Mystery on South Mountain (Binghamton NY)

Copyright Ó # Txu1-009-024, Merlin William Lessler
 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the author. Printed in the United States of America. For information address: Front Street Press, 351 Front St., Owego, New York 13827. Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication DataMystery on South MountainLessler, Merlin William FIRST EDITIONNovember, 2005
Edited by Lauren Massey
 Published by Front Street Press351 Front Street
Owego, New York 13827
mlessler@stny.rr.com
 Printed by Carr Printing

Foreword – Sunday, June 20, 1954

She stepped off the curb onto the path. It connected her street to Sally’s. She hated this section of the neighborhood. Hated that it was not developed yet. The mass of trees and undergrowth lining the trail scared her. Low branches and blackberry shoots reached into the passageway, as though to grab her. She thought of them as the elongated fingers of a witch. Her doll was cradled under one arm. She dragged an overnight bag stuffed with miniature dresses in her other. She was in a hurry to get home. Then she was struck! It was like a bolt of lightning. One minute she was walking along, the next she was lying on her back looking up at a clear blue, June sky. Tree branches swayed gently above, but the hands that held her were rough. A stench of garlic and body odor washed over her. She struggled to get up, but his grasp brought her down with a thud. He mumbled behind a soiled kerchief that hid his face, “Shut up and you won’t get hurt.” She squirmed free in a fit of panic when he shifted his hold to unfurl a burlap sack. She took two steps and then felt her head explode. The woods turned bright yellow, and then flashed to white. Her knees buckled; she went down. She saw him above her just before the blackness took her away. He was holding the sack with a gloved hand. How odd, she thought, to be wearing a glove in summer. Then she was gone.

Chapter One - A Schoolyard Wake

Friday, June 18, 1954

Nick Carns was twelve years old in the summer of 1954 when the mystery of South Mountain swept through his hometown in upstate New York. It began during the waning days of the school year, though its origin stretched back two decades. Diane Palmer and Nick were alone in an isolated section of the school playground, hidden behind a giant maple tree. He thrust a small silver box at her in an attempt to startle and intimidate. She was a notorious tattletale, constantly ratting out her classmates, no matter how slight their misdemeanor. An “alphabet” belch, a tongue stuck out at the teacher behind her back, or a concealed squirt gun were typical of the infractions “reported” by Diane. The all-female academic staff at Longfellow Elementary had nearly had it with her proclivity to tattle, though not one of them ever considered making her stop. The information was too useful to their purpose - order and control. Nick was eager to even the score; to make her pay for the hours he’d spent standing in the cloakroom or staying after school because of her betrayal. Diane stared at the tinfoil-covered box, her eyes as big as saucers. A nervous twitch pulsed across her forehead. She knew the "Dead Finger" was inside the box. She dreaded to see him open the coffin but her curiosity was too strong for her to stop him or look away. It was her moment of glory. She’d be the first one to see it from the girl’s side of the classroom. Nick slowly lifted the cover and watched her rosy cheeks turn ashen. It lay silent, a pale twisted finger on a fluffy bed of cotton.

"Blow on it," he dared. Diane was stunned by the starkness of the "corpse". She couldn’t catch her breath, let alone blow on the finger. She began to squirm, crossing and uncrossing her legs like she did in class when she got excited. Her squirm dance was often a prelude to a bladder accident, an event Nick and the rest of the sixth grade class witnessed many times over the years. She wanted to flee but orders from her brain weren’t getting through to her legs. With nowhere to turn she gave in, leaned over and gently blew on the necrotic finger. As her breath glided across the cotton bed and engulfed the nestled body part, the dead finger rose from the white batting, seeming to float above the tinfoil box that served as its final resting place. The hovering finger did the trick; it ended her curiosity. Her legs came back to life and she ran shrieking from the schoolyard to the footbridge across Ross Creek, where her pig-tailed classmates were skipping rope.

In her haste to get away she crashed head-on into a small, wiry woman, who was struggling with two heavy bags of groceries. The woman caught Diane, preventing a disastrous collision, but spilled the contents of her sacks in the process. "What's the matter with you? You act like you've seen a ghost," scolded the woman as she helped Diane to her feet and started refilling her bags with the scattered cans of soup, vegetables and dry goods. "I did! It was the ghost of a dead finger," sobbed Diane as she made her escape on wobbly legs, too embarrassed to glance back. Had she, she would have been shocked at the look of horror that swept across the woman's face - a look that seemed to come directly from hell.  

"Did you see it?  Did you see it?" the girls excitedly asked when Diane finally made it to the safety of her clique. "Yes! It was horrible, just horrible! So is that Nick Carns!" It was all an act. She wasn't the least bit frightened, not now. She was filled with pride and feelings of superiority. After all, she was the first girl in class to view the monstrosity he'd brought to school that June day. One by one her fellow rope jumpers took a turn in the makeshift funeral parlor behind the maple tree. Not a single one noticed a small kerchiefed woman watching from the other side of the schoolyard.

Chapter Two - Origins

Nick walked home from school with his head in the clouds. The half-mile trek passed in a flash. He was delighted with the reaction his corpse evoked at school. Up until a week ago, he was the one who was scared to death of the dead finger, so named the first time he saw it when his mother revealed it to him five years earlier. Since that initial introduction he'd spent many nights in terror, unable to fall asleep without pulling the covers over his head, a protective shield from the dead finger his mother said was stored in the attic above his bedroom. He could picture it in its little coffin, rising and falling, as his breath ascended through the trap door above his dresser into attic space, giving it life. He was thrilled with the power the finger gave him at school. He now understood and could almost forgive his mother for the cruel prank she played on him. She claimed she had no idea it affected him so severely, until his sister Kathy complained that Nick snuck into her bedroom in the middle of the night and slept on the floor at the foot of her bed, "YET AGAIN!" That was a week ago. Nick was forced to admit he was terrified of the dead finger, that he went to bed in fear. If he woke up in the middle of the night it scared him so badly he fled from his room - either to the hall or Kathy’s room. His confession brought tears to his mother’s eyes as she learned of the terror she'd unknowingly unleashed on him. It had all been a joke. But she now knew, it had gone too far.

She loved practical jokes, and even more, she loved scaring kids. She almost always went over the line, unable to end a prank until her victim was at least teary eyed, if not downright sobbing. She'd always had a problem knowing when to stop. She blamed it on a nervous temperament caused by the public school system, an unenlightened system that forced her to write with her right hand, ignoring that she was left-handed. She claimed the stress made her high strung and nervous and impaired her ability to realize when she’d gone too far. The story of the dead finger, which she revealed to Nick when he was seven, was an extreme example of her impaired judgment. The corpse in the box that she used as a climax to her narration was a boldfaced lie. It wasn’t that of an injured railroad worker as claimed. It was her index finger, pushed up through a hole in the bottom of a small box surrounded by a wad of cotton taken from a bottle of Bayer Aspirin tablets. 

As the story went, she came into possession of a severed finger when she was fourteen. It happened in a rail yard near her home where she and her six siblings often played. A rail worker's hand was crushed under the wheel of a freight car. She stood in the shadows of an abandoned work shed as the ambulance took the injured man away. A freight car wheel had slipped off a jack and crushed his hand. Four fingers were severed and fell to the stony ground in the process. With the ambulance siren wailing in the background, she watched in amazement as a young girl picked up the discarded digits and put them into a small black purse. When the girl left, Nick's mother went to the spot where the accident took place and kicked at the stones, trying to cover up the blood already clotting and changing from crimson red to brownish copper. Suddenly an index finger popped up as she kicked at the gravel. She jumped back in shock, then was immediately drawn to the body part, as though by a magnet. She had to have it! She fumbled around in her shirtsleeve and came out with an embroidered cotton handkerchief. Using a twig as a pry bar, she maneuvered the finger onto the handkerchief, folded it and quickly shoved it into her pocket. She backed away slowly, then turned and ran full speed across the yard, crashing into the girl with the black purse who’d been watching her. The girl was crying; tearstains lined her face. She asked the future Mrs. Carns if she found anything in the gravel. "No, nothing," Nick's Mom replied. "Are you sure?" the girl questioned, "I thought I saw you pick something out of the stones." "No," she lied in reply. "I just dropped my handkerchief and then picked it up again. I didn't see anything else." She wasn't going to give up her trophy. She knew she would be the most famous kid on her block when everyone heard she had a man’s cut-off finger. The girl challenged her again, "Are you sure?" "Yes I'm sure," Nick's Mom shot back, then turned and ran, stopping once to shout to the girl, "I've got to get home. I'm late."

Nick remembered every word of the story and every gruesome detail of the finger he’d gawked at that fateful day. He was absolutely positive she never bothered to tell him it was a joke. Just the opposite; she’d reinforced the credibility of her tale by telling him she kept the finger in the attic, the trapdoor to which was in his bedroom. From that day, until last week when he was forced to confess, he’d crawled into bed every night, scared to death.  

Chapter Three - Woody is the first to know

June 11

After Nick confessed his fear of the dead finger and then found out it was his mother’s finger that he was afraid of, he couldn't wait to play the same trick on his best friend, Woody. Woody Stiles lived in the next block. They’d been soul mates since before they were born, at least according to neighborhood legend. Their mothers were pregnant together and claimed the two boys communicated inutero. When Nick was two weeks old his mother had a shower for an “overdue” Marge Stiles. She held Nick on her lap as delivery stories filled the room. Nick squirmed and Woody kicked all through the affair, evidence that they were having a conversation as well. Marge suddenly felt a sharp pain. It was strong. It was followed by a second jolt a few minutes later. She quietly handed Nick back to his mother, politely excused herself and rushed home. Before the back door slammed shut she had grabbed her already packed suitcase and ordered a startled Marshall Stiles to take her to the hospital, IMMEDIATELY! She barely made it. Woody was born in the hallway as his mother’s gurney was being pushed to the delivery room. From their initial meeting that fateful night, Nick and Woody were inseparable. They played together every day, progressing from animated baby talk conversations as they sat on their mothers’ laps, to crawling together in each other’s playpens, or exchanging splashes in a tin washtub on a hot summer afternoon. As they grew older their adventures progressed to such things as tricycle races down Nick's cement driveway, with half-dollar sized scabs on their knees to prove it, and climbing contests in every tree in the neighborhood.

They started kindergarten and moved to first grade as a duo. They both skipped ahead from an overcrowded second grade; Woody because of straight "A" grades and Nick because of "potential". They became the "Reptile Duo," terrorizing neighborhood girls with an assorted collection of frogs, turtles and snakes from a pond in a field behind Nick's house. Woody and Nick were Siamese twins, except without a physical connection. Nick was blond, tall, slim and athletic looking. Woody was short, slightly pudgy, and sported dark hair and eyes, the latter enshrouded by thick glass lenses that hovered above a mouth that constantly formed a grin. That grin exposed an overabundance of teeth, destined to enrich a lucky member of the local orthodontist community. It was only natural that when Nick found out that the dead finger was a joke, he wanted to - no, HAD TO - play the same trick on his best friend, Woody. Over the years he'd often repeated his mother’s tale to Woody. Woody knew first-hand how scared of the dark it had made him. Even when they camped out together, a mile from Nick's house, he still pulled the covers over his head to protect himself from the “thing” in the attic. It was a Friday when Nick learned the truth about the dead finger. Perfect, Woody and I are camping out tonight. I'll bring the dead finger and scare the pants off him.

Nick and Woody planned to climb to the top of South Mountain to search for dinosaur bones. It was a quest they'd undertaken many times, although they had never uncovered even a tyrannosaurs rex toenail. Even though it was only a half-hour climb to the top of this large steep hill, which was a mountain in name only, they planned to camp out en-route as part of the adventure. They loved to sleep in the woods. Woody slept in his father’s sleeping bag, part of the Navy equipment he brought home after his stint at the Panama Canal during WWII. Nick’s bag was brought back by his uncle, who returned from his stay in France with a steel plate in his head, a proclivity to grand mall seizures, and a drinking problem. Woody carried a knapsack bursting at the seams with peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, apples, bananas and chocolate chip cookies. Nick shouldered a pack containing a tent pilfered from Woody’s older brother, camp supplies and two Army canteens filled with milk. Homemade bedrolls were carried under their arms. Laden to the gills, they headed for the mountain with Nick's dog Topper following along. The black mongrel went everywhere with them. He even went downtown when they rode their two wheelers to the movie theatre. They'd park their 3-speed English bikes outside the building and Topper would plop down next to the bike rack, a capable guard. Hours later when they came out of the dark movie house rubbing their eyes, Topper would still be there, wagging his tail excitedly and lobbying for a pat on the head. It was the fifties, a time when dogs were well mannered and the leash laws were not yet in effect. 

The threesome reached the top of Denton Road, the steeper of the two streets that made up their neighborhood, crossed an unpaved farm road and made their way into the woods. The first leg of the ascent entailed a climb up a steep cleared slope that served as a neighborhood sled and toboggan run in winter. It got a lot of use because the city work crews were quick to ruin the kids’ preferred sledding place, the hilly street that Nick lived on. The minute it started to snow the public works trucks, laden with coal ash, were dispatched to the hilly sections of town. A laborer stood in the truck bed shoveling the gray crap in herringbone swaths across the snow-covered roads, making it passable for cars, but ruining it for sleds. Sometimes the shoveler left them a path at the edge of the road, but usually the kids on Nick’s block were forced to trek to the clearing in the woods to ride their sleds. Climbing it now, with a full pack, was tough going. They were forced to move to the side of the clearing and pull themselves up the grade using small trees as a railing. After ten minutes of hard climbing they were forced to stop. A cantilevered outcrop of ledge blocked their route. The only way they could get over the lip was to shed their packs, toss the gear to a flat area above the ledge and climb over the outcrop. They pulled themselves an inch at a time using tree roots that protruded from cracks in the rock.  They were exhausted by the time they made it over the cliff. All they could manage was to roll on their backs and gasp for air. A bored Topper took a longer but saner route. He explored the narrow mesa for chipmunks and squirrels while they recovered. The flat spot was not a true mesa, but rather an abandoned road that wound up the mountain to a rundown estate at the top. A second road that traversed the slope five hundred feet above was the primary route to the O'Neil estate. Cyrus O'Neil, an Industrialist from England, purchased the pristine hilltop farm in the late 1800s. Its remote location on the mountain offered privacy and spectacular views of the prosperous and bustling city below. It was excellent farmland, sustaining a dairy herd for seventy-five years. O'Neil left the country in 1923 after a disastrous fire at his clothing factory. Twenty-one employees perished in the blaze. All were women; most were Irish immigrants. They’d been trapped on the third floor as an inferno raged through the sweatshop. A horrified crowd of onlookers watched in helpless horror as the fire raged and the trapped women’s screams filled the night air. It was the worst single disaster that ever took place in Binghamton. The city fathers were so deeply moved by the tragedy that they voted to allocate municipal funds to pay for a monument honoring the victims. O'Neil was overwrought and ashamed. He never gained back his old entrepreneurial drive. He let the business dissolve in the ashes. He retreated to England and hired a series of caretakers to manage the farm on the mountain. Unfortunately, he didn’t provide enough attention or funds and the estate steadily deteriorated. Nick and his sister, Kathy, were told the story of the fire by their grandmother, who not only witnessed the tragedy, but also was friends with several of the women who perished. They gawked at the monolith marking the mass gravesite in Spring Forrest Cemetery many times. It was just down the block from their grandmother’s house and they often played among the tombstones in the enormous burial ground when they visited her.

It was an imposing monument, a thirty-foot tall monolith carved from solid granite. Circling it were twenty-one unmarked gravestones. Looking at it from the hill above, it appeared to be a giant clock, except with twenty-one hours marked out, rather than twelve. Inscribed on the lower third of the stone was a dedication text:

                                                               

SACRED TO THE MEMORY

OF THOSE WHO LOST THEIR LIVES

IN THE BINGHAMTON CLOTHING CO'S

FIRE, JULY 22, 1922

ERECTED BY THE CITY OF BINGHAMTON

TWENTY ONE UNIDENTIFIED BURIED HERE

MISS NELLIE THERESA CONNOR

   MRS. NELLIE F. GLEASON

MRS SARAH DORAN  

MISS MARY T. SMITH

MRS. LIZZIE RISLEY  

MISS LENA MARIE KENNEDY

MRS. MARY BIANCA  

MRS. LOU G. SHOVE

MRS. NELLIE KISON   

MRS. ELLA M. WHITE

MRS. IDA C. GOLDEN  

MISS CATHERINE CROWE

MRS. EDITH M. CHERNOFF  

MISS MARY JOSEPHINE GREEGAN

MISS EMMA D. HOUGHTALING

MRS. EMMA REID

MRS. STELLA M. CLARK

MISS RUTH A. BUTTON

MISS MARGARET DIMON

MISS MARTHA D. BURDICK

              

The deserted lane where Nick and Woody waited for their respiratory rate to return to normal was on O’Neil property. The road hadn’t been used in fifty years, having been returned to nature when a new shorter and wider lane was carved out of the mountainside. The abandoned lane made a great camping spot.  The grassy flat surface was a comfortable place to sit and gaze down at the hustle and bustle of the civilized world below. Nick and Woody could see a lot of the city from this vantage point. The junction of the Chenango and Susquehanna rivers aesthetically framed the several dozen multi-story brick buildings that made up the downtown section of the city. Even twelve-year odds could appreciate the beauty of this panoramic scene. After catching their breath they made their way along the trail looking for a good spot to camp for the night. It didn't take long. They soon were relaxing on a soft bed of pine needles and roasting marshmallows in a fire. The tent was up, providing a snug and secure backdrop. Their wool bedrolls were lying inside on a cushion of dry leaves. Topper snuggled at the foot of Nick's bed, a safe distance from the fire. He was the only one smart enough to avoid the plumes of white smoke that brought tears to the marshmallow roasters' eyes.

