The Crossroads

by Chris Grabenstein

  Judy and Zack went into the kitchen, where she attempted to toast bread for sandwiches. After she burned the first four slices and set off the smoke detector, Zack said he really didn’t need toast for his sandwich; plain bread would be fine. When the smoke cleared, they moved into the breakfast nook.

  Zipper followed after them, carrying what was, apparently, his favorite ball: a chewed-up spongy thing soaked with saliva. The dog curled up underneath Zack’s stool to feast on foam rubber while the humans settled in with their bologna-and-yellow-mustard-on-plain-bread sandwiches.

  “Did you ever eat your lunch in a breakfast nook before?” Judy asked Zack between bites.

  “Nope.”

  “We don’t have a lunch nook, do we?”

  “I don’t think so. But we have a dining room….”

  “Yeah, but I think that’s only for dinner.”

  “This house is so huge,” said Zack, “maybe we have a lunchroom somewhere. Like at school.” He dropped a pinch of bologna down to Zipper, who gladly gave up his ball to snag it.

  “That’d make a good story, wouldn’t it?” Judy said. “A boy who has a cafeteria in his house instead of a kitchen? He lives in a schoolhouse with Curiosity Cat.”

  Zack joined in. “And the front hall is the study hall! And a hall upstairs is the detention hall!”

  “Great idea, Zack. Can I steal it?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Just don’t tell Curiosity Cat we got a dog.”

  After lunch, Zack’s father came into the backyard to join Judy, Zack, and Zipper. Judy was throwing the spongy ball; Zipper was chasing it.

  “How’s it going?” his dad asked Zack.

  The two of them were sort of alone, standing close to the back porch, watching Judy play with Zipper.

  “Pretty good, I guess.”

  “I think you’ll really like it up here. I know I did when I was your age.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know why I wanted us to move up here, Zack?”

  Zack didn’t answer. He figured it was one of those rhetorical-type questions his father liked to ask so he could answer it himself.

  “Well, I’ll tell you.”

  Yep. It was one of those.

  “I think you and I both need a chance to start over. A chance to do some of the things we couldn’t do while, you know…before.”

  “Yeah.”

  All of a sudden, Zack wondered if his dad had to deal with the same ghosts he did. If so, maybe his father was right—maybe they could both have more fun in a place where his mother couldn’t bother them because she was stuck back in New York City haunting that stupid dining room!

  “You sure you like the dog?”

  “Are you kidding? He’s awesome! I mean, look how fast he is! He just zips! Zipper’s the perfect name for him!”

  Now the dog padded over and dropped the slobbery ball at Zack’s feet instead of Judy’s.

  “Looks like he wants you to throw it,” his father said.

  “Really?”

  “Yep. I believe our new friend has already heard who has the fastest fastball in all the major leagues!”

  Zack smiled. Long ago, in the olden days, before his mother got sick, back when she’d leave the apartment to go clothes shopping all day, Zack and his dad used to goof around together. They’d play make-believe baseball or build LEGO robots. One time, they even made this fort out of cardboard boxes and…

  The cell phone hooked to his father’s belt began to beep again.

  He, of course, took the call.

  “Hello? No. No problem. I have those files up here with me….”

  Now the phone inside the house started to ring, too.

  “Hang on,” Zack’s father said to the DingleBerry cell phone, which sort of looked like a calculator but with five hundred buttons. “Judy?” he called out. “You should probably grab that. It might be the library.”

  “The library?”

  He nodded. “I let them know their favorite world-famous children’s author was moving to town. They said they’d call to set up a reading.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  Zack’s dad went back to his cell phone. “Don? Give me a second. I’m not at my desk….” He wandered up the porch steps and into the house.

  The kitchen phone kept jangling. Zack guessed the moving company hadn’t been able to figure out how to hook up the answering machine.

  “You ready to go inside?” Judy asked.

  “Not yet,” Zack said. Zipper sat at his feet, eager for another toss.

  “Okay. Um…”

  Zack could tell Judy wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say in her new role as stepmother.

