Scumble (21 page)

“Wow! It's a . . . It's a . . .” Rocket scratched his head.

“You can't tell?” Winona gave him another thump with her wrench.

“
Oof!
Ow! Is it a donkey?” he asked, laughing again as he wrestled the wrench out of Winona's hand. I stared up at the sculpture too. I didn't laugh. I recognized the shape immediately: rounded back end, tufted tail, branching antlers sprouting from between two long ears . . .

“It's a jackalope!” I said, remembering the broken magnet Fedora bought at Willie's Five & Dime.

Winona nodded at me, beaming.

“See?” she said to Rocket, grabbing back her wrench and jabbing him in the stomach with it. “Another
artist
can see my vision right away!”

“Is that what you are, Ledger?” Rocket asked. I looked up, thinking Rocket was razzing me the same way he'd razzed Winona. But even though his smile was wicked and toothy, I could tell from the look in his eyes that his question was no joke.

I shrugged, even as my face went red.

“Don't worry, Ledge.” Rocket winked. “You've got a long life ahead of you—you'll figure out how to put yourself together.”

 

The following Monday, the last giant butterfly emerged from its chrysalis, and Rocket brought me a another envelope from the post office. My pulse raced as I recognized SJ's handwriting.

Rocket didn't glower like he had when he'd handed me Sarah Jane's first envelope. But he didn't look Green Giant jolly either.

“Is there anything you want to tell me, Ledge?” he asked, pointing to the words
Master Fence Bender
on the envelope. I paused before answering, watching the others go inside the Bug House to see all the butterflies. The twins floated Grandpa into the conservatory in his comfy chair, while Samson's thin outline followed. Next to Samson's shadow, Fedora bounced like a jumping bean soaked forty days in Red Bull and then set out in the sun.

The successful appearance of seven male and five female Queen Alexandra's Birdwings had improved Uncle Autry's mood substantially—enough to make the rest of us stop checking our breakfast for bugs. But I still didn't think it wise to say anything about the Cabots' fence.

I crumpled the envelope. “This is probably just one of Sarah Jane's newspapers. I must have won some kind of free subscription or something. I'll throw it away.”

Rocket looked down at the envelope, raising his thumb to his jaw in his old nervous habit, trying to rub at the beard he no longer had. Dropping his hand, he murmured: “Just be careful, Ledge.” But he said nothing more.

I held my breath until Rocket joined the others in the Bug House. Then I ran to sit on the far side of the potting shed, where I'd be out of sight of everyone—everyone but Bitsy, who followed me, tail wagging.

I stared at the crinkled envelope for several minutes before tearing it open. I'd been wondering if I'd ever hear from Sarah Jane again. Even if it was only one of her newspapers in the envelope, it reassured me that she must be okay. Besides, as long as this new edition of
The Sundance Scuttlebutt
was not about my family, it would be good to have something new to read. I still carried SJ's notebook in my pocket; I'd practically memorized every story in it. I'd finally given in to the fact that, somewhere along the way, I'd actually started liking Sarah Jane—despite all of her cheats and sneaks and tricks.

But the envelope didn't contain a newspaper. Instead, it held a letter.

Sarah Jane had signed her initials in the same crooked way I'd sculpted them into the iron fence before blasting the fence to pieces. Her words, underlined and capitalized, jumped off the paper and climbed into my brain. Adrenaline made my heart race faster; my blood pounded in my ears. Even sitting where I was behind the potting shed, my knees began to hammer up and down. My legs were restless. Itching to run.

Gah! Sarah Jane's dad was so mean!

He'd locked her in her room!

I had to get there
now
!

I leaped up, tripping over Bitsy. Completely under the spell of Sarah Jane's urgent letter, I didn't see the twins coming around the side of the potting shed until we collided. Fedora ran past the rest of us, oblivious, and disappeared into the shed.

I stuffed SJ's letter back into its envelope. But before I had time to jam it in my pocket or hide it behind my back, Marisol levitated the envelope out of my grip.

“Did you get a love letter, Ledge?” Marisol baited me irritably as she dangled the envelope six feet above my head.

“Ooh! Do you have a girlfriend now too,
Sledgehammer
?” Mesquite made kissing noises as she swished the envelope back and forth with a flick of her little finger. “Are you and Rocket going to double-date?”

I didn't have time for the twins' halfhearted attempts at torture. Sarah Jane needed me now! Her letter said so. I flicked a finger of my own, startling Marisol and Mesquite by nabbing the envelope, easily creating a lunging snare from the chicken wire strung around Rocket's garden. The wire snapped up to grab the paper from the air, like a giant frog's tongue snagging a hapless fly.

“Whoa! Ledge! When did you learn to do
that
?” Mesquite took a step back, dropping her ornery attitude in a flash. Marisol also forgot to be snippy and whooped out loud.

“Whoo-hoo! Our lessons worked! Good karma, here we come! Just in time, too! We needed a solid turn in our luck.” Marisol and Mesquite both rubbed my belly like I'd turned into the golden Buddha laughing in the entryway of Mr. Lee's Panda Palace.

Fedora came out of the potting shed just then, clutching a mud-caked shovel and eyeing the sharp edges of the chicken wire warily as I unwrapped Sarah Jane's envelope from its snare.

“Look sharp, Ledge!” Fedora said. “Don't get cut!”

As I took off running toward the south ridge, heading straight for Sundance, I wondered what safety advice Fe would've offered had she known where I was going.

As if she could read my mind, my sister shouted after me:

“Don't learn safety by accident, Ledge! Think through it before you do it!” But the morning breeze caught Fedora's words and blew them away.

