Baby-Sitting Is a Dangerous Job

by Willo Davis Roberts

  She wore little red plastic ones that went with her red plaid dress. She took one out of her hair and gave it to me.

  “All right. Both of you turn your backs—you, too, Shana—and I’ll hide it, and then you can all look for it,” I told them.

  Jeremy found it, hidden at the foot of the mattress, and then Melissa found it on the windowsill. Jeremy didn’t want to play any more.

  “There aren’t enough places to hide it,” he said, which was true, so we put it into Melissa’s hair again.

  “Where’s Shana?” Jeremy asked, and I spun around, looking. The little girl was out in the middle of the hallway this time, only a couple of yards from the Dobermans.

  “Shana, come here!” I called, and then I realized the dogs weren’t growling at her; they were simply alert, watching.

  “Maybe we could explore the upstairs,” Jeremy suggested. “See, they’re letting Shana go along the hall.”

  I was leery at first, because I certainly didn’t want to tangle with those dogs, but when we all moved outside the door, heading toward the bathroom, the animals did nothing except watch us. Maybe we could get away with exploring.

  The kids just wanted something to do. I wanted a way out of the house, if I could find one.

  So we checked out the bathroom, where the dogs were content to let us go. There was one window, painted shut, that opened on another section of roof. Carefully, watching the dogs, I took a step along one of the side halls.

  They let us go. We explored the whole second floor. One door opened onto a steep, narrow stairway that must lead to an attic, but it was so dark in there I didn’t want to try that. There were six big, dusty rooms on our floor, none of them with anything in them except a few odds and ends of junk. I couldn’t see how a broken chair or a dresser with the veneer peeling off or a box of old National Geographics from 1942 could help us escape.

  The magazines did have interesting pictures, though. We hauled the box back to the room with our mattress in it, and for a little while we stayed busy looking at pictures of naked children in Africa and gaily costumed dancers in Czechoslovakia and some brightly colored birds with big beaks that inhabited the jungles of South America.

  And then we came to a story on a Hawaiian luau, with full-color pictures of a roast pig and all kinds of fruit and vegetables. Jeremy looked at it and said, “I wonder if they’re going to feed us.”

  I was wondering, myself. It wasn’t dark out yet, but I knew by my stomach that it was way past mealtime.

  It wasn’t long after that that Dan brought us our supper. It came in two paper bags that made the dogs lift their heads and sniff as he stepped between them.

  The kids looked at him when he handed me one sack. “Do you have any little kids?” Shana wanted to know.

  Dan shook his head. “Nope. I’m not married. I didn’t know if the kids would like onions, so I had them leave them off.”

  The bag gave off a savory aroma when I opened it and handed out hamburgers. They were still warm, so I thought he must have bought them fairly close by. The kids sat on the edge of the mattress as I handed them out, breaking one in half for Shana after I’d tucked a paper napkin at the neck of her dress so the juice wouldn’t drip down her front.

  She accepted that, and the little packet of french fries, then looked up at Dan Hazen. “Where’s the ketchup?”

  “It’s in there, in little paper tubs,” he told her. He even reached in, got one and opened it for her, and Shana began to eat contentedly, dipping each piece of potato into the sauce.

  “I got pop, not milk,” Dan said, and opened the other sack to hand out cold cans.

  I wasn’t too scared to be hungry, and I sat down beside the kids to eat my share. Dan stood there uncertainly. “You think you’ll need a blanket or anything tonight?”

  It was pretty warm, but my heart quickened. “It gets cool before morning,” I said. If I had a blanket, maybe I could make a rope of it to hang out a window.

  “I’ll get one of Okie’s,” he said.

  Jeremy spoke though a mouthful of hamburger.

  “Who’s Okie?”

  “He’s the old guy that’s the caretaker of this place.” Dan had apparently decided to stay for a few minutes; he squatted down near Shana and used a napkin to wipe off her chin.

  “What’s a caretaker?”

  “Somebody who takes care of something. He’s an old man who lives in a room at the back, downstairs, and keeps vandals from getting in.”