  “Just, you know, stay in the yard,” she said. “Where we can see you, okay?”

  “No problem-o.”

  Judy smiled, then hurried in to answer the phone.

  Zack smiled, too. His dad was right: This whole new family deal might work out okay, especially up here in ghost-free Connecticut!

  Well, at least between phone calls.

  Zack squeezed the slimy ball in his right fist.

  “It all comes down to this. It’s the bottom of the ninth. The pitcher makes sure his center fielder, the rookie they call the Zipper, is deep enough.”

  Zipper moved backward a few inches and wagged his tail.

  “Here’s the windup and the pitch!” Zack made the sound of a wooden bat cracking into a fastball. “It’s going deep, deep, to center field.” He arched back and heaved the rubber ball skyward.

  He threw it too far.

  Zipper charged into the woods. Zack could hear the ball ripping through leaves, heard Zipper scurrying through underbrush.

  Then everything went quiet.

  “Zipper?”

  Zack moved toward the tree line.

  “Zipper? Where are you, boy?”

  Zack pushed his glasses up his nose and studied the woods fringing his new yard. He imagined there were snakes and lizards and lions and coyotes back in there. Bears, too.

  “Zipper?”

  Zack stepped into the cool shade. He moved through weeds and sticker bushes and brushed past branches. He saw the ball lying in a puddle of mud and heard a low rumble. Growling.

  “Zipper?”

  Zipper yapped.

  “There you are!”

  The dog was snarling at a big black tree.

  “Come here, boy.”

  Zipper wouldn’t budge.

  “Zipper? When I call you, you need to come, okay?” Zack pushed his way through a thicket.

  An old lady dressed in black stepped out from behind the tree.

  “Is this your dog?”

  Zack froze. Zipper snarled.

  “Dog like that ought to be kept on a leash.”

  “I don’t think we have a leash yet….”

  “You can wrap a rope around his scrawny little neck, for all I care. Now, scoot. Skedaddle. This is my tree. And don’t you dare let that mangy little mongrel piddle against it, you hear me, boy?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Zack saw the white cross nailed to the tree, the white flowers crammed into a rusty-bottomed bucket.

  “Why are you still here?”

  “I…” He glanced sideways, down the sloping embankment to the highway, where he saw an old man standing like a tired tin soldier near a big black car.

  “Speak up, boy!”

  “I was just looking at the cross.”

  “You’re not to touch it! Ever!”

  Zack realized who this scary old lady was: the Wicked Witch of the West. And this must be one of her enchanted trees—the ones that grew in the forest where Dorothy found the Tin Man.

  “Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  Zack and Zipper both turned and ran.

  He fully expected the giant oak tree to start swinging its branches and tossing acorns at him. Maybe it would tear down the power lines and electrocute him. Maybe it would try to kill him with a pointy-tipped bra
nch.

  Maybe this was the King of all the Killer Trees in New York and Connecticut.

  Zack ran faster.

  The next morning, Zack stumbled out of bed and slogged across the soft carpet to his own private bathroom. Zipper, who had spent the night curled up against his legs, hopped off the bed and trotted after him.

  “Good morning, Zipper.” Zack yawned.

  He opened the bathroom door and heard gurgling.

  He also smelled something foul. Like a three-week-old hard-boiled egg soaked in vinegar.

  He wondered if maybe he had given Zipper too much bologna yesterday. Maybe he shouldn’t have let the dog lick his ice cream bowl after dinner, either. Maybe Zipper was lactose intolerant because, frankly, the bathroom smelled like somebody or something had spent the night in there farting.

  Zack heard more gurgling. Maybe the whole house was farting.

  The toilet seat chattered up and down and looked like the flapping bill of a porcelain pelican. With every flip of the lip, Zack heard more sloshing and bubbling in the bowl.

  Then he saw brown chunky stuff come flowing out over the sides.

  Gross.

  Fortunately, there were two more bathrooms down the hall.

  Zack just hoped those toilets weren’t puking, too.

