McMummy (9 page)

Batty rested his weight against the pod. “Do you know what this means?” he asked thoughtfully.

Mozie couldn’t answer.

“This means that whatever was inside the pod got out.”

Mozie couldn’t answer.

“And if it got out, it can move.”

Mozie couldn’t answer. He wasn’t sure he would ever speak again.

“And if it can move, it’s alive.” Batty glanced over his shoulder at Mozie. “Let’s look for it, want to? Footprints! Look for footprints! We’ll track it down. Like Bigfoot.” Batty began circling the ruined pod. “Footprints. There have to be footprints … unless …” Batty’s shoulders sagged.

“Unless what, Bat?”

“Unless it was empty all the time.”

“I don’t think it was.”

“You know what this reminds me of? One time Benny Rogers—”

“I don’t think it was.”

“Let me finish. One time Benny Rogers came to my birthday party and I opened his present and the box was empty. Empty! Do you know what it feels like to open an empty birthday present?

“Later Benny’s mom explained that Benny’s little brother had taken my gift out to play with it and Benny’s mom didn’t know this and she wrapped up the box and sent Benny to the party. But can you imagine what it feels like to open an empty birthday present?”

He stretched out his arms to take in the pod.

“It feels exactly like this!”

T
HIS TIME WHEN MOZIE’S
mother awakened him in the middle of the night, Mozie knew what had happened.

“The professor,” he said.

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to talk to him, Mom. He’ll yell at me about the greenhouse being destroyed.”

“That wasn’t your fault.”

“I know, but—”

“You want me to tell him?”

He hesitated and sighed. “No, I’ll do it.”

He got up tiredly and padded barefooted to his mother’s bedroom. He picked up the phone.

“Hello,” he said.

“Howard Mozer?” It was the operator.

“Yes.”

“Go ahead, Professor Orloff, your party is on the line.”

“Allo! Allo! Are you there?”

“Yes,” said Mozie, “but something terrible’s happened.”

“No, iss not terrible, iss goot. The congress has accepted my proposal. Dey are prowiding me vith a huge greenhouse—huge, Hovard. I will grow wegetables for the vorld!”

“But your wegetables here …” Mozie began. He started over. “Professor, there was a storm—a killer storm, the newspapers are calling it.”

“Ya?”

“And McMummy is missing.”

“Vat? Vat iss missing?”

“The mummy pod. The pod! Remember I told you that there was a huge pod on one of the plants?”

“Ya?”

“Well, that pod is missing. I mean, the pod’s not missing, but what was inside it is missing.”

“Somevun stole the beans?”

“If that was what was inside.”

“Vat vas inside novun knows.” He paused. “But dey haff a goot meal, ya?”

The professor’s laughter boomed into the telephone at his joke. Mozie grimaced.

His mother said, “Find out when he’s coming back, Mozie.”

“Professor, when are you coming back?”

“I am not returning. De greenhouse is yours. Do vit it vat you—”

“I don’t want the greenhouse. It’s ruined. It’s—”

“It served its purpose. I am hanging up now. I meet my challenge. I prowide the vorld vith wegetables! Goot-bye! Goot-bye!”

The phone went dead, and Mozie stood for a moment as if in shock. He looked up at his mother. “He isn’t coming back.”

“At least he paid you in advance,” his mother said, trying to smile.

Mozie nodded. He started for his room and paused in the doorway with his back to his mother.

“Did you hear what I said about the pod being empty?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Professor Orloff made a joke of it. He said someone stole the beans. But, Mom—please don’t laugh when I tell you this. I can’t stand it if you laugh.”

“I won’t.”

“Batty and I found the pod this afternoon. It was crushed by a tree, but it was whole.”

“Go on,” his mother said when he paused.

“So we were going to cut it open—that’s why I wanted the butcher knife. I got Dad’s army knife and we cut a circle and looked inside and it was empty.”

“And?”

“And Batty thinks it was empty all along, but I don’t. Later I went back and I put my hand inside, and I could feel—well, ridges like, here and here.”

He pointed to the space between his arms and chest. “And I reached up and there was a narrowing, like for a neck, and then it widened as if for a head.”

