Search for the Shadowman

by Joan Lowery Nixon

  Mr. Thomas chuckled. “When I was a kid, a bunch of us went to the cemetery and sat among those old tombstones. We were determined to spend the night, just to prove how brave we were.”

  “Cool,” Andy said. “I didn’t know you spent the night in a cemetery.”

  “Actually, I didn’t. Somebody got the bright idea of telling a really gruesome ghost story, and we all got so scared we went home. It wasn’t even ten o’clock.”

  Andy laughed. “J.J. and I don’t want to go at night. We just want to go after school.”

  His mom broke in. “Bill, that cemetery is awfully isolated—especially the old part. And remember, last year the police arrested some people selling drugs back in there where they thought no one would see them.”

  “Mom thinks we wouldn’t be safe. She wants to go with us.” Andy looked pleadingly at his father.

  Bill Thomas smiled at his wife. “Donna, I don’t think there’s any problem with the boys’ going. It will be broad daylight, and that incident you mentioned is the only time they’ve had any trouble in the cemetery.”

  “Well …” She sighed and said, “Maybe I am being too protective. I suppose I shouldn’t worry.”

  Andy grinned. “That means we can go! Thanks!”

  As he jumped up to clear his plate from the table, his mother asked, “Andy, have you had time to go through all those papers in Miss Winnie’s box?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “There’s an awful lot of stuff in there, and it’s all mixed up.”

  “I know,” she told him, “which is why I thought when you sort through it, you could also catalog it for her.”

  “What?”

  “You know, fasten all the letters together in a bundle, put the receipts of sale and copies of bills in folders, maybe another folder for the children’s drawings and letters.”

  “Mom! That would take forever!”

  “No, it wouldn’t. And it would be a good way to repay Miss Winnie for her kindness in helping you.”

  “I second the motion,” Mr. Thomas said.

  “Okay,” Andy answered. He scraped off his plate and put it into the dishwasher.

  “By the way,” his mother said. “While you’re at the cemetery, look for Malcolm John Bonner’s headstone. It’s not very large, but it’s an unusual dark red. It’s been years since I’ve seen it, but I remember that it struck me at the time that there’s something odd carved on it.”

  “Odd? Like what?” Andy stared at his mother.

  “I don’t remember,” she said. “When you find out, remind me.”

  As she began talking to his father about a sale on men’s shirts at Gaspers’ Department Store, Andy picked up his backpack to go to his room.

  Mr. Thomas looked up. “Going to do your homework? Good.”

  “Dad,” Andy said, “you’ve got AOL and World Wide Web and all that on your computer. Does it have a genealogy board someplace in it, too?”

  “Oh yes. I know of many genealogy sites on the Internet.”

  “Can you show me how to use it?”

  “I will help you. But you’ll have to do the research on your own,” Mr. Thomas said. “You know about Yahoo, right? It’s a great place to start your research on the World Wide Web. Check my favorite places icon, but I think the address is http://www.yahoo.com/. Once the site appears, type genealogy and you’re on your way.” He thought for a moment. “What do you hope to find?”

  “Miz Minna used her genealogy message board to find a couple of cousins she’d never heard of before, who gave her information about some major in the Civil War.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to be as easy as it sounds to turn up relatives.”

  Andy shrugged. “Just let me give it a shot. Okay, Dad?”

  “Of course. Good luck,” his father answered. “But remember, don’t give anyone your name or address. If you have to give a name, stick to a screen name.”

  Once the computer service had connected, Andy typed in his father’s ID and current password, which were printed on a file card tucked under the keyboard.

  He jumped to Yahoo and typed in the keyword, Genealogy. Up came a list of possible choices. Andy groaned. Miz Minna hadn’t told him about all this. His father was right. Research was not easy. After more than an hour, Andy went into AOL and found “United States 1850 to Present.” He clicked on it, pressed enter, and discovered a series of messages from people around the country.

  Someone asked if Oliver Wendell Holmes had ever run for president of the United States. A teacher asked for recommended books about the Cold War and domestic politics since World War II. And someone wrote that in Massachusetts he’d found a memorial stone to Gerrit H. Niver, who was killed in the Custer Massacre at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, but Niver wasn’t listed with Custer’s soldiers. Did anyone have the answer?

