Ten Days at Federal Hill: Chapter Twelve

(To read previous chapters of Ten Days at Federal Hill, please click on the page tab just under the banner photo above.)

Chapter Twelve: Plans in the Attic

The attic room was silent for a moment before Julia leapt to her feet. She moved in front of Edward, blocking Abe’s view. “None of your business,” she said to her brother. “Get out.” She strode to the door, shoving past Cecil, and began to push it shut.

Abe jumped to his feet and pushed back on the door. Two years older than his sister, and significantly stronger, he kept her from closing the door. “I’m telling Mom!” Abe said.

Julia’s thin face appeared in the narrow opening, and she grunted as she pushed against the door. “Telling her what?” she hissed at her brother. Her eyes were slits and her mouth turned down.

Abe leaned forward, meeting her eye to eye. “That there’s a strange kid here. That you’re hiding him. That you’re trying to help him escape to some other creepy place!”

Julia’s face fell. How much had Abe heard? She balled her fists against the door and pounded on it once. “You’re the creeper, Abe! Listening outside doors!” And she would’ve slammed it in his face, if Cecil hadn’t stopped her.

“Hey … hey! You two! Calm down.” He whispered in Julia’s ear, “It’s okay.” Cecil opened the door again. “Abe, come in. Seems like you heard most of what we had to say anyway.” He looked at Carla quizzically. Just how much had Abe heard? “Maybe you can help us.” He led Abe over to their circle on the floor. The bare wooden floor was now scuffed with dust from all their moving around. The room had grown warm and stuffy under the August sun as the morning wore on. Cecil said, “This is Edward, a new friend. We met him this morning … uh … when we were playing outside.”

Abe squeezed between Carla and Cecil and sat down in the circle. He studied Edward. Both the boys had dark hair and large, dark brown eyes. Edward’s eyes were defensive, hiding his thoughts. Abe’s were bold, and although he wore clean clothes how, his face, hair, and hands still bore all the marks of filth and poverty. As the children squatted on the floor in a larger circle the dust swirled gently again and sifted through the air.

“I’ve never seen you before,” Abe said to Edward. “Where do you live?”

Edward cut a glance at Cecil, who rescued the moment.

“Uh, Abe, we were in the middle of finishing a game, a … uh … house game. We’re imagining where the secret passages or hidden openings or trap doors might be in this house.” He smiled at Abe. “Edward lives in an old house too, and we were comparing notes, kind of. What do you think?” he asked his cousin. “Does this house have secrets like that?”

Abe scowled, but he answered. “Of course – that’s easy. The assembly room. It’s the most interesting room.” He smirked. “I’ve spent lots of time in there, even though we’re not supposed to.” He looked at Julia. “I know every corner of that room.”

“Just because it’s interesting to you doesn’t mean it has secret passages,” she retorted. She sat with her thin legs pulled up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them.

Abe looked down at his hands and began fiddling with his shoe laces. “I’ve found stuff in there,” he said. “I’ve been reading the books this summer when Julia wasn’t around and the boys wouldn’t let me go with them.” He glanced at Julia, a look that showed he’d noticed the many hours she’d been gone. Then he looked at Cecil. “There’s not just boring old books. There are diaries from people who used to live here.”

“Yeah. I found one of those too,” Carla added. “And a whole book of newspaper clippings. There was a story about a lost ....”

But Abe interrupted her. “I bet you don’t know,” he continued, looking at his sister, “that there are hidden panels in there, along the walls.”

“What?!” Cecil and Julia exclaimed at once.

Abe stretched his legs out and studied Edward. “They don’t go anywhere. They’re not … tunnels, or anything.” He paused, looking around. “Just little empty holes.” He stood up. The dust flew up into the air. Carla coughed. “Want to see?”

“Not yet,” said Cecil. “We don’t want the others to horn in on our fun, do we?”

“Well ...” said Abe. “I guess not. But ….”

