Steemjammer: Through the Verltgaat (3 page)

***

The Steemjammer kids hardly reacted. Minor emergencies – machines suddenly acting up and needing attention – happened all the time in Beverkenhaas.

“How does he do that?” Angelica said.

Will blinked like his father had. “Huh?”

“I asked him how the Dutch we speak can be so different from other people’s Dutch, and he gave an answer that didn’t mean anything!”

“Oh, you’ve discovered one of his better tricks. He’s pretty good at it, isn’t he?”

“But why does he do that?”

He shrugged. “Obviously there’s some big secret we’re not supposed to know.”

“What?”

“If I knew, it wouldn’t be secret.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“That’s because I don’t have one.”

She sighed. “I bet it has something to do with Mom.”

He noticed how she fought to stay tough and not get emotional. Thinking about their mother used to really upset her, but lately she’d been keeping it under control.

“She’ll be back soon,” Angelica said, “won’t she?”

“Very soon, I think,” Will said, wishing he could sound more confident. “Let’s go outside and warm up.”

***

After finishing their lessons, they moved on to their afternoon chores. Angelica fed and milked the goats. Next, she collected white, green and chocolate brown eggs from the hens’ nesting boxes, where Gustaavus, her dad’s favorite little stone gnome, seemed to stand guard.

He wore a bright red cap and goggles, and instead of smiling like the other gnomes, his expression was quite serious. She imagined he was focused on some extremely important task.

“Good Gus,” she said, kissing him on the forehead.

After shoveling manure and feeding the horse and cow, Will pumped several hundred gallons of water into the rooftop reservoir - a large wooden tank that he accessed by climbing a ladder up the side of the house. The pump had a long handle made of stout ash wood and a metal pipe that came from their hand-dug, brick-lined well. If he put his back into it, he could pump twelve gallons a minute.

It was extremely important, he knew, to keep the reservoir full. Besides providing them water, it fed the boiler, and if it ever went dry, horrible things could happen. He didn’t mind this chore, but still, he wished his dad would fix the automatic pump.

Will took a moment to look around. On the roof, it seemed he was much higher up than he really was. Their acre lot was jammed full of crops and livestock pens, which crossed the property lines into the vacant lots on either side. No one seemed to notice or care.

Down on the street, a couple of kids stopped their bikes to gawk at Beverkenhaas before moving on. Will’s heart tugged as he recognized them. They’d once been his friends, playing together all the time, but something had happened. He hadn’t spoken to them in years.

He remembered how they complained bitterly about having to take out the trash or clean their rooms, while Will and his sister ran a small farm with their parents, not to mention the endless labor needed to keep the machinery working. But he didn’t mind.

In fact, it was satisfying to think about all they could do by simply burning wood, but something had been bothering him lately: a feeling that he and his family didn’t belong in Ohio. It was obvious that his parents were hiding something, but what? Were they in some sort of witness protection program? Spies? None of his guesses made any sense.

He knew he needed to toughen himself and say: “Dad, show me where we’re from. Point to the exact spot on a map. Then, tell me why we left and why we use steam when no one else does. Also, why is Mom gone? Straight and plain answers, right now.”

He’d tried before, but, as his sister had noticed, their father was good at giving non-answers. Will felt if he was firm enough, he could get the full story. He told himself to be strong this time and not give up until he got a real answer.

***

He met his sister at the back door, above which hung an old iron shield painted with a pair of penguins and a sword crossed over a ball-peen hammer. Latin words were written in white: “Donec ignis potens et altum vaporem.”
Keep your fire stoked and your steam high
.

They kicked off their dirt-caked klompen – wooden clogs - which they’d been wearing because of the mud, and went inside.

“Still freezing,” Angelica said, her breath misting.

“Even colder,” Will agreed, “except that cold ‘doesn’t exist.’”

She laughed. “Right!”

Putting on sweaters, they looked for Henry.

“Dad?” Will called.

This time, he thought, he’d do it. He’d keep asking until he got to the truth, but where was his father?

“Dad?” Angelica yelled down the stairs.

The only answer was the rattling and clanking of machinery, so they went down.

“Dad?” said Will at the bottom of the steps.

The large, deep basement, filled with contraptions and dominated by the big, hot boiler, offered many places for a person to hide. They searched, but their father was nowhere to be found. His oil lantern, however, still burning, sat on a workbench.

“He’s gone,” Will said.

Chapter
3

a hOUSE OF SECRETS

“I didn’t see the children leave for school this morning,” Waverly Norman announced with grim satisfaction.

Ron winced. He’d been in the garage, working on his latest undertaking, a way to project three-dimensional images of building designs in the air with lasers. All he’d wanted was to sneak inside unnoticed and get a cup of coffee.

“You know what that means, don’t you?” she said.

“It’s Saturday?” he offered.

Glancing up from her knitting, she started to chide him for stupidity but realized it was in fact the weekend.

“They didn’t go to school yesterday,” she recovered.

“Maybe they were ill.”

