Ghost Cave Read online

  “Mooney—Mooney—” Marc couldn’t stop laughing to talk. “Did you see that look on his face when he saw us? It was almost worth getting caught.”

  “Yeah, he knew we’d outsmarted him.” Eddie sat up. “ ’Course that doesn’t take much effort.” He started laughing again.

  Finally Marc rolled over. “Thank goodness we weren’t carrying the relics.”

  “Yeah, Marc. That was good thinking.” Hermie rolled onto his stomach.

  “If I could sneak into the bathroom and clean up,” Marc said, “I would go on home to sleep.”

  “Me too,” Hermie said. “Except that I’m starving. I was looking forward to Gramma’s biscuits and ham gravy.”

  Marc had forgotten that. He’d stay for sure if Gramma would cook for them. So they cleaned up as best they could without taking a bath, and appeared at Gramma’s table for a suspiciously early breakfast before taking off for home.

  Gramma, surprised but delighted to have three hungry boys to feed, made a big meal of hot biscuits, fried ham, and scrambled eggs, and gave them each a heaping plate. Without thinking, she even poured them coffee. Marc mixed his with thick cream and swigged it down, feeling warm to his toes.

  When they were done, Marc felt doubly full. The secret of the cave filled and warmed him, too. They had made a special find. There were really no great relics in the grave, nor anything rare. The arrowheads were beautiful. But the fact that it was a boy who was close to their age buried there had made him possessive about the discovery. That was why he had insisted they not reveal the grave until he could think about it some more. Right now it belonged to them. If news got out, it would belong to the whole town. And the last person Marc wanted to share it with was Howard Moon. Even if they got credit for the discovery and the money from the reward, to share it with people like Mooney would spoil it.

  At least he had bought some time from Hermie and Eddie. Now he had to decide what to do.

  11

  A TALK WITH MR. DANIELS

  The first thing Marc did was get some sleep. Falling into bed the minute he got home, he stayed awake just long enough to feel Bluedog sneak into bed beside him. Mama never liked the idea of his sleeping with a dog, but now with her gone, they’d gotten into this new habit. He ran his hand across Bluedog’s warm middle and was immediately asleep.

  It was just past noon when he woke, hot and sweaty from sleeping in the daytime.

  “You boys must have stayed up all night.” His father came in from the office to get some iced tea while Marc was pouring himself a bowl of cornflakes. He wished he had some more of Gramma’s good cooking.

  “Yeah, sorta,” Marc mumbled. He had hidden his dirty clothes under the bed. He smeared peanut butter on some soft white Wonder Bread, trying to keep it from tearing.

  “I hope you didn’t keep Mr. and Mrs. Sparks awake.” His dad squeezed a slice of lemon into his tea and added three teaspoons of sugar.

  “No, we didn’t.” Marc kept his answers short and pretended to be still half asleep. In fact, after he’d shaken off the heavy feeling from sleeping in the heat, he’d gotten so excited he could scarcely keep his secret. He wished he could tell his dad, but he wasn’t sure how he’d react or what he’d say. He needed to share with someone—someone who would understand his feelings.

  “Are we going to see Mama before Sunday?” he asked.

  His father stood at the window, staring off into space. “Would you like to, boy?” he answered, finally.

  Marc hated to admit he really wanted to visit Roy Clearwater just as much as he wanted to see his mother. But he’d give her a hug, talk for a minute. He figured it was his dad, not him, that she wanted to see anyway.

  “Sure, why not? Let’s go tomorrow. It’s the middle of the week. If you aren’t too busy …” Marc added, giving him a chance to back out.

  “I’m never that busy. It’s a deal.”

  When he’d finished eating, Marc took a glass of iced tea to the back step and sat there thinking. Bluedog brought her ball and looked up at Marc with a twinkle in her eyes. Did she know they shared a great secret?

  “Isn’t it too hot to play, Blue?” Marc took the ball. Bluedog waited, dying for Marc to throw it so she could bring it back. “Guess not.” He tossed the ball to the back of the lot.

