Boys Against Girls (5 page)

Caroline gulped. She knew what was coming next.

Mother stared at the chocolate chiffon cake, then at Mrs. Hatford.
“You
sent us a cake?”

Now Mrs. Hatford was staring back. “I did indeed¡ The week after you moved in.”

“Why, Ellen, I never got it!” Mother declared.

Caroline glanced over at the boys to see them listening in horror.

“That's impossible!” said Mrs. Hatford. “I sent my boys to deliver it themselves, and your girls returned the plate.”

Mother looked at the chocolate chiffon cake, and then at Caroline, Beth, and Eddie. There was fire in her eyes, but with Mother, manners always took over temporarily.

“Well, since I never got it, the least I can do is try it now, Ellen, and I'm sure it's every bit as good as it looks,” said Mother, and asked the librarian to wrap it up for her.

Mrs. Hatford was looking very puzzled.

“And if you want another of my pumpkin chiffon pies, I brought one again,” Mother added. “My great-aunt Minna's recipe.”

Mrs. Hatford gave a little smile and touched Mother's arm. “Jean, dear, you really shouldn't pretend to bake if you don't. Everyone in Buckman knows Ethel's pies. We all use that bakery.”

“What?” cried Mother. “I never sent you a bakery pie. I baked a pumpkin chiffon pie myself.” And she pointed it out on the table. “Didn't the pie I sent you look like that?”

Mrs. Hatford leaned down and studied the pie on the table. “No, indeed, it did not¡ The pie that came in your hatbox, Jean, was a pie from Ethel's Bakery.”

Mother turned toward the girls.

“Caroline, have you any idea what happened to the chocolate chiffon cake that Mrs. Hatford baked for us?”

Caroline swallowed. “I—I threw it in the river,” she said, her face burning.

“Threw it … in the … river?” Mrs. Hatford looked as though she were going to have a heart attack. But when she turned to ask her boys about the pumpkin chiffon pie, the boys weren't there. It was as though an abaguchie had swallowed them up.

Seven
Confession

      “W
allace, Joseph, Joshua, and Peter!” yelled Mother, and she sounded like a drill sergeant.

She sounded like a drill sergeant who had just discovered that someone had made off with a pumpkin chiffon pie. A pumpkin chiffon pie made by somebody's own hands from a recipe of someone's great-aunt Minna.

The boys moved reluctantly into the hall from the living room and stood with feet poised as though ready to run the other way.

“What,” said Mrs. Hatford slowly, taking off her sweater, “happened to a certain pumpkin chiffon pie baked by Mrs. Malloy and delivered to our very door a month ago?”

Peter looked at Wally, Wally at Josh, Josh at Jake, and Jake looked down at his knees. “We ate it,” he said.

“Ate it?
All
of it? The four of you?”

The boys nodded, all four of them.

“Why? Why didn't you save any for dinner? Why did you go out and buy a pie from Ethel's Bakery, and try to make me think that was the pie Mrs. Malloy sent? I even thanked her for a bakery pie¡ I've never been so embarrassed in my life.” She looked sternly at the boys. “Jake? … Josh? … Wally … ?”

Wally couldn't stand it any longer. “We destroyed it’ he said.

Mother continued to stare. “I can't believe this.”

“We were looking for dog doo’ added Peter.

“What?” cried Mother. “Have you boys gone stark raving mad?”

“We thought the girls might have baked the pie and put something awful in it’ muttered Josh.

“Why would those three sweet girls do something like that?”

“Easy’ cried Jake. “Very easy. I could see the Malloy girls doing about anything you could think of.”

“Sweet? Ha!” said Josh.

“Remember’ Wally reminded her, “they threw your cake in the river.”

Mrs. Hatford shook her head. “That I don't understand at all. Something must have happened to make
them do that. What did they think was possibly inside that box?”

“Dead birds’ said Peter.

“What?”

“Ellen, quit while you're ahead’ Mr. Hatford said from the dining room, gobbling down his lunch before he delivered the afternoon mail. “The more you ask, the more they'll tell you, and the more you find out, the more upset you're going to be.”

So Wally and his brothers escaped upstairs. Mrs. Hatford went out on the back porch to cool off, and Mr. Hatford finished his Saturday-afternoon rounds.

When the paper came out that evening, however, the chocolate chiffon cake and the pumpkin chiffon pie were forgotten temporarily, because there was something on page two of the front section that interested them all:

ABAGUCHIE AGAIN
?