It was getting dark fast and Nick was anxious. He couldn't wait to scare the daylights out of Woody. When their bellies were full and the fire died to a soft glow he suggested they swap ghost stories, a camp-out tradition. Woody went first with a truncated version of "Bluebeard," a serial wife-killer from the last century. Finally it was Nick's turn. He spun his oft-told yarn of the Dead Finger. Woody rolled his eyes and leaned back on his elbows in bored disgust. No matter, Nick went on, covering every detail of the story he'd heard for the first time when he was seven. Woody came back to life and sat bolt upright when he heard Nick brag that he had the finger with him. "Are you serious? Your Mom let you take it?" he croaked.

"No she didn’t. I snuck it out of the house. She has no idea it's gone," crowed Nick, as he slipped a two by three inch tinfoil covered box out of his knapsack.

Woody's eyes bugged out of his head. He'd heard about the finger for years, but never expected to actually see it. "Open it! Open it!" he exclaimed, his voice breaking in the excitement of it all. Nick slowly lifted the cover from the coffin, exposing the finger to Woody's shocked stare. "Oh my God!" he exclaimed, backing away from the corpse.

"Blow on it," challenged Nick. "Watch what it does."

Woody was hysterical. All of a sudden the woods seemed darker, scarier. There was no escape. He had to face it. Gathering all the courage he could muster in his 86-pound frame he leaned in and gently blew on the grotesque looking severed finger. It slowly lifted, rising above the bed of cotton. Woody shrieked and ran from his perch by the fire, into the tent. Nick rolled back on the ground from his “Indian-style” sitting position in a laughing fit; Topper jumped in alarm and started barking.

"Why are you laughing?” Woody demanded.

"Because it's a big joke," Nick replied. "Look, the Dead Finger is my finger,” wiggling it while it still was sticking up through the hole in the bottom of the box. Woody grabbed it and bent it back, bringing a yelp from Nick that started Topper on another barking jag.

"Don't ever scare me like that again!” he ordered.

Nick couldn't help but notice a grin beginning to take control of Woody's face. When it succeeded in breaking through, they both fell back on the bedrolls and laughed till tears came to their eyes. Topper couldn't figure out what was going on. He became nervous and began growling, first at Nick, then at Woody. Finally they regained their composure. Nick hugged Topper to assure him they hadn't gone totally mad. Woody sat on his bedroll and examined the now empty jewelry box, poking his index finger through the hole onto the bed of cotton. "This is so cool!" he bellowed.

"I know," said Nick. "I can't wait to take it to school."

"You can't do that. We've got exams. You'll get kicked out of class and end up failing sixth grade," gasped Woody.

"I know. I’ve got that figured out. I'm going to wait until Friday, after we're through with them."

It was over an hour before they settled down enough to crawl into bed. The fire dimmed to a warm red flicker. Topper rested in protective posture between their bedrolls. They both drifted into an uneasy sleep, dreaming that an enraged faceless man was chasing them through the woods with his left hand raised above his head, dripping blood from five stumps, cursing at them, “I’m going to get you!” 

Chapter Four - A Discovery on the mountaintop

Saturday, June 12

The next morning they rose early, the sun barely above the horizon. They were starved as a result of running from the faceless man in their dreams. Peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, fruit and cookies washed down with metallic tasting tepid milk straightened them out. After a series of belches, a few natural, and the rest forced, they packed up their camping gear and hid it on the side of the roadway. They’d retrieve it on their way home. With lightened packs, they carefully made their way up the mountain. They could have traveled on an abandoned roadbed that wound up the hill to the summit. Instead, they struck out on a deer path that went directly up the face. It crossed the main road five hundred feet above, then a utility right-of-way a few hundred feet after that, and lastly an overgrown branch road just short of the summit. The latter provided access to a summer pasture that was no longer used. At each road crossing they were forced to maneuver around an outcropping of ledge, a strenuous chore that caused their shirts to be soaked with sweat by the time they reached the summer pasture above. They didn’t care. In their heads they were duplicating the climb that Edmund Hillary made to the top of Everest the previous year. “A little sweat was a small price to pay to be the first one to the top of the tallest mountain in the world.” 

Woody and Nick stepped over a fallen fence rail into the ancient cow field. It hadn't provided nourishment to a single farm animal in over fifty years. They plopped down and pulled out the canteen, taking turns sipping the brackish milk in a futile attempt to slake their thirst. As they lay back and rested, they watched large puffy clouds float by.

Woody mused, "I wonder if we'll find any bones today," more to himself than to Nick.

"I think so,” Nick responded. “The mounds near the barn must be where they're buried."

Woody swallowed hard at Nick's prediction. He was afraid to get that close to the barn. All the kids in the neighborhood steered clear of the place because of stories about the crazy caretaker who lived there. His brother, Stew, told them the caretaker was weird and carried a shotgun. Last winter he fired it at Stew and his friend Vincent as they crossed the pasture near the barn. Fortunately, they were far enough to away to escape injury. They just turned their backs when they heard the gun. The spent pellets sprinkled harmlessly on their thick winter jackets. The mounds to which Nick and Woody were headed were close to where the incident took place. It was an active grazing area adjacent to the barn. The field was cordoned off by an electric fence. Woody was scared. He bet Nick was too. He didn't dare bring it up for discussion. He was afraid if he said it out loud it would make it worse.

After catching their breath and mustering their courage, Nick and Woody picked themselves up and started across the summer pasture toward the house and barn. Topper walked obediently at Nick's side, as though aware of the seriousness of the mission. They skirted several large anthills, but then succumbed to curiosity. They raced to the woods at the edge of the field to find something to dig with. They broke two dead limbs off a towering pine tree, quickly removed the stubble of small twigs that projected from the surface and raced back to the anthills. Nick attacked one, Woody another. Soon the area was swarming with thousands of angry black critters that crawled up their sticks, covered their shoes and were making good headway up their pant legs. Woody and Nick freaked and then ran for their lives, brushing off the tenacious attackers in transit. When they reached a small grassy rise on the other side of the field they dropped to the ground in a laughing fit. It was several minutes before they stopped. Woody felt a lot better now. He forgot he was scared.

They got to their feet and walked to the edge of the pasture where a thin wood lot shielded it from a dirt road. This road was the main route to the farm. They had to be careful if they wanted to avoid running into the caretaker chugging along in his rusted pick-up. They crossed the road, after first listening for a truck, and then slipped under the electric fence into an active pasture. Skirting cows as they ran, they headed toward a thickly wooded area in the middle of the meadow. It was a two- acre plot, too steep and densely wooded for cows to traverse. The strange mounds were located there. It was dangerously close to the barn, but they felt safe because of the cover provided by the thick growth of trees. They also felt safe because Topper was with them, a competent bodyguard. 

They dropped their packs near a large stump at the crest of the knoll. From here they had a good view of the barn, allowing them to keep an eye out for trouble while they worked. Nick pulled a lightweight ax from his pack. He was proud of this new possession that his mother let him buy with S&H Green Stamps. She saved the trading stamps she got for buying groceries at Loblaw’s Market for a year. Nick and his sister each were given a full book the day they rode along with her to the redemption center, their reward for licking the stamps every week and putting them into the redemption booklets. A book was enough for Nick to get a camping axe. Woody took out his father's fold-up shovel, compliments of the U.S. Navy.

They first cleared leaves from a large mound using their feet to kick them aside. It took a lot longer than they expected. The covering was almost a foot thick. Once the bare dirt was exposed, they switched from foot power to hand tools. Woody dug with the shovel until hitting a snarl of tree roots. Then Nick took over and cut through the mess with his ax. Topper came in for a sniff every few minutes and had to be shooed away. The rhythm of their labor fell into a pattern and before long they hit pay dirt, a dinosaur bone. It was a foot long and as big around as Nick's arm. Now they dug with fervor, expecting to uncover the jawbone of T-Rex any second. Instead, all they found after an hour of searching was a twin of the first bone. They were beat, physically and mentally. They ended the dig when they came across an odd shaped bone fragment resembling the face of a cat. The eyeholes in the bone were oddly triangular. Happy with their find, they packed up their tools and the bones and headed home. It was only ten in the morning but they were hungry and tired. It had been a long four hours since their breakfast at daybreak.

While Woody watched, Nick quietly crept to the edge of the wood nearest the barn to see if the caretaker was around. They didn't want to get caught crossing the pasture with an armload of bones. Nick watched for several minutes. All he saw was a small woman wearing a kerchief walking from the barn to the back door of the house. The cows were still in the pasture, so he surmised the caretaker must be in the barn cleaning out the stalls. He waved an all clear to Woody and with false bravado they made their way out of the woods and into the open field. Woody tripped as they fled across the rutted terrain, falling face down on a ripe cow plop.

"Shit!" he exclaimed, as Nick stood by laughing.

"It sure is," Nick countered.

"I'll get you for that!" screeched Woody as he lunged for and then chased him across the field. Nick rolled under the electric fence and scampered across the road into the woods but Woody couldn't stop in time and crashed right into the energized wires.

 "Yeoow!!!" he screamed as the electricity traveled through his arm and down his body into the earth. He released his grip and crashed to the ground. He laid in silence for a minute and then erupted into a roaring fit of laughter. Nick stood open mouthed in the woods and then he too fell to the ground and rolled around laughing.

"That was the funniest thing I ever saw," Nick managed to squeak out between waves of laughter, "A shit covered Electric Man." Then their laughing fit started all over again. It was several minutes before they regained their composure. When his side stopped hurting from the prolonged laugh fest, Woody crawled under the fence and over to Nick.

"Let's get going before the going gets gone," quipped Woody, misstating his favorite and extremely over used “hip” saying. Had they not been so engrossed they might have heard the idling pick-up truck parked nearby, but they didn’t hear the knock of its well-worn engine. They didn’t smell the oil tinged smoke pouring from the rusted tail pipe either.

Suddenly Nick was dangling in mid-air, his feet six inches above the ground. The caretaker had jerked him up by the back of his jacket in one quick motion. Holding Nick and glaring down at Woody he spate, "What are you two trespassers doing here?”

Neither of them said anything. The beer and garlic stench from the filthy, unshaven and unkempt attacker almost gagged them. Nick's voice box was choked off by his collar and Woody was too scared to talk. It took him a full thirty seconds before he gained control and muttered, "We were just digging for dinosaur bones mister. We didn't hurt anything."

His reply was met with an eruption of rage clearly displayed on the caretaker’s pockmarked face. It was an image so profound that it caused Woody to wet his pants on the spot.

"Nobody digs up bones up on my farm and takes them away," shot back the mountain man.

"They’re dinosaur bones, not human bones," replied Woody, wondering why he'd been so stupid to say anything. That did it. The caretaker began to shake he was so mad.

"You jag-offs are going to pay for this. You are going to pay dearly," he promised.

While still dragging Nick, he lunged for Woody but Topper jumped at him when his gloved hand was about to make contact with the top of Woody's head. It gave Woody just enough time to scamper out of range. The caretaker lunged again, dragging a gagging Nick further into the woods. Topper went for the caretaker’s legs, distracting him long enough for Woody to break into full stride and giving Nick the opportunity to wiggle out of his jacket. Then Nick crashed through the woods at full speed. When he took off, so did Topper. He was quickly out in front leading the boys down the mountain to safety. The caretaker stood holding the empty jacket, and screamed at them as they made their escape, "I'll get you little creeps if it's the last thing I do!"

They were so scared they literally fell down the steep hill. Branches lashed their faces and arms as they cascaded down the trail, tumbling over roots and stones protruding from the path. They didn't stop until they reached the farm road at the bottom. They plopped down at the edge and panted for what seemed an eternity. "He was going to kill us," Woody finally got enough breath to say. "I know,” Nick responded. “He was drinking. He reeked of beer. I know what I'm talking about. He smelled just like my grandfather." Nick's grandfather drank three quarts of ale a day. This created a bonanza when Nick and his sister hauled the empty deposit bottles to the Baby Bear Market to cash them in for a nickel apiece. Their grandfather’s empty bottles netted them more than their allowance. Nick didn't know what worried him more - the drunken mad man on the mountain who had vowed to “get him” or his mother when she discovered he’d lost his leather jacket.

“Maybe she won't mind at all,” he thought, in the optimistic rationalism of a twelve-year-old. “Maybe she'll be grateful that I lost the jacket. It won't annoy her in church anymore when it squeaks and creaks every time I move.” Every Sunday at Mass she whacked him while angrily whispering out of the side of her mouth through clenched teeth, "Be quiet! Stop making that jacket squeak!" Yea, maybe she won't be mad at all.

Chapter Five – The Skull

Saturday, June 12

When Nick and Woody recovered from their run/tumble down the mountain they stood up, shook out the cobwebs and gazed down Denton Road. They pulled on their knapsacks and headed down the last of the hill. The bones survived the trip intact and they had successfully escaped the clutches of an angry maniac. All in all, their adventure turned out pretty well! They decided to get home to the Saturday chores that awaited them and meet after lunch. Woody took the bones, promising to keep them secret until they could unveil their discovery together. When Nick walked in the kitchen door, his mother didn’t say anything about his jacket. She probably didn’t even give it a thought since it was June and far too warm for a leather jacket. No, he was safe until she noticed it missing from the front closet. He and Topper split a baloney sandwich and then went back outside. Topper took a nap. Nick mowed the lawn, his favorite chore. It was one he performed proudly, the only kid on the block permitted to operate a power mower. Most families in the neighborhood still used push mowers. Those few fathers who had purchased a power mower hogged all the fun and mowed the lawn themselves. Nick's dad had a bad leg, so he eagerly taught his boy the ins and outs of the labor saving machine. Nick finished mowing and snuck off to Woody's house. He didn't want to be home when his father noticed he hadn't trimmed along the sidewalk and stonewall. He hated trimming. He hated using the hand clippers and most Saturdays he skipped out on the chore, unless his father was around to see the omission. If Nick got caught, his father not only made him do the trimming, but also made him rake the lawn, as punishment for trying to get away with a “half-ass” job.

Woody and Nick spent the afternoon working the neighborhood, showing off the bones. Most kids on the block rejected the claim that the small bones were from dinosaurs. Only a few little kids were impressed. Their last stop was at the Almy’s house, a family who lived directly across the street from Woody. John Almy was their age; his brother Mike two years younger. They went to Catholic school at Saint John’s, not Longfellow, the public school that Nick and Woody attended. Nick couldn't imagine spending all day in school with nuns. He could barely handle it once a week when he and the other Catholic kids were “released” from school to attend religion classes. He often left the hour-long session with knuckles reddened from whacks administered by the presiding nun, the consequence of failing to memorize a catechism passage. Students were also whacked with the dreaded “yard-stick” for minor infractions of the rules. He watched in shock one day, as a nun unloaded on a boy’s rear end for sticking his tongue out at the girl behind him. It was a tough environment for antsy active rebels like Nick and his cronies. The girls were rarely hit. The nuns just shamed them into submission. John and Mike Almy eyed the bones with polite curiosity. Mr. Almy studied them with a powerful magnifying glass. He was the only adult in the neighborhood who spent any time with, or who showed any interest in kid stuff. He also was an accomplished amateur scientist, having a subscription to both, "Popular Science" and "National Geographic."

"Hmm," he remarked as he examined the find. “These could be dinosaur bones but more likely they're from a wooly mammoth or maybe a cow. It's hard to tell."

He explained that the foot long bones were probably from the forefoot of a forager, like a mammoth or a cow. The "cat-face" bones with triangular eye sockets were in actuality two sections of vertebrae. He said he was impressed with their find and even though he never actually said it, it was clear to both of them that they’d discovered a cow carcass. It was less than front-page news.

 Oh well, they simultaneously rationalized in their heads. At least he didn't accuse us of being idiots like everyone else. John asked them if he could go on their next hunt.

"Sure," replied Nick knowing it was going to be a long time before they’d go back to the top of South Mountain.

"How about tomorrow?” piped up Woody. "We've got to get our camping gear."

"Jeeze, I forgot we left it there. Why don't we get it and then look on Hazard Hill for bones," Nick replied, hoping to avoid a second encounter with the caretaker. He knew he eventually had to go back and retrieve his leather jacket but didn’t want to face the ordeal anytime soon.

Sunday, June 13

On Sunday afternoon, Woody, John, Nick and Topper struggled up Denton Road en-route to the mountain. Woody agreed to hunt for bones on Hazard Hill, a smaller mountain to the west. He was more afraid than Nick to go back to South Mountain. They made it to their campsite without incident, gathered the camping gear and quickly made their way west, intersecting the same farm road they crossed at the top of Denton to get into the woods. This dirt road went all the way to the Conlon farm at the foot of Hazard Hill. Mr. Conlon was a friendly farmer, not at all like the caretaker on the mountain. He didn't mind kids hanging around. Hell, he had four of his own. He once let Nick and Woody milk a cow, though the experience left them less than enthused. They had both slipped down in the ripe cow plop that littered the barn. Not wanting to waste time in conversation, they skirted the farm by going through the woods to a hidden creek. It drained rainwater from both South Mountain and Hazard Hill. They stashed the camping gear near a pond formed by a crude dam and started out toward the summit. Hazard Hill wasn't as steep as South Mountain, so it didn’t take long to make it to a mid-level plateau where there were mounds similar to those on South Mountain.

"Let's split up," suggested Woody. "We can dig into three mounds at once."

Nick and John agreed. Soon all three were digging with gusto, each hoping to be the first to find something. After a few minutes of frenzied digging, Almy screamed, "Come-ere, Come-ere, I found a skull." Sure enough, he’d uncovered a small skull. It had a pointed snout.

