The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester (8 page)

Stumpy shrugged.

“Maybe we could pull it behind our bikes,” Owen said.

Travis rolled his eyes.

“What if we got some more kids to help us pull it?” Travis said.

Owen shook his head. “Naw, this is our secret,” he said. “Other kids’ll just mess things up.”

“Like Viola?” Travis said.

Owen blushed. He
had
messed things up by letting Viola get involved, but Travis didn’t have to keep reminding him.

Stumpy pushed on the submarine with his foot. “It’s just too heavy,” he said. “We’ll never do it.”

“Yes, we will,” Owen said.

“And then you’re just going to drive it all around the pond like you know all about driving a submarine, right, Owen?” Travis asked as he hurled a stick over the top of the Water Wonder 4000.

“Look,” Owen snapped, “if y’all don’t want to help me anymore, then go on home.
I’m
the one that found this submarine and
I’m
going to get it in the pond and
I’m
going to take it for a ride with or without y’all.” He stomped through the weeds and scrambled up the slope toward the train tracks.

“Wait!” Travis called after him.

Owen stopped.

“Okay,” Travis said, “we’ll help. But we’ve got to figure out how to do it.”

“We
will
,” Owen said, stamping his foot.

Travis and Stumpy joined Owen up by the tracks. They stood in silence, looking down at the submarine, so red and shiny and fantastic. The silver dolphin sparkled in the sun that filtered through the trees.

“Let’s go up to the hayloft and think of some more ideas,” Owen said.

So they headed to the barn and climbed up the ladder to the hayloft. They took out the list of ideas they had made earlier and sat on the dusty wooden floor and
studied them. They talked about them and added to them and argued about them until they were all just plain sick of it.

“I’m sick of this,” Travis said.

“Me, too,” Stumpy said.

Owen had to admit, he was sick of it, too. He didn’t want to keep
talking
about getting the submarine into the pond.

He wanted to
get
the submarine into the pond.

“Let’s go check on Tooley,” he said.

So the boys climbed down out of the hayloft, tucked the wrinkled notebook paper with their list of ideas under the tarp with the tools, and headed to the pond.

Owen lifted Tooley out of the cage and set him on his lap. The bullfrog settled down in the folds of Owen’s shorts and closed his eyes.

“Do you think he’s sick?” Owen said.

“Naw.” Travis nudged Tooley gently with his finger. “He’s just tired.”

“Let’s make the cage bigger,” Stumpy said.

“Yeah,” Travis said. “We could make it go all the way around the dock.”

But Owen kept quiet.

He knew that Tooley didn’t need a bigger cage.

He knew that Tooley needed to be free.

He needed to swim around Graham Pond with the other frogs.

He needed to climb on the logs and float on the leaves and nestle in the mud and eat the bugs . . .

. . . but not in a cage.

“We could catch more frogs and have a whole frog town!” Stumpy said.

“Yeah!” Travis tossed a rock into the middle of the pond.

Ploink.

Tooley opened one eye . . .

. . . and then closed it.

Travis and Stumpy went on and on about the frog town they could make and how it could have little froggy apartments made out of logs and froggy restaurants where the bugs would be and there could even be a froggy mayor.

“Tooley!” Stumpy said. “Tooley could be the mayor.”

But Owen kept quiet.

He knew that Tooley didn’t want to be the mayor of Frog Town.

Tooley wanted to be free.

“Eat your squash,” Earlene snapped.

Owen looked down at the blob of yellow mush on the plate in front of him.

Earlene rattled pans and clanged spoons and mumbled to herself while she huffed around the kitchen.

She was annoyed that Owen had managed to beg and plead his way out of church that morning.

She was annoyed that he had stayed gone all day without telling anybody where he was.

And she was annoyed that he didn’t want to eat that blob of nasty squash.

“We’re leaving for church in five minutes,” Owen’s mother called from upstairs.

The Jesters always went to church twice on Sundays. Once in the morning and once in the evening. Owen
was still amazed that his begging and pleading had worked that morning, but he knew there was no way he was going to get out of going to church that evening.

“Eat your squash,” Earlene snapped again.

