“Did anyone else know about the game?”
“Not that I know. Maybe Steven told. But why would he? It’s only a silly game.”
“He travels a lot in Europe, you say?”
“Yes, his biggest fans are in Europe. London. Paris.”
“Not Italy?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember Italy.”
Confined in the pantry with my thoughts, I drew my knees up under my chin. Maybe there was something about Steven that I had missed telling Stephen. Again, there was no similarity to their names in my mind.
I leaned against the supporting board, and all thoughts of either man vanished as it cracked and split and I fell backward into an enveloping softness that scared me so much I reached my arms up, searching for a brace, and encountered a spidery string. I jerked my hand away, pulling the string with me. There was a click and the pantry was filled with the light of a small-wattage bulb.
I didn’t know there was a light in the pantry.
Now I could see what I had been avoiding for years … for a lifetime.
About six cans in from the door, everything seemed to be in some sort of order. After that, the shelves deteriorated into a curious mixture of rusted cans with bug-eaten labels and older glass jars of something once preserved and stored away, but that now supported rusty lids and cloudy contents. A few were cracked, probably from the internal pressure of fermentation; that explained the source of some of the moldy odors.
I was so embarrassed; the floor was nasty, needlessly so. If I had overcome my fear and ever cleaned it just once, the dread and power of the pantry would hopefully have disappeared. Instead, I had let my mother’s paranoia overwhelm me and become my own.
In the dregs of the waste on the floor was a mousetrap. If I’d moved my hand a little to the left while I was in the dark, it would have sprung and caught me. I shoved it away with the toe of my shoe, scooting it through the trash by its base. When I moved my shoulder, the board behind me finished its crash to the floor. I held my breath, sure that it had been heard elsewhere in the house.
Nothing. No sound. But I knew he hadn’t left.
I twisted around to look at the broken plank. It was really just a plywood slat that had covered the silver-and-pink insulation that was now visible without its protective wood.
That was odd. Why would anyone insulate under the stairs? I thought insulation was for outside walls.
As tentative as I had made my explorations earlier in the dark, I reached forward and poked the shiny side of the wrappings. My finger thrust through the worn and brittle outer layer, making a hole the size a mouse could live in.
Like a mouse, I tore and worried at the edges of the opening until it gave in little pieces, exposing more wadding behind it. Only it wasn’t more insulation. It was money. It was what Steven Bondesky would call “big bucks.”
I’d found my real inheritance.
NINETEEN
In the three hours I was enclosed in the pantry, I weathered my greatest nightmare and my fondest dream: there was a prowler in my house, and I had found a buried treasure.
At first, I pulled out the bills—all hundreds—one at a time, letting them fall in my lap any old way, but when they started to overflow my skirt, I began again, separating the bills in little piles. I was going to arrange them in a thousand a stack, but when that mounted too quickly, I went to ten thousand only to find that amount increased too rapidly, also. I doubled the first piles and came up with my own way to measure the money.
“One Plymouth Voyager, two Plymouth Voyager, three Plymouth Voyager …” No wonder Bondesky thought I could buy a Cadillac; I could buy a fleet of Cadillacs.
I knew Bondesky knew about the money, and all this time the fat old man thought I knew about it, too.
“Ten Plymouth Voyager.” I stopped.
The phone was ringing.
The answering machine will catch it, I thought. And then, Wonder what time it is? Stephen was going to call.
Was there was something wrong with the machine, or had I not switched it on? It rang and rang and rang, and I pulled and counted and pulled and counted and pulled and counted.
The ringing stopped.
He’ll call back, I thought greedily.
Twenty-four Plymouth Voyager. I stopped again.
Someone was coming in the back door. I could hear heavy footsteps crossing the porch. I had forgotten about the intruder.
Hurriedly, I laid half of the split board over the piled-up cash and upended the other half to cover the now enlarged opening where the money seemed to go back under the stairs forever; I hadn’t begun to touch it.
