Who Won the War? (9 page)

But there was some truth in what Peter was saying, Wally had to admit. The chief offenders were Jake and Eddie. As long as they were fighting, it was hard for anyone else to get along.

Eleven
Stop Complaining!

“W
ell, I guess we're stuck,” Beth said. “We'll have to make the best of it.”

“Yeah!” said Peter. “No more fighting!”

“So who's fighting?” asked Jake. “I just don't want them sleeping in my bed, that's all.”

“Don't worry,” said Eddie. “I wouldn't sleep in your bed for a million dollars. I'll be on the air mattress, you can bet.”

“It must be awful at home,” said Beth. “Mom said Dad told her it was ninety-six degrees in our upstairs. By tomorrow, all the food in the refrigerator will be spoiled. Ugh.”

“It's supposed to be a hundred and four here tomorrow,” said Josh. “What are we going to do today?”

“We could trap flies in the sun and put a magnifying glass on them and watch them go crazy,” said Eddie.

“That's cruel!” Caroline declared. “Besides, I don't want anything to do with bugs.”

“At least we can go swimming if it gets unbearable,” said Beth.

“Not!” said Eddie. “We packed our bathing suits, remember. We thought we'd be home by tonight.”

“I know!” said Peter. “We could make peanut butter and banana milk shakes! And bake cookies!”

“It's too hot for cookies, Peter,” said Beth.

“We could take Caroline's school picture and make copies of it at the library and turn them into Wanted posters at the post office,” said Jake.

“Not!” said Caroline.

“We could make lemonade and sell it at a stand out front,” Beth suggested.

“We've tried that, but people don't come down our block much,” said Wally. “Monopoly?”

“Bor-ing!” said Eddie.

What happened was that when the bedrooms were finally ready, with sleeping bags on the floor of Wally's room, fresh sheets on the beds in the twins' bedroom, and an air mattress there on the floor, the girls shut themselves up in the boys' bedroom for the afternoon, sprawled out on the beds, with books and magazines for company, and Wally and his brothers spent the afternoon on the porch.

By five o'clock, Mrs. Malloy insisted that the girls come downstairs and be sociable. And if they couldn't be sociable, she said, they could at least ask Mrs. Hatford what they might do to be helpful.

“Well, you could set the table for dinner,” Mrs.

Hatford replied. “Your mother and I have been cooking extra meals, because I have to go back to work tomorrow. Hopefully, even if it gets hotter here in Buckman, we'll have enough food prepared that we won't have to use the oven again for several days.”

“What if it turns out we can't go home for a week, Mother?” Eddie said worriedly.

“I doubt it will be a week,” Mrs. Malloy told her. “I called your father this afternoon, and he said the power company hopes to have power restored to all of Ohio in four days at the most.”

Four days!
thought Caroline. Four days of lying in a room at the Hatfords' was like a prison sentence. But she took the handful of silverware Mrs. Hatford gave her and dutifully walked around the dining room table, placing the knives and forks beside each plate.

When Mr. Hatford walked in at six, the shirt of his postal uniform was drenched in perspiration, and he had a small towel draped around his neck. He stopped and stared at the Malloys in surprise.

“Well,” he said. “Hello.”

“Tom, we've got a little emergency here,” his wife told him. “George called to say that there's a huge power outage in Ohio due to the heat. No electricity, no traffic lights or refrigeration or air-conditioning. There's no use in Jean and the girls going home to that, and no hotel here for them to go to. So I've invited them to stay with us for a few days until they get their power back.”

Mr. Hatford blinked. Caroline supposed he wasn't
any happier about it than the boys had been. “Well,” he said. “Any port in a storm, right?”

“We are so grateful for Ellen's invitation, but we know this is an imposition,” Mrs. Malloy said. “We're going to be as helpful as possible, and I've made a couple of lemon pies. I hope that will make up for it a little.”

Mr. Hatford laughed. “Well, now, I don't have any objection to that!” he said. “Yes, I heard about that power outage in Ohio. Pretty serious, I understand.” Turning to his wife, he said, “I need to take a shower before dinner.” And then, “I
can
take a shower?”

