Saving Lucas Biggs (16 page)

“History,” I gasped. “History, history, history.”

“I know,” said Aunt Bridey. “Oh child, I know.”

Sobs welled up from some deep place inside me, and suddenly, I was crying and I couldn’t stop. It was like the horror of it all, of everything that had happened in the hunting lodge, fell on me all at once, like a big, smothering heap of coal dust.

“That man,” I wailed, “that man was dead!”

Aunt Bridey just held on tighter and rocked me like a baby in her arms. I don’t know how long we sat that way, me shaking and crying, her rocking and rocking, because eventually, I guess I fell asleep. When I woke up, I was in Aunt Bridey’s spare-room bed, and morning light, lemonade colored and full of dancing dust, was beaming in through the curtains and across the heap of soft quilts that covered me.

For a few sweet seconds, I didn’t remember a thing, just lay blinking into the light like a little kid. I gazed at the floating dust motes. I gazed at the flowered wallpaper and at the tall posts of the bed. Then I remembered.

“Josh!” I yelped, tossing off the quilts and swinging my legs over the edge of the bed.

“Stop!”

It was Aunt Bridey, tall in the doorway, her green eyes blazing. She carried a tray of food.

“But we have to save Aristotle!”

“Of course you do,” she scoffed. “So it’d be a fine idea for you to jump out of bed and go tearing out of here to do it light-headed, weak, and without a thing in your stomach.”

“I’m not weak!” I protested. “I’m not light-headed.”

But even as I spoke the words, I realized that I was both of those things and a little short of breath, too. The room looked slightly fuzzy around the edges, and the roses on the wallpaper seemed to be swaying as though swept by a summer breeze. I pulled my legs back onto the bed, leaned against the headboard, and shut my eyes.

“Geez, I’m lame,” I said.

“Lame? You hurt your leg last night?”

“No. At least, I don’t think so, but since I seem to be a total idiotic wreck, who knows?”

Aunt Bridey set the tray, which held a pot of tea, a cup, and a breathtakingly big plate of eggs, toast, and bacon, on the table next to the bed.

“No, I just meant that first, I cry like a baby. Complete meltdown. Then I wake up all dizzy and trembly like an old lady with the flu. I just thought I was tougher than this.”

Aunt Bridey handed me a cup of tea.

“Don’t be foolish, girl. You
are
tougher than this. Drink.”

I drank. I’d never been much of a tea drinker at home, but with that honey-gold tea of Aunt Bridey’s running down my throat, I felt some of my strength come trickling back.

“Yeah, right,” I said. “Josh must think I’m the biggest loser.”

“He might think that,” said Aunt Bridey sharply, “but not because of your behavior last night. I told him what I’ll tell you: yes, the shock of the murder and your disappointment at not stopping it hit you hard, but mostly it was simple overstaying.”

“What?”

Aunt Bridey took a hand mirror from the dresser behind her and held it up to my face.

“Look at your eyes. Glazed. Too big. Too bright. Like a person with a fever, which you’ll also likely get if you haven’t already.”

I blinked at my reflection, which had certainly seen better days. Aunt Bridey was right about my eyes. I was pale, too, and it wasn’t only in contrast to my dyed mud-brown hair.

“It’s time,” said Aunt Bridey.

“Time for what?”

Aunt Bridey snorted impatiently.

“It’s
time.
Our time, trying to push you out, send you on home where you belong. I told you that your body would know when it was time to go back. Well, it’s starting to know. Now, eat.”

I shoved in a forkful of eggs, bit off a corner of buttered toast. I wasn’t about to admit it to bossy Aunt Bridey, but they both tasted as golden and delicious as the tea.

“But I can’t leave before we save Aristotle,” I protested, my mouth full.

Aunt Bridey shrugged.

“You have a little more time, but history doesn’t like you much right now. The longer you stay, the sicker you’ll get. Only way to keep it in check, as much as you can, is to eat plenty, drink plenty, especially good potent tea, and get sleep when you can. Pick that fork up, girl. Keep eating.”

“I
am
eating,” I said, crunching my way down a slice of bacon that tasted like greased heaven. “But I need to talk to Josh. We have to make a plan to break Aristotle out of that infirmary and get him out of town before, before—”

I couldn’t say it.

