by Delia Ray
I knew it was cruel to leave her happiness hanging in the air. I knew I should take her hand or say something, but my mouth had filled with the taste of dust, and I could smell the mildew, sickening and sweet, rising from the worn Oriental carpets, seeping into my skin and my clothes. How was I supposed to tell her Dad was dead? And what did she expect from me? Did she expect me to jump up and give her a big hug and call her Grandma?
I had started to scrape the letters and pictures back into a messy pile. “Thank you,” I babbled. “Thanks for showing me these and telling me your story.” I rose awkwardly from the table, almost sending my chair toppling backward. Miss Raintree looked up at me in shocked dismay. “I’m sorry,” I blurted out. “I think … I think I need a little fresh air.” I began edging toward the doorway. Delaney looked startled too. She was getting to her feet uncertainly.
“Will you come again soon?” Miss Raintree pleaded. “Will you talk to your father?”
“I …”
I couldn’t tell her the truth right now. I had to get out. “I’ll come again soon,” I said weakly. “I promise.” Then I turned and bolted. I could hear Delaney making apologies and saying goodbye behind me as I rushed through the house, trying to remember the way to my grandmother’s back door.
DELANEY ALMOST HAD TO JOG to catch up with me on our walk back to the bus stop on Grand Avenue. She must have known that I might start bawling or something if I didn’t keep marching forward. She didn’t ask me to slow down.
“Linc,” she panted as she hurried along, “are you okay?”
I nodded, but I kept staring down at the sidewalk in front of my feet. She stayed quiet for another block before testing my spirits again. “You got yourself a grandma,” she said softly.
“Yep. I got a grandma, all right,” I finally said, slowing my pace. “Not exactly the model I would have ordered from the catalog, but I’m guessing in this case the no-returns policy applies.”
Delaney brushed off my meanness with a flip of her hand. “Oh, you’re just overwhelmed right now,” she reassured me. “Once you’ve had time to let this sink in, you’ll start to feel better.” When I didn’t answer, Delaney kept musing on her own. “I liked her. She told you the truth, exactly like it happened, instead of trying to sugarcoat things because you’re a kid.… I even liked her house. All it needs is a good cleaning and a coat of paint or two.…”
Delaney ignored my skeptical look. We had made it to the bus stop. I flopped down on the metal bench and let my head loll back. Somehow I was surprised to see that the sky was the same bright blue as it had been an hour ago. To me it seemed like whole seasons had come and gone since we’d arrived on Fulton Lane. “But how am I supposed to go back there and tell her that her long-lost son is dead?” I moaned up at the branches overhead.
“It’ll be hard,” Delaney agreed as she sat down beside me. “That’s why you can’t wait too long. The longer you wait, the harder it’ll be.”
I sighed. “I can’t even imagine how Lottie’s going to react to all this.” The ugly scene in the attic flashed into my mind.
“Well, one thing’s for sure,” Delaney said, reaching down to give my hand a quick squeeze. “With the news you’ve got, I bet you won’t have any problem getting your mother to listen this time.”
I couldn’t help smiling. Delaney had actually held my hand, even if it lasted only a second or two. And she was right—this discovery about Dad’s real mother wasn’t the kind of thing Lottie could close up in some box in the attic.
I felt the tiniest ripple of excitement deep down in my chest. I’d always been jealous of kids who lived in the same town with a whole pack of aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents. Even if Adeline Raintree wasn’t the grandmother I would have ordered, it might be really nice to set a third place at our table now and then.
It was almost dusk by the time I made it back to Claiborne Street. I didn’t have a chance to keep worrying about how I would break the news to Lottie. The bus driver had just closed the door behind me when I spotted my mother coming down the block. C.B. and Spunky were with her. I started to call out but then stopped when I saw her expression. There was no mistaking what kind of mood my mother was in. Her lips were pressed into a thin line, and she jerked on the dogs’ leashes, trying to yank them out of their tug-of-war game.
