by Peg Kehret
“Easy for you to say. I’m the one climbing up and down hills. All you do is float.”
“It won’t take long. You can get the tools you need, dig up my leg, bring it here, bury it, and be home in time for supper.”
“No. If I tried to do all of that today, we’d both be dead.”
“Tomorrow, then?”
“If I can still move tomorrow, which I seriously doubt, I’ll do it early in the morning.”
“I’ve already waited more than a hundred years,” Willie said. “It won’t kill me to wait one more day.”
I groaned at his joke.
“Thank you,” Willie said. “Thank you for helping me.”
CHAPTER TEN
Willie talked nonstop on our way downhill. I think he was afraid if he let me say anything, I might change my mind about moving his leg bones.
“When I was alive,” he said, “the mines employed a thousand men. A lumber mill and a stone quarry thrived in Carbon City, too. Those coke ovens looked like big ol’ beehives. They blazed away night and day.”
It was hard for me to picture so much activity in sleepy little Carbon City.
Willie went with me as far as Aunt Ethel’s driveway; then I walked alone back to the house.
As I hung the compass on the nail, I was surprised to hear the mantel clock strike twice. I felt as if I’d been gone all day, but it was only two o’clock.
Willie was right. I probably could have dug the bones and reburied them yet today.
My tired legs were not the whole reason I had refused. I needed time to think through the whole process, to make sure I wasn’t overlooking a potential problem. Once I started digging, I wanted to finish the whole plan quickly.
A note from Aunt Ethel was taped to the door.
Josh:
Muriel invited me to go to the raspberry farm with her to get fresh berries.
Aunt Ethel
After eating a peanut butter sandwich, an apple, and a piece of chocolate cake, I went to the barn and found a sturdy spade and a small hatchet for hacking through the rosebush. The hatchet fit in my backpack, but I’d have to carry the spade.
I decided to leave the casket behind, rotted or not, and put the bones in my backpack. The less weight I had to haul uphill, the better.
Holding the spade handle in my hands, I tried to imagine actually digging in the cemetery. Thinking about it made my palms sweaty. I wasn’t afraid of seeing the bones, but I was definitely scared of getting caught. No matter how much I justified moving Willie’s leg, I couldn’t ignore the fact that if anyone saw me, I would have a huge problem.
Maybe I should dig the leg up at night, as Willie had suggested. But at night I’d have to use a flashlight to see what I was doing, and that might call more attention to me than if I did it in the daytime.
In my mind, I returned to the cemetery, thinking how it would look after dark. I remembered the road that went past it. I saw the rows of gravestones and the faded flowers.
Flowers! That’s what I needed! I would take flowers with me so if someone happened to pass by and see me digging, I would appear to be planting flowers on a grave. After I had the leg bones safely in my backpack, I would put the flowers in the hole so it wouldn’t be obvious that the grave had been disturbed and something removed.
Next problem: Where was I going to get flowers to plant on the grave? Back home, every large grocery store had a floral department that sold flowering plants; but the Carbon City Market didn’t sell flowers, and there were no other retail stores within bike-riding distance. I couldn’t ask Aunt Ethel to drive me to Diamond Hill to buy flowers unless I told her why I wanted them, and that was out of the question.
Then I remembered the flowers along the sides of the house. I could dig up a clump of those yellow daisies, keep them in a bucket of water overnight, and plant them in the cemetery tomorrow morning.
I decided to dig two clumps of daisies and plant one on Aunt Florence’s grave. That way I wouldn’t feel so guilty about taking Aunt Ethel’s flowers without permission.
I wondered when Aunt Ethel would get home. Her note didn’t say what time she’d left, but this was probably my best chance to dig up flowers. Hoping I’d hear Muriel’s car when it came down the driveway, I got the shovel and dug up enough daisies to fill a big bucket. I took small clumps from several spots so it wouldn’t be obvious that flowers were missing.