“I saw them picking crops and chasing that horse. They aren’t sick. They’re truant, and I’ve decided to call the School Police!”

Ron wondered if there even was such an entity in this remote area. They lived outside the town of Bellevue, Ohio, and their street, Newcomen Lane, was a largely failed real estate development, with most of the lots remaining unbuilt.

“After that,” she said, “I’m calling the Health Department. Then, we’ll see some action around here.”

“What if these Steemjammers home-school?” he mused.

“Then, they should be put in prison!”

Stridently loyal to the public school system, Waverly despised home-schooling and had lobbied hard against it. The only donations she’d ever made in her life were to a political organization dedicated to ending the practice.

“Now you’ve done it,” she said, rubbing her temples. “You’ve given me another migraine.”

“I think knitting those thingies is what’s giving you headaches,” he said. “That and worrying about everything.”

And constantly correcting everyone, he tactfully decided not to add.

“These are
doilies
,” she corrected, jabbing at him with a long steel needle as if it were a fencing foil, “not ‘thingies.’ And as any idiot could tell, this is purling, not knitting.”

Her aged mother, Agnes Finch, who sat in her favorite armchair, also worked on a doily. She’d recently suffered a stroke but could hear, think and move just fine. The only harm it had done was to take away her ability to speak. She rolled her eyes and went off in disgust.

“I think Agnes was knitting,” Ron said.

Waverly answered with a ball of yellow yarn, thrown at his forehead hard enough to actually sting a little.

***

“I guess he’s really gone,” Angelica said.

They’d just finished another search of Beverkenhaas and found nothing, not one clue. Will was worried sick but tried not to let it show. He knew his sister was doing her best to be strong, but he feared she wouldn’t hold up much longer. Three days had passed with no sign of their father.

“Did you see him go?” she asked.

Will shook his head. Hendrelmus often vanished, but they never saw him exit a door or sneak out a window. This time, between finishing lessons on an outdoor picnic table and doing chores, they’d had a pretty good view of the street. Unless he could turn invisible, Will thought, his dad hadn’t left that way. How did he do it?

Usually he was gone no more than a few hours, but sometimes he vanished for a whole day. Then, they’d discover him making a sandwich or repairing some gadget, as if nothing had happened. Never had he warned them he was leaving or said where he’d been.

“You have to be on your nose all the time,” he’d lectured, meaning “toes.” “You have to be ready for anything.”

When his dad hadn’t returned after 24 hours, Will grew worried. That night, he’d had a horrible dream about being lost in a strange place with no sense of up or down, left or right. When he’d seen a possible way out, his body refused to move that direction.

Then, he’d realized he was dreaming not about himself but his father. Henry called out for help in weak and extremely diminished voice, which alarmed Will, because he’d never heard him sound so scared. He decided it was just a stupid nightmare and not to tell Angelica.

They’d just have to do their best until their dad came back, Will thought. Surely he’d return! Was it legal for kids to live without a parent? What would happen if people found out?

***

Another day passed, and there was still no sign of their father. Without him to help run the complex machinery, they’d shut down many non-essential systems, and even then, they felt overwhelmed. The dishwasher, for example, ran continually, as Will didn’t know how to turn it off. As he looked for a wrench, a high pitched scream came from upstairs.

“Will!” his sister shouted. “Hurry!”

He raced up and burst into Angelica’s bedroom, where she pointed out the window. He ran over and looked down into the yard. Except for a few chickens and goats, nothing caught his eye.

“I don’t see anything,” he said.

“There was a man,” she said excitedly, “in a bright green coat, and he was peeking in our downstairs windows!”

“Green coat?”

“And a leather cap. I wish I hadn’t screamed, or you would have seen him. He got scared and ran.”

Will wasn’t sure what to say. Had a man in a green coat really been peeking in their windows, he wondered, or was his sister so upset from their parents’ absence that she was seeing things?

“Oh,” she gasped, “I know who it was.
Rasputin
!”

Will made a face. “Huh?”

“It had to be.”

“Who?”

“Rasputin.”

“I heard that. Again: huh?”

She had to take a moment to calm herself.

“One night I couldn’t sleep,” she explained, “so I went downstairs to get some milk. Mom and Dad were talking, and they didn’t know I could hear. I didn’t mean to listen to them. I couldn’t help it.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “What did they say?”

“That someone named Rasputin wanted to kill us! He must be very evil, because they called him ‘our enemy’ and sounded very worried.”

“
Rasputin
? Are you sure you heard them right?”

“Yes!”

He took a moment to frame his thoughts. “Angelica, I don’t know what to tell you, because Rasputin is
dead
.”

***

Even with his assurance that the mysterious “enemy” was dead, Angelica wouldn’t leave her room until Will, armed with a crossbow, patrolled the yard several times and made sure no one was there. He asked her to toast them some cheese sandwiches while he got a history book, and he showed her how the infamous mystic, Rasputin, had indeed died in Russia, long ago.

“See?” he tried to calm her. “He couldn’t have been in our yard. He was murdered.”

