The Crossroads

by Chris Grabenstein

  Zack and Zipper came running into the backyard. Zipper’s paws were muddy, his underbelly a collection of matted muck. Zack’s shorts were dripping wet.

  Okay. The puzzle may have to wait until after a load of laundry.

  “How’d you guys get so soaked?”

  “Davy and I found a secret lagoon.”

  “Really?”

  “Actually, I think it’s a cow pond.”

  “I like the sound of ‘lagoon’ better,” said Judy.

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  “Bet it felt good. On a hot day like this.”

  “Yep. Real good.”

  “Well, why don’t you clean up Zipper, then run inside and put on something dry.”

  “Okay.”

  “You want to go down to the library with me later?”

  “Maybe. Can I grab something to eat first?”

  “Oh. Sure. I can make you a sandwich.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll just, you know, fix it myself.”

  “I promise I won’t toast, bake, or broil.”

  “I’ll just do a PB and J. And then I might take a shower.”

  Judy grinned. “You don’t want to go to the library, do you?”

  “Not really. Not today. I mean, it’s Saturday and all.”

  “You’re right,” Judy said. “Go get cleaned up.”

  “Okay.”

  Zack ran into the house.

  Judy glanced back at her notes.

  June 21.

  June 21 was the summer solstice. The longest day of the year. The shortest night.

  1958.

  Fifty years ago this Wednesday.

  She wondered if Miss Spratling had anything special planned for the anniversary.

  Zack found the dog’s towel hanging in the mudroom and swiped it under Zipper’s belly before he grabbed the dog by the collar.

  “Sorry, Zip. You need to wait upstairs.”

  Zipper dug his hind legs into the thistle rug and tried to sit down while Zack tried to pull him forward. Finally, Zack scooped Zipper up, cradled him in his arms, and carried the dog upstairs to his bedroom. He didn’t waste time changing into dry shorts or taking a shower. He closed the door and stood in the hall.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said through the door. “And remember—no barking!”

  Zipper barked.

  “Zipper?”

  Zack heard whimpering on the other side. But no more barks.

  He raced down the steps and went to the front hall to retrieve the hacksaw he had hidden in the closet the night before. Since Judy was still out on the back porch, he slowly opened the front door, careful not to let it make any noise—even when he eased it shut again. Once outside, Zack turned right and ran toward a house being built three doors up the block.

  He saw a pile of neatly stacked lumber, but Zack wasn’t interested in free wood today. He scaled the cinder-block foundation and trotted across the decking to find the treasure hidden out back.

  There it was, just where Davy had said it would be: a shiny steel toolbox tucked up against the foundation.

  Zack jumped down to the cement-splattered clay and examined the lock. Davy had told him its shackle was made with a “cut-resistant alloy” and warned Zack that it might take half an hour to hacksaw through it.

  But we need the galdern tool!

  That’s why he added a shower and a sandwich to the list of things he supposedly needed to take care of inside the house. Judy wouldn’t start wondering where he was for thirty, maybe forty-five minutes.

  Zack started sawing. A thin dust of metal filings hit the dirt near his knees. Five minutes later, his hair was soaking wet from exertion, but the cut was only an eighth of an inch deep. He might be out here for over an hour.

  Judy will come into the house looking for you! Saw faster, pal! Faster! Give her some galdern elbow grease!

  Zack took in a deep breath and, grunting, put everything he had into his hacksaw thrusts. A drop of bubbly sweat fell on his knee.

  It took Zack an instant to realize it wasn’t sweat.

  It was spit.

  “What you doin’ down there, Barbie?”

  Zack looked up.

  Kyle Snertz loomed over him. The sneering bully hawked up another slimy wad, juiced his lips, and let loose a thick chunk of spit. The spew smeared across Zack’s glasses.

  “I said, what are you doin’, Bar-bie?”

  “Nothing” was the best Zack could come up with.

  “Hah!”

  Snertz leapt down. His three buddies came bounding down after him.

