Hunter Moran Digs Deep (6 page)

I slide into a chair behind a set of drums and smash the cymbals with a drumstick a couple of times. I add some music from inside my head.

Very satisfying, I have to say.

And Sister Ramona is back. “You're a born musician,” she says.

Amazing.

And then I hear it. The shovel. Zack's voice: “Ow, Yulefski. You nearly knocked my head off.”

Quickly I give the drums a
rat-tat-tat
.

Sister reaches out. “Hold the sticks this way,” she says. She puts on some music. “Feel the rhythm. Play with it.”

And so it goes. I feel. I play.

They dig.

Drumming is easier. It has a great sound. And I don't have to worry about snakes. Poor Zack.

Then someone knocks on the Music Room door.

Sister grabs the drumstick out of my hand. “Just in case,” she whispers.

But it's William. He has specks of green paint, like freckles, all over his face, and a smear of gray on one cheek. He's holding a huge drum in both arms. He looks shocked to see me.

“What would I do without you, William?” Sister Ramona turns to me. “You're so lucky to have a brother like William. He's my best helper.”

I try to look lucky.

William, with the spots on his face and dirt in his ears, smirks.

Sister waves her hand. “The drum goes in the corner,” she tells him. “And that's all for today.”

I can hear arguing coming from the coal cellar. I give the drums a good workout and throw in five or six
blams
on the cymbals.

William isn't fooled. He looks toward the door to the coal room.

But before he can say a word, Sister Ramona reaches
into her pocket and pulls out a hairy-looking Life Saver. “Payment for your work today,” she tells him.

William takes the Life Saver, looking as if he'll be sick, as Sister pats my shoulder. “Don't you worry, Hunter,” she says. “I have one for you, too, at the end of the lesson.”

William smirks again. He marches out the door and upstairs to freedom.

Another noise from the coal room. It sounds as if someone's hit the cement wall with the shovel.

“Will you watch—” Zack begins, and cuts off as Yulefski says a loud
“Shush!”

“Did you hear something?” Sister Ramona asks nervously.

“An echo,” I say. “Or maybe William talking to himself. He does that a lot.”

“Lesson's over anyway,” Sister says, and we leave together. She's too frazzled to lock the door behind her, so Zack and Yulefski are free . . .

Almost.

We pass Sister Appolonia on the way down to the Music Room.

“This is your one chance, Hunter Moran,” she says. Her eyes look like steel ready to shoot electric rays. “Sister Ramona says you have raw talent.”

I can tell she doesn't believe it.

I don't believe it, either.

Zack ducks his head; he turns his snicker into a sneeze.

But Yulefski nods. “I know it. Hunter will probably be a DJ in a few years.”

I bite my lip. How did we ever get involved with her?

And the money for lessons! I count on my fingers. Three bucks? Three-fifty?

Sheesh.

We knock on the Music Room door. “It's Hunter Moran for a drum lesson,” I say. “I think Sister Appolonia might be looking for you again.”

Sister sighs and hurries upstairs. Zack and Yulefski dive
into the coal cellar, banging the door behind them. Dirt trails from the shovel; I spread it around with my feet.

So there I am. Trapped for the next hour. Beating drums, banging cymbals, with Sister Ramona yelling “Yowdie Yo!” every few minutes.

But something strange is happening. I can feel the beat of the drum in my head, and in my chest. It's actually soothing. No, that's the wrong word. It's better than that. It feels pretty exciting.

But then Sister Ramona raises one hand, fingers to her lips, tilting her head toward the coal room. “I think we have a killer here. I don't know much about him, but his name is Fred, and he speaks a strange language.”

Does Sister look sad? Actually, she might even look terrified.

I'd be terrified, too, if I thought there was a killer in the next room.

I have to tell her, no matter what.

I say the whole thing in a rush. “My dog, Fred, fell down the old coal chute. He's mean and miserable and we call him a killer.”

Sister thinks about it, then figures out what actually happened. She grabs the drumsticks. With her eyes closed, she gives them a couple of
rat-tat-tat
s. “Yowdie Yo. We're all saved.”

“I guess so,” I say.

I take a quick look at her, but her head is turned to one side. Is she laughing?

I listen to the faint sound of the shovel.

Sister hits the cymbals with the drumstick. “Everyone thinks Lester Tinwitty's treasure is in the coal room—whoever's in there now, and the three from last Friday.”

Friday?

That wasn't us.

Bradley and his partner brothers?

Someone else?

“But Sister Appolonia read that old book,” Sister Ramona goes on. She leans forward, her lips barely moving. “The page with the best clue is torn out, and I have it.”

She smiles.

A secretive smile.

I lean forward, my mouth dry. “Where . . .” I begin.

Sister's eyes seem to go to the ceiling. “We'd better stop now,” she says. “The lesson is over for today.”

“But . . .” I begin.

“Tomorrow we'll listen to some jazz. We'll hear some of the greatest drummers. And you'll think about being one of them.”

I stand and slide the drumsticks back on the shelf.

Sister points to the coal room door. “We'll leave everything unlocked. When they get tired of digging for nothing, they'll let themselves out.”

She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a couple of dusty red Life Savers. She pops one in her mouth and hands me the other. “Good job, Hunter.” She motions for me to go out the door ahead of her.

I don't go home, though. I head upstairs and dive around the corner, watching as she walks down the hall. Then—I can't believe it—she gives a little skip and disappears into the office.

I shake my head, then double back downstairs to knock on the coal room door.

They slide out, filthy. Yulefski's teeth are black. It looks as if she's been eating the dirt. They both look a little irritable.

