The Scavengers (23 page)

“There is a bit of good news,” says Lettuce Face.

I just scowl at him.

“Despite everything our patriotic partners have been able to accomplish in the world of
corn
, a reliable so-called truth serum has proven elusive.” At this, the Fat Man shoots him a glare. Lettuce Face just shrugs. “The best we can do is help someone relax and ramble. But after comparing your answers to those your mother has given us, we are confident your father never shared his biggest secret—the one we
really
care about—with her.”

My scowl stays in place, but inside I feel a pang in my heart. Does this mean they put Ma through a babble session too? And what about Toad and Arlinda?

“So if you bring in Dad, we can quite happily return your mother.”

“Yah? Well, what if I go out there and blab? Tell everybody about Dad and CornVivia and why he had to leave, and what you’re doing to Ma, and what you did to my brother, and . . . and . . .”

“Oh dear,” says Lettuce Face after I run out of air and ideas. “Aren’t you petulant? Number one, you want your mother back . . . and alive. Number two, you wouldn’t know who to blab to. Number three, you wouldn’t know
what
to blab. After your little
relaxation
session, we know your father didn’t tell you the big secret either.”

My memory flashes back to the pig shed, and me yelling at Dad. Suddenly I’m wondering: By refusing to tell me the big secret, was Dad actually protecting me?

I look at Lettuce Face. “So. I bring you Dad, you give me Ma.”

Lettuce Face nods. The Fat Man just sits there, holding Porky Pig.

“How do I know you’ll keep your word?” I say, still scowling.

“What choice do you have?”

I scowl at him some more. He’s right, and I hate it.

“Good luck, Little Miss Maggie,” says Lettuce Face, and the glass fades back to mirror.

“FORD FALCON to you, salad skin!” I yell.

The mirror switches back to transparent glass. The Fat Man has vanished, but Lettuce Face is still there, grinning like a sneaky cat. “You have five minutes to say good-bye to your mother.”

I lunge forward, smashing my fist into the glass. Lettuce Face jumps back, then giggles again. The glass is at least two inches thick, and I can feel the blood ooze from my knuckles.

Lettuce Face disappears into the mirror, still giggling.

I go to Ma. She’s trembling, and there are tears in her eyes. There isn’t much to say. For the first time I wonder where we are. I mean, I know we’re in this stupid white room, but I wonder where in the Bubble City we are. I think about the brochure, and I think about the time I sat on the hood of the Falcon and stared across the distance, and I wonder if right this instant there are other girls my age nearby, laughing and playing volleyball and eating ice cream cones.

A door opens, and two mirror-faced guards enter.

“I’ll be back, Ma.”

“Oh, Maggie.”

50

THE PADDY WAGON DROPS ME IN THE SAME SPOT WHERE I WAS
picked up. I don’t look back, because I can’t bear to see that endless, giant white wall and imagine Ma in there. Instead, I look to the far edge of the Clear Zone, identify the building where I left Toby, and walk straight to it. He’s there with his pack on his back, waiting for me as if I just stepped out for lunch. “Let’s go,” I say, and without another word we begin the hike home.

With every step I take I try to figure out how to find Dad and get him back to the Bubble. I am in a race: if the Bubble Authorities find Dad before I do, I have no way of forcing them to return Ma. But I am also in a conundrum: they will be tracking me, so the minute I make contact with Dad, they’ll just swoop in and take him from me.

For a week I hike, and for a week I puzzle on this.

When we round the trail on Skullduggery Ridge and I see my good old station wagon waiting, I want nothing more than to bid Toby good-bye, crawl inside the original Ford Falcon, and sleep for a week. But I know I need to get back to Dookie. I’m also worried about Toad and Arlinda after their visit from the Bubble Authorities. I have good reason to be worried: the Falcon, the shack, the coop, the root cellar—they’ve all been ransacked again. The Bubble Authorities want Dad bad. If ever there was any doubt that they are doing everything they can to find him, the sight of our demolished belongings erases it.

Tired as Toby and I are, we quicken our pace and half trot down the trail to Hoot Holler.

Hatchet hits me the second Toad lets us through the security gate. What I wouldn’t give to wring that bird’s neck. Instead I settle for three swings and three misses and then just run for the porch, Hatchet crowing victoriously behind me. Toby just strolls along with a grin on his face. I guess that rooster knows better.

