The Prophet of Yonwood (12 page)

As he walked, he hummed a little tunean ambling, careless tune that went with being happy and trotting along and knowing what he was doingand his eyes scanned the woods and the ground for anything of interest, and his mind traveled off where it usually did, to his plan to join the Arrowhead Wilderness Reptile Expedition this summer. It was perfect for himAddison Pugh, a famous herpetologist, was leading it, and it was out in Arizona, where hed never been and where the snakes would be all different from the ones here. He would have a great time, he would learn a huge amount, and he would meet people who could help him on the way to his career. He had to go. How could something as trivial as $375 stand in the way? It was very inconvenient that his family didnt have any spare money. On the other hand, it had forced him to be creative. He felt pretty confident about the cereal jingle hed made up, and hed solved the cryptogram and sent it in quickly. Sweepstakes werent so promising, because winning was just luck. But hed entered so many of themat least fifty just in the last few weeksthat hehad to win something. It wouldnt take muchjust a few small prizes from three or four different contests, and hed have enough.

All these thoughts swirling through his mind kept him a little less observant than he usually was. He was up fairly high on the mountainside now, and the trail turned into more of a dotted line up here, blocked every now and then by overgrown bushes or a fallen tree. This didnt matter to Grover. He climbed over or went around whatever was in the way; he always knew where he was. But it meant he had to watch his feet more, stepping over stuff and being careful not to trip, so at first he didnt see that something was moving farther up the mountainside, where the trees were denser. The sound of his own footsteps covered up the sound that anyone elses footsteps might have made. A few yards farther on, he came to the place where a muddy path led down the stream bank to the place he wanted to go, and there he paused for a second. That was when he heard a distant rustling, the sort of rustling that only something big makes.

He froze. Without moving any other part of himself, he turned his head toward where the sound seemed to have come from. The trees and the thick undergrowth beneath them made it impossible to see very far, or at least to see clearly. All he could see was a patch of paleness far off in the distance. It moved, paused, moved again, and disappeared. He stood still for another three or four minutes, but he heard no more rustling and saw nothing, either. So he went on down the stream bank and sat on a rock by the water.

Nothing large and pale lived in the woods, as far as he knew. He couldnt think what it could possibly be. Maybe some huge white bird? A stork? But why would there be a stork in the woods? There wouldnt. A ghost? He didnt believe in ghosts. Anyway, a ghost wouldnt make a rustling sound, would it?

So maybe the talk about someone lurking up here was worth paying attention to after all. Grover felt a small shiver of fear. Maybe this terrorist was up here just waiting for someone to kidnap. Give me a million dollars to fund my terrorist organization, or else Ill slice this boy up and scatter him in the pines.

Grover put his arms across his knees and hunched down, bending his face toward the water. The stream rushed by, carrying leaves and bits of twig, making the weeds at the waters edge flow sideways. He stayed that way for a while, imagining what he would do if a terrorist stepped suddenly from behind a tree and grabbed him. The best thing would be to have a snake with him at the time, so he could terrify the terrorist with it and startle him into letting go. A venomous snake would be best. If he didnt happen to have a snake, hed have to struggle. Too bad he didnt know karate or any of those other martial arts. He could kick, though. He was strong and agile, and he could bite. He pictured himself twisting like a giant boa constrictor around the terrorist and biting him in the back of the neck.

It would be best, though, not to get caught in the first place. So he got busy with what hed come for. He turned over rocks, dug the toe of his shoe into crumbling logs, lifted up sodden leaf litter, and poked sticks into holes. Before long he had some nice grubs, a millipede, five water snails, two good-sized slugs, and a small purplish salamander with gold spots on its back. He put these all in his jar and started down the trail.

CHAPTER 16 ______________

The Snakes Dinner

Shortly before three-thirty, Nickie set out for Grovers house. Shed seen it from the backat least a glimpse of it beyond the shed and the fruit treesbut now she saw the front for the first time. It was a one-story yellow house with two battered tricycles standing out in the yard and three saggy steps leading up to a porch. On the porch was a couch covered in green material worn almost to white on the seat and arms, and on the couch sat a very old woman wearing a red housedress with a zipper up the front and a baggy lavender sweater. As Nickie came up the walk, the old woman peered at her.

Youre not from here, she said.

No, said Nickie. Im just visiting.

