tell Pa when he comes back.”

  “Write your father a letter, then,” Mrs. Biggers suggested. “Julie, get him some paper and a pen and an envelope. Send it to the place where he works, and they’ll surely see he gets it. It’s a federal offense to interfere with anyone else’s mail.”

  Julie went to get the materials for me to write a letter, and I stood there in the good-smelling kitchen, not knowing what else to do except to follow Mrs. Bigger’s suggestion.

  But this was Friday, and Thursday was a whole week away. What was happening to Ma? What if somebody kidnapped her not for ransom but to hurt her? What if she couldn’t wait a whole week to be rescued?

  The police weren’t going to do anything except wait and see. Uncle Henry didn’t seem to know anything to do, either. I was sure Pa would think of something, but he wouldn’t know for at least a week.

  What could I do in the meantime? Me, Rick Van Huler, one eleven-year-old kid?

  I had to think of something to do, I had to help Ma. Only I couldn’t think of anything at all.

  Chapter Five

  I thought hard about what to say in the letter and finally wrote in my best handwriting, “Dear Pa: We need you. Ma has disappeared, maybe been kidnapped. Kenny and I are staying with Uncle Henry in a purple school bus at the Wonderland RV Park. Please come home. Love, Rick.”

  I chewed on the pen for a minute before adding, “We miss you a lot.”

  I didn’t say anything about how scared we were. I figured Pa was smart enough to figure that out for himself, and it sounded better this way.

  Mrs. Biggers gave me a stamp and said Uncle Henry could pay for it later. “Julie can show you where to mail it,” she told me.

  It didn’t seem like very much action to take, but I couldn’t think of anything else.

  “There’s a big mailbox out by the street,” Julie said, and the three of us, she and Kenny and I, all went outside and walked toward the front of the Wonderland RV Park.

  The old lady who watered her flowers peeked out the window at us and waved. Julie waved back.

  “Mrs. Kenck,” Julie said. “Her grandson is coming to visit in July for two weeks. He’s a pretty good ball player. His name is Lael. If you’re still here, maybe we can play work-up or something.”

  “We won’t still be here,” I said quickly.

  “We’ll go home before July, won’t we, Rick?” Kenny asked, and I nodded hard.

  “Once Pa gets this letter, he’ll come and get us,” I said. I didn’t add, “whether Ma comes back before then or not,” because I didn’t even want to think about Ma not coming back.

  The big mailbox was apparently for everybody who lived in the RV park. There weren’t any houses along this street, only a lot of warehouses and the Wonderland Amusement Park, which was surrounded by a high wooden wall, painted gray, that we couldn’t see over.

  As if she read my thoughts, Julie said, “It’s not a very good neighborhood to live in. No kids. I have to take a bus to school. This was the last day; we came home right after noon. If you have to go to school from here, I’ll show you where to catch the bus.”

  I was almost angry with her. “We won’t be here long enough to go back to school.”

  She didn’t seem offended. “Your mom and dad both went away and left you, huh?”

  I put my letter in the box and shoved up the red metal flag so the mailman would take the letter. “Our pa’s a long-haul truck driver, and he’s gone to Oklahoma for a week. And Ma didn’t go away and leave us. Something happened to her.”

  “Something bad?” Julie asked quietly.

  My eyes burned. “We don’t know for sure, but she’d never have gone away and left us on purpose.”

  Kenny had found a dead bird and squatted down to look at it more closely. He looked up now and asked, “Did your mom and dad go away and leave you? Is that why you live with your grandma?”

  “My dad has a job in Alaska,” Julie said, nudging the dead bird with the toe of one red tennis shoe. “He’s not home very much, and he said it’s no place for a kid, so he sent me here. Living with Grandma’s not so bad. I miss my mom, though.”

  “Where’s she?” Kenny demanded.

  “In California. She works for a senator, and she travels a lot. She couldn’t make a living for the two of us here, she said. She has to go where the money is. Besides, she just has a little apartment; she isn’t there very much, and she couldn’t leave me alone, either, any more than Daddy could. So it’s better I’m here.”

  She didn’t really sound as if she thought so. But at least she knew where her parents were. She changed the subject.

  “Do you want to see inside of Wonderland?”

  Kenny stood up. We were on the sidewalk, and from here we could see what I’d only glimpsed last night. The wall around the amusement park was blank on the side next to the RV park, but at the front there was a big solid gate we couldn’t see through a
nd a fancy sign covered with colored light bulbs. A lot of them were broken.

  “I never saw it lighted up,” Julie said, looking up at it, too. “Grandma says Wonderland was one of the biggest and best amusement parks in Indiana when she first came here. But that was many years ago, before I was born.”

  “There’s a Keep Out, No Trespassing sign,” I observed. “It looks like it’s been closed for quite a while.”

  “Ever since Mr. Mixon died,” Julie agreed. “Grandma thinks eventually the family will agree to sell it to the company that has the warehouses beyond it; they want more room and they’ve offered to buy it. Then they’d get rid of the stuff inside, and tear down the wall to make another warehouse.”

  The gray wall went down the whole block, so it was big, all right. Bigger than several of the huge warehouses across the street and on the other side of the park.

  “We don’t know what will happen to us if they sell,” Julie said, looking up at the sign with the broken lights. “Grandma says we couldn’t afford rental space for her trailer anywhere else, if she wasn’t the manager. Of course Daddy sends her money to take care of me, but I guess it costs a lot to buy my clothes and feed me. Did you ever go to a big amusement park?”

  “Once,” I said. “Six Flags Over Texas. It was neat.” I remembered, then, what she’d said a while ago. “Did you say you’ve been inside this one? What’s it like?”

  Julie looked quickly around, as if to make sure she wasn’t overheard. Two elderly men were talking in front of the nearest trailer, but they weren’t close enough to hear what we said.

  “Nobody’s supposed to go in there. You’d have to promise not to tell.”

  Kenny’s eyes were bright with interest. “It’s locked. Do you have the keys?”

  “No. But there’s a secret way in.”

  “Did you break in?” I was still interested, too, but a little uncomfortable about breaking the law. I knew what Ma would think about that, even if the park was sort of abandoned.

  “I didn’t have to,” Julie said. “But I found out there was a way in. So I go there sometimes. It’s the only thing there is to do around here that’s worthwhile, except reading. And the library’s so far away I can’t get there more than once a week, on the bus. We can’t go into Wonderland right now, though. There are too many people around.”