  “Well, well, well. Barbie here is trying to bust into a toolbox.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “That’s my toolbox. We got first dibs.”

  One of Snertz’s cronies held a heavy-duty bolt cutter with three-foot-long handles.

  “I only need one tool,” said Zack. “You guys can have the rest. Okay?”

  “Hah!” said Snertz. “All the tools in that box belong to me! I need ’em to build a railroad.”

  Zack was confused. “A railroad?”

  “Yeah. On your chest!” Snertz shoved Zack backward, knocked him to the ground, sat on his stomach, and started pummeling his rib cage.

  “First we need to crush the rocks!”

  “Hey! Get off of me!”

  Snertz pinned Zack’s arms underneath his knees.

  “I said get off of me, snothead!”

  “What? What’d you call me?”

  Furious, Snertz ripped open Zack’s T-shirt and rasped a knuckled fist up his sternum—leaving behind a raw ribbon of skin burn.

  “Get off of me!”

  “Uh-oh! Rocks. Little bitty boulders.” Snertz twisted Zack’s nipples. “We may need dynamite!” He slammed his fists like wet, meaty sledgehammers against Zack’s chest and made explosion noises.

  Zack refused to cry. The punches and pinches hurt, but he would not cry.

  Pants him!

  Zack heard Davy’s voice in his head, remembered his friend’s stupid advice.

  “Time to drive in the stakes!”

  Snertz found a jagged chunk of concrete broken off the corner of a cinder block. He studied Zack’s exposed chest, considered where to scrape first.

  “Get off of me!”

  With a back-arching thrust, Zack freed his arms, grabbed Snertz’s belt loops, and yanked his shorts down to his knees.

  The other boys started to laugh. Snertz’s face went fish-belly white.

  The bully was wearing diapers! Disposable training pants. Zack saw cute little jungle critters dotting crinkled plastic. Apparently, Kyle wasn’t properly potty trained and his parents made him take the necessary precautions.

  “Gross, Snertz,” one of the boys said. “You wear diapers?”

  “Shuddup!”

  The other boys started waving the air in front of their faces and laughed even louder.

  “No wonder he stinks all the time.”

  “Hey, pantsload!”

  Now Kyle Snertz was the one with a new nickname.

  He didn’t waste time buttoning his shorts; he held the front flaps together with one hand so they wouldn’t fall down while he ran home—probably to hide in his room and cry.

  Buh-bye, pantsload!

  The other boys stuck around. When Zack told them what he and Davy were planning to do, they were eager to help. They used the bolt cutter to snap open the lock, and Zack pulled out the treasure he had come here to retrieve: a cordless drill with an extremely long, one-inch auger bit.

  Zack would bring the drill back when the job was done. But he and Davy really needed the tool for a day or two because it had the kind of bit that could easily bore its way down into a stump.

  “Where have you been? You and me need to talk!”

  Billy O’Claire sat in his tattered La-Z-Boy recliner. It was midnight and he had been trying to watch TV when Clint Eberhart materialized like some alien beamed up on Star Trek.

  “What do you mean, where have
I been?” asked Clint. “I’ve been inside your body ever since we went to visit the old lady.”

  “That was Monday, man.”

  “So?”

  “This is Saturday! Buy a watch, dude. One with a calendar!”

  Clint grinned. “You have a bad attitude, boy.”

  “Yeah. Like father, like son.”

  Clint moved closer. There was a hungry look in his hypnotic eyes. “I need you, Billy. Need your body.”

  “So do I. Go get your own.”

  “Sorry. I’d have to dig it up, and I don’t even know where I’m buried.”

  “Maybe you weren’t. Maybe your car was burned to a crisp after it hit that bus and there was nothing left of you but a greasy stain!”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’ll use yours.”

  “My car?”

  “Your body!”

  “Sorry. You can’t have it. Like I said: I’m already using it.”