“
Eat
. Josh left you a note about all that. When your plate’s clean and that pot’s empty, you can read it.”

Under Aunt Bridey’s watchful eye, I ate. And ate. And ate. Finally, I held up my clean plate for Aunt Bridey’s inspection. She looked unimpressed. I scowled, thinking that I could pull a rabbit out of the empty teapot and Aunt Bridey would still look unimpressed. Then I thought of something that I knew would impress her.

“You know what, Aunt Bridey? Last night, Josh was, like, dazzlingly brave. The way he came flying out of that dumbwaiter and slammed into Biggs like a freight train? He was amazing. He was
fierce
.”

Aunt Bridey sniffed.

“Naturally, he was. That boy’s got more courage in his pinkie finger than most people have in their entire bodies. Now tell me something I don’t know.”

It was clear that thinking of something Aunt Bridey didn’t already know would take hours, possibly even years. I said, “How about if I just get dressed instead?”

She smiled. “Now, that’s the first good idea you’ve had all morning.”

Josh

1938

I WAS A LITTLE NERVOUS, WAITING for Margaret O’Malley in the abandoned shed down the street from the infirmary among the paint rollers and mop buckets and rusty barbed wire. Not because I was afraid she’d stand me up. I knew she’d come. She was Margaret O’Malley. I just didn’t know what kind of shape she’d be in when she arrived. Truth be told, when I’d left her the night before, she hadn’t looked too good, and she wasn’t making much sense.

“Nice glasses,” I said, when she slipped in. “You look like—”

“I know. Aunt Bridey told me. A movie star,” she interrupted.

“—one of the three blind mice,” I finished.

She grabbed an old boot from a pile beside the door and threw it at me. This was reassuring, even though I was surprised when she missed. Maybe, I told myself, the sunglasses had thrown off her aim.

“Let’s go to the infirmary,” I said, “and reconnoiter.”

“First, let’s have a look around,” she replied.

“Actually,” I started to explain, “that’s what ‘reconnoiter’
means
—”

She gave me a shove and snickered. “I know what it means! Gotcha!”

The Victory infirmary wasn’t anything special, just a two-story brick building near the train depot. Through the windows, you could see the front desk, a couple of chairs, and the elevator.

In the rear, there was a beat-up old service door.

“What’s that for?” asked Margaret, pointing to the crate by the back steps.

“It’s where the milkman leaves the milk,” I said, “for Cookie.”

“Who’s Cookie?” she asked.

“The cook,” I said. “I met him while Preston was here.”

“How many people work here?” wondered Margaret.

“Not many,” I replied. “Even back before the massacre, Doc O’Malley usually just went to people’s houses. But there’s one nurse, or two if you count the lady who snoozes at the desk, an orderly, a cleaning lady, and Cookie. Boy, that milk crate looks like a handy-dandy place to plant the explosive device.”

Margaret was quiet for a few seconds. I guess she was starting to realize I’d already done a load of reconnoitering, sometimes known as looking around, without her. Maybe another girl would’ve been happy that her friend had gone out and done so much work ahead of time. Margaret was not that girl.

“What time did you get here this morning anyway? The crack of dawn?” she snapped, whipping off her sunglasses and narrowing her sizzling eyes at me.

“Uh, yeah, w-well,” I stammered, “after Biggs came to tell Luke about his dad, I was so riled up that I couldn’t sleep, and I just wanted to get on with things, you know, do some pre-reconnoitering I guess you could say, just laying the groundwork so to speak, and so I—”

“It was
before
the crack of dawn, wasn’t it?” she demanded. “You left me a note telling me to meet you at ten a.m., came here in the pitch-dark, and started doing it all without me.”

“Aunt Bridey said you needed your sleep after, well, everything that happened, and with the overstaying. I just wanted to make sure we had time,” I protested. “After all, you’re . . .”

“What? Weak? Babyish? A girl?”

“No!”

“What then?”

I just hauled off and said it: “Running out of time.”

All she had to say to that was, “Oh.” Like it hit her in a funny place, too.

