A Summer of Sundays

by Lindsay Eland

  “Mom went to get more cereal with May,” CJ said, peeling an overripe banana. “May is probably crashing the car right now. I think Dad’s at the library. You should be thankful we came last night. We saved you from being murdered.”

  “What? CJ, if you think—”

  The screen door opened and Jude waltzed in, taking a seat next to Henry. “ ’Morning,” he said, smiling.

  Henry abandoned his cereal and plopped himself into Jude’s lap. “Last night was fun, wasn’t it?”

  Jude looked at me warily.

  I shrugged and sighed. There wasn’t much we could do about it now. If we got caught, we got caught. “It was, Henry, wasn’t it? But I don’t think we’ll do something like that ever again, okay?”

  Everyone nodded except CJ. I knew he would gladly relive last night if he could.

  Mom and May returned, and Jude and I managed to slip outside while CJ, Bo, and Henry gorged themselves on more cereal, eating bowl after bowl and betting each other on who could eat the most.

  We crept down the porch stairs, avoiding the creaky second step, and went to help at the library. I filled Jude in on what I’d read of the manuscript the night before.

  “Orion’s Belt. That means the manuscript and the letters probably belong to the same person. I bet as I keep reading I’ll find even more evidence.”

  “Cool. So after our near-death experience have you given up on befriending Old Man Folger? Or at least that he wrote the story?” Jude asked. He kicked at a stray pinecone, causing a squirrel to skitter up a nearby tree.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.” I hadn’t thought that becoming friends with Ben Folger would be this hard or this scary. In The Secret Garden, it had been pretty easy for Mary Lennox to befriend Colin. But Colin was a cranky boy, not a grumpy potential murderer.

  Nothing could have prepared me for what happened an hour later when I saw Ben Folger walking toward the library stairs. Plain as day.

  My fingers froze around a new copy of Charlotte’s Web.

  He knew! He knew that Jude and I had been at his house the night before.

  And now he was coming for us.

  My legs went noodle-y, and when I reached for Jude’s arm, all that came out was a high-pitched squeak.

  “What?” he asked, looking up from the book he was helping catalogue into the computer.

  I think I motioned to the door, but I wasn’t sure. I followed Jude’s gaze out the window.

  Footsteps tromp-scuffle-tapped up the library stairs.

  Jude’s eyes grew wide, and he squeezed my hand so hard I thought he was going to break one of my knuckles.

  Ben Folger. I had definitely seen right.

  “Hello?” His gruff voice broke the quiet.

  I couldn’t move. I wanted to, but I couldn’t.

  Mom, kneeling beside a box of books, turned and flashed a warm smile. “Hello.”

  Miss Jenny stood up, her chair screeching on the newly finished floor. “I’m sorry, but the library isn’t open just yet. We’re doing some renovations. We’ll be having a reopening party in about two weeks if you want to come back then. Otherwise, the library at the high school is open for the community.”

  My noodle-y legs melted beneath me and I ducked down farther, wishing the stack of books was taller so that I could hide behind it.

  Ben Folger nodded and kept his eyes cast down to the floor. Sweat gathered on his forehead, and he rubbed his hands on his dirty jeans. He looked more nervous than a squirrel trapped in a doghouse. “I used to be a librarian here, years ago. My name’s …” He coughed into his hand. “My name’s Ben Folger.”

  Miss Jenny smiled again. “Oh, hello, Mr. Folger. Yes, of course. I’m Miss Dunghop, though please call me Miss Jenny. And this is Mrs. Fowler.” She gestured toward Mom, who stuck out her hand as well.

  “It’s very nice to meet you. My husband is the one outside with the sander.” Mom pointed over at me, revealing my pitiful hiding spot. “That’s my daughter Sunday and her friend Jude.”

  An awkward silence hung in the air.

  “Is there something I can do for you?” Mom asked.

  He ran his thick hands through his white hair. “I’ve seen a lot of kids running around here.”

  “Yes,” Mom said a little more warily. She shot me a what-has-CJ-done-now look, then turned back to him. “I hope that my son CJ hasn’t been bothering you.”

