The Secret of Rover (19 page)

“Hey,” the man asked. “Where you kids from?”

Both of them saw instantly that they should have worked out a story. Now, having no choice, David thought on his feet. “Hawthorne,” he said artlessly.

“Whatcha doin' in Melville?”

“Friend of ours is there.”

“Maybe I know him. What's his name?”

“Alex.” David's failure to supply a last name hung conspicuously in the silent car, but he did not want to say any more. The children had no idea whether the people in Melville knew about their uncle Alex or what they thought of him if they did. Now was not the time to find out.

“You were plannin' to walk that far?” asked the driver after a pause.

“Mom and Dad told us to walk, but we can ride. It's my money.”

“They told you to
walk
?”

Man
. That had been a mistake. He had gotten nervous, that was all. He had wanted to mention parents. He hadn't wanted the driver to suspect that they were on their own.
But one little mistake like that—one small slip of the tongue—could sink them.

Alarmed, David did not reply. He turned his face out the window and they rode in silence. But Katie could see that in his rearview mirror their driver continued to scrutinize them.

David was so busy reproaching himself for his stupidity—
Mom and Dad told us to walk!
—that he didn't even notice how the taxi was eating up the miles. Minute after minute passed in agonized silence and still they flew up and down the winding hills of Route 24.

Katie realized this first, and with a start. “Where are we?” she asked abruptly, snapping out of her anxious daze. “How far have we gone?” She seized the back of the driver's seat and pulled herself forward, searching for the meter that would tell them how many dollars' worth they had traveled.

The mileage counter read 000 and their fare showed as $000.00. The meter was turned off.

“We only have ten dollars!” she cried, frightened. Where was he taking them?

“I know that,” said the driver calmly. “Don't worry. I can take you all the way there, and it won't cost you more 'n ten. I'm going to Melville anyways, see? Picking up an old lady there, called for a ride. Easier to take you all the way there than to stop an' put you out.”

David and Katie shared a quick, uneasy glance.

“Are you sure?” Katie asked.

“Thanks,” added David stiffly, his mind frantically working. All the way to Melville for ten dollars! They'd be there! But something about this did not feel right. Maybe they were being kidnapped.

Apparently not. Moments later they passed a road sign reading melville: 23 miles. And a little while after that came a sign advertising a Melville realtor, then one for a Melville diner, and then they were there. They were pulling into town. They had arrived.

It was clear at a glance that this was an even tinier place than Hawthorne and that Route 24 was the road about which they'd been told, the one that went right through it. Their driver did not ask them where they wanted to get out. Instead, he rolled straight into the center of town. Then he pulled to a stop by what looked like the town square, set his brake, cut his motor, and shifted his bulky frame completely around in his seat to look both of them straight in the eyes.

David had the money ready. “Thank—”

“Now, you listen here,” said the driver, cutting him off. “You just listen to me.”

David and Katie sat back, stunned.

“That was a load of baloney you fed me, back there on the road. I know when I'm bein' lied to. You two are a mess. Neither of you's seen any mom or dad for a week.”

“That's not—”

“Don't interrupt me.”

David fell silent.

“Sum'pm's going on with you two—sum'pm's wrong. I don't know what it is, but I don't like it. Now. You want to tell me the truth, or what?”

Neither of them said a word. They simply stared, terrified. The cabbie's eyes were narrow and penetrating. A long silence hung in the car.

The driver broke it. He sighed and turned back around to gaze once more out the windshield. “I ought to turn you in,” he said heavily. “I really ought to.”

Katie and David stared at the back of his head and the rolls of flesh on his neck. Should they make a run for it? Katie's mind frantically scrolled. She glanced out the window. The wide-open square, the little town—they'd never make it.

“Tell you what I'm going to do,” said the driver, breaking into their thoughts. Slowly, his enormous hand reached for his glove compartment. A spasm of terror seized both children. They had come so far. Could it really end here, on the last leg of their long journey?

But it did not end. Instead, the man opened the hatch and lifted out a stack of small printed cards fastened with a rubber band. With his thick, fleshy fingers he extracted one and held it out to David.

“This here's my card—you take it,” he ordered. After a
slight hesitation David did. The driver lifted a fat finger and shook it at them. “If you need help with anything,” he said, “if anything happens to you that you don't like—you call me. My name's Mike; you can see it right there.

“I'm not gonna get you in any trouble. I don't want to know what you did. You need any help at all, you call me. Understand?”

David, dumbfounded, said nothing.

“Thank you,” replied Katie in a low voice. Her heart was still drumming in her chest.

“I got kids myself,” the driver continued. “Course they're all grown now, but once a parent, always a parent. And I don't like to see people your age in trouble. So you put that card in your pocket. No”—David had returned to his senses and was holding out his cash—“I'm not gonna take your money. I got a feeling you might need it.”

“Really, it's—”

“Put it away. Now, anything else you want to say to me? No? Then out of the car.”