Another sighting of the elusive abaguchie was reported yesterday by a man in the Stonecoal area of Upshur County.

Clyde M. Downs and his wife, Marlene, were sitting down to dinner when a low growling by their springer spaniel sent them outside to investigate.

Marlene Downs saw a large animal run out of the yard with a chicken in its mouth. At first glance, she recounted, it seemed to her a cougar, but in other
ways it resembled a wolf. Clyde Downs thought it to be a member of the cat family, but like no cat he had seen before.

Police report that the paw prints and bits of fur recovered from the scene were inconclusive….

“What do you think this means?” Mrs. Hatford asked her husband at dinner.

“I think somebody's large dog is loose, and an awful lot of folks are letting their imaginations run away with them,” said Mr. Hatford.

“If there
is
a creature like that running around, Tom, we ought to be awfully careful about leaving our doors and windows unlocked,” said Mother.

“Ellen, if there is a creature like that around Buckman, it's a
creature
, not a human,” said her husband. “It's not as though it's going around opening windows.”

Wally lay in bed that night and wondered what he would do if
he
were to see the abaguchie. Write the Bensons down in Georgia, he decided. Maybe
that
would bring them back.

Eight
Eddie's Thumb

      E
ddie found the story when she was looking up football scores the next day. Caroline had only half believed Wally Hatford's story about the abaguchie, but if a
newspaper
printed a story like that, it was true, wasn't it?

They talked about it at breakfast.

“Did you see this?” Eddie asked, showing the story to her father.

“Clyde Downs and his wife wouldn't lie, would they?” asked Beth.

“Remember that when you're frightened, you can think you saw things that weren't really there,” Mother said.

Father agreed. “You might see a mountain lion up in the hills, but around here it would be pretty unusual.”

Caroline looked about her warily. “I thought it
was just some animal people saw out in the woods. I didn't know it actually came in people's yards.”

Beth's eyes were as big as fried eggs. “Think what a wonderful book that would make’ she breathed.
“The Age of the Abaguchie; The Abaguchie Stalks; The Abaguchie's Revenge …”

But Caroline was not interested in books about abaguchies. She wondered what it would be like to be an actress in such a movie. Just suppose she was this young girl in this big house all by herself, and it's getting dark outside, and she's forgotten to lock the doors. Maybe she's reading a book, and she hears a noise on the front porch.

She puts down the book and waits and listens. And finally she realizes she hasn't locked the side door. So she gets up in the darkened room and goes to the side door. She puts both hands up to her eyes and peers through the glass. And there, right on the other side of the glass, only inches away, are two red eyes, staring right back at her.

Caroline wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. She imagined being given that role in a movie—how she would clutch her throat and scream.

Or perhaps she realized she hadn't locked the side door, and just as she got to it, it swung wide open, and there was this horrible creature, and …

Or maybe she would get up and go lock the door,
but meanwhile, unknown to her, the abaguchie had crept around and come in the back, so that when she was locking the side door, the abaguchie crept up behind her, grabbed her by the throat, and …

Caroline made gurgling, choking sounds.

“Are you all right, Caroline?” asked her father. “Drink a little juice.”

“I was attacked,” said Caroline, breathing heavy.

“By what?” asked Mother.

“An abaguchie came in and grabbed me by the throat.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Caroline!” said Mother.

“I just wanted to know what it would feel like if one
did
get in the house, and
did
creep up behind me, and
did
put its claws around my neck,” Caroline said.

“If that happened, my dear, you would not make another sound for the rest of your life,” said her father. “If you would like to practice not making another sound for the rest of the morning, I wouldn't mind at all.”

•

The afternoon was overcast and chilly, but Eddie talked Beth and Caroline into going to the field behind the college to practice her batting and pitching. It wasn't Caroline's favorite way to spend a Sunday,
and Beth had her nose in a book all the way there, but when one of the sisters needed something, the others usually came through.

“What I need,” Eddie told them, “is for someone to pitch to me, and the other to stand in the outfield. After that I need to practice my pitching.”

“Whatever,” said Beth, and almost stepped off the bank of the river. Caroline had to guide her onto the swinging bridge and make sure she got off the other end all right.

There wasn't anyone else at the field, so Caroline took her place in the outfield with Dad's old glove, while Beth pitched.

Eddie
was
good, Caroline could tell. She would have been even better if Beth were a better pitcher, but more times than not she cracked the ball so hard that Caroline was convinced it was going right across the river.