Eddie Read online

  Realizing he was right, the pair grudgingly postponed their ongoing spat.

  “Dap made a great point, you know,” the raven said, trying to offer some encouragement. “There is no way you could have gotten that bag onto the roof without a ladder or a pair of wings.”

  “And that’s where you come in.” McCobber sneered.

  “It wasn’t me,” the raven said, turning on the imp. “I know what I was doing before all the ruckus. It’s you two who can’t seem to account for yourselves!”

  “It’s like I said out there,” Eddie said. “I was asleep, dreaming, and then—”

  “And what were you dreaming?” the raven asked.

  “That I was a knight,” Eddie began, “a knight fighting a . . . a . . .”

  “Yeah,” the raven encouraged, “go on. Fighting what?”

  “A giant yowling cat and a hideous crowing cockatrice!” Eddie cried in despair as he sunk onto his bed, clutching his head in his hands.

  “Oh, yeah.” McCobber’s eyes lit up. “That was a good one if I do say so myself!”

  “I thought you said you didn’t have anything to do with this?” The raven’s voice hit an accusing note.

  McCobber suddenly grew sheepish. “Well, just a suggestion or two.”

  The raven turned back to the boy. “Now, Eddie. Think. Did you stick Cairo and that rooster into your pillowcase?”

  “I don’t know!” Eddie cried in agony. “That’s just it. I don’t know!”

  “All right, all right, take it easy,” the raven said. “Okay, Mac, what about you? You were there too. Did he actually go through the motions of catching those critters and hanging them from the weather vane?”

  McCobber shrugged helplessly.

  “You guys drive me nuts!” the raven said, losing his patience. “Can’t you tell a dream from reality? Don’t you know where one ends and the other begins?”

  There was a soft rapping at the bedroom door, and everyone fell silent.

  “Y-yes?” Eddie asked. “Who is it?”

  “It’s me, Dap, Master Eddie. Your presence is requested at the breakfast table.”

  “Oh, Dap!” Eddie flung open the door in relief, and was so happy to see his old friend smiling from the other side, he nearly started to cry. “Oh, Dap, what am I going to do? Everyone thinks I did this cruel thing, and I’m sure to get a whipping for it!”

  “Master Allan is a hard man, that’s true enough,” Dap offered, “but he is also a fair man. It seems to me if you use logic with him, he’s bound to see the truth.”

  “Which is . . . ?” Eddie asked.

  “Now, Master Eddie,” Dap said, “you know you didn’t do it. Common sense must tell you that.”

  “But I dreamt—,” Eddie started.

  “Dreamin’ and doin’ are two different things,” Dap said, and smiled. “And no one—I don’t care how much brainpower he’s got—has ever dreamt a sack full of a fighting rooster and cat to the top of a barn roof.”

  “But someone put it up there,” Eddie said.

  “Now, that is a fact,” Dap replied. “Maybe if you start from there and go about asking the right questions . . .”

  “You mean, I’m supposed to find out who did this before I go down there and get a whippin’?” Eddie was incredulous. “That’s impossible!”

  “Whether they whip you or not isn’t what’s important, Master Eddie,” Dap said.

  “Maybe not to you,” Eddie said, feeling as if no one cared what happened to him. “It’s not your hide going under the lash.” Eddie’s voice was full of indignant self-pity, and he looked to Dap, expecting an apology. The man merely met his gaze, and without saying a word his old eyes spoke eloquently of a lifetime filled with unjust whipping and unfair punishment.

  The boy winced and started to speak, but Dap held up his hand, silencing him. “Like I said, Master Eddie,” he continued, “whether they whip you or not is not what is important. What’s important is that one person knows the truth.”

  Eddie shrugged in response. “Yeah, and who might that be?”

  “Why, young Edgar Poe,” Dap said. “That’s who.”

  As Eddie and Dap walked down the hall toward the staircase, Eddie imagined himself a doomed prisoner being escorted to his execution. Dap had become his father confessor, the one appointed to accompany the condemned as he walked “the last mile.”

