I cautiously approach the bench, struggling to recall the cemetery boy’s real name, even though Jeremy told it to me earlier at the Lexington intersection. I’m still out of his peripheral vision, but I’m now close enough to see the profile of the boy’s smooth youthful face.
Behind me, the lawn tractor revs back to life.
Unintentionally frightening the ducks back into the cattails, I amble around to the front of the bench and stand directly in the boy’s field of vision. He looks up at me curiously through eyes as gray as the stocking cap he wears on his head. Scruffy dirty-blond tangles of hair flip out from the edges of his cap. He’s my age, maybe a year older. He stops chewing his sandwich, swallows.
I don’t know what to say, and I can’t remember his name. Calling him cemetery boy certainly feels inappropriate. Awkwardly, I bust out a soft “Hey.”
He frowns, looks me up and down with elevator eyes, and replies, “Hey.”
Over the boy’s shoulder, I see Jeremy approaching us. The sight of him triggers my memory, and the boy’s name springs back into my mind like a fork of lightning. I say, “Are you Spencer Hawkins?”
He doesn’t answer me but those gray eyes do.
“My name is Abby Cooper,” I say. “This is my brother, Jeremy.”
Walking up, Jeremy says, “My friends call me Coop.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“ARE YOU LOOKING for somebody?” Spencer asks, turning his head to the field of headstones, indicating the graves.
“No,” I say. “Well, I mean, we’re not looking for a dead person.”
Spencer nods. “Good thing. They’re not easy to find here, even though they don’t move around...much.”
Much?
I’ve just met him, but the inflection in his voice says that was a joke.
I hope.
“Abby,” Jeremy interrupts. “The caretaker told me we should come back when Spencer’s shift ends.”
I ignore Jeremy.
“Actually,” I say to Spencer, “we’re looking for you.”
Spencer looks at Jeremy and me questionably. “What do you guys want?”
Jeremy and I didn’t rehearse this, but maybe we should have. Neither one of us knows what to say, and for a moment there is no sound but the distant roar of the groundskeeper’s tractor and the periodic quack from a duck in Cattail Pond.
I stiffen and finally say, “We want to talk to you about the black-eyed kids.”
Spencer purses his lips and looks down at his sandwich. He picks up a brown paper sack resting on the bench next to him, stuffs his half-eaten sandwich inside, then drops it in a trash can next to the bench. Standing, pushing his back to us, he walks away without a word, instantly establishing a mile-thick wall of ice between us.
“Hey, wait!” I say, walking behind him. Jeremy follows.
Ignoring me, Spencer yanks a pair of yellow pigskin gloves from his back pocket and pulls them on. He walks to a tree where a rake leans. He snatches it with one hand and continues on.
“Look, we just want to talk,” I say, following him through the rows of headstones. The roar of the tractor grows louder with each of our steps. “They’ve been coming to our house for a week. They won’t go away.”
Spencer shakes his head, keeps walking.
The only thing I can think of to explain his behavior is that this must happen to Spencer Hawkins all too frequently. Years ago, the popular kids expelled him from the teen scene, banished him from cliques, parks, malls, sleepovers, and pizza parties. They feared him and teased him, called him crazy, creepy, shady. That’s what he thinks we’re here to do.
At some point, I bet he discovered a sort of sanctuary here at the cemetery, a peaceful retreat with no judgment. And now Jeremy and I just spoiled it. It doesn’t matter we’re no more popular than Spencer himself. He hates us already. In fact, Spencer Hawkins may have hated us before he ever met us.
My intuition suddenly says this was a bad idea.
We are in the same proximity as the lawn tractor now. The earth vibrates beneath its engine. My eardrums pulse from the leaf bagger’s swooping rumble.
Spencer, still ignoring us, begins raking leaves out from between headstones. The groundskeeper doesn’t see us yet. He drives away from us, his back to us. I turn to Jeremy, using a silent, pathetic frown to ask him if he has any ideas, anything that may get Spencer Hawkins to talk to us. Jeremy shrugs.
In desperation, I shout over the roar of the tractor, “They put my grandma in the hospital!”