Owen dipped the tip of his fork into the yellow mush and then dabbed it onto his tongue.

That seemed to annoy Earlene even more. She yanked the plate off the table, muttering about starving children somewhere in the world, and dumped the squash into the dog bowl.

“Go get ready for church,” she said.

While Mrs. Suttles put a smiley-face sticker on his Bible-passage work sheet, Owen stared out the window and thought about Tooley.

He had been thinking and thinking and thinking and, somewhere between listening to Travis and Stumpy talk about Frog Town and swirling his fork around in Earlene’s mushy yellow squash, he had made a decision.

As soon as he got home from church, he was going to go down to the pond and let Tooley go.

So now he was sitting on a metal chair in the basement of Fork Creek Baptist Church, wishing Mrs. Suttles would hurry up with those smiley-face stickers and
hoping, hoping, hoping that his parents didn’t want to stay for Bible Bingo.

Sometimes they did.

If they stayed for Bible Bingo, it would be dark when they got home and he wouldn’t be allowed to go down to the pond.

Owen stood in a circle with the other kids as they said some prayers and sang some songs and then they were finally done. He raced upstairs to find his parents, hoping, hoping, hoping they were not sitting at the Bible Bingo table.

They weren’t.

Owen said a silent
yahoo
in his head and raced out to the car.

As the sun sank lower in the sky, the pond seemed to be settling in for the night.

The moss-covered logs along the edges were empty. No turtles basking in the summer sun.

The water was still and smooth as glass. No water bugs leaving ripples across the surface.

Not a single pair of yellow bullfrog eyes peering out from the floating leaves that gathered in clumps in the shadows.

The low hum of crickets was starting, interrupted from time to time by the buzz of a mosquito.

Owen lifted the lid of the perfect cage.

He reached in and scooped Tooley up. Then he sat on the end of the dock and had a little chat with the big green bullfrog.

He told him about how much fun it had been to come down to the pond every day and look for him.

He praised him for his ability to avoid being captured for so long. The way he had darted out of the net quick as lightning. The way he had shot out from under the colander.

And then he apologized for a few things.

“I’m sorry I made you stay in that cage so long,” Owen said to Tooley. “Viola said you never wanted to be Tooley Graham and that you just want to be a frog,” Owen said. “So, well, if that’s true, and, um, I guess maybe it is ’cause Viola’s almost always right even though she’s so dumb, well, anyway, I’m sorry about that.”

The frog moved a little in Owen’s lap.

“And, um . . .” Owen stroked Tooley’s back. “I’m sorry if I made you sad.”

Owen leaned over the edge of the dock and lowered Tooley into the water.

“Goodbye, Tooley,” he said.

Then he let go of the most beautiful bullfrog in Carter, Georgia, and watched as it pushed its long froggy legs and disappeared into the pond without so much as a splash.

Owen knew Travis and Stumpy would be mad as hornets that he had let Tooley go.

But he didn’t care.

Tooley had been
his
frog, not theirs.

Travis stomped around the dock muttering “Dang it!” and “No fair!” and Stumpy glared and repeated everything Travis said.

“And then we spent half the dern summer building that cage!” Travis hollered.

“Yeah!” Stumpy hollered.

Owen looked at the perfect cage attached to the edge of the dock.

The
empty
perfect cage.

Then he gazed out across the pond, wishing he could
see into the murky water and catch a glimpse of Tooley, swimming happily with the other frogs, resting peacefully among the rotting leaves on the muddy bottom. Maybe enjoying a snack, chomping on a juicy cricket.

“You think your stupid girlfriend, Viola, is right about everything,” Travis snapped.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Owen said.

“She is, too,” Stumpy said.

“She is not!”

Back and forth and on and on they went, arguing and hollering and snapping and accusing until they all just ran out of steam and fell silent.

A dragonfly hovered in the air in front of them, then flitted off to the other side of the pond.

“So, um, are y’all still going to help me with the submarine?” Owen said.

“Get your girlfriend to help you,” Travis said. Then he stormed past Owen and headed up the path into the woods.

