The bus station really turned out to be a small lunchroom. There was a counter on one side, and along one wall were some small tables with chairs pushed up to them. There was one bigger table. Near the door was a bench where passengers could wait for the bus.
The man who had just slammed the door looked up as the door opened. He held a watering can, and he was watering a plant at one end of the room.
“You’re Frank, aren’t you?” said Henry at once.
“Yes, I’m Frank,” the man said shortly. “What do you want? It’s too early for lunch. I haven’t made any sandwiches yet.” He didn’t smile.
The four Aldens were thinking the same thing. This man was not very polite. In fact, he was not a good man to run a lunch counter in a bus station.
“Do you sell bus tickets?” asked Benny as if nothing had happened.
“Yes,” answered Frank, “and I run this lunch counter.”
Benny explained, “We are going to Oakdale to the hobby fair. We have to change buses here to get to Oakdale. Is that right?”
“That’s right,” said Frank, not so crossly. “But the bus to Oakdale will be late today. You may have to wait here an hour.”
“Yes,” said Jessie, nodding. “We expected to wait here an hour, even before we started from Greenfield. We don’t mind.”
“This is a nice station to wait in,” added Violet. She was thinking about the two boys Frank had told to wait outside.
Benny went over to the counter and said, “If you are Frank, I think this is your letter.”
Without saying thank you Frank took the letter and threw it on a shelf behind the counter. But he said to the Aldens, “You can wait here. Do anything you like. Sit down. Walk around. It’s pretty hot outside.”
His voice was pleasant now as he spoke to the Aldens. It was plain that he liked them better than the two young boys.
The Aldens folded their raincoats across the wooden bench. They all sat down.
Henry asked, “Can we buy our tickets now from you?”
“Yes, indeed,” said Frank.
“We want just one-way tickets,” Henry said quickly. “The bus driver told us we could buy our return tickets at Oakdale.”
“Right,” said Frank, handing four tickets to Henry.
Violet was looking out of a window. “Oh, dear,” she said, “I hope it doesn’t start to rain. Just the same, we’re lucky that we brought our raincoats.”
The others looked out. Dark clouds were beginning to fill the western sky. But the leaves on the trees hardly stirred.
“No need to worry about the rain,” said Frank. “This won’t last long. You can keep dry if you wait inside.”
Benny suddenly remembered the bad smell outdoors. Now he said, “Oh, we’ll wait inside for sure. The air outside smells just terrible.”
Frank’s face changed. He looked angry. “That’s my new neighbor,” he said gruffly. “New neighbors—they have no business here. I don’t have any use for neighbors of that kind.”
The Aldens were puzzled. But they did not dare ask any questions. Did the man mean the two boys or did he mean someone else?
Frank turned his back to the Aldens. They sat still on the bench and watched him.
The telephone rang. In the quiet room it sounded loud. Violet jumped.
Frank went over to the wall telephone and picked up the receiver. “Frank speaking,” he said.
Someone began to talk and Frank started to frown. “Yes, I just got your letter,” he said. “No, I haven’t opened it. I told you I wasn’t interested. You can’t offer me enough.”
Frank started to hang up, but the voice on the line didn’t give up.
“What?” Frank asked. “You’ll do what? Is that what you wrote in your letter? Well, I’d like to see you try. That’s all, I’d just like to see you try. You can’t do something like that to me. I’ll find a way to stop you.”
Frank put the receiver back in place without saying good-bye. He frowned angrily. Then his face changed. He had the saddest look that the Aldens had almost ever seen.
The Aldens looked at each other. Something was certainly going on. Here was a man who could be angry one minute and sad the next. Why was he so troubled?
Benny muttered in Henry’s ear, “A deep and dark secret.”
Frank reached up and turned on a radio. Jessie thought that Frank felt the music would be better than his silence.
No one said anything for a little while. Frank washed some cups at the sink behind the lunch counter.
Suddenly the music stopped in the middle of a song. A radio announcer’s voice broke in. “This is a National Weather Service warning. A tornado watch is in effect in York and Plain counties. High winds expected, with some thunderstorms. We will give you more information when we have it. Stay tuned to this station for up-to-date storm bulletins.”
Violet was pale. All the Aldens looked out at the day that now looked so dark and stormy.
Frank looked at Violet kindly and said, “A tornado watch only means we might have a bad storm. Now, if it were a tornado warning then it would be much worse.” He was trying to make Violet feel better.
Henry and Frank walked to the door and stepped outside. They saw that the wind had begun to blow the dust on the road in front of the station. The tree branches swayed in the strong wind.