  About once every month, Billy O’Claire, the plumber, went to visit his grandmother at the nursing home.

  Billy called his grandmother Mee Maw. He called the place where she lived the Smelly Old Folks Home because both were true: The home smelled and so did the old folks living inside it. The home smelled like mashed potatoes mixed with mop water. The old folks smelled like dirty diapers.

  Billy pulled into the empty parking lot. This was no assisted-living retirement village. This was a cinder-block dump with weeds and cigarette butts in the gravel pits that used to be gardens. But it was the best the twenty-five-year-old plumber could do for his sixty-seven-year-old grandmother, even though the crazy old coot had raised him since he was a baby.

  Billy had picked up a box of Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies. Mee Maw loved them because they were soft and spongy and easy to eat without putting in her dentures.

  Billy knew Mee Maw would be sitting in the cafeteria, so he headed that way. The vast room was quiet except for an old man plunking sour notes on a battered upright piano.

  Billy saw Mee Maw sitting at a table far from the window. Mee Maw hated windows. She always thought somebody was on the other side, waiting to smash the glass and grab her.

  “Hey, Mee Maw.” His grandmother’s white hair was flat across the back of her head, plastered in place by her pillow. Billy knew she spent most of her days in bed, staring up at the ceiling. She had lived that way most of her life. Alone and afraid.

  “Who are you?” Mee Maw looked up from her tray when Billy sat down across from her.

  “I’m your grandson. Billy. Remember?”

  “Who?”

  “Billy O’Claire.”

  “That’s my name. O’Claire.”

  “I know, Mee Maw.”

  “My name is Mary. Mary O’Claire.”

  “That’s right. I brought you oatmeal pies, Mee Maw.”

  “How sweet. Be a dear and open one for me.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Billy pulled out a plastic-wrapped pie and tore into the wrapper with his teeth.

  “He was here again. Last night.”

  “Who, Mee Maw?”

  “The man at the window. He says he’s going to kill me for what I meant to do.”

  “Is that so?” Billy said it with the enthusiasm of someone who had heard the same story over and over, every day, his whole life.

  When Billy was a baby, barely three months old, he had been sent to live with his reclusive grandmother. Maybe she wasn’t so bad back then. Maybe she even went outdoors. Billy couldn’t remember. He went to Mee Maw’s after his parents had been killed by a cop in what the newspapers called a “bungled blackmail scheme.”

  “How’s your baby boy?” Mee Maw asked.

  “Don’t know,” Billy answered sheepishly.

  “You don’t know?”

  “No, ma’am.” After the divorce, the judge gave Billy’s ex full custody of their baby boy.

  Mee Maw shook her head. “Like father, like son.”

  “I brought you some candy, too,” Billy said. “Bag of them mints you like. Maybe you can fling ’em at the window if the bad man comes back tonight.”

  “Like father, like son.”

  Billy rose from the table. It was time to go.

  “I’ll see you next time, Mee Maw.”

  He kissed his grandmother on the top of her head. He sometimes wondered why he bothered coming out to visit the old woman, but the answer was simple: Mee Maw was the only family he had.

  Except, of course, for my son.

  But his ex-wife, Sharon, wouldn’t let Billy anywhere near Aidan—no matter how many times he went over to where she worked to beg.

  And Billy hated going to that place.

  Spratling Manor gave him the creeps.

  Tuesday afternoon, Judy drove to the North Chester Public Library. It was a two-story redbrick building with a small schoolhouse steeple. It looked like it had been built sometime after the war. The Revolutionary War.

  Judy loved the aroma of libraries: the scent of copy-machine toner peppered with just a pinch of plastic from crinkly dust jackets.

  “Ms. Magruder?” A sweet little lady with curly white hair and bright purple reading glasses was standing behind the front desk. “My, you look exactly like the photograph inside your book jackets!”

  “Are you Mrs. Emerson?”

  “Yes, dear. Kindly wipe your feet.”

  Okay. Maybe she’s more feisty than sweet.

  “I’m Jeanette Emerson,” the librarian said. “No relation.”