  “What’s vandals?” Jeremy wanted to know. At least when he was asking questions, he wasn’t bored or scared, I thought.

  “Well, they’re . . . uh, vandals break windows and steal things,” Dan said.

  “There’s nothing to steal here,” Jeremy pointed out.

  “Yeah, I know, but the owner doesn’t want the windows broken, things like that.”

  “Where is he now?” Melissa asked. She, too, was deliberately coating each french fry with ketchup before she ate it.

  “Okie’s in the hospital. Having an operation. He’ll be gone a week or two,” Dan said; and I knew why they’d felt safe in bringing us here. The house had no close neighbors, and it would be empty, except for us, long enough for the Hazens to collect the ransom. Probably, I thought, spirits sinking, nobody else would ever come here at all.

  “How come you’re in Okie’s house?” Jeremy wanted to know. He didn’t bother to stop eating when he spoke.

  “It isn’t his house; he just works here, making sure nobody bothers anything. He asked me to feed his dogs, so I got a key. Don’t spill that—”

  He stopped talking, because the can of pop had already been knocked over and was making a dark puddle between Melissa’s feet. She looked at it with dismay.

  “My shoes are wet.”

  “Move over that way, and I’ll get something to wipe it up,” Dan said, and left to get a towel from the bathroom for the job.

  “Are those Okie’s dogs?” Jeremy wanted to know as soon as Dan came back.

  “Yeah. They’re trained guard dogs.” Dan swiped away at the floor. “Don’t mess with them. They bite.”

  He straightened up, holding the sodden towel. “I’ll bring a blanket before it’s time to go to sleep.”

  After he’d gone, we finished eating, except that Shana had left a lot of her hamburger. She stood up, and before I could move to stop her, she walked out into the hall and dropped the mangled remains of her food on the floor in front of the nearest dog.

  For a moment the Doberman did nothing, though his nose quivered. A trained guard dog probably wouldn’t touch anything that wasn’t given to him by his master, I thought.

  But then the dog shifted position, ever so slightly, and bent his head, snaking out a tongue to pull the hamburger and bun into his mouth. Saliva dripped from the other dog’s mouth.

  I hadn’t finished my own supper, and I was still hungry, but I stopped eating. If we could bribe the dogs—

  The minute I approached, the dogs growled, and I paused. “Good dogs,” I said. I guess I wasn’t very convincing, because they growled again.

  “I do it,” Shana said, and took the rest of my sandwich. Very carefully, she placed it on the floor in front of the second dog, and a moment later it was gone.

  Would it be possible to win over the dogs with food? So far, it was only Shana they had allowed near them, though, and then only to drop something for them to eat. As long as any of us were in sight, the Dobermans kept their heads up, alert and ready to spring to their feet. I didn’t think it was likely they’d let us past them, not even Shana, and what could a two-and-a-half year old do on her own?

  The big house was so still. Except for the noises we made ourselves, I hadn’t heard anything. Were all three men downstairs, or had some of them gone away? The more of them there were, the harder it would be to outwit them.

  It was dusk, now; the shadows grew in the hall and in the corners of the room. A single naked bulb dangled from the middle of the ceiling, and I flic
ked the switch beside the door to make sure the electricity was on. The idea of sitting in the dark didn’t appeal to me very much.

  Shana came and crawled into my lap as I sat on the mattress. “Sing, Darcy,” she said sleepily.

  I don’t have a good singing voice, and usually I only sing along with enough other people to make sure nobody can hear me. Singing for little kids didn’t make me self-conscious, though; they weren’t a critical audience.

  I held her and sang a few songs, and Shana got heavier and heavier. When her head flopped over, I stretched her out on the mattress, and then went over and turned off the light.

  “Are we all going to have to sleep on that one bed?” Jeremy asked.

  “Unless you want to sleep on the floor,” I told him. “We’ll all fit if we’re careful. Do you want to lie down and go to sleep now, too?”

