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
The Hole in the Wall (5 page)
If it hadn’t been pouring rain I would have hunted down every last chicken that morning. I did glance around the yard as I ran to the henhouse, but I didn’t see any signs of hens on the loose. Barney and his harem were in the same state as the day before, and I found barely a dozen eggs.
At breakfast Grum said I’d grown another inch since yesterday and no wonder I felt so achy. Barbie stood back-to-back with me to compare heights, then turned around and glared. I’d caught up with her!
“Don’t worry, Shish, you’ll always have browner eyes and better grades than me,” I said. “And longer fingernails. What does it matter if I get taller?”
“I haven’t grown one bit since we got our school clothes this year, Seb. I don’t care if you’re taller than I am.
I
want to be taller than I am!” At that she ran up the stairs crying.
I
want to be taller than I am!” At that she ran up the stairs crying.
“Your sister has growing pains too,” Grum said, nodding wisely.
Now that I thought about it, half the girls and a few of the boys in sixth grade had outgrown Barbie this year. Now she was just average. Did being tall mean that much to her? Now I felt bad for her, but I didn’t know what to say, so I ate more cereal.
Ma sent a note to school about my not feeling too good last night, so Ms. Byron didn’t keep me after for detention even though I forgot to get my homework signed and Spiderman didn’t get it finished. Plus, he circled
is
as a preposition. When
is
actually isn’t. It’s a verb, according to Ms. Byron, even though it doesn’t show action. I guess she must know. Anyway, she was a little disappointed in me.
is
as a preposition. When
is
actually isn’t. It’s a verb, according to Ms. Byron, even though it doesn’t show action. I guess she must know. Anyway, she was a little disappointed in me.
My teachers always act surprised when I do bad in English. They think I’m supposed to be some kind of verbal genius from the way I talk and draw stories and use my imagination. And apparently I actually scored high on some test once. Which I don’t remember taking. Back in first grade the teacher told Ma that I was “gifted and talented,” just like Barbie. Ma told Pa, and he said, “Don’t let that genius malarkey go to your head, son. If you can use your hands you’ll be better off.” I believed him then, my wonderful Pa who could build a castle in the yard. But now that things had changed, I wondered if maybe he was wrong. Maybe I ought to put my mind to learning why
is
is a verb even though it’s so lazy.
is
is a verb even though it’s so lazy.
I thought about all that on the Rust Bus ride home. While ducking Rico’s rattle and digging little shreds of yellow foam out of the ripped seat. Barbie didn’t want to talk; she was busy doing her math. I didn’t have a pencil, but I wouldn’t have done any schoolwork anyway. It was Friday afternoon for crying out loud. I would rather spend the time talking to Cluster, but she’d stayed home from school.
“Maybe the baby is sick with something contagious, and Cluster came down with it too,” Barbie had suggested that morning after Miss Rosalie gave up waiting for her to float out of the woods. We waited a long time because it was unthinkable that Cluster would miss school. She hated weekends and vacations—they kept her off the Internet.
Too bad Cluster was indisposed healthwise that day. I wanted to find out the results of the tests Odum’s goons did on the Zenwater.
Normally when I kicked my way in the front door of our house and the musty smell hit me in the face, it felt like I’d just lost a fight. But that day an unbelievable sweet smell greeted us when Barbie and I got off the Rust Bus. It smelled so beautiful I could hardly stand it, like being stuck behind the Perfume Lady in church. Every time she sits in front of us it makes the sermon seem twice as long. Grum says she must be hiding something.
Friday was Ma’s early day home from the dress factory. She looked up from the bills spread out on the table and said something about my clothes. I don’t know what, because I was intent on looking around for the smell so beautiful it could drown out Odum’s M&M’s and Ma’s cigarette smoke.
Barbie leaned over to look in the oven window. “Ooo! Cookies! What kind are they? They look like swirling rainbows.”
“Homemade cookies!” Usually we got the expired store brand cookies on clearance sale. “I love you, Ma!” I was overcome with feeling. Homemade cookies could mean only one thing—dough in the refrigerator! I loved raw cookie dough almost as much as art rocks. I pushed past Barbie to get at it. A big blob of dough went straight in my mouth and another fingerload was on its way when Barbie shut the door on my arm.
“Sebby!” said Ma, Grum, and Barbie in unison. “No eating dough.”
