I climbed down the ladder, then spotted Mr. Stray on the same rock where he’d watched me before. I sat down by his food. Soon he approached, walking slowly as if unsure whether or not he should come close. When I didn’t move, he stopped beside me and sniffed my shoe.
“Good kitty,” I said.
He leaned against me, rubbing the side of his face against the sole of my shoe. I wanted to pet him, but I was afraid if I reached toward him, he’d run off, so I sat still and continued to talk to him. Soon he stretched forward and sniffed my pant leg.
That’s when I realized that Mr. Stray was really Mrs. Stray!
This cat was nursing kittens! No wonder she was so hungry. I wondered where the kittens were. Hidden in the brush somewhere, I supposed.
My plan to tame the cat and find a home for it had just become more complicated. If Aunt Ethel was unhappy about one stray cat, what would she say about raising kittens?
I made a fist and slowly extended it toward Mrs. Stray. She sniffed my hand thoroughly, but when I tried to touch her, she backed away. She crouched at the water bowl and lapped quickly, her pink tongue darting in and out. Then she moved to the food dish, keeping a wary eye on me.
When she finished drinking and eating, she left.
As I walked back to the house, my brain buzzed with excitement about the ghost and the mother cat, but I decided not to tell Aunt Ethel about either of them. Since Aunt Ethel had not been able to see or hear Willie when she was younger, she might not want me to talk to him, and I didn’t want to push my luck about taming the cat. Let her get used to the idea of one cat before I sprang a litter of kittens on her.
The summer that I had thought would be boring was already filled with secrets and excitement.
Aunt Ethel seemed relieved to see me. “I was afraid you got lost,” she said.
“I’m sorry if I worried you. I was in the tree house, reading.” And talking to a ghost and feeding Mrs. Stray.
She smiled. “You sound like Florence. She always had her nose in a book and forgot the time. Get washed up; our dinner’s almost ready.”
“It smells great,” I said as I washed my hands at the kitchen sink.
“Cheese omelets and sliced tomatoes. Another favorite dinner. Fried potatoes, too, and cantaloupe. It’s good to have someone to cook for again. I’ve always liked to cook, but Florence didn’t, so we agreed I’d be the cook and she’d be the one to clean up.”
Taking the hint, I said, “I’ll do the dishes. That can be my job all summer.”
As we ate, I asked, “Do you have any books about Carbon City history? I’d like to learn about the coal mines.”
“There might be some in Florence’s room. I never got around to sorting through her things.”
“Is it OK if I look?” I already knew which room she meant, because she had called it “my sister’s room” that first night when she showed me around the house.
“Read anything you want,” she said. “Nothing made Florence happier than a youngster who liked to read. If you don’t find anything you like, we can stop at the library the next time we drive to Diamond Hill for groceries.”
After dinner and two pieces of the best chocolate cake I’d ever eaten, I washed the dishes, then found two apple crates in Florence’s room. Stacked on their sides to make shelves, they were filled with old books.
Several were books for children: The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, The Adventures of Sammy Jay, and The Birds’ Christmas Carol. All had names written inside the cover, but none of the names was Florence. She must have bought used books, or maybe they were donated to the school by the parents of her pupils. Compared to the mystery and adventure books I had brought with me, these didn’t look very exciting.
In the second apple crate, I found two slim volumes—pamphlets, really—on the history of Carbon City. One, called “Mining Disasters,” consisted of reprints of old newspaper articles about the area. I began to read, skimming until I saw the date, May 10, 1905.
EXPLOSION IN CARBON CITY MINE
FIFTEEN MEN MEET THEIR DEATH
Widowed women and fatherless children wept near the mouth of Mine Number Five’s tunnel yesterday, as the bodies of fifteen miners were hauled up out of the mine on the long incline tramway.
An explosion occurred shortly after noon on May 9. Mine Superintendent Richard Jones speculated that carelessness and disobedience of orders by one or more of the miners caused the tragedy. “Someone must have struck a match or exposed the flame of his safety light,” the superintendent said, “probably to light his pipe.”