“What if he’s a vampire?” she argued stubbornly.

“Oh, come on.”

She pointed at his picture in the book. “Well, he looks creepy enough to be one.”

“But the sun’s out. Look, I bet this is what happened. Some random guy got curious about our smokestack and animals, so he snuck up to check us out. When you screamed, he ran away, and we’ll never see him again.”

“Maybe. Who’s Rasputin, then?”

“A dead guy.”

“Then, who are Mom and Dad scared of?”

“You got me.”

“And why do we learn to fight with swords and crossbows? What about all the safety drills?”

Will grew concerned. She was getting very worked up.

“We have fire drills,” he said gently, hoping to calm her, “in case Beverkenhaas starts burning, and we have boiler alarm drills because - well, boilers are dangerous, if you don’t take care of them. You know that.”

“But what about ….” Something about her sentence frightened her so much that she couldn’t finish.

“What?” Will urged.

“They always creep me out.” Still scared, she lowered her voice. “Shadovecht drills.”

Will laughed. “Is that what you think he is?”

“No, he’s too small, but what if he’s spying for them?”

“Shadovecht? They aren’t even real.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it’s the sort of things parents make up to frighten their children into being good.”

“But that would be lying! Dad says we can’t do that.”

“Do you even know what a Shadovecht is?”

That stopped her a moment. “Well, they’re very bad, and I know Dad wouldn’t lie like that.”

“Okay, maybe Shadovecht is his word for burglars, and those drills are so we know what to do if there’s a break-in. But it won’t happen because we don’t have anything worth stealing. So cheer up!”

***

“Angelica,” Will called that afternoon, “can you hold the light?”

Earlier they’d shut off the haaskooler or house cooler. By noon, Beverkenhaas had become a sweltering sauna, so Will had decided to turn it back on. That meant reconnecting the belt drives that spun circulating fans, the chain drives that ran the compressor, and the gear system that worked the heat exchanger. Creating a simple on-off lever for this was one of many items on his father’s long “to do” list.

His sister arrived with a lantern, but he knew she’d been staring anxiously through a window at the yard.

“You should see your hair,” he said, hoping to distract her.

She saw her reflection in a window and laughed. It was particularly hot and humid that day. Normally, her hair stood up like a vase full of ornamental yellow grass, but with all the moisture in the air, it snaked uncontrollably in all directions.

“Like Medusa,” she teased. “Watch out!”

He smiled. It was her first joke since their dad had vanished. Even though he’d moved his bed into her room, the past few days had been tough for her. She’d awakened several times a night, screaming from terrible dreams, and often he’d heard her whispering to herself: “Be tough.” Maybe, he thought, she was gaining some control over her emotions.

“Just put the haaskooler on halfway,” Angelica said. “Not like before.”

“With my luck,” Will said, stretching a chain-drive, “it’ll start snowing in the living room, and glaciers will carve channels down the staircase.”

“Hey, Will?”

“Hey, what?”

“Dad’s coming back soon, right?”

“Yeah. Probably tonight.”

She nodded, and Will sensed she was doing everything she could to believe it.

“Why does he talk about going home?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, thinking how he was just about to corner him on the subject before he vanished. “Maybe we’re political refugees. Maybe if we went home we’d be arrested.”

“Isn’t Beverkenhaas our home?”

“You know what he says. It’s not our real home.”

“It’s my home.”

“Yeah, but do you feel like you really belong here?”

“I love Beverkenhaas!”

“So do I,” he said. “I mean this area, these people. I don’t feel right here, but what if we go where Mom and Dad are from, and it’s even worse?”

“What’s so bad about here?”

He put down his tools. “We’re different, Angie-bee.” That was her nickname, because when she was full of energy, she seemed to buzz about the place like a hyper little honey bee. “Haven’t you noticed? Just wait until Brie starts asking why her mom thinks you’re weird and why you can’t text.”

“She already does. I told her we could dig a trench and run a speaking tube from my bedroom to hers.” Beverkenhaas had a network of brass speaking tubes connecting most of the rooms. “She said ‘ew,’ and I guess that meant ‘no.’”

He thought about the friends he once had, when he was her age, but then they’d noticed how different he was. For example, the Steemjammers sheared wool and converted flax plants into linen to make comfortable, homespun clothing, but his friends guessed it was from a thrift shop. Saying his parents were too poor to buy real clothes, they teased him mercilessly, so he’d stopped seeing them.

“Why can’t I text, anyway?” she asked.

“Do you even know what it is?” he said.

“Yeah, it’s like a tiny typewriter you hold in your hand.”

“That runs on electricity. Haven’t you heard it six thousand times? ‘Electricity is dangerous.’”

A guilty look crossed her face. “I meant to tell Dad. I really did.”

“What?”

“The subject got changed, and then he vanished.”

“Angie-bee, say it.”

She looked down. “I used my friend’s computer.”

“Really?”

“I played games and looked up stuff.”

“What? It didn’t break?”

“No.”

Distracted, he caught his thumb between the chain and sprocket. “Ow!”