  It was almost dark in the room; I hadn’t left the overhead light on, because it would be shining right in the face of anyone who lay down. I couldn’t see the dogs at the top of the stairs, nor hear them, but I knew they were still there.

  Melissa slid her small, warm hand into mine. “I want to go home,” she said.

  A lump came into my throat. “I’d like to go home, too. Only I don’t think they’re going to let us go right away. Would you like me to sing you to sleep, too?”

  She was quite a bit bigger than Shana, but she sat close to my side and listened to me sing. Every time I’d stop, Jeremy would suggest another song, and some of them he sang with me. None of this woke Shana up.

  “Somebody’s coming,” Jeremy said suddenly, just as Melissa was easing back beside her little sister.

  One of the dogs whined, and I leaned forward to peer through the open doorway, hoping it wasn’t Pa Hazen. I was more afraid of him that I was of Dan or even Henry.

  It was Dan. He turned on a light on the landing, such a small dirty bulb that its glow didn’t come very far into our room. He handed me a blanket. “Here. You might as well all go to sleep.”

  I felt like telling him that was easier said than done, but I didn’t. Maybe if they thought I was still too terrified to think, or too stupid, they’d get careless, and there’d be a chance for me to escape.

  Meekly, I said, “Thank you.”

  I jumped when Jeremy spoke in a loud voice. “We want to go home.”

  “Well, you can’t, not for a few days,” Dan told us. “We haven’t even called your dad yet about the ransom. We’re gonna do that about two o’clock in the morning, and then he’ll have to have time to get the money and bring it. So you might as well go to sleep.”

  Two o’clock in the morning. Just like in that TV movie. Timed to have everybody’s nerves on edge and keep them from sleeping the whole night, so they couldn’t think very well. Surely the Fosters would have called in the police by now, but were there any clues for them to follow?

  “We’re not going to have to stay up here in this room all day tomorrow, are we?” Jeremy demanded. “There’s nothing to do.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think Pa wants you downstairs,” Dan said. He turned and left the room, calling the dogs. “Come on, you want to run for a few minutes?”

  The Dobermans sprang up, tails wagging, and followed him down the stairs.

  I looked at the blanket and gave a tentative tug at the edge of it. Torn lengthwise into strips that could be tied together, would it make a rope long enough for me to slide down to the ground from that back roof?

  It was too dark now to see if there was anything to tie an end to, and I couldn’t tear it, anyway. In the movies people can tear a strip off anything—a blanket, a shirt, a petticoat—but this was too strong a fabric. Without scissors to get a tear started, I didn’t think I could do it.

  “The dogs are gone,” Jeremy said softly, starting out into the pale light on the landing that showed the top of the stairs. “Maybe we could get out and run away.”

  I could hear the pulses pounding in my ears, just thinking about it. “I don’t think we’d make it,” I said. “He’s got the dogs running loose outdoors, I think. They’d know if we got out of the house, and it’s a long way to another house.”

  “Are we just going to sit here, then?” he wanted to know. “Aren’t we going to try to escape?”

  “Maybe later,” I told him. “Let them get a false sense of security, thinking we’re too scared to act. Jeremy, if I could get away, would you take care of your sisters, keep them from being scared, until I could get help and come back? I could go farther, faster, by myself, than trying to take all of you. Shana’s so little, she’d really slow us down; but we couldn’t leave her alone. She’d have to have you to take care of her.”

  His eyes were very large in the dim light. “I guess I could,” he said finally. “Only I’d rather we all run away together.”

  “Me, too,” I agreed. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

  After a while, Jeremy stretched out beside Melissa and went to sleep.

  I thought about home, and Clancy, and Irene, who might give him a clue if she knew I was missing, and hoped that when Mr. Foster handed over the ransom money the Hazens would really let us all go.

  But I couldn’t stop being afraid that they wouldn’t.

  Chapter Ten

  I couldn’t sleep. I sat on the edge of that old mattress, listening to the quiet breathing of the kids beside me, and I could see the place where the Dobermans had been at the top of the stairs, before Dan took them out for a run.

