“Looks like it’s gonna storm again,” Artie said. The smell of it was coming through. I looked over at Troo, who was rubbing her arm. Across the street Fast Susie began helping Bobby and Barb pick up the balls and bats and bases that hadda go into the shed because the playground closed when it rained so nobody would get hit by lightning.
We all agreed to try and get in one game before it started to rain so we did rock paper scissors to see who would be the first ghost. It was Artie.
He took off across the O’Haras’ front lawn while the rest of us counted loudly together. “One Mississippi… two Mississippi… three Mississippi.”
I really loved this time of night, when the parents were on their porches listening to the radio and maybe having beer in tall glasses and talking, like Mother and Daddy used to, catching up on what each of them had done that day.
“Ten Mississippi… eleven Mississippi…”
If someone led me to each of these houses, even if I was blindfolded, I would be able to tell you whose house it was by how it smelled after suppertime. The Fazios and their garlic and the Goldmans and their sauerkraut and the Latours and their slumgoodie and the O’Haras and their corned beef and cabbage.
“Fifteen Mississippi… sixteen Mississippi…”
I peeked down to where Mr. Kenfield was sitting on his front porch swing just sort of staring out at the street in front of him like he did every night, probably thinking about how Dottie had disappeared into thin air.
“Twenty-two Mississippi… twenty-three Mississippi.”
I wondered what Mother was doing. I wished I could brush her hair a hundred times with her gold hairbrush like she let me do sometimes.
“Twenty-five Mississippi… ready or not… here we come!”
Wendy got caught right off like she always did. Artie had hidden in these bushes beneath his bedroom window, and when Wendy walked by singing, “Red light, green light, hope to thee the ghoth…,” he jumped out at her and yelled, “Boo!” But for some reason instead of laughing like she always did, Wendy started to cry, so we had to wait while Artie went into the basement of their house and got a Popsicle out of their deep freezer, which was this enormous thing that had venison and a lot of other food just in case we got attacked by the Russians. Mr. Latour had also built a bomb shelter in their backyard, so Troo and me stayed friendly with them just in case. When we lived on the farm, Troo and me wanted to have a bomb shelter, but Mother said we didn’t need one because that bomb business was a lot of silly nonsense and we had a lot of other things to worry about besides the Reds. Daddy laughed at that and said, “And we don’t have to worry much about them either. Not with the way Lawrence has been pitching.”
The second time around, we skipped the counting and just looked away from Willie and Wendy when they ran off and hid. The playground was lit up like County Stadium. A light drizzle started to fall. Eddie and Nell were snuggled in the corner of the school where they thought nobody could see them. I guessed they weren’t mad at each other anymore because I could see that Eddie was sliding into second base.
Troo yelled, “Ready or not, here we come,” and then we all took off again. I was walking between the Fazios’ and the Latours’, saying not too loudly, I admit, “Red light, green light, hope to see the ghost tonight. Red light, green light, hope to see the ghost tonight.”
I had just circled behind the Fazios’ side bushes and could see and smell through their back window that Nana was at the kitchen window making those yummy cannolis. I pinched myself so I wouldn’t forget to tell Troo because those were her favorite and she would wanna eat over there tomorrow just to get those for dessert. Another thunder grumble rolled over my head, but beneath that there was a shout, like somebody had been caught by the ghost, so I turned to run toward it, and when I did somebody grabbed me by my braid and swung me down to the wet grass. Real hard. I could feel something come off him. Like a feeling. Like how you feel if you are afraid. And in a flash of lightning, I saw the pillowcase he had over his head with places cut out for his eyes and his mouth and it moved ever so slightly like the sails on a ship when he stood above me, his black spongy-soled shoes on either side of me. The rain started coming down hard, but I could hear Rasmussen just fine when he bent down to my ear and said, “Sally, dear, I love you,” so, so sweetly that I almost believed him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Nana Fazio screamed Il mio Dio… il mio Dio and ran toward me in her long black dress, swinging her bosoms belt over her tiny head like a lasso. Rasmussen laughed a little and said, “Until we meet again,” and ran off toward the alley. I felt something moving around in my head like you did if you stood up too fast and I saw some shooting stars even though it’d started raining so hard. Troo told me later that I’d fainted dead away just like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind.
When I woke up, we were coming down the Fazios’ front steps. I thought that Rasmussen had probably dodged Nana and run behind the Spencers’ garage and taken off that pillowcase, and here he was with me in his arms and nobody was doing a darn thing to stop him. Where is Troo? I wanted to scream but nothing came out. I tried to push off him, but he acted like he couldn’t even feel that. Like I was a bug and he didn’t even notice. Then I relaxed a little because I figured out that he’d never murder and molest me in front of the whole neighborhood. Oh no, not tricky Rasmussen.
Held close to his chest, my face pressed against his badge number 343 as the rain came down, I sniffed his uniform, which smelled like my socks did after sledding, and that made me think of Mother and hot cocoa. And maybe it was because I was so tuckered out, or maybe I wanted to imagine for a little while that I was wrong and Rasmussen really was the good egg everybody said he was. So I’m sorry to have to say this, but I gave up, and didn’t struggle. I just snuggled up to him, felt his breath going in and out of his chest, and tried to figure out what tune he was humming.
Right in front of the Kenfields’ house Rasmussen looked down at me and asked, “Did he say anything to you, Sally? Did you recognize him?”
Ha! Like he didn’t know what he said and he didn’t know what he looked like.
I bent my head down and said, “Did you know Dottie Kenfield?” I was trying to get a look at his shoes. They were those brown ones he usually wore. He musta changed out of the spongy black ones he had on when he bushwhacked me.
Rasmussen looked over at Mr. Kenfield’s cigarette burning red in the dark and said so low I almost couldn’t hear him, “That is a sad, sad story that you are too young to know about.” And then he said louder toward the Kenfields’ porch, “Evenin’, Chuck.”
I never looked Rasmussen in the eyes because I was too afraid what I might see there. Daddy always said the eyes are the windows to the soul, which didn’t make sense because I thought your soul was located sort of near your heart and not your eyeballs, but if Daddy said it, it was true and I didn’t ever, ever want to see into Rasmussen’s raggedy soul.
I didn’t have to worry because his eyes were covered by his police hat where the rain had beaded up on the rim, but the streetlight was shining on his lips. They were soft-looking like baby blanket satin. He had murdered Junie. And Sara. Like Granny said, three’s the charm. The next time he would murder me, so a little “Ohhh” escaped out of me.
“You okay, Sally?” he asked like he cared.
The rain was starting and stopping like it couldn’t make up its mind. I looked over at our front porch. Troo was sitting there with a jar full of fireflies. She was the most amazing firefly catcher. Fireflies flocked to Troo, probably because they began with the letter f. I knew she’d tried real hard to catch some quick to make me feel better because that’s what she always did when I was out of sorts. The fireflies were flashing off and on in the jar that she held beneath her chin, and when she saw me she gave me a double thumbs-up. Daddy used to do that, so that made me finally cry. Because here I was in the arms of the man who wanted me dead and there wasn’t one thing I could do about it. I felt like a leaf going down the Honey Creek after a storm.