The Spy Catchers of Maple Hill

by Megan Frazer Blakemore

  Hazel blushed. “Oh, that was about what I’d expected.”

  Mr. Jones raised his eyebrows. “Was it, now?”

  “Yes,” she said, nodding as if that would make it more true. “Where’d you get the limp?” she asked.

  “I joined the army. I went abroad—back to Poland of all places—and got hurt.”

  “Were you shot? Did you find yourself behind enemy lines, alone and afraid?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing like that. I’m no war hero. We were trying to repair a broken bridge and some materials fell on my leg. About near crushed it.”

  “Oh,” Hazel said, unable to hide the disappointment in her voice.

  “Now I have a question for you,” he said. “Fair is fair, after all.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Why do you spend all your time here in this graveyard?”

  “I’ve got nowhere else to be. No one else to see.”

  “You’ve got that boy,” he said. “Why else would we be doing all this work?”

  She let that settle in a little. “Some people think that Samuel is about to break. And I guess I don’t have a history of being too careful with things.”

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “I think he’s stronger than people give him credit for. But I think maybe they’re right about me.”

  “Well, then, it seems to me that you ought to let Samuel decide for himself what he wants to do. And as for you, there’s no rule that you have to stay the same way forever.”

  Hazel patted the dirt down around the base of the flowers. “I don’t know how else to be.”

  “It’s not a how else,” he said. He dug the edge of the shovel into the ground. “It seems to me like you’re a smart girl, but maybe you get ahead of yourself.” He looked at her meaningfully. “Like maybe you make up some stories about people you don’t even know, and get so wrapped up in them you can’t see the truth when it’s right in front of you.”

  Hazel kept patting the ground even though it was perfectly flat. She had always thought that she was exceptionally good at seeing the truth of things even when no one else could—especially when no one else did.

  “But it’s that first part that’s important. You’re smart, Hazel. Use that brain of yours. Think before you act.” He stood up and brushed his hands off on his pants. “Like this. This is thinking.”

  “Really?”

  “I wish someone’d done something like this for me and Alice, I can tell you that much,” he said. “Now go get changed; you have a funeral to run.”

  Hazel’s invitation list had started small: Samuel, Mrs. Sinclair, Miss Lerner and Mrs. Angus from the library, and her parents. Plus Samuel’s grandmother, but that was just out of politeness and she felt certain Mrs. Switzer wouldn’t come. As she’d made her preparations, though, her list had grown. When she emerged from the cottage wearing a black skirt and white blouse, the whole group was gathered by the cemetery gates, dressed in black as she’d instructed. As she’d expected, though, Mrs. Switzer wasn’t there. Samuel stood in the center, dwarfed by all the adults, looking small and alone.

  “Follow me,” she said. Miss Lerner gave her a warning look. If her eyes were telegraphs, they would be signaling, “He doesn’t need this silliness.” But Hazel ignored her and led the group to the grave where Mr. Jones stood next to Father Paul. Mr. Jones, too, was now dressed in black. In his suit, Hazel thought he was almost handsome, in a Humphrey Bogart sort of a way.

  “Dearly beloved,” Father Paul intoned. The adults shifted their feet. Hazel glanced at Mr. Jones, who nodded in encouragement. “We are gathered here today to say good-bye to Randy Butler.”

  Samuel blinked rapidly.

  “Randy was taken from us many years ago, but those of us in Maple Hill who knew him never had a chance to formally mourn his passing. Thanks to Hazel, we now have that chance. I’d like to begin with a passage from Psalms. ‘The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed.’ As we pay our respects to Randy, his family—both those who are here and those who cannot be—they should know that the Lord is always with us, especially in times of sorrow. We cannot always see him, but we can see those who do his work.” He turned to Hazel. “I believe you’ve arranged for some eulogies.”

