The Hole in the Wall (23 page)

Read The Hole in the Wall Online

Authors: Lisa Rowe Fraustino

Tags: #Technology & Engineering, #Mining, #Family, #Action & Adventure, #Environmental Science, #Mines and mineral resources, #Juvenile Fiction, #Family life, #Mysteries & Detective Stories, #General, #Supernatural, #Science, #Twins, #Fiction, #Soil pollution, #Brothers and sisters

BOOK: The Hole in the Wall
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After a few minutes Pa’s icy skin warmed and softened into something like clay. His muscles started to twitch. Ma and Jed traded the glasses back and forth to watch the adrium colors fly to the walls. A little later, Pa slowly reached his right hand up to his chin. I jumped all the way out of the cave, in case he was reaching for me, but he just wiggled his jaw around.
The first hoarse word that came out of his crooked mouth was a
blankety-blank.
Then, “What the
blankety-blank
’s going on! Where the
blankety-blank
am I! Why do I feel so
blankety-blanking
stiff! And what the
blankety-blank
am I wearing!” He pulled on the chest pocket of his johnny gown. Then he jerked around like a newborn fawn trying to get up, but he couldn’t. We must not have been massaging his good side.
We all looked at each other, waiting for someone else to answer.
Ma adjusted his johnny again. “What’s the last thing you remember, Craig?” she said.
Pa glared at her. “Why do you want to know?” He acted like he had something to hide. Not good. I took another step away. My eyes prickled, but I scowled back the tears.
Finally Pa managed to move his arms and torso enough to lean on his elbows and turn his head slowly, taking in the cave. It reminded me of that owl back in the infirmary. I hoped Dr. Mills had gotten those poor animals out along with Miss Beverly.
“This looks like that old cave where Stan and I used to hide from our old ladies when we were brats,” Pa bellowed. He pounded the ground with his fist. “Why did you bring me here? What did you do to me, Claire? When I—”
Just then his neck stopped turning. His eyes got big. They had stopped on Jed. Pa really did look like an owl, and not the sweet kind perched on a branch but an owl with its wings spread wide, swooping down on a baby skunk it was ready to devour. “You!” he roared. “You’re behind this, aren’t you? Why, I’ll—”
The top of his body twisted and his arms lashed out, but he couldn’t get up because his legs were still paralyzed.
Ma had been calling his name over and over, trying to get Pa’s attention, but all he had owl eyes for was Jed. She took a fistful of Pa’s hair and turned his head toward her. “Craig, whether you know it or not, you owe your life, such as it is, to your kids. They rescued you. And nobody got you into this sorry shape but yourself, Mr. Do-Drop-Inn. Rumor has it that there’s going to be an explosion under your butt tonight. So if you want to walk out of here alive, I suggest you get to work rubbing the stiffness out of your legs.”
And she walked very calmly out without looking back. Pa kept screaming and yelling behind us as we all scurried to follow her lead. I felt like a duckling following my mother. But suddenly she turned around and very calmly retraced her steps, saying, “Oops! Forgot the chickens. Just ignore the howling lunatic while we gather them up. He’s made his own bed.”
Well, that was like saying, “Just ignore the pizza until you finish your math.” I looked straight at Pa. His desperate eyes locked onto mine as he bellowed, “
Blankety-blank,
son,
help
me! Please!” And like old Celery the adrified chicken, I was magnetized. I walked toward him, my hands held out.
“That’s my boy,” he said. “Just let me pull myself up with my arms across your shoulders, and you can drag me home.”
But that wasn’t good enough. “No, Pa. We have to finish massaging your legs now so you can walk.” And I got down to work below the knees. I leaned over to concentrate on what I was doing so I wouldn’t have to see his face. He looked . . . not like himself. He was humbled and ashamed.
“Sebby? What are you doing?” Ma crawled from behind the shelves with a struggling hen. “Oh . . .”
When she saw what was going on, she melted like mozzarella. She knelt at Pa’s feet to join the massage, saying, “Don’t you dare make me sorry I did this, Craig Daniels.”