Belatedly, I remembered the dim lightbulb and reached for the string to turn it off just as the pantry door opened.
“Honey? Are you all right? What are you doing in there?” It was the first time Joaquin had called me Honey.
I scrambled to my feet, putting a grimy finger to my lips as I warned him, “Shh. There’s someone in the house.”
Unsteady, I fell against him, and he caught me and drew me out into the kitchen. “Where are they?” he whispered.
Well, now I didn’t know. I had been so busy counting money for the last—How long?—that I couldn’t remember when I’d heard the last noise from … “Upstairs.” I pointed.
Together, for I wouldn’t obey his instructions to stay put, we sneaked through the downstairs, paused in the front hall, and gingerly climbed the stairs. I was so close that if Joaquin had stopped in midstep, he would have put his foot down on mine.
My room … bathroom … war room … Mother’s room … even the upstairs sleeping porch. No one.
“Are you sure there was someone here?”
“Yes, but it was hours ago.”
“You’ve been in that pantry all this time?” He couldn’t believe it.
“Oh, it wasn’t so bad,” I said.
“No? You’d better take a look at yourself,” and he pointed to the bathroom.
Well, I did have to go.
I closed the bathroom door and then opened it a crack. “You’ll stay right here, won’t you? You won’t leave me up here alone?”
He moved from the hall into my bedroom. “I’ll be right here,” he said reassuringly. We were speaking in normal tones now.
“Good golly, Miss Molly,” I looked like one of the mice who’d died in Father’s traps. Cobwebs in my hair were the least of the smutty and foul rubbish I found covering my head and sundress.
“Ugh … yuck … ooh … ow,” was all I could utter as I shed my dress and filled the sink. I kicked the discarded garment with my toe: another sundress down the drain. A lot of black and gray goopy things peeled off my hands and arms and—yuck again—my face. I thought I was going to vomit, and I brushed my hair so hard, it stood on end like Little Orphan Annie’s.
Only the realization that Joaquin was waiting kept me from completely stripping and bathing. How many baths could a person take a day? I took a cotton housecoat off the hook on the bathroom door and wrapped it around me.
Joaquin laughed when I entered the bedroom. “I can’t tell if you look worse now or before.”
“I think there are dead things in that pantry,” I said laughing with him. And money—lots of money, my heart sang.
“Would you like me to clean it out for you?”
“Oh, no. No … no. I’m responsible for the condition it’s in; I’ll clean it up. Obviously, its a long overdue chore. Joaquin?” I hesitated, then went on. “Why were you in the house? Were you looking for me?”
He straightened up and almost seemed hurt I had asked. “After the rain stopped, I was checking the garden. I kept hearing your phone ring and knowing you were home—”
“How did you know I was home?”
“I saw your car through the clinic’s garage window. Anyway, the back door was open, and I was worried about you. I was going to search the house, but then I heard something in the pantry …” He paused and looked at me strangely. “Honey, the phone di
d ring forever. Didn’t you hear it?” And then quickly. “Have I done something wrong?”
“No. I didn’t know the rain stopped. Yes, I heard the phone ringing, and I don’t know why, either. I mean, why it would keep on ringing like that, unless I didn’t remember to switch on the machine?” I walked over to the night table. “No, it’s on. What do you think could … Oh, my God.”
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s no answering tape.”
“It’s run out?”
“No, I mean it’s gone. Look.” We both looked at the empty sprockets inside the guts of the machine.
“Maybe you took it out.”
“Don’t be stupid,” I said sharply and then just as quickly added, “I’m sorry, Joaquin. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m not as nice as I used to be. I meant to say, no, I would never do that, and if I had for any reason, I would have remembered it. No. Whoever was in the house took it. But why?”
“What was on it?” he asked moving toward the front window.
I sat down on the edge of the bed, rubbing my forehead, trying to remember. “The last time it was on was … when … when Ste … a friend called last night, and it clicked on before I could catch it.”