“Thank you. Thank you very much, Mike,” said David, and he scrambled for the handle and tumbled out the door. Katie was right behind him. The taxi pulled forward, swiveled backward, and in a spray of gravel and a cloud of fumes pivoted around to head back up Route 24, the same way they'd come.

David and Katie stood blinking, watching it go.

“He's going back toward Hawthorne,” said David, bewildered.

“So much for the old lady in Melville,” said Katie.

Worried and depressed, they wandered the streets of Melville.

They knew they should be happy. They had made it, after all. It was just after four o'clock and they had arrived—in air-conditioned comfort, for free—at a place from which they really could walk to their uncle's house.

So they should be happy, but they were not. They could not decide whether to strike out to find their uncle, or try to find food instead.

After three days without proper meals, their need for food had finally become urgent. For the first time since they had left home, they had nothing to eat. Apart from their map and their flashlights, their pockets were empty.

They had fourteen dollars, but since that business with Mike they were afraid to use their money even to satisfy their hunger. Mike had noticed they were in trouble but had let them go. A cashier or a waitress might not.

“You know what's happening,” said Katie after they had strolled around for nearly an hour, kicking this matter to and fro in half whispers. “Because we can't decide what to do, we're getting the worst of both worlds. We're
not getting anything to eat and we're making ourselves conspicuous anyway. We need a plan, David!”

“Fine,” said her brother. “Let's go back to that diner and get sandwiches. With fries,” he added hungrily. The smell outside the diner had just about drilled a hole in him.

“But they'll ask questions! And what'll we say?”

“OK! So let's just leave, then. Let's forget about eating and head out to Uncle Alex's.” The diner called, but fear called from the opposite direction.

“But what if we have to walk a really long way? We'll faint, David!”

He threw up his hands.

“Besides,” added Katie with affected casualness, “we don't know Uncle Alex.”

Here was a new one. David stopped walking and his eyebrows lifted. “Meaning . . . ?”

“Meaning we don't know him. Like, now that we're getting close I'm just thinking about that, that's all.” Still her brother stared, and she stumbled on.

“You have to admit it's unusual,” she said, “him being a hermit and all. I mean, what kind of person does that?”

“I dunno. A person who had a really bad fight with his girlfriend a really long time ago. That's what Mom and Dad told us, anyway. Does it matter?”

“I don't know. Maybe. Though by the way, if we do find him? We're not going to ask.”

“Give me a little credit.”

“And what if it turns out he's weird?” Katie continued, not replying. “What if he's—what if he's
not nice
? What if he won't help?”

“Now you say it.”

“I know. I know! It's just that now that we're getting closer I'm realizing—”

“That he's a total unknown.”

“Right! Who doesn't like to be around people. And here we are, dumping ourselves right on top of him. Two kids, with a really big, really important problem.”

So they wandered, neither deciding to eat nor deciding not to; neither fleeing to their uncle nor abandoning the plan. Five o'clock became five thirty and five thirty became six. It was summer, they were in the north, and the days were long. But even so, they knew that night would come. And their hunger tightened like a screw and their spirits sank.

They were beginning to pass people they'd already seen once or even twice before, and they were beginning to draw looks. They knew it, but they felt so low in body and mind that they almost did not care.

Then they rounded the wrong corner. Spying a quiet, leafy block lined with neat wooden houses where they had not yet been, they turned onto it with slow footsteps. Katie let her fingers trail along the top of the low picket fence surrounding the first house.

Then her heart was slammed into her throat. An enormous dog—head low, fangs bared, and jaws slavering—tore snarling across the front lawn straight for them.

The creature threw itself at the flimsy fence in a frenzy of barking. A hoarse scream burst from Katie's lips and she stumbled backward, falling against her brother and nearly knocking him down.

The instant the dog hit the fence it jerked sharply back. Now the children could see that it was tethered to a long chain that would not let it off the property. But the damage had been done. Perhaps at another time they would have laughed off a scare like this one, but not today—not on top of all their other troubles.

So they freaked. Clutching each other they turned on their heels and fled, and when they reached Route 24 they didn't stop. They ripped around the corner and kept running, up the sidewalk to the end of the block, across the street, and up the next block as well. By the time they paused to catch their breath, they had decided what to do.

They'd had enough of Melville. They were hungry and they were scared, but it was time to move on. Whoever he might turn out to be and whatever he might turn out to do and regardless of what awaited them along the way, it was time to find their uncle Alex.

“It
sounded
close; that's the problem,” said Katie wearily. “It's the way the directions
sounded
.”

“Right,” said David. “That plus a little machine called a car. When Mom and Dad did this, they always drove.”

They were both right, and they knew it. But it didn't really matter. Nothing changed the fact that the trail to Alex's, which they had always assumed you picked up right outside of town, was not right outside of town.

They were supposed to remain on the road through Melville until about half a mile past the first bridge. Then they were supposed to find the rock that had been split by lightning, turn off the road, and head up the mountain. After that it was easy: Left at the creek and you're there.