The Florida Room

by Rosalind Barden

They plotted how to break into the Florida Room, plotted from their perfect spy hideout beneath the storm blown magnolia whose branches still lived and were thick with camouflaging leaves and dipped to the ground to form a little cave, cool and so secret it was missed by the bees that hummed about the dense encircling honeysuckle and stunted peach trees that bore only green fruit even squirrels didn't want.  From their hideaway, Melissa, her older-by-a-year brother Bobby, and Reginald, a boy from far down the other end of the road, could peer at the Florida Room, protruding from the second story of her grandparents old home, old from the times of horses and carriages and button-up shoes, a room encircled by windows all bricked up, every one, and the doorway to the room in the second-floor hallway was bricked up too.

Strange.  Very strange.  Of course there were rumors and stories about the Florida Room.  One tale said the only son and heir of a wealthy widow, who lived in the massive old brick home, killed a local girl, an angel with pale blond hair and porcelain face, and to punish him, and herself for bearing such a monster, the widow had him bricked up in the Florida Room and she sat outside the sealed door listening to his cries and pleas as he slowly died of thirst.

A competing yarn said, no, the window's weak heart gave out instantly upon hearing of her son's crime, and it was an old veteran, the grandfather of the angel, who slew the killer with his rusting sword from The War, then had him bricked up in the Florida Room so he wouldn't have a proper burial, ensuring his soul would never rest.

Yet a third said, no, no, no, the son and heir, for sheer evil spite, bricked himself up into the Florida Room with the little girl who was yet alive, and together they died slowly.  By the time people realized what had happened, it was too late.

Melissa decided to ask her grandma direct about the stories one morning in the kitchen with Bobby and Reginald.

Her grandma whipped about, slamming down a jar of green peach preserves.  "Young ladies shouldn't think about such wild speculations.  What are you doing filling this colored child's head with this nonsense?  I have half a mind to ring up . . ."

"Never mind!" and the children ran out the kitchen door, all the way down the long long road to Reginald's nanna's house where he posed the same query.

"Young men shouldn't think about such wild speculations.  What are you doing filling these white children's heads with this nonsense?  I have half a mind to ring up . . ."

"Never mind!" and the children fled Nanna and her kitchen table full of tisking and head shaking church ladies shelling peas.

But on their way out, Reginald's Uncle Hubert stopped them on the porch.  "Overhead the conversation in the kitchen.  I do believe I could provide you with some information, of course that is, if," and his eyes darted about nervously, "you could obtain your nanna's medication for me," and a most charming smile and twinkle of the eye.

Well, that was too much to ask seeing as the rarely used brandy bottle with the faded label (for certain deserts only, or for severe illness and then only administered mixed with cod liver oil to "Deny the Devil his Pleasure"), was in the kitchen with Nanna and the church ladies, so the children ran all the way back to the grandparents house and snatched up the medication there since it was kept, unguarded, at the bottom of the cellar steps.

Then run run back to Uncle Hubert waiting, rubbing hands anxiously, on the porch, and he gulped the entire quarter-full bottle before even sitting and a serene look came upon his face, until Reginald, out of breath, had to prompt with, "Well, come on then, tell us!"

Uncle Hubert nodded.  "You see, what no one says, what no one dares say, is if you break into that room, like you children seem to be wanting to do, then that dead man snatches you up and your soul is doomed to be about that house forever."

The children were disappointed, as it wasn't a grisly gore tale as expected.  They walked back to the grandparent's house, slowly, since they were still out of breath, and discussed the matter.  "I think it's still worth a try."  "Sure.  I mean if we were trapped around the house forever--how bad could that be?"  "That's right.  It's a nice house and your folks don't watch us near as close as my nanna does."  "If we got in, we'd see skeletons."  "And that Civil War sword--we could keep that and take it under the tree."  "Yeah!"

So it was agreed.

The scheming resumed in earnest.  They'd already tried pushing through the bricked-up door, but that was too hard.  Bobby, who was oldest and was considered mechanically inclined since he'd built two model airplanes all by himself, decided they could break through the wall instead, since it'd be just old lath and plaster.  The conundrum was that the grandparents would notice a mess of plaster in the hallway, until Melissa remembered the closet adjoining the Florida Room, a closet never used since grandma had seen a mouse in it once.

They waited until grandma was gone on church business, and grandpa went to the shed to fix the toaster but fell asleep in an old chair by his old radio.  Perfect

They scrambled back to the cellar and grabbed what might be useful and hauled it up to the closet and carefully closed the door.  With sledgehammer, shovel, and ancient post-hole digger, they assaulted the adjoining wall to the Florida Room and were pleased with how easily the aging plaster crumbled away.

They were in.

And too disappointed.  No skeletons.  No Civil War sword.  Nothing but a stale hot room with slivers of light streaming though gaps in the bricked-up windows.

"Can't believe what a waste of time that was," Melissa said as they slumped out of the house.  Wordlessly they whiled away the afternoon in their magnolia hideaway.

As the light changed in the sky and the evening breeze took the bite from the air, Melissa suddenly realized that in their shock and disappointment they'd left the closet wide open, with all the plaster and the post-hole digger right there for grandma's sharp eye to spot.  "Oh, now, I can't believe we did that!"

Strangely, as they ran back to the house, they heard a commotion, grandma's voice, loud, upset, many feet, and, what?  A siren?

There by the front porch, they saw grandma sobbing in the arms of grandpa, sobbing, "The children!  The children!"

Melissa and Bobby and Reginald all at once shouted, "Here we are!  We're right here!"  But grandma didn't look at them, just kept gazing up toward the Florida Room.

Sure enough there was a commotion: ambulance, police cars, every neighbor, and as a pack of police carried bundles out the front door, Uncle Hubert's car, a huge ancient black sedan, roared up and out spilled Nanna and her church ladies and Uncle Hubert's face looked the color of dried mud, like he was sick.

"My baby, where's my baby!" Nanna cried.  Reginald said, puzzled, "Nanna, you're practically stepping on me!"  But she did step on him to get to one bundle carried by a policeman, pulled it too her, and out of the blankets lolled Reginald's face, eyes wide, mouth agape, nearly purple.

Well, now, that was a conversation stopper.

Melissa, Bobby and Reginald decided to hide back under the magnolia just about when the undertakers arrived, all suits and ties and sympathetic clasped hands.

Night fell and they discovered they couldn't light their handy lantern because they couldn't pick up the matches.  "I don't know about you two," Melissa said, "but this isn't how I pictured things."