Who Won the War? (16 page)

Dear Bill (and Danny and Steve and Tony and Doug):

I don't know if your computer is hooked up. For all I know, you guys could already be on your way back here. But man oh man, have you ever missed some excitement!

First, you won't believe this, but the Malloys have been staying here for the past few days because there's a heat wave in Ohio and all their electricity is off. They'd already left your house when they found out, and all their furniture was gone, so Mom invited them to stay with us till the power came back on. They've been sleeping in Jake and Josh's bedroom, all four of them. Talk about weird!

And they threw our underwear in the closet! You know what would be even worse? If the heat wave hadn't broken here in West Virginia, our power went out, and we had to go to Ohio and stay in their house for a while. That would be so awful I don't even want to think about it.

Then a storm came up here and the heat wave broke and we were without power for a while. Then we had a ladybug invasion and Caroline freaked out. Dad's been paying Peter a nickel for every dozen he collects, and he's already got a jarful.

That's just for starters.

Then … Jake and Eddie dared each other to go to the old coal mine. They've really been bugging each other. It's like having a cat and a dog under the same roof, and we've all been getting a little sick of them. Anyway, they did go, and a man came charging out of nowhere, yelling at them to get out. Two days ago there was a big explosion at the entrance to the mine. Peter, of course, told Dad we'd been there, and Dad called the sheriff and the chief of police. They came over and asked us a lot of questions.

And you know who did it? Who set off the dynamite? The guy who was yelling at us at the mine. And you know who he was? Some old man whose dog Tippy fell in that mine shaft and died down there and the guy didn't discover where he was till too late. He told the police he'd been looking for his dog for a long time and finally found where he'd fallen in. The guy was so mad that the county hadn't closed up that mine, and so worried, I guess, that some kid might fall in there someday—especially when he saw Jake and Eddie in there—that he figured he'd better do something about it himself, so he bought some dynamite and blew up the entrance. Then he took a sharp rock and scratched something on the rocky wall:
This is for you, Tippy.

That was how the police found him. That, and our description of his truck. I don't know what will happen to him. The newspaper says he did the county a service—the old coal mine should have been sealed up decades ago, and this guy did it for us. But the police say you can't go around setting off explosives no matter how good your reason might be. Dad thinks the guy will probably have to pay a fine, but that's all. And the newspaper might even pay it for him, for doing a public service!

But you guys should have been here! It was a blast, in more ways than one. Right in the middle of the police chief's questioning us, a ladybug landed on Caroline's shoulder—they're still coming into the house from somewhere—and she jumped up and down and screamed. Now even the chief of police knows she's nuts.

The girls will probably be going back to Ohio tomorrow. That's when their power's supposed to come back on, according to their dad. If you don't get here soon, there won't be any time left before school starts again. If you get this e-mail, write back.

Wally (and Jake and Josh and Peter)

Twenty-one
E-mail from Georgia

Dear Wally (and Jake and Josh and Peter):

Hey, man! You guys really do get the excitement, don't you?

You know what I wish? I wish we had stayed in Buckman while the girls were there. I mean, I wish they'd been living someplace else and we could have been in on all the jokes and stuff.

All the summer sports are over down here, and we'll be leaving for Buckman tomorrow. Dad plans to drive straight through in one day, so we have to get up at five in the morning. This is the last time we can use the computer before it's packed. I sure hope our house is still the way we left it. I hope the girls haven't put ballerina wallpaper in our bedrooms. I hope that Buckman is just the way we remember it, and that the swinging bridge hasn't been washed away in a storm or anything.

What was it you always called those girls—the Whomper, the Weirdo, and the Crazie? Eddie the Whomper, because she could hit a baseball so far; Beth the Weirdo, because she read all those gross books about aliens and stuff; and Caroline the Crazie, because you never knew what she'd do next. Tell the Whomper, the Weirdo, and the Crazie goodbye for us. Tell them we'd better not find any weird stuff in our rooms. Tell them this time when they go back to Ohio, stay there. And if they can't stay there, then at least come back when we're around to help make their lives miserable.

Bill (and Tony and Danny and Steve and Doug)

Twenty-two
Goodbye! Goodbye!

T
he call came at seven-thirty the following night. The electricity was on again in Ohio.

“Hooray!” shouted Eddie and Beth and Caroline together, and Mrs. Malloy's face relaxed with relief and pleasure.

