The Sweet Stakes Robbery
written by: Jim Bates
I knew for a fact that Mr. Zilcher’s magic candy would be just the thing to help Mom get better. I just had to steal some first. Tonight was Halloween and it seemed like the perfect time to do it.
They were called Sweet Stakes, and the rumor was they were the best candy in the world. That was good enough for me.
“Jenny,” I told my best friend, “You’ve got to help me.”
She grinned and looked me right in the eye, which was daunting because she must have grown three inches this year and was now taller than me by an inch or two. “First, say ‘please.’” She smiled and popped a huge bubble from her pink bubble gum. “Say, ‘pretty please.’”
Grrr. This was no time for messing around. “Okay,” I groused. I was way more serious than her, and she was always joking and goofing around with me. Still, since I needed her help, I complied. “Pretty please,” I said.
“All right, Zak.” She grinned and gave me a high-five. “Let’s do it!”
I had a sudden thought. “Hey, maybe we should dress up. What do you think? It’s Halloween you know.”
Jenny looked at me like I was nuts. We were in sixth grade, and I’m sure in her mind she was way too old to dress up in a costume. My thinking was right on the money. “What you think we are, ten years old?” She scoffed. “No way, Jose.” She rolled her eyes at me. Then she snapped her fingers. “Wait a minute. How about if we dress in black?”
“Cool,” I said. “Like secret agents?”
She punched me in the arm. It kind of hurt. “No, goofy.” She struck a pose. “Like Ninja Warriors.”
The pain in my arm went away and I grinned. “Sounds good to me.”
Gran was taking care of Mom and thought I was going trick-or-treating with Jenny, so all she said to me when I left was, “Have fun. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Ha. If she only knew.
“Don’t worry, Gran,” I told her, “I won’t.” I hated to lie, but I was learning that it was sometimes better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. This seemed like one of those times. “See ya!”
I slung my daypack over my shoulder, jumped on my bike, and took off, kicking up a plume of dust the entire half mile to Jenny’s house. I passed bunches of trick-or-treaters on the way. Lots of boys dressed in Superman and Spiderman costumes and quite a few girls dressed as princesses. There were a few cat women, too. Even some Ninja Turtles. I felt if I had a purple bandana like Donatello, I’d fit right in. I was dressed in black jeans, a black long-sleeve pullover, and my favorite black trainers. On my head, I wore an old, brown stocking hat.
Even though the sun had set, and the temperature was in the low 40s, I was sweating like crazy when I got to Jenny’s. But there was a crispness in the air along with an aroma of burning leaves and a hint of frost. It seemed like our little town of Able, Iowa, was all ready for Halloween.
Jenny was waiting in front of her house on the sidewalk watching trick-or-treaters as I slid to a stop. She was dressed in black tights, black trainers (like mine), and a black sweatshirt that said Unicorns Rule on the front. “All set?” she asked, pulling a black watch cap down over her short, auburn hair.
“All set,” I said. She looked me over. “What?” I asked.
“We need something else,” she said. She reached into her backpack. “I’m glad I brought this.”
“What is it,” I asked. She took out a small round can the size of a hockey puck.
“Black shoe wax,” she said. She took the lid off. “I got it from my dad’s workroom.”
“What’s it for?”
“For us, dummy.” She stuck two fingers in and pulled out a glob. “To cut the glare.” She smeared it on her face and turned to me. “How do I look?”
She looked like a raccoon, but I didn’t say that. Instead, I said, “Looks great.”
She stepped close to me and pulled out another glob. “Stand still,” she said. Then she spread it all over my face. I kind of liked how it smelled.
As she put the can away, she asked, “Are you nervous?”
I was but tried not to show it. “Naw. Not at all.”
She laughed. “You big liar!” Then she punched me in the arm.
“Ow!”