Details of the disaster are still meager.
* * *
The article ended with the names of the dead, including Emil Davies and Wilber Martin. I stared at Willie’s name. I had talked to him that very afternoon, yet here was proof he had died more than a century ago, and his death took place exactly where and when he had described it.
Why could I see a ghost when others couldn’t? Did I have special psychic powers? Mom sometimes watched a TV show where a man helped people talk to their dead relatives. I liked to watch the show with her, but it gave me the creeps to think I might have such ability.
If I could see one ghost, maybe I’d see more of them, and what better place for them to show up than a graveyard? What if all of the dead miners decided to pay me a visit? I regretted my promise to go to the cemetery the next morning.
I put the two pamphlets in my own room. Then I went down to talk to Aunt Ethel.
“Why did Aunt Florence think the tree house was haunted?” I asked, hoping I sounded casual and not overly curious.
Aunt Ethel put down the book she was reading. “Florence claimed a ghost visited us whenever we were in the tree house—a coal miner who had died in one of the explosions. I never saw him, but Florence swore up and down he’d come inside the tree house and talk to her. She even described his clothes, and she said he smelled of coal dust. At first I thought she made it up to annoy me because I didn’t see him, but when she got frightened, I knew she wasn’t pretending.”
“Why was she scared of him?”
“She wasn’t at first. She liked seeing him when I couldn’t. It made her feel special. Later it bothered her that he always came when we were there. She feared he might start popping up other places, and she wouldn’t be able to get rid of him. So she quit going to the tree house.”
“Did she know his name?”
“If she did, I don’t remember it. I do remember he had only one leg, which seemed odd.” She put a bookmark in her page and looked directly at me. “Why are you so interested in Florence’s old ghost? You didn’t see anything like that today, did you?”
Who, me?
I shrugged. “I’m curious. I like ghost stories.” My reply wasn’t the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but it wasn’t a lie, either.
“Did you find any history books in Florence’s room?” Aunt Ethel asked.
“A couple. I’d like to visit the coke ovens sometime.”
“They’re overgrown and crumbling now, but you can still find them. When we go to town for the mail next week, I’ll show you where they are.”
“You only pick up mail once a week?”
“No need to go more often. It’s mostly ads and bills.”
“Maybe I’ll hear from my parents.” Since Aunt Ethel did not have e-mail, Mom had made arrangements with Mrs. Arbuckle, Steven’s office manager in Minneapolis, to forward letters between India and Carbon City. When I wrote to Mom and Steven, I was supposed to mail the letters to Mrs. Arbuckle, who would scan them and e-mail them to Mom and Steven. They would e-mail to Mrs. Arbuckle all their letters to me, which she would print and send to Aunt Ethel’s post office box.
Aunt Ethel shifted in her recliner and looked closely at me. “Do you miss your folks?”
I didn’t answer right away. I still felt angry at Mom and Steven for shipping me off for the summer, but I missed them, too.
Seeing my hesitation, Aunt Ethel stood up. “I have the perfect cure for being lonely,” she said. “Rocky road ice cream.”
“Can I have mine with another piece of that chocolate cake?”
She beamed at me. “You like your Welcome cake?”
“It’s the best cake I ever ate.”
“Good cake is one of life’s great joys,” she said. “Cake making is an art, you know. You can’t dump a mix out of a box and expect to create a delicate cake that melts on the tongue. It takes practice—and sour cream.”
“You can practice as much as you want while I’m here,” I said.
“I’m glad you came,” Aunt Ethel said. “I hadn’t realized how much I missed having someone else in the house. Muriel comes two or three times a week, but she never stays overnight. It’s good to have a companion.”
As we ate, I said, “I read about the Carbon City cemetery in one of Aunt Florence’s books. I might go there tomorrow to look around.”