"It's a baby Tyrannosaurus Rex," Nick announced.

Woody picked it up and then quickly threw it back to the ground.

"It's full of bugs," he exclaimed.

It also stunk to high heaven. Nick stuck a branch into one of the eye sockets and lifted the dinosaur skull in the air.

"Let’s take it to the stream and wash it out," he suggested.

They were careful to walk downwind from the reeking fossil. When they came to the creek, Nick pushed the skull under the surface and held it there, letting water run through, flushing it out. A horde of maggots were expelled and quickly floated downstream. They took turns holding it in the water for the next half-hour. When they fished it out for a final inspection it didn't seem to smell quite as bad and the maggots were gone, as was the gooey gray matter they had been feeding on. They carried it home suspended from the middle of a long stick, African safari style.  By the time they reached Almy’s backyard, all three felt peakish. John ran in the house and got his father. He took a quick look at the relic held by Woody and then at the three green faces of the archaeologists.

"Put that thing down boys, and come with me," he ordered, trying hard to cover his nervousness.

He led them to a hose at the side of the house and ordered them out of their pants and shirts. Stripped down to their underwear, he hosed them off with cold water and instructed them to wash themselves with a bar of yellow laundry soap, which he tossed first to Nick, since his coloring was the greenest. 

"That’s not a dinosaur fossil. It’s a deer skull, probably from an animal that’s only been dead a month or two. The brain is still rotting inside and you'll get deathly ill unless we clean you up fast."

He was fast but not fast enough. After the scrub down they got dressed. They were even greener in the gills than when they came in from their excursion. Woody threw up first, right on Mr. Almy’s shoes; Nick made it home before he succumbed to the bile substance that screamed to be released from his stomach. John deposited his load on the back porch in a vain attempt to get inside to the bathroom. They were sick like never before in their lives, throwing up like clockwork every half-hour. Nick’s dad went to the drug store to get a small vial of coke syrup from the soda fountain after listening to his son retch for several hours. The thick sweet concentrate did the trick, settling his stomach so he could finally get to sleep. It was an early bedtime, only six o’clock, but he never stirred until his alarm went off thirteen hours later.   

Chapter Six - Exam Week

The alarm clanged loudly, completely unwinding before it roused Nick from slumber. He turned over and sat up in bed and moaned. His stomach was still sore from yesterday’s “up-chuck” marathon. He wasn’t ready for a day of final exams. He lay back down, gazing at a sea of tinfoil stars glued to his ceiling. It was his Dad’s attempt to create a night sky in his bedroom. It didn't soothe him as it usually did. He rubbed his eyes and stretched, setting off a new round of growling in his belly. He knew he had to get a move on. He couldn't take the day off. He’d never missed a single day of school in his life. He expected to be presented a special perfect attendance award on the last day of school, ten days from today. He'd received one every year but this year his string of attendance would set a record. He wasn't sure how it started but it had become almost a religious tenet for him. He had to get up and get moving and was confident he could handle a day in the classroom in pain. He’d done it many times in his school career. He crawled to the bathroom, brushed his teeth and splashed cold water on his face to snap himself out of his stupor. He took a quick swipe at his highly prized flattop with a stiff brush to finish off his preschool ritual. Heck, he thought to himself, most boys in class don't bother with their hair. They just brush it out of their eyes. Nick slipped on a pair of corduroys that were too hot for June but they were the only clean pants he had. He slipped into a short-sleeved sear sucker shirt and his prized PF Flyer sneakers. Then he went downstairs for breakfast. His mother was fixing egg toast (Woody called it French toast). The table was set for two, him and his sister. His father left for work an hour earlier and his mother didn’t sit down until they left for school.  He couldn’t stand the thought of egg toast, lying heavy with syrup in his belly but he didn’t protest. It would only set his mother off on one of her early morning jags. She hated the morning and was always irritable at breakfast, standing at the stove banging pans and listing his shortcomings of the previous day. (If he said anything about the egg toast it would get her going and he’d get another tongue lashing for the filthy clothes he came home in yesterday or, even worse, she might stumble onto the fact that his leather jacket wasn't hanging in the front closet.) Better keep my big mouth shut, he cautioned himself. He gulped down the unwelcome breakfast and then wisely headed for the door, covering his retreat with the statement that he and Woody wanted to get to school early so they could go brush up on spelling for today's test. His mother bought it and Nick slipped away. He cut through several backyards to get to Woody’s. The neighborhood dogs took notice but stayed quiet. They were accustomed to him and Woody trespassing on their turf. He arrived at Woody's kitchen door and peeked through the window at his ashen-faced friend sitting at the table pecking away at a bowl of cereal. It was probably his favorite, Wheaties. They both believed if you ate enough of the tasteless mush you’d become as great an athlete as the sports hero featured on the front of the box. He knocked on the door and Mrs. Stiles let him in. He was forced to endure five minutes of conversational questioning from Woody's parents, "How is your mother? How is your grandfather? Blah Blah Blah." Finally he and Woody escaped and started the half-mile walk to school. It was more than that if they took the sidewalk, but they traveled via the field behind Nick's house, passing a small pond where they sometimes snagged a frog to terrorize the girls on the playground. They skipped the pond today, happy to get to school without throwing up their breakfast.

They were early. Even Mr. Terry, the policeman who stopped cars so they could safely cross Pennsylvania Ave, wasn't there yet. They crossed the busy street by themselves and headed for the playground, a scooped out paved area ten feet lower than street level. As usual, Denzel Kelly was there waiting. "What'll it be boys, ten cents or a slug in the arm?" They put down their books and rolled up their right sleeves, resigned to the painful ritual. Whack! Whack! It was over in a second. Their arms hurt like hell, but they were paid up for the day. For years they’d followed this ritual, which Denzel initiated in the second grade. You either paid him a dime or took a shot in the arm. Either choice ensured protection for the day, protection from him for the most part. Some kids paid the dime. Woody and Nick didn’t have money to waste on such a frivolous thing as avoiding a sock in the arm. But they fully understood they had to pay one way or the other. They learned a long time ago from watching what happened to kids who refused to go along with Denzel’s deal. Usually the kid would tell Denzel to get lost, incorrectly sizing him up. That was a big mistake. In less than ten seconds they'd find themselves lying on the ground with a bloody nose and Denzel sitting on their chest demanding a dime. He was fast, tough and enterprising.

After submitting to Denzel's ritual, Woody and Nick made their way across the playground to hang out in a remote section behind an old maple tree, the very same spot where four days hence, Diane Palmer would meet her fate, would meet the dead finger. They didn't bother going over the spelling words. Instead, they made plans for introducing the dead finger to the school. They agreed that the first day would belong to Nick, since it was his trick and he'd been the one to suffer from it for so many years. Woody would reveal his version on the second day. They didn't want to miss final exams because of the prank and be forced to spend the day in the principal’s office, so they decided to launch their wave of terror on Thursday, when exams ended. With that settled, they made their way back to the playground, stopping to watch the bat ball game in process. It was their favorite schoolyard activity. Today they passed it up, since their stomachs were still queasy from the deer skull. Instead, they messed around with their Duncan yo-yos by the school door. Woody tried in vain to master "rock the baby" and Nick worked on refining his mastery of "thread the needle." The bell rang and everyone lined up, girls to the left, boys to the right. The janitor opened the door. They walked in and immediately went to their classroom. Loitering wasn’t allowed.

Woody and Nick took their assigned seats on the boy’s side of the classroom. Seating was alphabetical so a dozen classmates separated them. Miss Nevel turned from the board where she had written the day’s test instructions, just as the class finished settling into their desks. She asked them to stand, nodding to Delbert Gergocian to lead in the Pledge of Allegiance. Then it was Donald Pearl's turn to lead the prayer, "Our Father, Who art in.” It was always interesting for Nick to listen to the non-Catholics continue with the prayer following "deliver us from evil, amen." He was instructed by his mother, and more importantly by the nuns at Saint Johns, that it was forbidden by the church to join in on the addendum, "For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever, Amen." He was amazed at the strictness of his religion, especially during Lent when he was forced to “volunteer” to give up candy for forty days, and to attend church services several times a week in addition to the mandatory Sunday service. The class sat down after completing the morning ritual. The only diversion they could hope for in the next four hours was a fire or an air raid drill. Otherwise they were prisoners not just to the classroom but to their desks as well. They’d had a lot of air raid drills lately, ever since the “dirty Russians” set off their first hydrogen bomb last summer. 

Miss Nevel instructed her charges to prepare for the first exam by getting their writing paraphernalia ready. Nick had a special responsibility today. It was his turn to fill the inkwells. He went to the supply cabinet and removed the quart bottle of black ink and uncorked the filling snorkel. One by one he went to each desk in the room and topped off the inkwell recessed in the upper right hand corner. That done, he took his seat and like the rest of the class placed his penholder, spare points, blotter and ink rag on his desk. He was now ready for the first test, although his mind was on the dead finger and the terror it would unleash at school in three days.

Nick and Woody endured the grueling sixth grade test ordeal for three straight days. The finals were the most important thus far in their academic lives. The results determined if they graduated from Longfellow or not. If they did, they’d leave behind the “little kid” school and be bussed to West Junior High on the other side of town starting in September. They'd catch the bus at the Longfellow playground, so their days of walking to the old brick school on Pennsylvania Ave. would continue. They were terrified. They knew all about the initiation ritual that greenhorns were forced to endure on the fifteen-minute ride. Woody's older brother, Stew and his friend, Vinnie had been filling their heads with the gory details for the last several months. They wouldn’t be allowed to sit but rather, would be forced to stand in the aisle and be shoved back and forth by “upper classmen”. A kangaroo court was conducted in the back of the bus. One by one they’d be called back and forced to do gross things, like licking the floor or eating a bug. They could also expect to be pounded by the thugs running things in the back, out of sight of the disinterested bus driver. Most definitely, a “wedgie” or the dreaded “atomic wedgie” would come their way on the bus ride to West Junior. Stew and Vinnie promised protection from the ordeal, but to get it Nick and Woody had to be their slaves until school started in the fall. So far it had only involved running errands, but Nick was sure the pace would pick up. Before long, he and Woody would probably be doing all of their chores - mowing the grass, washing windows, cleaning up dog crap in the yard, and on and on. It was going to be one lousy summer.

Chapter Seven - The skeleton is out of the closet.

Final exams were over. Nick was free to unleash his reign of terror in the prison where he served his sentence for six and a half years. He woke up bright and chipper Thursday morning and, after getting dressed, made sure his index finger fit through the hole in the bottom of the crude display case he’d concocted - a tinfoil covered box that once held his sister’s prized ID bracelet. He lined the interior with a puffy blanket of cotton so that it covered the hole and made a snug bed for his finger. It checked out great! The finger looked real, and dead. He stained his nail with blue ink and then rushed through a breakfast of lumpy oatmeal and toast, a weekly ritual. It was tolerable on cold winter mornings, but hard to swallow on a muggy June day with the temperature in the seventies. Woody waited at the back door while Nick gagged down the gruel. Then they left for school on a path that started in Nick’s back yard and went across an open field for a quarter of a mile or so. Nick's mother watched them jump and whoop from the kitchen window where she stood most mornings, gazing at her son and his sidekick start off for school while she did the breakfast dishes. 

“I wonder what those boys are up to?” she asked aloud though no one was there to hear.

Woody was more excited than Nick, even though he was sticking to their agreement and wouldn’t showcase his dead finger until tomorrow.

"Don't let Denzel see it," he cautioned. "I know,” said Nick. “Do you think I'm stupid? He'd take it and that would end it for us."

The coffin was well hidden in the pocket of Nick's dungarees when he and Woody rolled up their sleeves to get their daily whack from Denzel. Rubbing the soreness out of their arms, they walked over and joined in a bat ball game already in progress. Nick kept an eye on Denzel, hoping for an opportunity to bring out the finger without his seeing it. He got his wish. Denzel and his new protégée, Richard Mosement, climbed the chain link fence separating the playground from Ross Creek, and descended into the recessed aqueduct that carried run-off from the surrounding hills. The creek went downstream to the Susquehanna River passing by the school. Denzel and Richard headed toward the river.

"They're probably going to the tunnel," opined Woody. It was a popular but forbidden hang out, a cavern that he and Nick went into for the first time last year.

The tunnel was as long as five football fields connected end-to-end. It was black as night, even on the brightest summer day. According to schoolyard legend it was inhabited by strange life forms. Woody and Nick made it through to the river when they were eleven, thanks to Denzel, who chased them into the dark abyss. They never mentioned or even discussed the thing, whatever it was, that appeared in the dark just as they climbed out at the river end of the cavern. Neither wanted to admit that anything so strange looking existed, or that it might have, had their timing been different, attacked them in the isolated darkness of the tunnel. If they didn’t speak of it out loud, the danger couldn’t be real, and that’s the way they wanted to keep it.   

With Denzel gone, Nick and Woody quickly gathered the bat-ball players into a circle. Nick told the story of the dead finger and then showed it to the “boys of summer.” A pall fell over the group when the sickening sight was revealed. The bell rang and Nick promised a second look at recess. All day long, one-on-one, and in small groups, Nick related the tale to the boys in his class. He let the story build to a climatic "viewing" of the corpse. Every boy was shocked when the box was opened. By the end of the day he was the talk of the school. Nick was famous, so was the floating dead finger.

The girls got wind of the gruesome tale. It’s why Diane Palmer was so excited and secretly honored that Nick picked her to be the very first from her side of the room to see it. She agreed to meet him after school behind the maple tree. The woman who Diane bumped into as she fled from the finger was waiting across the street from the school when the three o'clock dismissal bell rang. Nearby, a rusted pick-up idled noisily. The woman clutched a small bag of groceries, though it looked more like a prop than a genuine parcel. One by one, the students of Longefellow Elementary (PS-13) filed out the side door onto the playground. Some walked toward the creek, crossing a narrow foot bridge that took them to Park Avenue and the residential section of town know as Park Terrace. Most, though, went toward the woman, climbed thirteen steps from the playground to street level, and crossed the busy street as Officer Terry blocked traffic with his outstretched arms. She scrutinized each student’s face from behind her bag of groceries, paying particular attention to the girls with long dark hair. Nothing registered on the woman's face until a school bus passed in front of her. She saw Diane Palmer excitedly waving to her friends through a window on the driver's side of the bus. Her wave was frantic and her face aglow. She was still high from the encounter with Nick and the "Dead Finger." Diane was one of a handful of kids who were bussed to Longfellow from their new neighborhood near the western boundary of the school district. The woman cursed under her breath as she pushed her way through clumps of kids ambling home from school though none took offense. She turned the corner on Aldrich Ave, stepped onto the running board and slid into the passenger seat of the rusting pick-up. It sped from the curb, narrowly missing a group of boys pushing and shoving as they crossed the street in a combination race and wrestling match. The truck hurled around the corner at Brookfield Road heading toward Vestal Avenue in a reckless attempt to catch the bus. It was slow going for the pick up. First, it was held up trying to get onto Vestal Avenue, the main road west out of town. Then it got stuck behind a farm tractor crossing from a stretch of cornrows along the river to the Conlon farm at the base of Hazard Hill. By the time the pick-up reached Diane's neighborhood, the students had exited the bus at the single stop and were in their kitchens reporting events of the day to an interested mother, snacking on the homemade cookies and milk before them at the table. Diane's mother was appalled at her daughter’s recapitulation of the day’s events. She had half-a-mind to call the school and report it. Had she even an inkling of the events that would unfold in the next few days, she never would have allowed her husband to talk her out of it. "Boys will be boys," he'd concluded as the clincher to his argument to let things be, this, the last week of the school year.

Chapter Eight - Back to the Mountain

Woody and Nick didn't race home from school, as was their usual Friday routine. They lingered on the playground, using the draw of an after school bat-ball game to attract new victims. Nick lured the kids waiting their turn at bat and then Woody spun the tale, concluding with a viewing of his version of the dead finger. They had earlier agreed since Nick had first crack at the kids in their class, Woody would have first shot at the rest of the kids at Longfellow. As Woody revealed the corpse to a small group of third grade boys, he felt a presence behind him. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He turned to find himself face to face with his worst nightmare, Denzel Kelly.

"What the hell are you doing?" Denzel demanded.

"Na, na, nothing," Woody stuttered while shoving the jewelry box into his pants pocket, desperately trying to extract his finger from the hole in the bottom.

"This is me you're talking to, punk," Denzel reminded him. He then grabbed his arm and twisted it up behind his back in a half Nelson. "I want to know EXACTLY what you told those kids. Are you cutting in on my territory?"

"Ok, OK," Woody gasped. “I'll tell you what I was doing."

Denzel listened intently as Woody related a condensed version of the dead finger story. His arms were crossed when Woody opened the box holding the corpse. Denzel gasped and then grabbed the finger as it rose from its cotton bed.

"That's your finger!" he shouted and then fell back to the ground in a laughing fit. "That's pretty good, kid," he managed to say, between waves of laughter. "I'll take the box now. You're all done with this deal.”

"It's not my deal!” Woody protested as he handed the box over to the bully. "It's Nick’s deal and his mother really did find a finger in the rail yard when she was a girl."

"Go on, get out of here," Denzel countered. He then turned and sped across the schoolyard to the West Junior bus pulling up to drop off the seventh, eighth and ninth grade kids from the area. Nick and Woody knew it was all over now. Denzel had hijacked their fifteen minutes of fame.

      

The second Nick walked in his back door he knew he was in trouble. His mother was waiting for him with an irritated look on her face.

"Where is your leather jacket young man?” she demanded. He couldn't tell her the truth. That would only get him in deeper. She had forbidden him to go to the top of the mountain two years ago.

"I left it at Woody's," he lied.

"Then get right over there and get it," she ordered.

