Darnay Road by Diane Munier

and up her yard and all the way through her property to the
tracks. Then I’d cross those and go through Easy’s yard and knock on his back
door and say, “Easy, where in the devil have you been?”
    But
I am a good little Catholic saint. And I’m so so tired of it. You just can’t
solve mysteries being a saint.
    I
face Miss Little’s house very squarely. It’s just a house, just boards and
nails and a crazy lady. I’ve seen her before haven’t I? I’ve been all the way
to her porch once to rescue a dog! And wouldn’t Easy do it for me? Wasn’t he
the first one over me when I nearly died in the street? And didn’t he ride me
to the trestle and face Disbro on that bridge and save those kittens? Didn’t he
put that heart around his name on my cast…just for me? And I won’t do this for
him?
    “Come
on Abigail,” I say, and I work Miss Little’s rickety gate open and it drags on
the ground, but that don’t stop me. I’m in a mood, maybe on my high horse, I
don’t know, but something inside me is waving a fist.
    “Oh
no,” Abigail says.
    “Oh
yes,” I say.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    Darnay
Road 20

 
    I am clutching what’s
left of my bag of candy in my bad hand, and holding Abigail May’s hand with the
other. Well I’m pulling her along and her candy machine ring with the pretend
pink pearl is digging into my palm and she keeps stepping on the backs of my
Keds but I don’t even care cause Miss Little might come out and she is so
frightful. She looks like Betty Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane .
I said that when we watched that movie and Granma said I must not ever say it
again it is so unkind, she said it’s even unkind that Betty Davis looks like
Baby Jane.
    But
I do think it anyway—about Miss Little I mean.
    So
I pull Abigail May along and I would rather do this than go up on the trestle
bridge, and she did that, and at night. So I give her a yank and we move to the
side of the house and I squint my eyes so I don’t see the whole thing at once.
There’s a dead bird and I nearly step on it, and something rustles in the
overgrowth that keeps the neighbors from being able to see how badly Miss
Little keeps her yard.
    I
wonder if we can even get through the backyard, and the gate is hard to see
it’s so covered with thick vines. We are very close to the house now and
Abigail May is so quiet, and there’s a window and I make myself look and it’s
more horrible than looking under the altar, when Abigail pulled that door wide
open, but there sitting in that window for all the world is that yellow kitty.
And that’s not all, hanging in the center of the window, from the lock is my
pink pom-pom. The kitten is batting at it, first all by his lonesome, then
another kitten appears. It’s one of the grays.
    The
kittens are in Miss Little’s house. Miss Little has kidnapped my kittens and my
pom-pom.
    I
am pointing, but Abigail May already sees.
    “It’s
them, it’s them,” she says nearly squeezing my good hand with both of hers and
her bag of candy. “Holy smokes!”
    “Come
on,” I say. I pull her to that gate but she’s pulling back.
    “We
have to go tell your Granma. We need the police I’ll bet!” she says.
    But
I’m not going to the police. My dad Stanley is a policeman. I don’t want anyone
like him on this case. “We’re going through this yard and we’re going across
the tracks and we’re going to find Easy. He’ll get those kittens back.”
    I
sound like Flint McCullough on Wagon Train having just scouted the road
ahead and unwilling to take another trail even if there is a war-party of
Sioux.
    Abigail doesn’t fuss.
She already knows Cap and Easy are better than any old policeman who can scold
us or take us to jail. So we pick our ways through that back yard that has
never ever seen the spinning blades of a lawnmower. Or not for a while. But there
is a well-worn path through the weeds that leads to a back gate in the
tumbledown fence. I have not been so happy