“Yes. We've talked about conserving the hot water,” Mrs. Hatford said, and Mr. Hatford headed for the stairs.

Dinner helped perk everyone up. It was a cold meal of tuna and macaroni salad, with homemade rolls, sliced tomatoes, corn on the cob, and Mrs. Malloy's lemon pies.

The adults did most of the talking, with Mr. Hatford telling about how crowded it was in town with so many alumni returning for the college's anniversary—how impossible it was to drive around campus delivering mail with cars parked all over the place, mostly where they shouldn't be.

After the meal was over, the girls did the dishes while the adults sat in the living room watching the evening news.

“Three-fourths of the state of Ohio has been affected
by the current power failure,” the announcer said. “Crews are working around the clock, but the governor has said there is still no clear idea of when all communities will have power. Generators are being set up in gymnasiums where citizens with health risks may go to cool off, but travelers are urged to stay out of Ohio until the crisis is over.”

Caroline and her sisters joined the Hatford boys on the porch when the kitchen was clean. The next night it would be the boys' turn to clean up. Mrs. Malloy had talked them into doing the dishes by hand to save the hot water for showers. It almost seemed to Caroline as though her own mother was trying to make things as difficult as possible.

The boys had taken over the rocking chair and the glider, so Caroline, Beth, and Eddie sprawled on the steps. Caroline thought the boys did look a little smug, having escaped kitchen duty this time, their stomachs full of lemon pie.

Instead of saying something pleasant to the girls, Jake said, “Too bad the power didn't go out when you were halfway back to Ohio. Your dad
would have
to call while you were still here!”

“Yeah? I don't know what
you're
complaining about,” said Eddie. “You've got free maid service. We did the dishes, remember.”

“Hey, you guys,” said Josh. “You know what I think? I think you two ought to go hide in a cave or something till the heat wave's over. I'm tired of hearing you gripe at each other all the time. I mean it.”

“I am too!” said Beth. “Nobody likes that we have to be here, you know.”

Jake and Eddie looked quickly around at the others, surprised, it seemed, that their own brothers and sisters were turning against them.

“I just wish there was something exciting to do,” said Eddie. “We never did go to the old coal mine. I'm going to go up there and look around.”

“Yeah? I dare you,” said Jake.

“I dare you
both
!” said Josh. “Maybe that'll stop your complaining.”

And Caroline knew that a dare, to Eddie, was as good as a done deal.

Twelve
Undercover Operation

W
ally did not know when anything had felt weirder than having Eddie, Beth, and Caroline sleeping in his house. Here in the upstairs! In Jake and Josh's bedroom!

The twins had dumped all their stuff on the floor in Peter's room and were sprawled out now on their sleeping bags in Wally's room. But those sleeping bags alone took up most of the floor space. If Wally had to get up in the night, he'd have to take wide steps, putting his feet only on the places where there wasn't an arm or a leg.

“This stinks! They'll snoop through everything!” said Jake.

“I got most of the stuff out of our desks, though,” said Josh. “I got the journal I was keeping for a while, and all your baseball cards.”

Suddenly Jake gave a little cry and bolted upright. “Our underwear!” he gasped. “We didn't clean out the dresser! We left our underwear!”

Wally watched as Jake fell back on his sleeping bag, eyes closed. For once something humiliating was happening to Wally's brothers, not to him. He imagined Caroline coming down to breakfast in the morning with Jake's underpants on her head. He imagined Eddie going out to his mother's vegetable garden in the backyard and picking tomatoes for lunch, using Josh's underwear for a basket. He imagined Beth fastening little pink bows to the front of each pair.

“Man oh man!” he said, trying not to laugh. “That could be embarrassing.”

“We've got to get them out of there!” said Josh.

“The girls?” asked Wally.

“The underwear!” Jake and Josh howled together.

“What are you going to do? Sneak in there while they're asleep?” asked Wally. “Everyone's gone to bed.”

“I don't know. We'll think of something,” said Jake, and who knew what that something would be?

It had been a hot, miserable day, made worse by Wally's brothers' taking up all his floor space with their sleeping bags, and all the air with their complaints— Jake's in particular. Not only that, but their shoes stank! All Wally wanted to do was fall asleep and forget how many people were in his house just now.