"I can't. Woody isn't home and he hid it someplace at his house as a joke." It was the best he could come up with on short notice. At that moment his sister Kathy walked in with two of her friends, saving the day for Nick. He took full advantage and fled to his bedroom. He changed into his prized Levis and a white T-shirt. Getting the Levis took a lot of campaigning on his part. His mother usually bought him cheap imitations, two- dollar dungarees. It took three months of pleading to get her to spring for the real thing, reducing the family’s net worth by six bucks. Kathy and her friends were working on their cookies and milk when he returned to the kitchen. He casually told his mother he'd be back by suppertime. She'd been distracted by the girl’s report of their day at West Junior and forgot all about the jacket.

Nick cut through the Bowen’s' back yard, over Daley’s' fence and carefully tiptoed through Mrs. Viking’s garden to Woody's house. Mrs. Stiles let him in and he shot up the stairs to Woody's room before she could engage him in one of her extended and boring interviews. Didn't she get it? Kids hated to be peppered with adult interrogations. Woody was tying his shoes as Nick rushed in.

"Hurry up! We've got to go up the mountain and look for my jacket!" he extorted.

"What are you talking about? I thought we were never going up there again," Woody countered.

Nick explained that his mother figured out his jacket was missing and was furious. He had to get it back even if it meant risking an encounter with the caretaker. Woody wasn't keen on going. In fact he was scared to death, but he and Nick were blood brothers so he had no choice.

He said, "OK, let's get it over with." And then examined the small scar on his wrist where he'd cut it with a Cub Scout knife the day they became blood brothers. They’d copied the ritual from a Cowboy movie.

Woody delayed their departure long enough to fill a canteen with water and snatch two apples from the kitchen counter on their way out of the house. We’ll work up an awful thirst getting to the top, and who knows, maybe the apples will be our last meal, he thought.

It didn't take long to get to the abandoned road bordering the unused pasture near the top of the mountain. Time goes fast when you don't want it to, thought Woody, as he climbed over the broken fence that poorly guarded the overgrown field. Nick led the way, skirting the cluster of anthills still misshapen from last week’s massacre. They stopped just outside the thin woodlot that bordered the primary road to the O'Neil estate, and looked for signs of the caretaker. They listened for sounds of his truck too. They weren’t going to be ambushed again! The coast was clear. Giving Woody a hand signal to stay back, Nick quickly made his way to the edge of the dirt lane. It was the same spot where he had escaped from the caretaker the previous week, by wiggling out of his leather jacket. He wished and prayed all the way up the mountain that it would simply be right where he dropped it. He’d just pick it up and go home. It wasn't. He waved to Woody to come over, afraid to attract attention by shouting. This was exactly like one of the hundreds of cowboy and Indian adventures they’d seen in the movies. In this one, they were the Indians so they’d have to use clever tactics to win; they would sneak around the farm and size things up before taking action. Woody was scared but Nick was terrified. He'd felt the caretaker's strength when he was suspended above the ground by the collar of his jacket. The guy didn’t even grunt and he held me there for several minutes using only one arm, Nick mused to himself.

Nick looked long and hard into Woody's eyes and asked, "Are you ready for this?"  Woody nodded with a sick smile pasted on his face.

"OK, follow me," Nick ordered. He got down on his belly and crawled under the electric fence that guarded the cow pasture. They stayed on their bellies all the way across the field, standing only when they reached the wooded mound in the middle where they dug up the dinosaur (cow) bones last week.

"My mother's going to kill me," Woody predicted, as he looked down at the grass and dirt stains on his pants and shirt.

"I hope that's mud and not cow shit," Nick chuckled, thinking back to last week when Woody fell face down in the cow plop.

"Cut it out!” Woody demanded. “This is no time to screw around."

Nick agreed but he always used humor when he was scared or upset. He couldn't help it, a genetic inheritance from his mother. They crept up the mound to a good vantage point. They were well hidden by a thick clump of trees, yet had a clear view of the house and the barn. They decided to sit and watch for a while, hoping to see the caretaker leave in his truck. Just the opposite happened. His smoking green pick-up rattled up the road into view and pulled into the yard. A woman bolted out of the passenger door, struggling to keep her balance while juggling a heavy bag of groceries. It looked as though she'd been shoved out of the truck. Her head was shrouded in a kerchief. Had it not been, Nick and Woody might have spotted the angry red welt that crossed her right cheek. She slammed the door and walked toward the house, almost losing her balance as she climbed the three steps to the back porch. The pick-up sputtered, blew a puff of black smoke and rumbled through the open barn door. A few minutes later the caretaker emerged, closed the door and went into the house as well.

"At least we know where he is," gulped Woody. "He won't be able to sneak up on us."

They watched the house for fifteen minutes, though it seemed a lot longer. Nick noticed something flapping in the wind behind the barn. It looked like a scarecrow the way it stood erect in the middle of an open area. The sleeve that waved looked like his leather jacket, calling for help. He pointed it out to Woody, and then suggested they go around to the woods behind the barn and try to get a closer look. Woody, scared but bored with the present situation, readily agreed. Their clothes got even more stained when they repeated the crawl back across the pasture and under the electric fence. They went downhill through the woods for five hundred yards or so, then to the east to get behind the barn. A twenty-foot cliff blocked their route from the back so they retraced their steps to a huge pile of dead and downed trees that Nick’s grandfather called “deadfall.” It extended from the cliff area to a thicket of brambles near the back of the house. The place was virtually cut off from the world. The deadfall was massive, a disorderly twisted pile of tree trunks and limbs that had been pushed aside to clear the pasture many years ago. It lay in a helter-skelter mess, large enough to easily bury a high school football field under twenty feet of scrap logs and limbs. Anyone crossing it could easily slip into the bowels of the pick-up-stick-like configuration and become trapped twenty feet from sight, doomed to a slow death of starvation. No one would even hear a cry for help, so thick was the tangle. Nick and Woody spent years climbing trees and crossing piles of deadfall, though they’d never encountered one this big. They didn't give the possibility of danger a thought. With Nick still in the lead, as he should be since it's his jacket, thought Woody, they climbed the twenty foot face of the wood pile and started across the uneven surface on top. It was like a giant monkey bar set and under different circumstances would have been a “blast” to play on, to use Woody's latest buzz word. When they reached the half way point Nick shimmied up a small tree trunk that jutted above the pile.

"Oh my God! Look at this," he whispered excitedly to Woody. "There’s my jacket. It's mounted on a cross."

Woody gulped as he also shimmied up to look. It was so weird. It meant they would have to climb down from the safety of the deadfall and go into the yard near the house. Now he really was scared. He knew Nick wouldn’t leave without going after it. I've got to get a new friend, he promised himself.    

They climbed back down and resumed their trek across the pile of logs. The closer they got, the more they could see of the yard behind the house. Nick noticed a cluster of small crosses lined up in rows behind the larger cross where his jacket was flapping in the breeze. He slowed his pace and waited for Woody to catch up.

"This is starting to get weird," he observed.

"What do you mean, ‘starting’?” countered Woody. "Is that a cemetery?" he asked, pointing to the series of crosses that had stopped Nick in his tracks.

"I don't know," Nick replied. "If it is, we're in big trouble." Nick snapped himself out of the grip of fear that was starting to paralyze him. He had to get the jacket, no matter what the cost. He moved across the final dozen yards to the edge of the twisted pile of dead trees. Woody followed but was so shaky he slipped twice before getting his unsteady legs back under control. By the time they made it to the end of the maze it had become crystal clear. There definitely was a crude cemetery behind the house. Nick counted twenty-four small weathered crosses. Like everything else on the estate, only a few specks of paint remained. Even the house, once a white Victorian gem, was now a weathered gray color with large green patches where moss had taken root. The whole place was slowly rotting away. 

"You wait here and be the lookout while I climb down and get my jacket," Nick ordered. He then began to descend from the pile before he lost his courage.

Woody stared intently at the house, a loyal watchdog on the job. Nick worked his way down to the cemetery. What is going on here? Nick asked himself. He didn’t really want an answer, just his jacket. It took several minutes to climb free of the deadfall. He hid behind stumps that jutted out from the pile when he could, a feeble attempt to prevent being spotted if someone was looking out a window. He jumped the final five feet, twisting an ankle when he landed. "Damn!" he cursed. He took a few steps to test it. It was sore but seemed to carry his weight OK. The cross where his jacket flapped in the breeze was forty feet from the dead fall, clearly visible from the house and barn. He'd be a sitting duck the second he stepped away from the log pile. He decided speed would serve him better than cunning. Instead of crawling on his belly, he ran as fast as he could - sore ankle be dammed. He made it to the cross. Then he crouched down to see if he'd been spotted. No sign of movement came from the house. He got to his feet and tried to slip his jacket off the crude wooden structure. It wouldn't budge. It was nailed to the cross. He tried to push the cross to see if it would come out of the ground, but no deal. The post was firmly imbedded. It didn't budge an inch. He needed something to pull out the nails with; a hammer would do fine. He and Woody were experts at this. It was how they got their supply of nails for building hot rods and tree forts. They "inspected" new houses under construction in the neighborhood and removed select pieces of discarded lumber, and salvaged bent nails that the carpenters left behind. There must be a hammer in the barn, he thought. He then regretted it, since going after it might put him right into the hands of the creep who had sworn to get him. He ran back toward the pile and waved for Woody to come down.

Down he came, muttering all the way, "Oh man, I really really do have to get a new friend." Nick told him the jacket was spiked firmly to the cross and the only way to get it was to find a hammer and pull the nails out.

"I'm going into the barn. There must be some tools there," he prophesied to Woody. "You wait here. If the caretaker comes out of the house, yell and then climb the pile and go for help as fast as you can. I'm sure you can get away; he's probably drunk and won't be able to climb this mess. I'll hear you yell, and hide out till the coast is clear."

Woody didn't like it, didn't like it one bit, but couldn't come up with a better idea. Nick left for the barn and Woody started up the pile, so he'd be a few feet above the ground, in case the caretaker tried to sneak up on him. I have a better view of the house from here, he mused as he settled down on a log ten feet out of reach. 

Getting into the barn was easy, too easy - like walking into a spider’s web, thought Nick as he went through the main door, past the pick-up truck that rested heavy on a sagging wooden floor. The place reeked, a mixture of motor oil and stale beer, the latter emanating from dozens of empty beer bottles littering the floor. A quick look showed him there were no tools in this area. He pushed open a massive interior door in front of the truck exposing livestock stalls where a few cows quietly munched hay in their manure littered pens. Two other doors led from the garage area. One was secured with three padlocks; the other was slightly ajar. Nick pushed it open and peered in. He found what he was looking for, a workshop. The large bench that extended along the entire length of the outside wall was littered with tools. Hammers, pliers, screwdrivers and saws were strewn in a long sweep of disarray across the worktable. Nick turned and quietly closed the door, noticing that it was peppered with expired car registrations held in place by thumbtacks. Corresponding metal license plates were nailed to the adjacent wall. The registrations were for a 1938 Dodge pick-up truck. Francis Gleason was listed as the owner with an address of #1 South Mountain Drive, Binghamton New York. Gleason must be the caretaker, thought Nick somehow less afraid now that he knew the creep’s name. It was a short-lived revere. He closed the door by leaning into it with his back and an enormous mason jar on the workbench caught his eye. Something flesh colored floated in a clear liquid. From his vantage point it looked just like the jars that littered the bar in his grandfather’s favorite watering hole. Every once in a while Nick was allowed to tag along, to the chagrin of both his mother and grandmother. His grandfather would order a boilermaker and a pig knuckle for himself and a coke for “the kid”. Nick couldn’t figure out how he could eat the disgusting thing, especially after seeing the bartender fish it out of the jar with a bare hand. The caretaker must have a private supply of pig knuckles, mused Nick as he crossed the room for a closer look.

"Oh my God!!" he gasped. It wasn't pig knuckles floating in the jar. It was fingers, small and delicate like those of women or kids. Nick was stunned. He almost fainted. His legs wobbled so much he was forced to sit. He knew he had to get out but for the moment was too scared to move.

He heard Woody yell: not a warning signal but a screech. He was reacting to a huge black snake that crawled through the deadfall.  It brushed past his leg and over his foot, oblivious to the difference in texture between the limb of a tree and that of a twelve-year old boy. Woody’s scream brought Nick out of his stupor. He tore out of the barn and raced toward the deadfall. He climbed right over the top of Woody in his rush to scale the log barrier. The caretaker came charging around the side of the house just as they scrambled out of sight. They were well on their way to the safety of the woods by the time he reached the deadfall, a shotgun clutched in his right hand.

“Damn,” he cursed. If he had know it was the same kids he caught trespassing the previous week, he would have circled around and ambushed them. As it was he shrugged and walked back to the house. He had enough to deal with. He had to find the girl who was blabbing about a dead finger in the schoolyard. His sister would help, even if he had to smack her senseless again.

Chapter Nine – The Calm Before the Storm

Nick and Woody crossed the top of the log pile in record time, slid and scampered down the side and then made their way to the bottom of South Mountain. When they broke out of the woods and stepped onto the pavement of Denton Road, they were panting, sweating and covered with burdocks. They plopped down on an old log by the side of the road to catch their breath and sat staring into space, numb. Finally, Nick broke the ice, “You won’t believe what I saw in the barn,” knowing full well that Woody could never guess what he saw.

“I don’t think I want to,” Woody replied, looking over at Nick, hoping the answer would be something silly or funny. He could tell by Nick’s ashen complexion it wasn’t going to be either.

“A jar of fingers,” Nick blurted, “a huge jar, with dead fingers floating around like pig knuckles.”  Woody desperately wanted to see Nick grin and tell him he was joking, but he saw that Nick wasn’t kidding. Maybe he just thought they were fingers. After all, they’d been messing around with that stupid amputated finger trick all week. He’d even had weird dreams himself the last few nights. Nick couldn’t be right; he must have imagined it.

“I know what you’re thinking, that I’ve gone nuts but I haven’t. I really did see fingers floating in a jar!” Nick exclaimed. He hoped his best friend could see he was telling the truth. “That caretaker is weirder than we thought.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Woody responded, still not sure what to believe but starting to accept that Nick’s bizarre claim was real.

“His name is Francis Gleason,” Nick continued after a long silent moment.

“How do you know that?” Woody replied.

“His expired truck registrations were plastered all over the door in the workshop, Nick explained and then switched back to the topic Woody wanted to leave behind. “I think the fingers might have something to do with that odd graveyard behind the barn.” 

“What are we going to do?” Woody asked, “Go to the police?”

“What good would that do?” Nick responded. “Remember what happens every time we do that?” Woody remembered all right, like the time they escaped from the “Thing” in Ross Creek tunnel. Something weird in the pitch-black cavern came after them. The cop they reported it to booted Woody in the seat of his pants and told them to stay the hell away from the creek. “Go play at the park like you’re supposed to.” 

Another encounter they had with the “authorities” wasn’t any better.  It happened six months ago. Tom Conlon’s dog, Tippy, was attacked by a ferocious English bull dog on Vestal Ave. Nick, Woody, and Tom were walking along the sidewalk on their way to MacArthur Park when they passed by the McNierny house, the home of Butch. Butch was a menace to the neighborhood. Mailmen and paperboys were his favorite targets. Nick knew this all too well. Butch attacked him several times when he substituted for the regular paper carrier. Butch was short legged, stocky and slow but made up for physical limitations with meanness and cunning. His favorite trick was to hide in the shrubs by the front door and attack strangers as they strolled up the walkway to the house. He also prowled the neighborhood, unleashing his wrath on unsuspecting kids and dogs. Tippy never knew what hit him. One minute he was chugging along with the gang. The next, he was on his back, Butch chewing and tearing at his throat. It was over in a flash. He lay on the walk bleeding and in shock while Butch swaggered back to his roost under the shrubs. Tom scooped up his dog and with Nick and Woody in tow, ran to get help. Sixty-three stitches later, it looked like he’d survive. At least that’s what old Doc Vink told them as they left Tippy behind to recuperate in the animal hospital.

The day after the dog attack, Tom, Nick and Woody went to see McNierny, Butch’s owner, to discuss the crime. Mr. “M” impatiently listened for less than a minute, then yelled at them, “Get the hell off my property. If I catch you on my land again, I’ll sic Butch on YOU.” Their next stop was the Dog Catcher’s office in downtown Binghamton but their complaint was quickly dismissed by an impatient civil servant, “ Are you kidding me? I don’t get paid to referee dogfights. Go home and play with your dolls, girls.” They didn’t fare any better at police headquarters, getting another brush off.

“The hell with all of them,” Nick proclaimed. “Let’s just get even.”

“How?” asked Tommy?

“I don’t know,” mused Nick. “Maybe by shooting out the street light by McNierny’s house?” 

“Great idea,” yelped Woody. “We can use my bb-gun.”

 It took three nights of sniping before they finally hit the target. They hid in a clump of wild bushes on the overgrown lot next to McNierny’s, taking turns running from cover to take a quick shot. Woody finally made a score and was rewarded with a shower of glass. It felt good. So good that they repeated the feat every time the power company replaced the bulb, chalking up six retaliatory strikes in total. They learned two valuable lessons in the process: authorities don’t care about kids and getting even feels as good as getting justice.

They knew what would happen if they reported the jar of dead fingers to the cops - disbelief and irritation. They might even end up in trouble themselves, cited for trespassing. They also knew they couldn’t tell their parents. They’d been forbidden to go within a mile of the O’Neil estate where Gleason was the caretaker. They knew they couldn’t report it to anybody. The smart thing to do was to keep their mouths shut. This strategy decided on, they parted company. Woody went down Denton Road to his house for dinner while Nick cut through Lowery and Colavito’s back yards to his on Chadwick. Topper, his tail wagging in double time, welcomed him. Nick rewarded his loyalty with a pat on the head and a big hug. “At least I have one friend in this house,” Nick whispered, as he made his way through the back door to face the music.