I carried the daisies and the shovel out to the tree house and looked around for Mrs. Stray. If I expected to tame her and her babies, I needed to spend as much time with her as I could, but I didn’t see her. The food hadn’t been touched since I had refilled the bowl that morning. I hoped Mrs. Stray was okay.
I was eager to tell Willie my brilliant idea about the daisies, but he didn’t show up, so I climbed the ladder and went inside.
I was too nervous to read. All I could think about was what I planned to do the next day. I looked out the tree-house window at the cat dishes below.
A twig snapped. Three deer stood near the base of the tree house, their black tails flicking as they grazed. I scarcely breathed, for fear I would startle them. The largest deer kept looking back into the woods as if she saw or heard something. Soon the other two stopped eating and looked in the same direction. Their ears perked forward; all of them seemed curious.
The big doe took two steps toward whatever she was watching, then stopped again. A few seconds later, I spotted Mrs. Stray moving slowly toward her bowls. The deers’ eyes followed her.
She walked a few feet, then stopped and looked at the deer before continuing. When she reached the bowls and started lapping the water, the three inquisitive deer stepped closer. I imagined them saying, What in the world is that animal? Let’s go closer and find out what it smells like.
Mrs. Stray crunched some cat food, but she kept glancing up nervously as the deer approached. When they were only three feet away, she fled into the woods. The deer trotted after her.
I realized I was smiling. I’d climbed the ladder feeling anxious, but the animals and the forest made me happy.
If I had any sense, I thought, I’d leave well enough alone—enjoy the woods, try to tame the cats, and not take a chance of possibly ruining my summer by getting arrested for removing bones from the cemetery.
Even as I thought that, I knew I would follow my plan to help Willie. If I didn’t help him, who would? Willie needed a friend and, as far as I knew, there were no other candidates.
I returned to Aunt Ethel’s house. She was in the kitchen, rinsing a colander full of raspberries. “Look what we’re having for dinner,” she said.
I helped myself to a raspberry. “Yum,” I said. I took another berry.
“I stopped at the post office on the way home. There weren’t any letters.”
I knew it was too soon to get a letter from Mom, but I couldn’t help feeling disappointed.
My plans for the next day soon took over my thoughts. I needed to have everything ready so I could get an early start.
“Is there any bottled water?” I asked. “I get thirsty in the tree house.”
Aunt Ethel said, “No point paying for bottled water when perfectly good well water runs out of the faucet free.” She opened a cupboard and handed me an empty plastic container.
“You can use this.”
I filled the container with water, pushed the lid on tight, and put it in my backpack, hoping it wouldn’t leak.
I added a brown bathroom towel to my backpack, to wrap the leg bones in. I looked under the bathroom sink, hoping to find a pair of rubber gloves to borrow, but there weren’t any. I hadn’t found any garden gloves in the barn, either. I decided not to ask Aunt Ethel for gloves because I didn’t want to explain why I needed them, and I couldn’t think of a believable excuse. The less I said about my intentions, the fewer questions she would have. If the rose thorns were too bad, I’d pull my shirtsleeves down over my hands.
I considered packing myself a lunch but decided against it. Once I start
ed this project, I wanted to finish as quickly as I could, and I already had enough to carry. Besides, I wouldn’t want to eat a sandwich that had shared the backpack with Willie’s leg bones.
Before I went to bed, I wrote another letter:
June 18
Dear Mom and Steven,
I found the tree house, and it’s haunted! A ghost named Willie, an old coal miner, hangs out there. Aunt Ethel says Aunt Florence used to see him, and now I see him.
Willie wants me to dig up his leg bones, which are buried in the Carbon City cemetery, and move them to where the rest of his body is buried.
I’m going to do it.
Your grave-digger son,
Josh
I put down my pen, smiling to myself as I imagined how Mom and Steven would react when they read this. I had not yet mailed the first two letters; I hadn’t known Aunt Ethel was going to the post office today.