  Ben Folger’s ice-blue eyes landed on me. He knew it was me who had been at his house. My stomach twisted. “No, no, ma’am. But some sort of animal got into my flower bed last night and trampled my daisies. I was wondering if maybe I could borrow two of your kids for a few days to help me fix the damage? They’ll be turning and tilling the soil in the old flower bed and helping me start two others. What with my arthritis and hip, I can’t do nearly as much. I’ll give them lunch and won’t keep them too long. I’d … I’d really appreciate it.”

  Jude knocked me hard with his elbow and I winced.

  Please say no. Please say no, I wished. But wait. This is what I wanted, right? A chance to talk to Ben Folger. He obviously knew that it was me in his garden last night. He just wasn’t telling. Was he going to take us over to his house and make us dig up the old bones he’d buried? Or maybe—I gulped—we would be forced to dig graves for new bones.

  “Sunday?” Mom said, interrupting thoughts of being forced to eat a dead squirrel.

  “Yeah, sorry. What?”

  “How about it? Why don’t you and Jude go over and help Mr. Folger? I think Miss Jenny and I can handle the rest of the cataloguing for today. Jude, I’ll let your mom know and come and get you if she says no. Sunday, I want you back in time for dinner, okay?”

  “Thank you,” Ben Folger said, and then tromped out the door. “Follow me.”

  I turned to Mom with a “now what?” look on my face, and she gestured for us to scoot out the door after him. “You two behave and be polite,” she whispered.

  Jude and I walked side by side, following ten steps behind the old man. Even though he had his cane, he didn’t seem to have any sort of arthritis or hip problems that I could see.

  “What’ll we do now?” Jude whispered. “He’s gonna kill us. I just know it.”

  “I don’t think he will,” I said, sounding braver than I felt. “Besides, my mom knows where we are, and I can scream real loud if I need to.”

  CJ, Bo, and Henry saw us and huddled together by the old oak tree to watch us pass. They stared at Ben Folger, who didn’t give them the time of day.

  “You’re not really going to go with him, are you?” CJ asked, following behind us.

  “We have to,” I said.

  “But, Sunday,” Bo whispered, grabbing my hand. “He’ll kill you or make you eat raw meat.”

  CJ laughed grimly. “That’s just the beginning.”

  “Shh, CJ. You’re scaring Bo and Henry.” I pried my hand out of my little brother’s small-but-firm grip. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back before dinner.”

  I think. Gulp.

  CJ pulled Henry and Bo off to the side, placing his hand over his heart like a salute.

  “Can I have your iPod if you don’t come back?” he called after me.

  I turned around and glared, then continued on. Ben Folger didn’t slow for a moment. Jude and I looked at each other. I wanted to reach for his hand but couldn’t bring myself to do it. I felt like Dorothy going to get the broomstick from the Wicked Witch of the West. Eating raw meat and/or dying in a damp, dark basement was not my idea of making my mark on the world.

  Ben Folger waited for us by the flower bed where we’d crouched in the dark the night before. Our footprints were still visible in the soil and there was a sad, trampled patch of flowers, broken and torn at their stems.

  “Before I feed you raw squirrel, I might as well get some work out of you,” he said gruffly, handing me a trowel and Jude a small spade. “When you’re done fixing this bed, you can add two new beds on either side of the walkway. Turn the soil an
d then till it. What you don’t get done today, you can do tomorrow, and the next.”

  Jude and I both nodded, then watched as he walked up the stairs to his house and opened the door. He turned around just before he disappeared inside. “Well, what are you waiting for?”

  Jude and I tilled and shoveled and tilled and shoveled till I thought my arm was going to fall off. Sweat slid down my forehead and dripped into my eyes.

  After what felt like forever, Ben Folger came out, leaving behind two glasses filled with bright pink liquid and two paper plates with a sandwich on each.

  “Eat,” was all he said, then disappeared inside again.

  Jude and I set down our shovel and tiller, washed our hands and faces with a nearby hose, and then sat down in the grass with our lunches. We looked at each other.

  “Do you think it’s safe?” Jude asked. A fly landed on the plate and he brushed it away. His stomach grumbled.

