Horns & Wrinkles (26 page)

Turning toward our lantern, I broke it open too.

The two shooting stars did several figure eights of joy before whizzing over our heads and out of the cave. We were watching them go when Reliable St. John called out, "I'm sure the door will stay open forever."

In one mad dash we raced out of the cave and into the great outdoors, which on that day seemed far greater and fresher and grander than ever before. While we'd been underground, the first green day of spring had sprung. Leaves had popped out everywhere. All around me stood kids in tattered, ripped clothes, who were laughing as if green were the funniest color in the world.

Way below us, at the bottom of the valley, the Mississippi flashed in the sunlight. From a distance, it looked blue, not brown, and pretty as a flower. We headed that way, calling hello to the birds and trees and anything else that cared to listen. We sniffed deep on every breeze that came our way. Everything we heard made us laugh. We headed down there arm in arm and wearing one grin that was twenty-nine people, two river trolls, and one cricket wide.

Back at the highway the old lady and her brother were waiting in the van. The silver ring was back on her left hand, and her right hand wore a stone glove that held a rock feather. When I asked about the rock birds, she pointed at the ground and said, "Back where they belong."

The old man offered us all a ride home, and how we all fit in the back of that van, I can't say. The answer to that goes beyond geometry. There was even room for Stump to lie down on the floor so that he wouldn't scare people in passing cars. Duckwad could have joined him. There was room. But he said he'd had enough sunlight for that year and crossed the highway to wade into the river without even waving goodbye. The river took him back without a ripple of complaint, which goes to show just how big a river it is.

Two kids hopped off in Big Rock, and the rest of us hung on till Blue Wing, where the old man had to pull over every few blocks to drop someone off. Excited shouts of "I'm home!" filled the air behind us.

A handful of kids couldn't find their families. Too much time had gone by and their parents had moved away or passed on. We delivered them to Sheriff Tommy Pope, who told them not to worry. The sheriff's department kept a missing-person file on every one of them, and the files listed where their families had moved to or the location of their nearest living relative.

By the time we got to Duke's house, the whole town was abuzz. We trooped through the open back door, the old lady leading the way with the stone feather. She had Grandpa B back to breathing in a jiffy. Tipping his hat to us, he stretched and said he'd never felt more rested. Aunt Phyllis and Uncle Norm took the news about Duke way better than I'd expected. They didn't even mind that he couldn't be bothered to come say goodbye. Actually, they looked kind of relieved.

Jim Dandy claimed that he'd always known there was something familiar about Duke. All three crickets called out, "No, there wasn't!" Biz took off in a lather the instant he heard of Duckwad's return, crying out, "He's got a head start on finding our fathers." Stump and Jim Dandy streaked after him, though Stump did pause long enough at the back door to say, "Thanks."

Such thoughtfulness is rare, and I knew I was going to miss him.

The deputy and Dr. E. O. Moneybaker followed the trolls, in hot pursuit but losing sight of them before they'd even cleared the backyard fence. Men of science and the law just didn't have eyes for anything rivery. Whether women of science and the law had any sharper vision, I can't say. But I can testify that despite failing eyesight, Grandpa B saw Biz, Jim Dandy, and Stump's escape just fine, even cheered them on. Dr. Moneybaker stormed back to the house and phoned One-shot, ordering up a fresh batch of photographs. One-shot's answer made the doctor gripe, "I knew that!"

Old Duff couldn't stop wagging his tail, and the sparrow perched atop Uncle Norm's head lit out the back door as fast as wings could carry him. The old lady and her brother cleared out pretty quick too, claiming they were needed elsewhere, but before they drove off, the old lady placed her hands on my shoulders for one last peek into my eyes. When I checked out her eyes, all I saw was the river, peaceful and lovely as a daydream.

"Crickets?" I asked, wondering what she was seeing. A mysterious smile had curled the corners of her mouth.

"Among other things."

And, patting my cheek, she was gone before I could quiz her further.

Then Grandpa was pulling me home by the arm. When we got back to my house, Mom and Dad pretty near hugged us to pieces before grounding me forever. Even my sisters seemed glad to see me. Mom had been making them feed flies to Three, down in the basement. When I asked if they'd heard anything from Lottie, they rolled their eyes and reminded me that turtles couldn't talk.

Nobody knew what to make of Uncle Floyd. He kept gawking at everything, and bumping into what he wasn't gawking at, and with a goofy grin asking what year it was. According to Grandpa, Uncle Floyd had been gone one hundred and fifty-five years, though he barely looked a day beyond sixteen.

We dressed him up in some of Dad's clothes and set up a cot for him in the basement. When Grandpa lobbied for Uncle Floyd to bunk at his house, Mom exercised veto power, saying that if he was ever going to adjust, he needed to be around people his own age.

"He'd have to set up house in the cemetery for that," Grandpa said.

"You know what I mean," Mom firmly answered. "He looks the same age as Fran and Lillie."

"How you going to pass him off?" Grandpa asked, hanging tough.

"We'll say he's a cousin visiting from Kalamazoo," Mom said, chock-full of surprising answers.

So we had a new member of our family, one who kept us on our toes. He couldn't quit trying to talk to people on TV, or jumping up every time the phone rang, or leaning out a window whenever a jet rumbled by overhead. There were some pluses, though. For one thing, my sisters spent so much time being embarrassed about having a new man around the house that they couldn't be bothered with worrying about me and Three.