  Hazel pulled out a sheet of paper, the results of her investigation. Some people remembered him as Miss Lerner had, but others had different stories. The paper rustled in her hands as she began speaking. “Randy Butler was a good man,” she said. “He liked to work on cars with his best friend, Charlie Wall.” Mr. Wall nodded. Hazel turned next to Mrs. Buttersbee, who was holding on tight to Mr. Jones’s arm. “In the winter, he would shovel the driveway for his neighbor Mrs. Buttersbee. In the summer he’d pick the blackberries from her bushes and she’d make him jam.”

  Mrs. Buttersbee said, “He always said it was the best jam he’d ever tasted.”

  “He liked to drive out to the quarry and go swimming in the summer, too, and he was never afraid to jump from the highest ledges. He liked to go to the library and read books with Mrs. Angus about folks caught out in the wilderness.”

  Mrs. Angus stepped forward. She had a book wrapped in brown paper. “This was one of his favorites,” she said, and handed it to Samuel. Samuel took it and held it close to his small body.

  “He took care of his dad, who couldn’t take care of himself.” Hazel was afraid to look at Samuel. She thought she heard him crying. “And he loved Lacey Switzer. And Lacey Switzer loved him.” Hazel turned then to Mrs. Rushby, who had tears in her eyes. The smell of smoke from the chimney of the house filtered out to them.

  Mrs. Rushby cleared her throat. “I lived next door to Lacey Switzer and she was like a little sister I never had.” She looked at Miss Lerner and at Hazel’s mom. “I still remember the night Lacey came and told me she’d kissed Randy. I thought she was pulling my leg because they were so different. But then she started talking to me about his eyes, and his hands, and a poem he had read to her, and I knew she was in love.” Mrs. Rushby rubbed her eyes. “They planned to get married, even before you were in the picture, Samuel. You need to know that your parents loved each other. They were excited to get married. Lacey was excited to have you, and I’m sure your father would have been over the moon. I didn’t know your dad well, but I do know that he didn’t mean to leave you behind. That if he could be here, he would. And so would your mom. If she could.”

  As Mrs. Rushby spoke, Hazel heard someone crunching through the leaves behind her. She turned and there was Mrs. Switzer, dressed in black and holding a white carnation.

  Samuel stood at the foot of the grave, his head tilted down, but Hazel could still see the tears on his face. His body shook but he made no sound. Maybe she had made a terrible mistake. Maybe this was all wrong.

  Mrs. Switzer stepped forward then. She leaned over, shaking a bit, and placed the carnation on the grave. Then she turned, and Samuel fell into her arms and she hugged him close.

  Hazel’s parents walked around and held Hazel to them just as tightly. Her mom was crying. This was not how she had pictured it at all. All this crying, all this emotion raw on people’s faces. She wanted it to be a proper funeral, just like Samuel had asked for. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry, I thought this would help. I thought—”

  “I know,” her mother said. “You did good.”

  38

  City of the Dead

  From her perch in the tree Hazel could see the site of Samuel’s father’s grave. The chrysanthemums stood out against the grass like bright bits of confetti, and Hazel wondered if she had made the wrong choice in the yellows, oranges, and purples. She should have done something quiet and sophisticated, like white snapdragons.

  She pulled one knee up and put her foot flat on the tree branch, then she put her cheek on her knee. She figured if someone saw her from afar, this position would show them just how melancholic she was. But there was no one to see her. Everyone had gone home
.

  The funeral had seemed like a terrific idea. She had wanted to give Samuel a chance to say good-bye. A funeral with folks talking about his dad, just like he had said. She’d wanted him to be able to see his father as others had seen him. But instead she had just made him sad.

  She heard a rustling and looked down to see her father climbing the tree. The top of his head was shiny and pink where he didn’t have any hair. “Dad?” she asked.

  He looked up through smudged glasses. “Just a sec,” he grunted. In a moment he was sitting on a branch opposite her, his arm wrapped tightly around the tree trunk. “This used to be my favorite tree to climb, too,” he said.