His mother was mad but not the Irish Temper mad that Nick expected. Thankfully, she didn’t use the cord from their electric coffee pot to make her point this time. When she did it raised welts on the back of his leg. Maybe she felt some guilt from the nights of terror she’d caused him with the dead finger. She did give him a whack on the side of the head and made it crystal clear he’d have to pay for the jacket. His sister was thrilled because Nick would have to do dishes as part of his punishment. He’d get paid twenty-five cents a day for taking over her chore, but every cent would go toward his debt. The stash he’d put aside to buy a generator light for his bike and the money he made from mowing lawns in the neighborhood would also be earmarked for the jacket fund.

It was a glum Nick who distractedly nibbled away his usual Friday night dinner fare - macaroni topped with Hunt’s tomato sauce, tuna fish, bread, butter and milk. His mother made sure they followed the Catholic Church rules; in this case they abstained from meat on Friday. As he ate, he puzzled over the jar of fingers in the barn, wondering whose fingers they were. When he asked to go to Woody’s after finishing the dishes he learned he wouldn’t be going anyplace after dinner until the jacket was paid for. This was a crushing blow. School was going to end for the year in three days. He’d better get cracking if he wanted to avoid being a prisoner for the summer. Twenty-five cents a day for doing the dishes, and three dollars a week for mowing lawns in the neighborhood would take half the summer to add up to the fifteen dollar price of a new jacket. He guessed he’d better break into his so-called tamper proof bank, which was official property of the Binghamton Savings Bank. His parents forced him to use this metal vault, cleverly constructed to look like an ordinary book, to save money for college. Heck, he didn’t even want to go to college, especially if he had to put half his earnings away. He kept the bank on his bookshelf between his favorite book, The Wild Dogs of Drowning Creek, by Manly Wade Wellman and a collection of Cub Scout and Boy Scout Manuals. The bank was so well made that most kids couldn’t get money out like they often did from a piggy bank. Nick though, had become an expert at getting into it. It took a lot of work and several years of practice, but he’d learned to pry open the cover with a screwdriver. If he went at it very slowly he could avoid damaging the series of metal tabs that held the two sides together. He’d opened it and put it back together a dozen or more times. When he took it to the bank to make a deposit, the bank teller never noticed that it’d been tampered with. She’d simply opened it with her master key and took out the money. “It’ll be the first thing I do tomorrow,” he thought to himself as he drifted into a troubled sleep. Troubled because it was interrupted by dreams of dead fingers chasing him through the woods. 

Saturday came and went, a blurred memory of grass clippings spraying over his sneakers. His hands were tingling, as though asleep, from the constant vibration of the power mower. He mowed his three regulars, and then took on two new customers and one freeloader, Vinny DiStaphano. Vinny forced Woody and him to do the DiStaphano lawn, an installment payment for the protection services he soon would be providing on their bus ride to junior high. Nick was beat by the time he sat down to the Saturday night hamburger ritual. He loved it but wished his mother would spring for hamburger rolls once in a while. He hated the way plain white bread fell apart under the stress of hot meat smeared with ketchup. After dinner he did the dishes, chalking up another quarter for the jacket fund. He was a third of the way toward getting the fifteen dollars he needed. He figured he’d be done, or close to it, when he broke into his bank later that night. He hung out in the back yard with Topper after the dishes were finished, working on his knife throwing skills, using a screwdriver (the very same tool that would break the bank in an hour or so) instead of a hunting knife. It was a rare toss when the screwdriver actually stuck in the target, a bull’s eye painted on an old tree stump. “I’ll never be able to defend myself in a real life or death situation,” he mused, and then dejectedly went in at dusk to listen to the radio and read comic books. He couldn’t get the jar of fingers out of his head. “Where did they come from?” He had to find out. He had to go back up the mountain.

Nick was up by seven Sunday morning, hoping his mother would follow his lead so they could go to eight o’clock mass (and get it over with, as she often described their fulfillment of the Sunday obligation). She did. He and Kathy rode with her to Saint John’s. He took his missal; she brought her rosary beads. His father had dropped out of the church routine years before Nick was born. Today he stayed home and worked on his latest construction project, a do-it-yourself camping trailer. The plans came from Popular Mechanics. It was nearly finished after six months of weekend construction, highly laced with bursts of cursing at a hammer that routinely strayed from course. A two-week stay at Chenango Valley State Park was the promised maiden voyage. Nick couldn’t wait. He loved State Park. The swimming was great, with diving boards and floats. There were boats and canoes for rent, which kids were allowed to use, provided they’d passed a Junior Life Saving course. Nick took and passed it at the Binghamton YMCA when he was ten. The park had miles of forest trails, acres of swamps and plenty of streams to explore and play in. It even had a nine-hole golf course where an ambitious twelve-year-old could earn a few bucks caddying. The archery range next to the golf course was hardly used. It was a great place for Nick and Woody to test their homemade bow & arrows. State Park was heaven for a twelve-year-old boy, especially one allowed to bring his best friend on a two-week camping trip. 

After mass he escaped to Woody’s house. Topper followed along as usual. He knew Woody wasn’t allowed to play until noon on Sunday but he didn’t care. He just wanted to get away from his mother so she wouldn’t trick him into admitting how he’d lost his jacket. She was pretty good at sensing when something was wrong, especially when that something had to do with him. He slipped into the Stiles’ garage, snagged a basketball and went to their side yard to the hoop for a solitary game of Horse. It was a good way to kill time while he waited for Woody.

At the exact same moment his first shot was swishing through the net, a rusted pick-up truck was six blocks away making a left turn off Vestal Ave. onto Jutland Road. Smoke puffed angrily from the tail pipe as it entered the newest subdivision in the city. It was as out of place as a vagrant at a fancy wedding. The kids who lived here were bussed to Longfellow. It was where the girl who spoke of a “Dead Finger” lived. At least that’s what Bessie Gleason told her brother Francis after he’d viscously slapped her face to get the information. Francis was obsessed. He had to get his hands on the girl. 

Chapter Ten – The Storm

Sunday, June 20

Foreword Repeated: She stepped off the curb onto the path. It connected her street to Sally’s. She hated this section of the neighborhood. Hated that it was not developed yet. The mass of trees and undergrowth lining the trail scared her. Low branches and blackberry shoots reached into the passageway, as though to grab her. She thought of them as the elongated fingers of a witch. Her doll was cradled under one arm. She dragged an overnight bag stuffed with miniature dresses in her other. She was in a hurry to get home. Then she was struck! It was like a bolt of lightning. One minute she was walking along, the next she was lying on her back looking up at a clear blue, June sky. Tree branches swayed gently above but the hands that held her were rough. A stench of garlic and body odor washed over her. She struggled to get up but his grasp brought her down with a thud. He mumbled behind a soiled kerchief that hid his face, “Shut up and you won’t get hurt.” She squirmed free in a fit of panic when he shifted his hold to unfurl a burlap sack. She took two steps and then felt her head explode. The woods turned bright yellow, and then flashed to white. Her knees buckled; she went down. She saw him above her just before the blackness took her away. He was holding the sack with a gloved hand. How odd, she thought, to be wearing a glove in summer. Then she was gone.

Mrs. Palmer started to prickle when Diane hadn’t come home from Sally’s for lunch by twelve-fifteen. It was so unlike her to be late. By twelve-twenty she was boiling. “How long does she expect me to stand here and keep the soup from boiling away?” she complained to her husband. He could not hear her from his location in the living room, reclined and in a snooze with the Sunday paper lying across his chest. The phone rang, breaking the escalation of her anger. It was Sally, asking if Diane was through with lunch.

“What do you mean through with lunch? I thought she was still at your house,” Mrs. Palmer responded, her mood now transformed from irritation to full blown rage.

“No, Mrs. Palmer. Diane left over half an hour ago,” Sally replied.

“Well she isn’t here. Are you sure she was headed straight home?”

“Yes,” Sally answered, “Would you please have her call me when she gets home?” and then quickly hung up. She knew how mean Mrs. Palmer could get when she was mad. She wasn’t going to stay on the phone and take the brunt of it. “I wonder where Diane is? It’s only a three-minute walk from my house to hers,” she puzzled and then quickly made her way to her bedroom to escape the phone, in case Mrs. Palmer called back. As Diane’s mother hung up the phone her knees buckled. It was her body’s reaction to the rush of adrenalin that washed away her anger and replaced it with a sinking feeling of dread. Her worst nightmare was happening. Her daughter was missing.

Mr. Palmer practically catapulted into the air from his leather recliner. His wife’s scream jerked him out of a pleasant Sunday doze. He ran to the kitchen to find her sitting on the linoleum in the middle of the floor, shrieking and sobbing, “Our daughter is gone!  She got lost in the woods or someone has kidnapped her!”

“Now, now,” he responded, helping her up and asking what was going on. He was concerned himself when he learned that Diane was not home yet, having left Sally’s a half hour earlier. She wasn’t one to dawdle or get sidetracked.

“I’ll go look for her. I’m sure there’s a good explanation,” he said to his wife as he walked toward the back door.

“I’m going with you,” she shot back and together they began to scour the small neighborhood. When they came to Sally’s, they knocked on the door and went in to discuss Diane’s whereabouts with Sally and her parents. All they learned was that Diane left before noon and headed straight home.

“I know she wasn’t planning on stopping along the way,” Sally opined. “She was carrying her doll and a suitcase full of doll clothes that we just traded. She wanted to get home as quick as possible to arrange them in her doll closet before lunch. That’s why she took the shortcut through the woods.”

Mr. and Mrs. Palmer looked at each in surprise. They knew how much Diane hated the woods. She always complained to them how scary the path was. They thanked the Nights and quickly left, in a frenzy to get to the shortcut. The trail scared Mrs. Palmer even more than it did Diane. She was a city girl who hated woods and all the creepy things that lived there. When they got half way down the path, where the wood was at its thickest, they spotted a doll lying face down at the edge of the trail, nearly hidden under a thicket of briar. It was Diane’s. Mrs. Palmer clutched it to her chest, too scared now to even cry. A sickening feeling overcame them. They knew something bad had happened to their only child, their princess. She never would have left her doll behind.

The police responded immediately. Not to say they weren’t responsive to all emergencies but this was the most exclusive neighborhood in town. The small town political infrastructure reacted in a little faster when called on by the highbrow residents. Every kid in the isolated neighborhood was questioned but the only clue to surface was that an old beat-up pick-up truck was seen in the neighborhood several times that morning.  The police made a second visit to each house, imploring everyone to keep the situation confidential. It looked like a kidnapping and if the story went public it might mess up their chances to get Diane back safely.

Chapter Eleven – The Aftermath

Monday, June 21

8:15 am – When Nick and Woody took their seats in response to the “third bell” they noticed that Diane Palmer was absent but didn’t think anything of it. She missed a lot of school. She was lucky; she had one of those rare over-indulgent mothers who let their kids stay home with the slightest ailment, even a little cold. But this was the last week of school. There were no tests and no new subjects to conquer. They had three days of fun ahead, then a short graduation ceremony where Miss Lennox would hand out the sixth grade diplomas. It would be their “best ever” days in Longfellow. Why would anyone miss it? When they stood to pledge to the flag, Woody tossed a spitball at Nick to get his attention. He pointed to Diane’s empty seat and mouthed, “You must have scared her so bad with the dead finger that she couldn’t come to school.”

“No way! She came to school Friday after she saw it on Thursday and besides, she loved it. You should have seen the way she ran screaming to her friends to gloat,” Nick whispered, his hand covering his mouth so Mrs. Nevel couldn’t tell where the chatter was coming from. 

“Maybe she thought we were going to get another polio shot,” Woody chuckled.

Nick remembered back to April when every kid in school got polio shots, one of the first schools in the country to use the new vaccine. They were forced to line up in the auditorium and file past a nursing station set up on the stage. The first nurse took their name and temperature; the second asked them to roll up their sleeve and then swabbed their arm with alcohol. A doctor stood at the end of the row, jabbing kids’ arms with a hypo as they tensed and closed their eyes. Man it stung! But you didn’t dare wince in front of your classmates - if you were a boy, that is. The girls shrieked and sobbed, belying the courage they would demonstrate years later in the delivery room. Diane refused to get in line. She ran sobbing back to class. Shortly thereafter, her overindulgent mother came to school and took her home. She missed class for the rest of the week and then came back with a big bandage on her arm and a tale of woe. She claimed to be allergic to the polio serum, which had been administered by her family doctor. She just barely survived. Nobody bought her story. Even her best friend Sally rolled her eyes when Diane told some new kid about her ordeal. Nick was sure Woody was kidding about Diane being absent because of a new round of polio shots, but he might be right about the dead finger. Maybe it had scared her more than he thought. After all, it kept him in a state of fright for six long years.

The rest of the morning session was spent going over the exams they took the previous week. Woody hit “A’s” on all of them. Nick escaped with an A, two B’s and two C+’s. His mother was going to be mad. The “C+’s” were in his best subjects: Arithmetic and English. At eleven fifteen they went out to the playground for a “bonus” recess, a reward for the fact that everyone passed. They all would graduate on Wednesday.

11:20 am - At the exact moment Woody and Nick were choosing up sides for a bat ball game, Mr. Finch, the head linotype operator at the Binghamton Evening Press was checking the front-page story he’d just typed from the scribbled notes of the city editor. He hated these last minute changes. As he read the words that he’d unconsciously typed a minute earlier on the huge linotype machine, he gasped. Charlie Palmer’s daughter was missing, maybe kidnapped. He’d gone to high school with Charlie and, like a lot of people in town, was envious of the success he’d achieved. Still, he liked and respected him a lot. Palmer owned one of the biggest electronic supply houses in the region, drove a fancy sports car and lived in the best and newest neighborhood. I bet she was kidnapped, he thought. You couldn’t pick a better target. He read on, in spite of the lump in his throat. The paper had to be printed and then delivered to forty-six drop off points by 3:30. He had less than twelve minutes to finish proofreading and get the front-page ready for the final run. 

Back in time to 8:15 am - As Nick and Woody were exchanging wise cracks about Diane Palmer’s absence and the rest of the class was reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, Bessie Gleason stumbled across the dirt driveway behind her house, propelled by a powerful shove from her brother Francis. He was in a panic. The girl he’d abducted yesterday was still unconscious.

“Get in there and take care of her. I didn’t work my fingers to the bone to pay your tuition to nursing school for nothing,” he shouted, while unlocking the door to the small room next to his workshop.

He gave a final shove that carried her across the small room into the rough boards of the outside wall. Bessie was scared. She’d never seen him this much out of control. He’d practically knocked her senseless yesterday with a flurry of smashes to the face to make her to point out the girl who babbled about the dead finger. She was sorry now she told him about her encounter on the playground last Friday. Francis was sixteen when their mother died in the fire and she was only two. He scraped out a living for the two of them delivering papers and doing odd jobs. Jobs so awful that no one else would do them. It was a remarkable testament to his tenacity. It was inconceivable in Nick’s era that a sixteen-year-old boy could take care of himself, not to mention a two year old sister. In 1922 it was more than possible. Saint Mary’s Orphans Home was overflowing and the few Broome County social workers were spread too thin to investigate reports of young kids living on their own. He was her only family, so Bessie put up with his hermit-like approach to life. Now she was worried, worried to death. He seemed to have gone mad with his long held obsession. She didn’t have time to dwell on it. The girl was lying on the floor covered by a ragged old horse blanket, her eyes closed, her breathing faint and shallow. She knew a coma when she saw it and this kid was in one. The lump on the side of her head was the size of an orange. “It’ll be a miracle if she doesn’t have a fractured skull,” she thought, as she checked Diane’s pupils for dilation. They checked OK. The girl groaned and shifted her position, another good sign. The coma didn’t appear too deep but she knew from her days at Binghamton General Hospital that a condition like this could last for weeks, even months. She turned to Francis and told him the girl would most likely recover but it might take several days for her to wake up. She hoped this news would calm him down.

“Just fix her and let me know when she wakes up,” he hissed as he huffed out of the room. “And be sure to lock the door. If anything happens to her, you are going to pay for it!” 

Bessie did what she could to make Diane comfortable and then locked the door and returned to the house. She sat in the parlor reading and must have dozed off. She woke with a start as the mantle clock struck ten; she raced out to the barn to check on the Palmer girl. She noticed that her brother’s pick up truck wasn’t in the yard or the barn and the cows were lined up at the pasture gate for a milking that should have been finished an hour ago. Some of the cows were already showing signs of discomfort. I wonder where Francis is off to. He never neglects the herd.    

But he was neglecting the herd. Francis was across town in Spring Forrest Cemetery, on his knees praying and crying.

“I’m sorry mom, I messed up this week. Ever since I started coughing up blood I’ve been crazy to find it. Now I’ve done something bad and I don’t know if I can fix it. Please help me find it before it’s my turn to go.” Francis got to his feet after kneeling at his mother’s grave for more than an hour. He felt a little better. His graveside conversations with a long dead mother always helped him work through a bad period, though lately he needed the one-sided talks a lot more often than in the past. He used to come once a year. Now it was every few days. It irritated him that he didn’t know for sure in which of the twenty-one unmarked graves his mother was buried. As a result, he’d taken to praying at the monument that honored all the women killed in the fire. It also irked him that his drunken Irish father deserted them when his mother told him she was pregnant with Bessie. It transformed his devotion to his mother into an obsession.  