  Clint Eberhart grinned devilishly. “You’re flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, Billy. That’s why it’s so easy for me to slip inside your head and take control, make you do whatever I want you to do. We’re family!”

  Now it was Billy’s turn to laugh. “Family? You scared my grandmother to death!”

  “She should’ve died decades ago!”

  “I take it you two had ‘issues’?”

  “Mary O’Claire ruined my big score! Why couldn’t she just die like everybody else on that bus?”

  “Don’t know. But, personally, I’m kind of glad she didn’t. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here right now, would I? And we wouldn’t be having this conversation, which I can’t believe we’re doing, anyhow! I mean, what are you? Some kind of Halloween ghost? A zombie? One of those soul suckers from the comic books? Are you even here now, or am I just going crazy?”

  Eberhart narrowed his icy blue eyes. “Tell me about my son.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Your father, lamebrain.”

  “Oh. Right. What do you want to know?”

  “How about his name?”

  “Thomas. But most people called him Tommy.”

  “And your mother?”

  “Alice. She and my father both got themselves killed when I was a baby.”

  “How? How did they die?”

  “Cop shot ’em.”

  “What?”

  “On his twenty-fifth birthday, Mee Maw finally told my father who his father was. In other words, I guess she told him all about you and, for whatever reason, Tommy figured Mr. Spratling owed our family some money, so he set off to collect the cash.”

  “Go on.”

  “Tommy and Alice went over to Spratling Manor and demanded to see old man Spratling. The security guards told them to vacate the premises. My father threatened the guards. The guards called the cops.”

  “And then?”

  “The sheriff told Tommy and Alice to go home. Promised he wouldn’t press charges. They pretended to walk away.”

  “And?”

  “Well, when they figured the sheriff wasn’t looking, they twirled back around and whipped out their weapons!”

  “Hot diggity dog! What were they packing?”

  “Shotguns. Tommy fired first; then Alice pumped off a round.”

  “And that sheriff got peppered full of lead, right?”

  “No. They missed.”

  “What?”

  “They missed!”

  “Both of them? With shotguns?”

  “Yeah. I think my parents needed glasses. I know I do sometimes. Like when I watch TV or read the funny pages.”

  “Billy?”

  “What?”

  “Tell me what happened!”

  “Oh. The sheriff shot back. Tommy and Alice both died. End of story.”

  “Okay. Okay. Tell me about the fuzz, this sheriff—what’s his name?”

  “Um…”

  “Where is he? How do we find him? Because it’s payback time, Billy!”

  “I think his name began with a J.”

  “So this is why my spirit never passed over to the other side. Too much unfinished family business to take care of!”

  “Sheriff ‘Juh’-something.”

  “We need a plan, Billy! This sheriff—is he still alive? Does he have any family? A son? Maybe a grandson? Billy? What are you doing?”

  “Thinking.”

  “Well, hurry up!”

  “Okay. Yeah. I remember. His name was Jennings. Sheriff James Jennings.”

  “You ready for another?” George Jennings stood over the griddle, flipping Sunday-morning pancakes.

  “Okay, just one more,” Judy said after taking a big gulp of milk.

  “Zack? How about you?”

  “Sure!”

  Zack’s dad flipped two fresh pancakes onto his plate.

  “You know,” he said, “it’s a law that all American fathers must make pancakes for their families one morning every weekend.”

  Judy giggled between bites. “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah. It’s in the Constitution. The Founding Children put it there.”

  Zack rolled his eyes. “The Founding Children?”

  His dad moved back to the bowl to give the batter another good whisking. “Yep. They were sort of like the Founding Fathers, only, you know, younger. I believe it was twelve-year-old Benjamin Bartholomew Bisquick who penned the pancake proclamation.” He tapped the box of pancake powder. “Family business and all that.”

  Judy was laughing too hard to chew. Zack shook his head and smiled.

  And people thought he had an overactive imagination.

  After breakfast, Zack, his dad, and Zipper went out into the yard to check out the progress on the tree house.

  “Wow. Neat.”