He was still facing into the hallway.

“And I took my knife and I went around the whole upper half and I lifted it up—it was like lifting up the half-lid of a coffin. And in the case was—what it had felt like—the shape of a person.”

“Mozie.”

“What?”

“I don’t want you to go back to that greenhouse.”

“I might have to.”

“You don’t have to do anything. I wish now I’d never let you go in the first place. Look at me, Mozie.”

He turned.

“I don’t know if I can explain this, but a person can get so caught up in things—and I do this myself—so caught up in things that—”

She broke off. He could see she was having trouble expressing herself. That was a trait that they shared.

“Like last year I was in the mall,” she continued, but she was still struggling with what she had to say, “and there was a lot of noise, but over all that noise, as clear as I hear my own voice right now, I heard your father’s voice call, ‘Lily!’

“And I turned around and I expected to see him and when I didn’t see him, I was almost physically sick with disappointment. I could hardly drive home. Mozie, the imagination is a powerful, powerful force.”

He felt almost sick himself, but he said stubbornly, “I’m not imagining.”

She straightened. “Then that is all the more reason to stay away from the greenhouse.”

They watched each other for a moment. His mother was looking into his eyes as hard as if she were trying to see what was going on behind them.

She turned her eyes to the ceiling. She seemed to be reaching for some other argument. But when she looked back, she sighed. “Well, let’s go to bed. We can hash this out in the morning. Good night, Mozie.”

“Good night.”

“I
’VE COME FOR MY
dress,” Valvoline said. She spun into Crumb Castle.

Mrs. Mozer said, “I guess you’ll want to try it on.”

“Yes! I can’t wait to see myself in it.”

Mozie said quickly, “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

Mozie’s mother brought out the dress on a hanger. Mozie went through the kitchen and onto the back steps. He sat down. Pine Cone came out of the bushes and rubbed against his legs. Pine Cone had been very friendly since the storm.

“Ah, Pine,” he said. He put his hand on the cat’s side and felt the comfortable purr.

Inside his mother said, “Now, aren’t you glad you didn’t have me take it in? It fits perfectly.”

“Hold the mirror so I can see the back.” There was a pause, then an explosion of pleasure. “I love it. I love it. I want to show Mozie. Mozie, where are you?”

“I’m here,” he said, getting to his feet.

Valvoline swirled onto the back porch, creating a small eddy of sweet-scented air. Mozie’s head snapped up and his mouth opened.

Valvoline was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. She was radiant.

“Am I going to win or am I going to win?”

“Oh, you’ll win, all right.”

“I wish you were one of the judges.” She started back into the house, then turned. “Are you coming? Please—to cheer for me.”

Mozie hesitated.

“Your mom promised she’d come.”

“Oh, all right.”

“I’d hug you if I didn’t have on this beautiful, exhilarating, fascinating, pageant-winning dress!”

She disappeared into the house. Pine Cone came back for the last half of his neck rub. Mozie put his hand on Pine Cone’s side. He felt the deep humming, the purring.

Valvoline’s perfume hung in the still summer air.

Pine Cone’s purr grew louder. “Wow, you really are happy,” Mozie said, and then he realized the faint hum was not coming just from the cat.

He shook his head to clear it. This humming had been recurring in his mind since that moment when he had stood in the scented bower and first heard it. He imagined this was because that was the moment he became aware of things beyond his understanding, things alien to all he knew, a world where anything could happen.

Valvoline went out the front door and called, “See you at the pageant,” to Mozie. Mozie walked slowly around the house to watch her back out of the drive.

The hum was stronger now. It seemed to be coming from the woods.

Mozie stood without moving. Pine Cone came to join him and then stopped. The hair rose on Pine Cone’s back. Pine Cone let out a low yowling sound.

Mozie bent to pat him. “What’s wrong, Pine Cone? I’m not leaving. I’m just …”

Eyes wide, Pine Cone turned and ran for the house. Mozie could hear him scratching on the screen, begging to be let in.

Mozie didn’t have time for the cat. Already the sound was fading. He started toward the woods.

Mozie located the direction of the humming sound and quickened his pace. He broke into a run. He crossed the yard. At the edge of the forest, he paused. He listened.