“Would it have recorded your conversation?”
“Yes, at least thirty minutes of it. I’ve done it before, and all you have to do is hit Erase. It resets itself, but why would … oh, my God.”
“What? You scare me when you say that.”
“Nothing,” I answered. I could only guess who would want a taped conversation between Stephen and me, and I didn’t like who I was guessing. The somebody we had decided last night who had either followed him from Italy or who already knew the address of the phone number on the piece of paper. My number.
Joaquin acted hurt again because I was hiding some-thing from him, and he knew it. “Well, I guess you’re okay now. I’ll go. Unless you want to report the missing tape to the police … to Silas Sampson?”
“Joaquin, I’m sorry,” I said again. “I don’t mean to act so secretive, but there’s a lot going on around here that you, a stranger, needn’t get involved in. I know you want to help, but that’s one of the reasons I don’t want you to move in upstairs. The last person who said they’d be responsible for me … for the house … was Steven Miller, and he’s dead because of it. And I don’t want that … or anything else bad to happen to another living soul, not to you or anyone, because of me.” I looked up from where I had been staring at the threadbare rag rug on my bedroom floor and said, “Joaquin. Joaquin, did you hear me?”
He was still standing in front of the window, his back to me and his head cocked to one side. With one hand, he waved at me, signaling me to be quiet. “Listen,” he whispered.
I listened and heard a noise like someone dragging a heavy piece of furniture across the floor.
We looked up. It was coming from the third floor.
“You stay here,” he said and ran from the room.
We reached the downstairs landing about the same time. After all, it’s my house, and I knew just how to take the steps three at a time, even if I hadn’t tried it until after my mother and father died.
Joaquin glared at me but didn’t take the time to stop me again. We ran outside and up the wooden steps. He grabbed me by my coattail and pushed me behind him. Quietly, he tried the door. It was unlocked. Joaquin turned the knob slowly, then charged through the door like Silas Sampson.
“What the devil?” a voice exclaimed.
“Who are you?” asked Joaquin.
I peeked under his upraised arm, gave a squeal, and ran under it, feeling the brush of his fingertips as he tried to grab me. I heard him gasp as I jumped in the middle of the beanbag chair the stranger was sitting in and gave him a big kiss.
“Lydia, my own sweet girl. I’m home. You’re a sight for sore eyes.” The object of my affection hugged me tight and looked up at Joaquin. “In answer to your question, mate. I’m Steven Hyatt. Who are you?”
TWENTY
“Steven. Steven … Steven … Steven.” All I could do was hug my friend around his neck and babble his name. Touching him was like reaching out and grabbing a piece of something that had been missing from my life not just this last crazy week, but for a long time.
When I could finally halt the mindless dribble of Stevens gushing from my mouth, I began to ask questions that had their origins in the same never-never land of simplicity and borderline lunacy saying, “How did you get in? How long have you been here? How long can you stay?” Yes, and I even heard myself say, “Where did you come from?”
But Steven didn’t let me down. He answered them all just as if they merited the same dignity as legitimate, intelligent questions. “With my key. All day. Until I have to go.” And, surprisingly, “New York.”
“Oh,” I said. “I thought Australia.”
“Australia?” He frowned, his forehead crinkling from the effort to look serious, but nothing could ever make Steven Hyatt look serious or older. He had shut his eyes to exaggerate the thoughtfulness he had given his supposed place of residence, and when he opened them, I saw the same sparkle in his green eyes that I had seen and appreciated seventeen years earlier. His hair, a ball of brown, curly fuzz that matched mine in unruliness, if not in color, seemed a little longer than it had back in the freshman speech class where we had met, and the glasses that gripped his long, thin face were now wire-rimmed aviators.