Dookie runs out to meet us. It’s good to see him. Right away I see he has a scuff on his cheek and a bruise over his eye.

“Another seizure,” says Arlinda. “A bad one.” I give him a big hug and he hugs me back for maybe half a second, then runs three laps around the house, yodeling, “
Ya-la-loo, ya-la-loo, ya-la-loo!
”

“Good to see you too,” I say.

Then I notice Toad’s face looks just like Dookie’s.

“Toad—what . . . ?”

“Bubblers,” says Toad. “Least that’s what I figure. They were perusing fer yer pater.”

It makes me queasy to think of how they got me to tell them about the pig shed, and it made me angry to think of them beating up Toad when they found that my father was gone again.

“They were pummelating me gritty pood until Arlinda pepped out on the storch with her Zini-Mooka!”

One person was no match for all those Authorities—not even Arlinda with a Mini-Zooka—but none of those Authorities were interested in eating rock salt, so they stopped working Toad over.

“Se-bides,” says Toad, “the prize they prized had vaporized.” Now his face shades over, and he reaches a hand toward me. “Ford Falcon, your father . . .”

“He’s gone again,” I say. “I know.”

“But how . . .” Toad and Arlinda look perplexed.

We sit on the porch and I tell them the whole story then, from the solar bear fight right up to the moment I tried to punch Mr. Lettuce Face through the glass.

“
That
was dumb,” I say, flexing my knuckles, which are still stiff and sore.

“No sow . . . ,” says Toad.

“. . . So now,” I say, “I am hunting my own father. Again.”

“The night after you left,” says Toad, getting serious and abandoning Reverend Spooner, “he convinced me he had to go. Told me the whole story. Said as soon as you reached the Bubble they’d be sending someone after him here. In the morning I backed the oxcart into the pig shed. Your father climbed in, wrapped himself in a tarp with a breathing tube, and then I buried him in straw and pig manure.”

I make exactly the kind of face one makes when one thinks of being buried in pig manure.

“Yep, I knew nobody’d want to check that,” says Toad. “Also, the heat of the manure would help disguise your father’s outline in case the Bubblers were peeking down from the sky with anything fancy. I hooked Frank to the cart and drove it down to Tilapia Tom’s. We made a big show of talking about him using the manure for his methane fizzer, the one he uses to heat his fish tanks during cold snaps. We backed the oxcart into the shed that houses the fizzer, closed the doors, and unloaded your dad.

“He said his plan was to wait for nightfall, then slip into the woods behind Tom’s fish tanks. I bet he took to the river. Arlinda and I figure he had enough URCorn to last a month, maybe less.

“That’s the last I’ve seen of him.”

It’s quiet now, nobody saying anything. Dookie runs past us and into the house, so at least we know he’s not in the fish tank.

“Oh!” says Arlinda. “Before I forget!” She goes into the dining room and comes back with the Emily book. “Your father made us promise that we’d put this back in your hands the minute you returned. He said whatever happened, you’d want Emily’s help to get through it.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not sure even Emily’s up to this one,” I say.

“There is one other thing,” says Arlinda, looking at Toad. “The night before he left, your father asked for a pen and some paper. He said . . .” Arlinda pauses for a moment and looks at Toad. He nods. “He . . . he said he wanted to copy down some poetry to take with him.”

“Boy, he kinda picked a weird time to get into poetry,” I say.

“He said a good poem can lift you above all trouble.”

“Yeah, Ma used to say that. But that was before we were being harassed all over creation by fake GreyDevils and angry fat men who collect antique toy pigs.”

“Let’s eat,” says Arlinda matter-of-factly, as if that solves everything, and for now it does, because suddenly my stomach is roaring like a solar bear.

The moment I step inside the house, a miniature boomerang hits me in the head, so I guess I can stop worrying about whether Dookie is his same old self. If it isn’t a crazy flapping rooster, it’s a crazy boomeranging brother.

Soon Arlinda has the stove rumbling hot, and the kitchen air is filled with the smell of good cooking. It’s all Toby and I can do to keep from eating straight from the pots and pans. When we do sit down to eat, we spend the first five minutes in almost complete silence as we work through piece after piece of fried chicken, piles of mashed potatoes, buttered carrots and green beans, and biscuits so fresh that a curl of steam comes wisping out each time I tear one open. Even Dookie eats well, finishing everything except a neat little pile of cooked carrots before running off to hang out with the stuffed animals.