I swear Jenny was more like a guy than any of the guys I knew, but we’d been best friends ever since I could remember. We were both eleven years old, so it went back a while, five years at least. My memory’s not the greatest. Just ask my Gran. Or my teacher, Miss Luckenstock. Well, on second thought, maybe not her.
Anyway, we got on our bikes and sped down the street dodging costumed kids and their parents along the way. Fifteen minutes later we’d come to the outskirts of our little town. Mr. Zilcher lived in the last house at the end of a wooded lane called Mulberry Way. We’d passed the last streetlight a few blocks before we’d gotten to it. It was dark, dark, dark out there.
We parked our bikes down the lane and crept through the woods to Mr. Zilcher’s house, kept company by the hooting of an owl. I glanced at Jenny. Her eyes were set off by the shoe polish and looked huge. She grinned. “Having fun, yet?”
“Absolutely,” I said and tried to ignore the rapid beating of my heart. And that owl. For some reason, it kind of freaked me out. All of a sudden, I was having second thoughts about what we were doing, but I kept them to myself. Mom was counting on me, I told myself.
At the edge of Mr. Zilcher’s property, we hid behind a big evergreen tree and peered through its branches. The sky was full of thick clouds obscuring the moon. I’d never been anywhere so dark in my life. The house was an ancient, two-story, dilapidated structure, with a covered front porch that sagged to the right. A couple windows in the second story were busted out. Why, I didn’t know, but in my mind, it looked exactly like a house from the Alfred Hitchcock shows my mom wouldn’t let me watch, but I did anyway.
Mom. My thoughts went to her. She’d been sick for a week and just had to get better. Dad had left home a few years ago to, as he put it, “Search for the gold at the end of the rainbow.” Which I thought was a cool thing to do until Mom told me that he was just making it all up.
“He didn’t want to tell you the truth, Zak,” she said.
“The truth?”
“Yeah, the truth,” Gram spat out. She’d been staying with us since he left. “The big jerk just doesn’t want to live with you guys anymore.” Gran was always what they called a ‘straight shooter.’ Nevertheless, the words stung.
All I could think to ask was, “Why?”
Mom looked at me and shrugged her thin shoulders. Then she gave me a hug and said, “Who knows?”
Gran told me later that he left because he gambled and owed people a bunch of money and was afraid for his life. I’m not sure if she was telling me the truth or not, but it sounded better than he left because he didn’t love us anymore.
So, for the last few years it’s been me and Mom and Gran, and now, with Mom sick, I had to do something to help her get better. The Sweet Stakes were just the thing.
As we watched the house, an outdoor flood light suddenly came on. Jenny tugged on my sleeve, bringing me back to the present. “Look at that,” she pointed.
I looked. “Geez, cool!” I whispered.
Mr. Zilcher was the town’s undertaker. We didn’t see him, but with the yard illuminated we could see parked along the side of the house a long black hearse. Real long. The back door was open and we could see there was casket in it.
“Do you suppose that’s old man Jorgenson?” I whispered.
In a small town like ours, everybody pretty much knew everyone else’s business. Old man Jorgenson had gotten kicked in the head by a mule last week. “Dropped like a stone,” some said. “Deader than a doornail before he hit the ground,” others added. I didn’t have an opinion, but I had no trouble imagining him being a goner. It made sense the casket was his.
“We need to get inside the house to find the candy,” I told Jenny.
“Yeah, I heard he kept it in safe in his office.”
“How are we going to open it?”
I glanced at her. She was watching the side of the house intently, the gears of her brain click-clacking away, picking up and discarding ideas one after another, trying to come up with a perfect plan.
“I’ll think of something,” she said. “But first things first. First, we need to figure out…”
Just then Mr. Zilcher came striding outside though the side door of his house. He stood in the yard next to the hearse and looked around, twisting the waxed tips of his mustache. He was a tall, thin man, and he was dressed in a black suit, black coat, and a black top hat. He looked like a sinister undertaker but more demented, and that made him all the more frightening. In the background, the owl began to hoot again. I shivered.