“We have to search,” I begin.

“What do you think we've been doing?” Zack asks, rubbing his hands. “Two steps down. All around.”

“And something else,” Yulefski says. “Someone else was digging around in there. I nearly fell into the hole.”

I take a breath, wave my hand, and tell them what's what.

We start to look. The room is filled with stuff Sister Ramona must have collected for the last fifty years. There's a picture on the shelf. I take a look, and then another. It's a swing band; and there's Sister Ramona, a hundred years younger than she is now, playing the drums.

Actually, she looks great. Hard to believe!

Zack and Yulefski leave fingerprints on every piece of
paper they touch. I flip through music books—operas, sonatas at the bottom of one stack, country and western, filling a shelf. There's even a box filled with old Life Savers.

This could take all night.

And then I remember. “Sister said something,” I begin slowly.

“Spit it out,” Zack says.

“ ‘You don't have to dig for this one,' she told me, but then she closed her mouth.”

“Like a clam,” Yulefski says.

“Right.”

Zack runs his hand over his face, rubs at his eyes. “If you don't dig deep, then you have to dig high,” he says.

“Whoever heard—”

But the three of us look up, like puppets on strings.

And what do we see?

Over our heads, the light glows in a big opaque hanging lamp.

We have to stand on something. Zack begins to move Sister Ramona's desk. It screeches horribly.

“If we get caught . . .” I glance toward the open Music Room door.

“We won't get caught,” Zack says. “We'll just heave ourselves up there and grab on to the light.”

“Why not?” I say, getting into it.

“Way to go, guys.” Yulefski digs at her braces with one filthy finger.

Zack picks up where I left off. “The table will be right below us, like a safety net. We can reach up into the lamp, take a look at the paper, memorize the clues, and stick it right back in . . .” He raises his shoulders. “Neat, right?”

I help him screech the desk a little farther. “Nothing to it.”

The desk stops moving. Zack shoves harder. “It's caught somehow,” he says.

“Man up,” I say. I move next to him and we give a gigantic shove.

Crack
.

The leg of the desk breaks off and clatters to the floor. The desk leans to one side like a ship sinking in the middle of the ocean.

We look at each other in desperation.

“Keep going,” Zack says, and gives the desk a gentle push. “We'll worry about putting this thing back together later on when we're calmer.”

And that's what we do. We inch along until we're directly under the light. “That should do it,” Zack says, looking up and squinting.

We stop, take a breath, and we're ready. “I'll go up,” I say.

Zack nods.

“I agree,” Yulefski says. “After all, I have blisters all over my fingers.”

“Maybe you should go home,” Zack says. “Put your hand in a sling.”

Yulefski laughs.

Amazing.

Here I go. It's not as easy as I thought. It's like climbing backward up a slide. And worse, when I manage to get to the top, waving my arms like antennas, I'm still not high enough to grab the light fixture.

I slide down to the floor. “We need something else,” I tell them.

We look around. The drum would be perfect. “I'll set
it on the very edge of the desk”—I give it a
rat-tat-tat
with my fingers—“and climb right up.”

“You'll put your foot through it,” Zack says. “Bad enough we've ruined Sister's desk.”

He's right. I know he is.

And I have to say I'm getting fond of that drum. I snap my fingers. The answer is in front of us. Almost in front. It's in the hallway alongside Sister Appolonia's old bed.

“One of those barrels,” Zack says.

We give each other a high five, then spend the next five minutes rolling the barrel into the Music Room while Yulefski sits back and watches us. The barrel is heavy enough to be holding a body.

We stand in front of Sister Ramona's desk, ready to hoist it up.

I glance around. Actually, we've gotten the room into a bit of a mess. The desk leans on three legs, a piece of the tile floor has somehow cracked, and the barrel seems to be trailing dirt along behind it.

There's no help for it.

As soon as we get the money, we'll buy Sister Ramona a new desk. It'll be terrific, with a leather top and six legs. We'll throw in a new floor, too.

We try to heave the barrel onto the desk. It seems as if it's stuck to the floor. It probably weighs about two hundred pounds.

We sink down, leaning against the wall. What to do?

“It'll have to be the drum,” Zack says. “You'll have to stand on the rim, and”—he holds his hands up to both sides of his head—“be careful.”

The drum is lighter; it rolls along without a problem. Up and up, on top of the desk, Zack holding it steady, while I take off my shoes, just in case.

And then I climb, perching myself on the rim, and reach up gingerly. Almost there.

I stand on tiptoes, teetering, and grab the edge of the light. It swings, I swing. And then, with one hand, I reach inside. I come out with a handful of dried bugs and dust.

No paper. Not even a scrap.

I hop off the rim and slide down the desk.

We sit there, defeated, shoulders slumped. I take a breath. “We'd better clean up this mess.”

We roll the drum back into place, which seems to take forever. Then we drag the three-legged desk back to the front of the room.

“All set,” Zack says as he props the leg beneath it.

Except for the barrel.

We begin to heave it across the room. But it doesn't want to be heaved.

“It's coming apart,” Zack says.

We look behind us. Not only is there a pile of dirt, but the whole bottom has come off.

Zack grabs my shoulder. “Look.”

I look. It's not dirt; it's grass seed. Tons of grass seed.

But that's not what Zack is staring at. It's not what I'm staring at, either. Mixed in with grass seed are torn—up papers, old, yellow . . .

“Yee-ha,” says Zack.

We pick through the seed. We dump the barrel on its side so we don't miss anything. We spread each piece of paper out carefully, almost as if we're seeding a lawn.