Elementary (30 page)

Bounce didn't think Badstink Man heard the Circus Bear or smelled him, for Badstink Man merely adjusted his grip on the Girl's arm and dragged her toward the staircase that led Above. “Where were we before we were so rudely interrupted? Ah, yes. You shall be my first human subject, my darling. Aren't you pleased? A few minutes in my laboratory, and you'll be a completely different woman,” he promised.

The puppy whimpered in terror, smelling the Circus Bear, smelling the Wrongness that surrounded Badstink Man.

“Hush
,” Bounce said. He had an idea.

It was a foolhardy idea, the sort of idea that led Hunters of Rats to glorious deaths. Bounce threw back his head and sang to the Circus Bear. Softly at first, and then louder.

“Here,”
Bounce called to the Circus Bear.
“Badstink Man is here. He waits for you. Come and close your jaws around his throat.”

Badstink Man kicked at him, and Bounce dodged. He scuttled out of reach and Sang again.
“Badstink Man is here. He waits for you.”

For long moments Bounce wasn't sure the Circus Bear had heard, or whether he cared to listen to a Hunter of Rats at all.

Badstink Man set his foot on the first step, pulling the Girl with him.

And then a dark Shape shouldered its way through the door to Above.

 • • • 

Frederick wasn't sure if it was the scream or the
smell
that roused him, but he opened his eyes just in time to see an enormous bear take George Cliburn by the throat and shake him the way a terrier might shake a rat as it dragged him up the stairs.

Exeunt,
he thought hysterically,
pursued by a bear.

And then the darkness reached up and claimed him again.

 • • • 

Bounce did not know where the Circus Bear and Badstink Man went, but as long as they did not come back here, he didn't care. The Girl found food for all of them in the rooms above, and water, too, and they stayed. Percy could fly home again, and Bright Eyes did not care, but Bounce did not know how to find Smell-Gives-Bite again, and Jingo did not know where he belonged. For now, here was as good as anywhere.

The Earth Master slept for a long time. The puppy Bucket never left his side. Finally, when the window near the ceiling brightened with day, the Earth Master stirred and sat up, putting his hands to his head in the way Men did when they didn't feel at all well. He sat for a moment, apparently unperturbed by the assortment of creatures peering at him closely.

Then he turned to the Girl and said the one thing that mattered.
“I'm Frederick. And I know your name.”

Ron Collins

On an evening late in August—a hot month in Dayton, Ohio—ten-year-old Daisy Mae Fuller dried her sweaty palms on her dress as she peered out the bicycle shop's dirty window.

She plucked a feather from the duster, like Mr. Cash had suggested. And just to make sure the feather knew what it was there to do, she brushed it over some dirt that had gathered in the window's corner. Then she hummed a little tune and opened her thoughts to the Elemental, just like Mr. Cash had taught her.

The feather jumped from her hand and danced down the window, dusting all the way.

With a gleeful yip, she clapped her hands with such vigor that her palms turned red.

She discovered that the harder she hummed, the faster the feather twirled. So Daisy hummed, and she whistled, and she even sang, starting with “Daisy Bell” (a song her daddy sang to her every day on account of that being her name) and moving into “Ta-ra-ra Boom de-ay” (a song she just liked to sing). The feather danced with her songs, it floated on her melody, and it dusted. Oh, yes, how it dusted.

It was the most exciting thing she had ever seen! Better than her wildest dreams—and let me tell you that being ten years old and full of thoughts like beating Timmy, her freckle-faced older brother, in a race across town, or pulling a never-ending string of fish out of the creek that ran behind Franklin's Curio Shop, Daisy Mae could dream of many wild things.

In fact, she dreamed all the time. The century had just turned, after all, and everyone was talking about what might come next. She imagined having her own horseless carriage, setting its choke and getting out of the cab to turn its crank until it roared to life with a plume of oily smoke and a rumble that sounded like a big old grizzly bear. If she did have her own automobile someday, she might go to Boston, where she heard there was a train that ran completely underground, or maybe she would drive to Alaska, where Uncle Carl said they'd found mountains of gold. Daisy could barely imagine what that might look like. She dreamed about places from the stories that Mama read her, too. Places like the Sahara desert and the Amazon rain forest.

Ever since she had started coming to the Wright brothers' shop, she found herself thinking of Kitty Hawk, too. Kitty Hawk, where the Wrights were going to fly their contraption. Kitty Hawk. She liked how saying it made her lips stretch over her teeth. She liked how it sounded so exciting.

She dreamed of flying, too, you see, though she had never told anyone at all about it because she knew how they would laugh and say that no ten-year-old named Daisy Mae Fuller, a girl no less, could ever be allowed to touch a flying contraption, better yet captain one. But dream about it she did, and in her dreams she imagined it would be like swinging out over the lake on that big rope Timmy had strung up, only better. Daisy had to admit that when she saw the contraption's parts spread over the bicycle shop's floor—the wiring, the canvas, and the box framework—she had felt that same thrill. And when she had seen the drawings pinned up all over the shop walls, she dreamed of flying even more.