  Andy was surprised to read a message that answered the Niver question: Gerrit H. Niver had enlisted under the name of Gerritt von Allen, for some unknown reason, and was indeed killed with Custer in the battle.

  “Cool,” Andy murmured. At the end of the list of messages he clicked on the icon to create a message. As the blank screen came up, Andy wrote, “I’m using my father’s computer for a history report I have to do about people in my family. There’s a mystery person, someone no one will tell me about. His name is Cole Joseph Bonner, although he was known by the name of Coley Joe. He was born in 1856. His parents were Malcolm John and Grace Elizabeth Bonner, and they moved from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Hermosa, Texas, in 1879. Coley Joe’s suspected of stealing his family’s money. I don’t think he did it. If you have any information, please write to me under my screen name, Hunter, at my dad’s e-mail address, listed above. I need to find out more about Coley Joe. I really do.”

  He closed the history message board and clicked on the States, choosing the Texas board as the states’ names came up.

  He read through a number of messages from people trying to locate ancestors, then typed in the same message he had entered in the history board.

  Next, Andy picked the alphabetical listing that would cover Bonner and went into the message board.

  “Looking for John Billings,” the first one read. “Born about 1861, married to Lucille James in Cincinnati, Ohio. Their daughter was Ellen Billings, married to Richard Burke. They were my grandparents, but I have no further information about them, and I can’t find any information. Please contact me by e-mail if you know anything about them.”

  Andy clicked to the next message and read, “I’m looking for anything on my grandma’s sister, Myrtle Bridges. Born 1907, grew up in an orphanage in Virginia. Last news was over fifty years ago when she married an Arthur Davis. My grandma’s name is Emily. Their parents’ names were Dorothy and Edwin Bridges. Please answer by e-mail.”

  The hands of the clock on the desk were moving fast. Andy took a deep breath and added his message a third time. As he clicked on send, he worried that he’d said too much and been too insistent.

  For the next five minutes Andy waited for the mail symbol to appear, which would let him know his message had been answered, but nothing happened.

  Andy disconnected the service, then turned off the computer. He slumped back in the chair. Had he really believed that some kind of magic would pull someone out of the sky to answer his questions about Coley Joe? What he had done made just as much sense as his pleading to be able to go to the cemetery—the last thing on earth he really wanted to do.

  Andy went into the kitchen. I’ve got to outline an essay for English class and do a page of problems in math, he told himself. There’s no way I’ll have time to start organizing the stuff in that box. But he found himself walking to the box and plunging his hands in, wiggling his fingers through the papers to the bottom of the box. The tips of his fingers rubbed against soft leather—a small, rectangular packet—which he pulled out of the box.

  The worn leather, so old it had blackened, was smooth in Andy’s hands. He placed the packet on the counter and
opened it. It was divided into thirds. Tucked into the left-hand side was a cracked and badly faded photograph of a woman, her dark hair pulled tightly back and wound into a coil that rested against her shoulders. She was not smiling. In fact, her eyes looked sad, but there was a wistful softness to her face. She sat upright, facing the camera and clutching a small book in her hands. Andy recognized her. She was older than in the family photograph, but she was definitely Grace Elizabeth Bonner, Coley Joe’s mother.

  He looked at the book she held, then pulled from the box the small poetry book his mother had mentioned. It was too hard to tell, without a magnifying glass, if this was the same book. But Andy was pretty sure the Bonner family hadn’t been able to buy many books.

  Andy had never been very much interested in poetry. Some of it was too hard to figure out. Besides, he thought, if a person had something to say, why not just say it and be done with it? Why hunt around for a word to rhyme it with?

  He put the poetry book back into the box and examined the packet. Inside one fold were official-looking certificates. When Andy had them smoothed out to read, he could see that they were certificates of death. Grace Elizabeth’s, Victoria Grace’s, and Rose Marie’s.

