Visions of heroism volleyed between Robby and Casey’s thoughts as they waited in the thicket, but such notions of bravery lasted no longer than necessary. As it presently stood, they could barely fend off an onslaught of pesky mosquitoes, much less the potential rampage of a supposedly deranged hermit. Had it not been for the sudden appearance of their friend strolling down the hillside, they might’ve squatted there all night brooding over their current predicament.
Much to the boys’ astonishment, Kyle’s pace did not seem hurried. In fact, he was completely at ease in his surroundings. Despite the mugginess of this afternoon, he hadn’t even broken a sweat on his brow. Though Robby and Casey were certainly relieved that he was unhurt, they never expected him to be whistling a tune as he descended the hill. Casey stormed from the underbrush first, meeting Kyle as he reclaimed his bike from a weedy incline alongside the trail.
Unlike Kyle, Casey’s voice was peppered with fear when he yelled, “Are you crazy, man?” Casey stomped closer to Kyle, disregarding the decibel of his scream. “You’re lucky that you’re not dead,” he ranted.
Kyle seemed surprised that his friends had decided to come after him. He sounded somewhat apologetic when saying, “Take it easy, guys. I’m okay—everything is fine.”
Casey’s eyes darted between the hillside and Kyle’s placid expression. He immediately suspected that Kyle had not met with Ben Murden. By this time, Robby popped his head out from behind a tree and extended a nervous glance at his friends. Once seeing that there was no danger, he strode up beside Casey and issued his own reprimand.
“I can’t believe you would do something so stupid,” Robby shouted at Kyle. “This is not a game we’re playing here, you know.”
Kyle laughed jubilantly now, disregarding the fact that his voice echoed throughout the woods. “You guys don’t know what the heck you’re talking about,” he chuckled. “Just for the record, Ben Murden isn’t the madman everyone thinks he is. In fact, I’d say he’s kind of tame—in his own strange way.”
Robby moved forward and clutched Kyle by both of his arms. His mouth circled and his eyelids flickered as if irritated by a pitch of dust. “Are you telling us that you actually saw him?” Robby gasped, slicking back his crimson hair with a swipe of his fingers.
“C’mon, Kyle,” Casey huffed, still watching the hillside out of the corner of his eye. “You didn’t really talk to that ol’ dude, did you?”
Kyle nodded his chin confidently before replying, “I sure did.” His answer caused Casey to roll his eyes in disbelief. “I’m not asking you to believe me,” he went on, “but I did meet with him.”
Because of the length of their friendship, Robby had acquired a knack at determining when Kyle was telling the truth or not. In this instance, judging by the boy’s unflinching eyes, Robby guessed that his confession was valid, but somewhat misguided.
Rather than coax Kyle into an argument, Robby said, “Okay, so you might’ve seen him. That’s not such a big deal. The question is—did he see you?”
“Of course,” Kyle replied. He then picked his bike off the ground beside a tree and straddled it. “I was talking to him for a little while.”
“Get out of here,” Casey groaned. “Even you couldn’t be that dumb.”
Despite his friends’ opposition to the possibility that he spoke directly to Murden, Kyle’s resolve did not diminish. If anything, he became more committed to dissolving their disbelief. “There’s an easy way to settle this thing. Why don’t you go up to Murden’s house and meet him for yourselves? If he talked to me, he’ll talk to you, too.”
Both Robby and Casey were silenced by the challenge, even if they did partially believe Kyle’s story, they had no intention of duplicating his heedlessness. Instead of trading any more words, the boys retrieved their own bikes. After joining Kyle on the trail leading back toward home, Robby’s thoughts gradually focused on the subject again.
“You might’ve gotten lucky this time,” Robby admonished Kyle, “but I would stay away from that old man from now on.”
Casey followed up that bit of advice with a question of his own. “Hey, Kyle, I know it ain’t none of my business, but what were you and Ben Murden talking about?”
Kyle released a breath weighted with anguish. He then peered at the forest’s terrain, listening for the sound of some baby birds crying in the thicket. “C’mon,” Kyle called to his friends as he started forward on his bike. “I’ll tell you everything on the way home.”