All in all, I was pretty well satisfied with events. Maybe that explains what I did several nights later when I heard a
scritch-scritch-scritch
at my bedroom window. Checking, I found Stump clinging to the catalpa tree, looking terrified of heights. I laughed to see him, then sobered when I noticed Biz and Jim Dandy standing below. Duckwad was nowhere in sight.

"We've a favor to ask," Stump said, sheepish about it.

"How big?"

"Not so. We need you to look inside a cabin for us. Shouldn't be too dangerous."

"What's in the cabin?" I asked.

"Maybe our fathers."

"All of them?"

"Could be. You know what it's like trying to figure out what a cricket's saying."

"Not hard, not hard, not hard," sang the crickets on their shoulders.

I crawled out the window before our talking woke someone who might remind me that I was grounded forever. I didn't even ask why they couldn't look in the cabin themselves. That question got answered about two hours later, when we beached our dugout canoes on a sandbar far above Big Rock.

There was a cabin, but between it and us was a ripple in the river that the trolls didn't want any part of. I wasn't too thrilled with it myself. Midnight had come and gone by then, and a quarter-moon gave off enough light to make the ripple wink at us. It wasn't the kind of wink that left anyone feeling comfortable.

"What's that ripple?" I asked.

"It's nothing to worry about," Jim Dandy promised, silky as ever.

"The blue-wing's spell stops there," Stump whispered at my side. "We daren't go beyond it, but it shouldn't be any problem for you."

"Take this," Biz squeaked, holding out an old flashlight.

The flashlight was identical to the old man's flashlight, all the way down to the Day-Glo atomic sticker on its end, but I didn't ask where they'd gotten it. Turning on its beam, which was as bright as a car's headlights, I advanced along the shore with three trolls in tow.

Stopping short of the ripple, I could hear the river rushing over something, but when I shined my light on the water, all I saw was sandy bottom. The line made by the ripple stretched out of sight across the river. At my feet, where the line met the shore, it turned into a mound of sand about the size of what a mole might push up. It cut straight across the island, headed toward the bluffs.

Fifty yards beyond the ripple sagged a tumbledown log cabin that looked as though it'd seen a hundred floods come and go.

"Why would your fathers go there?" I asked.

The three river trolls shook their heads in total bewilderment.

"Emeralds," Reliable St. John answered for them.

"Diamonds," Biz's cricket sang.

"Gold doubloons," added Jim Dandy's cricket.

All lies, of course, but to find out otherwise, I'd have to hike over there in person.

I did feel a tiny tingle as I stepped over the ripple, but other than that, I could have been stepping over a sidewalk crack. The river and valley and sky on the other side looked exactly the same, as did the trolls standing behind me. Jogging, I soon reached the cabin and shined my light through a glassless side window. Inside was nothing but one small room with rotted-out floorboards and junk deposited by the last flood that passed through—pop cans, paper plates, plastic spoons. There was no sign of missing troll fathers or of anything that might have lured them.

Turning around, I was about to call out that there was nothing there when I saw it.

A hole was opening at the base of a huge old cottonwood tree twenty steps behind Stump, Biz, and Jim Dandy.

A rock troll was rumbling out of the hole.

He held a pitchfork. He wore a bib. He looked as though Bodacious Deepthink might be his cute little sister.

I didn't need to shout "Look out!" The only thing quiet about a rock troll that humongous was his manners.

"PUDDING!" he slobbered. "PUDDING!"

"We're not sorry. We're not sorry," sobbed the lucky cave crickets.

Backed up against the ripple, Stump, Biz, and Jim Dandy had nowhere to go but the river. They might have made it too, except that Jim Dandy fainted—this time for real—and Biz thought he was stone again. Something told me they weren't the first river trolls to freeze on that exact same spot. It appeared the crickets' lies had led us into a trap.

True blue to the end, Stump struggled to drag his friends into the river, but there wasn't time. The rock troll was closing fast.

With a whoop, I came running.

That slowed the rock troll for maybe a split second, to laugh. I was about to hurl the flashlight at him, but before I let go, the light beam raked across his face, blinding him. Raising a hand to shield his eyes, he tripped.

"Get down!" I yelled.

Stump shoved Biz on top of Jim Dandy, then dove to sand himself.

The rock troll sailed over them, shooting past the ripple. The bloodcurdling scream he let out at that instant made my ears flap.

"COLD!"

As he tumbled and twisted on the far side of the ripple, his feet splashed into the river and a block of ice instantly formed around them. His wails and writhing went on until he burst into a crackling flame, which according to the old lady was the only way he could keep warm. As he lifted off the ground, his flames grew brighter. In less than a minute he was blinding as a shooting star. Then he began to shrink until, in no time at all, he was small as a shooting star. Pointing skyward, he zoomed out of sight.

Not a one of us blinked or twitched a tail. We were all leaning so far back that we almost toppled over. At last Stump said in a hushed voice, "Is that what happened to our fathers?"

Lost in our own thoughts, each of us gazed upward as if seeing the night sky for the first time.

"That or pudding," Biz squeaked, breaking our trance.

"Hey!" Jim Dandy said, coming to life. "That means we did it. We found 'em."

And then they danced. And sang. I joined in too.