  Soft carpet, delicate wallpaper, and warm woodwork mutated into cold, hard, slime-covered walls that made up a dank torch-lit passageway. Out of the shadows stepped two tall, hooded figures: one carried a double-edged axe, the other a cat-o’-nine-tails. Grimly they began the descent of the stone spiral stairway that coiled downward into the bowels of utter darkness.

  Ahead, unknown horrors awaited. Eddie shuddered. The agonizing anticipation twisted his guts and squirmed in his chest, forcing him to gasp for breath. He alone could hear the panic-choked voice of McCobber raving in his ear. “They can’t do this to us! I’m innocent, I tell ya. INNOCENT! You gotta save me! SAVE ME!” On and on he went.

  Halfway down the stairs Dab turned, speaking quietly. “Remember, Master Eddie, everyone has only seen this thing from one angle, and from that point of view, you look guilty. What you have to keep in mind is that this world is full of angles, and one of them is bound to lead you to a place with a better view.” He smiled.

  Eddie blinked and answered as if awakening from a dream, “Uh . . . what?”

  “I said, you’ve got to open their eyes.” Dap put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, and Eddie looked into his smiling face. The hopeless dark passage was engulfed in warmth, as sunlight now flooded the stairwell. “You’ve got to show them what we already know—that you are innocent.”

  Eddie smiled back. The entryway of the Allan home seemed to sparkle in the sunshine as they descended the remaining stairs and walked through the front hall. At the partially closed dining room door, the two friends paused once again.

  “Thanks, Dap,” Eddie whispered. “Wish me luck.”

  Dap tapped himself on the temple. “Just use your head, boy.” He smiled broadly and winked before turning to continue noiselessly down the hall to the kitchen.

  “And you,” Eddie, under his breath, warned the demon on his shoulder, “shut. Up.” He then took a deep breath and pushed open the dining room door.

  Although the room was awash with warm morning sunlight, there was an ominous silence that cast a cold shadow over the breakfast table. John Allan sat at one end, reading a newspaper, and Fannie, his wife, sat at the other. Eddie slipped quietly into his chair, trying not to be noticed. Fannie looked up, her eyes red. Apparently she had been crying. Master Allan’s eyes barely left his newspaper.

  Eddie entertained the feeble hope that if he simply acted as if nothing were wrong, the whole thing would just go away. As he helped himself to some scrambled eggs, the light clink of silverware against porcelain was the only sound to break the heavy stillness. But even that seemed to draw too much attention his way, so after putting just one small scoop onto his plate, he noiselessly eased the spoon back into the serving bowl and left it there. That was all right. He wasn’t hungry anyway. He kept his head down as he pretended to eat and concentrated on being invisible.

  Eddie had been so young when he’d come to live with the Allans that his memories of it now were foggy. But in his mind one thing always remained crystal clear: They had taken him in when he’d had nowhere else to go. They had welcomed him into their home and treated him well. He had even come to call them Ma and Pa. And yet . . .

  “Edgar.” John Allan’s voice cut through the silence, seeming louder than it truly was. Startled, Eddie felt his stomach tighten.

  “Edgar, your ma and I are just about at wit’s end!”

  So much for this whole thing just going away.

  “Pa.” Eddie cleared his throat and sat forward in his chair, trying to meet his foster father’s hawklike gaze. “I know it didn’t look good out there this morning, but you have to believe me,
I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Oh, Eddie!” Fannie cried softly into her napkin and turned away.

  Eddie felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him. He’d known he’d have to prove himself to John Allan—he was always having to prove himself to John Allan—but Ma? If anybody had ever believed in him, it was Fannie. Her doubt blindsided him, and he slumped back in his chair.

  “Haven’t we done enough for you?” Allan’s flinty Scottish accent was arrowhead sharp. “A good home, nice clothes, fine schools . . . and how do you repay us?”

  Eddie slumped deeper into his chair and lowered his head. Usually he and the Allans tried to pretend that they were a happy little family: father, mother, and son. But today, at this moment, that all seemed a million miles away. Edgar was not their son. Edgar would never be their son. The growing differences between him and John Allan seemed to become more and more painfully obvious every day.