Before I could even say hello, she was fussing at me. “Lincoln! Where have you been?” Her voice crackled with irritation as the dogs dragged her toward me. “C.B. was beside himself when I got home from work, and Mr. Krasny has called three times, wondering why you hadn’t come to walk Spunky.”
“I’m sorry,” I said as I reached down to greet the dogs. “I forgot to tell him I’d be late today.”
“Well, where have you been?” she demanded again.
“I went with Delaney to—”
“Delaney? Delaney who?”
I closed my eyes for an instant. I needed to keep calm. “Delaney Baldwin, Mom. I’ve told you about her.… Anyway,” I said with a huff, “you’ll never believe what happened this afternoon.”
Lottie wasn’t listening. Spunky had started barking at some guy who had banged out of the house across the street, dressed head to toe in black leather. I almost had to shout to be heard over all his yapping. “Lottie! I’m trying to tell you something.”
Lottie let out an angry grunt as Spunky lunged forward. Now the guy in leather was climbing on a giant motorcycle parked in his driveway. “Listen, Linc,” she snapped as she wrestled Spunky away from the curb. “I don’t like what’s going on here. I’m starting to think that enrolling you at Plainview was a huge mistake. Ever since you started there, you’ve been different. You’re gone all the time with all these new friends I’ve never met, and you come home acting surly and defiant.”
Even with Lottie ranting, I couldn’t stop watching the man across the street. He kept stomping on his kick-start pedal. It took him five or six tries to get his Harley to splutter to life. “Like Monday, for instance!” Lottie’s voice had turned sharper. “You disappeared for hours. Then you stormed into the house with no explanation. And now this! You’re three hours late on a school night and you’ve forgotten all about your obligations to Mr. Krasny.”
“What are you saying, Lottie?” I burst out. “What do you want me to do? You want me to quit Plainview right now? You really think that would be a good idea?”
Lottie cast a look up at the darkening sky in exasperation as the motorcycle man revved his engine. “I don’t know, Linc,” she cried out. “All I’m saying is that I might have to consider moving you back to your old school if this unpredictable behavior of yours continues.”
My insides clenched. “You wouldn’t do that,” I said. “You can’t!”
Her face turned hard. “Don’t push me, Linc,” she threatened in a voice I didn’t recognize. Spunky gave another lunge toward the curb. “Now will you take this crazy dog before he tears my arm out of the socket?”
I snatched both leashes from her hands. “I can’t even talk to you about what’s really going on. Every time I try, you don’t want to hear it.”
At last the man was maneuvering out of his driveway. Lottie waited with her teeth gritted until he had sped off with an obnoxious roar. “What do you mean, what’s really going on?” she asked suspiciously. Her question rang out in the sudden quiet. “Tell me. I’m all ears.”
I stood staring into her blazing eyes, listening to the whine of the Harley’s engine fade into the distance, and I could feel the last traces of electricity from my wild afternoon fizzle away like a blown fuse.
“Well?” Lottie repeated, more impatient than ever. “What do you have to tell me?”
“Nothing,” I said as I pulled the dogs in the opposite direction from home. “Never mind.”
• • •
When I finally showed up on his doorstep with Spunky, Mr. Krasny was too preoccupied to bother asking where I’d been all afternoon. “Oh, good. You’re here,” he said. “Come inside for
a minute, son. I have to show you what I’ve found.”
Mr. Krasny led me back to his kitchen, pumping his frail little arms as he shuffled along. If I had been in better spirits, I would have smiled at how spry he had suddenly become. But I was still reeling from my fight with Lottie. What if she was serious about making me quit Plainview? I could already imagine the I-told-you-so look on Sebastian’s face when I showed up on the Ho-Hos’ doorstep.
Mr. Krasny motioned me over to his kitchen table, where six or seven red leather volumes were spread open and scattered across the Formica top. I recognized them from the day he had shown me the bound collection of the Slovan Americký in his living room. “I knew Tatínek’s old Czech newspapers would come in handy someday,” Mr. Krasny said. He smoothed his hand fondly across the yellowed pages of one of the volumes. “My sister tried to talk me into donating them to the Czech museum in Cedar Rapids. But I wouldn’t hear of it.”