Henry looked for the two boys under the tree, but they had gone.
Violet peeked outside. “Look at those black clouds, Jessie. They’re moving so fast!”
The sun had gone behind the clouds. The sky was growing darker by the minute.
Frank and Henry came back inside and shut the door. Frank turned to the Aldens. They could see he was worried.
“I have a little house on the river just a mile from here,” Frank said. “I think I left the windows open this morning. Maybe I should go back and close up the house before the storm hits. I have a small boat pulled up on the riverbank. I want to see that it is tied tightly to its post so that it won’t float off in the storm.”
“It’s all right with us if you go,” Benny said. “But is it safe for you outside?”
“Oh, don’t worry about me,” Frank said. “I’ll be safe. I have a car parked behind the building here. I can drive over to my house in just a few minutes. I can get there before the rain starts. If I get caught, I’ll stay in my house until it is over.”
“You’ll come back here, won’t you?” asked Violet.
“Oh, yes, I’ll come right back to the bus station. You’ll be all right if you stay in the station. This is a strong brick building. It doesn’t leak.”
“We’ll be fine,” Jessie said. “We won’t go outside unless the bus comes to take us to Oakdale.”
“Yes,” said Frank. “If the bus comes, you can just shut the station door as you leave. The door will lock if you shut it tight. When I come back, I can open the door with my key. I don’t expect anyone to stop at the station anyway. Everyone will see the storm coming and stay indoors. Too bad for the hobby fair. There won’t be a crowd on a day like this.”
“We’ll keep the radio on and listen for the weather bulletins,” Henry said. “I’m sure everything will be all right. Don’t worry about us.”
Frank walked to the door to go out. Then he stopped as if he had remembered something. He turned to the Aldens and really smiled. “You four might get hungry while I’m gone. You can just look in the refrigerator and take whatever you’d like.”
“Why, thank you,” said Jessie. She was surprised. “That’s very good of you.”
Benny added, “We’ll look in the refrigerator the minute you’re gone. Be sure of that.”
Frank laughed. “You can just leave the money by the cash register,” he said. “I’ll know what it is for.”
He smiled again and waved good-bye. Then he walked out and shut the door behind him.
But a moment later the door opened. There stood Frank. This time he looked angry again.
“I forgot to tell you something,” he said. “If you see two boys hanging around, don’t let them in. They are troublemakers. I don’t want to have anything to do with them.”
Then Frank turned around and went out. This time he passed the window, and in a minute or so the Aldens heard him start his car. He drove off down the road that ran close to the river.
“Well,” said Benny. “What do you make of that? First Frank is friendly and thinks we might get hungry. And then he gets angry and tells us to watch out for those boys he doesn’t like. I don’t understand what makes him act so.”
Jessie said thoughtfully, “Frank knows those boys and we don’t. Nobody would order them out of a public bus station unless they had done something very annoying.”
Benny said, “Well, so far it’s a mystery to us. We don’t understand anything about it. But I know one thing. I’m not going to ask Frank about it and get my head taken off.”
Jessie glanced quickly around the bus station. She began to see a lot of interesting things.
“Look at those beautiful pink flowers on the windowsill,” she said. “They’re on all the windowsills. Frank must love flowers.”
“Birds, too,” added Benny, looking out of the window. “Just look at the bird houses. And there are some bird feeding stations, too.”
Violet said, “A man who likes birds and flowers can’t be all bad. Just look at that woodpecker! Isn’t his red head beautiful! Oh, it’s flying away. Something must have scared it.”
Henry was looking over Violet’s shoulder. He saw the bird, too. But he saw something else as well. He was sure that something moved behind one of the trees.
Henry continued to watch. He caught sight of a red shirt. It must be one of the two boys Frank had sent out of the bus station in such a hurry.
Henry had been wondering what had become of the boys. Had one of them been spying on the Aldens? Or maybe the boys were watching Frank. That was possible, too.
Henry didn’t want to say anything to frighten Violet or Jessie. But Benny exclaimed, “Hey, I see somebody behind the station. Who is it? One of those kids! Sneaking around, that’s what. No wonder Frank is mad.”
“Wait a minute,” Jessie said. “I don’t think the boy is sneaking around. He has field glasses. He was watching the bird Violet saw.”
For a few minutes it seemed as if the storm was not going to be too bad. Perhaps the tornado watch was already over.
Then all at once the sky turned a deep purple. The wind which had died down suddenly returned with new strength. The bus station sign creaked and tree branches bent in the strong gusts. The Aldens backed away from the windows. |