The Hole in the Wall (26 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
“Sebby, do you have to use the bathroom?” Ma asked.
“No, I just really want you to go camping with us.”
At that, Pa stepped between me and Barbie and put an arm around each of us. “Myself and the twins’ll have the fish all fried up in the pan when you get out of work. Right-o, kids?”
Wow. I nodded my head off, because “Right-o” couldn’t get by the lump in my throat. This was beautiful.
“Sure, Pa,” said Barbie. She looked pretty pleased, too, in spite of her horrible disappointment at having to go a week without any tests or quizzes.
Ma gave up half a smile, saying, “Well, all right,” and then she frowned. “No, we can’t. Someone has to take care of the chickens!”
After all we’d gone through to save them, I had to agree, someone did. “How about we get Boots Odum to come clean up their doo-doo?”
Oh, the looks I got! “Just joking,” I said. “Just joking.” Sheesh. No way did I really want that guy poking around on our property. Especially not in the henhouse with the secret tunnel entrance.
Then Jed stepped into the discussion. Fluffy Kitty had just given up playing with him to chase after a noise in the woods. “Look, you guys can go camping without me. I’ll stay here and keep an eye on things. Who knows, there might still be repercussions from the explosion. Somebody ought to stick around, just in case.”
“What am I, chopped liver?” Grum called. She was leaning in the doorway now. “Jed, you’re going with them, and I’m going to hold down the fort, with the help of God and Smith & Wesson.” (That was Pa’s kind of rifle.) She had us all smiling when she added, “My mind’s made up. Now go.” And Grum being Grum, that was the end of that.
Since there hadn’t been a holocaust after all, we took out the garbage bags of supplies we didn’t need for camping. Then the Daniels family took off for Lake Exton in the SUV, Ma and Pa in the front and us three kids in the back, with Grum standing on the porch waving.
On the way to Lake Exton we listened to the news on the radio. It was all about the evacuation. A representative from ORC came on and said that there had been an earthquake right underneath ORC. This earthquake had led to a colorful explosion of industrial chemicals, but there had been enough advance warning for everyone to get out unharmed. The complex had been completely destroyed, with losses amounting in the hundreds of millions of dollars, but the operations of ORC would continue in other offices. All Kokadjo employees who wished to continue in their jobs would be offered transfers. Upon completion of cleanup, the site would be restored as parklands and donated to the county.
“Wow, that’s quite a story,” said Ma.
“That lying, cheating, paralyzing
blankety-blanking blank,
” cussed Pa. “He’ll be inflicting his shady shenanigans on another innocent town now. Well, good riddance from the perspective of this ol’ buddy ol’ pal.”
blankety-blanking blank,
” cussed Pa. “He’ll be inflicting his shady shenanigans on another innocent town now. Well, good riddance from the perspective of this ol’ buddy ol’ pal.”
“C’mon, now, Pa,” said Jed. “Stan never meant to hurt you or anybody else. He’s a scientist, after all, and—”
Jed suddenly interrupted himself laughing. It was so strange and unexpected, I couldn’t help but laugh too. Then Barbie giggled, and Ma joined in, then Pa cracked up. Ma pulled the car over so we could laugh ourselves out without going off the road. My stomach was sore from it.
“What was so funny, anyway,” Barbie said when we were moving again.
Jed smiled sheepishly and said, “Never mind.”
But I could guess. I considered it pretty funny myself that the two of them, Pa and Jed, had completely switched sides on the goodness or badness of Boots Odum. But they were still arguing. Some things never change.