Gleason hurried from the cemetery, guilt from neglecting the herd flooding his conscience. If only his damn sister could do it. She’ll have to sell the cows when I’m gone. He tried not to think about it but a coughing fit on the ride home made it hard to ignore. He spit the wad of blood-laced phlegm out the window and stepped on the gas, forcing the tired engine in his rusted pick-up to strain as it climbed South Mountain. The cows were mooing in desperation as he pulled into the barnyard. He wanted to check on the girl, but one look at the cows ended that. It took almost an hour to finish the job. He was beat. Then a round of coughing hit him as he exited the milk parlor. When it subsided, he unlocked the door to the room where Diane was kept. His coughing didn’t bother Diane a bit. She just lay on the floor and stared at the ceiling. Her eyes didn’t twitch nor did she make a single movement in the five minutes he watched her. “Damn,” Gleason mused aloud. “She’s my last chance to find it.” Then he turned and left the room. It was almost lunchtime but he wasn’t hungry. He decided to go downtown and hang out by the Press Building. The early edition would be finished and when they stopped the press to feed in a new roll of paper the news could be read through a huge window in front of the pressroom. Locals loved to hang out on the sidewalk and watch the presses roll. It was quite a show. The “regulars” got a peek at the headlines before anyone else in town. The need to be first with local gossip was rampant, well evidenced by the number of people who hung out on the sidewalk in front of the Press Building every afternoon. Gleason blended in with the crowd as the press rolled to a stop. A gasp went through the small crowd as they read of the kidnapping. Gleason’s face turned bright red as he took in the headline. He pulled his hat down and quickly slipped through the crowd, heading down the street to his truck. He couldn’t believe the mess he’d gotten himself into. Now he’d have to kill her.

3:00pm - Nick left school in an upbeat mood. “Two days to go and we’re junior high students,” he remarked to Woody.

“Yea, but first, a whole summer of slavery for Stew and Vinnie,” Woody responded, bringing the mood back to street level.

Nick didn’t care. He figured they could avoid much of the ordeal. Vinnie and Stew never stayed focused long and in the summer they usually hitchhiked to Quaker Lake to spend the day ogling girls at Brady’s Beach. Naw, this wasn’t going to be a bad summer at all. Nick was also excited because tonight he’d be delivering papers. Ronnie Gordon promised to sell him his route at the end of summer and was giving him a tryout. For the next two weeks he’d be handling the delivery, collecting the forty-five cent weekly fee and turning in the paper work and money to Ron. They’d split the profit, netting him about five dollars. As soon as he got home Nick changed into a pair of faded dungarees, each knee marked with a bright blue, iron-on patch, and topped it with white tee shirt. He headed to the drop off point on Vestal Ave. The paper bundles for three separate routes were dropped off at the corner of Brookfield and Vestal. He wanted to be there when the bales were tossed out of the truck. If no one were around, the delivery guy would throw the bundles anywhere his mood dictated, often into the bushes at the edge of the sidewalk. He was a real schmuck who loved to jerk the paperboys around. He always tried to cheat them out of money when they settled up at the end of the week.

Nick was there when the Binghamton Press van pulled to a stop at the corner. Topper was with him, sitting in the grass wagging his tail. His ears perked up in suspicion as Mr. Libus waddled out and opened the back door to get the three bundles of papers for this drop.

“What the hell are you doing here kid? You’re not a paperboy,” he growled, never taking the unlit cigar out of his mouth.

“I’m filling in for Ronnie Gordon,” Nick responded. “He’s going to sell me his route at the end of summer.”

“He can’t sell the route. I’m the one who sells - er - I mean assigns the route,” Libus shot back. Nick knew he’d said too much and countered,

“I’m just kidding Mister. Ronnie asked me to substitute for him for a few days while he works on a project with his father.” He hoped his lie would shut up the fat distribution supervisor.

“That’s more like it,” Libus said. “If you want a route, you come to me first. No little punk of a paperboy is going to cut me out of a sale – er - I mean assignment.” Nick knew he’d eventually have to pay off the slime ball but so what? The route netted over ten dollars a week. He’d be rich. All he had to do was deliver sixty-three papers every day and collect the money once a week.

As Libus left, Topper stood and barked at the truck. “Calm down boy,” Nick ordered. “He’s not worth getting in a stew about.” Nick was cutting the wire that held the bundle of papers together when Marshall Reutlinger and Rick Ludwick, the other two paperboys who picked up their papers at this drop-off, walked up.

“What’s in the news?” Marshall asked? “I like to be the first to know.” Nick had no idea. He never read anything in the paper except the funnies. He pulled out the top paper and looked.

“Oh my God! Diane Palmer has been kidnapped!” he exclaimed as he read the two-inch headline.

“What are you talking about?” Marshall challenged. “Give me that paper!” The front page was totally taken up with the story about Diane’s disappearance. The headline writer had gone for the most dramatic angle possible and blasted the front page with Wealthy industrialist’s daughter kidnapped. It wasn’t until the third paragraph that the reader would learn that she was missing, not kidnapped.

“She wasn’t in class today,” Nick explained to Marshall and Rick. “I wondered why she was absent.” 

“I bet she just ran away and is hiding at a friend’s house,” Marshall countered. “She’s always doing dumb stuff to get attention and to make her parents buy her things.”

Nick and Rick agreed. It was too hard to believe that anything bad had happened to her. Nick loaded up his sixty-three papers and began the long climb up Brookfield Road to the first house on the route. Topper ran ahead, scouting for birds and squirrels. Nick reread the article about Diane as he walked. Maybe it was true. Maybe she really had been kidnapped. Then he came to a police quote that caught his attention. Apparently several kids in the neighborhood mentioned seeing a beat-up green pick-up truck driving around that morning. The police discounted it as a lead since there were scores of green trucks around town.

“It’s the number one color for a work truck and most are beat up old wrecks. The guys who buy em keep em till they rust off their frames,” according to the police officer quoted in the paper. This wasn’t promising lead for the police, but Nick wondered. Could it be Gleason’s truck?  My God! If he has a jar of fingers in his barn, he’s capable of anything!

4:15 pm - Nick finished delivering papers in record time and immediately went to Woody’s house. Woody wasn’t home. “Darn!” he cursed under his breath as he turned from the house and walked away. He forgot this was the day Woody had his clarinet lesson. He won’t be home till dinnertime. Tomorrow will be too late. Nick decided to go up the mountain by himself. He had to find out if Gleason had anything to do with Diane’s disappearance. He decided not to take Topper. He wanted his company and protection, but couldn’t risk it. It would be his luck to be hiding in the bushes with Gleason nearby when Topper ran out to chase a squirrel. No, he had to do this alone. He ran home and tossed the newspaper delivery sack on the back porch and then quietly locked Topper in the garage. He didn’t want his mother to know he was there. She said he couldn’t go out to play after dinner until he paid for the lost jacket. He was pretty sure that she wouldn’t let him free to play before dinner either - at least until Diane’s kidnapper was captured. That is, if she had been kidnapped. He was pretty sure she wasn’t pulling a fast one on her parents like Marshall Reutlinger thought. There is no way she would leave her “lap of luxury” to blackmail her parents into buying her something she wanted.  

Nick climbed the steep first section of woods to the abandoned road; he then followed it to the top. He felt safer on the road then in the woods. He was sure he could outrun most anyone on an open roadway and had learned the hard way that Gleason was more than capable of sneaking up on him in the cover of the woods.  His lost jacket was proof of that. He didn’t see any sign of Gleason on his trek to the top. He became more nervous and paranoid with every step. He jumped into the undergrowth at the side of the road three times. In each case it was in response to a bird rustling in dry leaves.

“The damn things make more noise than squirrels,” he whispered. I must be nuts. Now I’m talking to myself. Finally he made it to the last section of road and within sight of the house. He decided to go around to the back by the same route across the deadfall pile that he and Woody had taken last Friday. It was the safest way. He’d be protected from gunshot by the tree stumps that jutted above the pile in an irregular pattern, like white caps on an ocean, and he knew he could outrun Gleason in a chase across the uneven surface. He maneuvered his way up and across the pile; then descended to the yard area behind the house. He had a clear view of the house and the barn so he stopped to check out the “lay of the land”, to use the cowboy & Indian lingo he and Woody picked up in the hundreds of Oaters they’d seen.

He didn’t have to wait long. Gleason exited the barn and went into the house. Nick decided to sit tight for a few more minutes before making his move. It was a good thing he did. Just as he was about to leave the safety of the log pile a woman came out of the barn carrying a small sack. She, too, crossed the small dirt driveway and went into the house. Nick waited for his heart to settle down. It was beating so fast he was dizzy. Finally he got his courage back and started to crawl across the un-mown lawn to the barn. He wanted to keep the lowest profile possible. When he reached the barn he stood and, with his back to wall, waited to see if Gleason or the woman had seen him. It looked good, so he quietly slipped through the open door into the garage area of the barn. Just when he felt safe for the first time in many minutes he heard the back door slam. A nervous glance in the direction of the sound brought into view his worst nightmare. Gleason was headed toward the barn. Nick jumped into the back of the open pick-up and burrowed under a pile of empty feed sacks. He lay there quiet and motionless. He heard Gleason’s footsteps crossing the warped wood floor of the barn but they kept going - past him and the truck. He heard a door slam after the footsteps passed. It seemed to be from the direction of the workshop. Nick peeked his head out so he could get a look. As he changed position his knee rammed into something hard under the pile of sacks. He reached down to see what it was and felt a handle. It was a small suitcase. He didn’t get a chance to check it because the sound of footsteps filled the air. A loud coughing fit joined in the chorus. It ended with Gleason yelling, “God Damn it!” Nick thought he’d been spotted but apparently Gleason was swearing at his coughing fit; he left the barn without stopping at the truck.

In a few seconds Nick heard the back door of the house slam. He sat up to be sure Gleason was gone and then pulled the suitcase to his chest. What was a nice suitcase like this doing in the back of a crummy truck, he wondered? He opened it and got his answer. It was full of doll clothes. He knew from the story in the paper that Diane was carrying a suitcase and her favorite doll when she headed home from Sally’s house yesterday. They found her doll but not the suitcase. Nick had it now and knew Gleason had taken Diane. He had all the evidence he needed. He slipped out of the truck and with the suitcase clutched in his hand, made his escape across the yard and up the pile to the top of the deadfall. He was eager to get home with his find - too eager. About half way across the uneven sea of dead logs he tripped, falling flat on his face. The suitcase slipped away as he grasped at the logs to stop from slipping into the abyss below him. He saved himself but not the suitcase. It made it all the way to the bottom of the twenty-foot pile. Nobody could get to it now. Nick, on his belly, stared down at it. He knew the police would never believe him.

6:00 pm - The mood around the police chief’s conference table was somber. Detective O’Brien presented his latest update. The news wasn’t good. They hadn’t discovered a single clue since the Palmer kid was reported missing. The woods nearby had been searched and then searched again. Every kid on the block was interviewed and given a healthy dose of the fear of God to pry loose even the weakest link to her disappearance. Palmer had used his clout to get the FBI involved, even though the case had not been officially designated a kidnapping. Crank calls were rampant. The only levity in the whole meeting came when O’Brien reported the phone call from a kid claiming Diane was being held on South Mountain at the old O’Neil Estate. He said he found her doll suitcase there in a green pick-up truck but lost it in pile of deadfall. “He really had me going until he started ranting about a jar of dead fingers in the barn,” chuckled O’Brien. Chief Casey was still burning over the beat cop’s leak about the missing suitcase. It was the only lead they had, and thanks to The Evening Press, everyone in the state knew about it, including the abductor.

No, the mood wasn’t good at the Binghamton Police Department! They knew all too well that the lack of a ransom note within the first twenty-fours hours of a disappearance loomed ominously for the poor kid. It meant that a sicko, not a kidnapper had probably taken her. They’d never see her again. At least if it were a kidnapping, they’d have had a chance. The mayor sat at the table more depressed than any of them. It was his job that was on the line, not theirs. He was hounded by reporters and didn’t have a single shred of new news to share with them. He couldn’t get away much longer with his pat reply, “We have several leads we’re running down that I can’t discuss, because it would jeopardize our chances of getting Diane back.” He was careful to use her first name. He felt it showed his human side and was a good contrast to the police chief who referred to her as the “Palmer kid.” Either way, if she weren’t found and brought home safely, he was finished, politically. Why did this have to happen during an election year?  

The meeting was over in fifteen minutes. The mayor left to face the media at a press conference while the chief sidled out to face the Palmers. Neither had anything to report.

7:30 pm – Woody and Nick were in Woody’s living room; Sergeant Preston of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was fighting bad guys in the Yukon on the radio. It was their favorite show but neither of them paid attention. Nick told Woody about the suitcase he found in Gleason’s truck. The doll clothes proved he kidnapped Diane. Mrs. Stiles was in the kitchen, busy with the pots, pans and dishes from dinner, but she kept nervously peeking in on the boys to make sure they were OK. She was a wreck, as was every other mother in town. Nick had to call home the minute he got to Woody’s, to let his mother know he made it OK. She had pardoned him from house arrest, probably out of the guilt brought on by Diane’s kidnapping. He wasn’t allowed to leave for Woody’s until he’d promised to call the second he got there, something hard to do with a four-party phone line. He and his sister had campaigned for years for his father to spring for a private phone line instead of sharing one with three other families. He had to admit, though, it was fun to eavesdrop on their conversations, something he did quite often when he tried to make a call and found the line in use. If she knew he’d gone in the woods and to the top of the mountain she would have locked him in his room -- for life! Woody didn’t know what to make of Nick’s claim. If they weren’t best friends and blood brothers he would never have believe it.

“You’ve got to go to the police,” he finally responded.

“I did,” Nick replied. “The detective handling the case laughed at me. I have to go back up there and get proof. You’ve got to go with me.”

Woody knew he couldn’t deny Nick this demand, even though the thought of it made his stomach do flip-flops. They made plans to skip lunch the next day and get the proof they needed to save Diane. Woody would tell his mother he was eating at Nick’s and Nick would say he was going to Woody’s. They ate lunch at each other’s house quite often, so they doubted either mother would be suspicious. They’d set up the lie tonight. All they needed was a good reason.

“I’ve got it!” said Nick. “We’ll tell them it’s safer if we’re together at all times. If anyone tries something funny, one of us can run for help. Besides, nobody would try to nab two kids at the same time.”

“I think it’ll work,” said Woody. “Call me later and let me know how you make out.” Deep down inside he hoped one of their mothers would nix the plan but neither did. In fact, they liked the idea. Mrs. Stiles even suggested that Woody go along with Nick when he delivered papers after school.  Woody felt doomed. He was petrified to go anywhere near the old estate. Gleason must be a mad man.  What if he had already killed Diane?      

 

Chapter Twelve – Mission Impossible

Tuesday, June 22

8:15 am – Nick and Woody walked the long way to school, making sure their parents knew the route they were taking. They went down Chadwick to Vestal Avenue after meeting at Nick’s house. They traveled the sidewalk along Vestal to Pennsylvania Avenue. The street was busy with fathers going to work in downtown Binghamton, the walkway clogged with kids headed to school. It was part of their plot to get free at noon. Nick’s mom wouldn’t expect to see them when they came home for lunch. She had a good view of their normal route from her kitchen window but the “safe way” wasn’t visible to her. The boy’s double lie had worked. Neither mother expected to see them until school let out at three.

As Woody and Nick made their way around the corner at Vestal and Pennsylvania, Sergeant O’Brien passed them in an unmarked police car. On the seat was a ransom note, the third he’d picked up that morning. All three were fakes. They had to be. Not one offered proof. The real kidnapper would have sent something with the ransom note: one of Diane’s shoes, maybe some of the doll clothes, something. These notes contained nothing. They’d all been written using letters cut from a magazine but, other than that, they weren’t the least bit clever. Each promised to return Diane if a large sum of money was paid, details of the drop-off to come later. This case was sure bringing the kooks out of the woodwork.

O’Brien was worried. He knew these notes were fakes, which meant she’d been gone almost two days with no word from the real kidnapper. It didn’t look good.

It looked even worse to Francis Gleason. The kid was still unconscious and his sister just told him she could be that way for days, maybe even weeks. She’d die if they didn’t get nourishment into her, which meant she’d need to be fed intravenously. Gleason’s sister was more than capable of handling the situation, being a registered nurse, but Francis had made her quit her job at the hospital last fall in one of his paranoid rages. Now she didn’t have access to the supplies they needed to take care of the kid. He’d have to steal them himself or get Diane to the hospital. He wasn’t going to give up now. He’d gone too far to quit. He’d get the medical supplies somehow.

Noon – The dreaded moment arrived for Woody, signaled by the noon dismissal bell. Nick rushed from the classroom, eager to get up the mountain. Woody dragged his twelve-year-old weary frame from behind his desk and out of Miss Nevel’s extremely safe sixth grade classroom. He moved like a prisoner headed to the gallows.

“What took you so long?” Nick asked Woody when he finally made it to the rendezvous point at the playground.

“I had to help Miss Nevel,” Woody lied. “What’s your hurry anyhow? Aren’t you scared?”

“Not with you with me,” Nick replied.

“Damn!” Woody cursed under his breath. “I’m dead!”

They headed up the street from school for five blocks, then turned right on Hotchkiss, a steep residential street that ended at an iron gate. The gate blocked the road to the O’Neil estate. Although locked, it only stopped cars from venturing onto estate property. It wasn’t designed to block two trespassing 12-year-olds from striking out on a heroic mission to save a “damsel in distress.” The damsel, ironically, had caused each of them considerable trouble with her tattling at Longfellow Elementary. No matter, she was one of their own, and in trouble. Nick led and Woody followed as they ducked through the untrimmed hedge abutting the iron gate. Woody cursed under his breath again as they crossed the line. They now were trespassing on land controlled by a monster, a monster who stole Nick’s jacket, kept a jar of fingers in his workshop and kidnapped Diane Palmer. “Oh yes!” Woody mumbled, “This is going to be a great day!”