“We're going to leave first thing in the morning,” she told the Hatfords. “You have all been so wonderful to put up with us for five days.”

“It's been wonderful for me to come home and find dinner all prepared and the house straightened up,” said Mrs. Hatford. “And it gave us a chance to get to know each other a little better, Jean.”

“Are we really, truly leaving, Mom?” asked Caroline.

“Right after breakfast,” her mother answered. “I want you girls to pack up all your things tonight and set your bags out in the hall, ready to go. Then all

you'll need to do in the morning is put your pajamas and toothbrushes in your bags, and we're off.”

The girls did the dishes and cleared the table that evening. As soon as they were done, while the boys were watching a preseason football game on TV, Eddie whispered to her sisters, “We've got to pay a visit to the Benson place before we go.”

“How can we?” Beth asked. “The house is all cleaned up and locked, Eddie. Mom's already left the key with Mrs. Hatford.”

“We don't need a key,” said Eddie. “Just follow me.”

Were they going to get in trouble again just before they left? Caroline wondered. Hadn't their trip to the old coal mine been trouble enough?

“If we do something bad, Eddie, God will probably turn off the electricity in Ohio again, and we'll have to stay here forever,” she said.

“God wouldn't punish the whole state of Ohio just because of us,” Eddie told her. “Get a flashlight and let's go.”

Out the back door they went, being careful not to let the screen slam. They went down the steps, around the side of the house, and across the road, then started across the swinging bridge to the other side of the river.

“I'm going to be sorry to leave all this,” said Caroline in a small voice.

And she was surprised to hear Eddie say, “Me too. Ohio's going to seem so boring without the boys.”

“There are boys in Ohio, too,” said Beth, “but not as nice as Josh Hatford.”

“So what are we doing going back to the old Benson place?” asked Caroline.

“Just a little something to make sure they don't forget us,” said Eddie.

Up the hill they went until they could see the house and the old barn that was used for a garage.

“Into the garage,” said Eddie.

And once inside, she said, “Up the ladder.”

They had a lot of good memories of the loft in the old Benson barn. Who could forget the “abaguchie” they trapped in the barn, with Wally up in the loft? Or the way the girls had spied on the boys from the loft window and vice versa?

“What do we do now?” asked Beth when all three of them were on the floor above.

In answer, Eddie pulled out her Swiss Army knife and tried it out on one of the wooden rafters. It made a deep clean cut. “I just want to make sure they remember our names,” she said. “Hold the flashlight, Beth.”

Caroline clapped her hands delightedly. “Be sure to include my middle name,” she said.

The Malloys were here
, Eddie carved, making slow deep cuts in the wood.
Eddie, Beth, and Caroline Lenore.
Then she sat back on her heels to admire her work.

“The next time the Hatfords and the Bensons crawl up here for one of their club meetings, they'll have us to remember!” said Beth.

“As though they could ever forget
us!”
said Caroline,
taking the knife and carving an exclamation point after her name.

Eddie slipped the knife into her pocket, and the girls crawled back across the floor—through old screen doors and boxes of junk—to the ladder. Caroline went down first and walked over to the door. But when she tried to push it open, it wouldn't budge.

“Hey!” she yelled. “Someone's locked us in!”

“What?” said Eddie.

“The door won't move,” said Caroline, pushing with all her strength.

“But there wasn't any lock on that door!” said Eddie. “How could we be locked in?”

“We'll be here forever!” Caroline wailed dramatically. “No one knows we're over here, and the Bensons aren't back!”

“Can
it, Caroline!” Eddie said. “Save your tears for Broadway.” And then she whispered, “I'll bet the Hatfords are right outside holding the door closed.”

She and Beth and Caroline all put their shoulders against the door and pushed. It gave a little but bounced back. There was muffled laughter from the other side.

Eddie leaned over and whispered something into Caroline's ear, and immediately Caroline began to smile. While Eddie and Beth kept pushing against the door, Caroline climbed back up the ladder and crawled over to the loft window, dragging a box of old hubcaps with her.

She peered out the window in the gathering dark,
and sure enough, there were Jake and Josh and Wally, all laughing, all pushing hard against the garage door.

Caroline lifted the box of hubcaps to the edge of the window. She held one out.

“Look out below!” she yelled.

Wally looked up. “Hey!” he yelled as the box began to tip. “She means it!”

The three boys scattered just before a rain of hubcaps tumbled down, rolling and clanking and clunking all over the ground.