“It isn’t far. You can walk there.”
I nearly said I know; the ghost told me, but caught myself before the words came out. “It’s the cemetery we passed on our way home from Carbon City, isn’t it?”
“Yes. The road goes past it, but from here it’s safer to walk on the old railroad bed. The rails were torn up years ago, but the ground they were on is hard. It’s used as a trail by hikers and horsemen. Follow the trail and go right at the Y; you’ll end up in the cemetery. Florence is buried there.”
Yikes. Maybe going to the cemetery wasn’t such a great idea. I wasn’t sure I could handle Willie’s leg AND Aunt Florence.
Aunt Ethel went to bed as soon as she finished her ice cream.
I sat in bed reading old newspaper accounts of the coal mines until I fell asleep.
* * *
After I did the breakfast dishes the next morning, I went to the tree house. Mrs. Stray, or some other animal, had eaten the cat food so I refilled the bowl, but I didn’t see the cat. I didn’t see the ghost, either.
I headed the direction Willie had pointed the day before, looking for the old railroad bed. Every so often I saw deer droppings, but I didn’t see any animals.
I had hiked about ten minutes when I spotted a trail. I consulted my compass, then turned south on the trail. A weathered wooden pole stood at the side of the trail, with a cross pole about seven feet up. The old newspaper stories told about telegraphs sent after the mine explosions; this must be the remnant of a telegraph pole.
I’d gone about half a mile when I spotted a piece of rusty metal sticking up out of the dirt. I dug around it with my fingers, then pried up an old railroad spike. The spike was six inches long and looked like an overgrown nail, except the shaft was square instead of round with a flattened end, much like a chisel. I knew it would have been used to nail down the old railroad tracks for the train cars that hauled the coal. I stuck the spike in my pocket and walked on, feeling as if I were hiking backward into history.
From then on, I kept my head down as I walked. Maybe I’d find more old railroad spikes or even a piece of rail.
A mile or so after I found the spike, the path split. One part went straight; the other veered to the right, up an incline. I turned right and soon looked down on an old cemetery.
Once-white gravestones were dark gray; some had toppled to the ground. There were a few large markers, but most were about two feet high—flat slabs with rounded tops.
I went to the back row where fourteen identical grave markers stood side by side, sticking up like concrete headboards. I read the names, including Emil Davies, and saw they all had the same date of death: May 9, 1905. All of the miners from that explosion were buried there except Willie.
Some fast subtraction from the dates of birth told me most of the men had lived less than thirty years. Emil Davies, at thirty-seven, was the oldest. His son, Victor, age sixteen, was the youngest.
Sadness for these lost lives brought a lump to my throat. The newspaper account I’d read last night had seemed far removed, a tragedy in a past century that had nothing to do with me. Seeing these names and dates made the disastrous explosion vividly real in my mind.
I turned away from the last row and surveyed my surroundings. Faded plastic flowers and a few small American flags—probably left from Memorial Day—decorated half a dozen graves. The rest were unadorned.
No one else was visiting a grave, no joggers ran past, and no cars drove by on the road that bordered the far side of the cemetery. Willie was right; I could dig here unobserved if I wanted to.
Did I?
Back home, I would not have considered such an action for one second, knowing the trouble I’d be in if I got caught. Why should it be different here?
Although I was still angry at Mom for going to India and sending me here for the summer, I wasn’t so mad that I wanted to get myself hauled off to juvenile detention.
Still, now that I’d seen the cemetery, the idea of helping the ghost appealed to me. It was Willie’s leg, and he wanted it moved. Shouldn’t this be his decision?
There are laws against digging up graves because grave robbers steal jewelry or other valuables that were buried with the body. I only wanted to find Willie’s leg bones so I could grant his wish to have his leg buried with the rest of his body.
A voice in my head whispered, Tell that to the police if someone sees you.
Since other people couldn’t see or hear Willie, there would be no way to prove my story if I got caught.