  Zack’s dad looked up at the crooked collection of lumber and plywood nailed helter-skelter to the limbs of a tree.

  “Is that the door?” He pointed at a triangular space where three sheets of plywood didn’t quite meet.

  “That’s a porthole.”

  “Unh-hunh. I see. Neat.”

  A blue plastic tarp was hanging over the top of the structure.

  “That the roof?”

  “Now it is.”

  “Unh-hunh.”

  “Sometimes it’s our sail.”

  “Zipper go up there with you guys?”

  “Yep. We built him an elevator.” Zack pointed to a plastic mop bucket tied to a yellow nylon rope.

  “Well, you boys certainly have been…busy.”

  “Yeah. Davy’s good with construction projects. He thinks up the plans. I do most of the work.”

  “Unh-hunh…”

  “We like the way it looks. Sort of like a ship. Judy went into town and got us the pirate flag.”

  “Cool. So where’d you guys get all the wood and stuff? Judy drive you out to Home Depot?”

  “Nope. Scrap piles.”

  “Scrap piles?”

  “From the construction sites. It was free because it’s scrap.”

  “Zack? That’s a brand-new sheet of plywood.”

  “We were told we could take anything we wanted.”

  “And exactly who told you that?”

  “The aluminum-siding man.”

  “Who?”

  “The tin man.”

  “Are you making this up?”

  “No. We met an aluminum-siding salesman in the forest across the highway and he said—”

  “A tin man? In the forest? Is this The Wizard of Oz all of a sudden?”

  “No. It’s true. A tin man is what they call aluminum-siding salesmen.”

  “Zack, no one has sold or used aluminum siding since 1959!”

  “Well, Mr. Billings still sells it. Clarence W. Billings, and he said—”

  “Zack? Stop. Enough.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m very disappointed in you, Zachary. You cannot steal wood from construction sites. However, you can go to jail for petty larceny. You can also cost me my law license if the court finds
me to be an accessory to your felonious behavior.”

  “But we didn’t steal the wood.”

  “Yes, you did, and, frankly, you only make matters worse when you lie and say you didn’t.”

  “But, Dad—”

  “This is what you do, isn’t it? Make up complicated stories to cover your tracks. Tin men. A traveling salesman named Clarence W. Billings—”

  “But, I—”

  “Your mother told me about this. ‘He’s making me sick with his silly, childish jokes and stories.’”

  “Judy said that?”

  “No. Your real mother. Susan.” He took a deep breath. “She was in pain and there was nothing I could do. I’d try to cheer her up, but cancer is very serious business, son, and—”

  And then his father choked on whatever words he wanted to say next.

  Zack could see him straining to hold back tears.

  “Okay, Zack,” his father finally said. “Here’s what we are going to do. You and I are going to make a list of every piece of ‘scrap’ you stole and where you stole it. Then we are going to drive out to Home Depot and purchase replacements. The cost will be deducted from your allowance until the balance is paid in full. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It was absolutely, completely, 100 percent clear: His mother’s ghost had definitely followed them up to Connecticut.

  Judy drove over to the North Chester Library when Zack and his father took off for Home Depot.

  “What brings you here on such a gorgeous Sunday?” Mrs. Emerson asked. “Researching your next book?”

  “No. Remember how you told me that you didn’t know why Miss Spratling put her memorial on that tree behind our house?”

  “Yes, dear. I remember. In fact, I have a very keen memory. My knees are shot, but my memory is just fine. Now, then—what have you discovered about Gerda Spratling’s shrine?”

  “What do you know about the Greyhound bus accident of June 21, 1958?”

  “I know how to find out more. After all, dear, I am a librarian.”

  An hour later, the two women sat at a large table covered with clothbound volumes of old newspapers.

  “‘The Greyhound Scenicruiser was on its usual route from Boston to New York,’” Mrs. Emerson read from the lead news story in the North Chester Telegraph. “‘Along the way, it picked up campers from Camp Still-waters….’”