As Woody and Nick slyly made their way along the mountain road, Gleason was boldly making his way down the corridor on the surgery floor at General Hospital, his sister by his side. He wore stolen, loose fitting surgical greens and she, wore her old nurses uniform. She hoped they could get the supplies and leave before anyone recognized her. Everyone on this floor knew her when she quit last year, so her presence would bring a flurry of questions. “When did you come back? What shift have you been assigned to? Are you a floater?”

“Oh God, let us make it to the supply room unnoticed,” she prayed, shielding her face with a clipboard held in an unnaturally high manner.

“I wonder if that kid was telling the truth about the Palmer kid’s suitcase?” Detective O’Brien asked the wilting fern in his office. “How could he be?” answering his own question. “A jar of dead fingers! My God! Am I that desperate to get a lead on this case?” 

“What’s that?” Chief Casey asked as he opened the oak door to O’Brien’s office.

“Nothing,” just thinking out loud. “It helps sometimes,” replied O’Brien.

“Then you have nothing new to go on?” asked the Chief.

“No! I’m grasping at straws. I don’t have anything”.

“I thought you said some kid found a suitcase,” countered Chief Casey, to keep the conversation moving in a positive direction.

“It was a crank call. The kid said he found a suitcase full of doll clothes, but lost it running from a guy with a jar of dead fingers. Can you believe it? Where do they come up with that stuff?”

“Sometimes the unbelievable is a path to the truth in detective work,” offered Casey. “Where did he say he found it?”

“At the O’Neil estate on South Mountain. It’s a run-down place that kids in the area claim is haunted. I had to go up there a few years ago to look into a complaint. A hysterical mother from the Southside claimed the caretaker shot at her son. It turned out to be nothing; just a couple of kids trespassing who probably made up the story to get out of trouble with their parents for messing up their good clothes in the woods.”

“Well, if you don’t have anything else you might want to check it out,” Casey urged.

“Oh I plan to,” O’Brien lied, “later in the day. It’s just not a priority.”

“Well, hang in there,” Casey advised as he left O’Brien’s office.

“God damn it,” cursed O’Brien. “Now I’ve got to go up to that weird place and talk to the creep who takes care of it.” The fern was unmoved by his plight. 

It was a nervous walk for Woody and Nick as they worked their way up South Mountain on the main road. They stopped every few yards to listen for Gleason’s truck. Twice they were startled by birds darting through dry leaves near the edge of the road.  Woody claimed to be having a heart attack the second time it happened. They finally completed the climb, arriving at a flat section of road within sight of the house.

"Let’s turn here and go the rest of the way on the pile of dead-fall,” suggested Woody, as he pointed to the route that took them out of range of the house.

“No!” Nick replied. “I don’t think anyone’s around. Anyhow we can use the bushes at the edge of the pasture to give us a little cover.”

Woody gave in. He just wanted to get it over with. They picked up scores of scratches on their arms in the process, but soon were past the house and at a spot that gave them a good view of the barn. They could see that the truck wasn’t in the driveway or the barn. The door was wide open.

“He must be in town!” Nick offered.

“What about the woman?” Woody asked.

“Are you afraid of a woman?” Nick chided.

“No!” Woody shot back. “But I am afraid of someone with a gun. Maybe she’s the one who shot at Vinny and my brother!”

Nick hadn’t thought of that, but he doubted it. He never heard of a woman shooting a gun, except Annie Oakley. Women cooked and men hunted, period. “Let’s just keep going,” he finally answered. “The sooner we get over there and get it done, the sooner we can get out of here.”

Woody caved, as usual. He knew that when Nick made up his mind there was no talking him out of it. With about the same enthusiasm he exhibited the day they got their first polio shot at school, he dragged behind Nick from the cover of the brambles on a direct route to the barnyard. They walked through the open door to where Gleason’s truck had leaked oil all over the wooden floor. Nick crossed it, making tracks to the workshop. He wanted Woody to see the jar of pickled fingers, but now the door was padlocked. So was the one next to it. “That’s funny. This wasn’t locked last week.”

“Yea, but that was before he chased us out of here. He must have locked it after that,” Woody concluded, making Nick wonder why he’d been so stupid that he hadn’t figured that out himself. It was so obvious now that Woody said it.

“Let’s find something to pry open the lock with,” suggested Nick.

They started rummaging around the barn just as Francis and Bessie pulled to a stop at the entrance gate on Hotchkiss Street. Bessie was trembling. It had been one thing to steal a collection of amputated fingers about to be discarded when she was a student in nursing school. That was more like a prank, not outright stealing. Besides, it was the only time she ever remembered her brother being genuinely happy. He beamed for days when she gave him the jar of fingers. She hoped it would convince him that a lot of people get buried without all their body parts, that it’s no big deal! But it hadn’t worked. He went into a rage when she tried to make her point. He’d slapped her and stomped out of the house, yelling back over his shoulder, “You shut your mouth – I’m going to get my finger back before I die, and I’ll kill whoever stands in my way!” That was sixteen years ago, the year she received her nursing degree. Nothing had changed in the intervening years. Now that she had gone back to the place she loved, it wasn’t as a caring nurse but as a common thief. If she were caught she’d be disgraced and then sent to jail.     

Francis unlocked the gate, pulled the truck forward, got out and relocked it behind him. “Nobody is going to drive in here,” he assured himself, not even the police. The truck was gasping for breath by the time it pulled into the barnyard.

“What’s that door doing shut? I left it open when we left!” he shouted to Bessie, as though it was her fault.

She shrugged and looked blank. “God, please don’t let him go off again.”  But he all ready was off – He flew out of the truck and tore into the barn and then was stopped in his tracks by a coughing fit, beads of perspiration amassed across his brow. It was so intense it brought him to his knees before releasing him from its grasp. He staggered to his feet, hot and dizzy – his rage even greater now. Had he spotted Woody or Nick at that moment he would have beaten them senseless. Fortunately they were out of sight but not out of danger.

Woody glanced at Nick, a look of horror crossing his face. “He’s here! What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Nick replied. Then he turned from the workbench, still holding the jar of fingers he’d been showing Woody. They didn’t have to worry about it for long; Gleason, recovering from his coughing fit, stepped into the workshop door and growled,

“You’re the same two I caught snooping around in the woods! You aren’t getting away this time!”

“You can’t hurt us,” Nick defiantly announced. “We know you kidnapped Diane Palmer and so do the police. They’ll be here any second.” Woody couldn’t believe what he was hearing. How does Nick come up with crap like that? He’s the best liar I ever met.

“Nice try kid. If the cops knew about the Palmer kid they’d be here themselves, not two asshole kids. Well, you are going to get your wish. You’re going to see Diane.”

He grabbed Woody by the hair with his right hand and put a headlock on Nick with his left. The only thought that went through Woody's head was, “Shit! I wish I had a flat-top haircut like Nick.” Nick held tight to the jar as Gleason dragged them out of the workshop and to the door of the room next to it. He threw Woody to the ground; his head hit hard on the wooden floor, knocking him unconscious. Nick wondered if he’d killed him. Gleason took the key to the padlock from the chain around his neck and while still holding Nick, unlocked it, then swung open the door. Nick could see Diane lying on the floor. Her back was to him but there was no mistaking who it was. He’d glared at the back of her head for from the rear of the classroom many, many times. It was where he was forced to stand at attention as a punishment for some infraction that Diane had reported to the teacher. Yes, he knew the back of her head better than her own mother did. As Gleason turned to shove Woody into the room with his foot, Nick squirmed and broke free, the jar of fingers fell to the floor and smashed. The gloved hand that held him became disconnected from Gleason’s arm in the process, explaining why Nick was able to break free of his hold. Gleason’s left hand was a fake, a prosthesis carved of wood.

Nick didn’t wait for an explanation. He made a lunge toward the door but Gleason clubbed him with his stump before he made it, sending him spinning down, coming to rest in a puddle of formaldehyde, amputated fingers scattered every which way. He grabbed two handfuls and got to his feet. Gleason came at him. Nick threw a handful of fingers, hitting the surprised caretaker in the face, the formaldehyde splashed into his eyes. It stung, momentarily blinding him. It was all Nick needed. He ran out of the room knocking Bessie over as he fled. He made for the deadfall, knowing Gleason would never catch him on the log pile. Gleason stumbled to his feet, cleared his eyes with his lone hand and headed after Nick.

Bessie grabbed her brother’s leg and held on tight. “Francis stop! You’ve got to end this madness.”

He turned and glared down at her but said nothing; he just pushed her away. He exited the barn and tore across the yard after Nick. Nick watched him attack the pile and close the gap between them.

“Oh my God!” he thought. “He’s going to catch me!”

A coughing fit brought Gleason to a dead stop and gave Nick the break he needed. Nick was out of sight when the coughing attack subsided, leaving Gleason weak, dizzy and hostile. He walked back to the barn and locked everybody in, even his sister.

Nick made it most of the way across the pile of deadfall, a precarious one-eighth-mile journey, before realizing he still held two amputated fingers in his left hand. “Just what I need to prove my story,” he thought. He climbed down the pile and, figuring Gleason would be coming after him in the truck, entered the thick woods to the east rather than the familiar route to the west. It passed too close to the road Gleason would be driving on. He’d been this way years ago, when he hiked with Wally Zagorsky, a classmate who lived on the other side of the mountain. It would take him a lot longer but he was sure it was safer. He couldn’t take a chance of getting caught by Gleason. Even when he made it out of the woods he would have to be careful, to sneak through back yards, not go on the sidewalk. He stuffed the fingers in his pocket and left.    

2:30pm – Gleason was roaring when he pulled into the barnyard. He slammed the door of his pick-up and angrily stomped into the barn. He’d searched for over an hour in his truck and on foot, but didn’t see a trace of the kid. “The little bastard!”  His head was awhirl. He was hot, dizzy and couldn’t go ten minutes without a coughing fit. He didn’t know what to do. He even had trouble finding the key, though it was on a chain around his neck, swaying back and forth. He finally spotted it and walked over to the locked room where Woody and Diane were confined. His sister Bessie was there as well. He unfastened the padlock and swung the door open, holding on to it as a coughing spasm overtook him. Woody and Bessie stared from their perch on a wooden platform. Diane lay in a heap, her shallow breathing hardly detectable.

3:00pm – Nick made it to the schoolyard just as the West Junior busses pulled to the curb. Denzel Kelly and his aide-de-camp, Richard Mosement were standing near the bus stop. They were undoubtedly there to collect a daily protection fee from the smaller kids who went to West, or at least the ones they could still bully. . 

For the first time in his life, Nick was happy to see Denzel’s ugly mug. He waved and shouted as he ran over to them. “Denzel! Denzel! I need your help.”

“What’s with you?” Denzel replied. “Is some third grade girl after you?” He looked over at Mosement and winked. Then they both split a gut laughing.

“No! No! A guy with a jar of dead fingers kidnapped Diane Palmer and is after me. He has Woody too. I escaped. You’ve got to help me save them!”

“You are some piece of work Carns. What kind of deal are you trying to pull here? Don’t you know who you’re messing with?”

“No look! Here’s the proof,” Nick explained, and pulled two amputated fingers out of his pocket. They had dried out on the journey down the mountain and looked even more ghastly than when they were swimming in the jar of formaldehyde.

“Here!” he shouted. He shoved the fingers toward Denzel, who jumped back in alarm knocking them to the sidewalk.

“Holy shit! They really are somebody’s fingers. Where’d you get them?”

“I told you. From the guy who kidnapped Diane - the caretaker on South Mountain. You’ve got to help me save her! Now he has Woody too!”

Denzel waved and yelled to his older brother Chuck, who was getting off the bus. He was an even bigger bully than Denzel. (In fact, he was the one who taught Denzel the ropes of his protection game and then turned over his clients when he graduated from Longfellow, two years behind the class he started with.) Two of his customers at West Junior, Woody’s brother Stew and his friend Vinny, were right behind him getting off the bus. He ordered them to come with him as he sauntered over to Denzel and Nick.

“What’s up bro?”

At the very same moment that Denzel began to explain Nick’s crazy tale to his brother, detective O’Brien was trying to figure out how he was going to explain his predicament to the chief. He was stumbling from his car toward Gleason’s barn door, a shotgun poking him as he went. “I can’t believe it! I’m so stupid,” he chided himself - “to get captured by a farmer.”

It all started at the gatehouse. He pulled up to the iron fence that blocked the road, thinking all he had to do was get out and open it. Not so. It was locked! The old guy who lived in what was once a pristine gatehouse chalet, a welcoming entrance to the estate on the mountain, didn’t have a key. He claimed Gleason took it away from him years ago. O’Brien had to smash the lock with a lug wrench from his trunk. The wrench cost him a fingernail when it refused to budge from its rust-encrusted nest beneath the spare tire. He was in a snit as he drove up the mountain, certain he was wasting his time. But he was afraid to face the Chief and tell him he hadn’t followed up on the only lead they had. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” he yelled out the window to the silent trees as his old Ford police sedan rumbled up the hill. He pulled right into the barnyard and got out. Had his mood been brighter, he might have been a little more cautious. He hopped out of the car, anxious to get the useless follow-up over with, not noticing the green pick-up truck in the barn. Gleason was waiting. He knew the unmarked vehicle was a police car the minute it rounded the bend five hundred yards down the road. He’d been watching its progress up the mountain, a plume of road dust rising above the trees, announcing the arrival of an unwelcome intruder.

He thought, “Who else but the police would buy a car so plain?” It didn’t have a single piece of chrome and sported four ridiculous looking hubcaps, barley large enough to cover the lug nuts. The car screamed, “POLICE.” Gleason chucked to himself as he stepped from his hiding spot by the back door, a cocked shotgun lying across his left wrist. He swiftly ordered O’Brien to put up his hands.  O’Brien’s ears were bright red by the time he ambled through the door into the barn; he never was more embarrassed in his life. The gun barrel prodded into his back every step of the way, so he knew exactly where to go.

“Stand there with your hands high on the wall,” Gleason ordered. “And don’t turn around.” If he had turned, or even taken a quick peek, he could have redeemed himself. Gleason leaned the gun against the door while he fumbled with the key, finally getting the stubborn padlock to open.

“That was stupid,” he cursed under his breath. “I should have made the cop unlock the door.”  He gave O’Brien a vicious whack in the kidneys with the butt of the gun. It helped vent the anger that was going to consume him. O’Brien went down in a heap. Gleason kicked him to finish off the rage induced by his own stupidity.

“Get up and get into the room,” he ordered.

O’Brien couldn’t make it to his feet. He crawled on all fours into the make shift POW camp. Woody and Bessie were sitting back-to-back, their hands tied in a single lump behind them. Diane was on her knees trying to undo the knots. O’Brien perked up for the first time in days.

“The kid’s alive!”

His high was short lived. He was hit yet again with the butt of Gleason’s gun, this time across the back of his head. He felt nothing, just saw a bright yellow light and was gone. Diane shrieked and Woody cowered. “Oh God, we’re next,” he thought, but he was wrong. Gleason shoved the gun down his pants and walked over and grabbed Diane by the hair.

“You tricked me you little bitch.”

“No she didn’t!” countered his sister, a brave attempt to protect the girl. “She just came to a few minutes ago!”

“Shut-up! Don’t you stick up for her,” he yelled, dragging the screaming Diane from the room. He locked the door, holding her immobile in a scissor lock between his knees. He repeated the maneuver when he unlocked the door in the next room. It swung open and he pulled her inside and over to the workbench. He let go of her hair and switched to a headlock. With his right hand now free, he opened the jaws of a massive vice that was bolted to the workbench.

“Put your finger in there!” he ordered a sobbing Diane, still shaky from her long bout with unconsciousness.

“No!” she replied and then felt her hair being pulled from her head. It hurt so bad she thought she was going to black out.

“Stick your finger in there or I’ll tear every hair out of your head!” he yelled.

She obliged, not knowing what else to do. He spun the handle on the vise until her index finger was held tight, too tight. It turned purple and immediately began to throb. She cried out and was rewarded with a slap across the face.

“Now you’re going to tell me!”

“Tell you what?” she answered. “I don’t know anything!”

“My sister overheard you yelling about a dead finger when you bumped into her last week. I want to know about the finger,” Gleason responded and then began coughing again. His head was killing him and he was sweating like a pig. He thought he was going to pass out. He got so shaky he dropped to the floor and sat. Diane was puzzled.

“Is he dying?” she hoped. She didn’t have long to dwell on it. He shifted to all fours then slowly got to his feet. He reached over and gave the vice handle a whack, causing the jaws to clamp tighter on Diane’s finger.

She screamed. “I’ll tell you! Please don’t hurt me!”

It only took a minute to explain about the dead finger that Nick Carns brought to school and the story he told of his mother finding it at the rail yard when she was a girl. “But it’s not true,” she concluded. “He tricked us. It was just his finger sticking up through a hole in the box.”

Maybe not, Gleason thought, maybe the kid’s mother really did find a finger near the railroad tracks when she was a girl. My finger!

“Who is this Nick Carns? Where does he live?” Gleason yelled, standing over Diane as though to hit her again.

“He’s a boy in my class. That’s his best friend Woody that you have tied up in the other room. They both live in same neighborhood at the bottom of the mountain!” she responded and then began sobbing again.

Gleason smiled. Nick Carns must be kid that got away. His twenty-two years of prayers had finally been answered. This Carns kid’s mother must be the one. He walked out of the workshop in a trance. I’ve got to get something for this headache and a drink. I’m so thirsty. He left the barn, leaving the door to the workshop open. Diane slumped to the floor and passed out, her finger still held fast in the vise. He staggered through the backdoor of the house and went to the kitchen cabinet where he kept his medicine. “I need a whole bottle of aspirin to knock out this one,” he thought, reaching for the pills.