  With a sudden pang, as though these were friends he had known, Andy solemnly refolded the papers, put them where they had been, and closed the packet. As he carefully placed it back inside the box, his fingers touched the poetry book, and he found himself picking it up again.

  I don’t read poetry, Andy reminded himself, but he took the book with him as he headed upstairs to do his homework, placing it on the nightstand next to his bed.

  By bedtime, his head filled with math problems, Andy had forgotten about the book. He wadded his pillow into just the right shape, wiggled and curled into a comfortable ball, and immediately fell asleep.

  Sometime during the night Andy dreamed. This dream wasn’t the hodgepodge that usually ran through his head. As clearly as though it were day, Andy watched a woman pull a chair next to his bed and sit in it. Her dark hair was streaked with gray and fastened tightly into a knot at the back of her neck. She leaned forward, her eyes never leaving Andy’s face. Her gaze was deep, with such an intense pleading that Andy squirmed.

  He recognized the woman from her photograph. She was Grace Elizabeth Bonner.

  With both hands Grace Elizabeth clutched a small book to her chest, as if she were afraid of losing it. But slowly her fingers relaxed, and she held out the book toward Andy.

  “No,” Andy mumbled, afraid of her closeness and of the way her eyes kept searching his. “No. No. No!”

  But Grace Elizabeth persisted, thrusting the book toward him.

  “No!” Andy yelled.

  “Andy? Are you all right? Are you having a nightmare?”

  Andy struggled to sit up as his mother came into the room and sat on the edge of his bed. She reached out a hand to feel his forehead, but Andy ducked. “I haven’t got a fever, Mom. I’m not sick. I just had a nightmare. I’m okay.”

  His mother smiled. “Maybe the nightmare came from something you read.”

  Andy followed his mother’s gaze and saw that Grace Elizabeth’s poetry book no longer rested on the nightstand. He was clinging to it with both hands.

  CHAPTER SIX

  When he awoke to sunlight the next morning, Andy tried to figure out if his dream had a special meaning. The dream didn’t seem to make any sense. He tucked the book into the drawer of his nightstand, making sure it was securely closed.

  Andy hung around after history period, until the classroom had cleared. He joined Mr. Hammergren, who had begun erasing what had been written on the board.

  “How’s it going, Andy?” Mr. Hammergren asked.

  “Okay, I guess,” Andy said. “J.J. and I are going to ride out to the cemetery after school to look at family tombstones.”

  Mr. Hammergren turned and smiled. “I hope you find something interesting. Do you know that some people even visit graveyards on vacations, searching for some of the old stones?”

  “On vacation?”

  “Sure. I remember a couple of tombstones I saw. In an old Western cemetery, under one man’s name was ’Caught stealing the Marshal’s horse. Sam never did have good sense.’

  “And I like this one, from a cemetery in Medway, Massachusetts, ‘Beneath this stone a lump of clay, lies Uncle Peter Daniels, who too early in the month of May, took off his winter flannels.’ ”

  Andy smiled. Maybe that’s what Mom meant when she said something odd was carved into Malcolm John Bonner’s tombstone. He hoped it was something funny. Odd made it sound scary. Funny he could live with.

  “Could I tell you something confidential?” Andy asked.

  “Sure.” Mr. Hammergren sat on the edge of his desk and gave his full attention to Andy. “I’m listening.”

  “It’s confidential,” Andy said, “because of my great-aunt. Because she’d get mad if people knew—I mean like people who couldn’t keep things secret.” Andy took a deep breath and told Mr. Hammergren all about Coley Joe.

  “I don’t know how, but I’m going to find out about Coley Joe and what really happened,” Andy said.

  Mr. Hammergren thought a moment. “Okay, let’s look at the facts you’ve come up with: This relative named Coley Joe disappeared, he was cut out of the family, and his father’s money was stolen. It wouldn’t take the police long to figure this one out.”

  “But I believe he didn’t do it, and I have to prove it. The only trouble is that I don’t know what to do next.”

  “Two heads are sometimes better than one,” Mr. Hammergren said. “This head is asking what you’d do if someone disappeared.”

  “I’d go looking for him.”