  “To Ralph Waldo?”

  “Is there another? I was delighted to hear that you and Georgie have moved back to town.”

  “Georgie?”

  “That’s what I called him when he was a bluebird.”

  “Georgie was a bluebird?”

  “Yes. Four straight summers. The bluebirds always won. Read far more books than either the sparrows or the parakeets. That’s why I wanted to meet you.”

  “You want to talk about birds?” Judy asked.

  “We could do that if you like. I, however, was much more interested in ascertaining whether you might be available to read your latest book to this year’s flock of Summer Library Campers.”

  “I’d love to.”

  “Excellent. We start up in a few weeks. July, actually.”

  “My July is wide open.”

  “Wonderful. So, where are you and Georgie living?”

  “Rocky Hill Farms. We’re right near the intersection of these two highways.”

  Mrs. Emerson nodded. “Route 13. Highway 31.”

  Judy remembered George’s little landmark. “We’re in the corner where the tree is.”

  “I see. But as you may have noticed, there are several trees on all sides of that particular intersection.”

  “We’ve got the one with the white cross.”

  “Ah, yes. Miss Gerda Spratling’s descanso.”

  “Gerda…”

  “Spratling. The family is of German descent. Gerda, I believe, means ‘protector.’ Her family, the Spratlings, ran the clock factory here for ages. Ran the town, too.”

  “What’s a descanso?”

  “Spanish word for roadside memorial. In the early days of the American Southwest, funeral processions would carry the coffin out to the graveyard for burial. From time to time, the pallbearers might set the casket down by the side of the road and rest. When the procession resumed, the priest would bless the spot where the deceased’s soul had tarried on its final journey. The women would then scatter juniper flowers and stake a cross into the ground to further commemorate the site.”

  “So someone died behind our house? What was it? A car
wreck?”

  Mrs. Emerson hesitated.

  “Ms. Magruder, might I be frank?”

  “Please.”

  “That cross has been hanging on that old oak tree so long, I doubt if even Miss Spratling remembers why she hung it there.”

  “Well, that’ll be my second investigation,” Judy said.

  “And your first?”

  “Discovering why the town clock stopped.”

  “Ah, yes. There are several interesting stories about that. I’d tell you now, but I have to read Mother Goose to the children. Are you free for dinner this evening?”

  The storm started about eight p.m.

  Thunder boomed and the windows of the restaurant rattled. Judy didn’t mind: Mrs. Emerson was an excellent storyteller. She regaled Judy with tales of a girl so ugly “her face could stop a clock.” Apparently, she arrived by train in North Chester one day at exactly 9:52 p.m.

  “Then there’s the story of Osgood Vanderwinkle,” Mrs. Emerson said.

  “Who’s he?”

  “Clock keeper, dear.”

  “Did he have any monkeys or squirrels on his staff?”

  “No. None that I’m aware of. However, he might have seen several—as well as assorted pink elephants. Mr. Vanderwinkle loved to tipple his rum. He was soused so often, we suspect he forgot to close the trapdoor at the top of the tower. The rains came…”

  “The gears rusted?”

  “Exactly. I suppose that story is the most mundane and, therefore, probably closest to the truth.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Indeed.”

  Around nine-thirty p.m., Judy said goodbye to Mrs. Emerson and ran across the muddy restaurant parking lot to her car.

  She shivered and waited for the front and rear window defrosters to do their job. A twist of the wiper-control knob sent the windshield blades slapping back and forth to chase away the unrelenting rain. Judy cranked up the radio so she wouldn’t have to listen to any more clouds explode.

  She had called George earlier, told him about her dinner plans with Mrs. Emerson. He said, “Have fun. Drive carefully.”

  She had had fun.

  Now she would try to drive carefully.

  The radio was calling it a gully washer.

  Flood warnings were in effect. Water rolled across the freeway in rippling waves. Wind gusted and made the treetops dance a wild, frenzied tango. The weatherman predicted that the storm would last until midnight with “the usual creeks overrunning their banks.”