by Lesley Kagen
“Cry me a river,” she said. “What’s the real reason you’re here, Ernest Joseph Fontaine? Did you burn down a building? Drown a cat? Try to strangle one of the nuns at the orphanage with a rosary?
“Cut it out, Frankie!” Viv said. “You’re scarin’ him!”
“I wouldn’t … I didn’t do anything bad,” the boy whimpered, “but I can’t tell you why I’m here ’cause I don’t know.”
“Really?” I said, trying not to sound as enthusiastic as I was feeling. “Do you have amnesia?”
After the girls and I had seen Blood of Dracula—a teenager went on a killing spree and couldn’t remember a thing—I read up on amnesia in Doc’s medical books. Shell-shock, intoxication, hypnosis, and a few sleeping medications could cause the condition. Ernie was too young to enlist in the Army, and his breath smelled like Bigger’s tuna noodle casserole, not booze. That left only two other reasons he couldn’t remember why he’d been committed.
“Did somebody swing a pocket watch in front of your face and tell you, ‘Look into my eyes … look into my eyes … you’re feeling sleepy’?” I asked him.
He shook his head.
“Did you take any medicine that made you feel groggy?”
“No, I didn’t mean—I meant …” Ernie flapped his arm toward the hospital. “This isn’t where they told me they were bringin’ me.”
“Who told you?” Viv asked.
“Them.”
Besides being the title of a horror movie about gargantuan alien spiders, Harry Blake often referred to the Mondurians as “them.” Is that what was wrong with the boy? Paranoia? Birds of a feather flocked together, so maybe that’s why he’d hidden behind Harry when he was first let out of the hospital doors?
Viv must’ve been thinking along the same lines because she asked Ernie, “Them who?”
“The people who said they wanted to adopt me yesterday.” He hugged his one-eyed stuffed bunny closer to his chest, like it needed consoling, too. “When I got called into Sister Clement’s office, there was a man with a big moustache, and his wife was wearing perfume that smelled like the kind my mother wore.” He took in a shuddering breath. “They told me they lived in the country and they had a dog and mine was killed in the crash with my mom and dad. And then the man asked me if I had any relatives, and when I told ’em no, he smiled at Sister Clement and said, ‘He’ll do.’” Ernie shrugged the way I did when I didn’t want anyone to know how dumb I felt after getting my hopes up too high. “I thought they were taking me home and I don’t get many chances ’cause …” He pointed to his winking right eye. “I only do it sometimes, but nobody wants a kid that’s defective.”
He made the orphanage sound like a car dealership where shoppers wouldn’t choose a dented model. Since St. Jude was the patron saint of lost causes, that made some sense.
“Then what happened?” I asked him.
“I packed my suitcase and waited for the man and lady to pull up front, the way Sister Clement told me to. We listened to a ball game on the car radio and Hank Aaron hit a home run and then”—he scrunched his face into a remembering look—“we stopped at a drive-in for food. The man ordered me something called a Mars Malt and a Jupiter Burger, and then a girl who looked like she was an alien from outer space brought it out to the car. She had silver antennae bobbing on her head and … her skirt looked like it was made out of aluminum foil.”
Even though that sounded exactly like something else Harry Blake would say, I knew that Ernie was telling the truth because the bus had driven past the Milky Way drive-in—“Our Food Is Out of This World!”—on the way home from St. Jude’s. Powdery snow was whipping across the parking lot that night, so waitresses weren’t delivering food to car windows, but through the plate glass window, I could see them dropping orders at tables in their outer-space costumes.
Because Viv had gotten out of that choir trip, I could tell by the crumpled look on her face that she was having second thoughts about Ernie. A boyfriend who was always looking over his shoulder instead of gazing deeply into her eyes, one who would never tenderly utter, “I love you, darling,” but would go on and on about aliens from outer space wasn’t what she had in mind.
I knew I should tell her what I saw at the Milky Way, but I was still angry at her for running off, so I thought Who’s the dump chump now? and took great satisfaction in saying to Frankie, loud enough for Viv to hear, of course, “Aluminum foil?” Aliens? Boy, it sure sounds like Harry and Ernie have a lot in common.”
