The Old House (5 page)

It was impossible not to worry, though. What if even her brother didn't come back? What if she never found out what had happened to either of them? What if she had to stay here with Aunt Addie and Aunt Cassie forever?

Her eyes prickled and her throat ached, thinking about it.

The screen door slammed behind her, and she spun around. Max was standing at the top of the steps. “What happened to my kitten?” he demanded.

“What?” Buddy couldn't imagine why he was asking
her.

“Are you deaf? I asked what happened to my kitten?”

“I heard you,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster. “I just didn't understand why you'd think
I
would know. I haven't seen him.”

“I put him in that box just inside the back door.”

“I guess he must have climbed out. I don't know where he went.” And then, because she would have made the offer to anyone else, she added, “Do
you want me to help you look for him?”

“He's too little to climb out. Somebody must have taken him out.”

“Well, it wasn't me.”

Max was scowling. “I heard you went over to sign up for school. Does that mean you're going to stay here?”

It only occurred to her at that moment that Max was school age. “I hope not, but they said I should go as long as I'm here,” she said. “How come you weren't in school this afternoon?”

“The seventh graders are off until Monday. They're fumigating our room and the library, right next door to it, and there was nowhere for us to have classes.”

“Fumigating?” Buddy echoed.

“Yes. Some guys came in to clean up the mess and the smell and stuff.” Max's scowl had faded. “We had an incident yesterday. Somebody brought in a skunk, and it got loose. Old Faulkner thinks the rooms are going to be fit to move back into by Monday, but nobody else thinks so. You ever smelled skunk up close?”

“Yes,” Buddy admitted. “Our neighbor's dog
tangled with one once. They didn't let him into the house for a week, even after they washed him in tomato juice. He still stunk.”

“Exactly,” Max said with satisfaction. “I'm betting it'll still stink on Monday. I brought my books and my backpack home, and I can still smell it on them. And the skunk wasn't actually anywhere near
me.
Cassie said I had to leave them on the back porch to air out, but they're no better yet.”

“What happened to the person who brought in the skunk? How did he get it?”

“Trapped it in a box in his backyard. I don't know yet. He'd probably have been expelled, but his dad's head of the school board. They almost kicked me out of school once for bringing a mouse in my shirt pocket. You don't have much clout when your dad's the town drunk.”

“Is he?” Buddy asked, shocked.

“Yeah. Well, he's not the only one. But he's nobody the town would elect to the school board. Poor Cassie believed him when he said he'd stop drinking, but he's a liar, too.”

“But they didn't actually expel you?”

Max snorted. “No. Not after Addie went
over and gave old Faulker a tongue-lashing. You know, I think he's afraid of her. I think he was afraid of her when he was a kid and he and Gordon got into trouble, and she bailed
them
out. Afterward she really blistered both of them and told them next time she'd let them face the consequences if they did something stupid. Gordon said she chewed on them both so hard, she scared Herbert Faulkner forever. Gordon doesn't admit it, but I think she's always intimidated
him,
too.”

Distracted, Buddy asked, “What had they done?”

“Hid a dead chicken in the vent pipes off the kitchen. Addie said it stunk even worse than skunk, and it took them a couple of days to find it.”

“Why would they have done that?”

Max shrugged. “Who knows? Some people just like to make trouble.”

“Do you know Uncle Gordon?”

“He's my uncle—step-uncle, anyway—so, sure. He doesn't come very often, but when he does, he brings presents. Addie says it's to buy
his way out of disfavor, but she takes what he brings.”

“What does he bring?” Buddy was completely interested now.

“Oh, all kinds of stuff. A basket of fruit. A bag of shelled nuts. A box of high-priced candy. He brought me a neat knife.” He fished it out of his pocket and opened it, displaying all the blades and the can opener and corkscrew and nail file, and a screwdriver. “Last time he brought Addie the complete Oxford English Dictionary she'd been wanting, so she doesn't have to go to the library every time she wants to look something up. Of course it's the whole twenty volumes packed into two big books, not the original full-sized set. Addie complains about having to use a magnifying glass to read it, but I can tell she really likes it. Even though she works at the library two days a week, she wanted the books handy here at home.”