  “All you want to do is skulk around in that attic, root through Uncle Galt’s rubbish, and scribble till all hours. Moody insolence is one thing, but stupid pranks and now lying! That’s another! And I tell you, lad, I WON’T HAVE IT!” He slammed his fist onto the table. Plates, silverware, and the other two people present jumped.

  Eddie, and even Fannie, cowered. He had seen Pa angry before. In fact, Pa always seemed vaguely annoyed, but this anger was more intense. Was this it, then? Was this the day Pa would finally throw Eddie out?

  “I know now that I have been too soft with you! In the past your ma has always managed to stay my hand, but not today. This time a good thrashing is what you’ll get!”

  A sob caught in Fannie’s throat. Eddie’s head dropped even lower as he tried to hide his face. The unfairness of it all made him so angry, he thought he would cry, and the last thing he wanted John Allan to see him do now was cry.

  “It’s not that I want to do it, lad.” Allan’s tone softened a little. “But you leave me no choice. It’s the only way to wake you up, and you’ve got to wake up, boy. You can’t spend the rest of your life dreaming of greatness and pretending to be a poet. You’ve got to get your head out of the clouds and keep your feet on the ground. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps like I had to do!”

  “Pulled himself up by his own bootstraps . . . Baa!” McCobber growled sarcastically. “Why, whenever this jerk has gotten himself in over his head, he’s had rich old Uncle Galt to pull his Highland bacon out of the fire!” Eddie smiled in secret agreement but said nothing.

  “Ah, poetry’s all right, lad,”

  Allan continued. “I’m fond of the rhymes myself, but in their place.” Eddie thought Pa now sounded like the minister on Sunday morning, who, once he had shoveled in the fire and brimstone, went on to offer a chance at salvation. “Show me a poem with some moral fiber and common sense to it, and I’ll show you a thing of value. Have you never heard the old saying ‘No man e’er was glorious / Who was not laborious’? Now, that’s poetry—truly words to live by.”

  “But I do labor,” Eddie interjected. He alone knew how hard he worked on his writing, and he wasn’t going to sit there and let John Allan infer that he was lazy. “I work every night.”

  “But to what end—and at what price?” Allan asked. “Remember, ‘Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.’ That’s another poem you should commit to memory.”

  Eddie rolled his eyes and sighed.

  “So practicality isn’t good enough for you, ay?” Allan’s temper was rising again. “The wisdom that comes from an honest day’s work is beneath you, is it? Well, it’s practical thinking and hard work that’s put a roof over your head, not moonin’ around memorizing the plays of Shakespeare! That will only get you poverty and leave you in need of charity, just like your destitute parents before you!”

  “You, sir, have crossed a line!” Before Eddie realized what was happening, he was on his feet. Anger coursed through him like an electric current and propelled him out of his chair. Allan had cornered him like a homeless dog and beaten him down with guilt and shame, but the man should not have poked this stray with that particular stick. The hair stood high on the back of his neck as he tried to catch his breath and find his words.

  “I don’t care what you think about me. You can tell me I’m . . . I’m ungrateful . . . and . . . I’m . . . a . . . fool. And you can sit there and accuse me of a million stupid things. But don’t you ever—EVER—try to smear my mother’s name.”

  If John Allan had been another kid in the school yard, Eddie would have blackened his eye right about now. As it was, he could only stand there facing the man across the breakfast table—fists clenched, chest heaving and trembling with barely contained rage.

  Allan eyed him, unflinching, and in a firm no-nonsense tone responded. “Edgar, I will not let this discussion go off course. We will not waste time bandying words over any matter other than the one at hand, and that is—your responsibility for the fracas this morning!”

  “So my guilt has been decided, then.” Eddie returned the iron stare. His breathing was back to normal but his heart was still pounding. He remained standing.

  “It seems that that would be the logical conclusion, yes,” Allan answered. “You were found at the scene, the animals were in your pillowcase, and when questioned, you could not deny it.”

