Sharyn McCrumb - Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

“Well, now you know,” said Kenny Jeffreys, when I showed him the articles I photocopied from the microfilm newspapers. “Mr. Pierce was responsible for his sister getting lost in the woods, and he still feels guilty about it after all these years.”

“It’s because they never found her,” I said. “I’ll bet he still wonders what happened to her.”

“Poor old guy,” said Kenny, loading the last of the towels on his trolley. “Well, gotta go now. Too bad we can’t help Mr. Pierce.”

“I’m not ready to give up,” I said. “I looked up the patch of woods that Alva got lost in back in 1932.”

“Dream on, kid,” said Kenny. “If no one has found that little girl after sixty-something years, I don’t think your chances are all that good.”

“I’m not giving up yet. I got a topographical map of the woods-the librarian suggested it. And I have one more person that might be able to help.”

That evening I took Mr. Lagerveld his Salisbury steak, and before he could ask if it was Roy Rogers’s horse, like he always did, I said, “Remember how you said I could come to you if I ever had a geology question?”

“I don’t do term papers,” he warned me.

I pulled out my newspaper articles and my photocopied map of the woods. “Look at this, Mr. L. This was my library project. A little girl got lost in these woods sixty years ago, and they never found her. If you were going to look for her, where would you start?”

He put on his reading glasses and studied the map, and the fine print at the bottom that told where it was, and he muttered to himself some. Finally he said, “Strictly speaking, this is geography, but I think I can help you out. People looked a couple of days in these woods and didn’t find her?”

I nodded.

“Did they try the caves?”

“What caves?” I looked at the article. I didn’t remember anything about caves.

“Look at this analysis of the land. Limestone. Creek nearby. Of course there are caves. But the opening might be too small for an adult to notice. Low to the ground, maybe. A little girl would find it easily enough.” He took off his glasses and glared at me. “Please note that I am not advising you to go caving alone. Remember what happened to that little girl.”

“No problem,” I said. “I know just the person to take with me.”

Saturday morning was sort of cold and drizzly, but Kenny would have been complaining anyhow, because he hated to get up early on Saturday, and he was missing a trip to the movies with his friends, and about a dozen other gripes, but he agreed that I ought not to go alone, and he was curious about the little girl’s disappearance. So, with a lot of grumbling, he picked me up at my house at seven A.M. and told my mother we were going hiking, which was almost true.

The house that had belonged to the Pierce family was in ruins now, but it was still there, so we parked the car in the yard, and set off on foot from its backyard. That’s the way Francis and Alva would have gone. We had knapsacks with food, rope, and flashlights, and Kenny had brought a shovel in case we needed it, but he said I had to take turns with him carrying it.

The woods hadn’t changed much in sixty years. It was still a rural part of the county, thick with underbrush, and easy to get lost in. I stayed close to Kenny, and tried not to think about snakes.

We followed the creek, examining boulders, ridges, and any kind of land formation that might hide an opening to a cave. Since it was early March, I thought we might have a better chance of finding a cave than the searchers would have had in June, when summer plants had covered everything with vines and grasses. We walked around for hours, getting our boots muddy, and snagging our trousers on brambles and old bits of barbed wire.

Finally, I sat down to rest near the stream, wishing I’d packed two more sandwiches in my knapsack. As I leaned back, putting one arm behind me for balance, I slipped and fell flat on my back. My arm had sunk into the ground.

“Kenny! Bring the shovel!” I yelled. “I think I found it!”

After all these years, mud had filled up most of the entrance, but Kenny and I took turns digging like mad, and soon we had an opening big enough for me to fit into.

“I don’t like the idea of you going in alone,” he told me.

“At least you know where I am,” I said. “If I get in trouble, you can go for help.”

I tied the rope around my waist, took the flashlight, and wriggled through the muddy opening, and into the darkness. “It’s okay!” I yelled back to Kenny.

The cave was too low to stand up in, so I inched my way along, keeping the beam of the flashlight trained at my feet, so that I wouldn’t tumble into a pit. I hadn’t gone more than about ten feet before the light showed a flash of white on the ground in front of me. I crept forward, shivering as a trickle of water ran down the neck of my shirt, and I reached out my hand and touched-a bone. I dug a little in the soft mud, and found more bones and a few scraps of cloth. There was a large boulder near the bones, and I think it must have fallen, either killing the person, or pinning them down so that they could not escape. This was Alva. She had found the cave and had been trapped there, without anyone knowing where to look for her.

I made my way back out as quickly as I could. I hadn’t thought about cave-ins until I saw the boulder beside those tiny white bones. “She’s there,” I told Kenny, as I gasped for fresh air. “Now we have to tell the police, I guess.”

A couple of days later, I was back at work, and Mom had finished yelling at me for being a daredevil. As I took the meal tray in to room 226, I saw that Mr. Pierce was asleep, so I stopped at the desk, and set a newspaper down on top of the empty typewriter. It was open to the front page story about Alva Pierce being found after all these years. The search and rescue team had recovered the body, and she was buried now in the little church cemetery next to her parents. I thought Mr. Pierce would be glad to know that his sister had been found.

I did wonder, though, when I got to Mrs. Graham’s room to deliver her two dinners. She took her dinner, and set the other one down in front of her late husband’s empty chair. Then she said, “Young man, I thought children were not allowed in Northfield except at visiting hours.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, “but I work here. Remember?”

“Not you!” she snapped. “Mr. Graham tells me that he distinctly saw a little blond girl going into room 226 just now. Didn’t you, dear?”

Whatever he said, I didn’t hear it.

How We Wrote “Typewriter Man”

Sharyn McCrumb

Spencer and Laura McCrumb

Laura, who is six years old, came up with the idea for the story by listening to her big sister’s boyfriend talking about his job at a nursing home. Spencer, age seven, figured out how to find out what the man would be typing by putting paper into the typewriter, and Laura decided that the mystery would be that the man’s sister had gone missing as a little girl. Spencer worked out what happened to the little girl, and how to go about finding her after all these years. Sharyn McCrumb, Spencer and Laura’s mom, did most of the wording. She would read drafts of it to Spencer and Laura, and they would suggest changes, and make sure that not too many big words were used. Finally, they came up with a story that everyone was happy with. Laura is especially pleased with the ending.

GERDA’S SENSE OF SNOW

(I NSPIRED BY H ANS C HRISTIAN A NDERSEN’S “THE S NOW Q UEEN ”)