It hardly mattered—I couldn't listen. Sarah Jane's letter was still in control of my brain.

F
UELED BY THE URGENCY WRITTEN INTO every compelling vowel and consonant of Sarah Jane's letter, my legs flew on autopilot. I was halfway to Sundance before my head cleared and I started thinking for myself. Still, I didn't stop. Maybe I'd needed to take a break from running for a while to realize how much I missed it. Wherever my savvy talents were taking me, I was glad to know I could still run if I had to—or if I wanted to. Who said I couldn't run the half marathon with Dad
and
join the art club at Theodore Roosevelt Middle School?

It wasn't long before I was leaning against my knees, trying to catch my breath as I stared at the fence posts stacked in a pile on the Cabots' front lawn. How was I going to break Sarah Jane out without alerting Hedda the Horrible to my presence?

I knew Mr. Cabot wasn't home. All of Sundance knew it. Mr. Cabot was the Big Boss of the Backhoe, standing tall in his gleaming yellow hard hat as he supervised the total destruction of the T-shirt shop down the street from Willie's Five & Dime. Now that the five-and-dime had its own foreclosure sign, I wondered how long Willie had before his shop got torn down too.

I could hear the noise of the CAD Co. demolition vehicles from where I stood in front of the Cabot house. I could see the cloud of dust that rose above the town. I hoped that Sarah Jane was correct about being able to prove her dad was doing wrong by coming after the Flying Cattleheart. The image of those wreckers finishing what I'd started on the night of Fish's wedding wasn't one I liked.

The sound of a TV drifted from the rear of the house. Cautiously, I circled the building. Peering carefully through an open window, I saw Hedda with her feet up in a small room off the kitchen. She was eating popcorn while watching a daytime talk show.

“Tell me again, Mr. Rojenski,”
the talk show host was saying.
“You claim you visit a different solar system every time you eat your wife's mashed potatoes?”

Engrossed in her program, Hedda sat motionless, holding a piece of popcorn in front of her open mouth, as though she'd been frozen by a freeze-ray until the next commercial break.

I let out a breath. It would be a whole lot easier to break Sarah Jane out of her tower room with Cabot gone and Hedda the Horrible hypnotized by hogwash. Still, I was scared of getting caught. Scared of causing more damage for SJ to take credit for.

Fedora's last safety warning drifted back to me with the breeze:
Think through it before you do it!

“Okay, Ledge, listen to your sister for once,” I said to myself as I moved back around the house, trying to breathe normally and keep my savvy under control. Determined not to simply react, I started thinking through my options.

I could sneak inside . . . climb the stairs . . . and take apart the lock with a single finger snap. Easy! Only, I'd promised Autry I wouldn't put a shoe inside the house. One wrong creak going up the stairs—one crashing, falling door—and Hedda would be on the phone to Cabot or the sheriff lickety split.

“Not a good plan,” I told myself. I needed something better. If only those braids of Sarah Jane's were long enough, she could toss them down like rope.

I thought about scaling the tall birch tree that slanted toward the house. I'd climbed the birch trees at the ranch a bunch of times; this one didn't look too different. And its branches stretched close to Sarah Jane's window.

Careful not to trip over a dozen different stumps, I hustled to the base of the tree. Moving around it, I stared up, trying to gauge the strength of its branches.

“Well, Ledge, you might be able to fix things now as well as break them,” I murmured, thinking. “But you can't fix your own bones if you fall out of this tree.” Still looking skyward as I considered the birch, I banged hard into the marble bench that rested in its shade.

“Ow! Shhhha
zam!
” I covered my mouth with both hands to stop myself from cussing, to keep from alerting Hedda to my presence. Bending down to rub my shins, I looked closer at the bench. There was writing carved into the stone.

Summer Cabot was SJ's mom's name. I remembered Autry telling me. I read the inscription again, staring at the name.

Beacham . . . Beacham . . . I'd heard that name before too. I tried to remember, but I had other things on my mind. Crucial, clamorous things. As my eye fell back on the enormous pile of iron bars that had once been Mr. Cabot's fence,
Mrs
. Cabot left my mind, warp speed. I suddenly knew exactly how to get Sarah Jane out of her room. And I wouldn't have to put a shoe inside the house to do it.

“Your uncle took a wasp nest down from outside my bedroom window . . .”
Sarah Jane's voice came ringing back to me. Uncle Autry had climbed a ladder. I would too.

But when I looked again at the jumble of iron bars, I balked. Doubt hit me like confidence kryptonite. Sure, I could do stuff like this all I wanted in the safety of the salvage yard, where no one else could see me. But what if someone here was watching? A neighbor . . . someone driving by . . . Hedda coming out to sweep the porch between shows?

“Come on, Ledge. You didn't think about stuff like that the last time you were here,” I said out loud.

Then I thought:
Maybe I should have
.

Checking to make sure no neighbors were outside watering lawns or walking dogs, I took a deep breath and stepped toward the pile of iron bars. Looking up at Sarah Jane's window thirty feet above, I swallowed my anxiety. To keep myself steady, I crouched down low. I splayed my fingertips on the ground between me and the pile of fence posts, like I was at the starting line of a hundred-meter dash.

Shoving memories of falling barns and bumpers from my mind, I closed my eyes and pictured the iron bars lifting and coming together. Bending where they needed to bend. Fusing where they needed to fuse. My hands tingled and my nerves pulsed, and all the while the iron hummed, and my mouth filled with the metallic tang I'd gotten so used to.

Clinks and clangs filled the air, but softly. As if the metal bars knew they needed to be quiet.

I added rung after rung.

I telescoped rails up and up and up.