Then she said, “Hold on, partner,
explosive
device? We’re bombing the infirmary? No offense, but that sounds really stupid. And illegal. And won’t Aristotle be
in
the infirmary?”

“We’re not using a bomb. We’re using a blasting cap,” I said.

“Right,” she muttered. “Oh. That’s totally different. Sure. A blasting cap. Whatever that is.”

“I’ll filch one from the mine,” I explained. “When it blows in the milk crate, it’ll be our diversion. So we can get Aristotle down the elevator—supposing he’s on the second floor, if that’s where he is—and out the door, and onto the donkey.”

“Aunt Bridey’s short-legged donkey?”

“No, the rocket-powered donkey the little men from space are bringing to take Aristotle to Neptune,” I said.

“Ha, ha,” she laughed, and then choked, and then threw a coughing fit worthy of Preston.

“Margaret?” I said uncertainly. By now, we had reconnoitered our way back to the abandoned shed, and I whisked her inside. When she could breathe again, she was white as a ghost and I was considering checking
her
into the infirmary.

“Overstaying,” she gasped, catching her breath as she sank to the floor. “Listen. If something happens—if time runs out, and I’m so weak I can’t—make it there myself—get me to the white gazebo on the hillside above town. It’s where I have to be—at midnight—to get back.”

“Okay, Margaret,” I stammered. “I will—but how will I know?”

“You’ll know,” she said, grimacing. And then after a pause, she said, “Hey! Hold on! Did you say Biggs came to Luke’s tent to tell him about Aristotle?”

And for some reason, as we sat there amid stripes of sunlight falling through the dusty windows onto the floor around us, I punched the wall. It scared Margaret. It scared me. And it hurt.

“He lied, Margaret!” I said. “He lied about everything. Biggs told Luke the worst lies anybody could’ve told him. It was almost like he knew what Luke would believe, and what would do the most damage.”

“He told Luke,” Margaret began quietly, “that Mr. Ratliff really never planned to compromise at all. He said Mr. Ratliff was actually one hundred percent behind the detectives, and the rules, and the guns. He said Mr. Ratliff wanted to teach the miners, especially Aristotle, a lesson.”

“Yeah—right—how did you know?” I asked. But I guessed the answer to my own question. “Oh—because all Biggs’s lies are going to turn into what everybody believes about Aristotle, now and for all time, all the way to your time?”

Margaret shrugged sadly.

“You should have heard the way Biggs told it, though,” I said. “Like he’d made up the whole story especially for Luke. And you should’ve seen how Luke listened. Like he’d been waiting to hear it. Biggs just waltzed right into his tent at one in the morning, while people were still running around in the streets hollering about the murder. He sat down in Aristotle’s chair at their breakfast table and made Luke sit down across from him.”

“Did they invite you in?” Margaret asked. “How did you hear all this?”

“Stuck my head under the tent flap and eavesdropped,” I confessed. “Flap-dropped. Something.”

“Good boy,” said Margaret with a sad smile.

“Biggs told Luke that Aristotle’s plan never had a chance of working, and didn’t deserve to work anyway, because it was pathetic and weak. And Luke looked at him and said, ‘You’re right. I told him we had to fight.’ And Biggs said, ‘Smart boy.’”

“Biggs doesn’t just want to beat the miners,” mused Margaret softly. “He doesn’t just want to ruin Aristotle. He wants to keep Aristotle’s son as a trophy. Luke is the icing on his horrible cake.”

“Then Biggs told Luke the rest of his lies. He said Mr. Ratliff ordered Aristotle to head back to Canvasburg and tell the shiftless miners it was all over. Biggs said Ratliff ordered Aristotle to admit to all of Canvasburg that he’d been wrong from the start with his letters and his protesting, and to tell them it was time to go back to the mine, with a pay cut for punishment, and to be thankful for that much. Biggs told Luke his daddy turned as yellow-bellied as a sapsucker. He told Luke Aristotle demanded ten thousand dollars on the spot and a mule to ride over the mountain. He wanted to scram then and there and run away from everything, even Luke. Biggs told Luke that was when Ratliff laughed in his father’s face and called him a coward. And then, Biggs said to Luke, your daddy went loony and killed Theodore Ratliff.”