  “Where was he going when he disappeared? See if you can retrace his route.”

  Andy thought so hard he frowned. “The family was planning to move to Hermosa. The father had bought land here, and he was going to buy cattle and build a ranch house. Only he couldn’t, with the money gone.”

  “It’s possible that Coley Joe was sent ahead of his family to buy livestock and the materials for building a house so that when the rest of his family arrived they’d have a roof over their heads.”

  Andy gasped. “You mean he really might have come to Hermosa?”

  “He might.”

  Andy shook his head. “But then he would have done what his family wanted him to do. I don’t think he ever got to Hermosa.”

  “In 1879 or thereabouts, you said. Hmmmm. The logical thing for Coley Joe to do would have been to head for El Paso, which was the major city nearest to Hermosa. He could have planned to buy his stock there and hire help to move the cattle to the family’s land.

  “On the other hand,” Mr. Hammergren added, “he might have kept going west after he reached El Paso, striking out on his own. To many the West Coast was a promised land.”

  “I don’t think Coley Joe took the money,” Andy said. “If there’s any possible way to find out, I will.”

  “Why?”

  Andy was startled. “Why? Well, I like Coley Joe. I want to clear his name. It must have been awful for his family to cross him out of the family’s Bible and to pretend all these years that he didn’t exist. That’s why.”

  Mr. Hammergren smiled. “I like what you’re doing, Andy. Keep me informed. And if you want to talk about your progress or ask questions, don’t hesitate to ask me.”

  “Thanks,” Andy said.

  “One more thing,” Mr. Hammergren told him. “If you want any lunch at all, you’d better hurry. You’ve only got fifteen minutes left.”

  Heavy clouds, dark as mud, clotted the sky by the time Andy and J.J. arrived at the cemetery.

  “It’s going to rain,” J.J. said.

  “Not for a while,” Andy said. He rested his bike against the wrought-iron fence, laid his helmet in the basket, and peeled his sweaty shirt from his back. “At least when it’s cloudy it’s not so hot.”

  “What’s that around your nec
k?” J.J. asked.

  Andy touched the pounded nail. In spite of the heat, it was cold next to his skin. “A horseshoe nail,” he said, and explained to J.J. what it meant.

  “Cool,” J.J. said. He led the way into the cemetery and took the path that wound through the neatly clipped, grassy area, with its flat grave markers, back over a small rise to the older part of the cemetery.

  Wide, squatty tombstones crowded next to tall, imposing ones, most of them decorated with sculpted vines and crosses carved from speckled black-and-gray granite or pitted yellow sandstone. Here and there a weathered marble angel bowed his head and spread his wings.

  In the center rose an ornate obelisk with a pointed top. It made Andy think of a giant’s finger reaching from the earth to forever point upward.

  J.J. stopped so suddenly that Andy plowed into him. “That’s where James Jonathan the first is buried,” J.J. said. “It looks like those obelisks we saw in the book about Egypt.”

  Andy had to lean back to see all the way to the top. “Was the first J.J. Egyptian?”

  “Nope,” J.J. said, and grinned. “I think he just wanted his tombstone to be more important than everyone else’s.”

  To his right Andy heard a plink, like rock hitting rock, and he jumped.

  “What are you scared of?” J.J. asked. “Nobody’s here but us.”

  A jackrabbit shot out from behind two stones, its long back legs thrumming against the ground as it dashed to safety. Andy watched the jackrabbit’s progress until it leaped from the rise down to the flat prairie that stretched to the horizon. The low scrub, mottled in gray green and purple, was dotted in the distance with grazing cattle—much like the Bonners’ ranch.

  “Nobody but us and the jackrabbits.” Andy realized his laugh was shaky.

  J.J. pulled a notebook and pencil stub from the pocket of his jeans. “I’m going to read what’s written on all the Gasper family stones,” he said. “Do you know where your Bonner family stones are?”

  “I can find them,” Andy said. “Mom gave me directions.” As he turned right and moved into the thickly clustered tombstones he heard the same soft plink again. Was someone back in there? Someone moving among the graves?