  “I tell you, I must have been sleepwalking.” Eddie knew that sounded lame, but it was the truth, and that was all he had. “The last thing I remember before hearing the judge shout was a dream I was having.”

  “Perhaps,” Allan said grimly, “your dreams led you to commit a dark act.”

  “You speak of logic,” Eddie countered, feeling his words returning to him, “and yet does logic tell you that I could have dreamt a sack full of writhing creatures to suspend themselves from the highest point in the neighborhood?”

  “I’ll grant you,” Allan admitted, “where they were found does cast the biggest doubt on your guilt.”

  “The biggest, perhaps, but not the only doubt.” Eddie felt another current racing through him now—not a surge of all-consuming rage but the power of language and logic. He had found his footing and was off and running. He began his defense.

  “First of all, who in this entire household cares most for old Cairo? Who feeds and tends to him? Me, that’s who. And yet, who in this household—and perhaps the whole neighborhood, for that matter—has not been annoyed by his midnight yowling? Why, just the other night, did you not yourself throw a slipper at him?”

  Allan cleared his throat, and Fannie piped in, “He is right. He has always been kind to animals.”

  “And who in this household,” Eddie resumed, “or in this neighborhood has not been ripped from sweet slumber by the predawn crowing of that fiendish fowl? Who within earshot has not dreamt of seeing that wretched rooster simmering in a stew pot?”

  “Easy,” McCobber whispered. “Easy, boy.”

  Eddie continued, “And who in the neighborhood can do a thing about it? A bird like that shouldn’t be allowed to crow before sunrise within the city limits! But that fowl happens to be the prize rooster of a very powerful judge, so the good folk suffer, and the cock crows on!”

  “So you took matters into your own hands,” Allan said.

  “Someone did,” Eddie answered.

  “The circumstantial evidence points to you.”

  “But suspicion falls on anyone within the sound of that hellish cock-a-doodle-doo!”

  “So what would you have me do?” Allan asked. “Put the neighborhood on trial to spare you a whipping?”

  “Give me two days,” Eddie said. “Two days to find the culprit and clear my name.”

  Allan shook his head. “I am afraid the judge will want to see justice meted out more swiftly than that.”

  “Who is master in this house?” Eddie asked. “Judge Washington or John Allan?”

  “Oooh.” McCobber chuckled. “Nice one.”

  Allan eyed him steadily in silence. “I shall give you one
day. If in twenty-four hours you cannot show me evidence of your innocence, you will be punished. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.” Eddie nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Now,” Allan said, resuming his newspaper, “you’d better eat your breakfast and get ready for school.”

  “If you don’t mind, sir”—Eddie remained standing—“I haven’t much of an appetite, and I thought I could use these eggs to try to coax Cairo out of the bushes. I’m afraid that rooster might have actually done him some harm.”

  Allan nodded, and as Eddie picked up his plate and headed to the kitchen, Fannie squeezed his hand.

  “I believe you, Eddie,” she said. “Good luck.”

  Eddie nearly collapsed as the kitchen door swung shut behind him.

  “A reprieve!” McCobber chortled. “Thank heaven, a reprieve!”

  Dap’s friendly hand patted his shoulder. He and the cook were both brimming over with contained laughter. “Congratulations, boy!” Hattie the cook surrounded him with a big hug, and Eddie’s head was swimming with the scent of freshly laundered uniform and melted butter.

  “Why, I ain’t never seen anyone in this house stand up to old Master John like that before! That was fine, mighty fine!” She laughed again.

  Like a victorious boxer who has just stepped out of the ring, Eddie was dazed but happy.

  “I knew you could do it!” Dap beamed proudly.

  “I still have to find out who really did it,” Eddie reminded him.

  “Just use your head,” Dap said as he tapped his temple, “and you’ll do fine!”

  Eddie walked out the back door feeling like a new man. As the morning sun warmed his face, he inhaled deeply. The crisp autumn air was like a heavy perfume. The screen door slammed behind him, and he practically danced down the porch steps and into the side yard. He stopped at the large overgrown bushes along the side of the house. This was about where Cairo had disappeared earlier that morning.