“Oh . . . kay,” he whispered, then swallowed hard and looked at the wall. I knew what he was doing, though, because I was trying not to do the same thing. But a couple of hot tears dripped onto his legs anyway. I rubbed them in fast.
Jed and Barbie each claimed a thigh. We’d been at it for a couple of minutes when the whole gore started to tremble. We felt it in the floor, and we felt it in Pa.
20
“We have to get out of here
now,
” Jed cried. “Pa, can you walk?”
Pa grunted and flexed his ankle. His toes wiggled. His thigh muscles twitched. Sweat popped out over his eyebrows. “I can’t bend my knees,” he said. “You’re gonna hafta help me.”
We got him to the truck. Ma took the keys from Jed. “You kids ride in the back,” she said in her “no buts” voice. We all knew she wanted to talk to Pa alone. Which was fine by me. I didn’t know what to say to him now anyway. It was all so weird.
“As soon as we get home,” said Jed as the truck took off, “you two have to help me take down the plywood I nailed up to block our tunnel. Pa and I have to get to that adrium vein—”
“No, Jed!” said Barbie. “Wait until after the explosion. What if the tunnels collapse when you’re back there?”
The two of them kept talking, but I couldn’t concentrate on words. The ground alongside the rib road was actually heaving all around. I felt seasick, bouncing around in the truck bed. Ma had the pedal to the metal, and we were practically flying over the bumps. Even so, I was terrified that we wouldn’t get out of the gore in time. We still hadn’t even left the rib road, and we had a long stretch of the Gash still to go. On and on we lurched, and then I heard that noise. That same wind-chime ringing musical noise that had filled my head when I flopped the pebble around in the sunlight, when it wobbled away in the cavern—and when I got too close to the egg painting in Boots Odum’s workshop. Oh, man, if I was hearing that again, something big was about to happen.
“Do you hear something?” I said, grabbing Barbie’s arm.
“It’s the adrium,” Jed said, not sounding pleased. “It makes that sound when it moves.”
“When it moves?” That freaked me out. The sound was getting louder.
“Well, when certain isotopes of certain chirality—oh, never mind. I don’t really understand it myself. Stan calls it the music of the spheres. But anyway, nothing good ever comes after you hear it, I can tell you that.”
As if I wasn’t scared enough already. We prayed for our lives until the truck finally reached the back gate not far from our house. For the first time since ORC had built it, the gate stood wide open, with no goons standing guard over it and no vehicles in the employee parking spots. Ma didn’t even let off the gas but barreled on through to Kettle Road.
We left the gore and entered a different world. All four wheels of the truck gripped ground at once. The road felt solid, while behind us the gore heaved faster and faster. We watched it in the blinks between the giant rocks that bordered Kettle Road.
Ma jolted the truck to a stop in our driveway. As she opened her door she called, “You kids help your father into the SUV. We’re switching vehicles and getting out of Dodge as soon as I fetch your grandmother.”
I jumped over the side of the truck. “I’ll help you, Ma.” I ran ahead of her to kick the door in, but it just hurt my foot without budging. Like the cave door after the mudslide. But on the bright side, this time it didn’t hurt my teeth.
“She must have bolted the door,” Ma said and knocked hard. “Mum! It’s Claire! Come quick—it’s an emergency!”
When the door groaned open, Grum stood leaning on Pa’s rifle. “I sure am glad it’s you,” she said. “A couple of Stanley Odum’s
employees
came by here an hour ago and tried to
evacuate
me, but with the help of my special walking stick I persuaded them otherwise.”
“Well, I hope you’ll come with us now,” Ma said, “because the Onion’s gonna explode and it could take our property with it.”
Grum nodded. “Of course, we’re all ready.” She turned around and pointed to a stack of garbage bags in the living room.
Ma looked both amused and astounded. “What did you pack?”
“Everything we’ll need to live for the first month if we survive the holocaust,” she said.
With half a smile Ma shook her head and said, “Let’s pray we won’t need all that. But good idea just in case. Sebby, you hurry up and load the supplies while I help your grandmother into the car.”
Man, some of those bags were heavy. She must have packed every can of Spam and cast-iron skillet in the place. From the porch I hollered, “Barbie, Jed, come help—”