The old woman nodded. She was wearing, Nickie noticed, yellow bedroom slippers with ducks on the toes.

Im looking for Grover, Nickie said.

But Grover must have seen her coming. The door opened, and there he was. Youdid come, he said. Amazing.

Got yourself a girlfriend, the old woman said to Grover.

She isnt mygirlfriend, Granny, Grover said. Just a girl.

Inside, the house was dim and crowded. The TV was onit was the president, announcing that only four days remained before the deadline hed set for the Phalanx Nations. But no one was paying attention. The living room was full of sagging furniture, and every piece of furniture seemed to have a child climbing on it, or curled up in it, or crawling out from under it. They all stared at Nickie when she came in.

My brothers and sisters, Grover said, waving a hand at them.

How many are there? Nickie asked, spotting another one toddling up the hall.

Six. The twins and four more. Plus meIm the oldest.

He led her down a short hall that went right through the house. The walls were covered with photographsschool pictures, wedding pictures, baby pictures, some in frames and some stuck up with thumbtacks.

They went out the back door, and Grover led the way across the sloping yard, over the dead grass and brown rain-plastered leaves, between the gnarled trunks of the fruit trees, down to the shed beside the alley.

Nickie began to feel nervous. Her stomach clenched.

Grover twirled the dial of a combination lock on the latch and opened the shed door. She followed him in. The air had an earthy smell. A few garden tools, mostly broken, hung on hooks on the walls. On a shelf across one wall were the two snake tanks, and on other shelves, and on the floor, and on a small table and a chair were piles and piles of magazines and flattened cereal boxes, soap boxes, and cake mix boxes. The whole mess was sprinkled here and there with little bits of bent cardboard.

Whats all that? Nickie asked.

Contests, said Grover. Sweepstakes, lottery tickets, stuff like that. Theres gobs of dollars out there being given away. I enter everything I can find.

Why?

Because I need money,obviously. He made a how can you be such a moron face at her. I want to go on the Arrowhead Wilderness Reptile Expedition this summer, which costs three hundred seventy-five dollars, which I dont have. So Im going to win it.

People hardly ever win contests, Nickie said. I dont know anyone who has.

Well, you will pretty soon, Grover said. Look at this one. He held up a page torn from a magazine. You write one paragraph, no more than a hundred words, saying why Armstrong Pickles are the best. Want to hear my paragraph?

Okay, said Nickie. She glanced uneasily at the two glass tanks on the shelf, but she didnt see anything inside, only dry leaves.

Grover rummaged around on the table and came up with a sheet of binder paper. He read: Last Sunday night, I was studying for my math test. It was late, and I was tired. My eyes kept closing so I couldnt see the numbers in my book. I thought, How am I going to pass this test if I cant stay awake? Then inspiration hit me. I needed an Armstrong Pickle! I jumped up from my chair and ran to the refrigerator. I pulled one of those big, green, pimply pickles out of the jar. The first cool bite made my brain go ZING! And the next day I got an A on the test. Grover looked up, grinning. Only ninety-eight words.

Nickie laughed. Its great, she said. What do you get if you win?

You get five hundred dollars plus a whole free crate of pickles, said Grover. Theres all kinds of contests. Ones where you think up a slogan, and ones where you make as many words as you can out of some products name, and ones where you solve a cryptogram, and

Have you won any of them yet? Nickie asked.

Oh, yeah, said Grover. I won six free boxes of Oat Crinklies, and I won a bunch of coupons for Rosepetal laundry soap. Just no money yet, but that will come.

He turned to the snakes. All right, he said. Time to get down to business. First the milk snake. He hasnt eaten for a few weeks.

A fewweeks !

Yep. They dont eat much in the winter. Snakes out in the wild around here crawl down underground and hardly eat at all till spring. Hey, you know what I saw when I was up in the mountains looking for snake food?

What?

I saw that terrorist. The one who broke the restaurant window.

Youdid ? Werent you scared?

Nah. He was far away. Big, though. Huge. I just caught a glimpse of him.

Grover took the top off one of the tanks. Inside it, the snake stirred, lifting its head and then more and more of itself from the bark and dry leaves that covered it. Rings of black, yellow, and reddish-brown striped its long body.

It doesnt look a bit like milk, Nickie said.

I know it, said Grover, gazing fondly at the snake. Its called that because people used to find them in their barns and think theyd come to milk the cows.