  Weeds were getting high. Grasshoppers whirred and flew like popcorn popping when Bluedog chased the tennis ball to the corner of the fence. Maybe this evening he’d get out the scythe and cut the weeds. If Mama came home unexpectedly she would be disappointed in Marc and his father for letting the garden get into such a mess. But there was no chance of her coming home, so why bother? Marc didn’t know why he even thought of it.

  He heard Mooney’s voice before he saw him coming toward the front of the house, Otis sauntering along beside him. What was Mooney doing at Marc’s place? He didn’t wait to see.

  “Come on, Bluedog—come on, hurry!” Marc whispered to the dog, who held her ball for another throw. Grabbing his bike from the tree near the back door, he slipped it through the gate. Quietly he latched the gate shut. He and Bluedog were on their way down the street behind the house before Marc decided where to go.

  He’d go talk to Mr. Daniels. He could talk to him in general without revealing their secret. It might help him decide what to do about their discovery.

  “You must need something cold to drink, boy,” Mr. Daniels said, when Marc came into the cool, dim store. He had three fans going. They stirred up a lot of dust, but at least they kept the air moving.

  Marc didn’t mind Mr. Daniels calling him boy. It was a habit lots of people in this town had, talking to kids. Marc knew Mr. Daniels wasn’t thinking of him as a nobody. But his dad had been calling him boy for so many months now, Marc figured he’d forgotten his name.

  Mr. Daniels sat on a stool behind a counter, fanning himself. His shirt was soaked clear through around the neck with perspiration.

  “I sure could use something cold, Mr. Daniels. Now that it’s stopped raining, summer has set in for real.”

  Mr. Daniels got two frosty RCs from the icebox in the back of the store. Marc pressed the cold bottle to his cheeks, then put his cooled hands to his neck. “Business slow?” Marc asked, to start a conversation.

  “Pretty normal, I’d say. Relics are one of those things people can do without. Not many tourists corning here in the summer, either, on account of the heat. Can’t say as I blame them. Fall and spring are better. I do a lot of my thinking this time of the year.”

  “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking myself.” Marc eased into his subject.

  “I’ve about forgot what a boy your age thinks on.” Mr. Daniels leaned back on two legs of his stool. He had pulled up an old wooden chair for Marc.

  “Oh, I think about being in the woods, swimming, exploring, finding something good. If we found something and told Mr. Beslow, I figure he’d want to go dig it up, don’t you?” Marc sipped the RC, feeling tiny drops fizz onto his nose. He tried to act as if he didn’t care about the answer—as if he were just asking.

  “I reckon. He’d probably want to take it to the museum at the university and look it over. Decide how long it had been buried, what Indians left it there. You figuring on finding something?”

  Marc took a big swallow of the RC. Bubbles exploded into his throat and nose. He choked, then coughed until he got control. Mr. Daniels was looking at him kind of funny when he came up for air. Or was it Marc’s imagination?

  “I figure I could,” Marc said when he recovered. “It’s possible, don’t you think?”

  “Anything’s possible. Harder these days than when I was a boy. Sometimes I went down on the river bottoms and looked around. Picked up lots of spears and arrowheads that way. Awls and grinding stones. Graves were more often in some farmer’s field.

  “I wish I could have gone with you.”

  “Then you’d be old like me, Marc. And you couldn’t go looking at all.”

  They both laughed, thinking about Marc being
as old as Mr. Daniels. A peaceful quiet fell over them as Mr. Daniels teetered back and forth on his stool, and Marc listened to flies buzzing in the window behind him.

  “How do you think the Indian people felt about your digging up their graves?” Marc asked finally. He badly needed an answer to that question.

  “Don’t reckon they cared much, seeing as how they’d been dead a long time. Don’t figure they were standing around watching.” Mr. Daniels laughed at the idea.

  Marc had a hard time laughing with him. “Where do you figure they are now, those Indians?” he asked.

  “Well now, that’s a pretty big question, Marc. And I don’t reckon anyone knows for sure. Some people believe we go sit on a cloud and play a harp. Or maybe sit in a big kettle with fire burning around us. I can’t rightly say I believe that, and I never took much to playing a harp. Others think we sit out there someplace waiting to come back. At my age I’m not sure I want to go around thinking about it too much.”

  “Does it scare you, Mr. Daniels? Does dying scare you?”