Now I debated whether to send the letters one at a time or all together. I decided one at a time would probably be best, so I put the first letter, about shooting the bat, in one of the addressed, stamped envelopes Mom had sent with me.
“You’ll have no excuse not to write,” she had said when she gave me the envelopes.
I laid the sealed envelope and the other two letters in the drawer with my underwear.
Next I wrote a note to Aunt Ethel.
I’ve gone to visit the cemetery again. Then I plan to hike up an old gravel road to the Carbon River. I might not get home until late, so don’t worry if I miss lunch.
I planned to leave Aunt Ethel’s note on my bed when I left in the morning. In case I didn’t return, I wanted the Search and Rescue teams to know where to look for me.
The next day was Friday, June 19, the day the summer team played its first tournament game. I wondered what the other guys on the team would think if they knew what I was doing while they played baseball. They’d never believe it.
I knew tomorrow was either going to be the most exciting day of my life or the most disastrous.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Mr. Turlep did not look like a criminal. Wearing a navy blue suit, white shirt, and a tan striped necktie, he watched as his assistant locked the bank’s front door. He waited while his employees left their posts, said good night to each other, and headed home.
When he was the only one left in the building, he took the calendar out of his top desk drawer and, as he did each day at closing time, drew a big black X through June 18, that day’s date. He’d done this every day for more than two years, even taking the calendar home with him on weekends so he could X out the Saturdays and Sundays. Except on the thirteenth of each month. Mr. Turlep felt it might be bad luck to cross out the number thirteen, so every month he left it untouched.
Each X brought him one day closer to the happiest moment of his life: the time when he would walk out of the Hillside Bank forever, retrieve the money, and start his new life in Florida. He would spend every day fishing in the sunshine and would never again—not once—sit behind a desk in a bank.
Mr. Turlep had begun working at the bank forty-three years ago as a trainee and had slowly worked his way up to manager. He had relished the work for many years, but he didn’t enjoy it anymore. Now the government regulations and the unnecessary paperwork and the intense competition with huge national banks had taken all the pleasure away. Even the customers were less polite and more demanding. Everyone wanted to borrow money, but no one wanted to save it.
Mr. Turlep loosened his necktie and went out the back entrance, making sure the door locked securely behind him. He walked to his car, started the engine, and began the second part of his biweekly ritual.
Twice a week on his way home from work, he drove thirty miles out of his way in order to go past the sleepy little Carbon City cemetery, where he’d buried the money. He didn’t worry that someone might accidentally find it; in all the months (seven hundred eighty days, to be exact) since he’d hidden it, he had never seen a person in the cemetery.
His visits were a way to comfort himself after a hard day’s work and to stay focused on his plan of never having to work again. He liked to drive slowly past the little graveyard, his eyes on the spot he’d chosen, while he thought of what lay hidden there and how it would soon enrich his life.
By now, he’d nearly forgotten that the money didn’t really belong to him, that he’d taken it at gunpoint from two terrified bank customers as they approached the night-deposit box. He had erased from his memory the fact that the entire community had been outraged by the theft of the Cash for Critters proceeds.
At the time, he had pretended to be as furious as everyone else. As manager of the Hillside Bank, he had posted a one-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the arrest of the thief, and then he had personally matched that amount.
When his customers thanked him for his generosity, he had said, “Whoever did this robbed us not only of our animal shelter, but also of our community spirit. It’s tragic, that’s what it is. Tragic!”
Much of the money was in one-hundred-dollar bills. The rest he exchanged over a week’s time for more one-hundred-dollar bills until that was all he had. He bundled the bills securely, locked them in the small metal box he’d bought, and then used the ideal hiding place.
The crime was never solved, so eventually people quit talking about it and went about their business. The police had meth labs, drunk drivers, and assaults to deal with each day. With no clues to go on and no suspect, the theft of the Cash for Critters money slid gradually into the “unsolved” category, where the case was ignored.
