Ghost Soldier (13 page)

I suddenly sat upright. “What about marriages?” Rich looked at me in surprise.

Jesse shook his head and popped the caramel in his mouth. “Wouldn't help,” he said indistinctly, around the candy. “Same name we already checked.”

“No—the girls, Amalie and Louise! What if they got married? Wouldn't the family be under their husbands' names in the Census?”

“But Louise was too young,” Rich objected.

Jesse's eyes widened. Then he swallowed the caramel. “And so would the land and the tax records and everything! Good thinking—let me go check it out.”

I waited until Jesse had disappeared back into the Archives. “When you left, maybe,” I told Rich, “but not in a few years. And Amalie was old enough.”

Rich looked unconvinced.

“Well, it's better than finding out they both died,” I told him flatly. “I'm doing the best I can here—can you think of anything else we can ask him to look up?”

Rich shook his head and looked discouraged.

So did Jesse when he came back. “Nothing. And the frustrating thing is that it doesn't tell us much. You didn't have to get a license to get married before 1868, so it's hard to trace them. I checked the Marriage Bonds and the Record of Marriages, but there wasn't anything there. If there had been, we'd know for certain that one of the girls got married. Since there's nothing, we can't be sure.”

“Great,” I said, ready to give up.

“Hey—maybe this is what your teacher wanted you to find out,” Jesse said. “You know—how hard it is to do research and how frustrating it can be.”

If the assignment really had come from a teacher, that was probably exactly what she'd want me to find out. But not in this case. I slid off his desk. “I guess. Well, thanks for trying.”

Then I remembered the metal box. “Say, Jesse—where does all this stuff come from? Not the county records, but all the pictures and stuff you've got here?”

“All sorts of places,” he said, unwrapping another caramel. He looked pleased to change the subject.

Rich looked impatient. “Come on, Alexander. There's nothing here.”

Jesse went on, “Private collections, or people find things and donate them.”

“What about things other than pictures?” I asked, ignoring Rich. “What about things people might have hidden during the war?”

“You mean like jewelry, or family silver, and nobody came back to claim it?”

“Yeah, stuff like that. When I was at Research Triangle Park, I saw a lot of construction going on. Suppose they turn up something while they're digging, or tearing down the trees or something?”

Rich's eyes widened.

“Sure, 'at happens all 'e 'ime,” Jesse said, chomping on the caramel. He opened a different drawer, and took out several sheets of paper clipped together. Then he swallowed. “If they bring it to the State Historical and Preservation people, then it gets studied and either goes into storage or out on display. You can see a lot of artifacts that people have found at the State Museum of History.” He pointed it out on the top sheet of paper. “But sometimes the people who find artifacts give them or sell them to a private collector. Some of those objects come to the state eventually, but many of them are displayed in private museums. There are lots of them in the Triangle area. This isn't even a complete list.”

“Do you think one of these has the box?” Rich cried.

“Wow—I had no idea,” I told Jesse, not looking at Rich. “Could I maybe get a copy of this list?”

He glanced at it, then shrugged. “Sure, there's nothing private about it. I'll make you a photocopy.”

When he left, I turned to Rich and grinned. “Maybe we can find out what Louise put in that box after all.”

“Hello—can I help you please?”

I turned around. A man in glasses and a three-piece suit stood in the doorway. I looked up at him and realized he had an unfriendly expression on his face. “Uh, no, thank you, sir. Mr.—” For a moment I couldn't remember Jesse's last name. “—Temple is helping me.”

The man glanced at the potato chips and caramels on the desk, and the suit jacket on the chair behind it, and his frown deepened. “Mr. Temple is only an assistant,” he said.

“Well, he found me everything I needed to know,” I said, picking up the piece of paper with the notes about the Chamblee family.

Before the man could say anything else, Jesse was back. “Here, I've got that list for you—” Then he saw the other man. “Oh, Mr. Morley, I didn't realize you were back.” He practically shoved the papers into my hands, grabbing his jacket and trying to push the bags of chips and caramels back into the drawer at the same time.