“It sure does,” Frankie said with a sneer. “We should give them some time alone so they can get to know each other better. C’mon, Viv.”
Suggesting her Prince Charming was a paranoiac would’ve been enough to dissuade a child of average gumption, but Viv landed a loogie on my sneaker, shot a withering look at Frankie, and told Ernie with one of those smiles of hers that could charm the pants off anyone, “I bet if you try real hard you can remember why you’re here. Jimbo and Albie must’ve told you.”
“Who?” Ernie asked.
“The big brown guys,” Frankie said and pointed to where they were riding herd on two patients who were going toe to toe in the middle of the yard.
I’d been so focused on the drama unfolding between Viv and the boy that I hadn’t noticed Karen was throwing one of her conniption fits. She was screaming something about her imaginary baby and stabbing her finger at Roger Osgood, who was always asking Karen if he could hold Carl. I guessed that hadn’t gone well, but it never did.
When I asked Jimbo why Karen would regularly pick fights with the male patients, he explained, “I think she’s actin’ out the night she couldn’t stop her drunk husband from throwing their baby out a second-story window. Tryin’ for a better ending I ’spose.”
With their back muscles coiled beneath their sweat-stained white jackets, Jimbo and Albie were cautiously circling Roger and Karen. Nothing had erupted yet, but they had to be extra vigilant when an argument like this broke out in the yard. Rage opened the door to fear, and if the orderlies didn’t act fast to resolve the problem, it would spread to the rest of the patients. They’d dart around helter-skelter or bang their heads against the fence or howl. A few might even try to scale the fence, which would leave Jimbo and Albie with no other choice but to pull the handle on the point-of-no-return siren.
In a matter of moments, reinforcements would come barreling out the front doors of the hospital to administer tranquilizing shots or wrap the patients in straitjackets. If the nurses and other orderlies couldn’t get close enough to medicate or restrain them, they’d stun them into submission with cattle prods before they could hurt themselves or someone else.
After Ernie finished checking out Jimbo, who’d avoided a disaster by escorting a distraught Roger back to his flower garden, and Albie, who was leading Karen to the opposite end of the yard so she could rock Carl in peace, he turned back to us.
“The biggest guy told me not to spit on anyone and to line up at the door we came out of as soon as I heard the school bell ring,” Ernie said. “I don’t think he told me why I was here, but maybe he did.” When he knocked his knuckles against the side of his head, he loosed a rivulet of tears that came squiggling down his pale cheeks. “I … I’ve been having a hard time thinkin’ straight.”
“Aw, jeez, please, don’t cry,” Viv said. “Everything’s gonna be okay. I promise. The girls and me are gonna help you out.”
I loudly gasped and every muscle in Frankie’s body went rigid.
“And then a family in town can adopt you,” Viv bubbled on. “We can be your new friends and you can come to our hideout and—hey! You could even get a dog! I love Lassie, don’t you?”
Ernie brought his bunny up to his cheek, used it like a hankie, then nodded.
“Well, that’s great,” Viv exclaimed, “because the Forresters have a collie that looks just like her and she had eight puppies last week, and—”
The brrrring of the school bell signaling the end of yard time drowned o
ut the rest of Viv’s sales pitch, but Ernie wouldn’t have heard her anyway. Per Jimbo’s instructions, he had taken off across the yard to line up with the other patients outside the hospital’s side door.
Viv cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted at his fleeing back, “See ya tomorrow!”
I wasn’t so sure about that.
Frankie looked like she was about to murder Viv and I wouldn’t have lifted a finger to stop her.
Chapter Fourteen
What Viv had told Ernie Fontaine was far worse than wanting to spy on Aunt Jane May or kissing Norman Wilkes or any other of the foolishness she’d been doing, so I didn’t bother to stop Frankie when she lunged at her and said, “You just promised that kid that we’d help him out without checking with me and Biz! You broke the Good Samaritan rule!”