Her only defense was that when you're ten years old, everything is interesting. At least that's what her granddaddy said. He said she had the curiosity in her, and he said that was a good thing.

Auntie Ida didn't agree with Granddaddy. She said a girl needs to sit on the porch and find her a young man, and that even ten years old isn't too early to practice being attractive. Luckily, Mama agreed with Granddaddy, and shushed Ida every chance she got. Daisy didn't really like Auntie Ida. Not just because of her ideas, but also because she smelled like powder, and because Daisy had no patience for sitting on the porch and fanning herself all day like a lace doily waiting for the wind to come along and take her wherever it wanted her to go.

Mama would just smile at Ida when she started talking about her grandniece.

“I don't think Daisy Mae's cut out for courting just yet,” Mama said to Ida earlier this spring. “I think she's got places to go first.”

Ida blanched pale as a sheet and rolled her eyes up to the sky as she sipped her tea.

Mama glanced at Daisy out the corner of her eye. With a grin on her lips as cool as a cat's, she said, “Who knows, Ida. Daisy Mae might even be the first woman to cast a vote.”

Auntie Ida choked on her tea then.

And Daisy laughed and ran off to play in the creek. She remembered that day especially because it was springtime, and she had chased tadpoles all over the shallow flats.

She was worried, though.

Even at ten years old, Daisy knew there were more people in this world who thought like Ida than there were who thought like Mama. She knew most everyone thought it queer that she still played in creeks rather than got her hair done up, and she knew everyone expected her to be learning how to cook and sew rather than be dreaming of underground trains or mountains of gold.

All this made Daisy Mae feel strange. Since the day of that conversation, she had grown more wary. She tucked her thinking into the back of her head more often than not, and she kept her dreams to herself. She still had those dreams, of course. But now they made her wonder if she was broken. Was she so different? Was she supposed to think like this? Wouldn't it be better if she just learned to darn socks or to serve tea?

Usually she didn't worry so much, though. Usually she let her dreams run free inside her head, even if she didn't talk about them as much as she had when she was seven or eight or even nine.

The problem with dreams that are left to run free, though, is that they can sometimes get a person into trouble. And as Daisy watched the feather dance over the window, she should have known that trouble was just around the corner.

 • • • 

You see, everything started one day about a month before when Mr. Cash stopped her while she was walking home from the park.

“I'll purchase you a soda if you would take a moment to speak with me,” he said as they stood on the street corner, he primly in his suit jacket, cane, and bowler, and she in her dress stained with grass at the elbow and hip (she and the rest of the girls had been playing red rover, and she had broken through with such a run that she'd gone tumbling over the grass).

No one liked Mr. Cash much. He was one of those adults who always seemed to be around, but considered himself above the dignity of participation. The kids around town told stories about him. Jessie Martin said Mr. Cash was crazy as a loon, and Jimsie Pitoski told everyone that one day he saw Mr. Cash out in the woods all alone, making the wind do all sorts of tricks. It wasn't long after that common tattle talk at school was that he was a wizard, or a warlock, or some other witchy kind of thing.

That made Daisy curious, of course. She couldn't help herself.

Daisy was curious about magic. She admitted that fully and without any sense of shame. Magic didn't scare her. Not much, anyway. She figured that if it was real, it had to be about like everything else—something you could learn if you were interested enough. So when Mr. Cash offered her a soda that day, she was excited enough about the chance to learn a bit of trickery that she accepted.

She ordered a cherry float.

They took seats at a tall, round table in the drugstore window.

“The Wright brothers are looking for someone to clean their shop,” Mr. Cash said once they were settled. He played nervously with his cane.

“That's interesting,” Daisy said, more because she felt like he expected her to say something than because she actually found it interesting. The ice cream was very delicious.

“I would like you to consider pursuing the job.”

“I don't understand.”

“I'm very interested in the Wrights, you see. If you were to take that job, I would be willing to pay you a nickel a day if you would tell me stories about what they are working on.”

“I see,” Daisy said, though she didn't really. “You want me to spy on the Wright brothers?”

“Oh, no,” Mr. Cash said, dismissing that notion with a sharp wave of his spindly hand. “Nothing untoward like that, of course. I'm, uh, thinking that perhaps I'll write a book or something about them, and so I could use some inside perspectives.”

“So why don't you just talk to the Wrights yourself?”

“I would,” Mr. Cash said. “But well, let's put it this way. Have you ever noticed that people do things differently when they know someone's watching?”

“Sure.”

“Or do you ever notice they don't always tell you the full truth when you ask about something directly?”

“All the time.”