Jenny looked at me. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just kind of cold.”
She gave me a look. “Right.” Then she leaned close and whispered. “Anyway, if he leaves, maybe we can figure out a way to break it.”
I whispered back. “Good idea.”
It was a good idea. And it was an idea that worked because the creepy undertaker took out a set of keys, turned off the outdoor floodlight, locked the door to his house, slammed the back of the hearse shut, got in, and drove off.
“He’s probably going to the funeral home in town,” Jenny whispered.
We didn’t have to keep our voices down, but it seemed like a smart thing to do. With the dilapidated house and the dark night, it was pretty scary around Zilcher’s place. Who knew what kind of weird stuff could happen to us if we were caught?
We watched the hearse disappear down the road, clouds of dust billowing behind it. Then all was quiet except for the hooting of the owl and some crickets chirping. Through the clouds the moon suddenly appeared, casting enough light for us to see pretty well.
Jenny elbowed me in the ribs. “Okay, sport. Showtime. Let’s go.”
We hurried from our hiding place and across the uncut grass of the yard to the house. I pointed to the broken windows on the second floor. “Let’s climb up to them,” I said. “We should be able to get in easy.”
“Good idea,” Jenny agreed. We both looked around until she pointed to a tree next to the front porch. “Let’s climb that one.”
“Right on!”
Jenny went first, grabbed ahold of a low-hanging branch, and quickly worked her way up. I followed close behind, my heart racing. In less than five minutes we were on the overhanging roof above the porch and the front door.
“Let’s check the broken windows,” I said.
Jenny pointed to one along the front. “How about that one?”
“Looks good.”
She took off her black watch cap and wiped some sweat from her forehead smearing shoe polish. She turned to me, smiling, and said, “This is fun.”
Well, I was a lot more cautious than her any day, but I had to admit that it was kind of fun. Scary, too. But still…kind of fun. I took off my stocking hat and wiped sweat off my face smearing my own shoe polish. We looked at each other and chuckled. Our faces were a smeary mess, but we didn’t care.
“Let’s get inside,” I said.
Jenny grinned. “Go for it.”
I used my shoe to kick away a few shards of glass and then climbed through the window with Jenny close behind. We stood for a moment letting our eyes adjust to the dark. It looked like we were in an old bedroom. The first step I took scared up a bunch of bats that darted around for a minute before flying out the window.
Jenny watched, smiling. “Cool,” she said and squeezed my arm. “I like bats.” I shooed the last one away thinking, of course you do.
I turned to her. “Let’s get searching for those Sweet Stakes before Zilcher comes back.”
“Good idea.” Jenny took my hand.
We tip-toed across the room and made our way downstairs. The stairwell was covered with cobwebs, and we pushed them out of the way as we descended. The air was hot and musty and full of dust, and we both sneezed more than once. It worried me that we were making so much noise, but it was apparent that with Zilcher gone we had the place to ourselves. Hopefully.
By the time we got to the first floor our eyes had fully adjusted to the dark. But it still helped that Jenny had thought to bring a flashlight. She took it out of her hip pocket when we stepped off the last step. “Can’t be too prepared,” she grinned. Then she flipped it on, and our eyes went wide.
“Oh, my, god,” I said in amazement as she beamed the flashlight around the room.
I looked at Jenny and she looked back at me, her mouth hanging open. “I never expected this.”
Me neither. It was like stepping into the world’s greatest candy shop. “It’s unbelievable,” I whispered, awestruck.
The walls were lined with floor to ceiling shelves filled with glass canisters overflowing with candy. There were root beer barrels, lemon drops, and black and red licorice. There were jellybeans and candy corn and sweet tarts and dum-dums. That was just for starters.
Jenny wasted no time opening a container and grabbing a piece of pink bubble gum. She unwrapped it and started chewing. “This is incredible,” she said, blowing a quick bubble. “This is the best Halloween ever! I could die happy here.”