  He hadn’t brought them back yet. It was fully dark now, except for that one small bulb on the second floor landing. Irene, Irene, I thought, tell Clancy or somebody about the black car and its license number. Get us out of here.

  Downstairs, a telephone rang.

  I came bolt upright. It sounded very far away, as if it was behind closed doors, but I was sure it was a telephone. It rang three times before it stopped.

  If I could get to a telephone and call the police, or my dad, or anybody—

  They would take care that I didn’t reach the phone, of course. Still . . .

  I got up quietly and stepped into the hallway. The stairs went down into darkness, and after a moment’s hesitation, I began to ease down the steps, clinging to the railing.

  I expected the stairs would creak, but they didn’t. They were very high compared to the ones at home, and it took me a long time to reach the bottom.

  It wasn’t as totally dark down there as I’d expected, for a faint light filtered through to the entry hall from a room far at the back of the house.

  The front door was right there, and I was glad I was wearing running shoes with rubber soles that didn’t make any noise as I moved toward it. If anybody had come up behind me as I reached for the knob, I wouldn’t have heard them, my heart was pounding so hard.

  The door was locked, of course. I’d known it would be, yet disappointment almost made me sick to my stomach. A window, then?

  There were two windows, one on each side of the door, that opened onto the veranda. I tried each of them, but they’d been painted shut years ago. I might have broken the glass if I’d had anything heavy to hit it with, but the men in the back of the house would have heard that and caught up with me before I got down the porch steps. Even if they couldn’t see me, those dogs would find me before I ran down to the gate, and probably that had been relocked by now, anyway.

  No way out here, I thought. I could have gone back up to that almost-empty bedroom upstairs, but instead I began to move slowly and cautiously toward the source of light at the rear of the house.

  I turned a corner and saw a slice of brightly lighted kitchen. It was old-fashioned looking, with worn linoleum on the floor and wooden chairs at a big table with a green and white plastic tablecloth over it.

  When a door opened and closed, I froze against the wall, not daring to go either forward or backward. Henry’s voice sounded so near that the hair stood up on the back of my neck.

  “Did I hear the phone?”

 
“Yeah, it was Pa. He said there was nothing on the evening news. I bet the Fosters called the cops, though.” Dan sounded nervous.

  “It doesn’t matter if they did.” Henry didn’t sound nervous at all. “The housekeeper doesn’t know what happened to her car. They probably haven’t even found it yet, where you left it in the gravel pit. You wiped all the prints off the steering wheel and the door handles, didn’t you?”

  “Sure. I still think the gravel pit’s too close to here, though. They might get wise that I walked away from it and wouldn’t have gone too far.”

  “Why should they?” I heard another door closing and figured out that it was a cupboard door. Henry crossed the band of light and poured himself coffee from a pot on the stove. “They won’t be able to tell you walked away instead of changed cars.”

  He took his cup to the table and sat down, where I could see a little bit of his back. It made me feel somewhat safer not to have him moving around, though Dan was out of sight and could have come through the doorway any minute. Where, I wondered, was the telephone?

  “I don’t know,” Dan replied. “It’s just so close here, I feel like they might guess where we are, when they find the old lady’s car.”

  “No reason they should come here,” Henry told him. “Everybody in the neighborhood knows old Okie is the caretaker, and he lets the dogs run free on the grounds. Even the kids don’t try anything since he got the dogs. The place is a mile and a half from the nearest neighbor, anyway, and nobody can tell if there’s traffic in and out or more lights than usual. Okie didn’t tell anybody but us that he was going to the hospital for a week or two, and nobody’d suspect him of kidnapping.”

  “He’s going to be pretty mad when he finds out we used this house for a hideout,” Dan observed. I heard the clatter of a cup against something and guessed he was drinking coffee, too.

  “Why should he ever know? We’ll be gone before he comes back. I doubt if he goes upstairs once a year, and even if he does, what will there be for him to see? An old mattress. He probably won’t remember if it was there before or not.”