It rained most of the time we were camping. We had an okay vacation anyway. We spent long hours in the tent telling stories and playing games. Pa bet Ma he could keep a bonfire going the whole time, and to everyone’s surprise, he did. He wasn’t the
blankety-blank
Pa anymore. Well, I can’t lie—he still swore like a sailor’s parrot, but he wasn’t a
blankety-blanking blank
himself. He didn’t even drink one beer, not even in the fishing boat. But he wasn’t the Pa from when I was little, either. Back then he used to spend every minute
doing
something. Now he spent a lot of time just sitting and staring at the lake. I could live with this Pa, though. In fact, I spent some time sitting next to him, until I had a little accident of the imagination and fell in the water.
blankety-blank
Pa anymore. Well, I can’t lie—he still swore like a sailor’s parrot, but he wasn’t a
blankety-blanking blank
himself. He didn’t even drink one beer, not even in the fishing boat. But he wasn’t the Pa from when I was little, either. Back then he used to spend every minute
doing
something. Now he spent a lot of time just sitting and staring at the lake. I could live with this Pa, though. In fact, I spent some time sitting next to him, until I had a little accident of the imagination and fell in the water.
On the last day us kids gave up waiting for the rain to stop and went out fishing anyway while Pa watched us from the shoreline. It was pretty boring. Barbie had brought a book and umbrella to read under. Jed sat hunched in his rain gear texting on his fairly intelligent cell phone. He’d been spending quite a bit of time doing that and talking to his long lost friends. Even to Boots Odum a couple times.
The two of them had made us all appointments later in the week to go to Zone Q and be examined, but we all got to go home afterward. Jed described to Odum all about how the colors had left his body and Pa’s, and how the leachate had left the swirly patterns in our yard, and stuff like that to help ORC study the adrium. But he didn’t say a word about the spectacular mother lode on our property. We had a family conference and everyone agreed that was going to stay hidden behind the nailed plywood. We’d never let the land leave the family or allow it to be mined.
“Some things that are found in the ground should stay in the ground,” Pa said. For once Jed agreed with him.
So back to the boat. We hadn’t caught anything yet, and it was almost time for Ma to get out of work. I really wanted to catch her dinner today. The other days, Pa wound up going to the store for fish so he could keep his promise about frying it up in the pan.
“Here, fishy fishy fishy,” I said and cast out the line.
Jed looked up at me. “You guys wanna check your email? Sebby, what’s your screen name?”
I shrugged. I didn’t get much free time on the computers at school, and I had way better things to do on them than email.
“His would be [email protected],” Barbie said, turning her page.
Oh, yeah. I forgot we all had email addresses at school.
“What’s your password?” Jed asked.
I shrugged again.
“Try his birthday,” Barbie said.
“Eureka,” Jed said. “Sebby, you’ve never checked your email! You have pages of unopened messages from Adele Byron. Isn’t that your teacher?”
“Um . . . ,” I said. She may have said something about that a few times.
Just then the phone dinged. “New message coming in,” said Jed. “From dogstarcluster.”
“She lives!” I stuck the fishing pole between my knees and grabbed the phone away from Jed. The Shish jumped up and tried leaning over my shoulder to read the message too. The boat tipped wildly. Barbie teetered all over the place. Pa laughed from the shore.
“Sit down before you fall, Shish, I’ll read it to you,” I said.
Dear Sebastian,I hope this message finds you feeling upright and unshaken by the recent earthquake in Kokadjo. As you have probably ascertained by now, my family has left the Love Shack and transferred ownership to the Odum Research Corporation. I regret that I could not inform you about our situation and say good-bye in person.The good news is, Goldenrod and Marigold have finally discovered that computers are very groovy. Therefore, they have decided to start a new community called Breezy Acres Ecovillage, where we will operate a wind farm for electricity so we can enjoy technological advances without contributing to global warming through the exploitation of fossil fuels. Currently we are traveling around the country seeking an appropriate location.Zensylvania would have been ideal, but alas, there is no water there anymore. Our spring ran dry. That is why we moved so suddenly. G & M will not tell me the details of their confidential discussion with Mr. O, but I have a theory. My theory is that the mining in Kokadjo Gore disturbed the aquifer and caused our spring to drain.GtG! M wants me to help her look for her HS friends on facebook. SIT!Clstr
It took like ten years to read through the message because Barbie and Jed kept making comments. Well, I did, too. It’s always something with Boots Odum. Anyway, at the end of the ten years I was pretty happy to know that Cluster was okay and finally able to have a computer like she wanted.