“And plus, if your mom found us, she’d make us leave the room,” Carla added. She rocked a little, forward and backward, as she sat with her feet pulled up under her. Managing Abe would be trickier than she’d thought.

“And if the boys found us, they’d probably tell us to leave too,” Julia noted. She didn’t look at her brother, but she traced curling lines into the dust on the floor with her finger. Edward sat silent, watching the interaction of the cousins. He was amazed at their confidence, how they challenged each other.

“Well, when then?” Abe asked.

Cecil smiled. “Middle of the night, of course! When all the best things happen.” He chuckled. “Unless you’re scared ….”

Abe laughed, and the noise was so loud it echoed in the room. “Scared? Of what?” Abe sighed. “This is kind of boring,” he said. He glanced at Edward, who hadn’t said one word since Abe entered the room. At that moment, both Abe’s and Edward’s stomachs lurched and growled. Edward had not eaten in over a day. Abe was already hungry for lunch and tired of the chatter. He jumped up and stood over them. “I’m hungry. Anybody coming?”

“Yeah,” Cecil said. “Right behind you!” he added as Abe left the room. “Save me some ham!” he hollered for effect.

Edward lay back on the floor and let out a huge sigh. His stomach rumbled loudly again.

“You’re hungry,” Julia and Cecil said at the same time.

“That was tricky,” Carla said. She let out a long sigh and looked at Edward. “If anybody else finds out about you,” she said softly, “especially the grown-ups, then you’ll never get to Lucie’s house. You’ll never see the other kids again.” She wanted to make him understand. “You won’t be allowed to stay here either. They’ll take you away somewhere else, to live with strangers.”

“They can’t make me,” Edward stated. “I’ll run away. I’m really good at running away.”

Cecil and Carla both knew what they had to do. “We must find a way to Lucie’s house, right away,” she said to her brother.

Julia was the next to stand up. “I have to get his clothes out of the laundry room before mom finds them. I’ll take them ...” she paused, “… to the, uh, yeah, to the clerk’s office. Nobody goes there except me.” She looked at Edward. “As a matter of fact, that would be a great place for Edward to stay, if we could just get him there.”

“That old building?” Carla asked.

“What old building?” Cecil asked. “What are you talking about?”

Julia ignored his question. “Yeah!” she replied, growing excited. “Like I said, nobody goes there. And there’s a room upstairs that would be perfect for him to hide in.”

Carla stood up now, excited. “Julia, the hole by the chimney! He could hide in there if anybody did come in!” she added.

“Sure! We can sneak him stuff from the kitchen. It’ll be easy!”

“Nothing about this,” Cecil interjected, “will be easy.”

The children heard footsteps below, and then mounting the stairs. “Julia!” came her mother’s voice.

“It’s lunch. We gotta go,” Julia said.

They told Edward to stay there, that they would return soon and bring him food, and find a place to hide him. Then the three cousins descended the attic stairs. But Edward did not stay there. Bored in the empty room and desperate for something to eat, he crept down the attic hallway and into each tiny room along the way, peering through each window, examining the lay of the land outside. He studied the towering cedar tree, the complex boxwood garden, the clerk’s office, the driveway and the distant county road. He could hear the older boys hollering in a barn in the distance and the sputtering sounds of an old truck engine. From one window he spied the edge of the lake with its murky red water. As the family’s voices grew louder in the kitchen and the smells of lunch wafted through the house to him, his stomach turned over and rumbled louder than before. He sat on the floor and gazed at the back yard with his hands on the windowsill. From the edge of the boxwoods a stooped figure emerged, hunched over, creeping with hands nearly to the ground. It moved stealthily, its head jerking back and forth, watching for danger. Almost on all fours, it moved quickly from shrub to tree to hedge across the open space behind the kitchen, and slithered at last under the old porch on the clerk’s office, unseen by anybody but the boy looking from the attic window. Edward frowned and left the room.

(To keep reading the next chapter, please click here.)

[Ten Days at Federal Hill is copyrighted in its entirety by the author, M.K. Christiansen.]