Her words ‘die happy’ shook me out of my wonderstruck mood. “We can look at candy later,” I reminded her. “Right now, we’ve got to find those Sweet Stakes.”
“You’re right,” she said, stuffing a few pieces of bubblegum in her pocket. “I heard they were in a safe in his office.”
“How are we going to open it?”
I glanced at her. She was watching the side of the house intently, the gears of her brain click-clacking away, picking up and discarding ideas one after another, trying to come up with a perfect plan.
“I’ve read about this.” Jenny loved mystery books and was a huge fan of Nancy Drew. “Oh, boy,” she said, making a face. “It’s kind of gross under here.” After a minute, she exclaimed, “Hot diggity dog! I found it!” She ripped off a piece of paper scotched taped to the underside of the drawer and showed me, shining her flashlight on it. Bingo! There was the combination.
“Let’s get it open,” I said. Excitedly, I rolled through the combination and listened to the tumblers clicking. My heart was pounding. Would I be able to open the safe and get the magic candy and help make Mom feel better? Jenny was beside me holding the flashlight so I could see. Every once in while she’d dab the sweat off my brow, smearing more shoe polish, but I didn’t care. Neither did she.
Finally, I got the safe open. In addition to a bunch of papers and bricks of money wrapped with rubber bands, there was a glass jar. It held what looked like candy canes, curved white sticks with red stripes wrapped in cellophane. Were these the Sweet Stakes?
“It’s them!” Jenny exclaimed. “They’ve gotta be the Sweet Stakes.”
“You sure?”
“Absolutely,” she said, excitedly. “Grab ‘em.”
I was still a little hesitant. “All of them?”
“Yeah. All of them.” She looked at me with steely eyes rimmed in shoe polish. “They’re for your mom, remember?”
I mobilized myself. “You’re right!” I took the Sweet Stakes out of the jar and put them in my pack. There were probably two dozen of them. I took all but one which I left in the jar for the heck of it. When I was all set, I said, “Alright. Let’s get out of here.”
I was closing the door to the safe, when we heard the hearse pull into the driveway.
“He’s back,” Jenny said. “Run!”
We did. We sprinted out of the office and across the living room grabbing handfuls of candy along the way and stuffing them in our pockets.
We ran up the stairs and climbed out the window. “Almost there,” Jenny said when we were standing on the roof in complete darkness waiting for Mr. Zilcher to go inside. She turned to me. “You doing okay?” she asked.
I was better than okay. We’d done it. I was ecstatic. “You bet!” I told her and patted my backpack. “I’m great!”
Jenny gave me a quick and surprising peck on the cheek. “Me, too,” she said, grinning. Then she winked.
When Mr. Zilcher went inside, we began climbing down the tree to make our final escape. Just then the lights came on both inside and outside the house.
“Who’s been in here?” Mr. Zilcher screamed. We could hear him from where we stood out in the yard. “Who’s been in my house? Who’s been eating my candy!?” We could hear him yelling and kicking things and throwing stuff around in a rage.
He might have said more, but we didn’t hear. In the blink of an eye, we ran to our bikes, jumped on them, and sped down the road pedaling for all we were worth, leaving the screaming undertaker to himself. I had the Sweet Stakes safely in my backpack and all was right with the world. By the time we got to my home, we were winded and sweaty but happy. Really happy.
We dropped our bikes to the ground and Jenny hugged me. “We did it, Zak! We did it!”
“Way to go,” I told her as we danced around the front yard. “Way to go!”
After a minute the outdoor light came on. “Hey, you two!” Gran called, standing at the door. “What’s all that commotion? And more to the point,” she looked at her wristwatch, “it’s late. The last of trick-or-treaters were here hours ago.” She stared at us. “Where have you been?” she demanded.
“You wouldn’t believe it,” I said.
Both Jenny and I ran toward her to fill her in but before we could say anything, she raised her glasses up on her forehead and frowned. “Wait a minute! What in God’s good name do you two have on your faces?”