  Would I know the smell of dead squirrel or poison? I shrugged and picked up the sandwich, bringing it to my nose. Peanut butter and jelly. Grape. I guessed it was nonorganic peanut butter. “It smells okay.”

  Jude sniffed the liquid in the cups. “Poisoned, I think.”

  Our stomachs grumbled again.

  “I don’t think he’d risk poisoning us, and it’s definitely not raw squirrel.” I picked up the sandwich, sighed, closed my eyes, and took a bite.

  I chewed and swallowed, chewed and swallowed. It was a pretty good sandwich. Actually it was probably the best peanut butter and jelly sandwich I’d ever eaten. Jude licked his lips as he anxiously watched me eat, like any moment I might drop dead right in front of him.

  I shrugged. “It’s really good.”

  That was all the encouragement he needed. He grabbed his sandwich and devoured it in a few bites.

  “You’re right,” he said, his voice sticky with peanut butter. “It’s really good.”

  I picked up the glass. “This is probably pink lemonade.” I took a swig, my cheeks tightening and my lips puckering at the sour sweetness.

  “What?”

  I took a smaller sip, feeling the grains of sugary powder on my tongue. “It’s tart. I think he just put in too much lemonade mix and not enough water.”

  Jude looked up at the house. “Or it’s poisoned.”

  “It’s not poisoned, Jude. My mom said he was probably just a lonely old man.”

  “A lonely old man who poisons kids with lemonade.”

  Jude was hopeless. I drank the rest just to prove that nothing was wrong with it and took my plate and glass to the porch. “Now, hurry up. I want to finish one side of the walkway and then we can talk to him about … something.”

  Jude nodded, brought the glass to his lips, and barely let a dribble touch his mouth. Then he set his plate and glass on the porch as well, licking a blob of peanut butter off his finger.

  Tilling and shoveling a brand-new bed along the walkway was a lot harder than redoing the two beds underneath the windows. We barely finished the first when Jude checked his watch.

  “We should probably go now, Sunday,” he said, swiping a hand across his forehead. “It’s almost five.”

  I stood, my back and neck and arms and legs and everywhere in between stiff from being hunkered over the ground for most of the day. I dusted my hands on my shorts. At some point, Old Ben Folger had snuck out to grab the paper plates and glasses and then snuck back inside.

  I set down my shovel against the side of the house. Though my heart was beating fast inside my chest, I wasn’t about to give up the opportunity to talk to him. I couldn’t.

  “Sunday? What are you doing?” Jude whispered loudly, his hair wet with sweat and his face streaked with dirt. “Let’s just go.”

  “I’ve got to talk to him, Jude.”

  Before I lost my nerve, I walked up the path to the steps.

  “Sunday,” Jude said, “I don’t think you should.”

  I stood up tall and rapped hard on the door.

  Footsteps scuffled along the floor, then the curtain on the door was pulled to the side and Ben Folger’s sour old face peered out at me. He let the curtain fall and opened the door.

  “Yes?” his voice was quiet, but I could tell that he wasn’t too pleased I was standing there.

  “Umm …” I realized I should’ve prepared something to say. He started to shut the door, but I pressed my hand against it. “Thanks for the sandwiches.”

  He nodded. “You’re welcome. I’m … I’m not used to making lunches for kids.”

  “It was good. And we finished tilling one of the new flower beds. And—” Think, Sunday, think. I peered behind him into his house and noticed the bookshelf I had seen last night. “Books!” I blurted out.

  “What?”

  “Um … I see you like books. I do, too. I read all the time. I even won a contest in my school for reading the most books. I’ll probably win this summer, too. Since we’ve been here I’ve already read The Secret Garden again, a Nancy Drew book, and Princess Academy.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Could I … could I look at them?” Did I really just say that? I must’ve, because there he was, opening the door wider so I could come in.

  “I suppose. Just be careful.”

  I gulped, turned to look at Jude, whose face was pale, and then stepped inside. It smelled like pine trees and cinnamon. I walked past the piano and the small table where a cup sat alongside an empty cellophane wrapper. Maybe he’d just eaten one of the chocolate cupcakes that Muzzy said he liked. There was also a book, flipped over with a small bookmark sticking out from the top of the pages.