  “I’d be lying if I said it didn’t, but everyone gets around to it in time. You know what they say—death and taxes …” Mr. Daniels took a sip of his RC. “Something we all get to do. What’s got you into thinking about dying at your age, Marc? Your mama being sick? They don’t think she’s going to die, do they?”

  “No. I guess she could, but she’s getting better, I think. She has to stay in Boonville until she gets well. I was just thinking about it.”

  Mr. Daniels nodded as if he understood needing to think about things like dying. They sat silently again. One reason Marc liked coming to visit Mr. Daniels was that they could sit together, keeping each other company, without talking. Marc liked sitting there surrounded by all the junk in Mr. Daniels’s store. Sometimes he wandered from table to table, counter to counter, looking and daydreaming.

  It wasn’t the uncomfortable feeling of quiet like there was at his house right now. Mr. Daniels and Marc didn’t need to talk; Marc needed to talk to his father, but he didn’t know how.

  “I wish I could talk to my dad like I can to you, Mr. Daniels,” Marc said finally. “He used to talk to me. We’d talk about relics and lots of things. Now he sits around all the time and acts like I’m not there.”

  “I reckon he misses your mama.”

  “I miss her, too, but why would that make him ignore me?”

  “He’s got something on his mind. Might be he feels guilty, feels it’s his fault your mama got sick.”

  “How could that be true? How could it be his fault that Mama got sick?” That didn’t make any sense to Marc.

  “Of course it isn’t, but maybe he thinks his bringing her down here from the city made her sick.”

  Marc couldn’t think that Mama’s moving to Pine Creek from Chicago had anything to do with her being sick. And, after all, it had been a long time ago, almost five years. What Mr. Daniels said didn’t make any sense. But sometimes things adults said or did made no sense to him.

  “I have to go home,” he said abruptly. He was starving. Maybe he could talk his dad into eating in the cafe tonight. Then he’d get another decent meal. “Mr. Daniels, if Howard Moon should happen by and mention he’s looking for me, would you tell him you saw me on my way to Fort Smith?”

  Mr. Daniels smiled. “Having trouble with Mooney, huh? I can’t say that I like that boy much. I don’t reckon I’d want him for a friend.”

  “I don’t even want him for an enemy.” Marc thanked Mr. Daniels for the cold drink, called Bluedog from under a table near a fan, and took off down the highway for home.

  When Marc called Hermie and Eddie, he found that Mooney had paid them visits, too. “My mother told him I was asleep,” said Hermie, who admitted he’d slept until three o’clock. “She thought I was sick. I pretended we’d sat up all night talking, the way girls do at sleep-over parties.”

  Marc laughed. Ever since the run-in with Louanne Swartzberger, Hermie had sworn off girls forever. He couldn’t say anything good about them.

  “Mooney came by while I was sitting on the porch with Pops,” Eddie said. “Even old Mooney didn’t dare threaten me with a grownup there. Pops had his hearing aid turned off, but Mooney didn’t know it. Later Pops said he was glad I had a new friend.”

  Eddie and Marc laughed at that idea. Then they made up a plan to go into the cave on Thursday. Marc knew Eddie would wait if they had a definite plan to return. They also had to have a way to elude Mooney. Marc gave Hermie and Eddie that job.

  Meanwhile, he kept worrying about his problem. Maybe it was wrong to disturb the Indian boy’s grave.

  12

  ROY CLEARWATER

  On Wednesday Marc and his dad left in time to get to the sanatorium by mid-morning. They’d have lunch with Mama and leave soon after, since she had to rest every afternoon.

  Marc hugged Mama, who looked very pretty. She had left her hair loose, maybe hoping she’d get another surprise visit. “You two are spoiling me,” she said.

  “We like spoiling you, Mama,” Marc said, handing her the few flowers he’d been able to save from the weeds in the backyard.

  “Oh, my bachelor’s buttons. I love this blue. They must look pretty in the garden. I’d love to see them.”

  Marc didn’t say a word and was glad she couldn’t see the mess their backyard had become. His mother looked frail and tired, now that he studied her up close.

  “I had hoped I might be home by now to see them, but the doctor says I have to be patient. I’m afraid I’m not a very good patient.” She laughed at the double meanings.