I went to stand beside him and peer down at the hodgepodge of foreign headlines splattered across the page. “So what did you find?” I asked, hoping he would tell me something interesting to take my mind off my crazy afternoon for a while.
Mr. Krasny poked his knobby finger at one of the newspaper articles, which was only a paragraph long—and then traced a path underneath the words in the headline. “What does that say?” he asked me.
I coughed out a laugh. “Sorry, Mr. Krasny. I speak a little French, but that’s about it. For all I know, this could be Sanskrit.”
He smiled mischievously at me over the top of his glasses. “Take another look.”
I bent down until my nose was a few inches from the paper—close enough to get a good whiff of the dry, dusty pages—and then I tried to pronounce a few of the words.
“Pohovor s … Terezií … Doležalovou.” I stuttered over the last string of syllables. “Terezií,” I repeated, standing up with a jerk. “Is that Theresa? Theresa Dolezal?”
“Bravo,” he said, giving the air a tiny, satisfied punch. I had never seen him so jolly. “The headline says, ‘An Interview with Theresa Dolezal.’ That was her name, remember, before she married the rich rancher out west.”
He had me curious now. I bent down again to check the date on the top of the newspaper page. “This was published in 1880. So this would have been written just a few years after she came to this country. Way before her son Eddie died. So what’s the article say?”
“It’s quite a coincidence,” he started. “I’m sure my tatínek wrote this story. He used to do little profiles of the Czechs who had immigrated here. Human-interest stories. It was a way to connect people in the community. He would write about the villages where they came from. And someone would realize, ‘Oh, my wife came from the town next door.’ And, like magic, friendships would form.”
He readjusted his glasses and picked up the red leather book. “This article says that Theresa came from a village in Bohemia called Strmilov.”
“I remember that name,” I said. “From Eddie’s obituary in the newspaper I found at the historical society.”
Mr. Krasny nodded, and his wrinkles seemed to multiply as he brooded over the newspaper page, following the words again with his finger. “Well, I haven’t been able to figure out every single phrase. But the piece mainly talks about how much Theresa misses her family back in Bohemia. Her father. Her brothers and sisters … sourozenci.… And how she misses her village. But she needed to leave to make a better life for her son.…” Mr. Krasny shook his head in annoyance. “Just a minute,” he said as he set the volume on the table and reached for his Czech-English dictionary. “Požár,” he mumbled to himself as he thumbed through the pages. “Why can’t I remember požár?”
I crossed my arms restlessly and gnawed my lip.
“Aha!” he finally exclaimed. “Požár means ‘fire.’ ” He plunked the dictionary back on the table and hoisted up the book of newspapers again. “So from what I can gather,” he went on, frowning down at the newsprint, “the people in her village had been devastated by a huge fire. They lost their church and the school and more than a hundred houses—”
“Whoa,” I interrupted with a whoosh of breath. “That does it. She really is cursed.” Mr. Krasny’s eyebrows rose and he blinked back at me, as if he were trying to decide whether I was serious or not.
I was serious, all right. I sat down hard on one of his kitchen chairs. “Don’t you see, Mr. Krasny? How unlucky can a person get? She lost two husbands. She lost two sons. Then a rattlesnake bites her and she loses a leg. And now you’re telling me that she lost her village back in Bohemia on top of everything else?
“And what about that epitaph?” I asked with a little flail of my arms. “ ‘Suffering awaits you.’ I know it sounds crazy. But when you put all the pieces together, it sort of starts to make sense. Theresa had a horrible life, so she decided to get her revenge on the world by building a statue and trying to put a curse on it.”
A smile teased at one corner of Mr. Krasny’s lips as he lowered himself into the chair beside me. “Now, Linc,” he said, “you’re a sensible boy. You honestly believe someone could have the power to put a hex on a statue? To doom anyone who crosses its path?”