Mr. Cash's lips pulled back in a smile. “That's why I would rather not speak with the Wrights myself. I want to know what they're really up to. So, I need someone else to keep an eye on them, someone they wouldn't think of as watching them all the time.”

“All right,” Daisy said. “That makes sense, then.”

He waited while she drank more of her float.

“You'll give me a nickel a day?”

“That's right. A nickel a day on top of whatever the Wrights pay you for the actual cleaning you would do.”

“And all I have to do is tell you stories about what happens while I'm there?”

“Correct again.”

Daisy considered the offer. A nickel a day!
On top of what the Wrights might give her!
She would be rich. And the best part was, she could spend time in the Wrights' shop with all those tools and machines and other shiny gizmos the adults talked so much about, and Timmy would turn all shades of green.

* * *

She met Mr. Wright that afternoon.

“You can call me Wilbur,” he said as he shook her hand. Can you imagine that, an adult actually shook her hand and said to call him by his first name? Wilbur was the kind of thin that made him look taller than he was, and the fact that he was bald over the top of his head made him seem taller still.

Wilbur didn't smile a lot because, as Daisy would learn later, he didn't have his teeth in, but he was big, and he moved with confidence like her daddy did. She liked him right away. And he seemed to like her, too. He said she had gumption, which she also took to be a good thing even if it did sound like a disease. He introduced Daisy to his brother, Orville, a quiet, serious man, who looked a lot like Wilbur, but with a bushy mustache and considerably more hair. And finally, he introduced her to several other men hovering over a big sheet of paper, scribbling notes and arguing about angles and pressures.

“Are they working on the contraption?” she asked.

“Contraption?”

“You know,” Daisy said, “the flying contraption that everyone talks about.”

Wilbur chuckled and patted her on the shoulder. “Yes, they're working on the contraption, all right—though we prefer to call it our little flying problem—which right now is focused on the fact that our wind tunnel is not working as well as we might like.”

“Wind tunnel? It sounds like a hole in the sky.”

“A hole in the sky,” Wilbur said with a pleasant drawl. “I like that, Daisy. But no, a wind tunnel isn't a hole in the sky. It's that big, long thing over there.”

He pointed to a wooden box that stood on a set of sturdy legs made of crossed lumber. It was the size of a casket and had a built-in fan at the front. A square glass window let you look inside, and a small engine sat on the ground beside it. “We want to use it to push air over things to see how they work.”

“So what's the problem?” she said.

“Well,” Wilbur sighed, “the air going in is too messy.”

Daisy wasn't certain what he meant, but she studied the wind tunnel as they returned to the front of the shop. “Flying would be so dreamy,” she said.

Wilbur gave her a look of keen assessment. “Yes,” he replied. “I believe it would.”

They stopped at the counter.

“I think you'll do just fine, Daisy,” Wilbur said. “How would you like to start right now?”

She nearly jumped for joy but managed to restrain herself. “I'm ready.”

Wilbur showed her where to clean and what to stay away from (which was basically the back part of the shop, where they kept all the paperwork about the contraption), then left her to her own devices. She dusted around corners and ran wet rags over bicycle racks full of Ramblers and Spaldings and Waverlys. She loved the advertisements for the Waverly.
America's Favorite!
it read, and it had a picture of a lady of refinement riding down a lane.

There was even a bicycle from a company in Middletown, Ohio. Imagine that. A place that made bicycles right there in Ohio. Daisy smiled. She felt like she might actually be able to go to Middletown someday.

Pleased with her work, Wilbur gave her a nickel. She twirled it between her fingers as she walked home. A whole nickel! And another in the morning when she spoke with Mr. Cash! She was going to be so rich.

It wasn't until later that night that Daisy realized she hadn't asked Mr. Cash about his magic.

 • • • 

Everything was just peachy for a couple weeks.

She cleaned, she kept her eyes open, and she reported to Mr. Cash every morning. She told him about Elmer, a cat that was adopting the shop as its mousing territory, and about a stranger who came into the shop to get his spokes fixed—tensioned, Mr. Taylor called it. Mr. Taylor—Charlie—was a nice man who worked in the bicycle shop. Orville and Wilbur were always out back, so Charlie seemed to keep the bicycle business all by himself. She told Mr. Cash about that. And she told him about the kites Wilbur had showed her one day. Mr. Cash was more interested in those kites than anything else.

“How are they shaped?” he asked. “What are they made of?”

When Daisy answered, he nodded, scowled, scratched his chin, or mumbled things to himself that she couldn't catch.

Something didn't feel right about the way Mr. Cash's eyes grew slitted and calculating when she talked about things in the Wrights' flying shop. That's why she didn't tell Mr. Cash about the drawings she had seen, or about the test plans the Wrights were changing for the next time they went to Kitty Hawk. That's why she only told him about a few of the models they were building.