“I know, I know, raw eggs can kill me,” I said, chewing. Man, that dough tasted like heaven.
“I don’t care about that, but your dirty hands will kill us,” said Barbie.
“Seb, go wash up, please, and put on those pants of Jed’s I took in for you,” Ma said. “You and Barbie are going to bike into town and deliver eggs to Boots Odum, and you need to look presentable. Can you believe that man? All these years he’s never bought a single egg from us, and now all of a sudden he wants dozens, two days in a row. And delivered by the kids! What does he think we are, Domino’s Pizza? I told him delivery’s five dollars a dozen,
five!
And he didn’t even hesitate!”
five!
And he didn’t even hesitate!”
From the living room couch came the sound of a throat clearing. I looked Pa’s way and saw the keep-your-big-mouth-shut look in his eyes. No wonder Ma seemed surprised that Odum thought her eggs were worth so much. Pa must have pocketed Odum’s tip yesterday without telling her!
“Do I have to go? Can’t you just drive Barbie to do it? Me and Spiderman were really hoping to get our homework done.” (Really we planned to spend the rest of the daylight out at the Hole in the Wall. Without prepositions. Or verbs.)
Grum looked up from her rat ball. “That’s ‘Spiderman and
I,
’ subject of the verb, and don’t be a lazy boy. Why should your mother waste gas when you have two good legs? By the way, did you ever tell her about that bad egg?”
I,
’ subject of the verb, and don’t be a lazy boy. Why should your mother waste gas when you have two good legs? By the way, did you ever tell her about that bad egg?”
“What bad egg?” Ma choked, trying to talk to us and exhale her smoke out the window at the same time. She’s always trying to quit, and when she’s not quitting she tries to keep us from breathing her second-hand smoke. But I figure if I can smell it I’m breathing it, and I even smell it upstairs in my bunk when she smokes in the basement. Our whole house is a smoker.
“Cigarettes cost more than eggs,” I said. I don’t know where that came from, but I had to do something quick to get the how-dare-you look off Ma’s face. “What I mean is, maybe Mr. Odum is willing to pay the price because it’s fair. Fresh organic eggs ought to be at least twice the price of those mass produced at a factory farm, if you ask me.”
Pa growled for attention. “Nobody asked you that, boy. Are those real ears on your head, or are they just painted on? Your mother wants to know about some bad egg.”
“Oh, right.” I’d forgotten that. “Yeah, Ma, there’s something wrong with the chickens. They’ve been laying funny—half the usual amount, today and yesterday, and one was just like a rock. One egg, I mean. I put it in the plant pot so it wouldn’t get mixed up with the others.” I didn’t tell her that the diminished amount problem might possibly be due to escaped chickens. (Oh yeah, which I planned to look for at the first available opportunity.)
Ma frowned hard, ground out her cigarette butt in her smiling-mouth ashtray, put her hand on her forehead, and stared at the bills on the table. Then she slowly got up and went to pluck the egg out of the plant pot.
“Barbie,” she said absently, staring at the egg, weighing it in her hand, “I want you to do the talking when you deliver the eggs. Sebby, you be polite, now, you hear me?”
“Are you sure you want to give Mr. Odum any more eggs?” said Barbie. “I mean, what if there’s something wrong with them?”
“You wouldn’t want Boots breaking one of his big shiny teeth on an omelet,” I said.
Ma sighed and tapped the rock egg on the counter. Thump, thump, thump. It didn’t even crack. “He was quite insistent that he wanted eggs laid fresh this morning. They ought to be all right. This bad egg is heavier than normal, really dense. The eggs I used in the cookies seemed perfectly fine.”
Another idea occurred to me, and it was a Grum-pleaser involving the use of my two legs. “Hey, Ma,” I said in my most reasonable voice, “Barbie doesn’t even have to come. She can stay home and help you, and I can—”
“Yep, just painted on for sure, those ears,” piped Pa. “You’d better start listening to your mother, or else I’ll change your channel.” He pointed the remote control at me like a gun. Then he laughed.
I closed my eyes and counted to ten and tried to think a happy thought about Pa to calm my thumping heart down, like Ma’s always telling me to do. I thought about how I used to follow him everywhere and he’d let me spread the mortar between rocks or hammer in the stake when we set up the tent. But that just made me miss the old Pa. All I wanted to do now was run at the Pa we had now and pound that smirk off his face. Instead I slammed out the door, grabbed my bike, and took a running start up the hill to Kettle Ridge.