  I recognized the back cover because it was the same as the one that sat on the nightstand in my room. Lee Wren’s The Life and Death of Birds.

  “I just started reading this book,” I said, reaching for it.

  Ben Folger rushed forward and grabbed it.

  I jerked my hand away. “Oh, sorry.”

  His wrinkled cheeks flushed red and he looked down at the book, tucking the bookmark inside the pages so that it disappeared. “I … don’t want to lose my place.”

  I could tell he was embarrassed. “I’m the same way. I hate it when my brothers lose my place.”

  He didn’t look up but nodded with a hint of a smile.

  “I like the book so far. What part are you on?”

  His smile grew. “When Hunter’s father finds the bird in the backyard.”

  I nodded. “Hmm, I’m not there yet. I’m only on chapter two, when Aunt Sierra arrives at the house.”

  Ben Folger gave me a quick smile. Without the scowl plastered on his face, he looked almost kind. Sort of like a face that loved stories like I did. And one that I bet had stories to tell.

  The dinner triangle clanged from across the field. My mom had been forgiving the other day but probably wouldn’t be a second time.

  “Sunday!” Jude called from the doorway.

  “I’m coming.” I turned to Ben Folger. “I better go.”

  “Yes,” he said, and followed after me to the front door. “I’ll see you both tomorrow.”

  Jude and I walked quietly down the walkway and out of the gate. From there, we burst into a run, dashing through the tall weeds in the field and flushing out a flock of small blackbirds.

  “So what in the world did you do in there?” Jude pushed out through gasps of air. “See any bones?”

  “No. I talked to him about books,” I said. “He’s reading the same book I am right now, isn’t that crazy?”

  “He’s crazy.”

  We stopped in front of my house. “He isn’t,” I said. “And I’ll prove it to you. Tomorrow we’ll both go in and talk to him. Unless you’re scared.”

  Jude started off toward his house. “I’m not scared. I just have more brains than you do.”

  I laughed. “Tomorrow, Jude!”

  Bo dashed out from behind the house and wrapped his arms around my waist. “Sunday’s here. See, CJ! I told you she’d make it back al
ive.”

  “Of course I’m alive,” I said.

  He pulled away and grabbed on to my hand, leading me into the backyard. “CJ was making a grave for you.”

  “Really?”

  “Henry and me were in charge of taking away the dirt.”

  We reached CJ, who was streaked with mud and looking a little disappointed to see me.

  “I told you,” Bo said. “And look, Sunday, I picked that piece of wood for your gravestone.”

  “Don’t worry,” CJ said, digging his shovel into the ground again. “I was gonna write something nice.”

  I examined the large hole—more deep than it was long. “Wow, thanks, CJ.” I let the sarcasm drip off my words.

  He shrugged and pressed the shovel into the earth. “Sure thing.”

  “You know you still have a lot of digging to do, right? I mean, no one can fit in there.”

  “Well, I thought that maybe we’d bury you feetfirst. You know, have your head sticking up out of the ground. It would completely freak people out.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Come on, guys. Mom rang the triangle a few minutes ago. If we don’t hurry, we’ll have more graves to dig.”

  After dinner, standing on the porch, I found myself torn between sneaking away to my room to read or dancing around in the cool grass, catching fireflies.

  “Come on, Sunday,” Bo said, pulling me down the stairs. “Let’s see who can catch the most.”

  I glanced up at my bedroom window imagining myself sinking onto my pillow, book in hand, surrounded by nothing but quiet and words. I sighed. I didn’t want to dash around in the dark right now. It seemed … silly.

  I started to sneak away, unnoticed by Bo, who I could barely see in the deepening dusk, when a firefly blinked in front of my eyes. Smiling, I reached for it, plopping it into my jar as I had done every summer since I could remember. “I caught one!” I called out.

  But watching the bug crawling up the sides of the jar didn’t feel exciting like it had every other summer when I caught fireflies. Instead of placing my hand protectively over the lid, I watched as the small bug perched on the lip of the jar, spread its wings, and then buzzed off. I followed it for a moment as it blinked once or twice more until it blended in with the rest of the flashing lights.