Opps.
Gran took us into the kitchen, sat us down, and helped us clean the shoe polish off our faces, ‘tisk, tisk, tisking’ all the time. Then she made us some hot chocolate and listened while we told her the story. All of it. She didn’t even get mad. In fact, once or twice she even laughed a little.
When we were finished, Gran said, “Okay, let’s see those Sweet Stakes.”
I took them out of my pack and showed her. “Here. See?”
She laughed. “They look just like candy canes.”
Jenny frowned at Gran. “No way. These are definitely Sweet Stakes.”
My face turned red. I had been right when we’d been back at Mr. Zilcher’s. They did look like candy canes. But my Gran was a wonderful person. She took one look at me, recognized my discomfort, and came to the rescue. “Well, maybe there’s some magic in them anyway.” She looked closely. “They do look pretty special.” She turned to us, and then said to me, “Let’s go give one to your mom.”
So, we did. All three of us trooped upstairs to Mom’s room. I tip-toed across the floor to the side of her bed. She was resting but her eyes came open when she sensed my presence. She smiled. “Hi, sweetie,” she said. “How are you?”
“Hi, Mom.” I smiled at her. “I’m good,” I said. “I’ve got something for you.”
I gave her the Sweet Stake. To make a long story short, she loved it. She unwrapped the cellophane, put the candy in her mouth, and took a couple of minutes savoring it. We waited in anticipation. Would she like it? More to the point, would it work its magic and help her to feel better? Finally, she removed the Sweet Stake (I refused to call it a candy cane) and said, “Best candy cane I’ve ever had.”
Jenny and I both coughed at the same time and said, “Ahem.”
Mom smiled. “I mean, Sweet Stake.” She reached out her arms and gave me a hug. Then she hugged Jenny. Then she hugged us both in between licking and savoring every last bit of her candy. “Thank you both so much.”
After a few minutes, Gran said, “Alright, you two.” She looked at me. “Let’s let your mom rest.”
“Okay,” I told her.
We both hugged Mom again and then went downstairs and out onto the porch. Once outside, Jenny took my arm and smiled. “She really liked that Sweet Stake, didn’t she? You think she’s going to get better?”
I tried to be confident. “I’m pretty sure, yeah. She seemed to perk up a little after eating it.”
Jenny was quiet, thinking. We sat down on the steps. Then she said, “It was fun, wasn’t? Getting all that candy from old man Zilcher?”
I grinned. “It really was.”
We spent the next hour talking. Finally, Gran came out and told us, “Jenny, your mom called and said you had to go home.”
“Okay.” She stood up, dusted off her tights, and gave me a quick hug. “See you tomorrow.”
“Okay, see ya,” I said and watched her pedal off.
Gran put her arm around my shoulder and led me back inside. “Your mom’s feeling lots better, Zak.” Then she looked me in the eye. “I’m not sure I can condone what you two did tonight even if it was Halloween, but I have to say that you did a good thing. I think your mom’s going to be alright.”
I wiped a sudden tear of joy from my eye. “I’m so glad to hear that, Gran.” I really was, too, but I didn’t know what else to say. Gran seemed to understand. She didn’t say anything else, just hugged me tightly. I hugged her back, just as tight, if not tighter.
We went inside, sat at the kitchen table and Gran scooped us each a bowl of ice cream. Halfway through she pulled out a Sweet Stake, broke it in half and we shared it with each other. It tasted great.
The next day Mom was one hundred percent better. I had an idea and rode my bike over to Jenny’s and gave her a Sweet Stake. “For you,” I said. “Thanks for everything.” She smiled, gave me a big hug, and said, “Anytime, Mr. Ninja.”
She was a great friend, my best friend. I don’t know when I’d ever been happier. It was the best Halloween I ever had.
- The Sweet Stakes Robbery - October 23, 2024
- Platinum - October 4, 2024
- Botanizing - June 18, 2024