If the décor in Kyle’s bedroom resembled a theatre’s lobby designed to showcase the nostalgic monsters of motion picture history, Casey’s choice of decorating was equally fanatical. The theme of Casey’s room, of course, revealed his obsession for baseball. Neither Kyle nor Robby had ever visited the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, but they were quite certain that Casey’s surroundings rated as the next closest thing to bounding headlong into a realm of immortalized heroes.
Commemorative plaques and assorted memorabilia of such Major League icons as Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, and Reggie Jackson crowded the dresser tops and cabinetry of his bed’s headboard. An array of posters, bats, gloves, and authentic baseball jerseys formed a collage on his ceiling and walls. Even the Yankee-themed bedspread, curtains, and wallpaper did not escape Casey’s imaginative—if somewhat limited—eye for detail.
With soda pops in hand, the three boys assembled on the center of Casey’s bedroom floor. Showing little regard for the promise of confidentiality that he and Murden had made earlier, Kyle relayed the information to his friends at a frenzied pace. He justified his choice to tell his friends by insisting that Murden’s ghost story needed to be examined with greater depth, and preferably by a greater number of people.
Casey usually displayed a cynical attitude toward most events not directly linked to sports, so his skepticism in regard to this matter did not take Kyle by surprise. He took a swig of his cola before airing his gripe. “If you ask me, that old man sounds crazier than ever. They should’ve locked him up in a loony bin years ago.”
Kyle pulled back the tab on his can of soda, causing the beverage to fizz as he lifted it quickly toward his mouth. After gulping a mouthful, he said, “I don’t think Ben Murden is capable of hurting anyone. He’s actually very sick—I think he’s got cancer.”
Robby had already finished drinking his soda. He relieved his nervousness by squeezing a baseball that he found under the corner of Casey’s bed. “I think that Murden’s not worth the effort, and you shouldn’t be so eager to believe him, Kyle.”
“Don’t you understand what we’re trying to tell you, man?” Casey jumped in again. “That kook is a definite freak. He’s even got you believing in ghosts now.”
Robby didn’t often laugh at his friend’s expense, but Casey’s deliberate chuckle spawned his suppressed amusement. “Face it, Kyle,” Robby tittered, “Murden is just trying to get you to feel sorry for him. I’d leave him alone and be glad that he let you walk away in one piece.”
On a typical day Kyle would have swallowed his words like a tart pill and conceded to his friends’ well-intentioned advice. After all, this had been the formula for maintaining their friendship for years. No one in this circle besides Kyle wanted the caste system to change. They were comfortable with Kyle’s subservient nature. But today marked a peculiar change in the course of their camaraderie, because Kyle now sought to prove that his opinions—no matter how outlandish—mattered. His commitment to unveil the truth lingered even deeper in the recesses of his mind than he initially imagined.
Rather than listen to his friends’ muffled laughter, Kyle took the initiative to change their minds, even at the risk of sounding thoroughly obtuse. “There’s a lot more to this than we know,” he started. “No one can say what really happened to those missing people, much less any of the peach trees in Murden’s grove.”
Casey was no longer laughing when he yelped, “You think a ghost had something to do with all those missing kids?”
Kyle’s eyes methodi
cally shifted to Robby, but the carrot-colored hair boy’s expression remained unapproachable. With nowhere else to turn his sights, Kyle concentrated on the bedroom window on the wall’s far side, where an orange-breasted robin perched on a maple tree out in Casey’s backyard.
Kyle’s voice slipped into a whisper before he continued. “I don’t know what to think at this point. He then knotted his fingers across his lap and said, “Murden sounded like he was telling me the truth.”
“The best liars always do,” Casey chided. “C’mon, Kyle, don’t be so gullible.” Casey crushed his soda can in his fist before saying, “I think you got a bad case of the doldrums, man. Besides that, I think you’re reading too many of those horror magazines.”
Robby agreed with Casey, but he didn’t wish to badger Kyle with more ridicule than necessary. So that their friendship was not afflicted by this conference, Robby selected his words carefully. “It’s gonna be a long hot summer,” he sighed, rolling the baseball across the floor toward Kyle’s foot. “We need to get out and do things, but maybe we should stay away from The Bogs for awhile. We don’t need to chase a ghost—real or not—through the woods for the rest of our vacation, do we?”