That might’ve been forgivable, say, if we’d come up with it a few weeks ago and Viv had forgotten that she’d made a solemn oath to uphold it, but that rule had gone into effect as a result of what’d happened two days after Christmas.
Other kids besides us were willing to brave the bitter cold to try their new ice skates out on Still River that day, but not many. The conditions were barely tolerable when the sun was high, so when the north wind kicked up, clouds rolled in, and flakes began to fly, it was time to head home before frostbite set in.
Frankie, Viv, and I were about to undo our laces when we heard muffled calls for help further downstream. In the dusky light and squalling snow, we could barely make out Dutch Van Heusen shoving the puniest girl in town, Elsie Burke, toward a jagged hole in the ice that had been cordoned off. He was a farm boy, a hay bale–throwing hulk of a kid, but I had broad shoulders, too, and a full head of righteous steam when I blindsided him. Van Heusen slid a few feet on his stomach before he disappeared into the icy hole he’d been threatening to push little Elsie into. That part of the river wasn’t over his head, but it was frigid, and he wasn’t getting out of that hole anytime soon. After the girls and I positioned ourselves around it and brought our blades down close to his hands whenever he tried to boost himself out, a blue-lipped Dutch threatened, “I’m gonna get you for this, ya little sh-sh … shits.”
We had to wait until after most of the fight had gone out of him before Frankie called the sheriff from the pay phone across the street. When he showed up to pull Van Heusen out, the girls and I expected a round of applause after Elsie corroborated our story, but the little ingrate had taken a powder and left us holding the bag.
Of course, when the sheriff questioned Van Heusen, he denied everything. But he’d been in trouble before for pushing kids around in Founder’s Woods and his proclamations of innocence didn’t impress the sheriff. After he ushered Van Heusen into his county car and dropped him off at the family farm, he must’ve called Aunt Jane May, because when the girls and I came through the back door of the house, the two of them were waiting for us in the kitchen, and they didn’t look happy.
The sheriff fingered the silver badge on his shirt and said, “What you did today was out of line. Your hearts were in the right places, but it’s not your place to punish. That’s my job.”
“Ditto,” said Aunt Jane May. And after the two of them spent a brief time talking about severe consequences and how to “teach us a lesson we’d never forget,” she ordered the girls and me to spend the rest of our Christmas vacation apart from one another.
Given Frankie’s and Viv’s squabbling, that punishment didn’t sit too bad with me at first. Day three is when I started to miss them. We stared woefully at one another through our bedroom windows, read each other’s lips, counted down the days until we’d be reunited in our foggy breaths, and barely slept or ate. When I didn’t think I could bear being apart from them for a minute longer, I went looking for Aunt Jane May and found her in the kitchen, running sink water into a wash bucket. Since I was much better at refereeing than I was at arguing, I told her what I thought Frankie would say if given the chance.
“Keeping the Tree Musketeers apart is cruel and unusual punishment. Have you no mercy?” I said and dropped to my knees on the cold, linoleum floor.
She responded to my pleas by setting the bucket down next to me, handing me a scrub brush, and saying, “Long as you’re down there.”
But as it turned out, while we were separated, the Tree Musketeers had learned a lesson we’d never forget. We learned that we could never, ever endure being separated like that again. And one of the ways we could avoid that severe consequence was if we swore to one another that no matter how dire the circumstances, no matter how desperately someone needed our help—the way Little Elsie had that afternoon on Still River—we would not rush to their aid. Not without having one of our “powwows” first.
It was a sacred ritual we’d performed many times throughout the years whenever any of us had something troubling to discuss or we had an important decision to make. We’d head out to the hideout and light the train lantern. After we set it atop the blood stain that’d been created when we became sisters, we’d gather around it and say, “All for one and one for all,” and then whoever called for the powwow would share what was on her mind. After we talked it over, a vote would be taken to decide what to do, and it had to be unanimous.
So when Viv went rogue and promised Ernie Fontaine that we’d “help him out” that afternoon, she’d violated a Tree Musketeer rule, and there was no worse offense in our books.
