CHAPTER 21
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Getting Ready for the Open House

For the next two days, Wednesday and Thursday, Nickie worked with Crystal at Greenhaven, helping her get ready for the open house. Crystal gave her the assignment of cleaning and neatening the rooms on the third floor. “We won’t bother to make those rooms beautiful,” she said, “but they can at least be presentable. Get rid of mess and cobwebs, sweep up the dead bugs, take extra furniture down to the basement, that sort of thing.” She cast her critical gaze around the front parlor, where they were standing. “The rest of the house,” she said, “has to be as elegant as possible. I think we can manage it. The house has good bones.”

Once each day, Crystal came up to the third floor to see how the work was going, and Nickie had to quickly close Otis into the hall closet and put the radio on loud to disguise any sounds he might make. Luckily, Crystal wasn’t very interested in the rooms on the third floor. All she wanted was for them not to look too awful. She glanced in, said Nickie was doing a good job, and went back downstairs.

As she worked, Nickie turned over the problem of goodness in her mind. On Thursday evening, as they were sitting in the kitchen having a dinner of canned soup and soda crackers, and listening to the news on the radio, she asked Crystal her question.

“Crystal,” she said. “How do you tell if something is good or bad?”

Crystal was exhausted from rearranging furniture and hauling boxes of stuff down to the local thrift shop. “You mean like a good or bad book?” she said. “A good or bad movie?”

“No,” Nickie said, “I mean like something you do. How do you know if it’s a good thing to do or not?”

On the radio, the news announcer broke off in the middle of a sentence, and there was a sudden silence. Then he said, “We have a bulletin from the president. One moment.”

The president’s voice came on, not quite as smooth as usual. Instead of answering Nickie’s question, Crystal held up one finger and said, “Listen.”

“One day remains,” the president said, “before the deadline we have issued to the Phalanx Nations. I regret to say no progress has been made. Our resolve is firm: we will not back down in the face of threats from godless evildoers. Citizens should prepare for possible large-scale conflict. Please refer to the Homeland Security website at www…”

Crystal turned down the radio. She frowned and broke a few soda crackers into her soup. “It sounds bad,” she said. “We ought to be all right here, but I’m worried about your mother in the city.”

“Let’s call her, then,” said Nickie, “and tell her to come.”

“No, I wouldn’t want her traveling right now. I’m not really sure what to do.” She turned up the radio again, but the president was finished, and the newsman was reporting on a terrorist group that had taken a hundred hostages and was refusing to release them until they swore to follow the one true faith.

“Could you answer my question now?” said Nickie. “About how you tell if something is good or bad?”

“It’s a deep question,” Crystal said, “and I’m deeply tired. I guess if I had to answer, I’d say that you look to see if what you’re doing causes harm. If it hurts anyone. If so, it’s probably not good.”

“What if it doesn’t hurt any people,” said Nickie, “or even any animals, but it hurts God?”

“Hurts God? How can God be hurt?”

“Well, I mean if what you do goes against what God says.”

“You’d have to know what he says, then, wouldn’t you? Assuming he’s up there saying anything.” Crystal swallowed a spoonful of soup. “It’s too deep for me,” she said. “I just want to eat my dinner and go to bed. And by the way, your mom called again and read me another one of those odd postcards from your dad.”

Nickie jumped up. “Did you write it down? Where is it?”

“It’s here somewhere.” Crystal went out to the hall. “Here.” She handed Nickie a scrap of paper.

It said:


Dear Rachel and Nickie,

How is everything with you? Here it’s work as usual. I am doing all right, though I miss you both.

Love, Dad


P.S. Nickie, I was thinking about that movie we went to for your ninth birthday. Wasn’t it called “Snowblind”?


Nickie thought back to when she turned nine. She remembered it well. She and Kate and Sophy had gone ice-skating. There was no movie. So this confirmed it: either her father was losing his mind, or he was sending a message in some sort of code. She would crack it. She was sure she could. She took the postcard messages into her bedroom, spread them out on the bed, and began to study them in earnest. And after a while, she had an idea about what the key to the code might be.

 

On Friday morning, Nickie awoke and instantly knew that she had to find out what had happened to Grover and his snakes. If he was still mad at her, too bad; she couldn’t bear not to know.

Crystal said she was meeting Len for breakfast so they could discuss last-minute open-house details. “Want to come?” she said, and of course Nickie said no. As soon as Crystal had left, she ran upstairs to feed Otis and take him outside, and when that was done she headed for Grover’s house.

It was very cold. Iron-gray clouds hung like a ceiling over the town. Main Street was strangely quiet. As usual, small clusters of people stood inside the stores with TVs on, but when Nickie glanced in, she didn’t see the president on the screen. She couldn’t tell what was on—it looked like an old movie of some kind. But she didn’t stop to wonder about it. She was in a hurry.

Granny Carrie saw her coming. “You won’t find him here,” she said as Nickie came up the steps.

“I won’t? Where is he?”

“Up in the woods somewheres. They came and clamped one of them bracelets on him this morning early, and he took off.”

Nickie stood still where she was, with one foot on the porch and the other on the step. “A bracelet?”

“Yep,” said Granny Carrie. She pressed her lips together. “MMMMMM-mmmm-MMMMM-mmmm,” she said, “Nasty thing.”

“He didn’t go to school?”

“I doubt it,” said Granny Carrie. “With the noise that thing was making, they’d-a probably thrown him out.”

“So he didn’t let his snakes go, then,” said Nickie.

“Said he didn’t see why he should.”

“How did they catch him? He said he’d run.”

“Ambushed him,” said Granny Carrie. “Teddy Crane and that old Bill Willard jumped on him from behind the garage when he set out for school. Then he ran off, and the two of them came here and told us what they’d done.”

“I’m going to go find him,” said Nickie.

“Better not,” Granny Carrie said. “His pa’s already gone up there after him. No point in you going. You don’t know your way around in the woods. He could be anywhere.”

“But that terrorist is in the woods,” Nickie said.

“So I’ve heard,” said Granny Carrie, frowning and rocking. “It does make a person worry. We’ve got a lot to worry about today.” She waved a hand toward the window, from which came the sound of the TV. “That deadline the president set is up. We’re waiting to hear if there’s going to be war.”