“We won’t know if the ghost is real or not unless we go and take a look in that peach grove for ourselves,” Kyle argued. His friends stifled their own protests long enough for him to finish his thought. “If none of what the old man said to me is true, then we got nothing to be afraid of. Besides, Ben Murden isn’t in any shape to hurt us. He can barely stand on his own two feet.”
Casey shook off Kyle’s suggestion with a pitiful gaze. Instead of jabbering any further into what he believed to be utter hogwash, he cocked his head toward the ceiling and stared at the spinning blades of the room’s fan. The three boys weren’t prone to debating over such trivial affairs at length, but Robby detected a distinct irritation settling into Kyle’s gaze that he had seldom observed before. Whether Murden’s story had any validity to it or not wasn’t the sole issue anymore. Kyle had been persuaded beyond the point of acceptance. His motive suddenly seemed personal.
“Just for the sake of argument,” Robby suggested to Kyle, “let’s pretend that Ben Murden’s story about this ghost is true.”
“I’m not saying it’s definitely true,” Kyle interrupted.
“Yeah, I know, Kyle, but that old fellow was convincing enough to make you want to believe him, right?” After Kyle nodded his chin, Robby continued. “Even if a ghost does haunt that peach grove, it doesn’t matter much to us. We got nothin’ to do with it, and I got a hunch that we should keep it that way.”
Kyle’s voice fluttered with a long-curtailed excitement when he said, “But aren’t you at least a little bit curious, Robby? We could be on the brink of discovering something truly weird.”
Despite Kyle’s enthusiasm, Robby was reluctant to join his friend on a crusade into the unknown. But nevertheless, uncovering a side of his friend that remained tactfully concealed until this moment intrigued him. “What’s gotten into you, Kyle McCann?” he asked. “You seem different, almost a little strange.”
“I’m not sure if there’s anything different about me,” Kyle said, still staring at the window. “I just want to do the right thing, and I think that Ben Murden needs some justice.”
Casey shifted his glare back onto Kyle and casually tossed the aluminum can he was holding in Kyle’s direction. Kyle flinched, but was unable to prevent the twisted metal from falling into his lap.
“You think you’re brave?” Casey questioned with a growing agitation. He then crawled forward across the floor, poking his finger in Kyle’s chest. “I suppose you got a plan figured out already, huh?”
“All we got to do is sneak up into the grove after dark,” Kyle suggested.
“And then what?” Robby asked, his voice quivering as he waited for his friend’s response.
Kyle paused before answering the question, if only to present the illusion that he had thoroughly cogitated all the potential consequences of his proposal. “I remember Murden saying that the ghost only appears at night,” he began, “and usually in the summertime, so I figure now is as good as time as any to go and check it out.”
“Let me get this straight,” Casey fumed. “You want to go waltzing into Murden’s peach grove in the dark and sit around and wait for some crazy spirit to show up?”
“It does sound silly,” Kyle noted, slightly embarrassed by his proposal.
“No,” Robby corrected. “It sounds plain stupid. Did you ever think about what you would actually do if a ghost showed up? What if this supposed spirit wanted to make you disappear, too?”
Nothing Kyle offered would have sounded reasonable at this point, but it was obvious that Robby had exhausted himself trying to fill the boy’s ears with any tidbits of common sense. After mulling over his ideas, Kyle responded with an equally simple solution to his thus far unimaginative plan.
“If we’re careful, we can make this work, guys. According to Murden, the ghost only appears in the peach grove.”
Robby considered this option briefly before waving it off with an exaggerated gesture. Like Casey, he was less fearful of the probability of encountering a ghost than he was of confronting the old codger. Unlike the ghost, Murden’s existence could not be disputed. There were still a few sensible people who elected not to tamper with Ben Murden’s sullied past, and Robby suddenly decided to add his name to that list.
Robby sipped his soda gingerly before asking Kyle another question. His voice was slightly subdued when he said, “Do you plan on going back into those woods anytime soon?”
“As soon as I can—maybe tomorrow night.”
“Your folks will never let you go,” Robby cautioned. “How are you gonna get out of the house after dark?”