I felt horribly betrayed, but I’d rarely seen Frankie so bent out of shape. She yanked Viv away from the wrought-iron fence and said, “When you told that kid we’d help him out, ya didn’t mean that we’d be nice to him and bring him shortbread cookies, did ya. You meant that we’d help him out of Broadhurst so he could be your boyfriend!”
We expected Viv to deny it and put up her dukes, but she cried, “I’m sorry I didn’t call for a powwow. I’m sorry I broke the Good Samaritan rule. I … I don’t know why, but when I see a cute boy, somethin’ just comes over me. I’ll take my licks, and I promise that I’ll never—” She stopped whimpering, narrowed her eyes, and pointed over our shoulders. “Don’t look now, but …”
“Are you kiddin’ me?” Frankie said, because she couldn’t believe Viv had the nerve to use her favorite distraction tactic to keep us from getting more ticked off at her, or that we’d been stupid enough to almost fall for it.
But just as she was about to start ripping into Viv again, a screeching sound punctured the air and the three of us dropped to the ground, the same way we did when the air raid siren went off during the drills at school.
I yelled, “What’s happenin’?”
“It’s the point-of-no-return siren,” Frankie shouted.
I knew that because we’d heard it a couple of times before, but what I didn’t understand was why Jimbo or Albie had tripped it. Last time I’d checked, the patients had lined up at the side door of the hospital to go back in after their yard time, just the way they were supposed to.
“Somebody must be tryin’ to escape,” Viv said. “Look at Albie!”
He was running toward the back of the hospital, frantically gesticulating and shouting something at Jimbo, who was still at his post at the side door with the rest of the patients, who were now keening and rocking and covering the ears.
Moments after Albie disappeared behind the building, Harry Blake came ripping around the opposite end, arms and legs pumping. Usually a man who avoided working up a sweat, I was surprised to see that Albie wasn’t more than fifty yards or so behind Harry, who was so quick on his feet.
“Blake!” Albie bellowed as he chased after him through the middle of the yard. “Stay away from that fence!”
The girls and I knew what was about to happen and could barely stand to watch when the front doors of the hospital burst open and members of the staff flooded out in response to the siren. They rushed to help Jimbo round up the patients, who’d scattered like a panicked herd, all of them exhibiting the aberrant behaviors they’d rely on to comfort themselves when push
ed beyond their limit.
The only one who didn’t look like she’d gone over the edge was Florence. She must’ve sensed that I’d planned on talking to her about the raven-haired woman she told us would protect and guide us from lurking death, because she was giving me the same intense gaze she had when she’d made that prediction. I couldn’t hear her, but I could see her lips moving, and I thought she was saying, “Help … hurry,” before an orderly ran in front of her and slapped a syringe into Albie’s hand like they were running a relay and he was passing the baton. When I looked for Florence again, she’d disappeared in the maelstrom.
Feeling more confident now that he was armed with the tranquilizer, Albie further picked up his pace. “I’m warnin’ you, Blake!” he bellowed. “Stop or you’ll pay the price!”
Frankie and I wrapped our arms around Viv because, even though she’d sent her favorite patient on a wild goose chase for an alien so she wouldn’t have to share the spotlight when she talked to Ernie Fontaine, she was whimpering. She cared deeply about Harry. We all did. He was our friend.
Between the siren’s wailing and Albie’s hollering, Teddy Ellison shouting out chess moves, and Karen screaming about baby Carl, I could barely hear Viv say, “This is all my fault. I shouldn’t have sent Harry to look for a Mondurian behind the hospital. When he didn’t find it, he thinks it seeped into his ear and burrowed into his brain. He’s comin’ to ask me to pull it out.”
That sounded like something he’d do except he wasn’t coming our way. Harry was running toward that section of the fence about fifty yards to our right that he’d been stopping at before he’d come to visit with us. When he reached it, he wrapped his hands around the iron bars and peered through them, like he was searching for something—maybe a way out, maybe a Mondurian. It wasn’t until he didn’t find what he was looking for that he came charging our way.