Spencer glances up at me, pausing with the rake.
The caretaker halts the tractor and throttles down the engine. He shoots a look over his shoulder at Jeremy and me, revealing a hideous face. He kills the engine, climbs off the machine, and walks towards us.
“What’s going on, Spencer?” he says, removing his pebbled gardening gloves.
Jeremy has already spoken to him, but this is the first time I have seen him up close. The caretaker wears worn khaki coveralls stained with grass and dirt, and perched atop his head is a ragged green cap cocked slightly to the left. But it’s what’s below the bill of his cap which turns my stomach. His tawny face appears to be made of leather and is lined with deep crevices around his jaw and eyes. Or should I say “eye.” Although his right eye is intact, all that remains of his left eye is a hollow, fleshy pit where an eyeball once sat. Based on the gray hair poking out around his ears and the veiny wrinkles on the backs of his hands, I estimate he’s somewhere around Grandma’s and Mr. Donaldson’s age, perhaps older.
“Nothing, George,” Spencer says.
The caretaker, George, looks at me. “What’s going on, young lady? What’s all the shouting about?”
I hold my breath, unsure of what to say next. The man’s appearance frightens me. His gritty voice is tough to understand. His speech is choppy and muffled beneath the leathery stiffness of the skin surrounding his jaw. Yet, his voice somehow projects a gentleness which is comforting, chivalrous.
“I need his help,” I say, pointing to Spencer.
George runs his tongue along the inside of his bottom lip. “I see. Well, he belongs to me right now, and I know he belongs to me because I pay him by the hour. Now, it’s tough enough to get my money’s worth out of him when he’s working full speed, much less when pretty girls are chasing him through the graveyard…”
Spencer rolls his eyes.
George continues: “…so do you suppose you could all handle this on your own time, maybe over hamburgers and soda pops?”
Hoping to quickly resolve the matter without having to spend any more time than I already have in the cemetery or with Spencer Hawkins or with George the groundskeeper, I say, “I only have a couple questions.”
George looks down his nose at me, and his voice turns stern. “And I’ve only got a couple hours of daylight left. See here now, these leaves aren’t going to clean themselves up.”
George is protecting Spencer. He knows more than he’s letting on. If he and Spencer have spent a lot of time out here alone, he probably knows all about Spencer’s past.
Spencer cups his hands over the end of the rake and rests his chin upon his gloved fists. He stares at the ground, apparently content to allow George to speak on his behalf.
I say, “Maybe if Spencer did his own talking, we’d be done by now.”
Spencer shoots me a glare, but George cracks a sly smile. “I don’t know, Spencer, she’s not only pretty but she’s got some backbone, too. You may actually want to buy her that hamburger.” He winks at me father-like—or maybe he blinked. There’s no way to tell the difference, honestly. “Maybe even let her big brother tag along. He and I actually met just a minute ago.”
I correct George. “Little brother. Jeremy’s my little brother.”
George looks Jeremy up and down. “You don’t say. Do you know how to work a rake, young man? I could use a man your size this time of year. Lots of work to be done in the fall.”
Spencer looks put off.
&nb
sp; Jeremy’s jaw falls open. He responds stupidly, “I...I don’t know.”
George nods. “Well, when you figure out how to use one, stop on back.” George returns to his tractor. As he slips his gloves back on, he says to me, “Give Spencer your phone number. He’ll call you.” After tipping his cap to me, he fires up the tractor, pushes the throttle to full, drops the tractor into gear, and takes off down the row of headstones without looking back.
I have no confidence Spencer will ever call me, but it’s the only chance I have now that George has essentially evicted me from the cemetery. I slip off my backpack and lean it against the base of a tree. Kneeling next to it, I unzip it and remove a pencil and a notebook. I’ve no idea what the McGoverns’ phone number is, but knowing Grandma will likely be returning home tomorrow, I write down and tear out our home phone number.
“Call me tomorrow,” I say to Spencer, standing up and holding out the number. “I won’t be home tonight.”
Spencer refuses to take the number. He looks off toward Cattail Pond, staring past me like a stubborn, pouting child.