Stupid hill. Stupid Shish. She was slowpoking her way after me. If I’d been going alone I could have cut through the gore to town. I’d have saved half an hour each way, to say nothing of both lungs. And had time to spare at the Hole in the Wall.
Kokadjo meant “kettle” in Abenaki Indian, and that’s exactly what the mountain looked like, an upside down kettle. After you got to the top, you’d ride straight across for a stretch, and then you’d coast down the other side of the kettle to Main Street, Kokadjo. But before coasting, I always stopped at the top to catch my breath. And tried to make myself look to the right, across to the distant mountain ridges and foothills packed with trees and jutting rocks, rolling down into a valley checkered with stubble fields. Oh, but like driving by an accident scene, there was something irresistible about the horror. I always had to turn my neck and stare at the gore.
Somewhere at the bottom of the jaggedly torn cliff that used to be the next mountain stood my little oasis, the Hole in the Wall, but you couldn’t see it from here. I tried to spot it every time, but it was way back near the V end of the wedge shape, hidden behind slag piles. I was glad nobody could see it, or that might be the end of it. Off on the right side of the gray land skeleton, the town of Kokadjo made a little green nick in the edge of the strip mine. Just like the lip of a dirty ashtray.
That afternoon on my way to Boots Odum’s house, staring at his gore mess made my stomach lurch, like a bowling ball was knocking pins around in there. I bent over with pain. Suddenly my teeth were killing again too. And my leg bones. Stupid growing pains. Had Jed gone through this? Man, I wished we could talk about it. He always knew how to make me feel better, and laugh while he was at it.
Barbie was still far behind, zigzagging up the steep slope using the lowest gears on her bike. She hates sweating. I didn’t feel like waiting to hear her whine. Soon I was way ahead of her on the long coast to town. That gave me extra time to pop wheelies in the Skate Away parking lot. Which helped me forget my miseries. By the time I remembered to watch for Barbie again she was a block away from Odum’s mansion, and I had to pump the pedals to catch up.
Since the house was so fancy I used my kickstand and made my bike use good posture instead of flopping it on the sidewalk.
The place went on forever with porches and cupolas and wings and twists and turns. The front door alone was as big as our kitchen wall. My feet couldn’t resist poking around in the pretty rock gardens. The guy had some major art rocks holding in his daffodils. One looked like a gray rabbit sniffing the air. Another looked like a fox curled around its kit. They looked so real, I thought I saw one move.
“Wow, get a load of that door knocker,” I said. It looked like a lion’s head. I ran up ahead of Barbie onto the stone porch while she pried the egg carton out of her bike rack. I stuck my fingers in the lion’s mouth and knocked his mane about thirteen times. It sounded so cool.
“Sebby, cut that out. You’re embarrassing me.” She was combing her hair, straightening her clothes, and scowling like I was roadkill. “Back off from the door,” she said. “Your breath could drop a yak. You don’t want to give Boots Odum a rude impression when you say hello.”
“I don’t give a cheese doodle what anyone thinks of me,” I said as the giant door started to swing open.
5
I expected to see the walking billboard behind the door, but instead we faced a plump lady around Grum’s age, dressed in a faded housecoat and scruffy slippers, with silver hair cut shorter than mine. Which I couldn’t help but notice since her head seemed to point straight at me, poking out of her shoulders like a turtle’s. Her back was hunched way more than Grum’s. She had the absolute worst case of Not-Enough-Milk-When-I-Was-Your-Age Disease I’d ever seen.
At that moment I decided to love milk and sit up straight forever.
At first I assumed the woman was the housekeeper, but then she twisted her head sideways to get a look at us, and her nose looked just like a dahlia bulb planted in the middle of her face. That woman could only be the mother of Boots Odum.
Her face lit up. “Children!” she said. “Why, I was just telling my Stanley this morning at breakfast how much I miss seeing children. There used to be so many of them running around the gore, coming to visit me. I know they really just came for the candy, but I loved talking to them all the same. I’m Mrs. Odum, by the way. Call me Miss Beverly—the kids in the old neighborhood always did.”
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