Pa was in the back of the SUV, but Barbie and Jed were nowhere to be seen. They must have gone out to the henhouse to take down the plywood. Jed was going to follow through with his plan! He’d go out to the mother lode and be there when the gore exploded. Then who knew what disaster would happen next! I couldn’t let him go there. I couldn’t lose my brother again.
“Jed!” I screamed, throwing the Spam bag into the trunk on my way to the henhouse.
I bounced smack into him as he came out backward. I ricocheted onto my butt in a puddle. Great, now I was soaking wet with that leachate stuff! “Aaaaahhhh!” I jumped up and batted at my soggy pants.
Then I felt something move around my ankles. I looked down. The puddle had started to vibrate, and the water swirled in curlicues toward the road. I stared in disbelief.
“Seb, don’t just stand there, help me with this tent,” called Jed, stuck in the henhouse door.
“Do you see this water?”
“Yes, which is why we need to hurry up and get out of here.”
“Seb, hurry up and load these supplies!” called Ma. She had Grum halfway to the SUV.
“You heard your mother,” Pa called out the window.
“Ahh!” I cried, covering both ears.
“I’ll help Jed with the tent,” Barbie said from behind him. She was carrying the camp stove.
My mind flashed back to our last camping trip at Lake Exton, and how much we’d bickered over who would carry what, and how happy we were tipping Pa out of the boat when he took us fishing. But this was not a happy moment at all. I shook the memory loose and ran to load the bags, hurdling the streams of curlicue water along the way.
Soon we had the SUV packed to the roof and barely any room left for us kids to sit. Ma couldn’t even see out the back window to drive.
Just then Jed’s Stupid Cat came running out of nowhere, leaping over all the rivulets to jump up on Jed’s legs and lick his hand.
“There’s no room for the cat.” Pa scowled, but he sounded almost sad.
“What do you say we take two cars,” said Jed. “I’ll drive Fluffy Kitty and the kids in the truck.”
“Good idea,” said Ma, handing him the keys. “Which way are we going?”
“Left,” said Grum quickly from the passenger seat. “Just get on the interstate and drive.”
“I vote for that. Get as many miles between us and that
blankety-blank
gore as possible.” (That was Pa.)
“Let’s decide on a place to meet,” said Jed. “In case we get separated.”
“How about that campground we used to go to on Lake Exton?” suggested Ma. “Assuming Boots doesn’t blow up the whole county. If that happens, where we meet is a moot point.”
“Granted,” said Jed. “See you at the lake. Or in the next life.”
“Pray for good weather!” Grum hollered out the passenger window as the SUV took off down the driveway.
Me and Barbie climbed into the truck. The cat sat on Jed’s lap with his head out the window. Jed adjusted the seat from where Ma had left it, turned with a grin, and gave us the ol’ Daniels eyebrow.
“Uh-oh,” said Barbie. “Why do I think I’m not gonna like this?”
“You two ready to see a show?” said Jed.
I grinned and browed him back. “You didn’t say
when
we’d meet them at the lake.”
Jed waited until the SUV had driven out of sight. Then he turned right toward Kettle Ridge. He parked at the top facing the gore like a giant drive-in movie screen. Which it kind of was, for us, since we were watching everything on the edge of our seats and wanting to know what would happen next.
From here the heaving ground looked almost alive, as if a giant insect lay underneath and was trying to break free from its cocoon. The ORC Onion, which wasn’t normally visible at night, glowed with swirling colors and shadows. A line of vehicles slowly moved along the Gash toward town, their headlights like strings of polka dots.
While we waited for something else to happen, Jed stroked Stupid’s head until the cat flopped over onto his back and offered his belly. “Good boy,” Jed said. “I sure missed you all these months, Dawg.”
“You mean he wasn’t with you?” Barbie asked in surprise. “He disappeared when you did, and just showed up again Thursday.”
Jed had petted away a good size hairball by now. He flicked it out the window. It drifted and caught on the windshield wiper, looking just like the hairballs caught on the chair legs in Miss Beverly’s kitchen. It made me wonder. “Jed, was your cat at the Odum’s?”

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