“Dookie!” I say, and he comes lurking back to the table. “Eat your carrots.” Then, because Dad can’t be here to say it like he used to, I say, “They’re good for your eyeballs!” Dookie pops three tiny pieces of carrot in his mouth and scurries back to the taxidermy room. I figure I’ll take what I can get and let him off the hook.

After the last bite, I suddenly feel bone tired. I wash my plate, then lie on the floor beside Dookie in the room with all the strange creatures looking at us with their cockeyed gazes. I hear Toby leave for home. For the first time in six days, I relax.

Soon Hatchet is crow-hacking and the sun is up.

We eat a huge breakfast: fluffy mounds of scrambled eggs, sausage and bacon, pancakes right off the griddle and drowned in maple syrup. When I finish, I tell Toad and Arlinda I need some time alone up on Skullduggery Ridge.

“Two-times-one two-times-two-burro-not-early a retrieval aircraft-minus-a-vowel one-less-than-five per yater?” asks Toad.

He must have been up all night working that one out.

“Yes, Toad,” I sigh, after realizing by “burro” he meant mule, “to formulate a retrieval plan for my father.”

Then I give Dookie a hug, gather my gear, and step outside. I’m just at the gate when Arlinda comes out the screen door, waving something in her hand.

“Your Emily book!” says Arlinda.

I tuck the book in my pack and climb up to the place where I think best.

51

UP ON THE RIDGE I LIGHT A FIRE AND HANG THE KETTLE. THEN I
dig through the mess of the shack until I find the tin that held Ma’s tea. It’s scuffed and dented, but the cover is still on tight. When I pry it off I find just a few loose leaves. They’ve lost most of their flavor, but as the steam rises from the mug there is just enough of the bergamot to kick loose memories of sitting with Ma against the Shelter Tree. Tears fill my eyes. As the first one spills over I swipe at it and slop hot tea over my hand. As much as the scald of it hurts, it helps me get myself together. I set the tea on a rock to cool and pull Emily from my pack.
A good poem can lift you above all trouble
. We’ll see, I guess. Returning to the tree, I settle in again and begin to read.

The sun is bright today, but rather than blazing down, it’s filtering through the leaves of the Shelter Tree, falling across my arms and shoulders and the pages of the book in shifting, shimmering splotches. Once again I can hear Ma telling me not to devour Emily’s poems, but once again I just want to fill my head with these words, read the lines one after the other, not even stop to try to understand them. I just want to get lost in the
feel
of them. The
rhythm
of them. The
taste
of them. I want to read Emily’s words until I feel like she is right here with me, or we are sitting side by side in her little room, and we are friends, and we have made a pact never to venture into the rough, dirty, messed-up, lousy world again.

I read and read and read, until my eyes go fuzzy. The tea is long gone, the last drop dried in a brown oval at the bottom of the mug. When I finally raise my gaze and stare off over the Falcon and across the landscape toward the Bubble City, my heart lurches when I think of Ma, somewhere out there in that white-dome, white-cube world. My heart jumps again when I realize that the voice I hear when I read Emily’s poems is Ma’s. I wonder for a moment if this is the worst thing I could have done—wasting time reading these poems that make me feel so lonely. But in a weird way, even the lonely feeling is comforting. To sit in the spot where I used to sit with Ma, to read the poems we’d read together, and to realize that whatever comes to be in the future I have the memory of those moments inside me for all time.

One last poem, then it’s time to get back to real life. I leaf through the pages of paper to the poem Ma and I have always chosen for our favorite—the one about the joy of reading books. Ma and I shared it so many times that the Emily book falls easily open to it.

At first I don’t think much of the folded scrap of paper, figuring it is a bookmark Ma had placed. Then I see the words “Ford Falcon” written on it.

Ma
never
called me Ford Falcon!

It had to be someone else.

I unfold the paper. It is grubby and wrinkled, and the handwriting is shaky:

Dear Ford Falcon (Maggie, for your mother):

Good girl. Your favorite poem. I knew you’d find it here.