“Thanks,” I said, as half a dozen chips slid off the desk and onto the floor.

While the man glared through his glasses at the chips, Jesse glanced quickly at me and jerked his head toward the door.

Rich and I were halfway down the hall before Mr. Morley realized I was gone. I heard, “Who was that boy, Temple? And what did you think you were doing?”

“When you said I should stay in during lunch, sir, you also told me I needed to work more with the public,” Jesse told him. “He's the public, isn't he? He had a school research project.”

I couldn't just leave Jesse to get in trouble like that after he'd helped me so much, so I signaled to Rich to wait and hurried back to where Jesse was standing. “Thanks again, Mr. Temple,” I said.

Jesse was trying to pick up potato chips under the man's disapproving look, so I added, “I'm sorry I made a mess with the potato chips.” I turned to Mr. Morley, who was looking from Jesse to me now. “I'm sorry, sir, I guess I wasn't supposed to eat in the building. I won't do it again. But Mr. Temple really helped me a lot.”

“Oh.” The man looked surprised. “Well, see that you don't bring any food into the building again, young man. I'm glad to hear that Mr. Temple was able to help.”

Jesse grinned at me and waved good-bye.

*   *   *

“What does the list say?” Rich demanded.

I glanced at the pages Jesse had given me. “Too much,” I told him. “We're going to have to make some phone calls.”

“Phone calls?” asked Rich.

I knew the calls to Raleigh would be long-distance from the Hambricks' house, and I didn't want Mrs. Hambrick to see anything on the phone bill, so I turned the money Dad had given me into a bunch of change and started making calls right there from a pay phone in the mall. Jesse's list had addresses and phone numbers, and I figured I could cross off a lot of possibilities with some fast phone calls.

“Finding these historical museums was a great idea, Red,” Rich said, after I finally got him to understand that a telephone was a way of talking to a person miles away. “But why aren't we just going to see them?”

“Because there's like a hundred of them,” I told him. “I can't look in every museum for your box. Besides, we only want places that got stuff from the construction sites at Research Triangle Park. They can tell me that over the phone.”

I got depressed pretty soon at how right I was. Two hours, thirty-five phone calls, and nearly fifteen dollars later, I'd found only three of the little history museums in the Raleigh area that had gotten anything from the Park, and all they had were minié balls, a couple of broken bayonets, and some Union uniform buttons. No small metal boxes, and nothing that would fit inside a box like that unless Louise had decided to save minié balls or Union buttons.

“What happened to it?” Rich asked, thumping the butt of his musket above the ground. He looked disheveled and frustrated, even though I was the one who'd been doing all the calling. Two ladies carrying shopping bags had glared at me when I'd banged down the phone receiver and immediately shoved in more money and punched in a new number. I just turned my back on them and kept calling—they could find another pay phone if they tried. I was frustrated at not learning anything.

Rich looked at me and pushed his hair back out of his face. Something about the gesture looked familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on it, and I glared at the phone. I punched in one more number, but the line didn't answer. That made six no-answers, three museums with buttons and bayonets but nothing worthwhile from Research Triangle Park, and twenty-seven people who told me they hadn't received anything from the Park construction at all. What a waste! Some of them hadn't even gotten anything in the last forty years—talk about historical.

“If we can't find it in one of the Durham museums,” I told Rich, “you can come back and check out the ones that didn't answer. But we've got to get back to the bus stop. If I'm not home before supper, Dad's never going to let me out of his sight again.”

I was almost right. We caught the 4:30 bus, but it was nearly 6:00 before we got all the way to the Hambricks' house. Supper wasn't ready yet, and Dr. Seagraves hadn't arrived, but Dad was already mad.

“Where have you been?” he demanded. “We've been back here for ages, and Nicole said you hadn't come home.”