Overhead a plane droned in the pattern for runway 28, blocking out the sound.

Mozie moved into the forest, slowly, stepping around the remnants of the storm. As he came to a fallen tree, he paused again.

The plane had landed, its engine no longer interfering with the hum. Mozie listened. A bird called somewhere in the forest. A woodpecker worked on a limb. But the humming sound was gone.

As Mozie turned to go back to the house, he glanced down and stopped. He saw something that did not quite fit. He had almost missed it. He would have if the sunlight hadn’t been shining on it. Slowly he dropped to his knees.

There, against the protruding limb of the fallen tree, was a scrap of green. In the sunlight that filtered through the trees it seemed to shimmer with a light of its own.

Mozie reached out and took the scrap of green in his hand. It lay on his palm, as delicate as a butterfly wing, thin as tissue paper. Drops of moisture, tiny beads, came from the torn end of the scrap.

Mozie drew in his breath. He had the feeling that he was the first person in the world to see this. He got to his feet, tense with excitement, and began to run deeper into the woods, heading for the ruined greenhouse.

His head turned from side to side as he ran, looking for another shimmering scrap of green that would lead him to …

He didn’t know what it was leading him to, but he knew it was something he had to see.

“M
OM, LOOK AT THIS!”
Mozie rushed into the living room. The screen door banged behind him.

“Mozie, I asked you not to slam—”

“I know, Mom, but look!”

His mother was at her sewing machine and he held out his hand:

Already the scrap of green was losing its special luster.

“What am I supposed to be looking at—lettuce?”

“Mom!” he said, shocked.

She pulled her glasses down from her head. She used these glasses for detail work. She peered at the scrap of green through the round lenses.

“Mom, I think it’s—Mom, I found this in the woods and … I mean, I know it doesn’t look like much now, but when I found it, Mom, it was sort of, I don’t know, luminous and …”

His words faded. Now she examined him through her thick lenses. “Mozie, is something wrong?”

“No, no. I just—Oh, never mind. Never mind!”

“Have you been back to that greenhouse?”

“No! Not all the way.”

He turned quickly and left the room. He thought perhaps she would follow him into the kitchen and “hash it out” as she liked to say, but she did not. The drone of the sewing machine began almost at once.

His mother loved to sew and often lost herself in what she was doing, caught up in the shimmering fabric, the design, the dream. The only time she had been truly angry with Mozie was when she came home from shopping one October afternoon and found Batty at her sewing machine.

Batty and Mozie were going to be matching monsters for Halloween, and Batty wanted to run up some hoods for them. Mozie had said, “Mom wouldn’t want us to use her machine.” They were seven at the time, but Mozie was sure of what he was saying.

“She’ll never know. Anyway, I sew all the time at home.”

“Then let’s go to your house.”

“It’s locked,” Batty said quickly—too quickly it seemed to Mozie. He sat down. “I always have wanted to work one of these.”

He turned on the light, and his face seemed to turn on at the same time. Mozie looked out the window to see if his mother was in sight.

“How do you get this up? How do you get this up?” Batty asked.

“I thought you said you could sew.”

“I can, if I can get this up. All machines aren’t alike, you know.”

Mozie had the suspicion that this was Batty’s first stint at any sewing machine, but he lifted the presser foot as he had seen his mother do. Then he went quickly back to the window to check for his mother.

Batty began to sew. He sewed in fits and starts, sometimes running off the cloth in his enthusiasm. Mozie peered critically over his shoulder at the tiny little jagged seam Batty was making.

“I love this,” Batty said. He made his way around the first hood and stuffed it in his mouth, so his hands would be free for the second.

He was making a slightly less jagged seam around the second hood and was almost finished when he heard, “What is going on here?”

Batty and Mozie looked up to see Mrs. Mozer in the doorway. Batty’s mouth fell open in shock and his hood fell to his lap.

“We were sewing costumes,” Mozie said. He was glad Batty was at the machine instead of himself, but he knew that wouldn’t count for much with his mother.

“Do you realize that machine is the most valuable thing I own?”

“I’m sorry,” Batty said. “I’m sorry.” He got up so quickly he tipped over his chair.