“That’s the easy part, Robby. I figured that I’d tell my mom and dad that I’m sleeping over your house. They’ll never know the difference.”
“Your mom will check with my father,” Robby reminded his friend. “And I don’t want to lie for you.”
By now, Casey had heard enough deliberating. He soon concluded that there was only one way to put an end to this conversation. Casey settled back against the footboard of his bed before complaining, “This is all getting nuttier by the second. But even though you’re acting like an idiot, I don’t want to see you get hurt. I got a nasty feeling that Ben Murden is counting on you to do something totally stupid. If you go up into those woods alone, we’ll probably never see you alive again.”
Kyle’s voice peaked in intensity when he said, “Ben Murden is not a problem. He’s actually not a bad guy, once you get talking with him.”
Casey rolled his eyes in Robby’s direction before stating, “You’re a weird kid, Kyle, but I still think of you as a friend. My dad always told me that friends should watch out for one another, so I guess that’s what I’m offering to do for you.”
“So you’re gonna go with me?” Kyle asked Casey, surprised by the considerate gesture. After Casey reluctantly nodded his chin, Kyle said to Casey, “Okay, it’s settled then. We’ll go tomorrow night. I’ll just tell my folks that I’m camping out at your house.”
“Hold on a minute,” Casey retorted. “Nothin’ is settled yet. Like I said, I’ll go with you, but not without a few requests of my own for you to follow.”
“What kind of requests?”
Casey sprang to his feet now, pacing to and fro in front of his window. “Listen up,” he advised. “It’s not good enough for us to just have a plan getting into the grove, you know. If we expect to make it out again, we’re gonna need an escape route.”
“Of course,” Kyle agreed. “We won’t get lost. I know those woods pretty good now.”
“Yeah, but there’s more. Once we’re inside the grove, I don’t want to stay for more than ten minutes. That’ll be enough time to prove to you that there ain’t no ghost.”
“Anything else?”
“Come to think of it, yes,” Casey replie
d. “After tomorrow night, you got to promise both me and Robby that you’ll never go near that peach grove or Ben Murden again.”
“But what if we see something out of the ordinary?”
Casey cackled with certainty as he lowered his hand on Kyle’s shoulder. “Trust me, Kyle,” Casey promised. “The only spook haunting those woods is that old crackpot. Once he’s gone, things will be a whole lot quieter around here.”
Kyle couldn’t help but to think that if Meadowton became any more tranquil, it and all of its inhabitants would simply vanish from the county map. Despite his reservations over agreeing with Casey’s terms, he determined that it was far wiser to travel with a buddy. Of course Casey took no one for his word; in order for their agreement to be worthy, a handshake was required. They sealed their deal by clasping hands.
With the pact in place, Kyle quenched his thirst with the remainder of his soda. Neither Kyle nor Casey needed to glance at Robby to sense his disapproval. They expected him to reverse his earlier excuse for not participating. Even Robby realized this was a feat that would’ve required minimal effort on his part. But he didn’t wish to join them on this excursion. Perhaps Mr. Taylor’s repeated warnings about Ben Murden had factored into his decision.
For the remainder of this afternoon no one mentioned the circumstances as they now stood. Besides, in Casey’s mind, there were other forms of entertainment to consider. It was one of those now-rare summer days when the Yankees were scheduled to play an afternoon game at the stadium in the Bronx. After settling in front of Casey’s television with a bowl of potato chips and a six-pack of orange soda, the boys allowed themselves to forget about the harsh realities stirring outside.
At least for the remainder of this day, it felt like a summer afternoon in the lives of three 12-year-old boys, and notions of foul play had no chance to flourish during those moments. Yet as the ballgame lingered into its third hour, Casey wondered what had caused Kyle to become so adamant about investigating Murden’s peach grove.
Normally, Casey was not distracted from his favorite pastime, especially with the score as close as it was, but on this occasion he couldn’t concentrate on anything but Kyle’s steely-eyed expression. Perhaps Kyle’s friends had misjudged him after all, for all the traits he had demonstrated over the years, courage never surfaced as one of great importance. But neither Casey nor Robby had a better word to describe Kyle’s behavior at this juncture.
Chapter 11
Songs of a Peach Tree Page 11