  “It’s a good climbing tree,” she replied.

  He nodded. “It is.”

  They looked out over Memory’s Garden, at all the headstones and the statues, at the paths and the ponds.

  “When I was about your age, I used to imagine this place as a city. All the headstones were like the homes. The mausoleums were apartment buildings. And at night, I thought, the people would all come out and mingle and play games.”

  “You always said there’s no such thing as ghosts.”

  “I wasn’t imagining them as ghosts so much. It’s hard to explain. I thought of them as people. Real people who came back to life at night.”

  “Like zombies?”

  “No, not zombies. It’s more that they got to resume their lives just as they were.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I’m afraid my imagination was not quite as vivid as yours is. The point is, I used to see things that I took as evidence. I found a baseball once, over by the reflection pool, and was sure that there’d been a ball game the night before. Once I found a woman’s necklace. Or I’d see the ground all trampled. Sometimes I’d even hear them when I was lying in my bed. I was sure that if I could just get to the window fast enough I’d spot them, but I never did.”

  “That’s sad,” she said. She could feel just how disappointed he must have been.

  “Sometimes we want to believe something so badly, we see what we want to see instead of what’s there.”

  Hazel scowled. This sounded like it was coming around to be some sort of lesson. If someone wanted to teach her something, she preferred they just came right out and said it instead of making her puzzle over a story and its deeper meaning. “Sure, Dad,” she said.

  “Then again, maybe if we believe in something enough, maybe it is real.”

  Hazel didn’t reply. She looked down at her foot on the tree branch. Her sneaker was dirty, stained with grass and the root beer she’d convinced her mother to let her have one summer afternoon. She was never able to keep anything neat and clean for long.

  In the neighborhood behind them, a mother called her child home, and the boy replied, “Coming!”

  “You did a nice thing today, Hazel. Your mother and I are both proud of you.”

  “Samuel didn’t like it.”

  “I don’t know about that. He may have just been a little overwhelmed.” He pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

  “Everyone told me he was fragile. I should have been more careful.”

  Her dad shifted his weight on his branch, and all the leaves on the end shook like they were waving good-bye. “I think maybe everyone else has underestimated him. Everyone but you.”

  Hazel lifted her head to look at her dad. He was staring right back at her with his dark brown eyes. “You think?” she asked.

  “I do,” he said.

  They were silent for a moment and then her dad laughed and shook his head.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I have no idea how I’m going to get down from here.”

  “Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll show you.”

  39

  Simple Gifts

  Samuel didn’t come to school for most of the week after the funeral, and she could feel the space between them opening like a huge mouth ready to swallow her up. As Mrs. Sinclair talked to them about the solar system, and what made a planet, she wondered if she would ever see him again. Maybe he had run away, back to his mother, or to someplace new altogether. She could see him with his satchel and his strange clothes standing at the side of the road with his thumb out, hitching a ride to a new town, one where people didn’t open up your wounds and pour salt in them.

  He appeared, though, the night of the music concert. They sat backstage, side by side, while a first-grade class sang “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” onstage. Neither of them said anything and Hazel felt like she was being pulled into the chasm between them. She never didn’t have something to say.

  Maryann and Connie sat by their glockenspiels. In the end, Mr. Short had caved in. He’d answered the committee’s questions, and given up the names of a few fellow workers who had once been in the Communist Party, and so he got a transfer to a plant down in Georgia. The investigators had packed up shortly after without finding anything or giving out any more names. Hazel thought that the other moms ought to have apologized to her mother, but of course they didn’t. It was like Miss Lerner had said—whispers and rumors with nothing to them.

  Now that Connie’s family had to leave, she and Maryann were friends again, with Maryann declaring it a huge injustice that her best friend be taken from her. They cried daily, it seemed. For the concert they both had their hair pulled back with ribbons and wore brand-new dresses. Hazel was wearing last year’s party dress again, and it pinched her under the arms. Timmy sat next to Maryann, pink and quiet, as Maryann babbled on. So even though the spirits hadn’t spoken, Timmy had gotten the message. And even though Hazel had no interest in Timmy, she was jealous. Because Maryann got exactly what she wanted. Because everything with Maryann was easy. Because Maryann wasn’t sitting next to her best friend paralyzed and afraid to say the wrong thing.