  “Maybe this fall?” Marc’s father came alive at the idea of Mama coming home.

  “Maybe.” Mama reached out and took her husband’s hand. Marc looked at them and quietly sneaked away. They would never miss him.

  He almost ran into a nurse outside Roy Clearwater’s room. “Mr. Clearwater is having a good day, Marc,” she said. The nurse was round and pink and smiled at him, making him feel super. He didn’t realize she knew his name.

  “Hello, Mr. Clearwater,” Marc greeted him. “How are you?”

  “I wish I could be outside.” The old Indian was nearly always staring out the window when Marc came.

  “I’ll take you onto the sun porch,” Marc offered. He went to get the nurse to help him get Mr. Clearwater into a wheelchair. He could walk around his room, but not all the way outside.

  Mr. Clearwater grumbled, but went along with the work of getting him out onto the sun porch. Then he said, “This is fine, Marc, but I meant down in the woods, down by the river.”

  “Oh. Well, I guess you’ll have to imagine being there. I can tell you what it looked like the other day, and you can pretend.”

  “I remember the long summer days,” Mr. Clearwater said, not waiting for Marc to remind him, but beginning a story.

  “I roamed the woods day after day. I hunted and fished for my family. Once when I was just a boy I carried a deer home. I could hardly manage the weight. My mother was proud.”

  “How did she make your food last through the winter?” Marc asked, although he thought he knew.

  “She dried the deer meat and sometimes ground it with berries. She smoked the fish. Then we would have plenty if the winter was hard and we couldn’t hunt.”

  “Did you have a gun or bow and arrows?” Marc asked, remembering the single arrow in the grave they’d found. Also the perfect arrowheads, ten of them. He would like to bring both to Mr. Clearwater, who would probably be sure of the tribe.

  “Oh, I had a gun. Not a very good gun, but I was proud of it.”

  Mr. Clearwater drifted back into those days, roaming the forests. Marc left him there for a few minutes. It was the only way he could enjoy the woods now. Then Marc asked another question.

  “How did your people feel about dying, Mr. Clearwater? I know they buried things with the person who had died, things to keep him company on his journey, even food. How would they feel about someone digging up that grav
e now, studying your people?”

  “Misfortune will happen to the best and wisest of men,” Mr. Clearwater said, after thinking for a few minutes. “Death will come, and always out of season. A season of grief will come, then will pass away. I will not need my grave place in the spirit land. I will have my house, my tipi there, and I will be able to hunt the buffalo again.”

  Marc thought about what Mr. Clearwater meant when he said death would always come out of season. Maybe that a person was never ready for it? Or his kinfolk were never ready? Mr. Clearwater sounded ready. But even though Marc knew Mr. Clearwater might die soon, and Mr. Daniels might die before too long, he wasn’t ready to let his two old friends go. Was that selfish? Would Mr. Clearwater be happier hunting his buffalo again? Would Mr. Daniels rather be digging on the river bottoms for Indian relics? Mr. Clearwater sounded sure of what he’d be doing in the spirit land.

  Without meaning to, Marc saw his mother’s face before him. The hollows in her cheeks. How tired she looked. She was young. It wouldn’t be fair for her to die. It would be out of season.

  He stared at the sanatorium grounds, plants and trees budding and leafing out, getting a good hold on summer—a good hold on life. It was summer, the best time to be alive.

  He thought of the Indian boy from the grave, dying so young, certainly out of season. For a moment Marc could see him playing with his dog, shooting his bow and arrows, hunting rabbits. His constant thoughts of this boy, and his talks with Mr. Clearwater, had made Marc feel as if he had known someone whose childhood might have been like Mr. Clearwater’s own.

  Their discussion was interrupted by the bell summoning them to lunch. Marc turned the wheelchair around and pushed Mr. Clearwater into the hall and down to the dining room.

  “Mama, you remember my friend, Roy Clearwater. He’s a full-blooded Osage Indian.” Marc reminded Mr. Clearwater that these were his parents, and they all sat together. They had met only one other time, since Mr. Clearwater usually ate in his room.

  “Marc talks of you often, Mr. Clearwater,” Mama said. “I’ve been meaning to come and visit. I’ve stayed by myself too much.”