Stumpy stood there for a minute, looking down at his feet, then said, “Uh, see ya,” before heading off up the path after Travis.

Owen looked for the biggest rock he could find and
hurled it with all his might into the pond. It hit with a loud
ploink
, sending a spray of water into the air.

Now
what was he going to do?

How was he ever going to get that submarine into the pond?

Owen sawed and clipped and dug and hacked all by himself. He hummed as he worked. And with each branch he sawed and each thorny bush he dug up, he began to feel better . . .

. . . until Viola stepped out of the woods and said, “I’m here!”

Owen groaned.

“Y’all got a lot done yesterday,” Viola said, glancing around her.

Owen tossed a tangle of branches onto a pile of brush at the edge of the clearing. “Look, Viola,” he said. “If you want to help, then help, but don’t talk.”

“Why are you so mean?” Viola said, putting on her dirty work gloves.

Owen didn’t answer.

In fact, Owen didn’t answer any of the gazillion questions Viola asked.

He didn’t answer when she asked where Travis and Stumpy were.

He didn’t answer when she asked if he had called the railroad company yet.

And he didn’t answer when she asked if he was going to the pond to visit that sad old frog of his later that day.

Owen wasn’t going to say one word to Viola.

But then . . .

. . . she went and said something that made him change his plans.

“I know how to get that submarine down to the pond.”

Owen stopped his sawing.

He studied Viola.

Her big fly-eyes peering at him through her thick glasses.

Her freckly white legs.

Her know-it-all face.

“How?” he said.

Owen sat on a patch of moss beside the Water Wonder 4000 and listened to Viola going on and on in her schoolteacher voice.

About the ancient Egyptians.

About pyramids.

About simple machines.

Blah.

Blah.

Blah.

“Are you even
listening
to me, Owen?” she said, jabbing a finger at him. Her eyes were red and watery. Every few minutes, she wiped at her nose with a balled-up tissue.

“Look, Viola,” he said. “I don’t even know what the
heck you’re talking about. What do Egyptians have to do with anything?”

So Viola explained it again.

“Some people think that the Egyptians moved those big stones for their pyramids by rolling them on logs.” She went to the front of the submarine and squatted down. “See, we get some logs and we put them under the front.” She patted the ground. “
Then
, we pull the submarine over the logs, which will be easy because the logs will roll.”

She stood up and brushed dirt off her knees. “Then, as it rolls along, we take logs from behind it and move them back up to the front again . . . until we get to the pond.”

A lightbulb went on.

Owen got it.

He snapped his fingers. “
Roll
it to the pond! Yeah!” He jumped up and ran over to the submarine. “And the pond is downhill from here, so that’ll make it even easier.”

Owen couldn’t control himself.

He beamed at Viola.

Viola beamed back.

Owen sure was glad Travis and Stumpy weren’t here to see all this beaming.

“Now we just have to get some logs,” Viola said, rubbing her watery eyes and scratching at the pink rash that had appeared on her neck.

Owen’s beam disappeared in a snap.

“How are we supposed to do that?” he said.

“Well, um . . .” Viola looked up into the trees. “We could . . . um . . . well . . . let’s see . . .”

Owen never would have believed this day would come . . .

. . . the day Viola didn’t know everything.

It figured.

All those times she had irritated the heck out of him by knowing everything and now here was the one time he
needed
her to know everything and she didn’t.

And then, a lightbulb went on again.

“Pipes!” he said.

Viola stared at him through her thick glasses. “Pipes?”

“Yeah, you know, pipes. Like water pipes.” Owen jerked his head in the direction of the new subdivision out by the main highway. “They’re putting in a water line over on Sycamore Road and there’s tons of PVC pipes just laying there in the ditch.”

“That’s perfect!” Viola said.

They beamed at each other again.

“There’s only one problem,” Viola said.

Owen rolled his eyes. Here was Miss Know-It-All again.

“We can’t do it by ourselves,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Look, Owen,” she said. “Even if we could get enough pipes down here, we’d need help pulling that thing.” She flung her arm in the direction of the submarine. “We’d need two people pulling and two people moving the pipes from the back to the front.”