I didn’t know way back then that Steven’s colorless, plastic frames and off-the-chart IQ scores contributed to his title of Nerd of all Nerdos. From my sheltered point of view, I not only did not know Steven was a nerd, I didn’t know there was such a thing. Nobody ever bothered to tell me.
The harmonious glance and smile we shared in Miss Mott’s class and an identical one later after school were probably the first friendly eye contacts either Steven or I had ever exchanged with anyone in our first two weeks at Paschal High School. I smiled again when I recognized him in his green Pontiac trying to maneuver out of the congested parking lot, and he grinned back just as I ducked into the passenger side of my father’s car.
As usual, Father was so afraid of being late that he had been early, waiting forty-five minutes for me in the hot sun. I had told him repeatedly that I wasn’t going anywhere after school and I would be right there waiting for him, no matter what time he showed up, but he continued to come early because I might get hot waiting for him. I was fifteen and healthy. He was old and had only three more years to live.
“Your friend is following us,” my father said.
“What?” I stared at Father.
“Your friend, the one you smiled with when you got in the car,” my father said as he looked up at the rear-view mirror.
I first tried to look through the same mirror, but the reverse image confused me, so I finally scrunched up enough nerve to turn my head around. Steven saw me and waved casually—too casual to really be casual—that kind of wave. We were on Rosedale, almost home; he was following us.
“He’s not my friend,” I protested. “I just saw him today for the first time in speech class.”
Father turned into the driveway. “What an impression my little girl makes on boys. One smile and they follow her all the way home.”
I jumped out of the car, determined to make a run for the house, but Father stopped me. “Honey, you have a visitor.” Steven had parked and was getting out of his car, coming toward us.
“Hello,” I said reluctantly to the approaching boy.
“Hello,” said Steven. “I’m Steven Hyatt.” He held out his hand to Father. He didn’t look at me.
“I’m Joseph Huckleberry. This is my daughter, Honey. I understand you have a speech class together at R. L. Paschal High School?”
“Yes, sir. I followed you home to tell you that I wasn’t following you home. That is, I was behind you, not following you, when I noticed that we were getting closer to home … farther away from school. Well, I know it lo
oked like I was following you, so I thought I had better follow you to tell you I wasn’t. Following you, that is.” Steven stopped to take a breath.
“And where do you live, Steven Hyatt?” asked my father.
Steven pointed his long, bony arm toward Rosedale. “Back there … two blocks back on South Adams.”
“I see,” said my father, and it was only years after his death that I realized that he did see and understand, but at the time, I thought he was being his usual polite self when he said, “I see.” Then, “Honey, I’m going to take Steven Hyatt upstairs to my office and show him our toys. You go on in and say hello to your mother; then bring us up some lemonade. That sound all right to you, Steven Hyatt?”
Father never called him anything but the full Steven Hyatt as in, “Honey, Steven Hyatt is going to take you to school and bring you home every day. We have negotiated a small fee for this service with which we both are agreeable.” Or, “Honey, it is all right for Steven Hyatt to study with you on the third floor while I read my paper there.”
Steven Hyatt lived with an elderly aunt who had taken him in because of need, not love. She wasn’t mean or cruel, she just forgot he was there, and he was incredibly lonely. We read books together, acted out plays, and started our unknown poet game in the spacious, chopped-up third floor of my strange house.
I remember the day we worked out the intricacies of the game. We were laughing at the poem “The Optimist.” I recited:
The optimist fell ten stories
At each window bar
He shouted to his friends:
Before I could finish, Steven jumped up and shouted, “ ‘All right so far!’ ”
We laughed harder than the humor warranted, but I’ve noticed since that the young and the innocent tend to do that; that being funny is more fun than what’s funny.
“Okay, smarty,” I had told Steven. “See if you can get this one. ‘How far is it called to the grave?’ ”
“Get what?” asked Steven.
“The next line. Since you’re so clever, tell me the next line after ‘How far is it called to the grave?’ ”
The Complete Honey Huckleberry Box Set Page 10