Buddy frowned, trying to remember what she knew about the Oxford English Dictionary. “It's not a regular dictionary, is it? Doesn't it tell when words were first used? Like back in 1610 or something?”

“
Yeah. Lots of weird old words.”

“Why does she want to look up weird old words?”

“She uses them in those stories she writes,” Max said, coming down the steps with his hands in his pockets.

Buddy was astonished. “Addie writes stories?”

“Yeah. Never sells any of them, except once in a while a little short piece of some kind, to a magazine. The stories are historical novels. My old man says it's a waste of time. Nobody ever heard of her, and nobody'll ever buy anything from her. Didn't you notice the big envelope that came at lunchtime? She keeps sending them out, and everybody keeps sending them back with rejection slips. You watch, tomorrow she'll send that one out again to somebody new.”

“I noticed it was addressed to Adelaide Ostrom, and they called her that at the school, too. But that's her maiden name, isn't it? Didn't she change her name when she got married?”

“Yeah. But she'd started writing under
Ostrom
, and she's
kept on with that. Besides, she's lived in this town all her life, and everybody has known her as Addie Ostrom. Even when Ed was still alive, I think they called her Ostrom. Sometimes they call Cassie
Ostrom
, too, even though she's legally Mrs. Gus Miller.”

Buddy was still intrigued by the idea that Addie wrote stories. “Are her stories any good?”

“I don't know. She never lets anybody read them. Probably not, or somebody would buy one, wouldn't they?”

“It seems sad, that she keeps getting rejections.”

“Well, if she cries about it, she does it in private,” Max stated.

The idea of Addie crying struck Buddy as being very strange indeed. Especially when she remembered how her aunt had spoken to the school principal. Addie was tough.

From behind them, through the open window into Grandpa's room, came the artificial-sounding voice of his speaking watch. “The time is 4:20 p.m.”

Max rolled his eyes. “Now you understand why they made him move downstairs. It wasn't
because he fell down the stairs, even if he did. It was because Addie couldn't stand the sound of that stupid watch going off every few minutes, even in the middle of the night. He pushes it every time he can't remember what time it is, which is all the time.”

“And he can't see the clocks,” Buddy mused. “It must be very hard to be almost blind.”

“Yeah. It's hard on the rest of the family, too.” Max kicked at a rock that bordered the pathway to the garden. “He's really upset because he can't see to read anymore. And even when somebody else reads to him, or he plays those tapes from the Services for the Blind, he can't remember until the next day what he's heard. You could read him the same thing, over and over, every day, and he wouldn't get tired of it, because he's already forgotten it.”

“Is that what you meant about the family being
dys—dysfunctional
? But he can't help it, can he?”

“No, he's not the one who's weird, except for being forgetful. It's the rest of them. Addie and Cassie and my old man. Hey, you smell that?”

“The roast?” Buddy asked, confused. Why
would anyone look alarmed at the smell of cooking meat?

“No, not roast, it's paper. I hope he didn't start another fire—”

Max spun around and raced into the house, with Buddy at his heels. She could smell it, too, now: burning paper.

The kitchen was full of smoke. As they came in from the back hall, Cassie hurried into the room from the other direction. “Oh, Grandpa, what have you done?”

Max moved quickly toward the electric stove to turn off the burner that was glowing bright red. Then he reached for a metal spatula and shoved the burning newspaper off the burner into a dustpan he'd grabbed out of a broom closet.

“He laid the paper on the stove again,” he said.

“Grandpa, you mustn't turn on the stove,” Cassie scolded him mildly, nudging him toward a chair at the table. “Don't you remember?”

“Time for tea,” Grandpa said. “Isn't it?” He punched his watch and listened to it tell the time. “I was going to heat the water.”

“But there'
s no teakettle,” Cassie protested. She began to fan the smoke toward the back door, where Max had carried the still smoldering newspaper.