I thought for a second. Sure, my theory was a bit far-fetched. And sure, I was probably feeling spooked by Halloween coming up and all the unexpected curveballs I’d been thrown that day. But even Mr. Krasny had to admit that Theresa and Bad Luck seemed to go together like fire and brimstone. “I’m not saying Theresa’s curse ever worked,” I backpedaled, trying to sound more reasonable. “There are tons of stories about what’s happened to people who mess with the Black Angel, but I guess I don’t have any proof. It just makes you wonder, that’s all.”
Mr. Krasny gave up on holding back his chuckle. “Well, if I find anything in Tatínek’s newspapers about Theresa’s black magic, I’ll let you know.” He reached out to give my shoulder a pat, and in a flash I thought of Adeline Raintree—the way she had slid her hand toward me across the table that afternoon. “Really, Mr. Krasny,” I said guiltily, “you don’t have to worry about helping me with my project anymore.” I gestured at the heap of books on the table. “This is so much work.”
“Work?” he fired back. “Nonsense, son. This is the most fun I’ve had in years.” He pushed himself up from the table. “Now you better run along home. Your mother’s probably fit to be tied by now.”
I mustered up a sad smile before I headed out the door. Mr. Krasny was a very wise man.
DARTH VADER, the Grim Reaper, Abraham Lincoln, a princess, a pirate, a couple of hippies from the 1960s—they all started arriving right after sunset the next evening. Until this year, I had always been away from home too on Halloween night. So I had never quite realized how much kids loved trick-or-treating on my street. I guess they thought it was spooky being so close to the graveyard.
I could hear them coming as I sat on the couch in the living room that night, doing my math homework next to C.B. and a big bowl of Dum Dums. They screeched and yelped and ran squealing in herds, moving closer along the sidewalks. By the time they arrived at our dead end, where the shadowy shapes of the tombstones started to materialize in the distance, most kids had worked themselves into a fever of fright. It took C.B. about an hour to calm down, but after that he barely even twitched his long eyebrows whenever someone new came thudding up the porch steps.
I had almost run out of candy when my old Ho-Ho friends, Sebastian and Vladka, showed up at the door, dressed as ancient Egyptians. “Doth he remember us?” Sebastian asked Vladka as I stood surveying their costumes.
“Yes, I think he doth,” Vladka played along with her old sly smile and soft voice. Her eyes were rimmed in heavy black liner, and she had made a headdress out of glittery gold fabric. She could almost have passed for Cleopatra if it hadn’t been for her Russian accent and the purple high-tops peeking out from under her gown.
Sebastian, on the other hand? Except for the matching headdress, which Vladka must have made for him
, he looked about as far from a pharaoh as you could get. “I didn’t know King Tut wore glasses,” I said with a laugh, dropping the last of the Dum Dums into Sebastian’s pillowcase. “And what’s that?” I asked, pointing to the thick yards of ivory material that he had belted around his middle with a bathrobe tie.
Sebastian pushed his glasses up on his nose. “My tunic.”
“His mother’s tablecloth,” Vladka corrected. Her voice slid to a disapproving whisper. “He cut a hole in it, for his head to go through.”
I heard a gasp behind me. It was Lottie, standing in the doorway to the living room. “You didn’t!” she exclaimed as she came over to join us.
“Hello, Professor Landers,” Sebastian said sheepishly.
“It’s good to see you two again.” Lottie beamed. I stood stiffly beside her. She had come out of her office once earlier that evening to ask if I wanted her to take a turn handing out candy.
“No, thanks,” I had said curtly. I could tell she was trying to smooth things over between us. But I wasn’t ready. I hated how she kept blaming Plainview for all the troubles between us. And now she had practically forced me into keeping secrets from her. After what she had threatened, how could I tell her the truth about everything—about stealing the key and getting kicked out of the graveyard and hunting down Dad’s real mother? I might as well book a one-way trip back to the Ho-Hos right now.
Vladka had finally finished giving my mother an update on her latest math competition. “We came to see if Linc wanted to trick-or-treat with us,” she said. “We’re going to one last street. They always have the best candy over on Dover.”
“Great,” Lottie said quickly. “That would be fun, wouldn’t it, Linc?”