From a small cardboard box next to the snake tank, he took out the tiny mouse hed shown Nickie before. It was pink and wet-looking, with a tiny head and bulgy bluish eyes, and tiny legs with tiny toes like fringe at the ends. It was moving slightly in Grovers palm, but it looked limp and weak.

Bye-bye, baby, Grover said. He picked up a long pair of tongs, the kind people use to turn meat on a barbecue grill. His teasing manner was gone now. He moved carefully. All his attention was on what he was doing. He gripped the tiny mouse with the tongs and waved it back and forth before the snakes head. The snake lifted the front half of its body into the air. Its tongue flicked in and out.

I dont know, said Nickie. Maybe I dont want to watch.

But it was too late. The snake struck out and snatched the mouse. It withdrew into the tank and wrapped a coil of itself around the mouses body to hold it still, and then it opened its mouth extremely wide and began to stuff the mouses head into it.

They always eat things headfirst, Grover remarked. And they have expandable jaws.

Nickie froze in horror, but she couldnt take her eyes away. It took only a few seconds for the pink body of the mouse, still wriggling, to disappear down the snakes throat. For a second, a bit of tail hung over the snakes lower jaw. Then the whole mouse was gone. The snake stretched out on the sand again. Behind its head was a mouse-sized bulge.

Nickie breathed out. She hadnt realized shed been holding her breath. She felt ill. Its horrible, she said.

Not really, said Grover. Its how the snake lives. If I didnt give him a mouse, hed catch one himself.

How can you stand to do it? The poor little mouse.

Grover shrugged. Its nature, he said. Nature likes the snake just as much as the mouse.

I guess so, Nickie said.

Well, thats it, said Grover. He set down the tongs and put the lid back on the tank. At least you didnt faint.

Ivenever fainted, said Nickie. She felt upsetsomewhere between sick and angry.

Want to see the red belly eat?

No. Its too weird.

Its not weird at all, Grover retorted. It happens every day, hundreds of times. If you want to see somethingreally weird, go over to Hoyt McCoys house in the middle of the night. He cracks the sky open. I saw it.

Come on, said Nickie. Youre making that up.

No! I really saw it. A long, skinny line in the sky. Hes doingsomething weird over there. Maybe hes sending signals to enemy nations! Or he opens the sky, and aliens and demons ooze through! Grover wiggled his fingers in a creepy, oozing way.

Nickie just shook her head. With Grover, she didnt know how to tell the difference between truth and kidding. I have to go now, she said. So Grover led her back across the yard and into the house, down the hall among the toddlers, and out onto the front porch, where the grandmother was still sitting on the old couch.

Going already? the old woman said.

I showed her the milk snake, said Grover.

No wonder shes leaving in a hurry.

Fed him his dinner, said Grover.

It was gruesome, Nickie said.

No kidding, said the grandma. She eyed Nickie with interest. You going to introduce me to this young lady? she asked Grover.

This is my grandmother, Carrie Hartwell, Grover said to Nickie. We just call her Granny Carrie. He turned to his grandmother. And this is Nickie, he said.

Nickie Randolph, said Nickie. My great-grandfather lived here. His name was Arthur Green.

Ah, the grandmother said. He was on the side of the angels.

Nickie wasnt sure what this meant, but it sounded all right. She said goodbye and walked back out to the street. Her legs felt shaky and her stomach churned. Was it good, she wondered, to feed a baby mouse to a snake? It wasnt good for the mouse, but it was for the snake. Was it evil for Grover to do it? She just didnt know.

CHAPTER 17 ______________

Hoyt McCoys Horrible House

Nickie headed back toward Greenhaven by way of Raven Road. She hadnt really planned to go that way; her mind was on what shed just seen in Grovers shed. But when she found herself passing the gravel drive that led back into Hoyt McCoys overgrown acres, she hesitated. She thought about what Grover had saidthat Hoyt McCoy cracked open the sky. Surely that couldnt be true. But whatever hed seen might have been a sign of wickedness. Mrs. Beeson thought there was something strange about this man, that he was probably a trouble spot. And Nickie had promised to help her. So maybe, while she was here, she should check on Hoyt McCoy. She didnt really want to; even her strong curiosity didnt extend to creepy isolated houses and people with a whiff of wrongness about them. But if she was going to do her part to root out badness so that goodness could win, she had to be brave.