I tip my head toward George, who’s on the tractor and circling a grove of pine trees in the distance. “He told me to give you my number,” I say. “So, here you go.” I wave the number in his face, rudely.
Spencer’s looking at it now, thinking about it.
“Look,” I say without hiding any frustration “You don’t have to buy me a hamburger. I don’t want a stupid hamburger. We have more in common than you think. I’m not here to be a jerk, so stop being one yourself. I’ve got a problem only you can help me with. Just take the number before your one-eyed, freaky boss comes back and yells at me again.”
Finally, Spencer looks into my eyes. He must spy a hint of sincerity because he reaches out and tugs the number from my hand. His soft pigskin glove brushes my fingertips when he does so. I expect him to drop the paper immediately into the leaf pile at his feet, but to my surprise, he looks at it, folds it in half, and pushes it into his front pocket.
“You have to go now,” he says matter-of-factly.
“This isn’t a joke,” I assure him. I look off to the grove of trees where George has circled around and is now on his way back on the tractor, glaring at us with one eye.
“Abby, let’s go,” Jeremy says, concerned. I don’t know if he’s afraid of being yelled at or afraid of being handed a rake, but it’s disappointing because he’s the one who had pushed so hard for this encounter in the first place. “We’re really late. The McGoverns, what if they call Grandma at the hospital?”
And suddenly I’m worried, too. I turn away from Spencer and snatch Jeremy by the arm. “I never thought of the McGoverns calling grandma. They’ll scare her half to death if they tell her we’re missing. We have to get back to the bus stop. We can’t miss it.”
I fire one last look over my shoulder at mysterious Spencer Hawkins, the cemetery boy of Mount Herod legend. He stands motionless, holding the rake, watching us, interested but suspicious. I feel there’s a chance, a small one, he’ll call.
But now we have to get back home to the McGoverns. I pick up my pace from a fast walk to a trot. “Run, Jeremy,” I say.
My instinct to fall into long, steady, cross country strides is powerful. If I wanted to, I could knock out a 6.5-minute mile, but there’s no way Jeremy could keep up. George seemed to imply Jeremy may be hiding a considerable amount of muscle beneath his cushioned exterior, but raw strength has little to do with run conditioning. I recall how Jeremy pushed the furniture around his bedroom to barricade himself in a few nights ago. George is right; my brother is strong. But he’s not fast.
I settle for a steady gallop next to Jeremy. As expansive as the cemetery is, we were lucky we didn’t have to go far to find Cattail Pond. We don’t have a tremendous distance to cover to get back to the bus stop, but we can’t miss the next bus or we won’t see the McGovern house until long after dark. By then, old Ennis McGovern will have phoned Grandma and told her we never came home from school, and that will worry Grandma straight into her grave.
Weaving around headstones and maples and centuries-old oaks, we make our way back to the main office. This time, instead of going through it, we follow the path around, back out to the brick sidewalk and down the entrance drive toward the fountain and carriage house, where I hear the revving of the bus engine as it’s coming down Chokecherry Bluff Lane.
“The bus,” I say, gasping. Based on the pitch and direction of the sound, I can tell it just left the bus shelter.
“I’ll stop it,” I tell Jeremy, and I bolt toward the front gate, leaving him behind.
I’m electric, like lightning itself, and I cover 40 yards in 5 seconds. I emerge from the cemetery, waving my hand in the air just as the bus blows by.
Despite my upbringing, despite everything Grandma taught me about respect and forgiveness, I curse the unseen driver, and just as I am about to raise my hand in a gesture Grandma would further disapprove of, I see the back of the bus light up like a Christmas tree, and the driver slowly steers the bus to the curb, where it comes to a stop with a hiss, like a steam engine.
Short of breath with sweat beading on my face, I wait for Jeremy to catch up, and we jog to the open bus door together. When we board, we’re greeted by a driver wearing a knowing smile. Scattered passengers smirk and glare at us, shaking their heads, obviously perturbed by the delay we caused. I don’t care. I ignore them and drop the last of my change into the fare box.