“I told you,” Addie said, entering from the dining room. “We're going to have to take the knobs off that stove or he's going to burn the place down. In fact, I'm going to remove them right now. That's the second time in two weeks he's set something on fire.”

“Aren't I going to get my tea, Sister?” Grandpa asked. “And maybe a cookie?”

“Well, I'll heat some water first. We could all use a cup of tea,” Cassie said, opening a cupboard for cups. “It'll be awfully inconvenient to have to go hunting for the knobs when I need to use that stove, Addie.”

“We'll keep them somewhere handy, where he won't find them. Better that than burning the house down around our ears. You're the one who thinks we should keep him at home, not put him in a rest home, where he belongs.”

“Oh, Addie! You can't mean that! He's lived in this house since the day he was born! He'd
be so upset if he had to move into a home. Everything would be so strange.”

“You ask me,” Max said, coming back with the empty dustpan, “things are strange enough around
here.”

Grandpa punched his watch button again, reactivating the tinny voice. “I wish you'd all talk louder. I can't make out a word you're saying.”

Buddy had a peculiar feeling, one that must be somewhat like Alice's when she fell down the rabbit hole. Or was it at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, where everybody said confusing things?

Cassie was putting tea bags into each of the cups. “Sit still, Grandpa. It'll be ready in a minute. And speaking of being ready, Buddy, it would be a good idea to get out your best go-to meeting dress and make sure it doesn't need ironing. Better to do it now, if it needs it, than maybe forget until Sunday morning.”

Buddy twitched. “Sunday morning? I didn't bring any dresses, Aunt Cassie. Just jeans and sweatshirts. I don't need to go to church—”

“Of course you'll go to church, with the rest of us. We
always
go to church as a family. The whole town would be shocked if we didn't take you. Everybody knows you're here.”

“But Mama never sent me in jeans,” Buddy protested.

“No, no, of course not. Addie, don't you think there's something among EllaBelle's old things that might fit her? A Sunday dress?”

“More than likely,” Addie said. “Let's all have a cup of tea, and then we'll go look.”

Somewhere in the bowels of the house, a telephone rang.

“Max, would you get that,” Addie said, telling, not asking. “Your legs—”

“Are younger than yours,” Max finished. He was back in a moment, just as Grandpa was checking once more on the time. “It's for her,” he said, pointing at Buddy.

Buddy's fingers cramped around the receiver. “Hello?” she said breathlessly. “Bart?”

Her brother's voice sang along the line. “Yeah, it's me. You okay?”

“Yes. Did you find Dad?”

“Not yet. Listen, Rich Painter's missing, too. They were driving together. Neither he nor Dad checked in when they were supposed to the last time. I talked to Rich's mother, and she remembered the name of the trucking company in Lewiston that was hiring them. They took a load out from there to Sacramento, in California, and Rich called home from there when they delivered it. She thinks Dad tried to call us at the same time but didn't get anybody. It must have been that first week, when we went over to Devon's for the barbecue party, remember? That's
about the only time I can think of when we were both gone. Except, of course, when we were in school. I wish we'd had an answering machine, so we'd know for sure, but they were both okay when they left Sacramento.”

Buddy felt as if a tight band around her chest had nearly cut off her breathing. “But what happened to them after that?”

“I'm still trying to find that out,” Bart said. “I talked to the dispatcher at Edmonds Trucking in Lewiston, and he said they'd gone from Sacramento to Eureka, and they got there okay, too. I don't know why they didn't call us or Rich's mom from there—maybe they were loaded and left so early in the morning, they figured they didn't want to wake anybody up, so they intended to check in at home later. They were taking a load of lumber to L.A. Only they never got there.”

“But that must have been days ago!” Buddy exclaimed. “How long could it have taken to drive from one end of California to the other?”

She heard her brother's indrawn breath. “Not this long, Buddy.” Bart cleared his throat. “There seems to be some suspicion that . . . that
Dad and Rich hijacked the load, maybe sold it to somebody. It was worth a lot of money.”