Chapter Thirteen - Here come the Mounties

Nick led the way as he and the Southside “bully boys” scrambled up the mountain via the long route through the woods. He was on his turf now and they all knew it. Denzel was out of breath and sweaty. His arms stung from scores of scratches, painfully delivered by the blackberry bush he had pushed through along the way. He wanted to quit. His pride wouldn’t let him. Chuck, Stew and Vinnie felt the same but their macho image was on the line too, so they kept going. Finally, they reached the abandoned pasture where they hoped the pile of deadfall would shield them from Gleason. Nick was fit and ready to go but the foursome of toughs had to sit down and catch their breath. They could fight but they couldn’t run; Nick needed them for the fight. Ten minutes later they were on their feet.

“OK, kiddo, where’s the house?” asked Denzel.

“Follow me, we have to cross the deadfall to get there,” Nick replied. 

They all stood like fools with their jaws agape as Nick scrambled up the twenty-foot wall to the top of the pile.

“How the hell did he do that?” Vinny asked in disbelief.

“I don’t know but if he can do it, so can I!” Chuck countered and then started up the ancient, twisted pile of logs. By the time they reached the top they realized just how dangerous it was. They could see skeletons of dead animals that had slipped through the maze to a dirt prison twenty feet below.

“This is a giant set of Pick-up-Sticks,” observed Stu. It was a game he and Vinny played for hours when they were younger.

“Yea, it is,” responded Vinny. “Except this game can kill you.”

Nick stayed in the lead, skillfully stepping over the trunks that jutted above the surface, never slipping once in the process. His progress was dazzling compared to the four land crabs following behind. The agility he picked up from years of tree climbing and fighting pirate wars on tipsy log rafts in MacArthur swamp was finally paying off. He was first to reach the end of the pile. He spotted the plain green sedan that “could only be an unmarked police vehicle,” parked in the yard. He let out a sigh of relief.

“Hurry up! Hurry up!” he yelled back to the posse of four. “The cops are here. We don’t have to save Diane and Woody after all!”

Then he saw Gleason walk out of the barn, a shotgun resting on his shoulder. Nick ducked down and sidled back a few yards, out of view from the barnyard. He put his finger to his lips and shushed the walruses making their way on all fours; sweat was dropping from their faces to the abyss below. Vinny, overweight by twenty pounds, (the fat coming from doughnuts swiped from his father’s bakery) had lost his footing twice, the first time almost sliding out of sight. If Chuck hadn’t been there to catch him by the back of his shirt he would have gone under. He was trembling as he came to a stop at Nick’s feet.

“Gleason must have captured the cops, or killed them!” Nick whispered. “We can’t let him know we’re here.  I’m going ahead and see what he’s doing. You guys wait here.” They loved his plan. It gave them a chance to rest because they were too scared to go ahead themselves.

Nick found a spot near the edge of the pile where he could see both the barn and the house, yet was hidden behind a berm formed by three logs lying crosswise. He watched in silence but didn’t see anything unusual. The green police car, its driver-side door standing open was the only thing in the yard. There was no sign of Gleason, the cops, Woody, Diane or the woman. Even the cows, usually grazing in the pasture near the barn, were missing. Suddenly the back door to the house swung open and Gleason came into view, the gun held at his side pointing to the ground. He headed for the barn. Nick waited until Gleason made it all the way to the barn and was swallowed by the darkness inside before he waved to his “troops” to come forward. Denzel was first to reach him

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Gleason just went in the barn. I’m going down to see out what’s going on,” Nick answered.

“I’m going with you,” Denzel insisted.

Nick didn’t argue. He welcomed the company. He was sure Denzel could take Gleason, especially now that the caretaker was missing a hand. Vinny, Stew and Chuck agreed to stay at the top of the pile and wait for a signal, hoping to hell it would never come. They’d be in a safe position to go for help if Nick and Denzel got captured. With that settled, the scouting party of two climbed down the pile and crossed the yard where twenty-two weathered crosses stood guard. Nick’s jacket still hung from the tallest but at the moment it was of no interest to him. They pressed on to the relative safety of the barn wall. Nick used sign language to ask Denzel for a boost, so he could peek through the window above their heads. When he looked through the glass he couldn’t see a thing. A thick layer of filth blocked his view. It was no use. They’d have to go in blindly.

They crept to the barn door and stopped. “I’ll go and you watch. If Gleason comes for me, yell to your brother then come in,” Nick instructed in a hushed voice.

Denzel gave him the OK sign, then swallowed hard. This was a little different than pushing around some puke of a kid on the playground. Nick has more guts than I thought.  Nick didn’t hesitate. He got down on his stomach and began crawling. His route took him under Gleason’s pick-up. He figured it was the safest way to go. It was like crawling through a grease pit, there was so much oil on the floor. The truck must leak like a sieve, he thought. He craned his neck when he reached the front of the truck. He could see into the workshop door, though he only had a partial view. It looked like someone was sitting on the floor with his or her arm in the air. He rubbed his eyes to help adjust his vision to the dim light and looked again.

It’s Diane! Why is she sitting like that, her hand in the air, as though to get the teacher’s attention? It’s like in class when she’s getting ready to tattle on someone. What’s Gleason done to her? Nick was baffled, so much so, that he acted without thinking and crawled out from under the pick-up. He got to his feet and took a step toward the workroom.

Who the hell is that? F. Gleason wondered, as he looked through the windshield and saw a kid standing in front of the truck. I must have nodded off. All I remember is being dizzy and climbing in. It’s a good thing I didn’t start the motor. I’d be asphyxiated by now. 

Nick walked over to the workshop door and then stopped to look around. No sense in letting Gleason trap me in there, he thought. I’m sure he won’t let me get away from him again. (He didn’t think to look in the truck!)

Gleason couldn’t believe his eyes. He didn’t have to go looking for the Carns kid. Yes, he’s right here, like a fly in a spider web, my spider web. Francis slid the gun from the passenger seat to his lap and got ready to open the door. I’ll wait until he goes into the room before I get out, he decided. The kid’s fast, but he’s not getting away from me again.

Nick saw that Diane was out cold. Why does she have her arm up in the air like that? He crossed the room and had his answer. Her finger was clamped securely in a bench vise, purple and bloated. A chill ran through him causing the hairs on the back of his neck to stand up. Before he could figure out why, he was down on his knees, the recipient of a blow to his left kidney from Gleason’s gun butt. “God that hurts,” he thought, fighting for all he was worth to stay conscious. Instinct took over. He rolled and kicked at his attacker’s legs, knocking a surprised Gleason on his ass. He didn’t wait to see if the caretaker still had the gun. He just scrambled on his hands and knees as fast as he could toward the door. He only made it to the opening when Gleason’s cow-plop caked boot stomped him flat to the floor.

“Denzel! Denzel!” He yelled. “Help me!”

It’s just what Denzel was waiting for. Completely forgetting to signal to his brother and the rest of the posse, he charged into the barn. He didn’t flinch when he saw Gleason standing in the doorway with a gun, Nick at his feet. He ran full speed, lowered his noggin and dove head first, knocking the caretaker to the floor. The gun fell out of his hand, hit the floor hard and discharged. All three sat tangled in a heap wondering where the bullet went and hoping it didn’t go into them. They didn’t have to wonder long. Diane let out a scream that could wake the dead. The bullet, a deer slug, accelerated across the room. It smashed into the metal vice, and then ricocheted into her index finger. One-third of her finger stayed in the vice; one-third vaporized and floated toward the wall where the bullet lost its velocity and lodged in a wooden beam. The remaining third was still attached to her hand, a bloody stump. Nick’s prophetic reaction surprised even him, She’ll never point out our sins in class again. The tattletale is out of business. It wasn’t funny, but he couldn’t help smiling.

The tangle of bodies Nick was trapped in began to move. Before he could figure out why, he was lying on his back looking over at Denzel who’d done his patented wrestling move and flipped the caretaker, grabbing the gun in the process. Denzel was sitting on Gleason’s chest, pressing the rifle barrel, held crosswise, into his throat. The creep was powerless beneath the adrenalin-charged teenager. Chuck, Stew and Vinny stormed into the room.

“Go help Diane!” Nick yelled as he got to his feet.

Vinny, Stu and Chuck ran toward the workbench where Diane was sobbing face down on the floor. Vinny and Stew took one look at the hunk of her finger still held securely in the bench vice and threw up. Chuck didn’t flinch. He took out his handkerchief, wrapped it around Diane’s stump and sat down on the floor next to her, his arm around her shoulder. She was ashen and shaky, but her sobbing was subsiding as shock began to take hold. Nick got to his feet and walked over to Denzel and Gleason.

“Where’s the key to the other room?” he demanded.

Gleason didn’t say anything. Denzel pushed the shotgun barrel deeper into his neck and shouted,

“When the kid asks a question, you answer!”

Gleason responded with a violent coughing fit. Denzel wasn’t fooled. He didn’t let up on his hold one iota. He sat there and waited for an answer. The reply came in the form of a gesture: Gleason pointed to the chain around his neck. Nick got the message and started feeling for the clasp to undo it. Denzel didn’t have as much patience. He reached down and yanked. It broke - he then handed the chain and the clump of keys to Nick.

Woody’s eyes bugged out when Nick walked into the make shift prison cell where he and the rest of Gleason’s prisoners were secured with rope. Nick smiled and announced, “The Mounties are here,” a reference he knew Woody would appreciate. He was Sergeant Preston’s biggest fan and he never went anywhere without his Royal Canadian Mounted Police honorary membership card. It was a membership he’d earned by saving ten Wheaties box tops and mailing them to the General Mills Company with twenty-five cents.

“Untie me first!” ordered Detective O’Brien. “I’ll take over now!” 

“Like hell!” Nick replied. “You laughed in my face when I told you where to find Diane. We solved the case, not you. You don’t get untied until everybody else is free.”

O’Brien shrugged. “You’re right, kid. I should have listened to you. I’m sorry.”

Nick couldn’t believe his ears. An adult apologizing to him? And a cop, at that. Wow, he finally got some respect. He quickly untied Woody, Bessie, and finally, O’Brien, who to his credit didn’t try to take over. “What do you want me to do?” he asked Nick.

“Put the cuffs on Gleason; then call an ambulance for Diane on your police radio. She just had her finger shot off!” Nick then turned to Bessie and asked. “What the hell is this all about? Do you know?”

“I know and I’ll tell the whole story as soon as we get the girl taken care of. Let me help her. I’m a nurse.” She then passed by Nick and went into the workshop to tend to her patient.   

  

EPILOG

June 23, 1954, 7:45am

Nick and Woody walked to school at Longfellow Elementary for the last time. They took the route through the field behind Nick’s house. Their parents had restored their freedom now that Diane was safe and the mystery of her disappearance solved. Woody was excited; Nick was a little subdued.

“Tell me what happened at the police station,” Woody asked, unable to wait for Nick to volunteer the information. Nick and his mother had gone to the police headquarters last night after Gleason was arrested.

“I don’t think you’re going to believe it,” Nick replied after a long silence. “In a way, the whole thing is my mother’s fault.”

“What are you talking about?” Woody could hardly contain himself.

“You have to promise to believe me,” Nick asserted. “We’re blood brothers, so when I say trust me you have to do it.”  

“OK!” Woody quickly agreed. “Now tell me what happened?”

“We all sat around a big conference table in the police chief’s office: me, mom, Gleason’s sister Bessie and detective O’Brien. Chief Casey started it off by saying that Diane was going to be okay, except for missing half her index finger. Gleason was under arrest but in the hospital under police guard. When he gets better he’s going straight to jail. He has a severe case of pneumonia, bronchitis, an inflamed esophagus and a bleeding ulcer. As soon as Casey finished telling us about Gleason, Bessie jumped up and screamed that he should spend the rest of his life in jail. She was crying and looked pathetic. She said he’s her brother and she loves him, but he doesn’t fit in and never has. He raised her from when she was two years old, after their mother died. He was only sixteen at the time. They had to move all the time so the authorities wouldn’t put them in Saint Mary’s Orphanage. They lived like fugitives and it messed him up. He doesn’t trust anybody, even her.” 

“The chief gave her a handkerchief and she sat down and sobbed. It was pathetic. He changed back to the subject and told them that the cows had been trucked to the County Work Farm where they could be properly taken care of now that he was under arrest. That calmed her down a little. Then he said he wanted to get to the bottom of this mess, to figure out what happened and why.

“The Chief asked Bessie if she knew why her brother kidnapped Diane. It took a long time for her get composed and to answer, but she finally stopped crying and said that Francis didn’t mean to kidnap the girl. He just wanted to ask her some questions, but got mad when Diane tried to get away. He hit her and it knocked her out. He panicked and brought her home and locked her in the barn. He claimed he was going to let her go as soon as she came to and answered his questions, but she didn’t wake up. Bessie started crying again, and in the middle of it she stood up and shouted that it was her fault.

“Her fault? How could it be her fault?” Woody interrupted.

“This is the part you are not going to believe,” Nick cautioned. “She finally got herself under control again and began to explain. She said it started over twenty years ago, when she was ten and her brother was twenty-five. He worked part time for the Erie Railroad, greasing wheels, adjusting brakes and doing routine maintenance on old freight cars, broken down wrecks that were only good enough to use around the rail yard. 

“Bessie kept sobbing but went on with her story anyhow. She said a freight car slipped off a jack and crushed his hand. She was to blame. He was working on it when she came up behind him with his lunch. He left his lunch pail home that morning so she brought it to him. She threw it over to where he was working to see if she could scare him. They always scared each other. It was one of the few things in life he enjoyed other than working with animals. The lunch pail startled him. He jumped back and his foot kicked the jack and the wheel came down on his hand. She said it was awful. He screamed and screamed. There was blood all over. He yelled so loud the stationmaster and another railroad worker across the yard heard him and came running. Once they saw what happened, the stationmaster ran to call an ambulance and the other guy put a tourniquet on Gleason’s arm. She said she felt so guilty she ran away and hid behind a storage shed until the ambulance crew took him away.

“I looked over at Mom. Her eyes were practically popping out of her head. Then she interrupted Gleason’s sister. She stood up and said she knew exactly what happened after they took Francis away in the ambulance.”

“Gleason’s sister looked at her like she was nuts; so did Casey and O’Brien. Casey asked her to explain what she was talking about.

“Mom sat down and said she knew because she was there. Then she told them the same story she told me about the dead finger.

“I thought she told you it was a joke,” Woody complained.

“She did, but that was because it had scared me so bad. She felt guilty and tried to make it better for me so she lied about it. She really did find a finger when she was a girl. And it was Francis Gleason’s finger.

“Wow!” Woody could hardly believe his ears. “What happened when she told Gleason’s sister?”

“That’s the crazy part. After she told the whole story, Gleason’s sister stopped crying and smiled. And she didn’t just smile, she beamed.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Woody concluded.

“It does when you hear the rest of the story,” Nick countered.

“Lay it on me,” Woody begged.

“Gleason’s sister went back to scene of the accident after the ambulance left, just to look around. Gleason’s fingers were lying on the ground next to the wheel. Bessie picked them up and put them in her purse. She found a thumb and three fingers, but she didn’t know if she had all of them, because she didn’t know how many had been cut off. Apparently his index finger was hidden under the gravel. It must have gotten covered up when the ambulance crew was loading him on the stretcher. My mother spotted it after Bessie left and shoved it in her pocket. Then Bessie came up to mom as she was leaving and asked if she found anything. Mom lied and said she didn’t.  She wanted to show it off, to scare the kids in her neighborhood. But it backfired on her. One of kids she scared told on her and when my grandfather found out, he went ballistic. He yelled at her and told her to get rid of it, said she had to bury it in “hallowed” ground. She lived real close to the Spring Forrest Cemetery; it’s where she and her brothers played in the summer, so she buried the finger there. Get this! She buried it by the big monument that the City put up for the women who died in the Binghamton Clothing Company fire. Francis and Bessie’s mother was one of the women who died in that fire.

“This will blow your mind. Gleason buried his thumb and three fingers near the same monument but he put them next to one of the twenty-one unmarked headstones that go around the big monument in a circle. He believed it was the one where his mother’s body was buried, though nobody knew for sure who was buried where. Rumor has it that all the bodies were found huddled in a clump after the fire. His sister said he spent his whole life worrying about the missing finger. He wanted to find it so that when he died it could be buried with him and the other fingers that were cut off in the train accident. He thought he wouldn’t get into heaven unless his entire body was buried intact, awaiting resurrection. He even went so far as to erect a small cross in their back yard every year on the anniversary of his accident. That’s why we saw the twenty-four crosses there, well, twenty-five if you count the one my jacket is hanging on. Bessie said he became really obsessed about finding his finger in the last few months; he thought he was dying. When she told him about crashing into a girl near the schoolyard who was yelling about a dead finger, he went nuts. He made her go to the school with him so she could point the girl out to him. She didn’t want to, but he made her; he hit her.

“Diane was the girl.” Nick concluded.  

Woody and Nick continued their walk to school in silence, both lost in thought. Nick was certain that none of this would have happened if he hadn’t taken the dead finger to school. Was it his fault? Was it his mother’s fault? He couldn’t reason it out. Finally Woody cleared up the muddle for him.

“That Gleason is a real creep isn’t he?” Woody asserted. “All he had to do was ask Diane about the finger and go from there. Instead, he almost killed her. I hope they lock him up for the rest of his life!”

As they entered Longfellow Elementary s School Nick turned to Woody and asked, “How about after class we go back up the mountain and get my leather jacket?”

“Sure,” Woody answered, a big smile on his face. “It’ll be the first time I go there without being scared to death.”

That’s what you think,” Nick whispered, too softly for Woody to hear!