The next day, something else made me even happier. No, I didn’t catch a big fish. On the way home we stopped at the store to buy me red canvas high-tops. And as if that wasn’t happiness enough, the sun came out on our way home. So it was shining when we rounded the corner and got our first sight of the new Kokadjo Gore. What had once been beautiful rolling wooded land, and then an ugly hollowed-out strip mine, had now become something else entirely. A little sparkling lake! Reflecting the clear blue sky. Fresh spring water had bubbled up from the earth and filled the deep places. Little gray islands of rock poked up where the slag piles had been.
That night, we sat out in our front yard to watch the bats swoop down over the rocky shoreline. The lake sparkled like gemstones in the moonlight, making me think of the dragon’s lair in the Hole in the Wall. The cave must still be out there somewhere, under the water.
I smiled to myself and leaned back in my seat to imagine tomorrow.
I began writing a very different version of this story in the 1990s when I was a graduate student at SUNY Binghamton, and I have many people to thank for help along the way as it evolved into the book you now hold in your hands.
First I must thank the people who read early drafts of the work, the writer’s group that will always be first in my heart: Susan Campbell Bartoletti, Laura Lee Wren, Clara Gillow Clark, Anna Grossnickle Hines, Gary Hines, Mary Joyce Love, and (God rest her) Norma Grula.
Over the years, the story came to be what it is now with the help of excellent suggestions by Alexandria LaFaye, Hillary Homzie, Han Nolan, Gail Carson Levine, and David Webster. I’m fortunate to have good friends who are also good writers.
The critic who has helped most of all, though, is the editor at Milkweed Editions who acquired the book and pushed me to write beyond better, Ben Barnhart. Thank you, Ben.
Thank you to Eastern Connecticut State University for granting me a sabbatical year during which I did the major revision that led to a contract on the manuscript.
Thank you to the Dougherty Family Foundation for sponsoring the Milkweed Prize for Children’s Literature and gifting me with that honor. My heart warms every time I think of it.
I thank my three children, Daisy, Dan, and Livvie, even though they grew up and moved out some time ago, because they inspired many of the ideas in this story. The same goes for all those fifth-graders I used to teach at Wyoming Seminary Lower School in Forty Fort, Pennsylvania.
And finally, I thank my husband, Jeff Meunier. For everything.
LISA ROWE FRAUSTINO is the award-winning author of the novels
Ash, Grass and Sky,
and
I Walk in Dread,
and the picture book
The Hickory Chair.
The editor of several anthologies for young adult readers, she teaches children’s literature and creative writing at Eastern Connecticut State University and Hollins University. She lives with her husband and four cats in Ashford, Connecticut, and Bowerbank, Maine.
Ash, Grass and Sky,
and
I Walk in Dread,
and the picture book
The Hickory Chair.
The editor of several anthologies for young adult readers, she teaches children’s literature and creative writing at Eastern Connecticut State University and Hollins University. She lives with her husband and four cats in Ashford, Connecticut, and Bowerbank, Maine.
If you enjoyed this book, you’ll also want to read
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these other Milkweed novels.
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(800) 520-6455
or visit our Web site (
www.milkweed.org
).
(800) 520-6455
or visit our Web site (
www.milkweed.org
).
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www.milkweed.org
) or contact us at (800) 520-6455 to learn more about our donor program.
Milkweed Editions, a nonprofit publisher, gratefully acknowledges sustaining support from Emilie and Henry Buchwald; the Patrick and Aimee Butler Foundation; the Dougherty Family Foundation; the Ecolab Foundation; the General Mills Foundation; John and Joanne Gordon; William and Jeanne Grandy; the Jerome Foundation; Robert and Stephanie Karon; the Lerner Foundation; Sally Macut; Sanders and Tasha Marvin; the McKnight Foundation; Mid-Continent Engineering; the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature, a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts; Kelly Morrison and John Willoughby; the National Endowment for the Arts, and the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act; the Navarre Corporation; Ann and Doug Ness; Jörg and Angie Pierach; the RBC Foundation USA; Ellen Sturgis; the Target Foundation; the James R. Thorpe Foundation; the Travelers Foundation; Moira and John Turner; and Edward and Jenny Wahl.
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