Nicole was standing behind him, looking smug. Maybe if I'd actually found something out with Richeson, I'd have felt better, but Dad's anger coming on top of my frustration made me angry right back. “You said I could do some sightseeing on my own, since you were too busy to take me yourself, remember?”

But he was too mad to be distracted by a guilt trip. “Don't you understand I was worried about you?” he snapped.

“Why?” I snapped right back. “You were fine with Mrs. Hambrick and Mr. Carey, weren't you? If you were so worried, why did you bring me here and just forget about me, anyway?”

“I never forgot about you—”

I didn't let him finish. “Look, I'm back before supper, okay? And it's still light out. So just let me wash up before Dr. Seagraves gets here.”

*   *   *

Rich followed me upstairs slowly. “I don't understand, Alexander. Your father was upset because he was worried about you. But why are you so angry with him? Because he brought you to North Carolina? Because he didn't take you sightseeing?”

He sounded just like the school counselor, and I glared at him. “I'm angry with my dad because he's here with that woman—because he wants to marry her because he doesn't believe Mom's ever coming back! I'm angry with him because he wants to take me away from Indiana, so she'll never find me when she does come home. Okay? Give me a break—I've got a right to be angry!”

Rich was silent, but only for a moment. “But your father stayed with you. Not this afternoon, of course—but you knew you would see him this evening. Your mother is the one who left. If you're going to be angry with someone, why not her?”

“Are you angry at your mother for dying?” I demanded. “Are you angry at Louise for leaving? Is that why you want to find her, so you can haunt her great-grandkids or something and let everyone know how angry you are?”

Rich shook his head. “I'm not the one who's angry. I miss my mother, but she couldn't help dying. And I don't believe Louise wanted to go. That's why she left me a message.” He looked down. “I only want to know that she was safe.”

I threw the towel back on the rack and went down to be polite to Dr. Seagraves. Rich was wrong. I
wasn't
angry at Mom for leaving me. I'd told the counselor the same thing. And I had every right to be angry with Dad. What I hadn't told Rich was that I was angry with myself, too, for not helping him better. It didn't seem to matter how hard I tried—I couldn't get Dad to go home, I couldn't help Rich, and I couldn't be good enough for Mom.

Chapter Twelve

M
AKING AN
I
NTERNET
C
ONNECTION

“How come you go out and run so early every morning?” asked Carleton when I got back to the house the next morning. I climbed the stairs toward his bedroom, my legs heavy and aching.

“Because I'm on the track team,” I told him.

“Then why don't you run with the rest of the team?” he asked.

“Because they're all back in Indiana,” I said, pulling off my T-shirt and dropping it on the floor in his room.

“So, if you were home, you'd run with the team?” He picked up the shirt for me and tossed it in the hamper.

“In the afternoons we have track. In the mornings we all run on our own.” I started doing my cooldowns.

“What are you doing now?”

I groaned. Couldn't he give it a rest with the questions? “I have to cool down after I run—slow my heartbeat and everything.”

“Oh. If you got up a little later,” Carleton said, “I could run with you.”

“Um … you couldn't keep up—I run fast.” I only sprinted on the last stretch, but I didn't tell him that.

“Do you always run alone?” he asked, looking disappointed. “It seems a funny kind of team if you do it all alone.”

“I run with my dad sometimes,” I said, but I was thinking Carleton was a sharp kid. I hadn't really thought about it like that, but that was why I'd gotten into track, instead of playing baseball or football—I didn't want to be part of a team that always does things together. I wanted to do something where I could be on my own and no one would bother me about being a loner.

“He hasn't been running with you here,” Carleton said.

Thanks, kid, I thought. “Yeah, I noticed. He's been sleeping late—on vacation, I guess.”

“Aren't you on vacation?”

I opened the door to the bathroom to take my shower. “If you're serious about running,” I told him, “your legs can't ever take a vacation.”

He laughed at that, and I found myself smiling as I stood under the hot water. It would have been neat to have a kid brother. I wondered why Mom and Dad hadn't had any other kids.