The money was not forgotten by Mr. Turlep. Each day at closing time, as he Xed out the date, he thought of the difference the box of cash would make in his life. Without it, his retirement years would be meager. With it, he could live out his dream.
He should not have had to resort to theft in order to have a comfortable retirement. After years of living frugally and saving his money, Mr. Turlep’s dreams had been crushed by a corporate scandal that cost him, through no fault of his own, all his savings. Unscrupulous officers of the company where Mr. Turlep’s pension was invested had bilked the shareholders of millions. The money he had counted on for his retirement vanished.
When the news sank in that he had lost his personal savings and his bank pension, which were invested in the same place, Mr. Turlep changed. Overnight the man who had always been a mild-mannered, law-abiding banker became a bitter, cold-hearted criminal.
He knew his Social Security income wouldn’t buy the coveted condo on the beach, nor would it be enough to pay for weekly deep-sea fishing trips. The life he’d dreamed of for years had been within his grasp, and then it had vanished—until he’d planned and pulled off the perfect crime.
Who had been hurt by his theft? Nobody. It wasn’t as if he’d taken food from starving children or medicines from cancer patients. Oh, sure, a few hundred dogs and cats were left to fend for themselves each year instead of getting food, veterinary care, and loving homes. No big deal about that. They weren’t any worse off than they’d always been around here.
Mr. Turlep had worked hard all his life; he deserved a happy retirement. Now, with only one more day to go, the time was almost here. Tomorrow—Friday, June 19—he would make the last X, leave the bank for the last time, and make his final drive to the Carbon City cemetery.
Tonight he would finish packing. Tomorrow he would dig up his money and head for Florida. Those fish were waiting for him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Florence’s screaming woke me at sunrise. Instead of pulling the blankets over my head and blocking my ears, I got up, dressed quickly, and propped the note on my pillow.
I planned to grab an apple to eat along the way and tiptoe out of the house without waking Aunt Ethel, but when I got downstairs, she stood in the kitchen with mixing bowls and measuring cups lined up on the counter.
“You’re up early,” she said.
“So are you.”
“I
have a cake customer today. She requested carrot cake, and I want to get the carrots grated and the baking done while the kitchen’s still cool.”
I took an apple from the refrigerator.
“I’ve been thinking about that stray cat,” she said, “and I decided you were right. You should feed it and tame it and take it to the vet to be neutered. That’s what Florence would have done. Then we can try to find someone who will give it a good home.”
“Thanks,” I said. “She really seems hungry.” I decided not to mention any kittens quite yet.
“If you keep the food out by the tree house, the cat probably won’t bother Florence.”
“OK. That’s what I’ll do.”
“I can drive you to Carbon City to get some cat food this afternoon after I finish my cake.”
I couldn’t tell her it wasn’t necessary because I had already bought cat food. At the rate Mrs. Stray was gobbling the food, I’d need more soon, anyway. I could send my first letter and see if there was any mail for me today. Now that my summer was so exciting, I wasn’t as mad at Mom and Steven for sending me here. I wanted to hear from them, to know how they were doing.
I knew they were eager to hear from me, too. I thought about the letters I’d written about the bat, the peacock, and the ghost. Would Mom and Steven worry too much when they read those reports? Maybe I should add a few lines about Mrs. Stray and the chocolate cake, just to let them know I was really OK.
“I’m hiking up the river this morning,” I said. “I might not be back until after lunch.”
“No hurry. We’ll go to Carbon City when you return.” She started scrubbing carrots with a brush, then stopped, leaning against the sink.
“Is something wrong?”
“I think I’d better sit for a minute. I feel a bit dizzy.”
I took her arm and helped her to a chair.
“My energy gives out now and then,” she said. “Inside, I still feel like a schoolgirl, but sometimes my body can’t keep up with what I want to do. When that happens, I have to rest a bit.”