As the bus roars back to life and pulls away from the curb, Jeremy and I drop into a pair of seats next to each other. Jeremy plunks his backpack into his lap and pushes his head against the back of the seat with a sigh, and that’s when I realize—
“My backpack!”
Jeremy looks at me, confused.
“I left it by the tree,” I say.
The bus is already at cruising speed. Jeremy looks back at the fading cemetery. “It’s too late, Abby.”
I remember the food I took from Grandma’s pantry. It’s still in the backpack. It’s not like we can afford to leave food lying around the city, no matter how trivial it’s value. Far worse than that, the only twenty-three dollars I have to my name is stuffed in a zippered pocket within the lining—not to mention the half-dozen notebooks and school assignments buried inside.
“We have to come back,” I say. “First thing tomorrow. It’s Saturday so we’ll come back right away in the morning.”
“What if someone takes it?”
There’s only one other person who knows it’s there.
Will Spencer think I left it on purpose with the hope it will force him to return it to me? It’s too immature of a game for me to play consciously, but who knows what my subconscious is up to. I’m in desperation mode, and everything hinges on a strange stocking-capped boy who works in a cemetery.
This isn’t happening.
Oh, but it is. Mount Herod is full of bizarre tales. And now, reluctantly, I am becoming a Mount Herod legend myself.
“No one will take it,” I say, collapsing back against the seat. I close my eyes and let out a deep sigh as the weight of the world seems to ease itself down upon my shoulders. Despite the weight, I doze lightly during the ride, senseless dreams blending with the hum of the bus engine.
One hour and two transfers later, the bus drops Jeremy and me a block up from Mount Herod South High School at the bus shelter for route 32. We are three hours late, and we jog home in autumn darkness.
When the McGovern house comes into view, we slow to a walk, hesitant to return but knowing we have to. The porch light is on, and those ugly curtains have been pulled shut. Incandescent light seeps out into the night from the edges of the window frame.
Next to the McGovern’s house stands Grandma’s house, our house, just as dark and empty and haunted as it stood last night. I wonder if tonight the black-eyed kids will stand on the porch and ring the bell, trying to coax their way into a house where no one’s living, talking to our ghosts, pleading wi
th lifeless walls, calling into emptiness.
The sound of Jeremy’s voice shatters my speculation. “What do you think she’s going to do to us for being late?”
“Mrs. McGovern? Slip us into the oven and serve us to Dooley for dinner.”
“That’s not funny. I think she’s weird. I think they’re both weird.”
Stepping up onto the McGovern’s porch, I assure him, “It’ll be fine.”
I try the doorknob but it’s locked. I ring the bell, swallowing hard.
From inside comes a thump. Hurried footsteps grow louder as they approach the front door. The door clicks and clacks and jingles and bumps as the locks are undone from the inside. Finally, the door swings open and Mrs. McGovern stands stiff and wide-eyed in the doorway, a stern expression chiseled into her stone face.
“Where have you been? I was just about to call your grandmother. Get in here right now!”
Dooley sits in the kitchen eating dinner alone. We’re not even allowed to remove our coats. Instead, Mrs. McGovern forces Jeremy and I to sit on the davenport and listen to her lecture.
“I’d have paddled Dooley’s bottom black and blue had he ever come home so late...”
The lecture deteriorates into meaningless words bouncing around the living room. I hear them, but I don’t absorb them, so they just continue to bounce around the room uselessly, like marbles in a glass jar.
After what must be twenty minutes of snipping and snapping, Mrs. McGovern suddenly glares at Jeremy and says something completely unexpected and seemingly irrational. “And I know about your telescope.”
As far as I know, Jeremy doesn’t own a telescope, and by the look on his face right now, he doesn’t know he owns a telescope either. Mrs. McGovern puts on an ugly, slanted smile, and adds, “Oh, yes, young man. I know about your telescope. I see you pointing it at our house from your window like a little spy. What is it exactly you’re hoping to see?”
An expression of comprehension floods Jeremy’s face. With some hesitation, he says, “That’s not a telescope.”
Curse of the Black-Eyed Kids (Mount Herod Legends Book 2) Page 12