  Timmy said something, and then Maryann turned and glared at them. “What are you staring at, triangle girl?” she hissed.

  Connie added, “Ding, ding.”

  Hazel tightened her grip on her triangle.

  “Ignore them,” Samuel said. “They’re stupid.”

  She nodded. She wanted to say something else. She wanted to say anything, but the words all died on her tongue. Mrs. Ferrigno came back and began ushering them onto the stage, and it was the only time in her life that she would ever be grateful to see Mrs. Ferrigno.

  The lights were on them, and there was a hush all around. Hazel hadn’t realized how hot it would be, how the lights shimmered off the metal on the instruments, so it looked like camera flashes were going off all around her. She tried to see her parents, but couldn’t find them among the blurry faces in the crowd.

  Mrs. Ferrigno stood in front of them and began conducting. It was the best they’d ever played, even Hazel could tell that. Her heart beat faster as they got closer to her part. Samuel elbowed her, they dinged, and the song went on. She let out her breath. Just one more ding and this all would be over. No more triangle people.

  Samuel’s foot was twitching and he shifted in his seat. Hazel wondered if he had to go to the bathroom. Mrs. Ferrigno had warned them to go before they got up on the stage. Twice. “You never know how nerves might pluck your strings!”

  Hazel tightened her grip on her rod. Their next ding was coming up. She counted the measures. One, two, three, four, then another measure, one, two, three, four, and—

  Samuel stood up. “Triangle solo!” he yelled out, and began banging on his triangle.

  Hazel, flabbergasted, stared up at him. Come on, he mouthed. So she stood up, too. There are only so many notes that you can play on a triangle, and Samuel and Hazel used them all, dancing around as they hit the different parts of their triangles. Hazel felt her mouth stretching into a grin so wide it hurt her lips. Together and in perfect sync, they dinged out the entire song. She wished she could see the crowd, their reactions. She looked at Samuel, and he was grinning, too. They probably looked like a couple of lunatics. He nodded at her, she nod
ded back, and they sat down.

  The class stared at them, mouths agape. Mrs. Ferrigno, though, tapped her music stand, brought the eyes of the class back to her, and picked up where they’d left off, all the while glaring fire at Hazel and Samuel.

  When the song was done, the crowd clapped and Hazel couldn’t be sure, but it felt a little more enthusiastic than it had for the other groups.

  As soon as they got off stage, Samuel grabbed her hand and pulled her into the hallway. They hid in a little nook under the stairs.

  “We can hold off our execution until tomorrow,” he said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked. “I could have prepared something.”

  “I wasn’t sure if I could go through with it. I didn’t want to disappoint you again. But then Maryann said that triangle people thing, and I knew what I had to do.”

  Hazel smiled and leaned back against the wall. “Triangle solo,” she said, shaking her head. “It really was more of a triangle duet.”

  “It takes two to triangle,” Samuel said.

  “Did you just make a joke, Samuel?” she asked.

  “I mustard a joke,” he replied.

  A silence fell over them, a tingly kind of silence that seemed to anticipate something that neither of them was quite aware of. Samuel still had his triangle and he twisted his fingers around it.

  “I wanted to talk to you about the funeral,” Samuel said.

  Hazel’s stomach sank into the toes of her navy blue Mary Janes, which her mother had insisted she wear. “Samuel, I—”

  “I just wanted to thank you.”

  “Thank me?”

  “It was the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

  “I thought you hated it. You were crying. I thought you had left town and you were never going to come back and that would mean that in less than two months I would have lost two best friends and, frankly, I just don’t think that’s a very good track record.”